THE last thing any holy man’s habitat should remind you of is bananas. But that is exactly what happened with me.
It was an unplanned visit. There was time to kill, and what better way to kill it than with curiosity? The drive from Trivandrum airport in Kerala was uneventful. The same swaying palms, fruits perched on bicycles; I had done these roads so often that I could tell one coconut from the other.
At last, I arrived at a gateless gate. Upon entering the ashram I was surprised to find no foreigners in transparent pajamas ambling around with a glazed look in their eyes, which has somehow become mandatory in just about all the abodes of holy men and women. Instead, there were many locals squatting in almost scatological submission on the sandy floor. They definitely seemed as though they were close to their next goal.
They were. Half an hour later free lunch was served. I too was invited. Being from the big city, some of us were taken to a separate room and allowed to sit at a long plank of wood that passed for a table. Plantain leaves were put before us and thick globules of sticky rice from a straw basket were served topped with spicy rasam, a sort of peppery-watery grave for the intestines. Vegetables, curd, pickles and sweets completed the meal.
Then we were told to drop our pants.
As a concession to my gender I could retain mine, but I would have to wear a dhoti over it as it was the required uniform if you wanted to be ushered into the Guru’s presence. I gamely wrapped mine, even managing a neat little pleat.
Guruji sat in an ornate backless, armless seat with a two-foot wide low desk in front of him, the idea being that no one must touch His Holiness. One intrepid couple did a smart thing – they squeezed themselves beneath the stand to touch his feet!
We were about five of us special creatures who had been permitted to sit on the mat and watch as a line-up of devotees filed past, prostrated on the floor and made their offerings, the last one a compulsory condition for getting his blessings. I have no quarrel with this, but seeing such blind belief I did begin to wonder what these people got in return. A smile? Advice? Peace of mind? What?
A couple had brought their infant daughter to be named. He, barely touching the child or looking at her, pronounced, “Archana”, and turned to the next person in line. It was obvious that he wanted to get over with this; I secretly hoped he genuinely believed that the darshan business was a facade.
The truth is that he was waiting for the big moment with the microphone, with the rapt audience outside and, more specifically, the five in front of him from far-off places. To be fair to him, he was not a publicity hound. We would not have heard of him but for a report about a Mexican who, having experienced his aura, found him a most enlightened human being. He probably is, but to be a guru he offers nothing new except for the usual “oneness of god, truth, peace and sham of science” line.
Is it worth waiting for hours in the sun? Don’t we already know that good is good? Should we merely indulge someone only because he likes listening to his own voice? The moment we announced that we had to leave early he got an emissary to tell us that it was not possible to understand his message in such a short span of time.
I agreed. He handed me a red banana from the lot he had received. I was told it was a divine offering. No prayer, no sacred touch, only a fruit. I ate it hungrily and found bliss at the exit door.
Apparently, heaven was not quite done with me. My next stop was a temple in Thrissur several kilometers away. The purpose of the visit, however, was not pious. An acquaintance had been dumped with me because my friends did not think I was ‘proper’ enough for the small-town. The person assigned with the task of looking after my welfare for a couple of hours had no better idea. So, after discussing time management and girlfriend problems, he veered the car towards the ‘tembal’, as he pronounced it.
It was beautiful and serene, and the first time I had visited a place of worship in this light of darkness. There were spaces where I had to walk carefully and find a toehold. I had the opportunity of understanding things from the perspective of a devotee rather than getting a description about the architectural marvels from a tourist guide.
He lit an oil lamp and folded his hands. I felt like an actor onstage waiting for the cue. He then walked me around various idols; standing before each one, he would clap. I stood silently. He urged me to do the same. “That is for god to listen,” he said in all seriousness. Rather self-consciously, I clapped. It was strangely beautiful; there was clapping all around like at a musical concert. Thup, thup, thup. I could have danced all night.
Finally, we arrived at the sanctum. He took off his shirt. I asked him whether I was supposed to follow suit. He shushed me up with a, “People are listening, this is not Bombay”. Then he lay down flat on his belly, his folded hands extended towards a mute witness in stone.
That vision will haunt me forever. No sermons, no congregation, and no bananas. I, as a mere observer, was given a glimpse of divine communion even as I stood apart as a non-believer. Heaven, more than hell, is about other people.
(This was published in The Friday Times.)
