Nine Lives (46 page)
‘According to the Hindu
shastras
you marry only once, and Arati had already been married. So the
purohit
did what is
usual in such cases: he married me to a banana tree, and then I put
sindhoor
on Arati’s forehead.
‘I was completely innocent when I was married. How could I know how to make the frog dance before the serpent? I can’t see! For this reason, my guru Gyananand had advised me to concentrate on singing, and not try to get involved in Tantric
sadhana
. So in these matters Arati was my guru.
‘Nothing happened the first night. My education took place a week later in the new home the sadhus had helped me rent. She was a good teacher, and we now have four children. I owe this happiness to Manisha and the other sadhus of Tarapith: without them I would never have reached this plain of life. I tell you – there is such a lot of love in that place.’
On the last day of the Kenduli festival, I went for a walk with Kanai through the Baul encampment. The festival-goers were beginning to strike their tents and head off back on the road. Everywhere canvas awnings were being folded up and loaded on to bullock carts.
Only two old people seemed to be sitting still. Near the Kenduli cremation ground, I came across a Baul couple who were old friends of Kanai. Both were sitting cross-legged on the projecting ledge of a small roadside temple. Subhol Kapa and his wife Lalita were old, but were still singing Baul songs to anyone who cared to stop and listen to them. They hailed Kanai, and he introduced us.
‘I am eighty-three,’ said Subhol, ‘and Lalita is seventy. Our age prevents us walking the roads like we used to. But we can still dance and sing, and listen to the other Bauls. Lalita is a good singer – much better than I. These days I am so sick, but when I sing or listen to Lalita it makes me forget my illness.’
‘It’s true,’ said Lalita. ‘When I sing I forget everything else. Often I don’t sing for anyone, just for myself, for my soul. I could not live without this life. I need to dance and to sing. I feel ecstatic when I sing.’
‘It is enough for me too,’ said Kanai. ‘I need nothing else.’
‘Song helps you transcend the material life,’ said Subhol. ‘It takes you to a different spiritual level.’
‘When a Baul sings he gets so carried away he starts dancing,’ said Kanai. ‘The happiness and joy that comes with the music helps you find God inside yourself.’
‘The songs of the Bauls are my companions in my old age,’ said Subhol. ‘We sing together, or with other Bauls like Debdas, Paban and Kanai if they come here. But when I am alone I take up my
dubki
, and sing to myself to keep myself company.’
‘Did you both used to wander the roads together?’ I asked.
‘We used to be ordinary householders,’ said Lalita. ‘Only after I had finished rearing my four sons did we become Bauls together – some twenty-five or thirty years back.’
‘Even before then we used to sing,’ said Subhol, ‘but after we became Bauls we were welcomed everywhere, with love and warmth and respect. It has made our life complete.’
‘For eighteen years we walked the roads of this country,’ said Lalita, ‘until we were too old to walk any more. This temple was my guru’s ashram. Now we cannot wander, we live here following the Baul way, protecting our bodies and keeping our hearts alive.’
‘But I thought Bauls didn’t believe in temples?’
‘This temple is just to attract people,’ explained Subhol.
‘For us Bauls it is just a building,’ said Kanai. ‘It has nothing to do with god.’
‘But people come here and tell us about their problems,’ said Subhol, ‘and then we can give them solutions.’
‘God resides in everything,’ said Lalita, looking out over the river.
‘You have to learn to recognise god everywhere,’ said Kanai. ‘We have a song about this. You would like to hear it?’
‘Very much,’ I said.
The old people went inside a room to one side of the shrine and returned a few minutes later, with Lalita carrying a harmonium and Subhol an
ektara
. Lalita squatted in front of the harmonium and Subhol plucked a few notes on the
ektara
, then began to sing, while Kanai provided a high, reedy descant.
My soul cries out,
Caught in the snare of beauty,
Of the formless one.
As I cry by myself,
Night and day,
Beauty amassed before my eyes,
Surpasses moons and suns.
If I look at the clouds in the sky,
I see his beauty afloat.
And I see him walk on the stars,
Blazing within my heart.
Before long, despite his age and fragility, Subhol was rocking backwards and forwards, hopping from one leg to another, transported by the music he was singing. Kanai and Lalita sat cross-legged, swaying to the music, lost in its beauty. When he had finished, the three settled together on the ledge of the temple, looking out in silence over the river. It was getting late now, and the sun was setting over the Ajoy – the time Bengalis call
godhuli bela –
cow dust time.
‘When I hear this music,’ said Lalita after a few minutes, breaking the silence, ‘I don’t care if I die tomorrow. It makes everything in life seem sweet.’
‘It’s true,’ said Subhol. ‘Thanks to this music, we live out our old age in great peace.’
‘It makes us so happy,’ said Kanai, ‘that we don’t remember what sadness is.’
