Next week I will fly to India, where a national election is in progress. Students in Religion 100 and Religion 340, are there particular places in Delhi you think I should go? Students in Religion 321, how do you think the in-process national election might impact how I do my research?
Standing on my Hands
It has been a long time; since I returned from Kedaramandala there has been little that would have been exciting to report. I am within striking distance of finishing my Ph.D., and mostly concentrating on that. As I have been doing that the world has been changing around me, and I along with it. I’m also, recently, ever so slightly closer to a long-held goal of mine — to balance on my hands.
I’m hoping to get back to India within the next year, and also looking to fly over the ocean separating the student phase of my life from the remainder, or more optimistically, the next phase.
Nau-ling Kedar
What is nau-ling Kedar, do you ask? Well, it’s a good question. On the surface of it, it would seem to mean nine-ling Kedar, though several locals have voiced the opinion that in Garhwali “nau” can also function as a sort of nominal prefix that doesn’t really have any meaning. No one is totally certain. And, there isn’t a well known (or even little-known) set of nine anything in Kedarnath. Nau-ling Kedar is what Kedarnath is called in some versions of the epic song of Jeetu Bagudval, a famous Garhwali folk hero. In the versions I recorded he makes a pilgrimage to Kedarnath and Badrinath, where as is most other versions that anyone has ever heard of (including local experts) he makes no such pilgrimage. This leads me to question the authenticity of the recordings I did, except for several facts. One, there is a temple near Narayan Koti (on the way to Kedarnath, between Guptkashi and Gaurikund), called Nau-ling Kedar. Two, I have heard anecdotally (but not seen for myself) that in some local pujas (for example, Narsingh puja) Nau-ling Kedar occurs in the list of deities invoked at the beginning of the puja. So, to sum up, a tantalizing bit of something that adds up to almost nothing.
I’m writing this from Kedarnath. Yes, I’m back in Kedarnath, this time only for a couple of weeks before I head back down to Ukhimath, then to Srinagar, then Delhi, then America. It is cold in Kedarnath, and I don’t know what I am finding that so surprising (and tiring), but it is and I am. Right now the weather is absolutely as cold, rainy, and windy as it can possibly be without actually snowing. Probably it will snow during the wee hours of the night. I am in continual awe that people manage to get out of bed early and do lots of things here. The last several months have officially been focused on Garhwali language and Garhwali-related dissertation research. Closer to the truth is that the last several months have been focused on how difficult it is to learn Garhwali without a dedicated teacher and how difficult it is to translate Garhwali songs that are sung in a classical form of Garhwali that is slowly dying out.
Today I spoke with an older woman from Gujarat. I asked her what feeling arose in her heart when she came into the inner sanctum of the temple and saw the Kedarnath ling. She said that she thought about all the the pain (kasht) that people offload on Shiva (the pain of their lives, the painful effort of reaching Kedarnath), and then wondered who thinks about Shiva’s pain, since everyone is coming to Shiva with their own. It was a good little conversation, I’m hoping there will be more like it. 2 days ago, I also received as a gift from a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu (by way of Mumbai) a handwritten version of a poem in old Tamil about Kedarnath, which I can’t wait to have translated. He was a waste-water engineer from Mumbai who absolutely loved (and knew quite a lot about) American westerns.
A lot of what I am doing now is getting ready to leave, and both getting upset about it and also looking forward. There is a phrase in Garhwali, kuder lagnu, which some have translated for me into Hindi as viraha lagna, and though kuder supposedly comes from the HIndustani word for self, kud, there is no analagous HIndi expression to the Garhwali. Kuder lagnu means to miss someone with whom one had a relation. It is also the name of a genre of Garhwali song (kuder geet). What it means in my case is that all of the deeply textured walks and views and vistas and mountains and turnings I’ve seen, all of the food made with love and welcome that I have eaten, all of the conversations that I have had, emotions that I have shared— it is as if they have become thousands of little hands that have somehow fastened onto me from the inside and from the outside so that when I think about leaving I do not only get upset, but it somehow seems inconceivable, as if someone were telling me that my legs would walk away from my torso. So when I do leave I think that is what it is going to feel like. And yet I have to, for myriad reasons: to write my dissertation, to see my family, for chances at love that would allow for the enjoyable possibility of significant interaction before marriage.
So, see you on the other side. I have not yet decided if I am going to continue this blog or not. I’m toying with the idea of instead writing a blog in Hindi about my life in America, for my friends here. We’ll see.
The Kedarnath procession arrives at the temple
Ghost Dog and the Return to Kaliphat
I am recently returned, as strange and as accurate as that sounds, to Ukhimath after approximately two months out of station. Kaliphat is an old name for this area: it means the area surrounding the Kali river. Now the same river is generally called the Mandakini. The main events of my sojourning were the marriage of my friends Kate and Paul and, already being in Britain, research about Kedarnath at the British Library (see previous post). I even squeezed in a quick trip to America.
