Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Shambhu Babu

Picture : Pandit Shambhuratan Dube
The man I was talking about, his full name was Pandit Shambhuratan Dube. We all used to call him Shambhu Babu. He was a poet, and rare in that he was not eager to be published. That is very rare in a poet. I have come across hundreds of the tribe, and they are all so eager to be published that poetry becomes secondary. I call any ambitious person a politician, and Shambhu Dube was not ambitious.


He was not an elected vice-president either, because to be elected you have to at least stand for election. He was nominated by the president, who was just holy cow-dung, as I have said before, and he wanted some men with intelligence to do his work. The president was an absolute cow-dung, and he had been in office for years. Again and again he had been chosen by other cow-dungs.
In India, to be a holy cow-dung is a great thing -- you become a Mahatma; and this president was almost a Mahatma, and as bogus as they all are, otherwise they would not be Mahatmas in the first place. Why should a man of creativity and intelligence choose to be a cow-dung? Why should he be at all interested in being worshipped? I will not even mention the name of the holy cow-dung; it is filthy. He had nominated Shambhu Babu as his vice-president, and I think that was the only good thing that he did in his whole life. Perhaps he did not know what he was doing -- cow-dungs are not conscious people.
The moment Shambhu Babu and I saw each other, something happened; what Carl Gustav Jung calls "synchronicity." I was just a child; not only that, wild too. I was fresh from the woods, uneducated and undisciplined. We had nothing in common. He was a man of power and very respected by the people, not because he was a cow-dung but because he was such a strong man, and if you were not respectful to him, some day you might suffer for it. And his memory was very, very good. Everybody was really afraid of him and so they were all respectful, and I was just a child.
Apparently there was nothing in common with us. He was the vice-president of the whole village, the president of the lawyers' association, the president of the rotary club, and so on and so forth. He was either the president or the vice-president of many committees. He was everywhere, and he was a well-educated man. He had the highest degrees in law, but he did not practice law in that village.
Don't be worried about the noisy devils working outside -- after all they are my disciples. If I initiate devils into sannyas what can you expect? I have been taking all the disciples from Beelzebub. That was the name Gurdjieff used to call the devil, Beelzebub. But I would like to tell Gurdjieff that Beelzebub is losing hundreds of disciples every day. But they have been with Beelzebub for so long that they have learned his technology. I am not against technology, I love it. That is why Beelzebub's disciples find it easy to become my disciples, very easy, because they continue the same work under me that they used to do for ugly Beelzebub.
So don't be worried if I am not. In fact all their noises give such a beautiful background to what I am saying to you... of course, a sort of Picasso background, a little nightmarish. But sometimes nightmares can be beautiful, and one can feel sorry when they are ended. And what they are doing may not sound beautiful, but they are doing my work. Naturally Beelzebub is very angry... they are his disciples and using all his technology for me.
Science is a little devilish. You are medically trained, so in a way you are part of Beelzebub's technology. Forgive those poor fellows -- they are doing their best, and as far as I am concerned, when I am speaking nothing matters.
I was saying -- look at the background, and the silence -- if one knows, then one can use Beelzebub as a servant.
I was telling you about Shambhu Dube, Shambhu Babu. He was a poet, but never published his poetry while he was still alive. He was a great story-writer too, and by chance a famous film director became acquainted with him and his stories. Now Shambhu Babu is dead but a great film has been made using one of his stories, MUGLE AZAM -- "The Great Mogul." It won many awards, both national and international. Alas he is no more. He was my only friend in that place.
Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Ch. 21

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