Climbing Chamundi Hill (15 page)
Read Climbing Chamundi Hill Online
Authors: Ariel Glucklich
Just as he finished telling this story, I heard thumping sounds behind us. I turned, facing uphill, and listened. The sound grew louder, like two drums on parade. Then, suddenly, two teenage boys came flying down the steps, arms flailing wildly, tongues stuck out as their eyes were focused on the steps with a strange magnetic horrorâin an instant they were below us and out of view. When only a faint tapping remained of their violent display, I whistled and exclaimed, “That was insane!”
The old man laughed loudly, then reassured me that anyone could do it. To emphasize the point he quickly changed the subject. “How did you like the story?”
“It was a wonderful story. I really like the mood: dark, a bit surrealistic, and sad. But what does it have in common with the previous story? I mean, why did you connect these stories?”
The old man was poking at the ground with his walking staff, bending down every now and then, but he heard me. “Well, the two stories share nothing at all of course, other than what one is able to discern. Here, try one of these.”
From his bag he handed me a broken carob fruit that was much darker than the ones I had previously seen. I wiped it on my shirt, took a bite, and said, “You need to help me with the story. I don't get it.”
The old man toyed with his own carob, but he did not eat. “In the previous story, if you grant me the arbitrary
meaning I gave it, the love of the wife represented the thinking of the practitioner: âThis practice is wonderful. If I do it just right, I can expect great rewards.' In the second story we see a contrast between a very rigid notion of the afterlifeâhellâand a rather vague view of immortality. By immortality I mean the capacity to move across boundaries of existence and nonexistence, the type of ephemeral power achieved by the uncle. It's an extremely old story, my friend, and this is an obscure way of speaking about the liberation of the self.”
The carob was sweet and fleshy, with large pits that were easy to find and spit out. I felt elated. “That's very confusing.”
“Yes, of course. Look, in my tradition the Brahmin usually represents the highest spiritual valuesâit's the Brahmin who possesses the knowledge that leads to salvation.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“But in this story the âproper' Brahmins were useless. They were ignorant of the special chant, perhaps even afraid to approach the topic. The only man who had both knowledge and courage was regarded as polluted. He was dangerous. Do you know what kind of a man this is?”
“A sorcerer, I suppose.”
“Close. He's a Tantric ritualist, or perhaps an Aghoriâa mystic who follows in the footsteps of Shiva by living in the cremation grounds, where he immerses himself in secret practices that the orthodox Brahmins find dangerous.”
“Would it be fair to call him antinomian?”
The old man now bit gingerly into his carob with his eyes closed, but he answered the question. “If you mean like those Christians who break religious laws to achieve mystical goals, then yesâand no. The concept you mentioned is
too dualistic: good versus bad, sacred versus profane. Think of this man or woman as someone who transgresses against all dualism, against thought itself, which is dualistic by definitionââbinary' is the word philosophers use. What makes our chap seem dangerous is that in straddling boundaries he questions the way we have sorted out the world: âThis is mine, that is yours'; âI want this, I hate that.' There is nothing unlawful about what he does, and in India he has never been pursued by religious courts. We don't have your penchant for inquisitions, you know.”
“So all of this connects to the previous story because giving up the thought of a goal is part of it?”
“Yes, excellent. But there is more. You go beyond giving up the thought that accompanies practice, but you also go against the very fiber of religion. It is one step further along the pathâif you'll pardon the metaphor. Give up thinking about practice; go against entrenched values or desires. At the very head of the list, the most prestigious value, of course, is
moksha
âspiritual liberation. How I hate that word. You, young man, if you're a pilgrim on the path to Shiva, then you are also a seeker of moksha, are you not? Well, give that up. Abandon all thought of moksha.”
I didn't really know whether I was a pilgrim or not. On that day I had no intention of performing a pilgrimage to Shiva; I was merely exercising and drying my shoes. But I was then living in Varanasiâthe city of Shivaâand I cared about his river, the Ganges. I didn't know what constituted devotion or a search for knowledgeâI still don'tâbut I was no mere tourist either. I felt pretentious but not hypocritical for speaking about such things as moksha.
