And as they walked through the busy lanes of Benares, finding a room for her father, she told her own story. Her Sadhu had passed away a few weeks earlier, she almost whispered with swelling tears in her eyes, and he had been asked by his own Guru in Badrinath, that she, Sudha, should carry on the reading of Vasista Ramayana. She was happy, she said, of her early morning baths at the Ganga, and her visit to the Shiva temple, off Harischandra Ghat, where she sat, under the ancient pipal tree behind the shrine, first saying her beads and then in meditation for four hours in rapt solitude. And then she went home to the Dashashwamedh Ghat, where in a three-storeyed house by the river, she had a large room. At her door, she explained, her followers always left vegetables, rice and firewood. She would cook her food, eat and come after a brief siesta, to the hall of the holy-readings. An oleograph picture of Shiva as Pashupathi, hung on the wall, in the middle (as Ranchoddoss had just seen) with the sacred seat, garlands and oil-lamps and all. Under the picture of Shiva, she would spread out her volume of Yoga Vasista, and after a brief bhajan, she would begin her readings, fixed for the day, adding her own humble commentaries on the text. She was no scholar, she explained, but she understood, because of the Grace of her Guru, the nature of what people say is the most difficult of all things in philosophy — Shankara’s theory of Mayavada. ‘Father,’ she said, looking at the flowing Ganga before her, ‘Father, I think I have just a chink to the door of Knowledge — to Jnan,’ And then she went up to her room, laid her book and beads on the sacred table, before her Guru’s picture, and offering her deep salutations to him, came down, and gently said: ‘Father I have not heard of the news from home. Is everybody well? I forget all about them here. But what is there to remember, anyway, and what to forget?’ She looked at her father, and on the falling evening, she saw a tear on her father’s face. A street lamp revealed it. And she understood.
Her father took a room next to hers, it was at Vishal Nivas, on the sacred Ganga of course, and by the Dashashwamedh Ghat, and he too began his meditations. She gave him just a few hints, because she was no Guru, and then one day a few months later, he and the daughter went up to Badrinath, to see her Guru (that is Sadhu Sunderanandji’s Sat-Guru) and the Guru after many words of praise for the daughter, gave initiation to Ranchoddoss. He asked Sudha’s father to read Sri Sankara’s Upadesha Sahasriyam,1 and come back to him again, and in a year. Life flows as you see, like the Ganga herself, simple and abundant, carrying princes and dancing girls, fishes and carcasses, the pyres burning on her side, reminding you that the Truth is but one indivisible flow. What is dream and which reality, then?
So that Ranchoddoss now lives in Benares, and I assure you, you cannot miss him: always as neatly dressed as in his shop, with his muslin shirt, and his dhoti falling in precise folds, sandal paste on his brow, courteous to passers-by (and Benares is not known for courtesy, as any grandmother will tell you, especially by the ghat sides). And each dawn he will wake, and saying his beads he will go down the ghat to the River. There, like Sudha, he bathes and sits on the steps for meditation, and returns to his room to cook. Once in a while the postman will have thrown in a letter from his family, or some Maharaja he’d known in Bombay will seek him out, asking him silly questions of philosophy. What does Ranchoddoss know? He knows nothing. Only Sudha knows. But Sudha will not help a Maharaja become more virile (she knows of no such miraculous mantras or trichurations) nor will she bless them that they get back their kingdom — they made such an ugly performance of it all when they had their ancient thrones, some indeed which had come down from the time of Sri Rama. Once in a while a Bombay professor or Kathiawari aristocrat will come and ask Sudha real and earnest questions. She will answer them all, even about the serpent and the rope, or the dream and waking states. And some even in that obscure nature of the deep sleep state. Sudha is happy. Ranchoddoss as you see is proud, and happy
You can still see him sit on the bank of the Ganges, as the evening begins to fall, and, as the temple lamps begin to leap from tower after tower, and the gongs begin to extone, clapping his hands gently, he will sing Shankara’s,
mano nivrittih paramopa shantihi
sa tirtha varya manikarnika cha
jnana pravaha vimaladi ganga
sa kashikaham nijabodharupaha.
The cessation of all mental activities is the supreme peace — that is the holiest of all holy places of pilgrimage, the Manikarnika (in me); the ever-flowing stream of knowledge is the pure primeval Ganges (in me); (thus) I am the Kashika, of the form of pure Consciousness of Self.
XI
The power of man is to sow, the berth of women to reap. The bullocks may plough the field, the birds go plucking bugs and berries through trees, the shout of man come through all of space as if in a known straight line — the elephant will browse by the railway platform, the camels carry tight perched burdens on their humps, but the river’s flow is like a name— it shines through its own insistence. Boats ply as in a silent dream, as though time and movement were one, but space the meaning of sight, and all of human geste but a play on oneself. Man is not a beast of burden but a song to sing, and the earth a temple-garden where we sow what we pray. For prayer is life, and life breath and substance, that men wean not away from truth. So that every word is a sacred name and every name a true sound. Let us hear the anahata, the heart-sound, that we know ourselves, and that the river flow.
What if the river should stop, Lord? (Like once she did, you remember, when you held her thunderous flow in your topknot, the moon smiling above her). What might the Vedas do then, and the fishes and the seeds and the sounds and the elephants? O, let water flow, Lord, that the earth turn not away from its fulcrum, whirl, earth, that the Ganga flow, round and around on herself, from earth to sky and from the heavens back to the Himalaya. The circle is the end of all beginnings as the Ganga is of water. For, where the flowing ends—ap, the isisness of water begins. So, now Ganga, flow.
Death has no meaning. Man’s approbation is for the true. Sit with me and let us listen. The river has depth, and, see, the birds have flight. The boat has eyes, and the bridge its leap. Yet must man wallow with the donkey or the child play with flies. In the gullies of Benares the smells are exuberant, the ladies’ shy — shyness curves their saris to bent innocuity, but man’s passion is in the starved shine of his eyes. The gutters go their way making time, carrying little broken claypots (that milk and tea and curd have used for man’s satiations, and that ritual purity has destined for their formal destruction) — the gutters have broken baskets, little threaded sweetmeat trays, an ant-eaten umbilical cord, torn sackcloth on which bees sit for a better taste of funeral honey. The gutters leap through the side streets, open up by corners, and gay they go half-full with dark moving fluids to any Ganga ghat, and leap down under pipal trees. For all of here must be holy, and even the sewage has to rush in cascades, and be hallowed by the pipal’s knotted roots.
Man’s illumination, however, is of the mind, yet he shapes his utensils for proof of his material disposition. I am a pilgrim, so I have a pot. One pot. Big pot. Small pot. Brass pots with tusk-beaks or silver ones with swan-heads, pots with cow-mouths or pots with just arches carrying handless, pots are pots and the Ganges has no choice. You dip and you bring it to your pilgrim room and wax-covered, you take it back home to Maharashtra, Bhuvaneshwar or Rameshwaram, and, place it securely in your sanctuary, by the flower-covered gods. Ultimately, when the time comes, you ask your son, uncle or grandfather for the Ganga-jal as you begin to heave a heavy breath and you sputter yourself in, and now move into immortality. But the problem is, how immortal can you be? For that matter the dog that floats down the Ganga is even more immortal. Its mortal body is all afloat on the Ganges. And that of drowned pigs as well.You, dark and bloated pig, you know you too are immortal. Life is a grave game, oh, ye Brahmins. You talk so much of immortality. It is all a contribution to your purse. The mantra is money. The temple bell is for begging. The puppy’s yell is for the mother. Mother never gives birth to a child for all end at the Ganga Ghat.