6th October 2005
Today is the first day of Ramadan. I finish my sehri and begin the process of transferring all the random notes of my time spent with UG over the past couple of years in a chronological order in my diary.
* * *
5th December 1995
“Where are you?” UG asks.
“I am flying over Turkey. I am speaking to you on the sky phone,” I say trying my best to conceal my childlike excitement of being able to talk to him from 35,000 feet above sea level. The voice reception is clear. I can even hear his breath.
“The weather here is just wonderful. A London with zero degree weather will be greeting you. I will be there at the airport to receive you. Don’t go back,” he says jokingly.
When I arrive in London, at first we miss each other. I search for him in the crowd full of people who have come to receive their near ones at the arrival gate. I find him after a while. He is looking for me in the crowd. He has the face of a mother waiting for her child. He is holding a cream color cashmere sweater in his hands. He looks frail and unwell. I tiptoe unto him, hoping to surprise him and whisper “UG” close to his ears. He turns and looks at me. His eyes are vacant. That look, as if it is from a couple of lenses, is pointed at me. I don’t see any expression of him having recognized me in his eyes. I freeze. Then, after a pause, a smile floods his face: “Oh, you are already here! Take this. It’s cold out there.” Saying this, he hands the sweater to me.
London is empty, lifeless. There is this feel of labored gaiety in the air. [Christmas is just around the corner.]
6th December 1995
I have slept on the floor with three heaters on. It was a disturbed night. I dreamt that my mother had died.
“I am finished with England,” says UG as I join him in the living room to have my morning coffee which he has made for me. The watch says it is 5:20 am in this part of the world.
“Have you lived here in this same apartment last night? It seems like you have never lived here.”
“That’s what the real estate people said, too,” he is amused by my observation.
When you live with UG, it feels as if you live all alone. You always get this feeling that there is nobody home.
UG looks unwell. I notice dark rings under his eyes.
It is beginning to snow. We sit down in our warm living room and talk about his non-existent future. We call Bangalore and talk to Babu about his changed plans. He wants to get out of London. Julie is going to join us from New York today to take over this apartment.
He talks at length about the role of drugs in giving birth to religion. It is common knowledge that primitive humanity used psychedelics to experience the sacred. Even writers like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell kept this notion alive. Our ancestors were up to their eyeballs in trance, myth and shamanism. They assumed that the transcendental experience of the Absolute which they had tasted after taking drugs was the touchstone of sacred experience. They felt that this experience was absolutely necessary for human beings if they wanted to exist in the world and have meaning in their lives. The mystic was thus part of the elite that guarded the soul of the community.
Suddenly, UG begins to talk about desire. “Putting brakes on desire is choking you. You are all the time saying ‘I am not this and I want to become that.’ Become what? It is OK to desire one thing and not OK to desire the other. That’s where culture comes in. That’s where the game of manipulation and control begins. If we live like animals, there is no problem. Humans are neurotic. You want the flower and not the thorn. That is man’s tragedy.”
Later in the day, we walk to Harrods. The first thing that UG usually does when he comes to London is to go straight to the chocolate shop which is located in the basement of Harrods and buy his favorite white Leonidas chocolates. They are really yummy! But today we have come to this prestigious shopping mall to fix my wife Soni’s expensive Christian Dior wristwatch which has been giving her trouble. “You guys eat ideas and wear names,” says UG.
As we make our way back to our apartment we notice that every shop is aggressively selling Christmas. “Selling and buying is all that we do,” he mumbles as we walk through the famous Hyde Park. The trees look bare. They have shed all their leaves. Nature discards. Man accumulates. He picks up an evening paper from an elderly newspaper vendor around the corner and signs to him to keep the change. “Thank you, Madam,” announces the vendor. UG and I exchange a look. “Gender is in one’s head. What difference does it make whether he calls me ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’?’’ he asks with a smile. All over the world, and mostly in the West, people often mistake UG for a woman.
These were the streets on which UG had wandered before what he calls the ‘calamity’ hit him on his 49th birthday. In those days he hardly had a shilling in his pocket. Today he has thousands of pounds.
“I felt I was headless then. I feel as if I am bodiless,” says UG without a trace of emotion.
I am dumbfounded. A voice inside my head screams, “Don’t die, UG. Please don’t die.”
* * *
Random Utterances:
“England cannot be my base. This is the occult area. I guess I will just keep moving till I drop dead. This has been my lifestyle for more than 60 years.
“The Ebola virus will save this planet from humankind. It is the savior. Humans are the worst species. They are a disgrace to this planet. Man is irrelevant.”
“Your goal to be happy for ever is something which you will never, never, never achieve.”
“Pleasure means pain.”
“You should be proud if someone makes a pass at your woman.”
“Your sexual tendencies are ingrained in your genes. Your genes decide whether you will be a lesbian or a homosexual.”
“By saying that you are nobody, you become somebody.”
“Absence of money destroys dignity.”
“I would rather starve and beg than do what J. Krishnamurti did.”
(Note to Myself : The unusual relationship between J. Krishnamurti and UG can be good material for an interesting plot for a film. One can spotlight the loneliness of J. Krishnamurti in this tale. All seers and reformers are lonely people.)
“All conversations are to make others do things the way you want them done. Otherwise, there is no conversation. We are constantly imposing our likes and dislikes on others. And when everything fails, we become violent. All imposition is at the point of a gun.”
* * *
UG is ablaze again. In this winter of London, I sense that there is an unusual urgency in UG to get things done. He feels like fire. This ‘fire’ does not require a PR man to propagate what he is saying, least of all someone like me. Whatever he says spreads on its own. It just catches on and becomes a blaze. I have been spending these winter dawns playing with this fire and comforting myself. Right from 4:30 am till 8:30 pm every day.
“Mahesh will burn in this fire and become another fire, but not the continuation of this fire,” he says getting up unsteadily on his feet.
The news on television shows an image Michael Jackson falling down on stage. He is suffering from low blood pressure and dehydration.
UG is drinking glasses and glasses of water.
“The body has a tremendous intelligence of its own. It rejects what is bad for its survival. The doctors don’t know a damn thing about the body. They fool you because you all are frightened. Frightened people can be fooled very easily,” he says with fierce emphasis.
London is very cold. Snow has piled up on the rooftops of the buildings and all the car tops give the city a ‘white’ look. “This is a Siberian winter.”
He looks better. The dark shadow has unexpectedly passed.
7th December 1995
England feels dead. This great empire which once ruled the world is dying.
U.G. looks at my palm and says, “Your life will change completely. You will have no control over it. The foundation of that will be laid in your 49th year. But in your 56th year your destiny will take over. Nobody knows what that will be. But you have a strong support line. This means you will be my ‘worst’ disciple.”
“There is the story of a perfume seller,” says Babu over the phone. The essence of the story is that even though he does not sell any of his wares to you, you still feel the fragrance when you are around him. This is how one feels when one is around UG. And all that I can do is to market the memory of these perfumed times that I am spending with this unusual man.
“Remain what you are. Don’t try to be different from what you are even for a moment. Only then you will actually begin to share your ‘fragrance’. A flower does not share or preach. Your need to be accepted by the world makes you give in. A weed does not want to be a rose. It does not care if you do not praise it or even if you crush it. The model is the problem. Have you noticed that nature does not use anything as a model?” he says with great simplicity.
UG is getting simpler now. The lamp burns brighter before it goes out.
“The Prime Minister of Nepal wants to see me. I told the man who brought me the message to tell his Prime Minister that he must come to see me without his security men. What’s so special about the lives of these people? If they get into public office, they must be ready to get killed.”
* * *
Snatches from a conversation:
“Desire to go beyond desire is the worst desire.”
“Nirvana means ‘blow out’. When the Buddha came to the door of nirvana, he got too frightened to go through it. That’s why he became a proselytizer. It was Buddha who introduced proselytization in human history. Prior to him the concept of a sangha did not exist.”
“At the end of the day we are just dogs barking with different accents.”
As dusk descends we wander through the fog-filled streets of Ovington Square. All the parked cars are covered with thick layers of fresh snow. I am filled with an urge to step forward and play with it. I push my finger into the snow and write “UG, I love you” in it. At night when I lie in my bed waiting for sleep to tiptoe up to me and take me into its arms, the glowing image of “UG, I love you” glows inside of me. It fills me with warmth.
8th December 1995
I kiss his feet. He does not mind me doing it. It’s strange and rather unusual for him not to mind my doing that, because I have been rather successful before at teasing him by making the mock action of touching his feet. I mention this to him.
“It’s the beginning of a new phase,” he says with laughter in his eyes. Babu says that astrologically the 7th of December is a significant day. “Jupiter has moved into Sagittarius. It is in UG’s house for the first time in his life.”
I hear that the Anarchist Press is going to publish one of UG’s books, The Courage to Stand Alone.
I ‘die’ on the floor. The ‘corpse’ posture is the key asana in yoga. UG steps out of his room. He is glowing. Images of my future life flower within me. A gentle feeling of certainty has slipped under my skin. From now on it seems as if there will be no surprises in my life.
Images of a decorated Christmas tree in a military camp in Bosnia sparkle on the screen. “This is what the Christian maxim ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ resulted in,” says UG. He is referring to the sectarian war in Bosnia. History is full of tales of man’s brutality to man committed under the name of God.
There is a report on television which says that the United States of America is spending one billion pounds to study what goes on planet Jupiter. “What about the people who are starving on this planet,” asks UG glancing towards me.
Just then a commercial shot with lots of kids appears on the television screen. “You guys also use children to sell your products. Why do you then blame the beggars in India and the terrorists of doing the same thing?” he asks.
9th December 1995
“The media cannot be interested in what I am saying. They want comforters. We are automata -- we can be switched on and off from outside. All human relationships survive only on mutual need. I don’t need you; you need me. I don’t want a ‘do-gooder’ around me when I am old. I need a machine,” says UG.
“Your silence is noisy UG,” I complain to him. Later in the day, I think about Shirin. This is going to be a film based on my Muslim mother’s life.
10th December 1995
Sounds of a shovel hitting against the sidewalk wake me up from sleep. An unknown worker is working out there in the snow. It’s 4:30 am.
“Last day in London,” says UG going into the kitchen to fix me my morning cup of coffee.
“If my belief does not operate in my life, I have no business to impose it on others.”
I pitch the idea of Shirin to him. “It’s good,” is his verdict.
* * *
Random Remarks:
“All sharing is a pleasure movement; it’s not charity.”
“These food ceremonies which go on in your ashrams are like sex orgies.”
“Change is instantaneous. I don’t want anybody to change.”
