THE MYSTIC GUIDE

I met Babubhai in the summer of 1969. It was an extremely hot month of May when I decided to travel from Patna, where I was working with a multinational footwear organization, and from where I was desperately looking for an escape, both from the squalor and backwardness of a city that progress had left far behind, and from a company that matched the city in all its aspects. The company had two fixed periods of holidays during a year, each of a week’s duration, when the operations would come to a halt and the employees would be asked to proceed on leave. These periods were known as Annual Compulsory Privilege Leave (ACPL) weeks; the paradoxical juxtaposition of the words “compulsory” and “privilege” not bothering either the half-literate Czechs who owned the company, or their equally equipped senior Indian managers. The two weeks invariably happened to fall in the months of May and October. The second week inevitably coinciding with the Puja celebrations in Calcutta, when all of Bengal would be in a festive mood.

That May was particularly hot and dry. The heat and tedium of Bihar during summers can be very enervating. The dreaded pacchhia (westerly wind), whenever it blew, would sap even the last bit of moisture from all living creatures, leaving them listless and exhausted. To escape this oppressive atmosphere, I had planned to travel to Bombay where a few of my friends and classmates had found employment. I had written to them earlier and they had confirmed that I would be able to stay with them in their rented apartment. I had never been to Bombay, and despite having lived in Calcutta for almost two years, had never seen the sea. The prospect of spending a few days in the commercial capital of India, also the city of many dreams churned out by its cinema industry, was like going to a circus show or a picnic during one’s childhood days.

The train journey from Patna to Bombay took almost forty hours. Madhu Dandavate had not yet become the Railway Minister. Second class sleeper coaches consisted of wooden berths, and the three inches of foam covered by cheap Rexene cloth had not yet been deemed necessary for the poor, ordinary travelling people of the country. The train traversed through the dustbowl of Central India covering everyone with a uniform coat of earthly brown. The landscape also wore a uniform look, parched dry by the relentless sun; agricultural fields looking cracked and ravaged like the surface of the moon, our little satellite that would soon have its first human footprint. (Apollo 11 landed on the moon on the 20th of July 1969). The wayside stations wore a desultory look, the hawkers and vendors running along the train with their wares hoping to catch the eyes of tired and exhausted passengers. Even the drinking water taps at these stations either had run dry or poured out a scalding hot stream. The only vendors who did brisk business were the cola and soft drink sellers. Plastic drinking water bottles were yet unknown. Families travelling together usually had an earthen pitcher, commonly known as a surahi, which they would fill from time to time at railway platforms on the way. The surahi, being unglazed, has small pores through which the water seeps and as evaporation happens, it leads to the cooling of the substance left inside the pot.

Exhausted, dehydrated, and sleepless, I finally reached the Victoria Terminus Station in Bombay on a Sunday afternoon at about 1 p.m. I was delighted to see my friends Tony and Kiku at the platform. Bombay, in addition to being hot, was also very humid, but at that moment all my weariness evaporated and I found myself ready for whatever delights the city had in store for me. We hailed a taxi and were soon on our way to Malabar Hill where my fiends had their apartment. The taxi swung on to Marine Drive, and for the first time in my life I had a view of the sea. Till then the largest body of water I had seen was the Dal Lake in Srinagar. My friends told me that they were sharing their two-bedroom apartment with the landlord, who occupied one bedroom while they had the other. They were not supposed to bring in guests to stay, but they had sought special permission for me. Apparently he was a poet of sorts and they had told him that even I indulged in the same passion. They warned me that he was waiting for me at home, and that I should be prepared for a poetic onslaught as soon as I entered the house. I was told to keep a straight face and not to burst out in uncontrollable laughter on listening to his poems. Since I have no poetic pretensions, I thought they had landed me in a very sticky situation.

It was, therefore, with a great deal of apprehension that I entered the apartment on Little Gibbs Road, and sure enough, there was Babubhai waiting for me. Before I could even focus my eyes on him, he had grabbed me by the hand and led me straight to his room. He had a small school exercise book in his hand, from which he started reading some poems in English. It was a tremendous effort to keep my composure and not to burst out in raucous laughter. I did not comprehend even one word of what he was reading or reciting. Getting a hold of myself, I told Babubhai to relax, and in as polite a manner as possible, told him that physically and mentally I was in no condition to listen to, and far less, appreciate his poetry. I was dirty and grimy, thirsty and hungry, and above all thoroughly exhausted by my long and sleepless journey across half-a-subcontinent. More than anything else, I needed a long cold shower that would remove the dust and dirt from my body, and freshen up my whole being. Babubhai took a closer look at me and instantly agreed, releasing me from his hold. He said we would continue our conversation later in the evening after I had refreshed my body and soul.

