Full text of "NO DESTINATION" Satish Kumar 1

Full text of "NO DESTINATION"

https://archive.org/stream/nodestinationsatishkumar/NO%20DESTINATION%20-%20Satish%20Kumar_djvu.txt

=====

No Destination is the fascinating story of Satish Kumar — 

monk, peace activist, pilgrim extraordinaire and ecological 

campaigner. 

"Satish Kumar's unique story is stranger than 

fiction." - Hazel Henderson 

"Satish Kumar is among the most important 

educators of the 20th century. His lifelong odyssey 

adds a compelling flesh and blood reality to the 

wisdom of the East." - Theodore Roszak 

"Reading this book, you will have the rare pleasure 

of meeting a warm and witty, thoroughly genuine 

man, and one whose inspiration will not fail to 

move you." - Kirkpatrick Sale 

"Satish Kumar's life can be described as having no destination because he 

has never* settled for limited destinations. There are no full stops in his life, 

only commas, hyphens and semi-colons." - Vandana Shiva 

When he was only nine years old, Satish Kumar renounced the world and 

joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. Dissuaded from this 

path by an inner voice at the age of eighteen, he became a campaigner 

for land reform, working to turn Gandhi's vision of a renewed and 

peaceful world into reality. 

Fired by the example of Bertrand Russell, he undertook an 8000-mile 

peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money, 

through deserts, mountains, storms and snow. It was an adventure during 

which he was thrown into jail in France, faced a loaded gun in America 

and delivered packets of 'peace tea' to the leaders of the four nuclear 

powers. 

In 1973 he settled in England, taking on the editorship of Resurgence 

magazine, and becoming the guiding spirit behind a number of 

ecological, spiritual and educational ventures. Following Indian tradition, 

in his fiftieth year, he walked to the holy places of Britain - Glastonbury, 

Canterbury, Lindisfarne and Iona. 

Written with a penetrating simplicity. No Destination is an exhilarating 

account of an extraordinary life. First published in 1978, this revised 

edition contains two new chapters, bringing his story up to date. 

South Asia Edition 

====

An Autobiography 

Satish Kumar 

===

Published in October 2003 

by The Viveka Foundation 

New Delhi

Originally published by 

Green Books, U.K. 

Copyright © Satish Kumar 1992, 2000 

=======

FOREWORD 

, write this foreword at the Bija Vdyapeeth in Doon Valley in the Ind.an 

Himalayas. The Bija Vdyapeeth (School of the Seed) .s an instiWhon 

that Satish Kumar and I co-founded in the year 2001Jt« 

Navdanya's organic and biodiversity conservation farm in the Doon 

Valley. 

For years Satish had been suggesting I start a college for »>*« 

living in India like the Schumacher College he started ,n Devon. But my 

hands and head were full. And I kept putting it off. Bui• with Sabsft you 

can’t put things off for too long. In December, he and his wife June 

visited us in Dehradun. After a typical Carhwali lunch made with rogi 

7olra and maarchu - the precious millets and grams of the 

Himalayas we took a walk. And by the end of the walk, Satish had 

identified the place where the dormitory would be, where the dining 

hall would be .and thus the Bija Vidyapeeth was bom. We chose the 

name, both because the school was on Navdanya's farm wh,c J sa ^ 

seeds and spreads seeds as a creative resistance to mdustna 

monocultures and corporate monopolies and also because the seed is 

“zing teacher for lessons in renewability, justice and non-violence 

in our times. 

Less than a month after 9/11, Satish, Mohammed Idris of World 

Network, Sulak Suraksha of Thailand and Edward Goldsmith, founder 

of The Ecologist were planting a 'forest of diversity' to inaugurated* 

School of the Seed dedicated to sustainable living, peace and socia 

justice In two years, an organic institution has grown fromSatishs 

dea that a college like Schumacher College should be created in India. 

Thank vou Satdh for your gentle persistence. Masanobu Fukuoka 

Frances Moore Lappe, Herbert Girardet. Oscar OHvie^ EUi Gandhi and 

many others have already taught courses^ Two charters to 

Citizenship and Planetary Consensus — are becoming 

new experiment in education and learning. 

The Schumacher College, the green college that Satish started in 

Devon as part of the Dartington Trust, has become an innovative, 

creative model to provide an education that no school or fivers ty 

providing, but is desperately in need of, for learning to live hopefully

times of hopelessness, generously in times of greed, fearlessly in times 

of fear, compassionately in times of hate. 

I have been teaching at the Schumacher College since it was started in 

1991. Satish has drawn on the best hearts, spirits and minds of our 

times as teachers — Fritjof Capra, Jonathon Porrit, Jane Goodall, Rupert 

Sheldrake, Hazel Henderson, Wblfgang Sachs and Arne Naess, to name 

just a few. 

And, as in education, Satish has taken creative steps in communication. 

The Resurgence magazine which he edits, combines ecology, 

spirituality and beauty in such a way as to touch contemporary 

consciousness in ways not tapped or stimulated before. 

Resurgence, the Schumacher College and its sister institution, Bija 

Vidyapeeth, are Satish’s legacy to the future. They are small in 

structure, huge in impact. As Gandhi had said of the spinning wheel, 

'anything that millions can do together, becomes charged with 

unique power'. The spinning wheel became a symbol of such power. 

'The wheel as such is lifeless, but when I invest it with symbolism, it 

becomes a living thing for me'. Satish has walked Gandhi s path in 

unleashing the quiet power and beauty of 'the small'. Every 

December, Satish offers a course on Gandhi at Bija Vidyapeeth to 

spread the ideas of peaceful but radical transformation. 

It has been a joy working with Satish, teaching at Schumacher College, 

building Bija Vidyapeeth and writing for Resurgence. 

Satish's life can be described as having no destination because he has 

never settled for limited destinations. There is always another 

destination to strive towards, another creativity to unleash. There are 

no full stops in Satish's life, only commas, hyphens and semi-colons. I 

am happy to have shared some of those commas with him. I am sure 

you too, will enjoy getting to know him through his autobiography. 

Vandana Shiva 

Bija Vidyapeeth 

Doon Valley 

====

CONTENTS 

1 Mother 7 

2 Guru 21 

3 Ashram 4 1 

4 Benares ^7 

5 Wanderer 79 

6 Escape 121 

7 Floating 12.5 

8 Mukti 139 

9 Maya M5 

10 Hartland 157 

11 Small School 165 

12 Pilgrimage: Iona 173 

13 Pilgrimage: Return *2.3 

14 Japan 265 

15 College 281 

16 Mount Kailas 287 

17 Influences 2.95 

18 Realization 319 

===

Chapter 1 Mother    7 

Mother retreated into her room in tears. One by one she removed 

the precious pieces of jewellery which father had given her when they 

were married—golden chains, bracelets and rings, pearls, diamonds 

and silver bangles. She took off the pendant from her forehead, the 

diamond stud from her nose, her diamond earrings, her gold armlet, 

her belt of gold wire studded with pearls, her silver anklets and silver 

toe rings. She removed her yellow sari embroidered with gold and 

put on a plain green one. She sat on the floor in the comer of the 

room. For days she didn’t move, she didn’t speak to anybody, she 

didn’t take food. She just stayed in the corner of the room weeping. 

I came to her asking, ‘Why are you here, why don’t you come out, 

why don’t you come to the kitchen, why don’t you ...’ 

Four men took father’s body on to their shoulders and carried him 

in a funeral procession. Outside the town they laid him on the funeral 

pyre. Wood and coconuts were heaped over his body and the fire 

was lit. Melted butter and sandalwood incense was poured on to 

the fire while the village priest chanted mantras. We stood in a circle 

around the pyre until the fire died. Next day the ashes were collected 

and then taken by my brother to Benares to be offered to the holy 

river Ganges. 

I followed mother like her own shadow. I went wherever she went. 

I was part of her body. She breast-fed me until I was two years old. 

She massaged my body daily with sesame oil. I slept in the same 

bed as mother and always ate off her plate. She rose at four in 

the morning and meditated for forty-eight minutes, the prescribed 

period in the Jain religion, the religion of our family. She sat alone 

on the verandah with the glass sand-timer, and meditated partly in 

silence and partly chanting the Jain mantra of Surrender: 

I surrender to those who are Enlightened 

and therefore have no enemies 

I surrender to the Released Spirits 

I surrender to the Wise Gurus 

I surrender to the Spritual Teachers 

I surrender to the Seekers of Enlightenment 

She chanted it one hundred and eight times, counting with her 

bead necklace. After her meditation she took a daily vow to limit 

8 

MOTHER 

her needs. For example on one day she might say, ‘Today I will 

not cat anything other than the following twelve items: rice, lentils, 

wheat, mango, melon, cucumber, cumin, chilli, salt, water, milk and 

butter and today I will not travel more than ten niles, and only 

towards the East.’ 

At dawn she ground the flour by hand with a stone mill and 

churned butter from yoghurt. At sunrise she milked our cows and the 

water buffalo. Then she would turn the animals out for the cowherd 

to take them to graze for the day. We were a large family—my three 

brothers, my four sisters, my uncle and great uncle, their sons, wives 

and grandchildren all lived in the house. If we were all together, the 

number of us would be about forty. Breakfast was generally a glass 

of milk—tea and coffee were never allowed. 

The family would eat the midday meal from eleven o’clock 

onwards. Mother would make sure that each member’s taste was 

catered for. Eating in our family was never a social occasion, it 

was an act of personal satisfaction. No conversation was allowed 

while eating. Though she limited her own appetite, mother would 

prepare for each of us our favourite foods—but food was also her 

weapon to punish us for disobedience. For all of us mother was the 

only mother, the head of the household: my cousins would call their 

own mother ‘sister’. 

The family was strictly vegetarian—no meat, no fish, no eggs. 

About fifteen hundred years ago some wandering monks of the 

Jain religion had come to my ancestral village of Os. They taught 

complete adherence to the principle of ahimsa (not harming any 

living creature). My ancestors were Rajputs, belonging to the caste 

of Kshatriya (the warriors). They ate meat, they collected the taxes 

and they were soldiers of the King. The monks awakened in them the 

desire to renounce all killing, and converted the whole village into 

pacifists and vegetarians. The King granted the Oswals (the people of 

Os) leave from the army on the grounds of conscience, but they had 

to change from the warrior caste to the trader caste. He appointed 

my ancestor as Treasurer to the King, and since then we have born 

the name Sethias (the treasurers). 

Just before sunset, in common with Jain practice, we would eat the 

evening meal. Whilst we were eating I would hear cowbells ringing, 

as our cows found their way home at ‘cow-dust time’. Our two cows, 

9 

NO DESTINATION 

a brown and a white one, would come into the courtyard and I would 

run to prevent the cow going to her calf while mother prepared the 

milk bucket. Mother would allow the calves to suckle a little before 

she milked the cow and she would leave milk in the udder for the 

calves to finish. Then she would milk the water-buffalo; they were 

harder to milk, but mother always kept at least one because buffalo 

milk makes richer butter. While she was milking she would let me 

feed the camel. The milk was always boiled, as she never allowed 

us to drink unboiled milk. She would give us some cow’s milk to 

drink and also to anyone else, who wanted it. The boiled buffalo milk 

would be set for yoghurt. 

After father’s death, mother spent more and more time with 

the wandering Jain monks. She would leave the animals with a 

neighbour, and she and 1 would go off in our camel cart with pots, 

pans, food and bedding. For several weeks we would accompany 

the monks, listening to their story-telling and readings from the 

scriptures, following them from one village to another. The monk’s 

life is a life of continuous movement, a flow like a river. These monks 

have no permanent place: they walk from village to village, starting 

after sunrise and walking a few miles. Their rules permit them to 

spend only a few days in a village, begging their food, and sleeping in 

houses which disciples vacate for them. It is only during the monsoon 

months that they may stay long in one place. 

When I was seven, a group of monks came to spend the chaturmas 

{the four monsoon months) in our town. The news of their arrival 

travelled by word of mouth and a group of people, including mother 

and myself, went along the desert path to greet them, singing songs 

of welcome: ‘Today the sun is golden because our gurus are coming 

to our village with a message of peace...’ 

Suddenly out of the sand bushes, I saw three monks in their white 

robes, walking barefoot and carrying a few belongings on their 

backs. They were walking fast, their faces impassive to the crowds 

around them. 1 had to run to keep up. People had gathered in the 

courtyard of the house where the monks were to stay, to hear their 

first sermon. One of the monks, monk Kundan, who was sitting on 

a table, gave the sermon. He spoke for a long ; me. One of the points 

he made was this: ‘Seekers, we have come to show you the path to 

to 

MOTHER 

liberate your soul. The soul is wrapped up in good and bad karma 

which imprison it. [Karma is the inexorable law of retribution for 

evil deeds and reward for unselfish behaviour.J You have to break 

out of the bonds of karma. In order to break free from karma 

you have to leave everything you know and love; mother, father, 

wife, children. These relationships are the expression of possessive 

love rather than the expression of divine love that sustains the 

universe.. .* 

At the end, men of the town went up to the monks, put their heads 

on their feet and asked for blessings. I went up to monk Kundan. He 

looked deep into my eyes and talked with me. I asked him if he would 

come to my home to receive food. He enquired the way. When I got 

home Mother said, ‘But don’t expect him today because it is the first 

day and he will have been invited to many homes.’ I insisted we wait 

to eat and keep the doors open, since monks will only come into a 

house with an open door. I kept running out into the street to look 

for him. Nobody else thought he would come. After some time I saw 

him coming. He said to me, ‘We’re going to spend four months here. 

Will you come every day to receive knowledge from us?' 

At that time I was learning to read and write from our brahmin- 

teacher during the day, so 1 could only go to the monks in the 

morning and in the evening. The early morning encounter with 

the monks is called darshan —a glimpse of a holy face which is 

to purify and inspire. The monks would be in meditation, sitting 

on the verandah wrapped in their cotton shawls. In the evenings 1 

went to hear them telling the story of Rama, which was told little 

by little over a period of about ten weeks. Fifty or sixty people 

from our town gathered to hear it. every night. The narration of 

Ramayana was a combination of entertainment and religion. We 

sat listening in darkness—the monks did not use any kind of light, 

‘Dark is beautiful, not to be burnt,’ they said. 

One evening, cool after the monsoon rain, before the storytelling 

began, monk Kundan talked to mother. He said, ‘There is a line on 

your son’s foot, the lotus line, we think he is the reincarnation of 

a spiritual soul. He looks and behaves like a spiritual person. For 

many generations no one from your family has offered themselves 

as a monk. Out of eight children, surely you could contribute one?’ 

It was dark. 1 couldn’t see mother’s face. 

NO DESTINATION 

Next day Kundan said to me, ‘If you become a monk, the people 

will come to listen to your preaching, they will bow their heads 

at your feet. You will go to heaven and after heaven to nirvana.' 

‘What is nirvana ?’ I asked. He said, ‘No birth and no death.’ That 

impressed me—no death. Father’s death had created a deep question 

in my mind. I couldn’t understand where he had gone and what had 

happened to him. Whenever I asked mother about him, she said I 

asked too many questions and didn’t answer me, so I used to ask the 

monks about what happened after death. Monk Kundan described 

human life as samsara, (the everlasting round of birth and death) and 

the role of the monks who alone can free the individual from it. He 

showed me a picture. 

A man lost in the forest was being chased by a wild elephant. The 

man climbed a tree and grabbed hold of a branch, but the elephant 

started to shake the tree with his trunk, trying to pull it out of the 

ground. Under the tree was a water hole in which there were poison¬ 

ous snakes with their heads in the air, hissing. Sitting on the branch 

to which the man was clinging were two rats, a white and a black rat, 

symbolizing day and night. Just above the man was a wild bees’ nest. 

When the elephant shook the tree, the bees flew out and started sting¬ 

ing the man all over, but from the beehive drops of honey trickled 

down into the man’s mouth; the honey was deliciously sweet. Flying 

angels asked the man if he wanted to be rescued. He said, ‘Yes, yes 

but could you wait for this drop of honey which is just coming, see 

it is coming, just wait. . .* The angels flew away. The man shouted 

after them, it’s coming, wait. I will come with you after this drop.’ 

Kundan also showed me pictures of heaven and hell. Heaven was 

full of exotic flowers, beautiful men and women wearing rich clothes 

and fabulous jewellery, palaces, thrones, aeroplanes in which angels 

flew. He told me that those who didn’t become monks went to hell 

for thousands and thousands of years. The pictures of hell terrified 

me—tortured bodies being cut up and boiled in cauldrons of hot 

oil . . . Because he had been a business man, I could see my father 

in hell being tortured, cut up and fried. I could not eat or play—the 

pictures of hell made me shiver. If I went into business I would go to 

hell too, I thought. 

It was October, cool and dry, and the monsoon was over. The 

night before the monks left I couldn’t sleep. After sunrise mother 

ii 

MOTHER 

was busy looking after the animals, but I went to see the monks. A 

crowd had gathered to see them off. Some people walked with them 

and I also followed. At the next village they stopped. Monks went 

to beg food for themselves—it was considered wrong to give it to a 

non-monk and the other followers didn’t know I had come alone, 

so nobody worried about me. 1 was very hungry. It was the first time 

1 had been out of my town without mother. At home mother was 

worried. She searched everywhere. Eventually someone told her that 

they had seen me following the monks. She walked the ten miles to 

the village in the evening and found me. ‘Did you eat?’ she asked. 

I said, ‘I haven’t eaten. I’m hungry, give me some food.’ She said, 

‘You’re stupid. Why didn’t you ask someone to give you some food?’ 

I didn’t tell mother that I wanted to be like the monks. 

Mother came from a peasant family and wasn’t happy 

unless she did some farming. Every year when the monsoon came, 

she would hire about four acres of land, always on the west side of 

town so that when we walked to it in the morning the hot sun would 

be on our backs, and in the evening when we returned, the sun would 

again be on our backs. Just after the first rain of the monsoon, she 

employed a neighbour to plough with our camel, but all the other 

work she did herself. We planted maize, green beans, sesame, water 

melons, sugar melons, marrows, horseradish, carrots and gram peas. 

Mother prepared almond sweets for me and took them with us for 

our lunch. When the water melons started to ripen, mother and I 

would dig holes in the sand for them and cover them with sand, so 

that birds and animals didn’t eat them and they could ripen on the 

plant. They would grow big and sweet and red inside, weighing up 

to thirty pounds. We would take them home on the camel cart and 

store them for the winter. Mother would dry most of the vegetables 

so that we had vegetables all the year round. 

One morning mother and I rode out on our camel to the land. The 

maize crop was ripe. We built a small hut with wood and rushes. 

There we could sleep and protea the crop while we were harvesting. 

Mother asked me why I looked so sad? I couldn’t answer. She said: 

‘You don’t listen properly, you’re not interested in playing any more. 

Look at the other children, see how gay and cheerful they are, while 

you mope around, you miserable little soul!’ 

*3 

NO DESTINATION 

MOTHER 

When i was eight, the head of our branch of the Jain order, 

the ‘guru’ Acharya Tulsi, with his entourage of monks and nuns, 

spent the monsoon months in our town. Two rich families gave 

their homes to the guru for this period. Canvas tents were put up 

in the courtyards where people could go to hear him and receive his 

blessings. Mother took me to welcome the guru. I saw Tulsi walking 

towards us across the desert. He was plump and short but his eyes 

were shining like big lights. His face was fair, calm and peaceful. 

Three deep lines cut across his forehead. His brows were bushy and 

black. His ears were long, as 1 had seen on the statues of gods, and 

hair grew on the outer edge denoting wisdom. His arms were long 

too, which meant a man of many resources. His step was firm. 

He alone among the monks wore snow-white clothes. All other 

monks carried bags on their backs; he alone was burden-free. He 

walked like a lion. He raised his hands to bless us. After the guru 

walked forty monks, then sixty nuns, then the male disciples, then 

the women. Men and women sang welcoming songs: 

The sun is golden today 

The guru comes to our town 

O men and women gather together 

And sing the songs of happiness 

Now we can swim the ocean of samsara 

The monks and nuns walked with their eyes on the ground and 

remained silent. They looked like glorious angels in their robes. 

Through the clouds of dust I looked for any monk I might know. 

I saw monk Kundan. He smiled and raised his hand. 1 felt as if the 

guru had come to rescue me from death. 

A few weeks later monk Kundan took me to the guru. Normally 

the guru remained aloof, beyond reach, and talked only at sermon 

times but this day he looked at me with his kind and gentle eyes. 1 

said, ‘The monks have told me that they feel something spiritual in 

me, a link with my previous life, and that I should become a monk.’ 

The guru replied, ‘A monk’s life is very hard. You may have spiritual 

links from a previous life, but in order to continue these links in 

this life you have to gather strength and dedication.’ His words 

14 

reverberated in my mind. I felt I belonged to the guru. He would 

take me to nirvana (enlightenment), he would give me light. I longed 

to put myself in his hands. 

I stopped going to school and sometimes didn’t even go home to 

eat. 1 no longer saw my friends and playmates. At night I walked in 

the desert, thinking of Tulsi. In the moonlight the sand shone like 

silver and sometimes 1 slept on the sand. During the day 1 wandered 

around. The town was quiet. Near the well under a pipal tree sat a 

fat rich man smoking his hookah. Shepherd children rested under the 

trees with their goats and sheep. In the market place the women were 

buying monsoon fruits and vegetables, and chatting. But all this did 

not attract me. 

As every morning, mother was making butter. She sat on the 

verandah by a pillar with the yoghurt in a large clay pot in front 

of her. She pulled a wooden pestle backwards and forwards with 

a rope, gradually churning the yoghurt, dividing it into butter and 

buttermilk. The beautiful sound of butter churning woke me up. 1 

went to mother and sat by her. 1 wanted to tell her of my meeting 

with the guru, but I just sat looking at the butter-making, waiting 

for the butter to come, with a cbappati {a flat bread) in my hand. 

Impatient, I interrupted mother. ‘The butter is ready, it’s coming, 

give it to me.’ She said, ‘It isn’t ready—wait/ I looked into the pot 

and pointed to some bubbles, ‘See, it has come.’ Feeling my anxiety, 

she gave me some butter which was still not quite ready. After a while 

she said, ‘What’s the matter with you, little one?’ I said, ‘I want to 

become a monk!’ Mother was shocked. There was silence. Then she 

said, ‘I was dreading the day you would say this. But my son you’re 

too young. You can become a monk later on.’ She burst into tears. 

We didn’t speak any more about it. 

The brahmin came to our house to ask why I wasn’t going to 

school. Mother told him of a vow she had made when I had smallpox 

at the age of five. (Smallpox is a deity called mata [mother]. If 

someone has smallpox we say, ‘Mother has come into the body’. 

Every year a special day is dedicated to her, when the family doesn’t 

cook but eats the previous day’s food and worships her. If mata is 

offended, she comes into the body in the form of smallpox.) When 

I had smallpox mother thought she had done something very wrong 

and every day she prayed to mata , ‘Please leave my beloved son.’ In 

15 

NO DESTINATION 

MOTHER 

spite of herba] medicines, I became so ill that mother feared I would 

die. She promised mata y ‘If you leave my son, I will never stand in the 

way of him leading a religious life.* From the day she made this vow, 

I started getting better. 

The brahmin was angry with mother, saying, ‘Your son is not 

an animal to be sacrificed. You’ll regret it later on/ Although the 

brahmin was very close to our family he was a Hindu not a Jain, 

and therefore mother didn’t trust him on religious matters. 1 listened 

to mother and the brahmin arguing. She said that if she broke her 

vow, tnata might come again and this time to kill me. One day she 

said to me, ‘The thought of you becoming a monk grieves me but I 

have given my word to mata. I will not interfere. You must decide 

for yourself.’ And then she burst into tears again. My decision was 

already made. 

Together with mother and some prominent people of the town, 

I went to the guru with a formal request that he should make me 

a monk. The guru said, ‘You should wait. Think more. You’re 

going to become a monk for your whole life and there will be no 

turning back/ 

After a week I went to ask him again. Again he said,‘Wait more/ 

After many pleas he said, ‘1 accept to consider your request and 

I will ask monk Kundan to teach you and examine your intention 

properly/ A few weeks later Kundan reported to the guru that 

I would make a good monk. 1 went to the guru with my final 

request. He pronounced, ‘On the last day of the monsoon I will 

make you a monk/ 

I was happy but my family was in tears. The leading members 

of the Jain community made elaborate arrangements to celebrate 

my initiation into monkhood. There were dinner parties—at least 

one every day for the four weeks that were left till the end of the 

monsoon. Sometimes one hundred people would gather to eat with 

me. People gave me whatever 1 wanted to eat, to drink, to wear, to 

see. A white horse and horseman took me wherever I wanted to go. 

This horseman was famous in the community for his skill, and when 

he led the horse it would dance. We went to the main squares in 

the surrounding villages and he would announce that I was the boy 

who was to become a monk and that everyone was invited to the 

ceremony, and the horse would dance for the people with me on 

16 

its back. I wore peart necklaces, diamond earrings, golden chains 

and rings. I was dressed in silk and satin. On my head was a silk 

turban and round it a jewelled band and pendant. One quarter of 

mother’s jewellery was made up into five hundred silver rings and 

a hundred golden rings and on every ring my name was inscribed. 1 

gave them away to people I met—friends, neighbours, and relatives 

—as a remembrance of my becoming a monk. 

The family were required to give their written consent and also to 

be present at the ceremony. My brothers and brothers-in-law were 

not convinced that a boy of nine should become a monk. My eldest 

brother said, ‘O mother, have your wits left you ? In your unstable 

emotional state you make a promise to mata but you did not say that 

he would become a monk at such a tender age. It’s not too late even 

now—we can at least postpone this event for a few years/ Mother 

was upset and confused but still sure that she should not stand in my 

way. She put her trust in the guru. 

The Brahmin came again, full of anger: his eyes were red and he 

was biting his lips. I was frightened that he might make her change 

her mind. I sat outside the room praying, ‘O Lord Mahavir, give 

strength to my mother to stand up to him and don’t let this pagan 

brahmin make trouble/ 1 heard him shouting, ‘In your old age you 

have lost all sense. 1 have never seen you do anything which is not 

right, but now some demon possesses you and you are letting this 

foolish child take this difficult decision alone. He is not destined to 

be a monk. 1 know his horoscope and I know his stars. I tell you that 

he cannot stay a monk, so stop him now.’ 

Hearing his words my heart beat fast. 1 put my ear to the door to 

hear mother’s reply. ‘I have never gone against your advice. 1 have 

never said no to you bur in this matter I must follow my guru and 

if he agrees to my son’s wish then 1 dare not say no/ The Brahmin 

stamped his foot. ‘Your guru is a fanatic to make children monks 

at the innocent age of nine. Go to Hell if you wish to, but don’t 

blame me that you were not warned/ He walked out in a fury and 

I heard my mother sobbing. I went in to mother to reassure her, 

‘Mother, don’t cry. Our guru is kind and will look after me well. 

Monk Kundan said that | will have no difficulties and you can come 

to have my darshan (glimpse of a holy face) and hear my sermons and 

I will bless you and the whole family will be blessed/ Mother hugged 

17 

NO DESTINATION 

MOTHER 

me tight and said, ‘My son, I will not pull you back into the darkness 

of Samsara, You have my consent/ 

On the day of my initiation a message arrived to say that one of 

my brothers couldn't leave his business and be present to witness the 

initiation. The guru said, ‘All members of the family must be here 

to give their consent. If your brother canhot come, 1 cannot make 

you a monk/ 

It was a disaster. I suspected that this was a trick on the part of my 

brothers to prevent me from following my true path. Openly they 

did not dare to oppose my mother, but maybe this way they could 

stop me. Mother sent a telegram asking my brother when he could 

be present. He telegraphed back,‘In two weeks/ 

I went with a special request to the guru, saying that all my family 

could be present in two weeks and could he wait till then to make me 

a monk. The monks ought to have left immediately after the end of 

the monsoon, but the guru agreed to extend his stay. 

On the day of the ceremony 1 got up just before dawn. 

My sisters and mother rubbed my body with a paste of tumeric 

powder, sesame oil and lentil flour, then they washed me with 

flower-scented water. My head was shaved except for a tuft of hair 

in the middle. Mother and my sisters dressed me in a ceremonial 

silk costume. 

An hour after sunrise the procession arrived at our house—fifteen 

horses, twenty camels, a band, singers and more than a thousand 

people. The time had come to depart. 

Mother put her arms around me and burst into tears, i’ll be alone, 

who will be with me... ?’ 

I climbed on the horse. Mother walked in the procession behind 

me and we went round the town making it known that I was going 

to be made a monk that day and asking all the people to come 

and be witness to it. Three hours after sunrise we reached an open 

place in the centre of the town. There on a high dais was the guru 

surrounded by all his monks and nuns. They were wearing simple 

white seamless robes. 

