He has many names—Haridas Tyagi, Sitaram Maharaj, and is popularly known as Baba ji. He has lived alone in a mud hut for nearly twenty years, located on top of a hill in the compound of the temple of Kokila Mata in Hartola village of Nainital district in Uttarakhand.
Over the years, he has adopted this village as his own, and the temple as his home. He is well versed with the affairs of the village. All and sundry—the locals and the outsiders who have built cottages here—know him well and he’s become the sounding board of the village.
I have known him for many years. And every time I come to Hartola, I go and spend a few hours with him. I’m welcome to his hut, and he treats me with honey tea and some tantalising substances.
He was weeding a flower pot as I approached the temple gate after literally an uphill climb. ‘It is a joy to see you,’ he said, lifting his head. And we started from where we left the last time.
Baba talks his mind, and there’s nothing to hide, for he doesn’t judge and he cannot be bothered about the opinions of others. He is categorical about how he feels, and not patronising, therefore, is easier to deal with.
He is a profoundly interesting man, a vairagi—someone who has renounced bodily pleasures. By doing so, his mind is free of the pulls and pressure that’s so quintessential to desire. But he’s curious about life, and people, and mind and matter and the spiritual quest. He is interested in the game but never as a player.
Part of a religious group, his seniors—gurus—come to him, and he travels to them, and they travel together. His anushthans—or big ceremonial pujas— Shrimad Bhagwat Katha—are a popular event in the village. He meditates, loves plants and animals as his fellow being, welcomes people as a family. He’s noncommittal to life, that's a great commitment to his spiritual quest.
Living is easy. He does his things. Cooks his food, takes care of the plants and stray dogs and cats find home in his hut, people contribute, give him food, oil. God takes care of him, he affirms, and he gets what he needs, and more, as a goodwill contribution. Therefore, he’s dependent on others in general, but no one in particular—which is akin to being independent. ‘I will stay here till I’m around,' he says. No one can dislodge him from here, he believes with religious fervour.
It's all about faith. Faith is the strongest form of manifestation, and the whole cosmos conspires to give you what you want. If he decides to travel, he gets to meet people who are willing to be his co-travellers or would happily provide for it. And this is not just about going to places in the Himalayas, or the rest of the country for a pilgrimage that he calls yatra—or journey, but also when he travels abroad.
He has no documents. But when he wanted to go to Brazil, for that matter Turkey, or some other places, his disciples helped him get the paperwork done, and his usual life was disrupted momentarily while he was on board the flight, but as soon as he landed, he got all he needed, his life resumed as usual. The real journey is inside, change of context, place, and people then become merely peripheral. And if you love life, life will love you back—he explains.
Baba is his own sanctum. Life is easy. He does his things. Cooks his food, takes care of the plants and stray dogs and cats find home in his hut, people contribute, give him food, oil. God takes care of him, he affirms, and he gets what he needs, and more.
Many travel to him for this 'inner journey' that he talks about. He's a baba with international connections, speaks many European languages, and is famed to have organised a rainbow gathering, where hippie-looking foreigners, I call them nirvana seeker with great reverence, had come in large numbers, congregated in the forest, and celebrated their being as one with the God. They have a shared intention that of peace, harmony, freedom, and respect. ‘That’s what all religions teach,’ Baba affirms.
This congregation happened many years ago and didn’t spread harmony, instead causing much consternation amongst the villagers. It is cloudy these days with sporadic downpour. Rainbows are not rare here, but no more rainbow gatherings.
He adopted this way of life when he was 28, he has never been intimate with a woman, he says and I believe, for that’s something he never felt inclined to. His parents—who he calls guardian—took him to Rameshwaram, where he died, and they, his guardian, according to him, were obliged to throw his mortal remains in the sea, when a sage intervened, and said, ‘the boy is not dead.’
He was dead and then he came back. A break from the past. And nothing was the same again. He was destined for a life of a sage that he leads with penchant. Those who know him, say, his stories change. But, what is constant in this world?
Osho, who he admires, calls him a genius, though, not a sage, had famously said, ‘I am deliberately inconsistent, contradictory, so that you cannot make any body of knowledge out of me. So, if one day you start gathering something, another day I take it away. I don't allow you to gather anything.’ He talks about Osho’s book, From Sex to Superconsciousness. Repression cannot be a path to liberation, he concurs.
In his own experience, when he was travelling abroad, and leading a group of nirvana seekers, there were women who tried to dazzle him with their swaying bodies in dishabille, perhaps to entice him. All they managed to do was force a smile on his face. And he appreciated their intensity, it’s an energy after all. It felt like a gush of wind that woke him up only to realise, these women were, like toddlers, trying to gain his attention, to play with them.
With him time passes by very fast. Looking at him, one can’t help but think, this is one good way of existing on this planet. Baba has reached a certain state, where temptations are not tempting, when the usual pulls and pushes don’t touch you, and you become a witness unto yourself, and to the world around you. Then you are your own sanctum and the present moment becomes continuous. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, ‘The Medium is the Message.’
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