A baba on a motorbike.

Radhebaba is a special guy. He is a baba, which means he has renounced the world and lives as an ascetic, but at the same time he does great effort to do ecological agriculture in his home village in Moradabad district, an untouristic and uneducated region in Uttar Pradesh. In his twenties he decided to renounce the world and he stayed in Pushkar, Rajasthan for a long time, dealing with tourists/travelers teaching them Yoga. About the hinduistic Maya-concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29), he says that he doesn't claim to see through the illusion (as some other ascetics would claim), but accepts himself and everything we see in the world as a part of it. But he doesn't sit back and watches the illusion revolving all the time! He decided to go back to his birthplace to create consciousness about ecological agriculture, and there is a plan of building a small school in an attempt to give an impulse to education in the region. There are schools, but the pupils are not taught to think independently, and a lot of what they learn is "parrot work". The ashram school would be a place where not only books, but also handicrafts are taught.
When me and Nimrod, a French-Israeli friend, arrived to Moradabad from Delhi by train in april, I noticed that my backpack was gone. In light panic I ran up and down the compartment 5 times, sniffling under and peeking over the train berths, filled with good Indian families. Nothing ofcourse, the bag had long gone. It was put above my head (for those of you who know the famous Indian SL, sleeper class) on the upper berth. I read and slept a bit during the ride. Nimrod had fallen asleep on the facing upper berth. A man was sleeping on that bench when I saw the backpack was not there. He hadn't seen anything. But another man had been lying there before. Anyhow, no one had seen anything. Answering a man who told me I should have watched the bag more carefully Nimrod told him agitated that no Indian loses his bag in such way(?), even if they put it up there. It was gone. Without to much hope we started explaining someone who asked what had happened, in front of the railway police station. In a matter of seconds 10 people had gathered around us. I didn't like that and went into the police office and told the sitting officer in Hindi that my bag was stolen. He asked me to sit (the ever Indian gesture which drives me insane in these situations), and when I -standing- continued explaining what had happened, a bunch of journalists(?) came in. With a notepad in my face, a camera and video camera in near proximity, and a police officer who started laughing, I freaked out. How could the man, who is always there for the people, start laughing with my problem in stead of taking it seriously? In full anger I shouted at him and ran out through the flock of horny news folk. One of them caught my anger in his little snapping box, the bastard. I ridiculed him; I took a chair and invited him to sit. Then I went off to the station master where I found solace. People took me serious, gave me a double folded paper with the thin blue stencil in between and I could start writing my own(!!!) report. I described the bag and summed up what it contained: a digital camera, flight tickets and a bunch of books. Luckily I had all the important documents and money with me in a smaller bag!!! My clear writing kind of knew that the bag wouldn't come back, but was followed by their curious eyes. Especially the list of contents impressed them, but the most asked question was if there was a lot of money in the bag. Luckily I don't carry backpacks stuffed with dollars when I am traveling...
We took the connecting train to our destination, helped by a great chap and some police officers who showed us a seat in the train (we didn't have the time to buy a ticket). Free ride thanks to the stolen bag... joy(yes, ironically meant). When we arrived it was dusk. Radhebaba, in white cloth on black Hero-Honda 'Pulsar' motorbike, told us there are bag stealing gangs operative on the Delhi-Varanasi line.
Unfortunately, there was not much work on the fields in that period, so days consisted mostly of sitting in the small brick building, receiving high guests, red glowing sapphirs in their crown revolving in mist... In the evening the nice old men of the village come to enjoy the milky sky. With these old men I felt completely comfortable. Harmless, without hidden agenda towards me, wondering why there is no roti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roti) or mango in my country and laughing together about my Hindi. We regularly hopped on the motorbike to go to town, I even learned some driving. In town, even places to 60 km or more away from the ashram, people remebered the small article about the Belgian writer whose bag got stolen on the train, published in two newspapers. I had written many books, including "Lonely Planet 2007" and came here to study about Indian culture and handicrafts, which would be the theme of my next book. Even two weeks later this remained one of the first questions when Radhe and me would sit in one or another shop, sipping chai with the shopowner and random visitors, from clay tumblers which are to be thrown to pieces when empty, carefully aimed from the shop through the open street, between the wheels of motorbikes and cyclerikshaws, children's bare running feet and a cow enjoying another piece of juicy cardboard in peaceful satisfaction. The bigger splinters are crumbled to dust by the passing vehicles.
It's about time Radhe pays a visit to Belgium. Bruno is a few years older than me, also comes from Tienen and has completed his MA of Indology in Ghent. Radhe and Bruno have built up the whole ashram together (yatharthyogashram.org). Radhe has been applying for a passport for 2.5 years now refusing to give more money than officially asked for. It tells us a lot about the omnipresent delay and corruption in Indian administration.