Greenbrier, AR | Fairfield Inn Hotel Room, 4:30 AM
The call to India comes.
A friend venturing to teach. A friend who has taught me. A friend who is overseas in Asia meeting people who themselves are calling my friend to India, to the Maha Kumbh Mela, the occurrence of which is one in one-hundred forty-four years.
So the call to India comes as a challenge. It comes as a voice note.
Oh my brother, do I have a story for you? Okay, quick context.
Today it’s my birthday, and I start the day out—normal, fine. I’ve got all these fun little adventures and plans on the books and go to a friend’s house. And then afterwards, my motorcycle—my little moped—doesn’t start. And I’m thinking to myself, “Okay, all right, I guess the gurus have something else planned for me today.”
So I reschedule things. Long story short, I end up at this café with a friend, and she’s telling me about her guru.
And she was just crying. She was so overwhelmed. So then I’m just curious, I’m open-minded, and we’re talking as she’s, like, crying this guy pulls up behind her, just glowing, and hands her a flower. And she’s like, “Oh, this is him.”
This is literally manifested out of thin air. And dude—so this guy lives in India normally. White guy, normal-looking dude, kind of. He’s got a Jesus look for sure. In India, by the Holy Banyan Tree where Yukteswar first met Babaji at Kumbh Mela. And he—dude, oh, I’m getting chills.
So we meditated together for a little bit. Before I went, he looks at me—he’s like, “Do you know Kumbh Mela?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”
He’s like, “Very cosmic. Very activating.” And my mind just lit up. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’ve got to go to Kumbh Mela.” So anyways, I dunno if that calls to you at all—of making Kumbh Mela happen.
Like, literally, I was just crying. I was like, “This is the best birthday ever. All my prayers have been answered.” Like, meeting someone in the flesh, giving him a hug that—like—there’s no tension in his body. Pure love. Insane. Insane. Anyways, that’s my story. Hope you’re doing well, brother.
The voice note tells an inspiring vignette: a formal invitation from a divine personage. “Come with me and camp with my guru. Come with me to the site of the holy banyan tree, to the site where your paramgruru met Mahavatar Babaji at a Kumbh Mela many years ago.”
This invitation comes as an opportunity. It comes as a quest. It comes with a lesson, “There are no rules.” A lesson from this holy personage, as recited by my friend in a message to follow that would prove the final catalyst.
Quentin, oh man. Are we going to India together?
But I got a feeling—this is too good to be true, isn’t it? What are the other things? Oh, this feels like an important message to send specifically to you from this guy, although I haven’t mentioned you to him. He just keeps looking at me, and he says, “There are no rules. There are no rules.”
So it feels important for you to hear that as well. All this stuff of, like, irresponsible and blah, blah—like, there are no rules. We get to make up our game of life. And if you’re inspired to come to India—what a… there are no rules. The gurus … God will make it happen.
No doubt about it.
So I text another friend. This time a friend already living in India, who speaks the language of India, who is a disciple of the same path. I buy a ticket. A friend arranges for travel. The timeline is short, wedging an epic journey between two work weeks, and for one friend, wedging an epic journey among never-ending duties to work. Nonetheless, it is decided that four friends will travel into the mela, each never before having been to a mela.
Each with each intention, theirs of which I do not know. Mine of which is this: (1) go with joy, humor, and surrender; (2) be safe, neither greedy nor ambitious; (3) love God.
DL 5998 ATL → LHR
Oh Virgin Atlantic. Your British punctilio, ushering me with candies to my seat, my seat all the way down in the rear of the plane. But never mind because on these wide-bodies there is no rush, plenty of space for everyone’s luggage, plenty of aisles, cutouts, restrooms, and kitchen bays to shuffle past the slow and make quick work as the fast.
My row is empty. Empty. The plane is still. The same frozen landscape of the Berkshire fallows, not even enough movement to disturb the sunrise fog upon the fields. I strap in, my neck-brace “sleeping pillow,” I plug my ears with AirPods, active noise cancellation, sleep tones from Insight Timer, Native flutes, crystal singing bowls, and the sound of one hand clapping.
Sleeping mostly upright like this is difficult. Is slightly uncomfortable. Is slightly impossible. I had been following till this point a “Timeshifter” application to advance my circadian rhythms ahead of my Indian arrival. Admonitions like the avoidance of blue light, caffeine, and sleeping in past 3 AM in advance of a 12.5 hour time shift. The plan was to hit the ground running upon landing in Mumbai. There would be no rest for the weary, so it would be my point to banish all weariness.
I took my Melatonin. I ate no meals. Eye mask on, I saw no light. Eight hours later, we had landed. Sunday morning at 7 AM. I had two hours to get to church.
SRF London Centre
I’m early by an hour, so I stop at a café for tea and a salad. Salad? I feared it would be the last raw greens I’d be eating for a while. I feared right.
While London seems so commonplace now, so organized and mundane, at that time, at this first stop, it felt slightly overwhelming, jarring, chaotic, and foreign. The weather was 0° centigrade, but having packed for the desert warmth of India, I had with me only one flannel pull-over. I had naively hoped for the best on my twelve-hour layover in London, but had been met with freezing rain. Yay.
My accent is a giveaway. She said at the coffee stand, “You’re not from around here are you?” No. This was not a tourist neighborhood. Weird for an American to be ordering a salad and matcha at 7:30 AM. Where are your restrooms? She giggled. Ah. Water closet? Loo? So it is. I am embarrassing myself in subtle ways.
Not a five minute walk from the train station, somewhere off from the Piccadilly line, transferring to the Circle loop line, did I arrive at my real destination. Not the café but the reason for this trip, this pilgrimage: Self-Realization Fellowship, London Centre. Not the London Centre specifically, but God more generally.
I was the first one at the door. I rang the bell. Then a sweet woman, Leslie, greeted me with pranams, hands folded at heart center in the traditional Indian greeting. Ben is fast behind Leslie. The two chattered. “Are we the first ones here?” They believed so, though they were wrong. A monastic opened the door from the inside and we were ushered in before Ben had found the keys from inside his bag.
“I’m Ben,” he said. “You’re visiting?”
“I’m from out of town, stopping on a layover on my way to Kumbh Mela.”
With perfect understanding of the Mela, Ben asked if I had ever been to India before. “First time,” I said. And he smiled. “If you need anything, let me know. We’ll begin in 30 minutes.” Ben, I would discover, would lead our group of 50+ in song, readings, prayers, and meditation.
Leslie volunteered to give me a tour. The centre was beautiful with a regal fellowship hall, painted white with spectacular molding and spacious twenty-foot ceilings. Adorned on the walls were images of Yogananda’s first time visiting England, photos of monks, nuns, and the organization’s past presidents and saints who have visited through the years. Paramahansa Yogananda is our guru, the true master of himself and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship, and its Indian counterpart, Yogoda Satsanga Society. Contrary to Western religions, we learn there is no competition for righteousness, especially not Truth, which supersedes individuality and organization. This is added to say, Yogananda is but one true guru, and his family of devotees are but one such spiritual family.
