Pushkar and the Naked Gurus

Pushkar and The Naked Gurus
December 2015

 

Our hotel, where we stayed with the naked gurus

Having suffered through three days of Diwali, with its attendant tomfoolery of 'crackers' (aka bombs) being set off everywhere, all by young men, and many by children, who throw them in the streets - at cars, motorcycles, people and each other - we have been rewarded for our forbearance by being the only Westerners to witness the gala event of the visit of two naked Jain gurus.  This because we happened to be staying at the hotel where the event was taking place, and where the naked gurus stayed, just above us.  It was almost too exciting!

 

Preparations for the event started several days in advance.  At this point we had no idea what was going on.  First a back-hoe arrived and cleared several trucks full of construction rubbish (mostly old stones and bricks) from a lot just infront of our hotel's pool.  This took the better part of a day.  After half-smoothing the whole area (why do Indians never seem to complete tasks?), it left.  As it was going out the gate, a fellow who'd been intently watching the back-hoe's work (there are always at least as many people watching, directing, and supervising the ones who are actually doing the work) pointed to a rock that was sticking up.  The back hoe driver used his bucket to tear up the entire area - about 6' x 2', pulling up some sizeable rocks - and then drove off, leaving a much worse mess for someone else to deal with.  Typical.

 

At the same time, a couple of other guys were repainting the cement deck of the pool - a rich red.  We assumed all of this was routine maintenance, or perhaps that our hotel owner was thinking about building additional rooms at the bottom of his property.  

 

Our hotel owners

While all this was going on we were approached by the hotel owner and very politely asked if we wouldn't mind vacating the 'deluxe' room that we actually had not booked (we booked a 'standard' room) because all of the deluxe rooms were booked from that night forward.  No problem we said, we'd had three 'deluxe' nights at the 'standard' rate, so we moved down to the room right below ours, which apart from not having a mini-fridge and a flat screen tv (with nothing worth watching, just horror cum alien movies like King Kong, Godzilla - movies with appeal to 13 year old boys, the maturity level, if not the age, of most of the viewers) was a bigger and better room.  

After our big move we went off for a walk, and a decent breakfast, the 'included breakfast' here being no more than tea and a couple of pieces of thin white toast.  We returned to find that the entire lane leading from the street to our hotel - which serves other hotels and shops - had been cleaned up and covered with a thick layer of fresh sand.  We wondered who had done that and why.  Was all of this in anticipation of special guests for the famed Pushkar camel festival?  That seemed a bit of a stretch.

 

As we rounded the corner towards our hotel we saw several workers pounding tall posts into the ground on either side of the freshly sanded drive.  It appeared they were constructing a fence - a tall fence.  The hotel grounds were a hive of industry with workers - men and women - everywhere.  A stage had been constructed in the lot below the pool, and the entire area was being covered with purple carpets.  The path leading down to the lot, also freshly covered in sand, and a purple carpet, was festooned with red and white balloon arches.  

A long table had been set up on the pool deck, and several stainless steel tureens were already in place.  'Caterers' were beginning to set up an area for food prep - two older women sitting on the ground making chapatis, one guy cooking the chapatis over a charcoal fire and another cooking papadums in a great cauldron of hot oil. 

Women and children were busy within the hotel decking the building and the hallways with flowers.  The penny dropped - a wedding!  Of course, it must be a wedding.

When I saw our hotel owner I asked - are you preparing for a wedding?  'No' he said, 'our guru is visiting.  We're Jains - do you know Jains?'  'Yes', I said, 'I know Jains' (we'd been to Jain temples in India on a previous trip, so I was somewhat familiar with Jains).  'When is he coming?' I asked.  'Today - he is coming today at 5. The three hotels in this area are all owned by Jains, and are all involved in the celebration.'  

 

We went back into our room to do a little quick internet study, finding out that Jainism is an off-shoot of Hinduism, the Jains having decided that there were too many gods and too much hoo-ha associated with Hinduism (which to us Westerners seems a more than reasonable point of view).  The Jains espouse a simpler life, circumscribed by 'Right' beliefs, thoughts, and actions. There are two branches of Jainism.  In one branch the gurus take simplicity to the limit - they wear no clothes and (apparently) have no possessions other than a gourd and a peacock feather duster (a rather large one, with which they 'bless' people and things - and animals?).  

