Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  I do not go down to the plain with Krishna. I am beginning to enjoy this adventure. From beggars to a galloping old man, from Kemala to Krishna, I realize that if I am willing to be patient, something will always happen, somebody will appear, and even though I may get stuck, it will never be for long. The prodigious energy of this land and its people will push me onward as far and as long as I want.

  At midday I accompany the road-worker monks back up to their monastery. The same young monk who helped me wake up Krishna takes a firm grip on my hand and, laughing all the while, asks me questions in Ladakhi that I do not understand. We have been walking for some time, and the path is very steep. My bag seems heavier than ever.

  Suddenly, the characteristic hammering of little hooves on the ground. A mountain dweller and his donkey. Amid many Jullays, I try to explain that I want to rent the donkey. Everyone laughs, but no one understands. Finally the man begins to suspect a change in the course of his journey when I take hold of the donkey’s halter, forcing the animal to take a demi-volte, placing its tail where its head had been a few seconds before. Next, I poise my bag on its withers, sit astride the tiny mount, and, pointing up ahead, cry “Gompa!”—which means “monastery”—as you would cry “Charge!” There is a moment’s silence, then everybody bursts out laughing. The owner agrees to twenty rupees, but the donkey has not been consulted. With all the obstinacy of its breed, it refuses to budge an inch. The young monk tries to push the animal, then remembers a universal technique and grabs hold of its tail, twisting it violently. Suddenly it takes off with a bolt, to its own surprise.

  Finally the ground levels out.We enter a little circus-shaped valley. “Gompa,” says one of the monks, taking my hand and pointing it up. Between the peaks the great monastery of Rizong stands in all its majesty.

  As we reach the top of the steps, the monks gather around me. Among them I notice the voices of very young boys, children, little novices, no doubt. They laugh and blurt out high-pitched interjections. Yet despite their constant energy, a sense of peace emanates from their brouhaha. They guide me to a terrace where I am presented to the rimpoche, the abbot of Rizong. He takes the fingers of my left hand; although I understand not a word of what he is saying, my fingers perceive that I am welcome. Beside him, a monk translates into somewhat tantric English. The rimpoche says: “Come under our roof and stay as long as you wish. The food is very bad. The people who come here from the West are usually sightseeing with their cameras. Not you. Why did you come to Ladakh?”

  After a few days, the monks seem to have totally adopted me in a particular way and let me sleep on a high terrace: Lama Lampu, the translator, calls it the Terrace of Solitude.

  In the morning, I hear sandals shuffling. “Jullay! Jullay! ” It is Lama Lampu. He sits down. The cry of a bird of prey tears through the air, and way down in the valley, lost among the trees, I can hear water flowing. Lama Lampu touches my chest and laughs. He says that my insisting on sleeping in the open air leaves me vulnerable to all kinds of spirits who willingly enter into me. He says that my face is still dark from the night. We get up and go to breakfast on some miserable concoction.

  Buzzing with activity, the kitchen is a square room with a high ceiling. In the middle a charcoal fire is kept burning all day long. The room is full of smoke; the vault, wall, shelves, all seem cooked; everything is black with soot except for the shiny brass and copper utensils. The smoke floats in the room without seeming to bother the monks, who melt into the monochrome background. Framed by the small openings pierced in the thick wall, the landscape seems all the brighter. We sit down by a window with our small wooden bowls.

  Monastery in Ladakh

  Lama Lampu guides me everywhere, makes me touch everything, see everything. The great façade, with its classical, uncluttered, serene layout, hides an extraordinary labyrinth of corridors, passages, split levels, corners, and terraces jutting out under the sky. The original chaos, disorder of the soul, ferreting through thought. Unexpected passages, windows looking out onto walls, rooms apparently without purpose. But after a while, one realizes that all this imbroglio of architecture corresponds to well-determined functions, that there is reason in the madness. In the main sanctuary he stands on my left, his right arm around my waist, and takes my right hand, not only to direct me but to apply it to books centuries old, to the chair reserved for the Dalai Lama, to the multiple statues of the incarnations of Buddha. He spares me nothing. And, of course, according to the rules, we walk around the sanctuary clockwise. A sequence from the film Some Like It Hot springs to my mind and I close my hand over Lama Lampu’s and draw him into a tango, keeping the beat with onomatopoeia. “Ta-DUM, ta-DUM, tadada-DUM…” There is no question that this is the first time a tango has ever been danced in a Himalayan monastery. The monks guffaw, and my behavior, which surprises even me, does not seem to shock them at all.

