From Mauritius to Dehra Dun with devotion, spirituality and love

From Mauritius to Dehra Dun with devotion, spirituality and love

By Rashme Sehgal

Dehradun, Oct 12

Mr Datta was a deeply spiritual man. His full name was Banoouduth Boolauky but everyone knew

him as Mr Datta. Religiosity defined his persona. It was the moving force of his life. Everything else

was of secondary importance. Nothing else mattered to him, neither money nor personal comforts.

And because of these deep- rooted religious impulses, he acted in a manner that most of us, leading

our mundane and avaricious lives, could not understand. He left his country Mauritius on a spiritual

journey to India, the motherland of many Mauritians.

It was only after his death on December 14, 2024, when I began putting the pieces of his life

together, that I was able to understand him in a fuller, more comprehensive manner. Tall, good

looking, well educated, from a comfortably off family, with a good job bank rolled by the World

Bank, he once had everything. But he gave it all up to start an ashram in Mauritius. He donned

orange robes and became Swami Vimarshananda. Vimarshananda was one of the nine saints who

led a life of exceptional purity and was a great teacher. Mr Datta was both.

He sold the ancestral house which he had inherited from his father and along with a Yogini, Shubh

Veer, bought land by the sea shore and built an ashram. In a moment of distress, he once showed me

black-and-white photographs of the beautiful double storied colonial bungalow he once owned. The

property bought jointly was called ‘La Fayette’.

His decision to sell his house and move into an ashram sent shock waves through his large family

who could not understand how anyone could do something so foolish. But that was Mr Datta. He

was following an inner trajectory over which he seemed to have little control.

Even more startling for the members of his family was his decision, some years later, to leave this

ashram in which he had invested so much time and money and which had become a success, to go

into self-exile. To leave his beloved country and settle down in the tiny village of Ganeshpuri in

Maharashtra made no sense at all. He did so, he claimed, because he wanted to do `seva’, work for

the poor and downtrodden.

This was a decision which I, when I first met him in Ganeshpuri in 2006, could not fathom. To give up

living on the beautiful island of Mauritius and settle for a dusty and hot village, where he could

neither speak the language nor understood the psyche of the people, seemed completely crazy.

But that was Mr Datta to the core. He had come to Ganeshpuri hoping he could live in the Gurudev

Siddha Peeth (GSP) ashram and spend his life doing ‘seva’, meditation and prayer. Alas, that was not

to be. The rule in GSP in those days was that foreigners had to pay for their stay in dollars. Mr Datta

received a meagre pension of Rs 5000 in Mauritian rupees during the early nineties. That was not

enough money to cover his stay inside the ashram.

And so, he started living in a humble accommodation in the village. It must have been a very trying

period for him but I never once heard him complain. Within the first few weeks of his stay there, he

began to develop a close spiritual connection with Swami Nityananda , the presiding deity of

Ganeshpuri. Swami Nityananda had moved to Ganeshpuri in the 1930s and taken samadhi there in

1961 but his presence permeates Ganeshpuri to this day. Mr Datta began to believe, as do all of us,

that Bade Baba or plain and simple Baba, as he is lovingly called in the village, had ordained that he

come here and do ‘Tapas’. Saints gather seekers around them as do flowers the honey bee. Bade Baba was no exception and Mr Datta was just one more seeker who arrived in this place of pilgrimage to do his ‘Tapas’. He did so with a fierce intensity for over two decades. His adoration and faith in Swami Nityananda remained unshaken and truth be told, Swami Nityananda took the utmost care of him.

The incident I will retell may be difficult to believe but is reflective of how great masters look after

their disciples. Their ways are mysterious and it is only over a period of time that one begins to

understand their wisdom. In the December of 2011, as a journalist I was sent to cover the UNFCCC

conference being held in Durban in South Africa. This meet was no different from the many

conferences I had attended across different countries. The one distinct image that I carried home

from my stay there was the Sunday I spent at the Durban beach. I remember being swept away by

the beautiful aquamarine colours of the Indian Ocean in South Africa, quite unlike the grey and dull

looking waters of the same ocean that lap at the shores of Mumbai.

Eighteen months after my visit to Durban, I had a dream where Bade Baba appeared before me. He

stood tall, like the statue of Hanuman that we see straddling across many of our cities, and was

standing on a vast ocean of deep water. Its many shades were similar to the colours I had seen

lapping at the shores of Durban city. Bade Baba indicated to me in no indistinct terms that I needed

to look after his disciple. He was alluding to Mr Datta. I remember muttering that the man had no

money but by then Swami Nityananda had disappeared.

