Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  Mahavir and Shrawan were now beckoning for Mohan to return to the phad to continue the performance. Mohan smiled, and held up a single finger to indicate that he would come in just a minute. “For myself, all my life my heart has been bound up in the phad and its stories,” he said. “I have never had any real interest in agriculture or any other work. Pabuji has recognised this, and has guarded us. We none of us have ever had a serious illness.

  “Every day, I get up hungry in the morning,” he said, picking up his ravanhatta, “but thanks to him, neither I nor my family ever go to bed on an empty stomach. Not everyone in the village could say that, even the Brahmins and Rajputs.

  “It is Pabuji who does this,” said Mohan Bhopa, walking back to the phad and strumming the first note with his thumb. “It is he who looks after us all.”

  Postscript

  About a month after my trip to Pabusar, Mohan and Batasi came to Jaipur and we did another event together, at the literary festival there. Mohan was in his usual sparkling, mischievous form, dancing as flirtatiously as an eighteen-year-old despite his advancing years. Then a fortnight later, back in Delhi, I heard he was dead.

  After his performance at the festival, Mohan had complained to a mutual friend of stomach pains, and had been taken to the main state hospital in Jaipur. Advanced leukaemia was diagnosed within a week, but owing to some bureaucratic tangle, Mohan had been directed first to a small hospital in the Shekhawati, and then on to Bikaner. At each of these he had been refused treatment, for bureaucratic or financial reasons, and sent on to another place. It is the sort of thing that often happens to the poor and powerless in India. When he died, still hospital-less, in Bikaner, ten days after the first diagnosis, he had received no medical treatment whatsoever, not even a painkiller.

  His body was taken home, and he was cremated in Pabusar, with wood picked from the sacred oran grove of Pabuji.

  In her widowhood, Batasi continues singing the phad, and has begun to perform with her eldest son, Mahavir, who had earlier given up performing for lack of a tuneful partner. The two, mother and son, now sing the Pabuji ki phad together, keeping the family tradition alive until Shrawan finds a suitable wife and succeeds in teaching her the phad, or perhaps until Mohan’s grandson, Onkar, is ready to tell the tales of Pabuji to a new generation.

  The Red Fairy

  Rural Sindh is a province of dusty mud-brick villages, of white-domed, blue-tiled Sufi shrines and of salty desert scrublands broken, quite suddenly, by tropical floodplains of almost unearthly fertility. These thin belts of green fecundity—cotton fields, rice paddies, cane breaks and miles of chequerboard mango orchards–snake along the banks of the Indus as it meanders its sluggish, silted, café-au-lait way through southern Pakistan to the shores of the Arabian Sea.

  In many ways the landscape here, with its harsh mix of dry horizons of sand and narrow strips of fertile soil, more closely resembles upper Egypt than the well-irrigated Punjab to its north; but it is poorer than either—in fact, one of the least developed areas in South Asia. Here landlords with their guns, and private armies, and feudal prisons, still rule over vast tracts of country; bonded labour—a form of debt-slavery—leaves tens of thousands shackled to their place of work. It is also, in parts, lawless and dangerous to move around in, especially at night.

  I first discovered about the dacoits—or highwaymen—when I attempted to leave Sukkur soon after twilight. Asking for directions to the great Sufi shrine town of Sehwan, a three-hour drive away along main roads, I was warned by passers-by huddled in tea stalls under thick shawls that I should not try to continue until first light. There had been ten or fifteen night robberies on the road in the past fortnight alone.

  The same untameable landscape of remote desert and rocky hills that has made Sindh so difficult to govern, and so hospitable to brigands and outlaws throughout its history, has also turned it into a place of refuge for heterodox religious sects, driven here from more orthodox parts of the region. This, and its geographical position as the bridge between Hindu India and the Islamic Middle East, has always made Sindh a centre of Hindu-Muslim syncretism, with every kind of strange cult, part-Hindu, part-Muslim, flourishing in its arid wastes.

