Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  Cut the rice stalks,

  O rice-growing brother.

  Cut them in a bunch

  Before they begin to smell

  Rotten like your body

  Without a living heart.

  Sell your goods, my store-keeping brother,

  While the market is brisk,

  When the sun fades

  And your customers depart,

  Your store is a lonely place …

  Later, after dinner, Paban and the other Bauls went out to hear a rival Baul singer perform in the Kenduli market place, leaving Kanai on his own, sitting cross-legged on the rug, singing softly. I sat beside him and asked what he was doing.

  “This is how I remember the songs,” he said. “I am blind, so I cannot read and write the verses. Instead, when I am left alone, I hum a few bars and repeat the songs to myself to help me commit them to memory. It is by repeating them that I remember.”

  Kanai smiled. “There are some advantages to being blind,” he said. “I can learn songs much quicker than other people, and pick up tunes very fast. Debdas says that I see with my ears. When he forgets, I have to remind him, even if it is a song that he originally taught me, or sometimes, even one he composed.”

  At Kanai’s request, I lit a cigarette for him, and we chatted about his childhood, as he filled out the brief picture of his life that Manisha had painted for me.

  “I was born in the village of Tetulia,” he said, leaning back and puffing contentedly away, “not far from here, near Birbhum. I was born with eyes that could see, but lost my sight when I caught smallpox before my first birthday. Who knows? Maybe I did something wrong in a previous life to be punished like this.

  “My father had no land of his own, so used to work during the harvest and the planting season for the local zamindar. The landlord gave him a small house, and eventually he got to own it. I had two sisters and a brother, as well as fourteen cousins, and at one point there were as many as twenty-three people sleeping in the house, so we used to take our rest in shifts. All my uncles were casual labourers too, except one who was a silk weaver: every day he used to go to the zamindar’s estate house, where the looms were kept. The zamindar looked after the village and treated us all as if we were his extended family. He employed everyone in the village, either in his fields or in his silk business. He was a good man, but there was not much money—things were always tight for us.

  “I was ten when my brother was killed in an accident involving a heavily laden bullock cart, and eleven when my father passed away too, from an asthma attack. This left me with the responsibility to feed my two sisters. They were growing girls and needed food. At first it wasn’t too hard. Once I got used to begging from my own friends, from door to door, I found it wasn’t difficult to get enough to fill all our stomachs. We were loved and looked after: I only had to say, ‘I am hungry,’ and I would be fed. The door of the poor man is always open—it is only the doors of the rich that close as you approach. If the people in the village came to hear that another family was going through a hard time they would always give them rice or a cow dung cake for fuel.

  “I used to go out in the morning with my stick and my bowl, taking the name of Hari [Krishna], and would come back by lunch. Whatever I had collected we shared, and ate. People knew the family, and knew what had happened to us. They felt sorry for us, and although they were very poor themselves they would always give something: a rupee, or some rice and vegetables. The problems only began when one of my sisters became eligible for marriage.

  “I was fifteen, and beginning to talk to prospective grooms, but it was clear from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be easy. Some people in the village thought we were cursed because of all the bad luck we had suffered—first with me going blind, then the two deaths in rapid succession. Others considered my proposal, but demanded dowries I knew I would never be able to pay. I became more and more depressed, and without realising it I must have communicated this to my sister. One day I was at a friend’s place drinking tea when I was told I had to go back home immediately. When I returned, I discovered that my sister had committed suicide. I had no idea she was even near doing such a thing: she must have thought she was too much of a burden on me, and that we could not afford the wedding. Whatever the reason, she hanged herself from the ceiling beam of our one room.

  “Coming after the death of my father and brother, this sent me mad with grief: I was shattered, and blamed myself. I stayed at home for weeks and then I decided I couldn’t remain in the village any longer; I must make a new life for myself. It was then that I remembered Gyananand Sadhu, the Baul guru who had heard me singing when I was bathing in the pukur as a boy. I had loved the way he sang just as much as he liked my voice. I knew that his ashram was near Rampurhat, so I decided to go and see if he would take me on as his disciple, his chela.

