11/11/05 - Friday
Barely on time for Balsekar's satsang this morning. Today a 94-year-old German now living in Norway, a second-time visitor to satsang with Ramesh, asks the guru if he might ask a question preceded by a “10- to 12-minute story”. After hearing the question first, Ramesh assents.
Throughout the 1920s, Helmut, like most of his countrymen, bought the National Socialist party line: Germany would not have lost World War I if it hadn’t have been “stabbed in the back” by German Bolsheviks and Jews who wanted to pick up the tattered reins of government and commerce. However, on December 12, 1938, Helmut found himself sitting in a Munich café with Ernst, a Jew, who had become his best friend.
Helmut shared his concern that he was soon to be conscripted; with another world war just around the corner, Helmut’s chances of surviving did not appear to be substantial. Ernst, who was preparing to emigrate in hope of avoiding mounting pressure on Jewish academics like himself, suggested a solution.
There was a local trade school that taught a 3-month course in cartography. In the last war, map drawing skills were in high demand, and qualified cartographers, though conscripted, were able to avoid infantry service.
At the moment Ernst was relating this idea to Helmut, Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA) thugs detonated a bomb in the café because its management had continued to serve Jews despite repeated warnings. The two friends were carted away in separate ambulances.
Helmut was in the hospital for three weeks with permanent burn injuries; seventy years later, the skin grafts are still clearly visible on the back of his bald head. Once out of treatment, he enrolled in and completed the cartography course. During that period, the Munich café was repaired and reopened, this time with a posted prohibition: Keine Juden (no Jews). Helmut returned to the café off and on, hoping his friend would happen by. Given the fact that Ernst’s home address was no longer valid, Helmut began to assume that either he died in the bombing or had since emigrated.
One Saturday afternoon, approaching the café for coffee and strudel, he stopped dead in his tracks; there was Ernst, sitting inside the café next to an open window. As Helmut rushed forward, however, an SS officer appeared at Ernst’s table, demanding identification, which, as Helmut later learned, Ernst purposely did not carry. Narrowing his gaze, the officer asked, “You are a Jew, aren’t you?” Helmut intervened; fortunately, there was a certain physical resemblance between the two friends. “This is my brother, mein Kapitan; he’s 100% Aryan.”
Helmut’s orderly papers were accepted as adequate proof of Ernst’s non-Semitic heritage. After the officer left, Ernst told Helmut, “You must be my guardian angel.” Helmut scolded Ernst for risking a visit to the café when he was so close to escaping the country.
The following week, Helmut received his draft notice into a Wehrmacht infantry unit. He and a hundred other draftees appeared at a screening center to offer evidence of special skills that might warrant transfer to non-combat support units. The fate of these men is in the hands of an arrogant corporal who seems bent on rejecting each and every application, probably on the instructions of his sergeant. “We have plenty of engineers. Request denied.”
After 51 consecutive rejections, it was Helmut’s turn. As he approached the corporal’s file- and paper-strewn table, a captain walked up and began to look for some document in the stack of files. “Cartographer? What’s a cartographer?” sneers the corporal. “You draw maps? We have plenty of maps already drawn. Request denied.”
“Wait, you idiot,” interjects the captain, “where do you think all those maps come from? Transfer this man to my engineering company.” The corporal’s face grows red, but he remains silent. From 1938 to 1945, Helmut draws maps.
Helmut’s question to Ramesh: “Were Ernst and I predestined to rescue each other? I believe so, but my late wife insisted that was nonsense. I’d like to hear your opinion, and those of the sadhus sitting here.”
Ramesh: “Helmut, neither my opinions nor those of the people here today will help you resolve this question. Each of the egos sitting here are merely God’s robots, objects, not subjects, and will provide 16 different answers. But the events you describe were meant to happen, simply because they did; remember, neither you nor Ernst did anything – everything just happens. But since you would like to hear opinions, let’s get some. How about you?”
The Foam clears his throat, pauses for a moment in indecision, then replies:
“Guruji, for some unknown reason, Helmut’s story reminds me of two jokes. The first is about a young spiritual seeker who goes to the four corners of the earth in search of the answer to the question, ‘what is life?’ As he meets his 100th sage, he is finally directed to the Master of all Masters, who lives in a cave near the summit of Annapurna, nearly naked yet immune to the extremes of altitude and cold.
“The young sadhu struggles for a week to the cave and finds the guru clad only in a loincloth with a kind and beatific smile on his face. ‘Master,’ he pants, ‘what is life?’ The guru smiles, looks deep into the questioner’s eyes and says, ‘Son, life is like a fountain.’
“Somewhat perplexed, the seeker repeats, ‘Life is like a fountain?’
“A look of concern passes over the Master’s face as he replies, ‘You mean, life ISN’T like a fountain??!’”
The devotees in Ramesh’s parlor do not react. However, the guru himself dissolves in a fit of hilarity.
“The second joke, Guruji, is about another seeker, this time a Jew, who year after year prays for an audience with Yahweh. One day, as he prays more earnestly than usual, Jehovah Himself appears in a bolt of lightning, surrounded by angels.
“’Alright, so you’re praying; here I am. What can I do for you?’ said the Lord.
“’Adonai, I just have a question. Is it true that we Jews are the Chosen People?’
“The Lord answers, ‘Yes, Irving, it’s true, the Jews have always been special to me. Why do you ask?’
“’Well,’ replies Irving, ‘would it be alright if You picked on somebody else for a while?”
