It is time to go down to Gobind Dham again. As I am leaving Hemkunt Sahib, an old nihang comes up the stone steps. He is very late indeed. He will have to come down in pitch darkness. I tell him that he is all right, that he is very close now. It won’t take him much longer. He throws back his head and laughs. Let it take as long as it likes, he shouts. God has called me here. He is in no hurry, is he?
The last thing I see is the nishan sahib before the mist envelopes Hemkunt Sahib again.
(25 March 2005)
Endnote: I am indebted to Heather Michaud’s anthropological treatise on aspects of the pilgrimage to Hemkunt Sahib for this discussion, and indeed her intelligence and sensitivity in her thesis and our further email correspondence made my thought process clearer. Her treatment is comprehensive and made my research that much easier. This article would not have taken its present form without her input.
She treats the ‘controversial’ aspect of the pilgrimage to Hemkunt Sahib only in passing, but I append this to illustrate how complete her understanding of the issues is:
While studying the field notes which recorded my interviews at Hemkunt Sahib, I noticed a curious absence. When they were on pilgrimage, Sikhs seldom raised the subject of controversy. Yet Sikhs often raised the subject in interviews conducted when they were not on pilgrimage, even if they had been to Hemkunt Sahib in the past or planned to go in the future. Several areas of controversy centre around whether or not Hemkunt Sahib is a legitimate historical gurdwara. The authenticity of Bachitar Natak as an actual composition of Guru Gobind Singh is called into question, as is the selection of the geographical location of Hemkunt Sapatsring. The doctrinal relevance of transmigration, asceticism, and pilgrimage for Sikhs is also questioned.
Note to Chapter 5, Walking in the Footsteps of the Guru: Sikhs and Seekers in the Indian Himalayas. Heather Michaud, University of Calgary, Faculty of Graduate Studies, 1998. The full text of her thesis is available on Sikhnet.com.
As you will note, the problems she isolates are substantially the ones that I had in my own mind before I went up to Hemkunt Sahib.
25.
Ten
Bulleh Shah (18th century ce)
Translated by Kartar Singh Duggal
The pilgrims go to Mecca.
My Mecca is my lover Ranjha
I am crazy indeed.
To Ranjha I am betrothed
My father is severely distraught
I am crazy indeed.
They go to Mecca to atone;
I’ve many a Mecca in my home.
I am crazy indeed.
Here live pilgrims and priests
Along with lumpens and thieves.
I am crazy indeed.
The pilgrims go to Mecca.
My Kaaba is Takht Hazara
M am crazy indeed.
Mecca is there where lives my love.
I’ve referred to the four books from above
I am crazy indeed.
26.
The Impassioned Flame
Bachi Karkaria
There are few symbols more powerful than the leaping flame, so the Zoroastrians have a head start. No, we aren’t fire worshippers any more than Christians are cross worshippers. Our ancient, eco-friendly religion enjoins us to hold all elements sacred, yet nothing identifies us as definitively as the tongues of crimson leaping from the ceremonial urn in temples swathed in frankincense and sandalwood.
Any holy fire ignites reverence. Imagine, then, the pull of a historic crackle which marked the Indian community’s very beginning. As Zoroastrians, we existed in Persia for over 3000 years, but there was no such ethnic entity as a Parsi till our forefathers arrived, storm-tossed on the shore of Gujarat. In honour of the promise made in return for safe deliverance from the howling sea, they kindled a fire.
It was no primitive outburst of flintstone and twigs. It had to be one of the highest order as prescribed in esoteric texts. It would have to contain smouldering embers from sixteen sources. As soon as they were able, they collected these from domestic hearth, blacksmith’s foundry, funeral pyre, et al. Then their spiritual mentor, the priest Nairyosang Dhawal, prayed for eight days, and on the ninth, their God, Ahura Mazda, sent the remaining, cosmic flame in the form of a thunderbolt.
This fire was doubly venerable. On that alien beachhead, the bedraggled group appointed it not just their religious font, but also their secular ruler. It would replace Zoroastrianism’s lost emperors, the Achaeminian and Sassanian dynasties. It was anointed the ‘Iranshah’. As if all this were not claim enough to reverence, consider another value addition: this same fire, lit some 1300 years ago, has burnt continuously without ever being put out by enemy or elements.
