Travelling with a skull

Travel with a skull…….vignettes of travel in the Himalayas.

Traveling in India by road can be an enlightening experience, most highways connecting major towns are in good condition so the journey is more enjoyable especially on mountain roads. Viewing the vast Himalayan landscape one can forget mountain sickness but the queasy ones will still stop the car to puke out their sumptuous breakfast or lunch occasionally. Still others will sleep through the journey like my son does to overcome this uneasy feeling on a traveling car and waste an opportunity to soak in the majestic landscape. After every kilometer, one encounters people sitting on a small shack selling fresh juicy fruits like cherries, apricots, plums and pears. This is the time when one can gorge on these fruits in India and even the trees by the roadside are full of these luscious temptatations. The box of cherries I bought were the juiciest I have ever had in my life.

What does one do on a mountain road? Besides watching the scenery around which can get a tad boring after a while? So one fine day we decided to give a lift to two mendicants or sadhus as they are called in India in the hope that we may get some ancient wisdom from their erudite minds. With a black cloth tied around their waist, a stick in hand, body smeared white with ash and one of the sadhus even had a human skull hanging around his neck along with other bead necklaces!!!! Was I scared? Well no. As they got into the car for a free ride with us, I did have visions of us being robbed or even killed….the skull was white and shiny and my biology lecture in college came to mind . Our skulls are supposed to look yellowish, no??

Nothing dramatic happened and the wise guys chatted with us normally, asking us about our lives and what we do, where we live etc. They were happy to get a free ride and a meal too as we had lunch together on a road side eatery. Lives of sadhus in india come in many shades and varieties. These ones are called tantrics and they worship in human graveyards and invariably go around with a human skull around their necks. They worship the goddess Kali and travel to all the temples of Kali in India on foot to offer prayers. Goddess Kali bestows power to her devotees and many Indians are devotees of this POWERFUL goddess.
At the dead of night the tantrics will light a fire near a human corpse and offer prayers and chant mantras. The idea is to gain some power and knowledge and some who do are very popular. Ordinary folks will flock to them and offer prayers to these sadhus and they in return promise to solve your worldly problems. WHEN ONE GOES TO RELIGIOUS TOWNS IN INDIA, one can see many kinds of sadhus who have different ways of worshipping God. India is rightly called Nirvana land as people are offered quick fix solutions to attain enlightenment in these towns and temples by enlightened souls.

To continue with the story, Baba Amaranth , one of the sadhus , told me he was reminded of a disciple he once had as she resembled me. Maybe he is trying to make me a disciple I thought suspiciously. Both of them smoked premium cigarettes borrowed from my husband. After a couple of cigarettes smoke blowing around me I told them how can you be wise if you have such vices!!! Alas I did not get any wisdom from them , or maybe they did not want to share what little they knew about lifes miseries and joys. To cut a long story short he did offer some secret advice to my husband and told him to wear some stone ring to be happy and successful in life. He left me alone perhaps realizing that I had no need for any solutions to imaginary problems.

Next time I am going to give a free ride to some more interesting people on earth. I don’t fancy being engulfed by smoke from an ash smeared human donning a skull ever again !!!