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Yeh sangam hoga ke nahin?
This picture was taken at the sangam -- the meeting of three rivers -- in Allahabad.
The pujaris often jumped from one boat to the other because of the demand to perform rituals. There was also a good deal of exchange; if one sadhu ran short of coconuts or flowers, then hands were extended to borrow from another.
The pujari (uninvited) on my boat at one point wanted to leave because I was more interested in the sights than in him.
"Gotra kya hai?" he asked.
He wanted to know my specific designated caste.
I don't have any, or none I would want to know about or be associated with.
So, in right royal fashion, I announced, "Raj vansh".
Surprisingly, he did not object to my claims of blue blood.
He took his vengeance when he did not give me my share of prasad.
PS: Please note my aesthetic sense as I match the font colour of this write-up with the photograph!!
The Dying Light
I do not see the dead bodies in Varanasi. Even as the images flash before me, they get superimposed by the sight of a smiling paan-stained mouth, the pichkari from it landing on a cream-coloured wall. It is as red as the blood they are showing us now.
I do not see dead bodies. Instead, I see what looked like a huge boulder in the middle of the Ganges as the two young boatmen rowed near it. I had wondered what it was doing there. How did it end up in the river, was it a natural formation?
“Nahin, nahin,” they had laughed. “Murdaa hai…” It was the bloated carcass of an animal. They had become seasoned and we passed many such cadavers and they began pointing out those assuming I had just discovered the meaning of mortality. In some ways, I had.
The smoke from a distant pyre swayed ominously in the breeze like the dance of death it was in fact performing. Corpses lay waiting to be cremated – the higher the pile of wood and the more fragrant it was, you understood that it belonged to someone whose value in death, as in life, was a little more. One of the boatmen told me that sometimes relatives of those who could not afford it or just could not wait threw the bodies in the river. They saw the corpses turn blue and unrecognisable. Were they not afraid? I asked. “Yeh to roz ki baat hai,” he said.
* * *
The bomb blasts are not an everyday thing. I am sure he would react differently. He would see those bodies differently. I do not see those dead bodies. It is like wanting to remember something that one has cherished as it was. I am not denying what happened, I know it is something that needs to be probed into, but I cannot get myself to even think. In a strange way – and I still do not know why -- this was my first reaction to the demolition of the Babri Masjid too. I had gone numb. I did not know the latter; I know Varanasi.
It isn’t only about that saree in my closet – the one with the most subtle play of colours, the light sea green and dawn pink meshing on a white background that takes on their reflection and does not seem so white anymore. That is how one feels the moment one enters the city. I wasn’t just a tourist. It was a place I always wanted to go to. I felt like a seeker who would find something. I was not looking for god. I was looking for nothing. And it is tough finding Nothing.
The sudden showers had clogged the narrow streets. The cycle rickshaw swerved dangerously through the water, splashing school kids who were making their way home. How many such kids knew that the person clicking them with a camera was imagining she would find her Nothingness there? They laughed and waved and I laughed and waved back cursing myself for interrupting my goal towards mystical enlightenment.
My mind does not allow me to think of kids dying.
The rickshawalla could not go right near the ghats. Walking the stretch from the road to the steps through muddy water carrying withered flowers became a matter of survival of the feet. Did mystics think of antiseptic soaps?
After being accosted by touts, as one is in any religious place, I just stood at the edge of the steps leading to the river. I knew Project Ganga had been started to clean up the water. From where I was, I could see ochre and white robes, people carrying wood and incense, and lots of marigold garlands. Was this about death or life?
A foreigner sat cross-legged on the stairs, shutting his vision to everything. I tried doing that and realised that my eyes were hungry.
I got into the boat and from there even the man meditating seemed like a small speck. I had always wanted to touch the Ganga water, but chickened out. The boatmen did, leaving a trail with their fingertips. The skies realised my dilemma and a light drizzle came down on us. The water touched me and met the river. Contact had been made. We had gone quite far out and on the return we got a closer look. Each ghat had a story, a reason, a purpose.
* * *
There was a small eating place right up the steps. It was a little hole in the wall, but was stocked with an amazing range of biscuits and chocolates and…toilet paper rolls. They looked rather anachronistic here. I conveyed my confusion to the boy who was serving customers. “Foreigner log,” he said. This was the clientele. They ate pastas and sandwiches. They came in with their straw hats and paisley print dresses and returned for something straight from the packet.
