The Urban Jungle and the Little Republic of Survival

The years between 2010 and 2016 cover my career in publishing in Delhi NCR. I worked in a few companies ranging from online B2B marketing, content development for web portals, digital publishing, and hardcore academic publishing.

The jobs were thoroughly engaging, requiring your submergence into the sea of words with total focus, and at the end of the day you would feel like you had been doing hardcore labour, just like unskilled workers in the manufacturing sector do. And on top of that was this feeling of not getting enough payment, a kind of undercurrent of being underpaid for all this hard work.

It was tiring and exhaustive work, full of underachievers because, of course, in editorial and content development work, these were people who had some talent, who had academic inclinations, but unfortunately could not achieve in life what they really deserved, and at the end of the journey they had to take up this job.

I don't think I came across anybody who was here by choice. It was by compulsion. It was just by circumstantial forces pushing one into a corner and then having to take up this job when there was no other option.

Salary, of course, was always an issue. It was not as per my expectations, and especially after all those lofty aspirations and nearly coming to touch the civil services, and then having tasted business, and even though at the end of it I had to quit business, still I had seen, I had felt what it was like being an owner of an establishment, however small it was.

I had seen money arriving, money going, and the nice lifestyle in between, international travel, seeing the world, and other luxurious things. So having to convince myself to take up a content writer or editorial job in academic publishing houses was almost a milestone.

I accepted my fate and melted into the ignominy of congested, crowded, jostling, teeming, unkempt, labyrinthine, suffocating, mushrooming, disheveled Delhi. Being lost in this claustrophobia being as good as finding oneself in silence and solitude in the infinite space among the crowd.

My major stay during these six or seven years was at Aligaon near Badarpur Border in Delhi. A rural settlement caught in the restless entrails of the concrete octopus spreading its tentacles but not able to digest it completely.  The smell of struggle in the streets, the sweat and fatigue of labour, the diehard stubbornness of hope and dreams, and the soft, quiet, unassuming dignity of people struggling against enormous odds. Here you had thousands of struggles within meters. Dreams here were plentiful, sadly space wasn’t.

It was an urban village off the road to Faridabad and Mathura, cutting across the congested stretch from Ashram to Badarpur Border. On the right side you had this manufacturing corridor in Okhla Industrial Area. On the left side you had Sarita Vihar, and just nearby was this urban village growing very weirdly, unshapely, being pushed from all corners by the urban forces. Here poverty was the landlord; necessity its poor tenant. Everybody seemed to be moving; few in reality were progressing.

 

Under unplanned forces, it was just like any other urban village, as you can imagine, people trying to cope with the rising economic opportunities and then just rushing into the first major thing that comes to them, that is, making rooms to accommodate more and more people as tenants. The tenants had to be busy, busy and busy to make ends meet; nobody had the luxury of standing still. The city promised mountains but delivered molehills; but hope was the cheapest item that could always be bought even with empty pockets. Life was cheap; but survival was very costly.

This area was a cheap locality because on one side you had Okhla Industrial Area and Mohan Cooperative industrial zone. Then you had the Badarpur and Faridabad industrial corridor, and across the Yamuna to the east, of course, it was Noida. It was thronged by unskilled migrants labors, hawkers and vendors carrying inherited struggles on their frail shoulders; but at least hope would take birth every day in morning after dying by the end of the day.

Here poor migrant unskilled labourers from UP, Bihar and MP were staying, paying low rent for one-room or two-room accommodations. Here in this tiny rural corner with a mountainous urban grafting. A stubborn village although swallowed by the urban leviathan, but not completely digested and hence puked out in a strange half-digested rural-urban hybrid -- weird, shapeless illegitimate child of unplanned urban development. The streets slept very lightly; while hunger hardly ever slept. Full of crowded lives with almost empty futures.

To me personally, it was even peaceful to be lost in this concrete wilderness, to be wandering unnoticed while caught in the sprawling tentacles of this heartless urbanization. In the suffocating embrace of urbanization -- a labyrinth of brick, mortar and human strife, struggle and desperation (but dreams also) – it was strange type of peace. Here in this haphazard anatomy of the urban village, in a forgotten crowded pocket, where this untidy untended creeper clung to the big metropolitan banyan tree, I also rented a little nest. While the city exploded like uncontrollable organism around, I willingly became a participant-cum-observer of this claustrophobic geography of survival and needs. There was dignity in this drudgery. There was discipline in this desperation. When tomorrow is mortgaged to today’s needs, survival itself turns a full-time occupation. And there is art in it. Aesthetics.

Staying here would save me a lot of money because just for two and a half thousand rupees I had a reasonably good room in comparison to the majority of the people who were staying in almost slum-like conditions at 800 rupees or 1,000 rupees per room.

As they say, a one-eyed man is a king in a group of blind people. The same was the case with me. I was surrounded by people whose labour the metropolis was aware of but wasn’t aware of their names and presence. It needed their hands, but wasn’t interested in even casting a single cursory look at their faces. Every tiny hovel-like room had an unfinished story. To me nobody was insignificant in their struggle. It was a big university without classrooms to learn lessons in life. I studied their curriculum, they busy in trying to pass the exam of survival. I saved money here, but I collected rich experiences also.

The entire street where this house, whose one room I had taken on rent, was situated was full of unskilled labourers, security guards, petty shop attendants and vendors, street hawkers, or engaged in any type of job that can be sandwiched between the urban toast to squeeze out a morsel of survival and living. Quite a busy and happening place.

Poverty has its great tightening grip on its carriers, and there is a sort of communal living where many struggling poor people are staying engaged in different types of jobs.

It was more or less like a village kind of environment, people speaking in Bhojpuri and Purvanchali dialects, addressing each other like they were from the same village.

It was a very happening, busy, noisy street clamouring with the pangs of survival, the economic survival of unskilled migrants arriving here in the urban jungle with dreams and aspirations to look for a relatively better way of life, but getting lost in the urban sea as unknown entities. The fast wheels of economic growth, development and progress plied over them like they were a layer of tar or asphalt.

