The lost saint

fic.
 
Some years ago I tried contacting the babaji, to tell him he was right, that every one of his ridiculous predictions had come too, each absurd detail, memorable because of how strange it was, that I had dismissed right away had come true. It was a pilgrimage for a non-believer, a time to question my worldview and assumptions.

He wasn't there. No one knew where he was. The woman whose house was next to his old abode told me he died, her adult son said he hadn't, their neighbor said he had gone to India, the tea-seller understood he was offered a lot of money and sold out. There was no coherent understanding of who he was or where he came from, only that he was a man who dealt in higher dimensions and unlike folks of his kind, didn't ask for anything from anyone ever even if that meant making his existence a suffering. One young man in glasses, who they told me had recently returned from abroad, told me he knew for a fact the babji went to America and had worked for the Trump campaign -- why do you think a half-mind such as him won the election there, because of the powers abilities of our babaji, he said quite proudly.

I collected contacts to maintain the thread of connection to the story. My plan was to reach out to his followers wherever they may be, categorize their relationship, his predictions, and understand the man that he was. I promised to come back to the village, to write more on the myth and the mystery that had grown around the man.

I got busy after that. The media background in Kathmandu and elsewhere absolutely exploded. Someone like me got an offer from a new online media, a news channel, or a new paper every two months. And where I was, we were expanding quick. New reporters, new writers, so many stories to cover, so little time. The mysterious babaji disappeared from my active imagination much as he disappeared from the village he had lived for two decades. I'll do this when this project is over, I told myself every two weeks, but the projects kept on coming the work piled on and on and on.

And then this happened. You know.

Work is not that much lighter, but I have more time. No socializing with friends, or schmoozing with industry folks, biking around the town to get to the sources. That leaves a lot of free time. The other day I came across my old file as I was cleaning the room. An intriguing project that absolutely cried for my attention. What was he doing now? Was he alive? Was he safe? Was he in India or was he in Nepal? Had he foreseen this all? I had to find out. I set the gears moving.