In December 2003, I went to Baidyanath dham
for the second time in my life. My first trip, taken some fifty years earlier,
was one of my most memorable. I was but a child then, and as I peered from my
berth in a Sleeper coach, the brightly-lit platforms of Howrah Station looked
magical. I found the intense jockeying for our patronage by competitive
religious middlemen (known as pandas) in the early morning hours at the Jasidih
station positively bewildering. In Deoghar, I enjoyed the deep-fried puris for
dinner, snacked on too-sweet pedas, took in the gorgeous view of Trikut Pahar
at a distance, and marveled at the nicely kept homes laid out in tidy rows on
clean streets in the aptly named Bilasi Town enclave. The biggest excitement
for me and my brother on the return trip was to watch the latest acquisition of
the Indian Railways, the so-called Canadian Engine, haul Toofan Express into
the station. The two of us spent hours standing at the door of our compartment,
looking out at the passing scenery, ignoring the burning sensation in our eyes
caused by hot smoke and coal dust belched by the engine.
It ought to be clear by now that the
religious significance of Deoghar and Baidyanath dham was not uppermost in my
consciousness at that time. I learned of course the legend of how the
Jyotirlinga came to be located in that small town. King Ravana, after
propitiating Lord Shiva, was carrying a potent Siva linga to Lanka with the
understanding that he could not set it down anywhere without affixing it
permanently there. The gods, alarmed at the prospect of Ravana’s invincibility
in his island kingdom, schemed to fill his bladder with so much water that he
had to (indirectly) set down the Jyotirlinga on Deoghar to relieve himself.
(That act allegedly created a large pond.) When Ravana could not lift up Shiva,
he angrily flailed and hit it so hard a good part of it was driven into the
ground. That is the configuration in which the linga (i.e., Lord Shiva) is
worshipped in Baidyanath dham.
My family went to Deoghar because my
grandmother had apparently made a mental promise (known as manat in Bengali)
sometime earlier to do a puja to the deity there. I recall going to the temple
but could not see the object of veneration with any clarity. A large crowd
surrounded what looked like a circular depression in the ground. Shiva’s
phallic symbol, which normally points so proudly upward at the sky, seemed here
to be barely peeking out of the center of that depression. Nevertheless, in all
the confusion and with a sudden gush of piety, I also did a manat to perform a
puja someday at the same place. What was worse, I told my mother about my
mental promise.
Years passed, going into decades, and
nothing was mentioned about my childhood promise to the Lord. But things
changed some forty years later. Now, whenever I came to India to visit my
parents, my mother would pointedly remind me of my manat. For the first couple
of times I paid no heed, until I realized that she was dead serious and even
fixated on the matter. I began to worry that she might pass on before I could
fulfil her wish, leaving a large hole in her heart. So finally I relented and
approached my mom.
“You really want me to go to Baidyanath dham
to perform a puja there?” I asked. Her answer in the affirmative was not a
surprise.
“All right,” I said, “but your interest in
this matter far outstrips mine. Let me take you with me.” She gently but firmly
declined my offer. Her knees had gone so bad, she could barely fold one leg and
had difficulty getting into a cab. Riding a train would have been sheer
torture. I gave up and, in late 2003, boarded a train with two friends for
Deoghar.
*** *** ***
On my second trip, with adult eyes, I saw
Deoghar in a less idyllic light. The natural beauty of an undulating landscape
was still there, but it was despoiled by haphazard urban growth and a pervasive
sense of decay. Admittedly, I did not re-visit Bilasi Town, which proclaims the
following on a webpage (and I quote verbatim here): “Bilasi town in deoghar is
the most beautiful place in deoghar which has two cinema halls and it is very
neat and clean place of deoghar.” But what caught my eye the most were one-time
beautiful mansions in various states of dilapidation and decay. What was even
more interesting was that most of those once proud houses had Bengali names on
marble nameplates – Bhattacharya, Chatterjee, and the like. Clearly the decline
of Deoghar was partly attributable to the decline in fortune of the Bengali
zamindar and bhadralok class which greatly contributed to its prosperity in
British times.
The Bengali influence in Deoghar can be seen
in other ways too – most notably, in the large number of ashrams or religious
monasteries that have been founded by Bengali monks. The best known among them
are the ashrams founded by Anukul Thakur and Mohanananda Brahmachari. There is
also a fine school run by the Ramakrishna Mission.
We stayed as guests of the Dev Sangha Ashram
and Math school -- thanks to the kindness of its leader, Saumyendranath
Brahmachari. The day after our arrival, I took care of the manat puja early in
the morning. The priest took me into garbha griha, but the partially interred
jyotirlinga within the central indentation was – to use an inelegant Bengali
slang – surrounded by Dehati women in brightly colored saris and so largely
invisible. Lord Shiva must have chosen
to be hidden from sinners like me! From the temple, we came back to the school
where I taught two math classes at the request of our hosts. Then we ate lunch
and set off to explore the countryside.
While driving around the rocky and barren surroundings
of Deoghar, which were occasionally punctuated by tala (or toddy) and date palm
trees, we chanced upon a small village. What we found there confounded us all.
