Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tow, but at the last minute he realized what was going on. Running to the jeep, he piled in
next to her, and they rode off together, Mansi staring at the ceiling.
A month later I would e-mail her from New York, asking how things had turned out
when the yatra had reached Delhi. I hadn't found much in the papers.
She would tell me she had gone to see the protest. There had been nothing like the pre-
dicted half million people, she said, but there were sadhus from all over the world, and a
strong showing from the farmers' union. Creepy Baba had said hello, and another sadhu
had grabbed Mansi by the hand and dragged her up front to sit by the podium. There were
speeches, and some loose talk about taking a sledgehammer to the dam at Wazirabad. But
nobody in Delhi noticed.
“Sad,” she wrote me. “There's so many of them, and zero press coverage.” It seemed
the media had exhausted itself earlier in the month, covering an anti-corruption hunger
strike. In the end, Delhi would pay the Yamuna yatra about as much attention as it does the
Yamuna itself.
I continued with the yatra for a few more days. Because he spoke decent English, Mahesh
installed himself as my new minder.
“I will be your translator!” he said, walking beside me, his arms swinging wide. “I am
going to tell you SO many stories about Lord Krishna!”
An earnest, ever-smiling man in his mid-twenties, Mahesh looked more like a young
computer science graduate than a sadhu, but his enthusiasm for Krishna was unrivaled.
Thus was I treated to stories and digressions about Krishna and heaven, about Krishna and
the boy stuck in the well, about how Krishna had been “naughty” and gone “thief-ing wa-
ter.” About how Krishna had ordered his minister to “make women more lusty,” and had
then vanquished the minister for criticizing him about it. About how Krishna had told the
people to worship the forests and the hills instead of the lord Indra.
Mahesh on sin. Mahesh on how if you invoke Krishna you will prevent illness. Mahesh
on sin, again. Mahesh on how he had so many sins. SO many sins! I began to wonder just
what kind of sins we were talking about. The sin of attachment? The sin of being full of
stool and urine? The sin of being member to a ruinous species? Or something else that
shouldn't count as sin? Was his sin something he had done? Something he wanted to do?
Something that had been done to him?
We walked. We sauntered. We made embalmed relics of our hearts. Mahesh on how
with Krishna at your side, you will avoid car crashes at the last instant. How if someone
