Swanwick Star Issue No. 9 (2016)

A Dialogue-Gathering with Some Old Friends

 

One day, Raman, one of my old teachers from Brockwood Park School rang me up in Vancouver and said he was in town. Immediately, I said that I would love to meet him. He was the master chef when I was a student at the school and had been cooking with that elusive ingredient called “love”. Even though he had trained as an engineer, his passion to embody K’s teaching was so great, that he had decided to fill the only vacancy at that time for the school’s cook.

However, true to the Brockwood form, Raman was a teacher in the actual sense of the word, and taught me many valuable lessons about life and relationship. Such “teachers” are much appreciated and eternally revered. One never forgets the long chats in the kitchen or the philosophical discussions during walks in the countryside.

So, we met at a restaurant called “East is East” with a group of friends, some of whom had formed the core of the Vancouver dialogue group since the days of David Bohm’s retreats at Swanwick. We were saddened by the news of Saral Bohm’s passing just a few weeks ago in Israel. She was a great support to David throughout those dialogue years and a real champion of the whole dialogue movement. I think I remember her best for her sharp wit and sparkling sense of humour. Also, a certain motherliness seemed to emanate from her – I think I always felt somehow cared for in her presence.

This impromptu gathering in a rather richly decorated cubicle of oriental design gathered momentum while Raman reminisced about staff meetings with K and we talked about another of my old teachers, Shakuntala, and her daughter, Natasha Narayan. Once, I remember attending an outstanding concert of Bismillah Khan’s with them in London at the Royal Albert Hall. Another time we travelled together on the overnight train to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to attend Peter Brook’s production of The Mahabharata. Raman also told us Mark Lee was recovering admirably well from his fall in the shower and was even able to drive a car now. Everyone was delighted by this news.

The conversation rapidly developed into an outstanding night of dialogue. We touched on many timeless topics raised by K and wondered if one could ever take away a lasting understanding from such an evening, or, if it would just fade away. We talked about a stream or a river where one is standing on the banks and likened it to human consciousness. One can either jump into the river and be lost in it, or, just observe it flowing by on the banks. Then, I recalled a particularly poignant discussion with Allan Anderson in which he had likened one’s changing relationship to consciousness to experiencing different landscapes. That conversation had never left me…perhaps, it had even changed me forever on some level…

Chanda Siddoo