Back of Beyond (42 page)

And was it worth it?

Definitely.

The drive north from Bhuj began as sensations of diminishing stimuli, leaving the city and then the Black Hills behind, easing further and further out into a flattening desert plain. I paused in one of the few villages on the edge of the Rann and was entertained by the headman while his wives and daughters paraded past me in brightly embroidered jackets decorated with hundreds of tiny mirrors. I watched them sewing and sifting rice in the shade of their mud huts and among the circular granaries topped with conical roofs of reed thatch. Out under the thornbushes beyond the village, herds of white cud-chewing cattle sat in statuesque groups, guarded by naked, gold-skinned boys.

Nearby were two camels commencing the rituals of courtship. At first it seemed gentle enough—a bit of nudging and polite nipping of flanks—but then the screaming and spitting began. Either the female was in desperate heat or she was merely trying to discourage the gallant male who was now attempting to mount her. The more he tried to climb on her back, the more she spat and screeched. The boys lay on their stomachs, laughing. Finally the male forced his seemingly reluctant mate to the ground where she quieted down and just sat on her haunches with a kind of “Well—c’mon then, get on with it” look. But the poor male was obviously past his prime and for all his mounting and bellowing, just couldn’t seem to make it. So they ended up together, side by side, eyes closed, like a couple of old pensioners ruminating about prior conquests in the virile days of youth.

Further on, way out across the salty flats, a herd of over three hundred camels were being led by a group of raiskas to a market near the coast. Raiskas have a notorious reputation as fly-by-night seducers of village women as well as their more traditional roles as balladeer-historians, news carriers, and nomadic traders. I wondered what the decibel reading would be for a herd this size enmeshed in mating rituals.

Later on, at another village close to the edge of the Rann where this story began, I joined in a wedding until I felt that my presence was taking the limelight away from a visiting dignitary. He was being lauded to the skies by a “walking historian” (a
charan
or
bhaat
) whose job it was to act as the official greeter and sing long—very long—ballads in praise of the achievements and successes of each important visitor to this desolate region. A role similar to that of a wandering bard in medieval England.

The elders of the village sat around the dignitary, nodding agreement, as the historian sang his homage-filled rhymes. I always love to watch these old men of rural India. They seem to live such gentle, quiet lives, respected by their families, cared for by their children, sleeping the hot days away in the shade of their homes, or huddled in whispery bunches, seemingly involved in the slow resolution of weighty matters.

I sat a distance from the wedding party so as not to interrupt their celebrations and chatted with a young man who had just returned from Bombay to his village to attend the festivities. We sipped tiny glasses of “dust” tea made from finely ground tea leaves mixed with cardamom, sugar, and milk. Very sweet but refreshing, particularly on hot days like this. He seemed a little bored by the endless (and to him) sycophantic, antics of the singing historian.

He spoke an English I could understand so I asked him about the daily routine of the old men of the village.

“Oh this is very much our tradition, this taking care of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. A young man of the family will always be looking after him. The old man knows how things should be, and he sees that everything in his house and in his farm is in good order. When he is at home—the women have cleaned up and all those things—and he sits down. People come to call on him and take advice. If there is any calling to be done then he goes out and calls on them. Ladies of the houses, they are doing household work, grinding millet and corn, giving children their bath, making the bread, and seeing for all things for a rainy day. They clean up. If there are any rats here then they will see that a cat is there who finalizes everything. Then, if it is very hot, the old man may sleep—whenever the body requires it—and before sunset he eats his food and usually goes to sleep after sunset because there is no electricity here, you see….”

I asked about the younger men too.

“Oh, a young man is very strong. He will go to the fields every day. He will take the animals out for grazing—or he may not. He may have a little porridge in the day to keep his reserves, then he will pay social calls, and the rest of the time they are sitting, discussing, talking. It is not a very hard life. But when it is time for cultivation, then you will find everyone out in the fields. Then it is very hard. But it does not last for long.”