There has been a lot of nomadism, recently. Now that I think about it, I have not slept in the same room continuously for more than two weeks since the end of the season in Kedarnath. In such situations I seem to develop inner, instinctual antennae that search out ways by which other kinds of continuity, non-locative ones, could be established. I’m usually not so successful, but I try. The clearest example of what I mean involves the film Ghost Dog. Early on during my time in Britain I heard the phrase “Ghost Dog” thrown out, perhaps on television, in a context utterly unrelated to the film. However upon hearing the phrase I was suddenly possessed, viscerally, with the need to see Ghost Dog again. For those of you who are not familiar with the film, it is Jim Jarmusch’s homage to the sub-genre (of which I am very fond) of hip-hop martial arts films. Forest Whitaker plays the protagonist of the film, a modern-day, unlooked for samurai/assassin who lives on the roof of a building with his pigeon flock and owes his allegiance to a Mafioso who saved his life several years before. The pacing of the film, cinematography, and soundtrack are phenomenal. So I downloaded the film, and watched it. And then watched it again, with a friend, in Delhi. And then again, with another friend, in Ukhimath. I am not quite sure what in me needed to see this film so many times, but there it is. Perhaps I want to see my life as an art film with a good soundtrack. Who knows? Other instances of continuity establishment involved watching bits of an old Raj Kapoor film in an airport hotel in London and in Ciraag Delhi. And perhaps beyond continuity and into the realm of meta-continuity, was a successful attempt at a profoundly stirring musical juxtaposition as I walked across the Thames at night, fighting the wind at every step. I started with a recording of a local Garhwali jagar singing the story of the rakshas Banasur and the marriage of his daughter Usha to Aniruddh. Many of the pilgrimage priests of Kedarnath consider themselves to be descended from Banasur and the Lamgondi area where many of them live is understood to be his area. I then shifted right from the jagar to Limelighters by Aesop Rock. The power generated individually by both songs and even more so by their juxtaposition and eerily powerful musical continuities almost took me out of my body for about 5 minutes.
These days I am in Ukhimath, with upcoming trips scheduled for Garhwal Srinagar, Lamgondi, and possibly Pauri Garhwal. I am trying to learn more Garhwali, and work through data I have collected, prepare for the beginning of the 2008 pilgrimage season, and plan my re-entry.
Pursuing Kedarnath Through the Archives
This is a brief digest of what I found in London at the British Library in the first part of January 2008. My interest in such historical documentation at the moment is primarily both to understand the issues that inform current debates about rights of administration and collection of dakshina in Kedarnath and to find specific, historically situated details about rituals relating to the Kedarnath temple.
–Important information for searching on Garhwal in the India Office Library:
“In 1833 the Bengal Presidency was divided into two parts, one of which was styled the Presidency of Agra. In 1836 Agra was re-named the North-Western Provinces and was placed under a Lieutenant-Governor. The kingdom of Oudh was annexed in 1856 and was placed under a Chief Commissioner.The North-Western Provinces and Oudh were joined together under a single administration in 1877. Their name was changed to the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in 1902 and shortened to the United Provinces in 1912.” (Administrative Note from in house Reading Room Binder, p. ii. )
-Information about Garhwal in the India Office library could be filed either under Kumaon (since British Garhwal was part of Kumaon) or under things relating to the princely state of Tehri-Garhwal.
Summary of Findings
Findings ended up being more heuristic than anything else. It became clear that
1) the Kedar valley (part of pargana Nagpur, a land division which included both the shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath) was the site of geographical, administrative, and political slippage in the form of disputed boundaries between British Garhwal and Tehri Garhwal, and that Bamsu (that is to say, the area where many of the pilgrimage priests of Kedarnath are from) would seem to have played a special role in this) and
2) Kedarnath, from the top down, has been treated administratively and legally mostly as an appendage of Badrinath.
To the extent that the issues of legality and tradition are different for Kedar and Badri and that the knowledge base by which such issues could be revolved is in comparison to Badrinath slightly scanty, the documents I looked at frame potential Kedarnath issues but do not discuss them directly for the most part. One question for the present time might then be at what point did Kedarnath-related legal disputes become legally distinct from those of Badrinath? Another question that emerges out of this question is the lack of precision evinced in the record (both for Badrinath and Kedarnath) regarding the details of the identities of the Southern pujaris. They seem to get it mostly right for Badrinath but the colonial record at times contradicts itself regarding the identity of the Kedarnath pujaris, at times calling them Virashaivas (which is what they are now) and at times Brahmins from Kerala (i.e. similar to Badrinath). There is no evidence of such confusion now. It is also clear (though fuzzily clear, if you will) that the religious/secular (bracketing the problematics of this distinction for the moment) administration of the Panch Kedar were different for various Kedars, thus highlighting the composite nature of this pilgrimage system as a “system”.
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Main Documents Worked With or Sought (note: I also looked at numerous other documents, especially histories of Garhwal and gazetteers but did not note them extensively or spend time with them after I confirmed through World Cat that they were available elsewhere):
Atkinson, Edwin T. Notes on the History of Religion in the Himálaya of the N.-W. Provinces. Calcutta: the Author, 1883.
Atkinson, Edwin T. The Himalayan Districts of the North-Western Provinces of India Vol. III (Forming Volume XII, of the Gazetteer, N.-W.P.). Allahabad: North-western Provinces and Oudh Government Press, 1886.
Batten, J. H. . Report on the Settlement of the District of Gurhwal in the Province of Kumaon. Agra: Orphan Press, 1843.
Crown Representative’s Records: Political Department Records. “Tehri-Garhwal Darbar’s Claim for the Kedarnath and Badrinath Shrines.” 1936. Ior/R/1/1/2951. India Office Library.
Government of India Foreign and Political Department. “Representation from the Tehri Darbar in Regard to the Badrinath Temple, Restoration of the Village of Tapoban, and the Settlement of the Sankot Leases. File No. 306 – Political / 1931.” 1931. R/1/1/2129. India Office Library.
Hamblin, R.E. “Report on Civil Justice in the Kumaun Division During the Calendar Year 1899.” In Judicial Proceedings of Northwest Territories with Index, 1900.
India Office. “Appointment of a Chief Priest, or Naib Rawal, at the Temple of Badrinath in British Garhwal.” October 1895. Judicial and Public Annual Files 1901-1999. IOR/L/PJ/6/408. India Office Library.
MUIR, John. Notes of a Trip to Kedarnath and Other Parts of the Snowy Range of the Himalayas in the Autumn of 1853. with Some Account of a Journey from Agra to Bombay. Edinburgh: Printed for private circulation, 1855.
