In the Shadow of Crows (17 page)

“What are they doing,
Ama
?” he innocently asked.

“Exploring the limitless truth within themselves,” she smiled, her head sparkling with sweet, bright memories. “And the truth in us is the truth of the universe . . .”

A noise behind them caused Bindra to turn. It was the priest. He touched his heart and bowed towards her.

“Sister, you have wisdom,” he said with quiet respect.

Over his many years in Kashi, the old priest had encountered all manner of disease, despair and death. It had taught him to approach all life without fear or judgement. “Come and sit with me,” he offered in gentle invitation. “My students will prepare
haajri
. Share it with us.”

Bindra grinned in delight. He had used a colloquial word for the morning meal only heard in the Hills from which they had come.

***

The air was sweet with buttery ghee and fragrant sandalwood. The smoke from the pyre drifted across the Ganges and around family members overseeing the incineration of their loved one. A middleaged man approached the flames with a heavy stick. With a single blow, he struck the charcoaled head, splitting it in two.

“That is the eldest son,” a voice said to me in melodious English, “releasing the soul of his father.”

I turned to face a small, plump man, with a betel-nut-stained smile.

“It equally ensures the
Aghori Babas
don't steal the skull as a begging bowl!” he grimaced theatrically. “There are many
tantrikas
around
Manikarnika Ghat
,” he explained, indicating for me to survey the soot-blackened buildings surrounding us. “They do
sadhana
, their active practice, on the cremation ground after dark.”

Ramesh was one of the “untouchable”, yet wealthy,
dom
caste, who oversaw every aspect of the funerary rites. He was eager to share with me the details of his work, for a hefty fee. I thanked him, but expressed my preference for undisturbed observance.

“I have my own farewells to give,” I offered in discreet explanation, unwilling to engage.

He nodded in apparent understanding, yet still he lingered by my side.

“You see my brothers sieving the smouldering ashes?” I did. “They are searching for jewellery or gold-based dentistry. Such finds will pay for the ritual incineration of the destitute.”

I was impressed, but still unwilling to hand over cash for this information. He was becoming agitated.

“I have been in a
flim
!” he announced, his forehead trenching in frustration at my unwillingness to hire him as a guide. “French foreigners made a
flim
about the
Dom
!” He seemed aggravated at my indifference to his celebrity. “I have been in a
flim
!” he shouted at me. “A movie
flim
!”

The overseers of the funeral pyre were staring up at us through the drifting smoke. I bade him farewell, ignoring his vehemently outstretched palm, and made my way towards a quiet length of riverfront, to sit alone at the water's edge.

It was the permanent presence of death, exposed here as an inevitable, even essential reality of life, that had brought me to Varanasi. I had felt compelled to confront this certain end, that I might better comprehend the loss of those lives that had been integral to my own.

And yet, I had feared to face this perpetual truth, as though the grief from which I had attempted to escape might here consume my sanity. I had anticipated that the flaming pyres might too candidly expose the pointlessness of every thought and action, lay bare the futility of being. I had even feared that fires fed by smouldering flesh might finally scorch my own precarious hold on life.

Instead, I had witnessed an acquiescence to man's inexorable end that had brought me unexpected comfort. In facing the inborn dread of death, I had found nothing left to fear. To my surprise, on these river
ghats
it had not been despair that I had revealed, but rather an affirmation that the vast ocean of life demanded more than just the dipping of a trepidatious toe. Its infinite depths were to be plunged into, its inestimable fathoms sounded, its boundless waters drunk.

The sudden ringing of a temple bell drew my gaze. A spreading tree and the sight of a carved wooden temple with a pagoda-style roof tempted me to seek out the steep steps that would lead me to its shade.

As I sheltered my eyes from the sun's reflection on the river wall, a little boy peered over its top.

We smiled at one another. And waved.

***

“Do you know of the
Aghori
?” the priest asked in his eastern, Hill Nepali.

Jiwan did not.