I have little understanding of spirituality and can hardly be called a ‘bhakt’ in any sense of the word

but I do know that if a guru gives a directive, then one has to follow it. I had met Mr Datta for the

first time in 2006 when I, along with my daughter Diva, came to stay at a guest house in Ganeshpuri.

He was a tall, good- looking grey haired gentleman dressed in a white kurta and pyjama who came

across as being extremely kind hearted.

The guest house belonged to a Gujarati lady called Yogini who had gone for a short stay with her son

in Thane and had asked Mr Datta to take care of the guest house in her absence. He was the ideal

choice for the task. He was fluent in French, English and had picked up Hindi as well and since hers

was the only guest house in those days, a large number of foreigners flocked there. Mauritians are a

gregarious, outgoing people and Mr Datta was no exception. He built up a close friendship with a

Swiss banker Hans Peter. He had been nicknamed `a banker with a heart’ because of the charitable

program his friends and he were bankrolling to provide homes and education to the children of

widows in Ganeshpuri.

Yogini was a big large-hearted woman who loved feeding people. She provided clean rooms and ran

an excellent kitchen which was a key attraction for visitors looking for cheap but attractive

accommodation. She had grown up in a conservative Gujarati household and knew little English. Mr

Datta helped her with all her paper work and much else. Although she used of his services, she did

not understand him at all. Like most well off Indians, she had contempt towards those who

belonged to the lower socio-economic strata. Foreigners do not have this kind of unspoken disdain.

Many years later Mr Datta remarked ruefully, `Yogini never understood the kind of person I was

because at heart she remained a hard-core business woman.’

By 2017, when Mr. Datta had a more settled establishment with a small dining table and a fridge,

he invited Hans Peter to stay and dine with him. Hans Peter would spend a few weeks every winter

in Ganeshpuri.

Every evening when I dropped in at Yogini’s place to read the daily Times of India, she would

lament,` Mr Datta has snatched my customer’.

It was impossible for Yogini to understand that Mr Datta had done no such thing. Her rates had sky

rocketed and so her old- time customers sought out cheaper accommodation in the village. Hans

Peter was no different. Most of the locals believed foreigners were gold mines who could be

extracted endlessly. Mr Datta never once asked Hans Peter to pay for those meals though he was

free to make a contribution if he so desired.

The highlight of the year for Mr Datta was when Peter and wife Beatrice, took him and Gita, a

Ganeshpuri resident who helped implement their charitable programs, to a nearby destination. One

year they went to visit Mahabaleshwar. On another occasion, they went to the Ajanta Ellora caves

and during one winter, Mr. Datta travelled to the sea coast to Kanhangad where Swami Nityanand

used to live before making his way to Ganeshpuri.

I kept running into Mr Datta on my visits. In one of our chats, he mentioned he was finding

Ganeshpuri very hot in the summer months and was looking for a place to stay in the hills. I had a

place in Dehra Dun which was kept under lock and key because I had a full- time job in Delhi and did

not have the time or wherewithal to run two establishments.

It was around this time that Babaji directed me to take care of him and so I arranged for him to

come to Delhi from where I escorted him to Dun. The house was opened up after a gap of several

years. Mr Datta must have faced teething problems in settling down in this new town. After all his

base was Ganeshpuri but he never complained. Perhaps it was a relief for him to be living in a house

with a garden surrounded by fruit trees and not be cooped up in a congested flat.

His routine whether in Dehradun or Ganeshpuri never varied. Mornings were devoted to meditation,

yoga and house work which included cooking. In Ganeshpuri, the afternoons were devoted to

teaching English to adults and children across different age groups. His students included a scooter

driver, a trainee electrician and of course many, many village boys. They would troop into his flat

every day and I think he enjoyed their company as they did his. He never charged them for these

classes.

In Dehra Dun I prodded him to start holding Yoga classes. But not one of his students, however

affluent, ever bothered to pay him and he himself was incapable of asking anyone for money. One

of his students, Devender, loves to recount how he came to Mr Datta for meditation classes. Being a

student, he was apprehensive about how much he would have to pay. Every day he would ask, ` How

much do you charge?’ to which Mr Datta would reply, ` We’ll see. Learn to focus your mind. That is

more important.’

After a fortnight of these classes, Mr Datta had to leave for Ganeshpuri. When Devender asked him

yet again how much he should pay for those fifteen days, he was told, ` Whatever for? We have not

even completed one month of meditation.’

