An updated version of an experience from the year 2000 AD
I finally said goodbye to the Indian Air Force and hung up my uniform on 31 December 1999—a career I would happily revisit in any future birth, if there is one.
I was immigrating to Canada and wanted to do a course that would help me build a second career there. ‘E-business’ was the thing at the time, so I decided to do an IBM-certified e-business course in Delhi. On the first day, I met my fellow students. They were all in their early twenties.
One of the students, Vince, was an American who had come to India to do the course because it was much cheaper here. He generally kept to himself. However, over time, we became friendly, and he began sharing his ideas, thoughts and views with me.
Asking an American about his personal life is, I thought, somewhat taboo unless you know him well enough and he is willing to share it. In keeping with this, I never asked Vince anything personal.
I did notice, however, that Vince would disappear every Friday evening and return to class on Monday morning. This happened every weekend.
About three months into the course, we had become close enough for me to invite Vince home for a meal over the weekend. He declined, saying that his weekends were already booked. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked why he could not spare even one weekend to visit my home and family.
He replied that he went to Rishikesh every weekend.
He had rented a room there for the weekends. It cost him Rs. 300 a day and was located on the banks of the Ganges, just as the river emerged from the hills. He told me that the view was beautiful and that he thoroughly enjoyed his stays there.
Ganges Flowing Through Rishikesh
Image Courtesy: Google Images
One weekend, when he returned from Rishikesh, he was particularly excited and showed me some photographs he had taken there.
Among them were photographs of a sadhu with long, matted hair, wearing only bhasm—ash—and a loincloth. The sadhu had built a small hut with his own hands and lived there.
Vince told me that the sadhu spoke fluent English and had once been a college professor. He had retired and come to Rishikesh to live out his vanaprastha—the stage of life traditionally associated with withdrawing from worldly affairs.
He had renounced worldly possessions and had finally settled on the banks of the Ganges.
Vince had many conversations with this sadhu, and with several others like him, during his numerous visits to Rishikesh over the four and a half months we spent together on the course.
Of course, like a true American, he had also taken plenty of photographs of monkeys, elephants, snakes and other creatures in remarkably close contact with human beings.
He even had one photograph with a python wrapped around his neck, holding the snake with both hands. Even I would have felt a little creepy posing like that!
Towards the end of our time together, Vince confided in me about his dream—and his dilemma—in life.
He told me that he had always wanted to start a software company, make a lot of money and, once he had earned a million dollars, buy a cottage on the beach in Virginia, his home state. He would put an easy chair on the sand of his own private beach and simply relax, doing nothing.
It was an understandable dream.
But what he said next surprised even me. He said......
“I want to go through all this just to relax on the beach. And here is this sadhu, who has nothing except a loincloth and a few basic belongings, doing exactly what I want to do after all this struggle and after earning a million dollars.”
We both looked at each other, dumbfounded......
For quite some time, neither of us had anything to say. We were too busy trying to comprehend the enormity of the realisation.
I still think about that incident from time to time.
Is life actually that simple?
I know it is.
But my ego, senses and attachments keep forcing me to think otherwise.
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