The people of Bodh Gaya

We decided that our spiritual journey through India could not be complete until we visited Bodh Gaya, the little berg where Siddhartha attained enlightenment some 2550 years ago. I would like to introduce you to some of the people we encountered while there.

The Gollum:

Within one block of our horrendously mosquito infested guest house we caught a hanger-oner. He was a scruffy man with mussed up hair and pale eyes and a bright teal windbreaker that puffed out his little frame. I made the mistake of smiling at him when our eyes met and like a little barnacle he was along for the ride.

“Where are you going? Brothers?”

We told him in the least committal way possible that we were going to catch a bus northward to Kathmandu and find some food, then we put our heads down and sought refuge in a little Tibetan restaurant. He was waiting for us out front after our meal and tried to coax us down the road to the bus stands. We didn’t really respond to his questions which sounded more like the whimpers of a child seeking attention than a full grown man. “Oh you must see this, my brothers, and then you should see this, my brothers”.

He kept trying to be our guide through the town despite our best efforts to lose him with lack of interest and ceaseless meandering. We walked up to the main square with him 5 paces ahead, looking back every few steps to assure us that he knew the way. The whole town is no more than 2 kilometers by 1 kilometer and getting lost on the main roads would be impossible. We needed no guide, but still he lingered, my brothers, my brothers. It wasn’t until we left the main temple after some 4 or 5 hours of peaceful introspection that we, upon realizing that he was still waiting for us, told him firmly that we didn’t want a guide and he needed to bug off. He did.

The Baba:

The main temple, Mahabodhi Temple, which sits on the grounds where the Buddha had been for 7 weeks, was the epicenter of the town. I sat and just soaked it all in for a couple hours. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was built around 250 B.C. and it’s huge, towering over 50 meters high. The restoration/preservation work is remarkable and the presence of devoted Buddhists repeatedly prostrating towards it from all sides generates an amazing energy.

I walked around the perimeter of the building and found the Bodhi tree nestled on the far side, its branches spidering out in every direction. This tree was a sapling grown from a tree in Sri Lanka, which was a sapling grown from the original Bodhi tree that the Buddha gazed at, unblinking, for a week. I sat in the shade that it provided and studied the faces of the meditating monks all around me. A sense of complete tranquility washed over me and I could feel the pulse of the place reverberating through my body. I sat in peace and reflected on other holy moments I have experienced: the rising of the hunter’s moon at the ranch and Philip Glass echoing through the redwood forests of California and the many scattered instances where existence has clicked briefly into focus. I was planted firmly in the present moment surrounded by an infinite expanse of potential times and spaces in every direction. It felt like the center of it all, here under this fig tree, in the southern part of the Indian state of Bihar, in the year 2008, inside my own body and mind.

I began to walk in slow thoughtful circles around the temple grounds, breathing deeply, when I caught the eyes of a man about my age feeding biscuits to the mangy dogs here and there. He took up stride next to me and asked me where I was from. -Texas. I was not in the mood for conversation, but he went into an endless tirade of words. He would ask me some lofty question, pause to catch his breath, and then continue the stream of consciousness flow before I could think to respond.

He claimed to be a leader and a listener and with wild-eyes exclaimed, “I am not a follower, never a follower, i don’t believe in religions, i want to be a destroyer of religions, here, look, i wear every sign of faith around my neck, every faith. Are you spiritual?” He was dangling his many chains in my face sporting crosses, stars of David, the pentagram, the Hindi swastika, the lotus blossom, the yin-yang, you name it, he had covered just about everything.

All the while the words hit my ears, some sticking briefly before being swept away by the next 15 in rapid-fire succession. Something about a girlfriend from Texas who gave him the fancy cell phone he periodically checked. A couple days later in a cafe, he joined us at our table, uninvited, and proudly proclaimed after a few minutes of sporadic thoughts, that he had never once kissed a girl. He was 24 and he had plenty of chances to. “I’ve had beautiful girls sitting before me completely naked, but I just ran away.”

