The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  Pre-dawn, the streets of Varanasi that border the banks of the Ganges are bustling with rickshaws, sizzling samosas, sweepers and sellers of flowers and plastic bottles. In this holiest of Hindu cities – Kashi, the City of Light – the devout come to immerse themselves five times in Mother Ganga to seek redemption for their sins and wash away the wrongs of all previous lives. They pour water from the sacred river in devotional thanks and those that are pilgrims from outside the city will fill a plastic bottle to take home. The ghats terrace the city for two miles (three kms) and each has its own devotees. The young are largely absent – who wants to be reminded of mortality when life is for living? The bathers are elderly and several steps nearer the need to cleanse the soul in anticipation of salvation. Men strip to underpants or a loincloth but women duck down in their saris and emerge clinging and clammy in yards of printed cotton. This seemed a particularly uncomfortable penance.

  Sadhus, many bandy legged with skeletal frames and wrapped in orange blankets against the dawn chill, gave blessings; others, grey-bearded and turbaned, handed out marigolds and words of comfort. Young girls with panniers garnished with flowers sold little lumps of wax in a paper container which were then floated on the still waters so that 1,000 prayers sparkled in the dim light.

  At the southern end smoke rose in twisting spirals from the Mari Karnikh ghat where bodies, shrouded in white or red, were placed on burning pyres; their souls to rise to another life, their bodies to return to earth. The mourners of the rich bought fuel of sandalwood, the poor made do with roots. Many great stacks of timber piled square and high surrounded this crematorium; it seemed that they were ready for a plague. The northern end was dohbi territory where lines of dohbi wallahs scrubbed, rinsed and flogged the washing brought to the shoreline by donkeys. ‘A Hindu is a man who spends his life breaking stones with wet clothes.’

  The narrow alleyways behind the ghats were grimy, clogged and claustrophobic and the stone walls had been cleaned and polished by the shoulders of a million pilgrims. In tiny niches, betel leaf sellers squatted and in larger alcoves cauldrons steamed with spicy stews and smoke blackened the vaulted ceilings. From other gloomy niches were sold marigolds, powdered sandalwood, shrouds and incense. The air was thick and pungent, the crowds pressing, the atmosphere heavy with smoke and spirituality. An unfamiliar religion pervaded and oppressed. I felt that death crept around each corner but the crowd was lively; I could not square this anomaly. It was wonderful but disturbing; there was a spiritual force present but I could not grasp it; there was vitality but an uncompromising harshness – both were too concentrated. The acceptance of death and the liveliness of life were intertwined. I needed sweet air, long horizons and time to reflect. I needed to escape.

  Heading north to Sarnath down dusty, tree-lined roads, I bumped into religion again, but this time it was cushioned by the smiles and gentleness of a Tibetan Buddhist colony. I spun a prayer wheel, helped a granny up steep steps, pulled a child to safety from the traffic and felt refreshed.

  The road to Allahabad forms part of one of the northern arteries of India. National Road No. 2 starts in Calcutta, skirts Varanasi, rumbles through the centre of Allahabad and pushes on to Delhi and Pakistan. Along its way it pumps out life and vigour. Between the towns and villages, broad avenues of tamarind, eucalyptus and mango fringe each side and shade potters, brick makers, brick breakers, stone masons, rag sifters, metal merchants, tin can gatherers, cardboard collectors, wool dyers, carpet weavers, sari sellers, basket makers, wood splitters, tyre menders, tea shops, farmers with neat haystacks and piles of alfalfa and dusty white chickens with bright red feet and cockscombs. All the way, piled in their tens of thousands were pancake mountains of dung fuel. What a buffalo takes in, it gives back in abundance but not to the land where it is needed.

  Grossly overloaded Tata trucks thundered through villages hooting incessantly and children, dogs, buffaloes, cream coloured cows, the lame and blind idly crossed the road each with a death wish unfulfilled. Tomorrow there is an important festival to the god Shiva in Varanasi and along the verges individuals and groups of young men clad in bright orange and yellow walk and sometimes trot towards the city. Carrying a pole decorated with tinsel, they will walk barefoot for two days and a night carrying small copper pots or plastic bottles to fill with the sacred water of Mother Ganga. “They will go to Varanasi,” said my driver; “They will go bananas,” I thought. The less pious, less fit and less bananas rode in convoys of Mahindra jeeps decorated with flags and plastered with slogans; they were happy, in festive mood and drove dangerously. The pilgrims who walk on bleeding knees to Santiago de Compostelo, the penitent who crawl on their stomachs up the steep slopes of Mount Bohadapur and these young men sweating in the sun for 150 miles (240kms) humble the traveller in his comfortable car. I was content to be humbled.