The central thoroughfare with ceaseless caravans of economic refugees arriving like human tributaries emptying into the metropolitan river. These uprooted children of impoverished hinterlands jumping from deprivation to uncertainty, sometimes calamity; their entire possessions tied in a few rag-tag bundles; the unsung and unknown foot soldiers of our economic development. They land on the platforms, day after day, year after year, jumping into uncertain destinies. The restless migration of unmeetable dreams; the flight from inherited deprivation to uncertain opportunities. The small-human tide washing against prosperous shores. The exodus of these refugees from the circumstantial tyranny makes them look like economic pilgrims moving towards the shrine of the goddess of prosperity. And when these invisible passengers of our train of growth land here, ogling at the distant lighthouse to these dispossessed, it's a leap from familiar poverty to unfamiliar struggle. Ironically, it feels like a massive migration starting from fringes and ending on margins. A herd, almost in tandem with herds of cattle and sheep moving almost hypnotized: carrying the accumulated arrears of historical injustice; shackled by the inherited chains of inherited deprivation; a life starting several miles behind the starting line; squashed and pulped by the crushing arithmetic of daily survival; haunted by the perpetual deficit of existence; burdened under the ancestral baggage of discrimination and exclusion; struggling to come out of the bottomless pit of everyday necessities after spending a lifetime in the pit over the generations; busy in the merciless mathematics of hunger; balanced on the knife-edge; chalking their endless plans for survival; a life lived on the narrow ledge between life and death just a step from each other,

It was not a long street. It was a mere side street. It ran for just a hundred meters approximately starting from the main street. The house was situated at the end of it. About hundred meters of compressed humanity: a microcosm of our unfinished social transformation; a little republic of socio-economically dispossessed; a miniature struggle of survival; the cramped theatre of everyday survival; the living museum of everyday existence; the buzzing beehive of human necessity; a human anthill of restless activity.

It was a little street with hundreds of twisted tales, unfinished and bleak. It was a cauldron of conflicted dreams at the congested crossroads of destinies perpetually getting baked under fire. In this mosaic of deprivation and determination, there was the orchestra of labour, laughter and quarrels. A tiny republic on the crowded island of humanity where citizenship meant to be ever-a-soldier in the miniature battlefield. Here the unending carnival of unending needs and necessity played out day and night. A little universe held together by the undying will to survive. 

There was a dead end, and beyond that was the single railway line for cargo trains that fetched coal to Badarpur Thermal Power Station, which belched smoke into the already smoked-out lungs of Delhi. Along the line there was semi-wilderness comprising bushes, grass and trees on both sides of the single line.

Just in front of the house where I had taken a room on rent, there was this rectangular, double-storeyed block of a tailoring unit. They were vendors of some local clothing manufacturers. There were rows and rows of sewing machine operators toiling away day in and day out, their salary being defined by the number of pieces they finished in a day. Just near it was a water treatment plant where they drew water with a borewell, treated it and sold it in 20-litre bottles. The rest of the street was occupied by families in bundles: big families, small children, school-going children, adolescent parents; all struggling from the youngest to the eldest.

You could see the handcarts of the people who would put either their small-time eatables, snacks, tea, or vegetables, or trinkets and toys on them and wander around the congested Aligaon to seek out a few rupees that would convince them that this life was economically more paying and better than their villages in UP, Bihar and MP, where there were no opportunities. The wage payments back home were very low, and on top of that, you had annual floods that would destroy their crops on their little plots of land.

Most of these poor unskilled migrants belonged to the so-called lower rungs of society, poor people, socially disadvantaged, from the so-called lower castes, always at a disadvantage, underprivileged, and beginning their journey from a huge account deficit, where even reaching zero and starting afresh required almost an entire life's worth of effort. But still, whatever might be the living conditions in urban villages, people get drawn to them, just like people from Third World countries are getting drawn to developed countries, even if it means perishing on donkey routes and illegal migrant routes, drowning in the sea, getting shot by guards, being duped and kidnapped by mediators on the way. That is the same old story of people running away from their miseries. So it was a little replica of this tendency of humans migrating to better places.

These were too small people to venture out for any bigger places. So they had landed here in Delhi.

On a daily basis, full trains of migrant unskilled labourers from Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh and other northern states arrive at Delhi platforms. You have small, dark, famished, undernourished, malnourished, historically deprived, underprivileged thousands walking with their sackcloths and gunny bags full of utensils and clothes bunched together and made into bundles, carrying them on their heads and shoulders and backs. Little women, I call them girl mothers, clad in soiled saris, carrying infants in their arms, and a few others toiling along with the struggling parents.

A very poor sight.

 

Staying among these people, it would always remind me that it's a privilege to have a skilled job, even if it was in content writing in B2B ventures, or digital publishing, or academic publishing. It would give an appearance of being a good and nicely paying job.

The house where I stayed was a two-storeyed house at the end of the small street, in front of that tailoring unit. The lower floor was occupied by Chhedi Lal, a man in his early fifties, small, stocky, funnily mustached.

He plied his handcart called thela and tried to sell his chole bhature or parathas, which his always-fighting wife would prepare early in the morning for him so that he could sell them, serving as a lunch provider for scores of unskilled migrants and labourers in the near vicinity.  

They were from Bihar, from the cobbler community, historically deprived, socially very, very underprivileged and exploited. People like them have been running away from the dragnet of historical exploitation by the higher castes. They hardly have any opportunities: no land, no education, no social standing. So here they are trying to re-fabricate and reshape a new identity, at least for the children. The woman was very energetic but quarrelsome though, and that can be understood. Managing the economy on a shoestring budget, where you have to dig a well every day to drink that day's worth of water, is wearisome and very tough. And she was giving her best. She was restless, but I never found her to be lazy in any way. Her husband, in contrast, was a cool guy; a silent pond in comparison to the gurgling, noisy stream that his wife was. So he would absorb all her grumblings, shoutings, taunts, comments. Most of the time he was silent and just did his job, and when he was at home he just lay down. He did not bother about the hurricane unleashed by his wife.

Their pairing was like a placid pond by a turbulent waterfall; almost a quiet bank of a perpetually overflowing river. If he was a man of still waters, she was a woman of restless currents. Her words would unleash like monsoon torrents, he would quietly absorb them like dry land. I could usually hear this domestic cyclone fussing around the unmoving centre. It was a treat to watch such differing temperaments yoked into the same cart of survival. As she cooked food, the steam from pressure cooker looked like her anger escaping. Chhedi Lal surely had amazing endurance. Maybe her restlessness fuelled the household and his composure steadied it. While reading after coming from office I could hear the daily thunderstorms going late into the night. I really respected Chhedi Lal for his patience against this endless friction born of poverty that cascaded from the mouth of his wife. The grinding wheel of survival is bound to give sparks. Good that he never raised his sails while her storms lasted. Otherwise the house would have blown off.

It was sheer luck that I never ever found him raising his voice. So we owed our stay at the house to his endless patience.

 

 

 

 

 

The ground floor, where they stayed, had two almost semi-dark rooms. The entry was through a small door leading to a little, always-wet corridor, on the right side of which you had their bathroom, toilet and kitchen, and as you passed it, in front you had their living quarters, and in between there was the staircase leading to the first floor where I had my room. Their bathroom, toilet, kitchen, almost always busy, always noisy, somebody shouting, somebody raising complaints, almost hara-kiri. It was buzzing with that struggle for survival, always on tenterhooks. It was always shaking, and I can never ever recall the small cemented, brick-paved flooring being dry. It was always wet.

