Trekking

Today, we climbed a mountain.

On the road to Yuksom two days earlier, Danny and I met a Japanese guy, Kimura Hiroki, a 22 years old student in chemistry who is travelling alone and will be accompanying us in our stroll around Yuksum. By the way, Danny is 32 and is employed as an IT engineer for a medical company. Today we're heading towards the holy lake of Khecheopalri, five kilometres away from Yuksom. The great Khandchendzonga falls are on the way, where we take a break and enjoy a good bath in the fresh water down the falls. After walking another kilometre or so, we must choose from three routes, and a local advises us to begin directly by climbing the mountain through the jungle rather than to stay on the road. We thus engage in this shortcut of the trekking road (the other way being the road). The lake is on the other side of the mountain ahead of us. The path turns out to be more than sloppy and very steep. It seems that we're climbing half a metre up at each of our steps. And it will be that steep for the whole way, more than two kilometres. I will have to stop the climbing every forty minutes so my heart can slow down its beating to a normal rythm, instead of continuing it acceleration until it bursts my chest. I am also heavily sweating thanks to the effort and a burning midday sun.

12:25
As we almost reached the mountain top, we settle near a sugar cane field to gather our remaining energy. Exhausted with fatigue and hunger, I'm close to hallucinating. I have a strong impression of having lived this scene before. In a dream! Dan sitting in the rock in front of me, admiring the green mountains with small villages on them and the brilliant blue sky, while I'm getting my energy back sitting on my rock. I had dreamed this very moment and place a couple of nights ago, and the memory I have of it fits precisely and vividely with the moment. This was doubtelessly due to the mixture of heights, intense physical effort and heat.

We get offered a stick of sugar cane, cut in three pieces of approximately forty centimetres by a kind lady farmer and a sharp billhook. We tear away the green skin to reach the white flesh, of which we suck the sweetness while resuming slowly our walk toward the heights.

13:00
At the top, we halt at a restaurant / hotel and we feast on today's special, a mixture of sticky rice and vegetables with local pickles and chillies. Delicious. And three litre bottles of water. Our waiter, a twelve years old kid, teaches me how to say "namaste" in three local languages. They correspond to three different castes of the region. In Limboo, "sawaro". "Khamri" in Lepcha, a language close to Tibetan. And "kyapso che" in Bhutia. After a much deserved one hour break and a tasty lunch, the lake awaits us just half a kilometre away from here.

We remove our shoes to cross the bridge going onto the lake, rolling the prayers rolls on our way. We pray looking at the lake, with two other Buddhists by our side. Hiro is of Buddhist faith too, and he's closing his eyes while praying. We drink some holy water from the lake, which we purified with Dan's SteriPEN that he bought in Kathmandu. 99,9999% of the bacterias are killed by leaving the SteriPEN in half a litre of holy water during forty eight seconds. We prey some more after each sip.

15:45
It' s getting too late to walk back to Yuksom, so we decide to rent a Jeep to go to Pelling, further to the West. The tourist season only begins in a few weeks (from the end of September till December, then from March to mid-June) and nobody is interested in going to Pelling with us. Since the driver can't fill his Jeep with more tourists, we have to pay him for the whole vehicle, instead of buying single seats for each of us. We negociate the journey at Rs700.

21:00
Dinner at the hotel / resto-bar of Pelling, where they will play live music every evening... a month from now! A dozen employees of the hotel are all busy watching TV in the reception room, on the other side of the window that separates them from the restaurant section. We accompany our meal with some local strong beer (the "Hit") and some tasty honey-flavoured Sikkimese rum.

Durga Puja

10:00
After staying at a hostel near Sudder street (where most tourists end up at, or start from), Sourabh Datta Gupta welcomes me in his flat. He lives 500 metres North of Kalighat metro station, opposite Workhardt Hospital on Rash Behari Avenue, and will be my Kolkata host for a few nights. I'm planning to use Kolkata as a base to explore West Bengal.

