In the City a Mirror Wandering

by Upendranath Ashk

  Yogi ji was delivering his sermon with full force, when the stark naked child came running in, perhaps in an attempt to escape his older brother, and plopped down in Yogi ji’s lap. Yogi ji finished his sermon, lifted the child from his lap and pushed him towards the door. The child turned back once, but there was something about Yogi ji’s look that made him go away.

  Then Hunar Sahib piped up, ‘But you have attained the highest knowledge, Yogi ji, you must surely have attained this state in your soul!’

  ‘No, no, my friend.’ Yogi ji smiled politely in a way that made it apparent that he had in fact attained that state in his soul but he didn’t want to come out and say so. ‘What is achievable in the world of consciousness? In the world of consciousness man strays so far from the soul that rediscovering that condition—that supreme joy, that supreme peace—becomes difficult. It is not so simple to stray far from the soul, then return and dissolve into it. One requires deep knowledge, perseverance and yogic practice.’

  Yogi Jalandhari Mull stopped for a moment, then spoke again. ‘Hunar Sahib, why does this world seem lovely after all? Why does life seem so enchanting to us?’

  He stopped for a moment to hear Hunar Sahib’s response, but Hunar Sahib looked up at him like an idiot, as if to say, ‘Sire, please tell us!’

  Then Yogi ji continued joyfully, ‘It’s because our soul gets some bliss or other from this world, from this life. But sorrow plays no small part in this life, so sometimes we are badly wounded by the hardships of the world. Now, imagine a situation in which there is no sorrow alongside joy, a condition that is beyond joy and sorrow—one that is filled with the highest peace: a dreamless sleep. In order to attain this, we must surrender the false pleasures of this world, we must control our senses and we must dissolve ourselves in the soul. That soul, which is part of Brahma himself, which is dispersed throughout the world. To become one with the soul, to attain moksha by cutting the bonds of life and death, that is to attain the feeling of supreme bliss . . . and this isn’t possible for everyone, only a specialist in yoga can attain that supreme bliss by rising above desires, sorrows and joy through yogic practice.’

  ‘But Yogi ji,’ laughed Chetan, ‘in the old days, when knowledge had not made so much progress, man needed to suppress the senses and engage in difficult yogic practice in order to attain such a state, but nowadays, man can attain that supreme peace with an injection of morphine—to attain that supreme peace of deep sleep, in which there are no dreams.’

  Yogi ji was stunned for a moment, then he smiled contemptuously. ‘Whether or not that state can be achieved via morphine, I cannot say, but those taking morphine cannot just enter the conscious world whenever they wish. As long as the effect of morphine holds, man will not attain peace, whereas with Gyana Yoga, man, despite engaging in worldly tasks, rises above his worries regarding joy and sorrow. The greatest wise man and the greatest yogi will remain in the state of peace with or without meditation. He performs all tasks free of desires and with no expectations of good and ill consequences, and thus he is released from the cycle of death and rebirth.’

  If Yogi ji were giving this speech from a stage, then Hunar Sahib would have risen and burst into spontaneous applause; but instead, adopting the pose of a supremely satisfied devotee, he pleased Yogi ji by crying out, ‘Wah wah! Wonderful!’ And this time, Ranvir and Nishtar praised him as well. But the moment he fell silent, Chetan laughed out loud.

  ‘None of this seems accurate to me, Yogi ji,’ he said. ‘I haven’t read as many religious texts as you have, but I have heard many, and to me, nothing is apparent besides self-deception. You say that there is only one soul that pervades all beings, and you also say that when we love other things, it’s because we find self-respect in them, but then how is it that all of creation, whether beast or bird, will swallow one another down with the greatest impartiality? Can anyone consume their own body?’

  Yogi ji laughed, ‘That is the illusion of Brahma, my friend. To the unknowing one, it appears that one person is consuming another, or one beast another, or one bird another, but the wise man knows that the being that has emerged from Brahma is also contained in Brahma. This is the illusion of God. Didn’t the god Krishna in the Gita ask who is the killer and who is being killed?’

