by Angela Long
I clasped my spoon and scooped up some dal. Only foreigners used utensils here. I’d been advised to keep my spoon in my room. If I lost it, it wouldn’t be replaced. But suddenly I wanted to eat with my hands, to feel the rice and dal in the cup of my palm. I watched the children’s movements.
The girl looked up as I put down my spoon. She smiled. Slowly, she mixed a portion of rice into the dal. I followed. Slowly, she cupped her palm. I felt the stickiness of rice, the wetness of dal. Together we brought our cupped palms closer to our mouths, grains of rice spilling into my yogurt along the way. The girl smiled as encouragingly as a young mother.
The locket sat between our knees on the burlap. I wished I’d filled it with something, anything – a bead, a pebble. I worried now the girl would be disappointed when she discovered there was nothing inside.
Soon, the compartments on my plate were empty. I picked stray grains of rice off the burlap. I touched the locket.
“May we check now, Madame?” the girl asked. “Please?”
The doors of the dining hall opened. Heat and sunshine streamed in as the children gathered their plates and lined up at the washing stations. I heard the monkeys screeching their way towards the place beside the kitchen where the cooks threw vegetable scraps and fruit peels. As they played tug of war with rubbery chapatis, their screeching resembled human laughter even more.
I looked at the girl, suspecting she’d already endured greater disappointments in life than an empty locket. “Go ahead,” I said.
Carefully, she opened the clasp and held the locket open by the hinges. “Look, Madame!”
The silver hollows looked dull, unpolished. But a brightness transformed the girl’s eyes. It was the look of faith, I thought. She closed the locket and held it out to me.
“Keep it,” I said. I knew how easy it would be to find another locket in another town filled with Tibetan refugees.
“Oh, no,” the girl said quickly, “you can’t give away the gods.” She looked at me as though my scarf had just fallen away from my chest. She stood up. “But be careful of those monkeys, Madame. They’ll steal it from you the moment they have the chance.”
The Sage
Every day, I walked from Phool Chatti Ashram to the Ganges River for a swim. Along the way, I passed a cave chiselled out of the rock. There was an old man there, a holy man. He was usually crouched low over a fire, snapping twigs. I tried my best not to let him see me looking inside his home. I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but I was curious. I’d never seen a holy man’s living quarters before. Sometimes, when I thought he was bent low enough, I slowed down to catch a better glimpse of life inside the cave. I saw a battered pot, a wool blanket. I saw an altar at the back: candles burning, pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses. Today the holy man was sitting very still at the mouth of his cave, gazing at the lemon trees. It was difficult not to stare at his long, neatly combed white hair and intense brown eyes.
When I arrived at my swimming spot, I waited behind the rocks until the groups of white-water rafters had bobbed past, then dove straight into water fresh from the Himalayas. The cold was shocking.
At the ashram, they joked I must have had Canadian blood to swim in the Ganges so late in the season. I humoured them, saying I came from a people who ran naked into oceans in subzero temperatures on New Year’s Day. To be honest, my blood rebelled against the water temperature. It numbed my every cell.
But the river cured everything, eventually, I’d been told. Rheumatism. Cancer. Snakebites. Broken hearts. Bad karma. For thousands of years people had found their way to its banks and prayed to it, adorned it with flowers, burned their dead beside it, swum in it. Millions and millions of people. I liked to float along in its current, thinking of this. I liked to imagine my body as a sieve and the river straining through me, the rapids crushing any molecules of disease. I liked to imagine my chronically broken heart coming dislodged and floating downstream like a dead branch, my bad karma sinking to the bottom with the silt. Like the silt, every day it seemed to pile higher as I remembered some new misdemeanor: Lies. Jealousy. Unkindness. It was all there. Cringing in the cold water, I thought back on turning thirty, and on my twenties, and all the way back to my teens. I waited for the river to swallow me whole. But it didn’t.
