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Photo Gallery...
Warning: Politically correct weasels--Tim Cahill--may encounter
episodes of seeming cultural insensitivity. A bastardized
version of this story appears as "Snap Happy and the Nagas" in
"Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why" published by Travelers'
Tales Books.
‘The Hindu Kumbha Mela at Allahabad makes the Muslim Haj at Mecca
look like a Christian clambake in Carlsbad.’
—Brutus Lovetrain, Godland
*
Five days prior to Mauni Amavasya, the biggest day of the
biggest religious festival in history, the district High Court of
Allahabad decreed that ALL photography had been banned within 500
meters of any holy bathing area, or sangam. This was the worst
news possible for anyone with a serious camera, with the lone
exception of NASA, who had agreed that
the single largest gathering of humanity the
planet earth has ever known
was worth orbiting over for a snap or two.
I heard the reasoning three ways: 1) That Channel 4, during some of
its broadcasts back to the UK, had shown Indian women with exposed
breasts bathing in the holy sangam and had therefore made
mockery of the Hindu religion for purposes of monetary gain via high
ratings. This on its face was patently ridiculous. Even if such
occasions did occur on Channel 4 broadcasts, they would likely have
had just the opposite effect. Trust me when I tell you that the
quality of breasts exposed in the sangam were not anything
anyone wants to see, not even an Englishman. 2) That a Western
photographer was seen aiming his lens in the general direction
of a pair of Indian breasts in the throes of watery worship. 3) That a
Western woman carried away not by devotion but by drugs and raving
sacrilege, stripped herself nude and frolicked through the sangam,
again making mockery of the Hindu religion as slavering photographers
snapped her every frolic.
The first two possible reasons were in the Allahabad papers and
widely circulated on a grapevine of slowly shaking heads and
incredulous smiles. The last one I heard from an AFP cameraman two
months later at the FCC in Phnom Penh. In any event, or even in the
event of all three, the decision to ban cameras would prove short
sighted, virulent, and typically Indian—God bless all billion of ‘em.
‘Small fire is best being extinguished with petrol’ might as well be
the national motto.
The first proof of virulence—and casualty—came immediately. An
Indian cameraman was set upon with a cane for shooting near the
sangam and had his camera confiscated by an army officer. He was
justifiably furious and took his case immediately to the Media
Center—an assemblage of drab, uninspired tents and equally drab and
uninspired bureaucrats seemingly assembled for the sole purpose of
doing nothing at all constructive.
A heated debate ensued, resulting first in the photographer’s camera
being smashed to the ground, and second, with his head being smashed
with a brick. This ‘petrol’ looked to be
of high octane. A media protest was later organized and a
demonstration took place outside the Media Center, resulting,
predictably, in nothing at all constructive.
Despite dire warnings of the inevitable chaos to come, the High Court
stood firm. Now you had a case of photographers and camera crews from
all over the world having gone to a lot of effort and expense to be
here—some even at the behest of the Indian government—being told they
could not do what they came here to do, which was, ostensibly,
something constructive. Now it was all starting to make sense.
Everybody I spoke with was irked but undeterred. Britain’s Channel 4
was going with hidden cameras. So were the Japanese and even some of
the Indian crews. A Dutch group of still photographers was going to
try and man the tower about 600 meters from the sangam with
high-powered lenses. Others were going to try their luck in a rowboat.
They would need a submarine with a zoom periscope. Other still
photographers like Mac (demi-famed Australian photographer Alastair
McNaughton) and myself were tucking our cameras under our clothes and
taking our chances. So basically, what you had was some 10,000 Indian
Army troops going into battle against a couple of hundred miscreants
with cameras hiding amidst millions upon millions of devout civilians.
Though the army was brandishing a wide array of death causing devices,
canes, praise Vishnu, were to be the weapon of choice.
With all those millions of people and all those square miles of
vast Mela grounds, you’d think your odds as a photographer of going
undetected were pretty good. That is until you took in the other
factors. The target area on this day was comparatively small—the 20 to
30 meter wide 2K long procession route that would carry the Mela’s
main attraction, those zany naked warrior ascetics known as Naga Babas,
down to bathe in the Naga section of the main sangam. That was
it. This was Ground Zero.
Another factor not to be overlooked: that of being a foreigner. We
stood out in this dark-skinned Indian crowd like a rainbow in
Pleasantville. Add a camera to that, which you had to take out
sometime, and you morphed into the aurora borealis. Where on the
Shahi Snan (major bathing day determined by Naga astrology) of the 14th
we were given fair access by army and pilgrims alike, on this day we
would find both working against us. The pilgrims knew about the camera
ban and believing the hyperbolic papers, many among them would
consider us a scurrilous enemy to piety on this, the greatest day of
their religious lives.
‘Holy War’
The 24th of January 2001 AD. Five thousand four hundred and
sixty-five years after the first Mauni Amavasya, observed by
that unnamed nudist proto-astronomer in 3464 BC, marks not only the
origins of the Kumbha Mela, but also the Naga Baba’s as
“proto-originators”. To this day the 13 akharas of the Shambhu
Panch, led by the infamous Juna Akhara, determine exact
bathing dates and throw a lot of general weight around this very heavy
happening.
