India is starting to make a little sense. The puzzle pieces are all still scattered all over my mind and other places I haven't found yet, but I'm starting to turn some over and even connect a few! I'm not sure they'll stay connected for long, but I'll take success as it comes and goes.
I had my first real Indian sickness a few days ago. Turns out, looks and tastes can be deceiving and you don't find out until 8 hours later when your stomach wakes you up in the middle of the night to rid itself of foul substances in your digestive system. I missed going on the field trip to see the place where The Buddha gave his first teachings, but bed was pillow and the toilet were the only things I could manage that day.
Over that and feeling much better, we're been exploring Banaras for our last few days here until we head off to Sikkim tomorrow for colder climates and more Tibetan food! Yum! Yesterday, we went to a goddess worship microcosm of India 80 kilometers away from Varanasi. We got to meet two aghor practitioners, one male and one female which was a rare experience, even for our guide here. The aghor practice is completely orally passed and otherwise very secret so we didn't learn much about their practice, but it was an amazing experience to feel the presence of the female aghori from Bengal. She was one of the warmest and kindest women I've ever met and was happy that we all came because now she knows that her children also live in the United States.
India has been a great experience and I hope that life finds me back here, but in all honestly, I'm ready to walk down the street and not have to worry about stepping in cow dung or have strange men comment at me for no reason.
Ready for something a little less intense,
B(ee)
18 February 2010
10 February 2010
The City of 108 Names...
Bags locked, people arranged on the lower-most of the triple-decker beds of the B1 3AC car headed for Varanasi, or Banaras, or Kashi, depending on whose asking and whose responding, we leave the mountains of Risikesh for a different sort of settlement further up the Ganga, or or Ganges, depending on which textbook you consult.
The swaying of the train rocks us all to sleep, singing an initially ear-splitting lullaby that soon becomes sweetly familiar as the wheels of the train clank-clank-clank along the seemingly-endless line of tracks. I fall asleep with one arm clutching my bag with valuables: passport, wallet, camera, iPod, and the other cradling my mandolin, legs wound-up in the straps of my backpack.
“CHAI GARAM CHAI GARAM CHAI” is my alarm clock this morning. I sit up, sleepy-eyed, and feel a Styrofoam plate with vegetable cutlets and a masala omlette stuffed into my lap in between eye rubs. The man will be back to claim his 40 rupees later. The breakfast is almost edible, but everything tastes better after being washed down with a 5 rupee cup of chai.
~*~
I arrive in Banaras after hundreds of miles of yellow flowers and a few too many experimentations with the train food vendors who earn a living by moving up and down the train line, jumping on one train after another and walking up and down the aisles vats of chai, buckets of chips, and fanny platters of chickpeas and tomatoes. I climb off the train with everything I boarded with! --- an accomplishment considering the horror stories I’ve heard about stolen handbags, backpacks, and shoes.
I’ve been told that if I’m looking for the “typical Indian experience”, I’ll find it in Varanasi (or Banaras, depending on who‘s talking). The streets are filled with people dodging bicycles weaving in and out of rickshaws who will stop for nothing but the highly revered cows who move from one trash heap to the next in search of India’s delicacy for its holy, free-roaming livestock: Food Scraps à la Plastic Bag. At sunset, looking out from my hotel room balcony, I see sadhus clad in saffron robes and lay Hindus flocking to the Ganga for the evening ritual fire puja. India: where ropes of spirituality are tied to outright contradictions to form a complex web of chaotic existence coated with a thick layer of dust.
~*~
Watching a human corpse lay on a platform of sandalwood logs, torso separated from legs by engulfing flames, waiting to be burned into ash and accepted into Mother Ganga-ji, a serene calm resonates throughout my body. Death is close.
I don't feel the knot in my throat until I look away from the burning corpse and think about what it would be like to see someone I knew down there. Women aren't allowed on the cremation grounds, so my view was basically where I would have been --- if they let me there at all! Then the knot came. I remembered what it was like to watch the few bodies I've seen be placed and dropped into wholes in the ground, how quickly they disappeared and how distant it made me feel from them. I like it this way much more. It seems more personal, more ceremonial, like you have more time to say goodbye for good and then after, you never know, you could just be swimming among the ashes of a loved-one. That's comforting to me. Now that's not saying that I would swim in the Ganga-ji anytime soon...or ever.
In a holy place,
B(ee)
The swaying of the train rocks us all to sleep, singing an initially ear-splitting lullaby that soon becomes sweetly familiar as the wheels of the train clank-clank-clank along the seemingly-endless line of tracks. I fall asleep with one arm clutching my bag with valuables: passport, wallet, camera, iPod, and the other cradling my mandolin, legs wound-up in the straps of my backpack.
