Wearing a dhoti in Kedarnath.
View of Kedarnath close to the end of the season.
Three Bhupendras and I at the end of the season.
The weather went from bright sunshine, so warm that I would often sit in the shade, to successive days of hard rain, to a snowstorm that lasted for three days and then melted away in a couple of weeks. Then bright sunshine again for several weeks. At the last, the mercury at night headed below freezing for a couple of days and my water buckets started freezing on the top. The day the procession left Kedarnath we were all slipping and sliding for the first two kilometers until the sun came out and passed the point called Devdarshini, or Deodekhni ("sight of god"), the point from which Kedarnath comes into view or from which it is last seen. A couple hours later I was sweating and it felt like I had never been cold.
The procession leaving Kedarnath.
Procession one kilometer away from Kedarnath.After my own personal Mount Everest (Vasuki Taal, see previous posts), I didn't do any more serious trekking. I did discover the pleasures of the evening walk out past the heli-pad and down along the green, stepped plateau that lies on the opposite side of the Kedarnath valley from the footpath from Gaurikund. It felt very Middle-earth-ish, and there were all these rocks that looked as if they were going down to the river to drink. At the very end of the plateau there are a series of rock faces whose curves I find both compelling and inscrutable, a puzzle that I want to both solve and caress. I took photographs there as well but mostly black and white film, so y'all will have to wait to see those beauties, if in fact they turn out.
I also underwent a series of small crises in my work. They probably shouldn't have been crises as such, but towards the end of the season the weight of the entire year started weighing on me more and more, so that was probably a factor as well. Actually there hasn't been a time here when that weight hasn't been there. Hmmm. Being here is both intensely rewarding and very difficult, so I suppose that is all par for whatever this course is. One crisis was that there were many people who had said that they would have to time to sit and talk with me at the end of the season, and then didn't. So there were a number of episodes in which I and Bhupendra would think we had scheduled an interview or conversation only to find that the person had become busy, or gone somewhere, or couldn't be bothered. It turns out that there is a slice of the local Kedarnath population that wasn't so interested in giving me time if no economic benefit was forthcoming. Money matters started coming to the fore in the last couple of months. I was at times quite discouraged that, whether guised as a joke or put baldly as request or demand, that people would suddenly ask me for things, money, clothing, etc... I was understood by most to be much richer than I actually am. This is how people think about most foreigners but I like to think I'm special and different, so it was a bit depressing. The corollary to this was the slowly dawning understanding (yes, I'm often quite thick-headed) that the best avenues for information depended more on friendship than anything else. So during those last couple of months a couple of things were happening. I was on the one hand realizing that many people in the local community weren't particularly interested in helping me with my research, and on the other hand enjoying the deepening of acquaintance into friendship. The difficulty was that for a couple of weeks, relationally, I really didn't know whether I was coming or going.
Reports of a ghost were also circulating the bazaar at the end of the season. I don't recall whether I previously mentioned this or not, but in the beginning of the season there was a tragedy involving a local youth and a helicopter (details intentionally omitted). Because he was unmarried he was not cremated but rather buried (or placed in samadhi) in Kedarnath itself. In the last two weeks of the season this youth apparently began harassing locals. One sadhu who normally stays in Kedarnath until the bitter end left a week early because the youth wouldn't leave him alone. People were saying that the youth's family should have done a fire sacrifice to put his soul (atma) at rest when he died, but didn't. There were actually three nights at the end of the staying when I was the only person staying in building in which my room was located. People kept asking me-- aren't you scared? I replied that so far the ghost hadn't bothered me and that I wasn't scared, which was mostly true. The first night I woke up suddenly and there was this strange throbbing noise/feeling coming from just above my head which was quite frightening. However, being sleep-besotted I decided that this was just the noise made by the friction between my hat-covered head and the top of the sleeping bag combined with an over-active imagination. Distressingly reductionist, I know.
