Ganges was gradually flooded with hundreds of candles like lava gushing out of stark black crevices. Mirrors inside the temple glittered like jewels and reflected the flickering lights onto the entire ghat. There was such a big difference between the Haridwar of the day – the jarring, smelly, repulsive entity – and the Haridwar of the evening – this dreamy, fluid, almost songlike city. Lights twinkled everywhere, the smoothest glowing shade of buttery yellow one can imagine, and the energy of the people gathered here was truly infectious. I don’t exactly know why, maybe it was the bhajan, but my head was filled with images of a shepherd looking over his cows grazing in a lush green meadow. Bhakt jano ke sankat… das jano ke sankat pal me dur karein, om jai jagdish hare. O lord, you resolve all our problems in a moment. And like benign animals under your ever-watchful gaze, we explore the fields without any worries.
After the aarti was over, the crowd subsided significantly. We were even able to find a relatively dry spot on the steps and sat down to watch the pilgrims. A refreshing breeze brushed our faces, liberating us from the suffocation created by the throng. River had just taken out his camera when abruptly, all the trousers around us started to drop one after the other. I looked to the left and bam! A pair of boxers was flashed in my face.
“Whoa! Things are getting frisky here.” River was alarmed; he hadn’t expected such brazen behaviour in a holy city like Haridwar.
“Look at that man.” I followed his finger and saw this old soul with shaky legs emerging from the Ganges after a holy dip. His underwear had slid all the way down to his hips and was perched dangerously above his crotch. If his penis had not shrivelled up because of the cold water, I’m sure we would’ve got an eyeful of his scrotum. The number of naked men I saw this evening in Haridwar was astounding. Men with wrinkled bodies stood next to young boys with supple limbs and baby fat still hanging off their tummies. Kids screamed out to their granddads, “dadaji kachcha sambhal ke." Hold on to your underpants! Husbands dragged their wives into the river, grandmas walked around with their breasts freely swinging under the thin cover of wet saris.
“Are you going in for a dip?” River asked me seriously.
“I don’t think so. Are you?”
“I want to, but I’m afraid of what I might see when I come up for air.”
“Haha, go on, you’ll be fine.”
River considered that for a few seconds and then got up.
“Okay, but if I come back here and find out that you’ve disappeared with my jeans, you are dead.”
Dammit! River had figured out my plan. But I gave him my word and sat there surrounded by the scent of flowers, camphor and incense, while River went about cleansing his soul. There were so many languages around me – Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali, French, Dutch, German – that religion seemed a mere footnote to this merry get-together. A man in a white dhoti and tonsured head sat next to the water, conducting the final rites of his father or mother. He emptied the ashes into the river along with a glass of milk and the priest began a long session of chanting. In our sensible, practical world, it’s often easy to forget the incredible power of human faith. On any given day, thousands of people come to the Ganges with their miseries, hoping that the water will soothe their nerves as though it were a balm. And surprisingly, Ganges rises to the occasion without fail. If you wish to be blessed, you will be.
When River was done, we carefully walked over the slippery marble and got back to our shoes. The lost and found department kept making announcements over the speaker, calling out to people who had lost their bags or their children or their parents. I almost clapped with joy when I slipped back into my grotty old sandals. Perhaps I’m a sentimental fool but there is a special place in my heart for all my shoes. They are my mates, my good luck charms and the more places they take me to, the more amazing things they see with me, the more attached I become to them. The more battered and dirty they get, the more I feel the need to nurture them as though they are a manifestation of my world-weary soul.
From Har ki Pauri, my sandals and I followed the crowd and landed in the bazaar surrounding the ghats. It was such a vibrant trove of memorabilia, religious contrivances, food, clothes, sadhus, music and colours. The markets of Kathmandu were nothing compared to this honeycomb filled with gold and silver vessels. Piles of vermillion were stacked outside every shop along with coconuts and blocks of sandalwood. When we were walking along the bridge earlier, I had seen some men bent over the edge with nets in their hands. As the pilgrims finished their pujas and dumped the coconuts into the water, these men fished them out, dried them off and sold them right back to the people. It was an ingenious scheme; recycling, reusing, reducing, all at once. In the bazaar, River spent a long time looking for an incense burner and the perfect dhoti to go with his freckled skin. Sadly, he never got to wear it while he was in India, but hopefully he’s walking around the English countryside now, wrapped in his pristine white, outrageously expensive, hand-woven sarong.