Sitting in the open space was an assembly of thousands of towns¬ 

people—women to one side and men to the other. In between 

the men and the women was a long pathway with a carpet over 

it. I stepped down from the horse and walked along the carpet 

path to the dais. 

1 bowed my head on the guru’s feet and said, ‘I have come to you 

to receive knowledge, I have come to search for a new life, I have 

come to seek nirvana. I am ready and 1 beg you to accept me. O my 

guru, will you lighten the darkness, will you purify my soul?’ The 

guru answered, i am here on this earth to help people find light, I 

am here to help people search for their soul and find liberation. If 

you want to do this, I am ready to help you/ 

I went behind a curtain to change my clothes. One by one, I 

handed over the jewellery, clothes and shoes to my family, and 

they gave me three wooden bowls for begging food and water. 

My brother came forward with a white silk robe which 1 put on. 

I went back to the guru and said, ‘Nothing belongs to me. I renounce 

everything, I am ready to leave this world, I am ready to follow 

you.’ The guru declared in a loud voice, ‘My disciple, 1 accept you. 

The first thing you have to practise is ahimsa [total non-violence). 

Respect all that is living and all creation. Do not hurt any person 

—neither plants, nor water, nor fire, nor air. Practise truth. Do not 

steal. Practise celibacy. Do not touch money nor think of it, have no 

possessions and live in poverty. Lastly, surrender your mind, your 

heart, your ^oul and your will to the guru. Live in obedience.’ 

‘I accept/ 

The gum called to my relatives, ‘This member of your family has 

come to me to find light, to find truth and nirvana , freedom from the 

cycle of death and birth. I have accepted him to be my disciple. Do 

you agree?’ Mother and my family said, ‘We have no more claim on 

him/ The guru went on, ‘He is no more your son, your brother, your 

relative. He is no longer part of your society/ My brother read out 

the written statement signed by all the family which ended by saying, 

‘We are fortunate that a member of our family has the wisdom and 

the understanding to accept this challenge and to search for a new 

life/ The guru turned to my family and took the document. I climbed 

the steps and again put my head on the guru’s feet. He held my head 

in one hand and with the other plucked the remaining hair from my 

scalp. A blaze of fire shot through my whole body. The guru said, 

‘You have no past, you no longer belong to this world.* 

Chapter Two Guru 

T 'he NEXT morning the guru said to me, ‘O beloved of the 

gods, now you have become a monk and therefore when you 

walk keep your eyes on the ground before you. Stand relaxed only 

on that ground which is devoid of living beings. Gently brush the 

earth to remove any creatures before you sit or sleep on it. Speak 

little and always in a language which is good and restrained. You 

will have no fixed abode. You will not possess more than thirty 

yards of cloth at a time. You will not use cushions or quilts. You 

will not drink water, eat or take medicine at night. You will not 

sleep in- the day. You will not travel by train or automobile or 

any other means of transport but your feet. You will not wear 

shoes or slippers. You will carry all your belongings yourself. 

You will not shave your head or chin with a razor but pluck out 

your hair and beard.’ 

Then the guru called Monk Kundan and said to him, ‘You sowed 

the seeds of renunciation of the world in this young monk. Now 1 

put him in your care to train him in the rituals so that he can follow 

the path of Mahavir, our Lord. Teach him the true meaning of the 

three cardinal principles; right knowledge, right vision and right 

action.’ The guru turned to me and said, 'Follow the instructions 

and commands of Monk Kundan. He is the wisest among our wise 

monks. His soul is pure and his life is humble.’ I placed my head on 

Kundan 1 s feet and from that moment 1 followed him. 

My day began about two hours before sunrise with learning how 

to meditate. For one hqur I remained sitting in the lotus position, 

silent and still. 1 wore a cloth folded eight times across my mouth to 

prevent any violent exhalation of breath which might hurt the air 

or any organisms in it. This cloth could only be removed to enable 

me to eat, and while I was eating, I could not speak. In the morning 

and evening 1 learned to inspect my clothes and belongings (blanket, 

XI 

NO DESTINATION 

GURU 

begging bowls and manuscripts), to see that no ants or insects had 

got into them and that I had not acquired anything which I did 

not need. I was instructed to walk slowly and gently, always being 

careful not to tread on any insects or plants. At night when I could 

not see clearly, 1 did not go outside, and if I walked within the house, 

I swept the floor in front of me with a broom of soft wool. The doors 

were always left open so that no creature could be trapped as they 

closed, and 1 slept on the floor wrapped in a blanket. 

As a new monk I was favoured and did not beg for food. When the 

other monks brought food, the guru was the first to receive it, then 

myself and the other young monks. Every scrap of food had to be 

eaten. I would clean my bowl with a small piece of unleavened bread, 

wash it with some water and then drink the water. In the evening the 

other monks ate the remainder of the morning meal, but someone 

would go out specially to beg a hot meal for the guru, and I was also 

allowed to take hot food with him. If the guru offered us some of his 

food we all wanted it because he had touched it. If after drinking a 

little from a cup of milk, the guru passed it to me, I would feel that I 

was blessed. We all would wait fora kind look from the guru. After a 

meal a rug was put down on the floor on which the guru would walk. 

Sometimes he would rest his hand on my shoulder, but I had to be 

careful nor to tread on the rug as I went along with him. 

According to the rule of the monks, I didn't wash my clothes. 1 

wore the same clothes until they wore out. I never took a bath nor 

deaned my teeth. One day, sitting by the guru, 1 scratched my hair 

and fleas fell out. The guru looked at me and said, ‘You have fleas. 

It doesn't matter. You must remember that you have taken a vow 

that you will not hurt any creature, even a flea. Take the fallen fleas 

back and put them in your hair so that they will not die.' ‘But they 

irritate me—I cannot bear them.' it is a test of your endurance,' he 

said. ‘Don’t think of the body at all.' I accepted his command. 

And so we lived, walking from village to village, sometimes stay¬ 

ing one night, sometimes two or three. My feet were sore and 

blistered and full of splinters. The desert produces a thorn, sharp 

and strong as a needle, which I could carry to take out these splinters. 

The thorn was removed by a thorn. 

The guru gave me daily teachings in the Jain scriptures. 1 was 

being trained to answer questions. People would come to discuss 

22 

and debate with the guru, and I would listen. There was criticism 

of the practice of making young boys and girls into monks and nuns. 

The guru would present me as an example of a young monk who was 

totally committed to the spiritual life and understood it. When we 

went for morning walks he would sit with me near a tree and say, 

‘Start speaking now. Imagine you have two thousand people in front 

of you, and you have to convince them of your belief.' 

A few months after I entered the monkhood, Monk Kundan 

came to the guru. He was in his mid-seventies, toothless with a pale 

and wrinkled face. After a few minutes’ silence he said, i am growing 

old. My body doesn’t work any more. I am unable to practise all the 

obligations and duties of a monk's life. I beg you to allow me to die.’ 

The guru said, ‘I understand your great desire. If a monk lives, he 

leads a good life; if he dies, he embraces a better life.' *1 wish to 

undertake the practice of Santhara % to fast unto death.' ‘The fast 

unto death is a path of pain and suffering.’ ‘I am ready for pain 

and suffering.’ if that is your wish,' said the guru. ‘This evening I 

will announce your decision to the disciples.' 

Ar sunset all the monks and lay disciples gathered to receive the 

guru's blessing. The guru asked Kundan to stand. There was a smile 

of happiness and the courage of conviction on Kundan's face. The 

guru spoke loudly, ‘Death is not something to be afraid of. It is the 

soul changing its garments. The soul leaves this body and takes a new 

one. But through Santhara the monk prepares himself for moksba 

(ultimate salvation), 1 am very glad to see monk Kundan embracing 

death and I bless him.' 

During his fast 1 went to Kundan and sat beside him. ‘The guru 

said that you will go to the land of angels.’ ‘It is true,’ said Kundan 

calmly. ‘No one has returned from there to tell us whether it exists 

or not.’ ‘Why do you have doubts, my young monk?' ‘Hundreds 

of monks have died and gone to heaven, but not one of them has 

returned. 1 want you to come and tell me whether heaven exists.' 

‘The angels of heaven live a very superior life. Heaven is very far from 

here, and this world is full of dirt, smells and ugliness. Angels cannot 

bear the atmosphere of this planet—they cannot stand the filthy air 

of this earth.’ ‘Aren't angels powerful enough to break through the 

barriers and come for a few moments to tell us or even send us a 

*3 

NO DESTINATION 

GURU 

message from heaven?’ Kundan said, ‘I understand your desire and 

T promise you that if I can I’ll come to you/ Kundan asked me to 

sing a song which he had taught me: l O Lord Mahavir bless me with 

death at the moment when I am filled with the thought of you and 

when I have no worldly desires, no attachment to my body and no 

fear of death/ 

He wanted me to sing this song again and again which I did. He 

said ‘Our guru is very kind. He kept me always with him. Only once 

did he send me away and that was last year when I came to spend 

the monsoon months in the town of your birth. There 1 found you, 

a diamond in the sand. So I told our guru and when you became a 

monk, I felt my last mission had been accomplished/ 

After twenty-three days of complete fast, Kundan died. The Jain 

community was happy to hear this news. I was sad. The monks said 

he had conquered the fear of death. I went to the room where his 

body had been placed. I looked at his face. I felt he had gone 

somewhere and might come back—in the night, in a dream, or could 

there be some signal that I might not recognize? 

Dressed in yellow silk robes, Kundan was seated on a throne dec¬ 

orated with gold and red. He was carried on the shoulders of the lay 

disciples to the cremation ground and on the way, followers threw 

money for the poor. Then his body was burnt with dried coconuts, 

sandalwood and butter. 

My hair was growing. Unwashed and uncombed, it stood on 

my head like a bush. Soon after sunrise on the appointed day, I 

prepared myself for the celebration of suffering. 1 went to the guru 

and he told me that his own brother, who was very gentle, would 

pluck my hair. He told me a story, ‘Long ago, a young monk like 

you stood still in meditation in a cremation ground in the wilderness. 

While he was there his worldly father-in-law saw him and in anger 

wished to take revenge for the desertion of his daughter. So he took 

wet earth and made a crown on the monk's head and within it he 

placed the burning embers from a fire. But the young monk did not 

move. He died standing and achieved moksba [ultimate salvation]/ 

‘In comparison to this,’ said the guru, ‘what you will suffer when 

your hair is pulled out is little, and I am confident that you will 

endure it bravely/ 

I bowed my head on the guru’s feet and he laid his hand on me. 1 

went to his brother who was waiting with a drink of ground almonds 

mixed with honey and milk. I drank it, then sat on the floor with my 

head between his knees. He gripped my head tightly and held my 

neck with his left hand, then with his right hand he took hold of some 

hair and tugged it out with a quick sweeping movement until every 

hair was removed from my head. Fellow monks stood hear me and 

sang inspirational songs. My head was scarred and bleeding. My hair 

and its fleas were wrapped around my legs and tied and knotted tight 

so that the fleas could have their food from my body. They remained 

there until the fleas were dead. 

One evening after the .burning heat of the day, a few drops of rain 

had fallen, and people gathered in the village square to welcome the 

monsoon. We were on the verandah of a mud hut in meditation. I 

heard the sounds of drums and songs and, still sitting in my lotus 

position, I could see dancers passing in the distance. I tried to 

return to meditation but without success. Later a monk spoke of 

the dancers. The guru looked up with a blank face and I realized 

that he had heard and seen nothing. His meditation had not been 

broken. I went to the guru as he was preparing to go to sleep and 

asked him what 1 should do to experience true meditation. He put 

his hand on my head. I felt a sense of relief in his touch. ‘Do you know 

why you are a monk?’ the guru asked me. ‘Not clearly,’ 1 replied. 

‘The monk’s life is a way to achieve moksha —total liberation,’ he 

said. ‘My desire to achieve moksba is growing, but I am not sure 

of the path.’ The guru replied, ‘Do not doubt. As long as you are 

caught up in doubting, thinking and questioning, you will not be 

able to experience the spiritual life. Submit your thoughts, your 

sorrows, your unhappiness to me. I am the ship to cross this wild 

sea of samsara [the cycle of birth and death]. Pronounce the mantra 

of Surrender a thousand times a day, lose yourself in the deep sound 

of it. Fast on alternate days. This will give you better concentration. 

Only renouncing house, property, parents and possessions is not 

enough. You must also renounce your own will/ 

One day after the guru had given his morning sermon, he called 

me and said, ‘It is the holy duty of a monk to go and beg for food. 

We eat food not to build the body non to satisfy the palate, but to 

NO DESTINATION 

GURU 

enable the body to practise dbarma [the fulfilment of right action). 

Today 1 send you to beg. Do not knock at the door of a house when 

the door is closed. Go to a house where the doors are open. Take 

only from people who are giving happily. The food should not be 

specially prepared for you and you should not announce your going 

beforehand. You will meet many people who will refuse to give food, 

but do not take offence. Bless those who give and those who do not 

give alike. By begging you will learn humility. If a person offers you 

three chappatis (flat bread)* take one; if you are offered one, take a 

quarter. No one should be able to say that they have gone without 

because you have taken. Ask people to share their food with you and 

only to give what they are able to be without, and not to cook more 

after you have gone. Fill your bowl from many places, but beg only 

once a day.’ 

After a silence the guru went on, ‘Begging should not be easy. 

Often it may be necessary to make conditions which unless fulfilled 

prevent us from accepting the food. This enables us to practice 

endurance. Our Lord Mahavir, the founder of our religion two 

thousand five hundred years ago, made a vow that he would only 

accept food from a princess. This princess should have been sold and 

chained by the foot so that one foot was outside the house and one 

foot inside. There should be tears in her eyes and she should offer 

soaked beans in a bamboo plate. For many days Mahavir fasted, 

going from house to house searching for someone who could fulfil 

his conditions. Six weeks passed when at last he came to a rich 

man’s house and sitting in the doorway, he saw a woman whom he 

recognized as the daughter of a defeated king. She had been bought 

by this rich man who had been called away on business and left her 

chained. When she saw Mahavir coming, she forgot her sorrows and 

smilingly said, “O Lord Mahavir, in my pain and misfortune you 

have found me. Teach me the way to liberation. 1 have nothing but 

soaked beans to offer you. Accept them and give me your blessing.” 

All the conditions of his vow were fulfilled except that the princess 

was smiling, so Lord Mahavir turned away. Then the princess wept 

—“Everyone has deserted me and even you refuse my offering. To 

whom can I look in this world?” Mahavir turned his head and seeing 

tears in her eyes, he put both hands together and received the food. 

‘Now you must go and fulfil your dbarma . Just as the honey-bee goes 

from flower to flower and harms none, so you should go from house 

to house taking little.’ 

The guru gave me a square of cloth with the four comers tied 

together. In it there were three bowls—*-one for liquids such as milk, 

one for vegetables, one for dry foods like nuts, rice, chappatis or 

sweets. Then he told me and the other monks to which area we 

should go so that not more than one monk went to any one house. 

1 went to a house. There was a large family and on my arrival 

all the members of the family gathered together. I checked that the 

food was not touching fire, that there was no unboiled water or raw 

vegetables and that the people giving me the food were not wearing 

flowers nor standing on grass or other plants. I made sure that the 

food had not been prepared for me. 

One young man said, ‘You are strong and healthy. Why don’t you 

monks work and produce food?’ I didn’t answer. The women told 

me not to listen. They were happy to share their food with me. 

They offered me cream, almonds and milk-sweets, and I took a 

little. I went to ten houses and I brought sufficient food for several 

monks. First I offered it to the guru and he took some, which made 

me happy, and the rest I shared with the other monks and the other 

monks shared with me. 

One cold MORNING a monk complained to the guru that he had 

gone to bring water from a house, and i saw a begging bowl in front 

of a room. I couldn’t understand how a begging bowl could be there, 

so I waited outside. After a few minutes this monk appeared and a 

woman followed him. Therefore I believe that he has broken his vow 

of chastity.’ 

The accused monk confessed, ‘1 went for food to the home of a 

disciple. The husband of the woman was not there. She was beau¬ 

tiful. When 1 saw her smiling face, I forgot myself and 1 forgot that 

I should leave her immediately after receiving food. I started talking 

and during the talk I kissed her and asked her whether she would 

make love with me. She said, “How can I say no to a monk?” We 

started to have intercourse, but I remembered my vow and stopped 

before ejaculation.’ 

The guru declared, ‘If you had discharged yourself, you would 

have destroyed your whole monkhood and you would have had 

NO DESTINATION 

GURU 

to become a monk all over again. But I believe you, and therefore 

only six months of your monkhood are destroyed and all those who 

became a monk during that period will take precederifce before you/ 

The guru asked us not to speak of this to anyone and said ‘King 

Bhartrihari realized long ago that the love of woman is part of the 

world of illusion/ ‘Please guru, tell us how he came to this realiza¬ 

tion/ ‘Listen, my monks. In the kingdom of King Bhartrihari, there 

was a great yogi who practised self-mortification and meditation for 

many years. God Vishnu, being happy to observe such a great act of 

purification, came and said, “You have purified your soul and as a 

reward, take this fruit of immortality.” For many days the yogi kept 

the fruit, not knowing how he could best use it. Then he thought, 

“What is the good of my body becoming immortal? 1 can do no good 

to anyone. But we have a King who is just and kind, who follows 

the dkarma and serves his people; if he lives forever all the people 

will live in peace and harmony. Who knows who will be King after 

Bhartrihari? And whether he will be as just and good.” 

‘So the yogi came to the King and said, “O King, I give you this 

fruit of immortality. By Vishnu's grace, death will not touch you 

ever. Take it and eat it so that all living creatures may prosper under 

your eternal rule.” 

"The King kept the fruit. He said to himself, “How could 1 bear 

to live forever without my beloved Queen? She is beautiful and 

devoted. She is mother to all. She has no enemies. Let my love, 

Queen Pingla, be immortal.” 

‘The Queen received the fruit and thanked the King but did not 

eat it at once. She had no desire to be immortal. She longed for the 

love of the charioteer, who was strong and fresh. The Queen spoke 

to the charioteer in a soft voice, “You are young and there is no 

match for your body. Eat this fruit and let your youth and beauty 

last forever.” 

‘The charioteer smiled and accepted the gift. He gave the fruit to 

a beautiful courtesan with whom he was in love, thinking, “If such 

a beautiful woman lives, that will be the greatest treasure for this 

kingdom—beauty should never die.” 

‘The courtesan came to the King and said, “I have got possession 

of this fruit of immortality but I am a woman who lives by selling my 

body. What is the good of my living forever? But you, O King, are 

the greatest man on this earth and if you live you will serve people, 

but if I live I will corrupt them. Take it and eat it.” 

‘Deeply shocked, the King took the fruit. His eyes were opened. 

His illusions were shattered. He realized that all that which he 

had called “love” was merely a mirage. He said nothing, spoke 

to no one, stood up, left the throne, left the palace, renounced the 

kingdom and did not look for one moment back to his beautiful 

women and the world of pleasures. He went to the forest, searched 

for the yogi, and when he found him, he surrendered himself at his 

feet. He became a wanderer, a sadhu, stopping at people's homes and 

begging his food. 

‘Once as he was passing his former palace he sang, “O mother 

Pingla, there is a yogi standing at your door, would you give him 

a piece of bread?” The Queen was overjoyed to hear his voice and 

said, “O my King, O my husband, remove those robes of a beggar 

monk and come back. Once again be my King, be my husband and 

be my lover.” Bhartrihari replied, “O mother Pingla, truly there is 

no husband and no wife. In reality there is no mother, no father. We 

were bom alone and we shall die alone.” 

‘Never forget the last words of Bhartrihari/ the guru concluded. 

4 “For whom 1 longed she longed not for me, and whom she loved, 

he loved not her, and whom he desired, she desired someone else. 

Shame on me, shame on you, shame on him, shame on her. Shame 

on sexual desires.”* 

One night, not long after, a monk came and sat by me. He began 

talking about a beautiful woman and said that he went to the guru's 

morning sermon just to see this woman. ‘We’re not supposed to look 

at women/ I said. ‘There's nothing wrong in looking at women— 

I am not doing anything/ he replied. I argued, ‘Our guru said that 

looking at women arouses passion and from passion comes desire, 

and desire leads to destruction of monkhood. Therefore, it is better 

not to see a beautiful woman/ 

Then the monk touched my face and caressed my back and took 

me in his arms. He rubbed his naked body against me. He took 

off my clothes. 1 didn’t resist or say a word. I had an erection 

but he didn’t touch my penis. He just went on holding me in his 

arms, rubbing his body against me. There was tension. It was like 

playing with fire. He acted in a guilty way, afraid of breaking 

29 

NO DESTINATION 

CURU 

his purity, but unable to control himself fully. I was angry at his 

interference with my celibacy and ashamed that 1 just let him have 

his way without resisting. 

Five years passed, learning scriptures and practising rituals. 1 

memorized 10,000 verses in Sanskrit and Prakrit (the language of the 

Jain scriptures). The whole Sanskrit dictionary was in my head. But 

was I any closer to moksba (salvation of the soul)? The monks were 

busy debating whether we should continue to follow the hard ascetic 

path laid down by the founders of the order, or adapt to modem 

ways and go to the cities and meet politicians, create centres and 

publish books. The guru himself longed for modernization. So we 

walked hundreds of miles to spend the monsoon months in Jaipur, 

the capital of Rajasthan, to spread the Jain teachings. 

When we arrived in Jaipur I fell ill. I was shivering as though I 

was in a sea of ice, but at the same time my temperature went up 

to 104 degrees, and my body was burning. In spite of all the monks’ 

blankets over me I was still cold. I had malaria. The guru came ro my 

room and pronounced long mantras for my protection. Bur 1 didn’t 

get any better. I became weak and frightened. 1 was convinced that 

1 was going to die because of bad karma —either sexual indulgence 

with the monk or some other error. I was being punished. 1 was not 

allowed to be treated by a doctor, but monks went out and begged 

quinine which I took with hot milk. 

After I recovered I became friendly with one of our lay disciples, 

Keval, who was our guide and stayed with us all the rime. It was 

the first rime 1 had ever been to a big city. Keval felt it his duty to 

protect us by carrying a stick which contained a sword. My guru 

never objected, but one day I asked him about it. The guru said, ‘We 

don’t carry the sword, and Keval isn’t a monk. He lives in a world 

of compromise.’ Later I asked Keval himself, ‘You shouldn’t concern 

yourself with the sword—it’s my business,’ he answered. ‘But you 

stay with us all the rime,’ I said. ‘This is a big city and there are 

all sorts of people—anything might happen. Do you think 1 should 

stand by and let something happen to you or to the guru?’ ‘But we 

believe in non-violence,’ 1 said. ‘You couldn’t live non-violently 

unless we were here to protect you.’ 1 was confused and asked what 

he meant. ‘You don’t produce any food because there is violence in 

3° 

producing and cooking it, but if we don’t produce or cook food, can 

you live in this world? If monks are to live a life without committing 

violence or without accepting money, there must be some people to 

support them.’ 

One day Keval walked with us to the fountain of Galta in the 

mountains. I had been born and brought up in a desert area, so 

when I went to Galta I sat down near the fountain and looked at 

it for hours. The flow of water was coming from the month of a 

stone statue of a cow. Keval had brought some cannabis leaves with 

him and prepared the drink bhang (cannabis and milk), which he 

then drank. The high peaks of mountains were touching the clouds 

and hundreds of red-faced monkeys were playing around. I had 

never seen so many monkeys. ‘Monkeys have a special place in 

our life,’ said Keval. ‘They are our forefathers, and moreover the 

monkey-faced god, Hanuman, was the greatest devotee of Rama. 

Therefore, we worship monkeys.’ I laughed. ‘You seem devoted to us 

monks, Keval—why do you take bhangV ‘It gives me an opportunity 

to forget about the world and be myself.’ ‘Drugs are forbidden by our 

religion,' I commented. ‘Yes, but from personal experience, I know 

that when I am high with bhang I am extremely happy,’ 

We came back quite late, and I told the guru about bhang , the 

monkeys and the abundance of beauty at Galta. The guru said, 

‘This is all illusion. We monks neither admire pleasing objects 

nor despise the unpleasant. A monk shouldn’t indulge. We are 

like the lotus. Although its roots are in muddy Water, the flower 

is always above the water. We are in the world, bur we are above 

the world.’ 

After Jaipur we set out for Delhi. As we were walking there from 

the north, Vinoba Bhave was walking from the south. Vinoba had 

worked closely with Gandhi in the independence movement. After 

the Telangana riot of landless against landlords in which hundreds 

of people had been killed, Vinoba had solved the immediate problem 

by persuading the landlords to redistribute part of their land to the 

landless. He had begun by walking from village to village, saying 

he would not wait for the government in Delhi to bring changes; 

he would walk to every village in India for the abolition of private 

ownership of land. Within a very short time, Vinoba had collected 

3i 

NO DESTINATION 

GURU 

50,000 acres for distribution among the poor, and bad been joined 

in his campaign by hundreds of young people—doctors, lawyers, 

teachers and students. 

Overnight, Vinoba became a name on everyone’s lips. Here was 

someone with a message of revolution in land ownership, and people 

were voluntarily giving him their possessions and property. Nehru, 

then prime minister of India, invited Vinoba to Delhi, offering to fly 

him there in a private plane, but Vinoba replied, i will come in my 

own time and on foot as always.’ So he walked to Delhi and stayed 

not in a hotel or official residence but in a bamboo hut near the 

place where Gandhi’s body had been cremated, by the side of the 

river Jumna. 

Here my guru and Vinoba met. They, the two saints, were sitting 

on the ground on blankets, facing each other. A hundred monks and 

lay disciples were gathered around them. I was sitting by my guru. I 

looked closely at Vinoba. He had a long white beard and no teeth; his 

face was scholarly and wise, his eyes half closed and peaceful. I saw 

this man wearing less clothes than me, but unlike me not claiming to 

be superior in any way—a man without a label. My guru asked me 

to stand up and briefly explain the fundamentals of the Jain religion 

in Sanskrit. I recited a passage from scripture then spoke in Sanskrit, 

As I was talking, Vinoba looked at me and I at him. He smiled. I 

was touched. 

During the eight years I had been a monk I was always with my 

guru. He treated me as his son and I treated him as my father. People 

thought I was being groomed as his successor. But I was beginning 

to feel overpowered by him. His answers no longer satisfied me, 

Ever since his decision to modernize the order, I felt he was trying 

to travel in two boats at the same time—denouncing the world and 

also seeking its recognition. 

Usually monks travelled in groups of three and nuns in groups 

of five. I wanted to go in' a small group with monk Mohan, with 

whom I had studied and whom I knew 1 could trust. Both of us 

went to the guru to ask his permission. ‘We have come to ask you 

to bless us and permit us to travel independently. Please assign us 

some place where we can spend the next monsoon months.’ ‘My 

young monks, time is not yet ripe for you to go by yourselves. You 

should stay with me and learn more . 1 I said, ‘1 have spent many 

years sitting at your feet and now I want to spread the knowledge 

you have given me.’ ‘I give you twenty-four hours to think. Think 

and re-think,’ he said. 

Next day we went back to the guru, saying ‘We have thought a 

lot and still wish to go independently of you.’ ‘You have to travel 

through villages where there are no disciples living, and where 

there’ll be hostility and opposition.’ The guru guided us in the 

words of the Buddha, if people come and abuse you, think that 

they are only abusing you, not hitting you; if they hit you, think that 

they are only hitting you and not wounding you; if they wound you 

think that they are not killing you; and if they kill you, think that 

they have liberated you from this body. If you are able to follow this 

path, then I give you my blessing to go by yourselves and spread the 

religion of self-denial.’ 

Aiter giving his blessing, the guru asked a third monk, Chandra, 

to join us on our journey and he sent us to Ratangarh. The day of 

leaving was full of sadness. Some monks came to the outskirts of the 

town to see us off, then stood and waved their hands. 

We travelled in the mornings and preached in the evenings. 

We walked for six months through beautiful desert villages to 

Ratangarh. During the monsoon months I preached every morning 

and Mohan preached in the evenings. 

The disciples, men and women, gathered together three hours 

after sunrise and for forty-eight minutes they would become ‘rime- 

bound monks’. They removed their stitched clothing and put on 

a length of cloth and covered their mouths like us. They would 

vow that during this period they would not think of worldly affairs 

nor family problems, they would commit no violence, touch no 

money, allow no sexual desires. It was mostly to these ‘time- 

bound’ monks and nuns that 1 would preach, and among them 

was the woman who had been my mother. She had come from Sri 

Dungargarh. 