“The way my room is empty here, your head must be empty there. If you can’t part with all the junk you have accumulated in your head, how can you say goodbye to all those junky ideas which humankind has accumulated for centuries?”
“The real dialogue is in the space between the words. The scene is in the silences which vibrate between the characters, not in all the noise which they make by using words.”
* * *
Larry Morris, the soft and charming Christian evangelist from New Mexico, calls, saying, “UG, I would rather be in hell with you than in heaven.”
When UG gets rid of things he is happy. Unlike all of us who are happy when we get money, UG is happy when he gets rid of money. UG says that he cannot ‘separate’ himself from the world around him. Then why can he not experience any pain or pleasure? “Sharing is only possible through separation.”
Movies should be made like a gift which we would like to give to someone special whom we love deeply.

13th October 2005
A couple of days ago, an earthquake of 7.6 intensity devastated Kashmir. More than 40 [80] thousand people, mostly women and children, have lost their lives. Millions have become homeless on both sides of the border. But the worst is not over yet. Winter is just a few days away and people do not have any roof over their heads. The apathy of the Indian civil society is unspeakable. It has failed to respond to this calamity with any generosity.
* * *
5th September 2003
“Happy teacher’s day,” I say bending my head and offering a namaste to UG who is dressed in silky white clothes. “UG, don’t teachers have a withering impact on their students,” I ask fishing for his response.
“Yes, they must be killed first,” he says without blinking an eye.
This gets Pratap Karvat, the sweet meek Woody Allen look-alike, going. “Why don’t you kill yourself? You are also a teacher of some sort. Why don’t you practice what you preach?” he says concealing his rage with his distinctive smile.
“Why should I, when nobody in this world does?” he shoots back. I am charmed by his humor.
“What can we do to get rid of all these so-called Jihadis who have played havoc with our world?” asks Pratap.
“Why don’t you then first get rid of yourself? And why do you want peace? Is it so that you can continue to live your affluent life undisturbed? Well, that is not going to be possible,” UG says with a fierce sense of finality.
“UG, don’t you see that all over the world the Muslim community is having problems living with other religious groups?” I ask.
“Why should they? Can you live with your wife or your husband? You can’t even live with yourself in peace. So why blame the Muslims?” he thunders.
Later in the day, Pratap begins to express grief over the state of affairs in India.
UG shuts him up saying, “You just talk. You don’t do anything. Instead of complaining, why don’t you become like that suicide bomber whom you are condemning? You are no different from those politicians whom you are condemning. Even they do nothing but talk…. I am a dog barking here, a pig grunting. Why do you call me a teacher? You come here and make me bark and grunt. I am not interested in teaching anyone anything. Go to your gurus.”
All through the first half of the day I have been teasing UG. I have been sitting very close to him on the floor and grabbing his feet. Most of the people who come to see him want to do the same but they lack the courage to do so. They are very surprised and envious of my actions.
“Mahesh has the courage to say what all he says. People are jealous of you because you are so famous,” he says looking me in the eye. I blush.
A thought surfaces within me. One should participate in building one’s own mythology within the course of one’s own lifetime. Gandhi played a key role in building his own myth. Jinnah did not. One can see for oneself how history looks at these two brilliant people.
“You just say ‘yes’ to whatever UG says,” says Pratap trying to put me down publicly.
“You don’t insult me when you say that I’m nothing but my master’s voice. In fact, you flatter me. I know that I am merely a vehicle. Just like a mother is a vehicle for a ‘new’ life,” I say without the slightest hesitation.
“Soon the time will come for you to choose your path,” UG says looking at my palm.
The count down begins.
UG Sound Bytes:
“Nothing is new. There is nothing original. Get this and get this straight.”
“America is the only nation which has no future.”
“If the Hindu fundamentalists kill one Muslim woman, the Muslims must kill ten Hindu women. That is the only action which will stop them from doing what they are doing.”
6th September 2003
“The day you put a Muslim in the Prime Minister’s chair I will call this country the world’s largest democracy and salute it. Till then you are only formally democratic,” says UG. I remember him once saying a similar thing about the black man in the United States of America.
7th December 2003
UG says:
The whole world is against the Muslims. The Western nations know that the only people who can stop them in their tracks are the Islamic fundamentalists.
You actually talk of a larger interest to safeguard your own interest, your own car, your own children.
Unlike the Hindu bitches this woman who is arrested for the bomb blast is a very courageous woman. Who is going to define who is a terrorist? Who is calling whom courageous?
That Hindu woman who is selling cauliflower in the bazaar is the foundation on which the edifice of the Hindu fundamentalists stands. She wants her way of life and her way of thinking to be in command of things. So she does not want the Islamic fundamentalists to shake that.
This is not going to be a war like the First or the Second World War. This is going to be the war which will go on for ever. There will be constant fighting and that too from ‘within’. The leaders of mankind know that they can never win the war against terrorism.
Why are you guys over the moon? If Saddam’s sons have been killed in this war, we have sons of so many Americans.
Why does CNN not show the shots of those lamenting wives and mothers of the American soldiers on their channel? Why do they only show images of weeping Indians after a bomb blast? Because they know if they do that, it will demoralize the American people.”
* * *
A Conversation:
UG: You say whatever you say just to enlarge your fame and your name.
I: Is there any other grander reason then which should be driving me to say what I say?
UG: None whatsoever.
Tanuja: How should the state leadership respond to a bomb blast?
UG: Bow to it. Supply these so-called terrorists with more weapons. Plus give a peace prize to the bomber.
In that lies the answer.
* * *
My visit to Pakistan is now getting certain. I will be flying to Karachi via Dubai. This will be my first visit to Pakistan.
September 9th, 2003
It’s a harsh day. UG’s gaze has been on me for a while.
“You write and talk the way you do simply to get more fame and power. You are using the Muslims and their problems to gain more and more of fame and power. Even Mother Teresa used the lepers of Kolkota to get sainthood.”
I chant a kalma. “Shut-up,” he says, “Just because you make those empty sounds, it doesn’t make you superior. Chanting these prayers doesn’t mean a thing.”
We hear the old speeches. These speeches were made way back in time. They have a UG-like feel. The message is: “As long as you use models you don’t find your own voice.” All his earlier speeches were modeled on the great orators of the past.
UG says:
You are responsible for Bush being in the seat of power. He protects your interests. He protects your way of life and your way of thinking. The Islamic fundamentalists also use Islam to come into power and stay there. The Hindus in India are not Hindus, nor the Muslims in India Muslims. Do you know ‘Islam’ means peace?
Tell me how the ants find out when you die. Who informs them that it is party time and that they can now feast on your corpse?
His advice to Tanuja: “Don’t say anything nice about the Muslims in your American film. It will harm your film and the film will certainly be a flop.”
A note from Tagore to UG written to him in the year 1939 on his 21st birthday says:
The shy little pomegranate bud
Blushing today, behind the veil
Will burst forth into a passionate
Flower tomorrow when I am awake.
With much affection,
- Rabindranath Tagore
Something must have told Tagore that UG was A ‘God’ in the making.
“Why don’t these Americans get along with the Muslims in Iraq before lecturing to the Indians and Pakistanis on peaceful co-existence?”
“Do you know that the Upanishads re-entered India through Persia?”
“First throw the Chinese out of Kashmir and then talk to Pakistan about giving up the area which they have under their control.”
“Unlike the Muslims who identified with India, the British looted India for two hundred years and left its coffers empty.”
“You are ‘humble’ because you have nothing to be proud of.”
“When I was a kid I used to ask myself, ‘why am I cutting these flowers to worship Lord Ganesh?’”
“In a country where people starve, turmeric and rice are adornment for prayer. What a waste!”
16th Sept 2003
My trip to Pakistan is postponed. I call UG in Chennai.
He sounds different over the phone. The reason is that he has been talking all day long to Krishnamurti freaks that come in hordes to see him whenever he is in that part of the world.
“You must emphasize that religion should be rooted out of politics completely. You cannot bind nations with the glue of religion. Only economic needs can. Pure political issues are the ones that must stitch nations together.”
19th September 2003
“I want to celebrate your death day, not your birthday,” says UG to me over the phone from Bangalore.
“I promise to gift you my ‘death day’. I will pursue martyrdom as you asked me to,” I say putting as much sincerity in my words as I can.
“How else will the world remember you?” he asks.
Next, he does something unusual. He begins to praise me to the skies. I find it hard to accept praise from UG. “You are the most courageous man in the world.’
I know in my heart of hearts who and what I am. I am a mirror which just about reflects his light. I have no light of my own.
20th September 2003
According to the Buddhist mythology, the Buddha was born, found enlightenment and died on the very same day of the year.
UG says, “Annie Besant was born on the 1st of October. She died on the 20th of September. But the forces around her did everything to suppress this fact. They wanted to tell the world that she died the same day she was born. This is how people create myths.”
Later, he tells me to warn Tanuja not to say anything against the Western nations or the Hindus. He says that if she does, she will get herself into a lot of trouble and that will finish her career.
26th September 2003
I am in Katmandu, Nepal. I have come to this war-torn region of the Himalayas to talk to the Nepali film industry about my experiences as a writer in Bollywood. Since I am already here, the local elite have requested me to make a keynote address and kick start the South Asian Documentary Film Festival.
The idea of using the Gandhian means of ‘aggressive non-violence’ to confront the Hindu fundamentalists is finding acceptance in this part of the world.
Meeting Mark Tully has been a stimulating experience. I have also met an unusual Nepali intellectual; his name is Kanak Dixit. “Why don’t you start using Urdu in your film titles again?” he asks. I think it’s a very good way to send the right signals.
UG is having problems with his European visa. This morning I blasted the visa department in Chennai on his behalf. I conveyed to them whatever UG wanted me to convey to them, but it did not work. They just won’t give him a visa without medical insurance.
“I will decide if I want to go Germany or any other country in Europe, not they. I will never insure my life or see a doctor. ‘Shoot all doctors at sight’ is my maxim. If for some reason I want to go to their country, then I will have to dance to their tune. But since I don’t want to, I don’t have to.”
I realized that I could say whatever I said to the Consul because UG did not want to go to their country. It was that which gave my tone that extra punch. Not wanting is power. I must not want anything either from the Hindus or from the Muslims. I must also have the same attitude when I address the public.
2nd October 2003. Mumbai.
I am here exactly at 5 am. UG opens the door. A baby rat scrambles for its life. It was perhaps sleeping somewhere near the door. Today is Gandhi Jayanti.
The ‘me’ is a graveyard of memories. It is an echo chamber which resonates with sounds of the bygone days. Dog’s bark. Our host coughs. The pen moves. A new day is here.