  Before being blinded by muggers in New York City, Hugues de Montalembert was a painter, film maker, and writer. In his book, Eclipse, which was translated from the French into four languages, he writes about his blinding and search for a cure. He still travels widely and writes regularly for French and U.S. publications. He lives in Paris.

  India shows what she wants to show, as if her secrets are guarded by a wall of infinite height. You try to climb the wall—you fall, you fetch a ladder—it is too short, but if you are patient a brick will loosen and then another. Once through, India embraces you, but that was something I had yet to learn.

  When I arrived in Delhi it was my ladder that was too short. I wanted everything immediately. The monsoons had broken. Black, swollen rain clouds brought the usual rain, humidity and chaos. Roads were awash, taxis broke down, peacocks screamed. I perspired, worried, and developed prickly heat—and I had only been there a few days.

  Inevitably I consulted a fortune-teller. “You are married, yes,” he stated wisely.

  “No,” I replied.

  “But you are having a companion, I think.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are most fortunate, sir. Soon you will be having another one. I am seeing many problems. But do not worry, sir,” he added brightly. “They will only be getting worse.”

  —Mark Shand, Travels on My Elephant

  A Bath for Fifteen Million People

  DAVID YEADON

  The world’s largest gathering happens every twelve years, and the next one is in 2001. Mark your calendar.

  THE ULTIMATE CLEANSING OF BODY AND SPIRIT! AT ALLAHABAD IN north central India one splash, paddle, and body-wash in the fast flowing Ganges--the holy mother of rivers--at the right moment of the right day “reaps the benefit of bathing on ten million solar eclipse days.” It’s an offer any self-respecting Hindu cannot possibly refuse. A whole lifetime of sin, debauch, and spiritual uncenteredness washed away in a few wet moments. A new beginning, a promise of eternal bliss, salvation, Nirvana!

  “You should see the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad,” I’d been advised by a friend in Kathmandu.“It’s an incredible festival of cleansing. Fifteen million people--all coming to the Ganges once every twelve years. Incredible. You might just make it. It’s worth a try!”

  At first glance Allahabad is not a particularly prepossessing city. (Second glances don’t help much either.) Nonetheless this dusty, hot place is a renowned center of learning, an intellectual nexus, for students from all over India. But much more important, it is the meeting place of the three most sacred rivers, the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the “invisible river,” Saraswati.

  From the distance the Mela looks like a vast military encampment: thousands of square white tents with four-sided pyramidal roofs lined up in endless rows fill the dusty flats around the Triveni Sangam, the confluence of the three rivers (you can actually see only two, but in India nothing is what it seems and everyone insists that it is the third, invisible river of Saraswati that endows this place with unique significance).

  It’s very hot. A white dust hangs in a cloud over the site, giving a haloed,
mystic feeling. I’ve been walking for almost an hour now from the cordoned-off entrance to the Sangam. Actually, walking is not quite the word, more like half-carried, half-trampled by a thick mélange of humanity filling the hundred-foot-wide “corridors” between the tents and the fenced encampments of the sadhus, the gurus, the sanyasins, and the swamis. Each encampment has its own ceremonial entrance made up of rickety scaffoldings and tied bamboo poles topped with painted symbols, logos, and depictions of Hindu deities. A vast supermarket of salvation specialists. Hundreds of them from all over India, each surrounded by his own faithful disciples and followers. The women in their bright saris feverishly cook and clean outside the square tents, while men, bearded, ascetic, and clad in dhotis or dark robes, gather in hunched groups around their chosen wise men to listen and debate and nod and sleep and listen again.

