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A Seam for the Master
by Veena
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Published
by Primavera Publications.
152mm x 192mm • softback • perfect bound • 142 pages • 24 pages of colour photographs(65 photographs) •
ISBN 0-9546099-1-3
Price £10.95
plus postage and packaging.
Only a
few copies are left SO GET YOURS NOW!! (email from here to reserve your copy)
Veena's popular booklet Meeting the Master is still
available - see more on the home page and
read an extract on the Meeting the Master page.
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In her new book Veena tells of the 12 years she spent as Osho’s
tailor, making the robes, hats, and costumes which people are
familiar with from seeing him on the podium during discourses
or from watching videos and looking at his photographs.
This is a very humorous, touching, personal story of a Master
working with one of his disciples through the medium of sewing, knitting
and upholstering. It is probably a unique situation in the
history of Master and disciple relationships!!
Below you can find some comments by people who have read the
book, followed by two extracts with illustrations.
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Comments
Having read a few extracts, this is what
some people have said:
It is just that what I read
very much brought back those days when we were with the master
in the body. Those days were special and you brought them back like
they are here and now. I imagine it must be a great insight for people
who haven't been there then as well. As far as the disaster robe is
concerned, it still totally cracks me up. I could very much feel Osho
in your writing. What else can I say but I absolutely love it... Upavas, Hawaii, USA
I love the way you write! For me it is
reading from the heart. I guess that is also the space you write
from. I had the same experience with your previous "book" too.
Sucheta, Sweden
Thanks so much for the treat of these
stories. It is a pleasure to read these jewels. Disha, Australia
I laughed out loud when I read the part
about Osho and Nirvano trying to take the robe off!. Kailash, US
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Excerpt 1 – from Chapter
5:
The First Step on the Tailor’s Path
About a week later I was peacefully sipping a cup of
tea when Priya appeared at my door.
‘Come quickly! Come quickly!’ she breathed.
I followed her at a trot to Lao Tzu House to find Nirvano
rather white-faced. She told me that Osho had suddenly decided that
morning to have a photo session and wanted me to make something for
him to wear – by 11 o’clock. I glanced at the kitchen clock. It was
ten to nine! My god! I had never made anything for him before and now he
was giving me two hours to concoct something? My face must have been pretty
white too as I followed Priya and Nirvano to the verandah outside the library
where there was a cupboard with some cloth and an old sewing machine.
After Osho had arrived in Poona, a sannyasin woman had
sewn for him for a while before returning to the west. There were
a few bits of uninspiring cloth left on the shelf which I fingered
in some dismay. Nirvano told me that Osho had said I was to make a kind
of cloak with a hood – very simple! No doubt! But I had no idea of his
size and I had by now less than two hours to come up with something!
Osho wasn’t very tall, actually about the same height as myself, so
Nirvano suggested I just use my own self as a model.
With a forehead bathed in sweat not just from the heat,
I cleared a table in the library and started to cut. Priya obligingly
found me a mirror and I set to work. That was probably the most focussed
I have ever been in my life! Summoning all my powers of concentration
and all my sewing skills I actually did manage to produce a hood by
11 o’clock.
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Nirvano whipped it out of my hands and
ran onto Osho’s balcony where he and the photographers were waiting.
Totally exhausted I went back to my room and made another
cup of tea to sip. I was just beginning to relax and gather my scattered
wits together, when Priya appeared. Again it was, ‘Come quickly!
Come quickly!’
‘Oh my god, what now?’ I thought as I hurried back to
the house after her. In the kitchen Nirvano this time had a cheeky
grin on her face – which I was soon to learn heralded a new and impossible
task for me. With a wicked giggle she told me that he had liked the
hood so much that he wanted me to make another one for another photo
session at three that afternoon, after his nap.