In an adjoining courtyard I could see four men in the shade of a line of round-walled granaries, furiously weaving blankets, which were stretched out on wooden trestles and using bright red, purple, and yellow threads of wool. They had obviously not been invited to the wedding and seem to be ignored by everyone.

“Oh, they are not of this village. They walk around, all over, and make blankets when they are asked.”

“They seem to be working very hard.”

“Well, yes. They work whatever time they wish but they must complete each blanket in three days or they will starve. God will not give them food. But the talent is there, isn’t it, and as long as the talent is there, they do not have to bother about anything. No red flags of communism here y’see!” He laughed at his own wit. “And that is why we in India are safe from all that because it is embedded into us that we are satisfied with what God has given us. The cycle of karma plays a very important role in our day-to-day life and we say, if I don’t have it, it is because God did not will it. I must do something good in this life for my rewards in the next one, d’y’see.”

The singing historian was coming to the end of his ballad. His voice rose, the nodding of the old men increased, and the dignitary sat very straight and stern as the last refrains rang out. My companion translated (with a sly grin):

“And you have been just, with authority, with kindness and with love for our village. Here you sit in these four walls and we feel proud when we see you here, a descendent of the old house of our rulers that began here in the year 1212
A.D.
, in this place. But do not forget your duty. You are a political power and you are also a social power of great importance and we are all standing here and respecting you and remembering all the great deeds of your revered family.”

The nodding reached a crescendo; the dignitary nodded gravely too, waved his hand limply at the wedding party, indicating that the celebration could now continue, with his blessing.

I wandered on around the village of tight-packed mud houses surrounded by high mud walls, trailed by a snake of children who giggled as I walked and then scampered and ran when I turned to talk to them.

A group of old men, in huge grubby turbans, sheltered in the shade of a goat-nibbled tree, the only tree I’d seen for miles, drinking something black in finger-long glasses. My English-speaking companion was still with me.

“That tea looks odd,” I said.

He laughed, “It’s not tea. It’s a kind of opium. Only the old men drink it. It strengthens the weaknesses of the body.”

“Really?”

His city cynicism flashed again. “Well—that’s what they say. I think it just makes them sleepy.”

The men invited us to join them in the shade of the tree. One of them pulled a heavy mortar of black rock from under his gray robes and placed a thimble-sized piece of something that looked like broken obsidian in the bowl.

“That’s opium?” It wasn’t at all like the little greasy balls I was to see later among the hill tribes in Thailand’s Golden Triangle.

“Yes. Watch him now.”

The old man, whose sulphur-colored turban seemed to be unraveling as he moved, pounded the hard black substance with a brass pestle into a fine powder. Then he added water, mixed it thoroughly, and strained it through a piece of white cloth into a clay bowl, which he offered to me.

“I’m not sure I really want any,” I whispered to my companion.

“Oh, that’s not a problem. Just pretend to drink,” he whispered back. So I accepted the bowl, lifted it to my lips but kept them closed. I handed the bowl back. The men nodded, smiled, and extended cupped hands toward the man with the unraveling turban. He proceeded to pour a little of the muddy fluid into each set of hands. There was a murmur of ritual acknowledgments before they leaned forward and drank with eager sucking noises and licked the gravelly remains from their fingers.

“Now they all go asleep,” said my urbane companion.

And that’s just what they did.

A little later I met the old man whose brother had been lost in the Rann many years ago. After his sad tale of the terrors of the place and the spirits of “the whites” that haunted its barren wastes, I was anxious to drive on deeper into the blazing nothingness, past the sun-cracked skins of stone mountains, peeled off like onion layers. I wanted to see the herds of wild asses said to roam the eastern portion, the Little Rann, and the vast gatherings of flamingoes living and laying their eggs in “cities” of conical mud nests way out in the whiteness. So I drove on, leaving the village far behind.

