Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  As the argument proceeded, a growing faction seemed to be urging acceptance. To make more room, some of the children were sent to join the luggage in the upper berth. The train moved out of the station, and everyone became resigned to our presence. Arms and parcels were adjusted for the most comfortable fit; several women lifted the ends of their saris over their eyes as they prepared for sleep. I tipped my head to get a better view down the corridor; it looked like a refugee train, a scene from a movie where all the men were gone and only women and children remained.

  Then a single masculine figure began working his way toward us from the opposite end of the car. A grizzled old man dressed for colder climes in a green wool army-surplus coat, he lumbered down the aisle, a vintage musket resting in the crook of his arm. Stopping before each compartment, he peered nearsightedly at the faces crowded inside and then moved on. As he inspected our section, I questioned the English-speaking woman again. “Who is he?”

  “A guard hired to protect the women.”

  Incredible, I thought, and smiled at him. He stared. Perhaps he didn’t encounter too many foreigners in the second-class train.

  Then he said something urgent, lifted the gun, and pointed it straight at me. The women around me all started chattering at once, with Madame trying to yell louder than the rest. My translator tilted her head to one side as she listened, and then said in a low voice,“He thinks you are a man and has ordered you out of this car.” A moment later, she added, “The others are arguing whether you are a man or a woman.”

  For all its frustrations, life in the subcontinent could never sink to dullness. What is more remarkable is India’s capacity to make even the most absurd incidents seem perfectly plausible—my Swedish friend selling off his belongings, for example, to meditate beside the Ganges. Such transformations appear quite natural after only a few weeks under the Indian sun. The sight of an ox munching on the rug in your hotel lobby might not merit a flinch.

  I began to worry, in fact, that my eyes were adjusting too much, that I’d return home to find the light muted, and everything a shade less interesting than before.

  —Peter Jon Lindberg, “The Confounding Allure of India,” The New York Times

  I laughed briefly at this turn of events, until he jerked the gun at my insolence. I wore neither the long braid, nor the sari or knee-length tunic over trousers of the other women on the train. My close-cropped hair, baggy pants, and collarless white cotton Indian man’s shirt were chosen for comfort, ease of travel, and to help me avoid harassment. I stood and rocked steadily among the jumbled feet and discarded sandals of my travel-mates in the narrow space between the two facing benches. Momentarily turning my back to the old fellow, I pulled the baggy shirt taut under both my arms and showed the women the outline of my chest. They roared in laughter and approval, and pushed the old man and his gun away.

  As dawn approached, food and hot chai were produced from among the folds of bags and parcels. The story of the guard and the foreigner passed in waves up and down the train, the punch line always enacted amid gales of laughter. Madame seemed especially proud of me as women and girls craned their necks or shyly walked over to see me in person.

  When we reached Bombay, Madame was reluctant to turn me loose. She walked me to the front of the station and negotiated fiercely with the autorickshaw driver for my fare to the General Post Office. Then, she gave me a long lecture in rapid dialect. Her accompanying gestures advised me to be careful of men driving rickshaws, on the streets, in buses, or just about anywhere. Despite the language difference, her message was clear. She seemed to be saying that if I got scared or had a problem, I should always rely on women for help.

  Thalia Zepatos is a political consultant and writer living in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of A Journey of One’s Own: Uncommon

  Advice for the Independent Woman Traveler and Adventures in Good Company: The Complete Guide to Women’s Tours and Outdoor Trips.

  She spent hours trying to teach us how to wear saris. It looked so easy the first time she demonstrated. She held the six metres of cloth in her delicate hands, showing us how to determine which side should be the border. She then tied a knot in the opposite side and tucked it under her skirt. Deftly she wrapped the cloth around her waist. Resembling a goddess in the temple statues, she held the length of cloth out like the wing of a butterfly in her left hand, and with swift finger movements folded it until it fell in perfect folds. This section she draped over her left shoulder then, with the same graceful finger movements folded the remainder of the cloth, tucking it around near her waist. The pleats flowed like a waterfall down to her feet.

  It looked simple, until we tried. The knot was easy enough to make, but draping the full length of cloth around our waists and trying to keep it from falling while attempting to make folds was difficult, to say the least. About sixteen ladies stood in the room dripping with perspiration. Our fingers did not move gracefully like hers. I could not understand. I use chopsticks, I knit and sew, but I never did learn to drape the sari. With incredible patience she explained the process again and again. “Don’t worry, it took us a long time to learn, and we have been wearing them since we were sixteen.”

  —Nesta Rovina, “A Love Story”

  Reading the Leaves

  PETER HOLT

  Do you really want to know the future?

  I HAD ONE FINAL MISSION BEFORE I RETURNED TO MADRAS. Ramesh suggested that if I wanted to discover more of the secrets of India—and, indeed, myself—I should go to a Nadi reading.

  The Nadi is the world’s most mysterious system of astrological prediction. The Nadi dates from around two thousand years ago when a rishi called Brighu produced a vast series of personal horoscopes on palm leaves called saraswathi, after the goddess of knowledge. He dictated his predictions to a team of scribes, who wrote them down in Mundu Tamil, the ancient form of Tamil.

