Viorica Weissman Interviews David Godman

A few years ago Viorica, a friend of mine who was translating Ramana literature into Romanian, asked me to do an interview by email that she could use as an introduction to one of my books that was going to be published in Romanian. We started out with questions on my early years in Tiruvannamalai, but somehow the project petered out without coming to any apparent conclusion. This is as far as we got…

Question: Can you describe your first visit to Sri Ramanasramam? The very first day, time of day, first feelings, emotions, happenings, first people you met, first impressions, expectations, disappointments, experiences, etc?

David: When I travelled to Tiruvannamalai for the first time, I had no idea what I would find at my destination. I had found my first Ramana books – those written and edited by Arthur Osborne – in my local university bookstore in 1974. I asked one of the staff there to order all the other books on Bhagavan that were listed in his notes, but the bookstore received no response from Ramanasramam, the publisher. I assumed from this that the ashram didn’t exist any more. The books I had read had first appeared in the early 1950s. I assumed that after Bhagavan passed away, the ashram had ceased to exist as an institution that people visited and stayed in.

Since I know that this was my thought process, I find it odd, looking back, that I was so determined to come to Tiruvannamalai. I came overland to India from the UK on buses and trains, a trip that took a little over two weeks. I didn’t stop at too many places on the way. I had done the overland route to India before, in 1972, and spent months enjoying all the places on the way. This time I knew I just wanted to be in India. In the 1970s the overland route was a lot cheaper than a plane ticket. I didn’t have much money, and I wanted the trip to last as long as possible.

Once I had arrived in Delhi, I discovered that there were no trains to Chennai for two weeks. They were all booked up for the summer holidays. This was May, 1976. It was the height of summer and I had no desire to be cooped up in Delhi for the two weeks I had to wait to catch the train.

I went to the Motilal Banarsidas bookstore in Old Delhi and there, to my delight, I found all the books that I had previously only seen as footnotes in Osborne’s books. I bought about ten ashram books, including Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day with Bhagavan, Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, and so on. Armed with a back pack full of exciting reading material, I caught a bus to Manali, a hill station north of Delhi. I think the trip took about fourteen hours, but it was well worth it. I ended up 6,000 feet up a mountain on the outskirts of what was then still a small village. I rented a room about two miles from Manali and spent 10–12 glorious days sitting in the mountains and forests, wallowing in a feast of Ramana literature, none of which I had seen before. Occasionally, people would ask me why I had come to India. When I told them I was on a pilgrimage to Tiruvannamalai, no one had ever heard of either the place or of Bhagavan.

I remember one sadhu I showed a Bhagavan book to ‘cursing’ me for being arrogant, saying I was a typical foreigner who thought he knew everything. All I did was show him a book and say I was on my way to Ramana Maharshi’s ashram. He had no idea who Bhagavan might be, and didn’t care.

The Delhi-Chennai train took about fifty-five hours, a lot more than the scheduled timetable predicted. It stopped, or was stranded, for hours in many remote locations. I was on the top bunk, about eighteen inches from the steel roof, reading my books. Every time the train stopped, the radiant heat from the roof had me drenched in sweat within seconds. The ceiling fans just couldn’t keep up with it. By the time we arrived in Chennai I was in no condition to face another trip, so I stayed for a day and a night in a cheap hotel near the train station.

At some point during my recuperation day I found myself on the beach, reading one of my new Ramana books. Someone came up to me, noticed what I was reading, and started a conversation. He mentioned that he had been to Ramanasramam himself a few weeks before. At this point I had been traveling for well over a month. I had covered about 6,000 miles and I was only a five-hour bus ride from my destination. This, though, was the first confirmation I had had that there really was a place called Ramanasramam which devotees could visit. I knew there would be a grave that I could pay my respects to, but this was the first time I received information that there was a functioning ashram there as well.

