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Part V : Rekhchand Parekh
Rekhchand Parekh is the husband of Mrs. Parekh, Osho's past life
mother.
One of my friends, Rekhchand Parekh, a very rich man, who presented
me with almost everything.... He made it a point that nobody
could present anything before him, so everything that I needed
or could have needed anytime he managed to present to me - things
which I never used. I asked him also "What am I going to
do with this?"
He said, "That is not the point. The point is, nobody is
going to present you anything before me. Later on they can go
on presenting you with things - and millions will be presenting
you things out of love - but they will always be after me.
Nobody else can be first."
And I was very reluctant, because if there was something I was
not going to use, if it was no use to me, he was unnecessarily
wasting money. And he was so particular and such a perfectionist
that only the best satisfied him. If I would not take something
then he would find ways somehow to smuggle the thing into my house.
Once, when I was leaving - l used to stay with him at least
three days every year, that was a commitment. So three days I
used to stay with him every year, and when I was leaving he said
to me - which he had never said before - "Just be
a little careful about your suitcase."
I said, "I have come so many times, and so many times you
have come to the train to say goodbye to me, but you have never
said to me, 'Be careful about the suitcase.' What is the matter?"
He said, "Nothing is the matter," and he gave me the
key.
I said, "Strange - why are you keeping the key? If it
had been left with you, then I would have been in trouble" - and
it was a thirty-six-hour journey from his place to Jabalpur.
He said, "No, I was not going to forget it."
As the train left, the first thing I did, I opened the suitcase:
what was the matter? The suitcase was full of one-hundred rupee
notes. I thought, "My God! What has he done?" And there
was a slip in an envelope: "This is for a new Fiat car. Purchase
it immediately. And you cannot say no to me because that will
hurt me my whole life."
I said, "This is strange. I am continually traveling - in
Jabalpur I remain only for five to seven days a month at the most,
and that too, not at one stretch. But he will be certainly hurt."
And as I reached home, immediately my phone was ringing. He said,
"You have to do first things first. I have already arranged
it. I have contacted the Fiat company in Jabalpur - and the
car is ready there. Just take the suitcase and take delivery of
the car."
I said, "You don't leave anything for me!" The car was
already standing there ready and the man said, "We have been
waiting for you."
I said, "What to do? The train was two hours late."
And my friend must have been phoning according to the timetable.
In India it is said that that's why the timetable is published - so
you can find how late the train is; otherwise how will you find
out by how much the train is late? The timetable is absolutely
a necessity....
I said to the man at the garage, "What could I do? - the
train was late, so two hours...."
He said, "Your friend was very particular about everything;
a radio had to be in the car." And he had made sure of everything,
insurance.... And he asked the garage owner to arrange a license
for me because otherwise the car might just stay parked at my
place. He gave me the first tape-recorder, the first camera - everything
that he could find, he would immediately bring to me.
This man was rare in many ways. He was a miser - such a miser
that beggars simply bypassed his house. If any beggar ever stood
there, other beggars thought, "This seems to be a new man - standing
before Rekhchand Parekh's house, begging!" He had never donated
to any institution in his life, never given a single pai to any
beggar.
His wife had taken me to introduce to her husband because she
said, "He is so miserly, and he has so much money. And we
have only three daughters, who are married and have rich houses,
so there is no problem. And there is no son, there is nobody after
us, but he goes on collecting - even I don't know how much
he has."
They lived in a place, Chanda, in Maharashtra. She said, "He
had purchased almost one-third of the houses of the city - it
seems he is going to purchase the whole city. If there is any
house for sale, he is not going to let anybody else purchase it.
And his only joy seems to be just accumulating money. I have brought
many Jaina monks" - because they were Jainas, and they
were Gandhians - "and I have brought many great disciples
of Gandhi, thinking perhaps somebody will change his mind. But
he is very straight and does not give any chance for anybody to
even touch him."
So I said, "Okay, I will come. I cannot guarantee anything;
I don't know what type of man he is, but he appeals to me."
He had come to receive me at the station. While we were going
to his house - he was driving - l told him, "One
thing I should tell you is that your wife has brought me here
to persuade you not to be miserly. She wants you to donate to
institutions who are doing a public service, to religious institutions,
to schools, to hospitals. I am not interested in all of these
things; I have just come to meet you because you attracted me.
You are a rare man! Never in your life have you given to a beggar,
never have you donated a single pai?"
He said, "Never, because I am waiting for the man who is
worth to be given everything."
When we reached his house, his wife was surprised because never
before had he taken to his sitting room any saints that she had
brought. And he told the servants that I would be staying in his
guest house, in his sitting room; that I would be there: "And
tell my wife she need not worry about this man." His wife
was at a loss: What had happened?
A sudden synchronicity, he told me - not the word "synchronicity,"
he had never heard that, but he told me, "It is strange,
the moment I saw you, I felt, 'This is the man.'" And even
after we had known each other for twenty years, there was not
a single question from him - no question, no doubt, no argument - whatever
I was saying was truth to him.
I asked his wife only one question. After being there for the
first time for three days, I asked his wife, "Is your husband
interested in sex or not?"
She said, "Not at all, and it is not that he represses, he
is simply finished. And you can see now that he is a strange man.
He has told me, 'If you are not finished you are free; you can
have sex with whoever you want. I am finished with it."'
