As long as space endures,
As long as sentient beings remain,
Until then, may I too remain,
To dispel the miseries of the world.
—Shantideva, eighth-century Indian mystic
Smallpox eradication in India is a fool’s errand. We should not waste time on such a stupid idea,” said Dr. Jankowicz,† a director of WHO’s communicable disease division in Geneva. “You may be able to eradicate smallpox from a small country like Nepal or Sri Lanka, or an authoritarian place like Burma, or a rich country like the United States, but you will never do it in India or Bangladesh. Worldwide eradication of smallpox is impossible. Never, never, never. If that ever happens, I will eat a Land Rover tire.”
Nicole told this story over and over to motivate us and help us all remember what we were up against. Jankowicz was one of the leading WHO skeptics, one of many with whom D. A. Henderson had to battle daily. But he was not the only one; many thought smallpox eradication in India would be impossible.
Their skepticism was not without reason. Smallpox had been eradicated in rich, sparsely populated, and well-educated countries that had good public health systems. The final four countries infected with Variola major were poor, densely populated, and less educated and had underdeveloped public health systems. The United States had eradicated smallpox through a robust public health system, a combination of routine vaccination and enforcing requirements for proof of prior immunization at our borders.
But routine vaccination and a mass vaccination campaign would not have been feasible in India, which was large, underdeveloped, and had a population of half a billion people in the 1970s. Many villages were off the government’s radar. Even if an army of health workers was able to visit every village and vaccinate people in their homes every year, by the time they finished, at least twenty million new babies each year—roughly equivalent to the population of Canada or California—would have been born who would need to be vaccinated. After long debate with WHO, the Government of India approved, for the Intensified Smallpox Campaign, the more efficient strategy of targeting for vaccination those people who were most at risk, either because of exposure or proximity to a case of the disease. This meant finding every infected person quickly and then vaccinating in a containment ring around them.
The image of Jankowicz chomping on a Land Rover tire and asking for mustard and ketchup to go with it both lightened things up and inspired us to battle the doubt. We had some early successes to build on: because of the vaccination strategy, the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka were all freed of smallpox.
During the All-India Searches that began in 1973, WHO and the Government of India created a massive force of almost 150,000 health workers who knocked on every door of every house in India one week each month, writing on the outside wall of the house the number of people living there, the number of people vaccinated, and the number of those still in need of vaccinations. They recorded everything on the adobe walls using a wet saffron-colored clay that was indelible when it dried. During the other three weeks of the month, workers visited every school, market, and teashop, showing everyone a card with a photo of what a child with smallpox looked like. By that time we had instituted a reward for reporting a case, as Ramesh Agrawal in Meerut had suggested. We raised the amount every so often, so if people knew how much the reward was, then we would know the last time the village was searched. We also collected rumors of scars and infected households, as well as reported sightings of neem branches, tulsi plants, or other signs of homes being visited by Shitala Ma. Girija suggested we send smallpox workers directly to the larger Shitala temples to try to enlist the pujaris in pointing to families or communities that might be infected. I was pleasantly surprised by their cheerful willingness to help the eradication effort, as most of the doctors had thought the temples would hide cases. Perhaps the pujaris had also seen too many children suffering from the disease. The temple surveillance did not seem to stop people from coming because as smallpox disappeared from communities, Shitala Ma seemed to be willing to specialize in measles and chickenpox instead.
After our successful field visit to Meerut, Nicole wanted me to take on more responsibility. I was not yet a full-fledged fieldworker so she sent me as a representative of the Central Team from SEARO to meetings in states that were mostly free of smallpox, such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, or to cities in which early urban searches were being performed, such as Calcutta, Lucknow, and Patna. This kept me away from Delhi, and away from the regional director, V. T. H. Gunaratne, who had taken an instant dislike to me, as he did to most young Westerners coming in to WHO. He confided to Nicole his concern that my having “gone native” would cause some upset with Westernized Indian doctors in the Health Ministry who were embarrassed by the various superstitions surrounding smallpox, like Shitala Ma as the cause and the neem twigs as the cure. My own experience was just the opposite. When Indian doctors found out I could talk to them in Hindi about a guru and his prophecy about eradicating smallpox, they invited me in for tea or a meal. Those Indians still on the brink of modernity harbored great affection for gurus, ashram life, and religious pilgrimages. That a well-known Indian mystic had prophesized the end of smallpox added credibility to their hopes.