There is nothing special about this family. Nothing superior. However, the easy modesty of this group does make them feel, at times, exemplary and precious. Organizations like this are not new religions but a community to show the inherent harmony among all religions, and especially for followers of this path, to show the perfect harmony between Jesus Christ’s gospels and Lord Krishna’s Gita. God does not take preference for which of God’s manifold forms is taught (Christian, Jewish, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, etc.). The religions were made for us, not us for the religions. The purpose of our life is not to follow these religions, but hopefully in following the religion best for us, we can find the purpose of our life.
So here I was with Leslie, touring me through their halls, their porch, their meditation chapel, where the service would be held in brief moments. The congregation filed in, and soon enough, the entire sanctuary was present. We stood for a prayer, then chants by a harmonium, then readings, a meditation, prayers for world peace. It would be quite strange and random for anyone joining for the first time. It might be strange in reading these words. But the ritual, the routine, the sequencing, none of this is what is impressive. None of these points is why I share this vignette. This is the precursor to say the following:
What’s impressive is that London felt foreign to me, and I felt foreign to London. Through the Underground I was confused. At the airport, lost. Talking to others, despite speaking English, I troubled myself to understand them. Yet upon a second of seeing Leslie, by merely standing at the doorstep of this meditation centre, I was home, in the familiar, and treated not as a guest, tourist, or vagrant, but as a brother, part of the family — no questions asked except my name.
I would learn later, as you will read later, that even in the middle of a “spiritual warzone” where nothing is familiar, there would be safe haven, a familiar home wherever your spiritual family is present. In my case, wherever Yogananda is present.
But how?! Do you realize the implications of this statement? What thing is this I’ve found that in over one hundred countries and many more hundreds of cities around the world, there is a family who I feel, and who feels with me, an immediate kinship, immediate friendship and understanding without saying a single word, but by merely bowing hands? If this trip proved nothing more than this realization, this pilgrimage would have been enough, but as this story goes, there is so, so much more.
It happens that sleeping vertically for mere minutes of deep sleep does not aid one’s meditation. The fight was real, bobbing between the conscious and subconscious mind, from watching the mind to subtly falling prey to its deep and distracting memories.
Upon standing to leave, it was decided I would return to the airport early. Foreign, oh so foreign, I moved toward the Underground, crossing an apparent one-way street, looking left for traffic, and seeing none, began crossing before upon me was honking, screeching, and a black cabbie revving engines, wishing for me to retreat my position, clearly blocking his path from where I stood in the middle of his left hand turn, his bumper mere metres from my kneecaps.
A gentleman walking with me from inside the centre saw this near incident and shouted out at me, “You all right, brother?!”
Laughing, I replied, “Very. But how embarrassing.” Motioning to my head, I explained how unprepared I had been to venture into London. “I keep walking on the right side (the wrong side) of the road. Wild, I’m on my way to India for the Maha Kumbh Mela. I didn’t realize I’d be visiting for a Sunday service in London on my layover.”
We talked. He was one-quarter Indian. He said, “Be careful in India. The streets are way more crowded than this.” I agreed, though I disagree now. Indian streets are natural.
Up till that point, I was expecting the gravest streets, cars, and dangers when crossing Indian roads. Everyone was warning me of the chaos in Indian streets. The dangers. But no. It was the London street that proved more dangerous. For in India, the expectation is to stop and go with the flow of everything: cars, trucks, bikes, pedestrians, everything all at once all upon itself with no delineation, no sidewalks, road paint, or traffic rules. Whereas in London, there are non-negotiable right-of-ways. And if you are not in the right of way, as I was not right by accidentally cro ssing the street too soon, you lose. You lose in uncompromising fashion. By contrast, India only knows compromise, and by comparison, though seemingly a horror show, the Indian street is safer than the London street, safer than the NYC street. Safer than the Atlanta street. Everyone yields to everyone. Even the foolish tourist, deprived of sleep in a meditative stupor, standing in the middle of the road, will not get hit in India. The car will merely honk, then continue their way around your body, uninterrupted in the least, just water current passing smoothly around the momentary rock.
We parted, this quarter-Indian devotee and me. I wished him well. He wished me safe travels. My phone stopped working and per my astonishment and pride, I found my way back, transferring trains and all by memory alone. The hour journey back to Heathrow was successful, and so came time for India.
DL 5945 LHR → BOM
While the first flight was quiet, this flight never shut up. The first introduction to India. India in a bottle. No. India in a fuselage. India in a pressurized tube. While the first flight was quiet, this flight never shut up. But that’s like telling the waterfall to be still. What folly!
Finding my seat was chaos. Taking my seat was chaos. Many families were asking me to change seats, swap seats, rearrange seats. Why? Where? What? The British flight attendants were in over their heads. They were taking their jobs seriously, doing as their formal British training had been taught to them. But the Indian way is informal, beyond training. To hold any anger in India is a certain death sentence, for if anger is a conflict of one’s expectations and desires, then the Indian way is the most infuriating place on earth. But if in recognizing that nothing will go the “right” way, but that life will merely go on, then anger dissolves permanently. So it is that India is a peaceful people despite a most maddening, threatening culture. Threatening not to the soul, but to the ego. The ego will not get its way in India.
So it is that mine did not have a quiet flight, not a spacious flight, not a flight according to plan. But we boarded, we arrived. I was in for a treat.
BOM → My Friend’s Place
The traffic was delayed by two hours, meaning my native friend would not be picking me up at the airport. In the customs line there was me, desperately wishing to connect to the BOM airport WiFi. In a trick of paradox, a true catch-22, the airport required a telephone verification code to access. Yet, to access my telephone services, I needed WiFi. But what?! Not an airport in all of Europe or America requires authentication for free WiFi access.
Thank you, then, T-Mobile, for my 5GB of roaming service. The only problem was the roaming. The service hopped from carrier to carrier hardly carrying a connection for more than a few minutes at a time. Between weak signals was just enough luck to communicate my situation with my friend.
It would happen that upon exiting the airport I would head towards P4, towards the Uber pick-up point. Not reading the signs adequately, I ventured up four flights of stairs to the topside of the arrivals terminal. Many taxis abound, I thought I’d found the pickup point for Ubers. No.
“....” My driver spoke only Hindi. In text, his message to me read, P4 C22. I replied, capturing an image of the large LCD display, “P4,” and I explained I was near the Burger King on the top level. No response. I walked the entire 500-meter distance across the terminal’s arrival lanes, cars swerving in and out, searching desperately for his car and plate. Luckily, plates are on the fronts and backs of cars in India. Unluckily, is that his white Suzuki is most certainly the most popular car in India. Finding it would prove futile. One, two, five, ten minutes passed. My Uber app was connecting and disconnecting, but still, the driver did not cancel. Wild.
