A place where Mahadiddha Naropa medicated

 Naropa cave at Dzonkul monastery in Suru valley of Zanskar 

Luscious Ladakh

 

Ladakhi rainbows

Ladakhi rainbows after a brief shower on Hunder sanddunes...

 

 

Manali to Leh

 A few moments from Manali to Leh journey.

 

Govardhanh garima

 

Govardhan pilgrimage is a treat for the soul during winters. In summers, when the ground burns due to heat, walking on naked feet isn’t everybody’s game. Most of the pilgrims walk at night to avoid scorching heat.

But the real spiritual charm opens during bright sunny days in winters. Beggars, mendicants, friars, alms-seeking children, little girls decked up as tiny Radha matajis, vendors, hawkers, cows, monkeys, tea, samosas, langars, music—an exotic chaos, pushing everyone towards a mysterious orderliness, an invisible and subtly palpable rhythm.

Thousands walking, talking, chanting Hare Rama Hare Krishna, greeting each other Radhe-Radhe, the locals busy with routine life on roads and in narrow bazaar streets as the pilgrims squeeze past congested traffic, many pilgrims measuring the entire pilgrimage path with the length of their bodies by stretching on the ground and putting a stone with outstretched hands and then again lying prostrating from the point where the stone was put, the sadhus, the crippled, the poverty-lynched people, the non-disturbing hustle and bustle…  

Me and my brother cash most of what the winter has to offer by going for the pilgrimage on Saturdays. We get up at three in the morning, start at four, travel in our little car to Sonipat, park it near the railway station, take an auto or e-rickshaw to the bus stand, board the bus to Mathura, get down at Govardhan chauraha, take a bus or auto to Govardhan 22 kilometers away, reach the pilgrimage town, have tea and luscious parathas prepared by our sister, start walking on naked feet, feel the rhythm of walk in esoteric craziness, complete about 24 kilometers of pilgrimage in 4.5 hours, put on our shoes, run to catch a bus to Govardhan chauraha, get some shared cab or board a bus to reach Ballabhgarh metro station, run to grab empty seats in some compartment in the subway, sit meditatively for 1.5 hours with our caps pulled down on our faces, get down at Kashmiri gate, change metro, deboard at Subzi Mandi metro station, run to the nearby railway station to catch some passenger train heading to Sonipat, deboard at our local station, pick-up our car from the parking lot, and reach home roughly between nine to ten at night, but sometimes when the trains get late we reach home around midnight.

No fatigue in the process. We feel we have gained something. We feel all this is worth it. Pilgrimages within pilgrimages, within further pilgrimages. The restlessness within hums in tune with the buzzing collective dissatisfaction, then sublimates to a strange calm as you pick up the rhythms of walking on naked feet.

On this weekend’s pilgrimage, our sister has given us two woolen shawls for donation to the needy. One of these we give to a child widow, a tiny, shrunk old woman, clad in soiled whites in the narrow bazaar street leading to Radha Kund. In full gratitude she stretches out her bony hand to touch my brother’s feet. He has to jump back. But it’s a blessing from her side. Her touch from the depths of her misery is like blessing on one’s head. Because if you have retained gratitude despite all the shit life has given you, then your touch (even if it’s on one’s toes) is nothing short of a blessing on the head.

The other shawl goes to a eunuch. She is wearing saffron petticoat and corset; doused in the colors of asceticism. Around six feet in height, handsome in body, pretty in face, devotional in tone. She seems to have mellowed down in the folds of devotion to Radha rani. Acceptance and surrender to the unconditional love of Radha-Krishna has given her a balanced state of being between the contrasting shades of the polarity, the pressurizing duality, the binary-bound burden of existence.

The handsome-pretty devotee is all smiles to get the shawl. She has the confidence of a man and blushes like a little girl while receiving the gift, blesses us by putting her soft-firm hand on our heads.

Here everyone is a Radhe—man, woman, young, old, everyone’s Radhe. The overpowering love of Radha has sublimated even Krishna’s male identity to color it with Her vast sea of unconditional love and devotion. Beyond sexes and genders, it’s entirely Radha-Radha, pasted on foreheads and cheeks, a little saffron stamp of Radha mataji.

An old leper, limbs rotten off, lying on the ground and pleading some coins in the loving name of Radha ma.

The rope-walking little girls moving with bamboo poles to the tunes of empathy-creating songs blaring at full volume.

A young baba with a tamed monkey whose face he has dyed extra red.

A man with little tumors all over his torso lying naked waste upwards to show his misery in this cold. He has scratched himself and flesh shows at few points.

A robust man with three limbs cut, just one hand left; which one? It’s the right one if I remember it correctly.

Blind singers singing devotional songs. A puppy sitting in the lap of one of them.

The pilgrimage route is dotted with thousands of miserable scenes where you can’t avoid feeling lucky and blessed in comparison to these unfortunates.   

 

The lokhandi rakshash (iron demon)

 

Railway companies launched first railway projects in British India with Christmas gaiety to add to their plunder of resources. The purling pioneers, the scheming teamsters, busy in introducing railways in India. It was a godless game, unsparing, unsentimental, involving hardcore business.

The practical and startling burst of logical energies by the colonizers. While the oriental masses sought and waited for the unnamed largesse of luck and fate (based on faith in gods and idols): the maddening reveries, the irritating expectancy, the lethargic love for the powers unseen.

Vagueness mumbling around among the native subjects, the Westerners meanwhile gobbled practicalities with gourmet’s delight. With pinpointed focus, the colonizers first whitewashed the colored silhouettes of the oriental panorama and then, as fiery accompaniment to heartless logic, painted it with steely monochromes of loss-gain. Dully surmised: an era of humiliations and privations for the natives.

Despite all this, the story of laying the first railway line is quite interesting. The princely states funded the projects as the then Calcutta and Bombay competed to get the honor of having the first railway line in India. Among the caterwauling and ecstatic scintillations, the ship carrying the engine and allied equipment for the Calcutta line lost its way in the choppy seas and reached Australia instead of the destination port.

As the patrons of the proposed Eastern railway bustled with itching vexation, defeat hard on their heels, the Western railways won the race and completed the project ahead of their rival. So symbolic of the West’s win over the East.

The Bombay-Pune line was opened with much fanfare. It let loose a tidal wave of excitement, fear and rumors in the Indian society. Gossips went boisterously adrift among the natives. People had all the time for impractical, fissiparous, episcopal talk. It (the train) is a lokhandi rakshash (iron demon), they said. So no high society or upper caste Indian should travel in the demon cart. If you sit in it your dignity will be in ruins, the pundits admonished. Pitiful sarcasm and plain fear floated around.   

Some native plain-speak patricians maintained that the iron demon ran too fast taking the ill-fated travelers to the destination in too short time. With confidential smirk, they maintained that it results in shortening the unlucky travelers’ lifespan. Some said the iron demon thrived on human and animal sacrifices on its demonic iron path. For every mile traveled it needs multiple sacrifices, they whispered with fear and apprehension. Well, the bloody sights of accidental hits on the tracks might have sired this belief.

The native could travel only in the third class carriages. These were open-sided compartments having just roofs overhead to save the passengers from direct onslaught of weather elements. The Britishers maintained that the Indians don’t need closed compartments because they don’t feel the heat like the fair-skinned rulers. These third class compartments were open to all Indians irrespective of caste or social rank. The higher caste Indians raised objections that they won’t travel with the untouchables because that pollutes their bodies. But to the Britishers all Indians belonged to one class, the lowly class of ignorant native masses. So they kept the rule that whoever pays the fare gets to travel in the train.