One of my business clients had made a last-minute decision to send me to the first Afro-American Conference in Harare, Zimbabwe. The travel agent worked feverishly to arrange the ticket for a flight leaving the next morning. Following the conference, a business tour to Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya and Ethiopia was planned. More arrangements would be made once I landed in Africa.
When I arrived in Harare, my luggage failed to show up, which surprised me since it was a direct flight. The airline staff promised to deliver it to the hotel when the next flight arrived the following day. I had only my traveling clothes: a gray leisure suit and my slip-on shoes. No pajamas, no change of underwear, not even a hairbrush.
On my first night in Zimbabwe, I was awakened by a thunderous voice saying, “Johnny Appleseed!”
It sounded as if the voice had come from the window. Immediately, I opened the window and looked out. It was dark outside. I was on the fifth floor of the hotel. There was no way anyone could have been outside the window.
I ran from the window to the door, opened it and looked down the hallway. I saw the beautiful pattern on the carpet, but there wasn’t a soul in either direction. Puzzled, I stood there wondering, Who said that?
I could not go back to sleep. My body was vibrating with the echo: Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed.
The next day, my luggage still hadn’t arrived. Most of the delegates to the conference were ambassadors dressed in expensive suits, and they were changing their clothes two or three times a day. Most of them had their staff with them. And there I was, solo, in my leisure suit and burgundy Johnston and Murphy slip-on shoes.
Later that afternoon, I saw people noticing me wherever I went, maybe because I was the only native Indian there, or because I was grossly underdressed for the occasion. That made me more self-conscious. But soon I realized they were trying to befriend me.
Tired after a full day, I lay down to sleep and it struck me: the vibration of Johnny Appleseed had been going through my body all day long. I thought perhaps others were also hearing or feeling it. They were not noticing me or my clothes. These vibrations were drawing them. I was not the reason why. That night I slept like a baby. The pressure was off.
Having become aware of the mystery, I started to observe it in action.
People were forming a semi-circle around me wherever I went—in the lobby, the conference room, the restaurants. Even in the local bazaar. Three ambassadors attached themselves to me as special friends. Even the U.S. Senator from Kansas, who was there as one of the keynote speakers, spotted me and came over to visit. She knew me and had sponsored my name for a presidential appointment.
The most sought-after personality in the conference was a New York Times columnist who was syndicated around the world and well admired. He approached me and wanted to know who I was. After a brief visit, he asked me to meet him for breakfast the next morning in his room.
The breakfast lasted an hour and a half. He was more interested in my philosophy than in my business life. He insisted on driving me to the airport the next day, as we were both going to Mozambique on the same flight.
As I checked in at the airport, they brought out my luggage.
“Where was it all week long?” I inquired.
“It was always here, Sir. Your luggage came with you on your flight,” the airline agent informed me. I had been calling them twice a day, leaving my phone number each time, and no one had called me.
I realized that someone or something was playing games with me. I am in the magical field of your dance, I thought to myself. I shall dance with you and enjoy every step. I laughed out loud. My new journalist friend was puzzled by my approach and told me so.
There were eight passengers to Maputo, Mozambique, all of them Americans. It included the immediate past Ambassador to the United Nations, the Mayor of Los Angeles, a State Department officer, and three vice presidents of major international corporations. The journalist, while friends with all the others, chose to sit next to me. Upon reaching Maputo, everyone got their luggage, except for one. Me. We had seen our luggage loaded on the small plane, so I asked if they would check once again. Members of a top-level delegation of government ministers were there to receive the VIP American guests. They intervened and confirmed my luggage did not make it.
I steeled myself to travel through the rest of Africa without baggage. I had packed even my leisure suit jacket in my suitcase. The vice president of Star-Kist tuna company gave me a black T-shirt with the famous tagline on the front, “Sorry, Charlie.” That t-shirt and my well-worn trousers became my wardrobe for the next several days. I wore it for dinner at the house of the Indian Ambassador to Mozambique and his wife, as well as to meet with some of the top members of the Mozambique government, the prime reason for my trip there.
The government of Mozambique offered the possibility of providing 10,000 fertile hectares of land to my client to start an agricultural operation to provide food for their people, as well as crops for export.
The last night I spent in Mozambique, two things became clear. The vibrations going through my body were all that I needed to fulfill my life’s work. No fancy clothes, wealth, or status could compete with it. A mere t-shirt would do the job.
And I knew that the voice I had heard in my hotel room, and the vibrations it started, were a call from the small lemon tree, whose lemons I had picked as a child to make jugs of lemonade for my family during the hot summer. I had made a pledge back then that when I grew up, I would plant thousands of lemon trees just like it, so other people could also benefit from its fruits. Now the lemon tree was calling me back, as it had been doing for months whenever I would go into meditation. It was asking me to keep my promise.
I vowed to plant 100 lemon trees before returning to the U.S. In that split second, the vibrations left.
I wrote to Treva that night, in January 1983:
An interesting phenomenon is taking place. The ministers and ambassadors from these countries are chasing me—I am the one they seek. I do not mention this because of vanity—which I am not short of—but because it is a wave that I am riding. It is a force not of me. I feel at the top, 10 stories high, not because I am that tall but because the tide has lifted this body that high. Just as sure as in a short time it will put me back down. It is the recognition of these times and tides that make a good surfer.
Doors are opening. I am not opening them, they just open. I feel as if I’m in an enchanted house. There is an entrance, for I know I have just entered, and there is an exit. The trick is to be able to enter this house at will and stay totally detached. It is not my house. I am merely a visitor, as I would be in a museum. I do not own anything, anything, and yet, I own it all.
My world is not limited to my imagination, nor by my will to use the power that has been bestowed upon me. . .
The next day I decided to reroute my journey through India, instead of continuing through Africa.
Now I was in a rush. I had a mission propelling me forward.
balbirmathur.com 
When life gives you lemons, make
Lemonade. It take that idea to a
Wholly different plane of knowing and existence. I am so honored to be your steppie. Namaste.