1 would sit on a low table, the lay disciples around me. Their 

minds were one-pointed, concentrated and ready to receive. I 

would begin with the mantra of Surrender. 1 would read a 

passage from one of the thirty-two books of Jain sutras : the 

words of Mahavir. 

33 

NO DESTINATION 

All that is living wishes to live 

Nothing wishes to die 

Therefore killing is dreadful 

And the monks, free from all bonds, refrain from killing. 

Then I would elaborate with stories, analogies a,nd examples. In the 

afternoons individual disciples would come to talk about their lives 

and problems or to learn scripture. In the evenings Mohan would 

tell Ramayana (the story of Rama) episode by episode so that it 

would take the whole of the monsoon months to tell. 

One day a disciple, Kishor, offered me a book by Gandhi. I 

told him I wasn’t allowed to read any non-religious books. Next 

morning as I walked through the desert to find a place for my toilet, 

he followed and urged me to read the book. He said, ‘This book is 

religious in a deep sense and therefore it is not wrong to read it.* 

What Gandhi was saying was that religion is not religion if it 

does not help to solve the problems of this world, here and now. 

If religion takes a person away from this life and this society, then 

it is escapism. The search for truth is a continuous daily experience. 

There is absolute or ultimate truth and the search for truth never 

ends. Every person’s life is a kind of laboratory and every person 

should make experiments with truth. 

Gandhi’s ideas were in contradiction with my guru’s teach¬ 

ing that as monks we should keep our backs to society and our 

faces towards God. According to the guru, people like Gandhi 

who involved themselves in the world and in politics were living 

in darkness’. Gandhi’s words raised doubts in me about the monk’s 

life. For me the rituals had become monotonous. I was thirsty for the 

joy of spiritual experience, but I wasn’t achieving it. 

When I read Gandhi’s ideas it was an awakening. I talked about 

his ideas with Mohan: whether it was possible for us to cut off totally 

from the outside world. As long as we were in the body, as long as we 

needed clothes, food, shelter, then we had to attend to these needs. 

It seemed that we were escaping from a reality we could not deny, 

shutting our eyes and pretending the rest of the world did not exist. 

1 asked him if he was sure that we would reach heaven or nirvana. 

Mohan said, ‘Once you are a monk, you are a monk forever. There 

is no way out, we have to die as monks.* ‘But when seedlings are 

GURU 

small and tender a gardener keeps them in pots and raises them till 

they have grown stronger. Then the plants have to be planted out in 

open fields for them to grow fully into trees. In the same way, we are 

grateful to our guru that he gave us guidance and training and laid a 

strong foundation for our growth, but now it is time for us to stand 

on our own feet.’ Mohan said, ‘l agree with you. I want to free my 

spirit and experience the world. But it would be a great blow to our 

families and if we do leave the monkhood, what can we do and where 

can we go? Our parents are not going to take us back.’ 

For weeks we argued and pondered these questions, spending 

many sleepless nights. Mohan and I were of one mind that nirvana 

could not be found by rigid adherence to a particular path, and we 

had to take courage in our hands. 

We opened our minds to monk Chandra. He had been a monk for 

a couple of years and we found that he too was disillusioned. We all 

knew that by leaving the monkhood we would bring sorrow and 

pain to the guru, but we felt we could remain monks no longer. 

In the town of ratangarh, there were two hundred families 

who were followers of our religion and they would be bound to make 

it impossible for us to break from our monkhood. So we needed a 

way to escape secretly and quietly. There was a woman living in the 

town who was beautiful, and a poet. She had a special relationship 

with the guru. For many years she had come to see him. When they 

talked together, I used to guard the door. So there was a strange bond 

between us and I felt that I could trust her. 1 suggested to Mohan that 

we ask her to help us. We were afraid to speak to her openly so we 

sat down and wrote her a letter. 

Dear Sister 

This letter may upset you but we are confident that you will 

understand our predicament. Over the past few months we 

have been going through profound heart-searching. We have 

gained a great deal from the practice of Jain principles, but we 

have grown more and more disillusioned by the way a monk’s 

life puts boundaries on the open search for truth. We wish to 

find nirvana in the midst of the world and therefore we have 

decided to discard our monastic robes. 

35 

NO DESTINATION 

GURU 

We are writing to seek your help. Will you be kind enough 

to give us clothes and some money which will enable us to 

take the train from Ratangarh to Madras? 

Please treat this letter in strict confidence. Yours with 

brotherly love ... 

I gave the letter to the woman in the morning. 

That night I had a dream. I was standing upright in a yoga position 

on one leg. A cobra came and bound itself tightly round the leg I 

was standing on, from ankle to knee. Because 1 was standing in 

meditation with my eyes closed, I didn’t see the snake coming, nor 

did 1 even feel it wrapping itself around my leg. Only when it started 

tightening its grip did I become aware of it. I opened my eyes to see 

the snake with its body bound round my leg, its head facing me. It 

opened its hood, swaying its head ready to bite. Terrified, I woke up 

covered in sweat. 

The next afternoon the woman came. Her first reaction on reading 

the letter was to say, ‘What will the guru think?’ But eventually she 

said, T don’t want to know whether or not you are going to leave 

the order. However, what ydu have asked me to do 1 will do, but 

without being emotionally attached to my action. Come to my 

house for food.’ 

I went to her home and she gave me a small parcel of clothes and 

four hundred rupees in an envelope. 

That evening we did everything as usual. At sunset we had one 

hour’s meditation, then instead of Mohan, 1 preached. Since this was 

the last day of the monsoon months, a large number of people had 

gathered to hear us speak. As 1 sat down cross-legged 1 caught the eye 

of the woman who had given me the parcel. 

I told the assembled people the following story. A rich business¬ 

man received a call from his business a long way away and left 

his home and his pregnant wife, thinking he would be away for a 

short time. However, the business was doing badly and the man 

was forced to stay away longer and longer. Time passed. His wife 

gave birth to a son who grew up without his father. The son was 

always asking, ‘Where is my father? 1 want to see him.’ When the 

son was nine, he insisted that he should go and see his father, so his 

mother arranged some bullock carts and servants to accompany him. 

Meanwhile the father had decided that he must leave his business 

and travel home to see his first and only son. He also set out with a 

large entourage of servants and bullock carts. One night the father 

arrived in a certain village and moved into the top floor of a guest 

house. A little later, the son arrived in the village and stayed in the 

ground floor of the same guest house. In the middle of the night the 

little boy had a pain in his stomach which became so bad that he 

couldn't sleep. He was crying. The servants of the rich businessman 

came down and spoke angrily with the boy’s servants saying, ‘This 

crying is disturbing the sleep of our lord. Get the boy put of this 

place.' So the boy’s servants took him from the guest house and made 

a bed for him in a bullock cart. When the businessman got up in the 

morning he asked, ’Who was it in the night, crying? What was the 

matter?’ He was told that it was just a little boy with a stomach pain. 

The businessman asked what had happened to the boy and who he 

was. His servants went to find out and the boy’s servants told them, 

‘It is very unfortunate that this little boy has died. He was travelling 

to meet his father whom he had never seen.’ 

For me, the father represented a guru who ignored the cries of his 

disciple and allowed his spirit to die. I said, ‘We are all on a journey. 

It is a hard and dangerous journey. We must listen to the inner cry 

which disturbs the sleep. This inner cry is the source of salvation. Let 

me warn you, that no outside authority can lead you to liberation. 

You must not be deceived by false prophets or external appearances. 

Even monks in their white robes can deceive themselves by blindly 

following the outer manifestations of the spiritual life, and by deceiv¬ 

ing themselves they deceive everyone.. .* 

When my sermon ended people came up, praised me for my 

words, put their heads on my feet and asked for my blessings. 

By nine o’clock everyone had left except a watchman who used to 

sleep at the front gate of the house. I told him we would be retiring 

early. The three of us went into the room and put a curtain over the 

doorway. It was a cold night and the curtain would keep the cold out. 

Also the watchman would think we had gone to sleep. We put our 

wool brushes by the door. This was the usual indication that we did 

not want any non-monks to enter. 

That night, shortly after midnight, we began our escape. Chandra 

crept out first while Mohan and I watched him from behind the 

36 

37 

NO DESTINATION 

curtain. Mohan went second and when I was sure that both of 

them had passed safely out of the courtyard without waking the 

watchman, I too left the room, treading softly. My heart was beating 

like a hammer, but all else was quiet. We met a short distance from 

the house and then, as we had decided, walked separately to the 

station to avoid any suspicion. It was twenty minutes' walk from 

the house to the station. We bought three tickets for Delhi and 

boarded the train. 

The train slowly pulled out. There was some sense of relief mingled 

with a fear that we might be recognized; our heads were hairless and 

where we removed the strip of cloth from our mouths, there were 

white bands across our faces. We went to a crowded third-class' 

compartment and slept on the luggage racks so that if there were 

some disciples on the train they wouldn’t see us. 

At Ratangarh, unknown to us, someone had got off the train in 

which we were now heading for Delhi. This man had come with a 

message from some monks in another town. After getting off the 

train he went straight to see us and told the watchman that he had 

a very urgent message which he must deliver at once. He couldn’t 

wait until the morning because he had to get back very early. He 

stood outside the door to our room calling out to us, but as there 

was no answer he eventually poked his torch through the curtain 

and saw that no one was in. He ran back to the watchman and told 

him. They searched the whole house frantically, every room, but they 

could not find us. Realizing that perhaps the three of us had escaped, 

he went back to the station and asked the ticket clerk if he had seen 

three young people going somewhere. The clerk told him that he had 

sold three tickets for Delhi. Immediately the man made a telephone 

call to our disciples in Delhi, saying that the three of us had escaped. 

As the train drew into Delhi, to our horror we recognized a large 

number of disciples on the platform, who seemed to be waiting 

for us, carefully spaced out so they wouldn’t miss us. They were 

important people, some of the leading disciples of our order. As the 

train pulled in we jumped out of the other side of the carriage and 

on to the railway track and ran as fast as we could away from the 

train. Only now did we think that we should have got off one stop 

before Delhi. At Delhi station there was no way out except through 

the ticket barrier where three disciples stood waiting. They caught 

GURU 

us, there was no way of escape. One of them was shouting, ’We 

cannot let you go.’ ‘We don’t want to go with you,’ we said. ’We 

are no longer monks, you don’t have any control over us.’ They said 

on no account would they let us go and we must explain why we had 

tried to escape. They said, ‘If you won’t come with us, we will report 

you to the police for stealing books from the order or for running 

away, then you will be in trouble. Be quiet and come with us.’ We 

were violently arrested by the adherents of non-violence! 

We didn’t know what to do. They took us to some other monks in 

the city who told us that the Jain community would never accept us 

back. Nobody would give us a job, nobody would give us a home, 

and if we didn’t come back to the monkhood, then we would be 

in great trouble. Again we said that we didn’t want to go back to 

being monks. The disciples said they would put us on a plane to 

the guru in Bombay. They wanted us to confess to the guru that we 

had committed a great error without proper understanding and beg 

him to take us back. Again we were obstinate saying that whatever 

happened we would not become monks again. We said to ourselves, 

‘Let’s face it now/ and we started to gain confidence. 

For a week the disciples kept us in confinement, interrogating us. 

Why did you escape? Is the monk’s life too hard for you? Is there a 

disagreement with the guru which has caused your departure? Or 

have you developed doubts about the basic tenets of our religion? 

They argued against all our replies. There was no more meeting 

of minds. They wrote to our relatives asking them to come and 

persuade us to return to the monk’s life. The person who came to 

see me was my brother-in-law. He said that he couldn’t take me to 

his house and that he couldn’t take any responsibility for me. He 

had come to advise me to become a monk again, otherwise nobody 

would give me anywhere to live. Eventually he decided to send me to 

my mother who might be able to persuade me. 

I left Delhi feeling greatly relieved. I saw the world—the sky, the 

mountains, the earth, people—with new eyes, and they all held a 

new meaning for me. I felt a sense of independence too. It was as if 

I had come out from behind a mask. No longer did anyone bow to 

me in the street. No longer did anyone rush up to me to touch my 

feet. No longer did I carry my begging bowl. I was no longer a monk. 

1 was just a man. 

39 

Chapter Three 

Ashram 

I GOT OFF THE train at Sri Dungargarh and walked three miles 

through the sand hills to the town. It was nine years since I had left 

the village. I passed the monsoon lake where I had played as a child, 

riding into the water on the backs of buffalos. I passed the sacred 

fig trees where I used to hide to watch the young women dressed in 

their beautiful saris of red, yellow and pink, carrying day pots filled 

with water on their heads. At this moment meditation and Mahavir 

were not on my mind. I was returning to the alleys and streets of my 

childhood where I had played my childhood games. For nine years 

I had no home; now I was returning to my village and my home. I 

saw my playmates, Kanu, Mod and Ramu, they looked at me with 

bewildered eyes. They were lost for words. They could not decide 

whether to welcome me or reject me, whether to call me brave or 

a coward. 1 myself was in a state of uncertainty. I waved at them 

and passed by. I got better smiles from Ali and Akbar and Aziz, our 

Muslim neighbours. 

Mother wept when she saw me. ‘My fortune is broken. You have 

committed a great error. By coming back to this world which you 

renounced you are eating your own vomit. 1 I said, ‘Don’t cry.’ My 

heart ached for her—I knew what she was thinking. If she took me 

back she would be breaking the law of dbarma , the Jain community 

would ostracize her, and other monks might be encouraged to leave 

the monkhood. ‘There is no room for you here,’ she said. ‘Go back to 

the guru. He is the only one who can make you happy. Don’t come to 

me. For me you are dead.’ 

I went to my sister-in-law. She said, ‘Let the old woman cry. It is 

not very cold. I’ll give you a good blanket and you can stay outside 

on the verandah of the guest room in the courtyard. 1 

I spent the days in darkness and indecision about what to do 

next. Whenever mother saw me she cried. Gone was the mother 

41 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

I remembered, sane and strong. My leaving the monkhood made 

her more unhappy than even my father’s death. She walked about 

confused and disorientated. I could hear her murmuring. 

In despair I sat on a bench opposite a tea shop with a sad face. A 

teacher from the local school came up and talked to me. He said he 

hadn’t seen me before which seemed strange since he knew all the 

boys in the town. I cold him I was bom here and later had become a 

monk. He wanted to know more. He invited me to his home and gave 

me some food to eat. In the two weeks since leaving the monkhood, 

this was the first person to accept me with some sympathy. He said, 

‘Why don’t you go to Vinoba?* ‘But do you think he will accept an 

ex-monk?’ He replied, ‘I don’t think it matters to Vinoba. You can go 

to an ashram, a community of his followers.’ Here was a little light in 

my darkness. 

Kishor, who lived in the neighbouring town of Ladnu, and who 

had sown seeds of discontent in me by lending me Gandhi’s auto¬ 

biography, came searching for me and found me once more sitting 

on rite bench opposite the tea shop. I could not believe my eyes— 

without saying a word we fell into each others’ arms. ‘What a brave 

act, well done.’ These were Kishor’s first words; no one else so far 

had understood my action, let alone praised it. Meeting Kishor I 

began to gather strength and pull myself out of despair. 

He did not rest until he had dug out the whole story of my 

escape. He was amazed and amused and frequently laughed at it. 

Talking about my future he also thought that 1 should join the 

work of Vinoba. He gave me a wonderful piece of news: Sadhak, 

who had been a monk and had also escaped was living in a Vinoba 

ashram in Bodh Gaya, Bihar. Why didn’t I go there? Kishor prom¬ 

ised to write to Sadhak and advised me to go there without wait¬ 

ing for his reply, as Sadhak was bound to sympathize with my 

predicament. 

That gave me hope. At home I was depressed; mother wouldn’t 

speak to me. I had spent all the money the woman in Ratangarh 

had given me. 1 had bought a pair of trousers and a small camera. I 

had also bought a sweater, and some good shoes. Tasked my sister, 

Suvati, who was living off a little money her late husband had left, to 

give me enough to buy a train ticket. Although she was poor, Suvati 

gave me twenty-five rupees. 

1 stopped in Delhi on my way to the ashram. 1 went to see a 

man who had promised to give me food and a place to stay for the 

night. He was a kind man; a businessman. He said ‘Why go so far 

to an ashram in Bihar? You can stay with me and I will find you 

a job.* But after five days he found it impossible to get me a job: 

1 had no education, no degree, no languages, no mathematics, no 

salesmanship, no typing nor any craft I knew nothing. No one in 

the Jain community would give a job to an ex-monk. ‘You are an 

outsider, a misfit,’ he said. 

By this time I had just enough to buy a ticket to Bihar. When I 

asked the man if he could lend me some money he said, ‘What 

guarantee do I have that you will be able to pay me back?’ 1 dis¬ 

covered that giving a few days’ hospitality was part of his dharma 

as a businessman, but giving actual cash was not! 

I was to leave the following morning. All night I worried and 

worried ... 1 couldn’t sleep. The train, the Calcutta Mail, was 

due to leave at 8.oo am. I had to be at the station by seven to find 

a place and buy a ticket I got up at five, while the others were still 

sleeping. As I got up I noticed a coat. 1 went over and put my hand 

in the pocket and pulled out one hundred rupees. I thought—1 don’t 

need one hundred rupees, I need about fifty rupees to keep me going. 

So 1 rook fifty. 

My host woke up. ‘Are you leaving now?’ he asked. 1 said, ‘Yes, 

1 am leaving. Thanks very much for your hospitality and all your 

help. Goodbye.’ But my host had decided to come with me to the 

station. He came to the platform and helped me find a good place. 

After that he went back. There was still an hour before the train left. 

Meanwhile the owner of the coat had got up, found the fifty rupees 

missing and started searching everywhere. My host mentioned that 1 

had got up very early and thought that 1 might have taken the money 

because 1 had spoken of having very little the day before. He also 

remembered that 1 had several notes in my purse after buying the 

ticket, which confirmed their suspicions. They both came to the 

station, found me and threatened to call the police if I didn’t return 

the money. 1 gave the fifty rupees back, which meant that I had to 

travel without money. 

1 arrived in Gaya early in the morning of the next day. It was too 

dark to go anywhere so 1 slept on the platform. When I asked for 

4 * 

43 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

directions to the ashram, I discovered it was about seven miles from 

Gaya in another small town—Bodh Gaya. I went to a rickshaw man 

and asked if he would drive me in exchange for my cap, because I 

didn’t have any money. He agreed. 

As we were travelling, the rickshaw man said, Bodh Gaya is a holy 

place. Here Buddha received enlightenment. For fifteen years I have 

been taking pilgrims from all over the world to the temple of the 

Buddha. My dbarma is to bring people to the Buddha.’ I said, ‘I am 

so grateful to you for taking me without money.’ ‘Don’t worry about 

money or even about giving your cap. Many travellers and especially 

pilgrims pay me very well.’ 

When we reached Bodh Gaya we found the ashram. I asked the 

rickshaw wallah to wait a few minutes while I found out if I was in 

the right place. There were a few people, a few small huts, and a well 

for water. The man in charge was wearing white clothes and had a 

small beard and shaved head. I asked for Sadhak. He told me that 

Sadhak was working in the village of Shekhwara, six miles away. 

I said, *1 have come from Rajasthan to see him, and also I want to 

work and live in the ashram. Could you let me rest for a while? Then 

I could walk to the village where Sadhak is/ He asked me if I had any 

letters or references. I said, ‘No, burl am a friend of Sadhak.’ He said, 

It would be better if you go to Sadhak straight away.’ When I asked 

him if I could leave my bag, again he said no. 1 was shy to tell him 

that I hadn’t any money, because it might have created suspicion in 

his mind. I went back to the rickshaw man and told him the man I 

was looking for was in another village. I gave him my cap and 1 said, 

Now 1 will walk to that village. I cannot waste any more of your 

rime and prevent you from earning some money/The rickshaw man 

said, ‘Don’t worry. I will take you there and you need not pay any 

money. But first get the proper name of the village and its location, 

so we don’t get lost/ 

When we arrived 1 wanted to give him my sweater. I said, ‘It will 

make me happy^it is not for you, it is for me/ He was happy. He 

took the sweater and left. I stood and watched him go. Yesterday 

in the house of the rich businessman I had become a thief. But the 

rickshaw man, who had so little, made me feel generous. 

On a low table in the sun, two women were sitting and spinning 

cotton, and a man with no clothes on except a small loincloth 

round his hips was also there. I* told them that 1 had come to see 

Sadhak. The man said that Sadhak was out but would be back 

soon. He motioned me to sit down and we began talking. He didn’t 

stop his spinning. The women brought some breakfast to me. 1 

hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-six hours so 1 was very hungry. 

They brought me bananas, milk and porridge. After a while Sadhak 

came. He had left the Jain order but hadn’t changed his dress— 

he was still wearing a white robe but without the cloth over his 

mouth. I was wearing western trousers and shirt, and the village 

people and children gathered to stare at me as I looked like a young 

modern city boy. 

Sadhak received me warmly and said i heard from Kishor that you 

had left the monks. I am glad that you have come. Let’s go to the 

village well where we can bathe and talk/ After nine years of not 

having a bath, buckets and buckets of water being splashed over me 

was beautiful, washing away all the dirt from my body, and the past. 

We laughed and threw water over each other. We spent a long time 

there, with the open rice paddy fields all around. 

Sadhak said, ‘It will be good for you to have some experience of 

ashram life and the philosophy behind it. I think you should live for 

a while at Bodh Gaya ashram/ I said, ‘If a few minutes’ encounter 

is anything to go by, I doubt if 1 can be happy there. Particularly 

with the old man/ ‘Don’t worry, he’s not the only person there, and 

later you’ll find that he is a very gentle person. Perhaps he didn’t 

understand you/ 

The next evening we both walked to the ashram. Across the fields 

it was only three .miles. It was prayer time, so we joined all the 

members gathered together sitting on blankets on the ground. They 

recited a passage from the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita , 

then chanted the name of Rama and pronounced the eleven vows of 

ashram life: non-violence, adherence to truth, non-stealing, chastity, 

poverty, manual labour, right diet, fearlessness, religious tolerance, 

use of locally made produce and rejection of untouchability. After 

the prayers, someone reported on the work that had been done that 

day. Then Sadhak introduced me, and asked me to speak. The old 

man whose name was Surendra, was impressed with my story and 

told me I had come to the right place. I was accepted to stay at the 

ashram for a trial period. 

44 

45 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

The ashram is a community where people live and work in 

harmony. The word ‘ashram* means a place where people live by 

their own labour. Surendra explained, in ancient times a sage or 

scholar lived with his or her disciples to study the spiritual nature 

of the universe. Students came to learn and share the knowledge 

and wisdom, but everybody was required to take part in the daily 

activities. Whether it was gathering wood or food, or the production 

of shoes or books, all the activities were performed by the ash- 

ram dwellers. 

As the influence of a traditional way of life diminished during 

the Muslim and British rule, the number of ashrams diminished 

as well. There were a large number of ashrams in the foothills of 

the Himalayas and along the banks of the Ganges. A few hundred 

of chem still continue. Mahatma Gandhi revived the ashram life in 

the early part of this century. He established a score of new ashrams, 

where his friends and followers practised the simple way of living, 

combined with manual labour on the land and crafts. He combined 

political and social work with spiritual and religious practices; self- 

reliance and consumption of only home-grown and locally-made 

produce became the key concept of the ashram way of life. 

The next day and every day, activity at this ashram started at 

dawn. Brother Dwarko beat the gong and Surendra could be heard 

singing Vedic mantras . We all gathered for the morning meditation 

followed by a reading from an Upanishad . After the meditation, I 

was asked if I would prepare breakfast. Although I had watched my 

mother cooking in my early childhood, I had never touched fire or a 

cooking pot in the nine years I had lived the life of a begging monk, 

but 1 was too shy to admit my inability to cook, and 1 cut my finger 

with a knife, burnt the food and pot, depriving the ashramites of 

their proper breakfast. I could see signs of discontent on some of 

their faces, and I felt extremely ashamed, but Dwarko said to me, 

‘you will also prepare lunch, but this time I will help you/ 

Dwarko taught me how to cook. I gradually learnt how to mix and 

make dough of wholemeal wheat flour, to make parathas and puris, 

and I cooked rice and vegetables and curry. Dwarko also taught me 

how to spin. 1 liked the beautiful musical sound of spinning, which 

made meditation easier. After six months I had made enough thread 

to make my own shirt and dhoti <a long piece of material used as 

trousers). I got rid of all my machine-made clothes, feeling happy to 

have my own hand-spun clothes on my body. 

During the morning I joined the eight other ashram members in 

cleaning the building, and went to dig land to make a garden. For 

the first time in my life I experienced the weight of a pick-axe and 

spade. About four acres of land had been donated to Vinoba for the 

purpose of starting this ashram. He suggested that the main work of 

the ashram should be ‘To find a synthesis between the intellectual 

and the manual, between the head and the hands, between contem¬ 

plation and action, and between science and spirituality/ 

In order to achieve this integrated way of life, the day was divided 

into two parts. Before noon was devoted to manual work—digging, 

planting, spinning, weaving, etc. All the ashram members were 

required to spend at least four hours doing these tasks. We were 

to earn our livelihood by working with our hands, thereby satisfying 

our physical needs. The afternoons were devoted to writing poetry, 

painting, music, community work, political and social action—any¬ 

thing could be done, according to the members* personal interest. 

Dwarko said, ‘When you were a monk you were using your mind 

in meditation but never your hands to produce things. Now you 

must aim at integration of mind and body, hand and head, serving 

mother earth. Working on the land is the path to spiritual enlight¬ 

enment. You should live by three new mantras ; cooking, digging 

and spinning/ 

In the ashram itself, I wasn’t using money at all. Only when I had 

to go into the town and use a bus or a train, did the ashram give me 

a little money. My total living expenditure could not exceed thirty 

rupees per month. If I needed medicine, we grew some medicinal 

plants and roots. The emphasis was on prevention rather than cure. 

Slowly, as weeks and months passed, I discovered that ashram 

work was not only to dig land, cook food and spin clothes. The 

ashram was a centre for a large number of workers engaged in the 

area to bring about an equitable distribution of land. As long as 

land was not available to those who lived by it, as long as landless 

labourers were exploited by a few rich landlords and money-lenders, 

a cosy, self-sufficient introverted ashram life could not be a right way 

of living. Therefore, most of us spent a lot of time and energy in 

helping the Land for the People (Bhoodan) Movement. 

46 

47 

NO DESTINATION 

Dwarko wrote to Vinoba ro inform him that I was now living 

in the ashram. Vinoba was very happy that now two ex-monks 

had come to join the ashram. When my guru heard that Vinoba 

had given me sanctuary he was angry and persuaded the Chief 

Minister of Rajasthan to write to Vinoba, saying that if he went 

on providing shelter to ex-monks there would be no monks left in 

the order. Vinoba laughed and said, ‘Let all the monks come and join 

the ashrams. They will lead much more useful lives/ 

I lived in a small mud hut with a wooden couch near the win¬ 

dow on which I did everything: sitting, reading, writing, spinning 

and sleeping. Every afternoon when 1 looked out of the window 

I would see a young Tibetan lama sitting on my verandah med¬ 

itating. He wore a robe of deep brown and his head was shaven. 

His eyes were closed and he sat silently; after a while, he would - 

begin chanting Tibetan mantras , I too closed my eyes and meditated 

with his sound. 

A few evenings a week he would come to lead the ashram members 

in meditation which would be followed by a talk on the Buddhist 

dharma . As Surendra was a Hindu, myself a Jain, and our lama 

teacher a Buddhist, we always had a lively discussion! I felt a sense 

of continuity with my Jain meditation and yet I felt myself more open 

to new approaches and more relaxed within myself. I warmed to 

the lifestyle of the lama: he always seemed to go with the flow. He 

acted like a counsellor to the ashram. When any ashram member 

had emotional, psychological or personality difficulties, the lama 

would spend Jong hours sorting them out. Coming from outside the 

ashram, he came like a breath of fresh air. He became a substitute 

for my guru without the formal ties. He personally taught me the 

Buddhist approach to the nature of mind and the nature of suffering 

and the way out of mind and suffering. Often I would accompany 

him to the temple and sit with him under the banyan tree where 

Buddha had sat. 

Ambadas was one of the more eccentric members of the Ashram. 

Vinoba had assigned to him the duty of keeping the ashram and the 

village of Bodh Gaya clean. Every morning after breakfast he would 

put his enormous broom on his shoulder. Sometimes he would smile 

and call to me, ‘Hello Satish, let's go and sweep the streets of Bodh 

ashram 

Gaya,’ and I would go with him. If he found much rubbish outside 

a house he would knock on the door and speak in a gentle voice. 

‘My brothers and sisters, please don’t make the street a dustbin/ 

If he found excrement he would say, ‘Streets are not toilets, please 

can you dig a hole and put your excrement in the hole and cover it 

with earth so that it can return to the earth and not cause disease. 

