That Savage Water (2 page)

The sadhu laughed. It reverberated like the wisest laugh Sal had ever heard, a lustrous, intelligent ripple that shocked the guru's eyes into brilliant sparks.

Sal went to the train station that night and cancelled his ticket to Agra.

One extra week in Varanasi became four; one month stretched into five. He'd boated across the river nearly every day, bringing Vaman small bags of cooked rice and fruit, sticks of juniper incense for his shrine. Under the shade of an orange remnant of fabric, he and Vaman would talk on the sand for hours and then meditate until dusk.

Trepidatious at first, Sal began to join him for his morning baths in the river. Vaman taught him how to recite the holy mantras while submerging: Asato ma sad gamaya. Lead me from ignorance to truth. As the intensity of his fears and desires subsided, vibrations of bliss, deep and profound, began to form like ripples on the inner corridors of his being. The water became an icy, primordial cocoon that caressed every surface of his body. Low, tremoring, the sensations grew and then began to move him into waves of tears. All his silly aversions and unskillful words replayed so fiercely in his mind and then vanished for good.
Lead me from ignorance to truth.

One afternoon, the turtle eggs began to hatch. Out on the promontory, dark circles emerged from the sand like oil slowly bubbling to the surface. With clumsy flippers the hatchlings struggled towards the river. Vaman pointed Sal's attention to the sky: A gyre of vultures spiraled lower. As others landed, the largest buzzard hopped to the nest with its collared neck and crooked wings at full extension. It stabbed its beak into the sand with a few swift pecks.


The turtles eat the bodies
– Vaman said.


Bodies?


Of course
– he squinted across the Ganges at the columns of smoke lofting from the pyres –
After the dead are in the water, very soon, very soon they are gone. Some humans eat turtles, yes, but then some turtles eat humans, so I must ask myself every day, what will eat me? What can possibly do it! Brahma created the world and Shiva will destroy it. We must treasure these many aspects of God.

Sal left the guesthouse with the TV behind him still broadcasting the disaster. He felt such unspeakable hatred at that wall of water, at its thunderous approach as it sped towards beaches spotted with curious families who had run out to the tide pools to gather shellfish. He wondered what it had all looked like from their perspective: Had they treasured God then? Had they praised their divine Creator as it roared at them with its velocity of barbarous indifference, a curled fist of ocean stretched so high it shadowed the sun? And for those who hadn't drowned, for those who'd clung to palm trees or held their breath, however they'd managed, everything had been lost or destroyed. Sometimes it was worse to survive a disaster. To survive meant you had to do something about it, to process the residue, to reconstruct a new philosophy from the rubble so as not to obliterate yourself in anger and hate.

Darkness in India no longer scared him. From the Rana ghat Sal walked along the labyrinth of steps and platforms until the Manikarnika ghat where cremations took place throughout the night. Still feared as cannibals, the Aghori sadhus sat by their fires in meditation. Sal carried nothing worth stealing, and the tsunami had confirmed to him that his life was as death-prone as anyone's. Once a protective shell, without his backpack he felt free and less vulnerable. Vaman had revealed to him his belongings had only been hindrances, a delusory coat of armour defending him against an already perfect reality he insisted on shying away from.


I am trying to serve Krishna with a pure heart
– Vaman admitted –
I am travelling for many many years, just observing, just looking, trying to understand. I leave everything, my home, my family, only to understand nature. Every way the human is searching. Everywhere, people are searching many things, but it is not so easy for us to find truth. You are living in five-stars, in air-conditioned rooms where everything is easy and perfect, and in this life we say we are searching for truth? What a funny world, Sal. A very funny world…

Vaman's fingers toyed with the string of beads he used to count his bhajans. He stood and looked at Sal without speaking, then squatted in the shallows of the river, splashing water over his arms. Farther down the bank, two boys kicked water at the pony; it backed away with small shifts of its hooves.

What should I do? – Sal stepped into the water beside him.


That answer always depends on what you want to find.

You'll live on this sandbank forever? When the monsoon comes?


In the monsoon I will find new places to meditate. I no longer maintain illusions of permanence, Sal. I am not even convinced of being a sadhu forever. You see, I will die one day and so I will no longer be a sadhu. Only my skinny corpse will be a sadhu then!