After my swim, I walked along the beach and shivered. Sometimes I’d see the holy man farther downstream making elaborate gestures with a stick of incense. Other times he just sat there, looking at the rapids. If it was a sunny day, the flattest rocks would be covered with his laundry: cantaloupe-coloured sarongs, matching handkerchiefs and towels. If he was close enough, I’d smile broadly, place my hands in prayer position, bow slightly, and say, “Namaste.” The holy man always seemed amused by this, but he never returned my greeting. Lalita, Phool Chatti’s Yoga and Meditation Director, told me he’d taken a twelve-year vow of silence. I’d also been told to avoid contact with him at all costs. But I figured even holy men liked to be smiled at now and again.
I confess that, while he was busy with his incense stick at the river, I took advantage of his absence from the cave and lingered for a few moments at the threshold, looking more closely at the gods and goddesses and his neatly kept fire-pit, until I started to feel guilty and walked quickly back up the hill to the ashram.
I’d overstayed my time at Phool Chatti. A one-week retreat, a sampler of the yogic path, had turned into three. I’d self-tailored the past two weeks to suit my own spiritual needs, which included reading novels, writing poems, and, of course, swimming in the river. Luckily the ashram was slow that time of year, and Lalita was happy as long as I kept quiet. I think she saw me as a lost soul, too fragile to return to the rigours of travelling alone in India. I think she was right.
As the river became colder, Lalita began to talk of closing for the season, so I walked five kilometers into Laxman Jhula and bought a bus ticket to Rajasthan. On impulse I bought the holy man a bag of oranges and left them by the mouth of his cave.
On my last day at the ashram I walked to the Ganges for my final swim. I saw the holy man inside his cave, bent over the fire, snapping twigs. The moment I reached the cave entrance, he turned and gestured for me to enter. I looked nervously back toward the ashram. He slapped the ground, hard, with a twig and fixed me with a scowl. I went inside.
He led me to the altar. There, beneath an image of Shiva, balanced a pyramid of oranges. He pointed to me, to the oranges, to Shiva. He placed his hands in front of his chest in prayer position and bowed his head. Then he rubbed the spine of a cabbage leaf onto the dirt floor and began to write with its juice: Breakfast. Tomorrow. 7 a.m. He looked to me for a response. I nodded. He clapped his hands together twice, smiling so widely I could see he had only four teeth. Then he turned his back to me, bent over the fire, and snapped twigs.
When I arrived the next morning, the holy man was stirring a pot over the fire. I offered him the only item I had left in my chocolate stash: a Kit-Kat. He clapped his hands and smiled, gesturing towards a cushion atop a bamboo mat. He busied himself with the pot, and I fidgeted on the cushion, growing more and more nervous, but my nervousness was soon overtaken by curiosity. I was at leisure to examine every detail of the cave: the bedroll, the symbols written in ash on the wall above, the package of incense, the books stacked neatly in a recess. He walked to a shelf made of branches lashed together by twine and extracted an assortment of bags from a large box, then returned to the fire.
Finally the holy man presented me with a mysterious concoction in an ornately patterned copper bowl. He sat in front of me and watched as I took my first spoonful. I’d prepared myself to like it no matter how horrible it tasted. But when it reached my tongue, I raised my eyebrows in surprise, then took another bite, and another. I couldn’t stop eating. It was as though he’d captured every flavour I’d ever loved. The sweet, the savoury. It was all there in my copper bowl.
He laughed and gave me more.
He pointed to Shiva, to the pot on the fire, to me. He went outside and returned with the spine of a cabbage leaf. Deva, he wrote, pointed to me and then to the centre of his forehead. I see you. I must have looked confused because he squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and then wrote: Good heart. I see you. Inside.
I panicked for a moment. Could he read my mind? I tried to think pure thoughts, and he laughed. Suddenly his expression changed to one of pain. Suffer, he wrote quickly, the cabbage stem beginning to turn to mush. Too much.
“I’ve suffered too much?” I asked, and he nodded.
The holy man clapped his hands and smiled. He threw the cabbage stem aside and picked up a twig. He scratched into the dirt. He pointed to every word. “Good is coming,” I said, and he clapped again. “Good is coming,” I said, liking the feel of the words in my mouth.
