The Corona Diaries

9-Mar-21
8:46 pm
Prosperity Apartment
Pondy

Rahul, Revathi and I have been sticking to G like bees to a pot of honey. We sit cozily around him all day glued to his magnificent presence. Our trips to shops, the beach and every other place have reduced drastically. We hardly go out, cook just one dish once a day and stay close to him. He has been talking to us all day, saying things that are immensely significant to me and my life. Explaining what is real yoga, attraction, meditation, equilibrium and much more. He is making himself available to us from the crack of dawn to almost till 10 at night every day. He is like a massive ripe fruit. Venky came yesterday from Bangalore, so our music sessions have started again with full gusto. G will record a song tomorrow – Bipulo Tarango.

***

Today evening at Devotion Revathi started narrating her long story about meeting G, the trials and tribulations, joys and ecstasies since then. Her story is as fascinating as a movie. Then I started describing incidents from my time with G during the lockdown, what I saw in him from such close quarters and other almost miraculous incidents since meeting him in late 2016. I felt charged up. I was burning from inside. Sivapriya was there. She seemed affected by G. She sometimes shakes her head, sometimes sits with her head lowered and hands locked. G was telling Julie a while back about Sivapriya. He said, “Sivapriya seems to really enjoy her time around me. She is very sweet.”

10-Mar-21
4:35 am
Ashram Guest House 

Yesterday after dinner we came back to Prosperity. Gradually the party warmed up and we started singing and joking. G’s energy started doing a number on us and we all became very high. My brain felt like jelly. He kept on joking and singing and saying profound things in between. Then as we were going giddy with intoxication he suddenly explained the meaning of Vaishwanara from the Brahmasutras. He said, “Vaishwanara is Vishwa + Nara, the world man. The original or aadi man that resides in every human. This man or energy can get excited and awakened in an individual under particular circumstances. I am not saying this, it is the Brahmasutra. I am not like those guys in the market who just namedrop and know nothing about the scriptures. I have read everything and reflected deeply about these things.” After a few minutes as he was singing he looked at me and said, “The way you are making me sing, the wheel inside me is turning. If this energy touches my throat, you guys will be dead! It is the wheel of life!” We started going crazy! By the time we left it was 10 pm. My solar plexus was on fire. Back in my room I texted him about the burning and he wrote back, “ I know, drinking water is the only thing you can do” I added, “And thinking about you!” He laughed!

He also said and did these during the reverie:

“Musicians have a free spirit”

He sang along with my alaap for Bipulo Tarango. He did quite a decent job! But what is electric is his very presence, his voice.

I was very high and going gaga. He said to the others about me, “Madness has fully flowered in her. She has fully flowered, fully flowered.”

***

5:18 pm
Prosperity

We went to the Ousteri lake today morning after breakfast in Venky’s car. It was stunning to ride in the boat with him. The huge expanse of splashing waters, many shy waterbirds flying away from our noisy boat and the cloak of greenery all around – I was so excited I stood  on the boat next to him. There was a local Tamil family of a young couple with their baby son on our boat. G invited them to join us when they looked hesitant seeing our group of 5. G kept laughing and looking at the kid throughout the ride. He too shyly looked back at him. After the ride was over we walked towards our car and said goodbye to the family. The kid kept looking at G from a distance and waving at him till his dad drove them off on his bike. Young children feel very good in his presence, a kind of freedom and openness and joy which I am sure they don’t find in their usual surroundings. 

11-Mar-21
9:21 am
Devotion

Morning utterances:

“How is it possible for a person to think about harming another person? I think it is a result of our reaction to oppression. You are oppressed and manipulated from all sides, hence you are frustrated and harm others. If you are content, you cannot harm anyone.”

“If you have no resistance, you don’t need to listen to me. All of you have resistance. You will resist anything I say, you will have to use your judgment when you listen to me.”

15-Mar-21
10:31 pm
Room B7, Ashram Guest House 

Came back from Prosperity 15 mins ago. 