The night prior to the big event Mac and I settled in for our
illegal cocktail hour at Camp Pilot Baba (Pilot Baba, perhaps best
known for crashing a record number of Indian Air Force planes and
living to tell the tales, was the ‘Rolex guru’ in whose camp we were
staying. He was aligned with the Juna Akhara, the most
notorious, violent sect of Naga ascetics surviving today. As part of
Pilot Baba’s media retinue we were able to gain access to the Juna
Akhara when it was otherwise closed to the public) and discussed
our camera ban battle plan. Mumbai black rum and ‘reverse osmosis
Ganges water’, (presumably to purify it of burnt body parts, raw sewage,
industrial pollutants, etc.), stirred not shaken, served in tiny
plastic chai cups was the best we could do under the circumstances.
We had two plans to consider, and neither included obeying the High
Court. They were, in order of triteness, Plan A and Plan B. Plan A,
was to make our way down to the main sangam (holy bathing area
at the three rivers’—the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the invisible
Saraswati—confluence) where the Grand Procession and the Nagas would
dump out to splash, hoot, holler and otherwise avail themselves to
God’s good graces. There we would stake out a vantage point behind the
lines, cameras hidden, and hope for the best.
But the drawbacks didn’t excite us. Without the front row
advantages afforded by the now off limits media corral that lined the
route, and the laid back security forces that made the much smaller
Shahi Snan of the 14th a breeze, both would now have to
be struggled with directly. Not to mention the burgeoning slew of
other cameramen and photographers all trying to stay invisible while
vying for position. There was the distinct possibility of being left
walking away with a squat named Diddly.
Plan B, as befitting the nature of Plan B’s, would be more risky
but the payoff was potentially far greater. It meant walking right
under the vigilant eyes of that pesky, ubiquitous Indian Army and
millions upon millions of Hindu pilgrims on high camera alert. We
would attempt to walk right smack in the middle of the Grand
Procession, joining it first at the source, right inside the Juna
Akhara. And keep every available appendage crossed.
Plan B it would be.
The decision made, we had a few more plastic thimbles of rum, did
ritual puja to Lord Shiva, and Mac the ‘Snap Baba’ held
satsang, regaling the night with photographer’s war stories from
the far flung reaches of the earth, all thematic and inspirational to
the snapper’s ongoing quest to get—the shot.
***
The inner circle of devotees, seventy-five or so, which included
half a dozen Westerners, made their way from Pilot Baba’s compound to
the Juna Akhara camp beginning about midnight. What that meant
to us was about five hours of standing around shivering in the darkest
before the dawn and the start of the Grand Procession. No thank you
please. We slept in to 4 am confident we’d be able to get into the
akhara before it was sealed off. It was neither a good sleep nor
an easy rise. It was freezing ass cold.
Speaking of ass…
There was rumbling and foreboding.
In anticipation, I sent Mac off for chai and ran to wave the white
flag at the bad sabji Jihad that had been firing mortar rounds
around my intestines for the last 48 hours. Actually, ‘Jihad’ was a
poor choice of metaphors, for what then passed from me—with extreme
prejudice—had more of a Vesuvius like quality. The staccato bursts of
molten green sabji that erupted from the bowels of my bowels
were so loud and so fabulously ridiculous that I couldn’t help but
laugh ridiculously. Doing so—and considering all
the bleary eyed Indians in nearby tents likely waking to the magnitude
of this mad foreigner’s magma melody—launched me into the near
hysteria. But let me tell you, I wasn’t the least bit happy about it.
The trek through the choking dust and dung fire smoke that hung
like another dimension over the Mela grounds would take about an hour,
including chai stops, wherever chai was there to be stopped for. Just
as we were exiting under the flashing, gaudy pink archway that marked
Camp Pilot Baba, still clearing the fog from our heads so as to make
room for the smoke and dust, some gangly, wide-eyed Englishman on the
way in stopped to ask a question. “Excuse me, but do you fellows know
where they’re having the function?”
The function? It was too absurd to elicit an answer from me. Without
stopping, Mac managed a vague sort of half-armed, grunt-n-point in the
general direction of where the 30 million bodies were gathering, some
three miles distant.
“Did you here what that moron asked us? A function?!” Snap
Baba was aglow with Aussie incredulity. “What does he think this is, a
fucking tea party?”
The army’s mindset was clear at the outset. If they thought you
didn’t look like you belonged wherever it was that you were, you were
beaten somewhere they thought you did. With a hardened, bamboo cane.
The Calvary was everywhere. As we approached the Juna Akhara, Mac was
keen to go for another cup of chai before entering. Noticing the
intensity with which the Calvary was cracking down on the crowd, I
recommended we get our sorry asses into the akhara and pronto. We slid
in just at the last second. As we stood inside, nervous and unsure as
to the status of our belonging, we watched two men get thrashed away
from the entrance. This was both a relief and a cause for concern.