A charred leg shifted in the fire, paused, and then dropped out of the coals completely. Gripping it with tongs, an attendant placed it back on the pyre. Sal could see the skeletal mouth and gaping rows of teeth, the rib cage bowed like the curve of a hull. Its family stood throwing handfuls of marigolds onto the bed of embers. Here, the river was thick and sooty, and the water lapped up onto a small beach where the ashes and remnants were raked through and left for the waves. Sal pictured a phalanx of turtles drifting offshore just under the surface, their prehistoric eyes peering through waxy membranes for undevoured pieces. Everything seemed so potently clear when he observed the water closely.

Like Vaman said, death has been our destination from the beginning. It made sense when he'd heard it, but he'd never taken time to dwell on it. Standing here on the ghats as the sparks flew up towards the moon, he felt a peace settle into him. It would come. One day, maybe even tomorrow, his own extinguishment was sure to come. He'd given his backpack and shoes to the guesthouse owner. All that remained in his pockets were a few rupee notes and his ragged passport. They too were temporary, transient, uncertain. There was nothing in the world one could count on for stability. The disaster had proven that. Nature hadn't discriminated between good and evil, between tourists or locals. Death wouldn't either.

Instantly igniting, his passport flared into enlightened orange flames that cooled into ash. The fire attendant raked them against the shore where they hissed on the sand. Tonight Sal would sleep tucked into the stoop of some temple doorway, his body receiving with equanimity whatever sensations came and went. In the morning, he would boat across the Ganges to study alongside Vaman for good.

The sky had brightened to an early blue by the time the bow slid onto the sandbank. The melon farmers trimmed the vines with curved machetes, throwing the foliage into woven baskets strapped to their backs. A final spark of conviction shot through Sal. He was excited to tell Vaman what he'd done, the path he'd chosen. He wanted to see the young guru's eyes light up, to watch that grin crack beneath his beard. Life was uncertainty and Vaman had taught him to embrace its fluctuations without ever trying to manipulate them.

He arrived at the promontory and looked out at the ghats across the river half hidden in haze. So many ways to live, he thought. Yet underneath, one side or the other all the way down the Ganges to the Bay of Bengal, there was nothing but mud – thick with the sludge of old bones, crumbs from those turtles and the ashes of thousands – that even separated the two banks.


You are so pensive this day
– Vaman called from inside the shelter –
What have you been studying?

Waves. Bones. Catastrophes. Something happened in the ocean yesterday.


Yes, of course. Happenings as always.

Many people died. An earthquake and a massive wave.

Vaman crawled out of the hut, his hair matted and still dripping from his bath in the river.

You were right. Nature is the best teacher of the human. You said that before.


The best teacher, yes, of how things truly are.

Sal suddenly noticed Vaman's fire was a pit of cold ashes: He'd let it burn out. The stacks of cow manure were missing as well.

I wanted to tell you – Sal continued – I made a commitment. I mean, that I'm serious about studying. I gave my things away. I burned my passport…

The sadhu squatted and began picking through the sand. He hadn't looked at Sal since he arrived. A surprise unease scratched at Sal's stomach.

Is everything fine?


Yes, yes. Fine…yes, fine.

I'm telling you I came to study for good. I left everything.


That is good news, Sal. The life of a sadhu is difficult but rewarding. You will learn about a truth not many people know is even existing. I wish you luck and Krishna's fortune for this…but I must tell you. I have chosen to leave the sandbank.

The young guru stood and gazed down the beach to the melon farmers and the boats arriving from across the river. He looked at the ghats and then down at Sal's feet.


As you know, I have lived here for many years as a sadhu. Every dry season I return and I have experienced much about the joy, the love, about what the human is searching for. But now I have a different curiosity.

You see I put out my fire. I sold the dung for some rupees to take me to Varanasi. I don't know how I can do it, but I am curious to discover how humans live on that side. There must be a joy to have children, a family! To have a small room, to live with a wife and a grandmother. To spend the days working diligently as a chai walla or office man, there must be a joy in that too.

