[John and I have fought over whether to publish this post for a month now.... after small editing and his continued good health, he relents....]
"People do not understand the meaning of Guru Shishya Parampara. It is imperative to serve the Guru with all one's heart. I would sit and massage my guru's feet for hours and when he was happy, he would teach me a new composition." -Kishan Maharaj
We two are not spiritual people. The extents of my spirituality may be outlined by a mild form of superstition, a general and persistent awe of the world about me, and my curiosity in the still-incomprehensible branes of String Theory. John is of a reassuringly similar mind. But India demands recognition of, if not devotion to, its irrefutable spirituality. And if you choose to go deeper into the culture--for example, become a disciple according to old Indian tradition--your guru becomes your unquestionable spiritual adviser. "Do I pray first to my guru or first to my god?" mused Sushiri Mehta, rhetorically. "I pray first to my guru, because it was he who led me to my god." But how can we understand this? The best we can do is respect it as best we know how, and go deeper.
Still, when John's guruji commanded that he bathe in the Ganga River, I argued against it for days. Nevermind that it washes away your sins.
Tuesday we wake. On the roof of a neighboring house we spy perched one peacock and two peahens, sunning themselves. The day is already shimmering with heat. At 8:30AM we are walking, river and sun at our left. We see one incredible creature--it looks like the wild offspring of deer and horse. It is long necked, skittish, with a cropped crest of a mane running down its spine. A small child chased it down the bank and out of sight.
At nine we have reached the Southern-most ghat that we know, upstream from the miles of shit-strewn bank that defines the Eastern border of the city. 500 million people live in the Ganga River basin, and we are somewhere in the midst of these millions. We are downstream from hundreds and hundreds of miles of shit-strewn banks. Then add industrial waste to raw sewage, all of it flowing seaward. But--yes, I know--with one's guruji one mustn't argue; one mustn't lie.
I stand on the steps, five feet up from the water's edge. Sweat is already running down between my breasts and shoulder blades, making my forehead slick. The water is the color of clay and smells like the marsh in my Dad's backyard. John strips to his underwear and wades in. I am still arguing in my head. He wades in up to the neck in this opaque water, then climbs out and tells me that there were tiny fish nibbling at his shins--"if they live here, then I can visit for a minute." In and out, and in the end, he does not dissolve. We go home and John takes a real bath. A few days later, he develops a rather anti-climactic head cold.
I do not admonish guruji when I see him. There are people who drink the Ganga's grey waters every day.
