6
The Disciple
The cherished day had
arrived. During the day he imagined about the religious mumbo-jumbo which
strummingly pumped up his spirits. In his sleep at noon time he dreamt a stellar world wherein fat,
bearded sadhus with incense smelling strings of rudraksh beads around their neck, wrists and
arms circled around a galoring bright halo of light. A big picture of Lord
Shiva, similar to his tattoo, gleamed from across the halo.
Lord Shiva, the most
powerful one among the Hindu pantheon covering terrestrial, interspatial and
celestial worlds, has been worshipped from Harappan times for the sheer cosmic
enmeshment inside His blue body encompassing destructive power, cuteness,
coyness, innocence and celestial intoxication. Myth has it that He’s so cute, Bhola
Bhandari, that whoever worshipped Him, He helplessly poured blessings, bestowing
divine powers even to the ashuras and daityas, the evil powers
who worshipped Him with their intended evil designs against the abode of devatas,
the heaven.
Now that the starry
eyed nascent devotee of His, the tattooed lame boy, had set his boyish
devotional gaze at the kind Lord, mythological beneficence of the God still had
enough power, even during this Dark Age, to bless him as an authenticated and
identified Shiva Bhakta.
Just when the sun was
preparing to say bye, they started. The boy, his grandma, some neighbours and
the peasant in whose cart they were sitting. The destination was the village to
the west across the fields sowed with jowar, bajra and maize. Red
sandy soil of the dirt road seemed subdued in the mist laden evening. Every
time the slowing down bullocks got an abusive kick at their haunches by the
farmer, his wife retorted back in a shrill voice from the side of mute beasts,
for she cared for them like her own sons.
During the one hour
jerking and corrugating journey he persisted with a request about Lord Shiva’s
tale.
“Maa, what happened
when Bhagwan Shiva opened His third eye?” he tugged at her crumpled veil cloth
hiding her face, because the old farmer driving the cart was a few years elder
than her husband.
She whispered at him
to remain silent as it was beyond social etiquette to be heard speaking loud in
the company of someone who wasn’t entitled to see the woman’s face.
By the time they
reached the village where sermon was to be held, night had started to fall. First
sight of the lamp and lantern lit religious encampment twitched his body as he’d
an exciting shock, as if it was an ephemeral electrocution by the wires of
spirituality. Old rickety divans, couches and charpoys had been covered with
thick quilts and neatly dyed cotton home-spuns were spread over the soft stage.
Preachers and spiritual overseers hadn’t yet arrived. The crowd had started to build
around the stage as they ran to grab a space nearest to the podium. Incense
smoke swirling around the steadfastly burning wicks made the night descend over
that big courtyard of the chaupal with a misty succulence tasting of
spirituality, devotion and religious anointation.
A five feet high
brass sculpture of Natraja, with butter lamps lit with ghee around it,
seemed to laud the God’s grace gigantically. The boy and his co-villagers found
a place near it. From so near it seemed a perfect artwork of the Almighty,
brightly steeped in the gloomy ambience.
Legend has it that
Lord Shiva as Natraja performed the cosmic dance of deluge and cataclysm which
sluiced open universal macabre and destruction. There was a hallow of flames
circling around the idol beginning from the mouth of the two fish. It depicted
the all encompassing and engulfing nature of the cosmic syllable “Om ”. Tambourine in the dancing metallic engraving’s
hand symbolised sound, the primordial creation. Deer on one side portrayed the
flirtatiously jumping nature of our wavering mind. The ego and flatulence, ahamkara,
arising from a disillusioned “I”, which the God had impaled, represented the
tiger skin hung around as the God’s sagely loin-cloth.
A holy trident,
garlanded, had been hoisted at the other end of the stage. It was the Lord’s
weapon for setting up transcendental purity. A deepak was burning as a
symbol of the sacred fire of the divine realm before this cosmic weapon of destructive
energies against the devil.
The Natraja with his
four hands seemed to cheer up the outweighed goodness during these evil days of
the Dark Age. One of the right hands invoked peace. Fire in one of the left
hands personified a brightened up soul. Tambourine in on hand represented the
primal sound whose vibrations created the Universe.
When a wall torch
facing the metal sculpture was lit up, full view of the cosmic dancer burst
into the boy’s view. Staring from the head to the raised foot he was boyishly
mystified by that symbol of spiritual potentate. The cosmic dance had no
meaning for him except a sectarian ritual in its superstitious awe. Without any
fault on his part, the Lord’s one raised leg which in actuality signified
sagely renunciation and abandonment, seemed to him as lameness; his own, of the
old sadhu at the fair, of the Lord Natraja now being worshipped here.
Patting his mildewed
leg, he vaunted an exclamation, “I too have a foot like God Natraja!”
His stickler mind
which miffed at a single glance at his right leg, now had a far, far milder
repugnancy as if a devotional raylet convinced him of his deformity’s favourable
conformity to the gracious God; blessing him as a reverential and respected God’s
fellow on the earth in future.
Second leg of Natraja
resting mightily and tramplingly on the devil Muyalaka, symbolising destruction
of delusion’s profligacy, made him happily look at his own robust one in its
perfect symmetrical opulence; strong and bulky for a boy of his age on account
of the constant load sharing of its infirm partner.
“Oh ma...God’s other
leg is also like mine!” he exclaimed in silence with a bulbous heart.
Unfortunately, this
synchronous comparison of legs ended just on a chalky crust of superficiality.
Because in reality, the God’s right leg of renunciation had its counterpart in
the boy’s which was ever clinging to a limping earthly desire. And the left one
of the God which killed the delusion, ego and vanity had in its earthly
counterpart a craving to force up its physical realisation, the sense of egoistic
human self.
Can we really follow
a perfect Godly path? It’s highly impugnable. With the foot really meant for renunciation,
we trudge over the disparaging ungodly traps getting into the snares of
savaging mire; and with the foot meant for killing delusion, we limp and sway
to jaunt an unholy tirade. In this way we go on obversely imitating God on
earth. Hence, if Lord Shiva danced the cosmic dance, then His mimicking,
wrongly choreographed earthly version with its wrong steps with wrong legs
becomes the dance of macabre and brazen mockery for the self.
An incidental glance
at the head of the idol brought into view the crescent of moon. Its mystically
redolent rays sneaked in through a high open niche in the back wall of dark
chaupal. He mistook it as a part of dancing Natraja.
“Ma, Ma...” he pulled
at his granny’s patched sleeve,
“a miracle has happened. God has suddenly got a moon over his head!”
The old woman much
puzzled deemed it fit to consent this. “Nothing is beyond His capacity,” she
folded her bony hands in reverence before the sculpture. Thick iron bracelets,
which appeared shackling her bony hands, rolled down almost to her elbows.
“Grandma, why God has
got that moon over his head?” the boy cracked his childish inexplicable whip, this
time pulling at her long plaited skirt of a coarse cloth lying on and around her
folded legs in numerous folds and creases.
She felt herself in a
tizzy. The poor illiterate lady’s faith in God was beyond mind’s reasoning. She
racked up her weakening brain. Her finger, meanwhile, rolled the plait of thin,
grey hair into a coil under the safe privacy of her thick head-cloth.
“Because He wants to
light up our dark room at home,” she quibbled signaling him to keep quiet.
On the previous
night, in the middle of a fearsome jungle tale, the earthen diya had
suddenly gone blind as the mustard oil had been spent, filling the room with
gloom, making him harrowingly afraid. Now, he looked at the gracious face of
the Lord expecting him to bestow light in his dingy room. The moon by now had
crossed the opening into the chaupal. So when the next time he looked at
the God’s head, he was filled with appreciating wonderment.
The old woman’s
extempore intuition had in fact made her speak the reality of the moon’s
purpose at the Lord’s head, because the moon symbolises the eternal, ever
gleaming light which fills the soul with milky light subduing the darkness of
ignorance about the real self.
Five or six religious
bigwigs made their way to the stage, as people sitting on the ground parted both
ways like a nullah to give way to the sadhus. Many were falling at the
pious feet in the hope of getting their dirty linens washed by the sadhus’
hands bequeathing purity to these worldly sinners.
The boy was nearly
squeezed in this crawling stampede as hips, knees, elbows and legs roughed and
rounded him up from all sides. But he didn’t feel it because he was keenly
looking at the sadhus’ feet, hopeful to lengthen his lame parallelism or
similarity on his little pathlet of infant religionhood. Wearily he searched
their gaits. Accurse to that ambidextrous steady walk! All those godheads
proceeding towards the stage were normal gaited ones with firm pairs of legs.
Still, pre-conceived notions and judgments kept on striking at his seeing sense
and many a times he took the uneasy, struggling pace of a fat old religioner as
a limp, as a wanton twitch, as a jerk obstructing the free flowing rhythm. But
at last all these imaginative webs of lameness cleared away as each of the
religioner stomped his way to the stage with his stumpy, sturdy legs. Of
course, he was disappointed.
“Not a single one of
them is like me and Natraja,” he murmured grudgingly.
Thanks to the above
experience, it at least made him realise that infirmity of leg was not the sole
requirement for becoming a Shaivite, a follower of Lord Shiva. But, by
then the symbol of Shiva’s cosmic dance had hardened his resolve to become a sadhu
baba.
“One day, I’ll be
sitting among them,” he arrived at his firm and arbitrary conclusion.
