Arriving at Gosaba for Village Festival
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2007
1
33
45
Trip End
Mar 10, 2008
Kolkata (Calcutta),
West Bengal,
India
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Lokenath Divine Life Mission operates 100 Women's Microcredit Self Help Groups here that are transforming villager's lives, as well as Farmers Clubs that teach organic farming. The SHGs put on an annual festival and cultural celebration when Baba Shuddhaanandaa comes to visit each February, and their's has become the favorite festival in the region over the years.
As our boat approaches land, we are greeted by a small gathering of men led by Kripa Sindudas, a school headmaster and teacher who is revered throughout Gosaba. Kripa worked relentlessly for 2 years convincing the locals, who were extremely cynical and resistant to anything new at the time, to form the Mission's first Self Help Groups in the area.
We are led along a typical, brick path on a elevated mud walkway for about 5 minutes before we arrive at a compound of pristine, very high quality, traditional mud cottages with real, wooden framed windows. The buildings are surrounded by lush flower gardens and clean ponds. Sweet, elegantly detailed bamboo fences line the walkways between the buildings and flower beds, which are blooming with marigolds and dahlias.
People line the gateway. They are sounding conch shells, women are ululating, drums are beating, amid chants of "Jai Baba Lokenath". A group of women with a puja tray (a puja is a ritual prayer offering of fruit, flowers, incense, lit candles or oil lamps, milk or water, and money). They apply flowers with sandalwood paste to Baba's forehead and pranam devoutly to him, tossing flower petals on top of his head.
No one mentioned to me ahead of time where we were coming here first. I finally see a sign telling me we are at The Tiger Conservation Centre. The center took 6 years to build. We pass a lovely covered bamboo, outside eating area (about 60'x40') as we are led to the director's office. The director explains his work to Baba. A former poacher himself, he now educates the increasing numbers of eco-tourists visiting the Tiger Forest and locals about the importance of protecting the tigers, other wildlife, and indigenous plants.
We are garlanded, given a beautiful small bouquet of flowers, then escorted around to see the spotless, nicely furnished guest cottages. Baba formally signs the guestbook in the eating area as the ever increasing crowd looks on. Then we depart in a procession on a 2km hike to the Lokenath Temple that the SHGs have built.
The crowd keeps growing as we walk along, stretching as far ahead and behind me as I can see. A young girl holds my left arm, another holds my right arm, while others rush up beside us looking me in eye, beaming smiles. Other girls carry my water and my bag. My on-arm escorts warn me when the path is rutted, when to avoid piles of cow dung. They catch me as I stumble and pull a tendon in my heel. I realize I really need their support and mentally promote them to guardian angel status, since my feet are constantly trying to slip out of my sandals on the uneven brick.
Women and children of all ages make their way through the crowd to get a look at Baba. When they can't reach Baba, who is far ahead, they settle for me.
The sun is glaring, I am hot and sweaty and thirsty, and the crowd is pushing in from every direction to get a closer look and make personal contact, including attempts to pranam. This is wild, really wild. Walking is nearly impossible, having 2 people on opposite sides walking at slightly different paces, neither of which would be my pace, makes it triple the effort that walking by myself would be. But letting go of them would be disaster. By the grace of God, I am managing to keep moving forward. Sometimes I wonder if I can make it, but know I must. This is an opportunity, I tell myself, to be more Indian, to develop one's capacity to endure, to realize that it doesn't matter if one is hot or tired or falling out of one's shoes. That actually works.
A round-faced, middle-aged woman in an orange-brown silk sari suddenly pushes the girl on my right side away and takes my arm. She quickly becomes the distilled essence of ego in action, puffed up with ridiculously over-inflated self-importance at now being an official escort. Her aggressive barking and pushing people out of the way who are in front of us is beyond rude and annoying. But when she treats a old women who is very bent with arthritis, small children, and a severely handicapped child with that horrifying harshness as she shoves them aside, I want to thrash her. For some reason, though, in this foreign setting in which I do not know the rules, I do not say a word. I am inwardly praying to Baba Lokenath, "Get me away from this woman!" But it is to no avail. She has attached herself to me with the tenacity of a leech.