But that made no sense. “That's absurd! How can I give up thinking about moksha if I'm after it? I mean, it's very
clever as a paradox and all that, but it makes no sense in practice⦔
“You have it in reverse, my friend. It makes no sense in theory, but works in practice. Come on, let's walk some more and see what we can make of the next story.”
Deep in the forest at the northern end of our state once lived a king named Bhangaswana. Endowed with all the good qualities of a true monarch, he was handsome and wise, a follower of the law who ruled over a peaceful and prosperous country. Despite all his virtues, however, King Bhangaswana was unable to produce sons. He wed no less than seventeen women and was fortunate enough to father a few girlsâbut no sons.
In his despair he decided to perform the Agnishtuta ritual. The ritual itself was not particularly dangerous, but because all the offerings in the fire went to Agniâthe god of fireâa deadly threat lurked around the place of offerings. Because the ritual made no provision for Indra, the notoriously jealous king of gods could retaliate, his quick rage ignited by the slight. And, indeed, Indra hovered above the ritual, watching the proceedings like a hawk, waiting to angrily pounce on the king for any lapse in detail. As a result of the Agnishtuta, he
obtained his wishes and in a very short time he sired one hundred healthy sons. King Bhangaswana raised them happily, secure in the knowledge that his royal line would survive and the kingdom would continue to prosper.
Several years passed and Indra, who never forgets a slight, finally saw his chance for revenge. One day as the king set out alone to hunt in the dense Labha Forest, both he and his horse became disoriented and lost their way in the woods. As the hours went by, hunger and thirst further confused the two, and they wandered even deeper into the forest. Finally, they stumbled onto a clearing with a sparkling and transparent lake surrounded by ripe fruit trees and tall kusha grass. Crows nervously flew up from the branches and bees abandoned the rotting fruit on the ground when the king approached. The water looked refreshing, and the king quickly dismounted and led his horse to the water's edge. After he watered the animal and tied it to a tree, the king disrobed and entered the lake in order to perform his ablutions.
Bhangaswana dunked completely three times, pulled his hair to the back, and repeated several mantras. Then he walked out of the water to fetch his clothes, which he had left near the horse. He felt strange, and the horse twitched nervously, edging to the side as he approached. The king looked down and discovered that he had grown breasts while he was in the lake. He froze in disbelief, then turned quickly back to the water's edge. In the calm water of the forest lake, Bhangaswana saw the reflection of a
woman staring back upâit was his own image! He had turned into a woman, and the lake somehow caused itâ¦The king felt no consolation that the woman staring back with wide-open eyes was lovely.
Bhangaswana quickly recovered from his initial shock, but was suddenly overcome with a deep shame. “A woman! A weak, temperamental, vacillating creatureâjust look at me!” he thought. “What will my boys think?” He reflected on his athletic boys, whom he had raised to be disciplined and upright. Then he thought about their mothersâhis wivesâand grimaced. “So quarrelsome and judgmental. They will never respect me in this shape. What should I do?”
Shaking and weak, the king struggled to mount his nervous horse and found his way back to the palace. People stared rudely, as they would never dare if he were still his male form. Everyone could see it was clearly the king, but it was also a woman riding that famous horse. The bustling palace came to a complete standstill, as everyone froze in mid-task. The one hundred boys came running out and gaped at theirâ¦father. The wives, attendants, and palace servants, even the dogs and the royal parrots, stood and stared at the transformed monarch.
The king dismounted clumsily, with some unwanted help, and called a hasty meeting of his family and closest advisors. He told them everything that happened, blaming fate for this catastrophe. He knew nothing, of course, about Indra's great vindictiveness. Then, crying, he added, “During my ride back I have
been thinking. I can't stay here in the palace or the city. How can I possibly govern as a woman? A king must be decisive and righteousâhow can I possibly live up to such lofty standards as a woman? No, I shall retire to the forest and become a renouncer, and I shall let you enjoy your lives hereâ¦Please try and remember me as a man.” Several of the wives sobbed quietly, but no one said a word, and the king quickly left the room and disappeared into the woods.
