Woman's spritual path leads to India

Shivani Aum Datri discusses her first trip to India 15 years ago. Amy Alonzo Rozak/The Union Democrat, copyright 2009

These words are synonymous with Shivani Aum Datri, 60, of Sonora.

Once the wife of prominent Sonora chiropractor Jeff Johnson, Shivani traded her worldly possessions for a more simple life.

“I went on this spiritual path,” said Shivani, nee Verna Johnson, a 22-year Tuolumne County resident. “My old life is no longer a part of me.”

Her path to enlightenment began 15 years ago when she traveled to India for the first time. Her children, Erica Manley, 34, of Palm Springs, and Lloyd Andersen, 36, of Las Vegas, were grown.

Circling the country by bus and train she discovered the beauty and truth of India.

As part of her spiritual transformation she shaved her head, began wearing long, flowing robes and changed her name to Shivani Aum Datri.

“Shiva is the destroyer of all our worldly things, like fear and money. Aum is the vibration we all come from and Datri is the mother, or the nurse,” she explained.

Her ethereal pilgrimage eventually led her to Varanasi, the Hindu holy city, located on the banks of the Ganges River, where she lives and works nine months out of the year.

“A voice told me to move to India. I sold my house the next day. There was no logic. I followed my heart,” Shivani smiled.

Six years ago, she opened a vegetarian restaurant, the Aum Cafe, in Varanasi, which serves breakfast, lunch and early dinner, mostly catering to tourists.

“We don’t have a can opener,” she laughed. “We make everything — bread, granola and pita pockets — ourselves.”

With an astronomical population — approximately 1.17 billion people, one-sixth of the world’s population — living in India is a stark contrast to the United States, she said.

“India is chaos — the noise and pollution. It’s hell, but there is something underneath it,” she said. “I absolutely can’t control it — I have to go back. It’s something within my being. Maybe it’s my karma.”

Over time, Shivani has created an extended family in India, which includes Shailendra Awasthi and his wife, Sangeeta, who works at the cafe, their two young boys, and Bhola, a baby she helped take care of when his mother was too ill to care for him.

“Bhola is special. He weighed less than two pounds when he came to me as a baby,” she said. “He is 2 years old now.”

Since the whereabouts of Bhola’s mother are unknown, Sangeeta has assumed the role of his mother and Shivani is like his grandmother, or Dadi Aum, in Hindi. 

“I sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ to him,” she smiled.

Other members of her extended eclectic Indian family include a pack of dogs that stops by the cafe for bread, and also a brahma bull named Nandi.

“I didn’t go looking for a bull. I found him, near death, in a garbage dump,” Shivani explained. “I fed him spinach, but he didn’t like it. I fed him an apple, but he didn’t have teeth, so I ran and got him a banana.”

Nandi, now a healthy 4-year-old bull, is colossal in size and has to be coaxed from the cafe with food, so customers can enjoy their dining experience, Shivani said.

The decision to make India her second home, and to open the cafe, has transformed Shivani’s life in ways she never imaged.

Though full of disorder and confusion, India is the place Shivani feels a connection with, a place where she discovers her humanity over and over again.

“People go to the city where I live to die because it is a holy city,” she said.

Seeing people on the street, near death, was something she wasn’t used to seeing. When she encountered an old woman, she felt like she had to help her.

With Sangeeta’s help, they washed the woman’s body, put clean clothes on her and covered her with a blanket so that she could die with a measure of dignity.

The experience with the old woman stayed with her and has fueled a desire to open a place for women, who are near death, who can no longer care for themselves and have no one to care for them, she said.

“My intentions are pure. If it happens, it does,” Shivani said.

India is intense and the three months Shivani spends in Sonora is time when she regroups, escapes from survival mode, and takes a break from pandemonium, she said.

“I love Sonora. I love this area,” she said. “I love going to Pinecrest Lake.”

Leading her Monday night meditation, which she offers for free, is something she and her clients look forward to when she is back in the Mother Lode.

“Her creative visualizations are amazing,” said Tricia Lewis, of Sonora, who met Shivani seven years ago through the meditation class.

“She’s an extraordinary woman,” Lewis said. “I hope to know her for the rest of my life.”

Whether she is healing bodies in Sonora or touching lives in India, Shivani feels she has found her purpose in life.
 

“I believe there is one truth and many paths,” she said. “Find the courage to go forward — that’s what my life is all about now.”