The Hidden Path (WINNER OF THE BEAUTY AWARD for Spiritual)

For The First Time

Peace begins when expectations ends.

- Sri Chinmoy

In the early - very early - morning on Saturday, the tenth of November 1990, a small convoy consisting of two cars left the still sleepy town of Graz. To embark on its seemingly endless journey across half the European Continent (but only after first having observed a minute of meditation. For our protection. And all those who we were going to encounter. Sri Chinmoy had advised us disciples to do so, as a spiritual way to help prevent accidents.).

Its goal: Berlin.

The Sporthalle in Berlin, to be more precise.

On seeing or passing the two cars, nobody would have noticed anything special about those vehicles. They were neither too flashy, nor too decrepit. They were neither speeding, nor crawling. To the unsuspecting observer, they would have looked just like any other of the thousands of cars bustling along the busy highways of Austria and Germany.

And - maybe - they would have been right not to notice anything special.

Yet, there was something odd about their occupants. Not because of the way they were dressed, no. All the passengers looked average enough, maybe even a bit too casual. But had one of the unsuspecting observers been able to listen into the conversations taking place inside of the two vehicles, they would definitely have noticed something unusual. The sheer number of unfamiliar words like 'sari', 'karma', 'prasad', 'reincarnation' offhandedly dropped at every turn of the conversation, would probably have confused the majority of those would-be listeners (at least the western-minded ones).

Of course, to me those words were neither confusing nor strange, as I was the one using them the most among our little group. Simply because I was the one talking the most.

You have to keep yourself occupied somehow, when traveling for 11 hours in a crowded car...

While talking and listening, and absentmindedly watching the familiar landscape of fields, woods, mountains, hills and villages flitting past the windows of our car, I could feel myself slowly growing closer to the four girls I was sharing the vehicle with.

True, their personalities were rather different from mine; so much so, we would probably never even have glanced at each other twice, had we met under different circumstances.

However, fate had brought us together and as I had got to know my companions over the last few months, I had also learned to accept and respect them for the people and the sincere seekers they were.

We took turns driving. But even so, I felt rather exhausted by the time we finally made it to the venue where the concert was going to take place.

With not much time to spare.

Fortunately - and quite miraculously - we found parking spaces conveniently close to the entrance. Still, we didn't even have the time to take a closer look at the building itself, as we were too much in a hurry: Only twenty minutes left until the concert was supposed to start and we still had to find a hidden place somewhere, in order to be able to put on our saris!

In the meantime, the boys were happily racing ahead, having already changed into their whites at the last gas station.

Some things are definitely easier for boys.

Once safely hidden in the sink area of the first multi stall toilet we came across - which turned out to be already occupied by a whole group of elderly, Eastern European sounding ladies - we did our best to each wrap our respective five to six meters of fabric around our slip and blouse clad bodies as quickly as possible. Preferably without dragging any part of it through the dirt on the ground or injuring the person next to us through uncoordinated movements.