All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (9 page)

Honoré pushed a lock of oily black hair off his brow. He had a craggy butcher’s face, but with a pair of eyes that radiated intelligence. ‘No, I don’t want to die,’ he said frankly, ‘but I don’t want to live enough to stop doing it.
Comprenez?
Chess was always a path for me, a way of getting somewhere that life could not take me. Heroin takes me
so
high. One floats above all of it.’

I saw him again the next morning as I walked down to the Burning Ghat. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before, but he seemed upbeat, more lucid.

‘Come, we walk together,’ he said. ‘I am going to see Baba Sananda, who is a
sadhu
I know. He is
Niranji Akhara
. . . quite senior. He has a great energy about him. Maybe good for your research, no?’

We lowered our voices as we crossed the funeral ground, then started up again on the far side. ‘How do you know him?’ I asked.

‘We met here,’ he said. ‘Eight years ago. I come here every year, so I see him. He is always in the same place. He makes me laugh.’

And why India? I asked Honoré. What was it about this place that drew him?

The answer was partly an obvious one, partly intriguing. Drugs were cheap here, he said. He could live the whole winter on what he earned in France. Heroin came overland from Pakistan and Afghanistan. And India itself was the world’s largest legitimate producer of opium poppies for medical uses. Part of that got illegally siphoned off for refinement into brown and white, and it was just getting cheaper.

‘Economy ’ere is exploding,’ he said. ‘So the syndicates began to realise that instead of smuggling through India, from the Golden Crescent, there was an ’uge potential market on their doorstep. I think there are more than fifty million addicts already, and growing very fast. My God! I’ve been to dealers where you’ve got kids – maybe six years old – chasing the dragon in the corner.’

‘Why is it growing so fast?’

‘Oof !’ He gave that most quintessential French exclamation, a kind of overstated sigh that seems to suggest that what follows is the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Opium has always been an Indian drug. You British once had them growing it in ’uge amounts to export to China. And it’s important in many religious ceremonies. But that India is gone now. India wants to be America. It wants to run
fast
. Opium is an old-world drug, something to drift away the afternoons on. Heroin is full power.’ He scuffed the stone with his dirty boot; we were heading west along Kedar Ghat.

‘It’s not just cheap drugs, is it?’ I pressed. ‘There’s something about India which draws you. It’s in your blood.’

Time passed before he answered the question. His stubbled cheeks, sunken under the weight of his addiction, seem to bunch up with disquiet. With the gesture, the years sloughed off him and a frightened child seemed to shimmer, like an old photograph, beneath the skin of this unwashed fugitive. ‘It is true,’ he muttered, ‘that I find a lot to admire in the Indians. They are
so
kind, no – even to someone like myself. But more than that, they see God so clearly, don’t you think? More than any other country in which I’ve travelled. They see Him. One can be walking through the poorest slum and this woman will step out, so
beautiful
, and light incense before a statue, and then she is set, you know, knowing that all is OK.’ He sighed, and his hands, reflectively, began to pat his jeans’ pockets for cigarettes: props to ward away the present. ‘They know something, I think,’ he chuckled, lapsing back into badinage. ‘But it’s out of reach for someone like me.’

We came to a small encampment of tents beside the river where Baba Sananda was to be found. We had reached Niranjani Ghat, and Honoré explained that locals did not bathe here out of respect for the
sadhu
’s ashram. I watched Honoré greeting his old friend with genuine delight. He admired the old
sadhu
, that much was clear. For a moment I wondered if, even in the depths of addiction, Honoré came to India because it offered him a view of the only transcendent thing that might rival the drug which had him in its grip. Perhaps he wanted what the
sadhu
had . . . a different kind of freedom?

Baba Sananda turned out to be a venerable
sadhu
of about fifty, with good English, seemingly radiant health and one of the heartiest belly laughs I’ve ever encountered. Within minutes, we were sitting on cushions while Baba Sananda stoked up the fire for tea.

‘My young friend is interested in
siddhis
,’ said Honoré, accepting a chillum from one of the younger
sadhus
. ‘What can you tell him about your
sadhu
magic?’

Baba Sananda added powdered sugar to the boiling water, then green cardamom, pungent cinnamon bark, a handful of cloves. He seemed to move very thoughtfully. ‘Some can do,’ he said, his ash-smeared face turning towards us. ‘But these days, many are boasting capaciously, and actually doing nothing.’ He added some peppercorns. ‘Why is this being your interest?’

‘Long story,’ I began. ‘In Western life, there’s not much magic left. Perhaps I wish there was?’

He blinked. His eyes were a duck-egg blue. ‘Many foreigners wanting this, actually. Always asking
jadoo
, asking miracles. But I tell you
none
of this is possible without
Him
. He is the true miracle!’ He held a finger vertically upwards. His fingernails, I noticed, were painted crimson.

I smiled and tried to look placated. He was right in many senses – how tiring it must be for the
sadhus
to be continually confronted by these spiritually bereft Westerners, asking them to demonstrate the one thing which, according to the tenets of their religion, was a pitfall, and indeed mere tomfoolery beside the larger achievements of the path! And yet, how to explain that, for us, coming from a culture overtaken by ‘scientism’, those paltry miracles were the raft we castaways hoped for.

He stirred the pan, tucked a glowing log more tightly into the fire and asked one of the other
sadhus
for the metal cups. We were sitting in a low canvas tent, strung up in a haphazard manner, and decorated with devotional flowers, icons of Shiva and a wooden statue of Hanuman, the monkey god, sitting in a meditative posture. It was a temporary structure, not dissimilar to the tents I’d seen at the Mela ground, and yet it exuded a homeliness: a place of order and retreat.

