The Heat and Dust Project

by Saurav Jha

  Incidentally, Jains also join this parikrama and the temples on Mt Girnar, whether dedicated to Hindu deities or Jain Tirthankaras, are considered sacred by both. For Jains, the temple of the twenty-second Tirthankara, Neminath, built in the twelfth century ad, is of particular significance since it holds an idol of Neminath that dates much further back into antiquity than the temple itself. Neminath is believed to have attained self-realization while practising sadhana on Mt Girnar. His temple is located – along with other important Jain pilgrim sites, like the Rishabhadeva Temple which is dedicated to all twenty-four Tirthankaras – at a height of 3,000 feet.

  Some distance from the Bhavnath Mahadev temple is Girnar Taleti, the base of the mountain where the steps begin. Since time immemorial, numerous akhadas of sadhus and Naga babas have located their campuses here. We begin to climb the steps furiously: one, two, and then on and on, to fifty-six, they are all numbered. There are 9,999 steps in all till you reach the crest. The sun is now positively glaring down on us. We realize that we should have come here much earlier in the day as we had been advised. Before daybreak.

  As we slow down, we see some pilgrims being carried in cloth harnesses by two-man teams. Such an ‘ascent’ would require you to go through the indignity of getting yourself weighed at the foot of the mountain.

  By the 800th stair, our lungs are gasping for air. Others can sense it apparently, since some of them come up with words of encouragement. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll make it. Ambaji Mata’s temple is at 5,000 steps. It’s good for couples.’ The Ambaji temple on Girnar is famous for guaranteeing happy marriages. Incidentally, not too far away on Mt Girnar is a mosque that is visited by couples looking to be blessed with progeny.

  The climb, while strenuous, is breathtaking (it is, unfortunately, literally so in our case). The forested mountain lit up by the sun affords spectacular views of the rest of the range and the countryside. The stone stairway is steep but dry, and is lined with spontaneous lingams and the silk cloth of offerings to pirs tied around trees. The five peaks of Girnar with their various temples come into view from time to time. You can feel the stairs rise and fall along the mountain. Cold comfort, given that we are struggling on the thousandth stair, some 3,500 steps away from the Jain temples and 8,999 away from Lord Dattatreya’s shrine that marks the end of the stairway.

  Lord Dattatreya is considered a combined avatar of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and was born to Rishi Atri and his consort Anasuya, who gave shelter and advice to Ram and Sita during their exile. It is believed that Lord Dattatreya had no teacher other than nature; he learnt the secrets of nature from observing flora and fauna around him. He is, in that sense, both the ultimate student and the primordial teacher, and is revered as the adi guru of the Nath sect of yogis. The Nath yogis have given the world, among other things, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the defining text of what is understood as yoga today, put together by Yogi Swatmarama, who considered himself a disciple of Gorakhnath, one of the key gurus of the Nath Sampradaya.

  But we are clearly not yet ready to receive. We fight over whose idea it was to sleep so late (the fight has not been resolved to date, but let me confess to you that we were detained watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother which Diego had forced into our laptop). We sit by the steps and glower at the good devotees skipping down with their children, we perspire and hope the fiery thumping in our chests will subside. The heat and thirst make it impossible for us to trudge along any further, and despite our pride, we decide to call it a day. Some langurs sitting a few feet away stare at us peacefully. Their look suggests that they are neither surprised nor disappointed. They know we will return.

  Someday.

  On the way back, we see a tank by which Narsinh Mehta, Vaishnava saint, first poet of the Gujarati language and composer of Gandhi’s favourite hymn ‘Vaishnava jana toh’ used to spend a considerable amount of time – the waterbody now bears his name. It is tempting to see Girnar as a meeting point given the way in which it removes dichotomies. Digambar and Swetambar, Hindu and Muslim, all blend here. But it is probably more of a starting point. A place where souls have found themselves, irrespective of the temporary name ascribed to them by the inherited body.

