Gods and Godmen of India (13 page)
Fifty-two years old Priya Nath was educated in Christian schools before he took a degree in nuclear physics from Allahabad University and went to Harvard for a doctorate. He gave up his lucrative job in the United States to look after his ageing father. And now Bhola Nathji is no more, to carry on his work. He is arranging publications of his father’s writing and keeping the World Prayer Day Movement going. He explains his life’s mission quoting Allama Iqbal’s lines from
Shikwa:
Ham to zindaa hain keh duniyaan mein teyra naam rahey
Kaheen mumkin hai keh saakee na rahey jaam rahey?
(We live to see that your Name lives for ever Is it possible that there is wine but no wine-server?)
24/4/1993
“M
y ‘friends’ have often told me that I would do better as a godman than as an editor. I did not take this back-handed compliment very seriously but now I am coming round to the idea that there may be more for me in the godman business than in journalism. I have the necessary accoutrements: unshorn hair, a beard which I can let down (after the black dye has worn off), I can quote the scriptures if needed as well as the Devil at times as well as any of the current
Bhagwans.
Like them I can spout world-shattering thoughts which pass as philosophy, e.g., “God is love” or “Find the truth within yourself”. I could also learn a few sleights of hand like producing
vibhuti
out of my empty palm. The real hurdles in my way to the godman’s
gaddi
are my addiction to the rotted
angoor
and my glad eye. I am assured that if I made a well-publicized demonstration of renouncing liquor by smashing a cut glass decanter or two in public it would add to my holy image. I could thereafter discreetly resume my indulgence. As for the glad eye, I would have much more opportunity to gladden my vision as a godman than I have as an editor.
I have come round to the godman idea out of sheer envy. They seem to get the best of both worlds, the material as well as the spiritual. There is HH Maharishi Mahesh Yogi staying in the royal suite of a London hotel costing Rs 7,500 per day (for the room only). He has in addition a chateau in Switzerland, Mentmore castle (bought from the Rothschilds), a Victorian mansion in England and many equally large estates in Europe and the United States. He also owns aircraft including helicopters, fleets of Rolls Royces and Cadillacs.
Not satisfied with what he has got, the Maharishi has advertised for an 800-bedroom hotel in England. From this hotel he promises to generate 800 trained meditators and ‘fliers’ (people who can get airborne by the sheer force of Yoga) who will then usher in a ‘World Government of the Age of Enlightenmen.’ Various departments of this have been named including an all-purpose Ministry of All Possibilities. You may find this laughable. The Maharishi’s two-and-a-half million followers do not regard it as a laughing matter.
The Maharishi and other gurus, swamis, acharyas and
bhagwans
have taken a head-start from me in this race. In the few years left to me I may not be able to catch up with them. Also there will be many who will mock my metamorphosis from a sinner to a saint. So I have decided to accept the advice of Colonel Chugh who sent me the following lines as solace:
Yeh bandey bandagi kar ke bhi bandey ban naheen saktey;
Magar ham badaa khaney sey nikaltey hain khuda ban kar
(These people despite their worship can never become human beings;
But I will emerge from the tavern like God Himself.)
17/4/1982
N
ot many people outside Maharashtra could have heard his name. Even in Bombay which he sometimes visited he had only a few admirers. But in the Marathaland around Pune, Kolhapur and the Konkan he had an enormous following and could draw audiences upwards of 150,000 and hold them spellbound for hours with his powerful oratory. And yet when he died at 42, three weeks ago there was hardly any mention of him in our newspapers, radio or television. He deserved better than a couple of paragraphs inserted as space fillers between ads. I knew Datta Bal and liked the little I knew of him as he was amongst the few educated ‘godmeri who could discuss human problems in a language I could understand. I also hoped that in the years to come he would become a power for the good and his voice would be heard all over the country. Alas!