  The Finara Bungalow at Allahabad (“Four rooms, very clean, all meals extra”) sat squat and comfortable with a style that managed to satisfactorily mix Corinthian columns framing the porch with Moghul decorations around the frieze. It fronted a busy street opposite the huge High Court complex, the largest in India. I had a lunch of bony chicken at one end of a long mahogany table; I could have had Fish and Chips with Dark Gravy and Rich Plum Cake with Thick Custard. My driver, the cook, the manager Mr Saxena (ex-Caledonian Insurance), the owner Mr Ghandi (“Ravi Ghandi is my second cousin”) did not eat but sat looking at me. My room, just off the porch and at the pavement edge was shared with a family of geckos and, it seemed, with the traffic and hawkers. Junior barristers in striped trousers and black coats missing a button or two and worn through at the elbows tucked into snacks at the roadside café just outside my window. If I had opened the French doors from my bathroom, I would have stepped into a garden of dahlias, daisies and gladioli; the sweet smell from the blossom of the kumquat orange trees filtered through the fanlight from the outside and helped leaven the liberality of the carbolic on the inside. In the evening, as I was lying prone on my bed after an unsatisfactory session under the dribbling shower, a fellow of fierce looks but charming manner gently opened the door.

  “Many sorries, sahib,” he said, “but I have come for buggers.”

  This service had not been on the menu and besides, we had not even been introduced.

  “No worry,” he continued, “no need to move, I will attend to everything.”

  As my consternation and curiosity grew (but nothing else), he produced his enormous weapon – a Flit gun with which he enthusiastically sprayed the room with clouds of insecticide. I coughed all night.

  I sought solace from the clamour of the streets in the cool and dusty interior of All Saints Cathedral. Like an overgrown English parish church it sat in a carefully tended garden. Inside, worn hymnals rested on the pews and brass plaques on the masonry walls remembered judges, officers of the 3rd Brahma Horse and two army medical officers who had died of blood poisoning in the course of their duties. A pigeon had started a nest in the reredos.

  “The best Indian food is in London.”

  Gubhan Kakkar, MD of GN Pharmaceuticals was insistent. I agreed, the trouble with food in India is that it looks a lot worse than it tastes. Along a buffet, the colours are two shades of brown, two of khaki and one like chewed seaweed. Poking around in the murky pots, the chunks you find all look the same. Could be fish, could be mutton, could be meatballs stuffed with cheese. On the a la carte menu there is little difference except for a dribble of yoghurt on top and a reasonable expectation that chicken ordered will be chicken delivered. The tastes of course are subtle, spicy and mild but even in the top establishments, presentation, that essential message the eye sends to the slavering tongue, has been ignored. I got talking to Mr Kakkar at a roadside stop for tea and cake. He swaggered in accompanied by two henchmen, one small and thin with an immense moustache and the other very tall. Weedy had a rifle and Lofty a shotgun – they were Mr Kakkar’s armed guards. “You never know around here,” he said enigmatically. I hope he never got to kno
w as the lack of ability of his minders was obvious to a sparrow.

  “Keep it safe!” he called as I drove away.

  Where the River Jumna meets the River Ganges and the invisible River Sawasrati rises from its mythical underground course, long low sandbanks break the flow before the Ganges doubles its volume and pace. This is fortuitous, as upstream of the confluence and spread over 8,800 acres (3560 hectares), seventy million pilgrims had gathered over the last six weeks for the Kumbh Mela. Held every 12 years, this Hindu festival is the largest gathering of mankind on earth but on these last two days, only 250,000 were left. They were a happy bunch, probably glad to have the place to themselves as they stripped to their underpants in preparation of bathing, offered rice and marigolds to the sacred rivers and scooping up water in a pot, poured it back in a symbolic cleansing of their sins.