  Girnar has been a holy site for people of different faiths who have carved niches for themselves in the region. And these niches have been defended and supported by all of India’s great empires. With the Ashokan edicts are those of Saka Kshatrap Rudradaman I and Gupta Emperor Skandagupta. Uparkot was built by Chandragupta Maurya, who was Jain and needed this bastion to watch over the pilgrim trails to Girnar. Chudasamas and Solankis were ultimately feudatories of the Gurjara Pratihara empire which ruled most of north India for a period of nearly four centuries. The Mughals made it a point to consolidate their hold over Junagadh once they defeated the Muzzaffarids. During the reign of the nawabs of Junagadh, Girnar was under British watch and they, in their turn, have left their imprint on Uparkot in the form of pumping stations for a tank commissioned by the nawab and modifications to the ramparts of the fort. All Indian empires seem to have sought the spiritual blessing of Girnar for their temporal prowess.

  16 January 2010, 2:20 p.m.

  ‘Bhaisahab, which is the bus to Somnath?’ I ask in Hindi.

  The man looks over his shoulder in the direction of the bus bays and replies in Gujarati. ‘It isn’t here yet. You can take the bus to Veraval instead,’ he says, pointing to a bus that has just started up. ‘From Veraval you can take an auto to Somnath,’ he adds.

  This seems reasonable since I have already checked on Google Earth that the two places are quite close to each other.

  ‘Get on board. It’ll leave soon,’ he warns.

  ‘Tickets on the bus itself?’ D asks, in Hindi.

  ‘Yes,’ he replies in English.

  The bus to Veraval doesn’t take long to weave out of Junagadh to enter a state highway that is a little bumpy but flanked by trees that serve as frames to a countryside redolent of a coastal plain. I draw this inference because the ride to the Saurashtra coast is remarkably reminiscent of our bus journeys through Puri where we go often, to visit the temple of Jagannath close to the sea.

  As I point out the cooling tower of a power plant to D, a voice from behind us says in Hindi, ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Delhi,’ D says.

  ‘Okay.’ The man looks reassured as if he had suspected something more sinister.

  After that, the man comes and sits across the aisle from us and a muddled monologue follows for close to an hour during which he curses and praises, by turns, politicians at both the local and state level, as also the state of Gujarat State Transport buses in the region.

  ‘Your stop is almost here,’ the conductor informs him gruffly. At which point he reluctantly gets up, waves at us and goes to the front of the bus to disembark.

  ‘Do you know he is a Brahmin by caste?’ the conductor tells us. ‘But he doesn’t behave like one. People have high regard for Brahmins who maintain their respect in society, no? This fellow drinks all the time. He is also a Gujarat State Transport employee, a driver as it happens. So he can get onto all the buses you know, off duty. He has four daughters, very decent girls, but he squanders his salary on bad habits. Drivers get good salary. Eight to ten thousand rupees. But no. He often gets into fights during these bus rides, when he’s going home after duty. That is why I came over here.’

  We listen without blinking.

  16 January 2010, 5:17 p.m.

  From Veraval we take an auto that rushes along a coastal road towards Somnath. The smell of fish fills the auto as we go past several boat-building enterprises and fishing hamlets.

  At the cusp of evening, we reach Somnath, basically a few streets hemmed in by the large compound of the temple. Perhaps because we has heard stories of the repeated destruction of Somnath, we are a little taken aback at its form now. The courtyard is fully tiled and the running of the temple s
eems to have been completely modernized, with security grilles, shoe bays, sitting shelters. Only the wandering cows remain from a less corporate past. The temple itself sits in front of the sea and is now fully restored, all plastered and painted like a modern Indian temple.

  Inside is one of the twelve jyotirlingas of India, placed in a sanctum that seems to have been on the bucket list of many Islamic warlords of the Indian subcontinent, including but not restricted to Ghazni, Khilji, Begada and Aurangzeb. A mass of devotees sways inside, the temple scents – incense, smoke and camphor – mingling with the assurances and vulnerabilities that seem to reek from their bodies. The temple bells sound; the sea breeze mixes with the chants that resound from the priests.

  We retreat to the back of the temple where there is a sea protection wall with a ‘Baan Stambh’ or arrow pillar symbolizing that there is no land between the temple and Antarctica. Gulls fly past us and D says, ‘Do you realize this is the first time we are seeing the sea on this journey?’ The sun hovers on the horizon, ready to drop. The sea, reflecting the colours of dusk, undulates towards us.

  The Arabian Sea.