They had four children. The eldest was a dark, slightly overweight girl, must have been around 17 or 18. She was followed by another girl, 13 or 14, a slim girl, dark in colour but with very pretty features. The girls  were followed by two boys.

The family was doing its best by sending their kids to a government school nearby, and as you can understand, the education system in state-managed schools is very poor. So it was education in name only, but still they were moving towards getting matriculation or senior secondary certificates. So even if Chhedi Lal probably never went to school, and neither did his wife, if their kids reached up to senior secondary level, that would be counted as moving up the rungs, and possibly the generation after, their grandchildren would move on to achieve graduation certificates with real skills to get into some job, some skilled job. Such fights in such families are intergenerational after all.

Children the tender shoots trying to break through the concrete of inherited poverty. Soft, slow steps on the slow staircase of generational uplift. Each school certificate a breach in the fort of deprivation and dispossession. A windowless existence so far, now education opening a tiny hole to the outside world. The tiny participants in the long relay race of social mobility. It's almost like Chhedi Lal and his wife running the first lap, followed by his children and then his grandchildren, to be finished in the coming generation. Or say, the parents planting a sapling whose shade and fruits would be enjoyed by their grandchildren. I watched their first uncertain steps out of the historical gutter. Their eyes glittering like tiny lamps flickering against the darkness of deprivation. A schoolbag carrying the unmet dreams of many generations. Walking on the fragile bridge between inherited poverty and imagined prosperity. This generation adding one more rung to the ladder, to make the ladder long enough to allow them to crawl out of the painful basement, and go on a slow painful ascent up the ladder to come onto taste open air from the subterranean existence. And go on roof and look at the distant horizon of a university degree. Vaah, the stubborn green shoots of possibility; dreams germinating in the cracks of deprivation.

We should not expect too much and expect them to create miracles, and we should never judge them, because they start their life from gutters, and to come out of a gutter, from the worms of survival, and clean oneself and start walking on the main street, and then go on to the highway of economic upliftment, is no mean task. It requires generations of effort, and they are doing that.

The eldest girl probably was in the loops of adolescent love, because I would always see her sneaking up to the terrace on the roof of my room, going past like a young filly, phone clasped in her hand and a gleam in her eyes. The other girl of 13 or 14 was very silent, and I almost always found her silent in a very dignified way. She carried herself with a lot of maturity even at that young age.

Sometimes, after office hours, when I stood on the terrace looking at the silence of bushes and trees along the railway line, the Badarpur Thermal Power Station railway line passing behind the house, and another abandoned house just overlooking the other side, it gave a very quaint feeling, a strange feeling of not being exactly in a metropolis, but in a very weirdly shaped village where so many types of stress, tensions, aspirations and dreams had commingled to form a heady concoction.

Therefore, it was quite interesting: looking at this last green fringe of the suffocating, smog-laden metropolis, with thermal power belching smoke nearby. Sometimes when I took a peg or two of whiskey the railway line looked like a scar across the urban wilderness from the terrace; a scarred iron artery feeding Delhi's industrial appetite.

At nights, the room would shake with the rhythm of coal trains carrying black nourishment to the smoke-belching giant, the thermal power station. And the smoky lungs of the tired metropolis would try even more to keep jogging, for progress and growth.

The forlorn patch of greenery at the edge of industrialization presenting a kind of uneasy handshake between wilderness and factories. But past midnight, when there was no train on the track, it gave the feeling of a thin line of silence. I would look into this abandoned yard of metropolitan battlefield. A thin slice of dying wilderness in my backyard surrounded by the soot-stained horizons. Here I sometimes heard the last whispers of rural solitude very late in the night. And to make it very ironical, it was so close to the thermal giant belching smoke.

The staircase landing on our floor lay in the middle of the two rooms on this floor. On one side there was my room, and on the other side was the gem of an attraction for this entire little house. It was full of new, fresh dreams, and it would require a complete separate chapter in its narration.

 

These were rectangular rooms. My room was a measuring about 20 feet by 10. Its roof was made in the typical rural, mundane, modest housing style, of stone slabs and iron beams. The other room in front of me, facing the street, in front of the tailoring unit, bore the same proportions with just one addition. It had a little kitchen, a very small kitchen where, at the most, two persons could stand shoulder to shoulder and try to work out the cooking. And in between, where the staircase landed from the ground floor, there was the washing area with a tap, and just where the staircase landed, there was a common bathroom and attached latrine, very small ones. A little bathroom where a heavy person would have difficulty in giving a free hand to massaging and rubbing his body during bathing. And from this bathroom, there was a little, tiny room leading into the Indian toilet on a raised platform. These two things, toilet and bathroom, and the washing area with a tap, were shared by the occupants of these two rooms facing each other. That was the setup where I was staying, like a one-eyed prince among the blind.

I was seen to be earning quite well, staying in a better room. And indeed it was so, because the room in front always had five to six occupants. Can you believe it? Five or six of them staying at the same time, sharing the meager monthly rent.

The average age of the entire group would come out to be 2O at the most. Like some of them would be under 20, some of them would be a couple of years more than 20, most of them undergraduates from poor, socially deprived families in UP and Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal and other states. Most of them held senior secondary school certificates and were doing graduation through open learning courses and distance learning courses here in Delhi, with dreams in their eyes. Their families were not able to continue their studies back at home. They were doing jobs in call centres. Call centres, the dream world of any job aspirant who lands up in Delhi NCR. And one or two of them would continue getting shifted, like someone going out and being replaced by someone else. But four or five of them were always the permanent fixture, and that made it very, very interesting.

Five, six, even more when they had visitors folded in a single room, a kind of dormitory of unfinished dreams. When it was having visitors apart from the regular residents, it gave the feeling of crowded nursery of ambitions. But more than that it was a small fraternity of economic survival. They were hardworking decent boys with dreams bigger than the room that they stayed in. The young shoulders, restless apprentices of urban prosperity, seemed to carry ancient family burdens. It kept the floor buzzing with life after the boring repetitive editorial work. The experience was everyday fresh in proximity of this roomful of tomorrow's possibilities. There was a solid faith in life fuelling this apparently fragile fraternity of shared hardship. I witnessed this generation trying to approach the threshold of opportunity, their dreams traveling faster their salaries. Five or six different destinies sharing a roof forming a tinier republic within the little republic in the poor street of a poor locality. Some of them even read at nigh and seemed the midnight scholars of economic necessity; the scholar borrowing time from sleep to buy a better future.

]A crowded launching pad to take their families ahead.

They called me Big B. Not that I was too big in stature, just that I was elder to them and was in a dream job, the way they saw it. Because they would laugh that you earn as much single-handedly as all of us do in a month, and that fetched me a lot of respect from them.

