Back of Beyond (36 page)

The result is a staggeringly rich panoply of teeming images, pulsing with life—an artwork of great beauty and subtlety but also an important visual aid to meditation and religious insight.

The smiling artist said something in a soft singsong voice.

“He’s asking if you’d like to see one of his tankas.”

“Yes, I would, very much.”

The elfin nodded, opened up the wooden chest in the corner of his cell, and carefully lifted out a rectangle of stretched canvas, about four feet high and three feet wide.

Slowly, almost shyly, he turned the canvas toward us.

It exploded with color—bright emerald green mountains, golden-edged clouds, pink and sapphire-blue lotus blossoms, curling traceries of leaves, haloed gods, some black and fierce, some with elephant’s faces, others with huge mouths and horns and a welter of gracefully waving arms, some almost transparent with long-fingered upraised palms and gentle almond-shaped eyes, and all clad in meticulously detailed robes. There were scores of separate images, each one tingling with symbolic gestures that I couldn’t begin to comprehend. And yet the painting possessed a swirling unity of composition so that each detail could be enjoyed separately and yet still form an integral part of the whole. Far more structured than the rambling fantasies of Hieronymus Bosch, but just as filled with life and movement—and humanity. These were gods, but gods reflecting all the kaleidoscopic miasma of human experience and knowledge.

My friends had seen tankas before, hundreds of them (you can buy ones of questionable quality throughout Kathmandu), but even they were silenced by the power and vitality of this little artist’s work.

“How long…?” I began.

The girl asked how long the tanka had taken to paint.

“He says about three months—three months of twelve-hour days.”

“And he’s painting more?

“Six. He’s been asked to do six.”

“And then?”

“He’ll go back to Dolpo.”

“Walking?”

“Walking.”

“Three hundred miles.”

“Right. Three hundred miles.”

“And when he gets back?”

“He’ll paint more tankas. This is his whole life.”

We thanked the artist. His smile felt to be warming my shoulders as we left the cell.

Outside it was dusk and the Himalayan ridges were flushed in a peach glow. Prayer wheels were still turning in the temple courtyard, spun by worshippers as they walked clockwise, round and round the white stupa, topped by the eyes of Buddha. Endless circling. The great mandala of creation, slowly turning, through all the centuries, ever changing, always the same. A universal centering here, in this little isolated mountain kingdom.

I wondered about the wheel spinners. Most were dressed in layers of old, poor clothes. Maybe they were peasants from the lonely valleys making merit by their long pilgrimages, living hard lives in a harsh climate, snatching subsistence crops from tiny patches of cleared earth in a land of broken rocks, ice, and burning summers. Surely it couldn’t be hard for them to recognize the
dukkha
of Buddha—the teaching that all so-called reality is empty and full of the “suffering of desire.” But had they found
sunyata
by being awakened (
buddha
is the Sanskrit word for awakened) to the freedom that exists beyond hopes and fears and desires? Their faces were shadowy in the half light. It was hard to detect emotion in them—any emotion. Maybe that’s what enlightenment looks like. A blank indifference to reality. Merely a part of the cycle, moving slowly around the stupa, turning the wheels….

Time to head for the hills.

I’d spent a day with a group of weary but starry-eyed trekkers who had just returned from a three-week hike to the base of Everest, way to the northeast of the city.

First came the warnings of littered trails, unreliable and greedy Sherpa guides, altitude sickness, the overabundance of other trekkers, expensive supplies, wild dogs, smoke- and animal-filled mud-walled houses, and, of course, diarrhea (the notorious “Kathmandu crud”!).

Then they told me the things I wanted to hear—of crisp nights spent in sleeping bags under the stars; meals of
tsampa
(ground roasted barley mixed with chilies) and dhal bhat, and mellow intoxication from home-produced brews of chhang and
rakshi
(rice liquor); the endurance of their barefoot porters carrying loads in bamboo baskets (
dokos
) hung on straps from their foreheads; tattered lines of prayer flags and
mani
walls—piles of stones carved with the Buddhist inscription “Om Mani Padme Horn” (“Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus”); stumpy stupa shrines topped by Buddha eyes; the incredible wild beauty of valleys, glaciers, ice fields, and glimpses of Himalayan peaks across meadows brimming with alpine flowers; flocks of snow pigeons, pheasants, choughs, eagles; strange dhami shamans (spirit mediums and medicine men), and the one feature that set them all nodding and smiling—tremendous pride in their individual feats of endurance.