‘Whaaaat?’ I had already scraped the bottom of the fabric
barrel but it seemed I had to conjure up something else. The positive
side was that I had three instead of two hours to do it in! There
was no piece of fabric big enough to make a single garment from, but
I played around with a bit of velvet and a bit of satin, and saw that
if I made the cloak from the velvet and gave the hood a wide border of
satin, I could just manage. That went in just before 3 pm and this time
I staggered home totally wiped out. I most certainly was not satisfied
with my efforts but he seemed quite happy, so what to do. I just hoped
that he would give me a bit of warning next time so I could get some interesting
fabric and have the time to create something better.
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Click on the picture above to see a larger
version of the page.
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He did! I was told well in advance when
the next photo session would be and, as this looked like it was going to
be something that might happen more often, I took care to stock up on some
fabrics and to even dream up some ideas. In hindsight I think that the haste
of the first session was a kind of test for me to see if I could knuckle down
and come up with something with the odds stacked pretty much against me.
As our spiritual journeys continued he was to create many similar ‘devices’
to help his sannyasins to push through boundaries, find strengths they never
knew they had, face and overcome hurdles they never thought they could
surmount, and generally trust in the ego-quashing process necessary for
the traveller on the path.
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Excerpt 2 – from Chapter 5:
The Disaster Dress
Another robe that I really loved was aptly named ‘The
Disaster Dress’. This wasn’t a festival robe, it was just one for
everyday wear, and I really liked the colour combination of the body
of the dress and the striped ’wings’. I was very happy making it. In
the middle of the process Nirvano appeared, looked at the fabric and said
that he said he wanted to try something new! Oh dear. She explained that
he wanted the dress to be cut without any ‘gathers’ around the neck as
this made it a bit bulky and he wanted it more streamlined. I explained
that the ‘gathers’ were absolutely vital as he could not get in or out of
the robe without that extra material to ‘expand’ as he put the robe over
his head and put his arms through the sleeves. Nirvano was totally aware
of this and said she had explained this to him, but with that mischievous
look in her eye, she said, ‘Do what he wants. If it doesn’t work it is
HIS problem.’ As I said, she was a mini-Zen Master in her own right.
Well, I liked this robe and didn’t want to see it ditched.
So knowing full well that it wouldn’t function according to the
new master plan, I decided to cheat a little. I made it without ‘gathers’
around the neck but instead of cutting away the fabric, I made a couple
of pleats which I ‘hid’ under the wings. If he couldn’t get the robe
on or off – which I knew would happen – I could undo the pleats and
would have enough material to re-insert the ‘gathers’ and make it wearable.
That evening the car took our Master off to Jesus Grove
and there hadn’t been an anguished scream, so I really didn’t know
what had happened. After he returned, however, it did seem as if
Nirvano took more time than usual to emerge from his room. Finally
she arrived in the living room, cracking up. She said he had got the
robe on with her tugging it down all the way round but it proved impossible
to get off! Both of them struggled and struggled and she said she thought
she was finally going to have to come and get some scissors and cut it
off him! Eventually they hit on a solution that worked. He lay on the
bed with his arms stretched over his head and she peeled it off him!
Very undignified!
‘It was a disaster!’ she said. ‘That’ll teach him not
to listen to us!’
Then she looked at me and told me that he said he DID
like the dress and it was a pity it would have to be trashed.
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The next morning it came down to the
sewing room to be stored for giving away, but, without saying a word,
I quickly undid it, released the material I had secreted away and
sewed it up again before giving it to the sannyasin doing the laundry
to wash. I DID tell Nirvano what I had done and a few days later she
playfully set it out for him to wear again. He was really surprised to
see it and was, apparently, very happy to have it. The fabric that ‘The
Disaster Robe’ was made of was very easy to take care of and was one that
travelled with him to India and then around the globe. The photograph was
taken in Crete where he loved to walk around and hang out with his sannyasins
before the world press found him and descended on him and he had to retreat
behind closed doors.
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Click on the picture above to see a larger
version of the page.
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Click on the picture above to see a larger
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