Light

guruji, watercolor and ink sketch, 30 minutes

I met my guru in an airport in 2003. I was walking along with a big backpack on, and out of the corner of my eye I saw an old man that looked very strange to me. He had golden brown skin, a mark on his forehead, and what in my naivety I thought was middle eastern dress. As a young man fresh out of Kansas (the naval of ignorance), such were the limitations of my knowledge of the world. He walked up to me with his hands in namaskara and said "Ah, my student!" Of course, I was taken aback. After staring blankly for a moment, I managed to get out "uh...I'm sorry, I'm not-" and the man cut me off with "Yes, but you will be! Soon!" The man did a strange little bow and walked away. I wasn't really sure what to think. Over the next couple of years I was surprised when I began to see the man's face on the covers of magazines and books. A series of strange coincidences finally coalesced into a singularity when, several years later, I found out who the man actually was and discovered that, strangely, I had recently and somewhat absent-mindedly become a student of his tradition and had just began studying under a few of his disciples. Stranger things involving yogis have happened to me since then, but I will certainly never forget this encounter.