Starting in Search - Part One - The ancient lost temple and ashram of the Puranas

The 'lost temple and ashram' of the puranas - starting in search - Part One

There are some journeys that begin not with maps, but with irritation.

Not anger exactly. Not rebellion either. Irritation.

A deep, private irritation with the modern world’s certainty that everything worth discovering has already been discovered, measured, photographed, indexed, and explained away by someone sitting far from the place itself.

I had carried that irritation for years.

Perhaps decades.

It sat somewhere inside me like an old splinter beneath the skin—small enough to ignore on ordinary days, but sharp enough to remind me of its presence whenever I read a dismissive article or heard a polished lecture that reduced the ancient world to a set of safe conclusions.

The irritation became particularly unbearable during academic conferences.

I remember one seminar in Mumbai barely three years before my retirement. A young visiting scholar from abroad, earnest and articulate and impossibly certain of himself, had delivered a lecture explaining that most geographical references in the epics were merely ‘symbolic constructs of ritual imagination.’ The phrase itself irritated me so deeply that I wrote it down in my notebook simply to stare at it later in disbelief.

Symbolic constructs.

Ritual imagination.

As though generations of people had crossed forests, rivers, mountains, deserts, and kingdoms merely to preserve decorative metaphors.

I had sat through the lecture quietly, perspiring gently beneath the auditorium lights while the air-conditioning failed in its usual heroic Indian manner. Around me, younger faculty members nodded enthusiastically and typed notes into glowing laptops. Someone behind me whispered the words ‘post-geographical interpretation’ with the reverence usually reserved for sacred mantras.

And all the while I kept remembering a night nearly twenty years earlier in a village near Adi Badri in modern day Himachal, just north of Haryana, when an old priest with cataract-clouded eyes had argued with me for two straight hours about the original location of a vanished pilgrimage route mentioned in a neglected recension of the Skanda Purana.

The old man had possessed no formal degree.

He mispronounced certain Sanskrit words.

He had probably never travelled beyond Himachal or Haryana.

And yet his understanding of terrain, memory, seasonal movement, river behaviour, and oral continuity had contained more living intelligence than half the conference halls I had attended in my professional life.

That was when I had first begun suspecting that modern scholarship often suffered from a peculiar weakness.

It studied texts while distrusting memory.

The old India I had encountered during my travels did the opposite.

It trusted memory so deeply that it buried geography inside story.

Perhaps that was why I had become restless after retirement.

My Academy had given me comfort, routine, salary, institutional respectability, and I retired without a proper pension. But retirement also removed the last practical barrier between me and the unfinished questions I had postponed for decades.

Questions have strange behaviour in old age.

If ignored long enough, they stop behaving like intellectual curiosity.

They begin behaving like unfinished obligations.

Mine eventually drove me northward into the Himalayas.

By the time I turned sixty-three, it had become impossible to ignore.

Age has a way of clarifying certain obsessions.

It does not always soften them.

Sometimes it hardens them into purpose.

I had retired from the Academy with the kind of official respect that institutions offer to men who have spent too many years inside them. There had been speeches, shawls, bouquets, framed citations, and careful words about my work in the natural sciences and the old knowledge systems of India. I had taught zoology, systems thinking, environmental planning and ecology, and now, after retirement, the epics—especially the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—long enough to know that the classroom was only one layer of the work. The real teaching, the deeper teaching, began when one looked at the world itself and asked why so many old texts were not merely stories, but routes, directions, topographies of memory.

The current academics —sharp, efficient men and women with fashionable spectacles and expensive conference bags— spoke about ancient India with the strange confidence of those who had never slept inside a crumbling temple mandapa during the monsoon, nor listened to hereditary priests argue over forgotten place names by the light of a kerosene lantern, nor watched a village elder trace a vanished river with one finger and say, with complete certainty, “It used to flow there.”

To them, the Vedas were text. To me, they had always been geography. Terrain. Memory. A coded civilizational map.

I did not mean that in a romantic or careless way. I was trained in the sciences. I had spent enough years with measurements, reactions, field notes, and data sheets to distrust vague enthusiasm. But the old Indian texts had gradually taught me something that no laboratory manual ever could: that a civilisation stores its knowledge in more than one form. A river may vanish from a modern map and still survive in a verse. A shrine may be dismantled and yet remain alive in a village name. A sacred path may be forgotten by surveyors and preserved by mule handlers, shepherds, and old oral traditions spoken only after tea and tobacco.

That was the kind of world I was pursuing now. Not a fantasy world. A buried one.

A world that might still exist north of Dharchula, beyond Trishul-ki-Chatti, even at some distance north of a small hamlet Nandipara, where the mountains narrowed and the air thinned and the older memories of the land seemed to gather in the folds of rock and pine like water waiting in a hidden basin.

I had come in search of a long-lost temple and an ashram said to lie somewhere further north. That was the simplest way to put it. There were other ways, of course, more scholarly ways, more cautious ways, but simplification becomes necessary when one is speaking to oneself.

I was searching for a place mentioned obliquely in old texts, a site connected to Vishwamitra, to fire, to discipline, to a knowledge of matter that sat somewhere between metallurgy and alchemy and ritual science. I had studied three Puranas closely, compared them against coded references in two Vedic passages I had no intention of revealing casually, and followed the strange convergence of names until the trail seemed to point toward this small, obscure Himalayan hamlet.

My colleagues would have called it a speculation. Some would have called it an obsession. One or two, if they were being kind, might have called it scholarly intuition. I called it unfinished work. And I knew very well that unfinished work can become a burden in old age. I was not a proper traveler in the fashionable sense.

I could not move like the young trekking groups who arrived with poles, certificates, matching jackets, and the cheerful arrogance of good circulation. I could not pretend that my body was still the body it had been at thirty-five. At sixty-three, I was broad, heavy, and uncomfortably aware of every ascent. I became breathless easily. My knees spoke up first, then my lower back, then my pride. Even so, I was not defeated by discomfort. I simply negotiated with it. 

I packed as if preparing for a long siege. Medicines in one large haversack. Extra clothes in another. Woollens, rainwear, socks, gloves, trekking poles, tablets for the stomach, tablets for the heart, tablets for the tablets. I carried notebooks, folded maps, printed pages wrapped in plastic sleeves, and a stubborn supply of pencils because pens had betrayed me too often in cold weather.

