Dawa, the cook, Fern, and I packed into Dawa’s car for the six hour journey south to Manali. Once we got to Manali we would catch a shorter distance bus to Naggar, about a half hour further from Manali. Dawa had family in Manali so he had no problem with dropping us off there. It was a gorgeous road that we had already seen but Dawa took the time to stop at special spots along the way. He even went a considerable distance out of the way to show us an area in the mountains that I had asked him about earlier. He was treating us as a friend from out-of-town and just wanted us to see some of the sights. Honestly I think he really enjoyed that drive (can’t blame him) since he was so focused and engaged while twisting around the endless switchbacks and assessing the possibilities for passing all the slow moving construction vehicles.
When we were getting close to Manali he pulled over and visited a carefully chosen shack on the side of the road. It was a butcher shop. We followed Dawa inside to observe the transaction. It was a tiny, dimly lit room with a partial goat carcass hanging from the ceiling near the door and a large worn wooden chopping block next to it. I didn’t see any refrigerators and there was a dense swarm of flies around the carcass. Dawa spoke to the man who hacked off a chunk and coarsely chopped it into smaller pieces, bones and all, and wrapped it in newspaper. Dawa said this was one of the only places he liked to buy meat. He didn’t trust meat shops in bigger cities, which is a sentiment shared by many people in India.
There was one more stop before we reached Manali. It was in a town called Vashisht, only a few miles away from Manali on the other side of the river. It happens to be a cute little village with a lot of younger, more laid back travelers – mostly Israeli hippies. Dawa’s family owned another hotel in Vashisht which was run by a family friend and he wanted to stop by for a visit. It was getting on into the afternoon at this point but we didn’t really need to feel rushed, especially considering how much Dawa had done for us. He disappeared for a little while and then told us that they had a nice room for us if we wanted to stay in Vashisht for the night. Fern and I felt as though we had put off coming south for too long already and we really wanted to keep moving so we asked him if he could drop us off in Manali instead, along with the cook. He seemed really disappointed and a little hurt. We’d become fairly close, especially Fern and Dawa, and maybe he was just hoping to spend a little more quality time with us. A special personal connection is certainly more important than staying on schedule, especially since we didn’t have a real schedule, so we changed our minds and told Dawa that we’d be happy to stay in Vashisht for the night. He showed us to our room, we unpacked a few things, and then we heard a knock at the door.
It was Dawa, and he wanted us to meet a friend of his who happened to be staying in the room next to ours. Funny coincidence, but OK. We went next door and Dawa led us inside. A man was sitting on the bed, and looked as though he’d been sitting in bed all day. There was a table next to the bed with a bunch of apples, some small mugs, random plastic bags that used to contain convenience store snacks, plastic water bottles, and a couple of bottles of Blenders Choice whiskey. He looked about sixty and sat very comfortably with excellent posture. A long white beard framed the dramatic features of his face and he had very large eyes that conveyed a relaxed intensity. He was a large man and had a large presence that dominated the room.
Dawa, a respectable man in his sixties himself, immediately leaned down on the bed and kissed the other man’s feet. This was Dawa’s guru and from from the moment we entered the room Dawa behaved as if he were his guru’s servant. The man was simply called Babaji. Babaji is sort of like “sir” in India. Baba would be more like “mister” and adding -ji to the end makes it a sign of respect. He didn’t go by any other name and I’m pretty sure that nobody knew of any other name for him, despite knowing him for many years and spending a lot of time together. Babaji was the master and his students treated him like a god. There was one other guy in the room when we showed up. He didn’t say much and left after a short time and then another person came into the room – Raj. He also kissed Babaji’s feet and sat down on the floor. Dawa brought in a decent size box full of plastic water bottles that were filled with homemade arrack – a clear liquor made from rice, and he unloaded several more bottles of whiskey from a duffle bag and lined them up on a shelf. Eventually he brought in bowls of the delicious goat curry that he had secretly been working on since we arrived.
From the time Fern and I came over to Babaji’s room we mostly just made idle chit chat for about an hour. Babaji and Dawa both spoke limited English which made things a little awkward. Once Raj came into the room the energy changed. Raj spoke more English and seemed excited that we were there and told us that we were very lucky to meet Babaji. We must have done something special in a past life in order to deserve such an honor. Once Raj was settled in, Babaji took a small glass bottle out of his satchel and Raj knelt down next to him. He pulled out a moist black applicator stick about the size of a matchstick from the bottle and he held it right up against one of Raj’s eyes and squeezed Raj’s eyelids around the stick. While pinching the eyelids around it, he slid the stick slowly across the eye and out of the eye altogether. Then he repeated the process for the other eye. Black tears started oozing from Raj’s eyes and he went into the bathroom. Dawa explained that this was “medicine” and after receiving it we should go into the bathroom and rinse off our faces. Babaji gave the medicine to Dawa, Fern, and then me. Fern and I had no idea what we were getting into here but we were willing to participate nonetheless, mostly because this person was so important to Dawa. When Babaji took the stick out of the little bottle it smelled like a cross between patchouli and moist, rich, moldy soil and as he slid it between my eyelids, applying pressure with his fingers, it felt like he was scraping the front of my eyeball with a coarse piece of wood. How could this possibly be good for my eyes? Once the tears started flowing I did experience a refreshed feeling and I was left with black rings around my eyes that didn’t wash away for several days.