Mother Ganges
“One dip in the Ganges, and all bad karma, washed away,” a taxi driver tells me. And every day, I swim in the Ganges. I walk down the path through the garden, along the small sandy beach, past the tree filled with langur monkeys and to the spot where the Ganges is just a step off a smooth rock. The current is strong here. The rapids very close. I let the river pull me from one rock to the next, until I’m hooked like a dead branch. Then I climb out and lie on a sun-warmed rock gazing up at the Himalayas.
I swim every day, imagining my bad karma sloshing about in the rapids, eddying downstream just before the bridge. I imagine the fish swimming away from it and the ferryboats cutting through its wake. I begin to dress in white and offer a five-armed goddess fresh guavas.
“If you swim every day in the Ganges for one month, never bad body odour again,” a yoga instructor tells me. And I swim, every day for a month. My skin becomes smoother, my hair softer. I notice that even on the hottest of days, even when I walk to the village and wait for two hours at the bank to cash a travellers cheque, I don’t smell.
“Three deaths offered to Mother Ganges,” a holy man tells me. “Death under five, death by cobra bite, death of woman with fetus in belly.” And I stand on the smooth rock, trying to read the flow. I step in. Float until I’m hooked.
The Saint
There was a buzz in the air. Devotees dressed in loose white cotton walked briskly, toting clipboards and folding chairs. The staff at the Western Canteen pumped out orders so quickly I barely had time to sit down before my veggie burger arrived. It could have been North America if it weren’t for the autorickshaws spewing diesel on the other side of the Amritapuri Ashram walls.
I had my first view of Amma –the Mother of Immortal Bliss, otherwise known as the Hugging Saint – on a billboard. Her doe-like eyes and radiant smile rose above the palm forests of southern India as I entered Amritapuri’s maze of flamingo-pink buildings that some called a “utopia in the jungle.” High-rise buildings housed a little metropolis of devotees and visitors. A sound system of rock-concert caliber filled the auditorium’s stage. Posters advertising astrology readings, kickboxing, and tabla lessons competed with the ashram’s daily schedule that began at 4:50 a.m. with the chanting of the thousand Names of the Divine Mother.
I took my first bite of veggie burger, enjoying the taste of mustard and dill pickle after months of dal and rice. I looked at my table companion – twenty-four-year-old Gabriel from the American Midwest. Gabriel had been here for two months, rarely venturing beyond the ashram walls. His muscular arms were tattooed with Celtic serpents. He closed his eyes while sipping ginger-lemon tea, smiling to himself.
Gabriel leaned back, trying to cross his legs while wearing a long white lunghi. “Do you know anything about Mother?” he asked.
“Never heard of her until a few days ago,” I confessed.
“Get out! How did you know she’d be here? She’s usually on tour right now.”
“I didn’t know she’d be here.”
“Well, it must be destiny then.” He sipped his tea. “Like when I met her.”
He told me the story of Amma’s visit to Kansas City. “People started lining up the night before.” He paused to caress a thick silver bracelet around his wrist. “I was skeptical, at first, like you. Until she hugged me.”
Gabriel watched as I took another bite of my burger. “She didn’t stop hugging. She hugged for nineteen hours straight without taking a break.”
Amma was used to hugging; she’d been at it since 1971, and had hugged more than thirty million people, including Sharon Stone, Jim Carrey, Oprah. In a country where gurus were as ubiquitous as chapatis, Amma had found her niche. She could have made holy ash flow from the centre of her palm or diamond rings appear out of thin air, but instead she hugged away what she called “the poverty of love.”
“I was hooked. I followed her for the rest of the U.S. tour, then sold everything to come here.” Gabriel gestured towards the worn dirt path leading into the male-only dormitories. He’d quit his construction job in the States. He’d traded in his tool belt for a silver Amma bracelet. He even had his own personal mantra now. “I just got it a few days ago.” He glanced around, lowering his voice: “I was invited to a private meeting with her. She whispered it into my ear.”
I sipped my cappuccino, looking at Gabriel, so earnest, so eager to believe.
Gabriel put his hands together in front of his chest in prayer position. “Thank you for sharing your energy with me.” He wobbled his head back and forth a little, India-style. “The line-up starts after breakfast, over there.” He pointed towards the auditorium.
