My Wanderings in India Come to an End: Mumbai

[continuation of July 31, 2004 email]

Mumbai (Bombay)

The Gateway of India, opened in 1924, opens out onto the Mumbai Harbor.

The last long ride before I left India was 18 hours on an overnight sleeper bus to Mumbai. The compartment I was in felt like a small cage for two people with reclining chairs that didn't fully open--the space wasn't long enough to fully stretch my legs and I had to constantly shift my feet where they were jammed into the wall to keep them from getting stiff and losing circulation, the metal side rails pressed uncomfortably into my back every time I rolled onto my side, and if I sat upright my head bumped into the compartment ceiling. I didn't get much sleep that night and it took hours to get through Mumbai's morning traffic to the final stop where we could get off.

36 hours in Mumbai

Walking along the Mumbai Harbor in the Colaba district on a rainy day in Bombay.

Looking north towards Chowpatty Beach along the Mumbai Harbor.

It had been raining all morning as the bus reached the Fort area of Mumbai and finally dropped us off. I shared a taxi with two English women from the bus; we dropped them at their hotel first and then went to look for one myself. I found a place called Bentley's Hotel in the Colaba district near India Gate and, once checked in, began my last day and a half in India.

In a cafe in Mumbai. The crowd outside is watching a televised cricket match between the national teams of India and Pakistan.

That evening, after getting some rest in the afternoon, walking around a bit, and getting my flight information for printed out from the internet, I went to eat at a restaurant called Leopold's and found myself sitting next to Stephanie, an American student from Yale. We had dinner together and went to Chowpatty Beach afterwards, walking past the vendors selling bhelpuri (fried rounds of dough mixed with lentil and onion filling) and the myriad head-massage wallahs who found it extremely difficult to take "no" for an answer. Walking along Marine Drive back towards Colaba we enjoyed the beautiful lights curving around the harbor called the "Queen's Necklace".

The next day I got up early and went to Sassoon Dock, where I observed the fisherman bringing their boats with the morning's catch in from the Mumbai Harbor and the intense market crowd sorting and selling a multitudinous variety of fish--squeezing myself through the throngs I even saw a couple of good-sized manta rays for sale.

Ramesh Balsekar

The last spiritual stop on my India tour was satsang (a gathering where teachings are given by a guru) with Ramesh Balsekar. I knew of him through the book I've been carrying around with me for the past three months, "From Here to Nirvana: the Yoga Journal Spiritual Guide to India." Mr. Balsekar is not your usual guru; he's a retired Bank of India president who always felt a sense of spiritual vision and, when forced to retire at the age of 60, began to more actively pursue his spiritual path. He began studying with the famous advaita Vedanta master Nisargadatta Maharaj, and about a year later, he reached a state of Self-realization which was confirmed by Nisargadatta. In 1981 Balsekar began giving satsang in his Bombay apartment. Now in his 80's, he's still doing it six days a week, from 9am to 10:30.

Advaita master Ramesh Balsekar

I arrived shortly before 9am and notice several westerners walking around near the building his apartment is in; when I went upstairs the apartment was already filled with maybe twenty-five people. Balsekar began the session, which was being recorded, by saying hello to a British woman who was also a first-time visitor and asking her some questions about her life. Though he's now definitely quite advanced in age, I was impressed by his presence of mind, his alertness, his sense of being right on the spot. In the course of the question and answer session, he managed to very lucidly present his teachings on the nature of reality according to the Vedantic perspective of advaita, which means non-duality. I found this particularly fascinating because Balsekar's philosophy comes from the same school of wisdom as Ramana Maharshi's method of Self-inquiry (and I'd just finished reading a book on Maharshi's teachings).

Balsekar teaches, similarly to Ramana Maharshi, that all reality is composed of consciousness: "All there is, is Consciousness." We as human beings are three-dimensional objects through which God looks at Herself through each other's eyes. There is no personal doer of actions; the enlightened person realizes that every action she performs is really performed by God as the Doer. And being a realized person does not change the facts of a person's everyday life; he will still experience pleasure and pain in the course of it; rather it changes one's attitude towards the life one finds oneself in he midst of. Balsekar said that our mission in life is to establish a harmonious relationship with the Other; and not to resist the destiny that is unfolding through us, as God.