From a small window you could see the river; it looked like a rough-hewn painting. This was one way to see it. Or you could stick your neck out and feel the air as it camouflaged death. I made quick visits to the umpteen temples and passed the many pandas who have found a home here.
Going through lanes selling rudraksh beads and kiosks hawking real estate, one reached row-lined houses where the sadhus stay. Peeping into one of the homes, the sparsely done up place was visible: a small cot, about four utensils and a pair of wooden sandals. A tap was located just outside from which a sadhu was filling a bucket. A single tiny grilled window let in the light and the air.
As one left to make way for some more, there was a modern intruder. A guy with a box on a stand tried to market the idea of a quickie horoscope. All you did was plug in the earphones and listened to a tape-recorded message in shudh Hindi about your character, your present problems and rosy future. You heard the catch-phrases about peit ka dard, sar dard, kathin rishte, and smiled at last over the prediction that you would get what you were seeking very soon. There, in a corner, was Chotiwalla Baba’s restaurant smelling of heaven fried a golden brown.
* * *
In these days of Them and Us when sick jokes and weak repartee have become the order of the day it wasn’t at all surprising that a friend should comment in ostensibly good humour about my then imminent trip. “Oh, a Muslim going there. You are sure to defile the place!”
The reply, as expected, was defensive. “Quite the contrary, I shall make the place holier.”
But all the machinations of men playing god fail when one realises that belief essentially means never having to be sorry.
You must not be sorry about the sticky stains left behind by extra sweet chai as memories on tea cups. You must not be sorry about suspicious-looking chhole-bhature and pakoras. You must not be sorry about the slippery floor that is wet with water and urine that mingle with dust and muck to produce a greyish glaze. You must not be sorry that what you have come to find you may never get.
At one of the temples a group of women were singing songs, carrying crimson strings that they would tie for their wishes to be granted. Was it the Sankat Mochan Temple that exploded with bombs, the temple that means all troubles would be wiped away? I do not know.
“Why don’t you tie a thread?” one of them asked.
I want Nothing, I had said.
It is all a matter of faith, I am told. It is only when darkness descends and one can smell the night and wipe out the stink, that one’s eyes become moist. Could it be merely a romantic moment of search? It matters not. Suffice to say that the sound of the aarti and the sight of small leaf boats with a flame on them were enough to engulf one with a warm feeling of being at home in an alien place.
I could hear the water hum and imagine Ustad Bismillah Khan’s shehnai playing a tune that was more celebratory than a dirge, or just lie down and watch the sky and marvel at the fact that nature is god in so many incarnations.
Footnote: 'Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.' Buddha
I do not see dead bodies. Instead, I see what looked like a huge boulder in the middle of the Ganges as the two young boatmen rowed near it. I had wondered what it was doing there. How did it end up in the river, was it a natural formation?
“Nahin, nahin,” they had laughed. “Murdaa hai…” It was the bloated carcass of an animal. They had become seasoned and we passed many such cadavers and they began pointing out those assuming I had just discovered the meaning of mortality. In some ways, I had.
The smoke from a distant pyre swayed ominously in the breeze like the dance of death it was in fact performing. Corpses lay waiting to be cremated – the higher the pile of wood and the more fragrant it was, you understood that it belonged to someone whose value in death, as in life, was a little more. One of the boatmen told me that sometimes relatives of those who could not afford it or just could not wait threw the bodies in the river. They saw the corpses turn blue and unrecognisable. Were they not afraid? I asked. “Yeh to roz ki baat hai,” he said.
* * *
The bomb blasts are not an everyday thing. I am sure he would react differently. He would see those bodies differently. I do not see those dead bodies. It is like wanting to remember something that one has cherished as it was. I am not denying what happened, I know it is something that needs to be probed into, but I cannot get myself to even think. In a strange way – and I still do not know why -- this was my first reaction to the demolition of the Babri Masjid too. I had gone numb. I did not know the latter; I know Varanasi.
It isn’t only about that saree in my closet – the one with the most subtle play of colours, the light sea green and dawn pink meshing on a white background that takes on their reflection and does not seem so white anymore. That is how one feels the moment one enters the city. I wasn’t just a tourist. It was a place I always wanted to go to. I felt like a seeker who would find something. I was not looking for god. I was looking for nothing. And it is tough finding Nothing.