I took an early morning bus the following day. I had no idea how long the trip would be, and for hours there were no signs on the road that indicated how far away Tiruvannamalai might be. However, once the bus passed Tindivanam, the kilometre marker signs for Tiruvannamalai (and other towns on the route) kept popping up every few minutes. I still remember my rising sense of excitement as the numbers went down: 35 km, 28 km, 24 km, and so on. I know now that Arunachala is visible about 24 km away on that road, but on my first visit I couldn’t be sure whether I was really looking at the mountain or not. When the distance came down to single figures, I knew I really was looking at Arunachala for the first time.

I walked from the old bus stand (near to where the train station is today) into town and had a lunch. It was June 17th, 1976. I ate in a place called The Modern Café, which might have been modern fifty years before, but on the day I came, it was just sweaty and squalid. I didn’t care though. I knew I was only a few minutes from Ramanasramam. I think I would have walked to the ashram had I known where it was. I liked walking everywhere when I was young, even in the fierce heat with a heavy backpack. Instead, I hailed a cycle rickshaw which pedalled me slowly through town.

I kept scanning the sides of the road for some sign that I was nearing my destination. The first was a painted sign pointing down a side road that said ‘Ma Taleyarkhan’. I remembered her name from one of Osborne’s books, and as I did so a physical jolt went through my body. I knew I must be close.

Since the ashram was only about 200 metres from that sign, I soon found myself standing in the office, asking if I could stay.

‘For how long?’ someone asked.

‘A few weeks,’ I replied.

A spontaneous eruption of laughter went round the office. I think they were collectively amused at the effrontery of this foreigner who had just walked in and asked for such a long stay. I didn’t know then that the rule was three days for new people they didn’t know. Nowadays, no one is admitted unless he or she has written in advance. At that time the office was just one room, with three or four workers sitting cross-legged on the floor behind low, sloping desks. Everyone could hear everyone else’s business.

When the laughter died down, I was told ‘Three days,’ and a man was called to take me to my room. I was given the one where Balaram Reddy and Venkataraman (the ashram president) later spent many years. It was a lot more primitive when I stayed there. There was a bed and a fan, but no bathroom or toilet.

I had put my life on hold to come to India on this pilgrimage. I had travelled for weeks to get to this place, only to be told I could only stay three days. Somehow, it didn’t bother me in the least. Simply by existing, the ashram had exceeded my expectations. I had had a recurring fantasy while I was travelling across Asia of turning up in Tiruvannamalai and having to poke around in a jungle for a headstone that bore Bhagavan’s name. I was therefore happy that the institution was still in business, even if it wasn’t very welcoming to new people.

A few minutes after being shown to my room I found myself walking around the ashram, looking for Bhagavan’s samadhi. I wanted to pay my respects and announce my arrival as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the day. All the big buildings were locked up, and none of them had any signs on them. They didn’t appear until the 1980s. The few people I saw were all lying full-length on the ground, having their customary siesta. It was about 2 p.m. on a hot summer day. With no signs to help me, and no one to ask directions from, I wandered around rather aimlessly for about fifteen minutes, trying to work out what each of the buildings might be. I was somewhat handicapped by not having any idea of what a Hindu samadhi might look like. In the end – and I always laugh when I recollect this – I decided that Chinnaswami’s samadhi must be Bhagavan’s. I went up to it and did a full-length prostration there. If there had been more conscious people in the ashram at that hour, I am sure that my action would have been greeted with another round of laughter.

As I continued with my perplexing tour of the ashram’s buildings, I encountered another foreigner who seemed to be doing much the same thing. I met him in the space between the kitchen door and the storeroom entrance. He wanted to try to find Skandashram, and asked me if I felt like coming with him. I am amazed as I write this that I thought that walking a mile up the hill on a hot summer’s afternoon struck me as a fun and desirable way to pass the time. I jumped at the chance.

I can’t recollect how or from whom we managed to get directions, but soon we were on the hill. I don’t remember much about the journey either, but I do remember sitting inside Skandashram and meditating for about thirty minutes. I think I was a bit too excited to be truly quiet, but I still remember it as a moving and memorable occasion. I had checked in with Bhagavan by mistakenly prostrating at Chinnaswami’s samadhi, and I had checked in with Arunachala by walking on its slopes and by meditating at Skandashram. My day and my arrival somehow felt complete.