These were boys from very disciplined, cultured families where elders had given them the family values of respecting elders. So I fetched a lot of respect from them, and that made it quite bearable, watching people struggle, five or six of them earning only as much as I was doing in a month, and a few of them even still teenagers, already supporting their families, bearing all their costs in Delhi, paying for their open studies, and still managing to send a bit of money back home.

 

Staying there almost a part of their group, it made life worth it. After shedding invisible sweat of intellectual labour while working on the assembly line of words in the factory of sentences and paragraphs, it was a relief in that personal environment. I felt almost like a labourer in the vineyards of words. Those who have worked in editorial departments must be aware of the mental treadmill of editorial deadlines; the ceaseless churning of the editorial mill; the quiet drudgery of cerebral labor; a miner digging through manuscripts; a regular excavation of meaning from mounds and heaps of words. While the unending conveyor belt kept on fetching more and more raw, full of errors manuscripts. Sometimes it would appear like a sea of words with no shore in sight. And I would come back carrying a mysterious fatigue born of earning a living using just mind with hardly any other physicality involved. Still, it was disburdening to be away from the spotlight in my village. I was lowest of the low here in this locality and it gave me a strange relief.

The entrepreneurial wings had been chipped, so now it was restless little bird trying to adjust to a smaller cage; a journey from steering my own boat to someone else's. From the pinching peak of ambition, it was coming down to the plateau or low land of accommodation, thereupon I wandered with a peaceful sense of resignation. The office was a tight pipeline so the once free current hardly had any avenue to feel the vastness of ambition, success and goal. The dignity that would be bruised earlier was now customized to the level of all those around me.

I could have easily afforded a nice accommodation in a nice society, but I preferred to stay here. I felt like a wearied long distance traveller now safely cocooned in this urban cubicle. My wandering spirit seemed strangely domesticated. I was fastly adjusting to the truce between aspirations and necessity. From open seas to this narrow canal. Ambitions thrown away. Personal freedom ditched. Still in this narrow confine, there was a sense of a different type of freedom, on this hard pavement of survival, in this reconciliation with the below-ordinary. I seemed to glow even more with the subdued embers of my civil services and entrepreneurial fire.                                                                                  

The Last Caravan: Van Gujjars in a Burning April

April, 2026

It's burning in April, burning summers, hotter than ever. Do we still need more proofs for global warming? Climate skeptics seem to have leathery, insensitive skin, harder than even crocodiles to call it a hoax. Well, they seem to be different species altogether. 

Summers are getting hotter each season, and still we have global warming skeptics leading the world as the most powerful persons on Earth. They don't believe in climate change, destruction of ecology. All they are interested in is adding to business, more money. They are not bothered about at what cost it comes.

All that matters is just more money, more dollars, more real estate, more weapons sold to stage-managed war crises in different countries, so that the war-material mafia is able to increase its business by selling more and more weapons throughout the world.

In any case, that is the bigger world of bigger people engaged in bigger-than-ever follies that will spell doom for the smaller people like me and you.

Here in this countryside of Haryana, Rajasthani nomads, the migrant cattle herders, walk pensively in soiled whites and big red headgears. You can see them wandering in North Indian states, their famished, big-horned cows clogging the roads, creating traffic hassles.

People get irritated, repeatedly honk, mutter, but they respect cows, thankfully, and somehow digest the loss of precious minutes on the road.

I always welcome a group of cattle on the road because that puts a pause on blindingly running traffic.

And then there is an offbeat sight: a big herd of buffaloes, sleek, not too famished. The invisible citizens with their buffaloes. An unusual caravan passing through the burning countryside. Things aren't definitely ok when the mountain herders are forced to come to the unwelcoming plains. It seems like the last miles of an ancient caravan. Buffaloes, burning roads and the invisible citizens of mother India. The sad sight of Van Gujjars: a culture on its last leg.  

And I am surprised as I come across this big flock of buffaloes lining across the road, covering half of it, moving in rhythm.

It's very surprising. Even shocking. Even sad. 

Van Gujjars in this part of Haryana! Their buffaloes are not famished like the cattle of Rajasthani nomads who come from the desert, where the cattle have to fight for sparse blades of grass.

Van Gujjars, they come from the hills. Their buffaloes are fed on mountain grasses, but it's sad to see them seeking survival on leftover crops in harvested wheat farms.

This is late April, so wheat harvesting is almost complete in this part.

In their traditional pasture lands, the forest department officials turn more and more strict these days, and Van Gujjars are the invisible citizens of India, so they are trying to sneak out a thin trail of survival.

Things are getting worse politically as well. Van Gujjars are Muslims, Muslim herders, and that adds to the challenge that they face.

The old man, he drags his feet with effort, a long hennaed beard. A woman leads the herd. Another woman mans the herd's rear. The man is in the middle, sandwiched for safety.

People will be less rough to the women herders. At least this is what they suppose.

Their carts with cloth canopies, laden with their bare essentials, are waiting a few hundred yards ahead on the road.

Communalism is getting hotter, each mile more challenging, each step more challenging than the previous one.

Van Gujjars are Muslims in name only. What do they know about religion? The Mughals must have forced them to convert. Now there is a counterforce. And here we have a distinct culture taking its last breath.

It's a very sad sight to see this caravan of Van Gujjars with their buffaloes in the scorching heat of the plains, away from the lush, verdant valleys and greens where the buffaloes would eat nourishing, succulent grasses and herbs.

And now here they are, surviving on dried leftover crofts in harvested wheat fields, getting harsh words from passersby.

People are not as lenient as with the cow herders to these buffalo herders; obviously for the reasons that are an open fact now. So there are lots of harsh words hurled at them.

A big car stops while crossing the leading woman herder in front of the caravan, and the young man must have said something very obscene, because I see her touching her ears and saying, “Tauba, tauba.”

A very sad sight.

Forest laws are becoming stricter, and the movement of their buffalo caravan is almost impossible now through reserve forests and national parks.

This distinct culture is on its last leg. Undoubtedly. It's dying. 

I think in the coming decade or so they will be gone. They will be forced to sell their buffaloes, and then they will become labourers because they don't have the skills, they don't have education, they don't have permanent residence.

They are the unknown and invisible citizens of Mother India.

It will be quite challenging for them in the coming days, even if the government does its best to make them settle at a particular locality.

But even there they will find it very difficult to earn a living because they don't have any education or special skills to make a living.

They are just buffalo herders.

Drops of Divinity: The Sacred Is Here and Now

Late March, 2026

The beautiful charm of the small world, of small places, sleepy life in a pause in the countryside of Haryana.

There are unassuming small places, little drops of divinity; but they carry the essence of godliness, just like a drop of the sea has got the entire essence of the sea. Similarly, these places, not so famous on the Indian spiritual map, carry the essence, the significance of divinity in their little, little ways.

