Silence speaking of peace

 

There are sadhus in front of an ashram in Rishikesh that serves food daily in the morning. There are cows also. The sadhus are having the routine sweet-sour chit chat while having food. The cows are chewing cud, contended. There are drops of dung around. Then a cute roly-poly baba arrives, his presence silent and peaceful. He has a unique attire: a piece of sackcloth tied like ancient Romans across his torso, a woolen cap on the head and a small towel on the bare shoulder. His left hand isn’t visible. To be frank, I’m not sure about its status. It might be missing; it might be tied along his stomach in hard penance to take this worldly yatra with a single hand. I give fifty-fifty chances to both probabilities.

He has a lovely way of walking, a kind of spirited ease of a child. A trace of smile doesn’t leave his face even for a single moment. He is a mauni baba, the one who takes a vow of silence, so by default his tongue is restful, which in turn avoids unnecessary fuel to the chattering mind. There he comes and starts picking the cow dung with the joyful ease of a child playing on the beach. He uses his free hand to pick up cow dung and drop it into the garden across the street. The street is soon clean. In fact his lovely walk to and fro works like a cosmic broom to clean the air itself.

There are gau rakshaks who take to violence in the name of holy cows. I would say most of them are people with violent tendencies and take shelter under mother cow’s name to hide their violence. Gau mata doesn’t need rakshaks, she needs sevaks like this kind and loving baba.

The baba then cleans his hand under a tap, caresses the cows with the feel of a boy touching something precious. That’s when the wagging tongues between the Hindu babas and a Buddhist monk start the fireworks and before the tongues could handover the work to fists, the joyful mauni baba comes in between and dispels the heat just with his smile, silent nods and gentle wave of hand. It’s a divine feeling just to be in the presence of someone who is at ease with himself.