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.