India
“Asia . . . when all my dying days are through, I run to you.”
In 1981 Steely Dan recorded a song called Aja, but it was pronounced Asia (I think it was the name of a Chinese woman). And, the words were actually, “When my all my dime dancing days are through, I run to you” but I never seemed to get the lyrics right back then. Maybe my ears or my brain were always a little crooked. I looked up ‘dime dancing’ to find out it meant someone who danced with women who didn’t have a partner, for money. Now what did that have to do with India? Nothing. But for so many years I thought it was, “Asia, when all my dying days are through, I run to you,” and that made perfect sense to me, as I wanted to be done with dying and taking birth again. For me it meant when you’re done going through the wheel of Samsara, the wheel of birth and death, you will go to Asia for the answers how to ‘get off the merry-go-ground,’ and how to stop this process of dying. You’ve got to laugh at yourself sometimes, and I could be crazy, but I liked my lyrics more! Anyway, that’s exactly what I did! I decided to go to India. I was hoping my dying days were through (dime dancing, too) and I would not go back into the womb only to return once again to the tomb and then again to another womb.
Starting in the mid sixties, Indian gurus were constantly coming to the United States. Many people were accepting a guru. There was my guru of course, Bhaktivedanta Swami, but there was also Paramahamsa Yogananda and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Bhagavan Sri Rajneesh and others, so why not go and check out why India was so special? Why did these holy men come from this part of the world? What was so special about India?
So I went to find out! Don or Dasahara went with me. We were stunned! India is the most amazing place I have ever visited! The dichotomy between rich and poor, demons and devotees and happiness and distress was almost overwhelming and definitely surprising! In the course of one block you would find a beggar with one hand and a businessman in an Armani suit. Little girls, barefoot with dust in their hair came up to your car at traffic lights to beg for rupees. Rickshaw drivers peddled through the crowded streets to earn 50 cents. On the opposite side there were stunning hotels with shops bursting with deep blue sapphires, luscious green emeralds and pinkish red rubies. Their floors were all milky-white marble polished to a high gloss and the ceilings were decorated with crystal chandeliers, reflected in the shine of the marble below. Polished silver urns on pedestals lined the foyers overflowing with pink lilies and golden freesia. The women employees were dressed in flowing silk saris with powder blue paisley prints highlighted in burgundy. They all wore golden earrings and matching golden bangles, jingling pleasantly as they walked across the room with graceful elegance.
If you were a well dressed person, you were treated with respect and ushered into the dining room and seated behind starched white tablecloths and bright red roses. Then you were graciously served coffee from a silver pot with small pitchers of fresh cream. The experience of all this luxury for the first time in my life was an absolute delight for the senses and an unexpected pleasure as we slid into the Imperial Hotel to find a Thomas Cook. Back in 1997 there were no debit cards, so we traveled with traveler’s checks and cashed them as needed. After cashing our checks and having a continental breakfast, we headed back out into the street to explore the shopping. Right outside of the Imperial Hotel was the Tibetan Market, a line of shops with brass deities and jewelry, leather belts, silk scarves and amazing carved wood furniture and figurines. Scooting down the block on a wide skateboard device was a small young man with only limp twigs for legs, begging for whatever coin you might give. At the end of the corner was a snake charmer. I only saw this guy twice in all my trips, but I saw him that first time and was amazed those guys were really real! And still alive! I stood back as he played his clarinet-type wind instrument, known as a Schnei, and a cobra came swaying out of a basket while people screamed and gawked about. I really didn’t need to see more, so I quickly crossed the street and kept going.
Walking down the street was a dark man with dreadlocks down to his knees. He was dressed in pale orange robes and walked with his gaze looking nowhere but yet he seemed determined and steady. Yogis and sadhus were everywhere, mixed in with the businessmen and local vendors and they were everywhere at the train stations and temples.