His grandmother
chanced to hear the declaration in an incongruous context. She looked at him inattentively,
because she’d not been able to get a meaning.
All religioners
prostrated before the Natraja. Then head of the congregation, the guru,
gave a heart-wrenching invocation, “Har! Har! Mahadev!” It was unsonorously
echoed by the devotee crowd. The crowd stood in obeisance as the group took the
podium. After sitting upfrontly, his disciples forming a crescent behind him,
the maharaj raised his hand holding a rosary, giving blessings as well
as an indication to sit down. All slumped down at the order except the boy who’d
upthrusted his body with a great effort. He stared at guruji and his
pack as if lost in self-communion. His grandmother pulled his torn kurta
feeling uncomfortable and irritated as most of the people were looking at her
disobeying grandson, who kept on standing unintentionally as if taking some
rest after the effort in rising.
“Shiv Shankar bless
you young devotee,” the pontiff gave him an exclusive blessing, thinking it’d
be enough to make the boy sit down.
The boy nodded into
the ground. His mind was blank. In a fit of absentmindedness he forgot that he
was supposed to sit down like others. Some giggles started in a section of the
crowd, which the holy man instantaneously suppressed with a hard look in that
direction. The boy stood meekly like an erroneous student in a class. His brain
buzzed to an aching zero.
“Do you want to say
something, son?” the head sadhu asked very softly.
The boy wanted to say
‘no’, but even the verbal sense to say ‘no’ negated him, leaving him in a
vacuum.
“Ye...es...” he
hesitated, almost dying of shyness and fear.
“Then speak out
little one,” the sadhu’s tone almost touched the crystal crest of
genteel piousness and softness.
These flowery words
encouraged him a little out of his den of shyness. He realised that he needed
to say something. ‘For God’s sake anything in the world!’ his whole being urged
him. His wooden stick shook a little as if giving him a clue.
Coming out of his
hibernation, he dashed out a query at full pace, “Is Natraja lame, maharaj?”
Shrill fluency in his
tone made it hammer like a blasphemous fist. So, for a few seconds there was a
stunned silence. Then someone’s giggle escaped like a loud fart in a gathering.
There was no stopping after that. Peels of laughter lambasted the religious get
together. Even the head of the ascetics couldn’t help and smiled. He was but of
such pious nature that he’d a beautiful Godly answer even to most jocular
banters.
“Lord Natraja is capable
of taking any form, my child. From the many-footed centipede to footless air
particles all are His forms,” he folded his hands to the sculpture at one end
of the stage. “All you should do is to have your soul’s eye open to see Him,” the
holy figure brought religiosity back to the gathering.
The boy felt somewhat
eased, as devotional shades coloured the faces around him. No one was looking
accusatively at him as he stole a few glances at some faces.
“He has one foot,
one-and-a-half, two, three...hundreds, thousands, lakhs as many as you people
can count,” continued the master sage lost in the spiritual bliss of the
realisation of the formless, all existing, all encompassing and engulfing presence
of the God from zero to infinity.
The boy meanwhile
cottoned on to his figure of one-and-a-half. Others with their varying matters
and morals followed the sage to different degrees and numbers. Some imagined a
mythological centipede with its infinite feet juggling in the cosmos with a
clattering flamboyance. Perhaps, one or two envisioned an infinitesimally big,
footless zero holding in its fathomless cocoon the true nature of reality where
only the ethereal sheen of a perfect faith can reach.
Overcoming that
one-and-a-half numbered vertical vortex, the boy felt brave enough to sit now.
Bowing his head in the direction of the sage he slipped down along his stick.
The devotionally
ebriated sage, medium built, seemed meticulously balanced with his hennaed
beard whose soft flakes swayed even to the gentle movements of his face. His
body hadn’t eaten the crow. Maybe he was a Yoga expert too. At least his
hairless chest, belly and shoulders smacked of a body discipline. His bare
upper part attired in religious jewellery of beaded strings made him look far,
far younger than his actual years on earth. His features made him appear belonging
to both worlds: one world of the free, abandoned spirits and the other socially
controlled one.
With his slowly
spreading hands he started to unfold the unexplained mysteries which come
acalling even through the normal day to day happenings. Then he co-opted them
into the confusion between tradition and truth. They listened to him in pin-drop
silence. Their serious faces giving an assurance that at least they could smell
the divine fragrance. For the sage the task at hand was no simple as it’s so
easy to realise God yet so difficult to describe it verbally because here the consciousness
of material self plays the spoil sport.
His right elbow was
supported upon a wooden cross piece, and the hand hanging down leisurely held a
rudraksh rosary where the 108 beads kept on passing through his fingers.
“Lord Shiva has three
eyes standing for sun, moon and the fire representing past, present and the
future. In His ears there’s a man’s and a woman’s earring thus symbolising the
dual aspect of the Universe.... His pious thread of 96 beads personifies 96
categories encompassing the cosmos.... The Nag, serpent, represents the
cosmic power of Kala, the time.... The ever innocent and cute God
engages in five types of activities—creation, preservation, destruction,
shadowing and beneficence...” he tried to get them acquainted with Bhole
Nath.
Then he explained
God, Bhagwan, in the physical terms. “Bhagwan stands for five
primal elements. ‘Bh’ means ‘Bhoomi’ or earth. ‘A’ implies ‘Agni’
or fire. ‘G’ stands for ‘Gagan’ or sky. ‘W’ represents ‘Vaayu’ or
air and ‘N’ symbolises ‘Neer’ or water...these five elements are linked
to five Gods. Earth to Ganesh, fire to Surya, space with Mahesh, wind and
Vishnu, while water is considered to be with Brahma.... Our five senses are
intrinsically linked with the five elements and Gods. So hey devotees, our senses
can be the gateway to liberation. Next time you use them just make sure whether
you are or aren’t making a proper use of them. And if you misuse them it will
be counted as a sin against the particular God related to that sense. If you
always smell a rat, that will be a sin against Lord Ganesha. If someone has
become eyesore for you, it means you’re showing irreverence to Surya. If you
always cup out your ears for wrong noises it shows your negation of Lord Mahesh
Himself,” he stopped and pointed to Lord Natraja, “If you touch a heart wrongly
that means you’re blind in your faith to God Vishnu and if your tongue tastes
any foul word then it’d be counted as blasphemy against the creator of this
Universe, Lord Brahma Himself...” he brought down the mysterious concept of God
to a commoner’s level of practical morality intended for a just society, as
they listened in rapt attention with a guilty look.
Well after midnight , when the time for departure
came, the pious sage asked them to recite the Panchakshara Mantra three
times after him.
“Na... Ma... Si... Va.
After this people
thronged to touch his feet, offer oblations and seek his blessings. When it was
the turn of our lame boy and his grandma, the old woman almost fell at those
holy feet. The boy however struggled while bending with his wood. The holy man
midway held him by shoulders and put a blessing hand on his head, smiling as if
he’d recalled the boy’s query. A strange sensation crossed the boy’s head.
Pleasantly it struck him that he had found a teacher, a guru to guide
him on the path of religion.
* * * *
Now this sage, named
Sadhguru Parmanand, literally meaning ‘ultimate bliss or happiness’, was a true
yogi. He wasn’t in a scuffle with the two worlds, the physical and the
spiritual one. He knew it too well the role of myths, legends, tradition and rituals
connected with Hinduism was to link the commonest of persons in the society to
the common cause and purpose of creation. Surrendering his reason as well as
heart to Lord Shiva, he’d arrived at the golden fruit of practical spirituality
for his followers and flashes of ultimate reality for his enlightening soul
during those night long meditative spells.
The Sadhguru’s face
had a reddish shine as if coloured by the divine drops from the amorphous,
cosmic fluid made of five elements which he felt dropping tranquilly into his
head during the meditative repose, as he surrendered his senses to the mantra,
“Om Namah Shivay...Om Namah Shivay...Om Namah Shivay...” ringing
with divine music in the lighted quiescence of his brain. Selfless chanting of
the mantra attracted holy drops from the cosmic kamandla of Lord
Shiva, concentrating a glint of cosmic energy around his head and face from
where it flowed to his disciples.
During meditations
his soul broke all worldly inhibitions and with a gurgling gustation ferreted
out to the farthest fringe of the Universe; at the margin of consciousness and
unconsciousness where a sparkling light blithely fizzled in his eyes. Then indefinable,
yet so glaring, experiences would flow with cosmic velocity padding around his
soul. The experiences shorn of every abstractness made him sense infinite, indefinable,
formless and fathomless reality in its manifestations like bodilessness,
fluidity of water and air, rigidity and lifelessness of a stone, flight of a
cloud, createdness of a new grown soot, flight of an unstringed kite which goes
on swirling with gusto in the air having snipped the cord of materialism....
Most often the
ultimate thing would piffle thriftily to him. His awareness about his karmas
or deeds, about his soul in exclusion of the body and yogic techniques
made him capable of letting out physical and spiritual energies from the body
and catch up with the reality beyond the dragnetted human imbroglio ; the truth
about space-time endless continuum. The sage’s devotion to Lord Shiva provided
him a fixed co-ordinate in the infinite dimensions of the ultimate surface,
where he realised the true nature of reality. At this point he felt his body
being dismembered in to the five primal elements, which then immersed in the
primordial fluid shining like a light, flowing like air and water, having ether
like the sky and solid like earth.