Which is why a squat mansion in a crumbling enclave tucked away in a nondescript town that most Indians have never heard of is such a stalactite of faith. The ‘throne’ of the Iranshah at Udvada is the holiest shrine of Indian Zoroastrians. It is their only link with their blurred origins, and the start of their recorded history. The term ‘Parsi’, meaning ‘from Pars’ (Persia), was the ethnic label which came to be attached to the descendants of those Zoroastrian refugees who lit this iconic flame at Sanjan, circa 720 AD.
India holds the patent on places of pilgrimage overwhelmed by secular squalor. It is almost as if divine power has co-opted sloppy civic satraps to test us. But it is heartening to know that we have not been found wanting; myth overpowers reality, most of the time. Municipal sins of omission and commission are simply washed away, no match for millennia-old reverence. What chance does something as ephemeral as a heap of garbage have against something as rocksolid as a chant? It is true of Benares and Tirupati, of Amritsar and Ajmer. And it is true of Udvada.
Turn left off the NH8 flanked by the belligerent commerce of Vapi. Billboards rise like votive candles to branded gods while video parlours and ‘party plots’ propitiate the consort deity of entertainment. Drive into the dusk-dulled emptiness of small townia. If the sidewalks aren’t rolled up after 6 p.m., it is only because there are no sidewalks; even the main road is nothing more than potholes interrupted by paving, with gutters slouching along its edge. Low-watt bulbs add to the gloom rather than dispel it, but in their sombre light barbers massage the heads and fantasies of local studs.
Then you enter the Parsi settlement, and you are in another dimension of time and space. The late hour heightens the surrealism. The silence is like a shroud, broken only by the growl of the mohalla dogs threatening the intruder on their territory. The ancient houses hunker down to the ground, and on their wood-railinged otlas, a shadowy white figure coalesces in skin-prickling silence. The fear falls away as we realize it is only a priest, white beard merging into his white sudreh, which in turn segues into his white pyjamas. He is sleeping in a typical old Parsi easy-chair, one which in its colonial origin was also called a fornicating chair. Such purposes are out of the question here, the very thought of it blasphemous.
We stumble our way to the Globe Hotel. It now has laminate on its tables and an ‘A/C deluxe room’, but in spirit and even charm it is not that far removed from the inn set up in 1925 by the present owner’s father, Kaikobad Sidhwa. His grandson Percy sprints down in sneakers to summon a retainer as creaky as the staircase. ‘Will you want toddy in the morning?’ he asks.
His offer of the local palm-tapped tipple confirms that we are now comfortably ensconced in Parsiana, for this is a community that doesn’t allow any deprivation to interfere foolishly with pilgrim dedication. Zarathustra gave us a simple enough creed, Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds, to which the Parsis have added the Good Life almost as an article of faith. Which is why, with charming candour, the visit to Udvada is always extended into a weekend of gorging on the goodies of the generous pastoral lifestyles of our past.
The hotels of Udvada, like those of the nearby Devka and Daman offer staggering meals. Hungering after God takes on an all-new meaning as families debate whether they should slot the visit to the Iranshah after the breakfast
or before it. Most opt for the latter, because having rendered unto God, they can settle down happily to the keema, liver-kidney khurchan and deep-fried masala omelette or poro. The mandatory tareli boi, sweet-water mullet, is reserved for lunch and maybe even dinner, where it arrives whole, darkly fried and plump with roe, accompanied by another ‘sidedish’, and curry and rice or dal-chawal-patia in the afternoon, and with chicken and/or mutton at night.
But, what’s the problem? This is par for the five-course community, and all of a piece with the community’s seamless deal between church and state, even if the state of both has been greatly depleted with the fallen fortunes and sliding demography of this once commercially vibrant and intellectually virile people. Minority is dwindling into minuscularity, and its once exemplary institutions have felt the blow. As the pilgrim progresses, she can see it all winding through this one narrow street of Udvada. Past wealth and its obligatory handmaiden of philanthropy, present aging and decay, but, yes, individual faith not whittled down by tumbling numbers. Maybe quite the opposite, as a beleaguered people huddle closer to their sustenance of a thousand years.
