Suspicious aura

On many mornings, however, I would pop up there and find him strolling on a stone-tiled verandah counting beads in a necklace. In his early sixties, he was always clad in an immaculate, soft white kurta-pyajama and his shaven head would glisten from the oil he rubbed on it.

If any villager passed by, he would call out and urge him to join his one-hour afternoon kirtan at 4 pm. He had nothing to do, nor did I, so little by little, I got to know his life story. A retired government doctor with a strong spiritual streak, he gave away all he had and came to Manali.

Living like a sadhu was tough, he said. In winter when six feet of snow lay around his home, he would sit in his room with a quilt around his body. You cannot switch on a heater if you are a sadhu. His meals consisted of half-frozen daal and rotis rustled up by a poor rustic lady whose room he had rented. As a sadhu, you cannot even ask for achaar. If news gets out that a sadhu is missing achaar, people lose respect for him.

But the years of asceticism paid off. Before coming to Manali, Mahajan had been attached to a prosperous ashram in Delhi. And when the ashram needed a new head six years ago, Mahajan seemed an obvious choice. His ascetic life on a Himachal mountainside had given him mystique.

Overnight, he became a minor godman. Now he has an entourage of rich disciples who hang around him in hushed silence. They accompany him to Manali where he spends some 20 days in June. A three-storey building has come up over the little room he inhabited for 10 years. When talking of him, Manali locals say, 8220;Mahajan ka promotion ho gaya.8221;

Over years of knowing him, one thing about Mahajan surprised me. Though a gentle soul, he was full of suppressed rage. His daily address to his disciples is a harangue. His eyes blaze and his nostrils flare as he tells them that life is full of sorrow and salvation lies in extolling Ram.

8220;Are you happy?8221; he asks. 8220;Don8217;t your parents die? Don8217;t you end up all alone when your children leave home? Where is happiness in this world? Are you happy with all those illnesses? The business setbacks? And chasing money?8221; Dr Mahajan8217;s passionate doctrine of despair leaves his listeners intimidated.

Personally, I reject his gloomy view of life. Life is tough, sure, but it also consists of joys like seeing good movies or boozing it up with friends. Reciting Ram-Ram the whole day as Mahajan advocates means wasting your life. He doesn8217;t read the papers. He glances at them now and then. He doesn8217;t watch TV. He8217;s cut off from life. He inhabits a fantasy world where everybody is chanting Ram-Ram.

And he8217;s not too cordial with me. After all, I remind him of his pre-big shot days.