  Rishi Brighu is said to have had the power of divine insight and he was able to write down the past, present, and future lives of individuals, who would make their stay on this planet in years to come.

  It seems difficult to believe, but the Nadi readers claim there is a palm leaf for nearly everyone in the world. It seems mathematically impossible that Brighu would have had the time to write down the past, present and future of billions of people. But the Nadi readers counter this argument by saying that many people share the same palm leaves. Therefore, on that basis there are perhaps thousands of people out there with the same past, present, and future as yourself. Likewise, Brighu based his philosophy on the fact that when a person died his or her spirit would pass to another person.

  The Nadi differs from other horoscopes in that it uses no intuitive, instinctive skills of clairvoyancy. First you provide your date of birth and an impression of your thumbprint—the right thumb for males, the left for females. Then you are asked a few questions as a sort of index: Are your parents still alive? Do you have brothers and sisters? Then the reader looks for the palm leaf corresponding to you. All the Nadi reader does is relate exactly what is written on the palm leaf. Nothing else. Ramesh was able to read the ancient Mundu Tamil script. When his Nadi was read a few years ago, he asked to look at the palm leaf afterwards. “What the man had just told me was exactly the same as what was written down,” he said. “Just from my thumb print, the palm leaf got my whole family history absolutely accurate as well as my life to that point. As to whether the future was accurate, I have yet to find out.”

  If you don’t believe in horoscopes, then all this will sound like nonsense. But it must be said that the Nadi is one of the great mysteries of India. And Indians take their readings very seriously indeed.

  The Brighu Samhita, or collection, was duplicated 150 years ago. And one of the sets of inscriptions had ended up in the little town of Vaithishwaran Koil, thirty miles south of Pondi. The palm leaves were kept in a small terraced house in the centre of town.

  When I turned up, a minibus load of rich Indians from Madras were crow
ded on the verandah waiting to have their leaves read. A man in the office seemed amazed that an Englishman had heard about the place. He arranged for me to see a reader immediately. The problem was that no one spoke much English. Help appeared in the form of a well-to-do tea-planter and his wife from Ootacamund, the hill station on the western boundary of Tamil Nadu. They had travelled 250 miles specially to have their fortunes read. They spoke good English and they agreed to sit in on my reading and translate what the reader told me.

  We sat down on the floor in a large room with shuttered windows. It was dark and gloomy and lit by a single candle. The Nadi reader was called Mr. Chellian. He sat on a cushion behind a low lectern. He took my thumbprint and asked a few questions about my family. Then he disappeared into a backroom and returned with a set of palm leaves. They were long strips, measured about one inch by a foot, and tied together with leather thongs. They were covered in the neat, tiny script of Mundu Tamil.

  Mr. Chellian flicked through the leaves and came to the one that corresponded to me. He began reading it. I have to admit that although he was not entirely accurate about my childhood and immediate past, he got most of it right. It galled me to be reminded, for example, of my lack of academic study at school. He also correctly identified my father’s occupation—farmer—and informed me, correctly again, that my sister was an actress.

  Mr. Chellian moved to my future...and then to the end of my future. And this was the bit I had not wanted to hear.

  He lowered his voice. My interpreter, the tea-planter, did the same. Suddenly everything had become very solemn. I had a nasty feeling about what was going to happen next. The Nadi reader continued. The tea-planter translated: “At the age of...you will leave this life. It will be in a hospital on the...of...and you will go peacefully.” That was enough for me. I stood up, thanked everyone for their time and handed Mr. Chellian his fee. He looked puzzled. Why was I in such a rush to go? I muttered something about needing a breath of fresh air. Not for a moment had he thought there was anything wrong in telling a person when and where he was going to die.

  And that put an end to my metaphysical meanderings. It was time to return to Madras and get stuck back into Clive’s trail. Bala was preparing to leave his yoga studies to fly back to Australia and I promised Ramesh that I would look him up again before I left India. I was sad to leave Pondicherry. The place had given me an insight into what India could offer the world. That nothing should be clear-cut; that we should take nothing for granted; that it is too easy to explain events as mere coincidence; that the forces of destiny are guiding us all.

  Peter Holt is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Robert Clive, who defeated Siraj-ud-daula, the Nawab of Bengal, along with his French supporters at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Clive’s victory ushered in almost two hundred years of British rule, and Holt’s book, In Clive’s Footsteps, from which this story is excerpted, is a journey in search of his ancestor. He lives in London, where he has worked as a reporter and editor at several newspapers.