I went to a guard, “P4 C22,” showing him my Uber texts. No. He didn’t speak English. Then another guard. Then another. Finally, one turns to pantomime and motions, “Down, down.” So I go down. Down. All the way underground to the basement parking garage. P4 was not the fourth flour up but the fourth flour down. What?!
My friend would later point out how obvious the signs are. The signs are obvious, but the logic is tragically flawed. Why would I have found a large “P4” sign on the wrong “P4” floor? But it’s important to let go of these things. Arguing with India is like arguing with the wind. It will only leave you winded.
Per the guard’s help, I found the driver at last. Both smiling and then angry, he tells me, “Thirty minutes I waited for you. Thirty minutes.” I hadn’t recalled that much time. I could not. But I understand. I am late. If only he could understand my confusion. He could not.
I pay him his grievances forward and give him an additional 500 rupees ($5) for the 1,000 rupee journey.
The drive would take 5 kilometers and nearly two hours. Not ten minutes into our journey did a fellow car motion to us. My driver cranked down his window. The two drivers exchanged words and we carried on. I wouldn’t have thought twice about the motions, except that some five minutes later my driver was pulling over, exiting his car and motioning me to poke my head out the left side window. “Flat tire.”
Uh. “Do I need to get out? I can help.” I motion to leave, but he motions twice as sternly to stay. He pops his trunk and in his flip flops — flip flops — jacks our car, stomping in due time on the nut bar, replacing the tire. “Five minutes,” he says. Surprisingly, five minutes proves nearly true. Perhaps he had a better sense of time than I gave him credit for.
We were off again. But then, just as soon as we’d left, we were parked again, on the side of a Mumbai road — cars, buses, trucks, people, auto tuk-tuks, all whizzing past.
“Now what?” I thought. But this was obvious. We’d stopped at the side of a random shop. What I would have mistaken as an abandoned building, hoards of trash littering its entrance, was actually a tire shop. Sure enough, the driver pulled his wheel out of the car and two men greeted him from the shadows of their room inside. With no more than a sentence of communication, the men got to work. One man takes the tire, my driver starts jacking his car again, and another man prepares a patch. The driver comes back to me, motioning me again with two outstretched palms, “Stay, stay. Five more minutes.”
Five minutes to patch a tire? What show is this I’ll see? So they blow the tire up, some inconspicuous hose pulling up through a disheveled pile of auto parts. Who would have spied this as a working air hose?
The man at the shop pulls out a severely browned water bottle and, squeezing it, ejects soap water on and throughout the refilled tire. Looking for bubbles (air leaks in the tire), they find something. They nail up the patch, stuffing the hole with cloth, nail, cloth nail, and before I realize it, the driver is jacking his car again, and we’re replacing the spare we just installed with the newly patched old tire. We’re doing this all over again.
The group exchanged words. Then the driver was with a full grin and greeting me back in the car. “Free,” he said. “Free.”
So this was the journey. Another ninety minutes to my friend’s place before we would venture to our first city later that afternoon by plane to Varanasi. But before we leave for that flight, may we appreciate the absurdity of this story. Repairing a tire in five minutes on the side of the road, for free, with an Uber passenger in the back seat. Only in India would this happen. Only in India is this possible.
Varanasi
The prime entry for the Mela: a neighboring “big city” to Prayagraj is this place called Varanasi—the city we would fly into before entraining for the Mela. The city that was also swelling with countless millions who were of the same sort, pilgrims en route to the Mela or stationed as they were nearby in this holy city, taking Diksha, bathing in the Ganges, it all sweetened by the spiritual honey brought on by this special event. But the event also brought swarms, of which were dangerous, fatal, and suffocating.
We were met by the family of my friend’s house help who met us graciously, the lot of them traveling together in, as was before, a white Suzuki.
“There’s five of them,” I pointed out to my friend. “And with the two of us, with only five seats ... are we displacing them from their own car?”
My friend gave me a sort of conciliatory shrug to approve but also to recognize my guilt. “Are we paying them?”
“In a way you can say we already are,” my friend said.
They pay their house help. This is the family of their house help. So we were treated finely, but we were journeying far through the veins of Varanasi, down back roads, down so many sites so new to me, but also, these were sights I had already grown accustomed to. In some ways, India’s landscape is similar to aspects of South America, to places I traveled to in Brazil. There is pervasive poverty, but the “ruined” buildings are so tenable, so livable by the people, so workable by their days that the city always felt alive and occupied, and the thought of actually condemning an establishment never properly came to mind.
Something becomes trash when its use ceases, its value totally abandoned, its hope for use lost. The sense here was more of modesty, making the most of what is, never minding the ideal for anything, for if it works in India it is inherently perfect — no need to condemn, rectify, and modernize as goes the obsession of the west, especially America whose homes are more easily torn down and rebuilt than remodeled or re-inhabited.
At our hotel in Varanasi we showered, meditated, and prepared for bed. It would be the first bed in 38 hours of travel. The last shower for the next 96.
“Dinner,” asked my friend. Just outside our room was a foyer. Spartan, but with a table, a booth, and on the table were two plates replete with a meal. Food. Seemingly from no where.
“But actually. Where did this food come from?”
“The dabba,” or Indian tiffin, as we might know it in America. “Did you go out to a restaurant and get this in the five minutes I was brushing my teeth?”
“No,” said my friend. “It was in the bag that our drivers gave us.” They gave us a whole meal? From this tin can.
It was delicious. We sat into midnight relishing these Indian comforts: good food and spiritual friendship. Spiritual because we had previously spent only an afternoon plus three intermittent days when we met seven months ago in the states. Yet here we were about to enter a significant trial of our lives, sharing quarters, meals, and the greatest intricacies of our life stories as though having been friends for many lives.
Even if it were so that this was our first meeting throughout time, the harmony would still have been for in knowing ourselves to have the same teacher, the same practice, the same goal, all relational riffs cease. There can be no competition between us. We are on the same team, competing for the same prize of Self-realization. There can be no confusion between us. Our life philosophy is perfectly the same. There can be no jealousy between us. Our guru’s love is on behalf of God’s love: infinite and unconditional. There can be no anger between us because in receiving unconditional love, we learn to practice it too. What could you do that could anger me when I am expecting nothing from you? And in having no expectations, not even for myself, the inspiration to act, to give, to not act, to not give, is also effortless and harmonious. Easy.
The only difficulty is in meeting each other at the same intersection in life. Have our circumstances and lives crossed paths? Can we relate to each other because we are in the same stage of life? For us, those answers are also yes.