It is said that South Kolkata is mainly occupied by sons or grandsons of immigrants from East Bengal, known today as Bengladesh, while people in the North of the city, the Old Town, have been here for more then 4 generations.

Sourabh's family is atheist, and himself is an active member of the Indian Science and Rationalist Association, which raises awareness of the power of the human brain, exposes the inconsistencies of blind religious practices and educates people into behaving in a more civic and lofical manner (civic sense, respect of the environment, education of children). Like his father and grandfather, he had a love marriage and not an arranged one. He works for a public company as well as being an investor on the stock market and being a financial advisor. He therefore enjoys his status of working for the public sector, and makes the money on the market. As he explained it to me, public companies tend to pay around three times less than private ones, but they only make you work five days a week and without doing much overtime, whereas people often work six days a week in private companies.

13:00
In Kurmatuli, in the Bakura area, the sculptors and craftsmen are working on the Gods, Goddess and Demons idols for the next big celebration in India and even more important in West Bengal, the Durga Puja ("prayer to Durga"), which takes place during four days at the end of September. Durga has ten arms and a third eye on her forehead.

Hinduism

Hinduism is not a religion ; It is a philosophy. So I'm told at the Chinese restaurant around the corner, a joint for old retired men to have beers and lunch.




I don't pretend to give a lecture on religion, but rather a short summary of my conversation with the man, as well as a few field observations and comments about them.

Hinduism describes life and death as part of an universal pattern. The universe is a cosmical entity, of which the timeless infinity lies behind everyday life's reality. The material world made of atoms is actually ruled by superior mystical powers which decide of the fate of all things and beings. Each man has a destiny embedded in him, and if he doesn't fulfill it in this life he will reincarnate to continue the quest. Atoms, protons, neutrons and electrons are all part of this universal scheme and encourage the fulfillment of destinies. The concept of good and evil is formed by each person's morality. Someone is bad if another person is here to judge his actions as bad. Moreover, determinism makes us stay what we were yesterday, and we will be the same tomorrow. This concept of eternal soul reminds me of what I've already learned with the Krishna followers. So much for free will...

Hinduism religion is unrationalizable. It takes us light years away from our Western philosophy and its rationalist (Descartes, Spinoza) or empiricist (Locke, Hume, Berkeley) tradition. The starting point for building our understanding of the world is Reason, whereas Hinduism as a philosophy describes a knowledge which is above reason, a higher reality. A the ISKCON temple for instance, the classes are given by the Institute of Higher Consciousness. The understanding of reality is not achieved by repeted experiments and study of causality, but by years of meditation, prayers and a blind faith (blind to us as faith does not use Reason, but rather a kind of Intuition that comes from the heart, or the soul) in another world, beyond ours, that we hope to reach after going through the four stages of spiritual life. Being a "student" first (mainly studying the Vedas) ; Then a "housekeeper" (everyday life, material happiness and experience of pleasure, sacrifice of instant individual happiness for the one of our family, more rewarding) ; To then become a "forest-dweller" (retire oneself for everyday life distractions to begin spiritual awakening) ; And eventually be an "ermit" (Sannyasa), virtually cut from the outside world in order to complete one's consciousness of the spiritual world. Dictature of the senses versus meditation. To sum up, Hinduist philosophy is hard for us to apprehend as it does not fit our rationalist understanding. Eastern spirituality doesn't rule out Reason, it transcends it.


As artistically stunning as it is, Hinduist artwork (shrines, statues...) and the devotion to the many Gods of Hinduism might actually be against the old foundations of the religion, according to which one should not worship the representations of the Gods. This information remains unverified (any grounds for this assertion Sourabh?), and even if it was true I don't know of any religion which still follows its founding principles. We usually read what we want to in the Holy Scriptures of any faith (Jesus always told us to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to give the other cheek ; But how many Christian families actually apply these? The fear of our own neighbours being very common in our society). The foundations of hinduism were layed in the Vedas, or vedic writings, including the oldest one the Rig-Veda, written between 1500 and 900 B.C., being the oldest book about philosophy or religion. The Vedas gather a great number of stories about the Gods, myths and beliefs, some of whom date back as far as 5000 B.C. The caste system, roughly set in the Vedas, was then further developped in the Upanishad. A lot more was depicted in the two most famous epics of Hinduism, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, written between 800 and 200 B.C. They are the most refered to when it comes to religious practices, rather than the Vedas.

