Waiting for Dayananda
Some welcome death in the hope that by death they will put an end to their problems; but death does not release anyone from problems. One only moves on to the next birth and death in this ephemeral world of sorrow. You are born crying and you continue crying, moving from sorrow to sorrow until the day you die.
- Swami Dayananda, The Teaching of the Bhagavad Gita
I. Waiting for Dayananda
The Dayananda Ashram sits on a bend in the Ganga River in Rishikesh near the foothills of the Himalayas, a cliff face looms on the opposite bank, casting a long shadow on the rushing water. Penitents sit on white marble steps to wash their feet. I took a dip the previous day and found the water bracing and holy; my body shook with the toxicity, temperature, truth. Swami laundry flutters in the breeze: saffron robes hang from every other balcony of the dormitories. Ants march onward carrying the desiccated corpse of a fallen comrade.
The open space where we eat lunch has been covered with tarps and so is tinged blue. We all take the appearance of the god Krishna or the creatures in the movie Avatar, shovel handfuls of rice and dal into our mouths. Afterwards a saffron-robed Swami discusses the relative benefits of mantra verses breath as a means for focusing one’s concentration in a meditative state. Saffron robed we wait for a man to leave his body.
An Australian woman I met three years ago three thousand kilometers to the south walks out of the lecture hall — she is a student here. She recognizes our group and comes over to exchange pleasantries and catch up. Perhaps we will meet later at the Ganga Aarti — a light ritual noted in Rishikesh and nearby Haridwar, cities close to the mountain source of the holy Ganga. We are all waiting for Dayananda.
Remember “I” is the first cause for bondage. “My” is the second cause for bondage.
Where’s Swamiji? Where’s Swamiji?
Swamiji is napping.
Where’s Swamiji? Where’s Swamiji?
Swamiji had a very busy day yesterday and he is quite tired. Modi came to pay his respects. The town was a mess with security. Terrible traffic snarls.
Where’s Swamiji? Where’s Swamiji?
Swamiji says the time for human intervention is finished and the time for natural intervention has begun.
Where’s Swamiji? Where’s Swamiji?
Swamji is having dialysis. He has resumed his treatments.
Go sit, relax, have tea, take food. If he is feeling refreshed and wishes to speak we will ring a bell.
Let’s go to the bookstore.
II. Swami and the Great Glass Elevator
We gather in the courtyard staring up at the building’s second floor exterior walkway waiting for Dayananda. Eventually Swamiji is wheeled out of his room, swathed in orange, wearing large headphones (I assume) to block out the sound of wailing devotees and clicking cameras, perhaps to provide soothing kirtan — devotional chanting. An attendant slowly pushes the Swami in his chair towards the elevator that has been built (I assume) since his illness. (What three-story building in India has an elevator? Why not move him to the first floor?) Another nurse wheels the IV bag. Swamji is pale and thin, birdlike. His eyes are closed. His mouth open.
The attendant pushes the button and gears grind and the elevator clatters to life, slowly pulling itself to meet the Swami. It takes an age and all the while thirty or forty people stare up at him, waiting, murmuring at the skinny birdman dressed in orange. The door noisily slides open. They enter. Shuddering, the elevator begins to move again, bringing the Swami to earth, but suddenly, close to its destination, the elevator stops. This is India and expecting such a mechanism to work unfailingly is ridiculous. Thirty seconds pass. More. Forever.
The elevator’s outer walls are made of glass and we all can see Swamiji and the two attendants trapped and waiting. This is India and it is hot. They must be sweating inside the glass box. An Eastern European woman presses her face against the glass to see beyond the glare of the late afternoon sun.
The minutes pass and they are still trapped and the situation seems to to have grown increasingly obscene, if it hadn’t started that way. Much of the crowd has moved to surround the elevator, craning their necks to peer at the living mummy within. Harry Houdini dead and floating in his cabinet. We tap the glass and shout, “Do something Harry!” Finally, mercifully, the power is restored and Swamiji is released.
