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Nine Lives(101)

By:William Dalrymple


“Just as I had two years earlier, I walked the road to the rail way station, and again I boarded the first train that came in. I was miserable—it was one of the lowest points in my life. The train pulled out, and I sat gazing out of the window, feeling as if I might as well just throw myself out of the train into the river. But then something remarkable happened. After a few minutes, I heard some singing further down the train. It was Paban, and his brother and his father, and with them, in a different carriage, was Sudhir Das, the Baul who had taken me to Kenduli, and with him was Kanai.

“I had known Paban’s family since I was a boy, as they lived in the next village, and they were very surprised to see me living like a Baul and wearing the alkhalla. But they embraced me, and looked after me, and Kanai began to teach me songs. We began to sing together on the trains and to sleep on the platforms of stations. We were perpetually on the move—from train to train, festival to festival. I was very happy, partly because I was back in Bengal—the Bengalis understand our ways and love our songs—and partly because I really liked the freedom of this life. But mainly I was happy because Kanai and the others recognised me as another Baul, and made me their friend and companion. I forgot the pain of being rejected by my family and immersed myself in the family of the Bauls, and the kinship of their songs. Kanai and I were together from this time.

“There was only one time when I left him for an extended period. This was when I became obsessed with trying to live without food, like the saints and yogis in the old stories. These saints controlled all their desires and so never ate: they lived on air alone. I wanted to find out if it was still possible to do this. So I went off on my own, and found a bel—a wood apple tree—in a forest near a pond: we believe these trees are very auspicious. I sat there in a loincloth and meditated for two years, eating less and less until I stopped eating altogether, taking a vow that no food was to pass my lips until I reached my goal, and achieved Enlightenment. I don’t know how I lived. I had matted dreadlocks down to my knees, and sat there not eating, not smoking, and drinking nothing but water. I focused inwards, conserving my energies. I sat there like that through two monsoons and two cold winters.”

“I used to visit him,” said Kanai. “The villagers knew where he was, and would lead me to him through the forest. They called him ‘Bel-talar Babaji’–the sadhu who sits under a wood apple tree. He was very thin and very weak. He hardly moved or talked—only very short sentences. I was very anxious that he wouldn’t survive, and it pained me that he wouldn’t eat. I brought him food, but he refused to eat it. He was very determined.”

“I don’t know what I attained with this penance,” said Debdas, “but I know my mind was at peace as never before. My hair was matted, but the knots of my heart were untied. After a certain point, I stopped feeling hunger. I was at the end of desire, beyond the senses. It was then that I started hallucinating. I was no longer living inside my body—I was somewhere outside of myself, in a state of ecstasy and rapture. I have never felt anything like it, before or since.

“Then one cold starry night, around the time of Makar Sakranti, I felt suddenly lost, as if my mind had finally detached itself from my body—like a bird flying high. It was Kanai who brought me back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was unaware of it, but there had been a terrible storm. Kanai had a premonition that I was in trouble, and came over from Tarapith to see if I was all right. He arrived early in the morning with a group of villagers, and found me up to my neck in a pool of mud, fast asleep. They all thought I was dead—and I suppose I almost was. Kanai brought me back to his house in Tarapith, and nursed me back to health.”

“The blind man saved the man who could see,” said Kanai, chuckling to himself. “Sometimes the mad and sightless can understand things better, and more clearly, than the sane and the sighted.”

“The blind are never deceived by appearances,” said Debdas.

“Maybe,” said Kanai, “it is only those of us who have no eyes that can see through the lure of maya, and glimpse reality for what it is.”



For five days I followed Kanai and Debdas around the Kenduli mela, as Debdas held Kanai’s hand and guided him.

All over the huge campsite, at all hours of the day and night, you could see groups of musicians breaking into song. Sometimes this was part of a formal concert: the Bengal State Government had put up a small stage in honour of Kenduli’s celebrated court poet Joydeb, the twelfth-century author of the great Sanskrit poem on the loves of Krishna, the Gita Govinda, and each night different Baul groups competed to sing the poem. Usually, however, the music was spontaneous. Groups of Bauls began singing around a campfire and were soon joined by old friends not seen since the last festival.