Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

quarters (a door, a window frame, no glass, and a wooden
bed). For the mahatmas. Perpedicular and at the one side
there was a kitchen, at the other were two toilets and an
open air sink without a tap. Next to the building was a
space for satsang gatherings, made in the same style as
the campsite in Delhi: a roof made of pieces of fabric on
poles. Underneath was a small stage. Other than that the
ashram consisted of wind and dust.
For the three thousand guests from America, Europe
and Australia a campsite was built on a small bare field
next to the ashram grounds. It was made up of about ten
large tent roofs constructed from pieces of fabric, with
open spaces underneath where everyone coming from the
buses tried to find a spot with as little dust and sun as possible
to roll out his sleeping bag. Next to the campsite, on
the way to the river, were two rows of canvas cabins, with
open fronts and backs, built on top of ditches where every
now and then water from the river would run through.
The toilets. One row for the ‘brothers’ and one row for the
‘sisters’. Behind that: mother Ganges, also the place where
everyone had to make a sincere effort to keep himself and
his clothes sort of clean.
That, the food (scooped from large buckets on a hold
out chapati - ‘More dahl brother More rice brother’), the
heat, the toilet-ditches that soon didn’t flush at all anymore
and aimless hanging around in the ashram dust,
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