Life in the capital of New Delhi meant being at the margin of the UN diplomatic life, attending UN cocktail parties, and growing up fast. I learned the effect of simple gestures like cutting my hair often, trimming my beard, and trading in the ashram uniform for suits and ties. Living in between the worlds of ashram and UN culture was sometimes funny. Once, in the middle of a tense strategy meeting with Indian colleagues, a WHO mail clerk rushed in to hand me an important letter. My colleagues held their breaths, afraid it was a new notice of a bad outbreak of smallpox. It turned out to be the only letter I ever received from Maharaji. Inside was a note in English from Maharaji’s translator Ravi Khanna: “Maharaji knows things are difficult with smallpox so he asked me to send this advice to you.” Maharaji had written one word, over and over again, covering every inch of the page: “Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram”—God God God God God. I folded the letter and put it in the safari suit pocket closest to my heart.
Girija and I had not visited the ashram in two or three weeks, but we were ready for a trip. The monsoons had caused erosion and severely damaged the roads. Tourists were marooned for weeks in the area between Kainchi and Nainital. The only transport was the buses—which often flipped over, lying like grasshoppers on their backs, wheels spinning in the air—and two-wheel-drive taxis with drivers who might have difficulty navigating the steep mountain terrain. If we were going to be sure to be back for Monday’s WHO strategy meeting, a four-wheel-drive jeep would be safer. I asked Nicole what the policy was for personal use of such a vehicle and a driver.
“Well, I need you back on Monday, and I know you want to see that guru of yours,” Nicole said. “As long as you pay for gas, house and feed the driver, and pay his daily fee, then I guess I won’t have the burden of finding some other young, bearded, Hindi-speaking hippie doctor to replace you when you drive off a cliff. Go. Have a good time with that guru.”
Vinodh Joshi, Maharaji’s ashram manager, met us at the front gate and motioned the driver to pull to another gate to park his car. “Maharaji told us to expect you,” Joshi said. “He has been telling the Indian devotees how he sent you to work at WHO and you had to go back a dozen times to get your job.” He showed us to rooms inside the ashram gates normally reserved for Indian big shots and longtime devotees. We were thrilled and surprised. “He said, ‘Girija and the doctor are coming!’ And he tells visitors, ‘God will pull smallpox out by the roots. It will be over. You will see! You will see! I sent Doctor America. You will see!’”
We were awakened Saturday morning by the sound of cymbals, an old-fashioned metal triangle, and the takety takety tak, takety takety tak of the damaru drum. Girija and I jumped out of bed to join the other Westerners in the ashram.
Maharaji wanted to hear news of smallpox and WHO. When I told him that Uttar Pradesh lagged behind other states in preparation because of the tension between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority there, Maharaji asked for a piece of paper. He scribbled some words introducing me to Akbar Ali Khan, the Muslim governor of Uttar Pradesh, and Shankar Dayal Sharma, the head of the Indian National Congress—both devotees of Maharaji.
“Governor Ali Khan will help you. He believes in God. He is full of faith. He knows. Shankar Dayal Sharma is wicked, but he will help. Everyone—wicked and good—will be on God’s side to end this terrible mahamari [catastrophic disease].”
Despite the heavy rains, much was going on in the ashram—soldiers were coming up from the plains and driving down from the mountains. Busloads of them arrived at the ashram gates, many of them carrying small flags of Hanuman, whose strength, piety, and obedience were admired by good Indian soldiers. The barely literate villagers who now were Indian Army grunts, likely to be deployed at the nearby border with China, had come to the ashram to receive a blessing from the saint who was rumored to be the incarnation of Hanuman. Hundreds poured into the ashram, waiting in a line snaking around the temples to catch a glimpse of Maharaji. Even if they did not believe he was special, no soldier wanted to risk going off to duty on the Chinese border without a blessing from the guru.
We planned to leave early on Sunday to get back to Delhi before nightfall. Maharaji had prepared three bags of prasad, blessed food, one for the driver, one for “the French lady doctor,” and one for us. I sat in front of him, reluctant to leave without his blessing on the campaign.
The car came around the front and the driver beckoned. “You want to ask something from me don’t you?” Maharaji called to me. I did want to know how to handle corruption.
“Please, Maharaji, tell me how to deal with ‘420.’”