Traveling with my mule train, porters, cook and luggage

Somewhere north of Dharchula, at my own pace

[Image created with AI - 10.5.2026]

I hired local guides, mules, and a cook. I arranged for one team to move ahead, find a reasonable camping site, and prepare shelter before I arrived. It was not luxury. It was prudence. The mountains do not reward vanity. They punish it quickly. One of the mule men had looked at my luggage and laughed softly.

“Professor sahib,” he said, adjusting the rope across a mule’s load, “you have brought enough things to stay here for a year.”

“Only if the road itself decides to imprison me,” I replied.

He grinned. “The road does not imprison. The weather does.”

That, too, was true. By the time I reached Nandipara, I had already learned that altitude changes not only one’s breath but one’s arrogance. The village was small enough to be missed by careless travelers, a few stone houses, a shrine, smoke from damp firewood, prayer flags faded by wind and snow, and faces that carried the calm reserve of people accustomed to difficult winters and older stories.

I sat that evening in a tea shed, warming my hands around a brass tumbler of salted butter tea, when an old villager asked me, not unkindly, “You have come this far for a temple that no one has seen?”

I smiled and said, “For a temple, perhaps, and for an ashram. Or for the trace of one.”

He looked at me for a long moment and then said, “In these mountains, the trace is often the thing itself.”

I did not answer immediately. The sentence stayed with me. Because that was exactly what I feared and hoped at once. That the temple might still be there. Or that only its trace remained. Or that the trace, if followed carefully enough, might become a doorway back into a forgotten landscape of memory.

And so I sat there, a retired professor of environmental planning and ancient India, overweight, aging, breathless, skeptical, persistent, and strangely excited, with the cold Himalayas gathering outside the tea shed and the unknown path north of Nandipara waiting like a sentence not yet finished.

(c) Dr. Bharat Bhushan

10 May 2026

Sanjiv Sharma meets Chakrapani Srinivasan - Part #1 - The Return of the Retired Civil Servant

The Return of the Retired Civil Servant - Part # 1

At eight in the evening, the city loosened its collar but did not rest. The air above the road held that particular Mumbai fatigue—warm, salted faintly by the sea, yet softened by dusk. From the front window of the upper deck, Sanjiv Sharma felt the wind flatten against his face and slide past him like a patient hand. He did not move. He allowed it to comb through the day.

The bus groaned into motion from Electric House, its body protesting the load of commuters who had decided, like him, that trains could wait one day. The conductor’s whistle pierced through layered conversations: office gossip, half-finished phone calls, arguments about cricket scores, someone explaining loudly how onions were again becoming a national crisis. The upper deck was a balcony to the city, and Sanjiv occupied the front seat like a quiet spectator to a performance he had seen all his life yet never tired of.

BEST HQ, Electric House, Colaba

He worked only a few lanes away from the grand façade of Regal Cinema, folding shirts, stacking denim, convincing customers that a color suited them when it did not, and sometimes convincing them that it did when it did. Retail was theatre. He had learned to smile with the precision of a shop mirror: wide enough to reassure, narrow enough to conserve energy. Today the crowd had been relentless. A shipment had arrived late. Two customers had argued over a discount. A child had hidden inside a rack of winter jackets and refused to come out. By closing time his calves felt packed with sand.

The bus curved away from Colaba and began its slow northward crawl. Lights flickered alive in office towers like sequential thoughts. Sanjiv let his head rest against the metal bar and drifted inward.

He saw Chembur the way memory preferred it: not as it was, but as it had layered itself over years. His grandfather, Naik Havaldar Jairam Sharma, marched through those memories in sepia. A man of straight lines and polished boots. The old stories returned whenever Sanjiv grew tired: Poona Cantonment, the last years of British command, the strange pride of wearing a uniform that belonged to a country not yet fully its own. His grandfather rarely spoke of war, but he spoke of discipline as if it were a living relative. When he retired and moved with fellow soldiers to the emerging outskirts of Bombay, they carried their regimental camaraderie like a portable homeland. Chembur then was dust and promise. The Bombay Improvement Trust chawls rose in practical rows, unadorned, determined.

Sanjiv had grown inside those corridors of shared kitchens and shared arguments. Doors were rarely shut; privacy was a negotiable idea. His childhood smelled of frying onions, kerosene, incense, and damp newspapers. He had run barefoot across the corridor with Shalini, both of them scolded by multiple mothers who believed themselves collectively responsible. He smiled faintly at the memory of her braids, always too tight, her irritation at arithmetic, her triumph when she beat him in spelling tests.

The bus lurched. Someone laughed too loudly behind him. A ringtone erupted with devotional music. The city stitched itself back into his awareness.

He pictured Shalini now, probably coaxing Vijay into finishing dinner. Their son negotiated every spoonful as if it were a legal contract. Sunita, at three, would already be asleep, one arm flung across her pillow like a fallen dancer. Sanjiv felt a sudden swell of protectiveness so intense it bordered on fear. He wanted for them what he could not yet name in concrete terms—only a broad, shining assurance that their lives would travel smoother roads than his. Education, he told himself. That was the bridge. He had seen boys from the chawls become engineers, accountants, men who returned in cars that looked like visiting dignitaries. He did not envy them; he catalogued them as evidence.

The bus stopped again. More passengers pressed upward, filling the stairwell with the smell of sweat and talcum powder. An elderly gentleman emerged, gripping the railing with deliberate care. His hair was white but not defeated; it clung neatly to his scalp. He wore a pale shirt ironed with old-fashioned pride. A small cotton cloth bag dangled from his wrist, and a plastic bottle caught the overhead light.

He paused near Sanjiv’s seat, scanning for space. The only available spot was beside him. Sanjiv shifted immediately, knees angling inward to make room.

“Please,” he said.

The old man nodded, breath slightly labored, and lowered himself with a sigh that carried the weight of the day. He took a sip from his bottle, closed his eyes for a second as if sealing in the comfort, then leaned back. The bus resumed its rhythm. Outside, Marine Drive’s curve glittered like a necklace carelessly thrown on black velvet.