“CHAI GARAM CHAI GARAM CHAI” is my alarm clock this morning. I sit up, sleepy-eyed, and feel a Styrofoam plate with vegetable cutlets and a masala omlette stuffed into my lap in between eye rubs. The man will be back to claim his 40 rupees later. The breakfast is almost edible, but everything tastes better after being washed down with a 5 rupee cup of chai.
~*~
I arrive in Banaras after hundreds of miles of yellow flowers and a few too many experimentations with the train food vendors who earn a living by moving up and down the train line, jumping on one train after another and walking up and down the aisles vats of chai, buckets of chips, and fanny platters of chickpeas and tomatoes. I climb off the train with everything I boarded with! --- an accomplishment considering the horror stories I’ve heard about stolen handbags, backpacks, and shoes.
I’ve been told that if I’m looking for the “typical Indian experience”, I’ll find it in Varanasi (or Banaras, depending on who‘s talking). The streets are filled with people dodging bicycles weaving in and out of rickshaws who will stop for nothing but the highly revered cows who move from one trash heap to the next in search of India’s delicacy for its holy, free-roaming livestock: Food Scraps à la Plastic Bag. At sunset, looking out from my hotel room balcony, I see sadhus clad in saffron robes and lay Hindus flocking to the Ganga for the evening ritual fire puja. India: where ropes of spirituality are tied to outright contradictions to form a complex web of chaotic existence coated with a thick layer of dust.
~*~
Watching a human corpse lay on a platform of sandalwood logs, torso separated from legs by engulfing flames, waiting to be burned into ash and accepted into Mother Ganga-ji, a serene calm resonates throughout my body. Death is close.
I don't feel the knot in my throat until I look away from the burning corpse and think about what it would be like to see someone I knew down there. Women aren't allowed on the cremation grounds, so my view was basically where I would have been --- if they let me there at all! Then the knot came. I remembered what it was like to watch the few bodies I've seen be placed and dropped into wholes in the ground, how quickly they disappeared and how distant it made me feel from them. I like it this way much more. It seems more personal, more ceremonial, like you have more time to say goodbye for good and then after, you never know, you could just be swimming among the ashes of a loved-one. That's comforting to me. Now that's not saying that I would swim in the Ganga-ji anytime soon...or ever.
In a holy place,
B(ee)
06 February 2010
ALSO!...
I've bought my ticket home. A sign of the end. And the beginning. The end of an incredible journey, pilgrimage, chapter of my life, and being home ignites the turning of a page and continuation of the story.
p.s. Everyone should read Siddhartha. Amazing story with (at least) a morsel of insight for each of us.
p.s. Everyone should read Siddhartha. Amazing story with (at least) a morsel of insight for each of us.
Hare Om...
India is leading me on one big introspective journey. Just when I thought my days of introversion were behind me, there the Ganga came, making me turn inward again all over again. But we've been having some great times, me and the Ganga. I even cleansed myself in her sacred waters yesterday. Freezing, it was. And I'm not sure what my feet touch at the bottom: plastic bags, other trash, decaying corpses...I'd prefer not to think about it.
Sentences are still hard to form. Words come out in a conjumbled mess and I have the feeling, stronger than ever, that you really have to see, hear, smell, touch, and experience India to understand the depth of some of the things I would say. But I managed to put together some prose with pictures from Kumba Mela.
Kumba Mela is essentially a three-month long festival of renunciants (sadhus) that happens every 12 years and we were in Haridwar just in time to catch the beginning of it. We spent four days in a sadhu camp with Swami G, a guru from Ujjain. Some of the best four days of my life, save being woken up at 3:45 every morning by sadhus chanting, dancing, and singing.
I'm also loving the meaning of these Indian greetings. Namaste (my light in you touches your light in me) and Hare Om (blessed praises to the sound of existence) are a few favorites!
~*~
Walking from the ashram, to the camp of Swami G,
My heart is pulled in opposite directions.
It moves me to tears and smiles.
A horse, with a twisted fetlock,
Nimbly navigating its home in the concrete jungle yesterday,
Today, standing still,
Over a small pool of blood.
He whinnies, softly, as a friend nuzzles his neck.
On the same block, one sandlot away,
A puppy, finds his next meal,
When a shopkeeper pours the remains of his breakfast ---
Crumbs of bread, onto the street.
He pushes his muzzle inside the plastic
Digging, deeper, for morsels of sustenance.