I left them, elated by the prospect of days among the mountains. The sun was shining. The high white peaks behind the city beckoned. All the arrangements had been made…

And then cancelled.

This was one dream that didn’t materialize at all. I was hit by a full barrage of bad luck—an ankle twisted badly in one of Kathmandu’s muddy potholes on a night when all the lights went out, a roaring pneumonic cold, and another Costa Rica-type attack of dysentery, which left me flat on my back for days, weak as a baby.

I was unable to muster much of the Buddhist capacity for acceptance of fate. This wasn’t predestiny. This was just bloody unfair! To come all this way to fulfill a boyhood promise, and then to be stuck in a cold hotel room, hearing all the trekker talk outside in the street and the thump of boots and the final farewell of a friend.

“Tough luck, Dave. There’s always next time, mate. Those hill’s ain’t going nowhere!”

Right.

And apparently, neither was I.

The ultimate cleansing of body and spirit! At Allahabad in north central India one splash, paddle, and body-wash in the fast-flowing Ganges—the holy mother of rivers—at the right moment of the right day “reaps the benefit of bathing on ten million solar eclipse days.” It’s an offer any self-respecting Hindu cannot possibly refuse. A whole lifetime of sin, debauch, and spiritual uncenteredness, washed away in a few wet moments. A new beginning, a promise of eternal bliss, salvation, Nirvana!

“You should see the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad,” I’d been advised by a friend in Kathmandu. “It’s an incredible festival of cleansing. Fifteen million people—all coming to the Ganges once every twelve years. Incredible. You might just make it. It’s worth a try!”

At first glance Allahabad is not a particularly prepossessing city. (Second glances don’t help much either.) Nonetheless this dusty, hot place is a renowned center of learning, an intellectual nexus, for students from all over India. But much more important, it is the meeting place of the three most sacred rivers, the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the “invisible river,” Saraswati.

“From time immemorial,” reads the local brochure, “Prayag (Allahabad) has been regarded by pious Hindus as the most sacred place in the country and as the God Brahma performed many yajnos or sacrifices here, it is called Tirthraj or the holiest of the holy places.” (Usually I don’t enjoy the language of guidebooks, but this one has such a pleasant, almost Victorian English flow to it.)

“King Harsha Vardhana, the beloved emperor of India, used to hold at Prayag, where the fair water of the Ganges plays with the blue waves of the Yamuna, a quinquennial fair, at which rich and poor, saint and sinner from every part of India gathered. These gatherings had great advantages. People from different provinces met together, exchanged their thoughts, and profited by discourses with learned men from places other than their own. Those who came from backward districts were imbued with advanced thoughts and ideas and returned home with changed minds. Sadhus and saints solved the queries of many an inquirer. Trade flourished and wealth circulated.” (This is always an important criterion of Indian festivals.)

The brochure continues in its delightful prose: “The Mela or fair is a very old Indian institution. A number of pilgrims, not to be reckoned in thousands of lakhs [Note: The Indian system of counting is a rather confusing conglomeration of hazars (thousands), lakhs (one hundred thousand), and crores (ten million).] assemble here to bathe at the confluence where a temporary township springs on the riverbed. Some of the pilgrims live there in temporary huts in order to obtain religious merit by taking a plunge in the river every day during the whole month and they are known as Kaplabasi.”

Apparently there’s some uncertainty about the origins of this amazing gathering of up to fifteen million devotees from all over India, but the Chinese traveler-historian Hinen Tsang described his experiences here in 644
A.D.
:

And all this for a river—the great river Ganges—symbol of all rivers and all water in India. Legend has it that by bathing or drinking the sacred Ganga water, one attains salvation. The water itself is said, even by scientists, to contain mystical properties. A quote from
The Times of India:

From the distance it looks like a vast military encampment: Thousands of square white tents with four-sided pyramidal roofs lined up in endless rows fill the dusty flats around the Triveni Sangam, the confluence of the three rivers (you can actually see only two but in India nothing is what it seems and everyone insists that it is the third, invisible river of Saraswati that endows this place with unique significance).

