Travel Reference
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smashed glass included - under the spare mattress. Flopping onto
my bed, I fantasised awful revenges, dreadful traps, simian holocausts.
I'd missed breakfast but I thought I'd give bananas and curds a shot
at lunch. Another occupant was in the office as I passed, an ancient
little man whose visage looked even kinder and more compassionate
than photographs of the Maharshi's had.
He greeted me in a high-pitched voice. 'Welcome, welcome, dear
friend. Please sit down. Where have you come from, is it?'
I told him. He seemed delighted. 'Oh, wonderful, wonderful,' he
kept repeating.
I eventually got around to the monkeys and my guts. He suddenly
looked as if he were about to burst into tears, shaking his head.
'Dear, dear, how terribly terrible! ' He paused for quite a while,
deep in thought. Then he brightened. 'Bhagavan says the mind is
like monkey.' I nodded, familiar with the metaphor. For want of a
better response, I told him I wished I'd been able to meet Ramana
Maharshi myself. The old man smiled sweetly. 'Bhagavan is still
here.'
'Huh?'
'He is still here, with us.'
'Where?'
He pointed behind me. ' There .'
I turned, not really expecting to see Ramana Maharshi.
The man laughed. 'Let me take you to Bhagavan's room and you
will see.' I followed his astonishingly athletic little form out of the
office. His step was light and springy, as if that happy old heart
inside him had wings. We walked down a tidy series of narrow
pathways lined with flowering shrubs to a neat and tiny
whitewashed structure. He unlocked its flimsy door. Inside was a
small and spotlessly clean space like some cramped student lodging.
It was unremarkable in every way - except that time in there had
stopped at 1950: a cabinet of medicine bottles from the forties; a
rickety little pallet dating earlier; an Edwardian child's desk with
yellowed papers, inkstand, and cheap nib pen; a chair even humbler
than the one Van Gogh immortalised; some worn pieces of cloth
crisply folded upon makeshift shelves. Not much else.
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