Blog.4. India: Mumbai blog

15th Jan 2010. The Old Bombay Club

My friend Shama who I’m seeing after some 20 years invites me for lunch at the Willingdon Club: spacious, gracious and privileged. In the hall hang portraits of British colonials in whose days of course Indians were not allowed anywhere near the club.

We sit in the closed veranda overlooking beautiful gardens as Shama orders Chinese lunch and tells me of the various summersaults and hoops she had to go through to become a member some 40 years earlier.

Someone ambles over to join us, ‘Ah here’s another actor. Leena is also in the same line of work’ He pulls up a chair. ‘You know of course that Salman Rushdie in town for the casting of Midnights Children.’

‘Yes yes I know. Have they seen you for anything?’

‘No they haven’t but you know I’m in it. I’m in the book. We used to go to school together.’

Later as we part, Shama says, ‘You know Leena. India is good for the soul. Try and come back if you can. I did it.’

17^th The Vipassana Global Pagoda.

It is the day of the gathering and in the morning I tie my sari perfectly as I was taught to do by my cousin Anjali when I was fifteen years old, and become an Indian lady. As I cross the courtyard to join the others for morning tea I reflect on how much our family’s aim, aspiration, goal was to return to India and not achieving it was a kind of failure. I am disconcerted when I join the party and someone asks me where I have come from. But as it turns out she does not doubt my Indian ness just wanting to know how far I have travelled.

‘ You’ve come all the way from London for the gathering?’

‘Yes. Well actually I have two gatherings. The next one is in Goa of childhood friends from my Krishnamurti school in South India.’

‘ Krishnamurti. I have been reading Krishnamurti since I was 18 years old. And you were in his school. Did you meet him?’

‘Well yes. He would come to the school and stay for a month. We called him Krishnaji. I was very sad I had to leave the school.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘Well it was a very small school and I’d come from England and my maths was way below standard.’

‘And after that you went back to England to school?

‘ No. I went to Paris and then to England and I didn’t go to school after that. I don’t know. It was all a long time ago now. Maybe it was all Karma.’

I realise that I am upsetting myself with this remembering of my endless partitions and am grateful to move on to breakfast although I do not manage to move on quite so easily in my head.

The Vipassana Global Pagoda is, huge colossal. I am given a badge labelled Special Invitee, with my name on it and helpers turn up with other badges to help me find my way.

I am seated in an enclosure in the second row next to a Burmese gentleman who turns out to be the son of U Ba Khim, Goenkaji’s teacher in whose memory this great Pagoda, the biggest dome in the world, capable of accommodating 8000 meditators has been built as a debt of gratitude.

I look up and in the centre of the dome is the charka, the wheel of dharma, like on the Indian national flag taken where it has been taken from the Ashokan pillar. Ashoka, the great humanitarian monarch of the third century B.C. who had embraced the teachings of Gautama the Buddha, renounced aggressive warfare, espoused the cause of non-violence and erected rock edicts stating the same, throughout the length and breadth of India. Of course for centuries no one knew what the writing said until a British scholar in the 19^th century deciphered it and gave us back a lost chapter of our history. So, I muse, when the nascent republic adopted the symbol of the wheel of Dharma, there wasn’t much ‘ ‘Buddhism’ in India. The Dalai Lama was still in Tibet and Vipassana was an unknown word.

I am seated next to the ramp, which leads to the central podium and so, I am able to see Goenkaji and Mataji from as close as is possible as they are brought in their wheelchairs for the function. He looks the same, and I am moved to see him.

Once on the Podium he recounts his journey to fulfil the mission entrusted upon him by his teacher: - to bring back to India, the teaching of Gautama the Buddha, Vipassana, in its pure form as kept alive in Burma these last 2500 years. U Ba Khim’s debt of gratitude for the teaching and his own debt of gratitude to his teacher and then his debt of gratitude to all those who enabled the Dhamma to take root and grow in the land where it first came into being - India. One by one people stand up and Goenkaji tells the assembly of their contribution and thanks them. Some of them I know from various courses here and there and I am deeply moved by this great army of devoted unpaid volunteers, paying their debts of gratitude by helping to materialise Goenkaji’s vision to this final great global pagoda built in Burmese style in honour of his Burmese teacher and the land of his birth which preserved the original teaching of the Buddha.

What can I say? Forty years on from when Goenkaji arrived from Burma with his mission and a first course of five people, one million have now sat Vipassana courses and there are 150 centres around the world. Layers and layers and layers of gratitude.

20th Jan. Dhammagiri, Igatpuri.

