Ram Krishna Mission
I wasn't sure what to expect when I mounted Dr Mandal's motorbike, wrapped up well for the cold that hits you at high speed in the shade of the forest, but the experience was a pleasant surprise.
We stopped at the roadside and the monk descended to greet us. He wasn't the bearded, bedraggled sadhu I expected (like Rama Krishna himself, above), but a young man of thirty five in a clean white robe topped with the region's typical woolly 'monkey hat' (see the picture below).
Twenty minutes walk up the path and we were at the ashram. Beside it was an orchard, now devoid of fruit in the wintry sunlight, and the monk's own quarters, a small glass-panelled hut contained in a wide patio area.
I know very little of Hinduism, but on mantlepieces, bedroom posters, restaurant shrines and phut-phut dashboards I had noticed a few recurring images. I learned that the people depicted are 'saints', gurus of a kind, and one of these was Rama Krishna.
In addition to its religious side, the Rama Krishna Mission operates in much the same way as Mother Theresa's organisation or the Salvation Army. This afternoon, in addition to being a Sen and Mandal family day out, local children came up to the ashram for a meal and a gift - a pullover.
Though this may sound pretty small, when you are child with holes in his only pair of socks in a region where nighttime temperatures are well below zero, then a new sweater is a pretty big deal.
To this non-Catholic Catholic school boy, to see religion in its proper place - unassuming, benevolent and a part of the wider community - was a charming moment.
