Swimming with Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer

by Sarah Bamford Seidelmann

  Samsara means continuous movement and the repeating cycle of death and rebirth in which we are trapped when we're attached to self, ego, and the external world. It arises out of a lack of awareness and induces suffering, fear, disappointment in life, and pain. I try to contemplate this, but it's difficult to be meditative while being thrust forward by bodies pressing against me and assaulted by constant shouts in Hindu punctuated by shrill whistles. I long to drink in all of this beauty in peace.

  Finally, our samsara ends, and we're spat out into an anteroom where our Indian guide, a candid and warm man in his fifties who is dapperly dressed in business casual, shares something personal with us. It's quiet here, insulated from the hubbub, and we can actually hear him as he speaks.

  “In the heyday of the Taj Mahal, this place was very much alive. Prayers were sung or spoken by musicians and singers twenty-four hours a day. It was a very charged and sacred atmosphere.” For a moment, my brain transforms the entire place into a rad nocturnal Bohemian scene, with costumed revelers, incense sticks, candles, and live flute music. Pure theatre and magic.

  “Today,” our guide continues, “while music and live prayers are not routine, it is said that, between three and four in the morning, the angels still descend to the Taj to answer the prayers of the people. A few years back, during a time when my own family was experiencing very bad luck and poor finances and my brother had a brain tumor,” he says, “my eldest son implored me and my wife to pray during this auspicious hour. We aren't religious people, you understand, but we wanted to honor his request. We didn't have much faith, but we wanted to help, so we were willing to try it.

  “Every night, we set an alarm for three o'clock. When the alarm went off, we crawled out of bed and prayed on our knees. We asked for healing for my brother and for our lives to come back into balance. Within several weeks’ time, my brother's luck had completely turned around. He made a full recovery and all of the family's relationships became more harmonious. We made a connection between this marked improvement and our prayers. Since then, we continue to pray at this auspicious hour, but now my wife and I don't even need to set an alarm. We wake automatically at three o'clock and get on our knees, praying for ourselves, our family, and the world.”

  Faith can only be gained through personal experience. I am suddenly aware that I'm here to pray that I can do what I'm being called to do.

  After leaving the mausoleum, I join a few fellow female pilgrims and stroll through the grounds. A crowd of sari-clad Indian women gathers behind us as we walk along the wide gravel path, and I turn briefly to look back at them. They smile at me, and I smile back.

  A few minutes later, one of the women fairly shouts to us, sharply, in perfect English: “What caste are you anyway?” Then they all begin to laugh. There's definitely an air of haughtiness to their laughter, and I'm caught off guard.

  I look around at my group of Western pilgrims and imagine we must appear quite odd to the Indian women. We're sporting Danish clogs (okay, that's just me), bizarre interpretations of proper Indian dress—kurtas paired with black woolen long underwear (oh, wait, the underwear is just me again), malas, and hiker's backpacks. Even though we're trying to fit in, we're hard to categorize. I feel as if I'm back in my junior high locker room and the other eighth-grade girls are staring at my nakedness.

  I try to dwell in curiosity and possibility, which helps me feel connected and more peaceful again. Even though India is known for its spirituality, that doesn't mean that bodhisattvas, or enlightened beings motivated by great compassion, dwell on every corner. According to Tibetan Buddhism, a bodhisattva is someone who dwells in a sublime state. Those who are fallible, but worthy enough to attain bodhisattva status eventually, are said to be arhat. I muse darkly that there may also be another, not-so-sublime, state in which the noncompassionate dwell before they attain enlightenment—asshat.

  After our visit to the Taj Mahal, we are taken by bus to a place where they make carpets. It's a hostage situation. We're held captive until somebody buys a rug.

  We're given a demonstration of how the carpets are made. I hope for an early parole for good behavior, but, instead, we're taken upstairs and offered tea. I had forgotten how exciting this kind of captivity can be—the first time. I understand the allure and usefulness of beautiful carpets, but my view of things has shifted with our recent downsizing project. I'm trying to be more wary of acquiring things these days, and more interested in having experiences.

