Calcutta

Yesterday morning I arrived to Calcutta. I was reading The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh on the train travelling here from Banaras. It is an exciting book on malaria disease, delirium and nightmares, coincidences and synchronicity, all set in Calcutta. When I arrived here, many of the stories of the novel seemed to repeat themselves. I met an Italian woman, a personal disciple of Osho. She was a natural healer, who gave me an interesting teaching on tantra and relationships and told me she is on the way to the Nicobar Islands to write a cookbook. Her first yoga teacher happened to be Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. Then I went to Kalighat, the place where Sati`s finger fell on earth, and I found a Kamaccha Devi picture on the road. I picked it up and still have it:) In the afternoon I visited the Birla Art Academy, and saw a market behind, where there was a Bengali painter sitting with his scrolls singing the Ramayana. He was just the kind of storyteller I came here to find.

Then on the metro a guy came up to me saying 'this is the fourth time I see you today'. It was true, I also noticed him in different parts of the city. (Calcutta has 12 million inhabitants). In the evening I read the Telegraph, the local newspaper where a proud article said that India got the 8th place in a survey where the question was "how often do you have sex?" The article was emphasising the fact that India is better than Britain in this respect. And who got the first place? You wont believe me: Hungary. It`s hard to imagine when I remember those gloomy faces on the streets of Budapest. This morning when I walked down on Park Street a waiter stopped me from the restaurant where I had dinner last night saying, that I should visit Mother Theresa`s House, it`s not far. I walked and walked, maybe even for an hour, it felt like an endless hike in the heat, but finally found it. It turned out that Mother Theresa`s beatification ceremony will be this Sunday in Rome and a sister of charity showed me the room where she lived. Then completely exhausted I sat down in Barrista Cafe, where an old Bengali man came over to my table for a chat, and told me his life story and how he met the Dalai Lama in `59, when His Holiness arrived to India. Then I met a young Bengali guy in the Oxford bookshop (had to buy a book by Tagore:), who took me out for a drink, and told me he is a fashion designer in Japan, just came back for holiday, and he would take me around on his bike tomorrow to see some scroll painters and collect some Bengali patterns. Then I went to the library of the Asiatic Society to find a book, but instead I found the Acta Orientalia on the shelf, the great Hungarian academic journal with Professor Wojtilla`s article (my Sanskrit teacher from the university). These are just some of the events of the last two days. I don`t know what I`m doing here, it`s too fast, too random, too much for my brain. Maybe it`s all just a malaria dream.

I love trees!

Although I`m back in Banaras after a trip in Tibet, my mind is still there trying to replay the moments, taste again some fragrances, colours and sounds. There is a picture coming into my mind often these days, the moment when we were about to reach Nyalam (a Tibetan village near the Nepali border). From the endless plains of the rocky desert plateau the road descended steeply into a deep gorge with a river at the bottom. The dry air of the Tibetan highland also changed into the moist air of the Indian subcontinent. And then I saw a tree, and then more and more trees, something we didn`t see for days. I was overflowed with joy as if it was a sign of reaching home after a long journey.

I was touched as I remembered the boy in Eric Valli`s Himalaya film, the little chieftain-to-be, when he saw the first tree in his life. Many thoughts rushed through my mind, about trees I`ve seen before, the sacred trees of India, banyans and pipal trees, tree worship. Then I thought I should catch this moment, I should be able to explain or describe it with words or pictures what that tree near Nyalam meant to me when I looked at it, but I couldn`t put it into words. And today in Benares, sitting in my hotel room reading, found a piece of poetry by William Blake who I think really made it: 'The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.' (Photos: the landscape before and after Nyalam)