Eight out of ten houses are locked, with little inside to lock up. There are less than sixty Parsis left here on one street of a town where once the only non-Zoroastrians were the tribal menials. Where there was youthful merrymaking and matchmaking, there is only the shuffling of a population mostly septuagenarian and more. There’s no medical centre closer than Daman. Homi Sidhwa, Percy’s seventy-eight-year-old father, complains that they can find no servants for the hotel. The local Dubra tribals have all been lured away to jobs in burgeoning Vapi. ‘But people expect all these lavish meals,’ he says, adding dourly, ‘at the same old prices.’
The old people in wizened houses cluster in their ‘relatively complete pre-industrial settlement’ which architecture students from Mumbai’s Rizvi College hope to conserve. But how long can these flaking residents hold out against the advancing concrete crushing this historic enclave? Besides, there’s no one much left to complain. Sons and daughters have long since left, and there are fewer and fewer Parsis left to sustain Udvada’s only Parsi ‘industry’—the Atash Behram. The sellers of sandalwood, prayer caps and religious medals eke out a living; their wives make a desultory stack of pappads, batch of bhakras or jar of pickles which worshippers buy only as part of the Udvada experience.
It is getting rarer to see the primitive loom which dominated every otla in the past, with women weaving the seventy-two strands of virgin wool into the sacred thread or kusti. The art is dying out with the old village matriarchs—or old maids—so much so that a UNESCO-aided project commissioned a documentary detailing every step. The kusti tied ritually at the waist three times a day over the white muslin sudreh symbolically girds the Zoroastrian for his or her battle against evil. A child is invested with both for the first time at the Navjote—‘new life’—which is the initiation into the faith.
The white-robed priests are no less beleaguered. Whereas in the past there would be six or seven people coming into Udvada every day to pagey paro or bow to the Iranshah, and use their services as intermediaries with the Almighty Ahura Mazda, today there’s a barely a handful in a month, business picking up on the special days of the religious calendar.
The Atash Behram itself, throne of the Iranshah, most revered, if not the only, place of pilgrimage for the Parsis, lodestar, community bond—yet you could almost miss it. It is tucked away, but sandalwood wraps the air, and its gong reverberates through the street, marking the changing of the geh, the five watches of the day, when the fire is fed with sticks of sandalwood, proffered on shining long-handled ladles, by a member of one of nine families historically anointed for this privilege. They trace their lineage to the nine sons of three descendants of Nairyosang Dhawal, the legendary priest through whose proxy hand Ahura Mazda had kindled this sacred fire, thirteen centuries earlier. Oil lamps are the only source of light, by tradition there is no electric connection on its precincts.
The priests go through a punishing ten-day ritual to cleanse themselves for the monthly honour of stepping into the sanctum sanctorum, and performing the boe at the start of every geh. Understand, therefore, the pain of Khurshed Dastur, whose family has resided in the shadow of the Iranshah for nearly 300 years, when he speaks of people ‘coming here as if it was a picnic’. He points to a small sign specifying appropriate clothing near the huge copper vessels where you are supposed to wash your face and hands, and say your kusti-tying prayers before entering the actual building. ‘Can you believe it? People actually argue about covering their heads! When you ask how they can come in shorts, they quibble, these are bicycle shorts, or some kind of skirt. We copied the words of this sign exactly from the Baha’i temple in Delhi.’
He shakes his paghdi-bound head and says, ‘We left everything behind in Iran. This fire took the place of a ruler; the fire is the first son of Ahura Mazda, through it we reach Him. Thus you are in a twice-revered place. Can you not switch off your mobile phone? Apart from anything, the waves interfere with the cosmic power of the prayers chanted by the dasturjis.’
The laity simply doesn’t understand, to Khurshed Dastur’s regret, starting with his own daughter. ‘I can’t go with her to McDonald’s; she’s too embarrassed by the dagli and paghdi. I wear at all times. Should I give up a 300-year-old honour for a hamburger?’