The season ended with a good deal of dhoom-dham, of pomp. On the last night the temple opened at about two o'clock in the morning so that devotees could have a last darshan and puja. I was surprised to find that many of the devotees that come at this time are regulars -- they come every year at the beginning and closing. So the sense of instant community that one often feels at pilgrimage places was strengthened by the fact that many people did in fact know each other. Just before sunrise came samadhi-puja (the ritual in which Kedarnath is in a sense buried, or perhaps a more functionally appropriate translation would be tucked in for the winter). Various materials and substances are placed on the ling in succession : ghee, specially adorned blankets, ghand (scented ointment), rice and rice husks, various fruits, dhotis (long rectangular cloth that is often worn as a kind of pant by men, especially for participation in rituals), and finally bhasma (ash made from cow dung). The press of devotees was intense and I had actually resigned myself to hanging back and asking what happened because I didn't feel that I had any right to be at the front of the line nor did I have anything approaching the devotion evinced by everyone around me. However,a local recognized me and in front of everyone (not all were pleased) seated me quite close to the entrance to the temple's inner sanctum where all the action was happening, proclaiming loudly that I had lived in Kedarnath for the whole season and it was my right. So at the end of the season I ended up right at the center of everything, my view of the samadhi puja framed on all sides by a press of bodies and devotion. It was a special night. I spent several hours with two local friends chatting and ended up hearing all sorts of local gossip and explanations about various Tantric practices. Then I helped two middle aged foreigners, one French and one Balinese, to find a room. At the end of the season only a couple of lodges in all of Kedarnath were still open and all were bursting at the seams so there was a good deal of negotiation in which I assisted by translating and being the social lubricant. So at the end of the season I became the "local" who helps the "outsiders" to find a room through his local connections. This is a trope of sorts at Kedarnath during the season. And in so doing I made yet another friend, a Garhwali saddhu whom I had actually met before. But during that first meeting I hadn't known that he also was a singer and composer of Garhwali songs. I was sitting in the canteen of the lodge where I had just gotten the foreigners the room with the owner of the lodge, his mother (who comes every year for samadhi puja) and the saddhu. The owner's mother said that you should really hear this guy sing, so we all prevailed on him to sing several bhajans about Kedarnath in Garhwali. They were beautiful, simple and full of plaintive longing, and I was strongly struck by the special quality of the night and the fantastic amount of luck I've received to be in Kedarnath for such special moments.
In the morning the traveling form of Kedarnath came out of the temple and everyone had their pictures taken with it. Everyone was busy either getting ready to go, grabbing a little breakfast, and watching the journalists interview the various luminaries who were present for the end of the season (the head officer of the Badri-Kedar Temple Committee, Uma Bharati - a famous politician , local politicians and elected representatives). The doors to the temple were sealed with lots of seals and signature and documentation, and the dholi (palanquin) headed down the mountain.
Processions are a very important and visible feature of life in Garhwal and one can learn a lot from watching processions especially if one has other processions with which to compare. I have seen 4 such processions in entirety, one partially, and read a book that was basically about one important such procession (Mountain Goddess by William Sax). Some features of the procession were standard: the dholi is carried by particular people designated for the task but at various times outside devotees or other locals are allowed to take a turn, which is an honor. The dholi stops at certain designated places every year where it is worshiped and those coming with the dholi are usually welcomed and fed. The dholi also stops or slows down for devotees so that they can either have a quick puja done for them by the people traveling with the dholi or garland the dholi. Somewhat special to the Kedarnath dholi is that, in addition to the two Garhwali drummers who accompany the procession at every step, the 17th Garhwali Rifles military band also meets the dholi at the entrance to every town and play their bagpipes and drums as the enters and leaves the town. Someone told me that the Garhwali Rifles have had a special relationship with Kedarnath since they served in (and survived) Kargil. There was also a complement of journalists and photographers (Sahara, India Today, a group of friends working on a coffee table book about the Char Dham) but they mostly traveled in cars or motorcyles and rendez-vous'ed with the procession at key moments (which I must admit made me feel rather self righteous!).
The Kedarnath dholi resting in a private home on the second day of the procession. The image on the wall is of Ram Darbar (the court of the king / avatar Rama). The image (and a surrounding tent) was erected in preparation for the multi-recitation and expounding of a Purana sponsored by a particular family, known as a katha.
