What's Down The Road Today? Come And See

Ram Krishnan

Today I asked Ram,
the young man who works at the guest house here, about kirtan in the area. He was surprised that I was interested, and that I participate in this form of worship in the States, or that I knew anything about it at all for that matter. Maybe because he assumed I am steeped exclusively in Tibetan dharma, or maybe just because I'm a Westerner, and as I've discovered, the understanding that Indian forms of spirituality are fairly widespread in the US is actually lacking for many ordinary Indians. In any case he offered that there is a temple in his village, Bhattu, just down the road from here, where there is kirtan, every evening at 7PM I think he said, but he never goes there. Why not, I asked. He's not welcomed there, he said, because he's of a lower caste. Arggghhhhhhh! He would let me know though if he learns of kirtan, maybe in someone's home.

Having opened the door, later in the day I decided to walk down into the village, chanting my favorite Hare Krishna mantra along the way, engaging a particular energy field and having an outline of a desire, to see what and who might present themselves to me. It's only about a half mile down the hill, as it turns out, to the temple, and as I was passing it and heading further into the  village, an Indian man came walking up the hill in my direction, and of course I said "hello", as I routinely do.

He was dressed in full light blue kurta and pants, looking clearly not like a laborer or farm worker for example. He answered hello, and we began to talk. I asked if the temple I just passed was a Shiva temple, and he offered to take me in to see it after I expressed interest and asked if I would be allowed to go there. What country am I from? What is my work there? And to my surprise, based on other experiences I've had in Asia, he understood "psychotherapy" and mental health counseling. He's a civil engineer, he shared, and lives just there, as he pointed to his very nice looking house just a  short way back up the road. And what is my good name? And his turns out to be Ashwani Sharma.

One of many possible representations of Ma Durga

So he took me into the temple, and I noticed that there were the remnants of a ceremonial fire still smoking in the fire area on the floor, and I asked if this is something that is kept going all the time. No, this was remaining from this morning's puja,  or worship service. I remembered that when we were in Delhi last year at this very time (see October 2015 post), that it was the ending time of a 9 day Durga worship, and he showed me that the deity in the temple's  little alcove was indeed Durga, and that tomorrow will be the 9th and final day of this year's cycle dedicated to Her. I asked if there was music involved in the worship and yes, there was singing and drumming, and then I noticed first one and then a second dholak, an Indian two headed cylindrical drum, very similar to the naal I have and play.

Dholak

Before I knew it Ashwani was offering me lunch and escorting me to his home, where, just at that moment, friends from the nearby city of Baijnath pulled up in their car, a mother and her grown son. We were cursorily introduced and all went into the house, where I was instructed to sit on one of the two sofas, and water was brought for all. Before long Ashwani's young - 10 year old? - son arrived and sat with the friends. A lovely greeting, when Mrs. Ashwani Sharma arrived, performed by the grown son of the friend, and by her own son, was the standing up, approaching mother and touching her feet and bringing the touching hand to one's own heart.

Soon we males left for the communal temple lunch that was being served during this Sunday holiday time. What immediately caught my attention as we arrived at the eating grounds was the music, of course, being delivered by what looked like all women, inside of a small, cave-like, low slung structure, complete with drum and multiple voices and chimta,

Chimta

the long fire-tong-with-attached-jingles folk percussion instrument. It was beautiful, but I had no opportunity to pursue it, as I was being hosted, as it were, by my new friends,  and they clearly had no particular interest in the music.

We sat on the ground, being served in shifts of perhaps a few dozen people all told, and were served by men carrying large baskets of rice and bowls with several varieties of dahl, in subsequent rounds, during which, I was told by software engineer Shivanshu, the 24 year old son I mentioned, and with whom I sat and talked primarily, that one could eat as much as one wished, until they were full. Ishan, the young son of Ashwani joined us, and after he asked me my good name, I asked him his name and whether it was the name of a god, and yes, it was a name of "Shiv", he told me.

After lunch we walked back to the house where we exchanged contact info, and said our goodbyes with my effusive thanks and appreciations, and permission to snap a photo.

From left to right: Shivanshu, Ishan, and Ashwani

I had entered this unknown rural village hoping to find, open to finding, some kind of exposure to or entree into the kirtan there, and low and behold, by Durga's Grace no doubt, I was led directly to people who could provide this. What may come next of this introduction is yet to be revealed, but here so far is an example of a simple wonder experienced in Mother India. My thanks.

And yet............these very people, professionals, probably Brahmins by caste, may be some of the same people who make Ram feel unwelcomed by virtue of caste hierarchy, and may have already passed onto the next generation this same barbaric, ancient, illegal and alive and well bigotry. India. Land of extremes and contradictions; of the most profound wisdom and the most abysmal ignorance; of the most unimaginable and obscene wealth and the most grinding and inescapable poverty; of brilliant color and despairing darkness; of palpable holiness and wrenching degradation; of widespread Mother/Goddess worship and widespread extremes of misogyny perhaps without equal. India.

Just being here, and being aware, is among the most challenging experiences one might know in a lifetime. Love/hate. Attraction and repulsion. Joy and exhaustion. The light that shines from the smiles of some of the poorest children one is ever likely to encounter is unlike any I've ever seen anywhere else. At the same time, certain children are routinely maimed, blinded, or otherwise injured so as to make them more pitiable, and therefore more able to earn money for their handlers, or for their parents, as beggars.

India. Maddeningly slow to change, and racing carelessly and dangerously into the 21st century of hi-tech and manufacture, selling its life sustaining water to American and European multi national corporations, and depriving its own people of the clean water they need in order to survive. It's politics moving ever backward toward more fascistic governments, corruption never abating, food that  could feed some of its hungry (1.25 billion population in total) held in storage for lack of political will toward distribution.

Hand stitched protector deity that our friend Tsultrim is working on (see October 2015)

And acceptance, or fatalism perhaps. Karma. What  if all of this is, truly, the working out of personal and national and regional karma? (I ask this rhetorically. I have no personal doubt about it). While it's easy to understand how invoking "karma" can be turned by the cynical and the corrupt, as it often is, I'm sure, into Marx's "opiate of the people", it may also have a basis in truth. And if that's the case, then what? Then, as Tibetan Buddhism most routinely and most explicitly seems to promote.....then, we are left with compassion as the single sane response to everything. Or, to put it in the words of the Serenity Prayer:

Amen.