“The Religious Endowments Act, 1863 (XX of 1863) (As Modified Up To The 10th August, 1936).” . Delhi: Manager of Publications (Government of India: Legislative Department), 1936.
“The United Provinces Shri Badrinath Temple Act, 1939.” In A Collection of Acts Passed by The Legislature of the United Provinces in the year 1937. Allahabad: Superintendent, Print. and Stationery, United Provinces, India, 1939.
Traill, George William. “Report on the Districts of Kumaon and Garhwal by the Commissioner, George William Traill (with Associated Correspondence).” September 1823. Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India 1784-1858. IOR/F/4/828/21951 . India Office Library.
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There were also two documents for which I spent a good deal of time searching, fruitlessly:
1) 1899 Scheme of Management for Badrinath Temple passed by Kuamon Commissioner’s Court
2) 1948 Uttar Pradesh Amendment to 1939 Shri Badrinath Temple Act (which broadens the scope of the act to include Kedarnath)
The search continues for these documents here, in India.
End of the Season
Highlights of the end of the season in Kedarnath involved weather, hanging out, landscape, chasing, and ghosts.
Wearing a dhoti in Kedarnath.
View of Kedarnath close to the end of the season.
Three Bhupendras and I at the end of the season.
The weather went from bright sunshine, so warm that I would often sit in the shade, to successive days of hard rain, to a snowstorm that lasted for three days and then melted away in a couple of weeks. Then bright sunshine again for several weeks. At the last, the mercury at night headed below freezing for a couple of days and my water buckets started freezing on the top. The day the procession left Kedarnath we were all slipping and sliding for the first two kilometers until the sun came out and passed the point called Devdarshini, or Deodekhni (“sight of god”), the point from which Kedarnath comes into view or from which it is last seen. A couple hours later I was sweating and it felt like I had never been cold.
The procession leaving Kedarnath.
Procession one kilometer away from Kedarnath.
After my own personal Mount Everest (Vasuki Taal, see previous posts), I didn’t do any more serious trekking. I did discover the pleasures of the evening walk out past the heli-pad and down along the green, stepped plateau that lies on the opposite side of the Kedarnath valley from the footpath from Gaurikund. It felt very Middle-earth-ish, and there were all these rocks that looked as if they were going down to the river to drink. At the very end of the plateau there are a series of rock faces whose curves I find both compelling and inscrutable, a puzzle that I want to both solve and caress. I took photographs there as well but mostly black and white film, so y’all will have to wait to see those beauties, if in fact they turn out.
I also underwent a series of small crises in my work. They probably shouldn’t have been crises as such, but towards the end of the season the weight of the entire year started weighing on me more and more, so that was probably a factor as well. Actually there hasn’t been a time here when that weight hasn’t been there. Hmmm. Being here is both intensely rewarding and very difficult, so I suppose that is all par for whatever this course is. One crisis was that there were many people who had said that they would have to time to sit and talk with me at the end of the season, and then didn’t. So there were a number of episodes in which I and Bhupendra would think we had scheduled an interview or conversation only to find that the person had become busy, or gone somewhere, or couldn’t be bothered. It turns out that there is a slice of the local Kedarnath population that wasn’t so interested in giving me time if no economic benefit was forthcoming. Money matters started coming to the fore in the last couple of months. I was at times quite discouraged that, whether guised as a joke or put baldly as request or demand, that people would suddenly ask me for things, money, clothing, etc… I was understood by most to be much richer than I actually am. This is how people think about most foreigners but I like to think I’m special and different, so it was a bit depressing. The corollary to this was the slowly dawning understanding (yes, I’m often quite thick-headed) that the best avenues for information depended more on friendship than anything else. So during those last couple of months a couple of things were happening. I was on the one hand realizing that many people in the local community weren’t particularly interested in helping me with my research, and on the other hand enjoying the deepening of acquaintance into friendship. The difficulty was that for a couple of weeks, relationally, I really didn’t know whether I was coming or going.
Reports of a ghost were also circulating the bazaar at the end of the season. I don’t recall whether I previously mentioned this or not, but in the beginning of the season there was a tragedy involving a local youth and a helicopter (details intentionally omitted). Because he was unmarried he was not cremated but rather buried (or placed in samadhi) in Kedarnath itself. In the last two weeks of the season this youth apparently began harassing locals. One sadhu who normally stays in Kedarnath until the bitter end left a week early because the youth wouldn’t leave him alone. People were saying that the youth’s family should have done a fire sacrifice to put his soul (atma) at rest when he died, but didn’t. There were actually three nights at the end of the staying when I was the only person staying in building in which my room was located. People kept asking me– aren’t you scared? I replied that so far the ghost hadn’t bothered me and that I wasn’t scared, which was mostly true. The first night I woke up suddenly and there was this strange throbbing noise/feeling coming from just above my head which was quite frightening. However, being sleep-besotted I decided that this was just the noise made by the friction between my hat-covered head and the top of the sleeping bag combined with an over-active imagination. Distressingly reductionist, I know.