The crest pearl of
his realisation was perhaps like this:
The body bubbling
like a brook and flowing through water, attritioning against stones; falling
with the water of a waterfall into the deep, deep gorge upon a rock then slip
down; swiftly flying with clouds among rocky peeks which went cutting through
the body: no pain but sheer joy! Divine bands of cosmic energy encircling his
head; his spine spiritually charging him upwards, and then he would experience
his body turning into non-existence. The cosmic fire annihilating it from all
sides and the escaping smoke would make him feel that his soul was spreading
around.
From youth, the Sadhguru’s asceticism had been nurtured
under the auspices of a Naga Saint at his ashram at Deva Prayag in a
holy grove along sacred Ganga in Himalayan
hills. For ten years there was a healthy development of his religiosity in unison
with hill forests under the guidance of his guru without any confusion
between incantation and faith. Afterwards, to give back what he owed to the
humanity, he took permission from his religious mentor and started on the path
of sanctifying the impiety scattered around. About a decade ago he’d set up an ashram
at a place not too far from the village he’d preached that night.
From his ashram
he was most often touring around for pilgrimage and preachings with his
resident disciples. These eclectic wanderings had made him worldly as well as
other-worldly wise. From many places he’d gathered God’s rare artifacts.
Sometimes, he’d just get up from his meditation at some late hour in the night
when all his disciples were sleeping and ask them to accompany him for a far,
far pious place as if God had ordained him to start at once without losing any
time. One such pious errant had made them start for Mansarovar Yatra around midnight when rain was at its full
fury. It is the most arduous of Hindu pilgrimages. Mansarovar Lake Himalayas in the Chinese
territory from where the Brahmaputra
River Mount Kailash Himalayas for hundreds of
kilometres chanting God’s name as landslides, rain, snowstorm and salacious
slopes come acalling at each step forward.
Wistful expression as
death seemed so nearby, followed by ecstatic burst of the spirits at the
heavenly beauty of the Himalayas at the next
step made the Sadhguru understand the realisation which lurked so
vaguely and shapelessly during the meditative trances. In a trice, heaven as
well as hell bared their inexplicable mysteries as path’s hazard and
unblemished beauty shone in their ethereal sheen monogrammed in a single
spectacle. At times they waited for a near certain death with the Lord’s name
on their lips and the lamp of faith burning piquantly inside their hearts, as the
nature’s unhindered play marooned them with a near impossible chance of survival.
And survive they will. Next shivering dawn when the sun smiled a warm
pacification, the rivers, lakes, peaks and forests would make them realise
their hugest fortune for coming across the heaven if there exists any. Iron of
a survivor, Parmanand led his disciples to the divine abode of Lord Shiva after
a four month long journey during which the paradoxes of death cloyingly
hatching a sinister design through the vilifying facet of nature and life’s
infinite largesse through the same nature’s divine acquiescence, bundled into
an attributeless circle, the Zero, the only one aspect of unabstracted, unrelated
and the ultimate.
And when they
returned to the ashram next year around late spring they’d so many
blossoming tales of Himalayan spring that it left the younger disciples, who had
been left behind at the ashram, wonder if there was any such place in
reality.
* * * *
While returning from the congregation the
boy asked his grandmother about the ever-so-impressive holy man, the diehard
soul’s purist, who could lit the lamp of faith even inside the most petulant
and muzzy of souls.
Under the starlight, amidst
creaking of the cart and chiming of bullocks’ neckbells she told him in her
sartorial, devotional style, “Sadhguru Parmanand is a blessed soul. He’s
mystical powers, yet his modesty may mistake a layman like us to consider him
an ordinary religioner.”
“What type of
mystical powers, ma?” he asked reminiscing those powers of rishis in her
fables who Goddamned the wrong-doers to turn into stones and themselves became
invisible muttering a mantra with closed eyes.
“Oh, there are so
many! People say he’s done tapasya in the Himalayas
for fifty years. He’s about 100 years old and looks only forty!” she folded her
hands as she became a new voice to the society’s predilection towards
assumptions almost to the extent of a propaganda mill churning out rumours, in
which the holy man had not the slightest part.
“Does he stay in the
mountain caves?” the boy asked realising that now his grandma was feeling free
to talk with an open face in the dark because the old man had stayed back in
the village with a friend.
In an old and
unobtrusive voice she replied, “No, for removing worldly impiousness he’s left
his abode in the mountains and come here on plains to serve the people.”
To the boy ‘the service’
by the holy man and the respected and powerful aura around him seemed
irreverently incongruous and mismatched.
“He serves the people!”
he exclaimed impishly.
“Yes son, by removing
shoddiness and pique from our ordinary hearts,” the old woman rebuffed calmly.
The boy felt a snooty
qualm over the disharmony between the two aforesaid things. After rubbing his
scalp he let it go.
Coming to the
important fact he asked, “Where does he stay now?”
“At a village about
25 miles away,” she pointed westwards, to the dark horizon.
“Does he come to our
village?” he asked, his query emphasised by a sassy rustle amidst paddy in a
nearby paddock.
“Till now our village
hasn’t been blessed with that fortune,” she whispered with a palpable
dejection. “After all he’s to visit so many places. And there aren’t too many
regular devotees from our village to his ashram. He blesses a place only
after persistent requests from the villagers to come apreaching to their
village.”
“I’ll get him visit
my village,” the boy decided in his inner conversation, basking in an
imagination about himself as a part of the holy man’s followers’ crescent at
the stage and his foes falling at their feet, pleading for leniency and blessings.
“Why don’t we invite
Parmanand Maharaj to a congregation at our village? Surte grandpa can
convince him,” he mentioned the old farmer left back at the village of
congregation, whom he’d seen latching onto some precious personal moments with
the head religioner before the starting of preaching session.
“Yes he can if he
insists on it. He visits his ashram whenever he gets a time from farming,”
she replied in her faded demeanour.
“Or I’ll go to his ashram
and request him to come to our village,” he said in a determined tone caressing
the tattoo on his arm.
“You can’t go that
far, child,” she tried to dismiss the idea beforehand.
Gleamingly kicked up
he cackled, “You just said grandma Surte grandfather goes there. Next time he
goes there, I’ll go with him.”
His enthusiasm was at
the peak of its thrills and frills. The old lady decided not to waste her old
spirits in subduing it, knowing it fully well that the boy’s thronging craze
would go haywire under a few bubbly slaps by her son with sapped spirits lugging
a huge load of survival.
It happened exactly
as it shall happen. A frustrated and poor Nathhu Ram would give him a whack or
thwack every time his lame son mentioned the word ashram. A few slaps
and hard words from his struggling father convinced him that he himself will
have to create a chance to reach the master with mystical powers.
The village life, at
least at that period of time, was simple with a few offbeat factoids. So
smallest of oddities like a visit to a town or anything which wasn’t covered by
the daily rut of hard work in fields very easily became a matter of interest to
be shared by all. He thus came to know, well in advance, when and how the old
farmer will pay a visit to the Sadhguru. Most troublesome was the fare,
as the old man very often went there in horse-driven tonga
So, one day when the
old farmer reached the dirt road outside the village, under the duress of a big
sack full of fruits and vegetables for the holy man, he found the boy waiting
for him with flawlessly lively eyes. As the vantage point of his intended
journey he’d a small bale of cloth tucked under his left arm.
He almost begged. “Grandfather,
can I come with you? See, I’ve even the fare with me,” he jingled the coins
inside his pocket, fearing a quick fall-out from the old man’s temper.
Now, in full letter
and spirit the old farmer was really kind. A walk on the path of devotion with
his ever reaffirming faith as well as his modest saga of dawn to dusk hardwork
in his fields made his slightly wrinkled face shine like a moonglow from across
a thin veil of clouds; an unfazed spirit cherishing its sweet struggle against
the dull and dreary worldly quagmire. For his age his spirit seemed too lively
as if the ennuing age-weariness had wilted under the pressure of his subtle
regalement. Hence, almost seventy-five he looked so mint-fresh and near to life
in his mustard oil polished leather papooshes, fading exuberance of his dhoti
cloth, long kurta covering his body for the umpteenth time and his very
soft cotton head-cloth wrapped skilfully around his intuitioning common sense.
All in all he seemed
so honestly full of truth that the very air about him deemed him unfit to say ‘no’
to a boy’s request. But, he was the part of a society also. So, before he
pursued leniency with a passion he put it on society’s anvil to get the upswing
or downswing of it.
“Where did you get
this money from?” he asked with a slowishly fine-tuning anger, realising the
boy’s father’s paucity of resources.
“Mm... my grandmother
gave it to me,” the boy fumbled, his fear skyrocketed with a vengeance.
“Tell me the truth,
boy!” the farmer tugged at the colossal bottom line of the boy’s fear.
“Yes grandfather, I
swear by my mother,” dread-locked boy almost choked as he held the skin of his
throat for a confessing pinch, his heart thumping as if put above tornadoes of
flame.
“Your grandma gives
you the money and you swear by your mother, boy,” the nonalarmist farmer
laughed, his unsuspecting spirit popping in the clear and shallow depths of his
mind.
“And she knows that
you’re going to the ashram with me?” he asked in a reconfigured cautious
tone.
