A Place Within (44 page)

There are children about, home from school. A woman in a colourful sari arrives, and I could swear from her features she could be from Zanzibar, where one finds people of African, Indian, and Arab blood combined. Similarly a man, right down to his white singlet and brown trousers and curly hair, his very posture. I imagine this, partly, of course. I cannot help feeling a rather silly closeness with these people.

A cart of small-scale items indicates their trade, peddling on the streets.

To the right from the main road, a branch climbs up to Uppar Kot, the massive old fort of Junagadh on a hill, conquered in the twelfth century by Jaisingh Siddhraj and three centuries later by Mahmud Begada. At the entrance below, we have to give our names and addresses to two men seated at a rickety table with a register; women have been abducted and brought here, they tell us, and so everyone who goes up has to be accounted for. Much of the fort area is overgrown, though the thick grey crenellated walls and towers are visible standing intact and strong in the midst of bushes when viewed from the upper levels; outside the walls and partly surrounding the fort lies the modern city of Junagadh. The principal structure inside is a former mosque, now a mere husk and no longer in use, its three domes collapsed, the three mihrabs mere shadows on the western wall. A staircase leads up to a terrace, from which is visible the entire city clothed in a haze; on the opposite side, the imposing sacred hill of Girnar looms up through a gap in the raised foreground. Outside the mosque entrance, occupying a part of the courtyard, are some graves covered in chaddars and a small shrine with a lonely-looking man sitting outside on the ground, for no one seems to visit it. The man tells us the grave in the shrine belongs to the pir of the last nawab of Junagadh. The
nawab’s family is in Pakistan and does not come here. The man is the voluntary caretaker of the shrine, though he tells us he himself is a Hindu.

At this fort site there is also an ancient Buddhist cave, two millennia or so old, its meagre sculptures on walls and columns almost erased with wear; and a very deep medieval step-well open at the top. There is nothing here to explain them, put them in a context; the visitor must come armed with his own information.

Finally, the climb up Girnar, a pilgrimage to the gods. This is why most people come to Junagadh.

Four in the morning at Kalwa Chowk; cows and dogs sleep side by side on the roadside; the restless among the dogs are already trotting about. A man prepares to open his stall in the distance, another heads off on a motorbike; otherwise, the street, the intersection further away, are empty. The air is cool yet somehow feels exhausted.

Later, as we turn in to the road that heads towards Girnar, a furiously barking dog breaks the stillness and chases us for a good couple of hundred yards. What offence have we caused? Before us a formation of bright lights marches up into the sky, an awesome ladder-galaxy, the path to the various peaks of the mountain.

We stop at a tea stall by the roadside, next to a Rajput hostel. The area is full of such hostels, or dharamshalas, belonging to various communities whose members regularly make the pilgrimage; it is more convenient and economical to stay in them than in the city. There is an air of anticipation about, where we sit with a bunch of other people in a silent fellowship. After tea and biscuits, we drive on towards the entrance to Girnar. Whereas the city streets are only just astir, over here hundreds are walking up to the entrance. It’s still dark, 4:30 precisely, as we take our first step up. A stall shrine is open to our left, playing a well-known bhajan that’s a film staple.

Lampposts light our way up; it’s these lights that make the ladder-galaxy seen from a distance. It extends now ahead of us, winding along. Noisy kids go racing past us. People barefoot, in chappals, girls in sandals, some even in heels. My companion, only a year younger than I, is straining at the leash; I on the other hand would like to keep a steady pace, not get breathless too soon. The steps are numbered at intervals; the journey up is ten thousand steps, we have been told, and takes eight hours, there and back. It’s cool, but at eight hundred steps I am sweating. The city lights are visible below, and the path seems endless.

A group of girls climbs with us in the care of an uncle of sorts, who has a whistle and carries a staff for good measure. He is answering questions, doling out advice: “What side of the road do we stay on?” “The mountain side!” comes back the answer, in a chorus. He scolds mildly: “Then what are you doing on the other side?” The other side borders on a sheer drop. It seems that this chattering mob with its shrill whistle is intent on keeping pace with us, stopping to rest as we do, always disturbing our peace.

