Pune- Big money and maroon robes

Sasha:

I am lying down in a huge pyramid-shaped meditation room with 75 other people as I follow the instructions to let my eyes make clock-wise circles as I stare up at the ceiling.  I, along with everyone else in the room, am wearing a maroon robe, and am activating a temporary suspension of disbelief as I ponder the questions, "What does it feel like to swirl your eyes around the ceiling for 15 minutes after first dancing with my eyes closed for 15 minutes, then circling my torso for 15 minutes? "  As it turns out, my head started to buzz and I think that the muscles that control my eye movement got a major workout.  Did it actually help me advance my meditation practice?  That remains to be seen.

How I ended up tasting the cool-aid at the Osho Meditation resort is only a slightly easier question to answer.

This story begins in Agonda, at the Garden of Eden- a yoga and meditation center.  An aquaintence in Agonda had stumbled upon the Satsang meditations there, and recommended that we check it out.  Our timing was off, but we were invited back for an afternoon Kundalini Meditation.  He asked us if we were familiar with Osho, the guru who invented the form of meditaion.  We had heard the name, but knew nothing else about it. After spending an hour shaking, dancing, sitting, then finally laying down, we looked it up. 

Osho was a a guru, Indian mystic, and  spiritual teacher who gathered a large international following.  He opened an ashram in Pune, India, and also taught in the US (where he was thrown out on Imigration fraud charges).  He was controversial, open about sex, and came up with numerous meditaion styles that involve actions like humming, screaming, talking in gibberish, dancing, whirling, jumping, vibrating, in addition to more traditional sit and observe meditations.  What once was an ashram, is now a "Meditation Resort," with such luxuries as a hot tub, swimming pool, cafes, and a number of state of the art meditation areas. It was a place where you could do meditaion and yoga on your own schedule, in your own accommodations, and are not required to wake up at 4:30 am, like at many ashrams where you have to follow the set schedule.  From that point on, we put Pune on our list of possible destinations.

Flash forward to Anisa and Taylor's wedding reception in Mumbai at the end of December.  We danced the night away at the Sangeet held at club Indigo in Coloba to the sounds of dj's Cheb i Sabbah and Talvin Singh as they were accompanied by amazing drummer Shivamani, and several others.  Two nights later, we were talking to Sivamani at the reception, and we told him how much we had enjoyed both the performance we saw at Indigo, and the concert we went in Panjim with Sivamani, Zakir Hussein, Shankar, and Ganesh.  He remembered us from Indigo, and asked us if we'd like to go to a party he was playing the following night in Pune for new years. He asked us if we'd like to join him on the private jet that the party's host was chartering for him, but after he called he told us that all foriegners flying into Pune have to register at least 48 hours in advance because it is a military town and there was a terrorist bombing a year ago. So instead he arranged for  a car to be sent to pick up Cheb i Sabbah and the two of us.  Sure, we had a reservation at the YMCA that was nonrefundable.  And we had a couple of different invites for New Years Eve events in Mumbai.  But somehow this seemed like the most interesting thing we could do, so we jumped on it. 

After countless phone calls between Sivamoni's travel agent and the car service, our car arrived at Cheb i's hotel to pick us up. Only, then Siva calls to ask us to pick up a drum for the show.  Unfortunatly, there would be no place to park, so Ra and one of the hotel's employees run down the street to carry it back to the car.  With skill, all of our belongings fit into the car.  This is not the rickshaw, or bench seat vans we are accustomed to traveling in here in India, but a luxury vehicle.  The car comfortably seats 6 or 7 westerners, though our bags and the drum take up the 3rd row of seats.  I'm thinking that we have 2-3 hours of driving to do the 175 km, but of course we are in India and Mumbai has some of the worst traffic in the entire country, in my experience only rivaling the traffic of Cairo, and it takes at least an hour before we are out of the city, but still the traffic doesn't stop.  And despite the comfort of the seats, all of the stop and go, and swerving meant that none of us managed to catch up on any sleep on the way.

Once in Pune, we drive directly to the party to meet up with Sivamani, and to deliver the drum.  Instead of being in a night club, the party is taking place on a private estate. The guy throwing the party, Ahasan Ali Syed, made his billions in the chicken industry, and is the first Indian to own a UK football (soccer) team.  Looking around at the party in the daylight revealed one of the best sound systems we have every seen- it was massive, with array after array of speakers.  In between were panels of LED.  Scores of people where hanging cable, and doing the carpentry work necessary to build the temporary club on the lawn.  Later that night, the space was completely transformed- dj's, 5 different food buffets, open bar, lines of people out of the gate, extra security that we got to bypass as personal guests of Sivamani. . . The people who were waiting in line had to have a laser-engraved 2lb piece of crystal that was the invitation. (can you imagine delivery charges alone for that?)  There were also hundreds of little tiny candle-lit hot air baloons that someone was lighting, and sending up into the sky all night long.  There were about 3000 people at the party, and about 15 of us were foreign. As backpackers, the only dress clothes we have at this point are our traditional indian clothes from the wedding, but everyone else at the party is in western clothes- suit jackets and teeny tiny cocktail dresses.  How do I say. . .  awkward!!

