Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
muscles in the legs, big feet, and large but slender and well-formed
hands. A Bengali, I decided, mainly because he resembled the poet
Tagore.
He bade me sit next to him and proceeded to fumble with a packet
of Wills Filters and light a cigarette, smoking it furiously through his
fist, the other hand working the fan again. I noted an old cloth bag at
his feet, from which protruded three more similar fans.
'I didn't know yogis smoked.'
He merely laughed, puffing and fanning with even more
concentrated intensity. The actions seemed connected. He did not
look like someone enjoying a cigarette so much as someone using
an asthma inhaler.
I lit up a cigarette myself, but felt oddly uncomfortable smoking
it next to the yogi. I soon dumped it surreptitiously, asking him if he
always smoked. He had just lit a second cigarette from the previous
butt.
'Only here,' he replied.
I felt the curious sensation you get when you suspect someone
can read your mind, or, stranger still, can inscribe on it what you are
currently reading there yourself.
When his other hand was not fanning, I noticed, it was performing
a rapid motion like counting the beads of an invisible rosary. Indeed,
he was all motion. In anyone else it would have seemed neurotic,
anxious, but with him it gave the impression of someone who needed
to vent excess energy.
I asked where he lived and what he did during the day.
'This beggar lives out there,' he replied, indicating the barren
wasteland surrounding Arunachala. 'He does whatever God asks.'
'What
does
God ask?'
'What this beggar does is not important,' he answered firmly.
'What is it that
you
wish?'
I told him that I just wanted to meet him.
He laughed insanely and long, as if he'd never in his life heard
anything so preposterous. I wondered if maybe he
was
just a beggar.
Except he seemed more like a king in exile.
'Oh! Oh! Oh!' he gasped, coughing. 'Is it so?'
'Yes. I'm really interested in what you people do. Where I come