And that in essence was the man. He had no money but even when it was being offered, he did not

take it. It simply was not important for him.

Initially, he knew no one in Dehra Dun. I therefore suggested that he spend his mornings at the

Songsten Tibetan library close to my house. The library’s architecture is inspired by Yumbu Lhakar

(yum bu lha mkhar), Tibet’s oldest known building, popularly known as Tibet’s first castle, predating

the era of Songsten Gampo. A beautiful place built on a hillside overlooking the Sahastradhara river,

the library boasts of a huge collection of rare Tibetan manuscripts and audio recordings of the

teachings of Tibetan masters. Mr Datta took to spending a couple of hours there each day.

 

Gradually, Dehra Dun began to grow on him and he began to love exploring the city. He loved taking

walks along the main Sahasradhara road which had a canopy of pilkhan, sal and silver oak trees

growing on both sides. Pilkhan is a magnificent tree with a wide canopy. It provides shade and was

home to all manner of birds and insects. It broke his heart when these trees, many years later, were

chopped down to broaden an already broad road.

On Sunday mornings, he would hop into the city bus which took him to Parade Ground in the centre

of the city. A make shift bazaar would come up here every Sunday selling clothes, shoes and

household items at threadbare rates. In Ganeshpuri, he used to wear a white kurta pyjama but in

Dehra Dun he decided he was more comfortable wearing jeans and a T shirts and so bought himself

a small wardrobe of second- hand clothes.

The Dehra Dun of 2012 was very different from the Dehra Dun of today. Back then, we could see the

Mussoorie hills stretching out on a stately line outside our house. A majestic sun could be seen rising

from the hills that rose about the Sahastradhara river front and every evening, the western sky

would be set aflame with a magnificent sun set. The view of the mountains has now been replaced

by the huge housing complex that goes by the name of Pacific Golf Estate.

Dehra Dun was not just about beautiful sights and sightings. It could boast of excellent bakeries

some of which remain unmatched to this day. After much persuasion, he agreed to visit Sunrise

Bakery located in Ghosi gali, one of the bylanes off the arterial Paltan Bazaar and not far from

Parade Ground. A minimalist, he finally got around to spending money on cake rusks, ribbed Atta

biscuits and freshly baked bread. Ganeshpuri had no bakeries and its residents had to make do with

two grocery shops. I remember being surprised to learn that a daily commodity such as bread was

not being sold there.

He also spent much time in the garden of my house. He was an avid gardener with green fingers.

Rangers College was located next to Parade Grounds and he took to visiting its nursery in order to

buy seedlings and saplings from there. He however found it difficult to plan a garden and everything

was grown in a haphazard manner. He hated my insistence on weeds being removed as he felt

weeds helped to bind the soil. His funda was to try and get plants free of cost and then plant them

wherever he fancied. Fortunately, Rangers College was a government-run institute and its rates for

seedlings and saplings were reasonable.

I often fumed at his lack of style and aesthetics. Not one to take kindly to criticism, his standard reply

after I had vented my spleen was, ` I’ll remove all of them if that is what you want.’ He used to spend

his time reading about gardening and agriculture and was very taken in by hanging gardens.

Another characteristic of his was that he could not throw away even a scrap of paper. His mantra

was that everything could be reutilised. He had read that cardboard made good manure so sheets of

cardboard were dug into the soil. He also believed that not a drop of water should be wasted and so

RO waste water would be collected in large utensils and then used to water the plants.

He planted a gourd called `chau chau’ which is widely grown in Mauritius but the conservative

Garhwali family that lived as domestics on the premises refused to eat.

What gave Mr Datta a great deal of happiness was to be taken to another landmark of Dehra Dun,

the iconic Rajpur road where were located the ashrams of revered saints including Anandmayi Ma

and Swami Ramakrishna. Both these ashrams are located on the foothills of the Himalayas and in the

evenings, the twinkling lights of Mussoorie can be seen from there. Sadly, like most of Dehra Dun,

the surrounding houses on Rajpur road have been sold to builders who have wasted no time in

pulling these single storey, residential homes and replaced by commercial structures adding to the

noise and pollution in the city.

Upkeep of a large property is an expensive business. I had kept a chowkidar to look after the house. I

had his salary to pay plus all kinds of maintenance costs. I therefore decided to rent a portion of the

house that would help in meeting growing expenses. I also had three rooms built on the first floor.

The construction workers were only too happy to take the chau chau after completing their day’s

work. Mr Datta decided to make pakoras for these workers as a New Year gift. I have never seen the

labourers look so delighted in their life!

