Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  “Two years later, when I was fifteen, I went to work at the mill too, and was put in the finishing department. When the jute came out of the machine, I was part of the team that cut it up and made it into the jute bales which were then sent to America. It was very hard work, and so dusty that everyone who worked there developed breathing problems. Some of the girls got caught in the machine and were badly injured. But I used to pray to the goddess and she always looked after me.

  “From my childhood I was very spiritual. Both my parents were religious too, and at home we had a small puja to the goddess every day. I was always attracted to the Devi, in her different forms—Ma Kali, Ma Durga, Ma Tara and so on—and I always believed that it was she who saved me from danger. Even as a child I used to love to attend festivals and melas, and especially the Durga Puja, which was my favourite week of the year. I loved to see the immersion of the goddess in the river at the end of the ten-day festival. While we were there I would seek out the company of sadhus and ask them questions. One of my earliest memories is of the Durga Puja, which I first visited in my father’s arms. It was a pleasure just to look at the fair and all the bangles and bracelets on sale. On that day my father would always save up and buy us all hot jalebis.

  “When I was sixteen, I was married off. I never met my husband before the ceremony, and I didn’t really know what it was all about. My husband’s family owned a small shop selling paan and cigarettes and groceries. My father had begun to drink by then, and he never had any money, so my maternal uncle gave Rs 3,000 for the marriage. I cried a lot when I had to move to my in-laws’ house. I was leaving my father and going to a strange place. It was over a year before I would sleep with my husband, and this made him angry. My mother-in-law also did not like me, and kept saying: ‘What are you crying for?’

  “It was shortly after I moved into my husband’s room that I was possessed by the goddess, and had a fit for the first time. A few months later, when I first became pregnant, and went back to my mother to have the child, I went into a full trance. A friend of my mother observed me in this state and said: ‘This is not an illness, this is possession.’ Over the next few years it became more and more frequent: I would start shaking or faint, and fall unconscious. The doctors could do nothing. My children became quite used to it: they thought all mothers were like this. But my husband and my mother-in-law were embarrassed and angry. He would beat me and say: ‘What is this trance? Why is this happening? The customers do not like it and you will drive them away. We cannot afford this.’

  “None of this stopped me. Instead, I became increasingly preoccupied with the goddess and spent more and more of my time in the temple, listening to kirtans. This led to more conflict still. My mother-in-law kept asking: ‘Why do you go to the temple the whole time? You have children.’ But I continued to sneak out whenever I could. I loved to hear the chanting of the names of the goddess, and it always calmed me down and made me happy when I could put garlands around her image.

  “One day I was possessed when I was in the temple, and when I came to, I found the pundit of the temple had garlanded me. Not only that, he had washed my feet and put a sandalwood-paste tilak on my forehead. I asked why he had done this, but he just replied: ‘Ma—don’t refuse.’ From that point on, people at the temple used to worship me, as they thought I was possessed by the goddess, and they gave me offerings and tried to interpret what I was saying during my fits. This frightened me at first, but slowly I grew more confident. My three daughters were no longer babies and I felt better able to imagine taking my own path. But there was increasing conflict at home, especially when devotees followed me and would knock at the door to ask for blessings. I don’t know why, but it seemed that the more angry and violent my husband became, the more often I went into a state of trance. Maybe this also was the doing of the goddess.

  “Before long, quite large numbers of devotees would come to see me in this state—five or ten people a day would come to the house, or the shop if I was working there, and of course they disrupted everything. My husband got more and more furious, saying I had turned our store into a temple. Then one afternoon, after he beat me very badly, I heard a call from Ma Tara. It was a sound which came in the breeze, Tara Ma saying, very clearly: ‘Come to me. All that you may lose, you will recover. I will take care of your daughters. Your place is now with me.’

