35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
thinking, No, I don’t believe. Don’t make me believe, either. But if you
come and stand there and smile – I’ll believe. The reality confused me
after years of living with the idea and the image. He drew closer. As
I realised I knew what he was going to do, someone reached out to
touch his feet. He skipped away with a reprimand. Then he stood,
not twenty feet away, and looked straight into my eyes. Not a muscle
on his face moved. Abruptly he turned and walked back down the
aisle, heading across the compound.
That’s that, I thought. There’s the answer. You feel nothing at all, and he
doesn’t even know who you are . . .
This seemed a perfect conclusion to the whole thing. I decided I
could probably get back to the West End in time for lunch, too, at
this rate. Instead, I decided to walk where I’d once found unsurpassed
serenity in the natural world.
First I offered a flower to Ganesh – good old Ganesh. Then I left
the ashram, heading down the track that led to the Chitravati River.
Or at least used to lead there. A hundred yards off the main drag,
houses and minihotels for devotees ended and country began.
‘Sai Ram, appa,’ a crafty-looking, well-coiffed sadhu announced,
holding out his kamandalam bowl.
‘Fuck off,’ I told him with satisfaction. I’d never have said that
back in 1974.
Turning the bend where I should have seen the river’s edge, I
found only a two-hundred-yard expanse of sand. The monsoon
had failed here, too. All that was left was a twisting sand runway,
with herds of goats being driven down it, and deep holes being dug
to reach the shadow Chitravati underground. Baba had always
warned people not to dig so many wells. It lowers the water table, he
had explained. At the time, I had wondered what that had to do with
us devotees, concluding it might be some sort of parable. Maybe it
hadn’t been.
I followed the dry bed. This aridity depressed me in a landscape
that had once been so lush. After half a mile, I turned back, heading
to the old part of Puttaparthi village – where Baba had been born. It
looked exactly the same, charming and chaotic, full of fat water
buffalo and happy children. Baba’s house had been torn down, I
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