Sanjiv tried not to stare, but he felt the presence of the man the way one feels a book placed beside them—full of untold pages. He wondered about the cotton bag. It had the modest dignity of long use. His grandfather had carried something similar: documents, receipts, a folded umbrella, always arranged with military logic.

His thoughts wandered again, this time to the arithmetic of survival. Rent was stable for now, but school fees would rise. Shalini had mentioned English-medium tuition. He did not resent the expense; he resented only his own limitations. If he could climb higher in the shop—assistant manager, manager—perhaps one day he could open a small store of his own. He pictured a signboard: “Sharma Readymades.” The idea felt audacious and fragile, like glass warmed in the hand.

The elderly gentleman’s head tilted slightly, sleep flirting with him. The cotton bag slipped. It fell with a soft, final thud onto the floor, unnoticed by its owner.

Sanjiv reacted before thinking. He leaned forward, fingers brushing the dusty bus floor, and retrieved the bag. It was lighter than he expected. He tapped the man gently on the arm.

“Sir…”

The old man startled awake, eyes sharpening with embarrassed alertness. Sanjiv held out the bag.

“This fell.”

A flicker of alarm crossed the man’s face, then relief. He accepted it with both hands, as though receiving something ceremonial.

“Ah—thank you, thank you,” he murmured. His voice carried the rounded cadence of the south, polished by decades in offices where clarity mattered. “These old fingers, they betray me.”

They shared a brief laugh, the kind strangers exchange to confirm mutual goodwill. The man adjusted the bag securely on his lap and extended his hand.

“I am Chakrapani Srinivasan,” he said. “Retired civil servant. And tonight, apparently, a danger to my own belongings.”

Sanjiv shook his hand, surprised by the firmness of the grip. “Sanjiv Sharma. I work in Colaba. Going home.”

“Chembur?” Chakrapani asked, with uncanny accuracy.

Sanjiv blinked. “Yes! How did you—”

“This bus,” the old man said, gesturing grandly to their rattling chariot. “It carries only the faithful. We are a community of the tired.”

They laughed again, and conversation opened easily, as if it had been waiting. Chakrapani spoke of files and ministries, of decades spent navigating corridors where decisions moved slower than the ceiling fans. He had seen governments change like monsoon moods. Yet retirement, he confessed, was a stranger terrain. Time stretched differently. He now measured days by walks to the market and arguments with his gardener.

“And you?” he asked. “Family?”

Sanjiv described Shalini, the children, the chawl. He did not dress his life in apology; he narrated it plainly. Chakrapani listened with an attentiveness that felt like respect.

“Diamond Gardens,” the old man said suddenly. “That is where I live. A small bungalow. Old construction. My wife refuses to leave it. Says the walls know her moods.”

Sanjiv’s eyes widened. “I live near the railway station. In the old chawls. Five minutes from Diamond Gardens.”

For a second they stared at each other, mapping the invisible threads of proximity. Then the absurdity struck them. Two men, divided by architecture and income, carried nightly by the same bus, breathing the same tired air.

Chakrapani chuckled. “See? This city. It arranges us in different houses and seats us on the same bench.”

“Bombay is a grand equaliser,” Sanjiv said, the phrase arriving fully formed.

“Yes,” the old man agreed softly. “Here, the bus does not care who you were. Only where you are going.”

Outside, the city streamed past—shops closing, couples arguing gently, a boy racing a stray dog. Inside, on the upper deck, they rode in companionable silence, two residents of the same neighborhood, newly aware of each other, equal passengers in the long, humming vehicle that carried them home.

(c) Bharat Bhushan

16 February 2026

Trying to hire cooks for the Daphabum expedition and how to bake a cake and custard

In those days, one had to wait it out at the Dibrugarh guest house in Assam for news and confirmation about aeroplanes or helicopters with space for people and animals and luggage to be sent out to Ramnagar in Arunachal Pradesh. I had been given instructions to meet the paramilitary desk and introduce myself and they would have a jeep to go out to the guest house. They did not do this for everyone. It was a courtesy because I was to be part of a multi-team effort to go to the most remote parts of India and participate in a long duration campout with many others.

Our group was assembling at the guest house and the team leader nodded at me in a rather cursory manner. I was quite upset. I had flown out at extremely short notice from Mumbai to Kolkata and on the next day out to Dibrugarh. I had been traveling non-stop except for a very brief nap at the Dum Dum airport and onwards to the last regular airport in Eastern India. A team member explained that the leader had actually been quite warm towards me and that he was a senior government officer from Kolkata and that this was much better than his welcome to fellow Bengalis.

I felt better at that and went up to the team leader and asked if there was any way that I could help since he was moving about, talking to many people and trying to coordinate various actions. He was startled. He had not expected that a ‘Bombaywala’ would want to help so willingly. So what, I thought, we all have our prejudices and perceptions.

“Ok! Come with me and do not wander away,” he said, almost grudgingly. “You do not know the language here and by the way these locals do not speak Assamese or Bengali. These fellows and some of these ladies are from many tribes in Arunachal and they do get by with some broken Assamese and Hindi. They refuse to speak Bengali even if they can understand it. Try talking in English and they will be very happy. That is the best respect that you can give.”

I smiled politely and laughed a bit. “I am in these parts for the first time. Never been to East India. I will learn.”

“We have to hire a group of cooks and this is as good a time as any. We have to search amidst all these waiting groups of local people who want to return to Ramnagar. We actually need the cooks to be from that place so that we do not have to hire inefficient guys from here and have to send them back. We will be traveling from Ramnagar to other camping spots and all that area is Lishu country in the Daphabum ranges. We need cooks who know the area, who live in the area and we need tough guys, those who know how to cook in the tough climatic conditions out there.”

This was the first time that I had heard that it would be tough out there. “What tough climatic conditions? Are we not going to be camping in good alpine tents and in local circuit houses and in the local panchayat settlements?”

“Yes, Yes. We do have good equipment. But we do not carry the local climate with us. We are helpless with that.”

