After three weeks in Bangalore I take off for Talli, which I hope will become my ideal home—it’s definitely in rural India. The driver of my long-distance taxi was once a wealthy businessman; so he speaks English, a rare find in a taxi driver. As we leave the cement block buildings of the suburbs and enter the countryside, he begins to tell me the story of how he became a taxi driver.

One of Indira Gandhi’s projects was the nationalization of all bus lines and transport companies. At that time, his bus and transport company was taken over by the Government. Problem is fifteen years have passed and the money for the forced “sale” of his business have not been delivered to the owner. Although he has been to court several times, nothing has been resolved. Each time the court ordered the payments be made, but still the Government has paid no compensation. The whole case is complicated by the fact that, in the interval, the government has changed five or six times. With the political situation in continual turmoil, now there is little hope that he will ever collect anything.

“The government is supposed to protect the people, not prey on them. You put up a fence to protect a mango grove from cows and intruders. But if the fence starts eating the fruit, what can one do?” he poses the rhetorical question.

Now with his savings entirely depleted and his credit gone, he is in a hopeless situation. He confides in me that this is the first day of his new career as a taxi driver. In fact, we did get lost in spite of the fact that he stopped and asked directions to Talli three times. I told him that he was not asking the right type of person; he will learn the hard way as I did—even though I have to continue to get reminders. You have to assess carefully the intellectual capacity of your source of information; then get a second opinion. You cannot just ask directions of any bloke standing along the side of the road who has never even been in a car. Some qualities seep through caste barriers: no Indian will ever tell you, “I do not know”; he will always give some directions to somewhere. They don’t want to disappoint you.

“Atheetha Ashram”—A large distinctive gray sign, carefully printed with white letters appears at the entrance gate. A smaller sign warns: “No interview without appointment.” Another states: “No visitors after 6:00 p.m.” I find out this is an imperative; there is no electricity. Winding beside a small lake, the entrance lane is lined with a profusion of spring colors: purple, pink and white cosmos, verbena, balsam and hollyhocks, with bright fuchsia bougainvillea sprawling over the fence. Just past the one large shade tree, a vibrant green banana grove stretches along the last quarter mile of the road. Many varieties of trees, recently planted, include mangoes, and several flowering varieties including gulmohar with its profusion of bright orange blossoms and jasmines. Now they are only about four feet high, but promise a shady border on the curving road in a few years. Little tiles, lettered with mottoes, are posted along the fence. It is a great entrance.

Local banyan tree

As we roll up to the main building, the three swaminis [feminine form of swami] greet us. After a break for tea, they take the driver under their wings, for we ran out of gas just as we arrived. They send him off on the back of a motorcycle to purchase some gasoline in a nearby village. Soon, he is back and ready to leave. He thanks me for my patience. “Just consider that you had all of your bad luck today, so now it’s finished. From tomorrow I’m sure it will be smooth sailing,” I encourage him.


Actually, the young swami who founded this ashram was a catalyst for my desire to return to India for a long-term stay. Swami Shajananda had been a fellow student at Sandeepany, the school of philosophy in Bombay, in 1978. Since my desire was to experience rural India, Swami Sahajananda’s ashram seemed to fit the bill for me. The way he described it, I had conjured up a picture that would be the best of two worlds: meditation and classes in the mornings, then some type of service project for the villagers in the afternoons.

Although I had waited for the return of the swami from his pilgrimage, when I arrive, he has come and gone again—for a few days. Although the three swaminis insist they have been waiting with bated breath for my arrival, although they have no idea where I am to stay since the ashram does not have guest quarters yet. Until the swami comes back to tell them what to do, they roll out a straw mat and thin mattress for me on the cement floor of the main building.

A loud bell wakes me up the next morning. I jump up to be on time for the yoga and meditation. Turning up the flame of the kerosene lamp, I grope around to find a towel. However, the bathroom is already occupied by an Indian woman, also a guest, so it could be hours before it’s free. I like to tease the Indian women that they must have spare parts that we European-stock women do not have because they take so long for their morning baths. Then I hear the thud of wet clothes slapped on the floor; she is doing her laundry also. A bath before the 5:00 a.m. yoga class will be impossible, so I stumble over to the swaminis’ cottage to at least wash my face.

