Sunday, April 9, 1995 New Delhi airport

Mr. Bhandari was a large, corpulent Sikh, and from what he said, a secular one. He wore a beautiful red turban and his beard was dyed jet black. Little bits, around the edges and notably under his skin were as white as the driven snow. He is in the ladies garment business and while he’s in England he also pops over to Sweden where he buys paper which he then imports into India.

He told me some quite wonderful things. He was traveling with his brother ( who wore a beautiful powder blue turban), both were vegetarian. He asked me if I was and then went on to say that he had only been one for five months.

His son, who is 18, studies very hard. One night, Mr. Bhandari went to the bathroom at 3 AM and noticed that his son’s bedroom light was still on. To his surprise he discovered hat his son was still studying

To show his son how solidly the whole family was behind him, and the son already being a vegetarian, they all gave up meat as an act of solidarity and support.

Mr. Bhandari, who studied business administration in London in 1973/4 and at Ann Arbor Michigan was telling me that the academic competition in India is so fierce that if a student doesn’t get more than 90%, they’re nowhere. He recently went to a parent’s evening and was standing in the queue to see a teacher. His son had scored 93% in a geography exam and Mr. B was looking forward to basking in praise heaped down on his son from the teacher. He overheard a lady ahead of him arguing with the teacher, her child scored had 98% and she wanted to know why he hadn’t received full marks and for what specific reasons why two points had been deducted. Finally, the teacher who had the exam papers to hand and obviously couldn’t fault her son's paper said that he never gave more than 98% to anyone. The lady went away satisfied.

Mr. B says he experiences a great deal of racial abuse in England, particularly in Hackney. He told me a joke. Some time ago an Indian prince was playing cricket for England against Australia. An Englishman watched the Prince hit a six, turned to an Australian and said, “See, we have princes on our team!” The Indian prince was bowled out the very next ball. “Bloody nigger,” said the Englishman.

Mr. Bhandari spoke with phenomenal love of his own mother. He said he was so grateful to her, he talked of how she had educated her children, even after her husband died. He sees her as a living saint. He said that the whole family feel the same way about her and if one morning she has even the slightest melancholy on her face they will all attend to her to make sure she’s well and happy. He says he touches her feet every morning and asks for her blessing.

What I find shocking in this was to contrast my treatment of my own mother with his. I thought at the time that my mother was stupid, prudish and old-fashioned. She died of breast cancer something I believe women are susceptible to when their wifely/motherly qualities are challenged. I know she felt rejected by me and I ask for forgiveness for this and I can see now in Self-realized retrospect that in most of her views she was right. All of the things I did which she disapproved of or would have disapproved of had she known about them were wrong, harmful to me as well as to others. How amazing it is that it’s taken until now, 20 years after her death, for me to see this. And is it not strange that in recognizing Shri Mataji as my divine mother, I came to see and appreciate my own mother so much more than I did when she was alive?

Why is it that I always have these great self revelations when I travel? I suspect that the answer is this, there are two types of travel, the first when one is travels through physical space, from A to B. The second also involves traveling through physical space but it’s also traveling through metaphysical space, there is a clear and obvious spiritual dimension to the travel, it used to be known as pilgrimage in times more enlightened than the one I grew up in. I recall sitting next to a French yacht broker on my way to New Zealand a few years ago and how cathartic and insightful his conversation has been. Everything he'd said was of direct relevance and benefit to me.

Mr. Bhandari said that when a man says he knows God, God gives him riches, to test him. Many men forget God or get distracted by the problems that come with money. If a man passes this test God then gives them lots of other problems e.g. family problems and that any man who passes these is truly close to God.

Having heard something of my own story, Mr. B said straightaway that my wife wanted out of the marriage when it became clear to her that I was no longer under her control. He pointed out how, in her new situation. she’s has put herself again in a position of control, she’s now the breadwinner, she’s in a totally dominant position over her new man, irrespective of whether she exercises that dominance or not. Well observed, Mr. B, she clearly from what my sons say, does exercise that dominance.

In common with others I’ve met from the Indian subcontinent, notably my dear friend Shams Qureshi, Bloomsbury's agent in Pakistan, Mr. Bhandari has a fine line in paranoia and conspiracy theory. Saddam Hussein, he was told by a man who’d been an officer in the Iraqi Army for 20 years, was a CIA agent.

Why did all assassination attempts against him fail? Because Saddam was always warned in advance by the CIA. Saddam was told by the American ambassador that if he invaded Kuwait the USA wouldn’t intervene. United States policy was to let Saddam destroy Kuwait then have Uncle Sam come to the rescue reminding all and sundry that they have to do what the USA tells them. He also believes that Gorbachev is a CIA agent, hence the way he destroyed the Soviet Union.

Mr. B, though nominally a Sikh, made it clear that he has no time for religion, he opts for the view that is the cause of all our problems and that we would all be better off without it. He saw no contradiction between this and the views he expressed about God but I guess there’s nothing unusual in this, plenty, William Blake included, were against organized religion although deeply spiritual and connected to God.

Mr. B is well-versed in scandal and had lots to say about Mark Thatcher’s USA tax problems, Rajiv Gandhi's shortcomings plus those of his mother. Shastri, the former Indian prime minister was murdered by air injected into a vein, because he was too honest. Like the stopped clock which is accurate twice a day, Mr B was close to the truth in the latter case. CP, who was Shastri's principle private secretary at the time of the Tashkent conference where Shastri died, did not think he had been murdered. Shri Mataji said that he was, poisoned by his cook, who disappeared immediately afterwards.

Listening to all of this brought home to me just how far I’ve come myself. To have lost my deep cynicism is truly a miracle for which I’m daily thankful and to know God, to live in the present, is a divine blessing, one beyond any hopes, aspirations or expectations I ever had before encountering Shri Mataji.