Here we were in the eleventh hour, this the first proper conversation between the two of us. For even in first stopping at his home, the occasion was to be served by his father, to see the house, to quickly shower off and be off again, back to the airport some hours after landing in India. Off to Varanasi. We would go on to complete a full night of sleep — the last until the last day of our trip.
We had a pilgrimage to make in Varanasi before entraining to Prayagraj.
Up a street, seemingly random, we walked inward into the labyrinth of the city’s many residences, buildings, and alleyways. Finding ourselves past the cows, the goats, homes whose home had no doors, roads whose road was but dirt, pressing up against buildings to let the motorbikes, squat cars, and crowds through, walking carefully, curiously, excitedly, we eventually reached our modest arrival.
A door. On it, “B. Lahiry,” once a residency of the great master, saint, and yogavatar, Lahiri Maharsaya, whose instruction marked a new era of Kriya yoga practice. From his guru Mahavatar Babaji, Master Maharsaya would give instruction of the scared science to all earnest truth seekers, regardless of their worldly status as material renunciants or common homesteaders. Truth, beyond organization and identity, can be possessed by no one. These are the ideas carried on by his direct descendants, whose sanctuary we visited just blocks from this home. There would be no religion from these teachings, no business, no sect, no ownership. There would be only the truth to accelerate one’s remembrance of Thee.
For all the spiritual paths I have come to discover, I have discovered none that speaks higher than the efficacy of Kriya yoga. But for the father of this preeminent spiritual science, the father’s home is as unassuming as they come.
Apart from us sitting on the step meditating, apart from a few fellow devotees laying flowers with devotion, the scene was not an overtly spiritual one. Soft manure clung to the road just feet from this door, streaked by tire tracks from the constant running over of motorbikes, then there’s the clamor, the surviving, the bustling of life in neighboring alleyways, made eerie by the apparent vacancy of occupants in the buildings closest. My friend calls out that a true teaching, true light, needs no amplification by glamorous settings nor aggrandizing media. It finds its way, unthreatened in its state of eternity.
All I can make of it is this, the adage of Lahiri Maharsaya that comes to mind when he addresssed the efficacy of his image’s ability to heal. “If you believe me near, then I am near. If you believe me far, then I am far.”
You travel far for the pilgrimage, not that it gets you any closer, but that in traveling far, you learn the distance is not what separates.
I recounted at that moment, a poem called Santiago, by David Whyte, that my friend had sent me before my leaving. Its most prescient excerpt goes like this,
the sense of having walked from far inside yourself
....
We were headed back to our hotel after walking along the Ganges at the site of the famous ghats, about ready to meet up with our friend of a friend of a house keeper’s family member for another chauffeur to lunch and then the train station.
Down a street there is a crowd. People everywhere had been the custom, but this was different. A crowd so thick no one could move. We met it and stopped as if waiting in a line, a line to walk down a double-wide street. A human line to walk down a street. Stopped not because we are stopping but because we have broken the capacity of the infrastructure and have no other choice.
A crowd so thick that like a surge in a riptide, any body that did break free brought an immediate resurgence of pulling, pushing, and shouting to occupy the newly freed space.
Till that point, my friend and I had done well to stick together, but police came in from behind with their batons and whistles and motioned with great intensity for us to move left, and in that moment we were separated. Faster, faster the cops were plowing us left, forcing everyone to scramble, push, and yank themselves to the side of the jeep that was making its way through, rolling a few treads a second.
Unlike gas, humans are of solid form, and to plow a jeep through a solid sea of flesh will quickly reach its breaking point. Any more pressure than what we were experiencing could have caused chronic injuries. Had true injuries resulted, I wonder how we would have received them?
I can only imagine, but I imagine that when the flesh is broken or the bones crushed, then the mind freaks. That state of watching the madness shifts into concern for the madness, and then, like falling to one side of a razor’s edge, the feeling is fear. Dangerous, dangerous fear. Yet I felt fear not once the entire trip. I don’t know why. Only, thank you.
Hordes were shoving me into a light post, then a curb, then a fire hydrant — oh how common street objects can become fatal hazards in the beginnings of a stampede. But fear, I did not take you with me. Instead, I had determination. Determination to leave the city street and connect with my friend, but not fear.
The will was pulling me to and from finding my friend and finding my way to safety. To friend, to safety. But in truth, my friend was my harbor and safety. Finding his face again, I motion left, for in a miraculously calm state of mind the answer was so silly. So clear. Looking to my left was a nearly empty alleyway. As it happened, everyone was stuck through this main thoroughfare while the side streets were relatively empty (maybe a few hundred bodies versus tens of thousands). But as the human riptide sucked us further and further down the street, we missed our chance to swim laterally. A break in the crowd gave me the chance to slip myself through, my flattened and outstretched arm a polestar as I flossed my body through the bamboo of other bodies. Together again, in it, we would have to carry on.
Eventually, we made it to the intersection of our hotel, but the police had barricaded all entry, turning the two-way road into a one-way road. No through traffic. We carried on.
Another intersection. Also barricaded. Detour upon detour. This went on for another thirty minutes or so until, alas, a break, and we were at our hotel, grabbing our bags, and we were on our way to the car. Lunch.
Simple hospitality. Bowing. “Namaste. Namaste.” Sharing food. Looking out for each other. “Here,” my friend said. “Drink this. It’s very good for the stomach,” alluding to the constipation I mentioned having the night before.
“It’s called lassi. It was Sri Krishna’s favorite drink.” A cool buttermilk-based drink with flecks of black seeds from the ground cardamom. It tasted savory with a hint of sour, but also with a seed of sweetness, as if only the memory of sweetness versus sweetness itself. The drink felt holy, lifted from a brown clay cup, terra cotta, the texture of which was exactly that of a standard brown American flowering pot, if only these pots were thin as tea cups and without holes in the bottom (obviously without holes).
“One-time use,” my friend says, pointing to the small, eight-ounce “kulhad” cup.
“One time?”
“One time.” Magic. I wanted to hug Her, divine India, for bearing children that could give us such a holy drink in such a satisfying cup.
I would be relieved of my constipation, I thought, and even that insecurity banished. I would be surrendering fully to India.
Prayagraj
Four of us now. Five with the plus one they met at a previous retreat. There’s only one direction. The direction of the masses. Here we venture into this setting, the setting sun into dusk, and the canopy of the banyan trees above us, vegetation mixed with the soot of dusty roads and roads lined with weary buildings, vendors, and endless cacophonies.
As we trained in across the bridges high above the valley of the rivers, high above the encampment, the sheer scale made itself known.
Can you believe it? A camp extending beyond the visibility of the sky, thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions traversing a network of over twenty improvised “ballast” bridges, each bridge the size and integrity to allow the passage of cars, trucks, and people beyond people.