  “It was not my will. Mother called me, and I had to go. I walked out of the house then and there, taking nothing with me other than the clothes I was wearing. I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to my children. It was already over with my husband; we no longer had a relationship. I spent the first night in the temple of the goddess Kali. That was the lowest moment. I didn’t sleep at all and felt depressed, as if my whole life had broken apart, and I had failed in everything. In fact the first few weeks were very hard. But I kept telling myself that when the Mother calls, there is nothing you can do. I stayed in the temple for two years, living off offerings, and sleeping in the courtyard.

  “Only after much wandering did I finally find my way here to Tarapith. I have now been here twenty years. It was here that Ma Tara fulfilled her promises to me. I have been on many pilgrimages since then, but from the day I arrived here, and after Tapan Sadhu became my protector, Tarapith became my home. I missed my children, of course—the youngest was only four, and none of them were old enough to understand. Often I would weep. But my devotees came to fill the hole in my heart left by the absence of my girls. Now the whole world is full of my children: when I miss my daughters I see my other children, and my heart turns to them. So many people now call me Ma.

  “From the day I left my husband, my trances became less frequent, but I feel her presence more than ever now. I will be sitting here in my hut with Tapan and suddenly I feel that she is here—I feel this with tremendous force—even though I cannot see her with my eyes. This is a very ancient site, and many great saints have attained perfection here though tapasya [ascetism] and meditation. Those who invoke the energy of the Mother here can access her power, and her imagination. She is present in all the rituals that are performed here.

  “One of the reasons I collect skulls is to help visualise her; many saints have seen her using the skulls. The great Bama Khepa—one of the first saints to realise the power of this place—saw her in a circle of fire in the form of a very young girl. Skulls remind us of our mortality, and of the world of illusion that surrounds our daily life. But we also believe that if you awake the skulls through sadhana [Tantric practice], and tame their spirits, they will give you more power and help show you the path to reach the goddess and access her power. They help you to invoke her, and call her to you.

  “The spirits of the dead often stay with the skull. They are formless and shapeless. No one can enclose them or burn them or drown them. You have to worship them, appease them and feed them regularly. You must offer them perfume, flowers and oil. Not all skulls work, of course—you have to give them time. You can tell by the way the skull behaves with food. You feed them rice, dal, raw meat from sacrifices, even whisky. If the skull moves its face away or recedes, then it is not accepting the food, and the skull’s spirit will not help you.

  “What you are looking for is a dissatisfied and troubled spirit. If a person has a peaceful death, and all the funeral rites are conducted properly, he will be reincarnated. But unsatisfied spirits, the ones that have died unfortunate deaths when they are young: they are the ones that linger on, and wander. They take a long time to reincarnate and they are the ones we can call through the midnight air. With luck, they are the ones we can work with.

  “You can’t master spirits. They are wilful and independent. They will come if they want to, and if you please them with special mantras. Some that Tapan taught me are so powerful he said that they can split the tombs open, and make the bodies manifest themselves. You must draw a circle around yourself for protection. Then, when the spirits which you have invoked come, you have to know the mantras which can help you
talk with them, and use their shakti. These are rare skills and great secrets. Compared to Tapan and some of the other masters here, I am just a novice.

  “Now, however, I am beginning to think that Tantra only really works properly when it is coupled with intense devotion, with bhakti. When I was younger and I first came here, I was very obsessed with skulls and the secrets of Tantra. I would do anything to collect new skulls and tend to them—putting vermilion on them, feeding them as well as I could, and bathing them in ghee, yoghurt and honey. I had a whole room filled with them. Once you feed them and they accept the offerings, they are pacified and will help you, protecting you from evil spirits. I found the shakti they gave me exhilarating. I found I could sometimes predict the future. Tapan Sadhu even taught me the secret mantras through which you can get the spirits to bring rain in time of drought.

  “But now my attention is more directed on Ma Tara herself, and increasingly I believe that the most important thing is to get close to her through devotional love. Skulls are still useful and they can be very powerful, but these days I am concentrating simply on the love and worship of the Mother—although in such a way as not to alienate the skulls. You could say that I am bringing them with me on my journey. Love is the most important thing.

