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