Would we be next? We hurried further inside and were recognized by a
friendly Naga who raised a hand to the stave off approaching soldiers.
After all, we were an essential part of our Rolex guru’s personal
media team, were we not? Well, not really, but they didn’t know that.
At any rate, the perception was good enough to make it look like we
belonged. Sort of.
The Juna Akhara is considered the most fierce and
individualistic of the 13 akharas, still adhering to and practicing
many of the more ancient rites, rituals, and tapasayas. They
are a Shaiva sect but their present deity is Dattatreya, a partial
incarnation of rival deity Vishnu, with many Shiva characteristics.
Only in recent years did the kinder, gentler Dattatreya replace
Bhairava, who was depicted in a multi-headed perpetual ecstasy,
surrounded by a bevy of hot Hindu babes, slugging wine, fornicating
like a mad sultan and eating flesh from a human skull. Put another
way, where the crass Bhairava may be seen as the Larry Flynt of the
Hindu pantheon, his more politically correct and effete replacement
Dattatreya, would be the Hugh M. Hefner.
Though it is clear the Juna hierarchy has seen the future of their
existence as dependent on a certain level of Hindu style political
correctness that includes a manipulative openness to the media, it is
just as clear that certain minority factions within its ranks do not
welcome these changes. The problem is, you never know who these
‘brain eaters’ are until they reveal themselves, and these revelations
are never pleasant.
In light of this—even with the general mood within the akhara
one of positive excitement, with plenty of laughing and hand warming
over dhunni fires, passing of the charas chillum, (hash
pipe), yogic asana practice, and rolling naked through holy
ash—we thought it best to mingle into the relative security of the
Pilot Baba retinue.
In stark contrast to the mood inside, outside the akhara
where our immediate futures lay, was a different story. There is a
certain tension that accompanies incessant cop whistles punctuated
with the crisp crack of cane. No, this wasn’t war, and barring some
terrorist siege or stampede, not even life or death. But it was to
be a battle, and the threat of bodily injury and destruction of
expensive equipment hung heavy. Perhaps worse and weighing more
heavily was the very real possibility in all this mayhem of being
denied position to get the
shot.
I didn’t come all this way and go through all this shit to get shut
out.
As we stood around and shivered waiting for things to get started,
wouldn’t you know it, ‘Vesuvius’ began rumbling again. Its molten
dissonance obviously hadn’t been exhausted during its most recent
pyrotechnics back at camp. Rather than risk missing something and
seek out the akhara squatter however, I decided to cinch up and
bear it.
The assassins of aesthetics and proper pomp—the tractors and the
attached steroidal Radio Flyers that would serve in lieu of the
elephants and chariots of the past—had been earlier fitted with the Shaiva red thrones trimmed in gold that would frame the gurus, shading
them with red umbrellas hung with gold tassels, and festooned with
garlands of marigolds enough to endanger the species.
We had been standing around observing and conversing for about 45
minutes when the tractors roared to life and a line of Nagas came
running through and out onto the sandy boulevard where the procession
had begun to take form. We followed them out, sticking close our
protective pod of devotees carrying pennants and banners emblazoned
with the black bearded image of Pilot Baba, our now beardless master,
and more importantly, as a major player in the Juna Junta, our
protector. For the time being, anyway.
As the light of dawn crept into the sky, the ‘chariots’ began to fill
with honored guests and hierarchy who stacked themselves in around the
thrones of their masters thick as french fries
stuffed inside extra large red and gold containers. In the procession
line we again did our best to act like we belonged. This consisted
entirely of looking for all the world like we didn’t, which of course,
came naturally. As if to press home the point, a white uniformed
brass band ambled right up to us and began belting out utterly
unrecognizable, and to our ears, utterly un-rhythmical swaths of
brassy, pounding sound that seemed to scream, ‘you don’t belong
here!’
Paranoid? Perhaps. Justifiably so? Damn straight.
But never mind all that. What happened to our Nagas? We’d lost
them. Just how one manages to lose hundreds of naked, ash-smeared
madmen wielding medieval weaponry I don’t know, but we had. Just
where they had gone we would be able to surmise shortly.
Make no mistake; to the Naga Akharas (and all the other thousand
plus Hindu sects present as well) the modern Kumbha Mela is the
greatest religious recruitment boon since loaves and fishes. With rare
exception, all new prospective Nagas are initiated at one Kumbh or
another, every three years. Naturally it is ‘being extra most
auspicious’ as one sadhu told us, to receive initiation during the
rare Maha Kumbh, the one we were smack in the midst of, which ends and
begins a 144-year cycle. Regardless of the level of auspiciousness,
of the thousands who receive initiation at each Kumbha Mela,
fewer than 10% stick around long enough to see the next batch of
recruits get their heads shaved and shikas lopped off.
Evidently, a life lived naked and unemployed; spending summers
meditating with cow dung fires on your head is not as easy as it might
first appear.