I don’t have many memories of those first three days. I do remember the almost-empty dining room, which was still divided into brahmin and non-brahmin sections, as it was in Bhagavan’s day. I think there were probably only twelve to fifteen people on the non-brahmin side. It wasn’t like today when hundreds are fed at every meal. I also remember discovering the old hall and taking to it like a duck to water. In my first few months at Arunachala I spent most of my waking hours there.

On my second day I met Raja Iyer, the old postmaster. I knew I had to find a place to stay outside the ashram, so I asked him to show me around. After looking at a few possibilities, it was Lucia Osborne who eventually took me in, giving me a room at the back of her house for Rs 30 a month. I spent the next eighteen months there.

Question: Your journey to Tiruvannamalai shows a strong determination to reach Ramanasramam. When you were asked how long you wanted to stay in the ashram, you answered ‘A few weeks’. What where your plans and expectations about those few weeks you intended to spend there? Did you have any? How did you see your future life in India at that time? What was it that you were really looking for? How did things really turn out to be? I ask because those ‘few weeks’ actually extended to a life time.   

Answer: I don’t think I had any expectations because I had no idea what to expect. The period of ‘a few weeks’ was a bit arbitrary. I didn’t think I could afford to stay there much longer, and I definitely didn’t go there with any idea of settling down. I had a gap of a few months in my life, some money in my pocket, and a desire to connect with Bhagavan.

I had spent most of the previous year in Ireland, doing self-enquiry in a small rented house, and growing most of my own food. I had to give up living there because my landlady, who had gone to live in Australia with her husband, wanted to reclaim it. Her husband had had a major accident, and with no medical insurance, she needed to sell the house to pay his bills. I then went to Israel for a few months, primarily because I didn’t want to have a cold and wet winter in the UK or Ireland. My plan was to return to another house in Ireland once I had finished my spell in Israel and completed my pilgrimage to India.

What was I looking for? I don’t think I was looking for anything. I just felt an irresistible urge to come to Tiruvannamalai to connect with the place where Bhagavan lived most of his life. In retrospect it seems such an odd and bizarre thing for me to have done. I am sure I had reasons at the time that made perfect sense to me, but looking back on that period I can’t recollect any sensible ones.

With hindsight I would say that Arunachala pulled me here, and that whatever reasons I might have had at the time were just my mind’s attempt to construct a coherent narrative and justification for what was going on.

I remember Bhagavan telling a visitor once that it was the power of Arunachala that brings everyone here, including him. Our brains might think of a sensible reason or excuse to go to Arunachala once that power has manifested, but it is the pulling power of the mountain that is the real cause of our journey.

Some of us have a script, a prarabdha, to be here. The body and mind will feel the pull, start moving in this direction, after which we think up a rational reason to justify the trip.

There have been some interesting experiments in neuroscience in the last few years. It is possible to monitor the parts of the brain that make the body do things, while simultaneously checking other corners of the brain that take the decision to perform the actions. Much to the scientists’ consternation, it has been discovered that the body starts to perform an act a few seconds before the decision to do it manifests in the brain. This has rather alarming implications for our belief in free will. It seems that the body has a script, that it starts executing its actions before the ‘I’ inside us ‘decides’ to do them. If the experiments stand the test of time, they really will demonstrate that the ‘I am the doer’ idea is an artificial construct, one that is there merely to sustain the mistaken idea that we are in charge of our destiny, and that we can choose and decide the things we do in this life.

So, some power drew me here and kept me here, and my mind had to run along behind, justifying it.

It didn’t take me long to fall in love with this place. Quite early on I knew that I wanted to stay in this place as long as possible. Again, I don’t know why. However, in opposition to this there was a recurring feeling: ‘I don’t have much money. Sooner or later I will have to go home.’

Destiny had other plans, though. At some point in my first year here I was walking around Bhagavan’s samadhi when it suddenly dawned on me, ‘I don’t have to go home. This is my home. I don’t need to go anywhere at all.’