The camps: some like circuses, regal, formal, and “luxurious.” Others are canvas tied down with rope, pitched with poles. Others still are no camp at all but mattresses in the dirt. Others camp upon the woolen sheet, babies playing in the sand, mothers hoping to sell something to the masses, hoping for the spiritual to overcome their needs.
Had we ventured into an apocalypse? Was this make-believe? Science fiction?
“Doesn’t this feel like we’re entering a movie?” My friends had the same thought.
Yes, except that we wished to spiritualize the journey. We arrived to be present, to experience, and to be present. At peace.
Sometimes, small moments ruin you. This is not one of those cases, but sometimes you do wonder. You do worry, not prescient about what’s to come.
The stitching on the back of my shoe had come undone. To prevent its worsening or tripping me, I felt it right to wrap that stitching around my finger in a gesture to tear it free, like pulling spare thread from a shirt.
Nope. This was nylon stitching, and before realizing what I had done I had split my right index finger wide open in a spiral starting at the cuticle, wrapping ’round the pad, and back around again to the second knuckle, returning in a 360 loop to span the entire topside of the digit, skin split and separating. Blood. Great.
“Did you see what I just did,” showing my friend my bleeding index finger. “Silly me. Trix are for kids.”
I hoped this would not ruin me. My mind wished to worry, but what support is that? This too, Lord, I must give to you. May it be okay. Surrender. It’s just that entering a dirty environment, entering a culture that eats with their hands, entering these places with a bad finger and bad precautions is never ideal.
Though you trust yourself because the week before came the thought to bring bandaids and antibiotic cream just in case. So the case would come. Miraculously, writing this just five days later can I happily report the finger is perfectly healed. My body requires much more physical healing, but I give thanks for these small miracles.
To The Mela
We found a western-styled restaurant called “Veggie Veg.” We would come to shorten the name to “Veg Veg.” Modern hospitalities included a regal staircase upwards to a well-lit second floor, somewhat sterile but in a familiar, American way. We were also met with soaps, sinks, overwhelming menus, and reasonable customer service. Below us, we would discover, was a sweets shop — though none of us were tempted.
The sun had set and night was among us. Somehow the moon’s dark ceiling made the atmosphere louder. There was no expanse into the infinite cosmos, no starry night to remember our ancestors by, nor the quietude of vacuous space. No. The air quality was too hazy, trapping pollution of all kinds: gas, noise, and light.
Military convoys on 40” wheels alongside motorcyclists, mopedists, cars, pedestrians, stray dogs, us, all venturing towards this encampment, this spiritual epicenter, this confluence of three rivers, this Sangha, this warzone.
A friend of theirs bails pretty quick. Hails a motorcycle and is gone weaving through the parading caravan.
Murmurs begin. “We should do the same.”
We find someone. They speak Hindi and my friend who interprets explains that this gentleman says he can have all three of us at the bridge in 30 minutes — a laughable impossibility in that we’d been told “Just 30 more minutes” for nearly two hours of walking towards this river-front bridge. Nonetheless, our friend hops on and then there were three.
Separated now, we grew impatient. Somehow I eye a guy who stops ahead of us. His friend stops behind me and talks to our interpreting friend. After minutes of deliberation, political chess moves of the tongue, negotiations, nodding yes and no, to and fro of the head, it came that we would be mounting these two motorbikes. The two of us with backpacks (one back pack being a guitar) would sit in the rear, and our friend with a roller suitcase would sit in the middle of their bike of three.
I would ride just me, but would hold my friend’s roller bag, a kind of knee-high computer bag with telescoping handle in the rear. My horseback riding would come in handy for this lesson, “the horse does not assume its cargo as part of itself, so be mindful of tight turns and passages wide enough only for the horse.”
So we would cut through medians, barricades, sheets of metal in the road, wide enough barely for a wheel, let alone a bike carrying luggage. Up would go my arm, suitcase in hand swinging it like a milk pale around the obstacle, through to the other side of the bike, and back down again where it hung inches from the street as we sped through the traffic of cars, people, and the dizzying hoopla of Prayagraj.
There would pass much noise, fanfare, celebration, even fires and celebratory fireworks. There would pass the whistling of security blockades, obstructing some path for some reason. There would pass the tireless honking of cars, for it happens that Indian drivers use line of sight and echolocation by the sounds of their never-ending horns. It would pass a million people now behind us, and a million more had passed us ahead.
When we left our motorbikes with a concessional, “So this is it,” the journey back together was made easy, miraculously, per WhatsApp live locations. Again. How internet works in these conditions is perplexing. Thank you.
We grabbed arms and linked our way through the final mass of humans ahead of the land bridge, some steel path suspended thirty feet above the river atop hundreds of ballasts spaced twenty or so meters apart.
When we descended onto the river the thought did come from all of us, “If I didn’t know better, I would say we’re in an apocalypse, and this is the world’s remaining stronghold where all the population has come for refuge.” As it happens, we knew better. This was a spiritual vacation, a spiritual quest. We entered willingly.
The Camp
We arrived into, as a friend would come to term it, “The Yellow Palace.” But these camps are not the camps you’re thinking of.
Yes. Please. Think of a camp. Picture its tent, its people inside, its food being prepared, its noise, sounds, sights, and smells. Yes. Picture all these things. Have you pictured it? Great. Whatever you have pictured, I promise you, you have not pictured this.
Here at this camp was a forever-open doorway where the tent flaps were parted. That entrance was barricaded by a couch where devotees and disciples of this lineage sat — shewing, ushering, and managing the chaos of visitors, beggars, and western fools like us who had rented a room for a few days’ encampment.
Upon entering, you have entered into a tent with chandeliers, tent posts rising twenty, thirty feet, and a barren ground covered by rolled-out cloth. No chairs — for the earth is a seat. Rows were created by the rolling out of columned linen where the sadhus arrived to sit and eat their prasad, which is blessed food or a blessed meal, especially when offered as an oblation to the guests, for in India, “guest is God.”
Where we were must also be remembered. We’re not exactly sure what this plot of land looks like when the mela and its many tent festivities are not full force. However, a desert, a dune, an erg of endless and desolate shoals is an image that comes to mind. Think sand, and you’d think rightly.
So sand. But almost more fertile than sand, like really, really dry soil. Dirt. Yes. Dirt. Dirt upon the floors, dirt upon the canvas walls, dirt upon the mattresses outlining the tent’s central nave, dirt on the shoes piled by the door, dirt more subtly in every man, woman, and child who had not showered in many days or weeks, dirt upon the couch where the leading men sat, dirt up under our nails, and dirt like a filter on the lens of our mind. In that way, the dirt was not named, cannot be named, would make men mad if it were named. For the fish name not the water and the birds name not the air, the people of the mela name not the dirt, so apparent is its presence that it recedes into the background and becomes part of the invisible and ever-present reality of the environment. I only mention it here to help you acclimatize to the camp. It’s invisibly dirty. You enter and do not notice it for in noticing the other one-thousand things, the dirt is inconsequential.
