Week 7, Guest Entry from Chris

This is an excerpt from Chris’s notes on facebook, which he wrote while he was here last week. It’s about out favorite local hang out, the German Bakery, and all the people that hang out there. I have appended it with a photo of some of our favorite ‘weirdos’ at the German Bakery:

The German Bakery is a bit of an institution in Pune, being the main hangout for backpackers, ageing hippies and devotees of the Osho ashram around the corner. I have no idea where it got it's name - there is nothing certifiably German about it. Maxi, Susan and Jenny had already primed us on a few of the weirdos who hang out there, so we spent a good morning drinking chai, reading our books and trying to match faces to descriptions ("Creepy Indian guy", "Creepy American guy with headphones", etc.)

That afternoon was the scene of my first encounter with Rama, an ex-devotee of the Osho ashram who became disillusioned with the recent excessive commercialisation, and now spends most of his time in Koragaon Park, imparting his wisdom and trying to find similarly open-minded girls with whom to explore the myriad mysteries that the universe lays before us - mainly via the medium of sex. Rama describes himself as the happiest man alive, and is only too happy to share his secrets of happiness, but he doesn't think of himself as a guru. If anything, he says, he is an anti-guru -- or perhaps a guru-fucker.

Life, you see, is an energy, and that energy originates in the mind (and can be replenished by eating food, but only the right kinds of food) and flows downwards, past your heart and stomach, and leaves your body in an explosive spurt that leaves you devoid of all energy, and in need of sustenance both physical and spiritual. This, as Rama describes is, is preceded by "the flower becoming the banana". There were accompanying hand gestures, in case the metaphor wasn't obvious to me at this point. When the energy has left the body the banana is crucified, like Jesus (accompanying throat-slitting motion). But, like Jesus, the banana is always able to rise again - though presumably it doesn't take the full three days. I'm really only paraphrasing here - our conversation was much longer and more convuluted, and made difficult by Rama's thick accent and the rain thudding against the tin roof of the German Bakery, so I wouldn't be surprised if I missed some aspects of his Buddhist-cum-hedonist-cum-Christian philosophy. But I think I got the thrust.


These are "Creepy guy with the beard and ponytail" and "Creepy american guy with headphones".