Our flying visit to Puttaparthi (home town of Sai Baba, the guru with the magnificent afro) was an amazing experience - one that we'll never forget! Lisa, (my sister's friend - and now ours too) who joined us for a couple of weeks earlier in our trip thorough India, is living in Puttaparthi with her Aunty Joan and they invited us to come and stay with them for a couple of days. We happily accepted, eager to see the inside workings of an ashram (sort of a religious commune) and find out more about Sai Baba, who appears on stickers and posters all over the country. We had arranged to meet Lisa and Joan outside one of the big hotels in Bangalore (3 hours from Puttaparthi) but amazingly we ran into them before then in a chemist, inside a little shopping plaza on a tiny street (in one of India's biggest cities!)! We did a bit of shopping, had some lunch and headed down to Puttaparthi in the 4x4 that Joan had hired (complete with driver) for the day. On the way she explained a little about Sai Baba, of whom she is a devotee, his teachings, his ashram and the community project she's set up for him. The story is that Sai Baba announced at age 14 that he was an immaculate conception and the reincarnation of Shirdi Baba, a saint (who died in 1918) who sat by a fire in a cave and blessed his devotees with holy ash. Sai Baba's devotees believe that he is an avatar (God in human form) and that he performs various miracles, such as manifesting Shirdi's vibhuti (holy ash) in his hands and on pictures of himself (there was a few clumps of it on the pictures on Joan's walls). So anyway, about 10 years ago Joan bought a big chunk of land not far from the ashram and embarked on a project to forest it and create a spiritual retreat for the surrounding villages, eventually setting up a school for young boys to teach them bhajans (sacred Hindu chants). There are 3 other Caucasian women involved in the project who live full-time on the land (Joan has an apartment in town), fiery Italian Maria, gentle Australian Vishni (renamed by a guru in Nepal) and her partner - an English girl who we didn't get a chance to meet). It was a brilliant time to visit as it was the weekend of the month that Joan and co. feed the poor, this time 108 people, as instructed (cosmically, I assume) by Swami, as Sai Baba is known to his followers. First thing in the morning on our first day we trooped down to the ashram with the thousands of devotees and, armed with cushions as sometimes you have to wait for hours for Sai Baba to arrive, found a spot to sit at the very back of the enormous and beautifully ornate v-shaped building where he conducts his twice-daily 'darshan'. The men, all in white, sit on one arm of the 'v', women on the other (which meant that poor Nige had to go in and sit on his own). Apparently you are supposed to sit in silence, but he level never fell below a dull roar as the tens of thousands of people sat and waited patiently... Finally, to the haunting chant of the bhajans and with the excitement of the devotees at fever pitch, Sai Baba, dressed in orange robes, made his appearance - in the back of a golf buggy as he can't walk at present, having broken his hip (to save the world from an unnamed disaster)! Many of the audience, unable to contain themselves, leapt to their feet, hands held high above their head in the prayer position, then sweeping down over their eyes and mouth, to bathe themselves in his energy! The hoards of security staff tried to wrestle them down, but as soon as the buggy reappeared in their line of sight they sprang up again! He didn't do anything besides drive around among the people that day, but he did reward everyone with some prasad (blessed food), in this case a sweet little doughy coconut cake. I for one felt very blessed - I was STARVING by then! From darshan, it was off to the 'the land'. We arrived in our auto-rickshaw and wound our way through the saplings and holes, to eventually arrive at a covered area with grass matting on the floor where an alter had been set up with pictures of Sai Baba, plus a few other Hindu gods and a chair, draped in flowers, where Sai Baba sits (in spirit form) during the ceremony. Maria, Vishni, ourselves and a French girl, who Joan had been chatting to at the ashram that morning and had invited along, sat on the floor and armed with tambourines and mini-cymbals and proceeded to launch into some more bhajans (fairly basic ones though, like, Hare Krish-na! Hare Krish-na! Hare, Hare! Hare Ra-ma! Hare Ra-ma! Hare! Hare!) Due to the fact that Sanskrit is not exactly a language which rolls off the tongue of westerners and also because, frankly, nobody present was particularly gifted in the old vocal department, it sounded closer to a cat-fight than a choir - but Joan pointed out that Sai Baba appreciated it regardless - he dropped a flower from the alter to show his presence! We then had a tour of the land, met the cows and each got to plant a tree (which then had a bhajan sang over it for good luck!) Then, back to the apartment and had a quick nap before Sarbitri, Joan's ever-laughing housekeeper and undisputed boss of the kitchen, arrived with a troop of girls in tow and everything burst into a frenzy of activity as she set them, us, and Maria and Vishni (who had arrived at some point on their little bike) to work peeling, shelling, de-stringing and chopping the masses of vegetables for the biryani (India's answer to fried rice) to feed the 108 poor the next day. We chopped for hours, with a quick break to eat some of the delicious pasta that Maria prepared and then, when we all went off to bed, Sarbitri began the cooking. With good intentions of getting up at 5am, I managed to stagger upstairs to the roof-terrace for 6am, by which point everyone else had arrived and the mountain of biryani had been poured into huge cane baskets on the floor, ready to be packaged up into plastic bags. At some point during the night an alter had been assembled on the terrace and we packaged up in silence (or else we'd invite the wrath of Maria!), listening to more bahjans! Once all the food was packed up, it was placed in front of the alter to be blessed and we all sat around (Nige turned up at this point, feeling very delicate with a dodgy tummy), did some Ommmmms, lit some incense, sang yet more bahjans (much easier on the ear this time as the Indian girls joined in), and then piled into 3 autorickshaws and took off down the little dirt roads into the countryside to distribute the food. It was such a great experience to see the little rural villages and wave at all the kids, however as soon as the autorickshaws pulled up in a little rural village and the villagers realized what the story was, we were literally stampeded by hundreds of people pushing and shouting - a seething mass of bodies and outstretched hands! I escaped (as did Nige and Lisa) and left poor Sarbitri (who had not had a wink of sleep) and the other girls to deal with it! Needless to say, the 108 packets weren't nearly enough and as soon as they had been handed out we beat a hasty retreat! On our return, Lisa gave us a proper tour of the town, which has grown up around the ashram and houses the schools, universities and hospitals (all free of charge) that Sai Baba has established for the poor. Joan took us to a gorgeous little Italian restaurant (run by an Italian lady who has settled in Puttaparthi) for dinner before we jumped onto our sleeper-train, heads spinning! Regardless of what you think of Sai Baba (we're still skeptical), you can't knock his message - truth, right conduct, peace, love and non-violence - and we've come away from Puttaparthi with a huge amount admiration for the hard and worthwhile work that Joan and her volunteers are doing - in fact, we've both decided that we will start to do some community work ourselves once we get to Australia!