Despite the shopping spree, we weren’t really hungry yet, but the smell of spicy chickpea curry and deep fried bhature compelled us to hog again. In the classic Indian tradition of defying all diktats of logic, the sitting area here was inside the shop whereas all the cooking was done right on the street. Men swirled their huge spatulas in the charred woks filled with oil, while mosquitoes squatted happily on the sweets, pickles and other ingredients. An interesting signboard above the shop caught my attention as it was advertising a new housing scheme in the posh part of Haridwar. It said, ‘You are welcome to our world-class enmities.’ I’m sure we were.
After this entirely unhealthy but satisfying dinner, we came across a shop selling, of all the things in the world, special lassi! Obviously, River was ecstatic.
“Fuck yeah! Finally!”
He immediately went ahead and bought two big glasses. But sadly, the special part of this lassi was made up of an extra layer of cream and a pound of sugar. It was delicious no doubt, just not in the way we wanted it to be.
“Don’t look so glum, we still have time. Hang in there,” I consoled River as we walked back to the hotel. There, lulled by the melancholic whirl of the cooler, we were fast asleep by ten.
Holy Dips (Part 2)
Since Rishikesh is just an hour away from Haridwar, we were hoping that the bus services would be frequent and hassle-free. Predictably, that wasn’t the case. First, we spent an entire hour running around in circles, trying to figure out the right stand for Rishikesh. When this didn’t work, we had to resort to jumping in front of departing buses and scream at the drivers, “Rishikesh? Rishikesh?”
Some drivers swore at us, some almost ran us over, but we continued to tempt fate till we were granted passage on yet another unbelievably dysfunctional bus. I shouldn’t complain though because it was cheap. Besides, who needs air-conditioning or a footrest or even a seat when for a fraction of the cost you can travel with dozens of fully-grown men perched on each other’s laps? Nowhere else in the world have I ever seen men offer up the space between their legs to other men so freely. The bus was so full that the conductor could barely hand out the tickets. Like a drunk trapeze artist, he took off gracefully, but then had to be held up by the passengers after losing his bearings halfway into the leap.
Nonetheless, as soon as we reached Rishikesh, we began hunting for a hotel with a sunny terrace or at least a big balcony, because we had a lot of laundry to deal with. And hallelujah, we found both. Travelling for a long time rewires your life so completely that almost all the things you considered essential for your well-being, suddenly become luxuries. The meals become simpler, the conversations more meaningful, the journeys turn into destinations and when looking for a room, your first thoughts are: is it cheap? Will I be allowed to wash my clothes here? If yes, how quickly will they dry? And most importantly, will anyone bother me if I get high and dance around like James Brown?
Most people visiting Rishikesh don’t stay in hotels and guesthouses; instead they take up long residences
at one of the numerous ashrams on the other side of the Ganges. I’d like to do this someday when I have more time to really explore my inner divine beast – mediation in the morning, yoga in the evening, discovering myself in the afternoon, chanting Jai Guru Deva at night and polishing my chillums in between. But for now, River and I were just interlopers, two pretend-hippies, that’s all. Besides, we only had enough days left over to make overnight stops till we reached our final destination, Ladakh.
Our guesthouse was a 15 minute climb from the river and had this interesting market on the way where shops had been cut right into the hill. Several small stairways, hidden between the colourful jewellery stores, branched off sideways and we followed one to arrive at the Third Eye Café. It had a fantastic view of the river. Nobody was around, as usual; we had to hunt down the waiter from the room underneath, where he was getting high in the balcony.
