No matter. He stretched his arms about over head, inhaled deeply and dropped his hands into his lap, beginning a series of pranayama exercises.
It was true—Amrit looked down his nose at much of Indian society, but he still practiced yoga religiously. After all, he was a firm believer in taking the best of any situation that presented itself and leaving that which didn’t suit his purposes. His mother had, on several occasions, wrung her hands and declared him an opportunist, but Amrit didn’t see it that way. He was an entrepreneur, a businessman.
After he finished his breathing sequence, Amrit rose, preparing to stand on his head, then thought better of it. He’d put that off for later, after the headache left and his stomach was settled. First things first—he needed to get a decent breakfast, clean up, and map out his day.
Since coming to the Pink Floyd, Amrit took nearly every meal in the hotel’s restaurant. He enjoyed the English food—egg fry, butter toast, milk tea—and he felt it looked bad for a businessman like himself to be spotted scooping dhal with rhoti in a dingy restaurant along the main strip where he conducted his work. Occasionally he treated himself to a high quality Indian meal at the Jagat Singh Palace Hotel, and if he’d met an interesting woman who he felt like spending an evening with, he took her to the Raju Garden Restaurant, or Moon Dance because it pleased him to be able to offer an eclectic menu.
He dressed himself carefully, slicking his hair back into a ponytail. He considered growing a goatee—a growing trend he’d noticed among western men, and it was creeping into the films, as well. He checked his face in the mirror and decided on a clean shave—the goatee could wait, he couldn’t take any chances on his appearance.
Amrit selected a pair of black slacks, shiny black tassel loafers and a purple cotton t-shirt, then topped the ensemble off with a leather jacket he’d found, months back, left behind in one of the hotel rooms by a careless tourist. The jacket was slightly too large, and if he zipped it closed it was obvious that the gathered waist was made to fit someone with a larger midriff. But Amrit prided himself on his narrow waist and tight abs, and was happy to wear the jacket undone, exposing his braided gold chain.
“Today is a new day,” he told his reflection, practicing a sly wink. A good breakfast was all he needed—he could undo the disappointment of the previous night, it was just a matter of getting to the market and finding a fresh new face. If he closed his eyes he could almost picture her, just up from making puja at Pushkar Lake, disoriented, confused, in need of a guide, a confidant, a friend. Someone to tell her where to go, what to do, how to spend her traveler’s checks.
(image from www.farm2.static.flickr.com)
Dev was jarred out a dream by loud banging. The desk clerk, one of the younger sons of the family who owned JP’s Tourist Village was knocking at the driver’s quarters, and not knowing exactly what room Dev was in, he was also shouting, “Mister Devesh! Message for you!” as he hammered his fist on each door.
Dev pulled on his pants in a fluid motion and opened the door barefoot and shirtless. “Yes, what is problem?”
“No problem,” the chubby-faced young man replied. “Only Madam is wanting to leave.”
Dev glanced at his watch. 7am. “She is waiting?” He was sure he hadn’t told her to be ready this early.
“No, but she is coming down to lobby very early and asking your whereabouts. I’m telling her I will pass the message, that she is wanting to depart.”
Dev scratched his head, wondering what the information added up to. “Madam has taken ill? She is having some problem?”
“No problem,” the desk clerk repeated. “Only perhaps some pain from the wound, but my brother has treated her for this.”
“Wound?” Dev wrapped his arms around his bare torso, shivering in the chilly air, wishing he could somehow extract the necessary information at a quicker rate.
“From the dog bite. My brother is saying Madam was most upset last night, but the skin is not broken. Only very bad bruise.”
“Ami is having dog bite?”
“Ay-mee?” the young man repeated.
“Madam Ami. She is having dog bite?” Dev repeated.
“Yes, yes. But nothing serious. Still, she is requesting to leave when you are ready.”
Dev sent the clerk back with the message that Ami should leave her bags at reception and have some breakfast at the Hotel Sarovar just up the road. Perhaps the clerk could arrange a rickshaw for her. And he, Dev, would pack the car and meet her at the Sarovar within the hour. With that he shut the door and sat back on his bed, instinctively lifting his feet from the cold cement floor, seeking warmth among the blankets. Dog bite. With tourists it was always something. They seemed so accident prone, always. So inept, unable to fend for themselves. He often found himself wondering how these people, who required explicit instructions on how to eat a thali plate or make a prayer at a temple or use an Indian toilet managed on their own in their own countries. He was always half-expecting one of them to invite him home with them, to drive them in their home towns, make their arrangements and sort out their difficulties.
(image from www.nocatsallowed.blogspot.com)
Sometime well after midday, after the Rickie Lee Jones tape had played out in Dev’s tape deck and Ami had been riding for sometime, her head lolling and bumping on the back of the seat as she dosed, Dev pulled off the main road.
“Where are we?” Ami roused herself, gazing out the window toward a tall hill, the road overlooking the valley.
“Ranakpur. Adinatha Jain Temple,” he answered, as if Ami would know what he meant. He was still a little annoyed about being woken, practically pushed out the door of the hotel in Pushkar. But when he looked into the rearview mirror, he could see Ami examining the bruise on her leg, which had spread to a significant size and was fanning out in shades of blue and purple. He relented. “Very important Jain site. You know, Jain peoples are not farming. They are not eating any animals, also not pulling potato from the earth so not to kill the earthworm. They are not wearing the leather, and some are putting on the mask so they are not breathing in the insects and killing them.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Dev smiled at her. He couldn’t help himself. “These temples are like Jain temples you are seeing in Jaisalmer, only much larger. I think only temples in Mount Abu are more impressive.”
