All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (14 page)

As the last of the villagers finished their treatment, the German, Stefan, was called to speak. Norbu shuffled forward to translate for him, and a long conversation ensued in Ladakhi, so that the oracle could understand the nature of the disease. Stefan spoke calmly and clearly to the oracle, and I felt a sudden wave of admiration for this sickly-looking German fellow whose quest had brought
him here, so far from home, and so far from conventional Western attitudes.

At last the oracle seemed to nod her head, and a flurry of high-pitched babble broke out. When the speaking hushed, the oracle moved forward to a wooden box and withdrew a long copper tube. I noticed Stefan’s eyes flickering nervously but, to his credit, he merely assented while she rolled up his trouser legs. Finally, using the same sucking technique but through the tube, she placed the copper against his withered knee joint and pursed her lips. Now, in a release of water so monumental that the room let out a collective sigh of wonder, she spat what might have been half a litre of clear, thin liquid into the bucket. Once again my stomach churned.

Moving from joint to joint, the elbows, knees, ankles and wrists, the oracle continued her bizarre therapy. Within ten minutes, the five-litre bucket she’d brought in for the ceremony was almost full, and another was produced. At the back I’d been surreptitiously making notes but now, I simply laid down my pen. This was the strangest thing I’d seen yet, and I was too incredulous to think.

When Stefan, at length, came to sit back down, he kept his eyes dead ahead and seemed to betray nothing of what he thought or had experienced. With everyone treated, I now expected the ceremony to be over, and for everyone to file out, but there was one further surprise. The oracle spoke again, and to my right, Norbu responded. Suddenly, he leaned forward to whisper in my ear.

‘Oracle wants to see you.’

My blood ran cold. ‘What do you mean, she wants to see me? I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘She is calling you,’ he said excitedly. ‘Go forward. I will come too. You cannot refuse her!’

With my heart racing, I stepped forward. Certainly the oracle was looking at me, and there was something acutely unnerving about this strange being, deep in trance, fixing her eyes on me. Up close, she was crackling with energy, and I knelt down in genuine panic before her.

Again came the wild-sounding speech, accompanied by flailing arms. Norbu bent down to whisper.

‘I know why you are here,’ she says. ‘You have come on business.’

I was shocked. How could she know this? Norbu must have told her . . .

‘This is acceptable to me. But you must not misuse this knowledge, or it will be bad karma – for you, not me.’

I nodded weakly.

‘There is something more. Your brain is full of too much pressure,’ she continued, ‘like a machine that breaks with overuse. You must become calm, quiet, you must let it go and live quietly.’

Again, I bowed my head. All my rationality suddenly ceased to matter.

‘For your well-being you should be helping others,’ the oracle continued. ‘Give happiness and it will gain you more. And religion – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism – they do not matter, as long as you follow the right precepts, only the truth, avoid bad things, clean your mind, no bad thoughts.’

All of this seemed good enough advice. But far less specific than what she’d first said. And then, she made her final remark. It seemed to speak more powerfully to me than any voice yet on my journey, to a place deep within myself. I felt struck by wonder.

‘You are afraid,’ she says, ‘and it is this fear which needs to be released. You must do two things. First, take some prayer flags and write your birth date on them. Then take them to a mountain. Tie them up, somewhere where the great wind can touch them, and then with each breath of wind, your fear will find release.’

She fell silent for a second; one could hear a dust mote falling in the room.

‘The second thing,’ she said at last, ‘is that you must buy an animal. You must find an animal which is going to be eaten. Go to a butcher and buy a pig, or a lamb, or a chicken, or a pigeon, and let it go.’

‘In the street?’ I asked.

‘No. Because then someone will find it and eat it. You must find someone to take care of it. Someone who will keep it, let it live, allow it to survive. In this manner, your fear will be freed and you will become peaceful.’