After the function we have a dusty bumpy four-hour bus ride to the meditation centre at Igatpuri where I sleep for nearly two days to finally knock out the jetlag. In my waking moments I take in beauty and peace of the place. It was the first centre to be built in Goenkaji’s big project. I think about my parents whose projects did not get really fulfilled, whose efforts were constantly being thwarted, whose perfect universe eluded them and it makes me sad and even though I know that I am creating suffering for myself with these thoughts, I find myself am unable to dispel them. I try and do what we learn to do in Vipassana: to simply observe without valuation. Not easy.

Tomorrow the course will start. In three days it will be six months since my mother passed away from this world. It is the first time since that I have a bit of space and time to digest it all. Those last days I would lie with her on the bed and we would talk, ‘You know ma, I wish you could bequeath me your capacities of discipline and non-judgementalism.’ I’d said once. What about her capacity for unconditional love! In her last days she just emanated it - peace and love. So why does the memory make me cry and feel so so sad.

Most important thing of all is to pray that love and light should fill your heart and overflow from you to all...

Every letter from my mother ended with that injunction. Other regular ones were to eat five almonds with honey every day and splash my eyes with cold water. We lived so much of our family life through letters. Words on paper trying to reach out, to express what words can’t always say.

If you look at the word Alone, you will see that it means All-One.’

I remember Krishnaji saying that when I’d gone to Brockwood Park one year to see if I could take my daughter to study in Rishi Valley.

The gong rings, deep, resonant and comforting. It is time for tea. From tomorrow only the gong will break the silence of meditation.

‘...You see my darling, it is all an inner journey.’ wrote my father said in one of his letters.

Dear Mama, dear Papa, I suppose inasmuch as the Universality of Indian Spirituality was so central to your Perfect Universe and the one you carried with you and tried to impart to me – then I’m in it aren’t I? The Inner Journey.

As Michael Wood put it in his series on the legacies of different civilizations- India: The Empire of the Spirit.

Blog 3. Gratitude

GRATITUDE.

I am on the plane in my way to Mumbai for Goenkaji’s Great Gratitude Gathering on January 17th.

All those who had taken a ten day Vipassana meditation course between 1969 -1979 in what Goenkaji called the ‘gypsy camps’ before there was an established meditation centre, have been invited to the Global Pagoda in Mumbai so that Goekaji can thank us and expres his gratitude!

I feel full of gratitude to be able to attend and a bit like a lost daughter returning home

And as I sit here on the plane, I am remembering my very first course, a double course during Dec/January 70-71.

We had arrived in Delhi in December of 1970 having driven overland across to India from Europe in a VW van. My husband was going through some sort of a mental crisis and my father had suggested we attend the World Conference of Scientific Yoga taking place in Delhi where we might meet someone who could advise us. So we attended the conference and nearby, J. Krishnamurti was also giving talks and so we attended those as well and hung around with other youthful western ‘seekers’. One of them, Bob Lane, told us that a bunch of them were all going off to Bodh gaya where there was ‘ A far out Burmese millionaire cat teaching a technique of meditation called Vipassana which enables you to do what Krishnamurti talks about.’

‘What’s that.’? Someone asked

‘Well, you know, Choicless Awareness of course.’ Replied Bob.

The Burmese Vihara in Bodh Gaya wasn’t that big but it somehow managed to stretch itself and accommodated some 95of us. The women slept along the closed veranda in a long line of mattress on the floor and strung between each of them was a string s on which we hung whatever we could sheets, sari, sarong as a makeshift partition to create a sort of privacy. The men slept on the roof. Outside there was a garden, trees to sit around, a kitchen and rudimentary toilets and bathing facilities.

In the meditation room Goenkaji would teach on a slightly raised podium on which there were two cushions. Goenkaji sat on one and the other remained empty. And we all speculated about the empty cushion. We knew at the time that Goenkaji’s wife was still in Burma and that with the military junta having taken over, there had been some delays and difficulties in her coming to join him. Finally in one of our informal evening chats someone popped the question and asked if the cushion was or her. Goenkaji laughed heartily, his whole body shaking with laughing,

‘No, no no! That is for my teacher. You see, I am not the teacher. My teacher asked me to come, so I am here, but he is the teacher. I am not the teacher, I am just a businessman and he laughed some more. And indeed, during the breaks, he would sit in the ante –room with his secretary, Yadev, and conduct his business.

