Meeting up with Naga Sadhu

That was the first day of the trip, and we were traveling from Mumbai to Adilabad. On the morning when brushing my teeth in the train I noticed this guy, sitting on the window seat. I was wondering if I should talk to him or not, because sadhus always invoke a feeling of fear and disconnect. But I decided to talk to him and he turned out quite friendly.

His name was Vinod, and he was from Amarkantak, where he stayed in the aashram. Aparently he was given as a “Gurudaan” to this ashram and now as a part of ashram he had done various tapas and yogas and now was a naga sadhu. He was a bal brahmachari and intended to remain so for the rest of his life. His knowledge about plants was amazing, he was looking out of the window, and pointing me to various plants and things and was telling me about the medicinal properties about them. Dont know if they were true or not, but he was telling with so much of confidence.

He told me lot of things about this educational system about this life, about what he does during the day and I dont think I can pen down everything here. He even showed me the photo album of his sadhu friends and mostly which had pictures of Gods and naked sadhus. He knew sanskrit and hindi, but was uneducated if we considered with todays terms of educaiton. He had never given any board examinations and that did not matter. But am sure with the knowledge he had, he could easily make a living and was more capable to finding his way around and surviving as compared to most of us who are highly educated.

His language was so pure hindi. He told me lot of stories about God specially shiva and Bashmeshwar. He was so surprised at my lack of knowledge about his guru and about any of the stuff that he knew of. I just felt as if we were seperated out in time, and also totally seperated out in the way we live as well. Hopefully I shall go to amarkanthak and meet him again sometime.

After coming back to Bangalore I read up little bit about the aashram he belonged to. And I found this story about "Tapasvi Baba" who had started this aashram. He left home at age of 12 and wandered and became a Naga Sadhu. He walked and walked around India for so many years before founding this aashram in Amarkantak. I also found his story amazing.

I always knew and heard about these Sadhus, but I always thought they were kind of fake, but meeting Vinod I did feel that there is so much these people know, the knowledge that has come from generation and most of us just disregard.