This was getting to be rather cryptic. I had seen the desert and I had seen the Western Ghats. I had seen the winter at Bharatpur and at Aligarh. So what if I had not been to the Himalayas. We were not planning to go up the Everest in any case. What was it about the Eastern Himalayas that one had to be worried about, especially with the climate?

I walked up to the team leader as he started talking to a mixed group of elders, young men and elderly women. They were seated together around what looked like four baskets filled with live chicken, large hens and roosters and young ones. Two of the youngsters had their hands busy with managing four goats. One of the elders had a very young mule nearer to him. The ladies were seated on large gunny sacks of potatoes and yam and arbi (colocassia).

My team leader was speaking in a mix of Assamese, Bengali and broken up local tribal dialects and Hindi and some words of English. Each time that he would speak in English, he would point at one of the elders and he would be met with a lot of nodding and ‘yes, yes, yes, yes’. I had my own doubts that they had actually understood. I was wrong.

A young man replied in English. Perfect convent school English. “Yes, Sir. You can get good cooks who can help you in your camping. A father and son are here right now in the guest house. I will call them. Both are good cooks.”

One of the younger lads ran off to a neighbouring group and explained the matter and two men came up to meet us. They introduced themselves. The younger one introduced the elder, and said, “Apu. He is Apu.” And then, proudly, he extended his hand to introduce himself, and said, “Apu. I am Apu. Son of Apu. He is my father. I am son.”

The English speaking young man explained to me, “Apu is first born. His father was first born and so he is Apu. His first born son is also called Apu. But his actual name will be different but we all call them as first born. It is a great honor to be the first born son of a first born father. They are good cooks and also very good hunters. The best.”

“Hunters? What do we need hunters for?” I thought, worriedly. “Were we not going to carry our food supplies?”

My team leader was not worried about this issue, I realised, as I watched him explain his needs to Apu and Apu. He wanted them to be familiar with a list of food items. He ticked them off very fast. Steamed rice, lentil soup, chapatis, vegetables to be made in good Bengali gravy, non-vegetarian items to be made especially like in the army and paramilitary cantonments, not in the Assamese or Arunachal manner, sweet dishes like kheer and other items with milk and sugar, and especially, he was very particular about this, they needed to be able to bake cakes and custard pudding in stone ovens, out there in the tough climatic conditions below the Daphabum ranges south of Ramnagar.

I could see that this had Apu and Apu rather confused. The English speaking young lad questioned my team leader about it and got to know his exact requirements about baking a cake without a proper oven. It was something about using heated-up smooth large stones and placing them underground and creating a natural oven. The youngster translated all the points about the natural oven and explained it to Apu and Apu and the group. One of the elderly women got quite excited about it and, I thought, she said that it could not be done. An elder from a nearby group who had overheard everything came up and introduced himself. He had been a cook with the army and he knew of this method when he had been camping somewhere near Sikkim with the British Army officers, decades ago. He explained the salient details and Apu Senior nodded happily. He remembered the technique, he said. American Army in Second World War, he claimed. British Army, American Army. Which war? Where? How old were these guys? 

From "the very short short stories on first edit" 

(c) Bharat Bhushan

3 February 2022

The "Kitchen in the Balcony" - a book that I need to write

20 June 2021

The "Kitchen in the Balcony and other stories of my parents" is a book that I need to write. We lived at the corner ground floor apartment at the Usha Building (Wadala - Mumbai) from 1972-73 onwards. I stayed on through to 1995 until joining service at Pune in 1996. The corner apartment had a balcony that had access to it from three sides of the open compound. The living space in the apartment was only about 200-220 sq feet. The kitchen comprising 100 sq feet was modified as an usable living room or bedroom and the balcony was modified to be used as a kitchen. 

This was not unique in Mumbai. Many old apartments in buildings were modified to be used as kitchens or as bedrooms or as study rooms. One needed to reorganise the plumbing to make the kitchen space usable. Normally, buildings were of two types of ownership in Mumbai. Some were on lease from the government for 99 years to the cooperative society. The others were owned by the builder or a single owner or by the cooperative of all the apartment owners. Some buildings had a single owner and the apartments were given out on pagdi to the family. 

In all such circumstances, there would be some person who would object to modifications made in the balcony space and if the alignment of the water supply pipes and drainage pipes were altered. We did not have any such problem. I think it was because we were in the ground floor apartment. Our flat, i.e. #27 and the neighbour, #26 were the first ones in the building to modify the balcony for use as a kitchen. 

Watch this space - for more thoughts on the "Kitchen in the Balcony and other stories of my parents" 

STRANGE TRAVEL STORIES 1-2-3 [written for WhatsApp]

STRANGE TRAVEL STORIES - 1
Mysterious photographs

I am usually traveling alone and staying alone in hotel rooms all over. There is this hotel high up in the mountains in a beautiful remote town. I find that whenever I stay there, I sleep very peacefully. But when I check my cellphone in the morning, I find that someone has used the camera in the phone inspite of the password. There are usually a number of photographs that show me sleeping in the hotel room. This has never happened in any other town. Strange...

Vagrant Birdwala
(Bharat Bhushan)


STRANGE TRAVEL STORIES - 2
The empty seat

I sometimes get to travel by flight to cities that do not have frequent travelers. On these occasions, I am usually traveling by Dornier aircraft that are much smaller than Boeings with 2x2 seating. Due to my large body volume, I guess, they usually give me seat 18D which is in the centre of the plane. Seat 18C is always kept vacant, and I am happy that I can sit comfortably. But, on each flight, the air hostess on her rounds for serving food and drinks, keeps asking someone on the vacant seat 18C, if they would like to eat "Veg or Non Veg" and /or "Tea or Coffee". Strange!!! But thankfully, that mysterious passenger has never asked for anything on any of the flights.

Vagrant Birdwala
(Bharat Bhushan)

STRANGE TRAVEL STORIES - 3
My family in the hills

I met him as a co-passenger on a 48 hour train journey from Mumbai to Kanyakumari. We were in an AC section and there were very few passengers. In our section, we were the only two passengers. He wanted to immediately go to sleep and he requested "please do not wake me for anything". Naturally I was curious. He woke up after about 6 hours. He looked very happy. And he explained. He said that he has two families. One back at Mumbai. The other was somewhere in the hills up at Himachal. And each time he sleeps, he travels to them and lives with them. It is a very normal life. He has a regular job there, a wife and kids and parents. And when he wakes up, he is back with his family and job in Mumbai. I looked sceptical, but he assured me that it is perfectly normal for him. Everyone dreams in their sleep, but he travels to live another life. Perhaps, he said, "you do the same. You do not know it." And, he advised, next time you sleep, start traveling with some faith in the journey.

