Bhootnath says "Enjai"

Chance meeting with Bhootnath (aka Vignesh), Aghori baba from Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu. Key phrase "Enjai". He spoke for hours about how he gave up everything, a good job in Chennai city, house, car, commissions…now living it up in Benaras, sleeping under yellow temple, Kshameshwar ghat. Homeless. Penniless. He spoke of "rounding" the breath, "dhyaana" (meditation) at 4 in the morning, of being pure consciousness. He took me to an internet cafe to show me his old photos on Facebook. He spoke of how food comes to him everyday, of the life post materialism, of a life sans luxury, of a life sans time. Living in silence…enjoying the energy of Shiva City. This city breathes new life into some people. Some people run away. Some never leave. I am mostly meeting people who have given up a lot of things and are here in Benaras to find salvation and Moksha. They just wait and wait for that day when death arrives. Bringing with it everlasting peace, a union with the sun. A union with the one… 

Only if...

"If I live or if I die", I think. What if death arrived now? Untimely and unwelcome? Would I play chess with death like in Bergman's Seventh seal? I would lose. My queens head-diagrams would be all wrong. I would be walking out the wrong exits and wondering what happened to all that time lost in the gulleys, lighting cigarettes, having tea. I would think of the times I was the happiest. Cycling around in Benaras wearing white Kurta and pyjama and the classic Benarasi waistcoat. In three colours. Its time to start thinking of happiness in terms of the non-abstract. How could I find happiness and peace of mind on a constant plane? Constant paradigm. Architecture of the inward arkeology. The Psychograph of Dara Okat, as it were. Constantly evolving and absorbed by clouds and river water. Fire has this immense power to suck you right in thru the fountains of its embers. Orange is like providence. It gives. Always. A new found trajectory of the sun. Beyond stars and silence. Its inconsequential. Time is irrelevant now. Its just a fragment of my imagination. I could imagine the most bizarre things. From the smallest little insect to the largest living land mammal. They are all life. Created by this amazing superthrow dynamic being, blue-lit and sky-covered. I have to come to myself and find my sun. The truth. I have to give up on any sort of habit. Any dependency. Got to become like a transparency, lungs all clean of smoke. What if death arrived now? Would I have any regrets? Or would I be unwelcome in that land somewhere from here, planet X. Or would the full stop in Benaras? 

Remembering 121212

A sunless afternoon on the boat to the otherside. What do we find? A Baba's tent with a red flag. He was not there so we sat there outside his tent looking at the illusionary Benaras "this side". Listening to Dire Straits's Planet of New Orleans. Suddenly remembered Viswajeet Ambat's statement "Benaras is like Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave". I am grounded here. Earthed. Wired. A kite-flying boy with a scarred face came up to us to talk, he came back with us as we returned to the pilgrimage spots and the apparently holy sections of Shiva City, the pedestrian alleyways, the ghats, the places where people come to die, to attain Moksha. This is Benaras. We come only by invitation. Sometimes we leave in a few hours, the city spits us out. Sometimes we stay for months, years. Remembered Mayank Pahwa's story of how he came here just to stay for a couple of days and never left. Same with his girlfriend. Never left. Like the Benaras ghost enters their bodies and refuses to leave.  

121212

Twelve, twelve, twelve,
Bodies on the pyre,
Delve, delve, delve,
Into all that's lost in the fire. 

Birds on the Ganga (Dec 10, 2012)

"I am enlightened"

Meeting at Assi Ghat. Daniel "Occupy" Balbony (Occupy meaning "Occupy your life"). American with Italian roots. Big-bearded man. Just like Viswajeet Ambat and Mayank Pahwa. The trilogy complete. We spoke for hours over many cups of chai. "I am enlightened", he said. Then he went into the details of sunlight and matter, humans and them being made of light, of how the earth was just star dust, "We are just stars", of plants, of ATP, the amount of sunlight required to move your arm and other things.

Oh, and ATP is Adenosine triphosphate, a nucleoside triphosphate used in cells as a coenzyme. It is often called the "molecular unit of currency" of intracellular energy transfer. ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism. It is one of the end products of photophosphorylation, cellular respiration, and fermentation and used by enzymes and structural proteins in many cellular processes, including biosynthetic reactions, motility, and cell division. One molecule of ATP contains three phosphate groups, and it is produced by a wide variety of enzymes, including ATP synthase, from adenosine diphosphate (ADP) or adenosine monophosphate (AMP) and various phosphate group donors. Substrate level phosphorylation, oxidative phosphorylation in cellular respiration, and photophosphorylation in photosynthesis are three major mechanisms of ATP biosynthesis.

He also spoke of the rainbow gathering, of how he rejected Catholicism when he was five by asking the question "If He is so mighty and powerful, why can't He show us His face?", of teaching and how it sucks out so much energy but is still so rewarding, of God and how that word has been bastardised to mean "someone sitting up there pointing his finger at us telling us not to screw up". 

Yesterday I was with Asha Ji at the Little Stars school, Nagwa, Assi. Aloo parathas for dinner. It was such a pleasant surprise to see Suraj Nath (the music teacher) there. We just connected, like old friends meeting by the riverside. He has a spark in his eyes. His friendship is so simple. Uncluttered. Had a nice chai with him at Assi Ghat. So, two consecutive evenings in Assi Ghat. Somethings bringing me back to my base camp. Mt. Assi...

Dead body tourism

An afternoon with Viswajeet Ambat over many chai's. He told me about the mysterious Japanese deaf-mute girl who comes to Balu's shop and drinks lots of coffee, two glasses, one in each hand. Of how she fell in love with local Indian boy. An indo-japanese lovestory. Of how he died and she got stuck in Benaras. Lost in the gulleys, whizzing past everyone. Viswajeet wanted to talk to her, he exchanged notes with her. Great concept for a film.

We went to Harishchandra ghat and sat there for an hour or so, talking, being silent. Viswajeet told me of the boatmen trying to get customers by saying "Achcha scenery hai, lots of dead bodies burning". Moni baba lands up with the classic statement, "Yeh zindagi bhi kiraya ka ghar jaisa hai, ek din jo jaana padega". Then we went back to Balu's chai shop, had some more chai and then we went to his guesthouse - Kishan house. Hung out with his neighbours Zeina and Tatiana, had more chai. Zeina spoke about how she gave up cigarettes after her Vipaasana course after being a heavy smoker for 15 years. I left in a bit, walked the gulleys again. Thinking of my life. What would be my choices in life? How am I to live it? For myself or for others? Where am I going with this life? Am I making any difference? Am I making the most out of my life? So many questions. When will I find the answers and drift into nothingness. Should I become like Viswajeet and "do nothing" or be of service to humanity? 

&

Arteries & Trajektories
meeting in circles, hearts bend,
the konstruct kollided against an ancient wall made of stones...

Analogies & Anomalies
fleeting in squares, arts end,
the faces folded into a perfectly even ball of bones...