Many years ago, I travelled through India with my husband. My impressions of that time are of him wearing a very fetching lunghi and reading ‘An Autobiography of a Yogi’, and me wearing my Che Guevara t-shirt and reading ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’; of him wanting to find his inner spirit and spend time with his beloved Baba in the Himalayan foothills, and me wanting to spend time in the inner cities where, I believed, real spirit resided. We must have come across as a very strange young couple.
I remember realising that I felt no ‘culture shock’ when I was living alongside the ‘real’ people of India, even when we were in the most poverty stricken of areas. The people, like most ‘real’ people everywhere, were kind, happy and accommodating. However, living in the Baba’s ashram totally freaked me out! Although I respected and honored my husband’s Baba as a person, I always harboured doubts about his religion and religion in general. Who were these crazy westerners, parading about with heads shaved, chanting om namaha shivaya at every corner and behaving like they were anticipating a vacancy in the Holy Trinity! Hadn’t they heard that religion was the opiate of the masses? You may be wondering how two people, such as myself and my husband, ever got together in the first place? All I can say, on my part, is that I loved him with my heart and soul – he was the most ‘real’ person I had ever met.
Herakhan Baba
However, looking back, I realise that the Baba was, in fact, ‘real’ too. He must have ‘sensed’ how out of place and time I felt and, against all the rules of the ashram, he offered us the garden cottage across the river and away from, whom I believed to be, the crazy westerners. To my eternal regret, we had to refuse. Spring was just around the corner and we had our own market garden back home to attend to, and there were still places and cities that I, selfishly, wanted to see. I promised my husband that I would return one day and try to understand what all this spiritual malarkey was really about. But life moves on and motherhood was calling, and we never got back to visit my husband’s Baba… Not long after we arrived back home, I found out I was pregnant with my first child (I had been trying to conceive for over a year). He was quickly followed by two beautiful daughters, and our life and our hearts were filled with wonder as we raised them and watched them grow.
Herakhan Ashram
Two years ago, with my children now grown up, I decided to check the Baba out on the Internet. My husband was going through a seriously rough time and I felt it was about time we made that visit back to Herakhan. Heartbroken, I discovered that the Baba had died only a few weeks after we’d left, on the 14th February 1984 (my son was born 9 months and two days later). The news of the Baba’s death not only saddened me, but shocked me too. He was only a young man, perhaps only in his early thirties. It’s difficult to find out how and why he died, there are so many conflicting stories. However, the ashram is still there and it is there that he’s been laid to rest. I hope to go back this year sometime and pay my respects. And also to thank him and his Gods for the gift of my son.