The season ended with a good deal of dhoom-dham, of pomp. On the last night the temple opened at about two o’clock in the morning so that devotees could have a last darshan and puja. I was surprised to find that many of the devotees that come at this time are regulars — they come every year at the beginning and closing. So the sense of instant community that one often feels at pilgrimage places was strengthened by the fact that many people did in fact know each other. Just before sunrise came samadhi-puja (the ritual in which Kedarnath is in a sense buried, or perhaps a more functionally appropriate translation would be tucked in for the winter). Various materials and substances are placed on the ling in succession : ghee, specially adorned blankets, ghand (scented ointment), rice and rice husks, various fruits, dhotis (long rectangular cloth that is often worn as a kind of pant by men, especially for participation in rituals), and finally bhasma (ash made from cow dung). The press of devotees was intense and I had actually resigned myself to hanging back and asking what happened because I didn’t feel that I had any right to be at the front of the line nor did I have anything approaching the devotion evinced by everyone around me. However,a local recognized me and in front of everyone (not all were pleased) seated me quite close to the entrance to the temple’s inner sanctum where all the action was happening, proclaiming loudly that I had lived in Kedarnath for the whole season and it was my right. So at the end of the season I ended up right at the center of everything, my view of the samadhi puja framed on all sides by a press of bodies and devotion. It was a special night. I spent several hours with two local friends chatting and ended up hearing all sorts of local gossip and explanations about various Tantric practices. Then I helped two middle aged foreigners, one French and one Balinese, to find a room. At the end of the season only a couple of lodges in all of Kedarnath were still open and all were bursting at the seams so there was a good deal of negotiation in which I assisted by translating and being the social lubricant. So at the end of the season I became the “local” who helps the “outsiders” to find a room through his local connections. This is a trope of sorts at Kedarnath during the season. And in so doing I made yet another friend, a Garhwali saddhu whom I had actually met before. But during that first meeting I hadn’t known that he also was a singer and composer of Garhwali songs. I was sitting in the canteen of the lodge where I had just gotten the foreigners the room with the owner of the lodge, his mother (who comes every year for samadhi puja) and the saddhu. The owner’s mother said that you should really hear this guy sing, so we all prevailed on him to sing several bhajans about Kedarnath in Garhwali. They were beautiful, simple and full of plaintive longing, and I was strongly struck by the special quality of the night and the fantastic amount of luck I’ve received to be in Kedarnath for such special moments.
In the morning the traveling form of Kedarnath came out of the temple and everyone had their pictures taken with it. Everyone was busy either getting ready to go, grabbing a little breakfast, and watching the journalists interview the various luminaries who were present for the end of the season (the head officer of the Badri-Kedar Temple Committee, Uma Bharati – a famous politician , local politicians and elected representatives). The doors to the temple were sealed with lots of seals and signature and documentation, and the dholi (palanquin) headed down the mountain.
Processions are a very important and visible feature of life in Garhwal and one can learn a lot from watching processions especially if one has other processions with which to compare. I have seen 4 such processions in entirety, one partially, and read a book that was basically about one important such procession (Mountain Goddess by William Sax). Some features of the procession were standard: the dholi is carried by particular people designated for the task but at various times outside devotees or other locals are allowed to take a turn, which is an honor. The dholi stops at certain designated places every year where it is worshiped and those coming with the dholi are usually welcomed and fed. The dholi also stops or slows down for devotees so that they can either have a quick puja done for them by the people traveling with the dholi or garland the dholi. Somewhat special to the Kedarnath dholi is that, in addition to the two Garhwali drummers who accompany the procession at every step, the 17th Garhwali Rifles military band also meets the dholi at the entrance to every town and play their bagpipes and drums as the enters and leaves the town. Someone told me that the Garhwali Rifles have had a special relationship with Kedarnath since they served in (and survived) Kargil. There was also a complement of journalists and photographers (Sahara, India Today, a group of friends working on a coffee table book about the Char Dham) but they mostly traveled in cars or motorcyles and rendez-vous’ed with the procession at key moments (which I must admit made me feel rather self righteous!).
The Kedarnath dholi resting in a private home on the second day of the procession. The image on the wall is of Ram Darbar (the court of the king / avatar Rama). The image (and a surrounding tent) was erected in preparation for the multi-recitation and expounding of a Purana sponsored by a particular family, known as a katha.
Villagers welcoming and worshiping the Kedarnath dholi in front of a Hanuman temple on the first day of the procession.
The Kedarnath dholi’s last stop before arrival in Guptkashi proper.
I was particularly attentive to several features of the procession. One, I was reflecting on how much I have learned in changed since I walked from Ukhimath to Kedarnath in April. So walking with the procession was like retracing a memory but with newer, more experienced eyes. This is of course more about me than the procession. 🙂 Two, I was very attentive to the mood of those around me. It seemed to me that the overall mood was one of happiness and satisfaction — the season has come and gone, we’ve made enough money to get through to next year, all is well. While there was of course a good deal of devotion to the traveling form of Kedarnath it seemed to me that what people were welcoming was not only a form of Shiva but also the tangible symbol of the (intact) prosperity of the region. Bhupendra agreed with me when we discussed it. Particular people (especially the Kedarnath pujari and various officials whose had just completed six months duty in Kedarnath) were also feeling hugely relieved that they had gotten through the season without anything untoward happening on their watch.
At the beginning of the season the Kedarnath dholi procession takes two nights and three days: first day Phata, second day Gaurikund, and third day Kedarnath. The distance is about 40 kilometers. At the end of the season the first night halt is in Rambara, the second Guptkashi, and then on the third day it reaches Ukhimath in the early afternoon. Guptkashi is really only about an hour’s walk (or one “up-down”) from Ukhimath so the last day the procession doesn’t actually have that far to travel. And from the night before in Guptkashi one gets the feeling that the dholi has begun to arrive. In Guptkashi again I was particularly struck by how much has changed for me here. Now I am someone whom lots of people know. So Bhupendra and I stayed in a hotel managed by a friend of mine, I ate dinner with the army band, and in the morning was breakfasted by a Kedarnath tirth purohit friend who manages a lodge / pilgrim rest house in Kedarnath during the season. And as we started coming into Ukhimath the crowd swelled into the hundreds and friends were greeting me, school children were pointing and saying (oh yeah, that’s that foreigner who lives here, etc…).