Some falafel, beer and a joint later, we skipped over to the hanging wire bridge across the Ganges called Laxman Jhula. This bridge looked like it had been built only for pedestrians, but rogues on motorbikes barged in regardless. As did these two fat bulls who had then got stuck in the middle and blocked all the traffic. They seemed to be thinking to themselves, “oh dear, are we in space?” But the exceedingly scary horns on their heads discouraged anyone from escorting them off the bridge.
While we all stood there impatiently waiting for the bulls to figure out a solution to their problem, a brave sadhu clad in a loincloth came charging at them from the other side. His face was painted in stripes like a tiger and if I’d been any more stoned, I might have had a hard time getting over this sight. The sadhu efficiently parted the crowd, whipped the bulls with the scrawny stick in his hand and they began running towards us with alarming speed. The whole bridge shook violently under their heavy stomping and some people nearly got head-butted into the river. After the bulls had disappeared from our sight, the tiger-sadhu laughed like a maniac, scarring the women and children for life.
“Anything is possible! ANYTHING is possible!” he yelled repeatedly as he retreated to his lair.
On the other side of the bridge, chillums, hash, dreadlocks and temples were all spread out along the riverbank. This area felt very similar to the one in Haridwar, but was considerably smaller. River wanted to see some of the temples, I wanted to wander around the bazaar, so we took off in different directions. The shops were selling the same old junk jewellery, Om kurtas, incense and vermillion. Bhajans, remixed into loud trance, played everywhere and shopkeepers with dreadlocks danced behind their counters, ignoring people in the street like me, who were staring at them openly. They were having too much fun to give a fuck.
Between the shops, I came across a hand-painted sign pointing the way to a small ghat. A few yogis were meditating on the steps that led into the water; it was very quiet. The river was swollen with rainwater but it wasn’t unruly; waves gently lapped along the bank like old souls left behind by the new current. I sat down to practice my own brand of mediation, which didn’t require me to close my eyes and miss out on the dramatic sunset over the hills.
When River was done with his pilgrimage, he found me and we returned to our guesthouse to spend the evening getting high under the stars. The entire terrace was our playground and we set up camp next to the water tank with our pillows and blankets. A big blue tarpaulin sheet was spread out over a temple right in front of our building, and it was lit from underneath like a zeppelin about to take off. In a house next to the temple, the light in the window kept going on and off. I didn’t hear any voices but I could see a pair of manly legs pacing in the room, then lying on the bed, then standing still, perhaps looking at us.
But why was he looking at us? Well, why wouldn’t he? We were interesting people, yes we were! I had never felt this way about myself before and the thought was a revelation. Suddenly, I liked my life; I liked the person I was growing into. I no longer felt as though I was running this blind race to impress the world, where we often have to ignore that voice within – the voice that cannot be fooled, that knows when a victory is fake and meaningless, that rears its head at the most inconvenient hour and turns all our medals to dust. The identities we create in the world are like holograms; empty projections of our minds and the fleeting opinions of others. The real judge is on the inside, which will settle for nothing but the best.
* * *
In the morning, River was gone by the time I woke up. I found him downstairs after breakfast, rushing out of yet another internet café.
“Guess what we are doing today?”
“What?”
“Bungee jumping!”
“WHAT?”
It took me a few seconds to process this news. Other people might have given something like bungee jumping a bit more thought, maybe even discussed it beforehand, but River? Not so much. The jumping part wasn’t the issue. My main concern was that we’d been planning on heading to McLeodganj in the evening. There just wasn’t enough time to do both.
But River had spoken to some guy in the café who had convinced him that we could finish our jump by four and then take the bus at five. So that was it, we checked out of our guesthouse, left our bags in this café and went across the Laxman Jhula to take the mini bus to Mohan Chatti. When we were dropped outside a swanky office building after an hour, I could not believe that such a place existed in Rishikesh. Most of the staff was Indian, but the two experts in charge of securing the cord to our legs were from New Zealand. That was a little comforting to know after we were made to sign a declaration that said, “I have willingly agreed to tie myself to a rope and jump off a perfectly fine bridge"
With all the paperwork done, we had some pre-bungee coffee at the cafeteria that had a wide balcony overlooking the valley. The wind blew in from the east and the dry brown leaves cascaded into the gorge in a slow, agonising swirl. In a few minutes, we would be hurtling through the same air; the thought made my stomach rumble with excitement.
