“You cannot travel on the path” ... “before you have become the Path itself”

A couple of years ago, in contrast to my self-imposed censorship when visiting with friends and relatives in India, I accidentally let slip into a conversation some of my thoughts on religion, temples, and history.   The self-censorship is because I have long felt that I had very little emotional investment in the old country and, therefore, an Indian could easily take offense at my comments.

But, hey, I am a mortal and I err.  Slips happen.  Visiting a temple, I blurted out in a conversation, is not really about the idol there. A temple visit offers plenty, I tried to convince them, by way of art and history, which almost all of them tended to completely ignore, and through that we gain insights into how we reached where we are today.  It is a wonderful opportunity to learn about, and reflect on life itself and, thus, to re-establish one's priorities.

As I recall, that comment did not generate any heated response at all.  In fact, there was pretty much no response at all, other than a rejoinder along the lines of "I wonder why only foreigners are so interested in India's history."

It was yet another confirmation that I was a certified "foreigner" in India.  "Ferengi" is what one friend said that I was (I hope I am correctly recalling that word.)

One of the most profound and humbling art and history that I have come across in India?  The ones at the caves at Ajanta and Ellora.

It felt blissful. After a day at the caves, I returned to the hotel with a better and richer understanding of life.

In reviewing a book on Ajanta by a foreigner, William Dalrymple--another foreigner--writes:

Excavated shortly after the collapse of Ashoka’s great Mauryan Empire (322–185 BC), which had once stretched from Kandahar to the Vindyas, caves nine and ten at Ajanta are some of the oldest extant rooms in the world: from the paleographic evidence, scholars believe the years between 90 and 70 BC to be the most likely period of construction. These long chaitya, or prayer halls, lined with tapering octagonal columns, ending in a rounded apse that encloses the perfect dome of a tall stone stupa, were thus probably already old when Augustus started the rebuilding of Rome.

Even now, I can clearly remember the columns and the dome that Dalrymple writes about.  And I also recall being completely dumbfounded looking at them and thinking that they did all that that long ago, when even a small little flickering light in the night would have been a luxury.  When living in the wilderness.  And, especially, even when they knew that they might not be around to look at the finished work.

the chaitya halls executed around 200 BC were some of the first spaces in Asia specifically made for congregational worship. They were created as part of a momentous change in religious practice, and provided a setting for a new form of communal Buddhist worship directed at the stupa, the domed, moundlike structure containing Buddhist relics, which had come to be seen as the living embodiment of the Buddha, rather as later generations of Catholics would look to the tabernacle, the place where the Eucharist is stored, as the location of the Real Presence. In these halls, the monks of Ajanta would gather together to have a “direct, intimate contact with a living presence.” The cult of stupa worship, writes Schopen, was “monastically controlled and monastically dominated…a primary concern for the monastic community and a necessary prerequisite for its continuance.”
The monks may have long gone, but reverence is still something these early caves invoke, and visiting them today you see crowds of chattering tourists instantly hushed by the dark, solemn splendor of their painted interiors. With some of these early images, particularly with the newly rediscovered and restored early cycles from cave ten, probably dating from the first century BC, we are in a world so astonishingly lifelike that even today they can still make you gasp as you find yourself staring eyeball to eyeball with a silent soldier who could have fought the Bactrian Greeks in Afghanistan, or a monk who may have seen the Buddha’s relics interred at Sanchi.

Indeed, the paintings and sculpture made me gasp.  They hushed me into silence.  They made me so conscious of the trivial nature of my existence. Of existence itself.

While the choice of subjects may surprise us today, the Ajanta artists clearly saw nothing odd in this juxtaposition of monk and dancing girl: in the Indian tradition, whether Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist, the sensuous is seen as an integral part of the sacred. As Vidya Dehejia puts it, “the idea that [such sensual images] might generate irreverent thoughts did not arise; rather, the established association appears to have been with accentuated growth, prosperity, and auspiciousness.” The celibate Buddhist monasteries of Ajanta were filled with images of sensuous, half-naked women—because in the eyes of the monks and their patrons this was not just permissible, but completely appropriate decoration.

We are all mere decorations, if at all. But we think that the decoration is the real thing. Even the paintings and sculptures at Ajanta are not really about the paintings and sculptures. They are phenomenal opportunities for us to think about the purpose of our fragile existence.

Fight against the Indian way of doing things ... and the only result will be tears

I know exactly when I first realized that I had stopped fighting my battles against India and its Indian-ness. That enlightenment about the change within me came when I was in a cave with the Enlightened One--the Buddha.  Well, sort of.

It was at Ellora, where it was one cave after another of astounding art.  And this was after my previous day at Ajanta.  Paintings and sculptures that were hundreds of years old.  I was so moved by them all.  I was ecstatic to the point of getting emotional.  It was a secular pilgrimage that taught me a lot, especially about the utter insignificance of my singular and momentary existence.

It was mostly a foreign crowd, at Ajanta and at Ellora.  Irrespective of whether we tourists looked Japanese or American or European or, yes, Indian, we walked in and out of the caves with utmost respect and, if talking with others, conversing at low decibels.

Ellora, perhaps because it was less remote than Ajanta, had a few more locals among the tourists. Unlike the mostly foreign tourists at Ajanata who were travelling without kids, Ellora had a few Indian families with kids in tow.  At one of the caves, two middle-aged men, who I imagined as the father and uncle of the kids, not only chose not to teach the kids the proper way to behave at such sites, they even delighted in showing the kids how the sounds echoed in that confined setting.