He was self- sufficient, happy, doing everything himself including his cooking, dish washing, washing

of clothes and ironing and of course shopping. He must have missed Mauritian food because he

would turn nostalgic about the way biryani was cooked back home. He made excellent biryani but

this involved a great deal of effort. As he grew older, he stopped cooking the more complicated

Mauritian dishes.

Something of a handy man, he loved tinkering around the house. However, since he kept everything,

one of my first jobs on every visit to Dehra Dun was to clear up the clutter. Old pipes, old wires, old

bottles, etc, etc. His justification was, ` I don’t believe in waste.’’

Bone honest in his handling of money, it was obvious that being a sadak had taught him discipline. It

also taught him self-effacement. Despite possessing a great deal of understanding and insight into

spiritual matters, he seldom spoke on these subjects. Several hours were spent watching J.

Krishnamurti and Sadhguru videos. In Ganeshpuri, where he went every winter, he and his close

friend the late Dr Shirodkar spent a lot of time discussing the nuances of his teachings.

He seldom spoke about his past. Not once did he inform me that he came from a large family and

was one amongst thirteen brothers and sisters. Nor about the fact that he had been a swami in

Mauritius. On a couple of occasions I did ask him why he had chosen not to get married. His reply

was, ` I was a very convoluted person. I was introduced to a few women but somehow that did not

work out.’

His sister-in-law, Liseby. informed me after his death that he had been in love with a woman but she

was arrogant. He realised she would not have taken care of his mother in the way that he would

have liked. The relationship broke up. Maybe it was this heartbreak that led him to spend more time

in meditation and yoga.

His family was not at all happy when he sold the family house to a cousin who in Liseby’s words,

`enjoyed this sale as a sign of his superiority over the family’. Among his last wishes was if he could

get the house back in exchange for his land but the cousin’s family was not interested. `The family,

especially his brothers and sisters believed that he had been `manipulated’ and never forgave him

for selling the family house.

Mr. Datta was a simpleton at heart, because he allowed the ashram manager Mr Verma to ease

him out of the ashram, something he had worked so hard to set up. He gave power of attorney of

his land to Mr Verma who was to ensure that his pension reached every month. It was only when he

returned to Mauritius in 2023 that he realised that he was being cheated on that score and that the

full amount of pension was not being given to him.

I must confess that Mr. Datta was extremely supportive towards me. He looked after the house and

also kept a stern eye on the tenants. Whenever I visited Dehra Dun, I would follow my usual routine

of writing freelance analytical pieces for dailies and online publications. I would make him read my

articles before I sent them off for publication and he never refused even though I am sure he found

them very boring. He soon fell into a routine — nine months of the year in Dehra Dun and three

winter months in Ganeshpuri.

During the Covid lockdown I was for a long time stuck in Dehra Dun. It was a quiet peaceable time

for us. I kept busy researching and writing. However, Mr. Datta must have found the Covid worries

and the isolation unnerving. Post Covid, he had a nervous breakdown. He would start crying and

hardly ate anything. One day, he came out of his room, announced that he was leaving, showed me

an empty wallet to assure me that he was not taking anything with him. Before I knew it, he had

opened the gate and walked out.

Terrified that he might just disappear into the blue, I sent my domestic Rajni and her brother Raman

after him. Fortunately, he returned safe and sound two hours later, lay down in his room and went

to sleep. This happened a few weeks after the Covid lockdown had ended. I decided to ask a lady

psychiatrist to visit him in the house. She was an attractive looking lady and Mr Datta had a

comfortable conversation with her which continued over lunch and coffee. She went away three

hours later with a fat fee and a contented smile.

I realised later that what Mr Datta missed was having ‘Sadhaks’ around with whom he could meditate

and discuss theological and philosophical matters. That was his life. Once I asked him to pray for my

family to which he replied, ` I’m a ‘Sadhak’. I pray for the whole of mankind.’ On another occasion, he

was doing his yoga when he had a kriya and his arm began moving reflexively for he had no control

over its movement. Scared, I went and held it to which he said, ` You should not disturb me. It is a

kriya, it will pass.’

In 2022, some dog lovers contacted me asking if I could provide a home for an unwanted female pup

whose name was Tunu. My apprehensions were soon put to rest because Mr Datta doted on her and

spoiled her silly. She could do no wrong and was even allowed to sit on the dining table!! During our

trips to the vet, on two occasions, Tunu vomited on Mr Datta who did not utter one word of protest.