I didn’t trust his ideas. He told me that India was beautiful, but the people of India were not because they were not trustworthy (he was of course an Indian himself). The many many many beautiful, caring Indians I have come across disproved that ugly generalization. He didn’t believe in science and wanted to destroy it too, but that didn’t stop him from explaining karma with “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” or carrying around a huge tome of science fiction stories, which he even read passages from later that day to make some point to Jacob, who was cornered in his serene solitude.

He is faithful only to humanity, or I guess you would call it Humanity because he embraces it with the excited energy of a religious zealot. There needs to be a revolution, in his opinion, to flush religions and dogmas from the Earth and he fully intends to be the catalyst, rendering all the chains around his neck meaningless.

Sandeep:

The children of Bodh Gaya are different from every kid I’ve met here in India (save the brilliant little Sikh at the Golden Temple) in that they want conversation, not cash. We were walking through the market square again, when a couple 14 year old boys ambled up to us.

-What’s up?

-Just crusin’ kid-o.

-Cool, cool. Where are you from?

They had loads of questions for us: where had we been, where were we going next, what did we think of Bodh Gaya, India, America. We were hungry so they took us to a little hole in the wall restaurant near the Tibetan refugee markets with cheap food in heaping portions. They hung around the market while we ate and then told us about their school and their hobbies as they led us along some back road back to our guest house. We promised to play some American football with them the next day and they asked us if we wanted to see their office and meet their Vice-principal, as it was on the way back to our hotel.

The office was a room on the ground floor of a mixed-use building and housed a couple desks, a computer, and Sandeep. He was exactly the kind of person I was hoping to meet in India. 22, smart, passionate about his life and trying with all his might to make a difference in his community. I got excited just watching the excitement well up on his face when he explained the various programs he was involved with and I thought for the first time here: “this could be me”. He was working with the school and with a micro-finance program called Women Helping Women as well as serving as the acting administrator for the Root Program in Bodh Gaya.

His eyes would dance when he talked about the future, optimistic in the face of some of the most daunting and deeply entrenched problems I can fathom: abject poverty, mounting debts, and lack of any significant educational infrastructure in India. He proudly showed us photos of the people he was working with and the group’s website and he urged me to help spread the word to solicit volunteers, money, and ideas to help him conquer these herculean tasks. We exchanged information and I promised to keep in touch. There were now 6 kids walking us back to our guest house and we again promised to meet them all the next day.

The Students:

I was completely prepared to have my ass kicked on the soccer field. I have never been know to be a soccer player and years of a relatively lax exercise regiment has allowed my stamina for running to drop to pathetic lows. I am also wearing my hiking boots, the only shoes I’ve brought for the trip, so I am clumsily clomping about trying to avoid stepping on the bare feet of the kids. But lo, I am just starting to get into the game when they all start to drop out of it, exhausted.

Tired and bored with the 20 minute outburst of gaming, we set out to meander the streets. The kids are busy leading us to shops of interest and chatting up a storm and imploring us not to forget them when one, Zishan, asks me point blank if I will buy them an English dictionary to help them in their studies. He leads me up to the shop and the tubby fellow behind the counter produces a dusty hardback. 800 rupees. 20 bucks. The cover is tearing away from the binding a bit, but the kids are adamant. Zishan looks me straight in the eyes and tells me that this will help all 20+ kids in his class and their families and the next wave of students, and I can tell he is being honest.

I begin the haggling that I have now perfected, and manage to convince the tubby book-pusher that for 800 rupees we should get the book, some tape to mend the spine, and some notebooks. Zishan picks up the book and marvels at its weight. It makes it all the way around the circle of hands before Kara runs it home to protect it from the elements. Zishan invites Jacob and I to come to his home that evening for some dinner and conversation.

At 7 we are led by Hassan and Ranjan back through narrow alleyways between rooms stacked upon rooms stacked upon rooms. It is like a labyrinth and we lose our bearings straightaway. Zishan lives in a part of a rental house and we are greeted at the door by three of the cutest kids imaginable who are thrilled to have such esteemed company in their house. It becomes a playful fight for our attention and when Jacob pulled out his camera they squealed with delight and began to pose and posture, then run to see the result, then step back for another go.

