Sardine-sandwiched between two people on a motorbike, a “scooty”, my eyes skip traced the orange remnants of sunset which slowly descended behind the Aravalli mountains. At the time, I didn’t know what they were called - the majestic peaks that circled the city of Pushkar from where we had set off.
‘The Aravalli Range is a mountain range in Northern-Western India, running approximately 670 km in a south-west direction, starting near Delhi, passing through southern Haryana, Rajasthan, and ending in Ahmedabad Gujarat.’
- Thank you to my friends over at Wikipedia.
The road we were trundling along, three-astride one rickety engine, wound its way all the way along and up through the mountains. A violently life-affirming panorama of sky and cement almost prompted me to utter the unsavoury line “Ain’t no feelin like the open road!”, or something cringe like that. I’m thinking of Walt Whitman’s poem Song of the Open Road. “Healthy, free, the world before me…” The breeze was blowing through my hair in this given situation, obviously. The air became crisp and clear as the altitude stripped off its filmy blanket, but then it got cold. I was not dressed appropriately for the weather. I am rarely dressed appropriately for the weather. During wintertime in Northern India, temperatures drop significantly overnight. Throughout the cooler months, the days remain mild while the sun continues to shine, but come sunset, the arid, desert landscape causes air to cool rapidly. I was unprepared for this sudden cool, having earlier refused offerings of additional layers as a person who is chronically underdressed has developed the toxic habit of doing. Chills aside, I began to feel a lightness of being as we escaped further and further away from the flurry of a city famous for its bustling market centre and holy lake where hordes of people gather at sunset. Some of these people are tourists, many preferring the self-proclaimed, masturbatory title of “traveller”, but most are pilgrims. Pushkar is a holy city, a pilgrimage site for Sikhs and Hindus. While Sikh pilgrims are drawn to the place visited by two of their most famous gurus, Guru Nanak Dev and Guru Gobind Singh, Hindu pilgrims flock to the ghats, the banks of the holy lake where they go to bathe and scatter ashes in woefully polluted sacred water.
In Pushkar there is no shortage of temples, the most famous being the Jagatpita Brahma Mandir – the one and only temple in India dedicated to the Hindu god Brahma. Brahma is the god of creation, the original creator of the universe, not to be mistaken with Brahman (with an ‘n’…) for in Hinduism this is something entirely different and refers to the ineffable concept of Ultimate Reality. Then you’ve got your Brahmins (with a ‘min’…), these are the priests, holy men, teachers, spiritual guides, individuals who are also worth mentioning especially since in India the guileless foreigner had better beware the fake Brahmin. “You find them, they don’t find you”, a trusted source tells me re: real Brahmins, and in relation to unconvincing posers in the Pushkar market. Beware the strange man in a loin cloth brandishing flower garlands who, apparently, will demand some sum of money in return for preventing the future possibility of a family member or loved one evaporating or getting hit by a monster truck.
I do not mean to sound so glib. It’s just that I was very much amused by these sorts of gambits, the type which presumably sought to exploit the idealism of spiritual voyeurs. The spiritual junkie traveller variety of this day and age, however, takes pride in the fact that they are wise to these tricks. Roaming the streets barefoot and sporting hemp clothing, often to be heard spouting pseudo-spiritual, pop-psychology jargon, they would have you think that they know the lay of the land, that they own it. Again, not to sound so glib, it’s just throughout my time in India I got pretty fed up with these types, usually men with leaky sexual energy who would sniff out my solo female vulnerability and proceed to mansplain some shit about “the ego” before trying to hit on me. They must have thought I was part of their weird tribe; I do not think I am.
