Nine Lives (43 page)

Krishna! Krishna!

Kanai then answered with a verse reminding Paban that the only proper place of pilgrimage for a Baul was the human heart:

Oh my deaf ears and blind eyes!

How will I ever rid myself of this urge,

to find you, except in my own soul?

If you want to go to Vrindavan,

Look first into your heart . . .

‘Who knows if the gods exist at all?’ sang Debdas, supporting Kanai.

Can you find them in the heavens?

Or the Himalayas?

On the earth, or in the air?

Nowhere else can God be found,

But in the heart of the seeker of Truth.

The voices of all three men were perfectly complementary, Paban’s resonant and smoky, alternately urgent and sensuous; Debdas’s a fine tenor; Kanai’s softer, more vulnerable, tender and high-pitched – at times almost a falsetto – with a fine, reed-like clarity. As Paban sang, he twanged a
khomok
hand drum or thundered away at the
dubki
, a sort of small, rustic tambourine. Kanai, in contrast, invariably sang with his sightless blue eyes fixed ecstatically upwards, gazing at the heavens. Paban would occasionally tickle his chin, and tease him: ‘Don’t give me that wicked smile, Kanai . . .’

The songs all drew on the world and images of the Bengali village, and contained parables that anyone could understand: the body, sang Paban, is like a pot of clay; the human soul the water of love. Inner knowledge found with the help of the guru fires the pot and bakes the clay, for an unfired pot cannot contain water. Other songs were sprinkled with readily comprehensible images of boats and nets, rice fields, fish ponds and the village shop:

Cut the rice stalks,

O rice-growing brother.

Cut them in a bunch

Before they begin to smell

Rotten like your body

Without a living heart.

Sell your goods, my store-keeping brother,

While the market is brisk,

When the sun fades

And your customers depart,

Your store is a lonely place . . .

Later, after dinner, Paban and the other Bauls went out to hear a rival Baul singer perform in the Kenduli market place, leaving Kanai on his own, sitting cross-legged on the rug, singing softly.
I sat beside him and asked what he was doing.

‘This is how I remember the songs,’ he said. ‘I am blind, so I cannot read and write the verses. Instead, when I am left alone, I hum a few bars and repeat the songs to myself to help me commit them to memory. It is by repeating them that I remember.’

Kanai smiled. ‘There are some advantages to being blind,’ he said. ‘I can learn songs much quicker than other people, and pick up tunes very fast. Debdas says that I see with my ears. When he forgets, I have to remind him, even if it is a song that he originally taught me, or sometimes, even one he composed.’

At Kanai’s request, I lit a cigarette for him, and we chatted about his childhood, as he filled out the brief picture of his life that Manisha had painted for me.

‘I was born in the village of Tetulia,’ he said, leaning back and puffing contentedly away, ‘not far from here, near Birbhum. I was born with eyes that could see, but lost my sight when I caught smallpox before my first birthday. Who knows? Maybe I did something wrong in a previous life to be punished like this.

‘My father had no land of his own, so used to work during the harvest and the planting season for the local
zamindar
. The landlord gave him a small house, and eventually he got to own it. I had two sisters and a brother, as well as fourteen cousins, and at one point there were as many as twenty-three people sleeping in the house, so we used to take our rest in shifts. All my uncles were casual labourers too, except one who was a silk weaver: every day he used to go to the
zamindar’s
estate house, where the looms were kept. The
zamindar
looked after the village and treated us all as if we were his extended family. He employed everyone in the village, either in his fields or in his silk business. He was a good man, but there was not much money – things were always tight for us.

‘I was ten when my brother was killed in an accident involving a heavily laden bullock cart, and eleven when my father passed away too, from an asthma attack. This left me with the responsibility to feed my two sisters. They were growing girls and needed food. At first it wasn’t too hard. Once I got used to begging from my own friends, from door to door, I found it wasn’t difficult to get enough to fill all our stomachs. We were loved and looked after: I only had to say, “I am hungry,” and I would be fed. The door of the poor man is always open – it is only the doors of the rich that close as you approach. If the people in the village came to hear that another family was going through a hard time they would always give them rice or a cow dung cake for fuel.

‘I used to go out in the morning with my stick and my bowl, taking the name of Hari [Krishna], and would come back by lunch. Whatever I had collected we shared, and ate. People knew the family, and knew what had happened to us. They felt sorry for us, and although they were very poor themselves they would always give something: a rupee, or some rice and vegetables. The problems only began when one of my sisters became eligible for marriage.

‘I was fifteen, and beginning to talk to prospective grooms, but it was clear from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be easy. Some people in the village thought we were cursed because of all the bad luck we had suffered – first with me going blind, then the two deaths in rapid succession. Others considered my proposal, but demanded dowries I knew I would never be able to pay. I became more and more depressed, and without realising it I must have communicated this to my sister. One day I was at a friend’s place drinking tea when I was told I had to go back home immediately. When I returned, I discovered that my sister had committed suicide. I had no idea she was even near doing such a thing: she must have thought she was too much of a burden on me, and that we could not afford the wedding. Whatever the reason, she hanged herself from the ceiling beam of our one room.