  Much of this intermixing took place in the Sufi shrines that are still the main focus of devotion in almost every village here. For Sufism, with its holy men and visions, healings and miracles, and its emphasis on the individual’s search for direct knowledge of the divine, has always borne remarkable similarities to certain currents in Hindu mysticism.

  All religions were one, maintained the Sufi saints, merely different manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque or temple, but to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart—that we all have Paradise within us, if we know where to look.

  The Sufis believed that this search for God within and the quest for fana—total immersion in the absolute—liberated the seeker from the restrictions of narrow orthodoxy, allowing the devotee to look beyond the letter of the law to its mystical essence. This allowed the Sufis for the first time to bring together Hindu and Muslim in an accessible and popular movement which spanned the apparently unbridgeable gulf separating the two religions. The teachings of Sufi poetry and song also provided a link between the devotions of the villagers and the high philosophical subtleties of the mystics. For the Sufis always wrote not in the court-Turkish or -Persian of the Muslim immigrants, but in the Sindhi, Punjabi or Hindi vernacular used by the ordinary people, drawing on simple rural symbols taken from dusty roads and running water, desert thirst, the dried-up thorn bush and the blessings of rain.

  If the Sufis brought many Hindus into the Islamic fold, then they also succeeded in bringing an awareness of Hinduism to India’s Muslims. Many Sufis regarded the Hindu scriptures as divinely inspired, and took on the yogic practices of the Hindu sadhus: sitting meditating before a blazing fire in the heat of summer or hanging themselves by the feet to recite prayers—a practice that is still performed by South Asian Sufis, who sometimes use the hat racks or luggage rails of trains from which to hang.

  This sectarian ambiguity is particularly in evidence in the writings of the Sufi mystics of Sindh, not least that of the greatest poet of the Sindhi language, the eighteenth-century Sufi master Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit Shah. Latif came from a relatively orthodox Muslim background, but during his youth, on the rebound from a failed love affair, he set off wandering through Sindh and Rajasthan in the company of a group of Hindu sadhus and Nath Yogis, a sect of ash-smeared Shaivite mystics who invented hatha yoga in the twelfth century, and who claimed that their exercises and breathing techniques gave them great supernatural powers—to fly, to see into the future, to hear, to see over great distances and finally, if the techniques were fully mastered, to turn devotees into immortal beings, or mahasiddhas, who had powers greater even than the Hindu gods. The experience of travelling with these holy men profoundly altered Shah Abdul Latif’s religious outlook.

  One of the most famous chapters of his great verse collection, the Risalo, is the Sur Ramkali, in which he reflects on the three footloose years he spent wandering the deserts with these yogis, visiting both Hindu and Muslim pilgrimage sites. For Latif, there is no distinction between the two different faiths; the divisions, as he sees them, are between the bigoted and orthodox, on one hand, and itinerant free-thinking mystics on the other. It is these that Latif wishes to be back among:

  Yogis are many, but I love these wandering sadhus.

  Smeared with dust, they eat little,

  Never saving a grain in their begging bowls.

  No food in their packs, they carry only hunger,

  No desire to eat have they,

  Thirst they pour and drink.

  These ascetics have conquered their desires.

  In their wilderness they found the destination

  For which they searched so long.

  On the path of truth,

&
nbsp; They found it lay within.

  Hearing the call,

  Before the birth of Islam,

  They severed all ties,

  And became one with their guru, Gorakhnath.

  Now, sitting by the side of the road, I look for them.

  Remembering these sanyasis, tears well up.

  They were so very kind to me.

  They radiated brightness.

  Yogis are many, but it is these wandering sadhus that I love,

  Says Latif.

  A few years ago, while making a documentary on Sufi music, I visited the tomb of Shah Abdul Latif during its annual ’Urs. The wild and ecstatic night-long celebrations marking the anniversary of the saint’s death were almost a compendium of everything of which Islamic puritans most disapprove: loud Sufi music and love poetry was being sung in each courtyard, men were dancing with women, hashish was being smoked, huge numbers were venerating the tomb of a dead man and all were routing their petitions through the saint, rather than directly to God in the mosque.

