Trip to India – l

(Don’t expect here a sequel to ‘A Search of Sacred India’, by the well-known author Paul Brunton)The thought of going to India came to mind – despite my advancing age and unsteady gait- through the contact with a user of Quora with whom I had been relating quite well through that medium. There are a number of such users who are either followers of the great Vedantin of the past Century, Shri Satchidanandendra Saraswati, or acquainted with his writings. Through that contact I learned that two Swami-s who took care of SSSS, one of them during the last 16 years of his life and the other during the last year (1975) were still alive and living in Bangalore, the city where my contact, Sowmya, lives (there must of course be other close followers of that sage in other areas of India, but we are now talking about Bangalore (or Bengaluru, as recently renamed) and some of the people who live there. With the indispensable help and support of my wife, we took to India without thinking it twice.

Bangalore, a sprawling and variegated city of over 10 million people and hub of a frenetic development in systems of information technology, soft-ware, etc. (the Indian Silicon Valley, as it is now known) is a chaos of old, decrepit buildings, intermixed in areas with brand new ones. Formerly called ‘the Garden city’, is now renamed ‘the Garbage city’. No need to describe the traffic conditions – taxis, bicycles, motorcycles with a family on top, and rickshaws a continuous smooth-flowing serpentine where separate lanes are unmarked and unknown. The so-called centre of the city is also a sprawl – I never knew where we were located, criss-crossing or winding streets and small shops all around – one or two dogs and one or two small cows ambling carelessly about.

I will not talk about monuments (except for a huge card-board or compressed-material-made image of Shiva).

Unbeknownst to me, but to be expected – and duly prearranged by the ubiquitous Sowmya, who took care of every detail – I spoke in front of audiences of between 20 and 30 people on three occasions; they were Advitins or adult students of Vedanta – I suspect all of them Brahmans. My spoken English was not very good (I suppose the strong Spanish accent was to blame), and some of the people’s there was even worse (unintelligible – to me of course). We were all rescued in this area by the very able assistance of Sowmya, who often –whether absolutely necessary or not – repeated, and improved, every one of my phrases. Her sweet and musical Kannada diction was appreciated – and now fully understood- by those who were present.