They are part of local folklore, local legends, local mythology, and these have been the guiding light for scores of people from the struggling, labouring, farming class, the people that you come across in villages. And they have been keeping the flame alive with their faith, with their belief, with their rituals, with their festival celebrations and annual fairs in commemoration of the spiritual significance of these small places.

These are small just in name, but they are as mammoth and huge in godly essence as any other famous place.

And as I wander around, taking little sips of divinity from these restful portals of energy, it gives me the same feeling as any big spiritual place like Mount Kailash would give.

One such place is at village Chitana in Sonipat. It's near my village, and the Devi of this village is worshipped and is famously known as Chitane Wali Mata.

The story goes like this: about 400 years back, a Brahmin kanya from Chitana village had a dream in which Mata gave her darshan and told her that in the village pond there was an idol of hers.

The villagers dug the pond and found Mother Divine's beautiful statue deep in the mud. The grand idol was extracted with faith, reverence, song, dance and celebration.

After rituals and much celebration, a temple was constructed by the pond and Mother's idol was consecrated there.

Presently, a grand fair is held on Saptami and Ashtami of Navratras. There is a tradition of digging earth seven times from the pond. The pond is named Kamal Talab.

The village temple committee has been very, very efficient. You can just look at the way they have set up the arrangement. It's very impressive, the entire compound, and there is discipline, there is seriousness, which bespeaks their faith and diligence in maintaining the sanctity of this place.

By the temple's back, there is a miraculous imli tree. It is very ancient, this imli tree. It is hollow from inside. It was dead earlier. After the eternal lamp was lit, the tree got new saplings. It sprouted to life.

There is a belief that if someone ties a thread on the tree, it fulfils one's wishes.

As of now, the tree seems to be dead, but it is alive in the hearts of the people who still keep on tying their threads while asking for fulfilment of their wishes.

So faith and myth are fresh, alive and green.

The tree is still worshipped as if it is fresh and green.

The temple is very impressive, well managed, everything in proper order. A regional Shakti shrine, folk sacred character, the sacred trinity: temple with Mata idol, sacred tamarind tree and pond.

The temple has evolved organically with additions and improvements over a period of time. It is a hybrid architecture of folk and Nagara style. Even with its modesty, it has a very tall spire and brick-and-plaster construction, incremental expansions over a period of time.

You can easily guess that people have been spending money on it with the rise in the economy.

The entrance courtyard is spacious, with semi-covered halls for kirtans and the inner core, the sacred chamber where you have Mata's beautiful idol glitters with religious decoration. There are sacred peripheral shrines of Devis and Devtas, and mass devotion during Navratra gatherings. It must be very crowded during the fairs because you can see the railings for managing queues of the devotees.

There is not much carving. Still it's modestly majestic with its painted and tiled surfaces instead of sculpted stones.

There is a classical Shastra-based yagyashala, and in front of it hangs a huge brass bell from the entrance archway.

Its vibrations send rhythms of divinity in the air.

It's very surprising to come across such a well-organized temple premises in the countryside. It means the committee and temple trust have been coordinating really well, and so are the donors of money, who have been quite liberal and kind and loving in donating big amounts of money for constructing and managing this beautiful temple, where thousands gather during Navratras when there is a fair held.

It fulfils multiple purposes of giving opportunities to the people to have darshan of Mata. Children come and enjoy the thoroughfare, buy toys, eat sweetmeats. So it is quite entertaining during the Navratras.

Now at this time, when this is off-season and there are not many pilgrims, save a family who have brought their newlywed son with his new bride for fulfilling rituals in front of Mata's idol and taking her blessings.

As I stand here, I just muse over the fact that this place is no less than Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, if you have that particular emotion, that bhav in your heart.

So, of course, even here Mata's blessings are as powerful, loving and compassionate as they are in the Vaishno Devi temple in the hills, provided you are open, you are on that frequency of surrender, full belief and faith.

You can harness the divine energy from any spiritual portal, big or small, it does not matter.

And there comes a stage when each and every part of Mother Nature becomes a living idol of grace, of love, of godliness. When you are on that frequency, you are no longer required to go on pilgrimages to get into that bhav of surrender and faith.

When you are perpetually, constantly on that platform, when you start seeing godliness in each living and non-living part of Mother Nature. When you see the same godliness in a stone as well as in a flower, in a beautiful woman or a handsome man, or a fearsome wild animal, or a reptile like a cobra. When this happens, you meet the essence cosmic unity. 

When you recognize the inherent unity of the same cosmic energy, which is the fundamental base of all living and non-living beings at the quantum level, the same energy manifesting in different forms in this interplay of beautiful Leela, this Maya, this grand illusion, this sweet shower, this ecstatic burst of energy on Mother Earth in myriads of forms.

When you recognize that cosmic inherent unity, then you start feeling godliness at each geographical point, at each spatial unit.

So space and time then acquire a sanctity and nothing moves. Even if everything moves around you and is churning, you are unmoved. You are out of the compulsive boundaries of karma bandhan. That's liberation. 

You are stable with your faith, with your feeling, with your surrender, with your acceptance, with your acknowledgement of divinity at each and every part on Mother Earth.

So as I stand at this beautiful place in the countryside of Haryana, the solitary chiming of the temple bell instantly draws my attention to the very fact that yes, it's here, it's here and now.

Divinity is here and now.

Dear sadhaks, wherever you are, the cosmic grace is available. You just have to recall and be aware of its presence and remember it.

The moment you remember it, it is there.

The only time this portal is shut is when we are not aware of it, when that veil, that separation of ignorance, removes us from this continuity, this everlasting, infinite oneness, the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of each and everything in the cosmos.

Only then do we feel separated, and the moment we feel that separation, there is restlessness, there is that pining, weird feeling, that pain that is driving most of us on Earth, and as a replacement we go for so many pursuits on the material plane, driven by our fears, insecurities and illusions.

But the moment we are aware that yes, it is here and now, divinity, the grace, and I occupy that position where it's present and is enveloping me, embracing me from all sides. That's liberation. That's samadhi. 

It is there where you are at this moment.

It manifests there the moment you are aware of it and feel it.

It just needs your awareness, your focus, your attention.

So the more we try to recall this fact, the more we are on that frequency. The frequency of liberation. 

Barbarik of Chulkana: The Sacrifice That Preserved the Balance

Late March, 2026

This is late in March, and me and my brother are travelling in the countryside around our village, seeking out holy places, places not so well known, but carrying the same majestic, mammoth essence of divinity like any other lofty, popular pilgrimage place on the spiritual map of India.

They provide you the same share of divine prasad, provided you reach them with faith, openness, surrender.

And one such place is Chulkana, Chulkana Dham.

It celebrates the extraordinary life of legendary Barbarik, the grandson of mighty Bhim.

Barbarik was a powerful warrior, possessed three divine arrows given to him by Lord Shiva, and he had taken a vow that he would always fight for the weaker side in a war or dispute.