  “My mother and other sister were very angry at my decision. They said, ‘Why are you going? Don’t you care for us?’ I was very sad to leave them in this way, but I had a feeling this was what I needed to do in order for the family to survive. I was always very religious, but it wasn’t just that; it seemed a practical decision too. A blind man cannot be a farmer, but he can be a singer.

  “Ever since I was a boy I had been picking up holy songs and bhajans, and all through my childhood I used to sing the songs of the Bauls, and the shyama Kali sangeet of the Tantric sadhus, playing the spokes of my father’s bullock cart with a stick, like a drum. Because I had a good voice the sadhus and the Bauls loved me, and all the villagers would gather around when I sang; but it was the songs themselves that led me to the life of a singer. I said to myself, I will treat singing the songs as my form of devotion, my sadhana, and put my whole heart into it. That way I can live the life of the heart—and also save money to send to my mother and sister. At that moment, when my fortunes were at their lowest, it was my ability to sing that saved me.

  “It was the season of the rains. I caught a bus to Tarapith, and changed buses there, and late that evening I arrived in Mallarpur, near Rampurhat, where Gyananand Sadhu’s ashram was located. It was raining very heavily, and as it was late there was no one about to ask for directions. When I got off the bus, the water was already ankle-deep. As I walked on in the direction that the conductor had sent me, straight along the road, the water got deeper until it was up to my thighs. There was no one around to help, and there was nothing to do but carry on, even as the water rose to my waist and the thunder boomed overhead.

  “But I persevered, and despite my fears, the road turned out to be the right one. Climbing a small hill, I hit dry land. Soon after that I came to the gate of the ashram. I was drenched, it was the middle of the night, and I expected to be turned away. But instead the chowkidar ushered me straight into the presence of Gyananand. The moment he saw me, he said, ‘I have been waiting for you. I always knew that boy in the pukur would come to me sooner or later.’ He welcomed me warmly, gave me food and dry clothes and took me on as his chela. I stayed there seven years, wandering in the cold season and staying with Gyananand in his akhara during the rains. He provided for my mother and sister, and gave me money to take home to them.

  “I joined the Bauls partly because it seemed the only way I could make a livelihood. But my guru soon taught me that there are much more important things than getting by, or making money, or material pleasures. I am still very poor, but thanks to the lessons of my guru, my soul is rich. He taught me to seek inner knowledge and to inspire our people to seek this too. He told me to concentrate on singing and did not encourage me to take the path of a Tantric yogi, though I have picked up a lot of knowledge of this sort from other sadhus and Bauls over the years.”

  “Is it a good life?” I asked.

  “It is the best life,” said Kanai without hesitation. “The world is my home. We Bauls can walk anywhere and are welcome anywhere. When you walk you are freed from the worries of ordinary life, from the imprisonment of being rooted in the same place. I cannot compl
ain. Far from it—I am often in a state of bliss.”

  “But don’t you miss your home? Don’t you tire of the road?”

  “When you first become a Baul, you have to leave your family, and for twelve years you must wander in strange countries where you have no relatives. There is a saying, ‘No Baul should live under the same tree for more than three days.’ At first you feel alone, disorientated. But people are always pleased to see the Bauls: when the villagers see our coloured robes they shout: ‘Look, the madmen are coming! Now we can take the day off and have some fun!’

  “Wherever we go, the people stop what they are doing and come and listen to us. They bring fish from the fish ponds, and cook some rice and dal for us, and while they do that we sing and teach them. We try to give back some of the love we receive, to reconcile people and offer them peace and solace. We try to help them with their difficulties, and to show them the path to discover the Man of the Heart.”

  I asked: “How do you do that?”

