The Lonely Old Reprobate

 was staying at the Sarovar Portico Hotel in Jaipur, Rajasthan, and I was looking for somewhere convenient to eat that was going to provide me with fresh vegetables I needed daily to fulfil the demands of my Ayurvedic treatment, taste good and not kill my budget. I didn’t want to eat at the hotel after my experience a the Bond Well Hotel in Alwar, which managed to clean me out of almost every penny I had before I left, a couple of days prior, I didn’t want any more nasty surprises. Sheela my friend back in Blackburn had warned me before hand, so now I had learned not to trust anyone. 

The night before I met Harsh I had dinner at a trendy eatery down the road from the hotel, and although it was everything I could have wanted so far as my treatment was concerned, in truth it was tasteless and boring, and a bit more pricey than I wanted to pay. I don’t know how to best describe it, it was a bit up market for a cafe, and a bit more noisy and hip for me to describe it as a restaurant. But it didn’t serve alcohol, so I wouldn’t describe it as a bar, but it was  packed with mainly young bloods, poseurs, and middle aged men out to impress. To be fair, I only had one meal there, and my inability to read the menu reflected on me and not the establishment. I just wasn’t so impressed. 

And whilst the management at the Bond Well Hotel did everything they could to come between me and my wallet, the young chef there was a superb vegetarian cook. The night before I left he gave me a lift on the back of his scooter to the ATM and accompanied me inside where he watched me draw the money I needed for my bill and the cost of getting to Jaipur. I have forgotten his name, but he is very likeable.  It was a mistake though letting him stand with me and watch me take my money, which incidentally was almost the entire cost of my final bill at the Bond Well Hotel, Alwar.

So, anyway, I had felt stung, and I wasn’t going to fall into the same trap twice.

Around the corner from the Sarovar Hotel, I found an eating place packed with local people so I ate there. The food was in the words of a local man who saw me stood mute, not understanding the first thing I was looking at, or what was on the menu, or that the chapati cooked to look like a balloon and the chick pea sauce it accompanied were ‘Really Yummy’, so I tried in and was not disappointed. That apart from the size of the portion which was snack size for a man of my proportions, which I guess, compared to the average Indian, is what I might describe as large-ish, or chubby by any standard.

My dietary demands could be met there, and my taste buds also could be sent into raptures, but the bottom line is what I found on offer didn’t match my expectations and I felt a bit stuck, it was like tucking into a really nice meal, and having it taken from you half way through. Maybe that is western largess, but you are what your culture makes you, and is probably why so many of us in the West are so fat.

 I had noticed though from my hotel window, that directly across the road was a small restaurant called “Marshall’s Corner”, so I thought I might as well try it, if nothing else it was just over the road, a hop, skip and jump away, so why not? It isn’t that I was ignoring it, rather, it was, I imagined it to be too convenient to be true, but by the time I tried it I had traversed the neighbourhood enough, and although each time I tried, the good was counterbalanced by a different inconvenience.. 

I walked into “Marshall’s Corner” at about 8pm and was welcomed by a smart young man who offered me the option of dining inside the restaurant, or in the garden at the back of the establishment, I chose the latter. I was given the menu and I asked the young man whose English was almost perfect what the items were on the menu, which he duly explained. The entire menu is vegetarian, most of which satisfied my Ayurvedic preferences, so choosing was difficult, as much as sticking a pin in a map isn’t.  And it was nice to have a linear conversation where we both understood each other. Perhaps it was an off night, but it wasn’t busy at all, so I engaged this very pleasant young man in conversation. 

What I have found on my travels is that most people who have an understanding of English will happily engage in conversation, if only to take advantage of the opportunity to practise their own language skills. Although it soon becomes obvious if they are only trying to impress themselves, which does happen, often.

However, this was not the case with Harsh. He told me his name translates in English to ‘Happy’ pointing out the contradiction which I seized on, because, of my inability to process quickly, it was easy for me to remember ‘Happy’ and I asked if he minded if that was what I called him because I find Hindi impenetrable. 

I asked how it was that his English is so good, and he told me he had worked on Tui Cruise Liners for a few years, and that as most of the passengers he met spoke English, it became the Lingua Franca.

 My lovely meal came and went, Harsh politely left me to it, but because the restaurant was quiet I think he sensed perhaps that I was craving conversation which soon developed into a series of questions and answers, much in the same way in which, I found out, he had worked on the Liners. He asked what I was doing in India, so I explained that I was on a spiritual quest, and that it was a life long wish of mine to be there, that I saw it as an opportunity to learn about Hinduism, spirituality,and in particular, reincarnation. 

This last statement perked Harsh’s interest and the conversation took a turn, it deepened, I ended up telling him about my Near Death Experience in 1984, and the Earth shattering experience I had at the Lakshmi Narain Temple in New Delhi. He wanted to know more, like who is my Guru and that is how it was that our bond formed. I have spoken about both of these events in previous posts, but I want to dedicate this post to Harsh, so if you wish to know about those events, unfortunately you will have to look for them there.