‘I understand Hanuman performed many miracles,’ I said, pointing to the statue. ‘He could assume any form. His strength was superhuman.’

Baba Sananda nodded. ‘
Acha
. That is so. You have been reading our ’Gita. He was master of
siddhis
. Also there is one temple in Ahmadabad where Hanuman statue is granting anyone who asks visas for America.’

I couldn’t help smiling.

‘This is absolutely correct,’ said Baba Sananda without a trace of irony. ‘Even after all applications are being refused, merely one visit to Hanuman-ji in Ahmadabad is resolving all difficulties.’

‘Will you go to America then?’ I asked. ‘Nearly everyone else in the new India seems to want to.’

‘I love my India,’ said Baba Sananda. ‘Besides, in this
Kali Yug
, America will be very bad place. India is best.’

He was referring, of course, to the Hindu view of time, according to which we are now in the last of the four great epochs: a tempestuous age, showing a deterioration of moral values, corruption, natural disaster and darkness. In recent years the phrase
Kali Yug
(literally, ‘Age of Kali’, ‘Age of Vice’) has almost become a leitmotif in circles far outside Hinduism, because of its seeming aptness for describing current events. I’ve heard it used at dinner parties, as explanation for almost all the ills of the modern world (‘It’s just
Kali Yug
, isn’t it!’).

‘Why will it be so bad?’

‘Scripture tells us that in
Kali Yug
, men will imagine that they know everything,’ said Baba Sananda didactically, ‘even though they know nothing. They will also forget how to worship Him. They will have no humility. They will be arrogant. Are you getting my point?’

I said that I was. For a wizened religious mendicant he seemed to have his finger on the pulse.

He served the tea with a kind of ceremonial dignity and as I sipped the scalding liquid – slightly dazed, perhaps from passive
charras
smoking – I felt very contented with life. Through the tent entrance, all the colour of the ghats went past; we could hear the far-off calls of the
mallahs
(boatmen) ferrying pilgrims across the water. Around me, the living embodiment of Indian spiritual life: this convivial bunch of
sadhus
, sharing their chai with allcomers, and spending a good deal of their time in laughter.

‘There is actually one
sadhvi
,’ said Baba Sananda at last, ‘in our Benares who is having some powers. Very
peculiar
lady, she is. Sometimes having a very bad temper! Shouting at peoples for no reason like a crazy person. But you can find her up there some evenings.’ He pointed out of the tent, downriver a little. ‘One old fort is there, abandoned by Maharajah. Now it is a place only for birds and
sadhus
.’ He chuckled. ‘We are enjoying view from there some days, and practising yoga
asana
in early mornings.’

‘Who is this woman?’ I asked. ‘Will she talk to me?’

He shrugged. ‘For some people she is telling future for money,’ he said. ‘She is not in any
akhara
either. She may talk. Or she may not. You will see.’

I thanked him.

‘But remember what I said,’ he cautioned. ‘Only Him!’ The bony finger, once again, extended to the heavens. The smile was limitless.

Some of the younger
sadhus
showed me their fort a few days later. By climbing over a stone wall and through a window frame, one could gain access to a palace inhabited only by crows. It was guarded by a hoary custodian: single-toothed, armed only with a frayed besom. He allowed the
sadhus
free access, they assured me, but should I see him I must pay the appropriate respect and perhaps a few rupees.

How had such a place, along the busiest stretch of one of India’s busiest pilgrimage sites, been left untended? That it was a former palace, bathed in both sunlight and soft breezes, only heightened the appeal. Feeling the momentary guilt of the trespasser, I climbed through the window frame into an echoing chamber of winds. Grasses protruded from the gaps in its brittle stonework, between colossal stone bricks. Climbing fig trees swayed like verdant banners from the bastions. There were enormous columns with scalloped arches, small balconies under miniature domes, and below ground a bathing pool – empty now – fed by the Ganges itself during the monsoon. The
sadhus
showed me their playground with delight.

‘We own nothing,’ tittered one of them, a man named Dishama whose coal-black beard reached almost to his waist. ‘Yet we sit each evening in this private palace!’

‘Here,’ said one of them, miming the playing of a flute, ‘is where the royal musicians entertained their master.’

‘This place,’ whispered Misri surreptitiously, pointing out the remains of a central dais, ‘was for beautiful Nautch girls.’

‘It is said,’ added Ananda, pointing to the open parapet that provided us this extraordinary view of the Ganges, ‘that once the Maharaja of Varanasi was facing attack. He took his horse and jumped straight off this into the holy Mother. She carried him to safety on the other side.’

I went to peer over the parapet, far below which the shimmering surface of the water carried boatmen, merchants and the occasional corpse along the stream. Below us, I could see buffaloes at the water’s edge, and hear the far-off tinkling of bells. They were hundreds of feet below: tiny pieces on a gaming board.

‘When does the
sadhvi
come?’ I asked.

‘
Sometimes
she is coming, sometimes not,’ said Dishama nonchalantly. ‘She is not following any routine.’

After that I came every night, partly for the view, partly hoping to catch a glimpse of this mysterious female
sadhu
. Now and then the holy men were there and we would sit together, practising each other’s language, and probing ways of life which, on both sides, seemed to exert a fascination. Other times I sat alone, reading in the fading light, or watching the riverfront from this privileged eyrie, an arena of devotion, colour and dignified death.