The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [131]
To me it is amazing to see men like this, so out of step with modern times. But, then, Siva’s devotees have always stepped away from their society. They were Lunatics right from the beginning. I tried to talk to some of them. Aristu was too shy to translate. Some knew a few words of English. Some encouraged me to take their picture and then hit me up for a donation. For one ragged pair who had made a pilgrimage from Bihar, I bought a package of biscuits, which they then shared with me in easy silence. Others offered to share their chillims, which I declined, being too much a creature of my own space and time.
Four months later I had the fortune to visit Kathmandu again and went to Pashupati with two Nepali journalist friends, one of whom had studied in Benares and written extensively about Pashupati and its holy men. With them as my interpreters, I entered the compound where the Sadhus were staying. It was dusk, and a prayer ceremony was taking place on the banks of the Bagmati River. Bhajans (spiritual songs) and the twang of a sitar could be heard in the night air. The music was punctuated by a band of monkeys jumping back and forth on the compound’s tin roof, beating out their own cacophonous rhythms, and screeching to each other now and then.
About thirty holy men sat around the compound, some readying themselves for sleep, others clustered in conversation. We found a group of three sitting on a raised stone circle, willing to talk with us about their lives.
Bharati Baba was a Naga Baba, a Siva devotee from Benares. He had a long black beard and slender body—easy to notice from his naked chest—covered with several necklaces. He wore a large saffron turban with a huge orange tika mark on his forehead. His feet sported white athletic socks, something foreign to his yogic body, which may have been donated by a foreign visitor like me. My interpreters told me that though he was the youngest of the group, he was in fact the most senior Baba in terms of attainment. There was, I found out, a very clear pecking order in the world of Sadhus.
Pancha Das was in his fifties, and had been a Baba for twenty years. He followed the God Ram. He wore nothing but a white dhoti wrapped around his waist and a single necklace—the most minimalist garb I had seen on a Sadhu.
Hanuman Baba—named after Hanuman the monkey God—was a sixty-year-old Nepali farmer who had left his wife and children at age forty-five to become a Sadhu. Despite his Santa-like gray beard, his yellow robes and white stripes marking his forehead, he was the junior Baba of the group.
I asked first why they came to Pashupati for Sivaratri.
“It’s the festival of the Babas,” said Pancha Das, “so lots of high level Babas come here. It’s where we get to meet them and learn from them.”
“Also, because the high Babas come, a lot of lay people also visit, so we all benefit. So it’s really good for the junior Babas like us,” added Hanuman Baba.
“Why do you dedicate your life to God?” I asked.
There was a lot of chatter which I did not understand. I first thought there would be different answers from them. However, in the end I learned that there was agreement in their answers. They all said that the sacred music has something to do with their decision to become a Baba. Music has the power to enchant and apparently all the three Babas were drawn to the devotional songs called bhajans.
Pancha Das said he was thirty and married when he left his village and family. For him, the path of a Sadhu was a means to rid himself of the bad karma which he had accumulated in this and past lives. He said his present life was devoted to prayer in order to improve his future lives.
Bharati, the Naga Baba, said that he was only ten years old when he dedicated himself to Siva. Being a Sadhu was the only life he can remember.
“What