It was like a great weight being suddenly lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t need to go anywhere because I had found my way ‘home’.

When I lived in Lucknow there was a woman there called Almira who had come from Hawaii to be with Papaji. She had come for a few weeks, wanted to stay longer, but had a plane ticket that had to be used within a particular time.

When she told Papaji about this, he just said, ‘Your ticket has expired’.

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s still valid. I can show you.’

He refused to look at it when she produced it. When she attempted to get him to read the date, he waved it away. He just repeated his earlier pronouncement: ‘Your ticket has expired.’

Eventually, Almira took the decision that she was going to let her ticket run out and stay on in Lucknow.

When she told Papaji of her decision, he said, ‘See, I told you. Your ticket has expired.’

The expiry had nothing to do with the calendar. Papaji just knew that she was destined to remain in Lucknow. She stayed more than five years and didn’t leave until after Papaji had passed away.

I didn’t have a ticket printed on a piece of paper, but I did have a similar fixed idea that I would have to leave within a few weeks of my arrival. I had put aside enough money to get back to the UK and assumed I would have to buy a ticket to return there once I had no more money to support myself in Tiruvannamalai. That moment in the samadhi hall dissolved a self-imposed layer of mental agitation: that I would have to leave when I didn’t want to, and that my time at Arunachala was limited.

I think all of us waste a lot of time and energy agonising over choices and decisions in our lives because we think we are in charge of what happens to us, and we further believe we have to plan and scheme to change the circumstances in our lives, or keep them the way they are.

Ramaswami Pillai once asked Bhagavan, ‘Life is full of apparent choices. We waste a lot of energy thinking about what we should do. When a choice presents itself, how can we tell if it is something that we have to do, or whether it is something that will waste our time and lead us in the wrong direction.’

Before I give Bhagavan’s reply I should say that in Tamil Nadu destiny is often conceived as a load that one carries on one’s head.

Bhagavan told him, ‘Throw it down three times. If it jumps back three times, then it is something you have to do.’

If we have a mind, we can’t tell what things are destined for us. A jnani might see and know, and he might even tell us if we are lucky. The rest of us just stumble along, making plans and thinking we are in charge of future events.

I was destined to be in Tiruvannamalai. Hindsight alone tells me that. I ‘threw it off my head’ a few times, but it always jumped back. On several occasions I made attempts to be somewhere else, but they never worked out for long. Sooner or later I would always find myself back at the foot of Arunachala.

Question: You mentioned somewhere else that, while still in England and before your first visit to Sri Ramanasramam, your acquaintance with the teachings of Ramana Maharshi was through Arthur Osborne’s book, The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his Own Words.  And surprise! You have just arrived in Tiruvannamalai and after the three days you were allowed to stay at the ashram as a newcomer, you spent the next eighteen months in Arthur Osborne’s home, although he himself had passed away a few years before. You have been writing on Sri Ramana’s life, teachings and his devotees ever since. To an external observer, regarding the work that both of you have been engaged in, your destiny appears to both parallel Osborne’s and be a continuation of it. I marvel at the coincidence.  It is as if choosing that room in Lucia Osborne’s house out of several other possibilities, you actually chose to continue Arthur Osborne’s work. Could you tell us more about that period in your life? It would be interesting to know more about Lucia Osborne too.  

Answer: First of all, I didn’t ‘choose’ to stay in the Osborne house. As I said earlier, Raja Iyer took me to see a few people who lived near the ashram, one of whom was Lucia Osborne. She then showed me around the neighbourhood and pointed out the places that were available for rent. We could not contact the owners of some of the various rooms we saw on this brief tour, but Mrs Osborne promised to do it for me. In those days there were very few places to stay; maybe four or five options that collectively contained about ten rentable rooms. It didn’t matter much then because there were rarely more than ten people who wanted to rent a room in the vicinity of the ashram. I think there were probably five or six foreigners staying near the ashram when I arrived. Over the next year or so the numbers didn’t increase that much, even in winter, which is when most people come.

At the end of the tour Mrs Osborne just said, ‘Bring your bag here on the day you leave the ashram and I will show you which room I have taken for you.’