But very soon that was all to change irrevocably. One night during the second course, on the 19^th jan I think it was, there was a terrible thunderstorm. In the veranda we shut the windows and remained mostly dry but the roof was flooded and all them men had to come down and sleep in the meditation room. The atmosphere was very charged and I seem to remember that something even caught fire. The next day came the news that Sayaji U Ba Khin, Goenkaji’s teacher had passed away in the night. Everyone now speculated about the storm, that the heavens broke when great men passed and certainly it felt momentous. Everything had changed. No longer would Goenkaji be able to deny being the teacher. The mantle had fallen on him, and we all knew it. That evening he talked of his teacher, and of the mission that he had entrusted on him to bring the teachings of the Buddha back to India after the prophesied 2,500 years, And he looked around at us all in the room and told us that many of us would in time become teachers and that the dharma as taught by the Buddha would spread across the world. And indeed it has.

Today, January 14th, is supposed to be a very auspicious day: Makar Sankranti, celebrated all over India in different ways. When Ranjan, the cab driver from South India came to take me to the airport he wished me a happy Pongal, and I told him in the Punjab we celebrated the day Lohri and that we lit bonfires on which we threw sugar cane and then sucked the hot juice. Everywhere it is the end of the old and the beginning of the new. A time of change and renewal.

I feel full of gratitude, that I am on my way to the gathering and also I am deeply grateful, that after that first meditation course, I wrote to my mother and father and thanked them - for everything; their love, integrity, for being who they were.

Gratitude is a very great thing.

May all beings be peaceful and Happy.

Blog 2. Dis-member and Re-member

Dis-member and Re-member. These two words and their images have been whirling around in my head.

India was dismembered and our little family too was dismembered. Can re-membering heal the dis-membering in some psychic way. Dismembering is violent, active, remembering still and reflective.

It was with these thoughts that last Friday I climbed on to the C11 Bus to visit my lovely dentist in the Archway Road.

We have been snowed under with the coldest winter since years, although it does not feel like the coldest winter for me. The sun streams into my flat and warms it so well, that I have to turn down the central heating. And although I can see the snow on the rootops, and the trees, and the little birds eating the berries for want of other food, I am snug inside. Outside it is a different story and I had to walk slowly and carefully down my snow encrusted slippery road to the bus stop.

On my way as I passed Pollys teashop, I remembered - sitting there with my sister some 18 years earlier and listening to her.

‘ When one has an unsettled life like we had one of the things that can happen is one looses touch with ones instincts.’

I stirred my coffee as I knew she did not like to be interrupted.

‘ And when a trauma is undigested, its get repeated. Have you thought about that?’

I’d shaken my head.

‘ Well then think about it. Nobody ever talked about Partition. And it was a terrible trauma and it got repeated in our lives. In Daddy’s life, Mummy’s life, mine, yours. We never had a home, a country, a room of our own, all scatterred all over the place in three different continents.’

I’d nodded my head, ‘I suppose it was worst for Mummy travelling all over the place trying to keep the connections alive.’

‘What about me? It was awful for me. Flying around all and trying to support you all.’ Replied my sister indignantly.

I smiled at the memory as I settled into the back of the bus and closed my eyes, knowing that I would not need to get off till the very last stop. Aah! Funny how sometimes such a small thing can feel comforting. Because of the snow, I had given myself plenty of time, the bus had arrived soon after me and I’d had no time to get cold. And now I could settle down and reflect and remember.

And then I remembered the first lines of the ‘Dhammapada’:

‘What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday.

Our life is the creation of our mind”

What was that telling me? That not everything should be re-membered? That some thoughts were best just left and not entertained…?

Well that’s my blog for today – out into cyberspace – into the cosmos…

Blog 1. Partition and exile

Partition and exile

I have actually made myself a blog. Don't quite know how I did it but - I did it. Obviously I pressed the right buttons and now here it is. Why did I want to do it? - Well that's the story which will unfold .

Some months on the radio I heard something like this:

' Exiles wander the world carrying in their heads a picture of a perfect universe.'

I rushed to write it down and although I cant find the scrap of paper with the exact words - the image has resonated with me - full of meaning and questions and pointers - a journey which needs to be undertaken.

The partition of India in 1947 which dismembered the subcontinent into India and Pakistan was central to the lives of my immediate family and we repeated it as a family and as individuals recreating ‘partitions’ again and again it seems.

I suppose my parents were exiles. They lost the world they knew and at the same time they carried it with them and it grew and it nourished them and it nourished me. But it also hurt me. I suppose I lost a world too, but it was not a world I knew. I didn’t have any ‘pictures’ to carry in my head of Lahore and the lost homeland. I was too small to remember, so I suppose I, wasnt really an exile.

There were four of us, the dislocated Dhingras in Paris - waiting to go 'home'. All hoping to be able to die in India. It wasnt to be either for my father, my sister, or my mother who was the last to leave - five months ago. And now there is only me left with that story.

What was that 'perfect universe'?