Such were my first impressions of the land of the holy. As I traveled I found out what many people say is true, you either love it or hate it, or, you both love it and you hate it. I did the latter. Part of me wanted to get the hell out, but the other part of me was fascinated and curious.
And that was just the city. The small villages, I found were where the real sadhus lived and practiced their meditation. There was no question about it, that was where the serious seekers and teachers seemed to congregate and there was a reason. History told us the Gods visited this planet and many stories were told of those Gods visiting the continent of India. Some said their feet never touched the ground. I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t personally say. But everywhere you went, especially in these villages, there were special holy places where these gods were reputed to have performed some past time, some special merciful activity or some miracle as we would have called it. Pilgrimage was about going to see these holy places with a qualified guru who could tell you the story of what happened at that location and hopefully you would be inspired to become a better person, to evolve, to grow and to achieve your highest goal. I heard about this process of pilgrimage and hearing from sadhus or holy men and women from other devotees. It would be enough to keep me going back I was told, and I was hoping it would be true, cause I surely wouldn’t go back for the pristine white beaches and the pina coladas by the swaying palm trees!
Don and I left New Delhi and headed to Vrindavan via taxi. Vrindavan, the birthplace of Sri Krishna, was not exactly what I expected. Maybe I thought the spiritual world would have been transported there and everything would be glowing the same as it was 5000 years ago when Krishna actually appeared. And maybe it was, but I sure couldn’t see it. What I found was a 500 year old village with broken brick structures, open sewers, wild pigs and yes, there were also beautiful peacocks, the Yamuna River, sweet smelling champa flowers and beautiful marigold garlands interspersed with roses and lotus flowers everywhere you looked. The local vendors were cooking up large pots of hot milk for their patrons to drink before bedtime or they were making milk sweets at night. As they stirred their milk, they held the ladle at least 30 inches high and let the milk fall back in to the pan as they continued to stir. The sight reminded me of a milky waterfall and the Milky Way all at once and made my mouth water as the stream disappeared into the pool of hot liquid. The milk was flavored with cardamon and sugar and the aroma was absolutely divine.
Cows roamed the streets freely, so you had to be careful where you stepped. Shit was everywhere! Monkeys were very mischievous, swinging from trees to fences and all the while keeping their eyes open for a nice ripe banana you might be eating. One monkey jumped on my back, reached over my shoulder and grabbed a bag of fresh bananas out of my lap while I rode in a rickshaw. It scared the hell out of me, but at the time they seemed to be harmless. Here was the cute thing, all the Indians around me stopped and stared to see my reaction, then they laughed hilariously as if to say, “Welcome to the land of the monkeys and the cows!” These Indians were always watching foreigners to catch their reactions to their culture and atmosphere because they knew we came from a foreign land and would probably be shocked and angry or we would just laugh it off. I laughed. What else could I do?
Don and I took our first trip to the shopping area in Vrindavan known as Loi Bazaar on a horse-driven cart. We thought how romantic and sweet, to have a horse-driven cart. As we rode towards the bazaar we began to smell something pretty bad. I thought it was maybe the horse who farted and Don and I laughed as we discussed the horrible odor. I was wrong! I held my nose and waved my hand in front of it, to the driver, using a type of sign language, since I didn’t speak his, and the driver pointed to the sewers to show us the cause of our misery. It was the open sewers with pigs eating out of them! Shit! We continued the journey, looking around at all the colorful cloth hanging from the fronts of the shops and the highly polished brass bells swaying in the breeze along with all types of copper cookware and other supplies displayed in an artistic fashion to catch your eye. But with the smell and the pigs and the cow shit everywhere, the monkeys fucking on all the rooftops and the hawkers yelling at us to buy their wares, we were more than ready to get back to our hotel. When we returned to the temple complex, we headed straight for our room and froze with the realization we were in major culture shock! All we wanted to do was to go to sleep, so we did.