Excrement left in the open air brings ill health and ill luck, but buried 

under the earth it brings good fortune and fertility/ Often he would 

say, The broom is my only friend/ When we came back we would go 

to the well and pull out buckets of water and he would always scrub 

himself thoroughly with Lifebuoy soap. Then he would go back to 

his room, and for the rest of the day he would do very little. 

One day he disappeared. We went out looking for him, and people 

from the village came to ask what had happened to him because he 

had never missed a single day of work. Later we found a letter among 

his clothes saying, ‘I have decided to offer myself to the mother river 

and let her take me in her arms and absorb me in herself/ Someone 

had seen him walking towards the river near the ashram, but we 

never discovered the body—the river flowed very fast and he must 

have been swept quickly away. 

1 was sent for two months to the town of Gaya, to a craft school to 

learn spinning wirh the Ambar wheel, which has four spindles. 1 was 

given one hundred rupees to live on for the two months. 

The town was on one side of the river and the craft school on the 

other. On the town side of the bridge there was a narrow street. This 

street always blossomed in the evening: it was full of the sound of 

music and the air was heavy with the sweet smell of perfume. Here 

lived the women dancers and singers of the town. The atmosphere 

was gay and relaxed. Men wandered through in their light evening 

dress, chewing betel leaves, and buying jasmine for their ladies. As I 

walked through, 1 looked up at a young woman, sitting on a balcony, 

decorated wirh red and blue lights. We caught each other’s eyes and 

she smiled at me invitingly: Her lips were red with lipstick and betel 

leaves, her cheeks were rouged and her eyes darkened with kajal. Her 

hair hung loose and she wore a red sari with a golden border. Her 

breasts were round and youthful. 

I was with my craft teacher. 1 asked him if we could go to her. I was 

feeling a little afraid. He agreed, and both of us went upstairs to this 

NO DESTINATION 

young woman. My young craft teacher, more used to the ways of the 

world said to the woman, ‘My friend wants to meet you/ Having 

introduced us he walked through the room and sat on the verandah 

overlooking the street. There were two rooms, a sitting-room for 

talking and drinking and a bedroom. She came to me and put her 

arm on my shoulder, and stroked my hair. She kissed me. My body 

started shaking and shivering. I thought of being naked with her in 

the bedroom, lying beside her body. She pulled me towards her. 1 was 

frightened. 1 said, i have been a monk and have never been with a 

woman, but 1 feel drawn to you/ She said, ‘You are young and it is 

quite natural that you should feel attracted to me. Come here. I said, 

i want to talk to you, tell me about yourself/ 

Then we sat down on a large low couch and reclined on a bolster, 

our shoulders touching. The woman said, ‘At the time of the Parti¬ 

tion of India my father, mother and many of my family were killed. 

1 was left alone. I couldn't find a job or anywhere to live. People 

suggested that since 1 was a Muslim I should go to Pakistan, but l 

didn't know anyone there and I was too frightened to go. Then 1 

met a man who introduced me to a woman who taught me singing, 

dancing and making people happy/ 

1 was more and more terrified. 1 got up to go. She asked, ‘Why are 

you going? Will you come again?’ ‘Yes, I will/She said, Come again, 

I like you. If you want we can go to the cinema together/ I couldn’t 

answer her. I gave her ten rupees and left. 

I finished my course at Gaya and came back to the ashram. 

That evening Dwarko said, ‘You have been with us over a year now. 

It is time for you to go to the villages and work with the poor. You 

should go to Shekhwara where a community of untouchables is 

being hard-pressed by the landlord. This is the village where Sadhak 

and other Gandhians have been engaged in distributing land to the 

landless. They need your help/ 

This seemed to be a new challenge and an opportunity. I made 

a small bundle of my belongings and walked through the fields of 

paddy and wheat. As l approached the village, I found a community 

of untouchables clustered together in small and shabby huts at one 

end of the village. As I walked through this cluster for the first time, 

I saw people the likes of whom I had never seen before. These were 

ASHRAM 

men, women and children who were the victims of corrupt and 

misguided caste systems; in fact here there was neither caste nor 

system—these people were outcastes . I stood in stunned silence, 

gazing at them. Their eyes were bloodshot with weariness, their 

bodies and limbs taut with lack of nourishment. Upon these people 

lay generations of suffering—the cruelty of nature which gave them 

a searing sun and no water; conditions which bred smallpox, malaria 

and dy sen try, and above all, exploitation. They had been flogged 

and whipped and robbed of their minds, these lowest of the low, 

the harijan$ y whom Gandhi called the ‘children of God’. All that 

they produced—even their children—went to the cities. They lived 

without hope and there was no one to speak for them. They were the 

forgotten people. 

Bewildered and shocked, I arrived at the place where the three 

Gandhian workers lived: Bharat, Lakshmi and Sushila. They were 

expecting me. I was shown my hut, given food and made welcome. 

This was to be my home for the next few months. That evening 

we were visited by a young harijan . He crouched in the doorway, 

anxious and unsure what to do. I asked him to come in and sit down. 

He was hesitant, i am a poor man, not worthy to sit with you/ ‘I 

am a man and you are a man,’ I said. ‘I am poor. 1 was bom in 

poverty and I will die in poverty/1 replied, ‘Poverty is not something 

ordained by God. Poverty exists because you accept the exploitation 

of yourself. It is your right to live as a human being. What can we 

do for you?’ ‘I have been given two acres of land, but I am as poor 

as before because I have no bullocks to plough with. I have a wife 

and two children to feed, so I have come to ask for help. Like the 

other harijans in the village, I am forced to work as a labourer on the 

temple land for only four pounds of rice a day. We are all hungry. 

What can we do?’ After a lengthy conversation 1 suggested, ‘You 

and your fellow recipients of Bhoodan land get together tomorrow 

and let us talk over these problems/ He seemed pleased with this 

suggestion and he came for me the next day. I went with him to 

the fields. The landless were all gathered there. At first they were 

reserved, then the complaints started to flow: ‘The landlord who 

gave us land has taken it back/ someone said. ‘My homestead is 

on the temple land and they are asking me to leave,’ another said. 

‘I have six children and four adults at home, but the temple only 

5i 

NO DESTINATION 

allows one person to work from each home.. / We talked for several 

hours. They explained that most of the land around Shekhwara was 

owned by the Hindu temple in Bodh Gaya and was managed by an 

unjust agent. I had not realized that the temples were among the 

worst landowners. This was a disagreeable surprise. I recalled that 

their feeling of inferiority and helplessness was so deeply rooted that 

they felt incapable of doing anything. 1 suggested that we should go 

immediately to talk to the agent of the temple. 

As we drew near the agent's house, 1 could feel the harijans' sense 

of fear and apprehension. They walked more and more slowly, 

looking at the ground. ‘We shall go on strike!' 1 shouted in an effort 

to revive their spirits. They shouted in response, ‘Rich give land—- 

poor give labour.' By the time we reached the agent’s house, we had 

managed to create an atmosphere of some strength and confidence. 

In the courtyard, sheaves of paddy were stacked high and a team , 

of bullocks were shuffling round and round on the threshing floor. 

The agent was eating his lunch. I could see his back through the 

doorway. He was a large man. I went in and told him that we had 

come to talk with him about wages. He nodded curtly and continued 

eating, ignoring me. When he had finished his meal he came out on to 

the verandah. There was a hush and an atmosphere of suspense and 

expectation. Before I had a chance to speak, a young harijan jumped 

up boldly. ‘The land which now belongs to the temple once belonged 

to the village. We are very poor, but you take away ail the grain and 

we don’t see any of ir. You stand over us from seven in the morning 

till three in the afternoon. I think we should go on strike until you 

pay us more.’ 

The crowd murmured, they were excited now. The agent shouted, 

‘I will, hire labourers from other villages to harvest the land.’ He 

glared angrily at me. if the villagers had come to complain on their 

own, without you Vinoba workers, 1 might have conceded. But you 

stir up trouble. You don't know these people as 1 do. They are lazy, 

good-for-nothing bastards. If they had a day’s supply of food at 

home, they wouldn’t work. They cheat and steal. Anyway, what 

do you think they do with their own land? Giving them land is like 

throwing gold on to the garbage heap.* I replied, it is amazing the 

barifans have put up with these conditions for so long.’ The agent, 

ignoring my remarks, said, ‘You labourers are always grumbling. Go 

5 * 

ASHRAM 

on strike if you wish to. There is no shortage of hungry men who will 

come on their knees, begging for work.’ He turned on his heels and 

went into his house. 

Everyone was angry. We divided ourselves into groups of two or 

three and went to the neighbouring villages to spread the news, ‘The 

harijans of Shekhwara are on strike and no one else should work on 

the Shekhwara temple land/ 

Hungry or not, the labourers of the surrounding villages were 

impressed to see that the harijans of Shekhwara were standing up 

for their rights and no one came to break the strike. We ourselves 

were amazed to see such solidarity. 

The harvest went uncut and the grain was in imminent danger of 

rotting. Then the agent came to talk to us and agreed to double 

the harijans ’ wages to eight pounds of rice per day. The offer was 

accepted and every harijan family went out to get the harvest in. The 

agent was pleased. 

This whole episode, which happened within the first month of my 

arrival, provided the basis of a trusting relationship between me and 

the harijans . 

After the harvest comes the traditional time for celebration and 

weddings. I was invited to a harijan marriage. 1 learned that the 

father of the bridegroom had to take a ton of grain from the temple 

agent to provide food for the marriage feast. As was the custom, he 

must feed all his caste-folk. Since he had nothing, he had no means 

of paying for the grain except by bonding his son to the temple for 

the rest of the son's life. For the son it would be a double marriage 

—to his wife and to life-long slavery to the landlord. 

I argued against this practice. ‘You don’t want to sell your son, 

do you? Why not have a small party that you can afford?’ But the 

father would not budge. ‘If I do not have a proper feast, inviting 

all my family and friends, no one will respect me in the village. 

This is the one occasion when everyone must be invited to the 

party. When I was married no one was forgotten, even though as 

a consequence, I have been bonded to the temple land ever since. 

My family honour is at stake/ 1 suggested, ‘Let every harijan family 

contribute a pound of grain to make the feast/ But the father replied, 

‘How can I ask them to bring their food to my feast?' I said, if the 

bonding of your son is part of the price of the marriage feast, then 

53 

NO DESTINATION 

I can not come to the marriage/ He was sorry but he could not 

act otherwise. 

The land of the barijans was barren because there was no means 

of irrigation. We started to dig a well. The villagers gave their labour 

as a gift one day a week and a Vinoba admirer in Gaya gave the 

bricks and cement to build it. This was typical of how things were 

organized by the ashram: everything was based on dart or gift. 

Bhoodan (land gift); shramdan (gift of labour); sampattidan (gift of 

wealth); sadhandan (gift of tools); Buddhidan (gift of knowledge). 

I went everyday at sunrise. There were a minimum of ten men 

digging, and five women carrying the earth. As we dug down into 

the earth we left a spiral of earthen steps up which the women carried 

the basketsful of soil on their heads. On a good day, we had thirty. 

or forty of us labouring, and then we would stand in a line from 

the digging point to the place where the earth was to be deposited. 

We would pass the baskets of soil along the line from hand to hand. 

When we went deeper we erected a pulley to take the earth up. People 

came from other villages, students came from the college in Gaya, to 

give their labour. 

When the first bubble of water appeared we rejoiced and broke 

coconuts for the God Shiva. ‘The water is the gift of the gods,’ the 

people exclaimed. We distributed pieces of coconut with a lump of 

raw sugar to everyone present. When the village bricklayer com¬ 

pleted the well, another Vinoba admirer in Gaya made a gift of four 

pairs of bullocks with ploughs to be owned and worked collectively 

by the barijans. Soon the landscape was transformed. The barijans 

grew wheat in the spring and summer, rice in the monsoon rains, and 

vegetables, sugar and tobacco for their home use. Of course, seventy 

acres of land with one well, shared between seventy-five families did 

not make them wealthy, but it made a huge improvement to their 

material lives and a great increase in their self-confidence. 

When i was digging the well, one of the young women who 

came every day was Sita, the daughter of a harijan. I would dig, 

putting soil into a basket, and when it was full, Sita came and stood 

dose to me and I would lift the basket on to her head. How could 

I not notice her beautiful face, her black eyes, her dark skin and 

firm breasts through the thin tattered sari she wore? She walked 

ASHRAM 

last up the steps out of the well to throw the earth so that she 

could stand beside me, waiting while 1 filled the next basket. We 

laughed and talked for those two months. Afterwards, I used to see 

her occasionally and I always felt attracted to her. One day, 1 asked 

Wasudev, a local supporter of our work who employed Sita's father, 

if he thought it possible for me to marry Sita. He said, ‘A high caste 

man like you marrying an untouchable, an outcast! Such a thing has 

not been heard of in this village/1 said, *If I am ready for it, then it is 

up to me. Moreover, breaking of caste barriers is an important part 

of my beliefs/ Wasudev said, i doubt if Sita’s father would agree to 

it/ ‘Will you do me this favour? Will you be my messenger and ask 

him on my behalf?" I asked. 

The next day Wasudev came with Sita’s father, Hari. Hari looked 

reserved but cheerful. He wore a white turban and a silver earring 

in one ear, and carried a stick in his hand. He was relatively well 

off among his caste-folk. He had a large family and so he had 

been given two acres of Bhoodan land. His wife worked on road 

construction, and one of his sons worked in Gaya, so they were an 

enterprising family. I gave Wasudev and Hari some sherbet. Then 

Hari opened his mind and said, i am very honoured to hear that 

you wish to marry my daughter, but sir, please do not make me 

break the customs carefully preserved from our forefathers. If by 

some temptation we break the custom once, then nobody knows 

where it will end. Therefore I pray you not to entertain this idea 

any further/ I said, ‘Hari, you are a wise man but you know that 

the tradition of untouchability has kept you and your people down. 

Will you not let us make a hole in this inhuman barrier?’ Hari said, 

‘We are very graceful to you and your leader Vinoba for the concern 

you have shown for us. If we can have land, jobs and houses then the 

caste barrier is no problem to us. What we need is mutual respect 

between the castes, not the mixing of castes. My daughter in your 

community will be like a fish out of water. We have our own values 

and our own traditions. We must follow our dbarma. You will find 

many young attractive women within your own caste who will be 

very happy to marry you. And as for Sita, it is my duty to find her a 

suitable husband within my caste. 

I heard Hari’s answer with amazement. Although my heart and 

my body longed for Sita, I suddenly realized how little 1 understood 

SS 

54 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

the mind of the harijans. Hari did not approve of these patronizing 

politics. For him, many more important issues were at stake. 

After this encounter with Hari, I was unsettled on many levels. It 

was impossible to concentrate on anything while the beautiful Sita 

was around the comer, so near and yet out of reach. Moreover, my 

presence in Shekhwara was of very limited value. The harijans did 

not want us to interfere in the fabric of their society. I learned a great 

deal by being in Shekhwara, but it was not a place for me to stay. 

The followers of Vinoba were to meet together in the South, in 

Kerala. This was to be the annual Sarvodaya conference where large 

numbers of people who try to follow the teachings of Mahatma 

Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave come together. I had been living the 

ashram life for about three years and here was an opportunity 

to get away and to meet Vinoba himself—the absent master of 

the ashram. 

I left the ashram on a four day journey by train, through Calcutta 

and Madras. I arrived in the town of Kalari where the conference 

was to be held. A whole new tent city to accommodate ten thousand 

people had been erected there. People were arriving from every 

corner of India, but Vinoba was still two days walk away. So I took 

a local bus to the village where he was. 

When 1 arrived, there was an atmosphere of a large number of 

people on the move. Mahadevi, who had been with Vinoba for 

thirty years and looked after his health, took me to him. He was 

sitting in a small hut on a couch, naked above the waist, wearing 

a simple loin-cloth. On his head was his distinctive green cap with 

earflaps tied under his chin. Many people gathered round him, and 

he was reading. Vinoba greeted me and said, ‘Tomorrow morning at 

4.00 a.m. we start our march from this village to the next. Gome and 

walk with me and we can talk.’ 

Next morning, Vinoba started out while it was still dark with 

someone walking in front of him with a lantern. A few minutes later 

he enquired where I was. Mahadevi sent someone to fetch me—1 was 

still sleeping. Luckily, the jeep which collects the sleeping rolls and 

other luggage had not left to join the group. The driver took me to 

Vinoba. Vinoba said, ‘This is the best part of the day to talk together. 

We have open skies, woods and mountains and fresh air. This is the 

time for fresh thoughts.’ 

56 

There were about thirty people walking. Many villagers lined the 

way to receive darshan from Vinoba. Women stood with decorated 

earthen water pitchers on their heads. Over the mouths of the 

pitchers were banana leaves held in place by coconuts—a sign of 

welcome. Occasionally Vinoba acknowledged them by bowing his 

head. Vinoba said to me, ‘By leaving the monk’s life you may find 

a real monk in you. Exclusive spirituality is not spiritual. And 

remember— as you did not get stuck in the monk’s life, don’t get 

stuck in anything else. Keep flowing. We should learn from the river 

which keeps itself pure and healthy by continuing to flow. If a river 

gets blocked and the flow is hindered it stagnates, produces a stink 

and the mosquitos breed. We should be like the flowing river.’ 

I was quite touched to hear this—he spoke exactly to my own 

predicament. I said to myself, i do not need to return to Shekhwara, 

I should flow on.’ 

After walking for about an hour, Vinoba sat on a hill to rest. We 

gathered around him. He always used this time for dialogue and 

discussion. He called it his ‘walking university’. He spoke on a pas¬ 

sage from the Vpanishads , ‘Ishawashyopnishad is my favourite. Its 

first verse encapsulates the entire Hindu philosophy of non-duality. 

It says that everything we can imagine and also everything we cannot 

imagine is the home of God. In fact the creator and the creation are 

not separate, as the dance and the dancer are not separate. That is 

why we have the image of dancing Shiva. The whole universe is the 

dance of Shiva.’ I had never heard this kind of explanation of advaita 

(non-dualism) before. If Vinoba teaches these kinds of ideas every 

day, I must stay and walk with him for some time, 1 thought. 

After speaking on the Vpanishads , he answered questions. One 

of the group asked Vinoba, in Kerala we have a strong socialist 

movement. We are trying to get governmental power. You and your 

followers should join the socialists, then the work of land reform 

will be speeded up.’ Vinoba said, * Gramdart (village co-operative) 

is a different concept from that of socialism. We want to bring the 

realization of their power to the people. Then they will withdraw 

their support from existing governments and become their own gov¬ 

ernment. If 1 were to enter politics directly, it would be impossible 

for me to walk as I do today, a free man, with nothing to hinder 

me from speaking the truth as I see it. I should no longer feel the 

57 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

inward spiritual strength which 1 experience now. 1 could no longer 

roar like a lion. Politics and service do not go together; authority and 

power are not conducive to service. My aim is to build up a new kind 

of politics and in order to do so, I keep myself aloof from the old 

kind. This is the politics of the people, as opposed to the Politics 

of the State/ 

When we arrived in the next village there was an atmosphere of 

festivity. People greeted us with drums and flutes. We passed under 

bamboo archways laden with leaves, fruits and flowers. Banners 

proclaimed, ‘Long live Vinoba, long' live Gandhi.* In the village 

square Vinoba spoke, ‘My plea—that every son of the soil has 

a right to Mother Earth—is not my own. The Vedas proclaimed 

it. No brother should prevent his brother from serving his mother 

earth. Land, like air, sun or water, is a free gift of God and what I 

am looking for, on behalf of the landless, is no more than justice. 

Though my own stomach is very small, that of the poor is very big. 

Therefore 1 demand fifty million acres of land, if there are five sons 

in your family, consider me the sixth. I claim one-sixth of the total 

cultivatable land in the country for the poor. India is a country of 

god-intoxicated people. I believe that India can and should evolve a 

new type of revolution, based purely on love.* 

A landlord owning three hundred acres came and offered one acre 

of land. Vinoba said, 4 If I had been asking for a donation of land 

to erect a temple, I would have been satisfied with your one acre, 

but I ask for land as a right of the poor and so I must ask you 

again to give one-sixth of your land to the poor/ The man then 

offered fifty acres, and Vinoba accepted. Other landlords got up to 

give similar donations. 

Eventually we arrived at Kalari. At the Sarvodaya conference, 

Vinoba spoke to the gathered mass of his followers. '*9$? must be 

made the year of Total Revolution. The land must be distributed 

among the people. There is a feeling in the air that some change is 

imminent. This change cannot come about by mere charitable work. 

We must initiate an act of “agressive* love. I pledge that I will con¬ 

tinue my walking pilgrimage until land redistribution is achieved, 

and the landless people throughout India have been given land. 

‘We have been trying to achieve a change of heart in the landlords 

by persuading them to see the problem, in the villages as a land 

problem and to solve it by getting them to make voluntary donations 

of some of their land. But the land donated is only a small fraction of 

the land of the village; the major part of the land is still owned by a 

few rich landlords. The responsibility and problems of distributing 

the land is too vast for us. We must persuade the landlords that 

instead of merely donating a part of their land, they should trans¬ 

fer the ownership of all their land to the village community. Our 

new vision is to create villages with communal ownership of land, 

the gramdan . 

‘We are engaged in a People's Revolution. We must be supported 

by the people. It is not right for us to live off the interest of the Gandhi 

Memorial Fund. We must cut all ties with centralized financial aid 

and any bureaucratic organizational set-up. We should express in 

our lives and work the ideas of non-violent revolution. Let us go dir¬ 

ectly to the people and receive support from them. All the supporters 

of non-violent revolution—those who made a gift of land, those who 

received land and those who accepted non-violence as a means of 

social change— should keep a pot in their house, a sarvodaya pot, 

A handful of grain should be taken by a child of the household 

and put into this pot once every'day. The grain collected in this 

way will provide our livelihood. How else can we support our 

workers who are walking from village to village to establish village 

ownership of land?* 

The conference proved to be a turning point for the Land Gift 

Movement. One reason was Vinoba’s pledge that he would not stop 

walking until the land problem was solved. Secondly the workers 

ceased to rely on centralized funds and made themselves dependent 

on support from the grass roots. Thirdly, everybody reaffirmed 

their commitment to a total revolution to establish village owner¬ 

ship of land. 

After three days of deliberations people dispersed. 1 went to 

Mahadevi and asked her if 1 could walk with Vinoba for a while. 

She accepted me as a member of Vinoba’s marching party. 

As vinoba moved from village to village, he inspired people and 

thousands came to greet him. Then when he spoke, people took the 

first step towards revolution, signing papers donating land to the 

village. He spoke in the language of the common people and this 

59 

58 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

simplicity was one of his keys to success. It was miraculous that 

one man like Vinoba with his small army of volunteers could walk 

round the country and by his moral and spiritual authority be able 

to collect four million acres of land for distribution among the poor 

and thousands of villages pledged to gram dan. 

While I was walking with Vinoba I learnt about Gandhi. Most 

of the people with Vinoba had either seen or lived with Gandhi. 

Vinoba’s programme for a new society, a communitarian society, 

was based on Gandhi’s ideas. 

I learnt about non-violence—that non-violence is not silence, 

that non-violence is not merely not hitting or hurting physically 

or abusing someone with words, but that it is a total relationship 

with the universe. This was a different concept of non-violence to 

the one 1 had learnt as a Jain monk. Then I had not learnt to relate 

non-violence to other people; it was much more a personal rule 

rather than a right way of living with others. Now I understood 

that any kind of exploitation was violence. This Gandhian tradition 

of non-violence is referred to as walking with two legs. One leg 

is constructing the alternative society, the other leg is using non¬ 

cooperation to resist the obstructions to change. Some of the more 

radical members of the gramdan movement thought that Vinoba 

was only walking on one leg, trying to create the alternative society 

without challenging the power structure that was protecting the old 

society. It seemed to them that Vinoba should launch a radical civil 

disobedience campaign to force the landlords to adopt the principle 

of community ownership of land and to force the government to 

change the laws of private ownership. Then the movement could 

get the momentum necessary for the Total Revolution which Vinoba 

was calling for. Talking about gramdan was preparing for revolu¬ 

tion, creating consciousness, but it was not the revolution. 

When I talked to Vinoba about it he said, ‘Gandhi used civil 

disobedience successfully against the British only because the British 

government was not an elected government but an imposed author¬ 

ity. The situation is different now. We are living in a democratic 

set-up. The people have elected the government. If we want a change 

in government we should convince the voters, who, after all, are the 

masters. It is no good going to the government which is a servant 

of the people. My task is to create revolutionary consciousness in 

60 

tin* minds of the people.’ ‘But you should lead the people,’ I said. 

Vinoba did not believe in leadership. ‘If you look for a leader in me 

you will be disappointed. The time for political leadership is over. 

Now the people should become their own leaders.’ His attitude 

was that to overcome landlordism, we should not resist the land¬ 

lords but assist them to act rightly. ‘Revolutionary feelings cannot 

he developed in an atmosphere of opposition because opposition 

is itself a form of violence. Opposition reduces the chances of a 

change of heart. Instead of creating an atmosphere of sympathetic 

understanding, it creates insecurity through which a man is drawn 

to defend himself just at the point when he should be taking a new 

impartial look at society.’ 

He continued, ‘Take the example of a house. You want to enter 

this house, but it has high walls around it. You go to the wall and 

fight to get past it. You can not. What happens? Your head is 

broken. But if you find a small door, you can get into the house 

and go wherever you want. But you have to find the door. Like that, 

when I meet a landlord he has many faults and shortcomings, and his 

egotism is like a wall. But he has a little door. If you are prepared to 

find this door, it means you have risen above your own egotism and 

you can enter his heart. Don’t worry about his faults, only try to find 

the door. I am in search of that little door in every capitalist landlord. 

If sometimes I can’t find the door, it is my fault, my fault that I am 

banging my head against his shortcomings.’ 

Vinoba himself had no ambitions. For him life was a search for 

knowledge of God. He saw the problem of India not as a political 

or economic problem but as a spiritual problem. He always said 

our tantra (technique) is gramdan and our mantra is Jai Jagat (the 

unity of the universe). So Vinoba went on walking, if the landlords, 

the capitalists and the exploiters are not converted today, they will 

be converted tomorrow. 1 will not stop until the whole nation 

is converted.’ 

Vinoba’s call to be like a river, and his pledge that he would con¬ 

tinue to walk the length and breadth of India asking for communal 

ownership of village land, stirred people throughout the country. 

Khadigram ashram in particular took his call to heart. As a result 

they decided to leave a minimum number of people to keep the 

61 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

ashram going and the rest of the members scaned an 4 Ash ram on 

the March’, taking Vinoba’s ideas to the countryside of Bihar. 

When Vinoba heard about this plan he said to me, ‘Why don’t 

you join this walking ashram? Keep flowing like a river, don’t get 

stuck with me.’ So after three months of being in Vinoba’s ‘walking 

university’ I travelled to Khadigram to join the walking ashram. 

A group of sixty people from the ashram were ready to begin their 

new venture. They had a bullock cart loaded with literature, clothes 

and other luggage and a microphone. On the first day a small group 

went to make advance publicity, followed by the main group which 

arrived at the village at breakfast time. On the second day, people 

invited the marchers to their houses for breakfast. After eating, 

everyone went to join the working life of the village. In the evening 

an open meeting was held to encourage the villagers to unite to form' 

gramdan. The response was good. The marchers stayed for two days 

more to get the whole village to sign a declaration of gramdan . A 

small part of the group remained for a longer period to consolidate 

the work whilst the main party moved on. 

In the first few villages the reception was good. Then in one village, 

we were surprised to find that no one would give us a space to stay. 

We were told, ‘Keep your message to yourself, please don’t come 

and stir up trouble.’ Nevertheless, we camped on the outskirts of 

the village. Not even the harijans would welcome us. They were 

afraid of their landlords. ‘You come today and you go tomorrow. 

We have to live with our masters and we dare not annoy them,’ one 

passing young labourer told us. Such stiff resistance was unexpected. 

We all went hungry. Our leader Ramamurti accompanied by me and 

a few others went to see one of the five village elders to discuss our 

concerns and ask for land. Ramamurti said to him, ‘Traditionally 

each caste selected one elder and the fifth was selected to represent 

the outcastes. The five elders were like the fingers of one hand 

working together in unity. In your village the fifth elder does not 

come from the harijan community; they are not represented. They 

have no land. Vinoba has sent us to seek justice for them.’ i have 

heard much about Vinoba and about Bboodan,' said the eider, *1 

think that your movement will do more harm than good. By giving 

these alien ideas to our farm labourers you are sowing the seeds of 

discontent. Harijans have no idea how to manage the land and how 

6z 

to plant the crops. Land will be wasted on them. It is better that we 

manage the land as we have always done.’ 

