Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
temple. The crowd was entirely Indian; Maan Mandir didn't seem to be attracting any aging
hippies or Silicon Valley dropouts. Shri Baba wandered in and sat on a low stage in front.
He was in his late seventies but looked much younger. He had great skin. He was bald,
with a perfect globe of skull that crowned an expressionless, hangdog face. He preached
in Hindi, his voice low and strong, measuring his sermon with long pauses. As he talked,
he noodled on an electric keyboard, and every now and then the music would take over, a
drummer and a flutist would start up, and Shri Baba would shift seamlessly into song. His
best move, which he pulled once or twice per song, was to let his melody soar into a high,
long note: at this cue, the entire room would raise their arms and scream, an entire army of
Gil Seriques.
AAAGGHH!
Early the next day, we went to see the morning sermon up at the temple itself. Brahmini and
Mansi and I climbed the stairs through the trees to the top of the ridge, toward an impos-
sibly brilliant sky. Outside the temple, Brahmini led us into a small garden, in the middle
of which stood the statue of a blue-skinned woman. It was Yamuna herself, a faint smile on
her face.
The temple was older and sparer than the buildings down the hill. It had a stone floor,
cool under our shoeless feet, and unglazed windows looking out over the countryside.
Mansi sat with the women, and Brahmini and I walked to a crumbling chamber adjoining
the back of the room, where he could translate the sermon without disturbing everyone
else. He had brought a handheld digital recorder, into which he would speak his translation.
Later, he said, he would send the audio file to a devotee in Australia, who would transcribe
it and post it on the Internet. They did this every day.
Shri Baba was sitting on another low stage facing the audience. He spoke. Brahmini
leaned over to me so I could hear him as he murmured into the recorder.
“The greatest mental disease is attachment,” he said. “Suppose a man is attached to a
woman.”
I sat up.
“Don't see the outside,” Shri Baba told us. “See the inside. The body is full of bones,
blood, urine, and stool. It gets old and dies.” Brahmini's translation was rhythmic and pre-
cise. “There are nine holes in the body,” he said. “Only dirt and pollution is coming out.
And think about that stool.
”
That was the key, according to Lord Krishna. “If you see the errors in the object, in the
body,” Shri Baba said, “your attachment will be destroyed.”