I showed up after lunch on the day I had to leave the ashram. We sat talking for about an hour on her veranda, with me wondering when we were going to get round to the business of being shown where I was going to sleep that night. Eventually, she said ‘Come with me’ and took me to a room at the back of her house that I had never seen before.

‘You can stay here,’ she said. ‘It’s Rs 30 a month.’

I accepted and moved in immediately. In retrospect I think the hour of conversation was some kind of interview, which I eventually passed. If I had failed it, I would probably have been taken to one of the other places I had been shown on my first visit. So, I think it would be more accurate to say that she chose me, rather than the other way round.

You said, ‘It is as if choosing that room in Lucia Osborne’s house out of several other possibilities, you actually chose to continue Arthur Osborne’s work’.

I just explained that I didn’t choose to stay in the Osborne house. I think it is also true that I didn’t choose to continue Osborne’s literary work on Bhagavan. In the eighteen months I stayed in that house, I didn’t write anything except the occasional letter. Most evenings I could hear Lucia Osborne banging away on her old manual typewriter, trying to finish the autobiography that Arthur had started, a work which was far from completion when he passed away in 1970. However, it didn’t inspire me to do any writing myself. In fact, I remember telling Mrs Osborne one day that everyone who came to Ramanasramam seemed to think that he or she had to write a book about what happened while he or she was here. I think I found it a bit amusing at the time that so many people were inspired to write down their experiences. I had, of course, read all the offerings by old devotees that were in print at that time, but at no point did I ever think that I had something of my own to contribute.

I didn’t begin to write until at least a year after I left that house. I had volunteered to look after the ashram library. Many of the newer books had been donated to the ashram by publishers who wanted their books to be reviewed in The Mountain Path. I began looking after the book review section of the magazine, and doing the occasional review myself, simply to ensure that there would be a good supply of books coming to the ashram.

Around 1979 Prof. K. Swaminathan, who was then just a member of the editorial board of The Mountain Path, came to the ashram for a visit. He had the beginnings of a cataract and found reading hard work. He asked me to read out some of the material that had been submitted. When I read out a review I had written – quite a short one, maybe only two paragraphs – he praised it effusively. Then he disappeared into the ashram office and came out five minutes later to say that I was now a member of the editorial board myself. Even then it didn’t occur to me that I should write anything original.

About a year later Nisargadatta Maharaj asked me what I did at Ramanasramam. When I included ‘book reviews’ on the list of my activities, he glared at me and said, very strongly, ‘Why don’t you write about the teachings? Writing about the teachings is very important.’

I remember being very surprised, firstly, because it was unusual for him to tell people to write, and secondly because it had never occurred to me that I had anything to say about his or Bhagavan’s teachings. I suppose, in retrospect, he saw that I had some sort of destiny in this field, and by making this strong recommendation, he probably felt that he was giving me a push in the right direction.

Now, going back to your suggestion that I share a few memories of Lucia Osborne, I have to say that I learned very little about her in the eighteen months that I stayed in her house. It is not because she was reticent or unwilling to talk: it was simply that in those days I had very little interest in the personal stories and histories of devotees I met. There were so many people around in those days that I could have talked to and gained useful information from, but the thought of asking them to tell me about their time with Bhagavan simply never occurred to me. Sadhu Natanananda, for example, lived about 50 metres from me while I was staying in the Osborne house, but I never once spoke to him. We would pass each other on the street on the way to our respective rooms, occasionally nod an unspoken greeting to each other, and then go our separate ways. I only heard him speak for the first time about two weeks ago when I saw an old French documentary about India, made in the 60s by Louis Malle, that featured a few minutes about Ramanasramam. Sadhu Natanananda appeared in it, talking briefly about Bhagavan’s teachings.

When I moved into Ramanasramam in the late 70s, I ended up in the room next to S. S. Cohen. The same thing happened there as well. I would greet him once in a while, and occasionally ask about his health since he was old and frail, but I never once asked him to talk about his time with Bhagavan.