  But for the Sindhis attending the ’Urs, it was not they who were the heretics, so much as the stern Wahhabi mullahs who criticised the popular Islam of the Sufi saints as shirk, or heresy: “These mullahs are just hypocrites,” said one old fakir I talked to in the shrine. “Without love, they distort the true meaning of the teaching of the Prophet. They are just interested in themselves. They should all be jailed for life.”

  It was while talking to the pilgrims in Bhit Shah that I heard about a Sindhi shrine, or dargah, that sounded even more wildly syncretic than that of Shah Abdul Latif. The dargah of the Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalander, “The Red Royal Falcon” of Sehwan Sharif, lies barely a two-hour drive through the desert to the north of Bhit Shah. Sehwan was once a major cult centre of the great Hindu god Lord Shiva; indeed the town’s original name was Sivistan, the City of Shiva. Here, sixty years after Partition and the violent expulsion of most of the Hindus of Pakistan into India, one of the sajjada nasheens, or hereditary tomb guardians, is still a Hindu, and it is he who performs the opening ritual at the annual ’Urs. Hindu holy men, pilgrims and officials still tend the shrine, replenish the lamps and offer water to visiting pilgrims. I was told that it was only in the 1970s that the central Shiva lingam, long the focus of veneration in the saint’s tomb, was discreetly removed to a locked annexe.

  The old fakir at Bhit Shah who had ranted about the hypocrisy of the mullahs was adamant that there were two things I should not miss when I visited Sehwan Sharif. The first was the daily dhammal, or devotional dance to the saint, which took place each evening at sunset, after the end of Magrib prayers. The other, he said, was a famous lady fakir who lived in the shrine, and was said to be the most passionate of all the saint’s devotees. Her name, he said, was Lal Peri Mastani, or the Ecstatic Red Fairy. I asked how I would find her amid the crowds.

  “Don’t worry,” replied the fakir. “Everyone knows Lal Peri. And anyway she is unmistakable.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “She is dressed in bright red, is very fat, and she carries a huge wooden club.”

  I arrived at Sehwan just as the sun was beginning to set over the Indus and the call to prayer was sounding through the bazaars. The dhammal was about to begin, so I ran through alleys thick with pilgrims to get inside the shrine before the daily dance in honour of the saint commenced.

  The wide, arcaded courtyard was filled to bursting, and neatly segregated down the middle, with women on the right and men on the left. At the far end of the courtyard, between the tomb chamber and a long line of huge copper kettle drums and outsized leather-trussed camel drums, a large area had been roped off, and here the dervishes were preparing to dance.

  There were men of all ages and appearances: black-robed or red-swathed, dreadlocked or shaven, hung all over with amulets and ta’wiz, or bound with chains and metal neck rings, their fingers heavy with cat’s-eye rings. Several of the malangs were now bending down and tying gungroos—lines of dancer’s bells—on their ankles. A few appeared to be practising their steps, hopping from foot to foot, like ballet dancers awaiting the curtain. One old man did this slowly and gently, while holding his granddaughter tenderly on his shoulders.

  Then, with the explosion of a thunderclap, the dhammal began: slow at first, the drumming rapidly gained pace, and the long lines of dreadlocked dervishes began to move as they felt the rhythm pound through their bodies. Old men began to sway, arms extended or hands cupped in supplication, mouthing softly murmured prayers. As the dancers turned their eyes to heaven, smiling beatifically, they slowly began part-skipping, part-dancing, part-running on the spot.

  The tempo and the volume both rose steadily, until the massed kettle drums were pounding physically through everyone in the courtyard. The dancing gradually turned from a meditative and prayerful swaying to something much more wild and frenzied and ecstatic. As a climax was reached some shouted out chants in praise of the saint—“Dum Dum Mustt Qalander!” (“With every breath the Qalander gets higher and higher!”) or “Jiya Jhule Lal!” (“Long life to the Living Ruby!”). A few cried out Shia chants in praise of Ali: “Ya Ali! Ya Haidri!” or “Ali Allah! Ali Allah!” One man fell to the ground in a gesture of namaaz, then, amid the jumping, jerking, dancing men, stretched out full-length on the floor. The air was hot with sweat, and the rich, sweet scent of rose petals mixed with incense and hashish.