 

I ventured outside again to see what was going on.  Our hotel owner saw me and asked me to take photos of the hotel and post them on Trip Advisor (Trip Advisor is THE big website here - all of the businesses want to be recommended by Trip Advisor).  I agreed to take the photos and give them to him.  For the rest of the afternoon I was busy taking photos of the final preparations - the receiving room being set up in an upstairs room of the hotel, barren except for a wooden chair and dais, with a reverse swastika carved on its front side.  Flowers artfully arranged in patterns on the outdoor hallway to the room and on the staircase leading up to it.  

There were more preparations in the once-empty lot.  A 'wall' of colourful fabrics was being hung to enclose the area, and hide the less than lovely vacant lot on the other side.  Two white mock-marble (aka plastic) statues - an elephant and a peacock - were being carefully placed on the stage.  White leather-look couches and scores of red and stainless chairs were being lifted up and over the garden wall, the chairs then covered with gold fabric.  A blue carpet runner was being carefully laid over the wider purple carpet, running from the bottom of the property up past the pool, into the hotel's garden and right up to the stairs leading to what was now clear would be the guru's rooms. 

Workers were filling the trays and turreens on the buffet table.  Men were bringing in cases of bottled water.  The guys building the 'fence' on the path leading from the street to the hotel were almost done pounding posts.  Now great rolls of fabrics were being carried in - this would be a fabric-lined passageway.  

I wandered down to see what else might be going on.  There were more red and white balloon archways along the alley leading from the road to our hotel.  

And then people started arriving - women in beautiful saris, some men in suits, others in their usual shirts, jeans and sneakers (the women like beautiful flowers, then men more like the stems or the trunks).  I looked at my watch.  The guru should be arriving soon and they were still hanging fabrics down on the bottom lot.

Right at five, as I was down watching the progress on the stage, there was great drum and trumpet fanfare, and there he was, the naked guru, flanked by his followers, all clothed, marching along the red and blue carpet and through the balloon arches.  In fact there were two naked gurus, one much older than the other, and clearly 'number two'.  

The older guru, with his peacock fan

The gurus and their followers quick-marched up the path, through the garden and up the stairs to their receiving room.  Typical of India, an impossible number of followers streamed up the stairs after them and crowded into the room.  

Doug came up from having witnessed the gurus' arrival as they came up the street - in their silver - or at least silver-coloured - chariot.  It was drawn by two white horses, their fetlocks painted red and encircled with bracelets.  

He said the horses were in the best condition he'd seen yet in India (most of the animals we've seen - from cows to camels and horses - are pitifully thin and frequently diseased - or dead).

 

I climbed the stairs to the receiving room where our hotel owner again asked me to come in and take photos.  The guru was blessing a baby. He looked up at me.  I signalled to him to ask if it was okay for me to take a photo.  He nodded.  I took a photo.  The family then asked me to take another.  I took another.  The guru looked at me then and it seemed to me his spectacled eyes conveyed a sense of boredom.  I stayed a little longer and noted that as his followers came forward to pay homage his eyes were focused on a flat screen tv on the wall opposite where a montage of images of his face was playing.  He was drumming his fingers on his dais.  He appeared, if anything, impatient.  

 

Down by the pool people were starting to eat.  We sat on our little deck overlooking the garden to watch the proceedings.  We'd made ourselves a couple of ersatz mojitos (rum and limeca) and drank them surreptitiously, as in addition to being a no meat and no eggs town, Pushkar is a no alcohol town.  Although there weren't likely any other imbibers of alcohol at this event, we'd seen evidence of alcohol consumption in town, and were pretty sure, with the number of foreign tourists here, that alcohol must be served somewhere.  Anyway we kept our drinking discrete.  Our hotel owner came over and invited us to come and enjoy the feast.  So we ambled over to the pool deck and filled our plates with what was, not surprisingly, the best food we've had yet - all vegetarian of course.  For the first time here the various vegetable dishes tasted quite distinct from one another.  And the chapatis and papadum were super fresh, and ridiculously delicious.