  ‘Then why has God done this?’ asked Chetan. ‘If no one kills anyone, then why are robbers and murderers hanged, and why are practitioners of yoga commanded to avoid “violence”? To me, God seems neither all-powerful, nor just, nor all-knowing. I see no truth in the cycle of rebirth nor in the fruits of karma. All these philosophies appear to me to be the marvels of man’s limited intelligence and his fear of death. If God is all-powerful, then why did he create this topsy-turvy world full of violence, hatred, sorrow and pain? If he created it for his own enjoyment, then sin and merit mean nothing at all, man works according to his limited intelligence, customs and environment. Since man doesn’t wish to die, he likes to imagine the next life; when those doing good deeds meet with hardship, and then he understands that he must surely have committed bad deeds in his previous life, because in this life he’s only doing good deeds, and he thinks that in the next birth, he will most certainly attain the rewards for his good deeds.’

  Just then the naked child came sniffling and whining to the doorway, and cried out, ‘Brother, brother!’

  Forgetting all his self-control and peace, Yogi Jalandhari Mull ji screamed, ‘Get out of here!’ and, flinging a vulgar Punjabi curse at the child’s mother, he called out to her to come and take him away. The next instant, a fat, coarse woman came and dragged the child off. Then, Yogi ji turned back and continued as though nothing had happened, ignoring his question, ‘If there is no God then who is responsible for creation? If there is creation then there must be someone doing the creating as well.’

  ‘Then why wouldn’t there be someone creating the creator?’ laughed Chetan.

  ‘But God, who is the creator of creation, who is without beginning or end, who is all-powerful, all-pervasive—who will create him?’

  ‘Who says he has all those qualities?’ asked Chetan.

  ‘Those rishis who came to know the secret of the cosmos through the power of their yoga discovered the movement of the stars; they were the ones who also discovered God,’ said Yogi ji.

  ‘But isn’t it possible,’ laughed Chetan mischievously, ‘that by the end of the last age, man had made as much progress as he’s making now? He used science to find out about the stars and he learned the secret of the cosmos and then, because of some natural disaster, or because of some evil deed of his own, the world was destroyed, water flooded the land, and where there had been water, dry land emerged, and a few men were saved somewhere on earth, and they remembered that knowledge and that knowledge came to us orally. If there was a God who created this cosmic game, I could never call him just. I see justice nowhere in nature. It runs on blind impulse just as the earth spins. Justice and injustice, joy and sorrow, merit and sin, good and bad—it’s man who weighs all these things, and I believe that man should stop worrying about previous births and coming births, and instead develop a new religion that makes this birth better, happier, more just and more peaceful, and that he can only do this with the help of his mind, having learned from his previous experiences, and observing the life around him; he can’t accomplish that absorbed in meditation, believing this world to be an illusion.’

  Yogi ji stared at him for a few minutes silently, then he said, ‘You’re an atheist!’

  Chetan burst out laughing. Hunar Sahib put his hand on his shoulder and tried to stop him from speaking further, but his mind was racing after being bored for so long.

  ‘It’s not a question of whether I’m a believer or an atheist,’ he said. ‘I just see a lot of conflict in what I’ve heard and what I’ve read. On the one hand, you have a yogi who has attained the soul, who has attained Brahma; he’s protected himself from untruth, from violence, from theft, from non-asceticism and the greed for wealth. He’s suppre
ssed his senses, and attained God by means of bodily purity, satisfaction, devotion, study, reflection and thought. On the other hand, in Karma Yoga there is no need for this restraint. What’s necessary is to perform deeds free from desire. If you are free from desire in your actions, you can slaughter people by the thousands and millions, and you can do so by any means necessary—lies, tricks and deceit. This was the sermon Krishna gave Arjun when Arjun hesitated to take up arms after seeing his kinsmen before him on the field of battle. Do you think that in the battle of the Mahabharata there was no lust for wealth, or land, or fame on the Pandavas’ side? And do you believe that when Jayadratha killed Abhimanyu, Arjun wasn’t saddened, and that when Arjun slayed Jayadratha, he had no desire to slay? If desire is removed from action then more than half of the motivation for performing an action is finished, and perhaps the fun as well. You do business, don’t you?’ Chetan asked suddenly, interrupting himself.

  Yogi ji nodded his head in agreement.

  ‘Don’t you have to lie? Don’t you take six annas for something worth four?’