The moment a man is finished with sex as an instinct that is forcing
him to do something, he becomes in a certain way a master of himself
and he starts having insights, visions which the unconscious,
instinctive man cannot have.
Just looking at me - not a single word had been said - he
said, "I have found the person." And then whenever I
needed any amount of money, for myself or somebody else, I had
just to inform him, "Give this much money to this man."
He never asked, "Who is this man and why is so much money
needed for him?" He simply gave it. His wife was simply shocked.
She could not believe that this miserly man...how suddenly
he had completely become just the opposite.
I told her, "There is no problem. He is not miserly - it
was your misunderstanding. He never wanted to give to those people
who are not worthy of it. And coming from the station to the house
he said to me, 'I have found you; now all that I have belongs
to you. Whatsoever you want to do with it you can do.' He is not
a miserly man, it was your misunderstanding. It is difficult to
find such a man, so generous." But from where was his generosity
coming? His generosity was coming from a certain mastery over
himself.
The instinctive man clings to everything: to sex, to money, to
power - to everything.
I asked him, "Why do you go on purchasing all the houses?"
He said, "Some day you may like to have a commune - then
from where am I going to suddenly give you a commune?* By that
time I will have purchased the whole city. I know that you will
take a little time before you need a place - l am preparing
it for you." Now, nobody would have thought that he was purchasing
houses...that even before knowing me, he was purchasing them
for somebody who was going to come into his life, who one day
may need this whole city.
And many times it happened...he used to come with me once
in a while for a tour. Anybody would think that he was a miser
because he was such a rich, super-rich man, but he would always
travel third class on the passenger trains. Never express trains,
mail trains, no; never first class, air-conditioned - out
of the question. But whenever he would travel with me, he would
say, "You can travel in the air-conditioned class; I will
travel in the third class."
Once I asked, "Why do you insist on traveling third class?"
He said, "I have my own ideas. People think I am a miser - l
don't care a bit about money. What am I going to do with the money?
Soon I will die and all this money will be lying here. But to
travel in the third class is an experience: the crowd, the people,
the gossips, and things that go on happening in the third class
of an Indian railway train...." He had traveled all over
India, and he had friends at every station; he would call the
coolies by their names. And he knew every place where you could
get the best milk, where you could get the best tea, where you
could get the best sweets.
He said, "With an express train, a mail train, this is not
possible, because they stop only at a few stations and I want
to stop at every station, because at every station I have friends
and I have things to do. The passenger train stays longer at every
station. If other trains are passing, then the passenger train
will be delayed; no other train will be delayed, so you always
have hours on your hands. And all these stationmasters are my
friends, the guards are my friends, the drivers are my friends - because
I call all of them when I know that a particular sweet is made
the best at that station. So they say to me, 'Parekh, enjoy yourself!
Unless you enter the train, the train will not move.' "
And he said, "I like to be the master rather than the servant - not
that they give the whistle and you run, no."
That was his reason: "I want to be the master. When I enter
the train, then whistling and flagging and everything happens - but
first they have to see that Parekh has entered."
He was an old man - I was only thirty-five, he was fifty at
that time - but he would take me out of the station, and he
would say, "Come outside. The mango trees are great here."
I would say, "The train is there - are we going to pick
mangos? And then if we miss the train.... I have my appointment."
He would say, "Don't be worried. Until I enter the train,
the train remains in the station. You can go up the tree, I am
also coming; we will go up the tree and pick mangos."
One day it happened: we were picking mangos and Parekh said to
me, "Just look upwards," and there was another man.
He said, "He is the driver. He knows that I will come to
pick mangos so the train has to stay. So why waste time? - collect
a few mangos, and these mangos are really sweet! In fact, the
guard will be in some other tree.... It is all under my control."
This man had no instinctive force. He was not in any way interested
in any particular food; he liked all kinds of food, he liked all
kinds of clothes. In fact he was so disinterested that anything
would do - no special liking, disliking. But he was a man
full of love.
Once in a city in Rajasthan, Biawar, he was with me, and I had
a fever. The whole night he remained by my side. I told him, "Parekh,
you go to sleep. Because of you I cannot go to sleep!"
He said, "That is up to you - that is your problem. I
am not saying to you, 'Don't go to sleep'; I am trying to help
you to go to sleep. As far as I am concerned I cannot sleep knowing
that you have a fever. The fever may increase in the night and
I may be asleep. That is not permissible."
And actually it happened: in the night the fever increased; at
two o'clock it was one hundred and five. He said, "Do you
see the point? You would not have awakened me."
I said, "That is true."
He called the doctor and he said to me, "This is not the
time for you to leave the body. If you can make some arrangement,
I am willing to leave the body and you remain in the body - because
you have much to do, and I have nothing to do." This is love
of a totally different kind - a caring, a friendliness.
The instinctive love can become any moment hate. The man who
was ready to die for you can kill you. The woman who was so caring
towards you, so loving towards you, can poison you; literally
she can poison you. Love, if it is instinctive, is not in your
hands; you are just a slave. The unconscious is very easily convertible
into its opposite, and you cannot do anything about it.
But when love comes to the conscious level - that is, when
it comes to the level of intellect, not instinct - then it
has a different flavor. Then it has no biological purpose. misery05
*Note: Later in 1973 an experimental commune 'Kailash' is set
up on their farmland in Chanda, see Part VI
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