In the United States, “420” is code for marijuana. In India, 420 was the number of the section in the penal code for bribery and corruption. Civil surgeons whose duties included dealing with smallpox often paid off supervisors for promotions, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. They then refused to work on smallpox, because they were busy trying to earn back their debt by starting illicit private practices. While the smallpox program had dedicated Indian doctors, a few corrupt local civil surgeons still demanded their bribes before being willing to participate in the vaccination program. It was a real problem for the campaign.
Maharaji looked pensive at first and then smiled, adjusting his weight from side to side. Sitting cross-legged, he pulled his plaid wool blanket over one shoulder, then reached out and tugged my beard. He smiled at me, holding my gaze while calling for someone to bring him a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, the little blue pocket version that so many devotees carried with them.
“Doctor America, read this shloka [verse]. Study it, and next time you come, tell me what it means and we will talk about this more.”
He opened the Gita to chapter 2, verses 62 and 63, and handed it to me. In the shloka, the champion warrior and archer Arjuna has declared he will not fight in the coming battle between the forces of light and dark because the opposing side is filled with his relatives and friends. Engaging in the war on either side means he will have to kill family. But he is a warrior—and it is his karma, his destiny, to fight. He does not know what to do.
Appearing in the form of Arjuna’s chariot driver, the god Krishna explains to Arjuna the core of the teaching of karma yoga, that fulfilling one’s duty as an offering of service, without attachment to the outcome and without any investment in one’s role in the outcome, will bring the aspirant closer to God.
The verse means that if people are living a worldly life, they may become attracted to certain things and repelled by others. These preferences affect the way they perceive and even remember things. From this comes confusion, and reasoning and objectivity become impaired. Even for a spiritual practitioner, this can lead to, as the Gita says, “The total destruction of the mind.”
I smiled to myself as I remembered that “Total Destruction to Your Mind” was the title of the last song sung by one of the bands at the Medicine Ball Caravan concert in Canterbury that set us off on our journey to the East.
Maharaji said, “Give up money, sex, and attachment. You should have no attachments of any kind; the whole universe is your home. All are your family.” Instead of answering my question about how to deal with corrupt government officials, he was telling me to get rid of my own impurities and those attachments and habits that could confuse and distract me. How could I navigate in a battle against Shitala Ma if I impaired my ability to reason?
The next verse in the Bhagavad Gita provides the cure: to rein in your passions, manage your attractions and attachments. You must follow a path of nish kam karma yoga, the work of nonattachment. It is so similar to a message of Rabbi Hillel, who said that it is our duty to heal the broken world—tikkun olam—but we must do it without any regard to whether we receive personal credit from our actions. Smallpox was the battle to prove humanity could still do something great, that Soviets and Americans could lay down arms and fight together on the same side; that from all over the world doctors could gather in India to defeat the last stand of an ancient scourge, to prove that this one form of suffering could be lifted from humanity’s shoulders. I was a soldier, a grunt, in that army, like the ones who had come to the ashram for a blessing that day.
That verse implies that freeing the mind of clutter, attachment, and distraction is the first step in putting it in service to the heart, which for me, was working in the smallpox program and forever after trying to alleviate suffering in the world. To be completely free of desire and attachment is the Hindu aspirant’s ideal. We take baby steps every day, every moment, of our lives.
Girija and I talked rapid fire about Maharaji’s teaching all the way back to WHO. I don’t remember any other detail about the trip.
The next weekend, we returned to Kainchi. This time Maharaji was hosting a dozen Indian businessmen, their families, and visitors from Delhi and Bombay. As he turned to them, he introduced me like a proud father. “This is my Doctor America! Doctor America!”
He continued, giggling, as usual. “What did you learn this week from the Bhagavad Gita?”
I recited the Sanskrit shloka like a schoolboy, worried that I would mispronounce it or muddle the words. Then I explained in English that the shloka means the world is complicated by the fact that everyone has become attached to things and ideologies. Then objectivity and reason are sacrificed on the altar of something akin to randomly choosing sides in team sports. And I learned that most of all, if I really wanted to become the best I could be and do the best I could do, I had to clear my mind of attachments and practice karma yoga, working in the world without attachment to results or to my being the one doing the work.
“Doctor America! Doctor America! Oh that is so good. You have read the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata. You are Subrahmanyum.”
For all of us who came to be with Maharaji in those years, the little symbols of acceptance as his disciple were highly sought after, like the jewels called “paradiams” given to mountain climbers in the mystical adventure novel Mount Analogue. Getting a spiritual name, such as Girija or the Das brothers had, was one of those badges.
