Chapter 7 — The Secret Cafe
And thus begins Chapter Seven.
Now, children.
The next morning arrived.
The council nods.
And unlike most mornings of the wandering,
I actually possessed a plan.
An ashram.
The council applauds.
Spiritual development.
Inner peace.
Meditation.
Perhaps enlightenment.
Perhaps the Unbegun would finally sit somewhere quietly and discover the secrets of existence.
The council looks skeptical.
Children.
I even showered.
The council gasps.
A holy place awaited.
Standards must be maintained.
Then,
naturally,
I smoked a joint.
The council immediately retracts its applause.
Balance.
Now.
A normal traveler wishing to visit an ashram would perform several sensible actions.
Look up reputable ashrams.
Read reviews.
Check visiting hours.
Perhaps determine whether outsiders were allowed inside.
Maybe even use something revolutionary called:
Google Maps.
The council waits.
Children.
I have one rule during wanderings.
No maps.
The council groans.
Maps are useful.
Maps are efficient.
Maps tell you where you’re going.
And that,
precisely,
is the problem.
The council pauses.
You see,
I spend enough of ordinary life knowing where I’m supposed to be.
What road I’m supposed to take.
What comes next.
Where everything leads.
Wandering is different.
During wanderings,
I want the road to surprise me.
So no maps.
No blue line telling me which turn matters.
No little digital voice correcting my mistakes.
If I get lost,
I get lost.
The council nods.
A philosophy with terrible logistical consequences.
And so,
I stepped outside Odin’s Abode,
selected a road,
and walked.
Now.
I needed directions.
The council leans forward.
Did I ask:
“Excuse me, could you please tell me where the ashrams are?”
Children.
No.
I approached strangers and simply said:
“Ashram?”
The council collapses.
That was the entire sentence.
“Ashram?”
And remarkably,
people understood.
Someone pointed left.
I went left.
Another person pointed forward.
I went forward.
Someone vaguely waved toward an entire section of the city.
The council pauses.
Useful.
Very.
And so I continued.
Ashram?
Point.
Walk.
Ashram?
Point.
Walk.
Children.
Language had once again been reduced to its purest form.
One noun.
One finger.
Civilization continued functioning.
Eventually,
something changed.
The roads became quieter.
The buildings changed.
Signs appeared.
Gates.
Courtyards.
Orange robes.
Prayer halls.
And suddenly,
everywhere I looked
ashram.
The council applauds.
Quest complete.
Now.
A new problem emerged.
Which one?
The council waits.
Children.
I had conducted absolutely no research.
So naturally,
I selected the prettiest one.
The council nods.
A rigorous spiritual criterion.
It looked peaceful.
Beautiful.
Properly ashram like.
I entered.
Spoke to someone inside.
And began enquiring about staying there.
The man explained the rules.
The council listens.
A room would be required.
Fine.
No phones.
The council watches me carefully.
Children.
This wounded me.
The archivist without his phone?
No photographs?
No recordings?
No evidence that the experience occurred?
A difficult sacrifice.
But perhaps
doable.
The council smiles.
Growth.
Then came the next rule.
No cigarettes during the stay.
The council goes silent.
I walked out.
The council erupts.
Immediately.
Children.
There are limits to spiritual development.
No phone?
Fine.
Disconnect from technology.
Live in the moment.
Experience stillness.
Beautiful.
No cigarettes?
Sir.
Let us not become unreasonable.
The council buries its face.
Apparently enlightenment would have to wait until nicotine dependency became less administratively inconvenient.
I thanked them,
left,
and decided I would simply admire the ashram from outside.
Perhaps take a few photographs.
Absorb the atmosphere.
Maintain a respectful distance between myself and personal growth.
The council approves.
A compromise.
Now.
I began wandering back.
Or,
more accurately,
vaguely in the direction I believed Odin’s Abode existed.
The council nods.
Navigation.
And that’s when I noticed it.
A narrow alley.
Easy to miss.
Almost hidden between buildings.
And inside,
a sign.
The Secret Cafe.