Datta Bal Desai was no more than 30 when I first men him. He wrote to me from Kolhapur: yellow paper, green ink and a very decorative effeminate handwriting. I invited him for lunch on his next visit to Bombay and picked up whatever information I could on him. A few days later he was my guest in the editors’ lunch room. He was a short, stocky, sturdily built Maratha sporting a trimmed beard. He was somewhat nervous of meeting a host of editors and Dr Dharam Vir Bharati (
Dharamyug
) added to his discomfiture by asking him bluntly: “So you call yourself a godman?” Datta Bal denied the charge and added modestly: “I am only a
seeker. “
The lunch was not a great success.
Thereafter whenever Datta Bai was in Bombay, I saw him alone or with his cousin who was a kind of chief disciple and secretary. I recall asking him, why a young man with so much promise had thrown up a career to seek whatever he was seeking: I quoted Dwarka Das Shola’s admonition:
Taalash-i-haq mein na dunya ko chchor ai zaahid
Kaheen ka bhee na raheyga agar khuda no mila
(Good man, do not abandon the world in search of God,
If you do not find Him you will be neither here nor there.)
Datta Bai was certainly a most unusual Godman. A princeling of Goa, at the age of three he was pronounced by a clairvoyant lady as bearing the marks of a
mahapurush.
He was unable to get his degree in India but managed to get one from Montreal (Canada). At the age of 19 he proclaimed his mission to preach the gospel of Divine Love. He quoted Marx, Engels, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, Sartre in Marathi to the Marathas, in English to the Europeans, Japanese and Filipinos. Senapati Bapat called him greater than Kahlil Gibran; others thought he was a second Vivekanand. His commitment was to Hinduism; communism was anathema to him.
Datta Bal had no hang-ups about women – or liquor. His name was linked with a lady of Kolhapur and once he had trouble with the police for trying to break into the Mahalaxmi temple at midnight.
We became friendly enough for him to take the liberty of calling on me unannounced. I will never forget one such evening. It was in October, the most unpleasant time of the year in Bombay: hot, sticky, with an all-pervading stink of rotting fish. For some reason our apartment building was without light or water and I was sweating it out under candle light. There was a gentle knock on the door. It was Datta Bal and his cousin. I was acutely embarrassed. I did not have anything to offer them: no soft drinks, not even a bottle of cold water in the fridge. All I had was whisky which, in the absence of soda or ice, I was drinking neat. I explained my predicament. “Why can’t I have what you are having?” asked Datta Bal and quoted the Bible, “It is not what goes in a man that matters but what comes out of him.”
We drank undiluted, tepid whisky and talked into the late hours in candlelight. The subject was Datta Bal’s experiments with extrasensory perceptions and attempts to communicate through telepathy with people in distant places and even those who had gone ‘beyond’, i.e., died. There was no reference to God, truth, reality or morality. Our dialogue ended when the bottle of Scotch had been drained of its last drop.
The last time I saw Datta Bai was one evening five years ago at Mahabaleshwar. I was strolling along the road towards the lake when I passed by a bungalow with a long driveway. I spotted Datta Bal draped in white kurta-pyjamas standing still as a statue under a porch facing the setting sun. At the bungalow gate was his cousin, and a couple of others with their gazes fixed on Datta Bal. I watched them for almost half an hour standing motionless and silent facing each other at a distance of 50 yards. They were obviously trying to communicate through concentrated thinking. As the sun went down over the western ghats it lit up Datta Bal’s face with an amber glow; he looked like a prophet swathed in sanctified saffron. That image of Datta Bal remains fixed in my memory. May be now that he has gone ‘beyond’ he may send me some message. Or may be the ‘beyond’ is all a lot of tommy rot.
25/9/1982
I
had the privilege of spending many hours many times at his sylvan ashram at Ganeshpuri. It was a lovely spot lying between ranges of low hills covered with sal, coral, flame and lantana. Whichever way you looked you saw temple spires rising above the green of the jungle. There was a rich variety of birds and butterflies. A hot water sulphur spring added to its many attractions. Above all there was Muktananda and his lame elephant who garlanded the Swami every morning. After Bombay’s ear-splitting noises, the peace and quiet of Ganeshpuri made it seem like a paradise on earth. Brooding over the hills, dales and forests was the spirit of Bhagwan Nityananda.
