Bharuch - Borbhatha - Narmada River -
We begin the day at the Seva Ashram Clinic in Bharuch. Gandhi had received people on the second floor of this building where a dental clinic was located at that time. The grounds and building have received a recent restoration and look pristine. Tahir finds the caretaker who unlocks the premises and leaves us on our own to explore at will. The dental clinic is now a museum housing archival photos and enlarged samples of Gandhi’s speeches and letters. Already many of the large photos have been stripped out of their frames due to mold so I understand better the challenges behind maintenance of these sites in India’s climate. Most of the photos and relics are copies of those we have already seen in the museum in Delhi but we are as excited as if we had just discovered something new. We linger, reading and taking photos and simply enjoying the face of Gandhi restoring our energy and commitments. We’re asked to sign the guestbook and are then invited to the office of the principal of the hospital. He greets us personally before quietly carrying on with his paperwork while his secretary brings us tea. On leaving the clinic we search for our shoes among the dozens of pairs of sandals left strewn at the entrance by the incoming patients and visitors.
Our next goal is on the far side of the Narmada River. Gandhi refused to walk the British built Golden Bridge and had crossed by boat, landing at Borbhatha. Erico’s plan was to have Tahir drive us across the Golden Bridge and then walk to Ankleshwar. I was disappointed we would bypass the walk from the river landing but Erico suddenly has a change of heart and after crossing the bridge tells Tahir to drive us towards the river’s south shore to find Borbhatha, the landing spot. The road grows progressively narrow, becoming a dirt track with many forks through banana plantations, guessing right or left turns even with the help of google maps. Tahir is a young man thoroughly enjoying this off-road adventure and it’s too bad he isn’t driving an all-terrain vehicle. Just as it begins to feel like the end of the world we suddenly pull up to a gate with a sign announcing the Om Tapovan Ashram. Someone arrives on foot and we enquire whether we are in Borbhatha. Yes.!Welcome.!We are ushered through the gate then invited to sit and meet with the guru Shree Navagan Swamiji. We are in a very peaceful place with tidy grounds of shade trees and out buildings. We walk over to a canopy where the guru is seated on a swing with bolsters at either side of him for elbow rests. He is drinking tea and reading the newspaper. He is perfectly groomed with a grey beard, open clear eyes, dressed all in pink. He has a quiet energy and we are each invited to kneel before him to receive his blessing and ask him any question on our minds. Erico wants to know how to grow deeper in his photography but as the question might have been lost in translation he then asks about a more personal matter and receives a curious response. My question is also a personal matter and he hands me an envelope containing dried herb grass from the Himalayas. Erico then remarks that he always photographs with his left eye (or was it the right, I forget…) The guru tells him that he has an imbalance in his breathing with the opposite nostril being more blocked. Erico holds the back of his fist up to his nostrils and exhales, saying he feels no difference –then adds he did have surgery on his sinuses a few years back which seems somewhat coincidental to me. We are taken to the meditation hall where the ashram’s children are assembled for some relaxation time. We are there to witness a demonstration of two of their students’ reading with their third eye. I hand my OHIP card to the the younger, blindfolded girl and she proceeds to read aloud my name and other details from it. It is quite evident she has developed the gift. The older student, unusual for developing her skill at a later age, is also blindfolded and able to identify the page of a text being read. We are invited back outside to have tea with the guru. He blesses once more before our journey and off we go. The visit was a curiosity but a detour as we came to learn there is both a Borbhatha and a Borbhatha Bet, the latter being the destination we sought. It is getting late so we speed over the bumpy dirt roads and back across the Golden Bridge to the Plaza Hilton Kohinoor Hotel in Bharuch. We ditch the car and the three of us take off in a tuk tuk to explore the north river bank in search of a boatman willing to ferry us across in the morning. Racing the sunset and fading light, we traverse the terrain beneath the bridge on foot, a mix of mud and grasses and water, peaceful with moored fishing boats, grazing donkeys tended by young boys and water buffalo swimming in the pink hued reflections of the sunset. We agree the mud flats are too wide to consider wading even if we had located a boatman. The decision is made: no crossing the Narmada River by boat.