“Already tired, Uncle?” a Marathi woman asks me jovially when I sit to catch my breath. As I search for an answer, she goes panting past, adding, “He’ll not admit it.”

The refreshment stalls are beginning to open; people trudging up or having paused to rest, kids racing and noisy. The chattering troupe is still with us, their avuncular captain keeping up spirits with his endless advice. “
Jai Girnar-ji
,” chant the girls as instructed. Even the mountain is a god. Now there’s a relationship with nature.

We keep going, along a steep, black mountainside—at times almost a vertical wall—zigzagging back and forth, and we wonder at the time taken, and the devotion, and the numbers it took, to carve out this stone path, as we look down the parapet from a landing into a dark abyss. The city lights appear in a broader expanse the higher up we go, forming a tender gauze of light spread over
the dark countryside, and the road coming up to Girnar, through a pass between two hills, is a thin golden strand.

We pause to take a long break and have a cuppa, the voices of our noisy companions disappearing above us, perhaps having attached themselves elsewhere. Starting again, we soon reach a complex of stone temples. Could this be the top, so soon? The heart leaps in anticipation. But it’s the Jain sanctuary, only halfway up; we are told we are too early, it will be open on our way down. Now we are onto another mountain face. The city lights show themselves in greater number, far below. Above us the bright stars, the Milky Way carelessly and lightly spilled, and we are headed directly for them at a forty-five-degree angle.

Dawn has approached. On the side sometimes, on a ledge jutting out into open space, are the meagre signs of habitation—a mat—on which a yogi must have sat or slept, in the proverbial fashion. Plastic and foil litter some of the hillsides, and occasionally we see large numbers of discarded plastic slippers. Perhaps on the way down the pilgrims wish to carry the dust of this sacred mountain with them on their bare feet.

Faces beam at you; the old struggle up with brave looks and pained smiles, the middle aged trudge along, the kids chatter incessantly. Some people carry staffs, and we already wish we had taken one each, to assist us on our climb, and also to make us look like real pilgrims. The mood is pleasant but not exactly jovial. The climb up Pavagadh was easier, gradual. This one takes an obvious toll.

Finally we reach the first of the mountain’s several plateaus, where sits the goddess Amba’s temple. It’s a squat, dark stone building, with a modern, rather incongruous, tall white superstructure topped by a red flag. At a flat ground across from it, our former chattering companions have gathered with other school groups. It appears that the uncle with the whistle is a teacher, after all. One school group has come all the way from Navsari in south Gujarat.

We keep going. A deep ravine separates this peak from the next, the highest one on the range, the steps towards it leading down, then dauntingly going back up. At the bottom, on a ridge between the two peaks, we pause to look upon a vast vista: the city, the highways, vehicles like pinpoints moving along them, the villages beyond. And then, finally, we are at the shrine of the famous yogi Gorakhnath, of kanphata (“torn-ear”) fame. The Kanphata Jogis are a well-known order of ascetics who split their ears for their large earrings to go through; they also blow horns at various times and put ashes on their forehead. Gorakhnath was their founding guru and he is supposed to have spent time at this peak on Girnar; here, apparently, the Sufi Baba Farid of Lahore, master of Nizamuddin of Delhi, came to visit him. The shrine consists of a small structure with a decorative tiled surface, beside a couple of flags and a bell, on a rock platform that looks out at the world below in all directions.

And then, the sheer exhilaration on the way down. (There is a third plateau further up, beloved to Marathis, but we’ve had enough.) The feeling is one of triumph over the mountain and over the night. The morning is cool, pure, hazy. Going down looks easy, the breathing effortless. People whom we meet coming up need encouragement—“it’s only a short way, now”—and some of the older women look beat, taking time to collapse on the steps, but we know they will keep going, no one gives up. We pass the woman who had taunted me earlier, subdued now, slowly, silently climbing up. We stop at the Ambaji temple and pay our respects. The grumpy priests seem scornful of our stinginess, expecting donations of ghee and oil.