The Iranshah, crackling unfazed by the mortal anxieties around it, itself went through a trial of fire. Its Udvada sojourn accounts for less than a fourth of the 1300-year journey, from the windswept shore near Sanjan through hidden caves in the Barhot hills, Bansda, Surat, Bulsar, and longest of all in Navsari, a town which grew far more commercially prosperous in its divine shadow than Udvada has ever been. There, the rivalry between priests squabbling over its lucrative tending became so acrimonious that one group absconded with the holy fire one night in 1742. It was harboured in Surat while the dispute was sorted out. And finally, as recorded in the Imperial Gazetteer, it came to its current residence, on 28 October 1742.
Grim portraits in the outer hall of the Iranshah record the role of the community’s legendary philanthropists in honouring its most powerful: symbol, Bai Motlibai Maneckjee Wadia, Maneckjee Naoroji Wadia, Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy, Dinshaw Fardoonjee Mulla … Then amidst all the vaulting munificence of the patriarchs and matriarchs, a small contribution speaking of the darkness of tragedy, and the light to dispel it. ‘This lamp candelabra is donated in everlasting memory of our darling daughter Persis Cyrus Khambatta.’
Udvada’s fire burns ferociously, and none will dare to call it the last burst of a dying community. Its streets may have fallen silent, and even the erosion of its shoreline is symbolic; the Arabian Sea which swept to safety a small band fleeing Arab conquest now threatens the home of the fire they kindled in thanksgiving not far from here. Khurshed Dastur’s proud religious mantle may get its come-uppance from an instant hamburger. But faith is a tough cookie. We don’t know if young Persis battled tenaciously for her life, or quietly acquiesced in its snuffing, but one can be fairly certain that Udvada’s fire will rage, rage, Dylan-like, against the fading of its light, that its gentle followers will not go into the good night.
27.
Arrow Of The Blue-Skinned God
Jonah Blank
The town of Nasik, about a hundred miles out of Bombay, is believed to be the place where Rama, Sita and Lakshman made their ashram in the Dandak forest. Worship of the Ayodhyan hero has been strong here for centuries. For lodgings I chose the Dasaratha Hotel over the Rama Guest House, and I ate at a little restaurant across the street from the Hanuman Saw Mill.
Pilgrims from all over Maharashtra were gathering at the Temple of the Black Rama to celebrate the festival of Ramanavami. So many of them had flocked to the shrine that riot police stood about anxiously, their vicious bamboo lathis at the ready. Several dozen schoolchildren in paramilitary white uniforms with red berets regulated the flow of human traffic, gleefully blowing thei
r silver whistles with only occasional pauses to fill their lungs with more air. Children and whistles, I mused with my fingers stuck in my ears, should always be kept far apart.
In the courtyard a guru was haranguing his audience to model their lives after those of Rama and Sita. Beneath the overhang of a stone portico, a small group of elderly men and women sat singing hymns to the accompaniment of drums, flutes and tiny brass cymbals. Peasant women, in from the countryside for the big day, circumambulated the mandir while tossing finely ground mica into the sky.
Rama was born, legend says, at the stroke of high noon. As twelve o’clock approached, the crowd grew noisier. Kids smashed coconut husks on the steps of the shrine. A low murmur of ‘Sri Ram, Sri Ram’ welled up through the masses. The worshippers pressed forward—men at one of the temple’s doors, women at the other—surging ahead as the sun crept slowly closer to its zenith, each person aching to be the first one inside.
At the stroke of noon, drums deep within the shrine began to roll like thunder. The pack of devotees let out a joyous shout, tossed flower petals and little globules of white sugar. The paramilitary prepubescents gave up any attempt to maintain order and blew their shrill whistles with gleeful abandon. Police guarding the temple doors let worshippers in three at a time.
The closer one got to the top step, the tighter the bottleneck grew. Men shamelessly squirmed and shoved, pushed and poked, jostled and jabbed to get in front of their comrades. It was more brutal than a Tokyo subway. For twenty minutes I bore the blows; with as much good humour as I could muster, but then I started to hit back. An elbow gouged my kidney, and I responded with a fist to the offending man’s jaw. A knee slammed into my abdomen, and I answered with a backhand strike to a stranger’s solar plexus. By the time I reached the door my blood was up; I found myself perversely savouring the roughness of the melee. When I entered the holy sanctum to march past the looming black icon of Rama, I had to choke back a hearty obscenity just leaving my lips.
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