The actual entry of the Kedarnath dholi into the Omakareshvar temple area in Ukhimath was, relative to the Madmaheshvar processions and relative to the departure of the Kedarnath dholi at the beginning of the season, fairly restrained. There were crowds, and the Kedarnath pujari returned certain special items that had been in Kedarnath to the Rawal (Jagadguru Bhim Shankar Ling, one of the 5 Jagadgurus of the Virashaiva community of whose five most sacred places Kedarnath / Ukhimath are one) for safe-keeping and performed a puja at the Rawal’s feet. The Rawal is also sometimes called “the form of Kedarnath that walks”. But scarcely an hour later the crowds had disbanded and the temple courtyard was almost empty. I drank chai with some friends just outside the temple precinct and one of them pointed out to me that a special kind of Garhwali song was playing over the temple loudspeakers, a kuder geet. I don’t know much about this type of song but it’s on my list. The little that I do know suggests that as a genre these songs have an emotive and existential bent, but that’s not confirmed.
After several hectic days of trying and succeeding in finding new accommodations within Ukhimath and trying unsuccessfully to get my internet connection fixed I left Ukhimath for a trip to Madmaheshvar and environs. This is another form of Shiva located at the head of another valley one valley to the east of the Kedarnath valley (they are separated by a valley in which one finds a famous goddess shrine, Kalimath, and another local form of Shiva called Rucya Mahadev). Madmaheshvar’s logistics are similar to those of Kedarnath: for half the year worship is performed on site in Madmaheshvar and for half the year it is performed in Ukhimath. However, the arrival of Madmaheshvar into Ukhimath at the end of the season is a much bigger deal than the arrival of Kedarnath. It is also the occasion of the biggest (three days!) mela in the area, the Madmaheshvar Mela. I went to Madmaheshvar for several reasons. I wanted to get some comparative data on processions so that I could contextualize the Kedarnath procession and I also was hoping to record several more payeri geet. It was also a personal challenge on a physical level — I wanted to prove to myself I could do it. As it turned out, the procession itself wasn’t so strenuous with the exception of the first two hours of the first day in which we basically trotted 9kms down a very very steep path in about two hours (which made my thigh muscles very sore). Payeri are a particular kind of Garhwali song that are a subset of mangal geet (auspicious songs). Payeri seem to be sung when deities or sacred figures (such as sages or ancient heroes) are going somewhere (i.e. in a procession) and their content is usually a description of the deity’s journey addressed to the deity (O Shiva, now you are coming into the village of Grija! O Shiva now they are doing your puja in Girija! Oh Shiva now you are leaving Girija, etc…) That is to say they seem to be songs of invocation, address, and movement.
The Madmaheshvar dholi in the midst of an extremely fast descent down the mountain on the the first day of the procession
Same descent, different angle.
The Madmaheshvar procession is different than the Kedarnath procession in several important ways. There is almost no media coverage and no Garhwali rifles. The procession in its present form is almost certainly older than the Kedarnath procession in its present form. There is a particular ritual in which a lamp belonging to each household of the village in which the dholi has stopped is lit in front of the dholi at the beginning of a puja. Then at the end of the puja these lamps are taken carefully, still burning, into the home. This is not done in the same intentionally collective fashion, or almost at all, with the Kedarnath dholi. More importantly, the entire mood of the procession and the participants in it is much more local, much more relaxed, and reflective of a both stronger and much less formal relationship with the deity. This is of course in spite of the “fact” that, as numerous people insistently remind me, both are forms of Shiva and so really there is no difference. The difference is one of place (sthan) or area (kshetra) rather than divine personality or aspect. That having been noted there are lots of differences. As I said, the environment is much more informal. This informality is reflected in less stringent adherence to timings, more joking, less propriety. This intimacy, the intimacy that people display with close relatives, is particularly evident in the way that the inhabitants of the villages closest to Madmaheshvar ( who also have traditional duties relating to the worship, conveyance, and protection of the deity and its procession) behave with the deity. The dholi itself behaves differently: it shakes from side to side (the Kedarnath dholi does not). It responds to requests and makes decisions about property divisions. There is a phenomenon called ghat pukarna in which someone goes before a deity and pours out their sorrows and asks the deity for help. This year this happened with the Madmaheshvar dholi and not with the Kedarnath dholi.
Lighted oil lamps and worship-trays ready for puja in front of the Madmaheshvar dholi in Rhansi.
The Madmaheshvar dholi getting ready to leave Girija.
The Madmaheshvar dholi comes into Fafanj village. The old women at the top of the image are singing payeri geet.