They pulled into the temple complex and were greeted by a band of large but docile monkeys. Ami paid for her ticket, removed her shoes and promised that she was wearing neither a leather belt nor carrying a wallet made of any animal products, and she was free to wander the temple grounds.
Adinatha, the largest temple, loomed above the complex, set up a steep
flight of steps. The sun had heated the stone, rendering it warm underfoot, but as soon as Ami stepped into the temple, she found the shaded areas quite cool against her bare toes. As she shuffled quietly past marble pillars and the piercing-eyed idols, she found herself aiming for pools of sunlight, drawing the warmth up through her feet, basking in the gold glow of the afternoon.
It was easy to feel peaceful, ambling through the 1,440 chiseled pillars, sensing that the work had taken years—perhaps lifetimes—and yet it was deeply meditative, as if it wouldn’t have been such a burden to spend one’s days toiling at the intricate carvings. She took a few photographs, wondering how her camera could ever convey the deep quiet that pervaded even the shrill cries of the monkeys and the happy shouts of children, visiting with their families. A stout set of parents accosted Ami, asking her to photograph their young family, and when she’d finished they snapped her portrait, standing on what reminded her of a wide veranda.
Returning to the parking lot, carrying her sandals in her hand, Ami found Dev dosing in the drivers seat of the Ambassador. She snapped his photo, which jarred him awake.
“You are waking me too early this morning,” he announced grumpily.
“Sorry. Look, I’m starving. Can we stop for something to eat?”
“Only tourist restaurant around here. You don’t like this,” he pointed out.
“Oh.” She didn’t argue, but settled unhappily into the back seat.
Dev began to drive out of the temple complex, then stopped in front of a long building. “One minute waiting,” he said, dashing into the screen door. He returned quickly, parked the car in the shade of a tree, and opened the door for Ami.
She followed him back to the building, where he told her to leave her shoes on the step. She did, and entered the screen door. Inside was a cafeteria of sorts—rows of long narrow tables with people sitting on one side.
“We are having some lunch,” Dev explained. “We are eating together, no problem?”
“Yes, I’d like that,” Ami answered, taking a seat beside him.
He seemed mildly uncomfortable, but showed her how to pull off bite-sized piece off a poori, and scoop up a mouthful of dhal and okra curry, keeping her left hand carefully tucked out of site. Each time they finished their food, a Jain server, dressed in white, rushed to their table and spooned more curry onto their metal plates until they were both full. Then Dev scoured his plate with a final scrap of poori, and poured water over it from a pitcher, washing it clean. He filled his cup, downed it, and wiped his mouth with hand, before heading off for the sink to wash up.
Ami sipped from her water bottle, and paid for both meals—only 100 rupees for all that food. “It was my treat,” she said when Dev returned, and he looked at her shyly.
“Thank you.” They stood awkwardly for a moment, and then one of the servers hustled over, gathering their plates and setting a new place for the next diners. It was their cue to move on.
(image of the Adinatha Jain Temple from www.gvanstijn.nl)
There was no self to be found in the fields of mustard, swaying, shimmering under late afternoon sun. No self in the breeze that came from far out across the brown earth, racing toward the patches of green, parting the yellow blooms.
God’s hand, some would say. But a God of natural forces, of air, soil, heat and the longing for water. Not a God of companionship, of whispered promises and cozy, fail proof directions. More like the God of the pilgrims on the road, walking barefoot, patiently crossing the country in testament to their faith. But not even the God they had faith in, the God they traveled for, trying to reach, to reach out to. The God, instead, that lived in the wind blowing through the white flags they carried, marking them as pilgrims to passers by. The God both small and omnipotent, the God that knows no boundaries, not even those of the human imagination.
The self fell away from vast places, an echo unanswered across the expanse of Rajasthan, a dream lost among the soft knolls and jagged heights leading toward the hill stations. And the route into those coveted cities, the pastel-colored havens away from the summer heat and the winter bleakness, was strewn with shrines. Each shrine painted in a garish display of devotion—paste-white for Shiva, caution-orange for Hanuman. Each minute temple decorated with prayer flags, cloth banners strung out from the spires.
But there was no self. Just the holy names, the names said over and over, chanted along malas and rolled along the tongue until they lost their hard edges and fell round and full down the throat.
And then there were the women, far out in the field or suddenly close in the perimeters of a town. They lifted their skirts away from the dust, tending the buffalo, watching the children, wearing the family’s wealth in silver around their ankles, wrists and necks. Women vivid as flowers, voiceless, saying everything in the sway and fold of the cloth they wore. They sparkled, like so many roadside shrines, the adoration of God wrapped up in adornment. Ganesh draped in marigolds, Krishna decked out in peacock feathers, even Shiva’s lingam twined with jasmine.
But there was no self. The self was lost in the intricacies, in the minutia filling in the emptiness of being.
And God was in the details, in the smallest petals, in the glint of glass bangles, in the wink of gold at the nose, in the fervent chanting of the names of deities, a sound uttered into nonsense, into oblivion.
(image from newsimg.bbc.co.uk)
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