  Gange Cha Yamune Chaiva Godavarai Saraswati Narmade Sindhu Kaveri Jale Asmin Sannidhim Kuru (O Holy Mother Ganges! O Yamuna! O Godavari! Saraswati! O Narmada! Sindhu! Kaveri! May you all be pleased to be manifest in these waters with which I shall purify myself!) Prayer to the Seven Sacred Rivers recited by every devout Hindu at the time of taking his bath

  —Eric Newby, Slowly Down the Ganges

  And the crowd churns on. Once in it’s almost impossible to break free without the risk of being squashed to a sweaty pulp by a million shoeless and sandaled feet. I’m not even sure where we’re going but I’m part of the flow, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  “Are you understanding the significance, sir, of this event, sir?”

  A young man in long white robes links his arm in mine and smiles brightly into my dust-smeared face.

  I don’t really feel like talking (I’m far too busy trying not to trip on the pebbly track), and I mumble something about having read an article in The Times of India.

  Gradually I was seduced by India itself. I have often been asked why, and I always find it very difficult to explain. I am not a poet, and so I can’t pretend to be able to describe how or why I fell in love. It certainly had something to do with all those friends I made. In India, the problem is not making friends, it’s retaining privacy. Friendship almost seems to assail you.

  —Mark Tully, The Defeat of a Congressman and Other Parables of Modern India

  The youth smiles sympathetically.

  “Ah the Times, sir. That is a good paper. But I think it is possible that you don’t understand everything, sir. It is a very long history.”

  “Yes,” I mumble again. “Yes, I suppose it is.” Everything in India has a long history.

  “The spiritual tradition, sir, of tirthayatra, the bathing at sacred river crossings, can be traced back to the Vedic period of our history, sir, about 1500 B.C. There are quite a few important bathing places, sir, but here—the Triveni Sangam--is the most important. And the Kumbh Mela is the most famous holy festival--and this one”--he pauses for drama—“this one, today, is the most important for one hundred forty-four years due to the astral signs, sir, which are the same as when Jayanta dropped the liquid of the Amrit Kumbh, sir, on this very place.”

  He looked closely to see what impact this startling information had made on me. His eyes gleamed; he was obviously very excited and I felt it only fair to let him continue.

  “The Amrit Kumbh. I haven’t heard of that.”

  A great grin cleaved his hairless jaw.“Ah, sir. That is why everyone is here, sir. All these people. They say fifteen million. Maybe many more. How can one know, sir?”

  That was one of the reasons I’d come. It was a substantial detour from my route to Rajasthan and the remote western regions of India. But I wanted to see what it was like to be among such an incomprehensibly large crowd of believers, all converging for the simple act of bathing in the Ganges. I wanted to feel the force, the power of such numbers. So many people all sharing the same purpose, all here at substantial cost and inconvenience and discomfort, all of one mind and spiritual intent--surely something miraculous would happen with all this centered energy. A river might stop flowing, apparitions might appear, the skies might turn black, and a god might descend….

  My informant smiled again.“I am your friend, sir. I do not want money, sir. Just to be your friend.”

  I’d met many of these so-called “friends” throughout India but this one seemed to be less grabby than most. He hadn’t even asked the ritual string of questions yet--country of origin, qualifications, profession, salary, wife, children, address--“in case I should ever be fortunate enough to visit your country”--and the old clincher, “I collect foreign coins, sir; if you happen to have any….”

  “Sir, are you hearing me, sir?” My friend looked hurt. He had been talking.

  “I’m sorry I missed that….”

  “Yes, sir, it is very difficult. Too many people. Too much commotion, I think. But nevertheless I was saying to you about the Kumbh, sir. The Kumbh means a jar, sir, a thing for holding liquids. And according to my religion, sir, there was a time, many many many long times ago, when our gods were all very tired and weak and the great Brahma told them to make a special ‘liquid of life’ to help them become strong again, but they used the bad spirits to help them and the bad spirits wanted to keep the liquid in the Amrit Kumbh--in the special jar, sir.”