When I first arrived in the ashram in 1976, I had asked him where he was from.

He laughed and said, ‘The last time I was there it was called “Turkish Mesopotamia”,’ from which I deduced that he had been living in Iraq prior to the First World War in a part of the region that was administered by the old Ottoman Empire. That was the extent of my personal enquiries.

I am beginning to regret my complete absence of curiosity in my early years at the ashram. Let me give you an example of why it is now bothering me. I have begun to research Maurice Frydman’s life and hope to write a book on him, if I collect sufficient material. He was a Polish-Jewish devotee, and so was Lucia Osborne. He visited the Osbornes many times and doubtless shared many stories about Bhagavan and life in Poland in the twenties and thirties. It never occurred to me to ask about him. S. S. Cohen, another Jew, also knew Maurice well. When he lived in Vellore, a town about 80 km north of Tiruvannamalai, Cohen was the local guardian of Maurice’s adopted daughter Maggie, who was then studying in the CMC Medical College there. I am sure he could have given me a vast amount of information on Maurice had I bothered to raise the subject. Then there was a Bangalore devotee of Bhagavan called K. Ramaswami. He was one of Maurice’s oldest friends and was present when he passed away in Mumbai in 1976. In the 1930s he worked in the electrical factory that Maurice managed on behalf of the Maharaja of Mysore. I knew Ramaswami well, and even visited him a few times in his house in Bangalore. But, as with all the other people I have mentioned, it never occurred to me to ask for stories or information about Maurice.

In recent months I have been casting my net in all directions, looking for people who had some personal connection with Maurice. I have managed to locate a few elderly people, some of whom are in their nineties. My job would have been a lot easier had I taken the opportunities that were available to me in the 1970s and early 80s.

The only story I remember hearing about Frydman from the old devotees who were present in the ashram in the 1970s came from Viswanatha Swami, someone else I now wish I had spent more time with and talked to more. He casually mentioned once that Frydman was a bit of a practical joker who once sat up in the branches of the iluppai tree that is near the ashram gate and dropped things on the heads of devotees who were passing underneath. It’s not much of a story haul, given the wealth of material that must have been in the memories of the people who were there at the time.

Since you asked about Lucia Osborne, there is one story that has always stuck in my mind. When she decided to marry Arthur, a non-Jew, her father was so angry, he organised a procession in his local neighbourhood in which all the members of the family were compelled to attend. He marched at the head, with all his family in tow, holding a big placard that read, ‘Lucia is no longer my daughter. From now on, no one will mention her name.’

Her marriage to Arthur saved Lucia from the Holocaust. At the end of the Second World War, when Lucia was safe at Ramanasramam and waiting for Arthur to come from his internment in Thailand, only one of the people who had gone on that procession was still alive.

Lucia didn’t talk much about her past. This particular story was told to me by Buday, a Polish neighbour of hers who was a regular visitor. I didn’t get much information from her myself. I could tell you about her dietary peculiarities, that she told me she had had thirty cats in thirty-three years in India, that she had lead poisoning from using too much lead-based paint during her years as an artist, that she was an amateur homoeopath, and so on. I could tell you lots of trivial, mundane things that I picked up from sharing a house with her. What I can’t tell you is stories about herself and Bhagavan, and I can’t do that because, somehow, I never bothered to ask.

Question: Could you build a picture of Sri Ramanasramam of those days?  There must have been some devotees who continued living there after Sri Ramana’s mahasamadhi and who knew him well. Some of them are quite well known since their stories have been recorded. Do you have anything of your own to add?  Was there anyone among them who you were especially close to? Was life at the ashram in those days in any way different to what it is today?

Answer: Life in and around the ashram was much slower and quieter in those days. There was not much traffic, and public transport mostly consisted of cycle rickshaws, all of which have gone now. Auto-rickshaws were unknown, and the only alternative to the cycle rickshaws were the few remaining horse-drawn tongas. A friend of mine who arrived in the 1960s told me that in his early years here he felt so sleepy on a summer-afternoon shopping trip to town, he just lay down on one of the deserted roads and had a nap. I don’t think anyone would try that nowadays.