Vagrant Birdwala
(Bharat Bhushan)

Panduranga Vittala!!! - the stubborn old man who listened to his own heart

it is that time again, that month...

time to walk, million million steps,

unable, I wait here, for you, O Vittala!!!

They were all shocked. The old man was adamant. He had suddenly declared that he would go away to walk with the lakhs of warkaris on the palkhi from Dehu and Alandi via Pune to Pandharpur. Zubin was always like that. Deciding suddenly, and resisting all arguments and going by his own wish. Beheram, his son, tried to convince him that this was not the age to suddenly go ahead and do something that a 75 year old had not done earlier. Kerban, his daughter-in-law, nodded vigorously. She added, for good measure, "We are Parsis, and this is not in our culture. Why do you want to go walking to Pandharpur, all the way in rain, sun and with so many people, for heaven's sakes?"

Zubin and Beheram smiled at Kerban's arguments. Beheram knew that such arguments would not work with his father. Questioning him about religious or spiritual  thought would never work. It had never worked over these many years, and Beheram had gradually come around to accepting universal values while remaining a Parsi, in his inner core. Zubin was an explorer, as his mother had told him, bless her. Beheram's mother sat in front of the TV at their house in near the Five Gardens at Dadar Parsi Colony, Mumbai, and did not enter the arguments. She knew her Zubin, and she knew her Beheram. They would end up doing whatever Zubin wanted to do, and they would do it with enthusiasm and genuine spirit.

As expected, the next day, a too-good Sunday that should not be wasted on anything but cooking and eating and sleeping, Beheram drove his Bullet 350CC motorbike, with his father, Zubin, on the pillion, from Mumbai to Pune. His father was all packed up and eager to be on the palkhi and to walk the many days to Pandharpur. Beheram did not find it strange at all. He expected it to happen, going by the sudden bouts of discussion that his father had been having with his friends from Pune. They had planned it carefully, having done many such journeys together.

They met up with the group of friends at the exit of the highway from Mumbai, near Dehu. They had been waiting for them at the junction before the Dehu cantonment. The friends had hired an airconditioned bus for support and logistics during the palkhi and they had determined that they would stay about 5-10 kms behind the entire group. They would walk about, join in the activities, move ahead and back, and not be a burden on the several groups of warkaris in their dindis. All friends were new to the palkhi. They did not want anyone to be worried about them and have to take care of them.

The group had registered themselves with the various helplines and the police. With all required permissions obtained, they had also placed a banner over their bus, proclaiming that they were with the pilgrimage. The palkhi had just about started from Dehu, and Zubin was impatient to get on with it. Sensing it, Beheram gave him a hug and drove back on his bike to Mumbai.

Zubin was happy. He looked forward to any excuse to get out of his house. At 75, he needed to get away. Beheram's mother was very content to stay at home and be with her friends, her grandchildren and to retain control over the kitchen. His friends had planned this out over the past month, and they had been quite enterprising. They were friends for many years now, and the group had also acquired some younger ones, sons, brothers, neighbors and support guys. They were a mixed group, businessmen, teachers, corporate honchos, tradesmen, including a police officer and a police constable, a customs officer from the Mumbai airport and a canteen manager. They had come together over the years in treks, expeditions and journeys and continued to travel together.

Very soon, they were on the move. They had decided against following the palkhi while on the route from Dehu towards Pune city. They drove out of the main route and went out of the city through the bypass to Katraj and went back to Hadapsar and drove out to Dive Ghat. They were now ahead of the palkhi by two days. They could use these two days to organise, plan, purchase and stock up. One of the group, Chaitanya Reddy, had given instructions to his office staff to purchase vegetables and groceries at Hadapsar and bring it over at Dive Ghat. His office manager had scouted a good parking location, away from the road, with water supply nearby. They would camp here, and plan their itinerary with the palkhi among all the members of the group. The late joiners would also be able to meet up with the group at this location.

The group set up their camp by  rolling out a tarpaulin sheet with one end attached to the side of the bus. The other end was set up with tall bamboo poles. This provided a large tent-like space alongside the bus. They had hired a cook and a helper for this pilgrimage, and along with the driver, lunch had been prepared, with everyone helping out, and it was time to rest, and look forward to the long walk that was to come. Just after lunch, it started drizzling and the rain began pouring in, steadily. The group moved inside the bus to seek shelter and sleep through a siesta during the noon. But, it was not to be...

There was a series of knocks on the side of their bus and a police constable opened the door and entered along with an undertrial prisoner with his hands cuffed. The handcuffs were tied to a thick rope that was held by the constable to prevent the prisoner from being able to escape. Arvind Adarkar greeted the constable on behalf of the group, "Ya, Mauli! Come in. Take some shelter from the rain. Are you on your way to Pune or to Pandharpur? Do not tell us that you are going to walk all the way to Pandharpur with your prisoner!!!"

The constable and the prisoner laughed. The constable explained that they had taken a lift in a private car after their bus had broken down with a puncture after Saswad, and now, the car had gone off the road due to the heavy rains on the ghat, and they had been walking down. He had to take the prisoner to the courts in Pune for a hearing on the morrow, and return to Pandharpur Tahsil Jail immediately thereafter. How he would cross the palkhi, he did not know, and perhaps he would take the train to Solapur and get back to Pandharpur before the pilgrims could take over the roads. They had seen the bus and tent nearby and guessed that they could take some respite from the rains outside.

Adarkar asked the cook and his helpers to make a round of hot tea for everybody and gave some towels to the constable and the prisoner to dry themselves up. Reddy gave a pair of t-shirts and lungis to them so that they could get out of their damp clothes. Very soon, after a cup of hot tea, the pilgrims were watching an unusual sight, with both the constable and the pilgrim out of their uniforms, and wearing identical t-shirts and lungis and  with the thick rope tied to each others' wrists. They had scrubbed themselves dry and now, none of them could tell them apart. Which one was the policeman and which one was the prisoner?