When I enter the meditation hall, there are only three persons present: two swaminis and one guest. The swamini who is elder to us does not participate in yoga, while the other guest is still in the bathroom. Atheetha asks if I want to do yoga or meditation first. “I prefer yoga first, to wake me up,” I suggest. We go through the exercise routine, a nice combination of bends, stretches and rolls.

Afterward, Atheetha announces, “Now it’s tea time.”

“Oh, good,” I comment. “I thought that the program stated that tea was served after meditation, not before. I’m sure this schedule will be better for me.”

“Nancy, we were all here at 5:00; you did not arrive until 6:00.”

They had already done the yoga routine, but repeated it because that’s what I said I requested. That’s how I find out the morning bell is not a wake-up call, but rings between yoga and meditation. That evening I dig out my alarm clock and carefully set it for 4:30 a.m., if I am going to get to the bathroom first.

“You know I told Usha in Pondy that I want to be in a place where the birds wake me up every morning. But here at Atheetha, we wake the birds up!” I announce jokingly several days later during the short break between meditation and yoga. As I listen to the birds chirping to cheer the coming of the day, I long to be outdoors with them watching the sunrise.

Our routine is set: one hour of yoga at 5:00 a.m., followed by meditation. On some days I have to do get up to exercise during part of the meditation as I am too sleepy to even pretend to meditate. However, one morning I get some help, a lizard drops from the thatched roof right onto my head. The shock definitely wakes me up. After our morning routine, we do have tea. They follow the diet of the Nature Cure system, so there is no breakfast. However, I always have a banana or papaya to tie me over. Both are grown here in the gardens.

I usually take a morning walk around the nearby lake, where I spot lots of cranes and a few herons. This is really rural India: a carpet of green rice fields and scattered villages with as few as 100 people each surrounds us in every direction. In my explorations, I find a stream bed to investigate. Although there is no water yet, I encounter a number of small song birds and lots of lizards sunning themselves on the smooth granite stones. I look for signs of larger animals since we are only five miles from a forest reserve with wild elephants. The terrain is hilly and full of crags and canyons, so not suitable for human habitation. However, it does not seem to bother the elephants.

One day a lovely Indian lady, the one who spends hours in the bathroom, joined me on my walk. Since her husband died two years ago, she has divided her time between her two sons who both live in U. S. Now she is touring India, staying in ashrams and places of natural beauty, in the same style as myself—alone, traveling in public transport. Her journey is quite commendable for a 60-year-old Indian woman.

When I inquire about her relatives in India, I am informed that she is not welcome in the home of any of her family. They are of an orthodox Brahman caste, and she has a black mark against her. Her son married an American woman. He is now an outcaste; therefore, his mother is an outcaste. Whether he had his mother’s permission did not matter. In point of fact, she had had no input in the matter; he only informed her after the marriage. Had he been in India, he probably would have refrained from committing an action that would boot his mother out of her caste.

These rules and regulations provide the underlying fabric of family loyalty that maintains the moral code in the society. The system has the advantage that everyone has a place in the group and is always is taken care of by the group—when they play by the rules. Surely, this dharma, duties, has been a major factor in keeping the Hindu tradition alive in spite of the incursions of the Muslims and Christians. Nevertheless, the foreign defamation has contributed in making the rules more ironclad, in order to persevere. And if you want to be independent and live outside the rules, the system definitely supports that desire too: you become a sadhu.

After lunch and a rest each day, I am working on the next issue, which is on Bharata’s foremost sadhu, Adi Sankaracharya. Since he is the most important holy teacher of Hinduism in the past 2,000 years, I am personally interested in learning more about him. I read every biography to glean all the reported incidents in which he exhibited any extraordinary powers, since this issue emphasizes yoga. Although his orientation was the philosophical aspect of yoga, “yoking with the Divine,” he did perform various miracles for the sake of others. He was able to move a river, take over the body of a dying king, and, on one occasion, enabled one of his disciples to walk on water.

