All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (21 page)

At midnight, still restless, I wrapped a blanket round me and went down the cow-pat-strewn lane towards the Burning Ghat. As ever in Varanasi, the process of death and rebirth continued and even now a corpse was being lowered on to the pyre, the flames sending faint reflections of themselves across the Ganges, shadows of one life passing. I sat on the cold steps, wrapped in darkness, and watched the primal scene unfold, and heard faint sounds of chanting at the water’s edge.

For scientists, I reflected, even these sacred rituals of death would be considered somehow ‘false’ or fabricated. And yet might it not be, rather, that those feelings which occur in the human psyche seek natural expression in the world of form? Are not every culture’s religions and bodies of myth merely the manifestations of human awareness, vessels to make the transcendent comprehensible?

If this was true, then Mata-ji was indeed fighting off spirits with the ability to make trouble in the human world. To believe in them was to give them power. In the week to come this notion would come to haunt me. For I was about to see the dark heart of a magical world-view: a ceremony intended not to heal, but to kill.

Black Magic

‘I was telling my friend about our visit to Mata-ji,’ began Niraj, enjoying a fizzy green Limca on the rooftop of my guesthouse. ‘And that you were interested in the traditions of Benares. He asked me if you would be interested in meeting some Mantriks.’

‘Mantriks?’

Niraj paled. ‘Very unpleasant men, actually. Also worshipping Kali, although when they invoke her name it is not for purposes of healing or assistance. It is for death. They have the power to kill people through curses and charms.’

I froze. I’d heard rumours of such people, but certainly never expected to meet them.

‘Are there many such people here . . .?’

Niraj looked uneasy. ‘Bad men are there in every country, I think. For myself, I do not like such people. I want nothing to do with them. But yes, there are some such fellows around. I’m assuming you don’t want to meet with them.’

‘I think I do,’ I said, tentatively. ‘What if I give them a false name and pretend to put the evil eye on someone who doesn’t exist?’

‘This may be possible. But you must be careful. And you will have to go alone.’

‘Alone!’

‘I will drive you to the village,’ said Niraj. ‘But after that I will go no further. I am afraid of these people.’

In the event, it took some time to organise. Niraj’s friend knew of the Mantriks through his cousin, who had some recourse to seek revenge a few years back when a local crime syndicate threatened his business. They were cautious men, it seemed, who wanted money up front and certain assurances. What I did glean was that they were of the Dom caste, the untouchables who worked the cremation ghats. As untouchables they were entitled to handle corpses – a source of ritual impurity for orthodox Hindus – and it was their lot from birth to manage the rituals of death. Because of their trade, however, most Hindus were reluctant to even brush past them in the street. Their village was apart, and they were expected to marry amongst themselves.

Over the week before the ceremony, I discovered as much about the Dom as I could. They were not vegetarian, offered one pious Hindu with a shudder, but ate the bodies of animals that had died a natural death, even rats. Another person suggested that the Roma, the gypsies who first originated in India, stemmed from their caste. Doms were supposed to stand when a higher caste person walked past them; they were forbidden from wearing new clothes; their children were illiterate; their women amongst the likeliest to work in prostitution. Even at weddings they were only allowed to make four sacred rounds of the fire, as opposed to the seven traditional for Brahmins.

With all this in mind, I began to feel an increasing sympathy for those downtrodden members of society. But neither had I forgotten that these Mantriks were, in effect, paid killers. They made their living from causing harm and that, when all is said and done, is a choice.

It seemed important to meet them, however. They were evidence of the dark heart of a magical world-view. It was easy enough to blame science for our disenchantment and to lament the wonder we had lost. But the truth was more complex than that. Black magic remains a serious problem in India, with occasional horrors appearing in the press. In 2005, the state of Maharashtra introduced its Eradication of Black Magic and Evil and Aghori Practices Bill in an attempt to stem a rising tide of incidents. And one only had to glance at the classified ads of any newspaper to see astrologists and numerologists offering cures for the effects of witchcraft, proof of an endemic problem.