Zubin started laughing and had a tough time holding on to his hot cup of tea. He pointed to the policeman and the prisoner, and said, "Look! This is magic. They are both the same now. The policeman could be the qaidi and the prisoner could be the policewallah. What if the prisoner took the policeman to the courts at Pune tomorrow?!!!" Everyone laughed, including the two visitors. The policeman replied, "O Bawa, do you know that you are correct? This prisoner was caught while helping some old ladies on the palkhi, at night, while they were shivering and cold, and may have perhaps died. This idiot was a vagrant warkari, without any dindi or any group. He went and broke into a clothes store after Renapur and took out some woollen blankets and gave them to the women. He was caught by the shopkeeper and a police complaint was filed. He has a better heart than most policemen that I know."

The entire group looked up at this story, after all, this undertrial was also a pilgrim, a fellow warkari, and he should have been appreciated for his deed. Zubin was angry. He asked, "Who was the idiot shopkeeper who filed the complaint? Did the local police not know about the reason?" The policeman replied, "Everyone knew. This chap had no money with him and the local people were very angry with the pilgrims. Each year they come to their town and disturb them. Some shopkeepers are upset while most of them are happy to welcome the palkhi. Perhaps this shopkeeper had a really bad experience. Who knows?"

Zubin asked, "Now, what will happen to him? Who is going to help him? Have the police helped him get a lawyer? Does he have money to defend himself?" While the rest of the group were not surprised, the policeman was puzzled at the anger. Yet, he replied calmly, "Bawaji, you know the system, don't you? Do you think he has any chance? He does not even have any money to purchase a cup of tea. He has no brains. If he had any sense, he would not have broken into the shop. Now, if the magistrate is kind, he will release him on first offence and intentions and maybe place him on watch and ask him to report to the police station for six months. If the magistrate goes by the rule, this idiot will be in for six months at least."

The entire group looked at Zubin. They knew him from many years. They knew the way he thought and acted, right out of his heart. They waited. Zubin did not disappoint them. He burst out in anger, "Nonsense. This cannot be allowed to happen. He has to have a lawyer, and he has to be released. I want him released tomorrow. He has to come on the palkhi with us, and I will take him to Pandharpur. Or, I will not go. Let Panduranga wait for me. I cannot go to Pandharpur without this foolish boy."

All his friends nodded with him. They were not shocked or upset. This was the right thing to do. Adarkar also said in support, "Zubin, my friend, I say, let Panduranga wait for all of us. Let us get this done tomorrow at the courts." The policeman looked at the prisoner, and said, "See... did I not tell you? Your actions were noble. You did it in the service of Vittala's devotees. So what if some policemen and some shopkeepers were strict about it. They did their job and now, we see the miracle of Panduranga."

Zubin spoke to Adarkar and Reddy, "I will call my daughter-in-law's friends here in Pune. They are all lawyers at the local courts. They are very good and efficient. Wait a moment." Saying thus, he called up Kerban, at Mumbai, "Maro Dikri, listen. Yes, yes... I know. When I call you as 'Maro Dikri', it usually means that I am pulling some stunt. Yes. But listen, this is for a good cause. I need you to talk to your friends in Pune, lawyers, and have them come and meet me below Dive Ghat in Hadapsar. I need legal help in getting an undertrial released tomorrow in a hearing at the Pune Sessions Court."

"Yes, Maro Dikri, help me now, please. Talk to your friends. I have promised that I will not go to Pandharpur until and unless I free him, and now, my entire group of friends have also promised that they will not go on the palkhi. Don't laugh, Kerban. And do not tell Beheram about this. He is an idiot. He will also come back from Mumbai and will get involved in this. This is an easy job. I just need a lawyer, a smart lawyer, tomorrow morning, and by afternoon, we can get this foolish chap released and we will be on our way, following the palkhi."

After a while, Zubin shut off his cellphone, and spoke to the policeman, "There, that is done. Tomorrow we will go to the court together. My daughter-in-law will get us some lawyers, and they will bring their vehicles, and we will get this idiot released immediately. I am sure that those lawyers will have a thousand reasons to give to prove that this fellow is innocent." The policeman replied, "Thank you. I was worried about this fellow. He seems really demented, going around helping people without any reason. What relation was he to those two women? Why did he have to help them? Nothing. None."

Zubin replied, "What do we know? We must be related. All of us. You also. Otherwise, why would you bring him here, today, in the rain? Why would your bus break down? Why would the car go off the road? Each and every problem that we face, daunting ones too, they lead us towards a solution, however miraculous it may be. Now, both of you stay in this bus. Do not go anywhere. We will go to the courts together, tomorrow."

Saying thus, Zubin turned to the prisoner and said, "Be careful. Keep a watch on the policeman. Do not let him get away. We have to take him to the courts together tomorrow. We will ask the courts to release the policeman from his job of escorting you. We will go to Pandharpur together, only if you are a free man. I am sure that Panduranga will wait for us to meet him, together, the two of us."