Let it be

Today is the first day of the strike in Kathmandu. It was imposed by the Maoists. They said if someone violates the strike rules, keeps his shop open, or drives around, etc., they will ruin the person and his business. People are frightened, everything is closed, Thamel looks like a ghost town in a Thai horror movie. The only cycle rickshaw driver who manifests on the street the moment I step out of the hotel, wants me to pay 300 rupees to get to the nearby Durbar Square, because 'he is the only means of transport today', he says, but I bargain it down to 40. It isn`t easy though. I’m hanging around all afternoon on the square, which is a little more busy than other parts of the city, thinking what I should tell my group tomorrow when I start guiding them through Nepali history and vision. Huge temples are facing the old royal palace. Some Kathmanduites are sitting on the stairs around the temples, having a chat or reading the newspaper. Tourists try to squeeze everything into their cameras; fake sadhus come up to them to get hard cash for their photos. Kids are asking for biscuits. Guides want to take me around. As the sun goes down I walk along Freak Street looking for dinner. The hippie movement started here in the 70s, and the atmosphere didn`t change much since then. There is no one in the restaurant, but it’s open. The waiter looks at me trying to figure out my mood. Then selects a tape. Let it be.

Endangered heritage

I saw an old Tibetan lady in traditional dress sitting on the stairs of an antique shop in Boudha, Kathmandu in silver framed sunglasses with yellowish-blue glass, the kind trekkers or climbers prefer. The same day I read in a magazine that the UNESCO listed Kathmandu this summer as an endangered heritage site.

Kala Bhairav

The rikshaw wallah was an old madman. He wanted me to buy him new shoes, had several ideas which shops to visit, it was really difficult to convince him that I`m serious about crossing the whole city just for a temple visit. He was entertaining me all the way from Assi to Kotwali by doing all kinds of acrobatics on his bicycle similar to a fake Hungarian wrangler on his horse on the Hortobagy performing for German tourists. We were heading to KalPeron as he pronounced the name in his Bojhpuri dialect, the temple of Black Bhairav. After a 45 minutes arduous ride we reached a big intersection, and I thought we must be close. I jumped off the riksha, gave the guy the money we agreed on, and walked down quickly on a small alley. Wanted to get away badly from the crowd, the noise, the busy traffic, the pollution. After a moment I found myself staring at a little shop selling garlands of small red roses, and a man from the counter was signaling to go that way. There was the temple of Kala Bhairav, one of my favourite places in Kashi, the 'City of Light'. At the entrance a Puranic description reads: 'This is Varanasi’s Lord Bhairava, who destroys the terror of samsara. The very sight of him removes the sins of many lifetimes.' Around the shrine a few people were selling pictures of Bhairav and his amulet against illness and evil spirits. This latter one is made of twisted and braided black thread you can tie around the wrist or the neck. The temple servants also offer their service to beat the `devil` out of you:), first swinging their stick in front saying a prayer, then beating the left shoulder of their customer. They say it keeps away disease and physical pain. Kala Bhairav, the “Black Terror” is widely known as the 'kotwal', the police chief of Banaras. Shiva appointed Bhairava to be the chief officer of justice within the sacred city, because Yama, the Lord of Death is not allowed to enter Kashi, the place of liberation. Bhairava took over the duties of Yama, and he keeps the record of people’s deeds in Kashi. 'Whoever lives in Varanasi and does not worship Bhairava accumulates a heap of sins that grows like the waxing moon. While all who die in Kashi are promised liberation, they must first experience, in an intensified time frame, all the results of their accumulated karma.' This is called the punishment of Bhairava. This punishment is said to last but a split second and to be a kind of time machine in which one experiences all the rewards and punishments that might otherwise be lived out over the course of many lifetimes. Pilgrims hope that by visiting Kashi Bhairava, they can achieve freedom from sins and the fear of death. It reminds me of a beautiful short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. I don`t remember the title, I read it in a collection of his short stories called 'Secret Miracle'. The story followed the rushing thoughts of a man who was about to be executed. From the moment the gun was fired till the bullet reached him. It was such a perfect presentation of how all the events of someone's life start running through the mind in an instant moment, how these events speed up so much that they blow up our space and time limitations, and everything explodes and expands well beyond our limited body and dissolves into a timeless spaciousness. The experience of purgatory and purification. And I was wondering how it feels, if seeing all the joy and sorrow of a past life feels the same as Bhairava's judgment, seeing all the results of our actions, joy and sorrow of our failed future.