When the Mahabharata war started, Lord Krishna understood that Barbarik would keep switching sides, because the losing side would appear weaker to him, and in this way he would end up destroying both armies.

So Lord Krishna approached Barbarik in the guise of a Brahmin and asked for dakshina, and the dakshina was Barbarik's head.

Barbarik was a great sagely fellow. Even though a mighty warrior, he was a firm believer in donation and charity to a Brahmin who approaches one's door.

Barbarik agreed to the supreme act of sheeshdaan, donating one's head.

Chulkana Dham is the place where Barbarik donated his head to Lord Krishna.

His head was placed on the top of a hill, from where Barbarik watched the war.

At the end of the war, when Krishna asked Barbarik what he had seen, Barbarik replied, “It was just your chakra doing all this.”

Krishna blessed him that in Kali Yuga he would be worshipped as Khatu Shyam for his supreme sacrifice.

There is a saying, “Hare hue ka sahara, Khatu Shyam hamara.”

In Treta Yuga, Rishi Chunkat had his ashram here.

A sacred tree of peepal, said to possess miraculous power, is worshipped by the devotees who tie a thread to its trunk and branches.

Now this episode of Baba Barbarik shows that one ideology pointing to one extreme isn't good for cosmic balance.

Even a noble vow of ever supporting the weaker side, if followed without adjustment, would wreak havoc, because the position of strength and weakness keeps shifting.

And standing in this impressive shrine in commemoration of supreme sacrifice by this saintly warrior, I am wonderstruck at the spiritual power of ancient Indians, who could make such supreme sacrifices of even donating their head willingly without any protest.

There are larger meanings in these mythological sayings, and according to me, one meaning is that Mother Nature is impartial.

It's not about good or bad; it's about maintaining the balance.

Lord Krishna knew very well that at the individual level Barbarik is giving a supreme sacrifice, and that might make it look like this is not a good act, but in the overall scenario, when we look at the way the war proceeded between the forces of good and evil, between light and dark, this sacrifice was essential.

Because his one-sided, rigid adherence to the cause of the weaker side at any cost, without adjusting for the situation, would have wreaked havoc, and the war would have continued, because Barbarik would have continued switching sides, and only he would have been left at the end of it, with both sides decimated.

So it's a great spiritual experience to pay homage to this mighty sagely warrior.

Baba Jindanath: The Living Fireplace of Faith

Late March, 2026

About 250 years back, a boy was born in village Moi on the 14th day of the Chaitra lunar month. Born in a farmer family, he was named Jaspal.

The family kept cattle and buffaloes. It was normal for the boys to take the buffaloes and cows for grazing in the surrounding scrub forest and pastures around the village.

Boy Jaspal had a spiritual attitude to life right from the beginning.

One day Baba Mastanath met him while the boy was preparing to return to his village with his cattle. Baba Mastanath said to him that he wanted to eat kheer.

Being respectful towards ascetics, Jaspal said he would go back to his house and return with kheer because it could not be prepared in the forest, as there was no rice and no milk.

But the Baba said, “If you are a true devotee of God, you will prepare kheer here itself.”

Jaspal explained helplessly that none of the buffaloes was lactating at the time, and moreover there was no rice or sweet to make kheer.

Baba pointed to a buffalo that had never calved, had never given a calf.

“Go and milk that one,” the Baba said.

The Baba gave him his kamandal and asked Jaspal to milk the barren buffalo, which had never given a calf in its life.

Miraculously, milk came out of the udder of a buffalo that had never been pregnant even once in its life.

Baba Mastanath then asked Jaspal to prepare kheer.

Jaspal said he would have to go back to his village to get rice and gur, jaggery.

The Baba then picked a bone and dropped it in the milk, and as it was boiled on fire, kheer was prepared.

Baba Mastanath told him that he had come to make him enlightened, like Gopichand and Bharthari.

“Eat this kheer and turn immortal,” Baba said.

But Jaspal hesitates. He doesn't feel like eating the kheer because Baba Mastanath had dropped a bone in the milk to prepare it. For courtesy's sake, he says that he doesn't eat a sadhu's food; instead, we offer them something.

Despite repeated requests, Jaspal doesn't eat the kheer.

Lastly, the Baba himself served kheer on the leaves and ate it and left the place after some time.

Strangely Jaspal got terribly hungry after the Baba left and could not help eating. He licked the leaves on which the Baba had eaten, and it triggered disenchantment with worldliness in the boy.

He followed the Baba to his Math at Asthal Bohar. He repents and asks him to bestow liberation upon him.

Baba made him his disciple.

He asked him to do tapasya at the place where they had met.

“On the 14th of Asoj, Mother Earth will embrace you in her divine lap and you will take a living samadhi, a jinda samadhi. You will be famous as Baba Jindanath.”

Jaspal returned and performed tapasya at the place for many years.

The said day arrived.

On this occasion mother Earth parted and took him into her maternal lap for a living samadhi, jinda samadhi.

As he was entering Mother Earth, a Brahmin saw him. He ran to inform his family.

Jaspal's sister-in-law cared for him like she was a mother and he a son. When she came to know that her son-like brother-in-law was taking samadhi, she came running to the spot and requested him to come back to their house.

Jaspal asked her if she also wanted liberation, she was free to accompany him to the real home, the abode of God.

And without hesitating, without thinking twice, she also jumped into samadhi.

Both of them entered samadhi while completely alive and conscious.

Now, to commemorate this great spiritual event, a big fair is organized twice a year, on the 14th of Asoj and the 14th of Chaitra month.

Farmers offer jaggery and brooms at the samadhi temple to seek the Baba's blessings. On this occasion, about 20,000 quintals of jaggery and a big mound of brooms collect at the site, so that gives an indication of how many devotees throng the temple shrine on the holy occasion.

The temple is a Siddha Mandir, a samadhi memorial of Saint Baba Jindanath.

It has an open courtyard. The renovated temple has imposing carved pillars and domes and arches. The garbhagriha has Baba Jinda's samadhi. There is grand stonework in the interior.

From earlier brick and lime paste, now it is extensive stonework in russet brown on the outside and marble inside.

And as me and my brother stand in this grand monument of sacrifice and thirst for divine love, which drew Baba Jindanath into a living samadhi, driven by the divine unquenchable thirst, unless and until one meets with the cosmic Father of ultimate realization, it showers joy and blessings on us.

Standing here, sitting here, absorbed in the beautiful carved stones, recalling the great spiritual happening that occurred two and a half centuries ago, it's a wonderful feeling in this March, when the wheat crop around in the surrounding fields is acquiring ripening colours.

It's like being at any other holy place, the lofty spiritual places like Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri.