  The sea, this sea, was part of the nawab of Junagadh’s argument in favour of acceding to Pakistan at the time of Partition, since his domain would have ‘direct’ connectivity with Karachi by boat. He acceded on 15 September 1947. This argument, however, proved hollow in the face of the Indian blockade that allowed neither men nor material to reach Junagadh, despite the nawab apparently having access to the sea. The result was severe shortages in Junagadh and deep civil unrest, providing an opening for resident Indian nationalists, led by Samaldas Gandhi, to set up a rebel government called ‘Arzee Hukumat’. Once the nawab had vacated the palace, having handed over the power of attorney to his dewan, Shahnawaz Bhutto, father of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Arzee Hukumat captured the nawab’s palace and Uparkot.

  Shahnawaz Bhutto requested the Indian government to intervene and take over the reins of the erstwhile princely state to protect the lives of its citizens. Samaldas Gandhi’s Arzee Hukumat was invited by the Government of India to administer the state in the interim, an offer he declined. Nehru, meanwhile, wanted to orchestrate the incorporation of Junagadh in a democratic fashion and conducted a plebiscite in February 1948 which found over 90 per cent voting in favour of integration with India. How could the Republic of India, which is the greatest of pan-Indian empires, not follow in the footsteps of all its predecessors, whether the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Gurjara Pratiharas, the Mughals and, of course, the Raj, in retaining Junagadh?

  Nine:

  How (Not) to Tell a City What You Feel for It: Delhi

  It took me quite a while to become an experienced vacationer, because travelling was not something you did much in Russia, at least not by your choice. Because we were not allowed to move freely, we used to approach our vacation time with a different attitude. We used to brag about places we couldn’t go. A typical vacation discussion sounded something like this:

  ALEXEI: I can’t go to Miami this year!

  NIKOLAI: Miami? You call that a vacation? I can’t go to Paris!

  — Comedian Yakov Smirnoff, America on Six Rubles a Day

  36

  It is a conjecture not unfounded that I am overcompensating with this punishing travel routine now because of not having travelled very much – or very far – as a child. I do remember rollicking summer vacations in Jharkhand where my parents grew up. Proper summers, replete with picnics by luscious waterfalls, skits put up by cousins, and mutton curry and rice at night on a dining table that stood rather apologetically on the traditional red verandah (where you were meant to sit on the floor and eat). The verandah ran along the house at the back and gave way to a courtyard. Behind the courtyard was a messy overgrown garden with a well in the middle and the tree of the saintly ghost by the furthest wall – but I am getting distracted here. My dad did want to take us for more vactioney stuff (the sort of things my Bengali classmates always boasted of: Rajasthan total package or Kanyakumari via Apollo Hospital in Chennai) but the fact is that his filial responsibilities were many and those were not times when people’s disposable incomes had reached the proportions they now have. At least for us, family getaways were not that common. Once, after my boards, my parents and I went to Nepal; one time in class six we zigzagged across Orissa (now Odisha) in our little second-hand red Maruti; and the most memorable holiday for me was the week in a gorgeous little villa perched atop a hill in Darjeeling, from which we could see the Kanchenjunga every morning, reflecting the moods of the sun. I was in class eight.

  The first time I came to Delhi, it was for an entrance exam, and I was twenty, in the final year of BA. We were a group of four. My friend Chumki was accompanied by her dad, and my uncle, who came as my chaperone. Chumki’s dad was a very resourceful gentleman, full of bounce and enthusiasm, and he booked us rooms at Banga Bhavan, the West Bengal government’s guest house, which can only be got by pulling strings at several levels. Thus, my first view of Delhi was of wide tree-lined avenues with bungalows and government buildings in large shady compounds on either side. This leafy old-world stretch was interrupted only by the pocket of tall buildings that comprised the central business district at Barakhamba Road. The day after the exam in DU, we went, first to Janpath to shop (my friend Chumki bought a flowing white skirt) and then to raucous Karol Bagh, a mind-bending maze of traffic and noise, signs and people. I loved it. The glimpse of that original Delhi has stayed with me over the years. I can’t remember what Chumki bought at Karol Bagh but I do know that the arches of several houses had caught my eye.