You notice the stage where their Guru’s image was invoked. You noticed the blaring speaker system amplifying the Sanskrit chanting and kirtans through harsh static and decibel clipping. You noticed the children and families sleeping in lousy conditions along the perimeter of the encampment — under cover but with no real respite from the conditions. You noticed people lying around. Lying around. I learned to always be doing something. Even my not doing something has a name: meditation. What were they doing? I noticed the people coming and going through the walls. I noticed I was fatigued but no where near tired.
There had been a problem. Our friend who made the reservation had been in contact with a different gentleman, a man of the same lineage as this Guru’s camp, but somehow, far off at another location.
But we had arrived here, and it was late, and I hadn’t seen a bed since back in Varanasi. After negotiations, talks, and foreign contrivances, we were ushered through the tent’s nave, under scaffolding, through a slit of canvas and behind the scenes. We had walked through the “peak behind the curtain.” We had broken the fourth wall. We were following a gentleman in robes, a Tilak blessing painted on his forehead.
Where he took us was a maze of canvas, low-hanging ceilings, draped with more tarps and maudlin, and the floor was a scattering of canvass upon dirt, commercial carpeting cut out in long strips to line the corridors that were single-file wide. Then at the intersection of some of these passage ways was the occasional grassy “turf.” I remember because this was the only green we would see for several days. Target chic, plastic green, where art thou!
The hallway behind the central nave spread left and right. Lined on either side were rooms whose doors — yes, doors — did hinge, but were of plywood construction, covered and stapled with commercial silk fabrics, colors of loud red, orange, and yellow. Though the amplitude of the colors was dimmed by the poor lighting of the one or two bulbs screwed into the walls, electrical wires conveniently exposed.
“Here,” they seemed to gesture. We poked our heads into the box, this whole place feeling like a kid’s cardboard fort if only kids had unlimited access to a hardware store.
We saw three bed mattresses atop steel cot frames raised to a western height. The beds were pressed together, side-to-side so that only the third bed had space for entering on its side. We would be entering the bed from the steel footboard, which was raised a good six inches above the mattress. To sit at the foot of the bed was to sit with one’s legs draped over the footboard, knees protruding in an “A” shape. Needless to say, we would not be sitting at the end of our beds. We would be sitting cross-legged on the beds, careful to make ourselves unshod, spared from our grimy shoes, or careful to wash our muddied feet.
“Just three,” we asked. Yes. “Can we bring in a fourth mattress?” A shake of the head. Yes. No. Not enough room.
We would learn that the shake of the head, yes and no, would sometimes bring great surprises. We asked for water for instance, and after a long enough time to have forgotten the request, a shallow knocking would come upon the plywood door. A speechless man would motion four large liter water bottles. “Miraculous,” we would exclaim inwardly.
Other times, such as our request for a fourth bed, the answer would be seemingly forgotten. No answer. No answer.
Then, after a day’s night in this three-mattress room, another unexpected knock would come. Hindi. We’d beckon to our interpreting friend, and through serious discourse, it would be revealed that this was another gift of Divine Mother. A family had left and we would be moving rooms across the hallway to a room with four beds.
“Should we do it,” we asked each other. “Is it worth it?” The room was from number 16 to number 21. “Twenty-one is my lucky number,” I said. A spiritual posse we were made favorable advance on anything seen as an omen. “Done,” someone said, and our things gathered themselves into the other room in no time at all. Such were the gifts of the mela. Forgive the desire for a thing and voila! It arrives. “Thank you, Lord, for this thing I did not know I needed or wanted but now realize is much appreciated.”
My answer for a toilet was answered unlike how I anticipated. In fact, much of this trip’s intentions were to set no intentions, no expectations. “Divine Mother, I am going to your heartland, your homeland. You are charged with my life as you always have been, despite the feigned control western culture has falsely given me. I entrust you with all my needs.”
But a prayer is only so good. I was a “doubting Thomas” from John’s recounting of Jesus’ resurrection — that disciple who need physical proof. My trust was obviously intellectual, theologized. I know because each time something was miraculously given, I was surprised as though my first belief was that it wouldn’t be.
Our bathroom, a private bathroom, was behind a second — hinged — plywood door, this one also with silken cloth stapled to it, but only on the interior side, not the bathroom side which was technically exposed to the outside except for an overhead tarp to catch the rainwater. Through the door, a concrete step up onto a slab of exposed concrete, still dark as though recently poured. On this slab sat a lonely toilet just off from the center with a curious amount of walking space all around — a true porcelain (plastic) throne. Thin PVC pipes stapled to the walls ran water to a spigot above a drain in the corner of the slab. Another pipe ran to the toilet. A toilet. A toilet with running water and with working sewage in the middle of a desert, in the middle of an endless encampment the size of Manhattan. What?! I was not expecting this. Who dug the plumbing? Where does the black water lead? Where does the grey water lead? Where is the water source?
It didn’t matter. To the privacy of beating drums, mantras, fireworks, chanting, shouting in all directions, millions of people reciting Sanskrit, I would have an ugly bowel movement but no one need know for no one could possibly hear. They wouldn’t hear a thing, smell a thing. This was an open air, plumbed toilet. Had it not been for the smoke, I’d have looked up and seen the stars, and while looking down, stared into a bowl and seen the depths of hell, my own horrific makings. Who would have thought?
Giving thanks for a movement after some days of stoppage, I also gave thanks to my friend who was looking out for my best interest and had served me that lassi during our Varanasi lunch. This was apparently the beloved drink of the beloved Bhagavan Krishna. Weird to consider how many thousands of years have passed while this drink lived on, served by generation after generation. It felt like drinking history. And that clay cup. Oh. Sensational. I also felt like a plant drinking the soil of the earth to sprout new life. Thank you.
After hosing, hosing my anus and desperately wagging my coccyx dry like a twerking Cyrus (for what else is there to do without toilet paper), after washing my hands beneath the spigot, mud splattering upon my shoes from where the water fell near and into the drain hole, after expressing gratitude to the Gods for these dearest and awfullest of surprises, after all this, I burst into our room for three and told the four of us how miraculous I had found these toilets to be.
“Can you believe it?! Plumbing. Look where we are. Look at this chaos. We have plumbing.” Maybe we would make it here all right anyhow.
We had set alarms. Set for ourselves a timetable to bathe in the Ganges at pre-dawn. Maybe we were mistaken about what this was.
Tangentially, I wonder if trees count down the days till budding or if the atmosphere could possibly forget to rain upon the trees. I wonder if in terrible droughts the planetary conscience flagellates itself for desiccating its vegetation.