In January 2023, Mr Datta did me a great favour by asking me to buy a small flat in Ganeshpuri that

someone was in a hurry to sell. I used to spend six to eight weeks in winter at Ganeshpuri but I had

never thought of buying a property there.

`It is going very cheap. It’s a distress sale,’ he informed me.

I had inherited a small sum of money from the sale of my parent’s house. I bought the flat and

renovated it on a shoe-string budget. An Indian style bathroom was converted to the western style,

two geysers were added as were some other fixtures. We bought some plants from a nearby nursery

all of which were stolen once Mr Datta returned to Dehra Dun.

I had no idea about his religious past. On August 8, 2022, Yogini Shubh Veer passed away in

Mauritius. It must have been heartrending for him but he never spoke about it. Some weeks later,

when I got down from the train at the Dehra Dun railway station, a very dishevelled and unhappy

looking Mr Datta arrived to pick me up. Grief stricken is the word that would describe his state.

That evening he asked me whether I would write about a woman saint who had died in Mauritius

but whose body, many weeks after her death, had not deteriorated. She had been buried along with

her German Shepherd dog whose name was Jet and his body too had remained intact. My reply that

no one in India would be interested in this news must have disappointed him but he let it go.

 

His nephews informed him that following the Yogini’s death, the manager Dr Verma was trying to

usurp his share of the land in La Fayette and he should return to Mauritius to ensure that he did not

lose his hold on this prime property. And so, twenty years after he came to India, in February 2023,

Mr Datta returned to his homeland. I was surprised when he informed me that he was staying with a

nephew.

`Why not your own home?’ I asked him.

It was then that he told me that he had sold his home and moved to an ashram. I was taken aback

because I had believed I had known him very well but there was much that he had not revealed to

1. Going back to Mauritius allowed him to visit his old school, the book store from where he

bought books in Port Louis and also to reconnect with his family. He went to the community centre

where he had worked and he was delighted to find how transformed the place had become. A new

building, a snooker table, a swimming pool and many other facilities had been provided for the

common citizens. He returned with a lot of photographs which he shared with his students

expressing his unhappiness at how we lacked similar centres at the village level.

In 2024, he went back to Mauritius for a six month stay as this enabled him to get the old age

pension being given to Mauritian citizens and also to sell his land. He had his ashram land

demarcated and made a will under the guidance of another nephew who was an attorney. Again,

not once did he inform me of the contents of the will, nor did I ask.

He returned in September to have a hernia operation. And that was the beginning of a horror story

for both of us. The hernia operation went off well but other complications developed. It turned out

he had myeloma. He was put on dialysis and his condition was deteriorating. Three months after his

arrival, he declared that he wanted to return to his own country. But he also wanted to see

Dehradun once before he left for Mauritius. I wish I had taken him. I was convinced he would get

better and once that happened, I would take him there.

For him the thought of returning to Mauritius without having paid a visit to Dehradun proved

extremely traumatic. He sent me this Whatsapp message:

`Its lost, my Paradise is lost.

I will never taste my jackfruit which I grew. Oh my god.

The guava, the avocado, the lime….

I’ll never see the boundary wall again.’

I wrote him this note before he left. `The most precious of men. The most understanding. So

affectionate, so kind hearted, so helpful. For me, more precious than any Kohinoor. Dehra Dun will

never be the same. For me, you were the embodiment of Dehradun.’

My last conversation with Mr. Datta was on December 11 was when I asked him how he was doing.

He replied, ` Not good.’

On December 12, his nephew informed me that he had gone into a coma. I drove to our small

satsang centre in Tun Valley in Dehra Dun and prayed to Swami Nityananda to end his suffering and

give him moksha. He died in Mauritius two days later. For his final journey, he was dressed in an

orange kurta and pyjama. We performed a hawan for him the next day in Dehradun.

In January, a second hawan was performed for him in Ganeshpuri. I had deliberately kept it for a

Sunday to allow his former students to attend. Not one of them showed up. Members of our

 

Nityanand housing society where he had lived all these years were also invited. Barring one family,

no one came. I found that surprising because he had spent twenty years in this town. Hans Peter

also had a hawan performed for him in February. Four of us attended it and it went off quietly.

Everyone in the village speaks so highly of him and yet people on whom he had bestowed hours of

his life could not find time to attend his final prayers. I suppose that is the way of the world. Our

lives do not end with a bang but with a whimper. We have little appreciation for those who are not

in the business of acquiring wealth or high status. But there are a few people who form a deep

relationship with the Other and it is this Other that sustains them through their life.