I spent total about 6 days in the Madmaheshvar valley, a wonderful trip marred only by a very depressing incident in which I thought I was a guest but was understood as a customer and after which ensued nastiness and a 6 hour period during which I almost headed straight to Delhi and got on a plane back to America. Excepting these six hours it was extraordinary. The Madmaheshvar procession takes three and a half days and spends the night in the following three villages: Gondar, Rhansi, and Girija. Then on the fourth day it proceeds to Ukhimath and arrives at about 3 in the afternoon. Greeting Madmaheshvar as it returns to Ukhimath, especially as one gets closer and closer to Ukhimath, is a far weightier affair than greeting Kedarnath (which is itself pretty weighty). But more people greet Madmaheshvar. The rituals are elaborate, the mood more devotional and more intense. Occasionally women will shriek and begin to sob when the dholi comes near: I’ve heard several explanations for this. Apparently (and it doesn’t only happen with Madmaheshvar) this happens as a result of the combination of several factors : devotion, the recent or not so recent death of a family member, other life difficulties, and the possession of the weeper by the ghost of the family member who is for whatever reason not comfortably settled in the afterlife. This happened at least 6 times with the Madmaheshvar dholi (and is common) whereas with the Kedarnath dholi it happened only once and is, I would contend, much less frequent. Thousands of people assemble to meet the Madmaheshvar dholi several kilometers away from its ultimate destination. The Rawal himself doesn’t wait to receive Madmaheshvar in Ukhimath but travels approximately 1 kilometer to the village of Mongoli to perform a puja for Madmaheshvar. When the dholi arrives into the Omakareshvar temple precinct the entire area is packed with at least 3-4 times the number of people there were for the Kedarnath dholi, in addition to the several more thousands of people hanging out in the nearby mela ground. The Madmaheshvar murtis (images of Madmaheshvar that are worshiped in the temple and travel with the dholi) were transferred to a larger dholi which then circumambulated the temple 11 times — some people say always 11 and some say it depends on the year– before finally entering the temple. The entire temple chakki (open space just in front of and below the temple) was decorated and covered by a large tent. The gradual dispersal of the crowd was much much slower because no one was going home but simply exiting the temple and joining the mela. Participating in the Madmaheshvar procession and mela was especially poignant for me as it marked my completion of a calendar year of relation with Garhwal, Ukhimath, and Kedarnath (even though I did make trips out). In November 2006 I participated in the last day of the Madmaheshvar procession as an almost total outsider, and here I was this time walking with my friends, recognizing and being recognized, being given chai and hand shakes. I understood much more (but by no means all) of what I was seeing and hearing. There was still a fair bit of staring but it was mixed with a good amount of recognition as well. The Madmaheshvar procession was the biggest index of how much I’ve changed in a year (that and the fact that I’m about 3-4 notches smaller on my belt!).
Since then I’ve been trying to tie off a couple of loose ends before heading down to Delhi and then London for my best friend’s wedding and time at the British Library. Most importantly there is a song sung during the Kedarnath procession that I’ve been trying to understand and record. It is a song about a Garhwali hero and king named Jeetu Baguwal who once made a pilgrimage to Kedarnath. Further there are several important sites on the other side of the valley (where most of the pilgrimage priests are from) that I hadn’t yet seen, namely Basukedar (reputedly where Shiva lived before coming to Kedarnath) and Phegu-Devi (the form of the goddess who is the village deity for a group of villages that are the original homes of many of the tirth purohit families). I’ve also being trying to lay the groundwork (it seems somewhat successfully) for access to some of the historical materials associated with the traditional rights of Kedarnath tirth purohits. These materials have been submitted as evidence in various lawsuits so getting access to them is a little tricky but looking at them will give me a better idea about the last several hundred years of history in the area.
So I’m now at a moment where I’m doing a lot of stock-taking, a lot of cheshbon nefesh (“soul-accounting”), both intellectually and existentially. The original plan for my dissertation was to look at what for the moment could be called the construction of experience in Kedarnath and in particular at what these experiences might express about Kedarnath as place, as divinity, and as fusion of place and divinity. I was going to do this by looking at the various building blocks of these experiences : stories, rituals, images, the physical experience of journeying to and living in Kedarnath, etc…. Much of my commitment to this set of research goals remains unchanged. However, different goals have begun to emerge as well. One is that, perhaps as an inevitable outgrowth of the fact that I’ve been doing this research while living mostly in Garhwal, I’m reflecting more and more on how to attend to the specificity of local attitudes and experiences of Garhwalis in Kedarnath. This is not the same as deciding that I’m going to focus solely on Kedarnath from a Garhwali point of view. Part of what interests me in Kedarnath is that it is a point of interaction between different sorts of people. I also am getting more and more interested in history, that is to say how things have come to be the way things are and how that history (and/or perceptions thereof) effects the present. But I’m not making this my main research task because it in itself would be a rather different task and require a lot of chasing after documents that are difficult to obtain and understand even for local experts.
This is also true at the local level. I’ve slowly come to realize over this course of this year that in the local scenario there are also several important and different groups who have a significant presence. Speaking generally they are the following :
1) the community of pilgrimage priests who are descended from a registered group of 360 families and who are MOSTLY located in the Kedar valley itself.
2) shop-owners, lodge owners, and horse and pony drivers many of whom are from the Ukhimath side of the valley (which according to some is also the beginning of the Madmaheshvar valley and not part of the Kedar valley). They often have a stronger devotional relationship to Madmaheshvar than Kedarnath.
3) Employees of the Badri-Kedar Temple Samiti (association). Everyone is jealous of them because they have permanent government employment for the rest of their lives. These employees might be from either group 1 or group 2 and in some cases come from even farther away. There are several members of this group who are from the Gopeshvar / Tungnath side, the area to the east of Ukhimath which officially belongs to the aspect of Shiva known as Tungnath rather than Madmaheshvar or Kedarnath. There are some posts in the Samiti that can only be filled by people from group #1, and the Samiti also gives wages to traditional rights holders for the performance of their duties, thereby converting them from rights holders whose authority stems from tradition to employees who perform a job for money.
A year ago at the beginning of all this I started in Ukhimath, which makes sense in some ways since Ukhimath is the winter seat of Kedarnath, the seat of the Rawal, and the base of operations for the Badri-Kedar Temple Committee. Bhupendra is also from Ukhimath. What I didn’t know then was the group with perhaps the most presence and traditional relationship with Kedarnath, the Kedarnath pilgrimage priests, actually are based on the other side of the valley and have a somewhat different set of local traditions.