Halfway down, we return to the Jain complex, a magnificent medieval site of grey stone temples, exquisitely carved. At the main entrance, crowded with worshippers, we are summarily told by a guard that only Jains can go in today, a ceremony is in progress. As we proceed down, disappointed, we pass numerous Jain men
and women climbing up, some of them of them struggling in the growing heat, others carried up in hammocks dangling from poles supported on the shoulders of two men, one at either end, each bearing a thick staff for support. Every few yards they pause for a break. The passengers on these rocky rides must be prosperous, more often than not they are soft and flabby, and look embarrassed, avoiding your eye. It’s a somewhat pathetic sight. Yet it’s a pilgrimage, and some need to be carried and others to carry for money. The fare depends on the weight of the passenger and could amount to a few thousand rupees.

By now our knees, thighs, calves can tell; going down may be easy on the lungs, but it’s painful on the leg muscles. My ebullient companion has to be cautioned twice when he almost slips, for the steps are smooth. An old Marwari man—proverbially miserly—receives a taunt from a stall keeper for quibbling about the price of a cup of tea. An old Marathi woman is hanging onto the side wall, smiling. “Far?” she asks. “You’ll reach there, Mother,” we tell her. And she has to go beyond where we turned back. A young man with a child passes us; he went up last night, spent the night at the Ambaji temple. “It was cold, but there were blankets.” A youth, a student from a middle-class family, is here because the exams are only a couple of weeks away. A girl, barely fourteen, is a porter and carries up her load painfully. A boy scarcely one hundred pounds does the same. This is how the dried milk for the tea, the ghee for frying, go up.

Finally, 2000 steps left; 800; 500; 50. And we are home. As we stumble out the entranceway, rickshawallahs are ready to take us anywhere; a masseur is prepared to massage our legs. But we first plonk ourselves down at a stall and have two sugarcane juices each. Our driver finds us and convinces us that a massage is a good idea, and so we surrender to the able hands of the masseur, who knows where exactly on the calf to press and squeeze out the pain. The driver watches with satisfaction: clients of substance reflect well on him.

Back on the streets of Junagadh. We have been told that there are some Khojas doing business at the town’s vegetable market, and that’s where we proceed. The market is like any other: shady, damp, and cool inside, rows of raised stalls selling carrots, spinach, tomatoes, squash, among a dozen other vegetables, sellers calling out; bustling activity on the aisles. A consignment of red chillies is the focus of attention. Several Khoja men are pointed out to us, young and old—all very busy, unpacking, arranging, selling, hurrying between stalls—one with the surname Kutchi, though he claims he does not speak the language, then proceeds to do exactly that with his relations. He escorts me up the road to the khano: a broad, one-storey building with a tall, narrow, and handsome section of the front set off emblematically at one end. There is a large arched entrance here, with a blue door that is closed; but it has a smaller door that opens.

I take off my shoes, go upstairs. Some repairs are in progress; the mukhi, who is present and supervising the work, tells me that the damage was incurred in the earthquake of a few years before. While being repaired, the place is also being modernized. We are on an upstairs terrace, at one end of which is an office, traditionally called the daftari. It has a large desk, behind which sits a woman; there are cabinets and shelves; a ceiling fan is on. There is a similar office in Dar es Salaam, another one in Nairobi. A visitor could go there and make inquiries about the local “vata-varan,” the situation, and about relatives; he might even meet the marriage committee. Here I have a friendly chat with the woman, and with a man sitting to one side of the desk, evidently here to chat. There are always those, too, people who come by to pass the time, have a cup of tea. And once again, the trust, the comfort. My manner, my way of speaking, what I say, completely identifies me. And so I take the only chair, my friends stand. They are the outsiders. We too are given tea.