Sal felt the grains of sand burn into his soles. The haze had steamed off and a full Indian sun was beginning its temper.

What kind of joy? – Sal countered – There's nothing over there. That's what I just realized, what you taught me. That's why I came here…

The city seemed like a giant wave perpetually cresting on the horizon, the colourful saris and longyis of the people like shattered debris lifting and churning in its momentum.


You are welcome to my hut – Vaman stared at the ghats that lined the far bank – It will last until the monsoon if you are lucky. Since I was a teenager, I have been only a sadhu. But I keep a curiosity about that shore I can no longer ignore. I need to participate in that fluxing, to share in that movement. Sure, to be a sadhu is easy. You don't have someone to say to you rules about waking, about clothings or behavior. We sadhus can be free as we like with no one but God to answer to. But there is no challenge to that life anymore. It feels so usual, so standard, so customary. Now I want to try and make the way of a life that will be a challenge to me. To help me grow, to use my practice for who needs it.

In the laughter of the boys down the bank he heard the guesthouse owner in his dirty undershirt –
You'll be back
– Sal's stomach felt inflated by liquid.


I am happy you have decided to live in this way. It is a good way and you can learn very much. But I am so curious about this city I have watched from across the river day and night. Yes, I have been there before but as a sadhu, not a citizen. You too have this curiosity, Sal, so you can understand what it means to try.

Yes… – Sal paused. Except for a scalding breeze that hooked under the fabric of the hut and flapped it against the poles, there was a thick, oscillating silence – We should all try.

Vaman promised to visit the sandbank as soon as he could. Sal watched him wade down the beach to a boat and the boat was pushed off the sand by the boy holding the reins of the pony.
Think you the first white man to come to India and meet a guru?
A vapor of sadness collected on the insides of his breath. He pictured the fishing villages on the southern coast, Sri Lanka, the beaches of Thailand full of inquisitive tourists camcording the wave as it grew and towered above them and then swept them away. He saw the surface of the Ganges roil as the turtles snapped hold of an arm bone or pelvis, shredding it of its meat. He watched Vaman's boat disappear into the chaos of the far shore. In one month, the monsoons would arrive on the horizon, a banister of cloud that would send Sal eastward towards the ocean.

SUNRISE – 6:44 AM

Men wrapped in shawls weave bicycles through oncoming streams of rickshaws. Two-pitched car horns startle the spit from mules. Wagons of bricks rumble past, emphatic and wrestling along the road's pocked pavement. Gathered at their motorbikes, gangs of Sikh men yawn and toy beneath their fingernails, awakening in the diesel-fumed dawn. Against the wall of Lahore station – a lingering sand-brick fortress of British Imperialism parked on Pakistan's eastern border with India – the roadside swells in front of my plastic stool as the barber leans in. From the mosque's turret, a black compass point against the haze of the Punjabi plains, the muezzin sirens out the call to prayer: The holy moans of Islam coat the waking city.

No turning – his chestnut hand steadies my brow – You want to save your head? Still, still.

As his razor scrapes my jaw, the cologne of his wrist lands in my nostrils – spiced aftershave mixed with the sweat of his undershirt. His eyes are yellowed, their corners faintly blood-shot; his ebony moustache is coarse and blunt as a broom. Leaning to the barbers next to him, he exhibits the blade he's drawn. Men in coloured shalwars peer in from behind: Semi-circular, hands hooked, they are curious and indolent at the sight of me, my whiskers, the strangeness of my downhill skis propped against the station's wall. Their notes of Urdu laughter perch on my shoulders as they study the blond stubble littering the heap of foam.

Gold beard – he wipes the razor on a scrap of cloth and brings it again to my lip.

Here is that alien bewilderment, that deeper paralysis of difference. Here the history fields still vibrate in their aftermath like the heartbeat of a bomb. It is right to have come, I affirm, wading through this strangeness alone while Adrian is still farther, stil ahead of me, settled in a guesthouse somewhere high in the Karakoram. We are ten years older and have let the drift of our lives separate us like an ice floe. Our purpose for coming, we reasoned and planned weeks earlier via email, was that once on our skis again, we might finally outrun what had chased us since high school.