As this village elder spoke I recognized almost the same words as 

those of the agent of the temple land in Shekhwara. But I was truly 

amused to hear his elaboration of the role of the various castes. He 

continued, ‘Our society is lik&a human body. Brahmins are the head. 

They hold the knowledge and wisdom in their brain. We warriors 

are the arms and hands. We defend the land in times of war and 

manage the land in times of peace. Neither you nor Vinoba nor 

anyone else can take away our rights. Merchants are the stomach 

and the harijans are the legs. It is the duty of the harijans to obey 

our orders and work the land. I urge you rot to disrupt this system.’ 

Ramamurti came from the same caste as this village elder and 

found no difficulty in countering his half-baked ideas and self-serv¬ 

ing interpretations. ‘The body is one,’ said Ramamurti, ‘without 

healthy legs the arms, head and stomach are nearly useless. In this 

village, as indeed in most villages, the legs are weak and sick. When 

your legs are injured, will you not do everything possible to heal 

them? At the moment in our society, the caste system has broken 

down, the landless harijans are a world apart and disconnected from 

the rest of the body politic. In a healthy body all parts are equally 

important and command the same care and respect. If the harijans 

were indeed the legs of the village, we would not need to come 

and initiate the Bboodan movement, but they are so feeble that the 

villagers are unable to stand on them and are using the crutches of 

false beliefs.’ 

The dialogue went on intelligently but the self-interest and preju¬ 

dice were so firmly entrenched that hours passed and the village elder 

did not even offer us a glass of water. Such lack of hospitality in 

rural India is almost unheard of. We failed to find the door into 

the heart of this village and returned to our camp disenchanted. 

We slept under the open sky and beside the closed village. The 

stars and moon were shining above but there was no light to be 

seen in the village. 

As we marched on we found that people were warm to luke-warm 

at best, and hostile in many cases. I should not have been surprised. 

When Vinoba himself came to Bihar he was beaten, together with 

his followers, in one of these villages. This area was a particularly 

*3 

NO DESTINATION 

ASHRAM 

hard nut to crack, whereas in other parts of Bihar, Bhoodan work* 

ers were receiving land in thousands of acres and gramdatts were 

being declared. 

One of the marchers was Kranti, a young woman of twenty, 

with a round face, dark eyes and long hair. I wanted to talk to her, 

but I was shy. On the march there was strict separation of men and 

women. When we arrived in a village, the women would go to one 

place and the men to another. 

One day I went to Khadigram and came back bringing the post for 

the marchers; one letter was for Kranti. 1 kept it in my pocket. But 

as soon as she saw me coming she asked me if there was a letter for 

her, as she was expecting one from her father. I joked, ‘But you are a 

revolutionary, even your name Kranti means revolution. You should 

not keep too close contact with your father!’ She laughed, ‘Kranti or 

not, I have yet to find out whether you lot are revolutionaries.’ 

It was the day of Holi, the spring festival of colours. People in 

the village were wildly throwing coloured water at each other. In 

order to escape the colour madness we all went to a waterfall in 

the mountains, walking through a forest. The trees were tall, the 

mountains steep and the footpath very narrow. I wanted to walk 

with Kranti, but she was with another girl. I was walking just in 

front of them, then stopped. To get past me, Kranti stepped off 

the path and a large thorn got tangled in her sari. I bent down to 

remove the thorn, taking as long as I could about it, and the other 

girl went on. Krand and I walked together, almost out of sight of the 

others. Krand told me that her father’s letter urged her to go home 

immediately: one of her relatives was very ill. She needed to leave 

that evening for Khadigram and I agreed to accompany her. 

When we returned from the mountains the colour carnival was 

still going on. We could no longer remain aloof. I made a bucketful 

of many colours and filled my squirter from it. I chased Krand up and 

down and around, and she chased me. Every now and then I caught 

up with her and squirted colours on her beaudful cream and red sari 

and pasted her face with red powder, and she did the same to me. 

In the evening we left the marchers. The bullock cart took us to the 

railway station. Although we were only about fifty miles away from 

Khadigram there was no direct train and we had to change twice and 

64 

wait for connections. That morning of Holt 1 could never have imag¬ 

ined that by the evening I would be travelling with Kranti like this. 

Wc had some milk and toast and bananas at the railway restaurant. 

I asked her to tell me about her family. She said, i have two sisters 

and a brother. My father is a professor of a college in a town in the 

foothills of the Himalayas. He grows herbs and eats natural, mostly 

raw, food. His passion in life is Nature Cure. When his students and 

friends are ill he treats them with water, mud poultices, sunbathing 

and fasting.’ -Are you planning to study at the college where you 

father is?’ I asked her. She replied, ‘I don’t want to go to college, 

it is a waste of time. I would like to look after young children and 

start a Kindergarten. It is better to do something useful, I don’t want 

to bury myself in books and exams.’ 

In the train we were sitting dose to each other. Kranti was tired 

and she fell asleep. I asked her to lie down and put her head on my 

knees, which she did. I kept looking at her. Her face was serene 

and calm. We arrived at Khadigram in the early morning. The 

following day she left for her home, but although physically she 

was gone, my mind was full of her, every second I thought of her. 

Next day I sat down and wrote her a letter; 'Dear Kranti, I hope 

you have arrived safely. You may be unaware that you have pierced 

someone’s heart. Since you left 1 have not been able to do anything 

or think of anything but you. The images of the day of Holt festival 

keep flashing across my eyes like a film. When are you coming back? 

I can’t bear to be without you. I have fallen in love with you. Yours, 

with love, Satish.’ 

Kranti did not reply to my letter. 1 kept waiting for some word from 

her, like a child. After three weeks Kranti returned to Khadigram. 

I asked her, ‘Why didn’t you answer my letter?’ Kranti said, '1 was 

not surprised to get your letter but I didn’t think that you should be 

encouraged. My father has been pressing me to get married. But I 

have no wish to marry. I don’t want to marry, ever.’ 'Why don’t 

you want to marry?’ She said, 'For a woman, marriage means a 

life 0 / domesticity, cooking, looking after husband, cleaning the 

house, caring for the children. I want to be free from all this. So 

if your falling in love means marriage, then forget it. My love for 

you is platonic. Love is like the ocean, you can’t put it in a bucket 

of marriage.’ 

*5 

NO DESTINATION 

Members of the ashram at Khadigram swapped places with people 

on the march from time to rime. So Kranti and 1 were asked to 

stay in Khadigram so that other members could be released to go 

on the march. 

Weeks passed. We worked together in the fields and our friendship 

grew. Krishnaraj, one of the senior members of the ashram called me 

to him. He said, ‘Satish, I want to talk to you about a serious matter. 

Your friendship with Kranti is causing concern in the ashram. If you 

and Kranti want, I will write to her father and see if it is possible to 

arrange a marriage between you, but it is not right in the discipline 

of the ashram that two young unmarried people should be seen 

together so much.’ I said, ‘Kranti does not want to marry and our 

relationship is platonic, a pure love untouched by physical sexuality.’ 

‘I am sorry, Satish, but this must stop. This can’t be allowed. If you 

both feel strongly for each other 1 am afraid one of you will have to 

leave the ashram. We will not let the atmosphere of the ashram be 

filled with gossip and speculation. The life we have here must be 

disciplined.’ 

I was taken aback by his words. I found myself in a crisis. I could 

not live in Khadigram and not meet Kranti. Even if I forced myself 

not to meet Kranti 1 could not stop thinking of her. 1 found solace in 

Vinoba’s dictum ‘Flow like a river, don’t get bogged down.’ 1 decided 

that the best course was for me to leave Khadigram. 

That evening I told Kranti what Krishnaraj had said. She was very 

upset. ‘Don’t leave,’ she said. ‘Even if we do not meet and talk to 

each other at least we can see each other here, but if you go, when 

will we ever meet again?’ 1 said, ‘If I stay, we will both be miserable. 

If we are in the ashram Krishnaraj has made it dear that we must 

accept the rules. 1 feel like 1 am back in the monastery, 1 cannot stay. 

I must move on. I have decided to go to Benares. You must come and 

see me there.’ 

Chapter Three Benares 

B enares was a mysterious city. The more I lived in it, the 

more I liked it. It was a city where nobody hurried. I lived in a 

house in a narrow alley where only pedestrians and cows were able 

to wander. In this old city I felt all around me a sense of rimelessness; 

li fe seemed as it might have been a thousand years ago. In every street 

there were many things quietly happening. There were astrologers of 

great ieaming, teachers, musicians and beggars, but behind the mask 

of a beggar might be a great sadhu , a spiritual seeker. 

The city was full of dirt and tilth, but the dirt was like compost for 

the growth of the spirit. Near the house where I lived was a brahmin, 

a teacher of Sanskrit. I used to watch him every day through my 

window. He imparted his knowledge to his students in an intimate 

atmosphere. I watched him playing devotional ragas on his sitar 

and going to the Ganges every morning chanting Vedic verses. His 

students would come after bathing, with flowers in their hands. 

They worshipped a Shiva I ingam together, offering flowers and 

burning incense. They sang aloud, Sanskrit songs and Upanishads, 

learnt by heart. 

One day I asked the brahmin teacher how he earned his living. He 

looked at my face with surprise and I felt ashamed of my question. 

He said, T never thought about it. It just comes.’ He told mc'that he 

had been living in this street for fifty years and had never left Benares 

in his whole life. 

From time to time I had been writing articles and reports of my 

work for the weekly newspaper of the Bboodan movement which 

was published from Benares. I discovered that there was a vacancy 

for a deputy editor so I went to see Siddaraj Dhadda, the editor. He 

had liked my reports and was happy to employ me. This meant that 

I had an income and a place to live. The offices of the paper were 

on the ground floor of an old house, and the staff lived in rooms 

66 

*7 

NO DESTINATION 

BENARES 

above, sharing the community kitchen. We observed some of the 

practices of the ashram—communal prayer early in the morning 

and one hour’s spinning as our manual labour. 

The life of a deputy editor was quite a different experience. The 

daily routine of a monk and an ashramite was turned on its head, 

here. Every morning at 8.30 I had to open a large pile of post, go 

through umpteen periodicals, newsletters and magazines, read and 

write comments on reports, articles and news stories coming from 

all over India and discuss with Dhadda what should go into the 

paper. We produced a twelve-page tabloid every Friday, to be sent 

out to forty thousand addresses. Thank goodness the circulation 

department was not my responsibility! But meeting deadlines was 

something I had to learn. 

I had an assistant who helped with editing and proof-reading and 

who was experienced in the nitty-gritty of typefaces, type sizes and 

print language. When it came to proof-reading every Wednesday 

afternoon and evening, sometimes even late at night, we would 

work together. My assistant, Vasant, would hold the galleys and 

I would read aloud the original manuscript to ensure that every 

word and every punctuation mark was correctly typeset. We had 

a small room at the printers where we could work. I took great 

pleasure in designing the page, choosing type styles and composing 

the headlines. 

These were the days of metal type, the letters stacked in hand made 

wooden cases. Five compositors formed a great team which worked 

together to produce our weekly paper. 

Working with Dhadda, Vasant, the team of compositors and the 

metal type was exciting and fun and proved to be one of the most 

enjoyable periods of my life. 

Kranti came to benares and stayed in the community house. 

At dinner 1 asked her to come to my Iroom afterwards. I kept waiting 

for her. When 1 heard any footsteps I thought it was her. Hours 

passed, the night passed and no sign of either sleep or Kranti. When 

we met at breakfast I gave her a poem. At lunch she gave me a slip of 

paper: if other people living in the building see me walking to your 

room it would create a misunderstanding, but I will meet you on rhe 

steps of Rajghat at eight o’clock tonight.’ 

68 

The afternoon became very long. I reached the appointed place 

almost an hour early. Kranti came exactly on time. It was a beautiful 

night. We hired a small boat and floated slowly to the other side 

nl the River Ganges and sat on the shining sand under the moon. 

'You wanted to speak to me. Why are you so silent?’ Kranti asked. 

’Perhaps I just wanted to be with you and say I love you,’ 1 answered. 

‘Arc you sure that you love me, because 1 see no connection between 

love and sex.’ ‘I don’t think I could exclude sex from love,’ I said. 

Kranti replied, ‘True oneness is above physical sex.’ We lay all night 

on the sand. Kranti said, ‘I don’t want you ro suffer because of me. 

Why don’t you get married? I would like to help you find a wife, and 

once you are married, all this gossip about our relationship would 

stop and our friendship can continue.* 

The next evening we met again and went for a drink of bhang 

{cannabis and milk). We walked through various bhang shops, 

watching the sellers preparing it. In one of the shops there were 

pictures of Shiva, the god of bhang. We went in. There was a 

pleasant smell of joss-sticks. Two glasses of bhang with almonds, 

milk and cream, were prepared and served. The taste was sweet, 

smooth and cool. The bhang worked quickly on me. The whole 

shop disappeared and the street came into it. One street came in, 

disappeared, then another came in. 1 saw a man enlarging his body to 

an enormous size so that the whole street was filled by him. His long 

hair was tied together on top of his head, his face was angry. He put 

on different bodies. He became my father dying. He became monk 

Kundan lying dead, surrounded with flowers, incense and peacock 

fans. In an instant he changed and became my guru. I was pursued 

by death. I started hitting my head to bring myself back to normal. 

Kranti called a rickshaw and helped me into it. I tried to jump out 

but she held on to me. I cried out, ‘Let me go. There is no home 

and no one is waiting for me there.’ She took me ro the community 

house and lay me down on the bed. She sat by me and then brought 

me some lemon to drink, stroked my hair and put a cool wet cloth on 

my head. I fell asleep. 

In benares THERE were many Shiva temples. 1 used to go to 

the Nepalese temple overlooking the Ganges where the walls were 

covered with erotic sculptures and carvings of gods and goddesses 

69 

NO DESTINATION 

in various postures of union. At the centre of the temple was a large 

Shiva 1 ingam (penis statue), erect, penetrating the yoni (vagina) of 

Parvati the goddess. Above the lingam hung a day pot from which 

drops of water fell and trickled down into the yoni. 

There was a man sitting beside the lingam on a deerskin. He was 

old with glaring eyes, silver-white long hair down to his hips, and 

a silver beard stained with the yellow of smoke. He was Babaji, the 

keeper of the temple. I placed fruit and flowers at the statue and sat 

beside Babaji in silence. I made the offering for many days. 

One day Babaji asked me to fetch some water from the Ganges to 

fill up the day pot above the lingam. The following day I found him 

cleaning the temple and asked if 1 could dean it. He put his hand 

gently on my head and gave me the broom. 

Another day he said, ‘Look at all these people coming here to see 

the temple. They see the external forms, but they have no under¬ 

standing of them.’ I asked what it was they did not understand. He 

said, ‘It is too late in the day. You must come earlier/ ‘At 6.00 am?’ 

Six o’clock is the devil’s time. Four o’clock is the time of the Lord 

Shiva. What can you understand by .coming to me? You see only this 

old beard, a toothless face and a thin body! No need to come.' 

i got up at three-thirty the next morning and went to see Babaji. In 

the courtyard of the temple there was a little hut. Overshadowing it 

was a large old banyan tree, and underneath the tree was a blanket 

on which Babaji slept. I watched him do his yoga and meditation, 

first standing on his head, then standing upright and completely still. 

Babaji told me, ‘I practise Want Marg (left path). 1 worship Shiva the 

three-eyed god and Shakti, his consort, the source of all energy and 

power.’ ‘What is the meaning of the third eye?’ I asked. ‘The third 

eye is the eye of the imagination, the eye of vision, the eye with 

which you see meaning beyond form. Only the third eye is capable 

of seeing mystery, seeing the unknown, seeing in the dark.’ Babaji 

seemed as if he were in a trance. He stopped for a while and then 

continued, The third eye is a symbol of all that we cannot know. It is 

like the third river of Allahabad where the holy rivers of Ganga and 

Jamna meet. Wise men and women have recognized the third river 

of Saraswati and so the town is known by everyone as the confluence 

of three rivers although with our two eyes, we can only see two. 

The two represent negative and positive. The third represents both 

70 

BENARES 

and beyond. Most of humanity fights over thesis or antithesis, the 

proposition ot the opposition, with the third eye one can see and 

experience the whole, the totality.’ 

I found Babaji’s teachings illuminating and enlightening, but the 

teaching was only available at fout o’clock in the morning. At six, 

he would sit in meditation in the temple and the time for speech 

would be over. 

Once he said, ‘Those who pursue things of matter, act by day, but 

those who pursue things of spirit are alert at night. As man and 

woman unite together in love in the hours of night, the atman (soul) 

and the paramatman (universal soul), find union in the calm, cool 

and quiet hours before dawn.’ 

When Babaji talked about the love of man and woman, I seized 

the opportunity to ask him to speak about the worship of the Shiva 

lingam. ‘What is the connection between sexual union and spiritual 

experience?’ The way of tantra is the way of sacred sex. The spirit 

can blossom and flourish only when its home, the body, is totally 

relaxed and when you are absolutely happy. How can you be happy? 

Not by chasing your own happiness, but by loving someone else and 

by making someone else happy. This is the paradox. When you lose 

yourself, you find yourself. When a man and a woman are united in 

their bodies they are free of all physical or mental tensions. There 

is no contradiction or dichotomy between sensuality, sexuality and 

spirituality. This is the way of Shiva, of Rama, of Krishna and of 

Vishnu. In all our temples you will find the statues of Rama in 

consort with Sita, Krishna in consort with Radha, and Vishnu with 

Lakshini. But Shiva taught the ultimate path of tantra and therefore 

it is not enough to see him with Parvati, we have to internalize him in 

sexual, physical bodily union.’ 

Often I would go and sit by him without speaking a word. Conver¬ 

sation always came slowly. Often he would close his eyes and retreat 

into his inner world. If I asked ten questions, Babaji would answer 

half a question. He would say, it is not possible for me to tell you in 

words. I am seventy-seven. If you think I have achieved something, it 

has been by living and experiencing.’ 

Once after 1 had been asking questions, he didn’t reply but took a 

thin piece of loin-cloth four yards long, chewed then swallowed it ail 

except for a small piece which he held in his hand. Then he slowly 

71 

NO DESTINATION 

BENARES 

pulled it out and on the cloth were stains of blood and food. It had 

gone down to his stomach. Another time he put a piece of string in 

one nostril and pulled it out through his mouth. 

Babaji said, The Serpent power in our bodies is like the cobra. 

When the cobra is provoked, it is one of the wildest snakes. It bites 

and you have no life. But it is hidden unless awakened. Through the 

tantra (technique) you can awaken the power centres of the body, 

the seven chakras (wheels) and the kundalini (serpent power). Sexual 

union is the basis of all. Orgasm without ejaculation by sucking the 

sperm back into the body up the spine, awakens the supreme energy 

of our consciousness. The centre above the brain opens like a lotus. 

Then the body becomes the true temple of god.’ 

One morning Babaji said, *1 don’t think you are ready for this 

path. If you want to do gramdan , do it. If you want to change 

the world, go away and change the world/ I was frightened, 1 

could feel his power challenging me. I sat down beside him and 

said, 'Please teach me something more.’ He replied, ‘You need full 

commitment and total surrender, which I don’t see in you. Either 

come in or go away.’ 

We sat in silence. I put my head on his feet. He understood that 1 

was leaving—he didn’t ask me to stay. 

Vinoba came TO benares on his way to Assam. He found our 

city very dirty. People had been using the banks of the Ganges as 

pubfic toilets and then washing themselves in the river, believing 

Mother Ganges had the power to purify everything. At a public 

meeting, Vinoba urged people to build proper toilets. Then he said, 

‘When I speak, only my beard moves, but if we all take brushes we 

can move the filth away.’ 

The next morning a group of us walked with Vinobaa to the 

river holding brushes and wheeling dustcarts. By the time we had 

reached the river bank there were about a thousand people. The 

Mayor of Benares was there, the leading members of the Brahmin 

community, the professors of Benares University—none of whom 

would ever think of touching a broom before now—were there 

carrying brooms. They were all photographed with Vinoba holding 

brooms, even if they did not help very much in the sweeping, they 

created a good impression and the ‘Clean Benares’ campaign got off 

u* ;t good start. Together we cleaned the Dashashwamedh ghat, the 

holiest of the holy steps going down to the river. 

Vinoba said, ‘We should not let this enthusiasm die down. We 

should organize a group of young people who will go from door 

to door persuading people to take their part in the ‘Clean Benares’ 

campaign.’ J joined a group of volunteers. Each day we walked 

through the city street by street. We cleaned and swept as we went. 

We visited homes. In the evening we held public meetings and we 

were fed and looked after by the inhabitants of the streets. 

While we were sweeping the streets and talking to people about 

the life and work of Gandhi and Vinoba, some of our listeners were 

not slow to point out that a new Gandhian complex of buildings, 

which included the offices of the paper of which I was deputy editor, 

was being completed on the outskirts of the city at the cost of half a 

million rupees. This could not be considered an example of simple 

living of the Gandhian kind. I agreed and wrote an article in a 

local newspaper, criticizing the building of such expensive offices 

for ourselves, rather than using the donated money in the villages. 

I also questioned the need t<j establish yet another organization, 

the Gandhian Institute of Studies, which was to employ university 

graduates at high salaries to do research and translate Gandhian 

ideas into the language of the social sciences, with an obsession for 

charts, facts and statistics. This article bought me into direct conflict 

with the new Gandhian Institute of Studies. The Deputy Director 

said to me, ‘How can we trust you if you express your disagreement 

in public like this?’ I said, ‘Whether 1 express myself in public or 

in private the fact remains that we are wasting time and money in 

giving Gandhian philosophy an academic face. If our movement is 

a people’s movement it must speak the people’s language, not the 

language of academics.’ 

For me, this man, this institute and this building represented that 

wing of the Gandhian establishment which was career-conscious, 

western-suited, city orientated, intellectual, salary seeking—those 

who felt it necessary to do a public relations job on the movement 

to fit it to the urban, industrial, twentieth century. They took the 

name of Gandhi but were diametrically opposed to the simplicity 

of Gandhi. My opposition to the Institute and criticism of the smart 

new offices brought me the sack from the Bhoodan paper, although 

7 i 

73 

NO DESTINATION 

BENARES 

against the wishes of the editor. In some ways it was a relief to me 

that I never moved into those buildings I despised. 

While i was working with Siddaraj Dhadda a friend of his was 

looking for a husband for his daughter Lata, Siddaraj wrote to his 

friend Suranaji proposing marriage betwen Lata and me. As was the 

custom there was a lengthy exchange of letters giving life histories 

and photographs, and matching of horoscopes. From her photo Lata 

looked very attractive. Siddaraj told me, ‘Lata is nineteen years old, 

she has been to school for ten years, she is gentle and good mannered 

and able to cook and sew.’ 

Dhadda and I travelled five hundred miles to Hinganghat to see 

Lata and her family. They had a large three-storey house, die front of 

which was the family drapery shop. We sat in the shop on thick, large 

cushions on the floor. The whole family was there: the mother, the 

brother, the uncle and his son and a few close friends. Lata’s brother 

served us with tea and sherbet and a big tray of sweets and savouries; 

pistachio and almond halva, gulab jamun and samosas. Apart from 

Lata’s mother, this was a male gathering. Women peeped through 

the curtained doorway at the back of the shop. After some time Lata 

came with a silver tray filled with betel leaf and nuts. She walked 

slowly, but appeared full of energy, her eyes were cast down, her 

sari covering her head revealed just a little of her black hair, parted 

in the centre. The sari was orange with a red border, and she wore 

a red blouse. Her bangles of silver and glass tinkled as she walked. 

Her face was round, her eyelashes edged her fish-shaped eyes. She 

offered the pan to me, after which she sat shyly near me. She was a 

fine-looking woman, but in a few minutes she was gone—there was 

no time for conversation. 

Coming back in the train Siddaraj said, ‘Marriage is a way of 

performing your social and communal responsibility. It is your 

dhartna to accept the Jove of woman and unite with her. Love does 

not come by accident or chance, you don’t fall in it, you cultivate it. 

In my view. Lata will be a good companion for you.’ 

It was a long time before Lata’s father wrote to us. Eventually the 

engagement ring was brought to me by Lata’s brother, and I gave 

to him an engagement ring and saris for Lata. The date for the 

marriage was fixed. 

74 

About fifty friends of mine came with me to attend the marriage. 

Lata’s family had arranged for a brahmin to perform the ceremony. 

The house was decorated with young banana trees in clay pots, 

forming arches and pathways. Silvery stars in red, green and blue 

hung from the windows. Coconuts entwined in ropes hung from 

ilic walls. Clay water pots painted in broad strokes stood on top of 

each other in comers. As we entered, young girls sprinkled jasmine, 

rose and musk scent on the clothes of all the guests. Lata and I sat 

on silk cushions under a silk umbrella. The soles of her feet and 

(he palms of her hands were intricately patterned with a red dye. 

Her face was powdered with glitter. Strings of jasmine flowers hung 

from her hair. She was wearing the traditional red sari with gold 

embroidery and jewellery on her body. Lata and I sat in the centre 

of the courtyard as Agni, the goddess of fire, blazed in front of us. 

Agni was the sacred witness to our union. Lata's hand was placed in 

mine and both our hands were bound together with a silk scarf. The 

brahmin pronounced a mantra. A corner of Lata’s sari was knotted 

to my shawl. The brahmin pronounced another mantra. Thus tied 

together we walked seven times around the fire. Lata’s uncle took 

her in his arms and carried her round me seven times. The brahmin 

said, ’Satish Kumar, take Lata as your companion in the living of 

your life. Look at her, never see enough of her, cherish her with the 

eyes of love. Lata, love him well forever, walk with him as his wife 

and follow him like his own shadow forever. I marry you.’ 

I put a garland of flowers around Lata’s neck and she put one 

around mine. Flute, shahanai and drums played ceremonial music. 

Hundreds of people ate sweets and festive food and drank sherbets 

and milk shakes and rose petal flavoured drinks; friends read poems 

giving us blessings. 

The next morning Lata was sent to me wearing a yellow sari. Her 

mother was crying and she was crying. Lata’s brother accompanied 

us to Benares; when we arrived we were received at the station by 

many friends and Lata was loaded with garlands. 

In comparison with her family home, my flat was very small 

—no cupboards, and not much furniture. A friend of mine had 

decorated the flat with flowers and fruits. Lata’s father had given 

us an eiderdown, blankets, pillows, clothes, cooking pots, plates and 

water jugs. In the evening, Lata’s brother left and we were alone for 

75 

NO DESTINATION 

BENARES 

the first time. We unpacked, made the bed, arranged our new and 

shining possessions, laid the carpet and sat eating sweets. Lata spoke 

very little. 1 longed to embrace her, but she was afraid: ‘Please don’t 

come near me like this, 1 she said. 1 kissed her. She said, ‘1 am told it 

is very painful. I don’t want it.’ She lay down on the mattress and 

covered her body and face. I lay beside her trying to think how to 

persuade her. It was dark. I drew back the cover slowly, opened the 

buttons of her blouse and removed her sari and petticoat. I found 

my way inside her. She gasped, then turned aside to sleep. I lay 

awake, alone on my honeymoon night. It had just been a physical 

act without any love. It was an encounter between an unwilling wife 

and an impatient husband. I felt guilty and disappointed. 

1 had all kinds of ideas in my head about our life together. Babaji’s 

teachings of tantra and visions of happiness with Lata were whirling 

around inside me. But for Lata it was a strange situation. In a 

conventional Indian marriage. Lata would have come and lived with 

my family. My mother would have looked after her, my sisters would 

have entertained her, my nephews and nieces would have teased her 

and amused her. It would have been a whole new world and the 

passage into married life would have been smoothed and eased. 

She would have been not so much married to me, as married to my 

whole family. I would have been only the focus for a small part of 

her attention. I would have met her in the evening to hear from her 

the events of the day, and if there were any little problems with my 

family, I would have been there to comfort her. But here was Lata, 

left all day in a two-room flat, thinking and worrying about our next 

encounter. For her it proved to be almost ‘hate at first sight*. 

Her parents wrote saying it was their custom to take their daugh¬ 

ter back soon after marriage so that she wouldn’t feel homesick. So 

Lata’s brother arrived to take her home. After a month I went to 

fetch her again. This time she was more relaxed and happy, but there 

was no sublime union and the passion I was so eagerly anticipating 

never came into bloom. 

Swamiji, a disciple of vinoba, was visiting Benares and look¬ 

ing for people to join his newly-established ashram. I had just been 

sacked from my weekly paper and was looking for new work. 