“Yes!” the boy
returned with a bold emphasis, his fear sharply plummeting down before the old
farmer unhabituated to smell a rat in his barn and hay-lofts.
“Has your father
given you the permission? As far as I know him he never visits religious
places. Without any fault of his, the man has no time left for the God after
all that backbreaking work. I think, his religion is to feed the hungry little
angels inside all of your tummies,” he tugged at his malnutritioned little
bulge.
“But father says
since I’m incapable of working in the fields I can go to such places,” the boy
feigned a rue, eclipsing all the optimistic sunshine of late.
“Why... he didn’t
mention it when I was returning from fields yesterday evening,” the old farmer
asked somewhat uneasily about the disturbing reality.
“He must’ve forgotten,”
promptly said the boy who had by now firmed his toe-hold on the slippery path
of his little lie.
Ironically, it was
also his initiation into using a common trick or designed witticism to reach a
few paces further.
* * * *
Many times, Sadhguru
Parmanand had realised the cosmic reality reaching him with its delectable,
divine, mysterious tugs and pulls at his soul. Far, far away from the bread and
butter of religion the ultimate thing held out an olive branch pacifying his soul,
making him realise the lighted aspect of physical self, that is, a feel of the
soul in the absence of Machiavellian machinations of the physical self caught in
the cleft-stick of materialism. Even the eternal question of “Who am I?” towed
the line of divinity; disillusions ate a humble pie. His whole body would glow
in a flame, the lightness of which kowtowed all his limbs, arms, legs, spine,
face and ultimately the brightest chamber in his head linked him to the cosmic
band of light and energy. When he opened his eyes after such a deep cosmic
dive, under the peepal tree inside the big courtyard of his ashram,
he would come across a world seeped into the ordinary hustle and bustle of his
disciples; all sorts of people whom he found himself incapable of telling the
verbal transfixations of his realisations. And why not, this sort of intra-self
communication which for a moment gets connected with the ultimate self can
never be described.
Also, there was an
eccentric and ethereal charm in his meditative techniques. As monsoon poured
down in its thronging craze and everything was swathed in mushy, gooey feeling,
he practised rain meditation. Perhaps, he’d improvised it himself. As the
showers fell in all their harmony, Universe’s life force, the cosmic energy
manifested itself in a rare, drizzling harmony. Harmony among water molecules
chanting a secret doctrine as the showers linked the celestial and the
terrestrial world. Effortlessly he became part of this phenomenon in God’s
domain as divinely duty bound droplets fell down over his body. He felt each
and every part of his body as well as soul being drenched with the musically
falling water.
Harmony of the drops
passed through his body without any obstruction making him an inseparable part
of the cosmic rhythm. His perfectly symmetrical brow and handsome, reddish
features shone with the sheen of some mystical glimmer.
Sometimes he
performed it even during the chilly rain of January. His big, black and
thickly-lidded eyes shut under those beautifully arching ere-brows got mystical
glimpses from the farthest point of the universe; his full and healthy lips,
meanwhile, chanted His name.
At other times to
break the obstinate obstacle of “I” he practised a very hard penance. Under a
scorching July sun he would sit by a melting bonfire, deeply unaware of his
body’s proximity to such squelching temperature while his soul jumped its way
to the divinity’s coolest climes.
If not in the formal
sense, then in some pleasantly vague sense he was well aware of his body’s energy
field layering around him for a few inches. Beyond this he sensed the greatest
energy field of the ultimate. He felt his field as a subsystem of the latter.
In this way the inevitable harmony of the cosmic energy field seeped away all
his disharmonies; making him feel harmony of the whole. He did it dutibound
because harmony of the whole cosmic order is impossible if there is disharmony
or imbalance in a constituent of it.
Then there was the Sadhguru’s
own spiritual healing for curing rarest of a headache or fever. Most often
he needed this meditation for his sick disciples. These efforts were not
outrightly miraculous. But his yogic techniques certainly pushed the
clogged life force around the disturbed energy field of the diseased person. He
imagined the divine sparks from the cosmic energy striking against the
malfunctioned energy field around the ill disciple, like a welding torch spews
out intense flames. He felt the cosmic welder creating those flashy ripples in
the disciple’s energy field to bring back harmony.
All this gave much
needed psychological support to the bedridden devotee apart from the invisible
spiritual medicine. Ashram physicist’s ayurvedic dose did the
rest of the work.
Sometimes, perturbed
by a slight worldly shuffle he’d go for a monvrata, penance in silence
without speaking even a single word for a month. Lethargic and energy sapping
tidbits thus exiled, his soul soared to even greater heights in its search for
the ultimate. During those moments of silence he sensed as if cosmic hands are
lifting him up for a spiritual elevation beyond the world of miseries.
* * * *
Utter and
unquestioning surrender to the cause and devotion of Lord Shiva was the
starting point for all young initiates at his hermitage to make them saints,
better persons, nice individuals and more humanely equipped in whatever they
wanted to do in the life to come.
To have a pious leash
over the young religioners he’d devised easy versions of Vedas, Vedangas,
Upvedas, Upanishads, and Dharam Shastras. It all started
in early morning with chants, invocations and prayers accompanied by the
ceremonial milk-bathing of Shiva Lingam at the shrine-curb beneath the peepal
tree. The pontiff would then explain the myth and legend of Lord Shiva to
unravel the truth enshrined in the scriptures in Sanskrit poetics: a layman’s
path to have a glimpse of the reality in one form or the other.
There was no paucity
of practicality in his Shaivism. He knew its only purpose was to save our souls
from the incessant deluge of ignorance, to order our lives through right
conduct, right thought, right action... in fact all the “rights” in Buddhism
and Jainism’s pipeline.
Thus, to keep up the
charm of life amidst the fast changing parameters of social life, the fight
between reason and faith, deeds caught in the webs of success and failure, cravings
struggling with morality and immorality, and the numerous make-do patches in
the belief of something, this sage had the modest mission to regale humanity
with Godly panorama, to keep people’s faith kowtowing the mainstream for which
this creation came into being and turn his disciples into anything but not the
ones who had the marginal-most snarling look with the slightest propensity to
disaffect even a single heart’s destiny. In a nutshell, his soul’s credo was to
keep the lamp of primordial goodness burning which the changing centuries have
not been able to puff dark. Sensitisation to that original cause and purpose
was his religion.
His hermitage was
thus open to all sorts of people from young to the old, from poorest to
somewhat well off, matriculates to illiterates, from witty ones to the ones
plagued by pubescent silliness, from good to insidiously worst: in fact all the
adjectives which can define human personality and character.
His religious forte
thus included each and everything which a commonly sensitive human being could
look for material as well as spiritual support: from feeble superstition to the
mystical ring of divinity. It’d all the diversification except one thing, the Sadhguru’s
unflinching faith in Lord Shiva, from where he’d started and which had kept him
going during that initial period of swerving steps and youth’s helter-skelter
hysterics with its dismissive air towards any sort of faith.
He was thus a thrower
of altruistic dice amidst the terminal chaos of the souls caught in nightmarish
glitches, enabling them to win the ‘useful faith’ overflowing to the brims.
As humaneness would
have it, the holy man had his own Godly defined limitations. His initiation
point of Shaivism and devotion was a means to achieve the final evolution of
soul. And if someone, at least from his full-time resident disciples-–leaving
apart the ordinary householders for whom the practicality of his social-religiosity,
which he preached to them during the sermons, was easy to adopt—missed this
particular end to which the Sadhguru was constantly looking, then the
whole process or the means of Shaivism was at the mercy of the physical self
with its material cravings. In that case, his teachings would remain just
ceremonial ritualism at the outer most surface of the Ultimate Religion with
its impenetrable core at infinite depths.
On that outer shell,
religion remains just a diehard ambition to get stamped as a qualified godhead;
just a tricky proposition to earn a livelihood; just an earthly occultism
played with élan upon a mass already caught in limbo.
Now, our young
would-be-Sadhu had decided to become just as such due to the painful
realization born of his lameness. He wanted to become a religioner to undo the
taunting sarcasm; to be revered; to be greeted with folded hands and his feet
touched. It was a huge wall in fact between him and the farthest end of true
Godhood. And he’d every danger of getting struck at the first ladder of
religion---a religion of ritualistic formalities, of spelling charms, of casting
witchcrafts, of leaving a useable impression on a believer’s simple conscience,
of being worshipped, of making a profession of sadhuhood to earn
livelihood.
The pontiff had
created a subsect which owed allegiance to Shaivism as the supreme path. The
mission beforehand was to spread religiosity among the religious novices. And
to the pupils at his hermitage he provided education of his sect to make them a
sanyasi, or mendicant, either vanaprastha (a forest dweller) or sansaric
(a layman living the life of a householder while obeying the mild principles of
the subsect).
He had, but, a tough
task ahead in the case of his would-be-disciple, who’d all the starting points
which limit religion to an acrobatic game played to the tunes of wizardry,---
an addition to his wooden stick, making it the efficient bearer of his weight
on the rough and rumble of life.
As they entered the ashram,
he saw the oblate man in an ochre coloured robe sitting beneath the peepal
tree, while the pupils, squatted on the ground, were mugging up slokas
in a scriptural rhythm. His heart went gung-ho at the sight of his
would-be-mentor.