I stayed in Bombay for six days. Tony and Kiku would go to work in the morning and we would meet for lunch at a restaurant near Opera House. I would visit some other friends who were also working in the city. Later, we would all meet for dinner at different restaurants. One night we went to Blue Nile, a restaurant in New Marine Lines which had a very popular cabaret show. The cabaret artist came to our table and dragged Kutty, aka Thomas to the dance floor, mock-trying to remove his trousers. Red-faced, though I suspect rather reluctantly, Thomas extricated himself from her arms and rushed back to the table, accompanied by wolf whistles from us all. The younger brother of a close friend in Patna was also in Bombay trying to make a career for himself in the film industry. He was tall, dark and handsome in a way, and had trained at the Film & Television Training Institute in Poona. Apart from his brother, no one in his family was happy with his choice of career, and it was his brother who supported him financially during his period of struggle. He thought he would make a break in the industry as a villain in the mould of the well-established Pran, and had been making the usual rounds of studios, producers and directors. During the week that I was in Bombay he was with me every day. I suspect he did not have a proper place of his own to live as he never asked me to visit him. Later he became a big star in the industry, and like many others, tried his hand at politics. He was successful to some extent - becoming a minister in the government at the centre; but his ambition of becoming the Chief Minister of his home state remains unfulfilled.

Babubhai, the landlord, and I spent many hours together in the mornings, and sometime late in the night. He would brew himself a pot of black tea in the morning from which he would pour himself a cup, and leave the rest in the pot on the dining table. At about eleven he would leave the house. He would go to the nearby Hanging Gardens, lie down under a tree, or sit on a bench and compose his poems. Whenever an inspiration came, he would pen it down in a notebook, which would always be with him. He would wander along the Queen’s necklace, the promenade on Marine Drive, and offer his services, for a small fee, as a guide to tourists. He would take them to shops whose owners knew him and who would pay him a commission from the sales they made to his groups. By five in the evening he would be back in the apartment. He would pour a cup of tea from the same pot he had left on the table in the morning (by now cold and very bitter) and drink it with great relish. I never saw him eat. My guess is that he would get some vada pao, or some other local snack from sidewalk vendors during the day, and that would be enough to sustain him.

Babubhai was of an indeterminate age; he could have been in his late twenties or mid-thirties, but certainly not older. He was medium-built, not very fair by the standards of his Khoja community, and single. His family was quite well off, and had quite a few business interests in the city. His mother had realised quite early that he would not be able to make a living for himself, and had therefore willed the apartment to him. His older brothers gave him a monthly allowance of Rs. 450.00, and my friends paid him rent of Rs. 250.00. These amounts, supplemented by whatever he earned from his efforts as a guide, were more than enough to meet his needs. He dressed neatly, but simply, did not smoke or drink, and never went out in the evenings.

Babubhai was deeply spiritual and had a great deal of reverence for the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Khojas. This reverence he had inherited from his mother, who he said, had complete faith in the Aga Khan’s divinity. He told me that he had once spied upon his mother who used to lock herself in her room to pray, and seen her levitating at least three feet above the ground. His poems too were steeped in spiritual themes and, though light in composition, they were deeply layered in meanings. Some of the poems he read or recited to me were very beautiful. Today I would have recognized them as the yearnings of a Sufi seeker. He had a bundle of notebooks under his mattress in which he had poured out his heart and his longings. I believe that apart from me he had not shown his notebooks to anybody. He was so happy to unburden his mind to a willing listener that he never once asked me if it was true that I also wrote some poetry, as my friends had falsely led him to believe. One night when Kiku and Tony had gone to sleep, Babubhai and I sat on the balcony and he went on reading poem after poem from his notebooks till I fell asleep there itself. It was like a whole lot of molten lava had found the thin crust of earth above it, and pushing for release, burst forth in a river of splendid colour and heat.

