Babaji and the FInnish Breather

A quick amendum to our last post regarding our "serious" yoga session, which proved to not be a yoga session at all...

Alice and I arrived a few minutes late because we had to switch hotels and haul our crap 2kms up a hill. The yoga master, Mr. Babaji, figured we wouldn't show up so began his breakfast. We were given toast with peanut butter and tea, and then told to wait for the food to digest before we began the session. We passed the time watching news stories on his satellite TV. Babaji used the terrible events pictured on the television as proof that the world is in a downward spiral towards some sort of dark oblivion.

When our food was adequately digested I was escorted outside by Babaji, and Alice stayed in the room with his Finnish lady friend (or devotee?). I was asked to show him some of the postures I knew, Alice was asked if she knew how to breathe. I showed him my stuff, and he said "you know many things, but you don't have knowledge." Alice, the recent recipient of a health science degree, was told about how important breathing is to life - too bad she didn't come to India first because she could have saved a lot of time and money...

Meanwhile, Babaji had me go through a few postures. No matter what I did, or how slowly I did it, he would say "shanti" (slowly in Hindi). It was kind of like that scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall where the guy is learning to surf and the stoner instructor just keeps saying "do less." The actual yoga instruction only lasted a few minutes before I was moved back inside the room, rejoining Alice and the Finnish breathing guru. I assumed that, like me, Alice had at least received some yoga instruction. However, I learned afterwards from Alice that the woman hadn't practiced yoga in so long that she had forgotten the poses and Alice knew more than she did.

We then sat in the mud walled, charras smoke-filled room for the next two hours taking in the monologue of Babaji who considered himself a fountain of knowledge, and us improperly shaped vessels that needed to be filled by him. It might have been interesting and enlightening if it hadn't been so damned confusing - quote, Alice. Babaji went off on various subjects, sometimes becoming very stern and incomprehensible, while at other times he laughed at his own equally incomprehensible stories. The general theme was that his speech was incomprehensive!

We were invited to become devotees, so that we could learn to overcome materialism and false knowledge...he assured us that we could easily transfer our money to him through Western Union or any international bank. We were also told if we wanted to buy any drugs that he was the main supplier to the village. Throughout, the Finnish woman spoke very little and puttered about changing her clothes at regular intervals, adding or removing various layers of the orange fabric that she was wrapped in.

Babaji, in his two hour diatribe, spoke only to me, never breaking eye contact. Afterwards, when he had filled my vessel, he turned to Alice and said, "don't worry I can speak with you too", and then turned on the TV to watch Wild Wild West, starring Will Smith ("Jim West, Desparado!").

We left feeling a little confused. I was bordering on an ecstatic sensation of 'enlightenment', not so much for what was said - Alice and I both agreed that Babaji was a self-involved loon - but just the strangeness of the entire experience. It fit very well with the crazy dreams that I've entertained over the years about what a trip to India might be like...wandering up a strange mountain path, into a shack containing a little bearded man who wanted to show me the path to who knows where. In this case the path offered seemed to lead to material poverty and bad eyesight from watching too many satellite movies in an unilluminated mud hut.

In addition to being invited on a 3 day excursion into the mountain with the couple (declined), we were invited to return the next day for another 'yoga' session. We initially agreed but after discussing the whole scenarios we decided to stay away from Babaji and the Finnish breather. Instead, I spent the day reading in the sun, working on my Babaji brand of do less yoga, and walking in the village. Alice, who claimed she was going for a short walk when she left the room in the morning, spent the entire day tromping about the Himalayas, and returned to the room dehydrated and feverish after nightfall. I thought it was going to be a repeat of the Sri Lankan hospital trip, but thanks to an infusion of mango juice, club soda, and a handful of pills she was back to her normal cheerful self before I even had a chance to enjoy a moment's peace.


The waterfall Alice ended up behind on her "short walk"



Mountains around Manali



In Old Manali



Manali