Now there was not a tree or a shrub or even a single blade of grass anywhere. Nothing but an endless eye-searing blankness in every direction. The track was a vague incision in the salt, but beyond that was what I’d come all this way to see—nothing at all. Twenty thousand square miles of perfect flatness. No clouds, no movement, no life. Nothing.

It was like vanishing into some vast realm beyond the mind, way beyond thoughts, beyond feelings and sensations and all the convoluted tangles of consciousness. Even beyond awareness itself. A space so colorless, so silent, and so infinite that it seemed to be its own universe. And I just simply vanished into it….

The sun was so hot in the dry air that I almost felt cold. I noticed this odd sensation at one point, about twenty-five miles into the whiteness, when I got out of the car and walked out across the cracked surface of the salt. After a couple of hundred yards or so the heat shimmers were so violent that I could no longer see the vehicle. I couldn’t even see my own footprints due to the hardness of the salt and the intense shine radiating from it. Then I noticed the shivering, similar to the sensation of a burning fever when the hotter your body becomes the colder you feel. It may also have been a flicker or two of fear. I realized that I had done something rather stupid. Two hundred yards away from my landmark was the same as a hundred miles. I didn’t know where the hell I was. I was lost!

I remembered tales of arctic explorers caught in sudden blizzards and dying in frozen confusion a few blinding yards from their tents. A few yards in a blizzard is infinity. This was infinity.

In retrospect the whole incident seems ridiculous, but at the time I sensed panic and the horrible reality that if I didn’t retrace my steps within the next half hour or so I’d become a raving sun-sacrificed lunatic lost in this utter nothingness. Given shade I could have waited for the sun to drop and the shimmers to dwindle. But shade was as impossible as alchemist’s gold here. There was no shade for two hundred miles.

And then, as suddenly as they had come, the shivers ceased and I felt an unearthly calm. I was neither hot nor cold now. The purity of the silence rang like a Buddhist bell, clear and endless. Here I was in the loneliest, emptiest place on earth, smiling inwardly and outwardly, utterly at peace, as if in some sensation-less limbo state between life and death.

I burst out laughing at the zaniness of the whole predicament and my feet, without any prompting and guidance from the conscious part of me, walked me surely and certainly right back through the shimmers and the vast white silence to the car.

The Rann is still with me now. In times of silence I return to its silence; in a strange way I find it comforting and reassuring. We should all carry a Rann somewhere in our minds. A place of refuge and utter peace. A place of the mind but far beyond the mind.

I never did see the asses or the flamingoes or anything else out there. If I’d taken a camel rather than a car I could have continued further and deeper but, as it was, I was hampered by thick mud below the salty crust about thirty miles in. The monsoon had been late that year and the Rann had not yet been thoroughly baked by the sun to make it safe for my way of traveling. But that was fine. I’d found what I’d come looking for.

Absolute nothingness.

What an enticing prospect.

A little piece of Portugal plopped down on the Indian subcontinent. Stucco and red pantile-roofed houses. White manueline churches tingling with Baroque extravaganzas; shaded and shutter-windowed manor houses hidden in palm plantations; a redolent compost of cultures mellowed like fine-crusted port to offer outsiders the life and fire of India tamed by the grace and gentility of old Catholic Europe.

And beaches.

Ah, the beaches. The best in India (with the exception of a few in the southern state of Kerala); most of them undeveloped, golden white strands edged by dunes, tickled by sloppy surf, where you can lie, naked as a babe if you wish, sipping aromatic cashew or coconut
feni
liqueur, wasting the days and nights away and waiting for the great Christmas psychedelic
pujas
of would-be hippies, wanna-be rock stars, world-wanderers by the buffalo cartload, and long-limbed nymphettes with blue eyes and golden hair—a world reunion of wackiness, once a year, every year. Guaranteed to tantalize the gypsy in your soul and galvanize the guru-gush that flows here like spiritual syrup, sweet and cloying but somehow liberating, invigorating. All a part of the life force in Goa for those who have settled in this ideal penny paradise; a wild, mind-stretching bacchanal for those who must soon trade their sandals for Florsheims, pop the bedroll back in the closet, slip off the bandana, and reenter the grist and grind of workaday worlds back home.