Villagers welcoming and worshiping the Kedarnath dholi in front of a Hanuman temple on the first day of the procession.
The Kedarnath dholi's last stop before arrival in Guptkashi proper.I was particularly attentive to several features of the procession. One, I was reflecting on how much I have learned in changed since I walked from Ukhimath to Kedarnath in April. So walking with the procession was like retracing a memory but with newer, more experienced eyes. This is of course more about me than the procession. :) Two, I was very attentive to the mood of those around me. It seemed to me that the overall mood was one of happiness and satisfaction -- the season has come and gone, we've made enough money to get through to next year, all is well. While there was of course a good deal of devotion to the traveling form of Kedarnath it seemed to me that what people were welcoming was not only a form of Shiva but also the tangible symbol of the (intact) prosperity of the region. Bhupendra agreed with me when we discussed it. Particular people (especially the Kedarnath pujari and various officials whose had just completed six months duty in Kedarnath) were also feeling hugely relieved that they had gotten through the season without anything untoward happening on their watch.
At the beginning of the season the Kedarnath dholi procession takes two nights and three days: first day Phata, second day Gaurikund, and third day Kedarnath. The distance is about 40 kilometers. At the end of the season the first night halt is in Rambara, the second Guptkashi, and then on the third day it reaches Ukhimath in the early afternoon. Guptkashi is really only about an hour's walk (or one "up-down") from Ukhimath so the last day the procession doesn't actually have that far to travel. And from the night before in Guptkashi one gets the feeling that the dholi has begun to arrive. In Guptkashi again I was particularly struck by how much has changed for me here. Now I am someone whom lots of people know. So Bhupendra and I stayed in a hotel managed by a friend of mine, I ate dinner with the army band, and in the morning was breakfasted by a Kedarnath tirth purohit friend who manages a lodge / pilgrim rest house in Kedarnath during the season. And as we started coming into Ukhimath the crowd swelled into the hundreds and friends were greeting me, school children were pointing and saying (oh yeah, that's that foreigner who lives here, etc...).
The actual entry of the Kedarnath dholi into the Omakareshvar temple area in Ukhimath was, relative to the Madmaheshvar processions and relative to the departure of the Kedarnath dholi at the beginning of the season, fairly restrained. There were crowds, and the Kedarnath pujari returned certain special items that had been in Kedarnath to the Rawal (Jagadguru Bhim Shankar Ling, one of the 5 Jagadgurus of the Virashaiva community of whose five most sacred places Kedarnath / Ukhimath are one) for safe-keeping and performed a puja at the Rawal's feet. The Rawal is also sometimes called "the form of Kedarnath that walks". But scarcely an hour later the crowds had disbanded and the temple courtyard was almost empty. I drank chai with some friends just outside the temple precinct and one of them pointed out to me that a special kind of Garhwali song was playing over the temple loudspeakers, a kuder geet. I don't know much about this type of song but it's on my list. The little that I do know suggests that as a genre these songs have an emotive and existential bent, but that's not confirmed.
After several hectic days of trying and succeeding in finding new accommodations within Ukhimath and trying unsuccessfully to get my internet connection fixed I left Ukhimath for a trip to Madmaheshvar and environs. This is another form of Shiva located at the head of another valley one valley to the east of the Kedarnath valley (they are separated by a valley in which one finds a famous goddess shrine, Kalimath, and another local form of Shiva called Rucya Mahadev). Madmaheshvar's logistics are similar to those of Kedarnath: for half the year worship is performed on site in Madmaheshvar and for half the year it is performed in Ukhimath. However, the arrival of Madmaheshvar into Ukhimath at the end of the season is a much bigger deal than the arrival of Kedarnath. It is also the occasion of the biggest (three days!) mela in the area, the Madmaheshvar Mela. I went to Madmaheshvar for several reasons. I wanted to get some comparative data on processions so that I could contextualize the Kedarnath procession and I also was hoping to record several more payeri geet. It was also a personal challenge on a physical level -- I wanted to prove to myself I could do it. As it turned out, the procession itself wasn't so strenuous with the exception of the first two hours of the first day in which we basically trotted 9kms down a very very steep path in about two hours (which made my thigh muscles very sore). Payeri are a particular kind of Garhwali song that are a subset of mangal geet (auspicious songs). Payeri seem to be sung when deities or sacred figures (such as sages or ancient heroes) are going somewhere (i.e. in a procession) and their content is usually a description of the deity's journey addressed to the deity (O Shiva, now you are coming into the village of Grija! O Shiva now they are doing your puja in Girija! Oh Shiva now you are leaving Girija, etc...) That is to say they seem to be songs of invocation, address, and movement.
