Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 F I R S T M O O N 06N I C KThe next morning I woke to that awful retching sound the Indians makeas part of their predawn cleansing ritual. India might be pretty dirty, butthe people themselves are into personal cleanliness in a big way. Theysoap and sluice themselves down with buckets of water a couple oftimes a day and clean parts that the rest of us never think of. First thingevery morning they get to work on their throats and noses, snorting andretching a welcome to the day.I lay in bed listening. He had got to the nose now and was snortingloudly. I reckoned it must be the janitor who had let us in the nightbefore. In the background was the noise of the street getting under way,people shouting, traffic, the constant refrain of rickshaw bells and hornblasts. There are always two opposing possible views of India: the nightbefore it had seemed magical; now after only four hours’ sleep, I had theother view. Our arrival in the middle of the night seemed like a pleasantdream from which I had been rudely awakened.Memories of the last time I had arrived in New Delhi from Englandcame to me; it had been with a friend called Fred, and we had come overland.We had set off in the summer of 1972 when I was nineteen, catchinga cheap student flight to Amsterdam having told everyone we weregoing round the world. In fact we had got cold feet in the last month andhad decided to go only to Amsterdam and then come back with someexcuse. After a week in Amsterdam we got up the courage to hitchhiketo Greece and, once there, just kept on going. We somehow hitched thewhole way to India, arriving in New Delhi on a local truck in time forChristmas. Now I remembered how unpleasant it had been then. It wasmy birthday, and we both had dysentery for the first time. We lay therein our hotel room, one on each bed, feeling miserable. Eventually Fredgot into Hinduism and gurus, very much the thing then, and went backafter a year. He became a disciple of Shri Chinmoy and so did the lady Ihad left behind, my girlfriend from my teenage years. I stayed away for1 0