India is not alone, of course, in such beliefs. In many parts of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, belief in the evil eye remains prevalent, with any number of charms and talismans adopted for protection. Disks of concentric blue and white circles are held to be, as well as certain prayers, particularly powerful.

The evil eye, evidently, is merely one aspect of a belief system which stretches back to the earliest origins of man. My own culture, I reflected – in the days before I was to meet the Mantriks – had once waged its own war against such beliefs. It was Pope John XXII, in 1320, who formalised the persecution of witchcraft when he authorised the Inquisition to prosecute sorcery. Almost overnight, those people once esteemed for their ability to manipulate the supernatural were seen as being in league with the devil. The trials and discrimination that followed, culminating in the mass hysteria of the seventeenth-century witch trials, were the beginnings of our European disenchantment.

More than that, I supposed, these historical events had also helped form the type of society the West had now become. The Enlightenment marked the beginning of a new era, still with us, in which reason and science were held as the ultimate arbiters of reality. Little did the Protestants know that this process, which was intended to gain them precedence over their Roman Catholic brethren, would eventually begin to erode the commonality of Christian monotheism itself. It would leave behind a society in which natural science was held to have authority over all interpretations of life, where the numinous struggled for air, only the faintest embers still glowing.

Nevertheless, it was with some considerable trepidation that I met Niraj on the appointed day. Suddenly, the calculating light of reason seemed a life-raft as I considered the possibility that these men were genuinely in touch with malevolent forces. Pacing through the main bazaar, I resolved to keep my mind open whilst keeping my wits about me. This was going to be a strange and unnerving day.

Niraj was waiting outside the Ganesh Chai Stand, puffing a
bidi
, when I arrived. He looked edgy and drawn, and said little as we sped through Varanasi in his cousin’s auto-rickshaw. Away from the ghats, the thick mist that had ushered in the morning burned away. The sky was cloudless and the ancient stonework was lit up with a flaxen light. At the traffic lights Niraj handed two folded bills to the traffic policeman, a fat bully in a sweat-stained uniform, who nodded and waved us through without a word. These bribes and pay-offs are the norm in Indian society, so that people such as Niraj, struggling to haul themselves up, are preyed upon at every level.

It was one more reminder of the challenges the poor face. The public image of India seems increasingly one of success and economic boom. But for the most part it is the middle classes who are enjoying the benefits. UN statistics show that 700 million Indians still live on less than two dollars a day and a fifth of children don’t go to school. Driving through Bajardiha, the Muslim weavers’ district, we saw scenes of harrowing poverty. Open sewers ran down the streets; undernourished children peered out from doorways. Here even auto-rickshaws were a rare occurrence and we caused a palpable surge of interest as we sputtered through the constricted lanes. I felt self-conscious, a voyeur, and crouched back beyond the canopy.

‘Silk market is in grave decline,’ said Niraj quietly. ‘Some weavers are dying from starvation.’

I asked the reasons for the crisis.

‘These people use traditional hand looms,’ he explained. ‘But now some factories are using machines, so that they can’t compete. Also, too much cheap silk is coming from China.’ He shrugged. ‘What to do. World is changing, isn’t it.’

For the last several miles, the rickshaw bumped unhappily down a dirt track. There were very few people about. At the roadside, a mound of burning plastic exuded a noxious yellow smoke; an old woman squatted beneath a peepul tree. Hairy black pigs rooted for grubs. Women pounded clothes on stone blocks, their flashing eyes acknowledging our arrival. There seemed something significant in occult traditions on the margins of society, a psychic as well as geographic hinterland. Shamans, I had read, often built their houses beyond the perimeter of villages, partly for privacy but also to subtly encourage the rumours that can only circulate in their absence.

