The Cauliflower, page 7
“It’s both sweet and sour,
Made with lemons, and it fizzes.
Bring some next time, please.”
Ah. Lemonade. The Paramahamsa wants lemonade.
Spring 1857, at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple (six miles north of Calcutta)
Uncle says it is almost impossible to eliminate the ego completely. He is very fond of using the example of a bowl which has been used for the purpose of storing chopped onions. Even when all of the onions have been removed, Uncle says, no matter how carefully you clean out that bowl, some trace of the smell will always remain. The ego is like that. You think it is gone but something always stays behind. A slight smell or a taint. And it will pop up and startle you when you least expect it to.
Of course, extremely holy men, after years of intense austerity and renunciation, can sometimes reach a state which we Hindus call nirvikalpa samadhi. If, during a divine vision, you finally get to see Brahman—or God—face-to-face, then your body will not manage to survive the experience. After only a short while you will be dead. It is as though the ego is burned away by the light of God and then the body shrivels up like an empty seed pod. Spiritual pursuits are very good for your soul, but they can certainly be harmful to your health.
Look at Uncle. Who can deny that Uncle is blessed? That he is special? Uncle can bring such joy to people. He is full of love. There is an intensity and an honesty and a childlike innocence. There is an intoxicating attraction. I have heard people call it a charisma. Uncle could live a charmed life. And all the Chatterjees and the Mukherjees could live this life right alongside Uncle. But there is a perversity in Uncle. And this is his longing for God, which is almost like a sickness. It is very nearly a madness.
Just one year after the inauguration of the Kali Temple Uncle’s beloved brother, Ramkumar, tragically passed away. Thank God I was here with Uncle to offer him support through this difficult time. How would he have managed otherwise? Ramkumar was Uncle’s rock. He was one of the few people to whom Uncle showed any deference. So then, when Ramkumar died, Uncle lost all hope. Uncle’s world turned black. He felt such bleakness—such a disaffection with all worldly interests and pursuits, as if there was nothing of any value left for him on this whole, broad earth. Poor Uncle suffered most dreadfully.
Before his early death, Ramkumar had been involved in many conversations with the Rani’s son-in-law, Mathur Baba, on the subject of Uncle. Mathur Baba had noticed Uncle around the place and had been charmed and captivated by his obviously spiritual nature. It is hard not to be struck by Uncle’s natural intelligence and his simplicity and his deep sincerity. Uncle has a kind of perfection. How might one possibly hope to explain it? It is simply his very essence.
Ramkumar had slowly persuaded Uncle over many months (inch by gradual inch) to help him with the Kali worship. But the rituals of Kali worship are very onerous and complicated. So Ramkumar made Uncle receive some formal training from an experienced guru. Uncle raised no particular objection to this process. And things went ahead swimmingly, or so it seemed, until during the initiation ritual the guru leaned forward and whispered Kali’s holy mantram into Uncle’s ear and Uncle unleashed a most dreadful cry—a cry so loud and so terrible as to strike pity and fear into the very hardest of human hearts—and then fell into an impenetrable trance. We were all greatly perplexed. What new mischief was this? But after a short while Ramkumar just slowly shook his head and laughed. Because when did dear Uncle ever do anything by halves?
At around this time an upsetting incident took place at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple. One afternoon, after worship, the head priest in the Radhakanta Temple slipped while carrying the image of Krishna, and Krishna’s foot was broken in the fall. The priest was promptly dismissed. Damage to an image is considered highly inauspicious. It might attract very bad luck. And this image was one to which the Rani was especially attached. There was much debate about what to do next. Many pandits suggested that the Rani retire the image and replace it with another. But the Rani was very fond of the image and this thought distressed her. One day Mathur Baba approached Uncle and asked him his opinion on the matter. Of course, Uncle—young and insignificant as he then was—took this question in his stride. Nothing intimidates Uncle! He merely thought hard for a second and then he said, “If the Rani’s son-in-law fell down and broke his foot, would the Rani then abandon him? Of course not. She would carefully tend to him until he was recovered. The Rani should treat the image of Krishna with the same level of compassion. She should fix the image and then return it to the temple.”
You may remember that Uncle had a great talent from his childhood with clay and sculpture. He volunteered to fix the image himself, using clay from the banks of the holy Ganga, and he did so with considerable skill.