Touching the holy man’s
feet, the old farmer introduced the boy who imitated his old accomplice. The pupils’
cramming chorus got a welcome respite. The pontiff blessed the boy’s bent head,
recognising him.
“Little one, you’re
there at the congregation that night with your good question,” he said softly
with voluminous piousness, which put the boy instantly at ease.
“Want to join us in
the service of God?” his would-be-teacher asked, coming to his aid with his
straight-forward proposal.
“Yes maharaj!”
the boy replied doggedly chasing his blues away.
“Na... no maharaj
he’s come with me just for a day,” old farmer protested as meekly as he could
manage without seeming irreverent to the upholder of his faith.
The holy man looked
smilingly at the boy, his eyes shining with an all-knowing gleam. Without any
tantalising tidbits he’d put the proposal himself instead of leaving the boy
all alone in his fight for an entrance.
“Yes, yes maharaj!
How kind it’d be of you to accept me as your pupil,” the boy pleaded with
folded hands, shaking of his limbs now firmly under control.
The old man in a fix
pleaded for the opposite, fearing his crash-landing into boy-lifting charges by
the boy’s aggrieved parents.
The afternoon sermon
had run into an earthly, rough weather. The pupils closed their scriptural
booklets and drooled over this silly goof-up. The holy man at once realised
this and slowly gestured to them to carry on with the same tempo.
In the background of
that affable chorus, the holy man pacified his old devotee, “The boy has taken
the trouble of coming thus far with you. Please, at least for the day let him
have a feel of the ashram.”
He asked the boy to
join his pupils. The boy instantly took to his left heel without even caring to
look at the puzzled villager, who lifted his sack and started for a row of
neatly thatched bamboo hutments at the other end of the ashram yard.
After joining the
group, his heart fluctuating wildly, the boy gave a sneak peek into the
gathering to find out more wooden supports resting on the ground. Alas! He was
in for a little bit of disappointment. No more crutches lying metaphorically,
validating his childishly drawn out parallelism between wooden support and
religion. But Lord Natraja and old lame friar at the fair were the shiniest
stars in his constellation of dreamy lights. He thought himself fittest among
the group to become a revered and respected Sadhu, visited by people
from distant places. The neophyte thus sat there, now and then adding to a
strange syllable in the chorus, while lost in future envisioning himself as a
pontiff of grand height and gait. Lost in that paradisiacal vision his right
leg twitched on earth as if it was trying to gather up as much physical weight
on earth as would be sufficient to walk on a forceful journey. While the holy
man’s religious credo of trivilisation of the physical self to decamp the soul
from worldly bondage looked chagrined at the desiring and craving shake of the
boy’s infirm leg which seemed to aspire an earthly castle at the cost of a free
soul.
The first sermon he
heard at the hermitage was about testing the sense and sensibility of one’s
faith. It involved a grand talk of morality and ethics, peace of the soul, of
reconciling young vagrant energies to a habit of seeking the ultimate objective
of their belief system even though they may not be aware of the exactness and
proper contours of their goal or the terminal point of the Sadhguru’s
grooming of their spiritual selves. Their young enquiring souls were to be
engaged in an interesting talk with the Ultimate Conversationalist through
educative, preaching talk which provided answers about the Almighty, morality,
ethics or simply the good version of everything and its linkage to the God.
The new entrant
listened to all this without burdening his young and exuding mind. Though,
throughout the session his face was armed with a warm smile as if he drew out
the deepest meaning of each and every word the holy man spoke. He took them as
humble, wordy possessions of a religioner which’d inevitably fall at his feet
when he will grow up to be a hallowed sadhu.
Next day when the old
farmer prepared to leave for the village he asked the boy to get ready to go
back with him. He was so sure of the boy’s return with him that he asked in a
very demphasising and frail-set sentence.
“No grandfather! I’ll
stay here and learn to become a sadhu,” the boy sounded very firm and
resolute.
“For God’s sake
child, why do’u want me to be expelled
from the community on the charges of fleecing other’s children and offer
them to religion?” old man’s temper went down to the wire.
He tried to drag the
boy with him and it splurged into as bad as it could. The boy slurped out an embarrassing
scene. His face turned pimply purple as he cried full throated lying on the
ground. He threw away his stick proclaiming he didn’t want to walk even a
single step. Old man’s heart went jaundiced yellow as practically whole of the
hermitage dwellers, including the master sage himself, gathered around them, as
the boy reached the apex of his fuddy-duddy antics.
“I’m of no use at
home. Nobody wants me there, nor does anyone love me. Children laugh at me,
always throw taunts like stones. Only Lord Shiva loves me and I want to serve
him,” he tried to impress upon his teacher-of-a-day.
“For heaven’s mercy,
why’re you forcing him to go back with you, Surte?” the holy man said in a very
detached tone, as if spoken from sidelines without coming in the way of God’s
will.
“But maharaj,
his parents will hold me responsible for all this,” the old devotee said
modestly without sounding unobedient.
“Responsible for what,
my dear believer in God? I hope you haven’t committed a crime. Only helped
someone whose heart is fully craving for a particular way of life,” it ended up
as a little sermon.
Sensing this ultimate
checkmate in this little cheesy game, the farmer in his not so deep mind easily
calculated out that any further move of any pawn from his side would only
breach the reverence he’d inculcated for the pious man. So, giving a marginally
snarling look at the boy, who was now standing near the head of the hermitage, the
old man touched the Sadhguru’s feet and asked for permission to leave.
To the boy his guru seemed so empowered and powerful, possessor of
divine powers, as to have a final say in all things and matters without any
opposition. So, instead of being thankful to the old farmer for taking him to
the ashram, his heart leapt at both its legs, clapping at the old farmer
eating a humble pie (as he thought so).
When the fact
surfaced at the village it wasn’t as stigmatising as the old farmer thought it
to be—who during his return journey was sure of being condemned as a scamster
and child-hacker—when he broke the news to the boy’s family. Though poor Nathhu
with his narrow cheeks, sparse beard and dull eyes muttered anguishly but he
still managed it within respectful limits without sounding openly impertinent
to old Surte who was respected in the village for possessing a rare mixture of
bone rattling hardwork cuddled with devotion to the Almighty.
The boy’s mother, her
little round freckled face now shorn of most of its former beauty (her little,
straight nose being the crest-jewel of her mildly sharp features), however
cried in her maternal euphemisms, buffed by this sudden happening. Now, in her
frizzy memories, lurching and sulking boy seemed so bubbly and hectic in childhood’s
pageantry that she unshackled his part of attic inside her heart and gave out
peeling sobs. She now realised she’d lost a pearl of her heart’s treasure,
because sadhuhood meant possibly a lifelong abandonment of home and
hearth. Almost mourning she gathered her head-cloth in her squeezing fingers
and pressed it against her face to muffle her sobs and sorrows.
Even in her utter decrepitude,
his grandmother, on the other hand, displayed wonderful sobriety as if she
could clearly see the imperceptible ways of destiny with her feeble eyes. She
knew it that from then onwards her favourite grandson’s path could go anywhere
except home. She controlled shaking of her frail-set limbs as she took big
swigs of separation, because at that time it seemed as if death had intervened
in the middle of a story.
The siblings too
sulked initially, no more seeing him horsing around the peck. Two elder ones in
fact mulled over their brains and came out with their repenting gullibility for
neglecting their lame younger brother.
And if, instigated by
his memory’s wheedling, any thought of savouring him back to the poor house
struck his parents; it got snoopily cut itself for the fear of the crime of
dragging the boy out of God’s acropolis, where he’d himself taken shelter. Any
such thought seemed drastically disparaging towards the holy man, which the
grandmother would’ve avoided till her last breath. Her mourning face, thus,
seemed divinely lit as if full of pride for offering her prized possession to
the service of God.
His parents too, once
the initial shoddy shock to their parentage was over, realising the hard striations
noosed around their parenthood, his disability and the question of his survival
after their death, accepted the reality of his first step as a religioner. Or
call it this way: ‘Whatever happened, God allowing, happened for the good of
their boy.’
* *
* *
It was a sort of
tepid austerity for the initiates at the propitious pontiff’s hermitage. He never
intended to imprison those young religious souls assembled at his ashram
for various factors and reasons. Some were there because their parents in extreme
indigence couldn’t keep down their little bellies’ ever-demanding cries. Some had
been offered with an impeccable faith to the God after a wish fulfillment in
the family. Others had been found lost out destitutely in the world and were
saved by the immaculate godhead. Few had obsequiously joined his entourage at
pilgrimages, perhaps their previous mentor was spookily reprimanding, hence the
elopement. Also, there were some well off followers of the Sadhguru, who sent
their children to him for time-tested ancient system of education, expecting
them to come out pert and petite literati capable of earning their dimes
without gullibility in any sort of slovenliness. The holy man on his part had a
mission of making this motley group of his pupils understand the God’s
compendium. ‘A good human being’ was all he wanted of his drudgery on each and
every one of them.
The pupils weren’t
prevented from seeing anyone who was known to them. But for the boy’s poor,
bucolic family his sudden bumping off the poor house’s ramparts to the rich and
respected religiosity meant their separation forever, as if death had suddenly
snatched him away leaving back only fading reminiscences. Though, sometimes in
their poverty laden nifty ways they boasted of having the heart to sacrifice a
part of it for the service of God. And for the rest of the time it was a back
breaking fusillade against hunger by poor Nathhu Ram and company. The hermitage’s
air, on the other hand, leavened with the holy man’s litany went in regalement
with a six months period of time. Oh, how time flies with an astounding
swiftness! Maybe the God was providing the boy with a quaint set-up for a life
of detachment from the family and the material world—if possible.