Glossary 
Ashaadhi = the Hindu Calendar month during June-July
ashtavinayaka = the pilgrimage to eight sacred destinations in western Maharashtra, with eight of the most well-known temples to Lord Ganesha.
atya = Aunt, usually, father's sister.
bawa, bawaji = an affectionate word to call out to a Parsi, usually for men. Only if you are a close friend.
beti = Daughter
bhagawantha = God.
chapati = cooked wheat flat cakes, like a roti. An Indian-style tortilla.
dada = elder brother
dhaba = roadside food place. With informal arrangements.
Dindis = the group-units of pilgrims participating in the wari.
Dnyanba = Sant Shri Dnyaneshwar of Alandi
lungi = a sarong-type of dress, worn below the waist, comfortably with an easy tuck-in.
Maro Dikri = 'my daughter' - a favoured term in Parsi and Gujarati lingo.
Mauli = Devotee of Panduranga. Also a form of greeting in recognition of the other person's faith in Panduranga Vittala.
paadukas = the sacred symbolic feet-impressions of deities or sages
palkhi = the pilgrimage from Dehu-Sant Tukaram temple and Alandi-Sant Dnyaneshwar temple via Pune to Pandharpur in Solapur District, Maharashtra
policewallah = policeman
prasad = sacred offerings presented to the deities. Some part of it is usually returned to the devotee.
qaidi = prisoner
rath = chariot, usually pulled by oxen during the palkhi from Dehu-Alandi-Pune to Pandharpur
tai = Sister
Tuka, Tuka says, Tukaram = Sant Tukaram of Dehu. His renditions in praise of Panduranga Vittala are the abhangs that are remembered through hundreds of years. They are popularly known as "Tuka says..."
vaikhunta = passed away. Gone ahead to the great heavens above.
veena = stringed instrument used by warkaris to strum and recite
wari = the annual June-July (ashaadhi) pilgrimage from Dehu-Alandi-Pune to Pandharpur.
warkaris =  traditional pilgrims - devotees of Panduranga Vittala, the deity at Pandharpur - who walk from Dehu-Alandi-Pune to Pandharpur, covering nearly 200 kms
Yaa = Come. A form of invitation in affection.

The great Khan - at the airport with the telephone

The Great Khan was very fascinated by the telephone, the airport and travel. Not in any particular order, but if he was traveling by air, and he was in an airport, and had to wait around, he HAD to speak on the telephone. Actually, he was more fascinated by one another thing. He loved to hear others speak on the telephone at airports. Their conversation fascinated him. 

Nowadays the cellphone is everywhere and it made Great Khan enjoy his fascination at airports much more easier. Earlier with payphones, it was more difficult to eavesdrop. Now, all he had to do was to sit near someone speaking loudly into the cellphone, and he could have his "timepass". 

What the Great Khan did not realise was that travelers speaking intensely and earnestly on their cellphones at airports would get totally rattled if they caught sight of the the huge pathan watching them. The Great Khan's stare could destroy even the most tough of border army sergeants, so how could a hassled air traveler not get nervous. 

Once at the New Delhi airport, early morning, the Great Khan arrived from Kabul, having traveled with great difficulty from his village that was high up in the secret mountains somewhere. Nobody usually bothered with his passport, for did all of them not look the same and did not all of them have the same surname? Someone was to meet the Great Khan at the New Delhi airport at the early hours of 5 am and take him to the old city area near Chandni Chowk. But, the person had not shown up and the Great Khan was getting impatient, and he had no telephone to call from. 

There was a middle-aged businessman looking type person, most probably one of those millions of businessmen Indians from the plains. Of course, anything south of the Ganges in India was the "plains"... not like his good old Himalayas. You knew the good people were from the mountains and all other shifty-buggers were from the plains. This India was indeed a strange place. Anyway, this middle-aged businessman was talking into a payphone and asking someone to come and fetch him from the airport. 

The businessman seemed to be dialing several times, and each time, speaking to someone on the other side. The Great Khan came closer to the businessman and tried to catch the conversation. And kept coming closer and closer, until suddenly the businessman, conservative guy from Mumbai, got aware that there was this huge pathan-like guy, looking totally like a very violent terrorist from Hindi movies about violent terrorists from the Himalayan nations, was standing very near, and hearing all his conversation. Terrified, the businessman kept the phone down, picked up his briefcase and tried to get away. 

It was not possible. The Great Khan had some questions. He blocked the businessman’s exit path and asked in pahari pushtoon-laced Hindi that he knew from the Hindi movie, Zanjeer, “Oye Saheb, whom did you call now? Did you ask someone to meet you and take you to the city?”

The businessman, already terrified, got more terrified, about 10 times more, and it is indeed possible, if you are faced with such a question, early in the morning. He kept nodding, and saying, in English, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Call. Yes. Sorry. Telephone. Yes. Meet. Go. Go. I go. To city. Ok. Thank you. Thank you. Please. Good morning.”

For the Great Khan, this pitter-patter English was the only extent to which he knew the language, and so he was quite comfortable with it. Ok. This was a language that he could also speak with, and therefore, replied, in his bass loud voice, from deep inside his chest, proud that he had an opportunity to speak in English, at an international airport, “Go? You go? How? City? Where city Delhi? Where? Yes. Yes. Speak. Tell. How? Taxi?”

The businessman was getting scared and terrified, terrified and scared, started sweating profusely, and was wondering in his mind, if he had now got caught in some very intricate international terrorist plot or network. Who was this guy? Why did he want to know about my travel to New Delhi town? Why did he want to know about who was coming to pick me? Must be some great supari network or must be from some D- or E- or P- company or whatever. Better to be careful and cautious. He replied, “OK. Yes. Taxi. To pick up from city. I am going to other airport terminal. Not to city. No Delhi. No Delhi. Return to Mumbai. Another airport.”

The Great Khan was tremendously happy. This silly plains-man from south of the Ganges and south of the Indus was able to understand the Great Khan’s English. Nobody had understood his English before. This was an amazing nation, this India. These Indians were probably were very good at English. The villagers in his village in the secret mountains and the buffoon army sergeants in the army camp below did not ever understand his English that he had picked up from his grandson watching the English movie TV programmes from the Dish Cable set that he had forced the Cable guys to install in his secret village.

The Great Khan asked, again in English, “Taxi. From City. On Telephone? You call? He come? To airport. One more airport. Mumbai airport? in Delhi? OK. How much? Money? Dollars? Rupees? You understand? Me say, how much money? Dollars? Rupees?”

The businessman had gone beyond all levels of fear by now. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he had been suffering from blood pressure, ocular pressure, hyperventilation and many other situations, but they used to come and go, and he had not bothered to worry about them. But this, this terrorist-type guy, this large and tall and big and strong sort of pathan, seemed to be really determined and dangerous. The businessman was thinking, ‘He wants my name? My name? That was terrible. And how did he know that I had dollars here at Delhi airport? Someone must have told him. Must be that office superintendent at his office in Mumbai. He knew that I was carrying dollars to Delhi for the payment.’