My heart cries, my eyes smile.
~*~
Swami says “God is not many.
God is one.”
Swami says “God is everywhere.
In everyone.”
Swami says “Stop searching for god.
God is in you.”
My eyes still glance, from side to side,
Then land in Swami’s eyes,
Flooded with
god.
Inside a Haridwarian temple,
A table ---
Cluttered with used candle holders
Already-burnt matches, red string,
And fresh orange flowers,
Vibrant as the pictures of baby god(desse)s they were presented to.
Splotches of candle wax
Mask the faces of Shiva and Krishna.
Their eyes no longer capture the gaze of darshan-seekers.
Divine leftovers.
~*~
I am pushes to extremities,
Laughing at a trombone player in a parade one minute,
And demanding for my change from a rickshaw driver the next.
My falsified anger releases satisfaction;
My smiles are a reminder of others’ woes.
~*~
A clothes-less sadhu,
Traveling by foot with ash as clothing,
Earth as his home,
Humanity his family,
Invites us into his tent
Which sits on the edge of the Ganges ---
Overflowing with the sacred ---
And offers us cups of tea.
His ash-washed face
Illuminates
A light
Brighter than the bulb above his head.
When the city turns off the power,
The tent remains full of his light.
~*~
A Shiva linga, phallus,
With a cobra coiled round
The sacred gift.
Milk and water purify,
Flowers decorate the
sacrificial alter.
This puja had no prior
meaning to me,
But my eyes are in a
trance,
My body is in tune.
As I listen to the foreign
parade of noises,
My mind gravitates
towards that
Which Swami tells me is singular, everywhere, in me.
Sentences are still hard to form. Words come out in a conjumbled mess and I have the feeling, stronger than ever, that you really have to see, hear, smell, touch, and experience India to understand the depth of some of the things I would say. But I managed to put together some prose with pictures from Kumba Mela.
Kumba Mela is essentially a three-month long festival of renunciants (sadhus) that happens every 12 years and we were in Haridwar just in time to catch the beginning of it. We spent four days in a sadhu camp with Swami G, a guru from Ujjain. Some of the best four days of my life, save being woken up at 3:45 every morning by sadhus chanting, dancing, and singing.
I'm also loving the meaning of these Indian greetings. Namaste (my light in you touches your light in me) and Hare Om (blessed praises to the sound of existence) are a few favorites!
~*~
Walking from the ashram, to the camp of Swami G,
My heart is pulled in opposite directions.
It moves me to tears and smiles.
A horse, with a twisted fetlock,
Nimbly navigating its home in the concrete jungle yesterday,
Today, standing still,
Over a small pool of blood.
He whinnies, softly, as a friend nuzzles his neck.
On the same block, one sandlot away,
A puppy, finds his next meal,
When a shopkeeper pours the remains of his breakfast ---
Crumbs of bread, onto the street.
He pushes his muzzle inside the plastic
Digging, deeper, for morsels of sustenance.
My heart cries, my eyes smile.
~*~
Swami says “God is not many.God is one.”
Swami says “God is everywhere.
In everyone.”
Swami says “Stop searching for god.
God is in you.”
My eyes still glance, from side to side,
Then land in Swami’s eyes,
Flooded with
god.
~*~
Inside a Haridwarian temple,
A table ---
Cluttered with used candle holders
Already-burnt matches, red string,
And fresh orange flowers,
Vibrant as the pictures of baby god(desse)s they were presented to.
Splotches of candle wax
Mask the faces of Shiva and Krishna.
Their eyes no longer capture the gaze of darshan-seekers.
Divine leftovers.
~*~
I am pushes to extremities,
Laughing at a trombone player in a parade one minute,
And demanding for my change from a rickshaw driver the next.
My falsified anger releases satisfaction;
My smiles are a reminder of others’ woes.
~*~
A clothes-less sadhu,
Traveling by foot with ash as clothing,
Earth as his home,
Humanity his family,
Invites us into his tent
Which sits on the edge of the Ganges ---
Overflowing with the sacred ---
And offers us cups of tea.
His ash-washed face
Illuminates
A light
Brighter than the bulb above his head.
When the city turns off the power,
The tent remains full of his light.
~*~
A Shiva linga, phallus,With a cobra coiled round
The sacred gift.
Milk and water purify,
Flowers decorate the
sacrificial alter.
This puja had no prior
meaning to me,
But my eyes are in a
trance,
My body is in tune.
As I listen to the foreign
parade of noises,
My mind gravitates
towards that
Which Swami tells me is singular, everywhere, in me.
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