For me, the obvious problematic of the abstract spiritualist trend is that it requires little to no tangible knowledge of the world religions and ancient wisdom it claims to be descended from. The whole “philosophy” is just a string of annoying aphorisms pertaining to metaphysical enlightenment which people vomit up without any awareness of the cultural, historical or ideological minefield they have stepped onto. Maybe it’s not that deep. In any case, that short rant was all somewhat hypocritical as I do, in fact, dabble in a brand of spirituality marketed to privileged white people (I often enjoy walking around barefoot and I think I own one, or maybe two, items of hemp clothing). The politics of the self are a complicated thing. All jokes aside, I hate to think that we live in a society where sensible, well-adjusted people can no longer occasionally Eat Pray Love, especially since, in one way or another, everyone is looking for their own way out, or in…
I must get back to the present. It is important to stay present, as they say.
Once the sun disappeared from view, soapy twilight descended into hollow darkness. The quiet calm of a deserted mountain road was rudely disrupted by a convoy of three spluttering engines winding their way through the abyss. At the time I wasn’t exactly sure how far or where we were going. All I knew was that we were hoping to attend a kirtan taking place outside of town. I say hoping because this knees-up was supposedly an insider’s affair. My escorts (acquaintances who I would now call friends) were locals, insiders, while I and another, a mysterious older Brazilian lady-traveller, were foreign objects they were planning to smuggle in. A kirtan is a type of religious celebration or performance primarily associated with the Hindu tradition. Derived from a Sanskrit word meaning "narrating, reciting, telling, describing", a kirtan involves music, mantras, hymns and general merrymaking in praise of religious deities.
‘With roots in the Vedic anukirtana tradition, a kirtan is a call-and-response or antiphonal style song or chant, set to music, wherein multiple singers recite the names of a deity, describe a legend, express loving devotion to a deity, or discuss spiritual ideas.’
- Another thank you to my friends over at Wikipedia.
The kirtan was taking place at Ajaypal temple, a Shiva temple dating back to the 11th century. The wobbly dirt track leading up from the main road was littered with indiscernible ruts and bumps and so we abandoned the engines, walking the last couple meters to the temple. I like to walk. I enjoy the steady certainty of it. Walking is conducive to thinking and feeling, or rather a specific type of thinking that relies on feeling. One foot in front of the other, I could feel an eerie stillness in the air, the kind that can be felt round about abandoned houses, empty churches or graveyards. In my mind, this feeling is conjured in places where the veil between the known and the unknown, or, if you will, this reality and another, appears to be thinner. In The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher theorises the feeling of eerie as something that is formed from absence; “either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present where there should be something.” This sounds about right. I often stumble upon the eerie in nature, when I’m on a long walk or something, probably for this very reason. In the absence of people and any signs of people there appears to be something else. I like to think that whatever magic still lingers on this earth goes there, to nature I mean, to escape the chaos, ugliness and inconsequentiality of a humanity which has almost stamped it out.
A lumpy temple-shaped shadow protruded through the darkness up ahead. As we drew closer, concerns were raised regarding the fact that there was no light or noise coming from its direction. No signs of nearby merrymaking to be seen nor heard. The concerns were dispelled. However, by the assurance that bright lights would attract the leopards that roamed the surrounding hills, and it was still early in the evening for any real ruckus. We came to an outbuilding where there was a miniature shrine with flickering candles and incense burning. We stopped to acknowledge the tiny cocoon of light; some paid respects. The building was surrounded by a sort of terrace which on one side overlooked a steep drop sort of mini cliff face which nosedived into rock pool sort of mini reservoir. The shallow water was filled with a colourful scattering of rubbish swimming around like weird fishes and the moonlit sky bounced off its surface with a murky shine. It was at this moment that a stirring of engines, people, movement, and voices begun to appear, their presence amplified by the earlier stillness and the reflection of a watery echo.
We hung around sheepishly for a bit while more and more people arrived. The throng grew big and bigger, the chatter loud and louder, until eventually it was time to follow the stream of people heading towards the temple building. The sheepish hanging, you see, had allowed enough time for someone to go in and check the scene and give a heads up that it was alright for us to intrude. To explain: this kirtan was organised by a group of swamis (holy men) from the local area, basically like a collective. This was their event - every so often they set up camp at nearby temples for a few days of festive fun and at some point, welcome in people from the community to join the party. Obviously, I am not exactly part of the community, and this was pretty plain to see given the fact that I was (am) a non-Hindu white girl amongst a crowd nearly exclusively made up of Hindu Indian men. Here lies the problem, except in the end this didn’t turn out to be a problem as we were kindly welcomed inside along with the rest. Everyone was soooooo nice! Indian people are just soooooooooo nice! (This is the type of dumb shit British people who go to Indian be saying forreal.)
