Eat the Whole Fox

"If you are going to eat a fox, you may as well eat the entire fox including the tail." This is a rough paraphrase of a Garhwali proverb explained to me in Hindi recently. As we proceed narratively, we shall watch with bated breath (as it were) to see whether, how, and if this proverb relates in any meaninful way to the content under whose heading it is subsumed. :)
The past several months have seen me in several different places. I left Ukhimath at the end of December to go to the American Institude of Indian Studies Junior Fellows conference (I am one, therefore), which ended up feeling like very intense intellectual fun that nonetheless left me very tired, and dizzy from wandering around the 21st century mall environment of the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, where the conference was held. Delhi in general, in quite trite ways (the lights, the people, the traffic! etc...), left me breathless after a couple of months in my foster-home in the mountains, but I managed.
Then I headed to Pune for about a month, to look up references to Kedarnath in Sanskrit literature. Let me rephrase that: I headed to Pune to generate a list of references that I could then use to determine which references to look up and then began the somewhat patience testing process of finding a way to access the books I needed to look up the aforementioned references. Let me again back up. In Jambudvipa, In Pune, in Deccan College (of Pune University) there is something called the Sanskrit Dictionary Project. They are making a dictionary of Sanskrit on very thorough, historical lines, and are basing it on 1500 specially selected Sanskrit texts (which is by no means anything even remotely close to all Sanskrit texts, but a strategic sampling) which they are working through very, very slowly and rigorously. By which I mean, they have been at it for 40 years and they have published 8 volumes of the dictionary, or the first half of the first letter of the alphabet. No, I didn’t mis-write. However, all their raw data is available to the lucky student in the form of the SCRIPTORIUM, a single room that contains massive banks of card catalogs. On each index card is a single occurrence of a single word accompanied with meaning, reference information, and sometimes a citation. So I copied out about six hundred of these cards by hand and learned how to use their system of reference (which took about half the time), then the other half of the time started to try and look up references and also find a way to take some material back to Ukhimath with me. That was frustrating, as the libraries in Pune are very well set up to make information available to people who want to come in and work with that info in situ. Take away takes longer, so I was only able to make a start. But I have a very impressive 41 page excel chart and some good notes and ideas of directions to proceed. And I can now say with authority what I already knew two years ago, that the word kedara basically means something like muddy field / field / clumpy wet dirt. So there. I had lived in Pune before for about three months, two years ago, when I was studying Sanskrit, and so I knew the city somewhat and also was looking forward to saying hello to the host family I had stayed with then. As it turns out, the son in the family had his engagment while I was in Pune and I found myself in delighted attendance, and happy watched all-spiffied-up-him outwardly being very calm, which cannot possibly have been true. Living in Pune was odd – I was staying with a friend, and knew the city, and even made some new connections (fed to the gills by a Punjabi-Maharastrian love marriage couple in the neighborhood I was staying in), but somehow nothing felt right. Pune is a delightful city (though overcrowded and polluted trafficly), with lots of wide streets and waterfall-rooty-branchy trees, smart people, nice movie theaters and good books (and a couple of new malls that were shishi-er than anything I’ve seen in America). But I didn’t feel embedded in place – it wasn’t where I have aimed my soul, and I don’t speak Marathi (everyone speaks Hindi but their hearts beat in Marathi, a language/culture with a long and deep history, unlike Hindi as such). So in many ways being there was unsettling.
Then a whistlestop back through Delhi where I had the serendipitous fun of a dinner in which people from all three of my times in India were present. Then back up to Ukhimath. I had actually been dreading returning to Ukhimath – once "below" (as they call everything more than 5 kilomteres south of here whether it be Garhwali Srinagar, Rishikesh, Delhi, or Madurai) moving around in the big cities re-awakened all my city-mouse tendencies that I had started to forget the mountains, and consequently I started to dread coming back (and this time really with no end in sight, time wise, no possibility of anonymity, etc...).
But as I came back into Ukhimath I re-acclimated, mostly. I ran into a friend on the bus and so spent the last two hours coming back into Ukhimath catching up, which helped a lot. Since I’ve been back, the main religious news is that Shivratri ("night of Shiva" – festival dedicated to the god Shiva) happened and though I didn’t get a t-shirt I did get a dhoti. During the day the main event was a fire sacrifice in the courtyard of Omkareshvar Temple, and I got to sit up front with the important Badri Kedar Samiti members and some local leaders and consequently had to wear a dhoti (and had to get help putting it on). There was some drinking of bhang (a marijuana derivate that is taken as prasad in Shaivite contexts, usually as an additive to a flavoured milk/ yoghurt drink) that had been prepared in the temple courtyard (apparently to make bhang traditionally you have to mash the leaves up together with a coin to catalyze whatever chemical process has to happen) itself but I wrongly assumed that it would continue all day and so drank very little, intending to pace myself, only to find out (somewhat to my distress) that that was all there was. I spent the rest of the day going around greater Ukhimath and seeing what various people were up to, then returned to the temple at about 10 at night and stayed for the rest of the night in observance of the 4-watches-of-the-night Puja (Car Peher ki Puja) that is customary on Shivaratri. In attendance were myself and my research assistant, those doing the puja, 5 pilgrims/visitors from Lucknow, and 2 guards. I spent the night either joining in their puja (I was very nicely invited in), talking with them, and reading a little bit about Shivaratri. Oddly enough, much of that time was outside (must have been right around freezing) but I felt very little cold.