We danced a little, ate a little, socialized with a group of Iranian girls who were in Pune to get their MBA, but were generally ignored by the Indian people there (minus the women who actively shoved me out of their way).  Aparently, this was the hardest invitation to get in all of Pune, and the best party of the year. In other words, the people at the part felt like they were very special and very important.  Sure, it would have been a great party if we had known a bunch of other people there, but as it was, we were ready to go by 3am, and didn't make it to the 8am champagne brunch.  However, VERY lucky for us, we had a 5 star hotel room to go home to, courtesy of being Siva's guest. So home, and to bed we went.  

We woke up, relaxed in bed, and ordered room service.  Eventually we tried to figure out what we were going to do next.  It seems that fate had delivered us to Pune, so we might as well hang out for a bit.  Fanoos, an Iranian girl from the night before, had offered to help us find a cheaper room than the most of the local hotels, so we called her up and made arrangements to meet up.    

Fanoos told us to meet her at a place called the German Bakery in Pune.  This is notable for two reasons, first of all, almost every touristic city in India has a German Bakery, which usually have nothing to do with traditional German baking.  Second, the German Bakery in Pune was bombed a year ago by a terrorist.  Many people were killed in the bombings, and as a result there is a lot more security in the city than there otherwise would be. So, we check out of La Meridian, the shi-shi hotel, and scoot into a rickshaw towards the German Bakery.  The funny thing is that we are actually surprised when we arrive at the German Bakery and find it a bombed out shambles.  Why we would have assumed that it would have been rebuilt by this time, I'm not sure.  

Finding a reasonably priced apartment in Pune is quite easy.  There are brokers who hang out on the corner next to the bombed out bakery who will take you to an assortment of rooms- some with private bathrooms, some with shared, some with kitchens attatched. . . It is clear that a couple people figured out that there are travelers willing to pay for apartment rooms, so soon everybody and their uncle jumps on the bandwagon, and soon the neighborhood is more filled with tourists living there than locals.  We bounce from complex to complex, trying to find one with an acceptable bed, and in a quiet street, and begins to feel like a wild goose chase.  We wander to a different block to pick up a key so we can open up an apartment, and this one is different- so much quieter than all of the rest.  So after a landlady hands us a key, and sends us to look at a place 5 blocks away, we start knocking on doors to see if anyone else has an apartment on this street.  We talk to a guy who says, sorry but all the people staying with him are artists- dancers, musicians etc.  We tell him we are fire spinners, and suddenly he is inviting us into the house so he can call the guy who arranges rooms.  The other people in the living room are fire spinners and dancers from Russia, the UK, and another girl from China.  For a moment the guy starts actually offering us 5,000 rupees to do a gig for a military party, but we don't have any fire poi on us.  There are no apartments there, but there is a guy who knows of a place a few blocks away.  

We enter a nice quiet courtyard, which is only disturbed by the sounds of construction in a corner unit.  They start taking us up to a place right next to it, but we say hell no are we sleeping next to a construction site (again).  Really, at this point all we want is quiet.  We walk into a place on the opposite side that feels quiet, fairly peaceful, mostly clean, and has a kitchen. Meanwhile, the landlord has shown up- a white haired guy with a big belly and a sharp nose, and the person we took the key from is madly calling us asking why we never turned up.  So the landlord sends us on a rickshaw to return the key, look at one more place with the (which  we immediately don't like because of the noise) and then return.  We agree on the apartment, on the rent.  Then the rickshaw driver asks us for money.  

"For what?"  We ask him

"For the back and forth." He replies

"We didn't realize that we were buying your time. We thought that you worked for the landlord."

"Him?" The rickshaw driver asks incredulously, "Ha, I know him for 30 year and he never gives me money."

Needless to say, we paid the man.

At this point, we have committed to an apartment for one week, and need to figure what the heck we are going to do with our time.  We read that we can go for a 1 hour tour of the Osho Meditation resort, and decide to do that the following day.  In the meantime, we meet our flatmates- 2 people who have their own room and bathroom, but share the kitchen with us.  They are both in Pune for Osho.  At this point we realize that we have moved into an apartment that is practically across the street from the compound. (There are high walls an lots of trees surrounding it, so it isn't obvious. ) Our plans are foiled when we find out that since the bombing, Osho no longer does tours, and the only way to see the compound is to shell out a 950rupee initiation fee, an 800rupee day use fee.  On top of that, in order to enter the compound Osho requires you to wear maroon robes (which you can conveniently purchase at the Osho store) unless it is evening, in which case you have to wear white robes to the evening meeting. If you want to use the Osho pool or hot tub, you have to buy special maroon swim suits or trunks. Sigh.

