2005

Sometimes I feel I am a 50 year old stuck in a 25 yr olds body. I look around and I see ambitious young friends working harder than ever to create a mark for themselves. Trying to create an identity with their degrees and their jobs. Few days ago when I met a few friends after almost a decade they skipped all question to the big one “Where do you work? what do you do?” I really want to tell them the life I have lived till now.

Very few people have ever heard me talk about my life in 2005. I was 18 then and lost. Searching for the usual things; love, god and direction. Like one famous founder of apple I also joined the Hare Krishnas in the search for all these answers. Those 12 months luckily took me on a roller coaster ride of a lifetime. The journey started from Mumbai, barely having arrived from a long distance sailing trip I was on a train to New Delhi with a train ticket. With me were two very devoted ‘devotees’ of the lord. Our plan was simple sleep in between berths and make it somehow to Delhi. To make it worse we were wearing a attire which would make us look even more foolish. Dhotis and a multicolor t shirt on top. Dinner time was spent trying to sell the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ to people who would just stare at us and wonder what has the world come to. The trip from New Delhi to Rishikesh was uneventful and so was the stay.

Our plan from there was pretty simple, somehow make it to Gangotri and then travel along mother ganga ‘till stocks last’. This was my first experience of the Himalayas, its deep valleys and intimidating peaks. However cliche it would sound, I was in love with the heights and equally intimidated. I would spend most of my time in the preaching sessions looking up at the peaks. My first experience where I was made to feel small. Never had I felt small in front of a 60 storey building but the magnanimity of those mountains got the best of my ego. And ego that would be humbled all along this journey again and again and again.

Next stop was Benaras. One of the few places in this planet I can never describe in words. The complex relations between the thousands of variables in our culture was on showcase right there. I would find myself often on the opposite banks just staring at lights and soaking in the magic they call religion. One of the ghats I was told was built by my ancestors. I could not sleep the whole of that night. At 4am in the morning I was up determined and like a film hero I wanted to make that dip historic. Proclaiming to my friends that a Shinde had arrived with my pseudo royal blood. Back in 2005 they did not have a mechanism to remove dead bodies from the water before they reached the ghats. Well the man with the royal blood did the scare of his lifetime that morning. The water was as cold as the water had been in Rishikesh and Haridwar. The brave Shinde dipped his feet in and with two long steps was waist deep in the water. And now with the next dip it was time for Gaurav Shinde to reclaim Scindia Ghat. Submerged with adrenaline at its highest I came back up. To my horror I had also pulled up a hand of a dead body. My reactions were natural to that of a teen, but not at all living up to honor my bloodline. Not even the high mountains or waves as high as a two storey building had ever scared the living daylights out of me as that moment had. God had devised a wicked plan to humble my ego and he was doing a good job.

Luckily the two months were pretty uneventful. Visit to Mathura, Gaya, Puri were as wonderful as they could get. Cleaning the floors of the Jagannath temple in Puri was a part of our self inculcated austerity drive. I still refuse to accept that I had got carried away with the Hare Krishna ideology while trying to sweep floors, dancing through the streets and preaching to people who actually only were listening to me for the food that followed. It was an inner drive beyond reasoning. This year was as epic for my life as it could be and the last months deserve a post for each of those months spent in the search for isolation and freedom.