  ‘But I’m a businessman. It’s my duty to do business. I continue to try to do that work which I’ve been given by God, free of desire, without worrying about good or ill consequences . . . and then on turning fifty, I will be freed of all this.’

  Chetan laughed out loud.

  ‘You have some sorrow and remorse,’ Yogi ji said suddenly. ‘You have no faith in God or the Dharma Shastras, and without taking refuge in God, you won’t find peace. Sorrow and suffering are written in the fate of the atheist and the un-knower.’ A flash of anger came into Yogi ji’s voice, ‘You should meet my guru, Shri Swami Apurvanand; you will benefit both in terms of knowledge and of peace.’

  ‘I will get knowledge from Swami Apurvanand but these millions of other people—what of them?’ laughed Chetan. ‘Not everyone can acquire knowledge; people seldom find God, but in the effort to do so, they are abandoning dependence on God considering this world a dream, an illusion and a falsehood. The result is that we’ve been slaves for centuries, our mortality rate is highest among all the nations—lack of education, poverty and hunger hold sway, and people are engrossed in contemplating the highest meaning—in their concern for the next world, they’ve forgotten about this one. Who knows if they’ll find happiness or not in the next world, but they certainly will find sorrow in this one. And our wise men, instead of focusing their attention on those problems, are absorbed in contemplating Brahma.’

  Yogi ji acted as though he hadn’t heard him. Suppressing his anger with great effort, he said calmly, ‘Do meet Swami Apurvanand, you will definitely find peace.’

  ‘I’m definitely unpeaceful,’ said Chetan. ‘But neither can I turn my face away from the world nor can I give up desire. My attention is neither directed at my previous birth nor the next one. I want to make this birth successful and happy. My circumstances aren’t favourable, the atmosphere is not good, but I’ll make my way through this one. It may take me a while, but I’ll find my way.’

  ‘But your Mahatma Gandhi is a worshipper of the Gita. He has complete faith in Karma Yoga.’

  ‘I’ve not met Mahatma Gandhi,’ laughed Chetan. ‘And then, when did I say that everything in our philosophy is nonsense? Gandhi may have extracted some kernels of truth, whereas other wise men are just gathering up straw . . . Okay, well, bye!’

  Hunar Sahib told him to sit down once, but when Chetan said he’d been out since morning and had to go now, he didn’t insist. It was his duty to smooth the wrinkles that had appeared on Yogi ji’s forehead from his conversation with Chetan, because Chetan had come with him. And he had to make some arrangements for the evening’s tea after bringing up the topic of translation of the Upanishads. Besides this, he’d brought the files from Widows’ Aid to show him too . . . When Chetan stood, he stood as well, but he didn’t go to the door. He took Chetan’s hand in both of his and pressed it with great affection while smiling, and said they’d go by Lala Govindaram’s in the evening; he was trying to put together a poetry reading . . . if possible, he’d see him later in the evening.

  Chetan said neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’, shook his hand and left.

  Evening

  28

  As Chetan walked through Mandi Bazaar as far as the station, his mind was caught up in thoughts of the soul and the Supreme Soul, happiness and peace, joy and the Greatest Joy, Gyana Yoga and Karma Yoga. Stopping for a moment at the tonga stand, he glanced around to see if any were going to Panjpir or Adda Hoshiarpur, but a train must have been pulling in, as all the tonga drivers were lined up at the stand—they’d already seated a couple of passengers and were looking for others. Not one tonga was tricking the officers and straying from the stand. Chetan quietly turned down Station Road. Although there was quite a bit of mud in the middle of this street as well, pedestrians had created a relatively hard footpath along the side. He let the legs of his pants fall loose and set out slowly.