I can’t  say I know very much about Harsh, not in the usual way we get to ‘Know’ people, you know, their background, where they come from and where they grew up, family, friends, jobs and plans, triumphs and tragedies,  the things that make a life. I tried to get under his skin because I quickly understood he would be the central pier of my time in Jaipur, it was obvious from what he did say, that he was well connected within the city and he was keen to be helpful, and good to know for a stranger like me.

He never offered personal information, and try as I might, I couldn’t pry it out of him, and when I did try, it only made his silence more opaque, I realised quickly that my enquiry only increased his reluctance to talk about himself.

I came to feel  there was a deeper reason for his intransigence, that he was holding onto something he was keeping shielded, not for want of being evasive, but he was guarded, not because he was hiding something, but more because he didn’t feel there was anything  about himself worth speaking about. His reluctance to speak about himself brought to mind Salman Rushdie’s book “Shame” which I read in hospital back in 1984 which talks about the Indian perspective of the word, not the way we in the west use it, as in ‘I have done a bad thing, so I am ashamed of myself’. The Indian perspective goes much deeper into the human psyche than that we in the west understand.

Rather, it alludes to a mans sense of failure, at not being able to live up to that which was expected of him, being unable to fulfil his potential, no matter if he is dutiful, not through laziness or wrongdoing, but more because he cannot live up to familial assumptions. He never said anything about it, and I am loath to make assumptions,  but he could not accept praise, being told something good about himself made him noticeably embarrassed, and he fell into silence when I asked about his aspirations, or his childhood plans.

It kind of made sense to me at some level when he told me his father was a businessman, his mother, a teacher, and his elder brother who was his support, is a banker, and his sister-in-law, who he see’s as his own, that his self worth was further impugned by my insistence to know more about him, it was as if to say “see what I am not?”, as though he was erasing his worthiness as a man in the shadow of his family name like a fractured spirit who had broken a sacred thread, entrenched in his family honour, so I didn’t try to labour the point, because perhaps in some obtuse way, doing so would add to his burden.

When we spoke of spirit though, something stirred in him, the light in his eyes burned intensely, we come from different cultures and do not need words like Brahma, or dharma to communicate our deeper selves, we aligned in soul contact, and shared moments beyond explanation, the kind that still your breath, and widen your silence. 

Indians speak of Nirguna Brahman, a thing known, not through study or dogma, but in stillness, in the spaces between pain, in moments stripped bare leaving only awareness, vast, wordless, nameless holding you when nothing else can, and it was in that we both recognised something in each other.

Nirguna Brahman is a core concept in Adavita Vedanta (non-dualistic Hindu philosophy), referring to the Absolute Reality without attributes – limitless, formless, timeless, beyond all categories of thought or perception. It is pure Being – Consciousness – Bliss (Sat – Chit – Ananda) beyond name, form and function. The ultimate, formless, impersonal reality behind all appearances. Not something you understand intellectually. It is realised in deep meditation, silence, surrender – when ego dissolves. In that state, you do not worship the divine – you become the divine, or you remember that you always were. It happened to me in the Lakshmi Narain temple in New Delhi, when I was shaken to my core, when I heard the words “Forgive me for forgetting who I am” coming out of me. 

It might sound airy fairy to western perceptions, but that, for me at least is the baseline of every religious teaching, and we all know it. We dress it up differently according to our cultural values, but every single one of us knows it, even if we can’t describe it or express it, but in the pit of your being you cannot escape it, you know, and that is enough.

Harsh is my friend. He is 24 years old, younger than any of my children, but we have a soul contact which in my life has been rare. In our conversations I had explained my plan, no matter how vague, about how I wanted to escape the monsoon by staying in Rajasthan, going deeper into the desert, staying away from the rain. And it was he who introduced me to his friend a tour operator at the business next door to the restaurant through whom a taxi was arranged to take me to Kumblagarh, which is how I met Manish the driver who I have spoken about.

Harsh told me if I had any problems, I just needed to contact him, and he would help any way he could. I have been so lucky on my journey, but meeting Harsh has been a highlight. In a previous blog post, I spoke of the difficulty I had negotiating train tickets from Alwar to Jaipur, which defeated me, and made me book a taxi instead. It sounds extravagant, I know, certainly the staff at the ‘Bond Well’ hotel at Alwar thought so, and which I paid for because of their perception, but the fare works out at 15 Rupees per Kilometre, which roughly speaking is 15pence per Km, and so the journey from Alwar to Jaipur, in an air conditioned taxi cost me about £90 for almost 500Km. A bargain by British transport costs, especially considering my health concerns.

As I have written about previously, it was in Kumblagarh where I realised my visa folly, which precipitated my onward journey to Cambodia. And it was there where I contacted Harsh to help me once more, arranging Manish to return for me. All of this was arranged for me by Harsh, all of it at prices I could afford, and none of which I could have managed within a reasonable time frame without him.

I keep saying how lucky I have been. But the luck stems from the relationships I have formed with people I regard as guardian angels. I could not have managed any of the things I have achieved without the help and dedication of people like harsh who I hardly know, but Harsh and I keep in contact, and we will continue this way If I have anything to do with it.

So my good friend Harsh, my little brother, my soul contact, I dedicate this blog post to you