“Line-up for what?”
“For darshan tokens.” He stood up, adjusting his lunghi. “You need a number if you want a hug.”
The next morning, there was even more of a buzz in the air. The dirt pathways of the ashram filled with children in school uniforms, women in saris, men in business suits. A line began to form in front of the thirty-thousand-square-foot Kali Temple, where Amma was scheduled to dole out hugs. I walked through the throngs to the auditorium.
“You’re very late,” said a woman with a German accent. “You might not get in today.” She handed me a plastic red chip painted with a number. “Darshan for Indian nationals first,” she explained. “Then international visitors.”
I rubbed the number on my token as I walked toward the Juice Stall, beginning to feel a little conspicuous. Since I’d been in India, I’d traded in my T-shirts and cargo pants for a collection of colourful salwar-kameez and flowy skirts. I’d even painted my toenails. My smiles were met with cold stares from the white-clad westerners.
When the temple doors opened, the crowd became even more animated. Security guards ushered everyone through a security check complete with metal detector. They herded the international visitors upstairs to the viewing gallery, gift shop, thrift store, and travel agency. I walked around the perimeter of the gallery until I had a clear view of the stage. Amma sat on a large throne-like dais, smiling as though we were all her long-lost children, finally reunited. It was difficult not to smile back. A retinue of western and Indian attendants surrounded her. She looked just like the image on the billboard – the kindly, chubby aunt I’d always longed for. She sat cross-legged with the erect posture of a yogi. A woman to her right nodded. The hugs began.
Hours passed and Amma hugged. Between trips to the juice vendor’s stall, I watched businessmen collapse in her arms and sob. I watched crying babies silence at her touch. Her smile radiated to the rafters and everyone, including me, began to walk around with goofy looks on their faces. It was difficult to remain cynical in the face of such an unbridled display of emotion, even after I’d entered the gift shop filled with Amma dolls, calendars, fridge magnets, body wash. The contagion of goodwill forced me to consider buying a purse made of recycled Amma curtains – a brocade pattern on heavy, cream-coloured silk – for the price of a week’s stay on the ashram.
I read free pamphlets about Amma’s empire – a university, hospital, a network of aid organizatio
ns recognized by the United Nations. I read that she’d been born in the lotus position and began performing miracles before she could talk. It was said she could turn water to pudding, kiss cobras, divert storms. This all before the hugging began in her parents’ cowshed at the age of fourteen. I walked from the gift shop to the Internet station to the thrift store, where used head-to-toe women’s swim robes worn in the ashram’s outdoor swimming pool were sold, then I returned to the balcony to see how Amma was doing. She was flushed, but barely perspiring in the heat. I wished I could say the same for myself. I’d already taken two cold showers that day and it was only ten o’clock. Between hugs, an attendant squirted what appeared to be perfume onto Amma’s bosom. Another fanned her face.
Finally, it was time for the international visitors to queue. I remembered what Gabriel had said about asking Amma for something, either verbally or silently, because she could read minds, of course.
The line-up moved quickly. Attendants stood at regular intervals to nudge dawdlers along. I went over a list of possible wishes in my head: World peace. The end of poverty. How about the end of suffering, to cover all bases? Or maybe I should wish to publish a novel? A novel that would change the world? I felt a gentle nudge as I contemplated.
I was almost there. The smell of damp bodies and rose-scented perfume was disorientating. A western attendant asked: “Where are you from?” I had to think for a moment: “Canada.” I wondered if I’d been drugged, if someone had slipped something into my freshly squeezed mango juice.
I began to panic when the woman who’d been standing in front of me seconds before staggered out of Amma’s arms, crying. I noticed make-up smeared on Amma’s pure white sari. I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on a wish. Peace. End of Suffering. Novel. A hand on my shoulder pushed me down to a semi-kneeling position. Another hand nudged me towards Amma’s warm, soft bosom. Amma grasped the back of my neck and pulled me to her breast. She squeezed. Hard. She murmured something that sounded like “Ma, ma, ma, ma.” She gave me a small paper bag, which contained, I discovered later, a packet of holy ash and a hard candy. Cherry flavour. My favourite.