The council leans forward.
Children.
If you name something:
The Secret Cafe,
you cannot reasonably expect the Unbegun to continue walking.
That is not a cafe name.
That is a quest marker.
So I entered.
The alley narrowed.
The noise of the road faded.
And then the place opened before me.
The council looks around.
Foreigners.
Indians.
Travelers.
Hippies.
People sitting on cushions.
Talking softly.
Existing without urgency.
The entire place felt like someone had taken the concept of:
“Where did that strange traveler disappear to?”
and built a business around it.
The council approves.
Then I saw her.
In the middle of everything sat a bald woman.
Older than me.
Calm.
Completely at ease.
Apparently Tibetan.
She looked toward me.
The council listens.
“Enter, traveler.”
The council pauses.
Children.
Nobody has ever improved a first impression by calling me traveler.
I was immediately invested.
Still,
I hesitated.
Everyone seemed to be doing something.
Perhaps I had interrupted.
Perhaps this was private.
Perhaps I had accidentally wandered into a spiritual gathering with absolutely no invitation.
A recurring talent.
She gestured toward an empty place.
“Sit.”
So I sat.
The council nods.
Obedient cryptid.
Then she announced:
“We will meditate.”
The council grows very still.
Ah.
Children.
The ashram had rejected me for nicotine,
and approximately twenty minutes later,
meditation had hunted me down inside an alley.
The universe is persistent.
Everyone closed their eyes.
So did I.
Someone began the sound.
Om.
And I joined.
The vibration settled through the room.
Voices blending.
Noise disappearing.
For once,
nobody asked anything from me.
Nobody required conversation.
Nobody needed a story.
Nobody expected a performance.
Just breathe.
Sit.
Exist.
The council falls quiet.
Five minutes.
Maybe more.
Maybe less.
Time behaves strangely when nobody is chasing it.
Eventually,
we opened our eyes.
And children.
Before me sat three objects.
The council leans forward.
A joint.
A bowl of pot.
And a bong.
The council pauses.
Meditation had taken an unexpected administrative turn.
I looked at the woman.
Then at the offerings before me.
Then back at the woman.
“Uh
is this for me?”
The council waits.
She smiled.
“Help yourself.”
The council collapses.
Children.
Apparently I had discovered the ashram compatible with my lifestyle.
Now.
I did, in fact,
help myself.
And then something stranger happened.
We talked.
Not small talk.
Not traveler talk.
Not:
Where are you from?
Where are you going?
How long are you staying?
No.
She looked at me and asked:
“What are your worries?”
The council grows quiet.
Children.
That is a dangerous question to ask someone whose emotional infrastructure is held together primarily by jokes and caffeine.
At first,
I gave a small answer.
Something safe.
Something manageable.
Then another.
And another.
And somewhere along the way,
the dam opened.
The council listens.
I told her everything.
The weight.
Home.
Why I had left.
The things I carried.
The things I couldn’t seem to put down.
The thoughts that returned when rooms became too quiet.
The exhaustion of being inside my own head.
The strange feeling of needing to leave somewhere
without knowing exactly what you’re trying to escape.
Everything.
Children.
I barely knew this woman.
Perhaps that was why it was easy.
There was no history.
No consequence.
No tomorrow attached to honesty.
Just a stranger in a hidden cafe asking:
What hurts?
And me,
for once,
answering.
The council remains silent.
She listened.
Properly.
No interruptions.
No attempts to fix me.
No horrified expressions.
Just listening.
Then she responded with several things that sounded extremely spiritual.
The council prepares to archive them.
Children.
I remember almost none of it.
The council collapses.
Something about carrying.
Something about rivers.
Something about releasing what is not yours.
Probably something profoundly meaningful.
Unfortunately,
the archivist had consumed agricultural assistance.
Records are incomplete.
But I remember how it felt.
Gentle.
Not like advice.
More like someone placing a hand against a door I had been holding shut
and quietly helping me stop pushing.
The council grows quiet.
Then she hugged me.
Not the polite stranger hug.
A proper one.
Tight.
