“He appeared as a person who has found his true destiny,” she later wrote in a letter. “The Krishna move- ment turned this torn, unhappy young man into an exuberant, disciplined, well-balanced and very lov- ing person.” After our shopping trip,
I felt more comfortable asking my uncle questions. Though it was sometimes hard to grab his undivided attention — several devo- tees every hour came into his office for counsel — he answered frankly about his childhood. Yes, he acknowledged,
SPIRITUAL LIFE, IT’S AMAZING. DID YOU
SEE THOSE WOMEN?
‘‘
THEY WERE VIBRATING
WITH JOY.”
Paramadvaiti
he had been a troubled boy. At age 10, while playing in a barn, a friend pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. The gun wasn’t loaded, but an accumulation of mortar dis- charged and flew into my uncle’s eye. For months, he lay in the hospital. Doc- tors feared for his vision. The family, driving in from the countryside, visited him once every two weeks. “They had me strapped, strapped to
the bed,” my uncle recalled. “All my fam- ily, they said, ‘Oh, this poor boy, he can- not move his body.’ So what did they do? Feed me chocolate. And when I came out of the hospital, I was round like a bottle, with one eye looking this way and another eye looking that way.” As a child, Ulrich clashed with his
father, a teacher. The man could talk for hours about bird-watching, but he couldn’t once say, “I love you.” He had the warmth of a science text. And when Ulrich once wrote a biting school report on the failings of his father, he showed it to the target himself, who said only that it was well-written. When my uncle first became a Hare
Krishna in 1972, he was the servant to the servant, a devotee of Srila Prab- hupada. Others ordered my uncle to travel, and he obeyed. He owned nei- ther his own time nor space. He had surrendered his ability to make choices. A South American woman, a fellow fol- lower, fell in love with him and wanted marriage. But love between two people
who do not share a connec- tion with God — and whose relationship is not built as a means to religious pur- suits — will invariably end up grasping for something false, he says. He couldn’t marry her. Krishna was the Supreme Enjoyer. Paramadvaiti
criss-
crossed South America set- ting up temples for the mission, and he was good at it, a talent that triggered his rise through the faith. But Krishna members, at the time, faced persecu- tion across the globe. He was jailed in Argentina and Paraguay, told only that the government prohibited all
religions except Catholicism, he said. One guard with a particular zeal for
torture dragged Paramadvaiti into the jailhouse bathroom and ordered him to wipe feces off the floor. Paramadvaiti clawed for his spiritual strength, until at last he realized that Lord Krishna must have willed this feces-cleaning, because it taught a lesson about pride, and no man should be too proud to obey orders. So Paramadvaiti… well, he kept on cleaning, and he even grew kind of happy. “The torture guy came back, prob-
ably expecting some monk to be in there looking all miserable, and he sees me like this,” Paramadvaiti recalled. “Yes, I was happy!” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: “I think I blew his mind.”
On my final full day in India, my uncle
and I conducted the big face-to-face talk, though technically this was done face-to-foot. Paramadvaiti sat on the only chair in his office, and I sat on a straw floor mat, volleying questions. Until this moment, I’d been the one do- ing all the asking. Now, it was his turn. “You strike me as an educated young
man,” he said. “Yes, I guess so.” “So,” he said, “how can somebody
like you just stand back and watch?” Perhaps every pilgrimage brings the seeker to that final vista, a place where
he looks back on what brought him there and realizes something, either profound or foolish. There I was, interviewing, probing, trying to understand the dy- namic of a relationship I never hereto- fore even cared about — and why? I tried to answer his question, but
the words were clumsy. I told him, more or less, that I didn’t yet know my beliefs. Nothing I’ve been exposed to has prepared me for — or made me desire — a life of complete immersion and devotion. I enjoy traveling, going to concerts, having coffee and beer with friends, occasionally talking about the AFC North instead of God. I recognized in Paramadvaiti just a small fraction of myself, but I wanted no part of his devotion to the extreme, no matter how peaceful he seemed. “Frankly,” I said, “it scares me a little.” He just nodded. Maybe he already understood the
part I left unsaid. The part about me that I was not ready to admit. Maybe my motives weren’t as pure as I wanted them to be. Maybe my curiosity about my uncle was just the cover for a con- venient excuse to travel. Maybe I didn’t give a darn how this conversation went. Maybe I was here for one reason, a rea- son that had everything to do with ego and control: I wanted to go home and write about this trip. The next day when my uncle and I
parted, we returned to what we knew. He would deal with a canceled flight to Finland, resigning himself to a sleepless night at the New Delhi airport, because penniless monks don’t have the money for hotel rooms. I headed back to Washington by way
of Frankfurt, stopping on the layover to buy cold medicine and a Rolling Stone. As I boarded a final plane to Dulles, the gap between my uncle and me, again, reformed into something un- bridgeable. It was a gap made of miles and time zones, sure. But it was, too, a gap between desires: my desire to see something and his insatiable desire to know it. I saw. For me, it was enough.
Next month, Chico Harlan will become The Post’s Asia correspondent. He can be reached at
harlanc@washpost.com.
may 16, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine
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