Silence. Not a word is exchanged between UG and me this morning. He is sitting still. His toe moves. His shirt flutters. His hands are clenched and they rest on his lap. Nothing else moves in the room except the calendar on the wall which is being blown by the morning breeze.
It’s 5:15 am. All of a sudden he begins to talk.
His words:
"The radio only played classical music when it first started. But now it only plays film music. You need to share your likes with me or else the pleasure circuit is not complete. It’s the same with food and clothes. You impose your way of life and your way of thinking on others all the time. The market tells you what to wear all the time. In the silent movie era they used to play classical music and not light music in the movie halls for effect. The coming generation will do the same thing. But that does not mean that the old must continue. We talk of change all the time. But when the time comes to change we don’t change. People who listen and play classical music still feel they are superior to the rest of the world.
"No one goes to the museums these days. At least, the young don’t go there at all. The tourist guides drag them there. Going to museums comes under prescribed culture.
"Classical music had the praise of God in it. Just like the politicians who use Ganesh to retain power. Under the name of culture you preserve the bygone tastes and you condemn what is in demand. These guys need to live in the market place or perish. Why should you force Milton on your kids when they love Harry Potter?
"It’s all about demand and supply. The older generation does not like these times because they cannot force their tastes on the current generation. Preserving the dead past with the sweat and blood of today’s generation is what these museums and archives do."
Reflections: My father used to make mythological movies in his days. No one does that now. No one wants to see mythological movies these days except old people. There was a time when mythological serials were a big hit on TV. Families huddled around their TV sets to watch them with their grandparents, but, like everything, even that trend has faded.
My wife gets very embarrassed when my kids hear these four-lettered words used in the movies these days. But my kids don’t.
Even the choice of the kind of table and the color of these curtains is forced on the younger generation. That’s how all art survives. It’s forced down the throats of our kids. Why should the state preserve the tastes of a handful of people? Simple: it does not want to displease the highbrows. But the joke is, they either make these so-called uncouth and unrefined masses pay taxes to preserve these exalted tastes or make some entrepreneurs fund these art institutions, which they do anyway to pander their own vanity.
"Even God has to be imposed on people.
"Selectivity and censorship are thinking. That is what you call culture.
"If you really want to keep art alive and kicking you must demolish all the existing models of art. The model limits you. Picasso broke away from the stranglehold of the existing model but unfortunately he became a model himself for the forthcoming generations.
"Society only rewards people who strengthen and fortify the existing beliefs.
* * *
We have spoken for two and a half hours on the topic of art. The echoes of his words will resonate in the art world for years to come.

“This talk is worth at least a thousand dollars,” I say.
“As far as I am concerned, it’s worthless. I cannot use it to enrich myself at the cost of people.”
UG shoots down my idea of resolving the Hindu-Muslim conflict through the Gandhian approach. “Violence is the only way to stop the Hindus from destroying the Muslims. If the Hindus kill one Muslim woman, the Muslims must kill nine Hindu women. But the Muslims won’t do this. Because they are frightened of being destroyed,” he says with great emphasis.
“All you guys are frightened of chaos because you don’t want your lifestyles to be affected,” he says struggling to open the main door of his apartment.
This image of his sticks in my head. A voice in my head says: “My God cannot even open the door.”
October 2003
“Good riddance,” UG says when we part at the Sahara International Airport, Mumbai. I struggle to convert the parting into a joke. I am trying to conceal my ‘loss of face’. As I leave he stares at me for a moment. He looks like a weird and wonderful animal.
“What about her bags?” he asks, wanting me to attend to his American friend’s luggage. He makes me realize that I too, like everyone else, was being very particular in attending to UG’s needs, but was ignoring the other two guests.
You cannot possess UG. You cannot contain him or direct him. He is like life -- wild and untamed.
25th October 2003
My daughter Shaheen is in London. Today is my wife Soni’s birthday. I am shooting for Murder in Nataraj studios in Italy.
Today is also Diwali. I am seized by a mischievous urge to tease UG, so I call him. “UG, the festival of lights is going on here in India. Happy Diwali,” I say hoping to get a great reaction from him.
“Why don’t you burn the whole country instead of burning some crackers and lighting some lamps?” He asks in the manner only he can.
“Do you know Rumsfeld, the man who is the architect of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has finally conceded that America can never win this war against terrorism? I wonder why it has taken the rascal so long to admit this truth to the world.”
“The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which is a right wing Hindu party, says that I am an anti-national. They are saying that I am provoking the Muslims to fight for their constitutional rights,” I inform him.
“India should be grateful to you for your courage and for saying what all you say to the Muslims.” Then he adds his usual line: “I want you to be killed so that the world will remember you.”
15th December 2003
“Saddam is arrested,” reads an sms text message from my friend Neelesh from AP. Somehow one senses that he is not very sure of this news.
I call UG in Switzerland to share this bit of information with him: “UG, I have some bad news for you; Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Tikrit.” I am dying to hear his response.
“Have they caught the right man or the wrong man?” He asks, sounding very calm.
“They’re not very sure. They will perform a DNA test to verify that,” I promptly answer.
Suddenly he erupts: “I don’t want to hear all that American shit,” saying that, he passes the telephone to someone else in the room and I get disconnected. I call again.
“What happened to him?’ I ask the woman who has picked up the phone. “I don’t know. He just gave the phone to me saying ‘I don’t want to hear all that American shit.’ Here, speak to him,” she says with laughter in her voice.
“The Americans have claimed four times that they have got him. Are you sure they have got him this time?” asks UG as soon as he comes on the phone.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Why do you believe all that stuff these Americans say to you? And why do you pass on all that news to me?” he asks, sounding very stern. I mumble some reply. I understand the point he is trying to make. We have a tendency to lap up all the news that these American agencies dish out to the world. We don’t question it. Then, just like that, he says “Bye,” leaving me with the day’s lesson.
A little later, the world media goes to town with the images of the captured Saddam. A subtle feeling of gloom descends on me. I don’t share the euphoria of the world.
“UG is shopping,” says a female voice. She sounds amused by this relentless pursuit of mine.
“I will call again. I want to know his reaction to these images of Saddam which are being shown on TV the world over,” I say.
“The world needs only Saddam Hussein to put the Western nations where they actually belong. This is not the end. You will see ten more Saddam Husseins. This fighting will not stop. This is just the beginning. You can be sure of that,” he says when I finally manage to get him on the phone.
The news of an assassination attempt made on the life of Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, surfaces on TV. A cloud of uncertainty begins to hover over the possibility of my meeting him in Islamabad.
16th December 2003. Karachi, Pakistan.
“They almost got the President of Pakistan, didn’t they? I had told you this would happen,” says UG, as I watch a new day begin from my hotel room in Karachi.
He had predicted this would happen a long time ago.
“The people of Pakistan are anti-American. But the government of the day in Pakistan has been blackmailed to toe the American line,” I say to him. This is what the Jamiat people had shared with me the previous evening when they had come to my hotel room to pay me a courtesy visit.
“I guess the President of Pakistan has now got the message that if anyone supports America he will be killed,” He says.
“I think he has,” I reply.
As the day deepens I find out from the Pakistani newspapers that a state of emergency has been declared in the State of Sindh. This extreme step has been taken by the local government in order to help them deal with the menace of terrorism.
“You can be sure that the President of Pakistan will keep all those billions of dollars which the American Government has given to Pakistan as aid and then turn against them,” UG adds before hanging up abruptly.
Late in the evening, the Kara film festival holds a screening of Zakhm. The experience of watching a scratchy worn-out print in Karachi along with the people of Pakistan is an incommunicable emotional experience.
21st Feb 2004. The Tibetan New Year. Bangalore.
Unuttered concerns about UG’s physical condition are in the air. As we drove through the city last night, Babu spoke to me about how, of late, he has been noticing UG’s ‘computer’ failing.
The night has a drop of sorrow in it.
The next morning, touching him in front of a large gathering, I ask him a question: “UG, is there any sacredness here; any out-of-the-ordinary significance?”
“No,” he says.
My body feels taut when he touches me. Despite all my display of intimacy, deep down within myself, I am in awe of him. I am scared of some idea I think I have attributed to him.
Sound Bytes:
“Kashmir will destroy India. Why don’t you throw China out of Kashmir? Why do you bully the worn out Muslims of that region? You ignore China ‘raping’ your Motherland and make a big issue out of whatever the Muslims do.”
“Any country which supports the USA should be ‘blasted’.”
“Money is all that you must want. And if that is the sole drive of your life it will cease to be a problem. The problem with you all is that you want ten things at the same time.”
* * *
I leave Bangalore without saying goodbye to UG. There is no need to because I carry him with me wherever I go. He is in my blood. There is no getting away from him. I am ready for death. His death? My death? Am I really? Maybe not yet, but soon I will be ready.
I get back to my world in Mumbai. Mukesh is drinking. “If Mahesh can go to UG, I can drink,” he says. He’s right. The night is dark, very dark.
30th April 2004
“Permanence is today,” says a quote of UG. I am reading Julie’s book. This book is a record of eight years which she had spent with UG traveling all over the world. It is 8 O’clock in the morning and I am here in Pooja’s pad waiting to get cracking on the script of Rog. Meanwhile, I read Bob’s mail. All does not seem to be OK with ‘God’.
I have made an arrangement with UG to call him every morning at 6 am according to his time in Gstaad.
I decide to find out how he is feeling. Yesterday, when I had called him he sounded just fine. I remember him also telling me that he had no plans to move out of Gstaad until the end of May. “Call me at this time tomorrow,” he said.
And when I told him about the comments he had asked me to make to the media about demolishing all temples, mosques, churches etc., he had said “Thank you for doing that.” I was deeply stirred by the manner in which he said that.
“Are you still alive? When are they going to kill you?” he asks when I call him. This is his usual question he hurls at me every time I speak to him. I tell him, “If you want me to get killed, provide me with more subversive ideas.”
He then begins to blabber about all the mess in India. He is dead opposed to the Congress party using Sonia Gandhi to grab power. “The Congress party should be destroyed,” he adds. His statement makes me wonder whether this is an indication of the Congress party coming to power.
He suddenly begins to talk about his will and money: “I may not see you again. I’m going to disappear.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Where do people go when they go?” he says with laughter in his voice.
“Then I should come and spend some time with you and say goodbye to you,” I say, trying being normal.
“This is the last goodbye. Bye, bye,” he says and hangs up.
“UG, if you are dying I want to spend time with you,” whispers a voice in my head.
I call him again. There is no reply. The tide of death is flowing in.

1st May 2004
The radio alarm on my mobile tells me it’s time for me to call ‘God’. To be honest, I have wanted to call him earlier, but I have refrained from doing so. I am just being considerate. I want him to rest a little longer. I wonder why these filial feelings are surfacing in me and that too towards the old man.
