Depression Chronicles Part 2.. Theatre of the absurd

That last episode with the ‘Baba with the occult powers’ had left all of us a bit shaken up. To top it all my fears were at their peak and paranoia, limitless.
A little back story at this point is a must- my husband had worked as rafter/guide on the Ganga for a couple of years back in the 1990s when rafting had just been introduced as an adventure sport in India. Because of this he had gotten acquainted with a lot of Sadhus who live in Hrishikesh. One such Sadhu was a Ram Pratap Babaji who lived in a kutiya near Tapovan.
We decided to go to Rishikesh to speak to him about my fears and that was the beginning of another roller coaster ride. Though I must admit that I was fascinated by this Babaji the minute I set eyes on him. He was about 70 years old around the time I met him. Though dressed extremely shabbily, in white clothes which were apparently taken off a dead person, he was extremely fit and didn’t have an ounce if extra fat on his body. His kutiya was neat and clean he could climb the big boulders around his kutiya better than a 20year old. It takes very less to impress me so I automatically thought he has to be a great Baba who could teach me a thing or two about how to meditate or give me some esoteric mantra or something to that effect. I wasn’t really thinking about the boori najar angle at that point.
Babaji, that’s what my husband and everyone else there called him, was thrilled to see Pradeep (my husband) after a gap of almost 10 years or more. They got to talking about a lot of other babajis and their stories and I was getting more and more fascinated. We stayed in Rishikesh for a few days and visited him everyday. During those days we told him about my fear and phobia and he said he would ask a tantrik who lived close by. The next day Babaji told us that this ‘tantrik’ would help and asked us to meet him at 10pm the next day near a particular stream. Although I wasn’t liking the sound of this I went along and the so called tantrik we met looked like an out and out crook. He as expected said that there was some lady’s spirit that was after me and that he would call upon none other than Lord Shiva himself to remove the spirit!! And he proceeded to do some ritual which involved fire and speaking out some mantras and speaking really loudly with the so called spirit.He was apparently talking to the spirit and at one point he even told us that Lord Shiva had appeared and we should biw down to him. Right in the middle of all this, he suddenly without warning leaned towards me and ran his hands down my body to remove the spirit which was just so awful that it makes me want to cry even now wondering why a person like me would allow something like this.
Anyway that ended one more ridiculous sojourn with the Babas.
Needless to say nothing changed with regard to my fears.
And to add salt to my wounds Ram Pratap Babaji started calling me up, even after I reached Mumbai, at all odd hours of the day or night, just to have general conversations with me which at times bordered on creepy. The calls increased so much that I had to block his number and that ended my association with him as well!!
As I write this post I realised its been so cathartic writing this. I had swept that entire episode under the carpet but I realise that the inappropriate touch of that fake tantric was a wound I needed to address however small it might have been.
Thank you Swamiji and the whole os.me team for creating this beautiful platform.

For part 1 please go here