The Scented Mist on the Ganges

 

The Western society seems to have gone too deep into the recesses of impersonalized caverns. There loneliness strikes despite all the material prosperity around. We are human beings after all. We need to connect, build relationships, be happy and joyful with our friends and relatives. The chessboard of ultra-modernity shakes too vigorously and scatters away the pleasant pawns of our emotional connect and we find ourselves terribly alone in the congested bazaar. Spirituality workshops in the Himalayas hold the beacon of hope for many a footsore traveller who dump the materialistic bag and sit down for the food of the soul.

She is a very pretty European lady. German Bakery near Lakshman Jhoola looks on invitingly with its glass-fronted look of breakfasting spirit. The woman is sitting on a stone bench. A stray dog is lying in her lap. She is absorbed in caressing its ears. There are ticks and mites on the stray animal’s ears. She is removing this irritating burden very carefully. The dog is lying with closed eyes, its miseries melting under the warmth of her friendly touch. Her heart has a lot to offer. The dog himself is a big empty pool that is ever open to receive the streamlets of such affection.

The Indian men look at her more hungrily than any other skinny dog. They have their feast with their eyes even though they try to dispel the sinful thoughts at the holy town by the Ganges. Everyone on the path has hunger that drives him or her. Lust drives those who are yet to get over the physical and material cravings; love drives those who are acquainted with the illusions of physical desires and are looking for deeper relations of soulmates; care and compassion drives those who have absorbed enough at the lower rungs to feel the higher purpose of life; and ultimate liberation drives those who have come to feel the futility of all the aforesaid needs. 

She has disarming smile. She has come across whom she loves and who in turn loves her back without any conditions, without any pursuits and feelings of ownership and possessiveness. A lot many thirsty eyes cast fleeting, pining glances. The holy river moves quietly on its mission to purify, of absolving the guilty consciences of both real and imagined sins. It bears the imprint of the universe.

The noontime sun beats down at the peak of its energetic catapults. Fire and water mix for a cocktail of ascetic fluidity. The rippling surface has countless stars flowing down the stream. The mother river has the flowing expansion of stars and light in its veins. It has been flowing for thousands of years. It was there even before the Himalayas were born.

Two foreigner ladies are feeding banana to a monkey sitting on the railings. They want to click pictures with the naughty simian. An old sadhu, coughing under the force of a long draught of ganja, is ordering Sundri, a female dog, to attack the monkey. The obedient canine gives it a try. The monkey jumps up to catch the overhanging branches of a tree. The old sadhu cackles with laughter. The tourists are irritated. It spoils their chance of clicking a picture with an Indian monkey at the pilgrimage town.

The monkeys have chucked out a few bananas. They turn funnier now and assert their right to rascality. The male rides the haunches of the female and mocks vigorous thrusts. It’s an act of defiance and chronic freedom. The branches shake. Dry leaves and pods come tumbling down. The old sadhu cackles with fun again.

It’s but not sufficient to erase the almost permanent lines of sorrow and suffering etched on the piteous face of another sadhu sharing the iron bench.

‘Sab jindagi kharaab ho gaya!’ he mutters and repeats it a few times.

He is a Bengali and suffers from chronic digestive disorder. ‘Bhajan nahi hota, kyonki bhojan nahi ho pata!’ he ruminates, rolling his fingers over his stomach.

There are so many community langars that are running round the clock to give enough scope to mendicant paunches to spread their girth and look stately well-fed babas. There are many rotund sadhus around. He feels the pangs of complex as he sees them gobbling down copious amounts of charity food and digest it like bulls and then sleep and snore like healthy buffalos after smoking ganja. 

Pointing out that he cannot do full justice to the people’s spirit of charity, with a suffering look, he shares his story. He believes he was poisoned by his wife. Snake poison it was, he is sure. Vish! It massacred his innards, he believes.

‘She was a devil. My sister-in-law had advised me against marrying her. But I fell into the trap! It left my mind also cut down in size.’

Again he mutters, ‘Sab barbad ho gaya!’

I can feel that he is scared of death. I fake myself to be an expert palmist from Delhi. I hold his palm and stare at it like the last authority in the world on palmistry, even though I don’t know even the basics of the art. With damn shot seriousness, I tell him that he will survive till the ripe age of 100.

‘Now it’s guaranteed that you will live up to be 100. So choose to be happy instead of staying sad all the time.’

He is thoroughly relieved with the ghosts of death dispelled under the barrage of my oracle. Dent at the idea of death, its probability getting pushed away into the future, acts as a massive sedative. I see the pal of gloom shifting from his eyes.   

Allaying his fears I move on. Sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by luscious green, huge, majestic mango trees, absorbing the feeling of awe for mother nature and its bounties, and feeling a bit guilty that everything, apart from we human beings, in nature gives back to it in some form for taking its sustenance. We just not only plunder our share but the collective share of all other species of flora and fauna, giving back environmental degradation, pollution and chaos. In our effort to add to our share of comfort and convenience, we have, inevitably, let loose irreversible damage to the beautiful, self-evolving, counter-balancing forces of Mother Nature.

A small cow arrives and starts rubbing its muzzle with full and unconditional love. One just cannot say no to such unqualified dose of affection. I take out my sole banana from the bag and offer my share of love. The little cattle eats it. It but wants more, turns pushy, won’t go away, rubs its muzzle on my pants, licks my hands and pulls at my bag. I am forced to take to my heels. The overdose of unconditional love may hamper one’s capability to digest even the under-dose of conditional love. I am no saint, neither I am on the path of enlightenment. I am merely a traveller on the path with my motley mix of good and bad in varying proportions. So without too much guilt of conscience I run away from the holy animal. 

Life has to be lived with water-like fluidity. It’s not advisable to hit one’s head against the stony walls of virtues, just like it’s highly objectionable to jump full time into the pool of vices. Moderation avoids many a fall, just as it avoids many an airy impractical flights in the air. One is well grounded with moderation. Walk with balance brothers and sisters.

It’s wholesome and nourishing to be a footloose journeyman on the path that doesn’t pull you towards a particular destination. I walk for many kilometres along the banks of the holy river and as I am returning in the evening, the valley has fragrant mists over the holy waters. As prayers start in hundreds of temples, the incense fragrance mixes with the mists to give scented mists on the Ganges.