Rikhiapeeth Day 1
Again I woke up at several points throughout the night. Indian trains are not very conducive to good sleep. The bunks were not long enough and the door to the bathroom compartment was at my feet. So not only did I have many people passing by throughout the night, but also there was the sound and rush of the door opening and closing, and the curtain refused to stay closed. Regardless, I managed to get about 9 hours of sleep, off and on. In the morning I purchased some chai, which normally costs about Rs 10. I handed the vendor Rs 100 expecting some change, but he disappeared after giving me a sly look. At first I thought he just needed to get some change, but then I realized he swiped it, and I let it go. A little while later another vendor came by with bread and omelets. Gurdev asked if I wanted one and bought it for me, his treat. Since we were both awake, we put my bunk down so we could both sit up on his bunk. He gave me my omelet and I thanked him for his kindness. He also offered me some apple slices and bread with jelly. We talked over the next hour exchanging the usual introductions, where we were from, what we do, etc. Gurdev spoke excellent English, very clearly with less of an accent than most I've spoken with. As it turned out, he was a bit of a linguist, speaking English, his native Punjabi, Hindi, a little Spanish and likely more. He had worked at Hewlett Packard as a technical support engineer which explains why his English is so good. He told me tried learning Spanish because those calls pay more, but he found it more difficult than he anticipated. However, the last couple of years he has been working in real estate in Kolkata (Calcutta), and he told me some interesting stories about that. We also spoke much about our spirituality which is very similar despite me being raised Jewish, and him being raised Sikh. Our conversation ended abruptly because we had arrived at my station, but we exchanged phone numbers and Facebook, and he told me to contact him before I got to Kolkata and that he would show me around. We took a picture together and I exited the train.
Jesidih Junction station was busy and it was a beautiful day. I didn't have to walk far to be inundated with offers to take me to Rikhia. Several tuk-tuk drivers offered to take me, but I chose to take a taxi which I felt would be more comfortable with all of my luggage, even though it was more expensive. We drove through Jasidih and into the outskirts of Deoghar, a very holy town and site of Baidyanath Shiva Temple, a jyotirlinga site. Unfortunately, we didn't drive near the temple. The area reminded me somewhat of the area of Agra around the train station, except I could see more because it was morning.
Before long we had moved on from the busy streets of Jasidih and Deoghar to more serene countryside where villagers tend to the land and homes are small handmade structure made of wood, brick, mud, and straw.
We arrived at the ashram in about 25 minutes. There were long walls on either side of the road with a gate and an attendant on each side as well. I was ushered through the gate on the left and told to remove my shoes, put my bags down, and wait. A tall woman in orange pants and an orange kurta with curly light brown hair and an accent (Serbian as it turned out) approached me and asked what I was at the ashram for. I explained that I had come for the Kriya Yoga course and she asked my name. She and two other women, all dressed in orange, looked for my name but couldn't find it. Eventually they did and one of them apologized and exclaimed that their English is not so good. Several of them seemed to speak in a Slavic tongue, which I later discovered to be mostly Bulgarian, Serbian, and Slovenian. One thing I discovered about ashram life is that though there are more Indians than any other ethnicity, it is very multicultural.
Again I was told to wait before collecting my passport and valuables and crossing over to the other side. I found security to be very tight at the ashram, sometimes making feel like I was being herded like cattle. The area across consisted of offices (known as Akhara) and an area known as the Samadhi area where Swami Satyananda spent his last years. Samadhi in Hinduism is one of the highest states of consciousness and awareness. I was brought into one of the office rooms where several comfortable looking chairs sat one side of the room and 4 desks with chairs on either side across on the other side of the room. Here I was asked to wait yet again. A few minutes later another woman in orange clothes sat me at a table and had me complete a registration form for foreigners. Then another woman in orange (detecting a pattern?) came in to put my valuables in the safe deposit box. I had to fill out a form identifying exactly what I was putting in the safe including how much of each currency I had, which she double counted for me. I followed the ashram rules and put away my iPad, iPhone, camera, and all of my money figuring that I wouldn't need money at the ashram. We finished just after noon and I crossed back over to the other to collect my luggage and go to my accommodations until course registration began at 3PM. There was an Indian man named Sumit who was also waiting, and he had a driver outside. We were given temporary name tags and directions to get to the other part of campus called Patanjali that was located about 1km away. Patanjali was also split into two parts, one on either side of the road. The main Patanjali area and the Anapoorna kitchen side where our accommodations were located. They had temporarily placed us in a dorm style room that had about 10 beds, some just mattresses on the floor, in a building called Kolkata Bhavan. Over the course of the next couple of hours I had the opportunity to get to know Sumit a little bit. He is from West Bengal, an eastern state bordering Bangladesh whose capital is Kolkata (Calcutta). This was his first visit to the ashram as well.
After settling in to our accommodations, where I had begun unpacking not realizing that they were temporary, lunch was being served. Food was served cafeteria style and it consisted of rice, potato, some things I didn't recognize and some papadam, a crisp bread made from lentils. I was pleasantly surprised with how tasty the food was. After lunch I freshened up which felt great after the long train ride. When I headed back outside there was a crowd of people that had gathered around. They were serving chai and everyone was getting to know one another. I found Sumit who was sitting with another Indian man named Madhukar. This was Madhukar's third time at Rikhiapeeth, and he had previously been to another Satyananda ashram in Munger twice before. Madhukar told us some fascinating things about his research, including the fact that he is a sun worshipper and can stare at the sun without blinking and without going blind for an hour. His interests are in proving some of the claims made about yoga scientifically. I was fascinated as he spoke, and the three of us sat talking for quite a while.
At 2:30PM we got ready to head back to Akhara for class registration and the three of us decided to walk together. It was a really nice walk, the sun was shining and we passed by a few dozed local villagers on the way.
Once we arrived at Akhara we entered the gate to the right and were directed back to the same office as I had been in previously. One by one we sat at one of the desks to check that all of our paperwork was complete, pay the balance of the required donation, and finalize our enrollment in the program. We were then ushered back across the street to arrange our final accommodations. We were met by a beautiful woman with an orange scarf hanging off her shaved head, looking like Mother Theresa, and a red bindi painted between her light blue eyes. She was one of the women speaking in Bulgarian earlier. She assigned our rooms and then Madhukar, Sumit and I headed back to Patanjali to get settled in our new rooms which were doubles instead of a large dorm.
At 5PM, dinner was served which was very similar to lunch except for a few different items. It was just as tasty as lunch. After dinner I was informed that I had a roommate, and sure enough I found luggage outside of my door. They also told me that I was to leave my key in a key closet near the gate any time I left the room so my roommate could get in and out when he needed. I freshened up a bit and headed back outside where I met Madhukar by the front door. We started talking and then a tall bald man walked up and looked at us. I greeted him and asked if he was looking his key, which he was, and his room number was the same as mine, my new roommate. His name was Dimitris and he was from Greece in a small town near the Bulgarian border. He was at the ashram with his wife, Kalliope, and two of their friends. I escorted him to the room and we talked, getting to know each other for about an hour. He got his bed ready and organized his belongings while I wrote in my journal which I knew I would need without the benefit of my iPad. We made our beds as comfortable as we could and had the lights out by about 8PM so we could get an early start the next day. I was pretty tired and I fell asleep pretty quickly.