  “Tantra on its own can be very dangerous. The skulls may help us to awaken the goddess, but if you make one mistake in the ritual, you can go mad. Some tried to do battle with the goddess, to tame her with magic. Look what happened to them! There are many here who made mistakes in their sadhana, and went insane. So what you need is to find a balance between bhakti and Tantra. With the two of them together, with both love and sacrifice, I believe you are on the right path, and when she thinks you are worthy she will reveal herself. Until then she sends me dreams, and I know I am daily receiving her compassion.

  “Tapan Sadhu taught me all I know about Tantra and love. I met him first in Calcutta, when I was still living in the Kali Mandir. I was passing by, and he was there with his disciples, and he said, ‘You want a paan?’ Over the following years I noticed him when he came to the temple. I was impressed because people said he was very strong and had great powers, but he was a kind and gentle man too. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I realised that if I wished to follow the Tantric path, I needed someone with whom I could perform sadhana. I also realised I needed to find a man who would protect me, because if I went out on the roads on my own I would be vulnerable, and might be attacked.

  “Then Tara Ma sent me a dream, in which I saw the face of Tapan Sadhu, and a voice said, ‘He is waiting for you now.’ I recognised him immediately, so I went to Tarapith, where he lived. For a long while I didn’t dare address a word to him, even though I had settled near his hut, under a tree. Even in Calcutta we had barely talked. But before long the people here began to gossip, and said we were having an affair. So eventually I went to him and said, ‘Since people are saying these things, why don’t we solve the problem by living together? We are not greedy for property: we only need each other.’ So he invited me to his hut, and from that day we stayed together.

  “In Tarapith, thanks to the Mother, I moved onto a different plane. I collected many disciples, and found that the life here suited me. At the end of the first year, Tapan Sadhu said we should go on a yatra, and I agreed to go with him. We travelled in trains across India to Benares, Haridwar and Rishikesh. We had no money for tickets, but the ticket inspectors are a little afraid of the sadhus and they never ask for money.

  “From Rishikesh we walked up into the snows to Badrinath and Kedarnath. By the time we got there it was very cold and the winter blizzards were beginning. But it was still wonderful—I felt I was in heaven. Whatever he ate, I ate. We used to practise yoga and asanas, and live a life of meditation in the silence of the high Himalayas. For me it was pure joy. Looking back at my old domestic life, it seemed meaningless, without any spiritual substance. I felt free for the first time. It was a total release.

  “We stayed up there a whole winter, and then the summer too. In the hot weather, the waters of Ma Ganga were cool and refreshing. But we were too attached to Tara Ma to stay there for longer than that. Ma Ganga is very powerful, but Ma Tara is stronger and more compassionate. The greatest pleasure we have is here, with her. It is here in this place of death, amid the skulls and bones and smoking funeral pyres, that we have found love.”

  That night was the amavashya, the Night of No Moon.

  Crowds started to arrive in the cremation ground around midafternoon. By sunset, preparations had begun in earnest for the sacrificial rituals that were to be performed after midnight. Piles of kindling were carried on the heads of the Tantrics, and goats led in, some pulled on leads by individual sadhus, others in great herds by villagers looking to sell them. In every hut, lamps were lit.

  Many of those who drifted into the burning grounds were sadhus and Baul minstrels, but as the day wore on, a surprising number of those who gathered were ordinary middle-class Bengali families from Bolpur, Shantiniketan and even Calcutta. All, for their different reasons, were determined to access the shakti of the goddess on the night when she was at her most powerful. I asked Manisha if it was unusual that so very many goats were being led into the cremation ground for slaughter.

  “The mother is very hungry,” she replied. “She is constantly needing to be fed, and of course she never moves by herself. To summon her you have to be prepared to feed her entourage of dakinis and yakshis too. They want their pleasures, their drink and the blood of a goat.”