‘Here they are!’ decreed Mac, ‘Our nutters…’
And there they were, our nutters, streaming and screaming right
past us with a fresh batch of nutters in tow, (Vaishnavas), evidenced
by the single, rupee sized patches of hair left on their shaven heads,
the last vestiges of their guru shorn shikas. They emptied into
a semi circle just ahead of us, where several veterans, easily
identified by their unfurled, knee length jatas (matted hair)
began whirling swords and battle-axes in a skillful display of martial
artistry. Some of this I was able to capture on video just before a
bit of brazen adumbration befell me.
Some asshole, here affirming the [There’s an] Asshole in Every
Crowd Theory, appeared from nowhere and struck down fiercely upon my
pack and tried to grab my camera while shouting—ever so distinctly
—‘No photo! No photo!’ At least he was to the point. As much as I
would like to have ripped him an expansive new orifice befitting his
station in life, I did the smart thing instead, saying nothing and
immediately spiriting away into the crowd. He did not pursue, as is
almost always the case with these Assholes in Every Crowd. It works
well with Indian cops and soldiers too.
I was rattled a bit, not wanting to be exposed and thrown out
before the ‘function’ officially began. As the Grand Procession
started to roll shortly thereafter, the great babas all ensconced in
their thrones surrounded by VIP devotees, I made my way back near the
front where Mac and the pod were. Quite matter of fact Mac said, ‘You
should have left that bloody video contraption behind.’ He was right
of course. Under these conditions one had to get his shot and get it
quick. The video camera was a burden and a risk, but I couldn’t bring
myself to leave it. I had to have some live action footage.
We shrunk into the middle of our now chanting pod of belonging and
began the march, taking care to keep our big, guilty looking white
heads from jutting too far above the others. There were about 2,000 Nagas and initiates immediately ahead of us and another two thousand
behind, but that’s just a guess. The entire length of the procession,
which included all 13 akharas and their farm equipment,
stretched back as far as I could see. It would take nearly three hours
to complete. Being near the front however, where the real action was,
meant we would do it in something under an hour.
The army was positioned everywhere along the route. Indians who dared
enter the procession or even stepped towards it were routinely
thrashed back with canes. Whistles curdled the air, often piercing
through the noise of horns the drums and chanting. Soldiers glared in
at us routinely, bemused by two shrinking white men hunched over
bulging (cameras) jackets crudely lip synching chants in Hindi.
The #5 pontoon bridge over the Ganga would mark the next crucial
stage. Soldiers clustered near the entrance, some on horseback, and
the procession line would have to narrow considerably in order to file
onto the bridge, exposing us further. No soldiers were on the bridge
however, and if we made it on we’d be free to shoot and enjoy the
ride. Until the other side anyway, where another cluster of menace
awaited. Feeling more naked than our Naga cohorts, we nevertheless
squeezed through and onto the crossing safely.
It was there that we were able to finally take in the enormity of
the crowd gathered to watch the procession (us!) and to bathe along
the east bank of the Ganges. A thick kaleidoscopic expanse of pilgrims
stretched into the distance past the highway and railway bridges, as
far as the eye pressed to a 320x digital zoom could see. It was an
amazing rush to be in the middle of it all, the energy sweeping the
angst away like a cosmic Bissel. Then that I’d deciphered the words, I
was genuinely moved to join in the chanting: “Har! Har! Maha Dev! Har!
Har! Maha Dev!” It was a grand and glorious release, arms raised like
a victorious Caesar returning to Rome, right there in front of
the single largest gathering of humanity the planet earth has ever
known.
We made it easily past the soldiers on the other side, who weren't
paying much attention.
Two hundred meters of chanting later we made the left turn that led
down to the main sangam, perhaps another five hundred meters
beyond. The media towers along the route were either empty or manned
by soldiers, and I never did find out what happened to the Dutch crew
who hoped to occupy one. At this point the procession split in two,
with the Nagas to the left and everybody else to the right. There the
rest of the Nagas caught up and paired up—marching two by two the
final leg towards the Kumbha Mela’s Big Splash Moment, holding hands
and yelping and stabbing at the heavens with trishuls, swords and
battle-ax’s.
By this time we had managed to snap a few shots each, but they had a
perfunctory feel for me, taken more for the act than the result. This
was the kind of difficult light and building, noisy action that begged
for video, which I was managing to steal a bit of as well. I was
thrilled, as I knew nobody else was in any kind of position to get the
footage I was getting.
That is until I took in the incongruous sight of an especially
maniacal looking Naga sporting a Panasonic Hi8, freely immortalizing
his naked brethren’s march towards the waters of
moksha.
I felt strangely slighted, but also thought: “Why didn’t I think of
that?” A Rasta wig, a trishul, a little ash smearing, a whole lotta
naked and…”
And this is where it all began to go terribly wrong.
My photo envy got the best of me; there was just no way I was going
to be outdone by some pre-historic, hash-laced heathen with inferior
equipment. Right on cue, another ‘illegal’ photographer suffering
perhaps the same pangs of envy I was, stepped out from behind
somewhere and into the no-man’s land between the marching Nagas and
us, and started snapping. He was soon beset upon, not by a soldier,
but by one of the additional security personnel in faded orange robes
employed specifically to keep processional order. These guys were
thugs in turbans is what they were, who went to the cane even faster
than the soldiers did. This particular thug however, quite un-thug
like, held his cane and lashed the man severely by means of tongue and
larynx only.