  I chatted to a smart Indian army captain in polished riding boots, jodhpurs and a swagger stick. His whole regiment had been camped here for three months. “It has been a most efficient operation,” he said proudly, “not a single moment of trouble.” He was right to be proud. A huge city had been constructed in six months together with a separate town for 11,000 officials. Nine pontoon bridges had been laid across the great river; sewage, water and lighting installed to serve six million each day; 155 miles (250kms) of metal plated road laid down; a hospital built. Forty trains a day brought the people in and returned them, 1,500 frogmen patrolled the river and the world’s largest public address system continually broadcast for the lost and found. Many wives were never found, deliberately abandoned in the immense throng by husbands who sneaked out of the back gate. In a country where a westerner cannot understand how even the simplest task gets accomplished and despairs at the lack of maintenance of every utility, this organisation was a miracle in itself. Nothing of it would remain within a month of the festival’s end.

  I had not been prepared for such a concentrated mass of humanity and this was just the remnants of what had been there a week or two before. It stretched to every horizon. It ate, danced and wept with the emotion of a lifetime’s sins purged and laughed with the joy of salvation attained. It was as though half of India was on a long spiritual picnic enjoying the sideshows, enough coloured lights to crown a Bombay skyline, tented restaurants of every kind and a multitude of striped and caparisoned enclosures. Huge pots steamed, charcoal glowed, rice cones were piled four foot high on copper platters each the size of cartwheels and piles of sweet meats dripped with honey and sugar syrup. Such plenitude in a land of hunger but this was a festival to end all festivals and all who attended would remember it for their lifetime.

  From time to time, a group of devotees from a particular sect came to the river with much fanfare and ceremony. Some wore orange turbans and yellow robes and were surrounded with garlands, others wore green or white or red and some wore nothing at all. These were the Nagas who were smothered in a paste of dung and ashes and carried a stick and a pot and nothing else, although I spotted one in trendy sunglasses and another carrying an umbrella. Emerging from their isolation in caves and forests, the multitude that they now found around them must have been intimidating. There were families from Rajasthan with women in bright colours and the men with bushy moustaches, loosely wrapped head cloths and proud handsome faces. And there were dark skinned groups from the south with saris of purple, green and brown shot through with gold thread; there were fat business men with fat wives, sadhus, seers, swamis and gurus some with long flowing beards others completely shaven and young men and women with small children who yelled as they got ducked in the sanctifying waters. On the fringes, commercialism intruded with a giant inflatable Colgate toothpaste tube, a scarlet clad stilt walker dropping promotional leaflets and a group bizarrely costumed as bears, whose message was as incomprehensible as their furry attire.

  There is no monopoly on the highway to faith. Many paths lead towards Nirvana but those routes that reach that final goal are the rockiest and the steepest. At this great gathering there was no time for meditation; all were in celebratory mood, although some explored these alternative tracks and there were plenty of distractions along the way. From dozens of tented pavilions loudspeakers blared out the philosophies of the alternatives on offer. Brahmins, Hari Krishnas, Pandas, Sadhus, Shramanas and Akaras – the original militant caste of priests – all had their followers and sought to inspire by myth and decibels adherence to their particular path. In one temple of bamboo and canvas, 100 fires were lit and smoking, each tended by a robed priest; it looked like St Pancras in the blitz. Dante would have been moved to a dozen more stanzas. But the sampling of these many spiritual menus was accomplished in piety, good nature and curiosity and all under the umbrella of a universal faith. An intense aura of spirituality and happiness was all around.

  As we drove back along National Route No. 2 through the reckless traffic and the lumbering and slumbering cattle, I regretted the imprudence of failing to fill a pot with the blessed and protective water of Mother Ganga. At least it might have helped the cough.