In addition, his guru is believed to have lived to some 1,000 years of age. Of course, modern religious scholars have dismissed this as myth. Honestly, I cannot understand why a Hindu sage cannot live to be such an old age, when Methuselah lived 960 years and only received mention for siring a few children. Sankara’s biography also includes a visit by Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas, who had been dead for centuries. One cannot help comparing the incident with Christ’s visit by Moses and Elijah. I am fascinated to dig out what I consider gems of our universal connections.


Each night I take a stroll in the cool air, then lie out under the stars. Ah, yes, there are certainly advantages to having no electricity; the brilliance of the stars being one of them. Music in the background, muted by the distance, contributes a soft background to the deep silence. A lone owl soars by, pivots, then perches on a nearby fence post. It must have spotted some little critter, as it keeps peering at the ground. I feel very content and alive watching this creature of the night. The Indians, like the American Indians, consider the owl a bad omen, but I think they are wonderful and always enjoy the rare occasions when I see one.

Even though I have to sleep with a light wool blanket at night and wear my down vest for morning meditation, it feels like 90 degrees at high noon. We are at about 2,000 feet, for India this climate is about as good as it gets year round. Any higher it is too cold in the winter; any lower it is unbearable in the summer.

On the third evening, Sahaja arrived about 9:30 p.m. I would have been lying out taking in the stars when he arrived, so I do not see him until the next morning.

He greets me with, “How do you like the food?”

“Oh, it’s great. Good quality.”

“The rice?”

“I’ve never seen this variety before; it is quite good.”

“It’s only available in this area. We love it.”

I am somewhat taken aback at the nature of his greeting, since I have not seen him for five years. However, I remind myself that Indians are incredibly particular about their dietary customs. I remember I once met a couple in Poona who had taken off for a world tour. At their first stop in Japan, they discovered they could not get anything that even resembled Indian cooking. They took the first plane home and forfeited the fees for the tour. Desirable as it may be, the Indian diet anywhere, even in a millionaire’s home, will not measure up to our nutritional standards. However, I refrain from arguing nutrition in a place where a teeming mass, approaching one billion, bears evidence that our American nutritional needs may not be universal.

The swami assigns me a small cottage made of cement blocks, which have an open lattice design in place of windows, with a red-tiled roof. I had envisioned a thatched roof with cool thick mud walls, but I can adjust. At this point, they have built for speed and cost, not aesthetics. As it turns out the open lattice, designed to let in the fresh air, also is an open doorway to droves of mosquitoes. Fortunately, I find a mosquito net in the store room.

In just over a year, Sahaja and four disciples have made a noticeable transformation of this once barren 12-acre plot. They have planted at least a thousand different types of fruit trees: dozens of chikku (looks like a kiwi, but tastes much better), custard apple, orange, nimbu, plus another hundred of mango. There are only seven residents—five swamis and two brahmacharis, but the local villagers are hired to do all the heavy work... and it’s necessary, they do not even have a decent tool here. Actually, I have not seen any in all of India, not just the ashrams. Since there is such cheap labor, no one has bothered to produce efficient tools. Clearly the British also left the gardening to the mallis (gardener caste), or they would have imported some decent tools.

The red soil appears to be quite rich. They just poke a stick of hibiscus or bougainvillea in the ground and it grows. They took a large branch of a pipal tree, cut it into two-foot pieces, 2" in diameter, then stuck them in the ground and watered. Two weeks later, I am amazed to find the branches sprouting bright new leaves.


When I first met Sahaja at Sandeepany, he was an expert in Nature Cure even then. Since he was always helping the half-dozen foreigners with any medical problems that came up, mostly digestion and dysentery, we all knew him well. I saw him again in the Himalayas five years ago when he was taking his renunciation vows to become a swami. At that time, he had already founded and built his own ashram in Coimbature. With the idea of creating a self-sufficient community, he had built a complex that included vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, a dairy, student quarters and a retirement home for the elderly; plus a school for the local children. I was quite impressed; so when he invited me to come there to live, I thought it a great idea.