It was even quieter in the first years after Bhagavan passed away. Chalam has written that his was the only remaining occupied house in Ramana Nagar. He noted that the other houses, abandoned by their owners, were being looted in broad daylight, and that leopards were prowling the empty streets. This report, so far as I know, is the last time anyone wrote that leopards had been spotted in Tiruvannamalai.

Everyone who has been here for a long time, irrespective of when they arrived, knows that it was much quieter when they first came. Every year it gets busier and noisier. Paul Brunton called Ramanasramam a ‘jungle hermitage’ in the early 30s. No one would call it that today.

I did a pradakshina with Sadhu Om around 1980. We returned to Ramanasramam along Pai Gopuram Street, the road that runs along the back of the temple at the foot of the hill. He told me that when he first came in the 1940s, there were no houses at all on that road. Now it is a busy city street. Kanakammal has written that when she arrived in the mid-1940s, there was still forest between the town of Tiruvannamalai and Ramanasramam.

Going further back, I remember being surprised when Annamalai Swami told me that there was only one bicycle in the ashram in the 1930s, and that it was reserved for trips to town. When he had to go to Adi-annamalai to order stones for the ashram buildings, he would walk the four miles to the granite quarries there to make the order, and then complete his pradakshina by walking the four miles home. As I said, the pace of life here was so much slower in decades gone by. Go back a hundred years and you have devotees such as Akhilandamma and Mastan walking 40 km on pilgrimages to see Bhagavan, serving him for a few days, and then walking home. Natesan, Bhagavan’s barber, used to walk 33 km from Polur on each full-moon day, shave Bhagavan’s head, do a pradakshina, and then walk home again. He carried on doing that monthly walk until he was well into his seventies.

I used to walk everywhere when I first came here, and thought nothing of it. I would go to town once a week to buy everything I needed. I was a bit of a sadhu in those days. I don’t think I wore any footwear for years after I came here, and I generally just wore a dhoti. I was bearded, and in summer I was often bare-chested.

The pradakshina road between the Bangalore Road and the Kanji Road was still just a mud track when I first came. It was a quiet, deserted stretch of road. There were no shops, and even the temples were unoccupied. Some days you could walk for a mile or more without seeing anyone. Full-moons came and went without any crowds. They only started coming in the mid-1990s. We have just had Chitra Purnima, which is now the second biggest full-moon for pradakshinas after Deepam. I hid in my house, but police reports say that up to a million people came and walked around the hill.

I remember one Kartikai Deepam night in the 1970s. It was pouring with rain. I borrowed an umbrella and completed a pradakshina without the rain letting up. Visibility was very poor, but I think I was just about the only person walking that night. Most pilgrims would have done the walk in the morning, but I was still a bit surprised to be so alone in the evening.

The road in front of the ashram was unpaved until at least 1955. That’s hard to imagine nowadays: in the 1950s the main Pondicherry-Bangalore highway didn’t even have a tarmac surface.

I mentioned earlier that the area around Ramanasramam was more or less abandoned in the early 1950s. Then, slowly, slowly, devotees started to trickle back, some to the houses they had left behind, and some to Ramanasramam itself. When I arrived, the ashram had a substantial community of people whose names will be recognised by anyone who has read the Ramanasramam books. Shantammal and Sampurnamma, two of the brahmin widows who worked in the kitchen when Bhagavan was alive, were still there, although they were no longer cooking. Natesa Iyer, another former cook, was looking after the old hall where I spent a lot of my time. He had a big bunch of keys that jangled as he walked because he couldn’t control the shaking in his hands. Viswanatha Swami lived in a room in the hospital block. Two of Bhagavan’s old attendants, Krishnaswami and Sathyananda Swami still lived in huts next to Palakottu. Kunju Swami also had a hut there, but he rented it out. He lived outside the ashram and only became a resident again in the mid-80s. Ramaswami Pillai lived in the Morvi Compound and acted as a kind of caretaker, sweeping up all the leaves and keeping the place neat and tidy. Raja Iyer, the retired postmaster of the ashram, continued to be a resident. He was always happy to show new people around and help them find places to stay, if that’s what they wanted. S. S. Cohen moved back to Ramanasramam just before I arrived. After Bhagavan’s mahasamadhi he had spent about twenty years practising homoeopathy in Vellore.