I hear the bell ringing. There is no reply. My mind begins to imagine the worst. I check myself from giving in to these ‘bad’ thoughts. Pooja’s room has a tranquil feel. The sound of water flowing into a pot makes the ambience spiritual. The morning is unusually calm, or maybe I’m feeling less restless today.
“Hello,” says the voice on the other end. UG is not sounding like his usual self. The river is slowing down. He has an unusual feel this morning.
“Are you unwell, UG?” I ask without indulging in niceties.
“Very unwell,” he says without dodging my question. “I was de-hydrated. I am 88. I have lived enough. I am ready to go. But to be honest, I am better now. Don’t worry; I will see you before going. You’re the only person that I would like to meet before I ‘go’.” His simplicity has the fragrance of love.
“So you will call me if you feel that the time has come?” I ask. I am amazed at myself. I wonder from where I have been able to get the courage to ask this question. I am reminded of those days when the mere thought of his death would make me go on a drinking spree.
“Yes, I will,” he says, meaning every word that he articulates.
“I will drop everything that I am doing and come to you,” I say.
“Thank you. I’ll call you,” he says. The pact is made. Then, just before hanging up, he says, “Don’t worry about me; I am OK.”
His parting words reassure me. I feel calm. I know now that even if someone came up to me and told me that UG is dying I won’t believe that person. Because for me there is only one maxim: If UG says so, it is so.
Later, I pass on the substance of my conversation to Babu. He is relieved.
“Why is he talking about his death?” asks crazy Frank from Bangalore when I speak to him over the phone. I tell him what all UG has told me. He too is put at ease.
“If you promise to throw my corpse in the jungle to the insects and the wild animals to feast on, maybe I will be tempted to come to India,” UG said to me during the course of his conversation this morning. His words echo within me as I drive through the streets of Mumbai.
Real courage is demolishing one’s own imagined greatness. “There is nothing to what I say,” he once said to me in the summer of 1995 in Gstaad when I was writing the Taste of Death. His words had a sense of finality. For me those were the words of my ‘God’.
2nd May 2004
The time on my mobile reads 9:43 am. I have just landed in Lucknow. The first person to step out of the aircraft is Rahul Gandhi. He is encircled by special security guards. I wonder what makes the lives of these so-called ‘leaders’ so special. Why should another human being risk his life and die to protect these very ‘special’ people.
I call UG as soon as I step into the arrival lounge. His “hello” says it all. This morning UG is beginning to sound like his usual self. I inform him that I am canvassing for Ram Jethmalani in the forthcoming general elections.” Good, we will stay in touch,” he says.
I hang up. My talk with UG today was very brief.
2nd December 2004.
I am flying to Karachi, Pakistan, this morning. Rog is going to be screened at the Kara film festival this evening. The exhilaration I felt the first time I flew into Pakistan has diffused considerably.
“There is no solution to the Indo-Pak problem,” says UG when I call him in Bangalore. I have called him to help me shape up my core message to the people of Pakistan.
“The human species has got to go. Your so-called peace talk is only delaying your inescapable doom,” he adds with a quiet finality.
“Say a positive ‘no’ to the Government of India. Don’t accept their offer and become a part of any committee. You must not accept anything from any government. If you accept what they offer you, you’ll lose the power to say whatever you have to say. They cannot deal with you. They want to silence you. This is their trick. I am solidly behind you in every way except money,” he laughingly says and then suddenly hangs up.
20th September 2005.
“UG, you once told me that when I put 56 years behind me and turn 57, my destiny will take over. You also said that thereafter I will have no control over my life.”
I have telephoned him after a very long time. Something within me compelled me to make this call. It also seems as if larger forces had made some kind of prior arrangement to make this conversation on my birthday with UG possible. It was unusual for Julie to go out of her way and send his phone number via sms the night before.
“Yes I did,” he says without a pause. It seems as if he has been waiting for my call. “From now on I have no role to play in your life. If you try and shape the events of your life and give it some kind of direction you will have trouble -- not in a spiritual or a mystical sense -- but I would simply say to you to let your life take over. I have never tried to control my life.”
“You mean to say that hereafter you have absolutely no role to play in my life,” I ask.
“None whatsoever. Good luck!” he says and hangs up.
His words have a sense of finality. They make me feel sad and exhilarated. I feel like a child who can now peddle away on his bicycle into the unknown without the support of his parents. A new phase in my life has commenced.
November 2005. Mumbai.
Today is Diwali and the 27th day of Ramadan. Only three more days of fasting left. UG is in New York. I am shooting for Kaliyug. It is 2:30 pm here in Mumbai, which means it is around 3:30 am in New York. This is the best time to speak with him. So I head to the corner of this noisy set and dial his hotel number.
“How is America treating you, UG?” I ask.
“Couldn’t be better. Do you know that the immigration officer who let me into the United States knew each and every detail about me? He also knew that my entire family stays in the US. He said that he has read all that is there about me on the Internet.”
“Was he an Indian?” I ask.
“No he was not an Indian. He was a colored immigration officer. He said to me that a man like me needs to spend at least six months in the USA along with my family. So, instead of two months, he gave me a visa for six months. He was telling me that India does not deserve a man like me,” he says, sounding bright and intensely awake.
“So are you going to accept that offer and stay on in the USA for six months?” I enquire.
“No, I have to see you. So I have got to come to India. I will be going to meet Larry in New Mexico and after that I will go to see Narayana Moorty in California. How is my host Mr Parekh doing?” he asks.
“He is unwell. Did you speak to him?” I ask.
“I will. I must also pay him a visit when I come there,” he says promptly. And then, after inquiring about the time in India, he says his parting lines, “Thank you for your call,” and hangs up.
19th August 2006
“If I were you, I would say ‘no’ to being on the advisory board of BBC. You’ve been blasting them. It’s a clever way of theirs to control you. You are a bold man, a very courageous man. You and I don’t want martyrdom. But if we can both go for saying what we are saying, nothing is lost. It is no loss to mankind,” he says even before I have pitched a query to him.
I had pre-arranged this conversation. I had informed Julie that I would call him in the morning. UG is in Gstaad. He informs me that he has moved into another apartment. “It’s spacious. But all I want is a cave. I want my room to get smaller and smaller.”
I then steer him to answer my questions about the current problems in India. I have a meeting with the Prime Minister of India, Mr Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi, on the 21st. An interaction between the Ulema and the Government to address the concerns of the Muslim community has been arranged by the Jamiat-e-ulema e Hind. I have been invited to give my views.
“Do not take sides. The Hindu fundamentalists think you are taking sides. That’s why they are threatening to kill you. The Hindus and the Muslims are both terrorists. The Hindus are as much a menace to India. Just like we find it impossible to live with our near and dear ones, the Hindus and the Muslims have a similar problem dealing with each other. The question you need to ask is who is calling whom a terrorist? Why does America get away with all the blood it has been shedding all over the world for years? As long as you don’t condemn that with the same might as you condemn the Islamic Fundamentalists, you reveal your bias. Tell the Prime Minister that you refused an invitation to attend the prayer breakfast meeting with the President of USA as well as a meeting with Saddam Hussein.”
This is the longest conversation I am having with him in a very long time.
“This war will go on for ever. No one is going to win this war. Fear is a political device. The political class will use to manipulate you to stay in power. But the truth is they don’t have the solution. No one does. Mankind is doomed. I am not being pessimistic, but that’s a fact. The leaders of mankind know this truth. It is 4 am in Switzerland. This is the best time to call me,’ he says and hangs up.
Another day has begun. News of Mumbai police going to schools in Meera road and interrogating Muslim kids has just reached my ears. Phew, looks like the worst is yet to come.
3rd Sept 2006. Mumbai.
My wandering ‘God’ is in Cologne, Germany. “He is at Renaissance Hotel, Room No. 635. Try calling him early in the morning, Love, Julie,” reads an msg on my cell phone. I had sms’d to Julie last night to find out where UG is. The reason I want to talk to him is that I have to lock horns with the psychiatric fraternity on the 15th of September on the issue of mental health, and also present my views in opposition to the use of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) to ‘cure’ the ‘mentally disturbed’.
“UG, this is Mahesh Bhatt from India,” I holler over the phone. From his tone I realize that I have called him rather early in the morning. It must be around 4 am in Germany.
“Do I know you?” he asks mischievously.
I tell him why I have called him. All one needs to do with UG is to stir up the smoldering coals of his non-existing mind with a question and he begins to blaze.
“There is no such thing as madness. Just like health it’s merely a definition. So is sanity. The root cause of the problem is not with all those whom you call mad but with those who call themselves sane and want to ‘cure’ the so-called mad. The mental patient has given up. He just does not want to fit into this brutal framework of your society. And since we just can’t deal with their throwing in the towel, we seek the assistance of the medical fraternity to batter them and make them fit into this system. The doctors are responsible for pushing them to suicide.”
I remember when Parveen was with me and UG in Kodai. She was just fine. Those moments were the best moments of her life. But the film fraternity and all those who lived off her wanted her to get back before the camera and act; and they wanted to get her fixed by the medical world. The medical fraternity was working in the interests of the money bags and not of Parveen.
“There is nothing to medical technology. They just don’t know a damn thing about the human organism.” And then he abruptly hangs up.
I am fulfilled. He has lit my lamp. Now it’s my turn to use that flame to light the lamp of others.
***
The Ramadan of 2006.
So, here I am trying to finish the task of transporting all my jottings on to this space. A journey into the treasures of the past begins today.
***
7th May 2004. Mumbai.
“Time for me to call him,” says a voice in my head. As I drive to the office I dial his number in Gstaad.
“I don’t want to talk about that filthy nation India. You are individually responsible for putting that Italian bitch in the Prime Minister’s chair. How can you tolerate that mafia-backed double agent ruling you?” he explodes.
“The BJP and the RSS are planning a nationwide protest,” I say hoping to barricade myself from his onslaught.
“The Hindu fundamentalists have paved the way for her to get there,” he is now also blasting all those who are up in arms against Sonia.
“Martyrdom is what is in store for her. She will get an airport named after her; that’s all. Even her children are in danger of being killed.”
After a long time he is radiating a new kind of vitality. He is tearing me down.
“The leftist parties are going to support her from the outside. They don’t want to be in the government,” I say.
“That’s a very clever way to seek power,” he says dismissing them.
“I don’t want to come to India. It’s a filthy nation. It should be wiped out. The people are responsible for voting her into power,” he roars before signing off.
19th May 2004
“You don’t have to thank Sonia Gandhi for relinquishing power and stepping down. She is still very much in charge.... I will tell you when I want to see you in a couple of days,” he says, nudging me into the real world of him and me.