I was first introduced to the Ashram by the mountaineer O.P. Sharma who assured me that his frost bitten toes and fingers had been saved from amputation by the spiritual powers of Muktananda. All he had to do was to repeat the mantra:
Om Shivay Namah!
I did not buy the story of miracle healing. Then a buxom American lass who introduced herself as Uma Berliner came to see me and told me how she had been saved from drugs and permissive living by Muktananda. That made sense to me because I believe that our gurus and saints can heal sickness of the mind better than modern psychiatrists. Uma insisted that I have
darshan
of her guru in his ashram. “Any pretty girls around?” I asked trying to put her off. “Lots. Come and see for yourself,” she replied.
There were indeed lots of pretty young Europeans and Americans (mainly Jewish) living in the ashram. They looked healthy of mind and body but all had ‘problems’: they came from broken homes, were in the process of being divorced or were on drugs and they all found their answers at Ganeshpuri. I had no problems and didn’t find Muktananda very stimulating company. He was medium-sized, dark complexioned and wore dark glasses (I suspect all who wear dark glasses as having something to hide), an untidy growth of hair round his chin and an untidier
kurta-tehmad.
But there was something extremely warm about him. I didn’t try his
Saktipat
but fell in the embrace of his friendship. He draped me with an orange shawl and asked me to come again. I went to Ganeshpuri whenever he bade me visit him. On one occasion I spent the entire day, visiting hutments raised by the Muktananda Trust for Adivasis and then gave away cooking utensils to hundreds of poor families.
Muktananda was a Mangalorean who after wandering all over India settled down in Ganeshpuri as the disciple of Swami Nityananda. He succeeded to the
gaddi
in 1961, and increased his following in India and abroad. Amongst those who visited him regularly was film star Nargis. Muktananda’s disciples claimed that he could not only heal the sick by the touch of his hand but had also saved innumerable people from accidents. He was in the States when Nargis was dying of cancer. She spoke to him on the phone. But this time, Muktananda did not perform the miracle of life-saving.
The Ganeshpuri ashram has been the subject of litigation for many years. I wonder what will happen to it now that its moving spirit is gone.
16/10/82
I
n my years as editor of
The Illustrated Weekly of India,
I got to know quite a few women journalists: Frene Talyarkhan, Gulshan Ewing, Devyani Chaubal, Nina Merchant, Shobha De, Fatima Zakaria, Bachi Karkaria. Among them was Vimla Patil of
Femina
for whom I developed a special regard. This women’s magazine was at first edited by Dr Jhangiani; Vimla was his assistant.
When Jhangiani retired, she became
Femina’s
first woman editor. She remained at the helm for 30 years till her retirement four years ago. Besides keeping
Femina
on top of the list of women’s journals, she was primarily responsible for
Femina
beauty contests in different parts of India. Most of our Miss India, Miss Asias and Miss Universes owe their recognition in the world of beauty to Vimla.
Being the first woman editor of
The Times of India
group of Journals, Vimla was entitled entry to the hitherto exclusively male luncheon room. She was not eager to avail of this privilege as it had been reported to her that a lot of bawdy talk took place during lunch: male editors were equally unwilling to lose the privilege of letting their hair down between working hours.
I made it a point to pick her up from her cubicle every noon and escort her to the lunch room and back. Her lady-like presence improved the tone of our conversation as it did of the food served to us. I did not have to guess what my fellow editors had to say about our relationship behind our backs.
Their gossip flattered me: Vimla was a quarter of a century younger than I, an attractive Maharashtrian type, always tastefully dressed: no make-up (her ivory-smooth complexion did not need any cosmetics) and never more than a string of pearls around her neck. She was extremely conservative and put men who tried to take liberties with her in their places.