Ra and I go home for the day to decide what we are going to do. We are both burnt out from the noise and traffic in Mumbai,and  from not getting enough sleep after the wedding reception, or on new year's eve. I reason that the universe supplied us with a ride and an excuse to go to Pune, then plopped us down in the most convenient location possible to access Osho. I figure, lets just jump in and try it out.  Ra is more skeptical: the cost is a lot of money for India, and sounds so much more like a way for someone else to make money than a spiritual endeavor.  Also, any institution that requires you to wear a uniform begins to sound more and more like a cult. I tell Ra that in my mind, the best case scenerio is that we find a way to relax, decompress, and to spend some time in meditation.  Worst case scenerio, we can point and laugh at the people who join the cult, and will have a good story to tell. In the end, Ra agrees to join me to see what Osho is all about. 

The day begins at the registration center.  You pay your first 950rup, then go get your HIV test (a requirement to being on the compound), you then pay for your vouchers, since the cafes and clothing store don't take regular cash.  They then take you across the street where you buy your robes.  You then put your robes on, then pull out MORE cash to pay your daily fee. . .why they don't have you do it all at once I can't tell you, because spreading it out like that just reeks like a scam. At this point, they lead us inside to join the first day "welcome morning."  The three women who are leading our session seem frighteningly happy and enthusiastic.  They begin the morning by doing a few icebreakers where we learn how people say hello to friends in different cultures, and proceed to mimic this around the room.  Then they play stereotypical music from different countries, bringing people from those countries to show how someone dances in Germany or India.  They yell out "USA!" and Elvis Presley comes on the stereo.  Only two of us do a demo of 1960's american dancing style  (Ra decides that he is really more Israeli than American at this point, so he doesn't step forward.)  After all this is done, they tell us that the point is for us to realize what our conditioning is, and to work on shedding it. We reach the break in our welcoming morning and they tell us that there is free chai (!) for us to enjoy, "the only free thing you'll get here!!" they laugh.  

At this point we are both a little wary.  Even in the Osho resort, there is construction noise, and the women grate on our nerves.  I am pretty happy in my new maroon dress, but Ra is visibly uncomfortable wearing the prescribed uniform and doesn't take well to being indocrinated.  "Wearing the robes is great!  This way you don't have to think about what to wear and it create a pleasant color everywhere you look!" they tell us, but I have trouble with anybody who tells me that not thinking for yourself is a good thing. 

After the break, they have us do mini-sessions of their two primary meditations: dynamic and kundalini.   Dynamic mediation happens every day at 6am.  Here is my unofficial description:

The First Stage: 10 minuets of intense breathing. Hyperventilate without letting your breath settle into any kind of regular rhythm.

The Second Stage: 10 minutes of self expression.  Pretend that you are a ward in an insane assylum, scream cry jump shake, dance sing and try not to throw your back out while you throw yourself around.  It is about as pleasant as it sounds to be in a room with a bunch of other people doing likewise.

The Third Stage: 10 minutes of Hooing! Raise your arms, and jump up and down shouting the mantra HOO! HOO! HOO!  Not for the out of shape, or those at risk for a heart attack.

The Fourth Stage: 15 minutes of keeping still while holding your hands up in the air.  From having your hands raised while you are hooing, freeze in place, and prepare to have a test of will with yourself to see whether or not you can keep you hands in the air for 15 minutes after exhausting yourself by jumping up and down.  Good luck. Oh, and be a witness to everything happening to you. The Fifth Stage: 15 minutes of Celebration.  Dance with your eyes closed to celebrate the fact that you don't have to jump or hold your hands up in the air any more!! When all is said and done, here is my assessment of my time at Osho: -I enjoyed several of the meditaions; the kundalini, the mandala humming meditation, and the 1 hour vipasana meditation.  The more exotic ones I could do without. -It turns out that 5 hours of meditation is exhausting! -We never bought the white robes, so we never attended the "evening meeting" so we never fully drank the Osho coolaid. -I did enjoy how clean the resort was after the trash in the rest of India, and enjoyed the aesthetics of the pyramid shaped meditaiton center, the clear reflection pools, the gardens, and the over green-ness of the place. -I am still mistrustful of a place that makes you conform! or invents new meanings for words like aloneness. And here are my thoughts on Pune: -The traffic sucks, and because of it walking around is pretty miserable because you have to deal with all of the traffic. -The local people were more standoffish than in any other place we've been.  It felt like the local up and coming population looked down at us- maybe because we were backpackers, or maybe because they are used to thinking that westerners are crazy people who are in Pune for Osho.