Viha magazine Nov/Dec 2013 | Page 8

Name/Ma 5W Fm J77 WP W M 5W7? Summer. I guess that was the most surprising thing that happened at Osho Risk this year. Why? Because it really happened! The summer s u n came shining into o u r lives at the beginning of July and has pretty much stayed ever since. You’ve no idea how unusual that is. People joke about the Danish weather. For example, in June, when Denmark had its usual share of cold, w e t , and windy weather, there was a joke going around the I n t e r n e t , pretending to announcea web-search malfunction: “Error 101. Danish summer n o t found. Tr y Thailand.” v , r . L . , l“, . , ’* 3 ‘ 3 vi» 1 B u t then the sun came o u t , bookings on Ryanair flights to Mediterranean destinations were cancelled, and suddenly we were swimming in the local lakes and Wearing sun bl(’Ck' Meanwhile, we opened our n e w building, R u m i House, with eight new rooms for residents and guests, plus a meditation hall. Everything seemed to be working fine until one night, shortly after mid‐ night, when all the fire alarms started a shrill, earpiercing beeping, which made everybody rush o u t of their rooms ‐ n o t to escape the fire, but to avoid the noise. for my Shakespeare play were flown in from Pune. Shortly afterward, Danish customs sent us a bill for 10,000 kroner import duty ‐ far more than it cost to make the costumes. When this was ignored asridicu‑ lous, a fine was imposed. After much negotiation and explanation ‐ the costumes were being sent back after the show, so technically they weren’t imports ‑ the duty was lifted. B u t the fine had to be paid! You can’t mess around w i t h Danish bureaucracy. Completion of the n e w building left a big brown field of mud where construction equipment had been operating, so the area was quickly cleared, leveled, rolled, and seeded. Nothing much happened for sev‑ eral weeks, but then the June rains came, and sud‑ denly we had a brand-new lawn. Some of us suspect the grass seed is genetically modified because it grows at a frantic rate, threatening to swamp the flowerbeds surrounding it. As for GM scare stories on Facebook, we figure that as long as we don’t t r y to eat the grass, we'll be fine. One evening, dinner table talk focused on o u r desire to video the Summer Festival, and to our surprise one generous-hearted, newly arrived friend from Copenhagen offered to lend us his state-of‐the-art Sony camera, valued at around US $9,000. Then he remembered, "Oh, wait a minute, I o w n only half of it ‐ I ’ l l have to ask my business partner.” So we were even more surprised when his partner, who'd never m e t us and knew nothing about medi‑ tation communities, also agreed to lend the camera. Thanks to these t w o , we n o w have a movie about the festival on o u r website: www.oshorisk.corn. "I woke up to find an attractive woman knocking on my window,” recalled Sudas, a long-term resident. "At first, I thought she wanted a date, but really she was just looking for ͽ