The Madmaheshvar dholi in the midst of an extremely fast descent down the mountain on the the first day of the procession
Same descent, different angle.
The Madmaheshvar procession is different than the Kedarnath procession in several important ways. There is almost no media coverage and no Garhwali rifles. The procession in its present form is almost certainly older than the Kedarnath procession in its present form. There is a particular ritual in which a lamp belonging to each household of the village in which the dholi has stopped is lit in front of the dholi at the beginning of a puja. Then at the end of the puja these lamps are taken carefully, still burning, into the home. This is not done in the same intentionally collective fashion, or almost at all, with the Kedarnath dholi. More importantly, the entire mood of the procession and the participants in it is much more local, much more relaxed, and reflective of a both stronger and much less formal relationship with the deity. This is of course in spite of the "fact" that, as numerous people insistently remind me, both are forms of Shiva and so really there is no difference. The difference is one of place (sthan) or area (kshetra) rather than divine personality or aspect. That having been noted there are lots of differences. As I said, the environment is much more informal. This informality is reflected in less stringent adherence to timings, more joking, less propriety. This intimacy, the intimacy that people display with close relatives, is particularly evident in the way that the inhabitants of the villages closest to Madmaheshvar ( who also have traditional duties relating to the worship, conveyance, and protection of the deity and its procession) behave with the deity. The dholi itself behaves differently: it shakes from side to side (the Kedarnath dholi does not). It responds to requests and makes decisions about property divisions. There is a phenomenon called ghat pukarna in which someone goes before a deity and pours out their sorrows and asks the deity for help. This year this happened with the Madmaheshvar dholi and not with the Kedarnath dholi.
Lighted oil lamps and worship-trays ready for puja in front of the Madmaheshvar dholi in Rhansi.
The Madmaheshvar dholi getting ready to leave Girija.
The Madmaheshvar dholi comes into Fafanj village. The old women at the top of the image are singing payeri geet.
I spent total about 6 days in the Madmaheshvar valley, a wonderful trip marred only by a very depressing incident in which I thought I was a guest but was understood as a customer and after which ensued nastiness and a 6 hour period during which I almost headed straight to Delhi and got on a plane back to America. Excepting these six hours it was extraordinary. The Madmaheshvar procession takes three and a half days and spends the night in the following three villages: Gondar, Rhansi, and Girija. Then on the fourth day it proceeds to Ukhimath and arrives at about 3 in the afternoon. Greeting Madmaheshvar as it returns to Ukhimath, especially as one gets closer and closer to Ukhimath, is a far weightier affair than greeting Kedarnath (which is itself pretty weighty). But more people greet Madmaheshvar. The rituals are elaborate, the mood more devotional and more intense. Occasionally women will shriek and begin to sob when the dholi comes near: I've heard several explanations for this. Apparently (and it doesn't only happen with Madmaheshvar) this happens as a result of the combination of several factors : devotion, the recent or not so recent death of a family member, other life difficulties, and the possession of the weeper by the ghost of the family member who is for whatever reason not comfortably settled in the afterlife. This happened at least 6 times with the Madmaheshvar dholi (and is common) whereas with the Kedarnath dholi it happened only once and is, I would contend, much less frequent. Thousands of people assemble to meet the Madmaheshvar dholi several kilometers away from its ultimate destination. The Rawal himself doesn't wait to receive Madmaheshvar in Ukhimath but travels approximately 1 kilometer to the village of Mongoli to perform a puja for Madmaheshvar. When the dholi arrives into the Omakareshvar temple precinct the entire area is packed with at least 3-4 times the number of people there were for the Kedarnath dholi, in addition to the several more thousands of people hanging out in the nearby mela ground. The Madmaheshvar murtis (images of Madmaheshvar that are worshiped in the temple and travel with the dholi) were transferred to a larger dholi which then circumambulated