“They're an
achara
sect of wandering
sadhus
, who live an extreme tantric path. They seem to make great efforts to upset the
Bahun
, the orthodox Brahmin priests!” he chortled.

Jyothi had joined the young acolytes in their kitchen, to watch them scrub the cooking pots, in the hope of leftovers. Jiwan sat with his mother, captivated by their kind host's talk.

“How do they upset the
Bahun
?” he asked with excited curiosity.

“Well,” the priest began, “as part of their chosen path to liberation, the
Aghori Babas
mindfully break all taboos. This they do in order to examine their attachment to the mistaken belief in a ‘self' that is separate from all the same forces of creation and dissolution of which our limitless, multi-dimensional universe is an expression. You understand?”

Jiwan shook his head in puzzlement.

“Well, the
Aghoris
fearlessly provoke rejection and contempt in others, simply to test their own detachment from the notion of duality . . .” the priest attempted.

Jiwan sniffed his nose and pursed his lips.

“When I say duality, I mean all those judgements we make on the world and ourselves, according to our particular culture,” the priest persevered, in careful elaboration. “Like the idea of what is good and bad, or beautiful and ugly. The idea of what is spiritual and sensual, or clean and unclean. The idea of what is divine and mundane, or sacred and profane. You see? All those divisive limitations with which a society obsessively defines itself - and yet which are only determined according to its particular habits and sensibilities at any one point in its history.”

Jiwan rocked his head tentatively.

“The problem is,” the priest persisted, “that in dividing up every aspect of experience into ‘acceptable' and ‘unacceptable', ‘right' and ‘wrong', we lose all sight of the underlying, unifying truth - and thereby lose all sense of who and what we really are.”

Bindra smiled broadly. To see her son attentive to the teachings of their mountain tradition afforded her great comfort. She could almost believe they were home.

“So what do the
Aghori Babas
do to test themselves?” Jiwan pressed.

“Oh, well, they wear no clothes, of course,” the priest continued selectively, chuckling again at the thought of the extent of social defiance he had witnessed amongst these ash-caked
sadhus
, shouting foul abuse at passers-by and sexually stimulating themselves in public. “They also carry a skull - preferably that of a conservative
Bahun
- which they use as a food bowl and for collecting alms,” he added.

Jiwan's eyes were wide.

At that moment, a group of excited, travel-worn Nepali pilgrims pressed up against the gate and rang the heavy temple bell to announce their readiness for
puja
. The priest beckoned them in, then turned back to Jiwan.

“You know, the
Aghoris
practise their
sadhana
below us, here, on the burning
ghats
. They have open
lingam
shrines dedicated to Shiva in his wrathful form - Shiva as Kaala Bhairava, whom we Nepalis call Bhairon.”

As Jiwan ran to have a look, the priest dropped his voice and turned to Bindra.

“However,
bahini
,” he almost whispered, “the reason I mention all this is that a well-known
Aghori Baba
has a clinic here. He's a good man. He offers free medicine to those with . . . your trouble. One of my boys will take you to him tomorrow. I can promise he will help you.”

Bindra's heart swelled with inexpressible relief. She stretched out her bound hands to touch the kind priest's feet, then looked to share the news with her boys.

Jyothi was still collecting leftovers in the temple kitchen, from which he intended to assemble their evening meal.

Jiwan was peering over the top of the river wall to scan the
ghats,
in search of naked sadhus and fierce gods.

Down below a foreigner stood squinting.

Jiwan smiled at his strange, pink face. And waved.

***

By the time I had reached the gate of the little wooden temple, I found it clogged with pilgrims. I peered over their dark heads for a moment, but felt uneasy at my intrusion. I decided to return another day, so turned away and wandered into the comparative coolness of the bustling
pucca mahal
.

It was not until late afternoon that I returned to the river
ghats
, where prayerful pilgrims were still dipping in the dark waters. Washermen
dhobis
were still beating iridescent cloth on glistening stone, whilst bony buffalo and their keepers wallowed in the scumtopped shallows. Priests were still intoning Sanskrit
slokas
beneath bamboo parasols, whilst the continuous pyres billowed grey phantoms of cremation ash across us all.