That is small-time India's charm, spiritually redolent with its local saints and sages who graced Earth and did tapasya for the beneficence of the local people, the farmers, the poor people in the countryside.

They guided them. They still keep inspiring millions.

On the days when the fair is held in commemoration of the great spiritual happening of Jaspal turning into Baba Jindanath by going into a living samadhi, the farmers and poor people come here with faith, open-heartedness, honesty and simplicity, and offer jaggery and brooms, the simple things that they can afford, and seek blessings for the welfare of their cattle and their family.

It's a living fireplace of faith and blessings that still spreads kindness, love and healing for the people around.

The Wild Rose and the Other Shore

March 4, 2026

Met her after almost 12 years.

It was in Delhi when we had met last time. We had a few months of sweet intimacy and then drifted away. We seemed to be following almost antipodal forces, and it was a beautiful transitory convergence when we crossed each other's path, sweetly embracing each other's presence without expectations, without rigidities and insecurities, without possessiveness.

It was a kind of relationship that is not bound by any conceptual expectation in a typical man-woman relationship, where there are expectations and needs at both ends, and that kind of builds up a contract, call it social contract, even if it is not written or formalized. But still there are unwritten rules of the game, with its clauses, do's and don'ts. So this type of relationship is basically defined by a framework.

But here it was something completely different.

She, a wild gust of breeze; me, a gentle, disciplined soft breeze blowing through a so-called civilized alleyway.

She, unbothered by what people think or say, following her own path, facing challenges, enjoying beauties of absolute individual freedom and free will, side by side paying big costs very dearly for not becoming a part of collective institutionalized security with its social norms, moralities and other standard rules of the game.

Basically, she was a rebel.

Me, on the other hand, expected by others as well as by my own self to follow social mores, norms, become successful, respected, always expected to be in line, to toe the line and stay a good man, always bothered about what others think, say or opine. She was exactly opposite. 

It was an exciting intermingling in the buffer zone, where contrasting impulses commingled.

For those rocking few months, me, the anchored one, enjoying the freedom of untethered free wind in the uncustomized sea of our existence; she, the bottomless, endless sea, coming to the stationary safe cove of my being on the shore.

She then receded, as the waves are supposed to, and both of us moved away.

No hard feelings, no quarrels, no heartburn, no blame game, no feeling of guilt, no feeling of victimization, no feeling of either dumping or getting dumped.

It was quite mysteriously peaceful. Taken so naturally by both of us as we take the end of a day. 

She had a few lovers before that and has had a few after that as well. But she could never get in touch with a man who could provide a reasonably safe anchor to the restless, heaving boat of her existence.

A German man of Kashmiri origin seemed to promise some anchor, but then he let her down, leaving her broken, the only time in her life when she felt caged in the beautiful tentacles of a relationship, feeling possessive about the man, and also yearning to be possessed by him.

And when he let her down, she crashed down from the peak of absolute freedom.

She attempted suicide, was in a coma for a few weeks, and returned to life when the doctors had all but given up hopes for her survival.

They say near-death experiences open up spiritual portals. It has definitely done so in her case. She has met death, so she knows a lot more about life than most of us do. 

A spiritual diva she became after that: exotic hair braids, extensive tattoos on her very fair, almost milky-white skin, body piercings, an absolutely exclusive style of wearing her clothes in a way that she would appear as a standout beacon from the normal mass around.

And all these give her a Roman gypsy kind of look.

She would pass as a hippie from the '70s if she doesn't speak and give a hint about her Indian roots: a nose ring from the middle at the base of the nose, a tattoo of Ma Kali covering her entire back, exquisite religious and astronomical symbols on arms, hands, chin. Almost everywhere. 

Her beautiful face has little freckles, a weather-beaten, wind-lashed look of a rose, a wild rose that has seen the open fury of Mother Nature, that has been caressed by a bright sun smiling from the azure blue skies, that has been shaken by cold breeze, that has seen torrential rains and snowfalls, that has tasted the sips of agony and ecstasy in utmost solitude, that has felt terribly lonely, that has felt amazingly full as well. And agonizingly empty also. 

A big basket of experiences.

And that makes her a gypsy exotica.

Her style makes her stand out in any type of crowd. Everything she wears, from stole to shoes, stands out as a mark of freedom and independence, an assertion of her own concept and idea of life.

The women look at her with jealousy. The men, of course, like spellbound black bees. Watermouthed. 

We had no clue to each other's course of life after that exciting encounter about a dozen years ago.

Then about two and a half years back, I received a mail. It was some abstract comment in the form of a question on one of my blog posts. The sender hadn't introduced himself/herself, but just looking at that small phrase, I knew it was her.

We shared our current phone numbers, started interacting.

She is about 11 or 12 years younger to me, but the way she now spoke left me surprised. A mature woman with deep thoughts in spiritual and philosophical realms.

She was running a homestay in partnership with a friend near Manali. They were planning spiritual retreats there. She wanted to meet. In fact, invited me to stay at her place and be a part of the meditation retreat plans.

I have never felt easy about becoming a part of any type of system, so I kept dilly-dallying. I was busy in solo travelling and writing books.

Before long, it was two and a half years since we were communicating, and she keenly and I casually talked about meeting someday.

On her free journey and open relationships, she spends a lot of time at Rishikesh as well. I also go to Rishikesh regularly; still our paths did not cross.

This time when I informed her that I would be in Rishikesh for a week or ten days, she said she would be there on one of these days.

“Great, let's have chai on the banks of Ma Ganga,” I quipped.

She seemed very excited to meet me after all those long years.

“Coffee on the banks of Ma Ganga,” she said with nostalgia.

On the appointed day, I am standing near the entryway to Parmarth Niketan Ashram, the place where we are supposed to meet. She will be coming over from the other side of Ma Ganga, from Tapovan side. I am staying in a hotel on this side.

Now it is about half past eleven at noon. The usual crowd of tourists and pilgrims.

I am looking at murals on the sidewalls. There are so many saintly eyes looking at the throng of people.

And then there she comes. I see her after 12-13 years here on the banks of Maa Ganga. The wild gust coming to meet the anchored shore. Excitement in the air as two different types of winds meet again. The beautiful gypsy walks to the anchored man. A brief convergence after more than a dozen years. 

I see her from a little distance. She walks gently with loads of warmth and comes into my arms.

Her presence felt almost the same.

After more than twelve years! A lot has changed. She has grown, evolved. She is in the second half of her 30s, and one can see signs of it on her beautiful face and exotic features, style and carriage.

The same exotic deportment in combination with her looks, style, clothes, tattoos.

She is a head-turner in her typical way. Walks with aloof majesty. An exotic spiritual diva. 

Beyond all this attractive cloud of exclusive femininity, I see traces of fatigue, weariness, a sort of exhaustion, which is inevitable if you have been floating on your own path of absolute freedom without any collective securities or assurances.

