More meetings at the crossroads
Since I just wrote about how you meet interesting people... Just before leaving Montreal, I made contact with an old friend from my teenage years--the first one, in fact, since I returned to Canada in 1985. She wrote me a few days ago to tell me that a friend of hers from Montreal was coming to Rishikesh, and so we set up a meeting. This woman, Maila Shanks, first came to India in 1996 and lived in Vrindavan for 7 or 8 years, staying at the Neem Karoli Baba ashram on the Parikrama Marg, not too far from Ananda Dham, where many Narayan Maharaj disciples stay. She learned Brijbhasha, mostly by ear, and did a lot of seva and things. Then a few years ago she got married to a Kashmiri who owns a hotel on the beach in Goa, Meems Arabian Sea . Their season in Goa has finished and they are in Rishikesh for a bit of a spiritual refresher before she goes to Canada for the first visit in a couple of years. Maila (Neem Baba ki Maya) came by yesterday and we had an interesting talk about life in In...