  Most of the people in the room seem overjoyed, however, as if they've never been taken hostage before. They seem thrilled to be offered hot tea by their captors. I try to settle in and accept that this experience is also part of my pilgrimage. Finally, I ask where the restroom is and slip away alone to explore the second floor, where I discover a spectacularly embroidered, framed, velvet art piece depicting a pair of elephants mating. Grateful to find humorous relief, I fantasize briefly about mailing the piece to Mark with a note saying: “Wish you were here.” Today, my spiritual side wins, and I leave without purchasing anything.

  As our bus roars back to the hotel in the deepening twilight, I spot small groups of men and families huddled around small fires on the roadside and wonder whether they possess something we've lost—the primal, simple connection of being outdoors gathered around a hearth, not separated from one another by swaths of suburban, herbicide-treated lawns, or burdened by an endless abundance of possessions to catalog, store, return, sort, dust, exchange, or cart to Goodwill. What would life be like if each day began and ended around a small fire? Sharing a cup of chai. Telling stories. Just being with one another. Noticing the exquisite softness of the air we're breathing. That kind of connection is what I long for. By firelight, India seems essential, personal, and deeply interconnected.

  CHAPTER 29

  Mela-Mobile

  India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.

  Shashi Tharoor, World Policy Journal

  One Sudoku-inclined pilgrim calculates our Total Pilgrimage Bus Hours (TPBH) as roughly forty hours. Some things are best left out of the brochures. The first buses we board appear quite modern from the outside. Inside there's a groovy, cosmic paisley theme accented with granny-inspired silky lingerie-like curtains.

  As we ride in our far-out Mela-mobile, time passes strangely. No ayahuasca, DMT, drumming, or vision-inducing anything is needed to put us into an altered state. I trade off between staring out the window at India and striking up conversations with the people around me. A lot of the travelers seem to have a common bond as devotees of the organization sponsoring our trip. The crowd is predominantly over forty, with a few teens in tow with parents and a smaller contingent of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

  Traveling days begin with a vague prediction of a four- to five-hour journey, which typically balloons into seven to ten hours. We bump along, accepting our fate. We watch pastoral India whiz by the windows, interrupted by the small, crowded cities we occasionally pass through.

  Every few hours, the bus stops for a bathroom break. One hotel generously allows 150 of us to use their three (not all functioning) toilets. I cringe at the wreckage we leave in our wake. I begin to appreciate the charm of the more rustic roadside breaks where all 150 of us leap off to pee in the wild. The Sufi poet Rumi might have been talking about more than our infinite possibilities when he wrote: “Out beyond the world of ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

  The pandemonium of India's traffic—all the careening buses, overloaded trucks and semis, dogs, ox carts, pedestrians, and wandering cattle—reminds me of microscopic video footage of human red blood cells moving within a small blood vessel: flow occurs but not in a linear, logical way. It's as if each blood cell is in simultaneous, divine communication with the others. Some cells tumble forward at breakneck speed; others hold back and wait; still others
creep along the edges for a while, only to burst forth when space opens up.

  Traffic movement is similarly organic, as if India is one large organism, with the highways as her arteries and the rural roads as her capillaries. Witnessing the sights around me in this way, through a lens of blood-flow patterns, deepens my trust that there's a divine current running through everything that's orderly and peaceful. Our safe passage wouldn't even be plausible if there weren't.

  When the sight out the front window is too much, I stare out the side windows at the world whizzing by. We're driving through rural Uttar Pradesh, a part of India that seems to have been forgotten. Some smaller towns look war-torn; so many ancient buildings appear to be bombed out and crumbling, but no cleanup crew has come to fix them. Some regions resemble the depleted, post-apocalyptic world that Dr. Seuss portrays in his book The Lorax, after all the truffula trees have been chopped down. Every square inch of nonfarmed land here is covered by some combination of drying clothes, dung piles, wandering animals, and people.