With around 10 minutes left in the hour and a half session Balsekar turned to me and asked me if I had any questions for him. I took the opportunity to ask him about meditation, whether he meditated, and whether it was necessary. He answered that for himself meditation had not been necessary, though for others it may be. He told me that now he enjoys a period of meditation early in the morning when he gets up; that meditation should be an enjoyable experience, and not a discipline that entails suffering. I asked him who it was who enjoyed meditation, and he smiled and said, "the ego." He described how during meditation one can observe the process of thoughts arising in the mind; I asked him whether enlightened people have thoughts, and he said that the difference is that non-enlightened people become attached to their thought process and engage in a horizontal process of involvement with their thinking; Self-realized people remain unattached to their thoughts, allowing them to arise as they will, and living with them in this manner.

Mumbai street scene.

Looking across the Back Bay section of Mumbai Harbor towards downtown Mumbai from Malabar Hill.

Then it was 10:30, and satsang was over. I thanked him and watched as a few of the westerners bowed before his feet as he sat with eyes closed. There was a short session of singing of devotional songs in Sanskrit, and then Balsekar withdrew to a private part of the apartment.

How cool is that, to have satsang with an enlightened guy on my last day in India?

The Taj Majal Hotel facing the Mumbai Harbor.

The rest of my day in Mumbai was a bit more mundane; to tell the truth I felt a little bit tired after the session with Balsekar, having expended a lot of energy concentrating on keeping up with him as best I could, and went back to the hotel and took a nap. Then I had lunch, went to the Mumbai Air India office to confirm my reservation (impossible to get through to them on the phone), walking back through the city; mailed a postcard to my youngest brother; went to the Barista coffee shop, one of the few places in India where you can get a good cup of coffee, and wrote in my journal for a bit.

Bangana Tank: holy ancient bathing ghat in the middle of a crowded urban neighborhood called Malabar Hill.

Colorful statues in a Jain temple in Malabar Hill.

Inside of the domed roof of the Jain temple in Malabar Hill.

Late in the afternoon I hired a taxi driver from one of the group who were continually offering their services every time I entered or left the hotel and went to the city's beautiful marble-walled Jain temple and a holy old bathing ghat called Banganga Tank (according to legend the spring that feeds the tank is believed to have been created by an arrow fired from the god Rama's fabled bow). Afterwards in my hotel room I enjoyed one last reverential yoga session, dedicating my practice to India, thanking her for her gifts, and feeling a mystical sense of connection as I breathed and performed my asanas--I felt really focused and had a truly great practice. Then there was just time to shower, finish packing, have a last meal in an Indian restaurant--my favorite old reliable, aloo gobi (cauliflower and potato curry), with pongal (sweet rice cooked with cashews and spices) on the side!--swing by a souvenir stand to pick up some bracelets for my nieces (I'm not good at the souvenir shopping thing)--and then into the taxi for the 30 kilometer ride to the airport for my early morning flight. Dodging trucks and quite a bit of night traffic through the rain I held my breath as the driver successfully delivered me to Juhu Airport (and then extracted an extra 50 rupees from me because he said he didn't have change--my last tiresome transaction with India's mercenary army of taxi and auto rickshaw drivers).

Looking across a park in downtown Mumbai.

Longest Day

July 28th was a 36 1/2 hour day for me, flying early Wednesday morning from Bombay to Delhi to London to New York and then on to Seattle where I arrived a half hour before midnight, through 12 1/2 hours of time zone changes and over 23 in-flight hours, before proceeding on Thursday to Helena where I'm now enjoying a visit with my sister Diane and her partner Gomez. (By the way, I got a kick out of noticing that between Tuesday night and Thursday morning I managed to practice yoga on three continents: Tuesday night a great last practice in India in my hotel room in Bombay, then Wednesday on the airplane as we waited on the runway in London's Heathrow for the plane to be refueled and cleaned, and finally Thursday morning in my motel room in Seattle before heading back to the airport.)