Goa has always been a goal. Way back in the scintillating sixties I worked for a while as an urban master planner in Tehran (long before the vengeful era of the Ayatollahs). The window of my office overlooked a small square or maidan in the heart of the city, a hundred yards or so down the road from the American embassy. And as I grappled at my desk with the challenges of the capital city’s future growth, the eradication of its slums, the routes of metro systems and freeways, and the implementation of all of the Shah’s grand schemes for the education and titillation of his “adoring subjects” (a phrase often used in the local Farsi newspapers), I would look down enviously at the travelers sprawled with their backpacks and tattered maps beneath the shade trees in the square. They were there every day, a different bunch, but strangely the same—Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Australians, all in the ritual garb of dusty jeans, discolored T-shirts, sweat-stained bandanas, torn boots, all coffee-bean brown from weeks of world-wandering, all making the great sixties “grand tour” from their homelands, through the wilds of Turkey, across Iran and Afghanistan, into the mythical nirvanas of Nepal, Kashmir, Kerala—and Goa.

Often I’d take my lunch down to the square and talk with these starry-eyed earth gypsies. A few were rapidly deteriorating into rambling dope-heads; others were young men, hair pony-tailed by elastic bands, with weary boned-out faces, and young women, leached of sensuality, sharp-edged and stern like gangly governesses, guarding their shrunken souls with Fort Knox imperiosity. But most were still road-fresh, bursting with the energy of exploration, kicking out the edges of their experience, in love with all the boundless possibilities of life and their own lives in particular. They spoke of the high Himalayas with the same reverence that a monk might use to address the sacraments. Truth would be found in those rarified regions, they believed; great wisdoms and insights awaited their arrival; they would discover a higher existence in these netherworlds far from the hedonistic bondage of our get-and-grab society. To them Kathmandu would be a lofty paradise, a place of visions in a land of simple centeredness. Sure, they demurred, drugs may form a part of their rituals of passage, but only as a means of release, you understand, not escape.

And then they’d talk about Goa. An idyllic corner of India where you could rent an old Portuguese beachside villa for pennies a day, feast on a pick-it-yourself vegetation diet with occasional banquets of lobsters and tiger prawns scooped up in bucketfuls from the warm surf—a place to sprawl in the sun, singing freedom songs, listening to long-haired gurus and dreaming dreams of perfect peace in the world.

I would return tingling with possibilities to my cramped office. Much as I loved my work and believed in its ultimate value, the frustrated wanderer inside kept up the old melody—there’s more, there’s more, there’s so much more to see, there’s so much more to be!

I knew that one day I’d be in Goa. It was just a matter of time really….

Twenty-one years. It took twenty-one years and as I look at these words on the page I feel that familiar flicker of fear—time wasted, time passing, mortality, the terrible inevitabilities of life. But at least I had arrived. Not for the Christmas orgy though. In my years of travel I had developed an aversion to crowds—even crowds of flower-power people trying to resurrect the “good vibes” of the youthful sixties and seventies. I had become a seeker of quiet places—the hidden corners, the backroads, the nooks and crannies of the earth. Even in unspoiled Goa I intended to avoid the northern beaches—the hippie enclaves of Anjuna, Baga, and Calangute. I’d heard through the world-wanderers’ grapevine of far more tranquil places to the south of the capital, Panaji, and the Mandovi River. “Go beyond Margao,” I’d been advised. “Almost to the southern edge of Goa. Go to Palolem, my friend.”