“Is that the only price I have to pay?” I thought. I can take a
tongue lashing with the best of them if need be. The
photographer returned freely from whence he came. Next thing I
remember, I, the great idiot, was out in no-man’s land myself, face
glued about a second too long over the video eyepiece.
CRACK!
Blindsided by a cane across the trapezium, followed by a death grip
seizing down from behind and onto the video camera, trying to wrest it
away. I held on for all I was worth, instinctively bending forward and
spreading out my base so as not to be brought down to the ground
and—in all that strain—‘Vesuvius’ let loose!
It was not a major eruption and no villages would have to be
evacuated, but it was of sufficient force to cause serious blight
across the back forty of an otherwise pristine pair of olive green Exofficio’s. Well, it could have been worse. I mean, for example, I
could have just shat myself in front of
the single largest gathering of humanity the
planet earth has ever known!
As if this weren’t obscenely more than enough, my two assailants
forced me back through the procession line, pod bodies parting in
mortal dread, and crashing into the cruel irony of the empty media
corral. The thug was hell bent and still trying with all his might to
tear the camera from my desperate grip. For me, the camera represented
the last shred of dignity I had and there was just no way, kumbh hell
or high water, that he was gonna get it. I’d sooner we ripped the
thing in half. For some reason no attempt was made on my 35mm Nikon,
which just hung and swung in the ruckus, refusing to get involved.
With the thug still gripping my camera and the soldier whacking me
with his cane with one hand while pushing me with the other, they
forced me through the fence and into the media corral. There,
waiting to get in on the fun stood another soldier, cane at the ready.
WHACK!
I had seen it coming and lurched forward just in time. He had struck
the thug. Small victory. I struggled down the corral
determined to get away, pulling the thug, who was really starting to
become a nuisance, by the camera with me. They tried to shove me
down and through the fence on the other side into the crowd of
pilgrims, but I wanted none of that. I just kept boring forward at an
increasing clip hoping they’d abandon me, like these asshole in every
crowd types always had before. But not this time. Finally
we wrestled to an exhausted stop in front of a gawking throng of
pilgrims who were no longer paying any attention at all to the
procession. A parade stands no chance against good, live action toilet
humor and a good thrashing.
I immediately launched into a colorful bit of hyperbole, professing
my innocence as the official photographer of the Juna Akhara
and Pilot Baba and my right to be let back into the procession, where
I belonged, shit pants and all. They responded by continuing to
thrash and shout at me in a Gattling gun hail of gibberish they
evidentially fancied as English. I was getting nowhere but further
humiliated and chose, choicelessly, to acquiesce. I bent to duck
through the fence into the crowd and was kindly assisted with a
parting blow to the shoulder and a jack-booted stomp to the calf.
Walking away my attackers were laughing like hyenas after a
kill, presumably, at the jackass who just shat himself in front of
the single largest gathering of humanity the planet earth
has ever known!
I could smell it now. Was that me? Squatting to hide my shame,
battered and bleeding on my cameras, I looked back at the crowd that
held me captive against the fence. They were sitting in the sand
twenty rows deep and standing another ten behind. All oculi, wide and
stark white against dark faces, were on me. What a fucking nightmare.
I struggled to take off my sweatshirt and tie it by the arms around my
waist to hide my shame.
The woman nearest me, who was breastfeeding her baby and was the
one most put out by my putting in, glared like I’d just gutted a cow
with a trishul. Even her baby took time out from its suckling
to give me a look of such seeming disgust that, coming from a baby,
was not only strangely disconcerting but—gauging from the smell—the
height of hypocrisy. I was disconcerted enough without getting the
stink-eye from some hypocrite infant.
II really had to get out of there. Pressing matters to attend to. But
how? There was not an inch of space anywhere to be had in this sea of
sari’s, turbans and nose-rings. What could I do but stand up and take
the first step? They could either move or get stepped on. Or worse,
sat on. They made way, and I stumbled through.
Once free I just started walking, fast, hoping nothing slid down my
leg as I scanned the land for the corrugated tin sheeting that
semi-privatized the toilet facil—er, squatholes. There were supposed
to be 74,000 of them spread everywhere around the Mela grounds.
Everywhere of course, but where I was.
II
was beginning to think this wasn’t my day.
My worst fear (well, previous worst fear) as a photographer on the
world’s biggest stage had been realized. I would not in any way, shape
manner or form, be in position to get
the shot.
In fact, the only position I was likely to be in any time soon was
over a squat-hole. After all I’d been through, of all things to have
happen to me, this! Had I but practiced a few minutes more of Mac-like
professional patience I’d have been out there shooting with him.
With clean pants.
I had gambled with time consuming, non-essential (at the time)
video, and lost out on potentially the biggest pay off of the entire Mela as a result. I was now in a state of full-blown
opprobrium—exceedingly pissed and fantastically
miserable.