the temple 11 times --- some people say always 11 and some say it depends on the year-- before finally entering the temple. The entire temple chakki (open space just in front of and below the temple) was decorated and covered by a large tent. The gradual dispersal of the crowd was much much slower because no one was going home but simply exiting the temple and joining the mela. Participating in the Madmaheshvar procession and mela was especially poignant for me as it marked my completion of a calendar year of relation with Garhwal, Ukhimath, and Kedarnath (even though I did make trips out). In November 2006 I participated in the last day of the Madmaheshvar procession as an almost total outsider, and here I was this time walking with my friends, recognizing and being recognized, being given chai and hand shakes. I understood much more (but by no means all) of what I was seeing and hearing. There was still a fair bit of staring but it was mixed with a good amount of recognition as well. The Madmaheshvar procession was the biggest index of how much I've changed in a year (that and the fact that I'm about 3-4 notches smaller on my belt!).
Since then I've been trying to tie off a couple of loose ends before heading down to Delhi and then London for my best friend's wedding and time at the British Library. Most importantly there is a song sung during the Kedarnath procession that I've been trying to understand and record. It is a song about a Garhwali hero and king named Jeetu Baguwal who once made a pilgrimage to Kedarnath. Further there are several important sites on the other side of the valley (where most of the pilgrimage priests are from) that I hadn't yet seen, namely Basukedar (reputedly where Shiva lived before coming to Kedarnath) and Phegu-Devi (the form of the goddess who is the village deity for a group of villages that are the original homes of many of the tirth purohit families). I've also being trying to lay the groundwork (it seems somewhat successfully) for access to some of the historical materials associated with the traditional rights of Kedarnath tirth purohits. These materials have been submitted as evidence in various lawsuits so getting access to them is a little tricky but looking at them will give me a better idea about the last several hundred years of history in the area.
So I'm now at a moment where I'm doing a lot of stock-taking, a lot of cheshbon nefesh ("soul-accounting"), both intellectually and existentially. The original plan for my dissertation was to look at what for the moment could be called the construction of experience in Kedarnath and in particular at what these experiences might express about Kedarnath as place, as divinity, and as fusion of place and divinity. I was going to do this by looking at the various building blocks of these experiences : stories, rituals, images, the physical experience of journeying to and living in Kedarnath, etc.... Much of my commitment to this set of research goals remains unchanged. However, different goals have begun to emerge as well. One is that, perhaps as an inevitable outgrowth of the fact that I've been doing this research while living mostly in Garhwal, I'm reflecting more and more on how to attend to the specificity of local attitudes and experiences of Garhwalis in Kedarnath. This is not the same as deciding that I'm going to focus solely on Kedarnath from a Garhwali point of view. Part of what interests me in Kedarnath is that it is a point of interaction between different sorts of people. I also am getting more and more interested in history, that is to say how things have come to be the way things are and how that history (and/or perceptions thereof) effects the present. But I'm not making this my main research task because it in itself would be a rather different task and require a lot of chasing after documents that are difficult to obtain and understand even for local experts.
This is also true at the local level. I've slowly come to realize over this course of this year that in the local scenario there are also several important and different groups who have a significant presence. Speaking generally they are the following :
1) the community of pilgrimage priests who are descended from a registered group of 360 families and who are MOSTLY located in the Kedar valley itself.
2) shop-owners, lodge owners, and horse and pony drivers many of whom are from the Ukhimath side of the valley (which according to some is also the beginning of the Madmaheshvar valley and not part of the Kedar valley). They often have a stronger devotional relationship to Madmaheshvar than Kedarnath.