G says our behaviour is an exhibition of our conditioning. This is such a solid truth! We cannot be anything else. I am what I exhibit and not what I think I am or I should be. And deeper conditioning works unbeknownst to us and in ways that are really hard to detect. I think maybe an acute awareness which develops gradually through learning by trial and error can shed some light on them. This is a suffocating process. The undetected wants to stay undetected, that’s the only way it will survive. In most people gross and deeper conditioning survive and keep growing with time and living becomes a misery. G says we keep feeding information to the information processing machinery inside us which strengthens the knower. Earlier today he said, “When the body is in equilibrium, it doesn’t want to say, hear, learn or know anything. It is a fact. UG himself told me this.” When he said this, I felt a great relief. For the past 4-5 days I was somehow unable to participate in the usual conversations and merrymaking around G. Something inside me was refusing to listen to or participate in anything. I didn’t even feel like writing or singing. I was grave without any apparent reason. I wasn’t sad, just very serious. My head felt extremely tight and it was repelling everything from the outside, I wasn’t interested in anything. An acute awareness was burning inside me. So much so that it felt terribly suffocating at times. I was aware of every mental movement inside me. The frustrations, the highs and everything. And then deep, deep sleep overtook me and I slept the whole day and night of 14th March. I felt better yesterday and cooked and did some chores and stuff. My head still felt tight at times. G said, “It is good that you took your mind away from it and made yourself busy.” Sanjiv came on 14th and I was sleeping all day in my room. G brought some food for me when I woke up at 3:30 in the evening. When Sanjiv saw me he asked what had happened to me. G replied “She was in yoga nidra all day” I jokingly held his shoulder and shook it.

***

8:30 am
Devotion 

Utterances:

“This energy expresses itself more towards addressing human sorrow, and not in the field of satisfying our curiosity. Sorrow is the result of conflict. And to avoid sorrow we become aggressive. Then we become angry and want to blame someone for it or take it out on someone.”

“The energy of order is flowing towards the energy of disorder in Nature. Nature’s reward and punishment come through the senses, pain and pleasure, through stimulus and response. That’s how life operates. Pain is a signal, so is pleasure.”

***

2:51 pm
Devotion

G is resting after lunch. I made rice, dal and a vegetable dish with potatoes, eggplant and methi leaves. What he eats is my personal concern and so I try to take care of it as far as I can. 

***

9:36 pm
Ashram guest house 

Since a friend and his daughter arrived, it has been chaotic. The kid is driving us nuts by ordering everyone around to get what she wants. G is infinitely patient with everyone but she even managed to irk him on a few occasions. Day before yesterday night the kid left G’s house and we were exhausted after a long day. He said, “There is orderly energy and there is disorderly energy. This is a completely disorderly energy. It just exhausts itself without serving any purpose.”

24-Mar-21
5:08 am
Club Mahindra, Pondy

I am sitting outside at the back of my room waiting for his text to go see him. My room 103 is next to his 102. It is still dark and the songbirds are busy singing. Currents of excitement are running inside my body. It is generating near the solar plexus and shooting out. 

We came yesterday to this exquisite resort 30 mins drive from Pondicherry to spend 3 nights. We reached here in the afternoon and were waiting in the lobby as our rooms were being assigned cracking jokes and pulling each other’s legs. I said something funny to Rahul and G exclaimed jokingly, “Hey you are the daughter of the Aryan race, how can you say such profane things?!” I said, “Ya ya I should be like Savitri and Sita, no?!” G added, “Hey you have to uphold the glory of Hindu religion, that responsibility is now on your little shoulders, ok?!” I said pointing to my laptop in my backpack, “What I have in there is better than all the scriptures put together!” G seemed very pleased with my confidence. 

For the first time, G swam in the sea with us! It was an outrageously joyous occasion. Sanjiv, Revathi, Rahul, Karan and I just freaked out! Then we came back to our rooms and danced to the sufi song tere ishq nachaya karke thaiya thaiya. This property is really beautiful and the rooms are of international standards. It has a private beach. But the place doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing can entice me. I know he is the only source of my joy and the only reason behind everything good that is happening in my life. 

***

These days I am feeling a different kind of punch and confidence when G talks about human experiences, knowledge game, the sense of self etc. I feel I can speak about these things from my own experience, as if some solid foundation has developed inside, a grounding, which is imparting a strange confidence to me. When I told this to G a few ago, he joked, “Are you developing a cocky confidence or what?!” and he started laughing! I also joked saying, “Far from that! I am becoming like a Cock, a rooster, powerful!”