The Rani was delighted. Uncle had effortlessly solved all of her problems. One cannot deny that Uncle had much spiritual authority for one still so young. Nobody could ignore it. And so both Mathur Baba and the Rani felt that Uncle should be persuaded to take a more active role in the life of the temple thereafter. Mathur Baba asked Ramkumar if Uncle might now be willing to act as priest in the Radhakanta Temple. Uncle accepted the offer (after much huffing and puffing) only because the burden of worship was not too heavy there. Alas, Ramkumar’s health soon began to decline, until it became increasingly difficult for him to continue in the demanding worship of Ma Kali. Mathur Baba and Ramkumar decided that the best thing would naturally be for Uncle to now move to the main temple and for Ramkumar to take on Uncle’s lighter duties.
Well you might think that Uncle would be delighted by this unexpected promotion. But quite the opposite! Uncle was horrified. He had no desire to spend his time tied to the routines of the Kali worship. Uncle was a free spirit. He could not be expected to conform to certain traditional ways of doing things. And he did not want the responsibility of looking after the Goddess’s expensive jewelry, either. Uncle had a terror of such things.
Even though Mathur Baba (a powerful and influential man) showed Uncle (a poor village boy of no formal education) so much favor and deference in offering him this promotion, Uncle responded to these great kindnesses by claiming that he lacked the knowledge of the scriptures needed for such an exalted role, and when Mathur Baba insisted that this was of no importance (Uncle’s spiritual qualities were of far more significance than mere book learning, he said), Uncle commenced avoiding Mathur Baba like the plague! If Uncle caught so much as a whiff of Mathur Baba in the vicinity he would instantly scurry off. You can only imagine how much consternation this caused both myself and Ramkumar! Uncle is extremely perverse! It was only when I myself promised to assist Uncle in all of his duties and to take full responsibility for the jewelry and precious items in the Kali Temple that Uncle was finally persuaded to relent.
Uncle is perfectly unmanageable! Who might compel him into anything? A wild stallion may be tamed, but who may tame Uncle?
Ah. Even as I ask this question I am quietly prompted with a response: Ma Kali, that is who. It is Ma Kali who will tame Uncle. And yet Uncle’s gradually developing devotion to the Goddess would express itself in yet still more displays of shocking perversity! Oh the trials Uncle would put us all through! The shame and the confusion and the heartbreak! Who can understand Uncle? Not I. Uncle is truly beyond my comprehension. But I love Uncle more than the very breath that fills my lungs. Even though I doubt him and I doubt him and I doubt him. Even so. I love him.
Twelve attempted answers to the twelve slightly impertinent questions about Ma Kali
1. The main monotheistic faiths cleave to the idea that there is one God, who is good. All evil comes from another place, a different place. In the Christian tradition, this place is the Devil. Muslims call him Shaitan. But the Hindus yearn to transcend what they call the “pair of opposites,” e.g., good/bad, love/hate, attraction/repulsion. They believe that it is necessary to do this if you are to journey beyond the limited world of the ego and its attachments, beyond the cage of relativism. To the Hindu, God is beyond “opposites,” beyond good and evil. Often the example of fire is used to illustrate this idea. We use fire to warm ourselves and to cook, but fire may also hurt us and destroy our homes. So fire transcends good and bad. The human mind, the ego, will call fire good or bad according to the context. But fire is neither good nor bad. It is simply fire. And it burns.
2. Kali is a creative, dynamic, destructive force who is both good and bad. She is Dakshina Kali (the loving Kali who grants boons and blessings) and she is Smashan Kali (the terrible, terrifying form, who destroys). Smashan Kali is traditionally worshipped in cremation grounds. These are places of ash and decay, burned bones, bad smells, and jackals.
In the west it could be argued that we sublimate this special “spiritual mood” into our phases of simmering teenage angst, or when we read books about vampires and ghosts, or watch horror films, or when we dye our hair black and become goths and listen to Joy Division or Marilyn Manson. When we celebrate Halloween, even. It’s the same fundamental impulse, and a curious irony, too, that a sense of comfort/release is sometimes felt when we actively go out of our way to embrace the sweet and sticky black treacle of darkness.
