Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

the double row and remove me from the stage. Pushed
and carried, without will and without weight.
I wrapped the cloth around my head again and slowly
walked back to the campsite.
That same afternoon everybody packed their things.
Beside the campsite a long row of Indian buses were parked.
Gaily decorated and with a complete Hindu altar on
the dashboard. The narrow wooden seats were suited to
two Indians, or one and a half Westerner. As soon as you
had your things together, you boarded the first bus in the
row. When one was full, it left for the ashram of Maharaj
ji in Hardwar, a place I only knew mentioned with great
awe by the first generation of followers who had themselves,
traveling through India, found Maharaj ji. I shared
a bus with American and Australian followers, my Dutch
ashram mates I lost days before in the crowd. We took
off through Delhi, that I hadn’t seen before yet because
the festival grounds were away from the city and as an
ashram premie I had no money to take a bus or taxi into
town. Didn’t want that either, because I’d left that world
behind me. But now I saw it anyway. Rambling buses, ox
wagons, mopeds, motorbikes, cars at least missing their
mirrors but sometimes whole doors, booths with melons,
booths with bananas, policemen with shrill whistles,
cyclists, rickshaws, pedestrians. And everything and everybody
dispersed colors, dust and noise.
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