The other big news is political. February 21st was election day here in Uttarakhand (the state name has recently legally changed from Uttaranchal to Uttarakhand), so there’s been a lot of campainging. The word in hindi for political campaigning and for religious spreadidng of the word is the same: prachar. You can do prachar for either parties or for religion. Each of the candidates, like anywhere else,has their own visual symbol but people explaining to me about the election were particularly insistent that I learn all the symbols as well ( I haven’t learned them all yet, but am compiling lists – much of this information is conveyed all at once by groups of men who are a little worked up for one reason or another, which makes it dificult). But in addition to the lotus of the BJP and the hand of Congress there are local party candidates with symbols such as a chai kettle, a clock, a camera, etc... And lots of candidates put a picture of the Kedarnath temple on their political posters because the legislative area for which they are standing is the Kedarnath-ksetra (the Kedarnath field/ area), so hello visual culture data . My new apartment is pretty bare but pretty good. I’ve yet to get a gas cylinder so cooking is limited to heating up water for various things with a little electric burner, and my office table hasn’t come (I ordered it two months ago) so I’m writing this on a coffee table with four bricks under each leg). It’s definitely not nearly the go out onto the balcony and just collapse with awe at the landscape that my old apartment was, but its still pretty nice, and I’m (with the exception of my laptop and voice recorder and boiled water etc...) living more like everyone else, and have neighbours.
I’ve also started working with a research assistant, which is both great and taxing, for several reasons. For starters, I’ve never been someone’s employer and its very uncomfortable (especially since he’s also a friend). Also, we spend almost all day every day together so it’s more together time than I probably have had with any one single person, almost ever, and certainly will be by the time this year is over. We are both learning about each other and a bit still on tenderhooks, but I think it’s going pretty well. On the one hand it’s definitely nice to be able to ask someone, hey can you tell me word for word what that guy said back there said and explain it to me in clear Hindi? On the other hand I also feel like I’ve given up my independence and there are lots of things that I actually can do myself here and like doing that I now have help for unless I structure otherwise. But all in all I think it’s a good start and the work is going well, am learning a lot.
I’ve now been back in Ukhimath for a couple of weeks and starting to mostly be here again. I mostly oscillate between being so busy and compelled by the work that I don’t think of anything, to looking around at the landscape and the amount of hospitality and honor I’m given and just not even being able to come terms with how lucky I feel, and the many moments (mostly either after 8:00 at night) or in the morning when I feel just by myself and a little bit at a loss. Mostly at those times I try and watch movies in Hindi or pull the covers back over my head.
So, to try and bring this back to the fox and the tale (intentional, for you careful readers), I’d say two things. I’m not giving up on eating the whole fox but really I’m just starting to nibble on the ears (starting at the head, of course, as one does when eating foxes). But I’m chewing every bite thoroughly. And then there is the question of whether the fox of sensible experience is the same as the ideal fox (a la Coomaraswamy), or whether the fox of below is the same as the fox of above (a la the two Jerusalems, one of above and one of below). There is a text I’m reading (skimming really) in Hindi (instead of struggling very slowly through the Sanskrit) that among other things, describes the journey of a group of renunciant ascetics and their teacher from the world of the dead to Shivaloka (the world of Shiva), along what is known as the Mahapa(n)tha, or the Great Path, i.e. the path that starts somewhere in the Himalayas and leads to Shivaloka. Actually, traditionally, it starts right above Kedarnath which is why I’m looking at this text (called the Kedarakalpa – anybody out there heard of it or know anything about it? Anybody? Anybody?). When they run into obstacles they recite a particular mantra (Aghora) and then the path appears again before them. Much of the text is devoted to them arriving in various fantastic quasi-divine Himalayan kingdoms and being feted (by kings and sages and beautiful women and bejeweled mountains) and invited to stay forever (not actually forever as their pointed questions reveal but until their accumulated good karma runs out and then it would be back to the world of the dead for them, albeit they would be kings etc... in the world of the dead), and instead they decide to press on. I haven’t finished it yet so don’t know whether they get to eat their whole fox or not, but I’ll keep you posted.
Plans for my on journey on my own demi-great path (i.e. the one to Kedarnath but not beyond) have started. The doors will open on April 30th, which means that I’ll leave Ukhimath with the procession on foot on the 27th and spend three days en route. Between now and then I’m mostly devoting my research time to trying to meet people on both sides of the valley who will be in Kedarnath during the season. For all you potential visitors out there anytime between now and April 26 is prime visit me and spend lots of any given day hanging out time. From the 27th April through June 24th it is prime visit me and get to see lots of really cool stuff which will include a really busy me trying to talk to lots of pilgrims all the time. Prime visit me season again starts at the end of August, i.e. when Kedarnath (and all surrounding sites) are still open but the monsoon has finished. Feel free to visit in the middle, just be prepared for lots of rain and scary roads.