  We pass through farmland, mustard fields of electric green and yellow that offer visual relief. I see many large, grand trees—many more ancient trees than you ever see in rural Iowa or on Wisconsin farmland. They're enormous and beautiful. It seems a wonder that these trees haven't been cut down out of desperation to make fires or to build things to sell.

  Some trees have colorful flags posted nearby, in the same way that flags are posted at temples and other sacred places. When I ask a veteran pilgrim about this, she informs me that all trees are considered sacred here and that certain trees are prayed to for certain things. In Hinduism, each kind of tree has particular qualities and gifts it can bestow upon you if you ask—qualities like fertility, good luck, and health. Everything that is, is alive.

  I begin to notice a peculiar pattern. Newer buildings have sprung up here and there that seem to have a modicum of hope built into them. These are single-story structures with towering projections of rebar protruding from their flat roofs toward the sky, ready to accept the bricks and mortar of a second (or even third) story, as if to say: I am only a beginning; we are not finished yet. A second story, maybe more, is on the way—maybe in the spring. Then again, maybe not. These buildings seem symbolic of the spirit that appears to infuse India's people. Despite the utter disarray and the cacophony of people and animals, there's no shortage of optimism. You can see this same anticipation in the smiles of the children; possibility is everywhere.

  We observe as we go; but we are also being observed. Our bus is a spectacle in the tiny towns along the Uttar Pradesh highway. Children rush toward our windows shouting gleefully, like girls I've seen running alongside a Taylor Swift tour bus. I'm perplexed; I've been to a lot of far-away places and have never been received like this. According to our in-country hosts, this section of bus-friendly highway was new this spring. Many local people have never seen a new bus like ours loaded with so many foreigners.

  After seven hours or more, time passes excruciatingly slowly. It's late afternoon when one of our fellow pilgrims (definitely a front-of-the-bus person) begins to lead us enthusiastically in chanting aloud one of our extremely long assigned mantras. I recognize this irrepressible person because I, too, have been one. But now, I'm enjoying my moody Coldplay-induced trance state, watching the countryside out my window.

  Mantras are syllables, words, or groups of words (often in Sanskrit) that, when repeated, have the effect of causing transformation. Pilgrims on both sides of the bus join our chanting leader, though it seems to me as if they do it more out of duty than out of passion. I remove my earbuds and, like a good pilgrim, try to chant the vaguely familiar words but discover that I'm feeling annoyed.

  I fear this is the beginning of a larger problem for me. Here I am, noncompliant student, on a sacred journey with a gang of seemingly devoted, mantra-chanting yoginis. What have I gotten myself into? Will they chant these unfamiliar Sanskrit phrases incessantly for the rest of the pilgrimage? Will I feel like a total spiritual heel, wishing I'd never signed up? Am I the only one?

  Glancing around furtively between the seat backs, I notice other pilgrims half-heartedly phoning in their chanting or already returning to whispered conversation. The chanting quickly peters out. I'm relieved. I return to staring out the window peacefully and happily at rural India. I enjoy the pure solitude.

  Ten or eleven hours into the bus ride, we turn off the highway onto a side road and proceed through a series of hamlets so small that our bus nearly scrapes the rooftop overhangs of the buildings on either side. It's almost like that last push out the birth canal—we just barely squeeze through.

  Around 9:00 that night, we finally arrive at the land where we will stay for the Kumbh Mela, emptied of conversation and in the grip of full-blown jet lag. We receive a Downton Abbey–style welcome in the nearly pitch-black darkness from a team of smiling greeters standing all in a row sporting headlamps and waving at us exuberantly. Our safe arrival here is evidence enough of the sacred at work. Maybe it will be okay.

  We step gingerly off the bus on stiff legs into the soft, cool darkness. Name badges are laid out on dimly lit card tables arranged in a grove of trees near the buses. We're instructed to go find our assigned huts, where we'll stay for the duration of the Kumbh Mela. Mine is number 39. In numerology, 39 reduces to 3 (3 + 9 = 12; 1 + 2 = 3). Three, for me, is a divine number, as it's my life path in numerology. So even my hut is auspicious. I've only recently discovered numerology, the belief that a number can have a divine relationship with a coinciding event. At its essence, numerology is simply the idea that numbers are not random.