Interestingly enough, both Ukhimath-ites and pilgrimage priests are more cosmopolitan than the average Garhwali villager, but for different reasons. Pilgrimage priests tend to be more cosmopolitan because in Kedarnath their work brings them in contact with people from the rest of India (and foreigners) AND more importantly they usually spend 2-3 months every year traveling to various parts of India in which their patrons reside. Ukhimath residents are cosmopolitan in a different way. First, (in addition to those who work in Kedarnath and get that exposure) Ukhimath is a minor tourist destination in the area (though nothing compared to Kedarnath or Tungnath / Chopta) and so people get exposure to Bengalis and foreigners in their own homes. This means that (unlike with the pilgrimage priests) it isn’t just men who are getting exposure to different sorts of people but the whole family. Second, because Ukhimath/Kedarnath is one of the 5 most sacred places in India for the Virashaiva community, Ukhimath is quite accustomed to welcoming groups of devotees from Maharasthra and Karnataka for Virashaiva related functions. Indeed, the population of the closest village to the Omkareshvar Temple in Ukhimath are almost all descendants of one sort or another of several former Rawals (who are required to be a special kind of Virashaiva to hold office). So in Ukhimath there is a sort of at-home cosmopolitan-ness that one doesn’t find in smaller, more rural Garhwali villages in the area.
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I’m now at a moment of transition and reflection. I’m away from Garhwal for about a month and will have about another 4-6 months there. Ukhimath has also become a home of sorts: I have work, a place to live, an established identity, and friends. I feel connected to the landscape in ways I don’t fully understand. I’ve now been gone a week and already it has become for me the place to which I’m returning. Yet even as this has been happening I’ve also had to start planning my re-entry to my university (which will be sometime in the summer of 2008) and the considerable portion of my life that is in America, which I find daunting as it involves things like teaching courses, saying I will present at conferences, applying for grants, thinking about the submission of articles, etc… I feel as if I have come down out of the mountains and stepped off the train into a different phase of my life, and am still getting used to it. My plan upon return to Garhwal at the end of January is the following: to swoop through the information I’ve gathered and focus on particular bits (interviews, texts, images, moments, themes) that I think will be appropriate for the work of my dissertation. That is to say, I have to pick particular examples and details to discuss whose content will suggest the range and shape of experiences in Kedarnath. I will then focus on these examples and details and make sure that I have them complete correct and fully transcribed before returning to my university that lies on the other side of several big oceanic ponds from here. Also, I’m going to set aside a good deal of time for studying Garhwali (and a bit of Hindi), something that hasn’t received enough of my time in the past year. I’d at the very least like to be functional for day to day stuff and have a grammatical picture of the language before returning to the states this time.
Other tasks of the moment include finding the love of my life and being in the same place as her (whoever she is and wherever that might be), continuing to lose weight and improve my fitness and self-discipline, and continuing to think through the the difficult question of whether my Jewishness has any nafka minah (practical difference and/or implications, a Talmudic term) for how I am conducting my life as an American in deep relation with India and Indian religions. Paltry tasks.
Waiting in Line to See God
In Kedarnath now the high season has ended, as the school holidays are over and the monsoon has begun. Locals slip away for a few days to see family, and now everyone is talking about all the exciting things that will happen in the month of Shravan (now it is Asharh), when lots of Garhwalis will come here and the Shiv Purana will be recited and locals will head up into the mountains above Kedarnath, having bathed and with bare feet, to bring back Brahma-kamal (Brahma-lotuses) that are one of the special things offerred to Shiva here in Kedarnath. It is said that VIshnu himself offerred Brahmakamal to Shiva here and, finding himself one flower short of the required number, completd the count by plucking out his own eye.
So now I’m looking back over the high season, feeling myself in the present of no longer being at the beginning of living in Kedarnath, thinking about how to proceed. Thus, I have the opportunity to write about something I’ve been meaning to write about for some time: the phenomenon of waiting in line at the Kedarnath temple. During high season, when 10,000 pilgrims a day are coming through, there was a great deal of tension surrounding the line, or queue. You see, the temple has two doors, a front door and a side door. Most yatris go in through the main door, and during high season would have to wait about 1-4 hours to get in. Some yatris, for reasons of money and/or prestige and/or connection, enter through the side door, from which everyone else exits. Enter the phenomenon of “gusna”– or as we would say in American “butting [in line]”. Many pilgrims, without even blinking, try to either butt in line or enter through the side door. Sometimes they give money to locals and are helped in their endeavor, and sometimes, either by invoking the privileges of age, gender, socio-economic status, simply forge ahead until someone stops them, at which point they either plead, get angry, claim a disability, or lie (“I was here before”). As a result, other pilgrims get extremely angry, the police have their hands full keeping control over the line and their own tempers, and various local factions (such as the organization of pilgrimage priests and the governmental body responsible for administarting the site) come into conflict about who has the right to grant entry through the side door. Knock down drag out shouting was common and there were even several instances of fisticuffs.
I had my own experience of all this. My father was having a cataract operation on the 30th of May so I decided that I would have a puja done the day before, feeling my distance from my own family at that time very keenly and thinking that it couldn’t hurt and could only help. So I went and got in line at 5:30 (the temple doors open for general darshan at 6 am). By the time I got to the door, two and a half hours later, I was extremely annoyed, my temper frayed to the point of breaking by the numerous times I had had to verbally and sometimes physically prevent people from entering the line either directly in front of me or directly behind me. The worst was when a woman approached me and said, oh I’ve come back from putting my sandals and started to get in line directly behind me, and steadfastly stuck to her lie in the face of all I could muster, then succeeded in getting into line 5 spots behind me. The second worst was when local pilgrimage priests approached me twice and asked in low voices if I would let one of their clients come in front of me, to which I angrily refused. So as I entered the door to the temple I felt very troubled: in such a state, what is the use of doing a puja? This doubt continue, and grew, as I proceeded in line through the anteroom and up to the doorway of the inner sanctum, the garbagrha. Then, everything changed. At the same moment I saw both the Kedarnath linga and the priest who would do my puja– my annoyance and anger were somehow transmuted into strong relief and for reasons I still cannot parse I started choked weeping (much as I tried to hold it back). Some of what I was feeling at that point, as I listened to the mantras said by the priest and clutched his knee as I fought for position in the crowded space, was a very strong memory and love and concern for my father, and the rest of what I was feeling I simply cannot name. I then left as quickly as I could, did parikrama (circumabulation) of the temple, and went back to my room without speaking to anyone and stayed there for several hours, sitting in the dark. Several days ago I told this story two a group of pilgrimage priests whom I was trying to interview (I say trying because it was really more them interviewing me). Their response was that I had experienced “sakshat darshan”– actual, before the eyes vision of Shiva. I responded that for me this wasn’t conclusive, that my experence didn’t contain any information, emotional or cognitive, that denoted Shiva per se. They waved away my objects– you had sakshat darshan, they said. That’s all there is to say about it.