But first, I had to get out of Bombay. I’d only intended to stay in the city a day or two making travel plans. But Bombay is not an easy place to leave. A casual conversation on a bus traveling south from the state of Gujarat had led to meetings with prominent members of the Jain sect (a religion appealing particularly to the more affluent and literate members of Indian society). Next thing I knew I was a houseguest in some elaborate mansion on Bombay’s “gold coast,” dining on fine vegetarian fare and spending time with one of the sect’s ascetic gurus.

“This man was a very famous businessman, owner of many hotels,” my host explained. “But he was also a great thinker, much respected by his peers, and he decided to take
mukti
, to become a sadhu. He sold all his possessions—his houses, his hotels, all his lands, he made his wife and his children comfortable, and then he said good-bye and set out to walk across India dressed only in a dhoti and eating only a little rice every day. He was not a young man at all, he was over sixty when he did this, and he could not—he is not permitted—to travel any other way but on foot, sleeping on the ground or at the temples as he walked. And now he is with us for a while at my temple—yes, I and my family built this special temple for the Jains of northern Bombay—and we are very happy indeed to have him here. You will meet him. You will like him.”

And I did like him. He was rather similar to Gandhi in appearance; small, thin, spectacled, and with a smile that was not so much enlightened as entertaining. His eyes sparkled. We had a wide-ranging discussion, touching on everything from Jane Fonda and the international implications of the McDonald’s empire to the problems of Sri Lanka and the nutritive properties of Indian rice.

Then he began, at first a little formally, to explain the tenents of “Arhat Darshana” (Jainism) in a lilting speech full of Indian-English phraseology: “You see it is very natural for the intelligentsia to strive to free themselves in all ways possible from the pains of major diseases of the soul in the form of births, senility, and death existing in the putrid body-cell, which is full of impurities, and it becomes inevitable to have various thoughts and musings in this behalf.”

He paused and smiled that enticing smile. He seemed to be amused by everything around him—himself and me and particularly a group of nearby worshipers who hung onto his every word. He leaned over and whispered, “I don’t think they understand my English very well but they listen to everything so—what can one do? I am hoping you understand what it is that I am saying to you.”

I nodded. “Two days ago,” I said, “I’d never even heard of Jainism, and I appreciate your taking time to help me understand.”

He giggled, then he reached over and touched my shoulder. “My friend. I am now a sadhu; I own nothing, I owe no obligations, I have only time. Nothing else is of any importance.”

He sipped some water from a paper cup. My host, who sat cross-legged next to me, whispered, “He is not well. We are bringing in a doctor this afternoon. He has just returned from a walk of over one thousand kilometers. We are worried about his health.”

I looked at my host’s face. He was also an important Bombay businessman and years of worries and deal-making and financial tanglings hung heavy around his eyes and over his furrowed forehead. The guru, on the other hand, seemed so full of life and energy he almost floated on his raised wooden platform. It was questionable who needed the doctor most.

“And so,” the guru began again, “we Indians are a peculiar people you know. Especially on account of our powerful culture and instinct of self-confidence, there has always been considerable reflection, cogitation, and imitation in the field of philosophy. This I think you must agree on?”

I nodded again. It was the Indian capacity for rapacious thought and vibrant spiritual values in the midst of seeming societal chaos that attracted many of the Western world-wanderers here in the first place.

“Consequently, you see, the quest for Muktivada—you might call this liberationalism—has become the staple hymn of our country, and that is why only knowledge, which is liberation, reverberates and resounds. And Arhat Darshana—Jainism—came about to make the path of liberation smooth, unobstructed, and easily available. The reason for this is that in no other religion, as in Jainism, is found so exquisite an arrangement and composition of means and materials, so rationalistically and methodically devised for the realization of the path of salvation. You understand?”

An eloquent preamble I thought and nodded. But what of the essence?

He looked at me and smiled. “You have a phrase in your country—not a popular phrase with us Jains of course,” he giggled, “but your politicians say it—was it Mr. Reagan, no I think it was your Mr. Mondale—‘Where’s the beef?’”

