"Suddenly I noticed a rather peculiar holy man crossing the road. On his forehead was the mark of Rama and he was almost n‰ked, except for a rope around his waist to which a tiny piece of cloth was attached covering his geñitals. This was nothing unusual, nor the fact that he had rubbed grey ashes all over his body, hair and beard. But through the ashes I could discern his skin, and a very light skin it was. Of course, the man could belong to one of the northern tribes of India, some of whom have very light complexion, but when he returned from filling his brass water-pot at a public tap across the road, I saw his eyes. Bright blue eyes. A white man? A foreigner baba?
He had disappeared between the tents and I decided to follow him, to check it out. Smaller, V-shaped tents were rather haphazardly clustered around a large square cubic tent where the leader of this subsect resided. This dignitary — tall, big, white-haired, in a long white robe — was standing in front of his tent as a young sadhu approached him. A disciple, I assumed, who bent down low and touched the feet of his guru. The master raised his right hand in a gesture of blessing, affectionately.
Construction of the camp was still in progress. Young sadhus were levelling the ground, hammering tent poles into the hard earth, stretching canvas over the poles, joking and laughing.
I greeted them by folding my hands and calling out, “Jay Shri Rama” (‘Hail Lord Rama’). And all within hearing range would echo this mantra.
“You go there,” one of the sadhus said and pointed to a tent a bit away from the cluster, under a solitary tree, sparsely leafed and throwing a faint shadow. Behind the tent the dry open plain stretched out in the shimmering distance, under the white light of the midday sun, and a hot, fragrant wind blew little dust devils around the bushes.
As I came closer I saw an older sadhu sitting cross-legged on a bed in the shade, half n‰ked, with long grey hair and beard. On some plaited mats on the ground, with his back towards me, sat a younger sadhu. The older man saw me and he shouted, “Jay Shri Rama!” while beckoning me to come closer. I heard the old man say, “Here’s a friend.” The younger sadhu turned around and, indeed, he was the one I was looking for — and he was white.
They both smiled at me as I saluted them with “Jay Shri Rama” and a mat was drawn into the shade for me to sit on. The older sadhu leaned over to me, his big belly touching his crossed legs, and asked, “Where you from?”
“Holland,” I said and, since many Indians have never heard of it, I added, “Europe.”
“Ah, good country,” he said and immediately went on, “so you come to India to find guru?” It was a statement, not a question.
“You must have guru,” he continued, “life with no guru is like travelling in train with no ticket!” We laughed. “If ticket-collector come ...” I would never know what would happen then, for apart from his broken English, he had no teeth, which made him slur his words. But we laughed anyway and I didn’t want to spoil the fun by some sort of interrogation.
“Guru mind is like elephant,” he then said and looked at me with penetrating eyes. I was still puzzled by this metaphor (did he mean strong like an elephant?, or agile like an elephant’s trunk, its ‘fifth hand’ as it is known in India?, or what?), while he made a more contemporary comparison, “Guru is direct telephone with God! You go your own country and think of guru and he makes connection. Guru always know what you do!”

I glanced at the white baba, and wondered if he believed all this and how he would feel being watched all the time. As a good disciple he had been sitting straight up in the lotus-posture, smiling in approval of his master’s words. He was well built and very slim, as a sadhu should be. From close-up the ashes couldn’t really conceal the whiteness of his skin or the blondness of his long hair and beard. His wrinkled face made him look older than he probably was. He caught my glance — his blue eyes shining with enthusiasm, eyelids wrinkled in smiles — and took the opportunity to break into the conversation.
“That’s right, man,” he said, “guru-ji has some kind of superconsciousness, you know, tremendous mind power!” He spoke in a rather shrill voice, but guru-ji, ‘revered teacher’, was pronounced softly, with much affection.
He went on, telling me how he had met his guru. It was seven years ago, while he was aimlessly drifting through India. At a religious festival he was wandering through the sadhu camps and had sort of bumped into him. Just by chance it seemed, but actually it was his karma, his ‘fate’.
Of course.
Soon he was initiated and guru-ji had given him his sadhu-name, Ramapriya Das, which means ‘Rama’s beloved servant’.
The guru commented, “Ramapriya Das is now seven year old boy!” We laughed, but Ramapriya Das was not to be interrupted. Initiation is a rebirth, the start of a new life, a divine life. He had changed enormously since that time, a real metamorphosis, but there was still so much to learn. His words came out so rapidly and so heavily accented — Mid Western American — that his guru soon lost track and hardly got a chance to do his bit.
He regularly had to go back to California. There he lived in a camper in the mountains, where he tried to keep up his sadhu-life. Of course, this caused problems with the authorities who treated him as just another homeless bum. Well, what else could you expect from this government, this conspiracy of big business, the mafia and the CIA. The American population was totally disillusioned, the rich got richer and the poorest, over twenty percent of the people, lived in the streets. This was a deliberate policy, a strategy to keep the dissidents down. “In the West,” he said with a sarcastic grin, “it is the survival of the meanest.” He went on and on, about pollution, crime, racism, trying to convince me.
I had heard it all before, so to bring us back to the here and now, I said, “tell me more about your guru.”
“Guru-ji’s name is Lakshman Das,” he said, looking up at the older sadhu with affection.
Lakshman Das — whose name would translate as ‘servant of Lakshman’, who is Rama’s half-brother — came to attention when he heard his name and beamed a happy, toothless cherubic smile.
“You smoke?” he asked me, meaning hash or weed.
”Yes.”
“Good.” He rummaged in his sadhu-bag and came up with a plastic bag filled with green marihuana.
“Patti,” I joked in Hindi with ridiculing emphasis. ‘Patti’ means ‘leaves’ and is slang for low quality stuff. “Let me give you some good charas.”
I gave him a piece of black Manali hash — that another sadhu had given to me — and a cigarette, and he started preparing the chilam, a clay hand-held pipe.
“I stopped smoking,” Ramapriya Das said, “it gave me ulcers all over my body.” He pointed to some scars on arms and legs, barely discernible through the ash.
“And I don’t need it anymore,” he continued. Now he practised yoga, and more importantly, japa. ‘Japa' is the endless repetition of a mantra, which in his case was the name of Rama. He showed me his mala, a ‘rosary’ of small wooden beads (made of the sacred tulsi plant). He did a thousand malas a day now, but he wanted to increase this number, until he would do it continuously, in the back of his mind, for twenty-four hours per day.
“Discipline is important,” he said. Then he laughed heartily, “my father should see me now!” His father had been an officer in the US army. A fascist bastard who tyrannized his family with military discipline. Everyone was scared of him. As a child, Ramapriya Das had hated his father, rebelled against all he stood for. There were endless arguments, there were fights. One day he ran away from home and he had never seen him since.
But now he had his guru, who was more than a father to him. Naturally, they had their differences, their quarrels, but ultimately it was based on love. He looked up to his guru.
“Hey, guru-ji!” he shouted cheerfully, “we fight a lot, he?”
With mock-seriousness Lakshman Das looked at me and commented, “this boy always think he know better, he must have some beatings.” He pretended to hit Ramapriya Das on the head who in defence held up his arms. Both were laughing out loud and their sham fight ended by Lakshman Das affectionately putting an arm around Ramapriya Das and kind of hugging him. All this display of affection overwhelmed me a bit. Was it genuine or were they trying to prove something?
We were joined by a sadhu from their camp. He had wandered by while Lakshman Das was heating and crumbling the hash and mixing it with the tobacco."