As the stifling heat promised to ease, misshapen shadows began to emerge from alleyways and stairwells to sit against the river walls. The destitute and disabled, the diseased and disfigured. I felt unable to ignore them. I had clean sheets and a generous, home-cooked feast waiting for me at the far reach of
Asi Ghat
. This extraordinary city, suspended as it was between sky and earth, life and death, now forced me to dispel all reserve and caution. I determined to speak to as many of these wraith-like figures as I could on my slow journey back to the indulgent comforts of my guesthouse. Despite the deficiency of shared language, I resolved to learn something of their lives and sat with every one of them.

I met men who had turned to the wandering life of a
sadhu
due to elephantiasis of the scrotum, their taut and shiny, balloon-like swellings exposed to me beneath grimy
longis
. I met expressionless children with dead eyes, riddled with ringworm, their stomachs distended. Congenitally crippled bodies pulled on simple, wheeled boards by younger siblings. Blind women who rocked and nodded to their own eerie, nasal laments. Boy prostitutes with henna-dressed hair, who offered to drop to their knees and “sing” for me in the ruins of an abandoned palace, in exchange for a few coins.

And then a little woman with two malnourished boys, sitting on a ragged shawl, below the wooden temple. Her wounds drew swarms of black flies and sniffing, licking pye-dogs in their packs. Leprosy. She looked away as I crouched to speak to her. She seemed ashamed to look me in the face. Her state was appalling, the stench foul. As she understood that I was no threat to her sons, her eyes began to brighten. It was evident that she needed simple nursing care. However, as darkness fell and the small crowd that had gathered began to intimidate her children, a little money for good food and medicines was all that I could offer. She protested. So I left it with her smiling, waving sons.

The
diya
lamps were already lit when I eventually reached the guesthouse, the air already scented with
dhup
incense. I had missed the evening
puja
.

My hosts seemed relieved to see me home, and were quick to assert that an unofficial curfew for outsiders was advised. It was common for visitors, whether foreign tourist or domestic pilgrim, to become lost in the maze of the
pucca mahal
, they explained. Indeed, some who ventured out after dark, they wished to impress on me, were never seen again.

I tried to clear my head as I sat alone for dinner, taking care to savour every mouthful. I tried to clear my head as I made my way to bed, relishing each soft pillow and clean sheet.

I tried to clear my head all night long, struggling with myself to find one moment that felt like sleep.

***

Bindra had a bed again.

White washed walls, scrubbed floors, medicine. And not one dead god hanging above their heads.

They had either
daal-bhat
lentils and rice, or
tarkari-roti
vegetables and flatbreads, with good
dahi
curd, to ease their hunger, and sweet
chiya
tea to start the day. Jiwan and Jyothi were even permitted to sleep together on a cotton-stuffed bedroll, on the floor beside her. And no one beat them.

The Nepali priest encouraged the boys to visit the temple as often as they pleased. When Jiwan asked to be taught to read and write, he happily accepted such an enthusiastic pupil. Some days Jyothi would return from helping the novices in their chores with surplus food that had been donated in alms. It was thus that Bindra tasted mango, cucumber and okra for the first time in her life.

The smiling woman doctor told Bindra her wounds were in a poor condition. They would have to cut off fingers and toes to save her limbs from spreading infection.

Bindra did not mind.

The doctor had given her a large pack of silver-wrapped medicines for her to keep. And as she had talked, the kindly doctor had looked her in the eyes. Not once had she scribbled on her pad of paper.

***

It was with great regret that I had to take my leave of Varanasi.

At midnight, I took a taxi to the railway station. It was time, before my limited funds expired, to continue my journey eastwards to the jungle-clad foothills of Uncle Oscar's Kanchenjunga, which lay some twelve hours away.