Aarti | Ceremonial waving of a lamp in front of an effigy of a god as an offering of light during a |
Agarbatti | Incense sticks. |
Ahimsa | Non-violence, from the Sanskrit for ‘do no harm’. |
Akhara | A |
Amavashya | A night with no moon. |
Aparigraha | A Jain term meaning |
Appam | A hopper or South Indian rice pancake. |
Apsaras | The courtesans and dancing girls of the Hindu gods; heavenly dispensers of erotic bliss. |
Artha | The creation of wealth. |
Ashram | A |
Atta | Flour. |
Avatar | An incarnation. |
Azazeel | Satan. |
Babaji | A |
Bakri | A goat. |
Bairagi | A Vaishnavite ascetic. |
Barat | A |
Baul | A wandering Bengali minstrel, ascetic and holy man. |
Barelvi | Sunnis Muslims in South Asia who reject the more puritanical reformed Islam of the Wahhabis, Salafis and Deobandis and who embrace the popular Islam of the Sufi cult of saints. The name derives from Maulana Raza Khan of Bareilly, who espoused a liberal form of Sufi Islam. |
Beedi | A thin hand-rolled |
Bhajan | A |
Bhakti | Devotion, |
Bhang | Marijuana. |
Bhomiyas | Rajasthani warrior martyr-heroes who die attempting to rescue stolen cattle and are sometimes later deified. |
Bhopa | A shaman, bard and singer of epics. |
Chakra | A sacred wheel or disc. |
Charpoy | A rope-strung bed on which the population of rural India spend much of their lives (lit. ‘four feet’). |
Charvaka | A |
Chaturmasa | The four-month monsoon break, when Buddhist, Hindu and Jain ascetics cease their wanderings and gather in one place. |
Chela | A disciple or pupil. |
Chelo | Let’s go! |
Choli | A |
Chowkidar | A |
Chuba | An ankle-length Tibetan coat. |
Chu-zhi | |
Gang-drung | Lit. ‘Four Rivers, Six Ranges’ – The Tibetan Resistance. |
Crore | Ten million (or 100 lakh). |
Dacoit | An |
Dakini | A Tantric deity, or attendant on a deity, embodying energy. Lit. (from the |
Dal | A lentil dish; eaten with rice or |
Dalits | Lit. ‘the oppressed’. Below the base of the caste pyramid, formerly known as ‘untouchables’. |
Danda | A |
Dargah | A |
Darshan | A sighting, a glimpse, or view, especially of an idol of a deity in a temple, or of a holy or eminent personage. |
Dastan | An |
Deccan | The plateau covering most of central and southern India, framed on the north by the Vindhyas, and bounded on either side by the Eastern and Western Ghats. |
Deobandis | Sunni Muslims influenced by the reformed and somewhat puritanical form of Islam propagated by the madrasa at Deoband, north of Delhi. In Pakistan, many Deobandis have embraced an extreme form of Deobandism influenced by Saudi Wahhabi Islam. |
Devi | The great goddess. Synonymous with Shakti, the female aspect of the divine. |
Devadasi | Lit: ‘Slave girls of the Gods’ temple dancers, prostitutes and courtesans who were given to the great Hindu temples, usually in infancy, by their parents. |
Dhammal | An ecstatic Sufi dance to the sound of drums. |
Dharma | Duty, religion, virtue. |
Dhoti | The traditional loin-wrap of Hindu males. |
Digambara | The ‘Sky-Clad’ or naked Jains |
Diksha | A ritual of initiation. |
Doms | Untouchable funeral attendants who man the pyres in cremation grounds. |
Dosham | Marital misfortune. |
Dotara | A |
Dravidian | A speaker of the South Indian Dravidian family of languages, often contrasted with the North Indian Indo-Aryan language group. |
Dri | Female yak. |
Dupatta | An over-the-shoulder scarf worn with a |
Durree | A rug or carpet. |
Ektara | A single-stringed instrument, popular among the Bauls. |
Fakir | Lit. ‘poor’. Sufi holy man, dervish or wandering Muslim ascetic. |
Firangi | A foreigner. |
Gagra-choli | A long skirt and blouse popular in northern India, especially rural Rajasthan. |
Gali | Abuse. |
Ganja | Marijuana. |
Ghat | Steps leading to a bathing place or river. |
Ghazal | A North Indian Urdu or Persian love lyric. |
Ghee | Clarified butter. |
Gompa | A Buddhist monastery. |
Gunda | A hired thug. |
Gopi | A milkmaid (in the Krishna myth). |
Gopura | A Ceremonial South Indian temple gateway, usually pyramidal in shape. |
Gujar | North Indian cattle-herding caste, once largely nomadic. |
Gulab Jamun | A sweet, syrupy rosewater-scented pudding. |
Gungroo | Dancer’s ankle-bells. |
Harijan | Lit. ‘child of God’. Untouchable. |
Haveli | A courtyard house or traditional mansion. |
Henna | A tropical shrub whose leaves are used as a red dye. Much in demand in the North-West Frontier for dyeing the beards of Pathan tribesmen. |
Holi | The Hindu spring festival; the occasion is normally celebrated by the throwing of coloured water and the consumption of a great deal of hashish and opium. |
Homa | A sacrificial fire or the practice of making offerings in a consecrated fire. |
Hookah | A waterpipe or hubble-bubble. |
’Ishq | Love. |
Jadoo | Magic. |
Jaggery | Unrefined sugar. |
Jatakas | A |
Jati | A community or clan whose members are of the same caste or subcaste. |
Jinas | ‘The liberators’. Also known as Tirthankaras, or Ford-Makers, Jains believe these heroic ascetics have shown the way to Nirvana, making a spiritual ford through the rivers of suffering, and across the oceans of existence and rebirth, to create a crossing place between |
Jivan | Life, spirit. |
Jyot | A lamp. |
Kalimah | The Islamic Credo (lit. ‘the phrase’). |
Kama | Sexual desire. |
Kar Sevak | An RSS volunteer/activist. |
Karma | Fate or destiny. |
Kathakali | A |
Kavu | A small, usually rural Hindu shrine in Kerala. |
Khadi | A home-spun cotton cloth, once associated with followers of Mahatma Gandhi, now the garb of politicians. |
Khana | Food, a meal. |
Khepi | A female Baul, the partner of a male Baul. |
Khomok | The tension drum of the Bauls of Bengal. It has a skin head pierced by a string, which passes through the wooden drum-shaped body to attach to a small brass handle. The |