A young Indian woman, with a camera hanging from one shoulder, a backpack, and a sketchbook in her hand was visibly annoyed.  I smiled at her as I kept walking.

I ran into the same group again at another cave.  The men were boisterous and the kids screamed their lungs out.  The young woman could not bear it anymore and she told them something in Hindi, which seemed like she was expressing her displeasure.  The American I am anymore, I kept going.

Later, at another cave, with mostly unfinished carvings, I saw that young woman in a group with three others.

They seemed like they had come together, perhaps less as tourists as more as scholars.  As I neared them, I told the rest that their friend got pissed off at the noisemakers.  She smiled.

I realized that I had changed.

I was her, and more, when younger.

Even a few years ago, I might have expressed emotions similar to what that young woman felt.  But, not anymore.

There is simply no point fighting with India.  It is as pointless as yelling at a mountain. A tiring thing to do, and nothing ever comes out of it.

Now, when I discuss India, or when I visit India, I simply accept India and her people for the way things are. I do not even attempt to understand the land and its peoples anymore.  They fascinate me, but I have come to realize that trying to understand is frustration, aggravation, anger, disappointment, and many more emotions along those lines.  Simply accepting, on the other hand, means that the land and its peoples are fascinating, beautiful, magical, and more such emotions.

Pico Iyer summarizes all those for me when he writes:

India is not going to change at its core anytime soon, and the challenge for all of us who love it is to see the blessing in that and not the aggravation.

As I often note here and at conversations and in the classroom, India has a momentum of its own and all the external agents who have tried to change its direction not only failed but, ironically, only become Indianized themselves.  As Iyer comments:

Every visitor who goes to India—and I’ve been back twice in the past seven months—knows how the country refuses to conform to plans or international expectations; the only way to survive is to give yourself over to its way of being. Fight against the Indian way of doing things, wish that things were different, and the only result will be tears. Just as you have to turn your watch forwards by half an hour when landing in India, just as you have to check in the batteries from your camera as separate pieces of luggage, just as it can prove impossible to find a working Internet connection in a proud center of high-tech like Hyderabad, so every foreigner has to surrender and realize that things will get done in their own, unexpected ways. The very qualities that make India so culturally alive, textured and itself make it uncommonly reluctant to adjust to the economic rules and geopolitical norms of the world. India most happily changes the lives of those who have no thought of changing India. 

 I wish I could share all these with that young woman.  But, even if I did, for all I know, she will refuse to accept such an interpretation, as much as I refused to give up the good fight when I was once young.  That is the charm of youth anywhere, especially in a beautiful and old India.

At Chennai's Marina Beach

I am a rock. At least, here :)

You see me?  Or, has the dark tanned-me merged with the stone sculptures in the background?  If so, then the punchline will be, "I am one with the Buddha"

"I hope you find your peace. And then move to Oregon."

The insane heat and the blinding brightness of the sun did not keep me away from going to the caves at Ellora.  After all, this is something I had been looking forward to since my middle school days--ever since we read about Ajanta and Ellora.  I did wish, though, it were significantly cooler. 

The previous day, I was at Ajanta.  It was beyond the wildest of my imaginations.  Thus, to some extent, I was worried that Ellora might be a letdown.

But, it wasn't. 

In fact, visiting Ellora at the end of it all was a wonderful bookend to these three months of learning experience, which began with Mahabalipuram.  But, wait, I am getting ahead of myself!

I saw quite a few familiar faces at Ellora. I don't mean the Buddha statues, but the tourists--American, European, and Japanese and Koreans.  The senior-citizen Japanese tourists seemed to be a lot reverential at Ajanta and Ellora, perhaps thanks to their Buddhist faith.

As I walked around, feeling humbled for the nth time, I paused to make sure I was not in the way of the young woman who was focusing her camera on a certain spot, while her significant other smiled at me as if he recognized me.  This couple was one of the tourists I had run into earlier at Ajanta.

Here, too, I felt that the couple was American.  When the woman was done clicking, I remarked, "hey, looks like our paths cross again."

They nodded their heads.  "Where are you folks visiting from?" I asked them.  My American instincts were correct after all--they were from Ohio!  She had spent a few years in California as well, in my old territory of the Central Valley.

"I have been in India for a month now" she added, "but he came here a month before me."  They were spending their time at an ashram at nearby Nasik.  "Being here is so peaceful compared to our professional lives as nurses.  We will be here in India till our money runs out."

I told them I went to the US for graduate studies and stayed back, and have been only a visitor to India since then.  They were all too familiar with such Indian stories.  "It is amazing that when we tell people we are from Ohio, so many Indians seem to know about Ohio State University and its engineering program."

"I was at USC, lived in California for a while, and now am in Oregon" I said.

"We used to drive down to USC for football games when we lived near Sacramento" she said.  

The guy, who was bald and with a well-trimmed beard, replied that he had been to Portland and liked it.

"I hope you find your peace. And then move to Oregon" I wished them as we parted.

Photo of the day: me at the Buddha's feet ... sort of

It was way, way back in middle school that we learnt about Ajanta and Ellora caves.  I have wanted to visit them since those years .... and finally it happened.  I was blown away and humbled by the phenomenal art in a location that 1,500 to 2,000 years ago would have been far from human-friendly.  Yet, the monks/artists worked away religiously and produced such art .... awesome!