The entrance of the temple gave onto an inner courtyard where a downscaled recreation of a bustling town marketplace was in full swing. The whole place was asmoke as a big spitting bonfire sat in the middle of it all. Various foodstuffs were effervescing in huge cauldrons being manned by people who were looking ever so tiny next to these giant-sized stirring sticks that they were swishing around. After removing my shoes, something that I was by now well trained in doing like a dog who can sit before being told, I was signalled to deposit them in an intimidatingly dense towering tower of footwear. It seemed the largest tower of footwear there ever was. Frivolous foolish me was concerned for the safety of my favourite boots. Of course they were fine. Soon after I was whisked off to an adjacent, outer-inner courtyard and plonked down into a circle of people were sat cross-legged awaiting the evening meal as people raced around frantically ladling out fat portions of steaming dal, pilau rice and vegetable gravy (gravy is the name for curry/curry sauce. Not Bisto. Also food in Northern India is predominantly vegetarian). The pièce de résistance on the menu was a regional speciality called dal baati, an extra spicy dal served over these tiny hard wheat balls. As one of those annoying people who likes to flex that they can eat superspicy food, this was my time to shine. People watched in amazement as I handled the spice, gracefully and with ease. The crowd went wild. Haha not actually, but some did in fact commend my abilities - both my “good spice for white girl” and my proficiency in eating with at hands. Grappling with food of a liquidy consistency is a logistical nightmare for the amateur with an untrained hand. The tiny wheat balls were a different logistical nightmare as they, on the other hand, were rock hard. It was like eating pebbles, spicy aromatic pebbles. I do not mean to edge into the realm of food criticism or make it sound like I know anything more than a tiny smidgen about Indian cuisine. I must now swiftly move away from talking about food because of the fact that it seems to be all anyone wants to do these days. I’m referring to how every other person seems to think they are a chef or food expert, a“foodie”, because they have spent too much time watching cooking Instagram reels. I, for one, would never dream of calling myself a “foodie”, or anything of the sort, although I do like food because 1. it is cringe 2. “foodie” is a ridiculous millennial word and 3. I am currently trying out a new diet trending on the online space whereby one subsists entirely on millet, pearl barley and potato scraps, like a chicken in the hope that it improve my cognitive functioning and performance in the gym. Ultimately, I think food-obsession and cooking Instagram accounts are symptomatic of a godless society LOL. Jesus, Brahma, Vishnu, the Buddha, Muhammed (pbuh) ect. never watched or made cooking reels, nor do they encourage us to do so in the scriptures. But seriously, it is as if cooking and healthy eating - eating well or “correctly” - is the contemporary measure of saintliness and sanctitude. In Pushkar I met a 70-year-old man named Aloo Baba (Aloo means potato in Hindi) - a holy man, myth and local legend who has eaten nothing but potatoes for the last 45 years. He be looking great, fire even. I just checked and he is googleable so you can go see for yourself - a great lesson that it really does not matter what you eat because at the end of the day it’s the vibes that count... and god. Anyhow, that evening I ate a delicious meal for which I was very grateful. I felt ever so slightly guilty about eating food which had been prepared for and by the community, although no one seemed to mind and people instead seemed happy that I was enjoying the meal. Like lots of places that aren’t the UK, India has a beautiful culinary culture which takes pride and pleasure in sharing food and making eating both a sacred and convivial affair.