Kali’s famous cremation ground is a location in which it is suddenly rather easy to renounce the body and the ego (a bleak and despairing place—how can we possibly evade the truth of death and decomposition here?), but it is also, and equally importantly, a place where we may master something even more powerful than our ego (or our attraction to life and the living), and that’s our deep-seated fears and aversions. Our aversions are even more difficult to eliminate and overcome than our natural human weakness for cheap thrills and attractions. A true saint feels neither attraction nor repulsion nor fear.
3. People happily and readily love Kali in both of her main forms (in fact, she has countless forms—there is a custom-built Kali for all occasions) because even though she may appear to both bless us/nourish us and kill us/destroy us, she actually does neither. Our world is just a kind of transitory dream, an illusion. We exist on a relative plane. The Hindus call this earthly realm maya. And what takes place here is only divine play—a game. Life and death are inconsequential. To move beyond maya you must consciously stop playing the game; then Kali may spare you and free your soul to unite with God, with Brahman, who is the ultimate reality, in a place and state of incontrovertible truth and infinite bliss.
Life is illusion. It is maya. Kali is the puppet master. We are the puppets. She may stoop and cut our strings if she feels the sudden impulse. But take nothing for granted here. She is perplexingly coquettish and a creature of strange whims.
4. Kali spits out her tongue not as a gesture of defiance, but as an expression of embarrassment or coyness because she has (during the course of an orgy of vengeance and destruction) accidentally stepped onto the prostrate body of her beloved husband, Shiva (Shiva, who is not dead, just deathly pale and smeared in the white ash of renunciation, has lain in front of his wife to try and curtail her inexhaustible wrath). Kali is fierce, but confused. On a purely symbolic level, Kali’s tongue is red and represents rajas, or activity, but this tongue is held between her white teeth, and white is the color of sattva, or purity and spirituality. Her passion is restrained by purity, or, in other words, by God.
5. The fifty skulls that Ma Kali wears around her neck represent the fifty letters of the ancient Sanskrit alphabet. Kali creates worlds and she creates words. The ancient concept of the Logos is contained here and originates here (long before Saint John thought of it or wrote about it in his exquisite gospel), nestled in the musky bosom of the Black Mother.
6. Kali’s name comes from the word kala, or “time.” Time consumes everything. Kali is black because she is time, and she has destroyed everything. She is a giant vacuum, an endless, dark void. She is inscrutable. The ignorant devotee can only really see her from a distance. She is similar to the night sky. Draw up close and (like God, or Brahman, who is ultimately formless) she will simply disappear.
*poof!*
7. Kali’s hair is in disarray because she is wild. She is an all-singing, dervish-dancing, ecstatically stomping, bloody-sword-wielding Beyoncé Knowles. She sings to her own crazy tune. She is utterly unfettered. She is fearless. She is free.
8. Kali’s priests at the temple may dress her image in priceless saris and cover her with precious scents and expensive jewelry—this is how they honor her, it is all a part of their divine service—but Kali herself may never be dressed. She may never be curtailed. Can you dress a storm? Can you bejewel the wind? For this reason Kali is called Digambari: she who is naked.
9. Kali cannot exist without Shiva, her husband, but Shiva (who, as he lies flat and pale at her feet, represents the blinding light of infinite consciousness) cannot manifest his destructive power without his wife, Kali. Creation and destruction are an endless cycle. One cannot exist without the other. They are two opposites, eternally conjoined. This is an eternal love affair.
10. The girdle of arms around Kali’s waist represents work or action. The arms symbolize her creative energy. They also represent—at some level—the pointlessness of all human endeavor. Everything we build will ultimately be destroyed. Nothing we do may last forever.
11. Kali provides a source of delirious bliss to her devotees (Kali herself reels about drunkenly, high on this blissful intoxication, but also, perhaps, on blood lust after slaughtering copious demons) through the physical mechanism of what Hindus call the kundalini. Kali’s energy is sourced at the base of the human spine. It extends down to a point just below the anus and then rises up to the crown of the head, traveling through the heart, the base of the throat, and the point between your eyes, at the top of your nose, en route. Her power writhes and vibrates like a snake through this channel. But it is a dangerous, overwhelming, and ecstatic energy to release, and very difficult to control once you have. Play with it at your peril, girls and boys.