Swamiji said, ‘Our new ashram is near Bangalore, situated in the 

Nilgiri hilts with many sandalwood trees, mango groves and beauti¬ 

ful lakes. 1 It sounded enticing. Lata was also keen to move. Living in 

a community promised to be less lonely for her, so we jumped at the 

chance. We made the two-thousand-mile journey to the south and 

arrived in Vishwaneedam. There were a number of young women 

members living in the community, which made Lata’s life more 

pleasant. They all worked together in the garden and Lata and I 

learnt to cook South Indian dishes. Swamiji was a celibate, yet be 

considered the whole community to be his family. All things were 

held in common. None of us were paid a salary but all our needs 

were met from the common purse. Much of the food was grow n on 

the community land. Bananas and papayas were in abundance. We 

sold some of our fruit and vegetables and also some grain. Our cows 

provided milk for the community. 

Lata became pregnant. She told me it was the custom in her family 

for the daughter to return to her parents to have her first child. 

76 

77 

Chapter Five  Wanderer 

O ne morning I was having coffee with Prabhakar Menon in 

a cafe in Bangalore. Prabhakar and I had become dose friends 

since living in Vishwaneedam. He had with him the Deccan Herald, 

an English language daily. He read out to me the news of Bertrand 

Russell's arrest at an anti-nuclear demonstration in London. 

Russell had said,.Today a handful of people in a few countries are 

vested with power to preside over the destiny of humankind. It is 

the duty of every common man and woman to rise up and expose 

the intrigues of the big powers which may lead to the destruction 

of humanity through nuclear war.’ 

I said, ‘Here is a man of ninety committing civil disobedience and 

going to jail. What are we doing?’ 

Prabhakar had a brilliant thought, ‘Why don’t we start a Peace 

March to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington, the four nuclear 

capitals, and demonstrate physically our opposition to this nuclear 

nonsense.* It was a brainwave, and 1 grasped hold of this amazing 

idea. ‘Let us do it/ I shouted and thumped the table with my fist. 

Prabhakar said, ‘Do you think the two of us are enough for the 

job?’ ‘It is the job that matters, not the numbers,’ 1 replied. We 

were carried away by our enthusiasm. We ordered more coffee. 

The decision had been made. 1 said, ‘Our journey will be a Peace 

Pilgrimage. By going to the nuclear capitals, we can attempt to 

exorcize them of nuclear terror.' 

I was reluctant to tell Lata of my scheme. As I wavered, a whole 

month passed. 1 was grappling with world problems, but the prob¬ 

lem of leaving my pregnant wife seemed to defy all solutions and 

left me helpless. So I wrote her a letter, telling her of my plan to 

walk from Delhi to Washington, justifying it with some idealistic 

phrases such as ‘personal responsibility for the fate of the world', 

‘not wanting to be a passive onlooker while the world is rushing 

79 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

headlong into a suicidal arms race’, and ‘a voice crying in the 

wilderness*. 

I told her I would take my final decision only after she gave her 

wholehearted consent. The letter I received from her was a surprise. 

Your undertaking is full of faith and courage. Had I not been 

pregnant I myself would have liked to accompany you on your 

Peace Pilgrimage. Please don’t take any decision before the birth of 

our child. As our first child, it takes precedence over us, doesn’t it?' 

I went to see her, and we talked about my plans. She suggested that 

with her mother and brother, we should rent a house in Bangalore 

so that we could be together for the remainder of her pregnancy. We 

rented a small house in the suburbs of the city and made arrange¬ 

ments with the hospital. We all took care to give Lata an undisturbed 

pregnancy. During this time she and I had many discussions about 

the proposed walk and she agreed to it fully. Her brother had found a 

job in Bangalore and wanted to stay. Her mother too was very happy 

in the city, so they both agreed to stay and look after Lata and the 

baby until my return. Vishwaneedam agreed to support the walk and 

pay me a bursary which was sent to Lata while I was away. 

Swamiji said, 'You are going to the world as emissaries of our 

Ashram.’ 

On 22 nd April 1962 , Lata gave birth to a baby girl in Ban¬ 

galore Hospital. I was not allowed to be with her, but waited 

outside the delivery room. An hour after the birth I was allowed 

to see our infanr girl. We called her Sadhana, which means seeking. 

Lata's face was radiant; she had forgiven me for that harsh and 

unwanted act of love on our first night. With Lata’s agreement 

Prabhakar and I fixed the date—we would leave Bangalore on 

10 th May for our world journey. My elation at now being free 

to go was tinged with sorrow and some reluctance to leave the 

newly-born babe. Lata said, ‘Your baby will be in good care: I 

will look after her, and be father as well as mother to her. She 

will remind me of you hut also keep me company in my lonely 

times. Don t Jet it be said that a woman held you back from your 

adventure.’ 

Lata was there with our baby daughter on the railway platform to 

say goodbye. She had brought some flowers for me, but there were 

tears in her eyes. 1 was silent. 

Men on and 1 went to see vi no ba to seek his blessings. 

I It was walking in Assam; when we arrived he greeted us with his 

familiar smile. He was already informed about our plans and started 

probing us about our journey, opening an atlas in front of him. He 

wanted to know which route we were taking, what preparations we 

had already made, and which countries we were going to visit. 

Next morning we joined him in his ‘eternal’ walk. He put his 

right arm on my shoulder, his left arm on Menon’s shoulder and 

so we walked. He asked, ‘How much money are you taking with 

you?’ We told him ‘Some business friends have agreed to bear 

some of our expenses and will arrange for foreign currency to 

be available for us in some of the countries we journey through.’ 

Vinoba became silent. l Do we have your blessing, Vinoba?’ 1 asked. 

He remained silent for some moments longer then said quietly, ‘It 

is a long journey. You’ll need some protection. 1 want to give you 

two “weapons” to protect you.’ ‘How can non-violent people carry 

weapons?’ 1 asked. ‘Non-violent people carry non-violent weap¬ 

ons,’ Vinoba replied. ‘The first weapon is that you will remain 

vegetarian in all circumstances; the second is that you will carry 

no money, not a single penny.’ ‘Remaining a vegetarian I under¬ 

stand, but how can we live without money on such a long jour¬ 

ney?’ I asked. Vinoba said, ‘You were a begging monk for nine 

years. How did you live without money? Because your pot was 

empty, you could fill it. Money is an obstacle to real contact with 

people. If you are tired after walking you will find a hotel to sleep 

in, you will find a restaurant to eat in and you will never meet 

people. But if you have no money you will be forced to speak to 

people and ask humbly for hospitality. Secondly, when you are 

offered hospitality you will say, “1 am sorry but 1 eat only veg¬ 

etables.” People will ask you why? Then you can tell them about 

your principles of non-violence and peace. This will open com¬ 

munication.’ 

Prabhakar and I looked at each other. We were both convinced of 

the value of Vinoba’s ‘weapons’, and promised him that we would 

do as he suggested. Vinoba said, *1 am very happy. Go with courage. 

Have faith in God and trust in people. The world will meet you with 

open arms, you will fulfil yourselves in this journey. I bless you. 

God bless you.’ 

81 

So 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

The sky was overcast. Again and again we had to quicken our 

steps to keep up with Vinoba who was walking briskly along the 

zigzag path leading through the mountains. We felt as if he was 

teaching us how to walk. He asked again about our route. We 

told him that we intended to travel through the Khyber Pass, enter 

Afghanistan and cross over the Hindu Kush mountains and take 

the direct route to Tashkent and thence to Moscow. Vinoba said, 

‘Although that route is the most direct it may not be the best for your 

purpose, In the Hindu Kush there are few passes open through the 

year and very few people live there. Also after Tashkent there will 

be long stretches of desert between villages and nowhere for you to 

stop for the night. Why not take the more populated route through 

northern Persia? The cultural links between India and Iran have been 

strengthened by many travellers over the centuries/ 

Once again he put his hands on our shoulders and silently looked 

at us with great love. 

We left Vinoba and went by train to Delhi. 

Earlier we had applied for our passports in Madras. The 

authorities there interpreted our walk as ‘political’ and forwarded 

our applications to the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Delhi. They told 

us we had to furnish a guarantee of twenty thousand rupees as 

security in the event of our needing repatriation. Who was going 

to bear this responsibility for us? My friend Kishor from Calcutta 

presented the security. But in spite of completing all the necessary 

formalities, we were still without our passports. In the scorching 

heat of summer we did the rounds of the various departments of the 

Foreign Affairs Ministry. In the bewildering desert of government 

bureaucracy a passport was like a mirage, always beyond our reach. 

Finally we decided to abandon the wild goose chase for the passports 

and start our walk without them. 

The clouds we had seen in Assam soon caught up with us. On ist 

June they suddenly burst, letting loose torrential rains. That day we 

went to Gandhi’s grave. As we stood there in silence, a cool breeze 

started blowing, awakening in us a new sense of life. It was under 

hanging clouds that Vinoba had given us his blessings; and now 

standing before the grave we were once again enveloped by rain 

and clouds. 1 seemed to hear Gandhi’s soft, almost caressing voice 

in the falling rain. ‘Don’t forget that the people are as generous 

as the clouds and their hearts can be as tender as the raindrops.’ 

Gandhi and Vinoba. Vinoba and Gandhi. Somehow their separate 

blessings mingled into a single sound—soothing our anxieties, filling 

our hearts with courage. We made the pledge: let people alone be the 

source of our sustenance, and let us never carry money during the 

course of our walk. 

A newspaper published the news that two peace-marchers were 

going on foot from Delhi to America to promote the cause of 

world peace, but the government had failed to provide them with 

passports. There were questions in Parliament as to why the gov¬ 

ernment had failed to give us passports. Nehru, then Prime Minister, 

promised he would go into the matter himself and just as we were 

nearing the Pakistan border on znd July, two stale officials came 

searching for us and delivered the passports into our hands. We had 

walked nearly 370 miles in thirty-two days in the burning heat of 

June. Each day we had set off in the cool hours of dawn, usually 

after a breakfast of mangos and milk. But for the first few days we 

suffered from bleeding blisters and aching muscles. 

Thirty-five men and women came to bid us farewell at the border 

town of Baga. We knew no one in Pakistan and everyone seemed 

anxious about what would happen to us when we entered. One 

woman friend came with parcels of food and urged us to carry some 

food with us in case we didn’t get anything to eat. She thought we 

were going to an enemy country. After all, India and Pakistan were 

in a state of war. We said that taking food with us would mean that 

we distrusted the Pakistani people. ‘These parcels of food are parcels 

of mistrust. You are very kind but we cannot take food with us.’ The 

woman was in tears. She hugged us and said, ‘You are crazy but you 

are my sons. Do your best for the world.. 

This was my first day, ever, out of India. Waving goodbye to 

our friends, we made our first steps into a foreign land. We went 

through the passport check. The huge numbers of policemen and 

heavily armed soldiers seemed to watch us keenly but asked us no 

questions. Anxiously we came out of the customs control. 

A young man was waiting for us. ‘Are you the two Indians who 

are on a Pilgrimage for Peace?’ We could not believe our eyes or ears. 

We said, ‘Yes, but how do you know about us?’ ‘I read in my local 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

newspaper that two travellers are coining with a message of peace, 

with no money in their pockets. I decided to meet you and take you 

to my house, sixteen miles from here in Lahore. I have been waiting 

for you for hours. Please come with me in my car and be my guests.’ 

We said, ’How kind you are. We would love to come to your house 

but not in your car. Give us your address and we should reach you 

by evening. The young man seemed unconvinced. He said, ‘You 

may meet someone else on the way who will persuade you to be 

his guest and I might never get the chance of being your host. So 

please come with me now, and make an exception.’ We said, ‘We 

promise to come and stay with you.’ He thought for a moment and 

said, ‘I accept your promise on one condition. You are walking, you 

need to travel light, you don’t need your rucksacks on your backs. 

Give me your rucksacks as a guarantee that you will at least come 

to collect your baggage.’ We laughed and gave him our rucksacks. 

A short while before my Indian woman friend had been in tears, 

worried that no one would feed us in Pakistan. Now there were tears 

of joy in our eyes, at meeting such determined hospitality. 

A few hours later, another man rushed out into the road and 

stopped us. He said, ‘Your host for tonight has told me all about 

you. I have prepared your lunch. Please come and rest and eat lunch 

with me.’ We were moved. Hungry and thirsty, we went into the cool 

of his house. He had prepared rice and salad and lentil soup, but the 

main dish cooked specially for us, as a treat for his guests, was fish 

freshly caught from his pond. We were hesitant to say to him that 

we could not eat fish. However when we explained that we were 

vegetarians, he understood. 

As we entered Lahore, by the Shalamar Gardens, we saw our host 

approaching. He said, ‘It is better that I walk with you so that you 

don’t get lost in this huge and congested city.’ And indeed Lahore 

was huge and congested. The rickshaws, the buggies, the cars, the 

buses, and the pedestrians, filled the narrow streets. We walked 

through Anar Kali Bazaar, where life was in full swing. Men walked 

along wearing freshly-starched muslin shirts (kurta) and trousers, 

and white embroidered muslin caps. Hundreds of men clad in white 

packed the pavements. Against this white background stood out 

the black burkas in silk or cotton of the women. The women were 

covered from head to toe, with only a small area of gauze as their 

contact point with the outside world. The unmarried young girls 

were the only ones to add colour to this black and white world. They 

wore skin-tight trousers and shirts in gaudy colours of red, yellow, 

blue, purple, and pink, all gleaming in silk and satin. A thin nylon 

or chiffon scarf was thrown over their hair as a token of feminine 

modesty on their provocatively-clad youthful bodies. 

Our host guided us through this sea of humanity. He lived in an 

old house in a small lane. He begged us to stay for more than one 

night. We met his friends, walked around the city, ate our fill of 

Lahore delicacies. And on the third day we bade him farewell. 

It took twenty-six days to walk the distance of 317 miles across 

Pakistan. Whether it was a rickshaw driver, vegetable-seller or 

farmer, whoever saw us on the road with placards on our front 

and rucksacks on our backs, would stop for a moment to have a 

word with us. Everywhere people would ask to which community 

or religion we belonged. To all such questions we replied, ‘We are 

human beings, first and last. Our religion is our faith in humanity 

—and there can be no religion greater than that. If we come as 

Indians, we will meet Pakistanis. If we come as Hindus, we will 

meet Christians or Muslims. If we come as socialists, we wilt meet 

capitalists. If we come as human beings, we meet human beings 

everywhere.’ 

At last we found ourselves at the frontier post, the Khyber Pass. 

The local authorities warned us that to walk from Delhi was all 

right but to go on foot through the tribal pass wasn’t safe. We 

assured them that we came to ‘observe, listen and love’. After some 

difficulty the government authorities in Peshawar agreed ro let us go, 

on the condition that we were accompanied by four armed guards. 

We walked the winding roads of this mysterious land alongside the 

small, snaking river which constantly provided us with refreshing 

and cool, thirst-quenching water. To the left and right of us moun¬ 

tains rose up steeply, piercing the sky. Every now and then we met 

an army post guarding the frontier—the frontier through which 

so many invaders had come. Walking through this land of battles 

we murmured our mantra of peace in the presence of our armed 

guards, who stayed with us for the twenty-four hours it took us ro 

get through the Pass. On our way we had frequent talks with the 

tribal people (Pathans) whom we met. ‘Much malicious propaganda 

84 

»5 

NO DESTINATION 

is made against us/ some of them told us. ‘Consequently, we feel 

ignored and isolated. We believe that if a guest comes, God comes 

in him. We carry arms to protect our guests, even at the cost of 

our own lives/ 

Near the Afghanistan border, suddenly a car stopped and started 

reversing back towards us. ‘Do you want a lift?’ the man asked. From 

his accent we realized he must be American. ‘No thank you, we are 

walking/ we said. ‘Where are you walking?’ the man asked. ‘To 

America/ There were four men in the car and they all burst into 

laughter. ‘Do you know where America is?* ‘We have seen it on 

the map/ we replied. The man sitting beside the driver got out of 

the car and said, ‘I don’t believe you fellows can make it to America 

on foot, but if you do, here is my card. I live in Philadelphia. If you 

ever reach America, call me and be my guests/ We took his card and 

packed it away carefully. Collecting addresses was one of our most 

important activities; because we had no money, addresses became 

our greatest treasure. 

After the Khyber Pass, we walked through the barren plains and 

high mountains of Afghanistan. When we were hungry we walked 

into gardens by the road and picked huge egg-shaped melons with 

yellow and green stripes. The taste, texture and flavour was such 

that we called them fruits of paradise. Both melons and grapes were 

abundant—even the donkeys were given them to eat. We feasted 

ourselves on almonds, pistachio nuts and many kinds of dried fruit 

which people gave us as we passed through mountain villages and 

nomad camps. In the evenings we went to the kabva (green tea) 

houses where there were hand woven, earthy-coloured carpets and 

people sitting cross-legged, relaxing with round cushions behind 

their backs. When we asked if we could stay the night there, the 

response was always positive, and we would be given cup after cup 

of tea with fresh home-baked bread. 

In Kabul we stayed with an Indian businessman. He was very 

happy to see two of his countrymen on a journey of adventure. 

He equipped us with warm clothing, soap, toothpaste and shoes, 

and provided us with enough stamps to write to everybody back 

home and to some contacts en route. We rested and wrote our 

travel stories. 

WANDERER 

Kabul appeared to us as the capital of glorious donkeys. They 

brought fruit, vegetables and nuts from the surrounding countryside 

.iml took back the consumer items of the city. They added their 

charm to the Kabul streets. A week’s stay in the cool breezes of 

Kabul refreshed us, and we moved on. 

There were three roads to Herat: the Northern road built by 

the Russians, the southern .road built by the Americans and the 

Traditional track which cut through the mountainous centre of the 

country straight to Herat. We took the last of the three—the caravan 

route, used by donkeys and camels, which proved to be as difficult 

as predicted by the locals. We had to climb peak after peak, meeting 

occasional camel caravans, or shepherds with their flocks of sheep 

when we were near a village. After climbing a peak, we would sit 

down on some rocks completely out of breath, and gain strength 

to climb the next one. We carried old army water bottles, but some¬ 

times water was scarce. We saw mirages in the dry desert between the 

peaks. Blisters became my constant companions and every evening 

Menon would perform a minor operation on my feet with scissors, 

plaster and hot water. One day in the mountains my feet became 

so swollen that the pain was unbearable. 1 walked ten steps then 

had to sit down. We were being guided by a local horseman and 

he insisted that I should sit on his horse. I said, ‘From Delhi to here 

l have walked every inch and I don’t want to give up.’ He laughed, 

saying that I shouldn’t be so dogmatic since the body was the most 

important thing to carry out the walk. 

Our average speed on mountain paths was two miles an hour. One 

day we left at five o’clock in the morning. We met peak after peak, 

and not a single village. When we started to climb a peak we hoped 

and expected to see a village from the top, but when we arrived at the 

top of the peak we saw another peak and no sign of any habitation. 

So it went on, peak after peak and hour after hour. We must have 

crossed at least fifteen peaks. By three or four in the afternoon, we 

had finished all our water. Sometimes we did see a village in the 

valley but when we arrived there we discovered only ruins. By sunset 

we were really worried. Now we had to continue walking in the dark 

—and if we were to get lost in these mountains, who would ever find 

us? We had seen nobody all day, but we kept on walking. We were 

hungry, thirsty and exhausted. 

86 

*7 

NO DESTINATION 

At about tunc in the evening we heard a few dogs barking Our 

faces hr up. 'There must be a village.- We followed the sound of 

barking. At the outskirts of a village, three or four dogs barked at 

us loudly. We heard a man calling off the dogs. Wc approached the 

voice. He was standing in front of a large black tent: a Pathan who 

had come from the town of Kandhar in the Plains to the south He 

was a merchant travelling by camel, trading in cloths, brass pots, salt 

and green tea. Fortunately in his journeys to Pakistan he had learnt 

Urdu, a language very similar to our own. We had very little energy 

left for talking, but he understood instantly our need for shelter for 

the night. He made us hot tea, gave us some flat bread with cubes of 

white sugar, and goat cheese. We slept in his tent. 

Next morning, the clear yellow rays of the sun woke us. Our 

Pathan host was up and ready for his journey. His white turban 

was tightly bound around his head. He wore a black waistcoat on 

a loose, big, long shirt, and underneath it, lavishly-pleated baggy 

trousers gathered in at the ankle above his handmade Afghan shoes 

with upturned points at the toes and tops of painted leather We 

sat drinking tea and earing flat bread, cubes of sugar and goat’s 

cheese. ‘How is your great leader Gandhi?’ the Pathan asked He 

was shocked to hear that Gandhi had been assassinated fourteen 

years before.’What a crazy world. The Prophet of Peace was killed 

by a bullet. The world will never understand the value of such great 

people. Our beloved leader, Abdul Gaffar Khan is rotting in a prison 

of the Pakistani dictators. Gaffar Khan is our Gandhi. He is the 

Lord of Love.' 

We knew well of the Frontier Gandhi, as he is known throughout 

",. L,ke Mahatma Gandhi, he had struggled for the independence 

of India with complete adherence to non-violent means—a concept 

almost unknown among the Pathans, who are warriors. Mahatma 

Gandhi had always said, 'Gaffar Khan’s achievement is greater 

than that of any of us. We are teaching non-violence to a people 

who have no weapons and have a tradition of non-violence behind 

them. Gaffar Khan is the Badshah-Lord of the Lords—he teaches 

non-violence to a people who carry guns.’ Our host said, ‘I have 

travelled back and forth so many times that if it were added together 

it would be more than a journey around the world, but I have done 

it only lor my bread and you are doing it for the peace of the world.’ 

88 

WANDERER 

‘lam surprised to see that you are an admirer of Gandhi and Gaffar 

Khan and still carry a gun on your shoulder.’ 1 said. ‘This gun on my 

shoulder is like my turban on my head, but I pray to Allah rhat there 

will be no need for me to use it, as Allah has enabled me to live so far 

without ever using it.’ 

We came out of the tent and saw the glorious sun making the mud 

huts of the village shine like gold. The village was in front of us on 

the slope of a hill. It lay in heavenly peace. No sign of modern 

civilization, no cars, no radio, no road, no electricity, no telephone, 

no machinery whatsoever. Men and women were healthy, handsome 

and strong. A young woman passed us by, going to the river. She 

carried a huge basket on her back, which hung from a strap round 

heF forehead and reached from her shoulders down past her hips, in 

it she collected cattle dung and firewood. Her face was fair, gentle 

and innocent. This woman, 1 thought, will never go to school, will 

never travel. She will blossom and wither in this valley, oblivious 

of political intrigues and nuclear explosions. Our Pathan host is the 

only connection between this village and the outside world. 

We reached Herat, the last town of our Afghan journey. No 

house was higher than one storey. The whole town appeared to 

be undet one roof, with the dome of the mosque over it. The 

people were tall, brown and handsome, wearing large white turbans 

and black embroidered clothes. We walked around and met many 

Western travellers in search of inner peace and hoping to find it 

through the fresh smoke of hashish, which was openly available. 

These were the beatniks and the first hippies, singing and playing 

their guitars, absorbed in the sounds. Many were on their way to 

India, and when they saw us they surrounded us, full of curiosity and 

questions about the ghats of Benares, sadhus, yogis and meditation. 

Herat was at the crossroads. We, the Eastern travellers were going 

to the West to shake off dogmas and sectarianism. They were going 

to India to break out of intellectual and technological straitjackets, 

hoping to find wisdom in the simple life of the ashrams. 

The story of two Americans lost in the stormy desert was going 

around Herat, and when the local police commissioner heard about 

us he approached us and tried to persuade us not to w T alk but to 

take a bus. He informed us that at that time there was a particularly 

89 

no destination 

bad sand storm raging the border area of Afghanistan and Iran 

l " 3,t f d * ^ day , S HCTat ,he hope that thc storm might 

u side, but when it showed no signs of doing so and we were told 

that it might take weeks for it to pass, we decided to leave. Since we 

insisted on walking, the police commissioner found a villager who 

knew the desert tracks, to act as our guide. If we hadn’t had that 

friendly villager with us, we would have been unable to find our way 

outofAfghanistan. There were only seventy-five miles from Herat 

to the border but it was the most difficult part of our walk so far For 

days we were completely enveloped in the whirling sand storm, We 

wrapped layers of cloth around our heads, especially covering our 

noses and mouths, just keeping a little space through which to see- 

even then the sand found its way to all corners of our bodies. The sun 

was defeated by the sand; it was so dark that we had to walk holding 

the hands of our village guide. With the help of the guide we stayed 

wuh various local farmers and village chiefs in their mud houses. We 

ended the journey stayingin a government guest house on the border 

and next morning crossed into Iran. 

We passed through many small villages and usually became the 

guests of the Dehdar—the village chief—but occasionally there were 

problems. In Khurmabad we went straight to the Dehdar and found 

h.m in his shop. In our broken Persian, we explained to him that 

we needed some shelter for the night. He asked many quest,ons. 

Soon a small crowd of villagers gathered round. The Dehdar told 

us that his house was too small and there was no room for us. We 

said that we could sleep in the courtyard, but this wasn’t acceptable: 

We waited there for almost half an hour but no one in the crowd 

offered to give us shelter. It was the first time we had been refused 

hospitality. Apparently they suspected that we were spies. We asked 

some villagers where we could find a place to sleep for the night 

Agam we were refused hospitality. We walked on to seek refuge in 

the next village where we were more fortunate. 

The Caspian Sea lay on our right, green cotton fields and rows 

of pomegranate trees on our left, and ahead of us the long track 

which disappeared into the Demavand mountains, through which 

tunnel after tunnel was being bored as part of a new road to Tehran 

One time we had to crawl a few hundred yards through a narrow 

9P 

WANDERER 

hole only three feet high and while we were in the hole we heard 

shouts of ‘danger, danger*. We crouched to the side with some 

workers. A dynamite blast shook the mountain, bringing rocks 

and dust down around us. We crossed the mountains, and came 

down into the plains and arrived in the capital of Persia, the city of 

Tehran, 

We went straight to the offices of the Kheyhan International, one 

of the daily newspapers in English, and told them our story. Next 

morning there were banner headlines with our pictures and a long 

article. This made us celebrities. The Indian Embassy and the Indian 

community in particular received us with enthusiasm. 

We had written to the Shah requesting an audience. We were 

now informed through the Indian Embassy that the Shah would be 

pleased to receive us. Naturally there were one or two formalities 

with which we should comply—the customs of the court. The court 

minister told us that we should present ourselves in black suits with 

matching ties. Neither of us had worn a suit in our lives. The Indian 

ambassador was very eager that we should nor miss this opportunity, 

and offered to provide us with suits. We felt that this was against 

the spirit of our whole venture, and we should go as we were, in 

our Indian shirts and trousers. We wrote to the minister expressing 

our sentiments. After an exchange of letters and telephone calls, 

apparently the Shah granted us an exception and we went to see 

him in our ordinary clothes. 

The meeting was cordial. He recalled his own journey to Mos¬ 

cow by plane and warned us that we would have to cross the 

high, snow-covered peaks and passes of the Caucasus, where any 

walking would be most difficult since it would be winter when 

we got there. He avoided talking about the problems of peace, 

armaments and military pacts and whenever we tried to bring the 

point he either blamed the big powers or cited the vulnerability 

of the small nations, but he showed great interest in our human 

endeavour of walking around the world. He wanted to give us 

money to help us in our journey, but when we explained that 

not only did we not accept transport, but also could not accept 

money, he laughed and said, ‘We are the same. 1 also never carry 

any money! The shah and the fakir (a begging muslim monk) meet 

on the same ground.* 

9i 

NO DESTINATION 

, ,1S ' ened C j arefu,l 5' to our route through the rest of Iran and 

afterwards we discovered that the Shah had informed his people 

™? r . 6 Way 3nd We were 8 iv «' sumptuous royal hospitality 

While we were « Tehran we went to the Soviet EmbLy to 

ange our visas. As it turned out it had been much easier for us 

Ira^h thr ° Ugh m °" ntains Afghanistan and the deserts of 

Iran than to get a Soviet visa from these officials. The first time we 

went, we were told that it would be too cold to walk throulh R US «a 

^ and ApriL 1116 sec °" d time, the samf official 

our norl^ l argUmC " tS about the cold and snow and added that 

in the ! Propaganda against nuclear weapons wasn’t necessary 

2 l II n ’ C th ‘ rd dme hc sa ' d we would be far ZZ 

Chey wem «uXg ^ 7* * WeSter " and Ameri «’ for 

4 y were causing the nuclear arms race. The fourth time the official 

went with us to the Indian Embassy to ask their advice. The First 

in ^ ° r th .V ndlan Embassy said that the Indian government 

the R re5p0ns,ble i for our belj eft in disarmament and .t was up to 

Emh! USS,an L W Mher tHey 8aVe “ S 3 Visa or n °t, but the Indian 

Srsr^irrr -■ ■■ *-—- *" 

offSdTmtlr 0 the f SOViet EmbaSSy - The Russian official then 

c :ZZ A a ??* f ° r tWent >' da >' s ' Provided we went only to big 

ct.es and provided that we deposited enough money to cover ahouf 

travelling w>h W '* h ' ntOUrist aBency ’ We told him we were 

ZnSv h m ° ney and that we must walk, adding ’Till now 

people have been sympathetic and generous to us everywhere and we 

have no reason to believe that the Soviet people will /different The 

aer without it and if your police arrest us and pur us in prison rhar 

n, 1 "" went a ® airi we saw the Consul. He told us that he had 

Phoned Moscow and talked to the Soviet Peace CommUtee Th ^ 

had taken responsibility to be our hosts. He would treat our case as 

an excepnon. We were given four-month visas. 

bofoer Ou'rVt ^i™ n °" h w ™ ‘awards the Soviet 

• ehran host, a Sikh businessman, had kindly re 

WANDERER 

One cold evening the sky was clouded over. All around us the 

earth was covered by green dewy grass. Fully wrapped in our warm 

clothes, we were walking all alone on a deserted road. Nobody 

seemed to be in a hurry to come out of their homes. All was 

quiet except for the wind, which was blowing hard. Suddenly a 

Volkswagen Beetle stopped. A man got out. ‘Would you like a 

lift?’ he asked, to which we replied, ‘No thank you, we are walking.’ 

