66 THE WEEK^ • JULY 29, 2018
COVER STORY
TRAVELHe told me he wakes up at 4am, meditates till
7am, has breakfast, meditates from 8:30am to
12pm, has lunch followed by another session of
meditation till 5pm, then goes for a walk or reads
a book till dinner and later, meditates till 11pm.
Th en he asked me with a twinkle in his eyes: “Do
you think I’m stupid to live like this?”●Th e last baba
of HampiWE LEFT THE clamorous cityscape of Bengalu-
ru. Internet cafes turned into straw-hatted chai
shops. Th e tap-tapping of ponytailed women out
on their evening run became the rustle of sun-
drenched paddy fi elds. You can never pinpoint
the exact moment when the world rearranges
itself; it is one of the mysteries of nature. Long
car rides have a meditative eff ect on me. I might
not be a good observer, but I am a professionaldaydreamer, and by the time we reached Hampi,
I had won several awards, climbed the Kanchen-
junga and acted in a movie opposite Benedict
Cumberbatch, who complimented me on my
beauty and poise.
Hampi rudely awakened me from my tete-a-
tete with Cumberbatch, and I got my fi rst sight
of the land of endless boulders stretching into an
unfathomable infi nity. Th ere is almost purpose
in their randomness, and your mind cannot but
be drawn to the designer behind the design. As
the Nobel prize-winning writer John Steinbeck
once said: “Everything in the world must have
design, or the human mind rejects it. But in
addition, it must have purpose, or the human
conscience shies away from it.”
Ramaswamy baba, 70, would have been
pleased with that insight, for he was of a philo-
sophical bent of mind. We met him meditating
under a mosquito net on Bazaar Road near the
Vijaya Vittala temple. Th e net falling in soft folds