The big red cross ahead marked a welcome sight—a hospital camp. I
thought it might offer a more private, possibly more upscale option
for my squathole-ing needs. I would be wrong. I should have learned
not to think by then. My bleeding hands along with the newly
discovered bleeding bridge of my nose qualified me for immediate
entry. At first they said there was no toilet and insisted I get
treatment for my wounds. I protested, they insisted, I protested some
more, they insisted some more. Then I untied my sweatshirt and pointed
out the disposition of my ass, and at last they, in unison, pointed
out the disposition of the squat-hole off in the corner, which to me
in that moment was Shangri-fucking-la.
But the nightmare was not quite over. This episode had an
uncanny way of getting stranger and stranger. The decidedly low-scale,
decidedly un-private squat-hole had been in recent use. There was no
water. What there was, set smartly against the white porcelain urine
channel that led into the hole, was a huge swirl of steaming shit—the
perfect shit—looking for all the world like a Dairy Queen ice cream
dispenser had been summoned from the ether to squeeze it there for the
sole purpose of further fucking with my reality. It stood so
high and well balanced that, to leave his mark, ‘The Man With The
Dairy Queen Sphincter’ must have had to gently rise and slowly rotate
himself with a precision rarely found amongst the non-metallic.
A fun loving dung beetle could have run the spiraling ledge from
bottom to top with nothing to break his stride save sheer exhaustion.
So skilled was this fecal craftsman, so attuned to the universe was
he, that left crowning this monument to the gastrointestinal tract was
an impossibly delicate, thrice curling pigtail—the final artistic
flourish of a scatological masterwork. It was so damned perfect it
bordered on the miraculous, the highest manifestation of the lowest
order. Looking back on it now I really should have photographed it. I
mean, who knows, maybe I’d been in position to get
the shot
after all.
I waddled out to fill the water jug. It just never ends in
India. Everybody in the compound, including those tending to patients
and the patients themselves, watched me fill the jug. I was beyond
giving a shit. I gave at the office. As the water pounded into
the clay jug my mind kept repeating Mac’s fateful words: ‘You should
have left that bloody video contraption behind…should have left that
bloody video contraption…’
Back in the relative privacy of my squat-hole, the ‘masterwork’
mocking me all the while, I cleaned myself with the now wet and
unsoiled front section of my own Mervyn’s 3 for $20 boxer shorts. I
have never felt such utter defeat. I just knew Mac was down at
the sangam getting the shots, I knew it! Not out of any
supernatural intuitiveness on my part, but because I had learned
through personal experience how the universe worked, at least for me,
and the point of my lesson just wouldn’t have been driven home hard
enough had Mac somehow been foiled.
Yes-sir-ee, ole Snap Baba was down there snapping away alright,
filling his ancient Nikons with BW images of wild-eyed Nagas splashing
around and ululating like—well—Nagas. Nobody and I mean nobody,
splashes and ululates like they do. This of course is exactly where I
should have been, would have been, if not for my own lapse in
awareness and the intelligent application of just a little more
patience.
Bright side? Anti-climatic perhaps, but yes, there was indeed a
bright side. Two of them in fact. First, I was pretty confident that
I now had something to write about that nobody else could, or would,
even if they could. Second, the extra liner the good people at Exofficio had provided proved the crucial difference in reducing the
outwardly visible signs of my unfortunate discharge into a single, egg
sized ovoid. This was more than just easily cleaned; it was a show of
divine mercy for which I am eternally grateful. My eruption had been nowhere near as noticeable to
the
single largest gathering of—as
I had feared.
It truly is, the little things.
****
Back at the house in Allahabad proper (our documentary team’s rented
sanctuary) that night I found out what had happened to Mac and to the
other photographers who weren’t nearly as lucky. Mac, as I had
brilliantly inducted during my ego shattering moment of truth, did
indeed make it down to the sangam to shoot the Nagas bathing,
untouched and un-ululated upon.
On the other end of the Naga sangam however, exactly where
we would have been had we chosen plan A; all holy hell had broken
loose. Some of the photographers that had staked out their camera
positions well before dawn decided it might be a good time to
stretch their legs a bit in the direction of the Nagas and oh,
while they were out there, take a few photographs to show the
grandkids.
The way I heard it was essentially the way it read in the papers the
next day, here allowing for a little authorly color. One of them,
we’ll call him Leg Stretcher #1, was shooting in the direction
of a group of five or six holy bathers which, in retrospect, was
exactly the wrong group of five or six holy bathers in whose direction
to be shooting. They attacked the man, yes, but not without a certain
poetry. Utilizing Leg Stretcher #1’s camera, which was attached
to a strap that was attached to his neck, they gave a concerted team
effort to the task of making the waters of enlightenment vitally
available to him—by nearly drowning the poor bastard.
NAKED SAINTS ARRESTED FOR ASSAULT WITH
HOLY WATER, MINOLTA
Of course there would be no arrests. (Nor were there any at the
minor Mela held at Haridwar in 1998 when a gang of enraged Nagas threw
more than a dozen Indian police off a bridge and into the Ganges,
drowning one.) These guys throw a lot of weight around.