After the foods, it was onto the music, the soul foods… Some jingle jangling had started up while we were eating, and we went to join the assembly of people all clustered in the belly of the temple. The swamis and the babas were seated in a circle at the front jamming on various traditional Indian instruments. I know near to nothing about Indian music, although me circa two years ago having newly acquired a Ravi Shankar Music of India vinyl might have informed you otherwise, but I can tell you there was a sitar, harmonium, bansuri (Indian bamboo flute), tabla (Indian bongo), and that’s all I got / can remember. There were some other freaky looking things along with your standard tambourine, cymbals, maraca variations – instruments that you were made to play in primary school if you were an unmusically inclined uncoordinated child. These instruments, however, were mere background noise to this severe looking heavily bearded man with a surprisingly sweet-sounding dulcet singing voice chanting Hindu mantras. A whole lot of “Hare Krishna”, “Om Hari Om” business. Everyone joined in call and response fashion. I stuck to smiling and clapping judicially, not wanting to dive headfirst into total cringe George Harrison mode. Sat below a candle which kept dripping gluey hot wax on my head and down my back, I kept being handed these tiny cups of chai. An enthusiastic man sitting next to me insisted upon bringing me automatic refills which he would then earnestly prompt me to drink; they just kept coming and coming in an endless stream. I had unwittingly accepted some sort of challenge. I must have had about twenty individual units since I could not help but feel that to politely-yet-firmly decline would not have been the polite thing to do at all. By and by, British sensibility had my head spinning and stomach turning as a result of having consumed too much fragrant warm liquid.
Gradually the energy in the place worked itself up until it was positively ecstatic. While people must have gotten high off the vibrations created by the chanting, many were also high in the traditional sense of the word. Everyone was circulating massive blunts and chillum pipes; there was enough hash to feed a village and the whole temple had been definitively hotboxed. In addition, people were handing out cups of bhang, a concoction of cannabis, milk and spices, that was being brewed in a large cauldron bubbling away over the fire. Shiva is known as the Lord of Bhang and all of this cannabis consumption could, if you will, be linked back to the Hindu religion since hashish smoking can symbolise devotion to Shiva due to the fact that, allegedly, he was himself partial to the stuff as a means of helping him relax, meditate and fire up the mystic inspiration. Still on the subject of substances but veering away from Shiva, there was also a man going round distributing toothpick appetizers of raw opium, a dark gooey tar-like substance which is the unprocessed dried latex of the poppy seedpod. I shall say no more on this, you are not reading Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.
Back and centre of the front and centre circle of holy men was a particularly magisterial looking guy who, perched on a makeshift throne, towered above the rest. He was the caricatural image of a figure of religious authority: large and round, long hair and beard. He was wearing a tiger print robe, which I thought an interesting fashion choice before I learnt it was symbolic of Shiva, and he had large dread bun atop his head. In Hinduism, dreadlocks are known as "jaṭā", and they are traditionally worn by sadhus, a specific class of holy men who have taken the plunge in renouncing worldly life. There are two main types of sadhus: Shaiva sadhus that are devoted to Shiva, and Vaishnava sadhus that are devoted to Vishnu. This man was a Shaiva sadhu, and it is usually his kind who wear dreadlocks, as inspired by the original dreadlord - Lord Shiva. According to legend, Shiva saved the world from flooding by using his locks to shield it from the heavy flow of the River Ganga as it fell down to earth. This sadhu sat there like Henry VIII, sucking on a pipe, occasionally trading it out for a couple hits on a large bong, while people delivered him plates of food and drinks. Without meaning any disrespect, at this exact moment he didn’t quite look the picture of someone who had renounced all material worldly pleasures. But who am I to judge. After all he seemed to be living the dream, specifically, something close to my dream, which, if you’re wondering, is: to live a life where I am admired, praised, lauded and revered, yet actually physically do little to nothing and instead spend most of my days basking in earthly delights all the while still being guaranteed an eternity of the same kudos and reward in whatever unearthly realm lies thereafter. Literally the dream. If anyone knows of any 2025 internship opportunities that would point me in this direction, please let me know.
