Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  ‘You must dip, taking a bath will wash away all your sins, and end your soul’s cycle of earthly existence and suffering.’

  ‘But I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation.’

  He laughs and walks away, calling over his shoulder, ‘The bath is best on certain days, you have time to beat the demons of doubt.’

  The sun descends into the dancing dust, the thick air grows cold and the traffic suddenly moves. Jonathan shouts, I run back to the car and we lurch off the bridge and travel along sand highways to our camp. A message is waiting. While we’ve been travelling, a huge earthquake struck the state of Gujarat and thousands are dead. Jonathan leaves immediately to record the devastation and watch people burn the bodies. The romance and the honeymoon are over.

  I’m left at the biggest gig on earth with Jonathan’s assistant Neeraj and his camera operator Titi. Titi is steady, focused and cool; one of the few camerawomen in India, she shuns convention by wearing jeans and having short hair. Neeraj, as usual, is outfitted in army fatigues but with a new utility belt and vest. He salutes as we split up.

  ‘Meet you at the mess hall at oh-five hundred.’

  I search the ‘luxury camp’ that is supposedly home to Madonna, Goldie Hawn and Paul McCartney, but the closest thing to celebrities I find are a bunch of doco-makers and net designers from Channel Four UK TV, trying to out-cool each other with spliff size. While they eat tinned tuna and drive off to buy beer, I sign a form promising I’ll abstain from alcohol and meat. I find my tent, wrap myself in a sleeping bag, shove in some earplugs and try to sleep through the unbelievable noise. All night long it rises and falls in massive waves; I toss and turn to the sounds of a sea of souls.

  In the morning Neeraj and Titi queue for the media passes they’ll need in order to film the mass bathing event to come, while I summon the courage to let myself loose among a crowd as large as the population of Australia. My friend Simi was horrified when I told her I was coming to the Kumbh and regaled me with stories of stampedes, mass drowning and mysterious disappearances. I put her fears down to melodrama but now the sheer scale of the spectacle sobers me. It’s also seductive – my fear is weaker than the pull of the party. I walk out the gates and follow a stream of pilgrims across the sands.

  In the temporary suburbs of devotion it’s ancient India meets Life of Brian. Straw-filled stables are jammed with people praying to plastic-doll gods, scrawny men in loin cloths stand preaching on corners, small knots of families cook in tiny sandpits and beggars with twisted bones shuffle along. I stumble over the body of a young boy without a head (he’s somehow buried it without suffocating), and scream when a teenager drenched in orange paint and sporting a tail jumps at me and demands money. But, such sideshows aside, the Kumbh is mild-mannered and calm. There’s no pushing and little sexual leering; pilgrims are here to wash away their bad karma, not attract more.

  In the midst of the Mela is a bamboo Las Vegas. Tall, temporary temples are lit by neon signs flashing ‘OM’ and swirling Hindu swastikas. This is the street of the sadhu clubs – a devotional disco alley, with an open door policy. Sadhus are the holy saints of Hinduism, mourned as dead by their families, they abandon everything to devote their lives to God; reprogramming their body and mind through celibacy, renunciation, religious discipline, meditation, yoga, austerities and secret tantric practices. Well, that’s what I’ve read anyway. It doesn’t look like they’re doing much of that here – their monastic orders or akharas are set up like stalls at the Easter Show.

  The club attracting the biggest crowd is the Juna Akhara. The Juna are naga babas or ascetic militant warriors who fought the Mogul invasion of India in the thirteenth century and worship Shiva, the Lord of Destruction. With naked bodies painted blue by ash and long black matted dreadlocks they look like Shiva. But they lack the god’s glory. Most lie crumpled in sleep on filthy blankets, some sit and stare, others hobble around in huge wooden chastity belts and a few perform austerities for the crowd to show their body means nothing. One young sadhu wraps his penis around a wooden stake and another, who has stood up for two years, leans on a swing showing off his gnarled thick legs. Attracting the biggest crowd is an old dude who’s held his hand up in the air for nearly three decades. He’s charging foreigners one hundred American dollars for a photo of the atrophied leathery limb with its closed claw of corkscrew nails.