For days she wandered in the forest, surviving on berries, mangoes, and tubers and sleeping under the dense canopy of the forest. One day she walked into the hermitage of an ascetic, a kindly man of moderate austerities. His hair and beard were long, but he lacked the fiery intensity of those god-maddened ascetics, and he invited her to stay with him. They lived together, at first as friends, but eventually as husband and wife. In the course of time she gave birth to one hundred sons, all of them as handsome and energetic as their brothers in the city.
The mother watched her boys grow, and tried to teach them as best she could about the world of Kshatriyas. It soon became clear that she was making slow progress with them, so she decided to have them educated in the palace. Bhangaswana, now called Aditya, took them to her former home and commanded her former sons to accept the new boys as brothers. The princes in the palace embraced the forest boys as siblings, joyfully sharing the life of royalty with them.
Indra saw all of this. He was still hovering over the
king he had vowed to destroy, and he now flew into a rage. “It turns out I only did this manâ¦this womanâ¦a favor. She's too happyâ¦That won't do.” So the king of the gods assumed the form of a Brahmin and went to visit the palace. Greeted with the proper honor, he received an audience with the two hundred boys. Seeing them intermingle peacefully the Brahmin wasted no time. “How can you live together like this? Don't you realize how perilous this situation is? You don't share the same father, which means that sooner or later half of you will demand superior rights. There's no doubt about it.”
The boys looked at each other. Surely that couldn't be rightâthey loved their life together. Still, this was a Brahmin, a respected elder. And the man continued, “Look, the sons of Kashyapa, the Creator, once fought to the death over their inheritanceâthe three worlds. Do you really think you are superior to them, better than the gods?” The boys now looked around uneasily, and the Brahmin kept up the pressure. He planted thoughts of jealousy, betrayal, and righteous indignation in their minds, and sure enough, eventually a fight broke out among them. The fight then grew into a battle, and within hours of Indra's arrival at the palace all two hundred boys were dead.
Aditya heard the news in her forest retreat while preparing a meal for some travelers. She collapsed on the hard ground, where she remained inconsolable. Days later the poor woman was still rolling in the dirt, lamenting her fate, when a Brahmin walked into the forest retreat and calmly approached her. It was
the disguised Indra, who came to survey his handiwork. Coldly, he inquired of the pathetic woman what had happened to cause her such manifest sorrow.
The woman looked up at the Brahmin and answered, “I had two hundred sons, sir, and all were killed. They were slain by the cruel hand of Time.”
“My goodness, dear woman, how did you come to have so many sons?”
So the sobbing woman told the Brahmin the story of her life. She told him about her life as a sonless king, about the ritual to Agni, her changed identity in the forest. She told him about sending her forest boys to the palace and the news of their destruction. “My life is over, sir, finishedâworthless!”
Indra looked down at the wretch, who was covered in dust that formed into mud stains on her cheeks. Suddenly he revealed himself to her, in his full majesty, swollen with self-righteous rage. “You brought this on yourself, Bhangaswana! It was not fate that destroyed your sons, but your own sin. During that ritual to Agni you completely forgot me, king of the godsâLord of All Beings! Did you think I could be slighted in this manner and remain quiet? It was I who got you lost in the woods, who changed you into a woman in the lake. And it was I who instigated the fight among your sons and killed them all. And now,” the god's voice reached and passed its highest pitch at once and now came down, “I am satisfied.”
The woman clutched the feet of the god and
begged Indra's forgiveness. “Punish me, Lord, if you must. It was my fault. Tear me limb from limbâeven death is too good for meâbut please bring those boys back! They're innocent⦔ The king of the gods, having satisfied his rage, was moved by the mother's anguish and by her genuine remorse. His anger evaporated.
“Fine. I shall return half of those boys to life. But you must tell me which of them I should reviveâthose born to you as king or as ascetic woman.”
The woman did not hesitate. “Bring back those I have borne as a woman.”
Her answer surprised Indra, who could not restrain his curiosity. “Why do you make such a strange choice? Why choose the children born to you from your changed self? Please explain this mystery.”