3) Employees of the Badri-Kedar Temple Samiti (association). Everyone is jealous of them because they have permanent government employment for the rest of their lives. These employees might be from either group 1 or group 2 and in some cases come from even farther away. There are several members of this group who are from the Gopeshvar / Tungnath side, the area to the east of Ukhimath which officially belongs to the aspect of Shiva known as Tungnath rather than Madmaheshvar or Kedarnath. There are some posts in the Samiti that can only be filled by people from group #1, and the Samiti also gives wages to traditional rights holders for the performance of their duties, thereby converting them from rights holders whose authority stems from tradition to employees who perform a job for money.
A year ago at the beginning of all this I started in Ukhimath, which makes sense in some ways since Ukhimath is the winter seat of Kedarnath, the seat of the Rawal, and the base of operations for the Badri-Kedar Temple Committee. Bhupendra is also from Ukhimath. What I didn't know then was the group with perhaps the most presence and traditional relationship with Kedarnath, the Kedarnath pilgrimage priests, actually are based on the other side of the valley and have a somewhat different set of local traditions.
Interestingly enough, both Ukhimath-ites and pilgrimage priests are more cosmopolitan than the average Garhwali villager, but for different reasons. Pilgrimage priests tend to be more cosmopolitan because in Kedarnath their work brings them in contact with people from the rest of India (and foreigners) AND more importantly they usually spend 2-3 months every year traveling to various parts of India in which their patrons reside. Ukhimath residents are cosmopolitan in a different way. First, (in addition to those who work in Kedarnath and get that exposure) Ukhimath is a minor tourist destination in the area (though nothing compared to Kedarnath or Tungnath / Chopta) and so people get exposure to Bengalis and foreigners in their own homes. This means that (unlike with the pilgrimage priests) it isn't just men who are getting exposure to different sorts of people but the whole family. Second, because Ukhimath/Kedarnath is one of the 5 most sacred places in India for the Virashaiva community, Ukhimath is quite accustomed to welcoming groups of devotees from Maharasthra and Karnataka for Virashaiva related functions. Indeed, the population of the closest village to the Omkareshvar Temple in Ukhimath are almost all descendants of one sort or another of several former Rawals (who are required to be a special kind of Virashaiva to hold office). So in Ukhimath there is a sort of at-home cosmopolitan-ness that one doesn't find in smaller, more rural Garhwali villages in the area.
------
I'm now at a moment of transition and reflection. I'm away from Garhwal for about a month and will have about another 4-6 months there. Ukhimath has also become a home of sorts: I have work, a place to live, an established identity, and friends. I feel connected to the landscape in ways I don't fully understand. I've now been gone a week and already it has become for me the place to which I'm returning. Yet even as this has been happening I've also had to start planning my re-entry to my university (which will be sometime in the summer of 2008) and the considerable portion of my life that is in America, which I find daunting as it involves things like teaching courses, saying I will present at conferences, applying for grants, thinking about the submission of articles, etc... I feel as if I have come down out of the mountains and stepped off the train into a different phase of my life, and am still getting used to it. My plan upon return to Garhwal at the end of January is the following: to swoop through the information I've gathered and focus on particular bits (interviews, texts, images, moments, themes) that I think will be appropriate for the work of my dissertation. That is to say, I have to pick particular examples and details to discuss whose content will suggest the range and shape of experiences in Kedarnath. I will then focus on these examples and details and make sure that I have them complete correct and fully transcribed before returning to my university that lies on the other side of several big oceanic ponds from here. Also, I'm going to set aside a good deal of time for studying Garhwali (and a bit of Hindi), something that hasn't received enough of my time in the past year. I'd at the very least like to be functional for day to day stuff and have a grammatical picture of the language before returning to the states this time.
Other tasks of the moment include finding the love of my life and being in the same place as her (whoever she is and wherever that might be), continuing to lose weight and improve my fitness and self-discipline, and continuing to think through the the difficult question of whether my Jewishness has any nafka minah (practical difference and/or implications, a Talmudic term) for how I am conducting my life as an American in deep relation with India and Indian religions. Paltry tasks.