There were other devotees who lived outside the ashram in their own homes. I have already mentioned Lucia Osborne and Sadhu Natanananda. Feroza Taleyarkhan and Roda McIver both had large houses in which they frequently entertained visiting devotees. Sadhu Om lived in the compound where his samadhi shrine is now located, spending most of his time editing and translating or commenting on the writings of Bhagavan and Muruganar. Annamalai Swami lived his solitary life in Palakottu, and was never seen anywhere else.

Some of the residents were the children of devotees who had been regulars at Ramanasramam in Bhagavan’s day. There was a swami called Jagadish, a Gujarati, who had visited Bhagavan with his father in the 1940s. Jagadish had not been very interested in Bhagavan at that time, but in the 1950s he made up for it by becoming a serious sadhu and imitating Bhagavan’s physical life. He only ever wore a loincloth, and for many years he lived in all the places on the hill where Bhagavan had stayed. He passed away in Ramanasramam in the 1980s while he was meditating in his room. Another second-generation devotee was Prof. Ramachandraiah, a retired history professor who was also the son-in-law of Munagala Venkataramaiah. He lived on one side of the Osborne compound. On the other side there was Dorab Framji, a Parsi whose father had been a regular visitor to Bhagavan in the 1930s and 40s. Chandrasekhar, the son of the man who is referred to in ashram books as ‘Colombo Ramachandran,’ lived in the ashram and took care of the book-packing department. And then, of course, there was Bhagavan’s own family. His nephew, Venkataraman, was the ashram president and his grand-nephew Ganesan looked after most of the day-to-day running of the ashram.

Not all the devotees who built houses in the 1940s managed to pass on their passion for Bhagavan to the next generation of their family. When Narayana Iyer and Dr Hafiz Syed passed away, their houses were either sold or rented out because no family members were interested in living in Tiruvannamalai.

The people I have mentioned so far all knew Bhagavan personally and lived in or near the ashram in the mid-70s. There were plenty of others who, as they had done when Bhagavan was alive, visited for a few days whenever they had the time. Some, such as T. M. P. Mahadevan, Suri Nagamma, Balaram Reddy and K. K. Nambiar, are known to modern-day devotees because of the books they wrote about Bhagavan and his teachings. T. M. P. Mahadevan would often show up with members of the Greek (and occasionally Spanish) royal families. They had become devotees through their association with Mahadevan and Swami Rajeswarananda. Ramanasramam actually had a long and narrow red carpet that was rolled out in the dining room for them to sit on when they came to eat. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India for many years, would also make occasional visits. She never stayed for long, though. She would sit in the old hall for a while, and sometimes stay for lunch. When she left, her government helicopter would do a quick pradakshina of Arunachala.

Though I knew most of these old devotees, I can’t say that I was particularly close to any of them. I enjoyed their company, had pleasant chats with many of them, but I couldn’t say that I was a close friend of any of them. The devotees who instantly attracted me, and with whom I formed a strong bond, came later. They would be Lakshmana Swamy, Annamalai Swami and Papaji.

One of your questions was: ‘Was life at the ashram in those days in any way different to what it is today?’ I would have to say ‘yes’, and in a slightly better way. The people I was in regular contact with in those days were all here for Bhagavan. Nowadays, hundreds of people come here, at weekends, on festival days, and in the cooler winter months, but fewer and fewer seem to be here because of Bhagavan. The ashram and its surroundings are regularly inundated with tourists and sightseers, and even the people who come here for spiritual reasons are often following other teachers who set up temporary bases in Tiruvannamalai. Nowadays, I am pleasantly surprised when I meet new people who tell me they are here solely because of Bhagavan and his teachings. I am happy that Arunachala is bringing so many people here, but I miss the sense of shared purpose that was here in my early years.