We both laughed. This was no cave-dwelling hermit. Only two years ago this man had been your typical high-flying, newspaper-reading, three-piece-suit Indian entrepreneur.

“Well—you see—in the doctrine of the Jain philosophy we believe that the ultimate principle is always logic and there can be no principle devoid of logic, you understand. We call this
Syadvada
—the means by which one acquires the full and complete knowledge of any state of things from all different and diverse points of view.

“Syadvada is known as the ‘compromising system of philosophy’—the great theory of relativity by Dr. Einstein is in many parts only a mere shadow the doctrine of syadvada. In this philosophy there is not even an iota of space for imaginary conceptions or superstitions. Many wonderful discoveries of science—so-called ‘new’ discoveries—are to be found long before in Jain doctrines. We are rationalistic philosphers you understand? Theories of sound waves; the interpenetration of matter; the instinct and feelings of vegetable life; theories of atoms and molecules—all these and many more detailed ‘scientific’ descriptions you can find in the most ancient—and I mean truly ancient—Jain readings.”

The sadhu sipped again from his glass. My host nudged me.

“Ask him about Atma,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The soul. It is the foundation of Jainism.”

So I asked the sadhu to explain Atma and he smiled that smile again.

“Long or short?”

“Long or short what?”

“If you can spare me two days I will prove to you without any doubt whatsoever the existence of the soul. Otherwise…”

“Let’s try the short version.”

“Yes. Very wise. Life is also short.”

However his explanation was not so short or so ‘scientific’ as I had hoped. I became rather lost in his complex philosophical knots.

“…and so you must conclude,” he said finally, “that the soul in all living things is like the soul in us. There is absolutely no difference between the soul of an ant and the soul of an elephant and your very own atma or soul. Contraction and expansion are the characteristic attributes of every living being, and lue to the bondage of karmas, a soul finds itself born again and again in any one of millions of forms of existence.”

My host had previously explained the great length to which Jains will go to avoid disturbing the soul of any other living creature, even to the point of placing gauze masks over their mouths to prevent the accidental intake of flies.

The sadhu continued: “As fire in firewood and ghee in milk are not perceptible to us although inherently latent in them, the soul is also not perceptible though it exists in your body. And when the soul comes to know its true nature, it evinces inclination to practice Dharma—it breaks the bondage of the cycle of life and death, the karma—and becomes free. That immortal soul becomes the enjoyer of permanent, continuous, uninterrupted, and infinite happiness in the region of final absolution, which we call the state of mukti.”

I’ve always had a problem with the concept of perfect bliss—harps, haloed angels sitting on clouds, thinking nothing but blissful thoughts in the perfect and heavenly Hollywood filmset. I’ve tended to assume that happiness exists as a relative state, as an antidote to unhappiness: The peace after the pain; the reward after the effort; the kiss after the crisis. But maybe that shortchanges life. Maybe “the pursuit of happiness” is really not the point at all—it’s the attainment of happiness, untrammeled happiness, here and now, that is our birthright.

The man sitting in front of me had cleared away all the irrelevancies of his life—even his wife and family—to take mukti. My host had told me he himself would never have the courage to go so far. “I’m what we call a Shravaka Dharma—a religious layman. And even that is very difficult, like trying to be a good Christian. Enjoying worldly things, but in moderation. That is why sadhus like our sadhu are so very important. They remind us of what is possible in this life. He is a tangible example. His way is very hard—he cannot use fire to warm himself; he cannot eat any living thing including vegetables; he lives in absolute celibacy—even if he touches the garment of a female he must undergo painful expiation, Prayashchitta—he can only wear un-sewn pieces of cloth; he cannot use any form of transport, or any umbrella or shoes; if he wants to remove bodily hair he must pull each hair out by himself, he can only eat once a day and cannot even enjoy a glass of water after sunset….”