The six days were up in no time, and I was ready for the return train journey to Patna. The would-be star came to see me off at the VT Station. Accompanying him was a similarly struggling female artist with whom he was then doing a horror film. I think he wanted to tell me that life was just beginning to get more interesting for him, and that he had put his foot on the first step of the ladder to stardom. This female artist also made it big in Hindi cinema, and retired at her peak when she married into a big industrial house in Uganda. Babubhai did not come to see me off, but he promised to keep in touch and write regularly; a promise he kept in full measure. There was a letter from him almost every week, and sometimes more than once. Sometimes he would say that he was in the post office, hastily scribbling a poem on an inland letter form, as the words of the new poem had just come to him. I would reply, although not as frequently, giving my appreciation for his work, and encouraging him to continue writing. We carried on like this for about six months. Slowly my responses became more infrequent as I got involved in other pursuits, chief among them my own impending marriage. He too must have sensed my flagging interest and soon his letters stopped coming.

A year later both Tony and Kiku had left Bombay for other places, and Babubhai’s flat on Little Gibbs Road had new tenants. However, the new tenants were usually friends of the earlier ones, single, and mostly from the same institution to which we had belonged. In 1971 I moved from Patna to the island nation of Trinidad & Tobago in the West Indies, although still employed by the same organization. I returned to India in December 1972, landing at Bombay and staying in the city for about a month. On enquiry I discovered that another of my classmates was staying in Babubhai’s apartment. I called on him and found little change in the appearance of the place. All the furniture was the same as it was in May 1969. In these three-and-a-half years a number of our friends had transited through this place and moved on. Now Kuldip was occupying one bedroom, while the second was occupied by another tenant, who apparently was not from our institute. Babubhai, it seems, had left the apartment and gone to Haji Malang, a Sufi shrine near Kalyan, where he had taken up permanent residence. This shrine, dedicated to the 13th century mystic Haji Abdur Rehman Shah Malang, (who according to legend, had come to India from Yemen and had made the little village at the bottom of the hill in Kalyan, his home), has been drawing thousands of Hindu and Muslim pilgrims who come there to pray and to find solace. This is probably the only shrine where a Hindu vahivatdar (a traditional priest) and a mutawalli (claiming to be a distant kin of the Baba) both officiate together at religious rituals. The Board of Trustees of the Haji Malang Shrine comprises of members from both the communities, perhaps the only symbol of true syncretism left in today’s India!

That Babubhai had chosen to leave this material world and find shelter in a Sufi shrine did not come as a surprise to me as I had been witness to his spiritual side and had heard his poems full of yearning for that mystic experience the Sufis call “fana”. I asked if he had left his notebooks behind, but Kuldip had no knowledge of them. I presume he would have carried them with him. How I wished I had, at least, preserved his letters which he had mailed to me in Patna. Some time later I learnt that Kuldip had to leave the apartment because his co-tenant decided to get married and requested him to find some other accommodation for himself. Being a gentleman, Kuldip obliged and left the apartment for his friend and his new bride.

Babubhai never came back to Bombay, and apparently attained the Sufi equivalent of fana while in the service of the Baba Haji Malang. I heard that he had left behind a will according to which the apartment given to him by his mother was to be gifted to the last person or persons living in it as tenants. Apparently his family, in honouring his wishes, did not choose to contest the will.

The week that I spent in his company will always remain in my memory as a period of mystery and wonder. The mystic guide had everything a young man would have wanted those days. He had a loving family who cared for him and made sure that he did not want for anything; seemed well educated; lived in one of the premium areas of Bombay; and above all, could choose to indulge in his passion for poetry without anyone pushing him to pursue a career in some field or other. The family never put any pressure on him to either join the business or do something else more financially profitable. They just let him be and only ensured that he had enough means to look after his daily needs.

Babubhai touched my life briefly, all too briefly. Today I cannot recall even one line from the scores of poems that he recited or posted to me. I find it difficult to even recall his face and if his photograph is shown to me I will surely fail to recognize it. But that one week together has left a deep impression somewhere in my consciousness, perhaps imperceptibly influencing my thoughts as I try to find some meaning in my own rather pointless existence. The magnetic pull of Arunachala that I have been experiencing for some time now seems a natural progression from that week I spent in Bombay more than forty years ago.