Midway through the evening, a group of more austere looking holy men pulled up to the function. Their arrival caused somewhat of a stir; music and chanting ceased, and the sitting crowd started up a game of Chinese whispers before parting like red sea as the men made their way up to the sacred circle at the front. The men greeted the others, bowing heads fastidiously, and after reshuffling instruments, the cacophony of banging and clanging started up again. There was now a new figure sitting up at the front who stood out from the rest, enigmatic sadhu number two. People had arranged a pile of cushions for him to sit on so that he was elevated to the same height as the OG. This man, similarly, had long dreadlocks, and, dissimilarly, a gaunt frame and face with dark, hollow eyes. He wasn’t an old man, he actually appeared quite young and was strangely good looking, but boy did it look like he’d been through it, not least over to the other side and back. You could see it in his eyes. Above all, there was one very clearly noticeable peculiarity about this man. His left arm was raised in the air above his head, fixed, rigid, stock-still. I say his arm, but it really didn’t look much like an arm; it had withered away and was part wrapped in a cast; at first I thought he might have suffered an unfortunate skateboarding accident. “What’s up with that guy’s arm?”, I ask my friend. He tells me that the man has had it raised in the air for plus eight years, for “adhiṣṭhāna” – a Sanskrit word commonly translated as ‘resolution’ or ‘empowerment’. It is not uncommon for Sadhus to do such things; many challenge themselves to acts of extreme self-discipline in the name of religious asceticism which is meant to help one sever ties with the material body and transcend into a realm of higher spiritual consciousness. I think the arm in the air enterprise must be trending in the Hindu ascetic community at the minute because I remember seeing a man named Amar Bharati all over the news a while back as he had kept his right arm raised for 50 years in a testament of his devotion to Shiva and as a call for world peace. Mad respect. After a couple years of constant excruciating pain, all the muscles in the arm atrophy and one loses all sensation in it. And some of y’all don’t even have the self-discipline to wash up your own dishes.
The snapshot image of this devout young arm-in-the-air sadhu remains fixed firm my mind. Sometimes I think of him at the randomest times, like when I’m washing the dishes or summing. Maybe the moments when I think of him aren’t so random after all… perhaps I think of him at times when I need to stay firm of purpose and call upon my spiritual discipline. Not that washing the dishes or summing is such a will-bending exercise. An annoying way to round all this up would be something like: in this epicurean age of instant gratification and rampant consumption maybe we all need to recall the practice of spiritual self-denial as a measure of personal discipline. That was the devil on my shoulder speaking.
While many of memories of being in India have already faded into the dusty corners of my mind, this night still shimmers around the edges. Upon leaving the temple during the witching hours the sky was vast and starry and soft. My whole body felt very light, the lightness of being sensation that I mentioned earlier on. Maybe it was from the opium I had eaten. Jokes!!!!! Jokes for real! The ride home felt like we were sailing above it all, the previously felt ruts and bumps in the road having vanished over the period of a couple hours. Plus there was the experience of that very real uncanny phenomenon of when a journey feels half as long on the way back. Throughout my trip to India time was re-framed as this weird non-linear entity; in cities things around me moved very fast while outside of them, everything suddenly stood still. At times minutes seemed like hours and at other, hours, days even, passed like minutes. For some people who I met living there, time appeared to have little significance - there wasn’t the same anxiety surrounding the yesterday, today, tomorrow binary of it all. Interestingly, in Hindi, the same word “kal” is used to describe yesterday and tomorrow!
While you’ve heard all the clichés of India being described as a sensory, flamboyant, aromatic sprawl, a place where the devastating impacts of profound poverty are marred by magical mysticism, and while one should always be wary of romantic overgeneralisations, especially when Western fantasies of “the East” are concerned, I can’t help but find that my lasting impression of the place is somewhat characterised by these hackneyed ideas. It must be said that there are at least two very different India’s: one that you would most commonly find in big cities (Delhi, Mumbai) that is very much quote-on-quote Western and not so different from here, and another that undeniably somewhat resembles the conventional portrait that I painted earlier. Maybe I’m just a silly girl… an ignorant Brit… yet another impressionable tourist… who’s to say! Anyhow, for now, namaste.
Thank God