The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  A flight of steps led up to the chamber’s back door. The stairs were guarded by a uniformed chowkidar, watchman. He caught me sneaking in, against the one-way flow of bald pilgrims. I explained that I was not intending to have a tonsure, only to see the bundles of hair. I persisted that I was solely concerned with the buying and selling of old hair … my regard was for the shrine’s part in the wig business, rather than its religious role. It was obviously the wrong thing to have said. The guard ordered me to leave. To him – and to everyone else – I was a sick-minded voyeur.

  I sat at the foot of the steps wondering how to get past the sentry. Bhalu, who was running a scam near the exit gate, came over to see what the problem was. He had brewed up a pot of some foul-smelling liquid.

  “Get that away from me”, I said.

  “Rub in a spoon of it and your sunburn will disappear.”

  “But I don’t have sunburn.”

  “Well, it’ll cure all other skin problems too.”

  “What’s in it?”

  Bhalu disliked revealing the exact recipes of his potions, fearing a copycat scam-artist might be listening in. I stared into the pot. It was certainly attracting a great deal of attention from Tirumala’s flies.

  “Got something sweet in it, has it? The flies love it … so do the bluebottles.”

  Only after considerable persuasion did the Trickster lift the veil on his concoction. Even for him, it was particularly inventive. Among the main ingredients were a kilo of sugar, two teaspoons of salt, a knob of ghee and a liter of stolen creosote.

  Bhalu said he would get me past the chowkidar if I promised to publicize the sunburn lotion. I agreed to do what I could to help. Without wasting a moment, he showed me the secret. He waited for a knot of newly shaven pilgrims to exit and, choosing the moment, told me to walk backwards into the chamber. Everyone, he said, would assume I was leaving rather than entering. He was right.

  There were actually several tonsuring halls arranged beside each other in a line. All were severely unpleasant. Marble-floored, with strip lighting, no ventilation, thick with flies, and strewn with haystack-like heaps of black hair, they were like a cross between a sheep-shearing shed in the Australian Outback and a rundown Turkish bath. Along one wall of the main chamber were the barbers – about fifty of them. Squatting on low wooden stools, they chattered away to each other, wielding cut-throat razors like boy scouts with bowie knives. Before them, cross-legged on the floor, heads tilted forward, arms by their sides, fifty pilgrims sat frozen to the spot, as the razor blades pared away every strand of hair.

  There was no question of a bit off the top, a light trim, or even a short back and sides. The standard cut being dished out was a zero on any scale. Spend a few minutes observing the shrine’s barbers, and you realize what frivolous stuff hair is. We preen ourselves like macaws, pampering our mops with expensive shampoos, conditioners and oils. We fling ourselves at the mercy of coiffeurs in up market salons. But forty-five seconds before a Tirumala barber shatters even the most outrageous delusion.

  The head is first dipped in a bucket. When the barber’s waxy palm has fondled the water into the scalp, the shearing begins. The blade begins at the crown, sweeping down to the brow in a single dextrous movement. Then back towards the neck. Four more strokes in quick succession and it’s all over … total baldness.

  At one end of the chamber an army of haggard men were gathering the hair into a single heap. Exceptionally fine locks were ferreted out by a special foreman. They were kept aside to be put in one of the frequent hair auctions. Yet many of these never reach the international wig trade. Instead, they’re bustled away to the black market outside. P.D. Roy had told me that his team of craftsmen would regularly visit Tirumala for the pick of the crop. Because nothing less than the best, he had said, would do for a Director’s Brand wig.

  Remembering my promise to Bhalu, I waylaid a group of hairless pilgrims who were preparing to leave the hall. I advertised the miraculous potion, saying that a limited supply was available outside. They asked a string of questions. Was it suitable for sensitive skin? How much did it cost? Was it made from the purest ingredients? Did it protect the scalp from the harshest sunlight? I fielded the inquiries with appropriate inventiveness and went back over to the barbers. Perhaps, I thought, it would be worth drawing people’s attention to the potion while they were lining up.