What kind of men came here to seek out these Mantriks, I wondered. A slighted husband, a businessman wishing to edge out the competition? On some level, it was not dissimilar to hiring a gunman to achieve the same ends, and yet, perhaps because death was less certain, the weapons less tangible, it conjured a different feeling in me. Equally, could I ever really understand the primal fears and impotence that gave rise to a need for black magic? Like most visitors from the West, I travelled in the developing world supported by the full gamut of tablets and inoculations, not to mention the money to seek whatever help I needed. But what would it feel like to exist in a world where those options were not possible, where the only real source of help lay in places like these, amongst whispered spells and mantras?

We pulled to a stop. In the distance, beneath the dappled shade of a tree, we could see three men loitering.

Niraj pointed distastefully. ‘Over there. You go and talk to those men. They will take you.’

‘You’re sure I can’t persuade you to come?’

He shook his head, and touched a tiny icon of Hanuman hanging from the wing mirror. ‘I’ll wait here.’

I got out and trudged across the scrubland, inwardly cursing myself for too much curiosity, for not staying in the reassuring confines of the backpackers’ district like the rest. It was after three o’clock and the sun seemed to sear the top of my head. Sweat was trickling down my back. Up close, I raised a hand in greeting. The men wore turbans of a distinctive pale-pink hue, and were dark-skinned and angular about the face. Two of them had impressive moustaches, the third a long, effeminate face, with smears of kohl beneath his eyes. They were waiting for me.

I walked forward tensely, standing out in my Western clothes, and shook them by the hand. From the first I was struck by their ease around me, their lack of surprise at having a white man here, seeking out their somewhat objectionable services. Their gazes disclosed little. For a time we stood beneath the tree while they finished their cigarettes and then, with a faint inclination of the head, the one who’d introduced himself as Baskar led the way. I fell in behind them, saying nothing.

We came to a small settlement, with perhaps three or four dwellings. There was dust beneath our feet, peppered with cow shit and windblown plastic. A hundred yards beyond, I made out a house built of mud bricks packed in with rammed earth, a sheet of corrugated iron serving for a roof. Outside, there were several unfinished baskets and a spool of rope. I could feel my eye twitching, as it sometimes does during moments of intense unease.

‘Inside,’ barked Baskar. ‘Come.’

There were no windows inside the Mantriks’ hut and it was surprisingly cool. Outside the sun had barely begun to dip, and heat lines still danced above the red earth. Beyond the cloth door it was silent; a single blade of light exposed dust whirls descending slowly to the floor. There was no furniture, save two coir mats, a battered wooden chest and a large bulging hessian sack. Instantly, it was as if the world outside had ceased to exist. There was only this humble room, and the belief of the men before me that they could effect real change on the world outside.

The three men sat down opposite me in the gloom, crossing their legs carefully. They seemed in no hurry to speak. I composed myself with a deep breath. Now the ritual would begin, I thought. I would have to work very hard to remain grounded.

‘You would like to curse someone?’ asked Baskar, who had the best command of English. ‘That is why you are here.’

I nodded.

He stared at me unblinkingly. ‘Do you want to kill this man?’

I thought for a time. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘This can be done. Death will probably not be instant – may take time. But will happen. Do you understand this?’

I said that I did.

‘There are many methods, many mantras. Many ways you can bring harm on your enemy. He might fall ill, have some bad accident. In certain cases he may drop dead in the street. Even those that have protected themselves with amulets cannot withstand our mantras. They have been in our family for a long time. No one else knows them. Before us, our fathers used them. Now it is the role of the sons to continue their work.’

I nodded.

A head tilt. ‘You have brought the money?’

I took out the notes – 3,000 rupees – and handed them over. According to Niraj this was the fixed rate, and they had not attempted to hike up the price once they knew I was a foreigner. They were taking great risks, to be sure, in the services they offered, but nevertheless it seemed like a lot of money to be handing over. A month’s wages for a rickshaw driver, three or four for a weaver.