  St Petersburg for the Weekend

  February 2002

  ‘Tourists wander for distraction, travellers ramble for fulfilment’– Hilaire Belloc

  You do not see the bones of the 40,000 slaves buried in the foundations of Peter the Great’s city, nor the 100,000 timber piles of Siberian larch that were cut sunk into the marsh of the River Neva delta, but as you walk the elegant straight streets with their classical façades washed in lemon yellow, pale blue or ochre, the turbulence of 18th century Russia and the legacy of the Romanov dynasty lies all around. In February, any colour however muted gave a little warmth to the grey sky, the grey snow and grey complexions of the inhabitants of Russia’s second city. This sombre mood seemed emphasised by the granite expressions of its people, the frozen canals, the huge scale of its principle buildings and the bitter climate of a city on the same latitude as Anchorage. Not for nothing is St Petersburg known for a yearly tally of 30 days of sun, 120 days of snow and the remaining days of rain. Gaiety and lightness of touch are not part of its character, but open the doors of its great palaces with their stifling heat, thaw the hearts of its people with a friendly gesture, throw down a shot or two of vodka (available at every meal and at any time in between) and a warm smile breaks out. But there is a darker side to the city too. Venture through an alleyway, peer in some trepidation into a shaded courtyard and you will find double-bolted doorways of steel, rusting vehicles and curtained windows from which corners may be anxiously drawn back. It is a dispirited world of poverty and in winter, cold and hunger. We looked into several of these darkened corners but retreated discombobulated with the aggressive stares of those lingering in shadowy corners, fearful that a foreign smile would not only be unwelcome but angrily rejected. But here is opulence on a staggering scale, culture of world class, learning and history are all in abundance and friendliness and humour are there if you look for them.

  Our own private chatelaine Elena Koshutskaya had all the keys to all the doors. Chunky, bow legged, croissant fingered, blonde hair piled in an untidy hayrick on top of her flushed face, in her squirrel skin coat she looked like a furry brick. In faultless English, though sometimes slipping into German or French, her other fluencies, she mothered her flock through private entrances and across icy roads pouring forth information like a gatling gun whose supply of ammunition was infinite. Given the chance, she would never have stopped talking and this flowing stream was often sidelined into eddies of dry humour. “I give you choices but you must come with me – this is democracy!” Her little eyes, darkly made up, twinkled with fun. “I interrupt myself,” she would say without a change of pace or tone pointing out a statue of yet another Alexander or Nicholas in between a discourse on the merits of a restaurant or the poetry of Pushkin. “My dear ladies and gentleman, can you imagine… it’s amazing!” Her enthusiasm kept us going at breakneck speed through seven imperial palaces. She was candid in her approach. “The Hermitage has four million ex
hibits, the National Museum three million, the National Library one hundred and thirty million. I know everything but you must choose. Shall I inform or shall I navigate?” By some miracle she seemed to accomplish both and in between obtained the best seats for the opera, spirited taxis for the tired, obtained tables at restaurants fully booked for a month and opened doors that museum directors were probably unaware of. This whirlwind carried our band through three centuries of Russian history and seemingly through every room of every palace (thankfully not in practice – there are 600, palaces that is) and left us not only breathless and happy at the end of each day but most miraculous of all, eager to greet her the next morning.

  The auditorium of the Mariinsky Theatre is a magnificent horseshoe of gilded balconies surrounding rows of uncomfortable upright chairs that make up the stalls. Eugene Onegin is long, soulful and full of Russian sadness and despair and it was a pity that each of the two bars was staffed only by a single lady so that the queues snaked around the narrow corridors of the Tsar Circle, even for intervals lasting half an hour. Those who did not try or gave up waiting promenaded in a clockwise direction around the strip of carpet that was the perimeter of the Grand Hall on the first floor. At Act III, Scene II, an uneasy shuffling and head turning indicated that most had become aware of the smell of smoke that seemed to come from the foyer. Perhaps the conductor had too since the volume seemed to increase and the tempo quicken as he too considered his route to the nearest exit. Whatever the cause, it was some relief when the pathetic Onegin was dismissed to passionless oblivion by the faithful Tatyana and the curtain of embroidered gold and silver thread descended for the last time. We scrambled out into a street fresh with snow and lit by the amber glow of streetlights. We had a second bite of entertainment to see Raymonda with the Kirov ballet on another night – the fire had been extinguished by then. Reckoned against the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan or La Scala, the performances had not reached the highest artistic peaks but it was enough to have been close to the boards trodden by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Borodin, Glinka, Diagalev, Nijinski, Pavlova and all the other stars of the Russian musical and artistic firmament.