20th May 2004
Today, he sounded unusually calm over the phone. His voice mirrors the end of the turbulent phase India has been through.
“We have a Sikh in the Prime Minister’s chair,” I tell him not knowing how he will respond.
“Good” is his reply.
“Sonia is still very much on the scene. She is controlling the action from behind,” I add.
“She will be killed. Tell her that you’re getting messages which say that her life is under fire. The Nehru family should never be allowed to come to power,” he says.
The end of continuity is my old man’s message. Death, ending, letting go.
Sonia would do India a lot of good if she made sure that no Gandhi ever became a Prime Minister. One must use power to demolish old biases. But unfortunately you need old biases to come to power. It is a ‘no-win’ situation. Human thinking is destructive.

18th June 2004. Mumbai.
“My days are numbered,” he says with a smile in his voice.
“So are the days of this planet,” I say trying to deflect his blunt statement.
“What do I care what happens to the world once I am gone,” he says bashfully.
“So, are you coming on the 19th of July? I am looking forward to your visit,” he asks. There is a sense of an ‘end’ seeping into our conversation.
“I am looking forward to those seven days I will be spending with you. I know they will be the most memorable days of my life,” I say.
“Thank you for your call,” he says and hangs up.
A silence descends. My heart whispers. UG’s ‘teachings’ have seeped into my life. They are just frozen words in a book. I feel OK with the idea of his death.
24th June 2004. Mumbai.
“I dreamt of three cobras with their hoods up crossing my path. Since I was barefooted, I let them pass and I quietly took another route,” I tell UG.
“That’s very good. You’re getting enlightened!” he says.
I laugh.
“Did the cobra bite you?” he asks with a mischievous tone.
“No” I tell him. And then I switch to the question I want to ask him.
“What should I tell India in my television interview that I am going to have with a top Indian journalist, M.J. Akbar?”
“Tell them that economic power and military might are what you need to matter in the world community. Without that the world does not give a damn for you. You just don’t matter.”
9th July 2004.
Those “Where is UG?”-calls keep pouring in as soon as the day begins. Today is my old man’s birthday. I finally track him down in Paris. Louis is on the line. He is the ‘voice’ between us.
“Tell him I am not calling to wish him happy birthday,” I say at the outset.
I hear Louis repeat my message to him.
“I am waiting for my death day,” I hear him say.
“Hang on till the 19th of this month; don’t die till then. We have a date,” I say having finally tracked him.
20th July 2004
I land in Zurich at the crack of dawn. UG, Larry and Susan are there at the airport to receive me. As always, I hand over to him on arrival all the moola I have in my pocket. This familiar scene of exchange of money between me and UG makes people around us smile.
We hit the road and head to Gstaad. He has lost weight, about 5 to 6 kilos. Since he has gotten rid of his dentures, it’s a little difficult to decipher what he says.
He barks at Larry sporadically: “After taking away all that nature has produced by using force, you talk of human dignity? This planet can feed 15 billion people. You Westerners have grabbed more than your share. But this has to end now.”
As I stare at the stunning beauty of Gstaad, I get the news that Anurag has blood cancer. The doctors and I talk over the phone about the possible course of treatment. We also explore the manner in which the news should be broken to the family.
“Why should you live long? I am willing to go now. The doctors thrive on your desire to live forever and exploit you. They don’t prolong your life; they only prolong your agony.”
As evening descends I receive a call from Mumbai. There is a move to conceal the news of cancer from Anurag and his pregnant wife Tani. I wonder how they will do this. The word about his illness is already out.
21st July 2004, Gstaad.
The hope industry thrives on the yearning of man to live forever.
We sit in his chalet replaying the memories of the death of UG’s son Vasant. The scene of UG with Audrey’s (Vasant’s girlfriend) father, which later went on to become the basis of my film Sir, is narrated to the gathering of people present. They listen with rapt attention.
“Why should your son, of all the people, be hit by the deadly cancer? God is unfair,” Lamented Audrey’s father when we paid him a visit.
“If not my son, then whose son should be hit by cancer? I think your God is a very fair God,” said UG. His words just blew our minds.
“My relationship with America is like the relationship between a customer and a prostitute. What I can get out of her is the only concern I have on my mind.”
But isn’t it true that all our relationships are like that?
He watches me write.
“I thought you have come here to rest,” he pokes at me.
“This is rest,” I shoot back. Everyone in the room smiles. I know I am a workaholic.
UG has a new toy now -- a stick. He uses it to thrash people.
Imitation: We imitate. Life does not.
Later I speak to Anurag’s mother. I give her hope.
“Talk to him later; he is sleeping now,” she pleads with me. I am moved.
“Do not listen to what the doctors have said or are saying or will say. These doctors will only prolong the agony. They know they have no cure for cancer. They fool you and make money. But unfortunately you would rather live in agony and go on hoping,” says UG.
His irreverence seems offensive, because it demolishes the structures of thought which have dominated the thinking of man.
“The moment you are born you have got to die. The aging process is a reality. Don’t translate my weight loss as a sign of ill health. It is in fact the sign of health. Don’t listen to these doctors.”
“You cannot part with one thousand Euros. I give away one million dollars. I don’t need anything that money can buy. So I don’t need the money. You need so many things; so you need the money. Simple.”
He is dismantling my fears and my phobias about money. I feel it happening.
“I don’t want to be placed along with Jesus and Buddha. I don’t give a damn for them. I have nothing to do with them.”
“Your quest for temporary relief creates permanent anguish. It sets on new pain cycles. Does the pain go away? It just does not. It comes back, leaving you hooked to the ‘medicines’, like people hooked to drugs. The patterns are same in the area of one’s search for fame and enduring success in the showbiz. We are praise junkies. ‘Praise me, praise me,’ is our cry. And if our demand is satiated, we soon realize that the ‘high' one experiences wears off like the ‘high’ of alcohol or nicotine. Then you are back pining for more. The demand for permanence is the cause of human suffering. Our quest for permanence is not only in the area of wanting to extend life, but in every area of human relationship.”
What he once said a long time ago about J. Krishnamurti and psychiatry when Parveen was sick has proved to be true. I know what he says about the world of medicine and cancer will also prove to be true.
“I thought my days were numbered, but a complete reversal has taken place. I will never depend on anyone in the world, no one. I would rather commit suicide than depend on someone to look after me.”
[Here is an idea for a film. Mix leaving Las Vegas with these utterances of UG on medicines and dependence.]
Then, just like that, I think of Hazrat Ali. If Ali could do what he did for Muhammad, then I will beat him by doing even more for UG.
I inform UG about the FBI monitoring the immigration counters in Pakistan. “They have hidden cameras which record the entry of every foreigner into their country,” I elaborate to him.
“What makes you think that the same thing does not happen in India? Why do you allow these Americans into your country? They treat you so badly in their country.”
The noose is tightening. No matter which route one takes to get to ‘hopeland’, it is blown up by the old man. He has aimed his shots on the medical world this summer. In fact, he is battering the citadels of power. All power centers are under fire. Though there is monotony in what he says, a repetitiveness, there is also a tremendous vitality and vigor in his words. He calls this physical energy.
“The goal must go first. Only then you will be able to deal with the world.”
22nd July 2004, Gstaad.
“Ready for the Hangman?” I send an msg over the phone to Julie. She promptly responds, “I am on the way.”
A new day begins. Old Hindi film songs play in the background. I am glad I carried these songs with me.
“I don’t give a damn for music. It has been artificially created. Your organism is rejecting it. But you can’t do anything to wipe it out. Because that is you. If you erase that you erase yourself.”
Rustling through the landscape. The feel has changed. It’s a different hour in the day. It’s fade-out time.
“Good luck, good luck, good luck,” he repeats with great vigor. He is emphasizing that mankind is doomed.
The air between him and me says, “No room for labored, put-on talk. I realize too much talk is wasted in doing that.”
“So many people have been killed in the name of love thy neighbor as thyself. How can you guys still talk of human dignity?” he mumbles.
I try bringing up the topic of his frail health. “I saw you coming up the stairs of your house; you looked so frail. You had to hold on to the railing of the staircase to walk up....”
Even before I finish he shuts me up. “You did not see me. It was your imagination.” He does not want to discuss it. He makes that clear.
It hits me later that what he says is true. I saw the past form of his, not what he is now. It was the remembrance of the way he was that was eclipsing the here and now.
The room is quiet. Even the sound of my pen writing on the page is audible. Most of the people in the room, including UG, have their eyes shut.
I have just finished directing Mohit over the phone. Nothing has changed since 1990.
A msg beeps on my cell phone. UG looks at me with childlike glee and smiles. He is my sunshine.
“Medical science is a menace. It only prolongs your suffering. Not your life.”
“Coffee?” someone asks me.
“No,” I say.
“He is a chicken,” chides UG.
“I’ve already had two cups of coffee,” I shoot back.
“So what? I used to drink 35 cups of coffee in a day. I’m still here, healthy, wealthy and wise.”
“Healthy and wealthy for sure, but wise? I wonder,” I say trying to poke fun at him.
“My wisdom is no match to yours. In any case, one has to claim to be wise.”
I switch on my cell phone.
“He would be ruined by these phones. But it’s too late now. One less on this planet; so what?” says UG.
I realize that we act or do something only to preserve yourself. You also don’t do that very thing only to preserve yourself.
I have to claim to be wise. Otherwise wisdom is shit.
“You have more verbiage in your shit box,” says UG.
We are all here because we feel UG is the model. We watch him, hear him and write about him, believing he is a very special person. Otherwise we would not be here. It is the profit motive that brings me here.
Louis and UG are in a WWF-like situation. They wrestle. Then Louis does a number which just blows my mind. He is simply brilliant. One has never seen anything like this anywhere. My sides hurt. Entertainment is exhausting. It saps a lot of energy.
I talk to people about my meeting and conversation with the Indian scientist Jayant Narlikar.
Sell cleverness. Buy bewilderment.
“Mathematics is mysticism in the final analysis. The number one is invented by you. All that is an assumption. So if there is no ‘one’, there is no ‘two’.
“Just because you repeat those holy words which don’t even operate in your life, you feel you are a holy man?
“What business does a religious man have to put himself on a higher level? You must put the holy man in prison, not the criminal. The average Chinese is not weighed down by this religious albatross. That is why China has leapt ahead of India.”
I ask Louis who is his favorite actor. “Brando,” he says, “It’s not technique. It’s the kind of person you are that actually gets across to the viewer. De Niro and others don’t touch you because of the kind of men they are. There was something about his eyes that touched you.”
“I can tune into sounds which you call ghosts. Sound and light are interchangeable,” says UG.