The next day we were guided by devotees to some of the more nectarian parts of town. We discovered the Yamuna River with sadhus praying at the bank, peacocks roaming the nearby fields, temple bells ringing, and some special places like the Krishna Balarama tree where both a black and white tree were inter-twined with each other. This was in an area called Raman Reti. The words Raman Reti meant ‘soft sands’, a name that was quite suitable because the surrounding ground was filled with the softest sand imaginable. The sand was much softer than the sand you would find at the ocean. It was hard to explain. We visited our guru’s Krishna Balarama temple and found ourselves feeling the pure ecstasy of Vrindavan. At the temple the deities were decorated in beautiful yellow silk garments covered in white champa flowers, crystals, pearls and golden ornaments. The devotees were chanting the sweetest mantras with melodies sounding like a Mozart concerto, while a solo devotee played his violin. We quickly forgot the open sewers and were in love with Vrindavan.
I still, however, laugh at myself when I think of my naivety. I asked the guy at the front desk of our hotel where the laundromat was so I could wash my clothes. He kept twisting his head and saying, “Madam, I don’t understand.” Over and over I tried to explain until a passerby stopped to inform me there were no laundromats. We would need to wash our own clothes by hand or send them out to a dobi (laundry man). “Oh,” I said, “where do I find a dobi?”
After leaving Vrindavan we traveled through Delhi and then by train to Varanasi where there were many Siva and Durga temples. Amazed at the huge gongs and drums and the sheer magnanimity of the temples, we were in awe. Then some Shiva priest chased us out of a temple shouting. It scared the hell out of us and we ran like thieves who had just stolen some valuable gold until he reached out his hand gesturing we should give him money. We did not know we were expected to give a donation everywhere we went. We were just sight seeing. We jumped into an auto rickshaw to go back to our hotel and found the driver was not taking us to the hotel at all. Instead, he was taking us to some shop where we would find the most luxurious and expensive silk saris available on the market. We were not rich and even if we were, what would I do with a silk sari? I preferred blue jeans, remember, although we did wear the customary clothing while we were in India. We quickly got out of there and he then drove us to some cottage emporium filled with Indian handicrafts, again at the highest prices in town. Funny thing is you can find these same artifacts in America at specialty stores, so why should we buy something we would have to lug back home? We soon found out the rickshaw drivers made deals with the shops that they would get a little something when they brought potential customers to their shop. The driver had no intention of taking us back to our hotel. He would have just driven us around from shop to shop until we bought something. I finally yelled at him with a few choice words I learned in Hindi and he gave up and took us back to the hotel. When we finally got back, I refused to go out again. Don wanted to go out at night and explore, but I found an english-speaking history channel program on TV and decided I’d stay in while he did his own journeying.
Later we tried to cross the Ganges to find a train-booking agency and were told three different directions to go leaving us thinking we were crazy for ever coming here. Anyway, we crossed the river on a ferry with our suitcases and camera equipment, etc., and began to walk through a horrible slum-filled neighborhood with poor people cooking on a small stove out in the open beside a plastic tarp hut. They actually lived in those lean-tos. There we were, rolling down the walkway with Pierre Cardin suitcases and a new Canon camera thinking we were about to be jumped and mugged and left with nothing. But that didn’t happen. Instead, we found the train-booking office and met a nice British woman there who just came from working with Mother Teresa for around 5 years and was now heading back to England. She told us a few wonderful stories of how they were working to help people who couldn’t help themselves. So that is how we saw India. One moment we were freaking out in the scariest slum in India and the next moment we were sitting next to a woman who was serving a Saint!