I am reminded of my “little Buddha therapist,” as I referred to him with my more clinical therapist. Little Buddha therapist recounted a tale with his son who looked fondly and morosely at their dog lying prostrate on a dreary day. “Our dog is depressed,” his son sighed.
Hmm. “Could it be that dogs don’t feel depression as humans understand the emotion? Could it be that we are projecting our feelings upon the dog? Could it be that our dog is perfectly content in her own doggy way, a contentedness so specific to dogs that only through doggy consciousness can we comprehend it?” That’s what the little Buddha therapist had to say.
It could be. So the planet might not grieve her dying forests as we would understand grieving to be. Despite prescribing clocks, celestial significance, dates, and seasons upon this planet, the reality of this planet’s nature may be of its own realm, which may be incomprehensible to human understanding. Maybe.
But in our human understanding, we did as we had learned to do. Before laying our heads to rest, we convened in a bedtime huddle asking, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“We will wake early. Bathe before the rush on this most auspicious day of the Kumbh. Then we will head to Kriya camp and meditate. Then we will return in the afternoon and take the day as it comes.” Time tables ordered, we slept.
But did it ever occur to us that setting alarms at a mela was another prescription that made sense to us, to our consciousness, but in all likelihood had nothing to do with the truth of the mela? “Set your alarms,” the mela would say, “but the mela isn’t of times or agendas. Life will spontaneously reveal itself as is required and desired, per the whims and the laws of nature. Make your schedule if it helps you sleep at night, but scheduled life is only another projection of your nature onto another’s nature. Call God, ‘God,’ but that is no definition — just a name. The doggy is not depressed and the mela does not need our plans.”
Night fell.
We pretended to sleep. At least, I pretended to sleep. The blaring of loudspeakers was perpetual. That innermost desire for silence was as foolish a desire for the waterfalls to quit their forever discharge and cavitation. “Never,” roared her rivers’ maelstroms. Noise. Noise. Noise. Noise. “If you can’t meditate here, you can’t meditate anywhere.”
We lied still, feigning sleep, assuming others were not doing the same but were actually asleep.
At an intuitionally agreed upon moment, our ensemble of four raised their thoughts to words. “Good morning, everyone.”
I spoke from curiosity. “Did you all actually sleep?” Eruption of laughter. So much relaxation from me. “Ahhhh,” I thought. “They had had as miserable a go at last night as me.”
We joked about it all, all the hilarities of this circumstance.
So we rose on not much sleep, but seemingly okay. Body still okay we would get up and start our day.
In checking the phones we learned an incident had occurred. There had been a stampede in the early morning. Over sixty had died at the confluence of the rivers, at the spiritual heart of the mela, at the sangha. Friends more attuned to the energy, to auras, had commented that a great darkness rose over them and the entire encampment at two in the morning, at the hour of this tragedy. While I could not have named those feelings, hearing their words recalled my sporadic dreams. I had slept last night. Sleeping, I had experienced in dreams the subtle fears and life-threatening anxieties of the death that still lingered in that pre-dawn air.
Did you know that spirituality is real despite belief in its reality? Spirituality is not a prayer, not a religion, not a philosophy. It requires no name, no definition, no acknowledgement. It’s upon us at all moments. Those not looking for it have no name for it, are not aware of it, and so do not see it. Not seeing it there is no acknowledgement for it. Nonetheless, it persists. Atoms existed before modern instruments proved their existence. Still more exists left unacknowledged. Shared mind and intuition exist. We do not live in isolation of each other. Our bodies may be fixed in a specific place and time, but our feelings and knowingness of the greater mind function like emissaries or adversaries, affecting everything. We had been and would continue to be affected. Conversely, we had the power to affect. Affect we would.
Guruji
It is easy to sensationalize the drama and difficulties that this trip presented. It is easy to share that which was chaotic, or absurd (from the American point of view), or bewildering. Contrast is an easy observation, but it’s often so harsh and blinding that the more beautiful subtleties are difficult to perceive, if not oblivious in plain sight.
I have skipped many sections at this point. I have skipped the developments of a human stampede that caught us in its net. I have skipped the encampment of hippies whose experience most surely juxtaposed our own. I have skipped the return journey home, and all the dominoes that fell accordingly to lead us home early.
I have skipped the many more ride share shares on the backs of mopeds, motorbikes, sleeper buses (missed and found), and the many miles hiked up and forth the part sandy, part dirt, part mud, part metal roadways of that Kumbh Mela encampment.
I skip all this because I cannot tell an accurate tale of my experience without giving you the direct experience. I’ve told this story in full, several times, to several groups of friends and family. They respond with relief that I made it home safely, and with an expectant question that I would never return, right?
Not right. In fact, I will return to India. I enjoyed all of what India offered, though indeed, it did test my physical, mental, and emotional strengths.
To be fair, it also tested the strengths of my native friend. To call the Mela a “spiritual warzone,” or “spiritual Burning Man,” is not wholly unfair, though certainly incomplete.
What must remain incomplete of this story is the respect I now have for India, for Her ways, for Her people, and for the many similarities and many differences between east and west.
Most notably, I have found great solace in my “sadhana,” a Sanskrit word for spiritual path. To say that we are on a spiritual path is a wonderful analogy that extends India’s true religion, the Eternal Truth called Sanatan Dharma, and what I have been telling people is the reason and celebration of the Kumbh Mela. “What is this event you went to,” my family asked. So I said it was a place where the spiritually attuned gathered with the worldly attuned so the two might help each other: the world giving purpose to the spirit, and the spirit giving purpose to the world in a never-ending dance called The Eternal Path, The Eternal Way, India’s gift to all, a theology for all people and persuasions. This is unlike the religions in America that are quite sectarian, dogmatic, and exclusive in some way. While the current spiritual fashion is to tolerate the religion that is not one’s own, Sanatan Dharma embraces it.
Of course, it is not what is not true, but it is also not limited to any one definition or form of truth. Should the Buddhist practice meditations and prayers in one flavor of God, that is part of the true path. Should the Hindu pray to ten manifestations of God, that is part of the true path. Should the Catholic pray to twelve of the holiest saints, that is part of the truth path. Should the Muslim pray at five specific times each day, that is part of the true path. Should the Taoist take no form of God, but find in the ever-present now a consummate and natural way to be, then that is part of the true path.
India’s true religion is all encompassing, and while it is sad how devastated Her organ cities have become from the thievery of colonial Britain, it is most evident that no robbery could ever steal India’s great spiritual heritage and pride. Not a stranger did we pass at gas stations, restaurants, airports, hotels, and back alleyways that did not pranam, bow, and share namaste (in Sanskrit, to bow to the light that is our soul).
Meanwhile, in the states it is customary to give a trite “How are you,” or “How do you do,” as the cowboys say, “Howdy.” We care little how you actually are. Perhaps the Indian, “Namaste,” pranam, and subtle bow is just as transactional, but even in its uninspired form, the spiritual heritage of those words persists. At least, my most brusque namaste is far more enthused than my shortest “How are you?” I remember God in the former, but only social contrivances in the latter.