This time, the devotees laugh, too.
“What the jokes mean to me, Ramesh, is that the events in Helmut’s life were fated to happen, but Helmut’s wife’s statement is also somewhat correct. Destiny aside, this seemingly magical chain of events doesn’t mean that Helmut and Ernst were singled out or were special in some way. In the first joke the seeker is reminded that any speculation about the meaning of life or events is futile; it’s not for us to know. The second joke points up the absurdity of seeking or expecting special blessings in a universe where everything in time and space has already happened, where there is no time but now, and no space except in our heads.”
Ramesh: “Yes. Although the happening of the map drawing course may be related to the captain’s intervention, the probability is very small, and there is no chance that the one was the sole cause of the other. With regard to praying for God’s blessing; why bother? Every happening is pre-ordained by God; the individual’s destiny is stamped at the moment of conception, since God sees all space and time.”
The Foam does not stay for bhajan (hymns) today. He has a second date with Ms. Spaghetti Bolognese. This time, though, the Caesar salad is a little wilted. Another long walk in the Fort area after the late lunch. On the third day in Mumbai, the Foam has witnessed a thousand near misses between pedestrians, taxis, bicycles, dogs, motorcycles, cows and rickshaws, yet not even a single fender-bender. If it weren’t all predestined, a massive chain reaction of collisions would occur.
Dogs, rats and cows figure prominently in the Indian urban and suburban streetscape because there’s no place in India to hide. Even the cat must forego its predilection for privacy; she must find her spot on the sidewalk like everybody else. Although the rat can mostly stay out of sight during the day, he must often make a break for a distant gutter, colliding roughly with human pedestrians on the way.
The poorest of the poor die in the streets, human and animal alike. In an alley around the corner from the hotel, the Foam finds a young beggar dead or dying; early stage Hansen’s disease is evident on his feet and legs. His arms and legs are the circumference of the circle formed by your index finger and thumb. The temptation to photograph this young man was only fleeting.
At Howrah Junction rail terminus near Kolkata, bodies of those who die in the plaza during the week are wrapped in their own clothing, heads covered, and placed at the curb for pickup by city contract body-wallahs, who draw them up on handcarts for transport to cremation grounds. The Foam believes he will never put out the garbage on Tuesday mornings without remembering the sight.
Somehow, the lives and deaths of feral street canines tug hardest at the Foam’s heartstrings, and not just because of an admittedly acute case of Western pet neurosis. Street dogs, unlike cats and cows, are not perceived in India as improving the probability of human survival; on the other hand, they can’t be eradicated because their bodies may contain the souls of departed ancestors. Thus they fend for themselves forlornly, wagging for the rare handout, foraging in the garbage heaps, usually suffering from mange and other disorders (one male was seen with a bloody case of testicular elephantiasis). The sight of a 12-pound, 3-month-old puppy sniffing out survival on its own is NOT one to remember; yet it will be.
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A touch of home: The Rotary Club, Mumbai.
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11/12/05 – Saturday
Today’s satsang with Ramesh was like the cursory review for a midterm exam. A clutch of newly arrived seekers asked questions on ground covered earlier in the week. Ramesh shows no weariness or irritation despite his 80-odd years.
This time the Foam stays for bhajan and makes formal pranam to Ramesh upon departure, taking the dust from the guru’s feet and placing it on his head. By the time the Foam reaches the street below, tears are streaming down his face. The train to Kolkata leaves at 8:30 PM; another meeting with Ramesh, either in his lifetime or that of the Foam, is very unlikely in the context of the laws of quantum mechanics.
An afternoon stroll from the hotel ends at Barista, the Mumbai equivalent of Starbucks® and one of the few havens from city traffic, noise and haste. The Foam shares a table and conversation with Akhmed, a fortyish bachelor on vacation from Dubai. His English is excellent, and, like the Foam, he is glad to find a fellow speaker.
Akhmed straightforwardly shares his concerns about the Russian Mafia’s growing influence in Dubai, Qatar and the UAE. Russian drilling investments have attracted Mafia carpetbaggers who are smuggling drugs and selling repaired but formerly “totaled” cars as if new. The computer age has made it tough for chop shops to forge new titles within the country of origin, so it’s easier to smuggle them abroad. Frame-damaged Mercedes sold in Dubai turn out to have been purchased and wrecked in Luxembourg or even Japan.
Dubai and Qatar sit on the south side of narrow straits opposite Afghanistan and Iran. Small motor launches can ferry across thousands of kilos of cocaine and raw opium without detection, even in broad daylight.
“This didn’t make the newspapers at home,” says Akhmed, “because Dubai doesn’t want to draw attention to the problem, but last week a smuggler and launch operator, stoned on his own product, ran is boat aground on a beach packed with bathers. The Dubai authorities confiscated the boat and about 1,000 kilos of coke, then took the operator back across the straits and dumped him in Afghanistan, where his life, of course, isn’t worth – how you say – a plugged nickel.”
The Foam and Akhmed parted with a handshake, vowing contact if every in the other’s city of residence.
After a harrowing cab ride 16km north of Mumbai, the Foam is deposited at around 6:30PM at Lokmanya Tilak Station to catch the 8:35 PM Jnaneshwari Deluxe #2101 to Howrah Junction, Kolkata, 1900 miles east.
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From Residency Hotel, Room 407
Street Vendors Lining Dadabhai
Nauroji
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