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

38
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
stained glass of milky chai, absently pulling her choli down, putting
it in its place. ‘God keeps the best for Himself,’ she announced.
A blind beggar with empty eye sockets that were as dry and black
as a dead dog’s nose approached us, urgently wailing, ‘Sai Ram, Sai
Ram, Sai Ram!’ He held a kind of theatre vendor’s tray, with a
garlanded portrait of Sai Baba propped on it against his chest. Some
coins were scattered on the otherwise empty surface, to give you a
hint. He smiled and intoned, sensing where we’d sat and picking
his way over. I placed a rupee under some coins.
‘Sai Ram! Woh, Sai Ram!’
It was a phrase I’d come to be very familiar with, connecting Sai
Baba’s name with the god Rama, and used as a mantra, greeting,
and all-purpose response to almost anything by those around him.
‘Baba says you shouldn’t give money to beggars. It teaches them
that begging is a profession,’ Joy said loftily.
‘The guy’s blind, Joy. I think begging probably is one of his few
career options.’
‘He’s a millionaire. He’s not even a devotee of Baba.’
Joy was putting me off the spiritual life of Sathya Sai Baba before
I had even met the man. I had no idea what a ‘spiritual life’ was
then, of course, or what it entailed.
Returned to the unyielding rear seat of Abdul’s car, I watched our
vehicle oscillate through what increasingly seemed a paradise
untouched by everything but searing heat since time began. This
heat was a third passenger. It slapped my cheeks, eventually
embracing my whole damp body with fierce, hot, and powerful
arms. Joy fanned her face with a slim paperback of Hermann Hesse.
‘Sai Ram,’ she mumbled constantly, like the blind man. ‘Sai
Ram.’
When the huddle of sparkling domes, stunted gopura, and
scattered concrete and palm-thatched bungalows of Puttaparthi
eventually came into view, ‘Sai Ram’ was all she had to say.
It was indeed one of the most exquisite stretches of land I’d ever
seen: the majestic, parched, and barren mountains, the profound
and stubborn boulders that seemed their offspring, the fertile groves
and paddies, the broad, mercurial river. And, in the midst of it, a