Martina and Ben, the two bungee instructors came up to our table and shook our hands. We followed them outside to a fixed iron bridge jutting out over the river. It was built specifically for bungee jumping. I had thought that I would finally get a bit nervous once I stepped onto the bridge, but I continued to feel nothing but excitement. Maybe it was the wind, the view or the cool professionalism of the instructors who were strapping me into the harness; everything was as calm and composed as it could be.
“By the way, these three Indian guys before you came all the way here, got right to the edge of the bridge and then decided that they were not going to jump. What a waste! Don’t do the same thing; trust me, it’s going to be a beautiful experience"
Ben smiled at me while tightening the rope around my ankles. I had chosen to go first, so River was sitting next to me nodding encouragingly. Everything was checked, rechecked, pulled, tweaked and calibrated according to my weight. I was asked to walk along the yellow line going right up to the ledge. The floor of the bridge was made out of iron mesh, which gave me a clear view of the valley looming underneath, right down to the last little stone on the riverbed.
Since my ankles were tied together I couldn’t take proper steps and Martina had to hold onto my hand to slowly guide me towards the edge from where I was supposed to jump.
“Okay, now carefully come forward and hang your toes out.”
I did as I was told and this was the moment when my brain finally caught up with the fact that my body was about to do something dangerous.
“Don’t look down, just stare straight ahead at that yellow board on the other side of the valley.”
Once she told me not to look down, of course I had to and instantly my stomach plummeted into my pelvis.
“Alright, ready?” Martina asked me eagerly.
“Just one moment.” I discovered that I was sweating and my heartbeat was all over the place. River was standing behind me with his thumbs up and everyone else was smiling reassuringly. I tried to control the tingling in my belly and took
three deep breaths. Then I closed my eyes for a second.
“Now?”
“Yes!” I spread my arms out and opened my eyes; I wasn’t going to miss watching myself go down. Finally, Martina, Ben, River and the two other boys on the bridge all began the countdown in unison.
“Okay… one… two… three… BUNGEEEEEEE!”
And I threw myself into the air.
Mountains, clouds, trees, boulders, all went whooshing past my eyes. My entire body went limp. I wasn’t even aware of how tense my muscles had been. Then my mind went blank and all I remember now is the intense pressure on my head, and behind my eyes and throat. The veins on my neck felt like they were going to pop out. I had opened my mouth to scream ‘whoohoo’ because I thought it would make me look cool, but the wind compressed my carefree ‘whoohoo’ into a painful guttural ‘whaaa’.
Once the entire bungee cord had uncoiled, it snapped me right back up and I continued to bounce from side to side for the next few seconds. All my internal organs were given a good spin and then put back in the wrong cavities. My stomach landed in my skull and my brain was entirely missing.
As I got used to the pressure, the topsy-turvy world began to make sense. Adrenaline flooded into my system; the deed had been done. I didn’t know how else to conclude this extraordinary and almost spiritual experience, so I started laughing. My laughs echoed through the hills. After a few minutes of swinging and twisting in the air, I was slowly lowered down towards the riverbed. Two men were standing on the ground with a big pole in their hand. I was supposed to hold on to it so that they could pull me down safely. They kept screaming at me to bend my head forward, but since my brain had turned to jelly, I ended up arching my neck even further back into my spine. Eventually, they had to grab my hair and yank it into the right position to stop me from smashing my face into the ground. Once the harness and the safety chords had been detached, they gave me a bottle of water and a small badge saying, ‘I’ve got GUTS!!’ The two exclamation marks didn’t seem enough at the time. A few minutes later, River jumped and even he laughed; his face was red by the time he came down. And both of us had the same afterthought: it was over too soon!
Special Lassi Page 19