I’ve also decided, just for the h-ll of it, to include some recent pretty bad poetry. Enjoy!

apna mulk*

you didn't know that green chilis dry
and turn to red?
You really are a videshi.**
Have you ever seen a salt tree?

Actually, I have.
They grow in that fictive landscape
that is my own natal place.
Also in that same place:
Winged sandals, one-eyed gods, sun-thiefs,
tintinnabulations, blues and shapes and colors, maenads,
deep winters and dirt roads,
sung sad hermeneutics
with short words and long powers.

But here in the mountains,
where green chilis apparently turn to red,
everything is upside down.
Here is everyone else's native place,
Here the mountains are fields to till,
and I feel like my own self is being turned as well.
But I am really am a videshi.
And here people try to give me new names,
, and dress me up into their stories,
dance in front of me and speak innocently of marriage.
They think they know who I am,
but at this point they really don't.
And I don't know how, nor is it my purpose,
to take them into my natal place, apna mulk I
t is hard enough for me to find it myself.
*native/natal place *
*foreigner
note: the first stanza is a precis of an actual conversation here and not of my own invention.

2) Yes, and Roses and Drinking in Delhi.



There was a night some years ago
in that same place,
smoke and fog close on the ground,
and going back at night felt prehistoric metropole,
as if anything could happen,
come out of the dark and fog.

yes, and roses and drinking in Delhi.
Here in Garhwal I have not yet begun,
on account of my temple going
and the well known excesses of beef eating white people.
Instead I dodge peg after profferred peg,
gently disentangle from fiercely affectionate,
somehow bizaar post-colony drunken embraces.

I met a quiet man today.
He is of mixed background,
paints signs for a living
and paints Shiva’s mountainous darshan
to hang in his own livingroom.
I think he was drunk too.

Banasur Valley: somewhat across from where I live.



Preparing Bhang.

A havan (fire altar) with Sapta Jiva Yantra drawn inside of it

Preparing to make an offering into the fire and say "Svaha"
(this action repeated hundreds of times over a course of a couple of hours)

Making the offering

Great textured land near Ukhimath. The green is wheat and mustard.