  *

  He’d stopped in the middle of the street and guffawed loudly after emerging from Lala Jalandhari Mull’s shop. He felt a childish glee at purposefully needling him and destroying his effortful pose of peace . . . . ‘Goddammmmn yogi!’ he said to himself. ‘A few days in jail beat all the patriotism out of him and he set himself up as a philosopher.’ A line from a couplet he’d heard years ago at a baitbaazi match in the pona at the Harivallabh Festival flashed in his mind and he smiled. ‘“If this monkey got his hands on a knot of ginger, he’d set up a dry goods shop” . . . Jalandhari Mull ji, “Sarfarosh”—the brave one—The longing for sacrifice is now in our hearts . . . Jalandhari Mull ji “Yogi”—the man who fuses his soul with the Supreme Soul and rises above joy and sorrow, thus attaining Supreme Bliss; supremely patient; unperturbed; the fully detached renunciant; he who influences others’ minds silently . . . hahaha . . . ’

  But despite chuckling, he wasn’t able to shake the topic from his head. Lala Jalandhari Mull was more of a fraud and less of a yogi, but was there no truth at all to his philosophy? That philosophy had influenced not just Indians, but foreigners as well; why was he the only one who had no faith in it?

  When Chetan thought about it, he realized that his extremely religious home environment was the reason for this, as well as his education at Arya Samaj institutions. His Dada was not only a devotee of Chandi, but also a worshipper of Shiva, and according to custom he worshipped all the other gods and goddesses as well. He would only touch food to his mouth after intoning the hymn to Chandi for two and a half hours. His mother read the Gita with the same reverence with which she read Lallu Lal’s Prem Sagar. For her, that text was not some social or personal philosophy but a part of daily religious observance. She believed that reading these books was a virtuous activity and that one attained liberation from doing so daily. What did she understand of the Gita’s shlokas and their deep philosophy, Gyana Yoga and Karma Yoga! She just read the stories that came with each chapter. It gave her great joy to learn from those chapters who crossed over the ocean of life, and since she’d seen nothing but hardship in this world, she liked those stories very much. But Chetan didn’t see any difference between the story of Satya Narayan (which was recited at his home every night of the full moon) and the stories in her books. The kind of logical thinking he learned from studying at an Arya Samaj school taught him that all those stories were entirely untrue—the difference between Gyana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga that he could see in the sections of the Gita and the popular versions his mother read . . . although not everyone is capable of understanding the subtle differences between Gyana Yoga and Karma Yoga, those versions had been added in so that ordinary people would be influenced by the deep philosophy after reading those shlokas again and again. The ordinary man doesn’t understand what the soul is, but from reading the Gita again and again, he learns that the soul is immortal, indivisible and unburnable; it cannot be made wet, nor can it be dried, and thus the fear of death is lessened somewhat in the minds of ordinary people. What is atta
chment and what is desire, and how can man become free of desires? Perhaps ordinary people aren’t able to understand such things, but from reading the Gita again and again, they begin to understand that they should perform just actions without worrying about the fruits of their labour . . . But how can an ordinary person find peace? How can he produce desire from detachment? These are things he can’t understand, but he can gain some sort of understanding of the idea that anger gives rise to a foolish feeling of bewilderment; that it destroys the powers of thinking and understanding . . . Chetan knew several shlokas by heart that he’d heard from Ma again and again . . . but where Ma found peace from reading them over and over, Chetan found confusion.

  As a child, when he used to listen to the story of the Gita from Ma, he had understood it to be literally true and could imagine it all—the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the armies of the Kauravas and the Pandavas, Arjun’s chariot, Arjun gripped by confusion on seeing his relations and teachers before him—the son of Kunti setting down the Gandiva bow and Krishna delivering his sermon. But as he grew older, the incident began to sound completely untrue to him. The Kauravas and the Pandavas must have existed, and the Mahabharata war must certainly have occurred between them, but it seemed impossible that Krishna would have stopped his chariot in the middle of the two armies and provided Arjun with all that knowledge found in the Gita. In that situation there was a need for at least a second chapter: Krishna could reveal his splendid form, but the Raja Yoga, Gyana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, was all that necessary there? Ma considered Krishna to be God, and every word he said seemed true to her, but Chetan didn’t like Krishna becoming a god and giving Arjun a sermon about how he should follow the shastras and observe the caste system. Under the influence of the Arya Samaj, Chetan had begun to feel a deep sympathy for Shudras. If the caste system was correct, then all that knowledge was forbidden to the poor Shudras. They were born only to serve, and generation after generation were fated to pass their lives in the deep darkness of ignorance. How could God have given a sermon about all this . . . and within Vibhuti Yoga, there were several such things that he had heard or read which he absolutely didn’t understand. At one point, Krishna said, ‘Among deceitful practices, I am gambling.’