Originally, the caste system was invented by the Aryans invaders, who used it to keep the natives in their position of conquered people by calling them "Dasas" (slaves). Then the karmic hierarchy developped, placing in order from high to low: the Brahmins (priests), Ksatriya (nobles, warriors), Vaisyas (farmers, merchants) and Sudras (servants), and many other sub-castes (carpenters, cleaners etc..). The untouchables are outside of this hierarchy. It is worth noting that it is uncertain whether religion backed up this cast system, and it was often broken, sometimes resulting in new caste formations. in facts, it seems clear that the caste system was mainly used as a powerful tool to maintain the relations of socio-economic domination.

Although source of unvaluable beauty to the observer, a lot of religious practices seem to be taking a lot of time, money and energy, for the whole of Indian society. So much time and money that is not allocated to infrastructures (roads...), cleaning and maintaining of public spaces, and furthermore education. Just to cite three of the main issues, in big cities and rural areas. What would be the cost of setting up an irrigation system to make farmers less dependant of the monsoon? A lot of religious practices and supersition get in the way of freedom for some youths, and may even substitute to their education.

Holy Shit

UTTAR PRADESH



Varanasi


The holliest city in India, by the holly Ganges river. Hundreds of pilgrims come everyday to cremate their lost ones. The purpose of being cremated here being to free oneself from the reincarnation cycle.

The city is a mayhem thanks to a rather bad handling of waste disposal and such. The sewage goes straight into the Ganges, where pilgrims bath. This is the holliest city in India, near Krishna's birthplace (Vindhravan), and they don't hesitate to throw the corpses straight into the river, letting the body float towards its delivrance. A special treatment for the higher castes they say, but outside of Varanasi this is regarded as source of pollution of the water. If it was just for that... Corpses of cows and dogs, garbage, sewage flowing in. The water is actually so polluted and full of bacterias that nothing could hope to survive in it. And they bath happily. They rub themselves with the water. Brush their teeths. Take generous gulps of water to wash their mouths before spitting it out in thin streams of holliness. Blessed, happy.

The place is a contradiction in itself.

Small streets vomiting garbage in all corners. Smell of piss, shit and burning corpses. An old Indian man is crouching by a huge cow dropping. He dips both of his hands in it. I quickly look away, slighlty disgusted, as he plays with it for minutes. I'm later explained that they use small balls of cow droppings for a better combustion.

I can't help but thinking what would happen if I took a poop in the middle of the Vatican. The huge gap between our treatment of (very) holy places and theirs is so wide that it is ununderstandable. What is their notion of respect of religion and the city? They seem to not respect their environment and public places like we do, which makes me wonder. We do take off our shoes before stepping into a temple or someone's house here. The notion seem almost inverted, where what is holy does not need to actually be "clean" because it is clean by essence.





My bad experience of the place is surely related by this:
The first day I arrived in Varanasi I fell ill, after a 14 hours train ride sleeping on the floor because of no beds available. Arriving in the city, bad tummy ache, feeling nauseaus. The migraine became worse thanks to the state of the city and rubbish everywhere (see above), then heavy sweating and feeling exhausted. I became worried when I started having difficulties to breath after the smallest efforts (Standing up and walking for a few metres), and I decided to pay a visit to the hospital. Thirty odd Indians are standing there in line, obviously impatient, waiting to retrieve an admission ticket. As a foreigner, western, I get a special treatment and, as I try to go at the back of the queue, a police officer stops me. He escorts me through the back door straight to the office on the other side of the window to get my ticket straight away for a Rs10 note. An Indian is asked to stand off his chair by a table where doctors are seeing patients to have me seated. Moments later I'm with one of the doctors, to whom I tell about my condition. Nice and quick, enjoyable to be treated in such a way after having walked 3 kilometres to get to the hospital. I'm sweating a lot, feeling very tired and my mouth so dry that I find it even hard to talk. I describe the symptoms to the man. 1 tablet of antibiotiques and a couple of "Electral", minerals to mix with lemon juice, water and salt. The whole hospital visit and purchasing the medicine have taken just over 10 minutes. A pill and I'm feeling better after a few minutes - Sweet placebo effect. I rush to the travel agency office to book my train to Kolkata. 16:25 train. Perfect.