  The second time, in 2005, I came with my mother to gain admission in JNU; we stayed with relatives in Dwarka, and it was the third place I saw in Delhi. A suburbia with multi-storey houses, obsessively numbered buildings and blocks, and many, many schools. It was late July and the concrete was baking under an intense sun. On most days, the streets were deserted after eleven. I could not wait to shift to the campus. After all, the truth was that I had followed S to Delhi, and I could not wait to throw myself into university life, with its politics and the tremendous sense of radical freedom its enlightened students breathed (that was the JNU hard sell). I moved to one of the girls’ hostels, to stay as a ‘guest’ with one of S’s classmates, that is, as a legal illegal. After a month or so, I was allotted a room of my own.

  Soon our world in Delhi was pretty much the campus. Built on the foothills of the Aravallis, with large forested stretches still extant and the red-brick buildings as non-intrusive as one could possibly imagine, the campus was beautiful. The neem trees shed in spring, the bougainvillea flamed at fall. There was little need to venture out – except to libraries and plays. In any case, it was still a Delhi where Ansal Plaza in South Extension was the only mall. We went for occasional movies and desserts to PVR Priya, close to campus. It was only after we got married, left JNU’s protective bubble and began to look for a place for ourselves, that we bought furniture, piece by piece, that we got our first gas connection, and received our first salaries. It was only then that we really got to know the city. I remember every individual excursion vividly. The price we paid for each thing. Yet, I have no general impressions of Delhi from that time. I was too absorbed in humdrum householding, at which I was woefully inept (I still am), and the fact of my love for the city became known to me only after we took the decision of moving our stuff back home.

  Afterwards, we continued to come to Delhi regularly. We stayed with friends or at guest houses in the Bengali neighbourhood of C.R. Park in south Delhi, packing each day with meetings and errands. Every single time, we were assailed by an intriguing play of twin sentiments: unease that what was once our home was now merely another hostile city, and intense anxiety that we might never come back to live here again. Once you leave Delhi, the entry barriers seem to get higher and higher every year, the incumbents more and more smug. So we observe the rising prices with increasing horror and fall bac
k with relief on the grapes-are-sour presentiment, that it was all for the better. But much like an unattainable lover becomes unsuitable in the mind yet induces a certain delirium, when the train goes past the suburbs of Delhi, and I begin to see the rows of unpainted brick-wall houses standing against the dusty blue of the sky, my blood starts pounding. When the train draws into NDLS and we pull our bags from under the seats and I collect the bottles of water, one part of my mind rushes towards the wall of noise that vibrates in the station – and I cling to it. Half a feeling bubbles in my mind. And for about half a second, I recognize it, and then, embarrassed to let it gain body, I quickly turn to look at the line of bossy old coolies in red who have begun to file past us in the corridor.

  Today, while writing, I can see the half-body of that disconnected feeling, and I have learnt to be more forgiving of my own disloyalties. As long as I have Delhi, I think, it doesn’t matter if I do not travel any more again.

  Saurav

  Twenty minutes after the train draws into the platform, we step out of the railway station, and though we are walking briskly and our bags are heavy, the chill hits us immediately. A sock in the stomach. It is the quiescent cold of Delhi, steady and intense, and the grey sky makes it seem more acute. There is the usual melee of passengers jostling outside, arguing with coolies; a few dogs; several touts. It all seems muted though, because of the weather. People lining up outside the ATM, the snaking queues of autos and taxis, even the guys advertising their vehicles, seem a bit dazed. Fortunately we have no need for transport. This time in Delhi, we shall do exactly what hundreds of thousands of travellers coming to India do: live in budget rooms in Paharganj.

  This is not our first time in Paharganj, though where we stayed the last time, Arakashan Road, is not exactly a backpacker hub. There are many mid-range hotels there, all marble and ACs – but low on sunlight or character – which advertise their names in giant lettering that glows in the night. Many foreigners in their late thirties, and several travel groups, favour this street. Indeed, at night, the general squalor or seediness of the place gets completely masked by the fluorescent haze cast by the rows of hotels, with their hoarding-like titles. A friend of ours, Neel Mojumdar (my batchmate in Presidency, D’s professor’s son), is now living in a hostel on Arakashan Road, attending one of those expensive tutorial homes that prepare students for the civil services (basically, hanging out and watching movies and getting drunk when he can afford it). It was Neel who suggested we stay on Arakashan Road. Apparently, the family which owns the hostel where the tutorial home boards its students also owns a hotel, and he got us one of the sunless marble rooms for seven hundred rupees a night. It was from there that we set out on the journey.