Warm.
The kind where, for a few seconds,
you stop remembering that you’re supposed to keep yourself together.
I hugged her back.
And that was that.
No revelation.
No sudden cure.
No enlightenment.
The weight remained.
But perhaps,
for a moment,
I wasn’t carrying it alone.
The council nods.
Then she handed me something.
A cube.
The council examines it.
Each side could spin.
Little moving sections.
A strange mechanical object.
Children.
Basically,
a fancy fidget spinner that had discovered geometry.
The council applauds.
A sacred relic.
I thought it was cool.
Therefore,
the crow accepted.
Into the archive it went.
Now.
Eventually,
it was time to leave.
I stood.
Thanked her.
Prepared to return to whatever nonsense Rishikesh had planned next.
Then she stopped me.
The council leans forward.
She handed me one more thing.
A small packet.
Closed.
Unmarked.
I looked at her.
She said:
“Open it on your last day here.”
The council becomes interested.
Children.
Mystery.
Prophecy.
Quest item acquired.
Naturally,
I had questions.
What is it?
Why the last day?
What happens if I open it now?
Is it food?
Is it spiritual?
Is it somehow more agriculture?
The council waits.
I asked surprisingly few of these.
Instead,
I put it safely away.
“Okay.”
Because sometimes,
when a mysterious Tibetan woman in a secret cafe gives you a sealed packet and tells you to wait,
you simply respect the narrative.
The council applauds.
Excellent instinct.
And so I left.
Back through the narrow alley.
Back toward the road.
Back into Rishikesh.
The city felt slightly different.
Or perhaps I did.
The council listens.
Kasol had been movement.
Constant movement.
Trains.
Buses.
Walking.
Raves.
Waterfalls.
Snow.
Strangers appearing and disappearing.
Everything rushing into the next thing.
Kasol had shaken me until the weight loosened.
But Rishikesh?
Rishikesh kept doing something else.
It kept making me stop.
Five minutes beside the Ganga.
A prayer I didn’t fully understand.
A dog waiting while I caught my breath.
Meditation in a hidden cafe.
A stranger asking what I was worried about
and actually waiting for the answer.
The council grows quiet.
Stillness.
That was the difference.
Kasol had said:
Move.
Rishikesh seemed to whisper:
Stay here a moment.
The weight will still be there when you stand.
But perhaps you don’t need to wrestle it every second you’re alive.
Children.
I did not understand that yet.
Not fully.
At the time,
I simply knew the encounter had been odd.
Beautiful.
Peaceful.
And somehow exactly where I was supposed to end up,
despite having no idea it existed.
The council smiles.
No maps.
Remember?
Had I searched for the best ashram,
I might have found one.
Had I followed directions perfectly,
I might have spent the afternoon meditating somewhere grand and famous.
Instead,
I refused to surrender my cigarettes,
got lost,
walked down an alley,
and found a bald Tibetan woman with a bong and emotional availability.
The council erupts.
Children.
There are many paths to enlightenment.
Mine appears to have poor signage.
And so,
cube in my pocket,
mysterious packet safely hidden away,
I began walking.
Vaguely toward Odin’s Abode.
I hoped.
Thus concludes Chapter Seven.
The Ashram.
The Audacity Of The No Smoking Policy.
The Secret Cafe.
And The Woman Who Asked The Wrong Cryptid The Right Question.
I had gone searching for a spiritual place.
I found one.
Then immediately left because they wouldn’t let me smoke.
The council nods.
Classic.
And somehow,
on the road away from spirituality,
I stumbled directly into something that felt remarkably close to it.
No ceremony.
No doctrine.
No requirement that I become someone else first.
Just stillness.
A stranger.
A conversation.
A hug.
And a tiny unopened packet waiting for the final day.
Perhaps the road had stopped trying to distract me from the weight.
Perhaps this time,
it wanted me to sit beside it.
And listen.
But children,
that mystery belonged to another day.
For now,
the Unbegun had one immediate objective.
Find Odin’s Abode.
Preferably before accidentally joining another religion.