  Since the aghori sadhu cursed me with pneumonia I’ve kept well away from India’s holy men. Yet this spiritual sideshow alley is hardly threatening – these sadhus are more like circus freaks on display. Pilgrims file past pointing, whispering, staring and occasionally touching the feet of the sadhus, giving them money or snapping a photo. In return, the hordes are blessed with prasad (a gooey sweet) for additional spiritual energy. The Big Pot Festival is literally in full swing in Sadhu Street; the air is thick with hash and red-eyed saints are sloppily stoned. In some pens smug westerners sit sharing hash chillums with the babas and a few in the Juna beckon me over. It’s high status to have foreigners pay homage in this way, but I’m unwilling to be a sadhu trophy and keen to be able to find my way back to camp. I retire to worship Shiva alone with the help of the Channel Four media boys. It’s a practical puja – the dope helps me sleep through the Kumbh noise and brings on states of bliss. I fall into bed feeling that everything is clear, everything is significant.

  The next morning the induced enlightenment has gone and Shiva’s favourite weed has made me seedy. I drink chai in the kitchen tent with a wealthy plump Indian woman with adorable dimples; her name is Dollie, and she briefs me on the Hindu concept of god.

  ‘There’s millions of gods, beta, but all represent aspects of three, and all three are really one.’

  I look confused, so she recites a Julie Andrews-like mantra to make it easier.

  ‘Brahma is the Generator, Vishnu the Organiser and Shiva the Destroyer. Together they are G.O.D. or Brahman. All the millions of Hindu gods are just forms of the one Supreme Being.’

  Dollie says that Brahman can be worshipped in any aspect and she chooses Shiva, the cosmic destroyer whom she highly recommends.

  ‘You know, dear, now you are married you should pray to Shiva for children. He’s very strong and well, um …’ she breaks off giggling.

  ‘Yes?’

  She leans close. ‘Well, sexual, I’d say, beta.’

  Dollie pats my knee and winks. I suddenly understand why I’ve seen so many penis-shaped rocks and sculptures in India – these erect lingams represent Shiva swollen with the seeds of all creation. He destroys to create anew.

  She whispers again, ‘Shiva is also an easy god. He doesn’t care for wealth and royalty and he’s rough around the edges.’

  Dollie is putting it mildly. Shiva ate meat, got stoned, liked a dance, killed the tiger whose skin he sits upon and was unkempt, wild and free. I promise Dollie I’ll think of Shiva today. I like the fact that Hindu gods don’t have to be perfect to be powerful.

  But I end up devoting my day to Vishnu, a calmer, less temperamental god who came to earth in different animal and human forms or avatars. The most popular avatar at the Kumbh is Ram, a prince born about nine hundred years before Christ. His story is told in the Ramayana, and because it’s one of the few scriptures translated from Sanskrit into everyday Hindi, it’s hugely popular. A television serial of the Ramayana, featuring shaky sets, little action and appalling overacting, stopped the nation when it was shown every Sunday in the late eighties and reruns still rate. In every sandy street of the Mela the Ramayana is being read. At midday I stumble into the most splendid reading of them all. A massive glass chandelier hangs from the tent’s ceiling, thick carpets cover the sand and the walls are hung with silk and red velvet brocaded with gold. Children dressed in sequinned costumes stare with stunned expressions down from a stage while the story is sung in squawking Hindi through speakers that distort the sound so much my ears begin to buzz. The children are meant to enhance the performance but they hardly move, let alone act. The epic i
s excruciatingly long but the crowd is crazy for it.

  The Ramayana is ‘Monkey Magic’ meets The Wizard of Oz on a biblical scale. The loyal, good Prince Ram and his child bride Sita are exiled in the forest. A demon with ten heads captures Sita and takes her from the forest to his kingdom of Lanka. The monkey god Hanuman helps rescue her in a fierce battle and she throws herself onto a fire to prove her chastity. It’s got love and war, honour and horror, courage and killings, duty and devotion. The bible seems boring compared to Hinduism’s wild stories of the supernatural and fantastic. I share the spectacle and some peanuts with a family from a nearby village. Mum is in her best pink sari, dad sports a fine polyester mustard shirt and puce flares, and their tiny daughter, dressed in a starched party dress, somehow sleeps on the lap of the withered grandma. In Hindi and sign language that’s way more exuberant than the performances on stage, they tell me they’re here to pray for a good monsoon this year. Jumping around using a corncob for a sword, the father tells me Hanuman is his favourite god because he rescues Sita and guards against ghosts.