And with that it was over. Turning away, the oracle gave a sign that, for the day, she would make no more pronouncements. One minute I’d been kneeling before her, the next I was making my way, amongst Ladakhi villagers, children eager for the sunlight and the quiet, shuffling Stefan, for the doorway. Outside we stood in silence by Norbu’s car. Beyond the village, a dust plain, bathed in waxen summer light, stretched out until it rose up into steep cliffs. There was not an animal to be seen and only a few stunted trees.

Feeling the need for a moment by myself, I walked to the edge of the hamlet and stared out. I felt the press of light against my face and saw sharp blue sky without clouds. What I had just experienced was beyond my ken, mysterious in a way that rendered rational analysis unimportant. Being out here, far from everything that was familiar to me, was to dispel some of the blind spots that come to all of us, comforted by home and family and the mundane. Do we shy from exploring the magical realities accepted by indigenous cultures everywhere because we believe our understanding of the world surpasses all others? Or is it that we fear uncertainty because we don’t want to question the structures and ideologies that keep us safe?

Behind me, the villagers returned to their fields, or to a long tramping journey home across this desert landscape. None of them, I felt sure, was questioning the validity of what they had seen, probing its edges for clues, or trying to
understand
. Rather, they were reassured, confident that a higher power than themselves had been called upon for advice and diagnosis. In my case, that higher power, whatever it was, had given me my own set of instructions. And so that, for better or worse, was exactly what I would do.

The following day I spent some time in the dusty markets of Leh searching for a prayer flag, or ‘wind horse’ as the Tibetans call it, to enact the first stage of the oracle’s advice. After finding one I liked, I wrote my birthday upon it, October 25th, and tucked it in my pack for the long walk up to the Shanti
stupa
, a peace pagoda set upon the highest hillside in Leh. After the first hundred steps I thought my lungs would burst but a glance behind me, at the Leh valley ringed by mountains, reassured me that it would be worth it. Several hundred more and I arrived, drenched in sweat, before a gleaming statue of the Buddha. Below me, the town was like a child’s model.

Aside from a few workmen who were repairing the temple wall, I was the only person about. To one side of the hillside, across a precipitous slope, some prayer flags already fluttered and I stepped out warily, bracing myself against the wind, and tied the first string to a metal rod someone had hammered into the rock. Ten feet away across an even more vertiginous drop, I tied the other end, then edged back to safety.

Below me, the brightly coloured flags caught like sails in the wind, and the mantras written upon them became a blur, spun out across the rim of the world.

In the Footsteps of Paul Brunton: the Cave of Sri Ramana Maharshi

Returning to Delhi one morning, I disembarked my overnight train from the Himalayas. Dawn was breaking; it seemed that the most restless nation on earth had at last found a moment of repose. Around me the city slumbered. Even the cigarette sellers and coolies lay dozing amongst their blankets.

Outside the station, I found a chai seller making his first brew of the day. He was a fat man, clad in a sooty white vest and
lungi
. His moustache would have looked grandiose on a general wearing full regalia: it suggested an outrageous self-belief. The accoutrements of his trade were simple: a gas burner, a pan, a sieve, one calcified spoon and a dozen cracked glasses. With this he offered a service and made enough to survive, perhaps support an entire family. He brewed, I suppose, many hundreds of cups per day, and yet to each one he gave his full attention.

Beside the chai stand was a single rickety bench, on which the customers could sit for the minute or two it took to drain their glasses, and take respite from the city. Hefting my dusty pack to the ground, I sat down on this beside another customer, an elderly gentleman perusing
The Times of India
. Above me, the distinctive red-bricked arches of Old Delhi station were changing colour in the weak sunrise. Beyond them, kites screeched in the mist.

Groggy from the journey, I wanted to sit for a while and reacclimatise to the capital. Before me lay exhausting bargaining with rickshaw wallahs, the fending-off of hawkers, the shooing of urchins, a hectic drive across Delhi to my guesthouse. Before then, a moment of silence: a quiet emergence into the metropolis.