12. Illustrious Ma Kali, Mother of the Universe, your blissful power, it seems, is infinite. But how may our pens hope to describe this infinity without promptly running out of ink? How may your great bliss be expressed by our mean and paltry descriptions of it? How may the dreadful fire of your ecstasy be controlled within our fleshy torsos? How, how, how may the creatress of all words (of language) be clumsily manacled by their petty meanings?
How indeed?
Sri Ramakrishna on Truth:
“Always speak the truth—
The tusks of an elephant
Can’t be retracted.”
Winter 1857, at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple (six miles north of Calcutta)
Uncle has gone completely mad. And who am I? Who is Hridayram Mukhopadhyay—still so young and strong and full of promise, tall and handsome, once his dear mother’s greatest hope. Who is he? Yes! The servant of a madman! And is not the servant of a madman a madman also? Ah! How can this stain not stick?
I am Uncle’s shadow, his keeper, his watchman, his guard. I am tied to Uncle by the clinging vines of love. And I live in a state of dreadful doubt and confusion. I live in profound uncertainty. I am sick with worry and anxiety. Not unlike poor Uncle himself.
Poor Uncle hardly sleeps! I carry his towel and water pot to the pine grove at 3:00 a.m. when Uncle answers the call of nature. I say nothing. I am fearful. And then on to the ghat, where Uncle washes himself. I say nothing. I am fearful. And then he sits and I carefully smear his emaciated body with oil. Still saying nothing. Still fearful.
But this is a good day. On a bad day Uncle will not clean himself. Uncle will roll in the dirt on the banks of the Ganga, hour after hour, howling and weeping. He has a tantrum. He calls for Ma Kali like a child bleating for its mother. He cries with such yearning that the crowds form around him. “Isn’t this the young temple priest?” they ask. “Has his mother just died?”
What can I say? How do I explain to them? Uncle suffers so dreadfully. Because Uncle has such a longing to see the Mother, and she will not appear to him. Ma Kali eludes Uncle. Uncle’s charms will not work on her. And Uncle cannot stand it.
He spends all his days in prayer and in worship and in japa. He will not eat. Like an angry child, a spoiled child, Uncle is fractious. He will not rest. He grinds his teeth. He whimpers and wrings his hands.
And I am fractious, too. I must guard Uncle. At night—if I close my eyes for just a second—he disappears, and I must then go out and find him. Where is he? Where has Uncle gone? Uncle? Where are you? Uncle! Uncle! Come back!
Oh why, oh why must Uncle play such games?
I am so tired. I am worn down with Uncle. I must cover for him at the Temple, but every moment as I perform the arati—as I wave burning camphor before Ma Kali or offer her choice morsels of food—I am thinking only of Uncle. Where is he? What might Uncle be doing? What scandal might now be unfolding while I, Hriday, faithful Hridayram, am not there to extinguish the flames?
Uncle has taken to wandering alone in the jungle at night. His bare feet sliced and pricked by spiky plants. Surrounded by a halo of biting insects. Stalked by wild animals. I am too afraid to follow him there. It’s as though Uncle is in a trance. He is lovelorn. Since Ramkumar died Uncle cares for nothing but God. But God eludes him. So Uncle yearns. Uncle is hungry for God. He thirsts for God’s nipple. His chapped lips open and close, but often now he is too tired to wail.
Uncle is so thin. He cannot eat. He cannot keep his wearing cloth upon him. It falls off. He does not care. He walks around naked, his chest stained a dark red. I do not know why. And the wind! Uncle has dreadful wind! Uncle is flatulent! Whenever he does appear at the temple—filthy, like a madman—he dances and sings (the strangest songs! the wildest dances!) before Ma Kali and he flatulates with every step. The temple administrators are astonished by Uncle’s displays. And the visitors. The pilgrims. They ask, “Who is this lunatic! What is he doing here?” They stare at him in revulsion and horror and fear. It is dreadful! And I am with Uncle. I am Uncle’s nephew. They laugh at me behind my back. I hear them! I hear them laughing! But never to my face. I am tall and strong. I will defend our honor even through all of my crippling doubt. I will defend Uncle’s honor with my life. Or else my fists. But what am I defending? What has Uncle left us with?