The woman did not think it was an extraordinary choice at all. “As a woman,” she said, “I love more deeply. I carried those children in my body, I bore them, and I love them as only a mother can.”
Indra was impressed and moved by this unexpected insight. As a reward he promised to restore all the boys back to life and added, “And you may now choose to return to your former self as king or remain a woman. What is your preference?”
“I choose to remain a woman,” she answered immediately.
“But why?” the stunned god shot back. “You can have all your sons back. Then you can return to the throne, to your manhood! What are you saying? Is it the life of the forest that draws you?”
Aditya smiled and answered, “No, Your Lordship. I chose to revive my children because a mother loves best. I now choose to remain a woman because a woman enjoys the sexual act more deeply. I hope I do not offend you, sir, and all the males in your court, but having been both, I know what feels best.”
Indra quietly studied the woman for a while. A number of times he opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Deciding that some things are beyond even his ability to fathom, he bade her farewell and returned to heaven.
We stopped climbing next to a large boulder that was jutting out of the hill on the other side of a dry creek. A tiny stone shrine stood along the path, but I could not make out the god because an old man wrapped in rags lay curled up in front. Was he asleep? It was a fairly common spectacle, a man who may have been ill or drunk, but then again could have been in the midst of complete god-intoxication. Was there a way to tell? I returned to the story.
“That's a totally implausible story for a culture like India. I mean what Indian man would ever express a desire to be a woman? Men here have all the power, without a doubt. No, it's sheer male fantasy, something about how great it must be to enjoy the pleasure that only a man can give⦔
The guide waved his cane enthusiastically. “Yes, a fantasyâ¦It's wonderful that the story appeals to you, my friend. Can you now connect it to the previous story? What we were discussing then?”
“You mean giving up the thought of moksha?”
“Yes, that's precisely what I mean.” He tapped the groundâthe rags in front of the shrine stirred a bit.
“Well, there's a gender reversal here. The king becomes a woman and prefers the children born to himâ¦to her, as a woman. And he also chooses to be a woman⦔
“In a patriarchal society, correct?”
“Exactly. And switching gender or social identity is like giving up binary thinking altogether, including the thought, âI do not have moksha, but I would like to have it.'”
“That's exactly right!” The old man's voice rose. “And what does it look like in practice?”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember, we agreed that it makes no sense in theory, but it works in practice.”
“Yes, I remember, but I wasn't sure what you meant. Doesn't meditation help you get rid of binary thinking?”
“It does, but we want to go further. We now want to actually change our identity.” He moved softly toward the figure in rags and bent down over it. But he kept talking. “If you are a man, become a woman. If you are rich, act like a poor man. Practice reversal in gender and in all things, and you shall move beyond binary distinctions.”
“But how do I do that? It sounds far-fetched.”
Satisfied with what he saw, the guide straightened up. He spoke with a softer voice now. “Yes, there are extreme forms of this practice, but there are lesser ones too. Some of our Tantric masters teach students to reverse their sexual identity during the sexual act. That is very difficult, and certainly not for you. But imagine that you are in Calcutta in April and you get on a bus that has no air conditioning. It is so hot and humid that you feel as though you are suffocating. What is the first thing you do when you sit down?”
“I open the window.”
“And loosen your shirt button.”
“That too.”
“Next time you find yourself in this situation, do the opposite. Button up. Close the window. Feel how cold it is in there. And try the flip side too. You step out of your house in America in midwinter and it's freezingâopen up your coat a bit.”
“That's crazy! I don't see what any of this can do for you.”
The old man ignored my protest and continued. “You are in a traffic jam and you feel angry and impatient, and then someone is trying to cut into your lane from the sideâyou know this situation? You move forward and block his way, correct? Why not let him in? In fact, as you let him in, give him your best smile. The angrier and more rushed you feel, the nicer you might consider acting.” He smiled at me triumphantly, expecting some type of reaction.
It was all absurdâhe was asking me to be a saint. “I'll just become a passive-aggressive neurotic, then explode like a post-office clerk.”