I don't want to eat alone - come join me!

When I had organizers in Germany, I normally stayed in their home, with them and their family. In 2004 it happened the first time that an organizer had arranged a full flat for me to live and work there. It was the flat of her friend who was on holiday with her boyfriend and who had agreed that I could stay there in the meantime.

I was very busy in that time, giving individual sessions and counseling and the whole day long people came to the flat to meet me. In the evening however, when the last person had left and I started cooking, I was all on my own. I remembered the time when I was alone in my friend’s flat in Itzehoe and when I had felt very homesick. I was just not used to being alone and especially eating alone. You may laugh now, thinking of the three years that I had spent in the cave, fully on my own with nobody else to give me company. That was different though, I was in a fully different state of mind, in a long meditation in which I did not consider myself as alone. In that flat however I noticed it.

This is why, already on the second or third day there, I asked the last woman who had come for a session if she wanted to stay for dinner. She agreed and we started cooking together. We talked, she asked me about India and told me about herself. We had dinner together and a very nice time. The next day, I did the same thing after my last appointment again. Daily I asked the last person whether he or she would like to have an Indian dinner together. Of course sometimes the person had an appointment afterwards or was in another way busy but usually people accepted.

After a few days several people knew that I liked eating in company and they told their friends. People started calling or coming by, asking whether they could join me for dinner. In this way I soon had a dinner party every day.

Seeing this, my organizer had put up a bowl into which people could give a donation, a contribution for buying the food items – because with several people joining us for food, we also had some expenses to cover. So people came and gave for the food they ate. Sometimes they also brought raw vegetables which we would then cook or rice and lentils. I had Indian spices always with me because I had already made the experience that whatever I could get there in spices could not compare to the quality of Indian spices.

The food was great and most of all everyone enjoyed the atmosphere, cooking together with other people, getting to know them better, chatting, laughing and finally eating all together. It was not only I who was happy to have company – there were others who would have been eating on their own and could in this way join us. We all made many friends and connected with a lot of people.