  My sales pitch, which had started as a shy apology, soon turned into a merciless harangue. Before I knew it, I was claiming wide-ranging applications for the brew. It was, I said, a panacea … it would protect against sunburn, dandruff, scabies, lice, ringworm, and any known diseases of the head. Apply it once and your scalp would be as soft as suede, but protected from the elements like the tarred hull of a brigantine. Any unsatisfied customers; I went on, would be given a full refund. As I congratulated myself for an effort worthy of the Secret Army, Bhalu charged into the tonsuring hall and grabbed me by the collar.

  “We”ve got to get out of here right now!” he said.

  “What do you mean? Listen to my pitch … I’ve got really good at selling.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve got too good,” riposted the Trickster. “Everyone’s demanding their money back …”

  “What’s wrong with the potion? I thought it was the best stuff around.”

  For the first time Bhalu appeared genuinely nervous.

  “It’s the flies,” he said, once we had made our escape from the hall. “They loved the stuff … they stick to it like glue.”

  NINETEEN

  Real Power

  Only those who have been sucked down in the maelstrom of an ecstatic south Indian crowd can understand the hateful nature of the sensation. Intoxicated with zeal, and fanatic beyond all reason, the mass of devotees waiting to hear swami Sri Gobind speak pressed around. Some were cackling – gripped by the laughter of lunacy. Others were wailing for no apparent reason. Bhalu and I fought to stand upright, snatching at air. Around us, three thousand of the godman’s supporters surged forward. Conceiving that their need was, quite obviously, greater than ours, I called the Trickster back. We would attend an audience with the famous Madrasi guru another day.

  By way of consolation, I suggested we visit a special festival, being held at a local sanctuary.

  When I had heard that a shelter for mistreated cattle was having an “Open Day”, I thought it was a joke. Bhalu was the first to rebuke me for finding humor in what even he considered to be a sacred creature. For, in India, cows are taken very seriously indeed.

  A great painted banner welcomed us to the annual bovine Open Day. Beyond it, the modest sanctuary was showing off its work, and encouraging visitors to express their affection for cows. About seventy cattle were being cared for at the shelter. Some had been hit by vehicles and left for dead; others were the victims of starvation, disease or stress. But the center was far more than a simple resting place for recuperating cattle. It offered a variety of complementary therapies for the sacred creatures. Massage and acupuncture, light therapy and Ayurvedic treatments, each had been adapted for the bovine community.

  Most of the shelter’s cows were the familiar zebu cattle: the powerhouse of India. Long-horned and with a distinctive hump, the country’s two hundred million zebu cows do the work of fifteen million tractors. But they do far more than hauling carts and ploughs. They provide milk and dung for fuel, and play a central role in the religious spirit of the nation.

  After greeting a number of convalescing cattle, a tall, rather severe young lady apprehended me. She had dressed up for the bovine fete. A mazarine-blue frock hung from her slender form. Very swish, I thought, tucking my grimy shirt into my pants. We exchanged pleasantries. When I told her that I had spent much of my time in England, her initial courtesy turned to hostility.

  “Murderer!” she shrieked, as other respectable members of Madras society craned their necks to see what was going on.

  “What do you mean? I’ve never murdered anything in my life.”

/>   “Bovine spongiform encephalopathy,” she snarled. “You Britishers treat your cows so ruthlessly that they’re dying of plague!”

  It seemed a bit unfair to blame the so-called “mad cow” scare on me. After all, I hadn’t eaten British beef for years. Long before the scandal had hit the headlines, a journalist friend had slipped me a rather unnerving dossier, warning of the risks. The confidential report would have put a butcher off beef.

  But the woman had set her sights on me.

  “The deities are now punishing you damn Britishers!” she announced, before the respectable audience of socialites and abused cattle. “You’re all getting infected from eating our holy animal. It serves you bloody well right!”

  There was nothing I could say to quell the woman’s fury.

  “When will you people stop messing with nature?” she barked, prodding my solar plexus with her index finger. “That’s what’s at the root of the problem … your meddling.”

  “Please understand, I’m not involved in this, I’m innocent.”

  “First you mistreat cows, next you test cosmetics on rabbits, and you’re evil! Why do you think the poor zebu cow is losing its hump?”

