Friday, June 8, 2018

Tungnath

Tungnath feels like a dream now. The mountain feels like a gently sloping hill, the colorful horses, the green grass and the blue skies make it seem like it could be a little place in the Nilgiris, somewhere near Ooty, perhaps.

But when I strive to remember, although I don't feel the pain, I remember thinking that I might die, or vomit endlessly, or faint, or do all at the same time. The climb up the mountain, the anxiety, my wide eyes, gasping breath, my struggle not to fall back- they could have happened to someone else.

Yet, one incident I recall clearly. I was stumbling over some rocks; RK was ahead and waiting for me; the kids on their pony were almost impossibly farther ahead, the pink and orange of their sweaters making a nice contrast against the bright blue sky. For every step of mine, the rest appeared to take ten. There was no way to catch up.
And at that moment of hopelessness against a background of stubborn will to climb that mountain to keep the kids in sight, if not reach the temple, a thought popped in my head: This is what a pilgrimage is. This is what penance is.

During a pilgrimage, there is no logic. It is a struggle and in that struggle there is only one driving motivation. Maybe it is the idea of God, maybe it is as simple as trying to keep up. But whatever it might be, it is what makes you force one step ahead of another, even if your chest hurts and you are light headed and your stomach feels like it might turn inside out.

I became one with the millions of others who must have struggled on that same mountain trying to reach that same temple over thousands of years. Just as they must have collapsed on the grass and stared sightlessly at the sky, giving their bodies a break and to gather strength for the next patch of mountain, so I did. After a point of time, there was no further reason to keep climbing other than the fact that I was on the mountain and the only way was up.

Somewhere in the back of my mind was a persistent thought: maybe this struggle was a good way of apologizing to my parents, for all the wrongs, for all the times I didn't listen, for the small daily decisions of inconsiderateness, forgetfulness, callousness or willfulness.

Onwards we climbed. 2kms, 2.5kms, 3kms up. At the 3km stop, I hired a pony. I feared I would die or faint or something highly inconvenient otherwise. I would have hired the pony for the remainder of the distance, but there was some disagreement with the pony fellow and I hopped down after half a km. But the break was good and I felt comfortable being back on the ground.

I don't recall the rest of the climb. I must have climbed the remaining 1.5km and must have met up with the kids at some point of time. I only recall reaching the temple gates and removing my shoes.

The priests at Tungnath sing out their prayers, instead of reciting them. Three of them sing in harmony, in three different octaves. It is easy to close one's eyes and get absorbed in the music. The main alter is Shiva's, but it is like no Shiva linga I have ever seen. It looks a bit misshapen, a bit hump-like. Later I remembered the story of Tungnath. Shiva tried to escape the well-meaning apologies of the Pandavas after the great Kurukshetra war, turned himself into Nandi the bull and not willing to take any chances, borrowed himself under the earth. Only 5 spots of the bull are supposed to be visible. The hump of the bull is in Tungnath. The shoulders, the tail etc are elsewhere in the Himalayas. The temple was built by the Pandavas, almost 5000 years ago. It's a funny story- no doubt many of us would like to borrow under the earth while disguised as animals to escape people we have no desire to meet!

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the air, or maybe it was just the place, but when the priests started singing the Shanti mantra (for peace) in that small, dark, ancient alter, my mind was filled with my parents and tears started rolling down my eyes. They followed it up right after with the Kshama mantra (forgiveness) and I was grateful and wonderstruck. Maybe it was a sign from God that the priests chose those exact mantras to chant?

Ultimately, it was a privilege. How many people get to see a temple built by the Pandavas?

One striking thing about this whole trip has been how my idea of our epics have changed... All my life, the Mahabharatha and Ramayana have been great stories. This trip made them so real- temples built by the Pandavas, their kingdoms (which are now suburbs of New Delhi), their battle grounds, the mountains Rama worshipped on and the peaks they stayed at... my view of India's great epics have always been extremely Western- I always felt these were wonderful fiction. Only now are my eyes slowly being to open to the fact that many of these stories might have actually happened, that the Pandavas actually did exist at one point of time. And if they did, then Krishna too would have. Which means that God suddenly no longer feels like some abstract concept. I too have walked the same mountains that all these people walked on. Suddenly, God feels a lot closer to my reality than ever before.





Saturday, June 2, 2018

Escape from Bangalore 1- Travels to Delhi

Just the very act of getting away from Bangalore felt like someone had pressed a release valve in the pressure cooker of my brain.

Mundane acts of travel- packing up, waking the kids up at midnight to make in time to the airport for our 4am flight to Delhi, printing out boarding passes, going through security-  took on a sheer exuberance. We might have been the first people in the world to ever travel by air, such was the level of our excitement. 

I've never been to Delhi by flight before. The two other times in my life I've been that far up North (people like me, who feel most comfortable south of the Vindhyas and who always have to scrunch up their face to recall their primary school Hindi, always capitalize the N in North India. The geographical, linguistic and cultural differences seem so vast that North might just as well be a different country) were when I was a child- first when I was 10 or 11, and the second when I was 22 (one might think, well, not so much of a child, but for all practical purposes, in terms of total and blissful ignorance of anything of import, I was).

Outside Delhi airport are a couple of eating and tea drinking joints. Tea seems to be the favorite drink in the North... which makes me wonder why my mom, who if she could have double-capitalized the N in North would have done so while firmly proclaiming that she was fine in the South, thank you very much, was such an avid tea drinker and reluctant coffee drinker. When I was 10, my dad got transferred from Madras (which is about as South as one can get). Initially he was supposed to go to Delhi and my mom literally cried, "Oh my God, how can we possibly survive so far up North? The cold! The Mustard Oil!!" But in fact, he got transferred to Pune and my mom told me, "Oh good, it's only central India. It's quite close to Bombay and that's practically home" And that is how my parents and I became life-long addicts of poha, bakarwadi, aam burfi and zunka bhakri.

So anyway, we went to an eating joint called "Delhi Str-Eats" and guess what we saw? Idli and dosa!! So much for Delhi street eats!
We all recoiled. Give us authentic Delhi food, we cried. And so we ate parothas with big dollops of fresh butter, deep fried pooris with aloo and a gigantic oil-dripping bhatura with chole. 

My uncle had booked us a room at the IIT Delhi guest house, in the center of the campus surrounded by trees. We were greeted by a golden oriole pair, a few jungle babblers, a coppersmith barbet and a red vented bulbul as soon as we got off the cab. Very soon it became clear that while the natural beauty of the guest house was all very well, it was impossible to actually stand outside in that weather for any length of time to enjoy all this ornithological pleasantness. It was 42 degrees Celcius.... at 9 in the morning!

Our days in Delhi were spent hanging out with my uncle, aunt and cousin; visiting some friends and driving around Delhi. In my mind, Delhi was this horror city, covered in smoke and filled with rapists.Turns out, apart from the preponderance of Hindi, Delhi isn't so different from Bangalore.  Also turns out, my Hindi isn't so rusty after a few days of linguistic immersion. So, maybe I don't need to capitalize the N after all... it's just the north. It takes the same time to reach it as it does to reach Kolar by car.