The boy wasn’t tardy
to begin with. His hunger to learn each and everything related to sadhuhood
reached a blind bottom, as if never to be satisfied. Perhaps, he was trying
paranoiacally to achieve some valid religious score over other boys of his
village, who always won over him in any normal childhood game back in the
village. His odium for them reached a nadir and the holy man’s teachings seemed
to offer him alibis. The Sadhguru’s soft and slow words danced like a
harangue inside the boy’s secretive self, blowing up the ears of his
adversaries.
During this period
there was great spiritual food available, extending right from the moral and
ethical preaching, daily observance of rituals, prayers, bathing, Patanjali’s
system of yoga, subtle
spiritual means to cleanse the body and ways to rein in the wandering
mind and desires. But the travesty of human mind is such that same thing can
show us a piously smiling Godliness, as well as a badgering devilness. To the
boy all it seemed a fantastic, slicky and cheesy way to religious empowerment.
His boyhood was thus immersed fully in the tawdry ritualistic jazz. All it was
a play, a rant for him which every sadhu had to pass through.
When they meditated
in the vast, grassed courtyard of the ashram he always saw the
infinitely large statue of Lord Natraja, as his guru tried his best to
make meditation as easy and simple as possible for them, in order to bring about
their spiritual initiation incontrovertible to their childish and chubby
meanouvre; like the elementary letters and numerals which the children go on
cramming in their nursery classes with a doddering and dodging concentration,
without realising or knowing that one day these hotch-potch, howdy little
troublings would make them full linguists. He would ask them to sit in the best
meditation posture, to cram it in fact, so that it came to them blandly without
any effort. The next important thing was how to close eyes in a best meditative
way, i.e. drop them dead without feeling their wriggling presence and see the
dark, then sacrosanct light somewhere in this gloomy sea stoically engaged in
its battle royale against ignorance; then concentrate this light in the middle
of the forehead thinking nothing, just repeatedly chanting a mantra.
The boy through his
best efforts saw stars and planets orbiting around him instead of the light. He
was lost in himself during those contemplative inner dives, in place of the
raylets loitering around in a splendid haze of time. Hence, instead of a gay abundance
his body-mind complex left him, even during those liberating moments, attached
to futuristic worldly desires. Thus, the most simplified versions at the
learning stage like mental control, body control, breath control, sense control
and the resultant concentration never assembled in their cosmic clout inside
the young religioner’s soul because the direction of his soul’s pull was
towards subjectivity, while all these were the tools of objectivity. So,
whenever he opened his eyes after the meditative session the apex of his
imagination was the picture of an influential religioner. Isn’t it a fact that
sometimes even the most detached of means becomes a slave to an attached desire?
His desired end made the pious vehicle of meditation just a session to
strengthen his ever existentialist subjectivity, when nobody disturbed him in
that hushed silence as he contemplated a world of his own—not His world. So he
went on making a worldly, illusioned mountain of the ultimate mole hill.
As ‘man proposes, God
disposes’, the Sadhguru could do little in this matter. Footprints
falling in such silence upon such a young soul are not easy to undo; they
create their own paths, their own territories. In fact reach wherever the
solidified subjectivity—or call it human Godliness or Godhood—takes them to. As
inevitable, the boy had taken to a different path than his master’s. And the
days sneaked as easily as they could in their indolence. The master engaged in
cosmic philanthropy couldn’t have sensed the oddity in one of his disciples
whose soul, despite the guru’s all liberating techniques, had been
caught in a pigeon hole.
As the boy was spared
of the trouble of manual aspect of the teachings like caring for the cows,
going into the neighbouring scrub-forest to fetch fuel wood, tending the crops,
going for alms, etc., he was left to nurture his religious lessons in his own
subtle ways. Thus, while most of the young disciples were engaged in some work,
he goofed around the premises solidifying his own convictions and resolutions
with palpable enthusiasm.
It was in a way a
kind of reverse journey on the path of spiritualism: a path towards the web of karmic
realm instead of the sublime detachment and bubbly effervescence of
realisation. These were the potent karmic seeds which were to grow up
later as big bushes and thickets. Thus, the journey which was meant to end in detachment
was in fact taking him to attachment; an erection of a sort of smokescreen
around his inner self. The formality of religion was initiating its sluggish
flare up---a formality in its hypnotising, forceful and deceiving forms, rather
than the true informality of a true religious being who takes to religion as a
food of life, not as the means of food. And as a result of the spitter and
spitton of his karmic seed, influential sorcery and effective worldly
utilisation of all the Sadhguru’s teachings were to be the future fruits
of his fully grown karmic tree.
He almost hated the Sadhguru
when the latter expressed his pining helplessness in not taking him on a
pilgrimage to Rishikesh. Reasons were many about which the holy man could do
little. Journeys were almost tortuous and utterly risky in that era when the
Indian transport system was not even in its infancy; it was in its womb. They traveled
on foot, on carts, on horses sometimes. The entourage traveled haltingly.
Stayed at other ashrams on the way, where the pupils had scriptural
debates as their gurus watched them with pride.
He felt a strange
avarice for the pupils who returned after a couple of month with numerous
stories to tell—of passing through hill forests at night, of great rivers, of
huge temples whose lofty shikharas almost colluded with spirit of the
God, of ranting and raving black charmers from the hill tribes, of the holistic
spirituality of Himalayan sages, etc., etc. More they told him, more impatient
he became feeling lost out even in this religious play and silently rasped his
boyish religious chauvinism with a vow that he too would go with the rest of
them in future and surpass all of them on the path of sadhuhood.
So the six months had
gone in their philharmonic ways. To him it seemed almost six years since he’d
left home. Sometimes at nights he recalled his grandma telling him fearful
tales in the dark of night which sent down nyctophobic chill down his spine.
But by now he’d started to believe in his religious toy powers to put those phantom
figures in the doghouse, as each and every cell of his body jostled for a
mystical power while he chanted a mantra or meditated, imagining a
rip-roaring figure that tore apart the ghosts.
In fact, he’d wept
two or three times at the thoughts of his grandma.
“She may not have
died by now?” his soul enquired, coasting to a far away memory in which the old
woman looked almost mythically ancient; while the truth was that the old woman
had grown old only by six months.
Then one day, much to
his heart’s high pitched ejaculation, Sadhguru Parmanand announced that they
would be going to his village for a sermon. That night his memory just caught
hold of the village.
“They’ll have to show
respect to me now,” he thought about the reverential decimation of his foes.
In full spirit and
fervour, he had washed his robe and practised some preaching. Who knows the guru
might ask him to perform a sermon before his own villagers?
“They will be humbly
surprised to see me in rudraksh beads draped around my body,” he thought
about the big heap of rosaries, which he’d borrowed from other pupils for the
occasion.
During the day, he’d
oiled his stick and to give it a holy look tied a neat saffron sash at its
upper end, thus removing its earlier look of sarcastic weakness. Throughout
night he pumped himself up for the retribution against his childhood foes, as
scenes of the sermon he’d witnessed in their neighbouring village about a year
ago flashed loud-mouthed in his whirring mind. After all, they were now mere
abusive, unholy and unclean street urchins, and he a disciple of the respected
pontiff; steeped in a worshipable tradition.
The disciples of his
age and experience were not usually taken for sermons. But this being a special
case he was allowed to join the elder monks. In the village chaupal, people
had gathered well in advance. As the Sadhguru was to have his first sermon
in the village, the villagers waited for him to bring blissful and bountiful
succour to the ever recurring, troubling turnouts of their rural rustic fates
determined by so few lines on their hardened palms. The village priest who’d
arranged the preaching session had the directing hand in the preparation of the
stage, the type of idols, shape and size of the garlands and even the sitting
arrangement. With flawless ease the martinet managed this religious stage. In
fact, to bring about a top-notch Godly succinctness in the surroundings, he’d
gone through the yajna. In its fire many people offered oblations of
butter, sugar, turmeric, rice, vermilion, kapoor and havan samagri.
It served the twin purpose of attracting more and more people at the site as
well as making the diffident air pious and gregarious so that formless God
might adopt an invisible form and watch over His people theorising about body,
mind and soul under the aegis of the master religioner. During this pious fire
ritual the smoke of different things went upwards for their respective Gods.
The gathering
included whole family of the young native disciple. Heavy in emotion they’d put
on their best clothes, special day as it was. After all for the poor low caste
family there were so few special occasions to adorn their best home-spuns,
which otherwise day-in and day-out waited to come out from the claustrophobic
air reigning inside the old rusted big iron trunk. Almost everyone who’d
gathered there knew about the native pupil. In fact, instead of the usual intimidating
look and nit-picking casteist knick-knacks there was some sort of God fearing
reputation in their tones for the humble family. His grandmother proudly
huddled on one side was wiping tears, while the waves in her old heart came
swooning higher and higher as she waited for the apple of her dim eyes. Family’s
other siblings were sitting in an apple pie order. His sisters chirped
excitedly as their plaits braided with ribbons purchased at the last fair
swayed to the festivity. His brothers who’d been in the contemptuous
hob-nobbing with his foes sat with somewhat guilty heart.