  I nodded, trying to focus on his words, still nervous about being pulped on the rough track.

  “But then, sir, then Jayanta, a young god, sir, flew toward heaven with the jar and was chased by all the bad spirits, and as he flew he spilt drops of the special liquid at four places on earth--in India, sir. Now at each one of these places, in turn, they hold a festival of life, sir, every three years, a different place every three years, and on the twelfth year they come here, sir, for the purna, the most important Kumbh and, as I have told you, this one now, today, is the very special one because of the astrological signs, sir.”

  “That’s quite a story.”

  “Yes, sir. It is a very famous story. All Indian people know about this. It is good for you to know this too, I think.”

  “Yes, it is. Thank you.”

  “You want to meet sadhu?”

  “A wise man?”

  “Yes.Very famous sadhu, sir. You can see his sign.”

  He pointed to one of a line of camp entrances, this one was painted a garish red, topped with a triangular pediment on which was painted numerous ferocious Hindu gods.

  “Come, sir, we go and see sadhu.”

  Somehow he tugged me sideways out of the churning crowd and through the entrance. It felt wonderful just to pause on soft sandy ground and not have to move.

  “Wait here, sir. I will find out where the sadhu is, sir.”

  A few yards away the crowd serpentined on, sheened in dust haze, down the long slope to the Ganges herself, gleaming soft silver in the sun. There were police everywhere and other more military types bristling with guns and grenades. Apparently previous melas here have produced outbursts of “cultural divisiveness” (a Times euphemism for outright revolution) in which scores lost their lives. Also fires, drownings (the Ganges is not always a tolerant mother), and anarchistic outbursts from students of the Allahabad universities. It was obvious in the amazing organization of this tent city of millions and the stern-faced wariness of the guards that the government was determined to make this particular one a model mela.

  I could see the black superstructures of the pontoon bridges across the river, smothered in pilgrims. The smoke from thousands of cooking fires rose to mingle with the dust haze. I could smell the hot oil in which the chapatis and papadums and samosas and a dozen other varieties of deep-fried delights were being prepared and sold.

  Near the entrance to the sadhu’s compound, an old man in a large pink turban used a tamed canary to pick fortune cards at random from a line of little boxes set in the ground. A group of spectators stood solemnly and silently as he read the fortune text to a client, another equally old man who fingered a string of black beads and tugged nervously at his long gray bea
rd. He didn’t seem at all happy with the reading. The fortune-teller took his coins, shrugged, and gestured to the canary, which had nimbly hopped back into its cage and closed its own cage door. The crowd snickered, pleased it wasn’t their fortune that had just been read. The old man painfully pulled himself to his feet, grumbled at the reader, and was swallowed up in the slithering crowd.

  “He is over here, sir.”

  My friend had returned, bright-eyed and smiling again. We walked between the rows of tents toward the center of the compound where a large green canvas awning stretched over a low painted platform.

  It was cool and dark under the awning. A score of men sat in a circle around a central dais. They all had long beards and were dressed in layers of crumpled cotton robes, black and gray. They shuffled around a bit to make room for us. I felt self-conscious in my jeans and checked shirt and pushed the bulging camera bag behind me. Cameras seemed out of place here, like laughter at a funeral. And it felt funereal. Everyone looked very glum except for the sadhu himself, a tiny, virtually naked man with spindly ribs and arms seemingly devoid of muscles. His matted black hair tumbled in sticky tresses over his shoulders. Offerings of rice and fruit and books and brass vases and painted pendants lay all around his feet, but he seemed oblivious of everything and everyone. His eyes were closed. His face was turned upward, his mouth curved in a half smile, and his hands rested limply in his lap.

  It was very quiet.

  “They say he has not spoken for six hours,” my friend whispered.

  “And they’ve been sitting here all this time?” There was something almost sculptural in this hunched bunch of devotees.