It is like constantly flying against the wind.

She walks with me. Many eyes follow her movement.

Women yoked into conventional safety of family and routine relationships look at her with jealousy. That is palpable. That is clearly discernible. They know their partner's eyes will follow her till the point it is possible.

When she appears, the majority of men can't help but look at her with eyes full of desire.

I become very conscious while walking with her.

We walk to a café. It is a nice little eatery overlooking Ma Ganga's broad current, visible through a glass front. We occupy a table near the window to enjoy the holy river's flow.

The café is just opening. They are still cleaning and arranging things.

Over big cups of cappuccino, we fall into conversation.

Her logic is sharpened. She is sweetly aggressive in defending her point.

I know she has been judged very harshly for her efforts to defy the conventional stream.

I used to be her idol philosopher when she was growing as an adolescent girl. Now it is a schoolgirl's fancy to prove a point to an old professor whom she meets after a long time.

The last time when we met, she told me that she was in love with me since the age of 13 ... her first love.

Now when we differ over something, there is a risk that she might take it as if I am judging her and finding fault with her. So I have to balance it out by putting things in a general way, so that she doesn't feel targeted or judged.

She is in her own zone, very solidly, assertively.

Lots of energies are flying through her psychosomatic system. That makes her a unique type of diva whom men can't help but follow with covetous eyes.

The discussion takes the direction of the recurring pattern in her life, the pattern of betrayals in relationships and business partnerships. The same discontentment and disappointment with people.

Despite all the exclusive finery of her appearance, she is a very, very simple girl, with an open and frank and honest approach to life. She isn't tricky like women usually are while dealing with men, using secrecy, shrewdness and coquetry to deal with male superiority in physical strength.

The simplicity and honesty leave her open to be used by selfish men.

It has happened repeatedly in her life.

There is a pattern.

So we are talking of recurring patterns.

It's a general experience with all of us that there develops a pattern, either positive or negative, making us feel either lucky or unlucky in our life.

The pattern gets established like a runnel of rainwater on an open field, a definite channel decided by the flow of events and happenings. The same proclivity of an individual destiny to get entangled in similar situations, relationships, events, challenging circumstances, making them mostly disappointed.

Now if you aren't satisfied with the pattern in your life, instead of blaming others and destiny, the onus is on oneself to try to break that pattern.

I have heard her gently cribbing about disappointment with people in terms of personal and professional business relations.

“Don't you think there is a pattern in this?” I ask, and she feels I am judging her on moral and social values, that I am blaming her for all that has happened.

“See, a pattern is not good or bad,” I clarify. “It just exists in Mother Nature. What I mean is that if you are not satisfied or happy about patterns in your life, you should try to break their recurrence and repetition in your life. It's not at all about a pattern being morally good or bad,” I emphasize.

We keep chatting over big mugs of coffee.

All along this time, a fat woman is eyeing our table with palpable greed. She has already asked us once if we are done, even though there is still coffee left in our mugs.

People have started coming. There are empty tables where she can enjoy coffee, but she wants this particular table, right next to the glass front, overlooking the broad sweep of Ma Ganga below.

Taking pity on her, I decide to get up.

She giggles slightly over the woman's schoolgirl's fancy for a particular seat. The woman runs to grab the prize the moment we get up.

We leisurely walk in the narrow, pleasantly congested bazaar street.

I have to buy her a gift, and books are my favourite items.

We enter the bookshop in the market. I feel very safe ensconced among books.

I propose to buy her multiple books. She keeps saying no to all my suggestions.

Finally, she settles for an Osho book which is displayed outside in a glass rack by the entry door. There is just one copy. The shopkeeper has to open the rack by removing the cello tape, get the book and re-tape it. It is showcased. What else can you expect from her? Even the book has to come from a sealed showcase. 

That is so typical of her, an exclusive free choice not bound by suggestions and limiting circumstances.

She says she wants to sit somewhere among the trees, so we start walking to the east towards the wooded hills.

It's noon and pretty hot. The deciduous forest with thick undergrowth of bushes and ferns doesn't sound welcoming.

So, walking on the road cutting across Rajaji National Park, we take a turn to the right and walk to Chaurasi Kuti, the famous Beatles Ashram.

She isn't interested in the famed spiritual ruins.

We sit in front of a large crumbling structure on a makeshift bench of plank supported over stones at each end and fall into deep conversation.

When you meet after more than a decade, you have hundreds of topics to talk over.

We keep talking for almost two hours.

It is already afternoon when our tongues need a bit of rest.

As we walk outside, she has to cover her head under a stole.

“My cellular structure cannot bear direct sunlight,” she says. “I feel like I'm melting and being drained of all my energy.”

She has turned pink in the heat.

Many people stare.

She holds my hand from the elbow, a very friendly and caring proximity. I am comforted by her touch. It feels very natural, honest, like the brace of warm sunrise on a cold morning.

We walk into a restaurant in the narrow congested bazaar street. Eyes follow her with curiosity, lust. jealousy, even suspicion.

She can be taken as anyone: Iranian, Arabic, East European, European or Latin American.

A white man is eating lunch with his partner. He gives her a comprehensive look, much to the unease of his partner.

She wants to eat typical street food, so orders aloo puri. I order a paratha, strawberry lassi we both order.

The aloo sabji does not match her street-food expectation. It is bland.

“Do you like it?” I ask.

“Not at all,” she says.

In any case, she finishes her plate.

We walk to the riverside and sit on a stone bench just near the water current going swiftly, just a step down from the stone-paved platform.

There again we keep talking into the evening.

Then she has to leave.

We walk to the other side, walking over the new Janaki Bridge, from where she has booked a Rapido bike taxi to go to Tapovan, two-three kilometres away, where she is staying at a friend's place. Her friend owns a spiritual yoga shop involving yoga, retreats and herbal massages.

She embraces me and gives a long, warm kiss at the side of my neck, below the right ear; a long, lingering, well-meant kiss, soft, full of love.

She clings tightly to me for a prolonged hug.

The bike cabby is smiling as she performs this loving goodbye ritual.

Her touch is personal, warmer than a formal friendly hug, slightly colder than a burning passionate clasp of a lover. Balanced. Bordering on unconditional love. 

A warm, respectful touch and acknowledgement of my significant image in her mind and heart.

I walk back over the bridge, not knowing whether we will meet again or not.

And in this way, the girl whom I met after more than a decade melted into the mystery like she had arrived suddenly ... so symbolic of our different paths.

I am walking towards the other shore of Ma Ganga, and she is going on the other.

I know she has immensely evolved over these years in the furnace of bitter experiences, but she has retained her individuality, her sense of absolute freedom.

She asserts her right to lead her life on her own terms without any compromises, and for this I really salute her for maintaining the sanctity of her concept of freedom, life and living.