  The woman pushed her crimson glass bangles up her arms, as if she was spoiling for a fight.

  “Vanishing hump? What are you going on about?”

  “The hump! The hump! It’s disappearing … a few more years and there won’t be a zebu hump left in India!”

  I had heard of the famous case of the zebu’s vanishing hump. The problem had begun when “unholy” European cows were brought to India and bred with sacred Hindu zebu cattle. The project, which was supposed to lead to a higher yield of milk, worked better than anyone had dared to hope. But it had never crossed the scientists’ minds that the famous zebu hump might be lost in the new gene cocktail. The loss of a cow’s hump doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

  For three thousand years India’s zebu cattle have drawn carts and ploughs. The simplest form of yoke – a straight wooden bar placed across the hump – is used as standard from Amritsar to Alleppey. Without the hump, farmers can’t plough their fields. With eighty-three million ploughs and carts to be redesigned, the very future of India seems suddenly in jeopardy.

  I apologized to the militant bovinophile. I had been blinkered until that moment. Henceforth, I explained, I would dedicate my life to saving the zebu’s hump. I would go and live in a mountain monastery and tend dear zebu cattle, drinking nothing but milk.

  The radical woman was not pleased with my facetious attitude.

  “How dare you make fun of milk?” she lisped. “It is a miracle … it is the Milk Miracle!”

  “Miracle! What are you talking about?”

  “Ganesha drinking milk … I saw it with my own eyes!”

  The Milk Miracle: it was all coming back to me. In England, fish have been found to rain from the sky; in the United States, people regularly spontaneously combust. And in India, deities drink milk. Well, to be more exact, effigies of the four-armed elephant god Ganesha quaffed milk in temples and homes around the world on a single day in 1995.

  The day Ganesha drank milk was a curious one. It began with a man in Delhi claiming he had seen an idol of the deity drink a spoonful of milk in his neighbor’s house. News of the miracle spread … first through the back-streets of Old Delhi, then across the capital, throughout India, and on. By dawn, Hindus across the known world were hurrying to feed cow’s milk to their statues. Temples were mobbed by the pious, all clutching tablespoons of milk. Millions of Indians, from Calcutta to California, reported having witnessed the miracle themselves. By the end of the second day, Ganesha had had enough, he would drink no more.

  Mad cow disease, milk miracles, and a tale of the vanishing hump: there was much to explain. But the militant lady at the cow shelter was in no mood for scientific deliberation. Thrusting her bird-like wrist up in the air, she ordered me to leave. I was unwelcome. My hands were stained with bovine blood.

  * * * *

  I spent much of the afternoon ferreting about at the back of Higginbotham’s Bookshop on Anna Salai Road. Amid the racks of turgid textbooks and biographies on the first-floor, I came across a volume extolling the pleasures of toilet seat collecting. I have a passing interest in obscure collections. A snippet which later began to obsess me was this: before President Nixon departed for China in 1972 on his ground-breaking journey of diplomacy, he sent a special covert team ahead. Presidential missions regularly necessitate such reconnaissance units. But the squad’s job was not to search for concealed bugs in hotel rooms, or to make sure the red carpets weren’t moth-eaten. Their brief was to double-check every toilet seat to be used by the President. The book divulged a little-known fact – many Chinese loo seats are made from the poisonous sumal tree. When a tender Western posterior engages the wooden seat, an allergic reaction can occur.

  Think of it. The President’s bottom gets an embarrassing rash: what humiliation. One thing leads to another. The CIA is sent into defame the Chinese Premier’s own behind. Tit-for-tat expulsions from each other’s embassies follow. Then massing of troops, the launching of spy planes, AWACS and extreme-depth submarines. Before you know it, someone’s pressing the nuclear button. Armageddon, all because of a toilet seat.

  As I was deliberating how the Cold War might have been, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Bhalu. He was beaming expansively.

  “OK, I’ve set it all up!” he announced, folding his arms.

  “How did you find me here? What have you set up? Look, have a listen to this story about Nixon’s Chinese trip …”

  “We must leave right away,” maintained the Trickster.

  “Where?”

  “To Sri Gobind … he’s waiting to see you.”