  “With our songs,” said Kanai. “For us Bauls, our songs are a source of both love and knowledge. We tease the rich and the arrogant, and make digs at the hypocrisy of the Brahmins. We sing against caste, and against injustice. We tell the people that God is not in the temple, or in the Himalayas, nor in the skies or the earth or in the air. We teach that Krishna was just a man. What is special about him in essence is in me now. Whatever is in the cosmos is in our bodies; what is not in the body is not in the cosmos. It is all inside—truth lies within. If this is so, then why bother going to the mosque or the temple? So to the Bauls a temple or a shrine has little value: it is just a way for the priests to make money and to mislead people. The body is the true temple, the true mosque, the true church.”

  “But in what way?”

  “We believe that the way to God lies not in rituals but in living a simple life, walking the country on foot and doing what your guru says. The joy of walking on foot along unknown roads brings you closer to God. You learn to recognise that the divine is everywhere—even in the rocks. You learn also that music and dance is a way of discovering the Unknown Bird. You come to understand that God is the purest form of joy—complete joy.”

  Kanai shook his long grey locks. “There is no jealousy in this life,” he said. “No Brahmin or Dalit, no Hindu or Muslim. Wherever I am, that is my home.

  “For many years now I have wandered the roads of Bengal, spending the rains with my guru, and after he died, in the cremation ground at Tarapith. Sometimes when I have tired of walking, I would work the trains between Calcutta and Shantiniketan. That was how I first met Debdas.”

  “In a train?”

  “He was only sixteen,” said Kanai, “and had just run away from home. He was from the family of a pundit, and had a childhood in which he needed to ask for nothing. But then he was thrown out for mixing with Muslims and Bauls, and he was innocent of the ways of the world. He had an ektara, but at that stage he knew hardly any songs. Though I was blind, and he could see, it was I who taught him how to survive, and the words of the songs of the Bauls. Although we are from very different worlds, the road brought us together, and we have become inseparable friends.”

  Kanai smiled. “But I shouldn’t be telling you his story,” he said. “You must ask him yourself.”

  So saying, without moving, Kanai went back to humming his songs to himself, remembering and repeating the words:

  You and I are bound together,

  In the six-petalled lotus of the heart.

  There is honey in this flower, the nectar of the moon,

  As sweet as Kama’s dart.

  Through the garden of emotion,

  A raging river flows.

  On its banks we’re bound together,

  In the six-petalled lotus of the heart.

  It was nearly midnight when Debdas rejoined us.

  He and Paban came back from their concert in high spirits, and as glasses of Old Monk rum and chillums of ganja were passed around the room, the music began again, and it was some time before I was able to get Debdas on his own and ask him about how he came to join up with Kanai. Eventually, when Paban left for another late-night concert at the akhara of a friend of his, Debdas settled back and told the story of how he and Kanai had first met. As he talked, Kanai occasionally interrupted, or corrected Debdas’s version of events.

  “For many years, I have been Kanai’s eyes, and he my voice,” said Debdas, puffing at a chillum and exhaling a great cloud of strongly scented ganja smoke. “He taught me everything: how to reject the outer garb of religion and to dive deep into the ocean of the heart. He is a friend, a teacher, a brother, a guru. He is my memory. He is everything to me.”

  “And Debdas is my eyes, my helper, my student, my co-traveller and my friend,” said Kanai, tapping his heart.

  “We have travelled the road together for many years now,” said Debdas.

  “Pushkar, Varanasi, Pondicherry …”

  “Allahabad, Hardwar, Gangotri …”

  “Always holding each other’s hands. Over the years we have become very close”—he held up two fingers—“like this. Chelo, Kanai!”

  “We are connected at the navel,” said Kanai, gesturing towards his belly button. “When Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the Madman of Madmen, went to Keshava Bharati, who had initiated him as a sanyasi, he said to his friend, ‘Give me the world.’ Keshava Bharati asked, ‘What worlds can I give you?’ Chaitanya replied, ‘The very same that I gave to you.’ We are like that, Debdas and I …”

  “At times, I am Kanai’s guru,” said Debdas. “And at times, Kanai is my guru. He reminds me even of my own songs.”

