A Lifetime with Farook — Eulogy 2

Adventures in the jungles, Guru Freddy and gourmet cooking

In part one of the Farook-Eulogy I described how we met Farook, his unique path to inter-religious marriage, and the Muslim wedding ceremony he took us to visit. Today I will describe some of the many trips he organized for us in the south Indian subcontinent.

Jungle lodging on the Kaveri and in Bandipur

The Kavari river — which is often spelled Cauvery — is the third largest river on the Deccan Plateau and, like many other Indian rivers, considered sacred by the people. It is also a wonderful place to go camping and fishing, and to see wildlife in its natural habitat. Our visit also included a bird sanctuary not far from the river.

You can click most of the following pictures to enlarge.

On our Kavari visit we stayed a beautiful jungle lodge close to the banks of the river…

…where we were constantly visited by denizens of the forests— some quite charming…

… and some less so.

Spotted deer were constant visitors, often coming very close to the lodge.

Birds of every hue and shape at the bird sanctuary

Fishing is done from coracles, which are small, rounded, lightweight boats

This is a fish I caught. After showing it around I wanted to take it up to the lodge to cook. No, I was told, you must release it. And in spite of many minutes out of water it merrily swam away — no ill feelings, apparently.

Bandipur National Park is a natural reserve renowned for its significant tiger population. It is also inhabited by elephants, spotted deer, bison, antelopes and numerous other native species — and over 200 kinds of birds. Farook gave us a wonderful week there, and we got to see so many wild animals at close quarters. It was the adventure of a lifetime.

There were plenty of elephants, all polite and friendly.

When they had a calf they quickly shielded it from the eyes of the intruders.

This is a gaur bison, a gigantic bovine species, the largest among wild Bovidae family.

On the very last day we saw the most important animal that Bandipur has been set up to protect: a wild tiger with cubs.

DThe tigress, just a few meters from us, saw our long telephoto lenses pointed at her…

…and decided to lead the cubs back into deeper jungles.

Guru Freddy

On one trip to Bangalore Farook drove us around 60 km south to an academy at the foot of the Guddappan hillock. There we were introduced to Guru Freddy, a follower of the 19th century Kerala reformist leader Narayana Guru. He ran an academy with about 200 trainees, who lead an austere lifestyle, with frugal meals. They had classes, outdoor activities and exercises all day. In the evening they watched films and listened to music.

Guru Freddy took an instant liking to us. He volunteered to show us “his mountain”, which had been a barren hillock until he transformed it by planting 30,000 saplings, fetching water on donkeys from nearly four km away to keep them alive.

The top of the hill, which took us over an hour to climb, was still barren rock. We lit a campfire and spent the night there. In the picture you see an academy trainee, Farook, Guru Freddy, my wife Ingrid, son Tommy and me. When the fire went out we lay there in the darkest night we had witnessed in decades — the stars glimmered and glistened with improbable brightness.

It turned out that Guru Freddy was originally Freddy Van Der Borght, born in 1936 into Belgian nobility. In 1984 he founded Nataraja Gurukula, an academy, for teaching unitive understanding and universal brotherhood. Our two days with Guru Freddy were a unique and heartwarming experience.

The gourmet

Farook was into food. Not primarily good food, but interesting dishes, which he would prepare himself and serve at sumptuous dinners in his house. Many were the feasts we enjoyed there. On our trips around south India we would stop at restaurants that prepared dishes Farook loved. Here is one of many examples on what could transpire.

At a roadside restaurant Farook asked them to show him the fish they had in their kitchen. He found what he was looking for, and bought half a dozen. The next day we were invited to taste the boniest fish in the world.

And bony it was, with layer upon layer of fine bones. It looked daunting — until Farook showed us how to fold back each layer and extract the flesh without the bones. It was by far the tastiest fish I have ever eaten.

Farook examining the boniest and tastiest fish in the world, cooking offals on his garden grill

Farook would often invite us over to dinner, always preparing something really special for us to try. “You don’t want to know what it is,” he’d say, while serving strange pieces of meat — usually offals that normal people would not touch. But with the correct spices and method of preparation they were exquisite culinary adventures. Once he served carefully cooked mutton bones where you feasted on the delicious grizzle, which you gnawed off.

At least one more part to follow…