It’s very hot. A white dust hangs in a cloud over the site, giving a haloed, mystic feeling. I’ve been walking for almost an hour now from the cordoned-off entrance to the Sangam. Actually, walking is not quite the word, more like half-carried, half-trampled by a thick mélange of humanity filling the hundred-foot-wide “corridors” between the tents and the fenced encampments of the sadhus, the gurus, the sanyasins, and the swamis. Each encampment has its own ceremonial entrance made up of rickety scaffoldings and tied bamboo poles topped with painted symbols, logos, and depictions of Hindu deities. A vast supermarket of salvation specialists. Hundreds of them from all over India, each surrounded by his own faithful disciples and followers. The women in their bright saris feverishly cook and clean outside the square tents, while the men, bearded, ascetic, and clad in dhotis or dark robes, gather in hunched groups around their chosen wise man to listen and debate and nod and sleep and listen again.

And the crowd churns on. Once in it’s almost impossible to break free without the risk of being squashed to a sweaty pulp by a million shoeless and sandaled feet. I’m not even sure where we’re going but I’m part of the flow, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“Are you understanding the significance, sir, of this event, sir?”

A young man in long white robes links his arm in mine and smiles brightly into my dust-smeared face.

I don’t really feel like talking (I’m far too busy trying not to trip on the pebbly track), and I mumble something about having read an article in
The Times of India
.

The youth smiles sympathetically.

“Ah the
Times
, sir. That is a good paper. But I think it is possible that you don’t understand everything, sir. It is a very long history.”

“Yes,” I mumble again. “Yes, I suppose it is.” Everything in India has a long history.

“The spiritual tradition, sir, of
tirthayatra
, the bathing at sacred river crossings, can be traced back to the Vedic period of our history, sir, about 1500
B.C.
There are quite a few important bathing places, sir, but here—the Triveni Sangam—is the most important. And the Kembh Mela is the most famous holy festival—and this one”—he pauses for drama—“this one, today, is the most important for one hundred forty-four years due to the astral signs, sir, which are the same as when Jayanta dropped the liquid of the Amrit Kumbh, sir, on this very place.”

He looked closely to see what impact this startling information had made on me. His eyes gleamed; he was obviously very excited and I felt it only fair to let him continue.

“The Amrit Kumbh. I haven’t heard of that.”

A great grin cleaved his hairless jaw. “Ah, sir. That is why everyone is here, sir. All these people. They say fifteen million. Maybe many more. How can one know, sir?”

That was one of the reasons I’d come. It was a substantial detour from my route to Rajasthan and the remote western regions of India. But I wanted to see what it was like to be among such an incomprehensibly large crowd of believers, all converging for the simple act of bathing in the Ganges. I wanted to feel the force, the power of such numbers. So many people all sharing the same purpose, all here at substantial cost and inconvenience and discomfort, all of one mind and spiritual intent—surely something miraculous would happen with all this centered energy. A river might stop flowing, apparitions might appear, the skies might turn black, and a god might descend….

My informant smiled again. “I am your friend, sir. I do not want money, sir. Just to be your friend.”

I’d met many of these so-called “friends” throughout India but this one seemed to be less grabby than most. He hadn’t even asked the ritual string of questions yet—country of origin, qualifications, profession, salary, wife, children, address—“in case I should ever be fortunate enough to visit your country”—and the old clincher, “I collect foreign coins, sir; if you happen to have any…”

“Sir, are you hearing me, sir?” My friend looked hurt. He had been talking.

“I’m sorry I missed that…”

“Yes, sir, it is very difficult. Too many people. Too much commotion, I think. But nevertheless I was saying to you about the Kumbh, sir. The Kumbh means a jar, sir, a thing for holding liquids. And according to my religion, sir, there was a time, many many many long times ago, when our gods were all very tired and weak and the great Brahma told them to make a special ‘liquid of life’ to help them become strong again, but they used the bad spirits to help them and the bad spirits wanted to keep the liquid in the Amrit Kumbh—in the special jar, sir.”