  I was skeptical of numerology initially. How was it any different from magazine astrology or simple fortune-telling? Despite my doubts, however, everything I read about my life-path number (3) resonated with me. It said I was born to be creative, to express myself, to be the life of the party (at least sometimes), and to inspire others.

  I had a dream recently in which I heard the words: “The number three is very important.” When I awoke, the glowing digital clock beside my bed read 3:33. The numbers seemed to be hinting at me what path to take. For me, numerology is a heart logic. I've decided that, if something helps me, then maybe I don't need to have “proof” that it's true. I just need to have evidence that it helps.

  I wander alone along the dimly lit paths to arrive at hut 39. Home sweet home? I prop open the thatched door and peek into absolute blackness. I can't see a thing; my mind leaps around, imagining what I'll see once I have light. I suddenly remember the headlamp in my backpack, switch it on, and pop it onto my head.

  Leaning my illuminated head over the threshold, I discover that it's not terrifying at all. It's cozy. Four neat cots beckon, with mosquito netting hung above. Strapped to the center support pole is a light switch and an outlet for phones and cameras. The floor is covered in fresh emerald-green felt, like a positively regal golf course. This is the country club of hay huts.

  My shoulders drop and I exhale as I swing my duffel up onto my cot to fish out my sleeping bag. I inhale the sweet fragrance of the warm, dry straw. The whole Bethlehem nativity scene makes a lot more sense to me now. I roll out my sleeping bag onto the cot and begin to organize my gear. This place is perfect for a new beginning.

  Lights out. I lie in the soft embrace of my down sleeping bag and suddenly notice all the sounds of the Kumbh Mela. My cot is beneath our one, tiny hay-framed window, open now to bring in cool night air. I hear drumming and chanting alternating with what sounds like electronic dance music pulsing in a muted throbbing, yet powerful, way. I toss and turn as I listen. How far away is it? I can't tell. Where's the river from here? Arriving here in utter darkness is similar to arriving in Agra under a blanket of white fog. Once again, we've arrived somewhere new, but I can't yet confirm it with my eyes.

  I know there are more pilgrims just upriver from where I am and wonder how many more. I send loving kindness to all my fellow pilgrims who've come from far and wide. I pray that we al
l find what we came to discover, that we're freed from suffering—and not trampled to death. Amen.

  I love the pilgrimage schedule, because it mimics my own schedule at home—well, on good days, anyway. At 5:00 in the morning, I rise eagerly and get dressed by headlamp-light. I gather a few items in my backpack, bundle up for warmth, and walk to get a cup of chai in the main dining hut. Chai time is announced at 5:30 by a loud, clanging iron bell.

  We were told at last night's brief orientation to honor silence until 8:30, unless there is a true emergency—in which case, whispering is permitted. I welcome this daily silence as a break from the near constant din of and interaction with the outer world.

  Staying silent seems challenging for many of my fellow pilgrims, however. I assumed a bunch of yoga instructors and devotees of a meditational branch of yoga would relish a few hours spent in silence. A small handful of rebellious pilgrims appear to disregard the rule of silence completely, however, and speak in normal tones during morning chai. Others whisper to each other constantly, as if emergencies are everywhere. This morning, my “pain body,” as Eckhart Tolle refers to our hypercritical unconscious, has a hair trigger and is casting its fluorescent glare on everyone.

  Hot chai is a welcome source of heat after the chilly night. I place my empty metal tumbler into the plastic dish bucket and head out into the darkness. Wide gravel trails lit by compact fluorescent lights help me find my way to the meditation grove, which is surrounded by a low wall. There are perhaps a dozen huge old Banyan trees covered in leaves that create soft rippling waves of sound when they rustle. A few pairs of pilgrims’ shoes wait at the entrance.