  Many scholars believe that just as the Sufi fakirs of Sehwan Sharif model their dreadlocks, red robes and dust-smeared bodies on those of Shaivite sadhus, so the dhammal derives from the damaru drum of Shiva, by which, in his form of Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance, the Destroyer drums the world back into existence after dancing it into extinction. According to the sixth-century Chinese traveller Huien Tsang, Sehwan was the cult centre of a Shaivite sect called the Pashupatas, who believed in emulating the dance of Shiva as part of their rituals, using this shamanistic dancing as a way of reaching union with God. Remarkably, Sehwan Sharif seems to have maintained the ancient Shaivite dance of the Pashupatas in a thinly Islamicised Sufi form.

  On the right-hand side of the courtyard, as the men danced, the women took the music in a quite different way. A few danced a little like the men: one beautiful old lady was jumping from side to side, holding her walking stick in the air. But most had gathered themselves in small groups, each one clustered around a woman in a state of trance. As their mothers and sisters supported them, the possessed women sat cross-legged, but with the upper halves of their bodies they swayed and thrashed about, their eyes rolling and long hair fanning out as they swung their heads wildly to the rhythm of the drumming. Still supported by their families, a few rose and spun around like tops.

  “As soon as they hear the drumming, they have to dance,” said an old man next to me. “Even if you bound them with chains they would have to dance.”

  “Within ten days,” said another, “whatever cure these women ask for will be done. Lal Shahbaz cannot refuse his devotees.”

  These, explained the old man, were women who were believed to be possessed by spirits, or djinns, and who had been brought to the saint for exorcism. One teenage girl, head uncovered, sat shaking and sobbing with one of her mother’s hands resting gently on her shoulders and the other supporting the small of her back. All the while, another older woman, perhaps an aunt or grandmother, kept calmly questioning the djinn she believed to possess her. “Why don’t you leave?” she said. “We are in the house of Lal Shahbaz Qalander. It would be better for you to leave. Just go! Go now!”

  The ecstasy of the dhammal is a safety valve, providing an outlet for tensions that otherwise could have no other expression in this deeply conservative society. The dhammal is renowned for its ability to heal, and in Sindh—as elsewhere in Sufi Islam—it is widely believed that a disease that appears to be physical, but which actually has its roots in an affliction of the spirit, can be cured by the power of Sufi music and drumming. The hope is that by sending the women into a trance, th
eir sadness and anxiety will be calmed and, ultimately, cured.

  It was while I watched the ranks of transported women that I saw Lal Peri. As my friend at Bhit Shah had indicated, she was unmistakable. In the corner of the courtyard, between the kettle drums and the shrine, was a huge, dark-skinned, red-clad woman of between fifty and sixty, dancing with an enormous wooden club held aloft in her right hand. She had silver armlets covering her forearms, and a red wimple over her head. Images of Lal Shahbaz hung from a chain around her neck. She danced with great force and a manic energy, jumping and leaping in the air, more like the male dervishes than the possessed women who were seated relatively demurely around her.

  Eventually, after nearly half an hour of building, the drumming reached its final climax and Lal Peri did a last pirouette before dropping to the ground as the pounding rhythm ceased as abruptly as it had begun. She lay there panting on the marble floor, smiling an ecstatic, exhausted smile. “When I perform the dhammal,” she said in a deep, husky voice, “I feel as if I am in the company of Lal Shahbaz Qalander himself—and alongside Ali and Hassan. I live for this moment.”

  I introduced myself, telling her that I had heard about her from the fakirs of Bhit Shah.

  “These shrines are my home,” she replied simply. “And the fakirs are my family.”

  “How many years have you been here?” I asked.

  “I’ve lost count,” replied Lal Peri. “Over twenty. People come and go, but many find what they are looking for here, and stay forever. This was my experience. It is ’ishq—love—that keeps us here.”