Then the moment
arrived crunchingly. The queue was headed by the ashram pontiff in his
esoteric and omniscient expression, followed by a religioner with a ubiquitous
smile—he was in fact the second in religious command at the hermitage and
managed the affairs in the master’s absence. Then there were senior disciples
whose philanthropic faces proved religious version of environmental determinism:
that their choices, decisions and actions on the path of Godhood had been decided
more by the hermitage than anything Godly inherited. And the last one was the
young religioner of the village whose intentions and potentialities on the path
of Godship seemed unprognosticable as he lumbered along his own precipitous
path to sadhuhood.
There was a clamour
and jostling for blessings as they passed through the people. Believers’ faith
in godheads is not determined by age, caste or class. Even a ten-year-old ascetic
addresses an eighty-year-old man or woman as “son or daughter”. So the whole
train of the religioners was a blessed one without any discerning distinction
among its individual links in the matters of seniority of profession, degree of
non attachment to cravings and of course the age. So they, playing their part
profusely, proffered blessings over the greying and balding heads.
Whole family of the
young Sadhu, grandma first, father next, followed by mother and then
brothers and sisters were lined along the ascetics’ path. They were touching
the bare feet of the sages approaching the stage. The grandson’s feet came near
the bending old woman. His heart’s hyperactivity missed a beat and he stopped
for a moment. She looked at the face of her Sadhu. Sagely path, perhaps
for the God’s infallibility is above and beyond our earthly relationships. For
the old woman sequence of touching the feet had been confirmed and formalised
like her life-long inculcated faith in the mercy and beneficence of the God. Now
she had to complete the chain of reverence.
Possibly at the apex
of her reverential self, in this twilight era of her religious history, she
touched his feet. Her frail fingers’ touch at his infirm toe sent up a whirring
sensation which zigzagged up his spine and ended at the tip of the single crown-plait
on his otherwise shaven head. For the rest of the family it was just like one
has to board a train if going somewhere. They had to toe the line of old matriarch.
With each lurching step of his, a head of his family bent and touched his feet.
He blessed them without looking at their faces. There was no thought, no
emotion inside his mind and heart. Even his last apprehension about his sadhuhood
had been thrown to the winds. Nobody created an emotional scene. Had they done
so, it’d have been a heresy. After all he was now a religioner, and they mere
devotees.
It wasn’t a shock to
the family. They were all well versed in doing a thing just for the sake of it.
Showing verbal respect with matching facial and body language, while some
work-worn farmer entertained himself through a puny diatribe aimed at their
caste as well as person, was the sort of thing which groomed their habit of
bearing such taunting menace in a detached and dispassionately objective
manner. And they bore it all without many wounds on their psyches by the
slandering charm of the pranks. So, here in this matter too they followed it
without any hassles. It was a matter of religion, after all. It was far, far
better than the decimating countryside jocularity, which sometimes loftily
hoisted itself almost to the extent of insinuating immorality. However, this
casteist numbness was underpinned by a heavy feeling that the boy had been
separated from their way of life forever.
His death would’ve
made them cry. But by the grace of God he was there to stay alive dedicated to
the cause of religion, fulfilling the whole family’s duty to Him all alone by
himself. So, they didn’t cry, nor they smiled. With a mysteriously heavy heart
they sat there, lost out in the devotee crowd.
The Sadhguru began
the sermon. The rest of them were arching around him on both sides. They looked
everywhere but still nobody could claim that the eyes of a particular
religioner stuck to his or her face for a moment, except the head guru
whose compassioned eyes holily pierced each and every soul that had gathered
there.
The young Sadhu
was also looking somewhere or nowhere. Mendicants don’t fix their gaze over
worldly possessions, so none of the family members found him looking at them. In
a few moments his mendicancy had taken a sharp upswing. He tried to find out
his debasing tormentors in the crowd. Few of them were standing at the end of
the sitters, concocting in their minds some fun, if possible.
All the religioners,
except the master sage, fixed their faces like that of statues. It seemed as if
two sides of spirituality were there on the preaching stage, side by side: one
of expansion to infinity and the other of contraction to infinity.
Once the prosaic and
monotonous talk of God was over harmonium, iktara, dholaks arrived
on the stage for the musical service to the unedifying spirit of God. Music,
and devotional music especially, is the sublime pacifier for the rabble-rousing
human soul. There were many lyrical episodes from Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagvata
Gita and many other holy books, myths and legends in the local folklore with
their savouring morals. The pontiff played the iktara and sang in His
name. Extolling vibrations of the one-stringed instrument—divine companion of a
recluse on the single and lonesome path of sagehood—loftily and salubriously
lifted his soul to abandoning Himalayan heights. The resultant pacifism
emanating from his soul circumvented the crowd as they opened their hearts to
his Godly songs.
Our young Sadhu’s
part in the chorus was to add to the background harp with the help of two small
slate pieces tucked in his fingers. He was learning because many a times the
pieces fell down. But the notes of his musicity were such that his slip-ups
hardly made any negative impact upon the devotional music and song. By the
grace of God, the conduit between his inexperienced fingers and the ripened
music was such that any nitpicking ear would’ve drawn flak if instead of
surrendering to the prostrating notes it tried to capture the irregular and
unrhythmic stony chimes produced by the boy’s fingers.
The keertan
went on till the wee hours as people sat there forgetful of all their apples of
discords which most often put the soul in a doghouse. And when it was all over
the people without any clamour or jostling started to leave the scene as if
they were walking in a sleep. The boy’s family too found itself unable to cut
the outgoing stream returning to their worldly households leaving the Godly
stage all alone in its meditative trance. They were thus carried away to their
house in an orbiting cycle of thoughts, damn sure of their own earthly and the
boy’s Godly polarisation; asceticism and the household life poles apart.
At least one
consolation assertively convinced them that he was getting something to survive
upon. Otherwise, a poor low caste physically disabled person could have hoped
only to stutter along the brink of death due to starvation.
While going back to
the hermitage the young Sadhu shed some silent tears in the dark of
night. Yes, today he missed his family. His heart was aching with a groveling
grumble for not even having a single word with them. And he felt somewhat
robbed of something. But it had been his avowed aim for the last two years.
When the whole family touched his feet, his stake in asceticism had been
confirmed. Momentously he felt himself under the force of a branding block. “A Sadhu”
it echoed stridently inside his body as well as soul. For sure there was to be
no looking back now.
“A true ascetic has
no bondage of family, friends, relatives or other worldly matters!” the sageship
of yore sent down a high-pitched placation to his wavering heart. It certainly
sounded comforting. Now he was surer, firmer, and more determined than before
about his exhilarating stake in the influential, eternal and bounteous religiosity.
It so happened, one
windy afternoon when the sun was slightly dimmed down by the upcoming mist and
traces of foamy, cloudy flakes high up in the atmosphere, he was seen sitting on
the edge of a pond, outside the ashram precincts. Spirit and fervour of
a cool breeze was creating numerous pleasant waves in the water. Red ochre sun
rays in their pacifism cast a lively star show in a portion of water. It seemed
as if it was a site of crimson gold formation in its bubbly effervescence. He
was watching it in low spirits, thinking about his four years at the ashram.
The Sadhguru had
been too pious and practical idealist which the disciple’s conjecturing
convictions undiscernibly resented to the extent of being mild indignation and
which further resulted in ingratitude to the holy benefactor. His soul was like
chaotic, turbulent and humdrumming water where the saffron colour of
surrendering religion was creating contentious waves. These panic waves seemed
to brew up a silent intemperate diatribe against his spiritual mentor. Wilting
under the tempests of influential and fruitful Godhood, his still minor—he was
about eighteen, the age of reckoning when elders’ grooming diktats seem
worthless anthills and molehills to be kicked out of existence—religious self
had arrived at a dire prognosis about the religious quality of his guruji.
The holy man seemed ‘a poor religious unworthy’ to his imploding, revolting,
busting and puerile sadhuhood.
Two weirdly awkward
looking boys of his age happened to be pelted on the scene.
“See, I’m putting
this black sign right in the middle of your palm,” one of them was heard to be
saying. “Then I’ll close it and you’ll find nothing of it when open it again,”
he shook his head with such assertion that his long, saggy and dirty locks of
dark hair swayed to magical winds and
fell over his deep-set, gleaming eyes.
That sounded
extollingly consonant to the tumultuous disharmony serenading across his
juvenile religiosity.
The speaker marked
out a big black sign with the help of a coal piece right in the middle of other’s
palm. The mark was big enough to be noticed even by a cursory look of the young
Sadhu sitting a few yards away from them. Then the marker squirmed and
wiggled his face in strange distortions and muttered some strange words
loud-mouthly; his seemingly glib tongue copiously visible in the rough and rumble
of his devilishly laid out yellow, black and brown teething.
“Oh my devil! Where’s
the sign?” the other one in torn and tattered knee-length black kurta,
went boom and bust with surprise as he opened his hand. His long, narrow face
with sparse strands of beard was seized with fear and surprise.
The young Sadhu
raised his head to see the mark. He couldn’t see it.
“I can perform more
surprising things,” the charmer let out a boast. His hands went into the
side-pocket of his patch worked, dirty and coarse robe, as if he was preparing
to spring another surprise.