Meditation

Siddhart Jaiswal wakes at 7 every morning. He does yoga for 15-20 minutes, then 30 minutes of meditation. Meditation is done by lying down or sitting, and following a certain set of mental instructions (which are given by mp3 or a tape to the beginner) which will raise awareness of one's own body through feeling of our body's activity (breathing, feeling the wind on our skin...). The mind can then free itself from all thoughts. The purpose of meditation being to control our thoughts and actions and therefore direct them in the way we want. Thanks to daily meditation, and a 10 days retreat he did at an ashram a few years ago, Siddhart has total control over his body, keeps a strong mind, and can achieve a lot of work every day, from 8am till as late as 10pm. Siddhart teaches farmers how to go organic, he also give speaches about organic farming, is Managing Director of an organic food and juices place, and raises organic awareness wherever he goes. Today, Siddhart goes to Mahatma Gandhi College at 9am to talk to high school students about the merits of organic farming compared to conventional farming, which makes farmers dependant on seeds and pesticides companies. The organic way makes farmers independant as they make their own fertilizer and use their own seeds. The explanations are given cristal clear by Sidd and the students come out convinced and pro-organic farming, they will probably ask their parents to start buying organic products! Siddhart then makes his way to Ahmedabad Jail, were he grows a 35 acres organic garden with the prisoners. After that, he will spend the rest of the day taking care of his restaurant / juice bar, JOOS, and on meeting with the other 3 directors.

Siddhart is hosting me during my one week stay in Ahmedabad in his flat off Satelite road, just opposit the Star Bazaar shopping centre.

Krishna and Ganesh

8:00
Every morning and evening Ashok prays to Ganesh (God of prosperity and success), at the little temple that his dad, Arum Sawand, set up in a corner of their kitchen. Arum also decorated it with flowers, and he changes them every Tuesday and Thursday. Still in the kitchen, Arum has a picture of his late parents on which he put a bit of yellow powder on their foreheads between the eyebrows.

Ashok, facing the temple, bend on his knees on a little rug. He pours a spoon of oil on the flame which is in a piece of cotton dipped in oil. He then lights a incense stick with the flame (Dia=light). He then prays silently with his two hands joined against his torso. He does the Sashtng Namaskar: putting his two hands on the floor before him, he stretches his body as to do push ups, touches his forehead on the floor in direction of the temple.

13:00
Lunch with Rahul's family, they're Gujaratis. The 14 of them occupy a 2 rooms appartment near Cotton Greens station, plus another little bedroom for Rahul. We were 9 at the time of eating, with the men on one side and women and kids on the other, but next to each other, sitting on the floor. We help ourselves to se dishes placed in the middle. Good ambiance, very friendly. Rahul's uncle, an architecte who's worked in Dubai for three years, chats me up. The chappatis are delicious.
Rahul is 19 years old, he has a Rock/Metal band and hides from his parents to smoke cigarets. His family are all Krishna followers and I witnessed his mom whispering the mantras to herself a couple of times during lunch.

20:00
The Sawand's appartement is of a very decent size for Mumbai, situated in a nice area of town. Ashok's parents share it with him and his wife, each couple having its own room.
At dinner time, the three men, including me, are being served by the two women. In our plates, served on silver trays, are little portions of tasty looking food. Arum is very joyful and he jokes around while we eat. He even sang something from a Dilip Kumar movie for me. The women will eat after us, helping themselves from the dishes.