Other monks flush interlopers out of the wheelchair’s path as he is wheeled towards another door across the courtyard marked “No Admittance.” Another nurse runs after the wheelchair carrying several picture books of wild animals: lions, elephants, cheetahs on the savannah, the like. The private door opens and shuts and the Swami and his menagerie disappear. The crowd slowly thins, several ladies take a place on the ground across from the door where they kneel, pray, and sing.
III. Road Rage
I had spent the previous two weeks with Swami Tattvarupananda who is a disciple of Swami Dayananda — the sick man was my teacher’s teacher and part of my guru lineage. I first met Swami T. (as we call him) when he delivered the Bhagadvad Gita lectures in my yoga teacher training course — his Sanskrit recitations and instantaneous translations of the sacred text were undoubtedly my highlight of that experience. During that course, we studied from one of Swami Dayananda’s texts.
The pilgrimage to see the dying man who teaches of death’s irrelevance carried us around 150 miles; an afternoon spin in the U.S. took nine hours in a rented SUV on the roads of Uttarekhand. We were in Haldwani and the driver didn’t know where he was going and tried to make a U-turn and wound up blocking a lane of oncoming traffic — there is no rhyme or reason to the lanes or patterns in Haldwani. In any event, we were stuck, but given the circumstances it did not seem such a grievous offence.
Caught in the fray, a hulking greybeard Sikh calmly stepped off his motorbike (his wife riding with him) and calmly walked over to our SUV and calmly punched the rearview mirror with great force, sending it flying through the open window and into the driver’s lap. He then started yelling at the driver, one fist clenched and ready to strike at his side, the other hovering in Three-Stooges eye poke position, which the driver wisely parried a la Larry by holding an open hand sideways in front of his face. The other drivers surrounding this mass of bleating and shouting took a break from chastising our driver to implore the angry Sikh to calm the fuck down, which he eventually, barely, did. We, the passengers, were invisible.
Having made our escape I patted the driver on the shoulder and commented as to the Sikh’s craziness. He just looked a bit sad. Earlier on the trip he’d pulled over and unrolled his window and waited several moments for a fly to find its way out of the car. We stopped at a Haldwani street stall where he bought super glue and attempted to fix the mirror and amazingly succeeded. Hours later we were caught in another traffic jam entering Rishikesh. Security was tight, several roads closed. Prime Minister Modi had come to pay his respects to the guru.
IV. Samadhi
In a shop in Rishikesh near the famous Shiva temple, we ask for the price of a leather purse. “What’s that made of?” we ask. “Cow?” (I was under the impression it was okay to use if the cow died from natural causes.) The man shakes his head, oh no no no. It’s camel. They would burn me down. It will be illegal everywhere soon. They will outlaw it all. Disdain rests on his face.
Back home I read the news of the cow-related killings of Indian Muslims. The ink throwing over a Pakistani book tour. Literary furor. I worry things will get worse before they get better. I am writing this as terrorist attacks happen in Paris and some mention the November 2008 Mumbai attacks as a template for the terrorists. In a riven India, how easily it would happen again.
A happy wave and a sad wave are some ways out from shore, rolling along towards their inevitable destination. The sad wave, as is her nature, is overcome with sorrow. “Ahh,” she keens, “When I hit the shore I will be dead! I can see it coming now!” The happy wave says nothing, just looks at her and smiles. “How can you smile at a time like this?” asks the sad wave incredulously, a hint of anger in her voice, “You will be dead too!” “What are we but water?” replies the happy wave now called guru wave. “What will change when we hit the shore?”
Guruji left his body on September 23, 2015, less than two weeks after our visit to the ashram. Throughout India, he is hailed as a patriot and a saint.
A different version of this essay was published in Guernica Magazine in January 2016 as “Swami in a Hothouse Elevator,” which is a name I still don’t get.