  Vishnu’s other most famous avatar is Krishna, a randy cowherd who seduced more than one thousand cowgirls (gopis) with his raunchy flute-playing. The bright blue shepherd’s games of love are a focus for the more sentimental spiritualists of Hinduism. After regaining my hearing from the Ramayana rave, I find some Krishna lovers in a small filthy tent. I squat on straw as a group of Gujarati men sing love songs about the god and his favourite cowgirl Radha. Playing tin cans with one string, the musicians’ voices soar with love and devotion.

  Krishna wasn’t just a lover; he was also a fighter. In the great battle of the Mahabharata scripture, the noble prince Arjuna doesn’t want to kill his cousins in a battle for his kingdom. Krishna takes the form of a charioteer and gives him a lecture about controlling the mind and senses, about living by noble action and of working to conviction. This chapter of the Mahabharata is called the Bhagavad Gita, and is the tale so loved by the Hare Krishnas, now called the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

  After the love song love-in, I come across a small riot. Men are laughing and pointing, children are giggling and a sadhu pulls a small instant camera from his robe. I think perhaps they’ve found Madonna and push to the front to see about thirty Hare Krishnas ringing bells and clashing cymbals. Indians are used to such parades but not by uncoordinated foreigners so pale they look like they’ve been stuck down a mineshaft for months. As their shorn heads turn pink, they twirl around drunk on ecstasy, swaying and stumbling and chanting their mantra.

  ‘Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Hare …’

  I’m swept up in the dance to their camp which sits below two King Kong-sized blow-up dolls in saris. Surrounded by a barbed wire fence, visitors are charged entry and must pass through a metal detector.

  Other westerners prefer to stay with Pilot Baba down the road. He speaks English so I suggest Neeraj and Titi leave the press-pass queue and come to interview him. We arrive at his camp just in time for darshan, a process where a holy one transmits their spiritual energy to those who show adoration. Pilot Baba seems to be transmitting his divine nature by siting on a red and gold velvet throne, slurping his tea, scratching his bum and occasionally giving a devotee an absentminded pat on the head. Pot-bellied with a chest of silver hair, he teams a red airforce beret with a saffron toga. He relishes the camera.

  ‘One day when my plane was about to crash bang into the earth, my guru-master appeared in the cockpit, took over the controlling devices and landed the plane safely to the ground.’

  The devotees murmur and nod, he slurps and burps. After a tour of duty in Kashmir he decided to give up his wings to work for peace and mass meditation. I curse myself for judging him too quickly, but then Pilot Baba launches into a bizarre conspiracy theory about the United Nations being set on world domination. The devotees’ piously peaceful smiles remain intact. We leave.

  Travellers to India carry more than one bible in their backpacks. Autobiography of a Yogi is a spiritual Lonely Planet guide that tells the tale of a great yogi and his master; a saint who could appear in two places at once, bring life back to the dead, predict the future and read minds. I’m not unbelieving of the power of the human mind and soul but it seems such yogis are hard to find in this day and age. On my way back to my camp, I almost fall over an Israeli, or should I say what was an Israeli and is now an unwanted child of Mother India. Wild eyes peer out from a face encircled by Medusa-like dreadlocks. His bony body is coated in crud and a filthy ragged caftan. I ask him if he needs help and he mumbles that he’s searching for a master. I suspect true masters are more likely to stay in their quiet Himalayan hideouts than come to the melee of the Mela.

  The Hindu religion is a guru’s gig, where ego is a dirty word and only supplication to a master can kill it. The closest I ever get to understanding the guru-thing is my constant ability to fall in love with lead singers and bass players. But I’m down on groupies. Maybe it’s my inability to respect authority for authority’s sake, maybe it’s my Australian independent streak, or maybe it’s the glazed expression on the devotees’ faces, but I’m not willing to touch the feet of any of the sadhus I’ve seen so far. It’s hard enough for me to surrender to a faith, let alone a fallible human. While I’m prepared to admit many beings are far more spiritually advanced than I am, the westerner in me is automatically suspicious of people who claim to be perfect. If I’m to find a god or a sense of grace, I’d rather it be in metaphysical form. It just makes more sense to me to look for the supernatural in something superhuman.