I accepted my tea, which was pungent with
adrak
(ginger) and black cardamom, and felt a great sense of well-being as the sweetness entered my system. As I began on my second cup, I took out my book. It was Somerset Maugham’s
The Razor’s Edge
, which I had found languishing on the bookshelf of a backpackers’ lodge in Manali, between a Clive Cussler and a copy of the Torah. I opened it and began to read.

‘Very fine,’ said a voice to my left. ‘Very fine to see the works of William Somerset Maugham are still appreciated.’

It was the
Times of India
reader, a gentleman of at least seventy, I now noted, whose small, benign face was contained by a shock of ash-white hair.

‘Yes, I’m halfway through,’ I replied. ‘It’s a real discovery.’

The old man looked at me quizzically and laid down his newspaper. ‘Isn’t it?’ he said. ‘That title is a quote from the Upanishads, you know, one of our holy books.’ He thought for a moment: ‘ “The sharp edge of a razor is . . . difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.” ’

‘That must refer to Larry Darrell,’ I said.

The old man laughed shrilly, his eyes gleaming. ‘Of course! I had forgotten the name. Larry Darrell. A young man who ventures East in search of esoteric knowledge and returns utterly changed. Isn’t that why all you foreigners are here? Searching for some . . . guru who will make your life better.’ He cackled at his own joke.

‘I’m not entirely innocent of that charge,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got my eyes open.’

The old man pursed his lips. ‘That is prudent, young man. Our India is more full of tricksters than saints.’

‘You’ve read much Somerset Maugham?’

He nodded. ‘He spent time in India, of course. Just before the Second World War.’

‘I didn’t know.’

The old man blew steam noisily from the top of his chai. ‘Sir, did you know that Larry Darrell existed?’

I shook my head.

‘Yes, yes. One theory suggests that Somerset Maugham based his character on a man named Paul Brunton. Have you heard that name?’

I shook my head.

‘Then you may consider this meeting very fortuitous,’ he said. ‘Because I can safely say that for anyone interested in the mystical traditions of India, the writings of Mr Paul Brunton might be considered essential.’

At this moment the chai seller cut in, holding his weather-beaten kettle above our empty glasses. ‘Allow me,’ said the old man at once, fishing in his pockets for change. ‘Amit Rajkowa, at your service.’

I introduced myself and we shook hands formally. Folding his newspaper delicately along its seam, Mr Rajkowa shuffled closer to me along the bench.

‘Too many travellers have come to our shores with somewhat fanciful ideas,’ he said animatedly. ‘But Mr Brunton travelled here with a
genuine
fascination for Indian spirituality.
The Razor’s Edge
is a good yarn, but whimsical, and without any real depth. Brunton’s book, however, was the product of real insight. I tell you this as a man who has studied our philosophies for many years.’

I said that I would buy a copy.

The old man nodded and his rich brown eyes narrowed for a moment. ‘If only my granddaughter would buy a copy. Always she is reading these . . . fashion magazines!
Cosmopolitan
and such things. Nothing of our Indian spirituality interests her. You know, I have much affection for her but I think she will never wake up in this lifetime. The West is a hypnotic jewel for the young Indians: they will strive for it their whole lives, but it is not till they have it in their hands that they see it is a lump of clay.’

‘So you don’t mind that there are so many Westerners here, looking for . . . gurus? You don’t think we’re somehow ridiculous?’

‘Quite the contrary. Because the thing is, my young friend, India is a land filled with a great river of spiritual wisdom. But many Indians have largely forgotten how to drink. So when we see you foreign people, so
thirsty
, it reminds us that we should also be.’

We sipped our tea quietly for a time, both of us provoked into introspection. Mr Rajkowa, I noticed, had almost completed the daily crossword. Finally, the old man spoke again. ‘Brunton met a great sage in India, perhaps one of the greatest we have ever produced. You will read of this in the book, but it occurs to me that – time permitting – you should visit the place where they met, a small hill town in South India. That is one unique place.’