In reply to the Great Khan, the businessman from Mumbai replied, in growing panic and fear, “No. Yes. No. Yes. Dollars. Yes. Name? My name? Sudhir. Sudhir. Sudhir. Yes. Sudhir. Yes. Dollars. Taxi come. To another airport. Not to city. Payment in other airport. Dollars to foreigner. Going to Mumbai. To foreign.”

The Great Khan settled down in pleasure at this continuing conversation with this very pleasant man from Mumbai. This man was very helpful, he thought. He spoke so nicely to the Great Khan and seemed to always speak in short, brief and very precise sentences, and, always to the point. Not like that old fat fool in his village, the idiot who made his morning tea, Chota Lota-Khan. That man could keep talking for more than 20-30 sentences with a cup of tea in his hand before he would give it over to a customer. The villagers had named him and his father as “Lota-Khan”, for very obvious reasons, because they had reasoned that they probably argued or discussed with themselves before they used the “Lota” (= Small pot-like container) for the purposes it was meant to be used when going out in nature.

This man from the plains was not like Chota Lota-Khan. This man was very pleasant and helpful. He seemed keen to help the Great Khan. He was getting his taxi and he had called for it, and he seemed to be saying that the Great Khan had to go to another airport to go to Mumbai. From Mumbai, he could get a taxi to go to the old city and reach Chandni Chowk. That was quite simple. Phew.

The Great Khan spoke to the businessman from Mumbai named Sudhir, “Oye Sudheer Pasha, Taxi? Good. Call Taxi? Mumbai? Airport? How much money? Dollars? Rupees? Pakistani Rupees? Indian Rupees? How much? I come. With you. Taxi. Give Dollars? Give Rupees? Go to Mumbai? Chandni Chowk?”

[My note = I am actually running out of words to describe Mr. Sudhir’s escalating terror and fear. But, please bear with me. This is early early morning at Delhi airport, and we have a businessman from Mumbai, Mr. Sudhir, making telephone calls to call for a taxi, and being trapped by a 6.5 feet tall Pushtuni-looking Pathan, asking him for dollars and rupees and taxi and wanting to go to Mumbai while wanting to actually go to Chandni Chowk in old Delhi. Confused? Imagine Sudhir’s plight.]

Sudhir was spiralling inside a vortex of panic. He had thought that he could get out of the situation by pretending to want to go to another airport terminal in New Delhi. If you were ever in New Delhi, just wanting to normally change airport terminals inbetween flights can get you into a panic situation, even one week before the actual travel. Now, this terrorist-type of huge guy wanted to come with him in the same taxi? And he wanted the payment of dollars in the taxi? And he also wanted payment in Rupees? Why did he want him to go back to Mumbai?

He replied to the Great Khan, “Taxi? You come? Dollars? Pakistani Rupees? No. No. No Pakistani Rupees. I, Indian, Mumbai. Mumbaiwala? You know, Mumbai? No Pakistani Rupees. I go. My Taxi. No. No. Mumbai not in Chandni Chowk. Chandni Chowk Delhi. Delhi Chandni Chowk. Mumbai different airport. Not Delhi. Ok. Bye. Ok Bye.”

The Great Khan was getting happier and happier with this nice man, Sudhir, who seemed to be a very good man. He did not seem to want any Pakistani Rupees as payment for the taxi to go to another airport in Delhi. And, he was saying “OK” to him, with respect. He was actually saying “OK Bhai”, and he could go free in his taxi. Maybe he could pay him some dollars as a small Thank you, for taking him to the flight to Mumbai. Delhi must be a very big city, if he had to take another flight to go to Chandni Chowk.

He said, “Oye Bhai, Good. Taxi. Come. Go to airport. Go to Mumbai. Go to Chandni Chowk. No Pakistani Rupees. Good. Ok, Bhai. Good. Come. Go. Taxi Go. Chandni Chowk. Mumbai. Airport. Delhi. Taxi Go. Dollars. Only Dollars. In suitcase. All Dollars in suitcase. In Taxi. In Airport. Mumbai Airport. Dollars. Give. Ok, Bhai. Dollars, give.”

Sudhir was wondering and searching for some clue as to how did he get to fit into this terrorist plot? Did someone in his office in Mumbai actually frame him, by sending him to Delhi with Dollars to be paid to their client who was traveling to Mumbai enroute to go abroad? He had thought it was a normal payment, for some services, and his office did it all the time. These foreigner types who worked as consultants in his office normally wanted to get paid in US Dollars, and his office had a foreign currency account and this is what they normally did. How did this violent looking and violent sounding and menacing pathan get to know that he was to courier US Dollars to someone going to Mumbai?

Sudhir decided that he had to now try and escape. There was no point in extending the conversation. After all, he was from Mumbai, and he was a brave man. This was an open public area, and he could just run away. What would this terrorist do? Would he shoot him down openly and cause attention to be focused upon him? He could just start walking and keep walking away. There were many taxi cabs at the entrance to the airport terminal. All greedy con men who would only be too happy to take him without any initial bargaining or negotiation that was the most essential tradition of getting a taxi at Terminal 1 at New Delhi. What would this terrorist do? Would he shoot him? He may not even have a gun.

Miracle of miracles, there seemed to be a wide-enough gap between the tall huge pathan and the payphone stand, and Sudhir decided to take it. He turned sideways, and walked out normally, as if in a very very normal situation, talking to himself, “stay cool, stay cool. Cool. I can get out of this. He cannot harm me. He cannot shoot me. Get away. Get away.” So saying, thinking to himself, Sudhir stepped out and started walking.

‘He was walking, he was walking, he was walking’, thought Sudhir. The tall pathan had not stopped him from getting away. ‘Do not look back. Do not convey any gesture. Somebody must have been watching. The police must have been watching. I must be marked by the police and intelligence bureau and CIA and FBI and all other interpol and police and everyone here. Do not look up. There are CC TV cameras everywhere.’

The crowd seemed to be parting on its own. God must be watching over me, thought Sudhir. The passengers were rushing out, and passengers were moving around. There was a CISF policeman at the gate, and he did seem to be watching him. Maybe he will stop me, maybe he will shoot me. No. No, thought Sudhir. Think good things only. Walk normally. The terrorist guy had not dared to stop him or shout at him or call him. So, he had guessed right, thought Sudhir. The terrorist guy had not got the courage to create an incident.