“Discovery does not take place because of transportation. There is nothing to search for in this life. Nothing awaits me at the end of the road. Truth is a point of view which is imposed. Reality is motion. Perfection implies a static state.”
23rd July 2004, Gstaad.
I am getting friendlier to my room. It has begun to get to know me too. Just like the body language of two people changes to usher in intimacy. The body language between me and this small room which is nestled in the lush green valley of Gstaad is getting intimate. It almost welcomes me every night.
UG’s health seemed good when I went to see him this morning.
“I never thank anyone for anything. Why should I be thankful to you guys? You guys are not genuine. You just mechanically say, ‘Thank you.’ You don’t mean it. This word ‘Thank you’ is a filthy word. In India they don’t say ‘Thank you’ like you do here. Everything that came out of the West is phony.”
“Life is hard. Don’t help her if you really want to help her,” said UG a very long time ago in Goa. This happened when Dinesh, who is the publisher of UG’s first book, tried to give Valentine a helping hand to get into the van.
Just ten minutes after his son’s death, UG advised his girlfriend to get on with her life. “Go and pick up a new guy. You’re going to do that in any case. Living with dead memories gets to be too much after a while.” I remember how she was revolted by UG’s advice. To add insult to injury, UG refused to dump his son’s ashes into the sacred Ganges.
I am reminded of Babu, the driver. Every time we ran into him during our walks on Pali Hill in those days, UG used to give him money to drink. “Why do you give money to this drunk, UG?” I once asked him. “Why do I give you money to fuck your girlfriend?” He asked, putting me where I belong.
“Unhinged in Gstaad,” could be a great title for this wild memoir of my days spent with UG in this Swiss village.
“An illiterate Indian is more intelligent than those Americans who have got degrees from Harvard and Princeton.” The white man asserts himself because he has better weapons. That’s it.
Mehmood is dead. Aajtak calls me for a phone interview. I am reminded of his debut in my father’s film Mr X. His raw, unrefined quality made him distinct and different from all the other actors of his time. “The coarser you are in your ‘_expression’ the more effective you will be,” UG had once told me.
UG is blasting Mark who is a great yoga teacher: “Prostitutes are better than yogis. Better to run a brothel than teach yoga. Yoga should be wiped out. You guys teach yoga to make a living.
“Walking is bad for your organism. It will cause a lot of trouble to you in your old age.”
He blasts the priest who is to his right, and also the yogi from Switzerland, who is on his left.
“When your dear one dies you don’t experience his or her death, but only the absence of the contact with that person.
“Anybody who teaches yoga or religion is a crook. Why do you teach something which does not operate in your life?”
An sms from Mumbai. It’s from Kum Kum. It says: “Anurag is being admitted to ICU now.”
Louis, Paul, Sidd and I sit in the veranda talking about UG’s health. Inside, UG keeps talking with the same ferocity about the same things over and over again.
Irfan Khan has sent a message. It says that his blood group is O+ and he wants to give blood to Anurag. When I call him I find him drunk.
There in Mumbai you have the never-ending saga of man’s fight against death. And here in Gstaad the spectacle of an extraordinary man’s openness to die at this very moment.
I discover that Louis’s comedy comes from this deep realization that nothing makes sense.

24th July 2004, Gstaad.
“You have to be the way you are in order survive in this world.” -- These lines have a soothing impact on me. Everyone tells you to change. He does not.
Today, he has taken a different line. Today he is telling everyone to go ahead and do whatever they have been doing. “Do it wholeheartedly. Make money,” he says.
I feel like a beggar running around with my broken cup, gathering as many rain drops as I can to quench my thirst. It is raining ‘moments’ and the writer in me is hoarding them.
Larry broke down while driving UG to this pad early this morning. This has made UG soften his stance.
Julie is leaving crumbs for the birds in the veranda. “You take away their food and then feed them crumbs.”
Every breath has eternity in it.
The I Ching reading done by Susan points towards ‘dissolution’. “He who has the vision of letting go of what is near will get that which is far.”
“So, what does it mean in one line?” I ask Susan.
“It means that UG’s old patterns of traveling will dissolve and change into something new. But the external support system to handle this change needs to emerge. This has to happen since existing patterns will wither away and fall apart.”
It is amazing how out of sheer desperation man has tried all through the years to find out about the future. Palmistry, tarot cards, I Ching, Nadi reading -- so many studies to get an insight into his non-existent future, in almost every culture on this planet and with just one yearning: certainty.
“You can say whatever you want without hesitation,” says UG to Nataraj. Nataraj hesitates. We all do that. The reason: we want to project ourselves to be somebody. We want to make an impression.
“The moment you put what I say in your language, it is dead. It may have the freshness, but it is dead,” says the old man.
Bad news from Mumbai. Anurag is bleeding. The doctors have decided to give him chemotherapy. UG is right. Medical technology can only extend his anguish, not his life. But the horrible fact is that we would rather have our loved ones suffer than face the void which would engulf us in their passing away.
“You want to find about death? Go kill yourself and you will find out. But you will not be there to explain to us what death is. Don’t listen to these holy men’s definition of death,” says UG.
He then talks about Marissa who helped her parents die. She could not bear to see them suffer.
I am watching the dance of life. A mosquito is dancing and singing before my eyes. “Its music is better than Beethoven’s symphony. And when it sucks your blood, it contributes to the flow of life. When you kill a mosquito you interfere with the larger design of life.”
Images of a handful of people trying to stop a flood by making a mud wall in its path. That is what man’s attempt to stop death looks like.
“You repeat what they want you to repeat just to make a living.” I don’t want to do that. I just need some money to survive in this man-made jungle.
UG flings a calendar at me. It has UG’s ‘maxims’ on it. “If you read these maxims your gospels will be in trouble.”
The maxims:
1) “The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort -- the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension is the state I am describing.”
2) “What is necessary for man is to free himself from the entire past of mankind. Not just his individual past.”
3) “Once the question, ‘How to live?’ is dropped, living itself becomes the most important thing.”
4) “You are not created for any grander purpose than the mosquito that is sucking your blood.”
Sixteen hours a day and that too for ten days equals 160 hours. Spending time with UG is like getting radiation. It is beginning to melt my insides.
“I cannot stand you and all this that I am being exposed to any more,” I say to him.
“Good,” he shoots back.
This is a place where everything comes to a grinding halt.
“Everything that comes out of your mouth is dead. Whatever you think, write and repeat is dead. That you will taste life someday is also a part of that hope mechanism which is dead. You will never know life, never.”
Immobility and silence are not inactive.
You can take a photo of a candle but you cannot capture its light. The flower and the candle don’t do anything. But they fill the room with light and perfume.
I walk through the streets of Gstaad at night. I realize that saying you are ready to die is one thing; but the very idea of letting go of one crore rupees makes me clamp up. You are what you hide. I am not what I claim to be.
“Do you know the first line of your autobiography?” I ask UG.
“I know the last line,” he answers.
He says the next day, “Whatever happened to me happened.... Something is certainly going to change this summer. It feels like the last summer of something.” I wonder what?
Aesthetics is what separates UG from J. Krishnamurti. UG has no sense of aesthetics at all. J. Krishnamurti is an embodiment of it.
“Only serious matters will bring out laughter,” says UG pushing Louis to get going with his performance. The reason he is challenging him all the time is that he wants to nudge him into some kind of a new life.
“He is weaning you away from him. He has brought you up like a baby – he cooked for you, he mothered you and coached you. Now he wants to throw you out to be on your own,” says Julie. She is trying to figure out why UG has pushed me into a sort of solitary confinement and made me stay on my own this summer.
As the day comes to an end, I stroll through the streets of Gstaad. They look beautiful and desolate. Back in my room, I begin eating my piece of dry bread with not-so-hot water. I have come a long way. Where? I don’t know.
26th July 2004, Gstaad.
This toothache threatens to cloud my morning activity. It got rather nasty last night. I took a painkiller. That helped.
I listen to a nazm of Bahadur Shah Zaffar. It was used in my dad’s film Lal Quila. This song, “na kisi ki ankh ka noor hoon,” is the only song which has found an enduring shelf-life in the world of Hindi film music. The song describes the present situation of Anurag.
This habit of putting on one’s thinking cap every morning has been disrupted here in Gstaad. Doing that consumes so much energy every morning.
The first ball of the day is rolled. “How is your guy, alive or dead? Pack him off. That’s the only way; or else it is a torture,” he says quietly. The room descends into silence.
It’s Susan’s birthday today. Susan is our doctor friend. She is a psychiatrist. A quiet woman by nature, Susan has that glee of insanity pasted on her face.
“Money is a nuisance for me. That’s why I get rid of it. Million dollars or two million dollars -- money just means nothing to me,” says UG.
But the truth is that a sizeable bank account fills us ordinary mortals with a feeling of well-being. It would be foolish of us to pretend that money means nothing to us.
“Why do you keep giving me things? Just to feel good, is it not?” he blasts Larry. It’s true. We only give to get. So it would be right to conclude that giving is a devious way of getting.
“You are not honest enough to reveal and admit the source of your ideas. You want to brag and show off and pretend that you are more intelligent. There was a time when I would not go into any bookshop. Now I won’t even look at one.”
The painkiller I have had to blunt my toothache is making me sluggish. I feel sleepy and dull.
Where did yesterday go? I experience the aftertaste of all those yesterdays.
“I don’t do anything for anybody. That’s because I don’t want anybody to do anything for me.”
I reflect on what he says. I wonder if all that is true. He has pushed me to become what I am today. He taught me to write, speak and live; and now he is teaching me how to deal with death and how to ‘die’.
The circus begins. UG is having this mock fight with Louis. One has never seen him play in this manner with anyone before. Absurdity touches ‘divinity’.
Lakshmi is blocking my view of UG. She moves to clear it.
“Don’t bother. I don’t want to see him. I am better off without that view. Who wants the direct glare of the sun? Too much ‘light’ blinds you. Too much ‘wisdom’ scorches you.”
“Shaheen’s school principal is dead. Call her,” instructs an sms from Soni. This is getting bizarre. Later, I speak to Soni. She tells me that the lady has died of cancer.
Still later, I speak to Shaheen. She is heartbroken. She regrets not being able to see her teacher on her last birthday. I find myself lacking the words to say what parents usually say to their kids. I guess I find those words that people normally use on such occasions meaningless. How can that which fails to comfort me comfort someone else?
“Thank you for calling,” she says, sounding very grateful.
Here in Gstaad I am teaching some young kids how to whistle.
“Practice and one day you will whistle. That’s the way I learned to do it,” I tell them.
First, religion should be wiped out. Religion is the root cause of all suffering.