I’ve waited in the queue quite a few times by now, and observed many more, and I’ve formulated a theory about people’s behaviour that I’ve told to others here and they seem to find it plausible. There are different moralities at work in the queue. According to one, in going before Shiva one’s person and behaviour should be pure and one should suffer at least a little (i.e. by waiting in line in the cold). Access to the divine should be utterly democratic and not contaminated by privilege. According to the second view, darshan (seeing and touching Shiva in this case) is powerful and precious, and if getting that darshan means pushing in front of others in line, paying to jump the queue, lying, well then that’s not even worth a second thought. I came to this conclusion after a great deal of observing, especially observing that the majority of those who had jumped the queue by one means or another, or who were trying to, did not seem to feel they were doing anything wrong at all.
So the second part of my theory, then, is that one can read the foundation story of Kedarnath, the story of the pursuit of Shiva by the Pandavas that I described in I think my first or second post, through the typology of the queue I’ve just set forth. In many versions of that story the Pandavas grab Shiva (who has assumed the shape of a buffalo as he slees from them, unwilling to give his darshan) by the hindlegs as he dives into the earth, and it is his back portion that has become the lingam here in Kedarnath. In some versions Bhima, angered by Shiva’s behaviour, hits that back portion with a mace and then later, repenting, applies clarified butter (ghee) to the wound in an attempt to heal it. I ask people about this story, do you think the Pandava’s behaviour was appropriate? Most reply yes, the Pandavas were trying to get darshan of Shiva and they did what they had to do. But some reply no, their behaviour was innapropriate– one shouldn’t try and get darshan by force, it is disrespectful. It is because the Pandavas chased Shiva and did not wait respectfully for the right time that they only received darshan of his backside.
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In other news, the monsoons have arrived below and promise to arrive here soon, which presumably means even more indoor sitting, conversation having, chai drinking time. I have moved in to the second phase of my Kedarnath time, which involves spending more time with locals and not just trying to have conversations with pilgrims. Also, physically, I’ve been getting fitter (I think it has to be mostly as a result of metabolic change as a result of high altitude living, and maybe also a bit to do with exercise). I would say that right now I look like a fit person who is starting to get just a little chubby, as opposed to an overweight grad student who has a hard time finding pants in his size. I’m hoping the trend continues. In the same vein, I’ve gotten (re)acclimatized to the altitude, and now can go for little walks and day hikes around the area without losing my breath, a very good sign for months to come. I also continue to struggle with the discipline it takes to wake up here everyday and go about my business, especially now that internet availbility has reminded me of the breadth and vastness of the world again. On the one hand, local friends keep saying things like “just stay here– we’ll get you engaged at the next Krishnajanmashtmi Mela”. On the other hand, I am reminded that I want to study more Hebrew, and learn a bit of Urdu, and am missing riding my bike and playing tennis, and am reminded that someday I’ll have to try and find a job. I am reminded that I’m no spring chicken (though by many standards I of course AM, if not a spring chicken, then definitely an early summer chicken). At the very least, I’d really like to be in the same place as someone with whom I’d like to be in the same place as (how’s that for good grammar?). But, on the other hand, this time continues to be very good for me in many ways– purification of self on many levels. So part of me wants to just unplug the internet and just be here, part of me knows that then that will just make things difficult for me in a different way, and part of me realizes that I just need to continually, processually make my peace with the fact that I live and breath in multiple worlds, and just keep on keepin on. Today, I took a “vacation”, which meant that I slept very late, blatanly read an english novel in a restaurant in the bazaar, and spent much of the day in a kind of half snoozing / half daydreaming state in which I sometimes can make choices within dreams and at the very least sustain a kind of running commentary on my own dream life as I move in and out of wakefullness. Today’s adventures were fascinating — unfortunately I don’t remember enough of what happened to write down. 😦 What I do remember is in late afternoon coming into wakefullness by hearing singing, played over the temple loudspeaker. In this case it was Ram Katha (recitation of stories about Rama) by the noted kathavacak Morari Bapu, a mix of story, sermon / drasha, and song. The song had the gentle swaying of the bullock cart beat of many devotional songs from the plains, and the sound, unlike the too polished, overly sweet and clean sound of todays’ commercial devotional songs, was scratchy and there was earth and bark and longing in the voice, the voice of someone who has a a wonderful voice but the voice itself is not beautiful so much as character-ful, and it is what is coming through the voice that is beautiful. I recall once in Jerusalem talking with a friend about another friend’s singing voice: he remarked that during services his voice was poignant and melodic but the rest of the time he couldn’t sing a lick. Something like that.
Well, that’s the news from Lake Wobegone, or perhaps more aptly, from Gandhi Sarovar (a local glacial lake), or as they call it in Garhwali, Chorabari Taal.
Gandhi Sarovar / Chorabari Taal
The same lake.
From a little further up
This is where I live!
The view from outside my door / hall, now in green!
I know them from Jaipur and we met in Kedarnath!!!
My Kitchen.
Laundry Room.
Bed / Office
Kedaraprakasham 