“Hey, then you’ve
learnt some magic tricks from the old frog. Now, I understand why you go into
his tent every night.”
The troubled waters
inside the young religioner at once caught hold of the wondrous little piece of
charm. He called them.
“Yes mister, I think
I should have a look at your trick again,” he said with a doubting look,”I’m
sure you’re playing just a deceiving little game.”
“Deceiving game? Yes!
But only if you catch me,” the charmer said confidently, his tone somewhat
harsh due to the pinprick at the credibility of his magical charm.
In a challenging
manner he pulled out his amulet consisting of a set of monstrous claw and tooth
as if it contained the key to his wizardry.
“Then OK, do it
before my eyes,” the young religioner braced himself up in a searching and peering
posture.
With an allaying air
around him the stranger did the trick with the quickness of lightning, leaving
the young Sadhu absolutely amazed, who got it repeated many times yet
failed to break the mischievous heart of the trick.
“Do you know anything
other than this?” holy man’s disciple asked.
The stranger with a
mysteriously sickened look performed four, five more duping games. Desirous
turbulence in the onlooker’s heart’s churlish waters increased manifold.
“Which ashram
do you belong to?” the disciple asked, thinking that the dirty looking boy
belonged to some hermitage where the head taught them such charming tricks.
“Aaashram!”
the stranger was caught in zilching laughter. “Who allows us to even go near
this thing?” he belched out a spray of sputum through his badly set teeth, as
if full of scorn.
“Then who taught you
these magical things?” the young Sadhu asked with a portentous look.
“Oh! It’s the old
frog in our dera (gypsy caravan site)”, weird stranger boasted in an
inflated voice. “I don’t mean that one!” he threw a stone at a big toad at the
water edge. “He’s old Nanku. He knows so many of them!” he stretched out his
arms as if to embrace whole of the pond. “They say he’s in a secret buddy-duddy
with invisible magical powers. Just looking at your forehead he can tell many things
about you. He knows magical mantras to heal ailments. Can call ghosts at
midnight and send a ghal!” he was now speaking with a
crunching fear, which sent an awful sensation across the pores of young
religioner’s skin.
“What is this ghal?”
he asked with a specious adamantness.
The stranger was
surprised a bit, “You’ve never seen one?” he looked into the sky in a cavalier
manner, enjoying each and every moment of the importance given to him by the
dweller of holy hermitage. “It’s a big pitcher with holes around and fire burning
inside. It’s made to fly in air from a graveyard. Name and identity of the
person to be killed is spoken into the fire. Then it goes flying in the air to
reach the target,” he drew an airy line with his index finger pointing to the
sky, turgidness now sneaking into his voice for being the pupil of such a
magically powerful guru.
To the young Sadhu
his own religious head seemed so helpless and weak with pittance of his
unsubstantiating mystical prowess in comparison to this old frog and his clique
of wonderful supernatural powers. He felt envious of the unseen charmer’s pupil.
“Can fly through the
air!?” he exclaimed somewhat contemptuously, prodding a disbelieving look into
his features.
“Yes! Fly through the
air!” charmers proud part-time-disciple emphasised the certitude of his guru’s
magical know-how.
“Have you ever seen
any?”
“Yes, I’ve on certain
nights,” his fear seemed to regurgitate again.
“Then, what happens
after it flies in the sky?” young Sadhu’s make-believe skepticism becoming
moribund.
“Then it stops in air
over the house of the imperiled person. It gives a call in that person’s mother’s
voice. Does it three times, in fact. If that person responds then it breaks on
his head, killing him,” he sounded somewhat whimsical, or was it just because
of his appearance.
“Oh, my Lord Shiva!”
holy man’s disciple uttered haughtily, but in the heart of his hearts he was
afraid as the feeble afternoon very fastly changed to an immediate evening
under the fiat of hacking weather.
“And what happens if
that person doesn’t speak?” he managed to ask looking at the sun with its mild
orange-yellow bonhomie beyond the porous misty fabric, as if it was the said
burning earthen pot from which his grandma would speak out his doom anytime.
“Then the danger is
averted,” ugly looking banjara, a gypsy, stewed his response a bit
tartly, as if a trick of his guru had failed just now. “But it happens
very rarely. Because the voice resembles so much to his mother’s that it’s
almost impossible to find out,” he reclaimed the infallibility of the black
magic.
The young Sadhu
became a bit hopeful of something mysterious. “Where do you come from?” he
asked.
The prodigy of
eternal picnickers smiled a stoic grin, which seemed so odd on his strange
face. “We come from nowhere, but go everywhere!” the voyeur exclaimed mildly
with some pride. “Presently, I come from there,” he pointed in a direction to a
place which seemed to be exactly below the ominous glow of the sun.
The encampment site
was just a kilometre away but the weather’s mystique masqueradation in between
made it look far away into the mistily-mild-mazy western horizon.
“Can I come there and
meet old frog?” disciple from the ashram asked.
“Why, of course you
can. Whyn’t. But don’t forget to bring something for him, if you have to ask
something,” the gypsy made it clear with his pathetic look.
And they were gone as
quickly to somewhere, as they had arrived from nowhere a little over an hour
ago.
These were new
proddings into the annals of his religious lexicon. “These are really great
things,” he thought recalling those still fainter Godly figures with unbelievable
charming powers in his grandma’s tales, who now in his unconcerned reminiscences
seemed mythically old.
“Why guruji
doesn’t teach us these things? Perhaps...” he’d many doubts about the religious
worthiness of the Sadhguru.
Agitatedly, his minor’s
sadhuhood was desirously hungry for a new, influential and charming
rubric at the top of his little chapter in mendicancy. To him religionhood
looked so empowered under the subsumption of such magical powers.
“This old frog must
be a great man. Flies pots in the air!” laden with such charming thoughts he
started back to the poor and weakling hermitage.
Earlier, his stumpy
jerks used to move him a kind of pendulum—swaying between the greatness of the
pontiff and his own fragile and yet-to-be-confirmed convictions. Today, when he
put up his reinforced support below his convictions, they weighed stronger. A
great aide they’d got today. Sadhguru Parmanand seemed so uninfluential and
incapably weak with his unenviable religiosity in comparison to the strong and
gubernatorial visage of the old frog in his concocting imagination.
That night the great
sermon from the pious head of the ashram was slyly dubbed by his judgmental
self as an inferior talk having no value. He felt almost blindfolded and
handcuffed in the ethicist’s confines. Under the aegis of a new heading and a
new chapter his religiosity was stewing in its own juice. His own possessive
convictions and ideas held out a stout defiance against each and every word
spoken by the Sadhguru. His whole self got excited to the brimstones as
he imagined a huge man with an intimidatingly big froggy head teaching them
wonderful tricks in place of the pontiff. More the holy man preached, the more
he seemed to him a vengeful strategist who was hell bent upon ironing out all
the hopeful, worldly wrinkles from his religious robe.
The same night he saw
a dream. From across the rim of a full moon, a bright starry object started to
move downwards, first slowly, and then came hurtling down with a harrowing
speed. While sleeping he feared it just like a large shooting star which goes
for a long distance, creating an awful suspicion that it might end up floundering
in the face of earth itself. He felt as if earth itself was pulling this
glaring object. His fear went on soaring with the gravitational acceleration of
the menacing glow. And when it crashed right upon the plants and trees in the
middle of spacious courtyard of the ashram, he jumped up from his divan
as if electrocuted. He was sweating profusely and his body was shaking as if
harping on the dangerous waves resulting from a stroke of lightning crashing
into the compound. His hands involuntarily went up over his head to protect it.
Why was his body
perspiring with fear? Light after all is the personification of all unknowable
and unanswerable questions. And it has the cosmic power to provide pacifying
answers as well. So, when it crashed so nearby-–even if in a dream—creating
howling ripples, it indeed was fearsome. Who knows, maybe it symbolised his
four years at the hermitage. Great efforts of the holy man couldn’t have failed
to bestow some upliftment to his disciple’s spiritual self, however little that
maybe. But when the sharp and focused beam of the pupil’s revolting beliefs
touched the rim of the larger, not so bright round cosmic hallow of moonlight,
there were sparks accompanied by a shocking repulsion. Earth’s natural law of
gravitation pulled back the bright sheen with its worldly force. In a few
seconds of its fatal fall the holy man’s efforts had been crashed into the
courtyard. Trauma of the disciple’s body symbolised its struggle with
dualism—his own breaking, shooting and sparking self at the one side and the unflinching,
mystically dim and moony aura of the holy man on the other. Now, the former had
crashed down, condemning the latter’s seership as a failure.
When he balanced himself, it was a matter of fact that
he’d accepted old frog as the next torch-bearer on his path of sadhuhood.
The dust, which arose due to the crash, mistily engulfed the path ahead. In its
hazy visibility sorcery, black magic, witchcraft and other tools of utilitarian
sageship galored in their ambiguous shapes and sizes. These were the ‘opiums of
Marx’ which intoxicated his adventurous self. Religion in its ‘functional
theory’ smiled in full animal spirits. Here, old frog became the determinant of
numerous functions. But alas, however high a frog may jump into the air, earth’s
futile pull always topples the flight and it falls with a thwacking croak. So,
earthiness of its flight is always undoubted and when it airs a jump, it is
nothing but a minor skirmish of a froggy religion.
No comments:
Post a Comment