Getting up (7.00 am)
We woke up to a Sunday. Not that THAT made any difference to us. But we ourselves had decided not to go out today, because (a) we have done a pretty strenuous walk yesterday, and (b) half the population of Delhi were still milling about Himachal Pradesh, with a proportionate representation in Tirthan as well.
Post breakfast, Panna went down to the intermediate level to listen to an audio book, while I preferred the cane chair on our verandah for a session with Osho. In our Kolkata house, sometimes we spent time in different rooms doing different things, but now we seemed to have spread our wings to different GPS points. Quantum particles were getting entangled over cosmic distances, while we were getting disentangled at close quarters. Which is bigger progress, God knows - or Osho does.
His book fell open at a page ideally suited to a chilled out morning: "You are not the doer." You bet I'm not, and will strongly endeavour not to be one today. Osho is one of the straightest shooters I know (ie, I have read) and today's homily went on at various levels.
Kesarbhai clears a river
In the latter part of the morning, Panna went down for her usual dip and found a local gentleman lugging around stones in the shallows. When queried keenly, he said he was doing this for his atta chakki. Panna understood that he was looking for a particular stone for his machine, like older idli-batter grinders needed a particular type of stone. After watching him rejecting stones for over half an hour, she asked him what specific type of stone was he looking for? It took the pahadi gentlemen a few double takes to recover and explain that he was simply removing boulders so that a wider channel of water could be directed to his atta chakki machine, which is water-powered, like the grinding mills of old England. The intellectual pressure of the conversation was quite high, and they both took a break to share life stories.
Kesarbhai's father had migrated here, and their family business is this atta chakki. Many landowners here still grow their own maize and get them ground at Kesarbhai's mill. He even knew the ex-Punjabi Raghubir bhai whom we had met earlier. Kesarbhai wanted to know where we lived and how many cows we had (he had three). Panna hung her head in shame and admitted we had none. "Where do you get your milk from?", he asked. We hardly take milk, but if required, we buy. Kesarbhai shook his head, bemoaning the fact that more and more people in villages here were buying ready-made stuff and not making them on their own. Traditions are eroding. "Look at those girls," he said, indicating some of our Jat friends cavorting nearby. "Girls nowadays have too much freedom. Are they your children?" he asked with slight disapproval. Panna hastened to disavow them. Kesarbhai forthwith invited her home for some tea, to which Panna took a raincheck. "So nice of you," said Kesarbhai "to come and talk to the locals. So many visitors don't bother."
Our Jat friends throw in the towel (2.00 pm)
Our neighbours were due to depart at lunch hour, and there was lot of activity in the morning - last dip in the river, last washing of clothes, shoving wet clothes in their backpacks (they had not planned for the plastic bags - how typical), settling the bill with furious negotiation. Then, as they started climbing up to the road to wait for the bus, the hammer fell. In the first room, only one towel was found, not two.
The students in the room maintained that they had been given only one. Kamlibhai said impossible. Either they return the missing towel or they pay up a thousand bucks. Impasse. They were all asked to show their backpacks, and no towel found. Ultimately, I gather they had to shell out the money.
Kamlibhai himself said later on that they had probably left a towel by the river, but to him, even the money is not the thing. His stuff is bought by special order from shops far away and sometimes this might result in an unmatched set. The students offered their own towels apparently, but "woh leke main kya karu?" complained Kamlibhai.
We were feeling bad for the students too, that their last memory here would be one of altercation, accusation, and stress. As a matter of fact, they were following Osho quite well, insisting that: "We are not the doers." God bless them.
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