  I asked Debdas to tell me about his childhood, and how he first came to meet his friend, and taking another puff of his chillum, he began his story.

  “I was born in a village about fifteen miles from that of Kanai, not very far from Tarapith,” he said, exhaling another great cloud of smoke, and passing the chillum to Kanai’s waiting fingers, and helping his friend lift it to his mouth. “But we were from very different backgrounds. My father was a purohit, the Brahmin of the village Kali temple. My father and I always had very different values. He was obsessed with his idols and his round of pujas. I was also pious, but I never embraced that sort of ritualistic religion. I didn’t know what was in, or not in, the piece of stone in the sanctuary of my father’s temple: how could I? How can anyone? For me, from the time I was very young, the company I kept was always more important to me than idols or rituals, status or material comforts.

  “My best friend was a little Muslim boy, Anwar. His father made beedi cigarettes at the other end of the village. My father would smoke the beedis, but before he lit them he would always touch them against cow dung to purify them. He would pressure me not to mix so widely, and if I drank water in a Muslim house, he would make me have a bath before he let me inside our home. There was a house of some Bairagi sadhus in the village who sang wonderful Baul songs, and Krishna bhajans, and my father didn’t like me going there either. I even shared cigarettes with the [untouchable] Doms who ran the village cremation ground. Even when I was very young, my mind was full of doubts about all these boundaries and restrictions my father thought were so important.

  “It was the songs of the Bauls that lured me towards their path. In our locality lived the great singer Sudhir Das Baul. One day, the schoolmaster invited him to come and sing to us on the feast of Saraswati Puja. I was thirteen or fourteen, and then and there I lost my heart to his music! He had such a voice, and such spirit: he could take a rasa to its very essence.”

  “Oh, he was marvellous!” interjected Kanai, leaning forward, sightless eyes gazing upwards, with folded hands. “What a voice!”

  “It was after hearing him,” said Debdas, “that I made up my mind to become a Baul and sing the songs of Krishna. After some time, I went and visited him at his home, and told him I wanted to learn music. So Sudhir said, ‘If you want to become a Baul you must attend the great festival at Kenduli.’ He
called it ‘the great festival of the Enlightened.’ He told me the date—it’s always at the middle or towards the end of January—and promised to take me along.

  “I knew that my family would never allow it, so when the day came, I climbed the walls of the house and slipped out without telling anyone where I was going. I had agreed to meet Sudhir at the station in time to catch the 4 a.m. train to Shantiniketan. From the station there we walked on foot to the mela.

  “The mela was beyond my dreams: you can see for yourself what it is like. The atmosphere was wonderful—the music-making, the dancing, the rapture, the matajis putting hair oil on the babajis, the intoxication of the madmen, the joy, the freedom … I drank in the pure life of those Bauls, and understood for the first time the real pleasure of living. It made me yearn to roam through the world and escape from my village life.”

  “And you never told your parents where you were?”

  Kanai giggled.

  “Wait,” said Debdas, smiling. “We’ll come to that.

  “For four days I walked the lanes of the festival, happier than I had ever been, meeting the Bauls and learning their songs. On the fourth day, as everyone began to pack up, I asked Sudhir Das, ‘What do I do now?’ I hadn’t left my parents a note—nothing. He advised me to go back home quietly, and he took me back on the train, holding my hand to give me courage. We parted at the station, and I headed home. But I was frightened of what my father would say, so I doubled back and went to the home of my Muslim friend, Anwar, and ate there.

  “By now it was dusk, and it was only after dark that I finally headed back home. Nobody said a word as I walked in. In silence I washed at the pump, but just as I was entering the house, my father stopped me and asked me to sit in the courtyard. My mother understood what was about to happen, and called me to join her in the kitchen, but just then my elder brother, who was the village police chief, blocked my way. He shouted at me that I had dishonoured the family, and that I was a good-for-nothing who only mixed with Muslims and vagrants. He said that he would teach me a lesson that I would never forget.