  There exists in India a secret knowledge based on sounds and the differences of vibration according to the planes of consciousness. If we pronounce the sound OM, for example, we clearly feel its vibrations around the head centers, while the sound RAM affects the navel center. And since each of our centers of consciousness is in direct contact with a plane, we can, by the repetition (japa) of certain sounds, come into contact with the corresponding plane of consciousness. This is the basis on an entire spiritual discipline called “tantric” because it originates from sacred texts called Tantra. The basic or essential sounds that have the power to establish the contact are called mantras. The mantras, always secret and given to the disciple by his Guru, are of all kinds (there are many levels within each plane of consciousness), and may serve the most contradictory purposes. By combining certain sounds, one can at the lower levels of consciousness, generally the vital level, come in contact with the corresponding forces and acquire many strange powers: some mantras can kill (in five minutes, with violent vomiting), some mantras can strike with precision a particular part or organ of the body, some mantras can cure, some mantras can start a fire, protect, or cast spells. This type of magic or chemistry of vibrations derives simply from conscious handling of the lower vibrations. But there is a higher magic, which also derives from handling vibrations, on higher planes of consciousness. This is poetry, music, the spiritual mantras of the Upanishads and the Veda, the mantras given by a Guru to his disciple to help him come consciously into direct contact with a special plane of consciousness, a particular force or divine being. In this case the sound holds in itself the power of experience and realization—it is a sound that makes one see.

  —Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or The Adventure of Consciousness

  Serenity 101

  STEVEN DARIAN

  A lesson in self-understanding.

  BEFORE HEADING NORTH, I HAD SEVERAL MATTERS TO TAKE CARE of, a few chores, things to buy. I especially wanted to visit the yoga school near Bombay, where I had studied years before. I bought my ticket for the evening train to Lonavla and made my way to a compartment. Of the three seats inside, one was occupied by a bald heavy-set mustached burgher, who, it was obvious, would not wake up until his station. Another man sat at the opposite end of the brown upholstered seat, reading a newspaper.

  “May I sit here?” I asked.

  “Yes, by all means,” he said, reading.

  After several minutes, he put the newspaper on his seat and went out. The train was not yet ready to leave. Shortly afterward, another man entered the compartment.

  “Is this seat taken?” he said, pointing to the empty space.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I will join you. You are American?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Akram. What are you doing in India?”

  “I am interested in the Ganges and in Indian culture.”

  “Have you studied yoga and meditation?”

  “A little, but...not enough.”

  “That is very good, that you avail yourself of our great traditions. I myself am a student of Krishnamurti. Perhaps you have read some of his holy books; he writes in English.”

  “No.”

  “He is a holy man, but a secular holy man. He wears western clothes and travels around the world giving talks. Basically, his message is: to develop the awareness of yourself—of your moods and the habits that control you. By doing this, a person overcomes his anger and loses all of his antisocial behavior.”

  “How long have you been a follower of Krishnamurti?”

  “All these many years,” he said.

  At that moment, the man who had left the newspaper returned to the compartment. “Excuse me,” he said, “but that is my seat. I left my newspaper there to reserve it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Akram. “I didn’t realize. However, this is a friend of mine, and I would like to talk to him for the journey. Perhaps you could find a place elsewhere.”

  “My luggage is already up there in the rack, so if you don’t mind...”

  “I do mind,” said Akram, crossing his legs.

  “Look. Here is my newspaper and that is my valise. What more proof do you want?”

  “I don’t care,” said Akram standing up. “Find another place.”

  “This is my seat,” reiterated the other man.

  “Off,” shouted Akram, his tiny black eyes flickering like a snake. “Get off or I’ll throw you off!”

  “I’m losing my serenity,” I hissed at a bank clerk after having spent all day trying to untangle currency problems which would have taken ten minutes to solve at home.

  “Madam,” he answered, “it takes many years to attain serenity. One does not lose it in a day.”

  —Cheryl Bentley, “Enchanted”

  At that point, I offered to leave. But before I knew it, Akram had laid his hands on the other man, and the two then set about punching each other.

  I managed to pry them a
part, whereupon the other man scooped up his newspaper and valise, and left the compartment.

  “I am sorry,” said Akram, smoothing out his white shirt and brown trousers. He sat down beside me and resumed his composure. “We were talking about...”

  “Krishnamurti.”

  “Yes. It is very difficult to develop self-understanding. But once a person does, he loses his selfishness and egotism and becomes free of anger.”

  And so we spent the next two hours, talking about Krishnamurti and the serenity one achieves through self-understanding.

  Steven Darian has been to India several times to pursue his studies in Eastern and Western thought. He studied Indian religion and languages at the University of Pennsylvania and has written articles on Indian culture. He is currently a professor at Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey. He is the author of Understanding the Language of Science and A Ganges of the Mind: A Journey on the River of Dreams, from which this piece was excerpted.

  Before my visit to the ashram in Southern Kerala, my knowledge of yoga consisted of browsing through manuals with photos of people bent into positions that looked downright frightening. Was the human body really meant to be able to perform like Gumby? Yet here I was in India attempting (without much success) the cobra, the locust, the plow and the wheel. These positions as interpreted by my body, could be renamed the pain, the torture, the agony, and the defeat.

  The days were full at the ashram and the structured schedule left very little free time. Squeezed in between 5:30 a.m. and 10 p.m. were four hours of yoga (or asanas), three hours of meditation and chanting, two hours of lecture, one hour of “Karma Yoga” (otherwise known as chores), two meals, and two tea breaks. It all had the feel of summer camp, including a pristine lake for swimming (watch for crocodiles) and a corner café outside the ashram where you could often find desperate yogis sneaking a smoke or indulging in a large fruit salad.