Babaji started pouring rounds of whiskey and soda water and as he loosened up, he got into the zone and his mouth ran on and on while his disciples sat on the floor and soaked it up. He tried to speak as much as possible in English since Fern and I were there. An idea would be raised, he would briefly define it, and then he would break the word down and make connections to other ideas using the letters that form the word or using other words that sound similar. He said these things as if he were intuiting profound insights about life and that was how Dawa and Raj took them, awestruck by the sheer genius of it even though they would most likely not remember or even understand most it because it actually made no sense whatsoever. He was just playing with words, sounds, and sometimes numbers. The things he was saying wouldn’t have worked at all if he were speaking Hindi or any other language but I’m sure he would be able to craft different word connections.
Apples are a local specialty of the region around Manali and both Dawa’s and Raj’s families owned apple orchards. There were lots of apples around. Somebody cut up an apple and an onion and Babaji scrounged around in his satchel looking for something, pulling out its contents to dig deeper. He pulled out a giant wad of Indian 1000 rupee notes and it occurred to me that all of Babaji’s possessions were probably here in this room – a satchel and a duffle bag. He found the container he was looking for and sprinkled some of its contents over the apple and onion. When I asked him what it was he said it was medicinal wild grasses and seeds that he had collected in the mountains. Funny, it tasted like marjoram, thyme, and maybe some other commonly available dried herbs to me. Raj had brought a bunch of small bags of salty processed snacks and those were passed around as well. After some time I started to pick up on the notion that Babaji fancied himself to be, among other things, a practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine. He also had formerly been a HIndu priest but renounced the ways of the temple because it revolved so much around money. He then went off on his own and meditated in a cave for a number of years. At this point he didn’t follow one specific philosophy or practice a specific modality but he was an all-around spiritual healer and teacher.
There were a few vague references throughout the evening that shed a little bit of light on the nature of the relationship between Babaji and his followers. At some point in the past both Dawa and Raj had allowed their selves to deteriorate in a variety of ways to a point where their lives were in pretty bad shape. They both came from well-off families but were making poor decisions and destroying their relationships and their upstanding status in the community. Babaji saved both of them. He took them under his wing and straightened them out, got them back on track. Dawa and Raj felt so grateful that they have been devoted to Babaji ever since. They would literally do anything for him. I have no idea how many other people were also devoted to Babaji but I got the feeling that he had a good number of followers.
At some point Fern’s health came up in the conversation. She had been experiencing pain in her abdomen, which is a common occurrence for her. Babaji showed a little spark of excitement and said that from the moment Fern walked into the room he had sensed that she had a problem in her gut and had mentioned it to Dawa, which Dawa confirmed. He seemed almost ridiculously confident that he could cure her on the spot of any and all health complications. Dawa and Raj shared this confidence and were very pleased that Fern would experience such a relief in her health. Fern’s health is full of interacting complications and none of these guys had any real understanding of what those complications meant. They had a very simplistic, almost childlike view of these things. Babaji performed a round of cupping on Fern’s back, which as far as I know is technique derived from Chinese traditional medicine which is supposed to release toxins and bad energy from the body. He told her that modern medicine is poison and she should stop taking any of it. Instead she should eat a couple spoonfuls of honey every day and lots of raw onions. He could also put together some herbs for her. Toward the end of the evening I remember Dawa telling Fern that from now on she would not have to worry. Babaji had worked his healing magic on her and she was cured. Simple as that. He was very concerned about the fact that Fern can’t have children. We tried to explain to him that it was absolutely impossible because her uterus and ovaries had been removed. No, no. He fixed her all up. The fact that Fern had to take synthetic hormones because of her absent ovaries meant nothing to him. If she were to stop taking this “poison” it would have disastrous effects on her health but these fellows didn’t embrace a very scientific understanding of things like cancer, surgery, or hormones. That was just a bunch of science mumbo jumbo but what Fern really needed was someone with spiritual power to intervene on her behalf within the realm of unseen forces.
Fern and I both were willing to hear them out. Babaji got more and more “loosened up” while Dawa and Raj seemed to feel like they were witnessing a miracle. Their belief in his abilities was complete and unquestioned. Since Fern and I had been welcomed into their circle they started to treat us like family. Dawa told Fern “You are my daughter. I will always be with you” and gave her a big warm hug. Raj owned several businesses and properties in the area and offered us an old house to stay in for free as long as we wanted or he could take us paragliding if we wanted. He had actually closed his businesses temporarily in order to focus on being with Babaji while he was in town. Dawa told us we could come and stay with him in Keylong any time we wanted too. The level of generosity they showed was a little shocking at first. Raj, especially, didn’t really know us at all but I guess that’s how their community worked. I’m pretty sure that most or all of Babaji’s followers put all of their resources at his disposal and that is how he survived, moving around from one patron to the next.
For a while I wasn’t sure where Fern stood with these things – particularly the healing. She’s experienced so many failed attempts at medical caregiving that for a short while I thought she was getting sucked into the possibility that it could be so simple. Western medicine has some serious flaws which makes it easy to put all hope and belief into an alternative, whether it works or not. Turns out she was just being polite, like me, and she felt relieved when we finally freed ourselves from the strange energy of that room for the night. It was hard to sleep with so much to process. Was Dawa planning on taking us to Babaji when he offered to drive us to Manali? It didn’t seem like it but it was hard to say for sure. It felt like they were trying to bring us into a cult. I wondered if this was what it was like to be initiated into the Mafia. Devote yourself completely to the organization and the organization will take care of all your needs. The catch is that you have to mentally surrender – allow your whole worldview to be reconstructed – in the case of Babaji, letting go of pesky hangups like scientific knowledge and a desire to be physically healthy. Not my cup of tea. It was nice that we got to spend more time with Dawa but we were getting antsy to move on…
jim@snorkelbandits.com