‘Where are you walking to?’ ‘Our final destination is Washington/ 

we replied, ‘bur for tonight, the nearest village where we can stay/ He 

looked aghast and said, ‘Where have you come from?* ‘From India/ 

‘And you have walked all the way?* ‘Yes, we have walked all the 

way/ ‘Never mind/ he said, ‘it is such a cold evening and getting 

dark. If you break your vow of walking for one day, nobody will 

know about it. I won't tell anyone and you can stay with me in my 

home.’ ‘It is not a question of anyone knowing. We want to walk/ 

His wife intervened. ‘The nearest town is Qazvin, fifteen miles away, 

and before that there is no decent place to stop/ The man said to her, 

*1 know, they are followers of Gandhi, who fasted for forty days. 

These Indians seem to have strong willpower/ Turning to us he said, 

'I will give you our address. Come and stay with us tomorrow.’ 

When, the next afternoon, we arrived at his home, we saw him on 

his knees on the verandah offering Namaz (prayers), his head bowed 

to the ground. We waited at one side but when he looked up and saw 

us, he leapt up and seemed to completely forget his Namaz. He came 

to embrace us. ‘Don’t let us disturb you in your prayers/ we said. 

He replied, ‘Receiving a guest is Namaz in practice. Please come 

in and let me welcome you as Allah has commanded/ He called 

his friends and family around and we all sat down to the national 

dish of Persia—Chile Kebab {kebabs with rice). We didn’t take the 

kebab but there was for us a sumptuous meal of fruit and nuts and 

buttered rice. 

The next morning he took us to the Hamam (the public bath) and 

arranged a barber to cut our hair. He packed our rucksacks with 

dried fruit, nuts and biscuits. A few hours later on the road he gave 

us another surprise by appearing with his wife and two daughters 

with a picnic lunch for us all. 

We had experienced a hundred days of such w onderful Muslim 

hospitality in Persia by the time we reached the border. 

9$ 

no destination 

We saw the frontier guards standing alert, equipped with 

guns and binoculars. The Iranian guards waved a signal, in response 

to which a Soviet military guard advanced up to the border and 

opened the gates. 

The next moment we were in a different epuntry. It was ist Janu¬ 

ary 1963 , seven months after we had set out from Delhi. The com¬ 

mander of the Soviet frontier guards made a sweet little speech to 

receive us: Your arrival reminds me of Afnasi Nikiten who went to 

India on foot a few centuries ago. Now you two travellers have come 

to our country with a message of peace. I hope thatsoon the bounda¬ 

ries dividing humankind will disappear and we shall be able to real¬ 

ize the ideal of world unity. We will no longer need armies or bombs.’ 

A message from the central office of the Peace Council in Moscow 

was waiting for us: ‘It will be extremely difficult for you to travel 

on foot during the winter months. You shouldn’t worry about your 

expenses; the Peace Council is willing to bear responsibility for you 

Please come to Moscow directly by plane.’ But we stuck to our 

decision to walk. 

We walked for forty days through'the villages and towns of 

Azarbaizan Armenia and Georgia, through theCaucasus mountains 

and along the Black Sea. By radio and newspaper, people had learnt 

o our walk many of them had never seen a foreigner. 

One day we met two young women and started talking. They read 

our leaflet which we had prepared in Russian. They said ‘We heard 

you on the radio.' A few minutes later one of them said, ‘This is the 

tea factory where we work. Will you come and have a cup of tea 

and meet our fellow workers?’ We said, ‘Yes, any time is tea time!’ 

We went with them. We were served with tea and a meal. Workers 

gathered around us and we made a brief speech: ‘All over the world it 

is the people who bear the burden of the bomb. It is they who pay for 

it in roubles and dollars, francs and pounds. Millions and millions 

of them, and it is they who will be killed when the bombs are used 

Therefore it is the people who should raise their voices against the 

bomb. Peoples of the world unite to stop the arms race. You have 

nothing to lose but bombs.’ 

One of the women who had invited us into the factory stood up 

and rushed out of the room. Moments later she came back with four 

pac ets of tea. She said to us, ‘What you are saying, I fully agree with 

9 4 

WANDERER 

—every word. Here are four packets of tea made in our factory. 1 

know you are walking and you want to travel light, but these packets 

are very important. Please carry them with you. They are not for you. 

Please give one to our Premier in Moscow, one to the President of 

France, one to the Prime Minister of England and one to the Presi¬ 

dent of the United States of America. Tell them that if they get mad in 

their minds and think of pushing the button to drop nuclear bombs, 

they should stop for a moment and have a fresh cup of tea from these 

packets. That will give them a chance to remember that the simple 

people of the world want bread not bombs, want life not death.’ 

Everyone applauded her words. We gladly accepted the packets of 

peace tea and became the messengers of an Armenian mother. 

A few days later we came to Idzewan. As we approached the 

town, hundreds of people came to greet us, bringing food, sweets 

and chocolate. They took us to the town centre, where we spoke to 

several thousand people. 

Later we stayed with the head of a collective farm. On our arrival 

his youngest daughter brought a towel, soap and a bowl of hot water 

to wash our feet. I was embarrassed. She insisted. ‘It is our custom to 

make our guests feel at home.’ She took off my shoes and socks and 

bathed my aching feet in warm water, with ceremonial delicacy. 

Then her father took us out into the garden. He wanted us to 

inaugurate the wine season and to be the guests of honour. Menon 

and I dug up a large barrel of wine, buried in the ground, and then 

filled the glasses of the thirty people who had been invited for dinner. 

I was asked to propose a toast for peace and to empty the glass in 

one gulp. It was a difficult moment. I said, ‘No, I don’t drink.’ My 

host replied, ‘You don’t drink?! What do you do? Here wine is the 

only drink—water is for washing.’ Everyone was quiet, holding their 

glasses ready, looking at us expectantly. After a few moments of 

panic and confusion, I seized the glass and emptied it down my 

throat. There was a roar of applause. Dinner that night lasted for 

six hours. Toast after toast was proposed. 

One of the daughters asked me to dance. 1 had never danced with 

a woman before, but she took my hand. The whole atmosphere grew 

madder and madder. I sang songs of Tagore. 

One of the young women who was in the party came next morning 

and said, ‘I could not sleep all night and kept thinking of your walk 

95 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

for peace. Can I join in your journey? I will come wirh you all rhe 

way to Washington.’ We were stunned. This young Armenian in 

her early twenties was firmly convinced that it was right for her to 

leave everything behind and come with us. Friends and neighbours 

listening became alarmed and told us that it would be impossible for 

her to get a passport. We suggested that she should come with us for 

a few days before committing herself. She had come prepared with 

her rucksack. 

She walked with us that day. When we stopped in the next town, 

her mother came to us and begged us not to take her daughter with 

us, as she was the only daughter and her only support. The members 

of the local peace committee and party officials also discouraged 

both her and us. So the next day she was not there. 

In Georgia we arrived at Gori, the birthplace of Stalin. We 

were put up in a small guest house and soon fell deeply asleep. In 

the middle of the night we heard someone knocking at our door. 

Menon went to the door. ‘I am a taxi-driver. 1 saw you walking 

with your banners. I read your leaflets. You arc good boys.’ He 

got twenty roubles out of his pocket. ‘This is my day’s earnings. 

I want to give it to you to support your cause/ ‘Thank you, but 

we are sorry, we do not carry money, we cannot accept money. 

Please don’t feel that we are rejecting your help and support,’ we 

said in our primitive Russian. ‘Why not?* he protested. ‘I too am 

against the bombs. It is no good Krushchev talking about peace 

and blaming the West for the arms race. If there has to be war, 

let us fight a conventional war. At least in it we can show some 

courage, some ingenuity, but there is no skill in dropping nuclear 

bombs on sleeping people, so let me give you these roubles as a 

contribution of an insignificant taxi driver.* ‘We are delighted to 

hear your words and your words are worth more than a hundred 

roubles. Please don’t insist on giving us money. We have taken 

a vow not to handle it on our journey.’ ‘All right then, please 

don t walk tomorrow. I will take you to wherever you are gong 

in my taxi.. Oh dear,’ I said to Menon, ‘how can we make him 

understand that this is also against our vow?’ The man was disap¬ 

pointed to know that he could be of no practical help to us. He left, 

wishing us luck. 

Hy the time we reached Sochi on nth February, the Soviet Peace 

Committee in Moscow seemed worried. They flew a special mes¬ 

senger, Mr Paladin, who tried to convince us that it was impossible 

lo cross the high ranges of the Ural mountains in mid-February 

because all the roads were blocked with snow. He argued that we 

should fly direct to Moscow. We said, ‘If the roads are blocked, 

we will stay somewhere in a village until they are cleared.’ But Mr 

Paladin replied, ‘You know nothing of the Russian winter, and 

you’ll be stuck there for months/ ‘So be it,’ I said, ‘we are not 

in a hurry, it is already mid-February. Let us spend two months 

by the Black Sea meeting and talking to people and then we can 

head towards Moscow/ This idea did not please him at all. This 

Peace Committee official somehow felt uncomfortable about our 

peace message. After four days of argument we found ourselves in 

a stalemate. He explained, ‘The roads are blocked with snow. The 

Peace Committee cannot take responsibility for you in such climatic 

conditions, nor can the Soviet Government allow you to proceed on 

foot. You are in our country and you must accept our advice.' His 

‘advice* came as an order. 

Under duress and having no alternative, we agreed to fly over the 

mountains and land on the other side at Voronezh. But as we were 

crossing the mountains in the plane, an announcement was made: 

‘Due to bad weather conditions, the plane cannot land at Voronezh 

and has to fly straight to Moscow.' None of the other passengers 

seemed at all affected. We suspected that the Peace Committee 

representative had deliberately misled us, and were in despair when 

we landed in Moscow. A car awaited us; we were driven to the centre 

of the city and put up at Hotel Budapest. 

Not knowing what to do, we telephoned the First Secretary of the 

Indian Embassy and walked immediately to his house, although it 

was ten o clock at night. We told him how our walk had been 

frustrated and asked him if he would help us to go to Voronezh by 

train, so that we could walk back to Moscow. But he made a helpless 

gesture with his hands and said, ‘It is Russia, you can do nothing.' 

Although deeply upset, we had to live with this fait accompli . To 

soften the blow, the Peace Committee went out of their way to 

organize visits to the Bolshoi, museums and a journey to Yasnaya 

Polyana, the birthplace of Leo Tolstoy. No effort was spared in 

96 

97 

t 

NO DESTINATION 

their attempts to reconcile us to our forcible abduction from Sochi. 

They organized meetings, interviews with newspapers and radio and 

dialogue with politicians. 

Our most important task in Moscow was to meet Mr Kruschev 

and deliver one packet of tea to him. We wrote to him for an 

audience. It was good to receive his reply, signed by him personally, 

but we were disappointed to learn that his diary was too full for 

him to see us. However, he arranged for us to be received by Mr 

Tikhonov, the President of the Supreme Soviet in the Kremlin. I 

could see from the expression on his face that Mr Tikhonov was 

very touched by the gesture of the Armenian woman. I said, ‘This 

peace tea has given us added courage and a new reason to keep 

walking. We have become the messengers of the Armenian woman 

and her fellow workers. Only by your unilateral action can you set 

an example which will force other nuclear powers to abandon the 

bomb.’ Mr Tikhonov’s reply was diplomatic and evasive: ‘After 

losing twenty million people in the last war we cannot risk the 

security of our nation, but there is no greater champion of peace 

than our Premier Mr Krushchev. He has personally asked me to 

receive you and assure you that the Soviet Union will never be the 

first to use nuclear weapons. I will gladly give him this symbolic 

packet of peace tea on your behalf.’ 

Mr Tikhonov very kindly gave us a guided tour of the Kremlin, 

which was as impressive and imposing as the Soviet Empire. The 

Tsars may have been eliminated but their pomp and paraphernalia 

were still being maintained. The splendour of the Kremlin was a far 

cry from the life of the proletariat, although when Mr Tikhonov 

brought us to the flat where Lenin lived, we were impressed with 

its simplicity. 

It soon became clear that in spite of the Peace Committee’s lavish 

hospitality in Moscow, they had never accepted our plan to walk 

freely through the villages of Russia. The visas we had obtained 

from the Soviet Embassy in Tehran were valid until April 1963, but 

one day the authorities took our passports from our hotel without 

informing us, cancelled the previous visas and instead gave us visas 

due to expire on 14th March. 

The officials of the Peace Committee tried to persuade us that 

we had spent long enough in their country. They said they had 

WANDERER 

arranged for us a free flight from Moscow to Warsaw so that we 

could make more profitable use of our time elsewhere. Next day 

a Peace Committee interpreter arrived with two plane tickets. We 

refused to accept them and made it quite dear that we had no 

desire to resort to any transport for our journey—except our legs. 

Any more discussion with the Peace Committee was pointless. We 

went directly to the visa officials. They told us they had received 

a letter from the Peace Committee that we were going to Warsaw 

by plane and accordingly they had made the necessary changes in 

our visas. If we wanted to have our visas in their original form, we 

would have to get a letter from the Peace Committee to that effect 

and only then could they make alterations. We wrote a letter to the 

Peace Committee saying that we intended to set out on our march 

according to our original plan. 

It was 13th March 1963 and darkness had fallen. We put our 

rucksacks on our backs and came out of our hotel. Moscow was 

covered by a white sheet of snow. With heavy steps we trudged 

along the streets, groping our way in the dim pools of light from 

the lamp posts. The white masses of snow shimmered in the dark 

night. We walked out of the city area and found ourselves in the 

green-belt area, which was pitch black and uninhabited. We went 

to the trolley-bus terminus to try and sleep there, but at midnight 

a woman came to lock it up and asked us to leave. We suggested 

that she lock it from outside and leave us inside for the night, then 

in the morning we would go on. She couldn’t understand why we 

didn’t have anywhere to sleep. She remembered reading about us in 

Pravda , so she took us to the Hotel Ukraina, a huge skyscraper hotel, 

where she knew somebody. She explained the situation to him and he 

gave us a room for the night, 

The next morning we set out on our journey ignoring the fact 

that our visas expired that day. Every time we saw a police car 

or a policeman we feared arrest. But, mysteriously, nothing hap¬ 

pened. We felt liberated, having come out of the maze of Moscow’s 

skyscrapers, to roam once again through the Russian countryside, 

to be among the warm and hospitable villagers and farmers. The 

country surrounding Moscow had witnessed many a bloody battle. 

The wounds of the last war were still fresh and would start bleeding 

at the slightest pressure. ‘Both my father and brother fell in the war. 

98 

99 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

Now I am completely alone/ someone said, i lost my eyes and one 

hand in the war—and-though l go on living, my life is of no use to 

anyone.’ We often heard such sad remarks. Once we were staying 

in a house where only two women lived. All the male members 

of the family had been killed in the war. In another village an 

old couple had lost all their sons and were now living alone with 

their memories. 

Another time, in a small village, we met a farmer. His eyes rested 

on us for some time before he decided to speak. ’They say you are 

the messengers of peace. You are coming from India and will go to 

America. Is it true? Will you convey my message to the American 

people? Will you tell them that though they fought in the war, the 

actual war was never fought in their country. The very thought of 

war seems nightmarish to us...’ He spoke for a long time with great 

passion. After he finished, he-took us in his arms and kissed us. 

The temperature was thirty degrees centigrade below freezing 

point, but we were convinced that if the Russian people could 

perform their daily work in winter, we could at least manage to walk. 

Sometimes the freezing wind blowing from Siberia made our bodies 

numb and every step forward a torture. We had never experienced 

such biting cold in our lives, nor had we ever seen such masses of 

snow, which enveloped the entire world around us. We would walk 

for ten minutes until our bodies felt like stone, as if our blood had 

stopped moving, then we would desperately look for some place to 

stop and warm ourselves. I had icicles on my nose; my moustache 

and beard were frozen solid. Although we had been given fur coats 

and caps by the kind Russian people, no clothes could be made that 

would keep out the Russian cold. 

Once a peasant invited us to spend the night at his house. His 

wife had gone out on some errand, so our host cooked food and 

made up beds for us. When his wife returned, our host whispered 

to her in the kitchen that we were going to stay the night with them. 

There was a long heated argument between husband and wife and 

the wife burst into tears. ‘This is a home not a guest house. You 

keep bringing strange people here. I can’t bear it. If you want them 

to stay, then I will go. They might be spies,’ she said. The husband 

stalked out of the kitchen saying over his shoulder, ‘Do what you 

like, I won’t stop you.* Before we could intervene, the wife took their 

huhy in her arms and rushed out into the cold. We, the ‘messengers 

nl peace’, had caused trouble in a family. We got ready to find 

shelter elsewhere. ‘Where can you go at this hour?’ the peasant said 

in despair. ‘It is pitch dark outside and the streets are full of mud and 

sleet.’ He thought a while, then went out. A little later he reappeared 

iirul told us a friend of his had agreed to put us up. Holding each 

other’s hands, we stumbled through the mud along the dark lanes. 

The man kept apologizing to us and cursing his wife. We said, ‘Don’t 

worry, we have had such marvellous hospitality from the Russian 

people that a little walk now to find a bed is no trouble to us.’ 

At his friend’s house everyone had gone to sleep, but the farmer 

there woke up his two children and made them sleep in one bed. 

Menon and 1 took the other one. Next morning they made a large 

warm breakfast for us. The wife said, ‘Why don’t you stay here 

longer? After walking for so long, won’t it be better to take some 

rest?* But we went on. 

Forty-five days from Moscow, after four months in the 

Soviet Union, we reached the border. The police officer examined 

our passports. ‘You have been in this country illegally. Your visas 

expired long ago,’ he said to us. ‘Where haveyou been all this time?’ 

We told him the whole story, but he wasn’t satisfied and tele¬ 

phoned someone in Moscow. Now the time had come to face 

rhe consequences of ignoring the authorities. We anticipated being 

arrested. All along, our way of travelling had puzzled the Russian 

authorities. They didn’t know quite how to deal with us. The police 

officer turned to us and shrugged his shoulders. ‘You have done some 

strange things, but you are going anyway. It is too late, no point in 

keeping you here any longer. Daswidaniya (Goodbye).’ 

On ist May we arrived in Poland. Through Warsaw, Posnan and 

many other towns we enjoyed the friendship and generosity of the 

Polish people. The winter was left behind and it was now sunny 

spring. Once, to rest from the heat of midday, we went into a school 

and found a few teachers to chat to during their lunch break. This 

was not acceptable to the disciplinarian headmaster who came and 

said, ‘The school is not a chatting house,’ and asked us to leave. 

Shocked and embarrassed, we scumbled out and found some shade 

ioo 

IOI 

NO DESTINATION 

under a tree. A child, watching the incident, seeing the headmaster 

disappear, came and asked us where we came from. When he found 

out that we came from India, he looked in one of his books and 

found a picture of the Taj Mahal, is this where you come from, 

the country of the Taj Mahal?* ‘Yes/ we said. ‘Oh, what a shame. 

I always wanted to go to India but now I can’t,’ ‘Why not?’ we 

asked. ‘When you came to my country, my village, my school, you 

were treated so badly by the headmaster, how can I possibly dare 

to come to your country?’ We said, it is not your fault. You can 

still come.’ ‘Not unless I see that you receive hospitality here. Can 

you come to my home for tea?’ ‘Where is your home?* ‘This way.? 

He pointed eastward, back along the road we had travelled. ‘We 

must head westwards, your home is not in our direction/ if you 

can walk from India to Poland, a couple of miles extra is nothing 

to you/ He was almost in tears. He could not have been older than 

twelve or thirteen, but he was so persistent that we followed him. 

‘Mummy, mummy, look who I have brought—the people from 

India, the country of the Taj Mahal, where I will go one day;’ His 

mother was as pleased as him. With such rich experiences we passed 

through Poland and arrived in East Germany. 

A thorough check of documents and rucksacks was made when 

we arrived at the East Berlin border. The faces of the Russian and 

German soldiers were tense. They seemed to be performing their 

duties so mechanically and without heart that we started talking to 

them. In the beginning, they were sceptical of our peace talk, but 

suddenly one of thefn burst out, ‘You are right. We have no peace 

of mind here, at home or at the front. We are longing for the day 

when we can throw away all these arms and join you in the light 

for peace/ He was an East German soldier in uniform, guarding the 

border of a tensely divided city at a crisis point in the cold war—it 

was just before President Kennedy was due to visit West Berlin. The 

other four soldiers looked at him as though he were mad to talk in 

such a way to strangers. 

Passing through West Berlin and East Germany, we arrived in 

West Germany. One evening, looking for shelter, we saw a very 

impressive church, and beside it the minister’s house. We knocked 

at the door of the house. In the door there was a little spyhole and we 

could see that someone was looking through it. A moment later the 

WANDERER 

mi iiistcr opened the door a few inches. We saw the edge of his gown, 

the Bible in his hand and his frowning face. We offered our leaflet 

which was in German and which explained who we were and what 

wr were doing. He didn’t accept it, ‘What do you want?’ he asked 

nrrvously. ‘Some shelter for the night/ ‘No place here. Go away/ 

I le hanged the door shut. We thought there must be some mistake, 

and knocked again, hoping to explain ourselves properly. He opened 

the door and shouted firmly, ‘Don’t knock at my door. There is no 

place here, go away immediately/ He gave us no chance to explain 

anything. We felt sorry at distressing him and left. 

A few hundred yards away we found the police station. Not know¬ 

ing what to do we went in. A young policeman smiled at us. ‘What 

can I do for you?’ ‘May we sit down for a few moments, and we will 

explain to you?* He shook our hands and offered us comfortable 

chairs. We gave him our leaflet, which he read carefully and asked 

in a curious voice, ‘Is this really true? How long did it take you to 

walk from India to here?’ We quickly came to the point that our 

most urgent need at the moment was to find shelter for the night and 

asked if he could suggest anywhere. He thought for a moment, then 

lifted the telephone and rang somewhere. Receiving an affirmative 

answer, he said, ‘All right, come with me/ We went back past the 

church and arrived at a large house. It was a hospital. ‘You don’t 

mind spending the night in a hospital do you?’ he said, and handed 

us over to the nurse in charge. We were taken aback—this was the 

first time we had stayed in a hospital. The nurses were very kind. 

We had a sumptuous meal of fruit, vegetables, milk, cheese and 

bread, and next morning were not only given a large breakfast, 

but also some sandwiches to take away with us. We passed once 

again the church and the police station and waved goodbye to the 

good-hearted policeman. 

After walking through Hannover, Dusseldorf and Cologne, we 

arrived in Bonn. We had written a letter to Chancellor Adenauer, 

asking for an appointment. We had talked about German problems 

with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in East Germany and we wanted 

to have similar talks with West German officials. When we arrived in 

Bonn, we went to the Chancellor’s office. After we had waited there 

for a long time, we were asked to come again the next day. Finally, 

on the third day we were told that neither the Chancellor nor any 

103 

102. 

NO DESTINATION 

other official would be able to meet us ‘for political reasons’. Since 

no government official was willing to see us, we decided to stage a 

demonstration in front of the Chancellor’s office. We arrived there 

at nine o’clock in the morning. Just after our arrival the police also 

appeared and snatched everything away—placards, books and leaf¬ 

lets—and we had no alternative but to squat there empty-handed. 

We sat there protesting until evening. 

From Germany we walked through Belgium, then northern 

France, and arrived in Paris on 5th August. While we were walk¬ 

ing through Belgium, Russia, America and Great Britain signed a 

nuclear test ban treaty, but President de Gaulle refused to sign it. We 

wrote a letter to President de Gaulle explaining that we were carrying 

a packet of peace tea for him from Armenia and asked him to give us 

an audience, but we received no answer. We wrote two more letters 

with no better results. 

We were welcomed in Paris by a number of peace groupsr War 

Resisters International, Amies de I’Arche and the French Campaign 

for Nuclear Disarmament were among them. We were given hos¬ 

pitality and wholehearted support for our mission. Having still 

received no response from President de Gaulle, we announced to 

the press and the peace groups our decision to demonstrate in 

a non-violent and peaceful manner in front of the Elysee Palace. 

Hearing the news of our plan, two young men from Germany and 

Denmark, Wolfgang and Ole, came to join us. 

A Paris peace group had advised u$ not to go on foot to the Presi¬ 

dent’s house since the police might arrest us on the way, so the four 

of us went by car. Many journalists and photographers had gathered 

and the police were everywhere. We got out of the car just in front 

of the palace and started to open our banner “ban the bombs 

and STOP the tests’* but as we were unfolding it, the banner 

was snatched from our hands by the police who had surrounded 

us. The chief of the Elysee Palace security came down the steps and 

invited us inside. The atmosphere was tense—the police pushed us 

into the palace and barred the way to the press. We were taken to a 

palatial room. ‘You are creating a disturbance in Paris,’ the security 

chief said. We replied, ‘Please Inform the President of our request to 

see him. We wish to deliver a packet of peace tea. We must see him 

wanderer 

personally to explain the purpose of our walk from India and to give 

the message from the Armenian tea workers.’ ‘The President has 

received your letters and even knows where you are at present, but 

he is unable to meet you.* ‘Then the only choice left to us is to go on 

demonstrating,' we replied. ‘You cannot change the government’s 

policy.’ ‘Nor can the government change ours,’ we said. 

A few minutes later we were pushed into a heavily-guarded police 

van and driven out of the palace through the back gate to a police 

station. We were put in an underground, semi-circular cell. Alter 

two hours of interrogation, the police officer said, i’ll let you go 

if you promise not to demonstrate in front of the President’s house 

again.’ ‘Unless we get an assurance from the government that France 

will not conduct nuclear tests, we cannot leave Paris or the Elysee 

Palace.’ Next we were taken to the police headquarters where we had 

to wait for another two hours. It was 9.30 pm when we were taken 

to a police lock-up. We didn’t know what was going to happen. Late 

that night we were put in cells. The cells were dirty, freezing cold and 

the air heavy with strange smells. There were two damp mattresses 

On the floor, stained and sticky and no blankets or sheets. All our 

possessions had been taken away and we were left with the barest 

minimum of clothes, minus the cords which held up our loose Indian 

trousers. The only other thing in the cell, right beside the mattresses, 

was an open toilet, which stank. 

It was the first time in my life that I had been in such a place. 

Everything we had worked and walked against was institutionalized 

in this place—fear and mistrust alive everywhere, in the walls, the 

locks, the sounds. The deterioration of the human situation was ter¬ 

rible—an old man shaking and stuttering on the stairs, a drunkard 

shouting and the police kicking and beating him, ill and disturbed 

people screaming out all night. I had thought of Paris as one of 

the most civilized and rich cities in the world, and was now seeing 

humanity on the most degraded level—it was a shock, like being 

thrown from the top of a mountain. I had not expected that in the 

land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, we would be thrown into a 

stinking cell. We had been free like the wind and suddenly we were 

locked into an eight-foot square cell. All night there was the glare of 

a naked light-bulb. We were unable to sleep, minds spinning round 

and round. Was this the final point of our journey? How long would 

104 

105 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

we be here? Was Delhi to Paris one long road ending in prison? All 

the colours, green forests, brown mountains, white snow, yellow 

fruit and blue lakes and seas, flashed through my mind in the dark, 

stinking atmosphere of the lock-up. 