  As darkness fell, and the shadows grew longer, Tapan Sadhu began to build a large pit for the sacred homa fire immediately in front of the hut. It was the first time I’d had a good look at him. Tapan was a handsome old man in his seventies, with a long grey beard and a surprisingly lean and toned body, the fruit of many years of yoga. He brought kindling and wood from the back of the hut, as well as one of the tridents, the biggest skull and a handful of incense sticks. He placed the trident at the edge of the hearth, and the skull at its base. He then garlanded the skull with marigolds and red hibiscus flowers, hanging his rudraksh rosary around it, and carefully placing a thali of offerings and a lit candle beside it. As he was busy with his work, a well-dressed Bengali businessman approached and asked Tapan if he could make the sacrifice for him and his family. After some haggling, terms were agreed.

  Before long, other fires were beginning to flicker through the trees. Across the cremation ground you could see squatting sadhus silhouetted against the flames. Some were muscular and naked, sitting crossed-legged in meditation amid clouds of incense. Others were building yantras of coloured sand under the banyan trees, with candles marking the eight points of the Tara Chakra. A few were passing chillums of bhang around circles of fire watchers. Shrouded, dreadlocked and topknotted figures emerged from the dusk, passed into the light of a fire, then disappeared again into the darkness. From somewhere in the dark I could hear the voice of a lone Baul singing a song about the Devi to the strumming of a dotara and the rasping twang of a khomok:

  I am sick of living, Ma, sick.

  Life and money have run out,

  But I go on crying, Tara, Tara!

  Hoping. You are the Mother of All,

  And our nurse. You carry the Three Worlds,

  In Your Belly.

  I am not calling you Mother any more,

  All you give me is trouble.

  Oh my mad, mad heart!

  Once I had a home and a family,

  Now I am a beggar. What will you think of

  Next, my wild-haired Devi?

  How many times, Mother, will you tie me to this wheel

  Like a blindfolded ox, grinding out oil?

  Take the blindfold off, oh my dark Devi,

  So I can see

  The feet that give comfort.

  At the next fire, one of the sadhus began to blow a conch shell. From other hearths came the noise of wild drumming and ecstatic shouts of “Jaya Tara! Jaya Guru! Jaya Jaya Ma Tara!”
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  If you wish to search for Tara,

  Come to the pyres of Tarapith.

  The Mother plays here night and day,

  Foxes dance with serpents.

  With meat and wine and liquor.

  It is here that Tara’s secrets

  Are revealed.

  Tapan had now lit his homa fire, and soon the flames were shooting up into the darkness. Ironically, it is the Tantrics, who have inverted so much of Hindu ritual, that have remained uniquely faithful to the Vedic fire sacrifices lost almost everywhere else in modern Hinduism; and like the Brahmins they emphasise the need to perform their rituals correctly and exactly.

  The businessman, who introduced himself as Mr. Basu, gathered his family around Tapan’s fire, as casual, eager and relaxed and as at ease as their British equivalents would be on Guy Fawkes Night.

  “We are praying for the improvement of our domestic life,” he explained, “and for our business also.”

  “We want peace in the home,” added his wife, “and children doing well at school.”

  Tapan began to chant mantras, occasionally ringing the bell he kept in his left hand. With his right, every so often he threw a spoonful of ghee on the fire, which made the flames shoot up higher than ever. I took a seat beside Manisha, a little back from the Basu family, and asked her about Tapan’s story.

  “Tapan Sadhu is a Brahmin, a Chatterjee,” she said. “Like me, he was called by the goddess when he was a householder in Calcutta. Like me, he left behind a family.”

  “Is his wife still alive?” I asked.

  “She died recently,” said Manisha. “He had been married to her for fifteen years before the call came from Ma.” She paused. “He happened to be in Calcutta, so he went to her funeral. But his son would not speak to him.”