‘Coming after the death of my father and brother, this sent me mad with grief: I was shattered, and blamed myself. I stayed at home for weeks and then I decided I couldn’t remain in the village any longer; I must make a new life for myself.
It was then that I remembered Gyananand Sadhu, the Baul guru who had heard me singing when I was bathing in the
pukur
as a boy. I had loved the way he sang just as much as he liked my voice. I knew that his ashram was near Rampurhat, so I decided to go and see if he would take me on as his disciple, his
chela.

‘My mother and other sister were very angry at my decision. They said, “Why are you going? Don’t you care for us?” I was very sad to leave them in this way, but I had a feeling this was what I needed to do in order for the family to survive. I was always very religious, but it wasn’t just that; it seemed a practical decision too. A blind man cannot be a farmer, but he can be a singer.

‘Ever since I was a boy I had been picking up holy songs and
bhajans
, and all though my childhood I used to sing the songs of the Bauls, and the
shyama Kali sangeet
of the Tantric sadhus, playing the spokes of my father’s bullock cart with a stick, like a drum. Because I had a good voice the sadhus and the Bauls loved me, and all the villagers would gather around when I sang; but it was the songs themselves that led me to the life of a singer. I said to myself, I will treat singing the songs as my form of devotion, my
sadhana
, and put my whole heart into it. That way I can live the life of the heart – and also save money to send to my mother and sister. At that moment, when my fortunes were at their lowest, it was my ability to sing that saved me.

‘It was the season of the rains. I caught a bus to Tarapith, and changed buses there, and late that evening I arrived in Mallarpur, near Rampurhat, where Gyananand Sadhu’s ashram was located. It was raining very heavily, and as it was late there was no one about to ask for directions. When I got off the bus, the water was already ankle-deep. As I walked on in the direction that the conductor had sent me, straight along the road, the water got deeper until it was up to my thighs. There was no one around to help, and there was nothing to do but carry on, even as the water rose to my waist and the thunder boomed overhead.

‘But I persevered, and despite my fears, the road turned out to be the right one. Climbing a small hill, I hit dry land. Soon after that I came to the gate of the ashram. I was drenched, it was the middle of the night, and I expected to be turned away. But instead the
chowkidar
ushered me straight into the presence of Gyananand. The moment he saw me, he said, “I have been waiting for you. I always knew that boy in the
pukur
would come to me sooner or later.” He welcomed me warmly, gave me food and dry clothes and took me on as his
chela
. I stayed there seven years, wandering in the cold season and staying with Gyananand in his
akhara
during the rains. He provided for my mother and sister, and gave me money to take home to them.

‘I joined the Bauls partly because it seemed the only way I could make a livelihood. But my guru soon taught me that there are much more important things than getting by, or making money, or material pleasures. I am still very poor, but thanks to the lessons of my guru, my soul is rich. He taught me to seek inner knowledge and to inspire our people to seek this too. He told me to concentrate on singing and did not encourage me to take the path of a Tantric yogi, though I have picked up a lot of knowledge of this sort from other sadhus and Bauls over the years.’

‘Is it a good life?’ I asked.

‘It is the best life,’ said Kanai without hesitation. ‘The world is my home. We Bauls can walk anywhere and are welcome anywhere. When you walk you are freed from the worries of ordinary life, from the imprisonment of being rooted in the same place. I cannot complain. Far from it – I am often in a state of bliss.’

‘But don’t you miss your home? Don’t you tire of the road?’

‘When you first become a Baul, you have to leave your family, and for twelve years you must wander in strange countries where you have no relatives. There is a saying, “No Baul should live under the same tree for more than three days.” At first you feel alone, disorientated. But people are always pleased to see the Bauls: when the villagers see our coloured robes they shout: “Look, the madmen are coming! Now we can take the day off and have some fun!”

‘Wherever we go, the people stop what they are doing and come and listen to us. They bring fish from the fish ponds, and cook some rice and dal for us, and while they do that we sing and teach them. We try to give back some of the love we receive, to reconcile people and offer them peace and solace. We try to help them with their difficulties, and to show them the path to discover the Man of the Heart.’

I asked: ‘How do you do that?’

‘With our songs,’ said Kanai. ‘For us Bauls, our songs are a source of both love and knowledge. We tease the rich and the arrogant, and make digs at the hypocrisy of the Brahmins. We sing against caste, and against injustice. We tell the people that God is not in the temple, or in the Himalayas, nor in the skies or the earth or in the air. We teach that Krishna was just a man. What is special about him in essence is in me now. Whatever is in the cosmos is in our bodies; what is not in the body is not in the cosmos. It is all inside – truth lies within. If this is so, then why bother going to the mosque or the temple? So to the Bauls a temple or a shrine has little value: it is just a way for the priests to make money and to mislead people. The body is the true temple, the true mosque, the true church.’

‘But in what way?’

‘We believe that the way to God lies not in rituals but in living a simple life, walking the country on foot and doing what your guru says. The joy of walking on foot along unknown roads brings you closer to God. You learn to recognise that the divine is everywhere – even in the rocks. You learn also that music and dance is a way of discovering the Unknown Bird. You come to understand that God is the purest form of joy – complete joy.’