The Raju Bharti Way

What an iconic guest house in the Tirthan valley taught me about myself, the world, and flourishing outside the rules of the game

Raju Bharti’s guest house in the Tirthan valley neither had an Airbnb listing about its unique story, nor a shiny, polychromatic marketing campaign on its Instagram page. In fact, it had no current profiles on any travel websites and probably had no computers or APIs doing any work for it. 

There were a few blogs and articles about the guest house from a time when travel-blogging was not yet a thing. But the Google reviews and TripAdvisor testimonials were a mixed bag. There was high praise, a “heaven on earth” as views, food, and location go. But the host was “not at all friendly”, even “a bit rude”; the place “too unkempt” and “much hyped.” 

My husband and I might have had second thoughts, if it weren’t for the fact that the guest house was described as legendary by friends of all stripes - from the globe-trotter in sports production, to the hot shot mediator ex-boss, to the educator colleague whose heart and soul are in the hills.

So we made an old-school phone call and booked the place. 

My annoyance that the property defied all the rules of an internet world dissipated, just minutes into getting there. We arrived at an odd hour on an overnight bus. Yet, we were personally checked in by the host’s family, much earlier than noon - their standard. They packed us fresh paranthas and home-grown apples when we set off on long hikes, and had steaming cups of chai and persimmon ready when we returned, weary and weathered. We were fed meals that we had not paid for, no questions asked. The host even volunteered to help with obtaining official permissions and personally arranged a local guide - who seemed like the best in the business - for the long hike into the national park. Sure, our host was uninterested in (and frankly much too busy for) empty pleasantries or polite small talk. But his care was matter-of-fact, and his attention, a rare gift. 

In the Airbnb economy where success is guaranteed even without face-time, hot meals or personal attention, Raju Bharti’s cosy guest house was a quaint outlier, writing its story one guest at a time.

Something about this experience moved me. 

Raju Bharti’s guest house

Is there a Raju Bharti way to be in the world?

I’d long wrestled with this question, in the face of considerable professional advice to build my online brand. Apparently, it would do me well to post online whenever I did the slightest thing of significance. (A totally normal thing in the world of suits I come from.)

Only a few months into this game, I couldn’t help but see everyone (and myself) through a distorting gaze made up of tag lines, posts, likes, and subtweets. Everywhere I looked, I only saw caricatures: the witty contrarian who likes to believe they fall for nothing, the self-styled libertarian who gleefully calls out tribalism everywhere, the intellectual who knows better than you and isn’t afraid to tell you, and the over-achiever who is “pleased to share” their latest and greatest attainment. The logic of the medium was so encompassing that the human beings behind the handles had become incidental. 

I privately concluded that I would just not internet in this way, and promptly retired from posting on public social-media. 

But there were other ways in which I was unwittingly always performing some version of myself for some indiscernible audience. If I went for a run without my Fitbit or a Strava log, did I even run? If I enjoyed a book but didn’t rate it on Goodreads, did I even read it? If I spotted a little green bee-eater but didn’t take a photo of it, did I even see it?

Raju Bharti’s family made no show of their hospitality. They were unburdened by such questions. 

For my first agenda item at the guest house, I decided to try the Raju Bharti way.

I needed to introduce myself in a post to my Write of Passage cohort. I’d been avoiding it. I was kicking and screaming internally against having to write up another filtered, internet-friendly story about myself for another social-medium. 

With less than a day to go before the course kicked-off, I signed into the online forum. Resisting the urge to introduce myself through some combination of my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, I started typing. 

I wrote about my current projects, saying as little as I could about my professional-story. I confessed that I was drained by my career, even if I didn’t fully admit the degree of burn-out. I claimed I was excited to find out more about myself through Write of Passage; in truth, I dreaded being waylaid by what I may discover, and was quite anxious about the course. 

I let out a long exhale and hit publish. For the first time, I was on the level about myself in public.

What makes the Raju Bharti way tick? 

Raju Bharti’s guest house didn’t bother with story-telling online, and they didn’t care to be reviewed for their hospitality. But they listened to our plans, they heard the things we did not say, and they were quietly there for us at the slightest sign that we were out of our depth. They looked out for us, even when we were not their problem, and they anticipated our needs before we even knew them. We were everything to each other while we were in the valley; why did we need to be anything to each other when we left?  

I suspect there was something more though. A kind of inner moral clarity that they were more than just their hospitality and guest reviews. They were guides to travellers, trekkers and solitude-seekers. They were horticulturalists of fruit orchards, and parents to countless mountain dogs and cats over time. And they were stewards of a tiny slice of the valley’s ecosystem (as I would later learn). 

The immaculate waters of River Tirthan, thanks in part to Mr. Raju Bharti’s work

That was not a project that they needed to sell by rendering themselves into a two-dimensional simulacrum on the internet. It was a project that would bring the right people to them, so long as they remained true to themselves and their sense of meaning. 

Having attempted this radical thing myself in the Write of Passage online forum, I was pleased as punch to meet the rest of my cohort: a veritable carnival of the wonders of the human condition. 

Conversations over minutes with randomly assigned break-out room buddies blossomed into unlikely friendships over DM. In each essay, we momentarily invited others into our lives, curiosities and obsessions. Requests for feedback were met with generosity of spirit - in both criticism and cheers - that seriously challenges theories of reciprocity.  Essay after essay, I showed parts of myself that typically live beyond the filters of social media. And as the weeks went by, I found more of my voice and obscured less of myself. In the company of strangers I’d known for a few days, I felt more seen than I had among friends I’d known for a lifetime. 

I was probably still performing. Just the Raju Bharti way.