Hare Krishna

7:30
Breakfasts with my friends the Krishna monks. Very simple and vegetarian food. Yuk. Before serving the food an offering is made to Lord Krishna in the form of a little amount of the food we're going to have, so he can have a bite and give us His blessings in return. When I ask about the meaning of this (How does it actually purifies the food to leave a plate on the floor for a few minutes? Do they really think a superior being purifies it?), I'm being told that "it is not like Lord Krishna is coming down on Earth just to help himself to some rice, it's more of a symbol". Trying to reason scientifically, I then suggest that we could weight the plate before and after the offering to see if it is lighter after we take if back. But, once again, "it's not like that", Lord Krishna only eats a tiny portion of food, like a single grain of rice. Moreover, he's got a lot of plates to bless all around the world, so he better keep some of his apetite. I reply that it'll be possible to weight the plate precisely enough to see if, yes or no, a grain of rice has gone. They laugh.

By trying to see how far they go to rationalize their beliefs, I find that they justify scientifically some concepts (soul, rebirth), but at first look it seems there is no actual explanations to most of their rituals (prayers, offerings), rituals which are more mystical and beyond reason. Which they simply believe in, and therefore doesn't call for a rational explanation.

Jean-Paul, Canadian, named after Sartre, has been a monk at the ISKCON temple for over a year. Like his comrades, he wakes at 4 in the morning. He prays for 2 hours, then meditate individually for an hour and a half.


The prayer, or Maha Mantra, consists in 108 "beats" which you have to say 16 times a day. A "beat" is this:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Ram, Hare Ram
Ram Ram, Hare Hare

To be said no less than 1728 times each day! It takes about 2 hours of their time. If you skip a beat, you have to start all over again. By singing this mantras, they liberate their karmas to achieve happiness. They extract the purity of the soul by cleaning away the mud that covers the diamond, the pure soul. By starting singing those early in life, everyday, we can hope to join Lord Krishna in His Kingdom at some point, liberating our soul (Jiva Muktha) and achieve wholeness. Some chosen few accomplished this in their lifetime, like the prophet A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who liberated himself and could therefore start spreading the Krishna Consciousness. Orelse liberation can be obtained at the time of our death, in which case we're freed from the cycle of reincarnations. Otherwise, of course, we can start in this life and carry on our faith in Krishna and singing of the mantras in our other lives, in order to attain the Nirvana (Nir=negation, Vana=forest ; "Come out of the forest of the material world").

11:00
Jean-Paul takes me for a tour around the temple and its pretty garden, their miniature version of Vrindhavan, the birthplace of Krishna.



20:00
I'm meeting up with Ashok Sawant, who will host me from now on.

Monsoon

09:00
Will it ever stop raining? Today the law against "unnatural sexual intercourses" has been amended, it was used mainly against homosexuals by the police and the court. The sexual minorities are celebrating in the street. Some traditionalists Hindus react in today's paper, like Baba Ramdev, a "spiritual father" famous for making up new yoga techniques to prevent hairloss or make your marriage happier: "These gays are sick people and should be sent to hospitals. Then they can marry or stay bachelors just like me". Deep.




20:00
I meet Rahul on the train, he takes me to the ISKCON temple (International Society for Krishna CONsciousness) where he's late for the lecture. A beautiful temple of fine Rajashtani architecture, which you don't find much in Mumbai. All the monks are graduates and often have a scientifical background. Having done High studies and a year working experience are required to become a monk here. Their belief in the soul and in rebirth are founded upon scientifical explanations, or at least they provide scientifical answers where science can't. Something most religions do anyway. The cells in a human body are constantly regenerating, and every 7 years the cells of our body are completely different from the ones 7 years back. Therefore, asks the monk, how can we say that we are still the same person, bearing the same name et having the same habits, wishes and desires? A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, main prophet of the Krishna faith, responds that the fact that we remain the same person can only be explained by the presence of an immortal soul, which resides in our body and move within it. The same soul will leave the body at the time of death to go around looking for another one.