I nodded, trying to focus on his words, still nervous about being pulped on the rough track.

“But then, sir, then Jayanta, a young god, sir, flew toward heaven with the jar and was chased by all the bad spirits, and as he flew he split drops of the special liquid at four places on earth—in India, sir. Now at each one of these places, in turn, they hold a festival of life, sir, every three years, a different place every three years, and on the twelfth year they come here, sir, for the purna, the most important kumbh and, as I have told you, this one now, today, is the very special one because of the astrological signs, sir.”

“That’s quite a story.”

“Yes, sir. It is a very famous story. All Indian people know about this. It is good for you to know this too, I think.”

“Yes, it is. Thank you.”

“You want to meet sadhu?”

“A wise man?”

“Yes. Very famous sadhu, sir. You can see his sign.”

He pointed to one of a line of camp entrances, this one was painted a garish red, topped with a triangular pediment on which was painted numerous ferocious Hindu gods.

“Come, sir, we go and see sadhu.”

Somehow he tugged me sideways out of the churning crowd and through the entrance. It felt wonderful just to pause on soft sandy ground and not have to move.

“Wait here, sir. I will find out where the sadhu is, sir.”

A few yards away the crowd serpentined on, sheened in dust haze, down the long slope to the Ganges herself, gleaming soft silver in the sun. There were police everywhere and other more military types bristling with guns and grenades. Apparently previous melas here have produced outbursts of “cultural divisiveness” (a
Times
euphemism for outright revolution) in which scores lost their lives. Also fires, drownings (the Ganges is not always a tolerant mother), and anarchistic outbursts from students of the Allahabad universities. It was obvious in the amazing organization of this tent city of millions and the sternfaced wariness of the guards that the government was determined to make this particular one a model mela.

I could see the black superstructures of the pontoon bridges across the river, smothered in pilgrims. The smoke from thousands of cooking fires rose to mingle with the dust haze. I could smell the hot oil in which the chapatis and papadums and samosas and a dozen other varieties of deep-fried delights were being prepared and sold.

Near the entrance to the sadhu’s compound, an old man in a large pink turban used a tamed canary to pick fortune cards at random from a line of little boxes set in the ground. A group of spectators stood solemnly and silently as he read the fortune text to a client, another equally old man who fingered a string of black beads and tugged nervously at his long gray beard. He didn’t seem at all happy with the reading. The fortune-teller took his coins, shrugged, and gestured to the canary, which had nimbly hopped back into its cage and closed its own cage door. The crowd snickered, pleased it wasn’t their fortune that had just been read. The old man painfully pulled himself to his feet, grumbled at the reader, and was swallowed up in the slithering crowd.

“He is over here, sir.”

My friend had returned, bright-eyed and smiling again. We walked between the rows of tents toward the center of the compound where a large green canvas awning stretched over a low painted platform.

It was cool and dark under the awning. A score of men sat in a circle around a central dias. They all had long beards and were dressed in layers of crumpled cotton robes, black and gray. They shuffled around a bit to make room for us. I felt self-conscious in my jeans and checked shirt and pushed the bulging camera bag behind me. Cameras seemed out of place here, like laughter at a funeral. And it felt funereal. Everyone looked very glum except for the sadhu himself, a tiny, virtually naked man with spindly ribs and arms seemingly devoid of muscles. His matted black hair tumbled in sticky tresses over his shoulders. Offerings of rice and fruit and books and brass vases and painted pendants lay all around his feet, but he seemed oblivious of everything and everyone. His eyes were closed. His face was turned upward, his mouth curved in a half smile, and his hands rested limply in his lap.

It was very quiet.

“They say he has not spoken for six hours,” my friend whispered.

“And they’ve been sitting here all this time?” There was something almost sculptural in this hunched bunch of devotees.

“I think so.”

So we sat. And sat. And sat some more. My legs had gone numb but no one moved, so I tried not to fidget.