 

Right after dinner the evening's ceremony started.  The two naked gurus came down from their room and were literally herded by their followers to the stage.  They sat on two special chairs - not quite thrones - behind a small raised platform and four white elephant statues.  A white-suited impresario sang and exhorted the crowd into a dancing, hand-raising, religious frenzy.  The gurus sat silently watching it all.  Kids went up on stage and danced, took photos and looked cute.  At one point candles were lit and a bevy of men pushed through the dancing women to mount the stage and pay homage to the gurus. 

 

As quickly as it had begun it ended.  The silent gurus were marched back to their rooms, the crowds left, and it was all over by 7 pm, and the night was serenely quiet.  I had the best sleep I've had in a while, perhaps due to the calming influence of knowing there were two naked men sleeping in the rooms above me....but more likely due to the ersatz mojitos.

 

This morning at 7:30 or so the guru's followers started arriving again, mounting the stairs to his rooms, presumably for 'private' meetings (nothing is actually 'private' in India - everything is attended, observed, eaves-dropped upon, by at least three or four others, and often dozens - it's amazing babies are conceived here - I often wonder how and when...).  

 

Younger of the two gurus, on the move to another hotel

At around 8:30 there seemed to be a little more excitement, and sure enough the main guru emerged, descended the stairs, and was marched through the fabric-lined path to another one of the three sisters hotels.  There we met with a young couple who spoke excellent English.  They were happy to provide us with a little more information on the guru, and Jainism.  We learned that there are 1600 Jain gurus.  The ones visiting now are from Ajmer.  The younger of the two became a guru in his late teens, and is now just under 40 years old.  He forsake his life and family for the life of a guru.  One attains guru-dom through learning.  Gurus eat just once a day, at 10 am.  They also drink only water, again once a day, at 10 am.  Their diet is restricted - of course no meat, fish, eggs.  But also no onions, garlic, and likely any food considered to be 'heating' (and therefore exciting, or stimulating) to the body.  Apparently the younger one walks around 15 kilometers a day, and does not ride in tuk-tuks or, we learned, in the horse-drawn chariot.  That was for the older guru and maybe some of his attendees.  The gurus also do not speak after 8 pm.  They mostly listen to the questions and concerns of their followers and, before 8 pm, provide advice about Right living - and praying.  So it would seem, compared to most of the people in India, that gurus have a relatively 'easy' life - one wonders what these gurus gave up (a life in the slums? on the streets?) in order to become gurus...

The two young people with whom we spoke confessed that while they are Jains, and do try to do daily meditation, they do not pay strict adherence to the dietary restrictions or the prescribed ten days of fasting that occur in September.  They said many of the 'elders' (as in their parents and grandparents) do, but the younger generation not so much.  This would appear to be the way of many, indeed most, religions.  If religion is 'the opiate of the masses' and finds its strongest adherents among the illiterate and uneducated, then it is hardly surprising, as the internet and widespread ownership of computers and cell phones, that the new age of instant communication is opening up the eyes, ears and minds of those same masses, and many religions are losing their hold.

 

When we left our hotel the gurus were back on stage, and the younger guru was holding forth - he can speak! - presumably about prayer, mediation and Right beliefs, attitudes and life.  We waved good-bye and thanks - for the memories and, more importantly, for the carpet-lined path that made rolling our suitcases to the street a heck of a lot easier!

Now at our new hotel the young owner has informed us that the hosts of the gurus have provided them with 'a very generous gift' (presumably money) for assisting with the festivities (but didn't say how).  In a way there is little difference between gambling and religion - both impose taxes on the poor, those who can least afford it, and have followers who are addicted to the teachings, attitudes and ceremonies associated with the practice of their chosen system of belief.  The big difference is that although the gamblers can eat and drink what they like, they have little to no hope of salvation or trips to paradise on the wings of angels.