An interesting rail sneham

Last week,  It was with a mixed feeling that I got into Garib rath. On one hand I was excited I was meeting  my parents and was also travelling down south to a spiritual retreat and on the other hand, I was travelling alone   after a long time ( my grown up kids now have staggered vacations and I have to be home before the elder one arrives )and was wondering who would be my co passengers and if they would strike interesting conversations or would they be plugged on to their phones. In any case, I decided if I have nothing to observe around I would bury myself in the book that I had taken for my journey “ the joy of less”.

When I reached my  seat twenty minutes to the departure time, I found there was nobody in my cabin. There was just one lady occupying the side berth of the next cabin. Close to departure and still nobody and then the train  chugged off from the station. The next station two young men  got into my cabin. They settled and were conversing amongst themselves in Telugu. One was dressed a typical city lad and the other looked simple. A little while later I went to get my rail  bedding for the night and when I came back there was some conversation in my cabin. Another lady arrived and she was seated opposite to my seat and guess what ? she was travelling with a dog hiding it from the TTE. When I told her I am scared of dogs, she said in a typical Bengali accent “Koch nohi karega”.  Candy was the doggies name and I was convinced when she said moreover  it was  a tiny dog chihuahua( a pocket dog) and she had carried it in her big handbag. The dog truly was a darling all through the journey. It never even whimpered or went to toilet or had a feed along the 13 hour journey. The dog even had a visa, passport, insurance and had travelled to USA. She said it was more like a kid for her and would simply listen to whatever she said.

Meanwhile the two young men, one of them volunteered to ask me if I knew how to go S Vyasa Unviersity. I said must be a new one and I am not aware. He told me it was one of the oldest and a famous one and even PM modi comes there regularly for yoga lessons. And it was in Anekal. I told him morning I would direct him to Anekal.  And  it was Yoga that initiated the conversation between the two of us.Amongst many things, He is  trained to be a traditional  yoga teacher although he doesnt teach  and I was a  power yoga practitioner and then on.....  the city lad  and I had a talkathon from around 9 in the night. At the risk of sounding pompous, generally,  It is I who do the informative talking with my friends ( that is what atleast my friends and family  say, that I know everything and am knowledgable ;) ) but for a change, here  I was the listener and my 29 year old friend was so informative  and knowledgable that we talked about yoga, politics ( Indian and American) , spirituality, holistic science, Indian culture, history, travel( he has travelled far and wide to  leh ladakh and kailash manasarovar next month) , cuisine and even law. Yes the 29 year old was a NLSUI  law graduate and had passed his judicial exam to be the youngest judge of the state. He said he would be travelling in two months  time to the USA for doing his masters in Calfornia.  We spoke so much that while the rest of the two passengers or make it 3 including the dog went to sleep,….we were still talking softly…the lady in the adjacent side berth was annoyed and asked us to switch off the light. We switched of the light and still continued to talk in hushed tones  till 11 in the night.

 I learnt so much from him for instance, he said, western concept was “ seeing is believing” while our Indian ancient concept was “ something were beyond science, it never needed proof. For instance, he said there is a shivling in Uttarakhand ( he mentioned the place, I forgot) which can be moved by any person but never lifted but  it can be lifted by 9 priests by just putting their little finger underneath. No science is able to offer explanation for this activity despite research. That  he said is ancient Indian  science and wisdom while many modern Indians refused to believe  such science and so they too adopted western culture  of “ seeing is believing” and started questioning our ancient  Indian wisdom and practices. I immediately connected our conversation to Krishna’s butter ball at Mahabalipuram(read about it here the first pic in the post). 

 We went to sleep at 11 and  got up again and continued our conversation in the morning till 9. In the morning, we talked about AYUSH(Ayurveda, unani, siddha and homeo)   Indian medical science believed in self healing through immunity while westerners believed in the concept of pill or medicine or surgery. He gave an example about Saliva. The saliva especially in the morning after waking up has many medicinal properties he said.  That is why even animals lick their wounds and even young kids lick their wounds as a natural instinct but we elders in the name of hygiene  stop them from doing this and so the immunity does not develop  he said. He went on to have his tea without even brushing his teeth, which I found it difficult to accept. Whatever, the whole journey was interesting and when it was time to get down we took the same auto and I directed him to to the anekal bus and I took to the hosur bus. A rail sneham after a long time, which started with the journey and ended there.

The young man made the journey interesting and  will  definitely remember his name because he told me  after his masters in the US and working there for 10 years he would come back to India and join politics because he wanted to serve the nation. 

I have a lot to say, about my spiritual retreat experience in my next post.