It’s 1979, and the air in India – city or country, although ‘country’ is not how you and I think of it – is threaded with smoke. It isn’t an illusion. The vast majority of householders cook on wood fires, street corner kitchen- and laundry-wallahs heat their food, water and ‘dumb’ smoothing irons with wood fires, points of danger or obstruction on the road are barricaded not with red and white striped cones but logs burning in 50-gallon barrels. The air is smoky, and fragranced with a sub-note of decaying organic and faecal matter.
We are in Benares – now Varanasi – a small group of young English and Australian novices, I suppose you could call us, newly initiated into the difficult, disciplined and highly regulated life of the Raj Yogi, as taught and administrated through the Brahma Kumaris Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya (ब्रह्मा कुमारी ईश्वरीय विश्व विद्यालय), or – as far as I understand the translation – the Godly World Spiritual University of the Virgin Daughters of Brahma.
We are on a ‘Promotional Tour’ round India to demonstrate that The Knowledge has reached beyond the borders of Bharat (ancient India) and picked up a few souls in white bodies. Most of us have arrived at this radically rule-driven vehicle of enlightenment, in our own countries, by the familiar woo-woo hippy path of meditation, hatha yoga, chanting, reading, experimenting with drugs of varying psycho-active impact. Uniquely, and by chance (although there’s no such things as chance, right?) I myself got into it at the BKs’ mountaintop global headquarters in Mount Abu, a hill station in Rajasthan midway between Delhi and Bombay (Mumbai). Once I had got past the alien teaching methods and ‘naïf art’ tableaux depicting the state of the world, the cycle of time, the nature of soul and God etc etc, and become absorbed in the power and truth of the experience, I was to learn that this signified unusual ‘luck’.

‘You are a Soul’, the naïf art of the 1970s Raja Yoga message

My Man and Soul Brother Garfield (we are all soul brothers and sisters, taught to see only the soul in the centre of the forehead, ignoring the body) is black. Or at least, his body is black; his Trinidadian parents were of the Windrush generation. He came to live in North London in 1958 at the age of 4. This, in 1979, for the adherents to the BK principles – 99% of them Indian outside India, and obviously all Indian within its borders – makes him exceptionally exotic. Leave aside for a moment the deeply racist attitudes of many, if not most, Indians (is it racist to say so?), which, predictably, are at violent odds with the principle of ‘soul consciousness’ – look at the soul in the forehead, not the body. Not only is he English and a Londoner, he is of an ethnic group which the white-sari clad BK sisters had signally failed to attract. In our ‘class of 77’ – of the 25-odd westerners who have been drawn in to commit body, mind and soul, there are but two souls in black bodies.

Garfield is a bass player, agrees with me on the eternal status of Jimi Hendrix, has a bassist’s dry, wry sense of humour, and a Londoner’s gift for ‘verbals’. We play music together and do jokes in a variety of accents, skating on the thin ice of disrespect.
Translated to the rarefied atmosphere of the Benares (Varanasi) Raj Yoga Centre – or even the London one – this apparent irreverence could spill over into the occasional prank.
Benares is a city, more than almost any other, that carries the full glory and ghastliness of thousands of years of Indian spiritual tradition. Happening now – this is where the ghoulishly beautiful funeral ghats fringe the Ganges: flights of steps leading down to the placid waters, where bodies burn on pyres 24 hours.

The power of our newly embarked spiritual journey aside, Garf and I (BK Garfield, sorry) are fascinated by the traditional Indian rituals, many of which are ignored and discounted as ‘bhakti’ (prayer and devotional behaviours) by the BKs. Their reforming zeal reminds me of for instance, the Protestant revolt against the corrupt practices of the mediaeval Catholic Church, or the ascetic disdain of the 17^th-century Puritans for the perceived laxity of Anglicanism.
Daily morning ‘class’ at the Centre begins at 6am. BK routine is rise at 3:30, meditate at home or wherever from 4-4:45, have a shower or bath and a cup of tea, and arrive at the centre for more meditation and teaching class by 6. Garfield and I look at each other before bed and hatch a plot to get down to the river before the sun comes up in the morning. It is playing hooky, but for the very best reasons. We may or may not get back in time for class.
The dusk of pre-dawn is smoky. We find a tuk-tuk guy and thump and rattle down to the river, adding a cloud of 2-stroke exhaust smoke to the grey air.
The light is lifting and taking on a golden tinge. There’s activity, but everything is quiet. People move on the steps. Quietly. We find a boat guy: ‘Will you take us on the river please?’ क्या आप हमें नदी पर ले चलेंगे? क्या आप हमें नदी पर ले चलेंगे?
… and as the nose of the boat pushes out on the tranquil wide wide water, the sun wakes up the earth and throws its glow down the golden ribbon of river and around Garfield’s head.
We got into mild trouble for missing class. I can’t remember a thing about it.