Next, three additional holy men set upon Leg Stretcher #2, who was
reportedly shooting the assault on Leg Stretcher #1. These three
proceeded to tear the camera from him and take turns smashing it to
the ground. Once good and smashed they performed a surprisingly well-
choreographed, primal Watusi round the wreckage. And yes, they were
ululating.
Meanwhile, just down the sangam, Mac the Snap, in a rare
splurge, snapped the last frame of his third roll, casually holstered
his Nikons and strode off into the sunrise—my hero.
This must have been about the time I was pulling up my pants.
Grabbing my gear hung on the squathole door, I bade adieu to
Ashoka’s pillar—now awaiting renovation under a tent of Mervyn’s 3 for
$20 boxer shorts—and left the hospital camp without seeking first aid.
My wounds were not serious and besides, I felt like bleeding. I
steered straight for the main sangam determined to make
something out of this yet. I’d be damned if I were going to let the
bastards get the best of me. Never mind that I was probably damned
anyway. I was going to walk right down into the middle of their
precious sangam and take some fucking pictures. And if some fat
and sagging stretch marked granny breasts intruded themselves into my
frame, then I’d take pictures of them too. Apparently there was a
market for them in England.
Along the way I passed a couple of soldiers sweeping for mines.
Huh? If there were any mines where they were sweeping they’d have been
discovered a couple of million legs ago. You boys best get back to
your nukes. I worked my way through the crowd and eventually arrived
at the top of the bank overlooking the sangam, about 80 meters
to the east of the great Energy for Life (an oil company ad)
monolith. I think it’s safe to say, without risk of overstatement,
that I’ve never seen more life in all my life, or more energy for that
matter. A crowd the size of the entire population of
California—making modest Allahabad the world’s biggest city for a
day—would bathe here in the coming hours. As I looked down the long
stretch of riverbank and out across the shallow confluence filled with
the rollicking devout, it seemed like they were all there in that
moment. It was a truly awesome and exhilarating sight, the type of
which can never be adequately described without an accompanying shot
of adrenaline.
You just have to be there, and it’s a shame so few outside India
ever will. Most Americans have never even heard of the Kumbha Mela,
let alone considered reservations for 2013. Never mind that it’s by
far far far the largest gathering of humanity the planet earth has
ever known. It’s also the most ancient, by just as far. Really, who
cares when there’s still so much shopping left to be done? Then again,
what can you expect from a country whose educational system churns out
routinely the kinds of minds frighteningly illustrated on a recent
Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Upon being asked possibly the easiest
history question of all time—who did the United States fight against
in the Vietnam War—a woman disciple of Generation X answered in all
earnestness: ‘Canada?’ Perhaps in the wake of the Blockbuster
Terrorism of 9-11, a few more popping sounds of heads being uncorked
from asses might begin to be heard.
But I digress.
Jostled continually by the crowd I managed to get my day-and-a-half
boots off in slightly less time than that. I tied the laces together
and garroted myself so that they dangled on my back and out of the
way. My pants were successfully rolled up above my knees. And so,
battered but willing, I stood gazing out over the Grand Spectacle of
joyous madness and thought: ‘I really should get this on the bloody
video contraption.’ Just as I raised the camera a ‘no photo!’ shout
rang out—the aurora borealis was attempting to shoot some video. I
tucked it away quicker than the Delhi pickpocket had with my Gandhi
wallet three weeks earlier, and attached myself to the ass end of a
family of twelve elephant-walking down to the water. Actually I didn’t
quite hook the ass end, as I soon found grandma holding on for dear
life to the ass end of my sweatshirt as we serpentined our way down
the slippery slope to salvation.
There was no respite here from the soldier’s whistles, which
continued to sully the air of excitement and revelry. One such
‘sullier’ lay dead ahead, standing in the water where we would have to
enter, blowing pilgrims past him through the surprisingly well moving
chaos. I did the only thing I could do, helping grandma into the water
and making an obvious show that I was with her, that these were my
people, that I belonged. Once past him grandma and I exchanged smiles
and namastes and I went long.
Once you were well out near the fence-line that kept people from
venturing too far out and drowning in deeper waters, the crowd thinned
some. Some. No soldiers were wading out that far, but you still had to
keep an eye out for the photographer hunting patrol boats cruising
just beyond the fence. Warily, I began snapping a still here and
there, but was soon spotted, not by soldiers thankfully, but happy
holy dippers. They weren’t yelling at me not to take photos but
just the opposite. They began posing in the midst of perhaps their
greatest moment, apparently anxious for a chance to become an
indelible part of India’s long and inimitable religious history. This
had been a familiar but forgotten theme in the midst of this camera
ban fiasco, but it was making me nervous.
I obliged one group, then another jumped in on the action, then
another and another and I knew I had to get out of there before ‘No
camera! Very bad! No camera!’—The Asshole in Every Crowd reared his
ugly head. And boy was his head ugly. He looked like an
obese, pop-eyed Coelacanth that had just been pulled up from the
bottom of the Marianna Trench, only not quite as comfortable with his
surroundings.