After booking our train, we headed for Calcutta. When we arrived, we were at Howrah Station which I quickly translated into Horror Station. As we were pulling into Calcutta, men with red jackets and read scarves were coming on board and grabbing our suitcases before the train even came to a full stop. Scared the shit out of me. An Indian man who spoke English let us know he was a porter and was just looking to carry our suitcases for a fare. Fair enough. But could they be trusted? The skinny-legged guy put one large suitcase on his head and rolled the other one behind him while carrying small suitcases at the same time and was trucking through the train station so fast we almost had to run to keep up with him. We were afraid he would steal our suitcases and have a great time selling everything, but at intervals he would stop and turn around to see if we were following. You just never knew who you could trust in this world and as we found out in time, it was usually not the vendors, but probably the porters and other people who didn’t want anything from you, just your money for their service. But Horror Station was sensational! People were running everywhere and shouting and there were so many people that they were pushing and shoving to get where they wanted to go. When we finally left the platforms and headed into the main terminal entrance, I thought, At last, we can be at peace for a moment, until men started running up to us from all directions, shouting “Mayapur? Mayapur?” At first I thought someone must have sent a driver for us and then I remembered no one knew we were coming. Before I could even gather my wits about me to figure out we needed a taxi for our trip to Mayapur, north of Calcutta, at least 8 different guys were trying to bargain with us for taxi fare. Again, scary as shit! What the hell is going on in this country? They started shouting prices and competing with each other. We didn’t even have to bargain, we just took the lowest price
I’m not sure that was a good idea. The driver we hired, was not the one we bargained with. Evidently there was a broker who got jobs for his drivers. The guy who ended up driving us was completely illiterate and driving like he was in the Daytona 500, but his Daytona speedway was a two-lane road with hundreds of large trucks that he kept passing whilst blowing his horn constantly. We found out later, blowing the horn is required because nobody stayed in lanes and drove like civilized human beings! The trip took us four hours, four hours of hell!
We finally arrived in Mayapur to find a mystical paradise. Coconut trees and banana trees were everywhere with beautiful temples surrounding the Ganges River flowing swiftly through the land. People were walking around in flowing saris and robes in an atmosphere completely devoid of the chaos we just left. The air was filled with the scents of flowers and incense. Bells were ringing and sweet music filled the air. Just another trip through hell to once again experience the divine. Was that what India was all about? It seemed like every time we went through a hellish situation, the end result was like heaven! The sweetness of Vrindavan, the saintly nun and now the mystical atmosphere of Mayapur!
In Mayapur, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, reputed to be the Divine incarnation of both Radha and Krishna combined, appeared approximately 527 years ago. The town was set along the Ganges River with ferries that carried people either up the Ganges or across. The river intersected with another river called the Jalungi. What was amazing was, where the rivers intersected, you could actually see very plainly the two different colors of the rivers. The Ganges was a golden green while the Jalungi was darkish blue. Seeing the confluence was a first for me. There was a line, as if drawn on a chalkboard between the two rivers. How does that happen?
We did the usual, checking into our room, getting a bite to eat and then started taking in the sites. How could I explain something magnificent? The main temple was huge with Radha and Krishna on the main altar, with Their eight principal gopis, all around 5 to 6 feet tall. They were decorated with silks and flowers and jewels to keep you mesmerized. And that was just one room. In the other room there was Lord Chaitanya and his four main associates on the altar. They were all golden polished brass and around four feet high. There was a large deity of Narasimha on one side of the first temple room. He was the half-lion, half-man incarnation who ripped apart the demon, Hiranyakasipu and was reputed to provide protection for the community.
Across from the temple we entered the Samadhi of Srila Prabhupada, a huge round planetarium-type building with beautiful paintings in the central dome of all the ten major incarnations and with angels showering flowers down on the central altar. Around the edges on the balcony were diorama depictions of events when our spiritual master brought Krishna Consciousness to the West. And the place was so incredibly stunning with marble, chandeliers and paintings we could only stop and drop our mouths in amazement. Is this what I paid for, I thought, when I was selling all those books?