  * * * *

  The forecourt of the luminary’s ashram was choked with even more devotees than before. Thousands had traveled across India merely to catch a glimpse of the man they revered as a deity. Others were in search of salvation. More still yearned to be healed: to cast away crutches or rid themselves of their white sticks, neck braces and bandages. Knotted together like a knitted quilt, they stood firm; an impassable barrier between us and the ashram.

  “Bhalu,” I said, as we approached the crowds, “look at them, we’ll never get through!”

  But the Trickster apprehended one of the guru’s cronies and whispered something to him. Mysteriously, the concourse of infirm and fanatic acolytes parted down the middle, like butter carved with a heated knife. Calling for us to follow, the godman’s henchman led the way into the compound.

  The activity of a large ashram is quite bewildering. In some respects it’s like a military encampment. Sentries are posted at the gates. Staff supervises the serving of meals, meditation sessions, seminars, and workshops. The place is a closed unit, run along strict, unwavering lines. Yet, in other respects a spiritual ashram couldn’t be less like a battalion’s camp. No one speaks in normal voices; they go about whispering. Neither do they frown, gloat, whinge, like real human beings. With bare feet and faces rapt with dreamy expressions, they list about like lotus-eaters.

  Far too twisted to appreciate the compassionate atmosphere, my instinct was to escape. But the henchman beckoned us forward to a private apartment within the compound. As we snaked through corridors lit with yellow light, past offices where main-frame computers were crunching numbers, I questioned how Bhalu had gained us such easy access into the nerve center of the cult. When I asked him what falsehood he had dreamt up, he grinned and pointed ahead.

  A male secretary with a shaven scalp led us through a carpeted conference room, replete with a tortoiseshell-veneered table, into a modest-sized library. The walls were lined with dozens of exquisite volumes, most bound in turquoise leather with finely tooled spines. Mounted high on one wall was a pastel portrait of the yogi, his palms pressed together, his expression oozing meekness. Twin garlands of marigolds had been tied across the sketch. The se
cretary directed us to a chintz-covered sofa. Then he left.

  I tugged the Trickster’s shirt-tail as the aide tottered off to bring refreshments.

  “What did you tell them, Bhalu?”

  The boy had no time to reply. The door was swept back by a hulkish American bodyguard, who towered up like a jinn. Two young women scurried in, sprinkling pink rose petals on the carpet. Another girl followed closely behind, strumming her manicured nails across a lyre. Each was clothed in a simple pink-colored cotton garment. After the maidens came the avatar himself, with the same airy expression as his admirers. Behind him, a dozen or so factotums, yes-men, secretaries, bearers, and acolytes gamboled in. All of them – male and female – were attired in orchid-pink raiments. By the time the entire entourage had filed in, the library was close to capacity.

  Amid the scent of rose petals and the mellifluous harping, the swami paced over to where Bhalu and I were sitting.

  His skin seemed to have a purply-brown glow; the unusual tinge complemented a voluminous mantle of lavender silk in which the guru was wrapped. A white polka-dot tikka was painted squarely on his divine brow. I studied the features of his face. They were not unlike those of Bhola Das, the indefatigable hangman of West Bengal.

  Taking his time, the sadhu greeted us:

  “Tahir Shah,” he said, cheerily, “it is a great honor to meet you at last.”

  Perplexed at how the godman might have heard of me, I replied that the honor was all mine. After all, it is not every day one meets a god. The guru clustered the fingertips of his right hand together. With a dexterous swiveling of the wrist, he had materialized something from thin air. I raised an eyebrow. This was a sleight which Feroze had made me practice feverishly. The godman pressed the object into the center of my palm. It was cold and hard. I looked down at the gift – a miniature silver effigy of Ganesha.

  I thanked Sri Gobind. Waving my praise aside, he flicked his fingers at the entourage. He gave no direct instructions yet, like automata, they each performed their own duty for a moment or two. The bodyguard flexed his back; the rose-petal girls sprinkled; the lyre-player strummed; the factotums ducked their heads sycophantically; the yes-men agreed; the secretaries scribbled on shorthand pads; and the bearers bore.