Maharaji had finally given me an Indian name. His translator told me that Subrahmanyum was the name of the general leading the soldiers of light against the soldiers of darkness under Arjuna in the great Indian epic of the Mahabharata.
I was a general!
“And in order for you to do that work,” Maharaji continued, “you must clean the mirror of the mind. You must not let attachment and anger cloud your mind. You cannot be angry about the corruption. You must understand where it comes from.”
“Subrahmanyum,” Maharaji said, “you will practice nish kam karma yoga. You will help to stop smallpox.”
Maharaji had given me a name, a job to do, and a verse from the “Song of God” that would unlock the mystery of the eternal path, the way to God.
It took me years to understand that the message was not exactly what I thought. It was not about me being superior to corrupt officials. It was about not becoming so attached even to the success of smallpox eradication that my role in the story became important or that I felt I had really become a general. Do the work for the work’s sake, for the sake of the children whose lives will be saved, not for your résumé, not as a career stepping stone, not so people will say what a wonderful person you are. If you do it for the children, for God, as your duty, you will be safe. If you become attached to the glory of name and fame and steal some of the credit that is not yours, you will fall off the path.
Decades later, I researched more deeply the root meaning of the name Subrahmanyum. When I found it, I roared with laughter. The etymology was “full of su,” or full of light. It meant “brilliant.” Maharaji caught me again. I was not being anointed a general. My guru had planted a long-distance joke, an apple hurled right at my own ego.
The following week Nicole asked me to check up on the work in Meerut. As part of the upcoming search, I was supposed to gather and correct the maps of the municipal area of the city. Girija and I planned to take a WHO jeep back to Delhi and then a bus to Kainchi, but Nicole told me to save time and take the WHO jeep up for the weekend because she needed me to be back once more at the office on Monday for a gathering of the “smallpox generals” at SEARO.
The foothills were still saturated with the monsoon rains, but as the rocky overhangs dried out, they had become even more unstable.
It was Friday night, September 7, 1973.
“Doctor America, I have a headache,” Maharaji said when I arrived. The car had been parked, we had cleaned up in our room, and everyone had been given the requisite cup of tea. “Come closer.”
I moved near and handed him some Tiger Balm, which was the first thing he usually asked for when he had a headache, or pretended to have one.
“No, this time I need real Western medicine.”
I handed him two aspirins.
He balanced them on top of his head.
“Thank you for bringing Western medicine. I feel so much better now.”
He giggled, bobbling his head from side to side, but I could see he was in pain. He did not want to talk about smallpox. I remember him sitting the next day in the back of the ashram near the lavatories. Girija and I had been allowed in, but many Westerners were standing alongside the road. They could look down from the hills and see Maharaji; he looked up and watched them, seemingly lost in another state of consciousness. “So many different flowers,” he said. “Lovely. They bloom at the same time, but their fates are very different.”
Maharaji had been treated for angina, and I wondered whether he had chest pain. Girija and I went out for tea at a stand next to the ashram and bumped into Maharaji’s cardiologist, who had just examined him and was waiting for his car. The doctor said that Maharaji had high blood pressure and a chronic heart condition and admitted he was worried about his long-term coronary health because of his diet and travel; but he did not see anything of immediate concern.
When we returned to the ashram, Maharaji was sitting alone on his tucket. He wasn’t engaging with anyone. His eyes were focused inward as he silently repeated Ram Ram Ram, using his fingers to count off each syllable. You could sense a shield around him, keeping us at bay. It felt ominous, as if clouds of darkness were gathering around the ashram. Some felt it more than others. The few Westerners said he had been like that for several days. Our friend Gita told us she felt as if the light were going out in the universe. There were days when Kainchi felt like the bright light of the world, but on this day, the valley felt closed in, claustrophobic.
Girija and I rode in the jeep the dozen hours from Kainchi down to Delhi mostly in silence. Just as we reached the hairpin curve where the narrow mountain road merges into the flat broad highway in the plains, we saw a huge, vibrant double rainbow arched over the tiny houses hewn from the sides of the rocky foothills; it looked like a shire inhabited by Hobbits. We tried to take it as a good sign, but Girija wrote in her diary that the world that night seemed out of whack.
A few hours after Girija and I left the ashram, Maharaji and his young translator, Ravi Khanna, left by car for the train station. Ravi said that as they left Kainchi, Maharaji told him, “Tomorrow I will escape from central prison.”