SALVATION AMIDST CHAOS
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
_Albert Einstein
Standing two hundred and ninety three meters above the sea level the majestic, Neelachal hill is the sole witness of the history of Pragjyotishpur and its people. It bears the role of a wise patriarch overlooking the land and her children along with the mighty Brahmaputra as its constant companion. The Neelachal holds the city at its mercy and is the abode of the great goddess Kamakhya, the Mecca of Tantra, a cult not for the faint hearted.
Every year in the month of June when the full moon period is over, it brings to the light the faith of the devoted worshippers when the menstruation of the earth goddess begins. To commemorate the unusual phenomenon a massive gathering of the devoted from neighboring Bengal, Orissa and Bihar come to the hill to pay their respectful dues to the ‘mother’.
This unusual phenomenon, which culminates into a five-day sojourn, is a celebration in honor of a spirit called faith. As per the custom of the land when a young girl show her first sign of fertility she has to remain in total confinement within the four walls of her house so as to avoid any act of sacrilege, a tradition zealously followed by every Hindu parents. In the same manner, more or less running parallel and with proper adherence to this cycle of fertility, every temple and shrine remains closed to draw the line of respect for the earth goddess. According to legend, Neelachal hill is the very place where the Yoni, the anatomical part of Sati, the devoted wife of Lord Shiva fell from the sky. To save the earth from total annihilation Lord Vishnu the preserver of the universe had to cut the lifeless body of Sati into many pieces as Lord Shiva went on a mad rampage devouring the world with his fury. Since Yoni is the centre of all cosmic energy according to Tantra, in Kamakhya the practice of this cult is both famous and notorious in the same angle. Some say black magic is widely used and even taught, there has been cited examples of human sacrifices, worshiping of demons and of wild sex orgies. It is one of those places of paganism, which challenges the very foundations of the great monotheistic religions of the world, and since paganism has lost grounds from most parts of the world in the northeastern region of India in the district of ancient Kamrup the vigor of Tantra has been flourishing for so many ages. And this is the reason why the whole vicinity in and around the temple is surmounted with an energy that allows people from every walks of life, right from the hopelessly poor of the society to the affluent rich flock to the abode to redeem themselves of their sins and from the illusion that illustrates the emptiness of life.
For someone like me growing up within the realms of rational thinking and empowered with reason to challenge the daily mundane aspect of a monotonous existence, and for whom millions like me in this part and the rest of the world whose salvation can only be obtained through money, was an invigorating experience to witness the ‘Ambubochi Mela’.
Upon reaching the abode, the sight was too overwhelming to greet my senses. There was the huge sea of people flocking to the same point like an exodus only without Moses, the atmosphere charged with the energy driven by faith in this march, some leading and the rest following. There were people clad in saffron robes their bodies adorned with beads, threads and various forms of amulets; and then there were the unfortunate men, women and children laying down in the middle of the walkway, their bodies smeared with mud reaching out to people for alms. However, one managed to invade my imagination and steer my inner Karmic connection towards a degree of trepidation about the prospect of humanity in the future. A man was rolling in the dirt, about five meters in front of me, and the very aspect of faith in concentration must have had instilled in him the determination to invade the corridors of rational understanding. He was a man with deformed limbs and with no legs to support him he held his earthen bowl somehow between his undeveloped arms with some support, flexing his torso, and all the while his lips didn’t stop chanting the praise of his dear mother. The sight was cruel enough for me to bear and I had to walk on. Until what extent I could ignore, the man was squeezing his pain through his praise for his dear mother, which was maybe a reverberation of any unknown Karmic guilt of his past life.
Within the premise of the main temple the ‘Aghoris’ had laid their siege in the exterior courtyard of the main sanctum where the Yoni is suppose to be. They are the avid followers of Kali and Shiva and are the fiercest of the holy-men found in India. For any new stranger in this land would find these men nothing sort of a group of hedonistic men with long, matted hair wearing only a loincloth to cover their privates, and smoking hashish through beautifully carved chillums. They were the pious ones, and the only one to be near God. Yet they are the same people who are victims of our own prejudices and we tend to laugh at them only because they consider the fact of non-materialistic existence as a wholesome truth and question our lives and our incredulous attitude.
At one corner sat a holy-man whose hair had much to tell than his experience of divine fulfillment, if any. He seemed to be quiet famous as he charged ten rupees per photograph of his long, matted hair. To me he seemed to have sacrificed all his personal ambiguities looking at his ashen face and frail body.
The Aghoris had had set up a makeshift colony of only their clan opposite to the temple door of the main temple. The moment I walked in, the intensity of the environment inside the camp sent a chill down the spine. It was not a place for the usual tourist. The Aghoris had their bodies smeared with white ash or ‘Vibhuti’, the sign of sacrifice. Some of them were quenching their thirst using human skulls as vessels. The air was pungent with the smell and smoke of hashish. It was dark inside and to some extent the rays of light coming in through small, circular gaps on the tarpaulin above had given me a chance to look into their red, fierce and true eyes. An aura of mystery had engulfed the whole psychology of the people present in there. They are the most feared and revered clan. Some people hold the view that the Aghoris have mystical powers to posses and control the will of other people. Suddenly all these ‘said things’ about them invaded my enthusiasm to ask any questions about their lives and experiences. As I walked out, I noticed a couple sitting with an Aghori near the sacrificial platform. Both the husband and the wife had long streaks of vermillion on their foreheads and they seemed to me without any fear or paranoia inflicting them as though they had build a bridge that would lead them to the realm of the truth destroying all the illusions that tends to make us blind.
The droppings of birds, goats and cows had been mixed with mud caused by a slight rainfall was strewn all over the path on which the people had laid their bare feet upon without any whining. Finally, as the sun came out from the clouds there was a general sigh of relief all around.
As I walked away leaving behind the people, the people who whose lives are as challenging as mine and yet have found time to spare, to rejuvenate the spirit by assembling their steps in the realm of our mother. Surviving through faith is a hard way, especially when the age of Kalyuga prevails like a thick fog all around. Faith is that light that breaks in through the illusions and enlightens our fragile mind. Corruption of the soul is common just like a bomb exploding, and the degradation of the human soul is a regular affair and yet we have to find a way to save our sanity to a wholesome extent. To set ourselves free the mind has to cross the barriers. One must find the way by self-discovery for salvation amidst chaos.
Gaurav Das
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