The human heart is indeed very strange. This feeling of pushing the fast-forward button and getting through with my stay here is slowly giving way to the feeling of “Alas, my stay here is coming to an end!” The desire to run away from UG is transforming itself into a longing to stay here with him forever. Well, that’s how fickle the human heart is. One can never say what it will want next.
Two hundred years of British rule has turned us Indians into slaves. The white man’s burden, this self-proclaimed superiority of the white man that he should civilize the world, has no real basis. Is the white man really civilized? He just has better guns.
Instead of swallowing their ‘shit,’ it’s better to eat your own ‘shit’.
Churches, temples, mosques and clinics do not deliver what all they promise. Whorehouses do.
Earlier, you massacred people in the name of ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’. Today, you kill people in the name of freedom. When America kills people, the world community either conspires with it or simply watches the bloodshed mutely.
The Red Indians had bows and arrows to fight their battles with. The white man had guns. That’s how they dominated the Red Indians.
The Muslims contributed much more to the Indian culture than the Western nations which ruled over it ever did.
A conversation:
Julie: UG, I am dying to see you.
UG: Better you die. Then you don’t have to see me.
***
I ask the German tarot-card reader to read my future. “Your cup is full at every level. But don’t get too complacent and begin to pat yourself,” she says.
“No such luck with this guy around me,” I say pointing towards UG.
Then I pull out another card asking whether my life will change. “’Sharing’ is what your card says. Your life will be balanced. But to maintain that balance you have to give, share with others what you have.”
“So, is Van Gogh a success?” asks Ellyn.
“No,” I say. Louis butts in and backs what I say.
Making a monument out of the suffering of an artist is sick. The rich people of the world buy the works of a suffering artist and hang them on their walls. They do this just to show off to the world and proclaim how sensitive they are.
“People come to my gallery and praise my work. But I don’t give a damn for them if they don’t buy what I have to sell. I want their money, not their praise,” Louis asserts.
“There’s nothing to music. It’s noise. Above certain decibel-level the hearing mechanism cuts out all sounds for its survival,” says UG.
“What about a beautiful scenery?” asks Mark.
“Nothing to it,” he barks. Then he begins to explain how the so-called artistic world forces its ideas on people. “You feel superior to all those people who don’t subscribe to your artistic tastes.”
“Money making is the only thing. Nothing else matters. Use all this ‘shit’ to make money,” says UG.
“Your pleasure is my pain. You feel great serving me. So why should I thank you?” he asks Larry who has been serving him like a devotee.
A top music teacher from Bangalore has telephoned UG. Her daughter wants to be doctor. She does not want to learn music. UG advises the daughter to steal money from her parents. He tells the parents not to force the girl to become a musician.
“The word is making rounds in Ramanashram that UG is dying.”
Moorty: You are alive and literally kicking.
UG: There is something like old age. The body gets thinner and thinner and then just disappears.
Silence. Overpowering silence in this room. All are quiet. I get up and leave.
UG talks about the conversation he had with my mother. He helped her sort out the conflict which was raging in her heart. The issue was about her last rites. To conceal her Muslim identity she was toying with the idea of making a will donating her dead body to the medical world.
“Don’t do that. These doctors will use all the knowledge they get from that to destroy human life.”
It was that conversation which she had with UG which helped her to make up her mind to go the Muslim way.
There is no cure for any disease. If you take medicines, all you do is only delay your exit. You suffer. If you don’t take medicines you go in a shorter time.
UG got the news about his wife’s death six months after the fact. He was in England in those days. The news came via a letter which his daughter Bulbul had written to him. UG read the letter and then tore it to pieces.
“Is this your response to the death of a woman you had lived with for so many years?” asked the English man who had delivered the letter to UG.
“What do you want me to say? She has been dead for six months,” replied UG.
“’Do as I say, not as I live,’ is the maxim of all pontiffs and holy men,” says UG, when I ask him if the leaders of the Theosophical Society communicated through silence. I was told that these people believed in silent communion.
“Bhagawan Rajneesh, Osho, was a porno avatar, not a purna avatar3.”
UG then begins to talk about my drinking days. It’s a good story to tell. The scenes from my drinking days reveal what this man UG truly is.
28th July 2004
My toothache got better without medication. Does it mean that there is something to what the old man says about medical technology?
“The body can handle all its ailments and problems. You are paranoid; that’s why you don’t give it a chance but begin to pop pills,” he often says. I wonder if this is true.
Last night while I was dreaming, my bed collapsed. It hit the floor with a thud. But despite that, I continued to sleep. Two more nights on this bed. So I leave it the way it is, on the floor in a reclining position. This summer in Gstaad, I slept on a reclining bed.
My mornings are filled with old Hindi film songs. Rafi was a good singer. He had an emotional buzz in his voice. I listen to “Lagta nahin hai dil mera...” written by Bahadur Shah Zaffar in this beautiful Swiss village. Just goes to prove that good writing endures. Ha, but so does bad writing! The people who create these works, however, wither away and fade out into oblivion.
“I don’t think anything about myself,” says UG. This line can be an antidote to all anxiety, especially for those who are self-obsessed.
“You have gone too far this summer,” says Paul Arms , his reaction to what I told him I do before sleeping these days.
This is what I said:
I get into my night clothes. Shut the curtains. Open the window. Set my cell phone to recharge. Adjust my night lamp at a right angle, and many more things. These activities are all-consuming. I only think about work when I actually have to, just like one uses an air-conditioner when it gets hot. Leaving it on all the time is not necessary. It consumes too much energy.
A feeling of well-being floods me. It has great depth. I snuggle into that feeling. A natural impulse to seize that feeling and hold on to it surfaces within me. Part of me says ‘don’t do that! Let the feeling go.’ All misery is created by this wanting to hold on to these pleasurable sensations for a longer time.
‘These are the emotions I must feel; and these I must not feel.’ If one becomes aware of this ongoing battle within oneself one gets unshackled.
The doctors asked me to get my hernia operated. I realigned my eating habits and as a consequence, I did not need the operation. These people only want to make money from your suffering. That’s it.
And then you pretend that you feel just great when actually you feel terrible. What a waste of energy to convert a fact into fiction. Living a lie exhausts!
UG glances at me. I duck. Why do I fear being ‘seen’ the way I am? Will he disapprove the ‘me’ the way it actually is? No, it’s not he who does that. It is I who disapprove the ‘real’ me. The idea that ‘this is what I should be’ keeps looking down at my real self all the time. That’s the tragedy.
A ‘thank you’ message from Deepshikha, Anurag’s mother, arrives on my mobile phone. It says Anurag is a fighter. He will certainly fight and win this battle against cancer. I am moved by her spirit. I reply to her sms with the utmost sincerity. I tell her and her entire family that they are not alone. Meanwhile, Anurag’s condition continues to be critical.
Our anguish comes from this need to keep him going. It is this impossible quest for permanence which is the source of our suffering. Temples and hospitals pander to this thirst of mankind to go on forever and amass power and wealth. But they both fail in the attempt. What’s amazing is that when they do fail we don’t question their authority. We let them off the hook and continue to trust them and their institutions. Man lives in hope and dies in hope. Hope never dies. It only dies when we die.
Images of people struggling with the floods in Bangladesh play on CNN. According to the news reader, 2/3rds of Bangladesh is battling with flood water. Here in Switzerland, I watch lonely rich women having lunch all by themselves with their pet dogs.
The end which is endless is dissolving like snowflakes into pure air.
The story of the Muslim man going to claim his son’s dead body from the police after he is killed in custody is crying to be told.
The Hungarian man who does not speak coherently and who constantly uses an English-to-Hungarian dictionary approaches me.
“Is it possible that if I die in India while I am there for my body to be cremated there and the ashes to be brought back to Hungary?”
“I am sure that can be arranged. Talk to the Indian Embassy,” I tell him.
UG wants to be thrown to the dogs after he dies. No cremation or burial; preferably the vultures. He wants vultures to feed on him.
“I must go unsung, unhonored and unwept,” he says.
“But that wish will never be fulfilled,” Moorty says emphatically.
We have an American with us. His name is Sidd. He was once a Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps. This is what he has to say:
In the battlefield we fight and die for each other. All this talk of patriotism is pure lies.
War is an equalizer. The bullets don’t give a damn whom they hit. They don’t differentiate between the blacks and the whites.”
He completely endorses what UG says. It is terror which will make people live together.
As I head for my pad Sidd gives me a piece of paper. On it this line is scribbled: ‘It don’t mean nothing.’ “This is the number one saying of all combatants,” explains Sidd.
This so-called existential phrase in a way simplifies and sums up what I feel about showbiz.

29th July 2004.
Today is supposed be my last day in Gstaad. Hopefully, at this time tomorrow, I will be heading to Zurich and from there I’ll fly back to Mumbai.
These last ten days have been strange.
“Your stay here seems to have slowed you down,” says Louis.
I wonder what he means.
“There is no suffering at all. It’s invented by these scoundrels so that they can step in to manipulate you and exploit you,” says the old man.
“Thank God there is no God! If He did exist, He would have wiped us all out for doing all that we have done to this planet and to the rest of the species which exist on this earth.”
“Muhammad was a worldly wise man. Islam contributed to Indian culture much more than the British did.”
“I don’t want posterity to remember me at all. I don’t want the world to recall me as a holy man,” UG says.
I: I do everything to be remembered. I want airports, stamps and monuments in my name. How can I understand what you are saying?
UG: You cannot. You know you are coming to an end. That’s why you put all your energies in your work, kids and philanthropy. You do all this just to make sure that you continue. What motivates you is the ending.
Permanence is what we all seek, all the time.
Anurag’s effort to contribute to Tumsa Nahin Dekha from the cancer ward is desperate. His attempt is to stay alive through that film.
“Why do you swallow that shit that they will give you permanence? It is that idea of permanence which is the cause of your suffering. Have these sacred institutions which market the idea of eternal life succeeded?”
I realize that man uses love, medicine, everything, just to ensure that he lives forever.
Can I die to the idea of permanence? If I can do that, then I will perhaps be free.
“You don’t even know what I am talking about. Why then should you repeat or remember whatever I say?” he asks.
“I am saying all this for him; not that he understands, but because he is writing a book,” says UG, looking in my direction.
“He has guts to say whatever he wants. He is the only person in India, the only person in the world who can do that,” says UG, referring to me. His comment makes me squirm and duck into a corner. I just can’t deal with him praising me.
“Because you cannot give or get permanence in this life, you invent an afterlife or reincarnation. You can’t just live the years you have been genetically programmed to live on this planet and go gracefully.”