  Besides, I’m finding the guru mentality all too manifest in other areas of Indian life. I join Neeraj and Titi at the media tent where they are still awaiting a press pass for the big bathing day. As we fill out more forms in triplicate, the Press Information Bureau Officer sits behind a huge table revelling in his own authority to forbid filming.

  ‘Not that we believe in censorship but we’ve had to start checking some stories and changing bits.’

  I try to speak. He shows me the hand.

  ‘Madam, even though it’s impossible for us to be offended, because we respect all opinions and criticisms, the western media has offended us by showing naked sadhus.’

  I can’t get a word in to tell the Raja of Red Tape that the local media has featured far more dangly bits than the international press. As he speaks, four men watch, drinking in the glory of their Goebbels. They prostrate before him, vigorously nod and fall over with laughter when he tries to be funny. They’re unpaid crawlers, men with not enough work and too much time who just love to sit at the feet of someone more successful than themselves. Indians adore authority. To these guys, this middle-ranking official is a Buddha of bureaucracy and a priest of paper work. To me he’s a dickhead of the highest order.

  I suspect guru supplication is a cultural and spiritual phenomenon; as much a factor of massive underemployment, the lingering caste system and the legacy of British imperialism, as a need to let go of ego for spiritual integrity. But in Hinduism generalisations are dangerous; in some ways this is the least authoritarian religion I’ve encountered. Almost anyone can become a sadhu. The Channel Four crew are filming a freaky dude who calls himself Kali Baba; he wears a bowl in his lip, says in an American accent that he’s from the African Masai tribe and beds a different babe every night. I’ve also heard there’s a Swiss stiffie sadhu who has a permanent erection, and a Japanese girl has been hailed a saint since living down a pit for days. Hinduism is far more accepting than I am. It accepts gurus of all colours, races and creeds and it has an ingenious way of dealing with its critics. Buddha rejected ancient Hindu teachings and the very existence of God, but Hindus insist that he was another avatar of Vishnu and respect him accordingly. The Dalai Lama has already been at the Kumbh and taken part in a ceremony at the sacred swimming spot.

  Most of the sadhus at the Maha Kumbh Mela don’t have a following. Simi’s husband Vivek turns up to film and he takes
me out for a trip among the thousands of solo saints who shuffle in streams, squat by the sandy roads and sleep in huddled heaps in the open. We film faces etched with hardship and creased with sun, and bow-shaped bodies with bandy legs carrying all their possessions in small shoulder bags. At a dusty windswept dune Vivek helps a solitary sadhu put up a tarp for shade. Sharp raven eyes peer beneath an orange turban and a brown and pink jumper clashes with his hemp-stained beard. Carbooterwallah (Pigeon Man) invites us to call him Bum Bum (which is the chant he makes to Shiva when he offers him the first toke of the hash chillum). Bum Bum’s worldly goods are a painted tree stump shaped like Shiva’s bull Nandi, a trident, a blanket, some tractor oil and a small table decorated with plastic gods, cobras and alarm clocks.

  For Bum Bum, India is a sacred land, an enchanted mother, where the divine is present in every mountain, ocean, river, tree and rock. The Ganges is especially sacred, because she’s actually a beautiful goddess who crashed to earth from heaven with only Shiva’s dreadlocks to break her fall. Pigeon Baba coos, ‘The Ganges is so sacred that even your family in Australia can go to heaven if they just picture the river in their minds.’

  I don’t have the heart to tell him they’d prefer Bondi.

  Hinduism is a faith of almost infinite diversity. Yet the broadest, most complicated religion on the planet actually caters brilliantly for the individual. It seems every Hindu is free to create and follow their own unique religion, choosing their own gods and methods of worship. The gods of non-Hindus are respected and Hindu gods are generously shared. A young boy called Anu walks me back to my camp and gives me some options for puja. I can look to Hanuman for energy, Varuna (the God of water) if I want rain, Lakshmi (Vishnu’s consort, the goddess of wealth) if I need money and Saraswathi (Brahma’s consort, the goddess of knowledge) if I have an exam coming up. Ganesh (the elephant god and the child of Shiva and Parvati) can be called on when starting a new journey or venture and Vishnu, Ram or Krishna if I want purity of spirit.