We saw two relatively new and modern structures across each other on a wide,
clean and well-maintained country road. One building had the appearance of a
temple; the other looked rather like a hostel. Young Caucasian men and women in
ochre robes and saris were flitting back and forth between the two buildings.
The very incongruity of the scene – a slice of the West in the heart of
Jharkhand – was breath-taking! We absolutely had to find out the story behind
it all.
We knocked on the front door of the temple
for admittance and were told that it was a private place and not open to
visitors. Undeterred, my friends persisted by pointing out that our group
included a visitor from America. That did the trick and, after waiting for a
while, we were ushered into the courtyard.
It was quite a spectacle. We saw two
stupa-like structures -- not domed but stepped-pyramidal in appearance – that
looked like small temples. There was also a large raised dais or patio of white
marble. Young Caucasian women in saffron saris were on their hands and knees,
with buckets of water and rags, cleaning and polishing the stone surface. Their
devotion to the task was palpable. We followed our guide to a small office.
Pretty soon, a white woman in her forties, most likely the person-in-charge of
the place and a kind of Mother Superior to the younger “nuns,” came in to greet
us and explain the background and purpose of the place.
The background itself was unexceptionable.
The set-up we saw was the Jharkhand chapter or branch of an active yoga
movement from a place further up north – Kanpur or Rishikesh, I forget which. The
devotees underwent some rigorous and systematic training in yoga and
spirituality. The lady gave us several books describing the organization and
its goals. But then she said something really odd. She said that the Jharkhand
“ministry” was under the leadership of a Guru who had gone into Samadhi for
some three months in one of the stupas. All the devotees were waiting for his
emergence from the Samadhi state in six months, per his assurance, and keeping
the place in tip-top shape for his return to the mortal world.
*** *** ***
The idea of a six-month Samadhi is patently
absurd. But it will be nevertheless believed by many Hindus as the
manifestation of supernatural yogic power. Any contrarian scientific opinion
will be brushed off with the old saw “Biswase Milay Krishno Tarke Bohudoor”
(The Lord reveals Himself to one of faith, not to a debater.) So was this Guru
of Jharkhand essentially immortal? What is the Hindu attitude to the
immortality of (at least some) holy men?
This question has intrigued me for some
time, so I did a quick research using two unreliable sources: Google and
Wikipedia. The first person I looked up was my favorite sadhu of the 19th
century, Trailanga Swami. The Wikipedia entry on him is truly fascinating. It
says (accurately enough) that he is regarded as a “legendary figure in Bengal”
– no wonder I am a fan! – and that Ramakrishna called him “The Walking Shiva of
Varanasi.” And then it gives his age (at death) as either 280 years or 358
years. Apparently, people knew exactly when he died, but they could believe
whatever they wanted about when he was born. I can only sigh about the
near-total absence of content-control by the Wikipedia management. (Or am I
showing my debating spirit and not evincing much of a sign of faith?)
I turned next to Lahiri Mahasaya – the
home-bound yogi who revived the practice of Kriya Yoga – or more accurately to
his guru, Mahavatar Babaji. According to Wikipedia, Mahavatar Babaji appeared
to Lahiri Mahasaya and also to disciples in his lineage, such as Yukteshwar
Giri and Paramahansa Yogananda between 1861 and 1935, i.e., over a span of 74
years. Nobody knows when he was born, but one anecdote in Wikepedia puts his
date of birth as 30 November 203 AD, while Yogananda in one of his books claims
that Babaji conferred with Jesus Christ when the latter traveled to India.
These stories would make Babaji close to 2000 years old and essentially
immortal, because nobody knows if and when he died either.
Musing on these seemingly immortal gurus, I
recalled one fact I learned from my grandfather. Hindu mythology names several
people or characters as immortal: for example, Hanumana, Veda Vyas and
Ashwathama, to name three. My grandfather used to throw in the mix a rather
modern name, namely that of Bijoy Krishna Goswami, so I googled him as well.
Per Wikipedia, he lived a mere 58 years (1841-1899), except that he was
apparently poisoned to death in Puri by some opponents, and made some cryptic
comments like “We shall again meet on a mountain.” So in spite of his having a
samadhi in Puri which attracts pilgrims, the end of his life is shrouded in
mystery.
All this brings me to the apparent
immortality of the sage-like political “guru” of modern India, Netaji Subhash
Chandra Bose. His legion admirers refuse to accept the mundane explanation of
his death in a plane crash in Formosa (now Taiwan). So they inventively place
him in odd locales: Stalin’s gulag in Siberia, Tashkent in 1966 for a meeting
with Lal Bahadur Shastri before the latter’s sudden death, and the ashram of
the sadhu at Shaulmari in the 1960s. For many Hindu Bengalis, “Netaji amar
hain” seems to have a real rather than a metaphoric ring -- aided no doubt by
the religion’s occasional acceptance of quasi-immortal gurus as a fact --
contrary to scientific evidence and our everyday experience.
-- September 2016
[AMITABHA
BAGCHI]
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