My brother-in-law helped me contact a travel agent in Ludhiana, and I arranged to travel by boat from Bombay to London and from there to New York. One week before my departure for Bombay, I visited my relatives in neighboring villages to tell them goodbye. One day, while traveling to see my uncle in Mandi Gobind-Garh, I started a conversation with a man sitting next to me on the bus. The man asked what I was doing and where I was going. I had brought my documents in a purse to show to my uncle. I took them out and showed them to the man, explaining my plans to study in the US. After he looked at them, I placed them next to me on the seat.
When I arrived in Mandi Gobind-Garh, I picked up my bags and walked the half mile to my uncle’s house. After greeting my uncle and several other relatives, I reached for the purse holding all the documents and saw it was not there. Immediately, I went into a state of shock. All my hard work had disappeared before my eyes.
The bus had left a while earlier, so my uncle borrowed a friend’s car, and we followed the bus forty miles to its next destination. When we arrived, the bus was empty, and my purse with the documents was not there. We returned to Mandi Gobind-Garh at 8:00 p.m., and I was devastated. The whole night I stayed awake, on the verge of tears, thinking, God, why have you done this to me? What do I do now?
The next morning, we hired a local drummer to announce throughout the town, “Krishan Bedi has lost his documents, passport, and visa to the US. Anyone who finds it will be rewarded.” Yet the documents never turned up.
When I returned home, my father did not show much emotion about my predicament. He was relieved that I would be staying in Punjab. Both my father and mother felt that Paramatma, the Supreme Spirit in Hindu theology, had taken care of my fate. It was my destiny to remain with my parents. This was the accepted explanation, and there was no more discussion about my future plans.
I did not like my destiny.
For the next few weeks, I helped my father in the shop. I told my parents that I would stay in Malaudh and join the cloth retail business. However, this was not what I wanted to do. I did not want to sell cloth for the rest of my life. This time my depression was even worse than before. I withdrew from all extracurricular activities, avoiding anything pleasant or happy. I even asked the barber to shave my head, causing embarrassment to my parents because I looked like a monk. After a month of plodding sullenly around the village, my mother realized my sadness was not lessening with time.
“Krishan, it is very hard for me to see you unhappy,” she said one day, while I sat in the courtyard watching two pigeons strut back and forth. “I know how much you want to go to Amrika. I think if you really want to go, you should try again. Go. Apply for admission. Prepare the documents again. It is important that you are happy.”
“But it is so hard,” I complained. “Do you know how long it took me the first time? Four months! I do not think I can go through it all again. All that work I did, and it was all for nothing.” I picked up a stone and hurled it angrily at the wall enclosing the yard.
“Krishan, if you really want something, you should not give up simply because it is too hard. Please, you have my blessing to try again.”
She walked away. I lay on the ground and stared at the darkening sky for nearly an hour. It was pitch black, and the stars had appeared in multitudes when I finally decided she was right. I could not back down from my dreams. It only made me miserable and hard to be around.
When my father learned my mother was talking to me about applying again, he tried to discourage me. “It is too hard, Krishan,” he told me. “You cannot do it. You will not be able to get all the formalities completed again.”
Hearing this challenge, I immediately decided I would. If I wanted to do something, then I could do it. I would show my father it was possible. As I started preparing the documents once again, someone recommended that I go to an astrologer to predict the future and remove any obstacles that might prevent me from traveling to the US. I thought this would be a good idea. Perhaps the astrologer would know whether I should continue my pursuit to travel abroad. The astrologer lived forty miles away from Malaudh. He prepared my janampatri, a prediction of the future in Sanskrit, including diagrams that show my prospects in terms of health, travel, education, and wealth. The diagram was based upon the day, time, and year of my birth. The astrologer told me, “Yes, overseas travel is in your stars, but there will be obstacles along the way. To overcome them, you must pray a mantra 1.1 lakh (110,000) times in thirty-seven days.”
The Sanskrit mantra he gave me translates to:
Oh God, the Giver of life. Remover