God is everywhere here — as, perhaps, God is everywhere, every where. But in India, you remember it, or perhaps, you can’t forget it. A country can’t host a spiritual gathering and expect an attendance larger than any other country’s entire populace (400 million visitors in three week’s time) without having deeply entrenched spiritual traditions. Only America’s traditions for sports can compare, and even that is grossly underwhelming.
A country can’t have as few rules as India and not fall into anarchy unless there be a greater surrender to eternal law. Perhaps this has gone too far, closer to the medieval reliance on God, which is the opposite of a more modern reliance on pure sweat and scientific method. But the point is that there is a peace and harmony that moves with the law of nature, not decreeing and desperately enforcing invented laws as we do in the States.
Perhaps the best example of this is from the beginning of this story, from the time in the taxi, the roadways. My friends have asked me to simplify this trip, and each time I tell them that all of India can be summarized in two words: non-violent lawlessness. Lawlessness, not because it is apparently dangerous or unruly, but because there are no rules. That adage, “There are no rules,” was the encouragement I needed to venture to India, and now it is the singular takeaway.
If you should sell a thing in America, you should need a permit. You cannot cross the street without a designated pedestrian crossing. If you pass in your vehicle a pedestrian crossing while the lights are solid red, you’ll receive points on your license. After seven points your license will be suspended. If the lights are flashing, then you must come to a complete stop and pass through the crossing only when there are no pedestrians present and actively crossing. Should the crossing flash yellow lights, you must yield to pedestrians by slowing to half the speed limit. These are but some rules enumerated from a singular instance in American life. Yet many of India’s roads have no lights, no sidewalks, no directional traffic. Imagine a pedestrian mall where everyone yields to everyone, except instead of pedestrians alone, you add buses, tractors, cars, livestock, bikers, dogs, and everything traveling by way of the street.
If you wish to sell teddy bears on the interstate, then you’ll sell teddy bears on the interstate. If you wish to blast fireworks as part of a spiritual procession, then hire all the pyrotechnic crews you wish to fulfill your heart’s fancy. If you wish to pay strangers to ferry you from place to place on the back of a motorbike, or to ride a bike without a helmet, or to sell food without a license, or to drive without a seatbelt, and litter without a fine, and so on, then yes. Do it.
Of course, there are surely laws. Security around airports is twice as strict and cumbersome. Building codes surely exist. And legal matters for business are still valid, though perhaps more laborious to ratify. We were told not to nap in a spiritual garden reserved for praying. But in the end, it seemed to be quelled with consolations that we were “American,” and knew no better. There is a humanness to India’s justice: commonsense and practicality prevail when the circumstances of present reality undermine the best intentions of the law. Exceptions, then, are so acceptable that it should seem the exception is more in abiding by laws than blindly adhering to them.
Here’s a classic American juxtaposition from the other day. Here, in Atlanta, a traffic light had broke. It was not broke, but clearly broke. The light shined red in all its glory, the cars stacked up awaiting their turn, yet more cars, then more cars, and before two cycles of the light, the entire protected left turn lane was swelling into the passing traffic. Yet all was quiet. All was unconscious to the possibility that maybe, yes, the light was broke. That maybe, just this once, we’d need to pass those solid white lines without the blessing of the traffic gods which dangled overhead, green, yellow, red. Eventually, a few daring leaders “ran the light,” breaking the seal for the timid forty cars behind them. Yet I laugh by comparison of India, for Her people are far quicker to pivot in such evident scenes as these: when something is not working, you quit it, no matter the history of it having worked.
The point of it all is that while America has more laws than can be feasibly served, India takes a more practical approach trusting that what will be, will be. Gone are most of the petty crimes, citations, and ticketing that pollute the majority of America’s lower courts. And God forbid they sue. I’m sure the wealthy among them do sue, but Her people do not sue, as if you could possibly steal shirts from your own wardrobe. Everything is everyone’s.
No rules doesn’t lead to violence, just a bit more requirement for flexibility. If fifty million people swell a city designed for a few hundred thousand, then you discard rules and do what the situation calls for. India acts as She needs to act, not as has been prescribed in accord to predetermined ideals.
Her people, then, are quite trusting. Your will won’t survive very long expecting it to get its way. Instead, you surrender to the will of the land and the land feeds you, moves you, and cares for you. So dependent on factors outside your own, you are forced to believe in a God, in spirit. America, so dependent on money, energy, and will, requires only effort. In India, sometimes the more effort creates only larger waves, so the result is more turbulent than if you had trusted the tides to take you there on their own.
What this reality ultimately creates in a man is beyond my accurate understanding, given my limitations to know only my Americanness. I might only conjecture that for different reasons there are equal pitfalls: false trust, prideful blindness, avarice that advantages the weak, or despair that immures the poor. I don’t suppose any path through life is superior except for the perfect individual path, the path that is most harmonious to the Self.
The final paragraph, then, is this: Guruji; the title of this section. There are as many circuitous paths to God in India as there are in America, though they take different forms. I learned that I am on my right path. The window into the homes of every other home brought no appeal to my appetite, especially compared to the family I have found from the guru I have found. My friends feel the same way. How fortunate and wild it is to have found so much solace amid the fracas.
None more proved the assuredness I had in my destiny than this final scene escaping from the streets of the Mela. The soot was so bad in my throat I could barely breath, and the noise so disorienting I could barely place my identity. Then like a curtain to a different world I stepped through the wardrobe of Narnia where there was an entirely different air. The people were calmer, more sincere, and the amenities were fresher, more complete. Ahead was a meditation, festooned with real drapery, opalescent blue lined with gold. The songs were sung with love and were soothing, and the faces of the Gurus were familiar and encouraging, like a mother’s kidding glance after her child’s naughty tantrum. Ahead of me was the silhouette of my friend meditating, and awaiting us both was the prasad of a most satisfying final meal. I was home. I was home. In a home away from home. I was home.
The next day we would resume our journey home, and then for me, another journey home where after thirty-six hours of wakefulness I would stumble out onto an Atlantan afternoon on a mid-Sunday in January, characteristically, uncharacteristically warm, 70s, and lying on our back porch couch, high noon, a blanket on my face and a hazel backlight upon closed eyes, I slept a sleep so sweet and silent I’d have thought myself deceased, soaking the bliss rays of the sun like a shamwow. In fact, not. A final sickness and eColi poisoning awaited me, but the serenity of that afternoon, so silent and life-giving by contrast of the journey we had taken, so strident and trialing, can surely only hint at the joy that is to come when we wake from our body consciousness into pure soul and cosmic consciousness. Till then, till then.
Jai Guru! (Victory to the dispeller of darkness.)
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