It’s getting late and the kids are bouncing off the walls. Zeshan says we should head over to Hassan’s house so we can escape their yelps and laughter. Back in the little maze, we weave our way deeper into housing web. Hassan’s parents are out front by the little hearth nestled in between brick walls. We go into his room which he shares with his brother. It is small, but filled to the brim with little treasures, all of which we are shown in a crudely formal procession. The English-Hindi translation book, the soccer ball from earlier today, school notebooks full of carefully formed words, the broken stereo on loan from a friend, and finally some artwork which Hassan had created.

I flip from flowers, to mandalas, to landscapes, to washes of fading colors, but settle on a picture of some trees with a man from the village standing before them and a little house. It is striking and I think it would make the perfect cover illustration for some 1970’s collection of existentialist essays. I love it and Hassan says I can have it if I would like. I make him sign it, just like my mom made me sign every piece of artwork I’ve made (“All great artists sign their work.”), and then carefully set it aside.

We dine on delicious roti and potato curry made fresh over the fire outside. All the parents of these kids are farmers and struggle to survive off the land. They speak no English and don’t aspired to learn it. These kids we’ve met are an exciting new development in the India of today; they are educated and they plan on studying hard to continue their studies at universities around the country.

On the way back to our guest house Zishan and the rest of the crew ask us again and again to be sure that we stay in touch via email and never forget them. I ask Zishan how his family can afford to send him to his school and he says that he is sponsored by a family. They all are, except Ranjan, who has been stuck in the menial local school with the kids that don’t really have plans for a future outside of Bodh Gaya.

I wished I was wealthy as I offered the only help I could think of: “I’ll talk about you guys to my friends and family back home and see if anyone wants to help out, buddy.” (that said, if anyone is interested please let me know, it is something on the order of $30 or $40 a month) We parted ways and agreed to meet them again as we were on our way out of town. I put my artwork in a safe place and prepared for the next part of our evening.

The Russian:

We had met him on the train from Varanasi and he shared a rickshaw with us to Bodh Gaya from Gaya proper. We settled on the same guest house and kept bumping into him throughout our stay, coming to places as he was leaving or vice versa. We decided that we needed to get together for some drinks on our last night before parting ways for good. He was off to Calcutta and we were going up into Nepal, but we wanted to let our brief time together have a moment to crystallize. We could tell were were cut from the same cloth.

The language barrier was enormous and conversations always stalled out and ended up in crazy pantomimes to explain our stories. We had some Indian rum and choked it down with Indian soda (thums-up, bottled by Coca-cola of course) before hitting the streets of Bodh Gaya. Right when we got downstairs the power went out and we had to convince the guest house owner to unlock the gate and give us 30 minutes to roam the streets.

It was pitch black and we stood for a while in the nothingness to let our pupils dilate. The rooftops slowly came into view and the muddy road up to town. The place was completely dead. Every shop was closed and there was not a soul to be seen anywhere, just scavenging dogs rooting through piles of trash. Then, right as we passed in front of the entrance to the Mahabodhi temple the power clicked back on and all the lights along the path came alive.

We found a cozy, strange looking arc of lamps at the top of a little semi-circular set of steps and decided to sit and soak it up. “Stranne mesto,” said the Russian to himself, “stranne mesto.” There was a moment of silence before I asked what it meant. “Strange place, this is a strange place.” I agreed and practiced saying the phrase to myself to save it for later.

There was a dog that materialized out of nothing, hovering behind us and it began to whimper. Then there was a scraping sound moving down the path towards us getting louder in short bursts. We all stood up, a little uneasy. There were scores of dogs watching something with the greatest excitement and through the darkness came a kid dragging a crate of filth behind him and leaving a slimy trail of goo in his wake. Further behind him two other people were slowly loping along and as the kid reached the top of the steps the Russian gave him a cigarette. He beamed back at his confused looking followers and then after several awkward moments we set off back to the guest house through the pack of dogs. Stranne mesto.

When we got back Jacob and I went up to the roof to get a good view of the night and the Russian retired. It was blissful up top looking across our soccer field lit in an incandescent yellow. And beyond it, peeking over the treetops, was the temple. It looked fake, an illustration of some ancient past. I watched the moon and the stars and the clouds slowly drifting by and then my gaze returned to the temple. I felt not like I was traveling, but living. I am alive and I am doing exactly what I want to be doing…and it feels great.