The story of my toothache: I have a toothache. I dread that it will get worse. So I rush to get medicines from the pharmacy in the village. I buy the illusion of relief. The medicine does not work. I get desperate. So I stop taking it. Now the body inches back to normalcy. No pain.
Suffering is wanting to be free from pain; the pain itself is not suffering. If you know there is no way out, the body adjusts to deal with the moment. The body creates the situation for it to heal itself.
In other words, all external support systems perpetuate pain.
The word ‘better’ should be taken away from the human language. It is that which is responsible for all the brutality. People who think they are better, feel superior to others and feel great. All these ‘better-yourself’ books and therapies are born in this human impulse.
***
Lakshmi = Wealth
Saraswati = Wisdom
Sakti = Power.
These according to the Indian tradition are the attributes of a woman.
***
UG says: “The fear of fear-coming-to-an-end is the real fear. Because that fear is you. And that you is an abstraction.
“Say everything you want to say. Do not hesitate. Put all this in very strong words. Just don’t tone it down.”
Everyone in the room is meditating. “Does this ‘meditation’ around him go on everyday?” I ask Louis.
“UG is sleeping. The others are meditating,” says the funny American, making me laugh.
This need to be needed, this need to be connected to one’s ‘world’ all the time, originates from the need to fuel the existence of the ‘I’. Everything one does is to prevent this fiction from fading away within oneself.
We watch CNN. “Hope is on the way. Tomorrow is going to be better than today,” reads a sign on Larry King Show. There is a Democratic Party Convention being held in the USA. The Democrats hope to vote Bush out and put Kerry in the White House. But if that happens, will things change in the world? A clear “No” is UG’s answer. “The Democrats won’t change anything in America or in the world.”
“Defense is offense. This the bedrock on which Hinduism stands. But you cannot kill people because of their ideology,” he adds.
He then begins to narrate to everyone the story of the speech I gave to the prostitutes. “Prostitutes are the only ones who deliver the goods. The rest of the world merely peddles hopes,” is what I had said to them in a gathering in New Delhi a couple of years ago. This statement made them jump with joy. They gave me a standing ovation.
UG scolds Larry who, on noticing two lesbians getting intimate during the course of his sermon on love, threw them out of the church.
“How can you talk of love and treat those women so badly?” he asks.
Larry has no answer.
The two Pakistani contractors who were kidnapped in Iraq have been killed. Musharraf complains, “This is a crime against humanity. And it violates the spirit of Islam.”
UG disagrees. “If Pakistan backs America in this so-called war against terror, what else do you expect them to do?” he asks.
“You should not take sides, Mahesh,” advises UG, “Both Bush and Saddam must be wiped out.”
“I am not a citizen of any country. If you let me travel without this document called the passport, I would throw this Indian passport on your face,” these were the words UG told Nehru when Dr Radhakrishnan fixed up a meeting between the two of them many years ago.
I am reminded of a scene which took place in New York several years ago. UG and I went into a bookshop. UG browsed through the books that were kept in the philosophy section for some time; then all of a sudden he walked out looking terribly disappointed.
“What happened, UG?” I remember asking him.
“They have J. Krishnamurti’s book on the shelf and not a single book of mine,” he replied. Now that’s what I call innocence.
Soni sends me a message asking UG to come and bless her new home. Wow, things have really changed!
The Siva Lingam is ancient India’s graffiti. It is no different from the dirty drawings one finds in the bathrooms of schools and colleges and in public toilets.
Time for humor therapy. UG brings Louis into the arena. The wrestling begins.
“Liar, you said no hitting today,” screams Louis.
“Only lies, no truth,” says UG.
“Did you get that Mahesh?” signals Louis looking slyly at me.
“Hey, that is a good title for a book,” says the thief in my head.
And then UG hands over to Louis the sixth bottle of coffee. Louis simply gulps it down. Everyone in the room is charmed by this performance.
UG used to have 35 to 40 cups of coffee in a day before the ‘calamity’ hit him. He used to also pop 50 to 60 aspirins in a day to blunt his headaches.
What has died within me this summer is the idea of death which I was brought up on. The entire human culture since the dawn of time has been dedicated to ensure permanence. It is this quest for permanence which is so deeply entrenched in me that has taken a battering.
The human body changes its form from conception to its final disintegration. It goes through so many phases of change. However, somewhere within me there seems to be an entity which is static. This is the ‘I’ which does not want to change or disintegrate. That is the root of all suffering.
Insights: Just like your own life, history also is just an interpretation of events.
“You have to believe in cause and effect. If you don’t believe in God you have to believe in the Big Bang theory. The human mind cannot conceive of anything outside this frame. Every event is independent. It is not related to the previous incident. But we link them up. That’s how biographies are written. That’s why I say all biographies are lies.
You may not lie consciously but your interpretation of those events makes it a ‘lie’.”
Cause and effect is the lifeblood of good storytelling. If you take that device away there is no narrative. The entire structure of storytelling is held by this glue of cause and effect.
“Atheism is also a belief. You are always a believer. You cannot live without belief, because if belief comes to an end, you come to an end.
“The more money you spend the more money you make. But you must be dedicated to money-making and nothing else.”
Twist a lie and call it the truth.
The truth is that all of us are liars, all of us!
***
Sarojini Naidu once said: “It’s costing India a lot of money to keep Gandhi poor.”
UG says that “Nehru was responsible for all the bloodshed that took place during the partition. He was in a hurry to become the Prime Minister of India.”
I ask UG to pick a [taro] card. I do this because I want to know my future. The card says, “Be a postman, an envoy, a delivery man of his message.”
A sense of ending begins to seep in. Tomorrow I leave for India. I just cannot imagine that day after day, here in this very room, people will come and talk about the same things that we have been speaking for the past ten days.
I glance down into the valley. I realize that for the last hundred years people have come here to this valley and dreamt a million dreams and then died. The dreamers disappear but the dream lives on. A dream of having a dream life -- that is where all nightmares begin.
Louis continues to entertain the folks in the room. The light is fading. There is laughter here and pain there. Such is life. Happiness and unhappiness exist in the same frame. My mind wanders to Anurag’s unborn child. One just cannot sum up life. It goes on and on….
And then as the end comes near, UG and Louis begin their wrestling competition. It’s absurd.
A big full moon begins to rise in a grey sky. It seems as if one could touch the moon if one went up to the snowy peaks and reached up a bit.
A half-full jug of water sits on the table in the veranda, having quenched us all throughout the day. Louis begins to sing: “We have to go, we have to go.”
The end is endless.
The Greek girl who looks like a boy comes up to me and asks me a question: “Ten years ago, you said you want to be like UG. Now what do you want?”
“I don’t want to be like him. I just cannot,” I say without any hesitation. My answer makes her smile.
“You have such a warm presence. I have not seen anybody like you. It’s good to be you,” she adds with a twinkle in her eyes and a smile on her lips. It’s obvious she likes me. I’m touched by her generosity. I thank her for being so kind to me.
Then I bid a clumsy farewell to most of the folks present in the room. There is a palpable emotion that one feels behind those casual goodbyes. “Things will not be the same without you,” they say. Their remark makes me blush.
“Bye UG,” I mutter.
“What do you mean, ‘bye’?” he asks.
“See you some day, somewhere, somehow in the world,” I say.
“The world is so big. Where?” he asks.
“Wherever you want me to,” I say and leave.
The editor of Osho Times hugs me and gives me a bar of white chocolate.
While driving me home Julie adds a twist to the tale. “The old man wants to see you in the morning. We have to drop by his pad at 5. I will pick you up at 4:45 am.”
“Fine,” I say, realizing that the last push from the old man has yet to come. I wonder what the new dawn will bring.
At night, I take a farewell walk through Gstaad. The big moon is out in the summer sky. It’s shining in its full glory. The sounds of romantic music flow out from the quaint-looking cafés. The entire feel is stunning. My heart cries for Anurag. Gosh! I wish he too could experience this beauty.
30th July 2004, Gstaad.
It is 2:28 am here in Gstaad. I have not slept. In two-and-a-half hours I will have to hit the road with Larry and get to Zurich. The sound of a car passing through the village adds to the stillness of the night. It’s a very quiet night. Even the sound of my own breath seems very loud. I watch the nib of my pen touch the paper as it writes. The light from the lamp makes its movements very attractive to watch. I wonder what my old man is doing at this moment. Visions of him in my room flood me.
It is 4:30 am here in Gstaad and 8 am in Mumbai at this moment. I’m ready. My bag is packed and I’m waiting for Julie to arrive. I give one last look to my small room which has sheltered me for 10 nights. Everything in the room is in order. Man is like a monkey. He imitates. I have picked up this habit of leaving places one lives in in order from UG. This unique trait of his has rubbed off on me.
Julie is waiting for me outside some other building instead of the one I stay in. I walk ahead through the dark lane and find her. She seems completely disoriented this morning. We drive to the old man’s house. Larry’s car which is parked outside UG’s pad signals that the ‘session’ is already on.
“Come in,” says UG in response to our knock. He is sitting with Susan and Larry in a hot room. It’s a very bare-looking underground pad which he has moved into recently. I notice that the TV set in his room is covered.
My comment about the TV being covered evokes a firm and fierce response from the old man:
“I don’t need to listen to all the crap these people talk on TV. It’s all lies. For all of you the TV is a source of entertainment. You swallow all the garbage these networks dish out to you guys and then repeat it to others as absolute truth.”
I find that I am unusually collected and still this morning.
“Music and art are also born out of man’s quest for permanence. The sensory perception operates in a completely different way. It operates in independent frames. There is no continuity. The great music of Beethoven or Tyagaraja is just noise for the human organism. The physical body is rejecting this ‘noise’ all the time. Music is harmful to the body. Mahesh has got an idea about what I am saying. Permanence is the cause of human suffering. Good luck to you guys. You can fool yourself and allow all these holy men and doctors to take you for a ride. Permanence is just not possible,” he says.
“It is 5 O’clock; time for you to leave.” I get up and walk across his bare room. His fridge, as always, has that empty look. Just cream and pineapple pulp, which is UG’s staple diet, occupy the shelf. All his worldly belongings are in his bag which is kept in a corner.
It’s time for us to leave.
UG gets up to shake Susan’s hand. “Victorian habits,” he says, trying to make her comfortable.
“Old habits don’t die,” I say.
“They were dead even before I was born,” he adds summing up everything.
As I get into my car, I once again begin to hear those familiar sounds coming from UG’s mouth. This is the word which has been amusing, shocking, irritating and revolting to me: “Shit, shit, shit.”
1 Breaking of fast early in the morning during Ramadan.
2 A Muslim prayer.
3 The full (total) incarnation of God, an epithet ascribed to Rajneesh.