In the meantime, Sahaja has had a falling out with the “powers that be” of the Chinmaya Mission in Coimbature. Sahaja regularly gave lecture tours and camps to raise funds for his ashram, which he sent to the accountant for the Coimbature Mission. However, they were not available when he needed them for a project in the ashram; in fact, it appeared that some funds had disappeared. Anyway, Sahaja bravely cut his losses and walked out of the ashram that was technically his property. The only criticism of Sahaja that anyone could manufacture was that he took the cows. No one mentioned that he signed the papers handing the property over to the Chinmaya Mission. As if the Pondy intrigues were not enough, I am afraid this is another perfect example to prove that Swami Nischalananda’s avoidance of spiritual organizations is wise. This will not be the only example I see of what transpires when businessmen, who are the ones who generously support the ashrams or religious organizations financially, begin to take control of it. Neither will it be the only report of the overseers dipping into the treasury themselves.

Sahaja really deserves credit for creating a second ashram. With one other swami and three swaminis, two of them giving considerable donations, Sahaja obtained this land and started over again. To get the funds for the buildings and gardens, he had to live here on the property for a year by himself. Now he seems quite relaxed, yet self-assured. I appreciate his soft smile and gentle approach to the daily problems, for no one makes a move until they find out what “the swami says.”

My inner purpose for coming to India was to find a place for regular spiritual practices, particularly meditation, since being with a group helps me to be disciplined. Also, I wanted to continue the study of Hindu philosophy, including Sanskrit, which I love. Also knowing that I am not one to meditate all day, I had thought that Sahaja’s set-up, on the Coimbature model, would be perfect. At least that is what he had described to me when I saw him in the Himalayas. But a few days after Sahaja arrived, the two other guests leave. That’s when I discover that meditation is not compulsory. The next morning, I find myself alone in the hut for yoga and meditation in the mornings.

However, I am definitely experiencing rural India. I’ve seen my first cobra. I am sure he saw me first, as I hardly caught a glimpse of him before he spotted me and quickly slid off the path into the grass. I hardly had time to be frightened. The workers just found a five-foot cobra skin, so it is probably the same fellow. Sahaja says that to see a cobra is very auspicious. If I am lucky, the cobra will show itself to me again. He goes on to relate that it follows him around. No comment.

Daily, the chipmunks and mice living in my tiled roof and dropping poop and nesting grass all over my room is providing enough of an encounter with nature for me. However, I do have a very welcome guest, a little toad. His attraction is the kerosene lamp. He sits in contemplation every evening and feasts on the bugs it attracts. Although I appreciate his company, I leave the door open every day so he can make an escape when he wants. After a couple of weeks, he disappears.

Before long my experiencing of nature turns into confronting it. The first time I am awakened by a critter in bed with me, a corner of the net has come untucked. When I wake up enough to realize that something is crawling around, I flash the flashlight and see a mouse tail hanging down from the corner of the net. So I get out of bed and shake the net, hoping that he will fall down and run off. Because of the dark I have to guess what is happening; it’s not as if I can turn the light on and see what is happening. When I do not see any movement, I have to take my bed totally apart, including removing the mattress, but I still cannot find it. When I spot it, it has somehow migrated to the opposite corner of the net. Carefully, I untie the net, then fold it to trap the frightened little gray fellow, then carry the bundle outside, and hang it on the clothesline, leaving him to figure out how to escape. Fortunately, he does; he is gone when I check it in the morning. I felt as I was doing a piece for a silent Laurel and Hardy flick, it was even funny while I was doing it.

Then I have another uninvited guest, a country-sized mouse in my net again; this one chewed his way through the white gauze. Since it is 2:30 a.m. and I get up at 3:30 a.m., I think I may as well get up, so I just vacate the premises to him. When I return later, he has gone, so I patch up the hole.

Then a larger creature moves in. During the night, I keep hearing a gnawing sound. When I mention the possibility of a rat, Sahaja pooh-poohs it with “we only allow mice here.” I try to find a rat cage-type trap, but with no cooperation. I cannot even procure a rat trap from the store room without the swami’s permission. A couple of mornings later, I find half of a papaya has been consumed during the night. So Sahaja brings a trap over. Luckily, we managed to catch the rat that first evening. Fortunately, Sahaja walked with me to my room to check the trap, so he took care of carrying the trap out of my room.

It is really strange how one can become adjusted to such circumstances, if they are brought on slowly and surely. And the mice are such cute little fellows. I wonder why we fear them so. But the rat, no, there was nothing cute about that rat!