Immediately I headed in the opposite direction, and for the second
time on this fateful day the 'Asshole' would not be shaken. He
continued after me, yelling and waving a fat fin of disdain. As I
increased my pace through the shallows, he increased his, still
yelling and waving that fin. Finally I had to break into a near
sprint, running over the water like a drunk Jesus showing off for the boys, just to
escape him and his malevolent fin. Asshole. Fucking Coelacanth.
Circling back around through the water and revelry I ducked in
along the low mesh fence-line separating the pilgrim sangam
from the Naga sangam. By this time there were but two old
warriors in loincloths loitering around, tossing handfuls of holy
water over an arm here, a shoulder there, when a group of woman
pilgrims broke through the fence. Surely the water on the other
side—now sanctified by thousands of Naga bodies’ worth of dhunni
ash and jata grease—was holier. Soldiers with lazy whistles
and bored feet herded them out. But it didn’t really matter now. The
Naga Baba Show had hit the road.
Turning my gaze, two other soldiers were staring straight at me
from atop an island of sandbags originally meant for cameras and the
intrusive bastards who stand behind them, just as I had my bloody
video contraption half out of the bag. I don’t know if they saw it
but I headed in the other direction just in case, continuing my
involuntary pachinko around the sangam. Just as soon as their
backs were turned I yanked it back out and shot some hasty footage
of the massive wall of humanity that smothered the fifty foot high
bank and stretched for more than a kilometer toward the Red Fort.
I thought of the anti-aircraft guns laying in wait for the Islamic
terrorists who, though uninvited, had RSVP’d through the papers anyway, but
never showed. So unmannerly, these terrorists.
If I’d had money, if I’d had back up equipment, I’d have said fuck
all and went into full photo-commando mode right then and there,
shooting everything in sight. But I didn’t, and having just removed
myself from nightmare, decided to quit before I got further behind, a
decision I was regretting even as I made it. I was the only non-Indian
in the sangam or even on the bank, as far as I could tell
anyway. I did get some decent shots but they were hurried and not near
all that I wanted. Only twelve years until my next chance.
At this point my opprobrium had largely gone, but I was only slightly
less exceedingly pissed and fantastically miserable than before.
But a funny thing happened on the way from the sangam…
I stopped. Dead. Suddenly it had struck me. I was standing in the
middle of a dream I’d had for exactly twelve years, standing right in
the heart of myth and mythology in the making, and I hadn’t taken a
single moment to stop and smell the marigolds. Good God man!
And so I stopped right in the middle of what it was all
about and took it all in. I am not a Hindu obviously, but nor am I
attached to any religion, not even one that teaches non-attachment to
the legions attached to its teachings. But I am, first and foremost I
like to think, a spiritual man. Dogma poisons all belief systems, but
it cannot touch that which is deepest inside and connected purely to
the infinite, that which is without thought and beyond belief, that
which was stirred inside me as I opened to the incredible vastness of
the moment.
My own karma wash was beckoning. Spontaneously dropping to my knees in
some ankle deep water, I cupped my hands together and
sunk them into the seemingly effervescent Saraswati. I raised
the goddess waters a foot or two and let them pour slowly back. I did
this repeatedly, my whispering mind gradually merging with Her and
drifting away. Among the whisperings that passed, was how gloriously
natural it was, how utterly normal it was to be here in benediction on
my never before so public knees. I raised my hands higher the last
time, above my head, allowing Her baptism to pour over me. It was as
if my head had turned to pumice and a million blissfully cold and
infinitesimal tingles of watery light went rushing in, percolating,
illuminating, softening the pain and anger still clinging to the dusky
edges of a spirit too long at war.
"If your heart is open, you will know the myth of the Kumbh was born
of truth."
I had heard numerous variations
on this since I’d arrived in Allahabad three weeks earlier. I hadn’t
believed it for a second. And now, lowering my arms and raising my
face to the hazy morning sun, I basked the bask of the blissful, and I
knew. The myth was true. This timeless place in time was indeed
suffused with the supernal, and it had been brought down, not by the
dubious Rolex gurus or the duplicitous Naga Babas, but by the millions
of simple pilgrims who, through their long enduring faith and sweet
devotion, invited God to a party in His honor. He didn’t RSVP but showed up anyway, rejoicing in His children as His children rejoiced
in Him.
In this state of being, even the resumed shouts from ‘The Asshole in Every
Crowd’ that blew by couldn’t bother me. When I opened my smiling eyes and there he
was, the great pop-eyed Coelacanth flopping up to the same soldier
grandma and I had passed earlier, finning in my direction with the fat
folds of his neck gasping like gills in all his agitation. Didn’t he
know where he was? Didn’t he know he was standing in the watery lap of
God on earth? I smiled inwardly, chuckled softly at all that had
befallen me, and high tailed it the hell out of the holy
water.
And back up the slippery slope.
~Bennett Stevens
Bangkok, Thailand 2001
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