The next morning while in the washroom, we managed to have a 

few words with Wolfgang and Ole and decided to make a hunger 

strike as a protest against our treatment and the conditions of the 

place. For two days we refused to eat the food that was pushed into 

our cell—porridge, bread, meat and potatoes. I could fast, wait and 

meditate. I had learnt it during my monkhood. On the second day 

we felt the bite of hunger; our tongues, teeth and throats were dry 

and sour. Menon was very distressed, and lay on a mattress unable 

to do anything. I massaged his back, chest and head helping him to 

relax. I felt very close to him. He was a dignified, determined and 

dedicated man. During our walk together from Delhi to Paris we 

had never been separated, not even for a day, and we hardly had 

any arguments or disagreements. It was extraordinary to reflect that 

we had survived so many ups and downs, comforts and hardships 

without exchanging one angry word. Mostly it was due to Menon’s 

patience and generosity, but also because we were so engrossed in 

our task that all minor egotism had evaporated. Now being in the 

police cell brought us even closer together and we talked about our 

personal plans if we ever got out. 

On the third day we were taken to the police headquarters. Two 

officials of the Indian Embassy were there. The police officer said, 

‘You are a problem for us. Inside you will die and outside you will 

sit in front of the palace, and we are inundated with phone calls from 

your supporters.’ He handed us our passports, a deportation order 

and two air tickets, saying, ‘Tomorrow morning you leave Paris by 

Air France for Delhi/ 

It had taken sixteen months to get to France and we were going to 

be flown back in sixteen hours. We tried to change the police officer’s 

decision to send us to Delhi, but it was no use. So we spoke to the 

Indian officials, asking them to do something. They talked to the 

police officer, saying that it would create a ‘serious misunderstand¬ 

ing’ between France and India .and bad publicity for France. They 

asked that we be handed over to them and guaranteed that they 

would get us out of France within twenty-four hours. The police 

106 

officer agreed. The choice for us was whether to be deported to India 

by plane or leave France by train for England. In the circumstances 

we decided to compromise and accept the latter. 

As we came out of the room, we saw Madame Petit, one of chose 

who had demonstrated with us. She had been arrested on 16th 

September for distributing our leaflets, bbr was later released. When 

she saw how weak and worn out we looked, she asked permission to 

bring some fruit, biscuits, potato-chips and coffee for us. Then we 

were taken back to the cell. 

Next day we were taken to the police headquarters again. The 

Indian Ambassador himself was there to greet us and to make 

arrangements for our ‘deportation’ to England. Afterwards he drove 

us to his home, gave us a sumptuous supper and saw us on to the 

train to Dover, handing over two tickets. Wolfgang and Ole were 

deported to their respective countries by plane. 

From Dover we were glad to set off on our feet again, passing 

through Canterbury, Maidstone and other towns. In all these places 

we received particular welcome from.the Quakers. Ever since we had 

been in western Europe, people involved in anti-war movements had 

provided hospitality and organized publicity in many places. The 

nature of our walk had changed—the almost daily adventures in 

the East of finding food and shelter and the unexpected offers of 

hospitality were replaced by the less eventful demands for publicity 

and lectures. 

When we arrived in London we felt as if we were in the Mecca 

of the Peace Movement and we received wholehearted support and 

co-operation from many peace organizations and activists. CND, 

the Committee of One Hundred, War Resisters International— 

all identified with our walk. Peace Neu>s had been covering our 

journey ever since we started from India, and people were waiting 

for us to arrive. We were surrounded by friends, supporters and 

admirers, and finding hospitality was no longer a problem. The 

Guardian wrote a feature article about us and bbc and itv put us 

on their screens. 

The response to our request for a meeting with the Prime Minister, 

Harold Wilson, was lukewarm. We were inhumed by the pm’s office 

that it was not possible for him to receive all the visitors who desired 

107 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

an audience. However Lord Atlee would receive us, and accept 

the packet of peace tea on the pm’s behalf. We were mollified 

to know that at least we would be talking with the man who, 

during his premiership, brought an end to colonial rule by granting 

independence to India. 

Menon and I were received with courtesy and warmth at the 

House of Commons in a room overlopking the Thames. The English 

politeness, and the tea served in Spode china, could not hide the 

fact that all politicians seemed to have predictable answers. 4 We 

are doing everything possible to achieve nuclear disarmament. It 

is the Soviets who are blocking progress. You yourselves have been 

to Russia—surely you know what a threat they pose? We cannot 

risk our national security.’ Our counter arguments prolonged the 

discussions, but brought no satisfactory solution. The packet of 

peace tea was accepted with a chuckle. 

The most important person for us to meet in England was Bertrand 

Russell. It was he who had given us our original inspiration and 

impetus to undertake our mammoth task, but unfortunately he was 

not in London. In response to our letter he sent his secretary to meet 

us and give us the message that he would be extremely disappointed 

if we did not go to see him. I said to Russell’s secretary, ‘We cannot 

dream of departing from England without making a pilgrimage to 

the prophet of peace.’ His secretary drove us by car all the way to 

Penrendendraeth in North Wales, where Russell had retired to a 

cottage set in the Snowdonian mountains. 

What an honour it was to sit beside this man, small in body yet 

giant in stature, old in age and young in courage, weak in limbs 

and strong in action; a man who was as dedicated to peace as to 

philosophy and mathematics. While he poured tea and served cake 

to us he said, Tam flattered to know that my small action of civil 

disobedience inspired you to make a great walk across continents.’ 

After talking about his efforts to bring peace between India and 

China he said, ‘In order to avoid the death of humanity and the 

destruction of our planet it is urgent and essential that we discard the 

bomb.’ I said, ‘At one level I agree with you, but I also feel that peace 

should be promoted for positive reasons. Fear of the end of the world 

cannot be sufficient motivation for me to work for peace.’ We sensed 

an area of disagreement here; but Russell bypassed this, asking, ‘You 

desire to reach Washington, but you cannot walk the Atlantic. How 

can we help you?’ Menon and I explained that we could not accept 

money but we would gladly accept two tickets to New York. Russell 

turned to his secretary and said, ‘Let us start an Atlantic Fund for 

our peace walkers to raise money for their passage to America, and 

please arrange two tickets on the Queen Mary for them.’ 

Menon and I were thrilled and grateful. That afternoon with 

Russell was the pinnacle of our travels. We left Russell delighted 

and happy. His secretary drove us back to London, 

Obtaining an American visa was no easier than it had been to get 

one for the USSR, and,it was made even more difficult by the fact 

that we had been in communist countries for nearly six months. 

Another obstacle was erected by the American Embassy; the fear 

that we might wish to settle down in America. None of the embassy 

officials of any of the countries we had visited had been able to 

understand how we were going to survive without money—least 

of all the Americans. Familiar questions were raised such as, ‘How 

are you going to eat? Where are you going to sleep?’ In the end, the 

official said, ‘The only way I can grant you a visa is that you find a 

reputable American citizen to sponsor you.’ 

We had been inspired by the writings of a great pacifist thinker, 

A.J. Muste, so we wrote to him explaining our difficulties, seeking 

his help and sponsorship. A.J. proved to be a man of compassion 

and trust. Without delay he undertook, ‘complete responsibility’ for 

our stay in the United States. It took twenty-two days to obtain our 

American visas. 

Strong legs and plenty of time were our assets in exploring and 

discovering London. We stayed with pacifist Peggy Smith in Earls 

Court, and from Richmond to Hampstead, from Greenwich to 

Southall, we measured the length and breadth of London with our 

stride. 

We walked to Southampton, and on the morning of und Novem¬ 

ber 1963, we boarded the Queen Mary bound for New York. Here 

we were, two travellers without any money, on one of the most 

luxurious liners in the world, with a separate cabin to ourselves, 

and a bell to call a steward at any time to bring us specially cooked 

vegetarian meals. Thanks to Vinoba’s weapons, we were travel¬ 

ling in style. 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

As WE sailed the stormy Atlantic, Menon and E had plenty of time 

for talking and reflection. Going into the unknown world and con¬ 

fronting it without a penny in our pockets had meant that differences 

between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, all vanished; and 

beneath all these divisions, a common humanity emerged. Whether 

we slept in comfortable beds or on the floor of a barn or under a 

tree, it was all a gift. As wanderers we were free of shadows from 

the past. The experience of a beautiful emptiness within myself, with 

neither material nor spiritual possessions, unlocked my soul. It was 

a journey without destination; journey and destination became one, 

thought and action became one. 1 felt myself moving like a river. 

A river and its flow are not separate things, 1 and my movement 

were not separate. The journey was me. It was as much an inner 

journey as an outward one. It was a journey into detachment. The 

contradiction between movement and stillness ceased. I was on the 

move in stillness. I was a wanderer, wandering through life. Living 

from day to day, from inspiration to inspiration. 

In wandering 1 felt a sense of union with the whole sky, the infinite 

earth and sea. 1 felt myself a part of the cosmic existence. It was as if 

by walking 1 was making love to the earth itself. Wandering was my 

path, my true self, my true being. It released my soul-force, it brought 

me in relation to everything else. I stood like I stand in front of the 

mirror. People, nature, everything became like a mirror and I could 

see myself in them, what I was. 1 was born in a dream of wandering, 

a seed conceived in my mother. My dreams are of wandering. From 

birth I was wandering—as a monk, with Vinoba, and on the walk— 

whatever 1 learnt came through wandering. 

My two legs were the most creative parts of my body and the most 

creative expression of my energy. Without these two legs I would 

have been nothing. But with my two legs there was no place in the 

world that 1 could not go. I felt like the god Wamanavatar (Vishnu 

reincarnated as a dwarf) who was outraged to see that an evil king 

was terrorizing people and the world with his armies and weapons. 

The god came to the king as a dwarf brahmin beggar and asked for 

a small gift. ‘What do you want?’ said the king. *1 have nothing. Will 

you grant me a small piece of land?* said the dwarf. No Hindu king 

can turn away a brahmin empty-handed so the king asked, ‘How 

much land do you want?’ The dwarf replied, ‘Let me walk three 

steps and whatever space of land I cover, give me that land.’ The 

king laughed, ‘I have the whole earth under my rule, so walk three 

steps little man, wherever you want, and take that land.’ The dwarf 

grew into a giant. He took his first step to heaven, and his second 

step covered the entire earth. Then he said, ‘Where can 1 have my 

third step?* And he put his foot on the head of the evil king. 

We were taking our four steps to Moscow, Paris, London and 

Washington. In all the countries, politicians, soldiers and people in 

responsible jobs argued, ‘We’re all right, we are peaceful. The other 

party is the trouble-maker.’ The Russians said, ‘Go to the West’; the 

westerners said, ‘Go to the communists’; the Pakistanis said, ‘Go and 

sort out your own country.’ Always the other, the other.,. 

We met no one on the walk who didn’t want peace, but no one 

seemed to know how to achieve it. Politicians were as powerless 

as the common people. We couldn’t convince people to accept our 

arguments. Argument merely breeds argument and everyone has 

their own answer. But walking as we were, going from country to 

country, to different cultures and religions, going in jungles, forests 

and mountains, we were perhaps able to communicate a sense of the 

inner power of the individual and the loss of fear of ‘the other’. 

Many times during our walk people had pressed us to accept 

money. At Jalalabad in Afghanistan the editor of a daily paper 

told us that he would like to help us in the name of peace and 

tried to give us some Afghan money. At Kabul we were talking 

with a shopkeeper who was so impressed that he took a handful 

of bank notes out of his cash-box and put them in front of us. 

When we refused to take the money, he presented us with two 

writing pens. 

Because we weren’t carrying any money, people were more con¬ 

cerned to look after our basic needs. When we reached Kabul two 

friends from India sent us some warm clothes to carry us through 

the cold weather of Afghanistan, and our host in Kabul presented 

each of us with a fur cap and a pair of warm shoes. In Behshahr, in 

Iran, someone saw us walking in worn-out, tattered shoes. He asked 

us to wait and after some time he came back with two pairs of brand 

new shoes. In Tehran an Indian merchant bought us sleeping-bags, 

pullovers, winter shoes and coats, saying, ‘Take whatever you need. 

I am only the trustee of the wealth I possess.’ 

no 

in 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

For two and a half months, between Kabul and Tehran, we were 

completely cut off from friends in India and from any news of what 

was happening in the world. Occasionally our hosts in different 

countries helped us to post letters; at other times we would carry 

letters with us and whenever any car stopped to ask if we wanted a 

lift, we would ask them to stamp our letters and post them instead. 

This happened a lot in Russia, especially with lorry drivers. At 

Tabriz in Iran, the postmaster-general presented us with a large 

pile of Aerogrammes. And when we stayed in some house, our 

host invariably gave us a cake of soap, razor blades, stamps and 

other things we needed for our daily use. In one village in Russia 

our host didn’t have any safety-blades, only a cut-throat razor, so 

he himself shaved off our beards. 

Now we were on the Queen Mary, by courtesy of Bertrand 

Russell and other peace campaigners. It felt like a welcome break 

from walking and a holiday from giving lectures and trying to 

convince people. The comforts of the swimming pool, ballrooms 

and dancefloors, bars and cinemas, were something we had neither 

planned nor dreamt of. The vast Atlantic ocean below and the vast 

blue sky above gave me a sense of eternity', which was so different 

from the ephemeral worlds of politics and commerce. 

After seven days of sailing we suddenly saw the Statue of Liberty, 

the Empire State Building and umpteen other skyscrapers. What a 

contrast it was to all the European cities we had visited! As our ship 

sailed into the harbour, we stood on the deck and gazed at one of the 

wonders of human civilization. 

We were met by A.J.Miiste and a group of anti-war campaigners. 

As soon as we arrived we started walking again through the streets 

of Manhattan to Brooklyn, where we stayed. There was something 

magical about our walk that captured the imagination of so many 

individuals and groups who were working for peace. Every evening 

that we were in New York we were invited to tell our story to a 

gathered audience varying in size from fifty people to two hundred, 

and we were invited by different families to wine and dine with them; 

it was an atmosphere of partying and celebration. 

We spent ten days in New York preparing for our last leg to 

Washington. A J. Muste personally worked out the route for us, and 

made arrangements so that every night bed, food and meetings were 

planned; and he wrote to the White House informing the President 

of our achievements and our desire to meet him. 

Unfortunately, quite a lot of walking had to be done on tarmac 

roads, as noisy and smelly cars speeded past. We were unable to find 

secluded footpaths or little country lanes. ‘Such things do not exist in 

America’ we were told. We were delighted to find that our path went 

through Philadelphia. We were longing to say ‘Hello’ to Dr Scarf 

who had offered us a lift in the Khyber Pass and who had invited us 

to his home if we ever got to America. The night before we were due 

in Philadelphia we phoned him. ‘Do you remember two Indians you 

met in the Khyber Pass?’ ‘Yes, I do. Where are they?’ ‘We are about 

ten miles away and planning to come to Philadelphia tomorrow. We 

hope to see you then,’ we said, i can’t wait till tomorrow. I want to 

see you tonight,’ said Dr Scarf and so he did. His first words were, 

'So your dream came true.’ 

We spent some time narrating our story to him. Then Dr Scarf 

gave us directions to his house where the next day, a party of twenty, 

including the other three occupants of the car in the Khyber Pass, 

gathered to celebrate our arrival. Dr Scarf proposed a toast; ‘We 

thought that our guests were totally mad to think that anyone could 

walk from India to America, but here we are, eighteen months 

later these two men have made it. So let’s drink to the successful 

conclusion of their journey.’ 

In Washington we had wanted to make an appeal to President 

Kennedy. However, when we eventually reached there on 9th Janu¬ 

ary 1964, after walking eight thousand miles. President Kennedy had 

been killed, the victim of an assassin’s bullet. It was to the cemetery 

and not to the White House that we went to look for him. And it was 

at his tomb, where the young President had ended his journey, that 

our walk also came to an end—a long walk, from Gandhi’s grave to 

Kennedy’s grave. 

Never during the walk did 1 feel such a sense of desolation and 

weariness as when I faced the tomb of the dead Kennedy. As we 

stood in silence, soft drops of rain fell on the flame burning there. 

The hair on my body stood on end as I shivered. It had been raining 

when we had started from Gandhi’s grave. We had walked from 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

the other side of the world for peace, and had come to America, 

the biggest symbol of military power. At Kennedy’s grave there 

was neither peace nor war, but something beyond—a moment of 

complete stillness. Gandhi and Kennedy. Kennedy and Gandhi. The 

grave, the bullet, the rain. The rain and the flame become one. The 

moment of beginning and ending became one. 

The only remaining task now left was to deliver the last packet of 

peace tea to the White House. As with the other heads of state, Presi¬ 

dent Johnson too was unable* to find time to receive us personally so 

he deputed his special advisor on disarmament matters to give us a 

cordial welcome. 

As we entered the gates of the White House we could not help 

but remember our encounter with Soviet officials in the Kremlin. 

The two biggest world powers, entrenched in their prejudices and 

fear, made us feel small and powerless. The response at the White 

House was not too dissimilar to the response at the Kremlin. ‘We are 

constantly proposing sensible measures to reduce armaments bur we 

are always forced back by obstructions from the Soviets,’ said the 

President’s representative. However, behind this formal answer, he 

appeared to be touched by the story of the Armenian woman and her 

packet of tea which came wrapped in a plea for peace. ‘Of course we 

know that the ordinary people of the Soviet Union desire disarma¬ 

ment as much as people in any other country, so that resources can 

be diverted from military hardware to better living conditions. But 

how do we guarantee our national security if we are faced by evil 

dictators like Hitler and Ho Chi Minh, who ignore the wishes of the 

people and impose their will by military means?’ 

To me this was the same tired old argument about evil men in the 

enemy camp. For me there is no such thing as evil. There is only fear 

and ignorance. Wars and weapons are bom from fear and ignorance. 

I found fear in Moscow and fear in Washington, fear in Paris and fear 

in London. The enemy is neither Russia nor America. It is fear which 

is the enemy of twentieth century civilization. 

Visiting the White House did not give us any solace or comfort; it 

was an anti-climax. 1 felt a sense of disappointment—eight thousand 

miles and eighteen months of walk ended in the bureaucratic defence 

of fear. I was depressed. What now? What next? We could not leave 

America at such a low point. 

The uplift came in the form of an invitation from Martin Luther 

King to visit him. He had just delivered one of his greatest speeches 

in Washington: ‘I have a dream that black and white, rich and poor, 

strong and weak, will be united in common humanity. 1 have a 

dream.’ Martin Luther King had become the symbol of the new 

America, an America of hope and trust. A civil rights campaigner 

from Washington, a staunch supporter of King, drove us south. 

As we arrived at the home of Coretta and Martin Luther King we 

felt an immediate sense of uplift. Seeing a large picture of Mahatma 

Gandhi hanging on the wall of their room made us feel at home. I 

had seen so many phoney warriors hiding behind the shield of fear 

in the Red Army headquarters and in the Pentagon, but here was a 

true warrior out to destroy discrimination and division. He said, ‘My 

non-violence is a revolutionary non-violence, touching the deepest 

corners of human consciousness. 1 am convinced that we will win. 

We will bring an end to all discrimination and division.’ His words 

flowed from his mouth like water from a fountain. Silently listening 

to him I felt renewed and refreshed—all that walk was worthwhile 

just to come and see Martin Luther King. 

After seeing King we went to Albany to see the Civil Rights 

Movement in action. It was here that I came face to face with fear 

and experienced what thousands of black people experience every 

day. I went to a cafe with John Pap worth, an English friend who 

was with me at the time. It was elegantly decorated and comfortable. 

We found a quiet comer and sat down. A waitress in a white apron 

came to take our order. ‘Tea and cheese sandwiches for two please,’ 

John announced. The waitress went. We became immersed in our 

conversation. The waitress came again and said, ‘Sorry we have no 

tea and cheese sandwiches.’ ‘Can we have coffee then?’ John asked. 

‘No, we have nothing, sir.’ The waitress disappeared quickly. We 

went to the manager who was standing at the cash counter. ‘Can’t we 

have a cup of tea?’ I asked. ‘No you can’t. Please leave immediately,’ 

he replied, isn’t this a cafe to serve the public?’ I asked, it is my cafe 

and 1 serve whom 1 like,’ he replied. ‘We won’t leave here without a 

cup of tea,’ I said. His face became red and his lips swollen and his 

breath was short, fast and loud. He pulled open a drawer and took 

out a pistol. Pointing it at my chest he said, ‘Are you getting out, or 

should 1 teach you a lesson?’ ‘There is no need for your gun, nor for 

ri 4 

ii5 

NO DESTINATION 

your anger. I just want a cup of tea /1 said anxiously. John stepped 

in between us and put his body in front of mine. The waiters and 

waitresses and various customers gathered round and pushed John 

and I away, out of the cafe. I was shaking—I had been at the point of 

death. Never before had I focused on the fact that the colour of my 

skin had any significance. My interest in the Civil Rights Movement 

had been rather academic until then; I then realized what black 

people in America were gping through, what a great battle Martin 

Luther King was fighting, and how much courage it needs to fight 

with non-violent means. 

We received a letter from the War Resisters of Japan asking, 

‘How can you complete your Peace Pilgrimage without visiting the 

only victims of the Bomb against which you have been walking?* 

They were right, and we agreed to return to India via Japan. 

We arrived in die country of the Rising Sun to find Buddhist 

monks, Christian pacifists and students at the airport to greet us. 

We were taken to a hall near the airport to tell our story. A married 

couple and two young female students who were at the meeting 

spontaneously offered to walk with us, to act as our interpreters 

and guides. An American pacifist woman, Mary Harvey, flew from 

America to join us in our pilgrimage to Hiroshima. 

Under the glare of television cameras, we started walking from 

the centre of Tokyo. Tokyo to Yokohama was one unending city, 

We stayed in a guest house where we were received by the Mayor. 

After ceremonial speeches he presented us discreetly with an enve¬ 

lope tied with a red ribbon which contain a few thousand yen—a 

support for peace. Nearly everyone who came to meet us brought 

some present—calligraphy, wall hangings, door hangings, draw¬ 

ings, paintings and dolls. 

We had our first experience of a Japanese public bath, which later 

became an essential part of our daily routine. 1 had never seen so 

many naked bodies together and was shy to take off my pants. In 

India we would never be naked in public, and would always wear 

pants when taking a shower. But here in Japan nobody would dream 

of bathing in their pants. First we would wash our bodies sitting on 

a little low wooden stool beside a warm tap, soaping ourselves and 

rinsing with bowls of water. Then we soaked our bodies in a small 

ir 6 

WANDERER 

swimming pool filled with very hot water. There was a thin bamboo 

wall which separated the men’s from the women’s areas and one 

woman sitting in the doorway was in charge of both, When we 

had completed our bath, we put on cotton kimonos provided by 

the guest house. On a summer evening the majority of people would 

be walking around after their baths in these comfortable kimonos. 

The Japanese dinner was always a delight. Bowl after bowl of 

soup, rice, vegetables and pickles with plenty of seaweed, soya sauce 

and tofu. My Japanese hosts would break into laughter seeing me 

fail to use their beautifully decorated chopsticks. One dish I much 

enjoyed was tempura, a variety of vegetables enveloped in batter and 

fried, but I was happiest when sukiyaki was prepared. Then I could 

choose exactly what I wanted to eat and hear no grumbles about my 

vegetarianism and the Japanese love of fish and fish-eggs. 

At all rimes we were given tea to drink. Tea before dinner, tea 

after dinner, tea during dinner. Sometimes it is green tea, other times 

black tea. If it is summer you drink ice-cold barley tea; in springtime, 

cherry blossom tea. I wish the Coca-Cola culture would keep away 

and leave Japan to tea. 

Much of our time during the walk was spent with the peace groups 

who, although they were very active to bring peace to the world, 

had no peace within themselves. Broadly speaking, the peace groups 

were either communist or independent. The communists insisted 

that America and the capitalist countries were responsible for the 

lack of peace in the world. They derived their strength from the 

trade unions and therefore were very powerful. The independents 

comprised the anarchists, Christians and Buddhists. Fortunately 

both groups supported our walk. Always we urged them not to 

put so much emphasis on their ideological divides, and instead unite 

for some common programme. But we were no more successful in 

bringing peace to them than we had been elsewhere. Only when 

there is peace within, can the peace without be established. Although 

the Peace Movement in Japan was stronger than in many other 

countries, it was no more successful, partly because of its internal 

disagreements. 

Our route took us to Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Okayama, 

Fukuyama and then to Hiroshima. In forty-five days we walked an 

average of fifteen miles a day. Often Buddhist monks accompanied 

NO DESTINATION 

WANDERER 

us with their chant of ‘Namu-myo-ho-renge-kyo* and their drum¬ 

ming to evoke harmony and peace in the world. The presence of 

these monks on our walk transformed us into pilgrims. I experienced 

an inner calm while walking in Japan, possibly because my Buddhist 

companions brought with them a strong sense of dharma. 

After walking seven hundred miles, we arrived at the Peace Gar¬ 

den of Hiroshima. Here I was reminded of the fact that it needs a 

calamity of Himalayan proportions to make us realize that power 

and prosperity need not go through the gates of war, Japan is 

now on the road to enormous economic strength because it spends 

almost no money on armaments. It is able to devote all its human 

ingenuity and resources, not on wasteful military research, but on 

the fulfilment of human needs—although I still doubted that Japan 

would know where and wheh to stop its economic growth and how 

to maintain a balance between the needs of its people and the needs 

of its environment. 

After travelling by boat from Japan to Bombay, once again 

we stood in front of Gandhi's grave in Delhi. It was md Octo¬ 

ber 1964, the anniversary of his birthday, and people were saying 

prayers, chanting mantras and turning spinning wheels. There was 

an autumn sun and a strong wind. As I laid yellow marigolds on 

the black stone of Gandhi’s grave, I felt again the power that graves 

have on me. 

From Delhi we went to see Vinoba at his ashram in Pawnar. The 

ashram is situated on a hill beside a river. We climbed the stone steps; 

at the top there was a temple, and beyond it, under the shadow of 

a large tree, Vinoba was sitting on a wooden platform surrounded 

by members of the ashram. There was the quiet voice of Vinoba, 

teaching from the Upanishads . When he saw us, Vinoba smiled 

and beckoned us to sit by him. He put his hand on my shoulder 

and said, ‘How are your feet? I have heard stories of your blistersF 

He laughed, ‘They are the ornaments of walking.'! said, ‘With your 

blessings and the armour of no money, we have completed our walk. 

Thank you for insisting that we went without money. Having no 

money totally freed us.' 

Vinoba reflected, ‘You have done well. It is brave and courageous, 

but ultimately you need to go nowhere to find peace, it is within 

you.' Vinoba looked around and continued, ‘The centre of the 

earth is here. Do you remember the story of Ganesh? One day the 

supreme god Vishnu called all the gods and devils together and said 

he would give his blessings to the one who went round the earth 

and was the first to come back. All of thenn left immediately on 

their various transports—riding on a lion, a peacock, a swan, a 

bullock, etc—each one wanting to be the first to return. But the little 

elephant-faced deity Ganesh, the son of Lord Shiva, was puzzled and 

thought, “I will take ages to travel round the earth on my transport 

of a mouse and 1 am bound to come last.” So he drew a circle on 

the ground, wrote inside it ‘Om Vishnu* and rode around it on his 

mouse. He returned to Vishnu, who was sitting on his lotus throne, 

and put his head on Vishnu’s feet saying, “I am the first to return. 

Give me your blessings.” One by one, the gods and devils started 

gathering and awaited eagerly for Vishnu's verdict. When everyone 

had returned, Vishnu gave his blessing to Ganesh. None of the gods 

could understand how Ganesh on his mouse could have come first 

and they begged for an explanation. Ganesh said, “What you see in 

space and time is only an illusion. The real essence of the universe 

is Vishnu himself. So you don't need to go anywhere to circle the 

world, the world is here.” 

We had walked around the world, but Vinoba told us it wasn’t 

necessary to go anywhere! 

We went on by train to Bangalore. Lata came to the same place 

where I had left her almost two and a half years before. As the train 

drew slowly into the platform, I opened the door of the carriage and 

stood on the step, my eyes searching for her among the people milling 

around. Suddenly I saw her dark hair bound in a bunch on top of her 

head, with a white jasmine flower-ring around it. She was standing 

with our daughter in her arms and a garland of red roses in one hand. 

I waved and she came running towards me. We embraced and stood 

there holding each other. I tried to lift my daughter into my arms to 

kiss her, but she hid her face in Lata's sari. Lata said, ‘Darling, this is 

your papa.’ I Was the papa she had never known. 

Menon and I stood awkwardly at the taxi rank, our paths about 

to separate. He got into a three-wheeled scooter taxi, and T saw him 

disappear into the traffic, waving his arms. 

Chapter Six