Pilgrim's India by ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM

Author:ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353052553
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2018-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

‘You must stay with us,’ insisted the amiable, silver-haired, middleaged Pir Sayyed Pir Muhammad Shah Qadri Qalandar, after I had introduced myself. ‘This is a Sufi lodge,’ he said, as we warmed ourselves in front of the log-fire in the kitchen, ‘and here everyone is welcome. You can stay for as long as you like. Subramaniam Shastri is here if you need anything,’ he added, introducing me, to a man in his early fifties dressed like a sadhu in a white veshti and vest, a thin cotton towel draped over his shoulders. A visitor from Mumbai was waiting outside, said the Pir. ‘We will meet for dinner and then you can ask me all you want,’ he offered. ‘Till then you can speak with Shastri. He knows almost as much about this place as I do.’

‘Come closer to the fire or else you’ll freeze,’ said Shastri, stirring a pool of thick, steamy dal cooking in a massive iron cauldron, after the Pir had left. Seated on a quilt on the floor, warming my feet in front of the pile of burning logs, I felt refreshed. Shastri busied himself arranging large pots of grain and oil on the shelves, as he answered my queries. He was, he told me, a Brahmin by birth and one of the closest disciples of the Pir. He had retired as a clerk in a bank and had then taken diksha from a sadhu, a certain Sridharswamy of Wardahally. After spending some years with the sadhu, he was instructed to go to a dargah for further spiritual training and, as he put it, ‘to serve the followers of Dada, irrespective of caste and creed’.

‘My guru,’ he said, as he bundled himself next to me and adjusted the folds of his veshti, ‘once visited this shrine many years ago during Dada’s annual urs. He distributed money among the fakirs who had gathered there. They all took the money willingly, but one of them declined, saying that he relied only on God to feed him.’

‘Guruji,’ he added, shaking his head approvingly, ‘was so overwhelmed by the fakir’s total dependence on God that when he returned he ordered me to shift here, thinking that this was the ideal place for me. And that is how I am here. It is been almost four years now,’ he said with a chuckle that lit up his otherwise stern, wrinkled face. What did he think of the recent events at the dargah, I asked him hesitatingly, not knowing how he would react.

‘Don’t talk about it, my son,’ he answered, curling his eyebrows into a worried knot. ‘It is all politics. Do you think these VHP leaders are really religious? Doesn’t Dada belong to all? Doesn’t God lie in every heart?’

Dinner at the khanqah was a simple fare-—thick, spicy dal and mountains of boiled rice flavoured with freshly prepared coconut chutney. We seated ourselves in two rows along a long plastic sheet, with the Pir at the head. His disciple from Bombay, a Roman Catholic, sat opposite me, and the Qalandar from the bush sat at the far end, next to Shastri.

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