Today, after the lunch I accompany Premal to Sanskrit class. The teacher, an old man, takes no money for his services, but asks that his students bring “Prasad” sweet foods that have been blessed and then are shared out to the students. I take a packet of biscuits along as my contribution to the class. We arrive at the post office in Ram Julha. The class takes place in a room adjoining the main service window. I step through the mouth of the entry way and it as if I have entered into an alternate reality. The class has already begun when we arrive. Following Premal's lead, I kneel and bow before this man, and extend my small offering which disappears into a pile of treats beside him. I take a seat on the last available cushion and someone hands me a board for my writing pad. We are a small group of nine international students, largely from Germany and Japan. The opening prayer is about to commence. Swami G, as he is endearingly called, begins a litany of prayers, and the established students join in the refrain. after this, small silver plates and tea cups are laid out before him; he generously deposits a handful of biscuits and sweets on each plate, and pours hot chai to the brim of each cup. The prospect of having to consume this volume of sweets and milky tea each time I attend the class, is daunting even for me, a lover of sweets. We eat in a respectful silence and when everyone is finished, one of the students gathers up our disused plates and cups. Taking a basin of water she goes out to the steps of the riverbank to wash the dishes. It is a privilege fiercely guarded by his prized students.
Swami G is a diminutive man of approximately five feet in height, with a very slender frame. He wears large framed glasses with lenses the thickness of a magnifying glass. They dwarf his face as he places them on the bridge of his nose to peer at the notebook I have handed him. He painstakingly writes the first letters of the alphabet across the top of the sheet and scores the page with columns. He then sounds out the letters and prompts me to imitate him. After three repetitions, he is satisfied with my pronunciation, and I sit down opposite him to copy the symbols he has drawn on the page. There is silence in the room, broken only when a student approaches him. he in turn dutifully scrawls additional words into our note books. The whir of the ceiling fan is the only natural sound in the room;it is a metronome measuring time, in an epoch of timelessness.
I am eight years old all over again, and I feel a rush of pleasure each time that I present my paper for review and there are no corrections. An hour and a half lapses, before Premal indicates it is time to go. Again we kneel before the old man and bow as we take our leave. He presses a few sweets into our hands hands and nods his acknowledgement. I tell Premal that I am in love with Swami G, she simply returns a knowing smile. She is leaving India in the coming week, and wants to purchase gifts to take home with her. She leads me to the near by shops where I purchase a dress and a shawl; I don't need any more clothes, but I can't resist, and the price justifies my indulgence. We head back to the ashram clutching our purchases, arriving just in time for evening meditation.
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