Finally, I see the Temple/ashram grounds, with its waiting crowds, off in the distance! It is set back a 200-300 feet from the main path, framed by bright green banana and coconut trees, amid rice fields with a few mud cottages farther off in the distance. Some of the fields are a newly planted brilliant green, some already harvested with only rows of browning stubble on the dry, grey-brown earth. Next to Baba Lokenath's small white temple is a water pump from a tube well that delivers arsenic free water to these villagers (arsenic concentrations in the water are extremely high here). A homespun stage constructed by the villagers, colorfully arrayed in fabric, faces a huge open air tent (about 250' x 250') in front of the ashram.
As we approach the Temple, the crowd lets loose. Conch shells are sounding loudly all around and ahead of us. They combine with the ululating of hundreds of women to fill the air with a heady rush of joyful exuberance. Children and adults are running across the field to join the procession and greet Baba. The crowd magically parts to allow several women to approach Baba with another puja tray. They dip the sandalwood paste on a small, 5-pointed flower head and apply it to Baba's forehead, then toss more flower petals on his head, and make heartfelt pranams.
I love watching Baba's face when devotees offer their pranams. He is no longer himself. He goes into a state of divine absorption as he blesses the devotees. In a procession like this, he is often so ecstatic, he is lost in another realm of consciousness altogether, so he must be led by others.
A chair is brought and Baba sits down once we arrive at the ashram. The women remove his sandals and socks and lovingly wash his feet. To them, he is God Himself, in a human body, who has come to this earth to comfort and sustain them and show them how much He loves them. He has been lifting their lives out of abject misery for almost 2 decades now. They cannot express enough love, enough gratitude, enough honor, or the extent of their joy when he comes once a year, for one day, to visit and teach them.
I dash inside the ashram to get away from the tyrant on my arm, to use the bathroom, and hide in the dark of my bedroom, feigning exhaustion, until she leaves to join the crowd. (I stayed here last year, so know which room is mine.) Sitting there, I know that she will be here again next year, and resolutely decide that I will stop her, with a strong rebuke if necessary, if she repeats the same ugly behavior.
The ashram sits to the southwest of the small, white Temple of Baba Lokenath. The ashram is a simple, rustic, rectangular hut sitting on a raised mud floor. It has a thatched roof, and rooms are sectioned off by woven panels of palm fronds. A large open room (about 30 x 20) sits to South. A bathroom with a western toilet is off that room to the northwest. (Baba is sooo good to me. He insisted they had to have one when I was coming last year.) At the northeast end of the large common room, a single hall leads to 3 small bedrooms along the west side.
The electric wires leading to a single bulb in each room are a sight to behold. The thin, wire is cut here and there, and the covering removed whenever necessaryto twist the bare wire together so that the current can flow. However primitive it might be, though, this solar powered electricity will be making a huge difference in the lives of poor students who use the Mission's book bank. They will now be able to come to the ashram in the evening to study by the light it provides.
I return outside and go to the Temple where Baba is offering a puja to Baba Lokenath. I am always moved when I see Baba at the altar before Baba Lokenath. Every pore of his body, every motion of his hands, is permeated with a profound devotion and consciousness that you simply have to see. It is inexpressible surrender and self offering, so far beyond my comprehension, all I can do is hold my hands and heart open to pick up the energy, like a satellite dish does a radio or TV signal, and pray to someday be capable of that.
Next comes the blessing of the food. The SHG women have spent the night cooking this food, and the villagers have been waiting for hours for us to arrive, so they are hungry. Neat rows of children and elderly are sitting on the ground under the tent with cut and washed sections of banana leaf laid on the ground in front of them, waiting to be served. Baba leads us all in a chorus of Jai Baba Lokenath, blesses the food, and begins ladling huge scoops of lentils with vegetables and rice. Then we retire to our rooms to have lunch and a brief rest. It is 3 pm. The remaining villagers will eat now. All 8,000 of them.
Next: The Festival Program.