The sudden showers had clogged the narrow streets. The cycle rickshaw swerved dangerously through the water, splashing school kids who were making their way home. How many such kids knew that the person clicking them with a camera was imagining she would find her Nothingness there? They laughed and waved and I laughed and waved back cursing myself for interrupting my goal towards mystical enlightenment.
My mind does not allow me to think of kids dying.
The rickshawalla could not go right near the ghats. Walking the stretch from the road to the steps through muddy water carrying withered flowers became a matter of survival of the feet. Did mystics think of antiseptic soaps?
After being accosted by touts, as one is in any religious place, I just stood at the edge of the steps leading to the river. I knew Project Ganga had been started to clean up the water. From where I was, I could see ochre and white robes, people carrying wood and incense, and lots of marigold garlands. Was this about death or life?
A foreigner sat cross-legged on the stairs, shutting his vision to everything. I tried doing that and realised that my eyes were hungry.
I got into the boat and from there even the man meditating seemed like a small speck. I had always wanted to touch the Ganga water, but chickened out. The boatmen did, leaving a trail with their fingertips. The skies realised my dilemma and a light drizzle came down on us. The water touched me and met the river. Contact had been made. We had gone quite far out and on the return we got a closer look. Each ghat had a story, a reason, a purpose.
* * *
There was a small eating place right up the steps. It was a little hole in the wall, but was stocked with an amazing range of biscuits and chocolates and…toilet paper rolls. They looked rather anachronistic here. I conveyed my confusion to the boy who was serving customers. “Foreigner log,” he said. This was the clientele. They ate pastas and sandwiches. They came in with their straw hats and paisley print dresses and returned for something straight from the packet.
From a small window you could see the river; it looked like a rough-hewn painting. This was one way to see it. Or you could stick your neck out and feel the air as it camouflaged death. I made quick visits to the umpteen temples and passed the many pandas who have found a home here.
Going through lanes selling rudraksh beads and kiosks hawking real estate, one reached row-lined houses where the sadhus stay. Peeping into one of the homes, the sparsely done up place was visible: a small cot, about four utensils and a pair of wooden sandals. A tap was located just outside from which a sadhu was filling a bucket. A single tiny grilled window let in the light and the air.
As one left to make way for some more, there was a modern intruder. A guy with a box on a stand tried to market the idea of a quickie horoscope. All you did was plug in the earphones and listened to a tape-recorded message in shudh Hindi about your character, your present problems and rosy future. You heard the catch-phrases about peit ka dard, sar dard, kathin rishte, and smiled at last over the prediction that you would get what you were seeking very soon. There, in a corner, was Chotiwalla Baba’s restaurant smelling of heaven fried a golden brown.
* * *
In these days of Them and Us when sick jokes and weak repartee have become the order of the day it wasn’t at all surprising that a friend should comment in ostensibly good humour about my then imminent trip. “Oh, a Muslim going there. You are sure to defile the place!”
The reply, as expected, was defensive. “Quite the contrary, I shall make the place holier.”
But all the machinations of men playing god fail when one realises that belief essentially means never having to be sorry.
You must not be sorry about the sticky stains left behind by extra sweet chai as memories on tea cups. You must not be sorry about suspicious-looking chhole-bhature and pakoras. You must not be sorry about the slippery floor that is wet with water and urine that mingle with dust and muck to produce a greyish glaze. You must not be sorry that what you have come to find you may never get.
At one of the temples a group of women were singing songs, carrying crimson strings that they would tie for their wishes to be granted. Was it the Sankat Mochan Temple that exploded with bombs, the temple that means all troubles would be wiped away? I do not know.
“Why don’t you tie a thread?” one of them asked.
I want Nothing, I had said.
It is all a matter of faith, I am told. It is only when darkness descends and one can smell the night and wipe out the stink, that one’s eyes become moist. Could it be merely a romantic moment of search? It matters not. Suffice to say that the sound of the aarti and the sight of small leaf boats with a flame on them were enough to engulf one with a warm feeling of being at home in an alien place.
I could hear the water hum and imagine Ustad Bismillah Khan’s shehnai playing a tune that was more celebratory than a dirge, or just lie down and watch the sky and marvel at the fact that nature is god in so many incarnations.
Footnote: 'Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.' Buddha
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