I found out in later years you should probably get a guide if you want to get the full value of any historical place or museum, but we didn’t. We took off across the Jalungi River by ferry to see what was on the other side. We touched land and began to walk down a path through a village where people were weaving cloth. The sound of the weaving machines clacking was rhythmic and trance inspiring as we walked. Huge skeins of purple, turquoise, red, yellow, orange, blue and pink yarn were hanging on clothes lines hung from tree to tree, drying in the sun.
Vendors were selling cloth, bananas and dobs of coconut water as we walked. Some old women and men were sitting on the porches of their homes spinning cotton thread. Colorful parrots were chirping and moving from tree to tree as we reflected on our amazing fortune to be able to see such a beautiful and incredible place as if it emerged from a distant past! But the reality was it had never changed. Homes made from Ganges mud and cow dung with thatched roofs were surrounded by level, hard ground filled with rice drying in the sun, occasionally raked to make beautiful patterns as if they were part of a Japanese garden. Goats were running here and there while children chased them to tie them up and get their milk. Marijuana plants were growing wild alongside sugarcane fields, and sadhus were everywhere chanting their mantras, some with vertical paint stripes on their foreheads and some with horizontal stripes, each with their own meaning.
After leaving Mayapur, we traveled by train down the coast of the Bay of Bengal to a place called Puri. As we traveled south to Puri, we found everywhere, vendors, hotel owners, rickshaw drivers and even some brahmins were eager to sell you their goods at probably twice what they were worth just because we were white-skinned.
Puri, also known as Jagannatha Puri, was located south of Calcutta on the Bay of Bengal and the ocean there was quite turbulent. By then we were starting to get used to the chaos. We swam in the Bay of Bengal with 4-5 foot waves, toured the exterior of the Jagannatha temple (westerners were not allowed inside), and took pictures of the colorful women carrying large pots on their heads filled with water or bundles of cloth or even large pans filled with cow dung for drying and burning at a later date when they cooked their whole wheat chapatis and rice. But Puri exhibited its own weirdness. There was a huge population of people with elephantiasis and leprosy. People sat in the marketplaces or in front of the temples holding out their stumps or showing us their elephant feet so we might feel sorry for them and give them money. I began to feel if I gave charity to everyone who was deformed in India, I would go broke, being a simple middle class American. It was true we made a lot more money in those days than the poor class in India, but it also costs us a lot more to live in the West. We realized, however, you must have compassion and do what you can. Many years later, after meeting my second and sikhsa guru, I was told to give only to the old people or people who could not work. I tried to follow that practice.
We headed back to Vrindavan, going through Bod Gaya where the Buddha attained enlightenment as we traveled north once again by train. I made a schedule for us and Lord Buddha was definitely part of the agenda.
Traveling in India was more than a westerner bargained for, but you soon learned to tolerate the differences in culture. If you didn’t, then you would go crazy. I think you had to be ready for anything if you were going to make that kind of endeavor. I was by that time.
There would be other trips in the future where I would head north and find a mystical place called Dev Prayag, north of Hrisikesh, where the golden Alakananda River met the blue Bhagarati River at a point, water swirling around in a ten-foot diameter like a huge vortex and coming out a golden green color, flowing south as the Ganges. From a cliff high above you could look down to see the seeming miracle of the amazing confluence. There were caves under the cliff where renunciates lived (or were they just beggars)? It was really hard to tell. Everyone was begging from you, especially those who were skinny renunciates or simply pathetic con artists. On top of the cliff was a temple of Ramachandra who was the God king who appeared on this planet before Krishna. The story was, He came to this confluence to bathe and purify himself after killing the demon Ravana.
When Don and I arrived back in America and were living in Colorado at the time, we were surprised at how quiet it was. There were no people screaming in the streets, no horns blowing and all around us was very peaceful. It was like we were in reverse culture shock after having spent three weeks in chaos. Anyway, that should not discourage you from going to India. It was the spiritual experience that changed you and made the whole trip worth while, so what you needed to do, if you decided to go, was to go for the right reason, the spiritual goal in your life! Not the luxurious summer vacation!