Siva, Scary Roads and Pandas: Thoughts in DevaPrayag

A. The Mundane Experience

Roads : We reached Devaprayag from Rishikesh after a rather scary and tiring road journey by bus with the threat of a (non-appearing) monsoon on our minds. I have never in my life been on a mountain road as high as that. Bangalore is some 3000 m above sea level, but the hills and mountains here are children’s pebble piles compared to the Himalayas. In Bangalore you never get the feeling you are on a mountain.  View Larger Map And Bangalore roads do not give you the feeling of mountain tracks. View Larger Map. Embedded on the sides of the hills near the high-way we saw cars and lorries that had fallen off. To be on the outer side of a narrow road where 2 buses are crossing each other with 2 inches between their bodies, is really something.

Himalayas : The mountains themselves were covered by dried up sparse vegetation.To experience high Vijayawada like temperatures in the Himalayas was beyond everything I had ever expected. To see dryness where I expected at least greenery, if not snow, was a shock. Some travellers we ran into told us that Bangalore was cooler than Badrinath.

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Ganga: In many places we could see the dry pebbly bed of the Ganga and it broke my heart. I have had my heart already broken by the dry sandy beds of the Godavari, Krishna and Penna, but this was an aching gnawing pain. I could have wept. Ganga, herself was a muddy grey not the muddy brown of the Godavari, and not the blue of the Krishna. The Alakananda that came from Badrinath for the Sangam was greyer than the greener Bhagirathi which came from the Gangothri. Iwas told this meant that the rains were happening at Badrinath. I also had a nagging doubt as to whether the Chinese were damming up the Ganga waters.

Bathing in the Sangam : We thought the waters were freezing and 3 dips had our teeth chattering. However children were swimming happily across the Bhagirathi all day ling, doing fun kid things like pushing each other in etc. They were a joy to watch.

Pandas : Pandas are how north Indians refer to Pujaris. By definition, they are kind, noble, knowledgeable, dignified and worthy of respect. They are supposed to be brahmins. Don’t get me wrong. I am always for respecting brahmins and giving them some danam. I am also for respecting everyone else and giving other needy (and deserving, willing) people also a little charity. But the pandas of Devaprayag with just one exception were aggressive. They chase you up the stairs wen you are clearly trying to avoid them, apply Tilak and demand danam. They want you to worship the Ganga in their way and give them money, without any choice in the matter. They scare and distract you (at this time our cell phone got stolen). They can convert the entire experience for which you travelled thousands of miles and spent thousands of rupees into a headache if not a nightmare.

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Policemen: Just like our Bangalore Policemen, Devaprayag policemen don’t accept a stolen cell phone complaint. They make you write that you lost it. They insist that there are no thefts in Devaprayag and that about 10 cellphones are lost at the Sangam everyday.

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Stay: You can stay in the Badrinath – Kedarnath Temple Trust Dharma Shala for Rs 150 a night. The rooms were very clean, but I am something of a linen freak. I wished I had carried my own sheets. And the beds shook back and forth.

Food : Food is not very good but is quite costly. That is because the town was suffering with no rains, no grass, no milk etc. It is very costly to bring food into Devaprayag from Rishikesh etc and quite difficult to grow things there in a dry spell such as what we experienced.

Snakebites. doctors and Mantras : The evening we reached a pregnant lady, working in a farm had been bitten by a snake. the doctors gave up on her and the family was trying the mantra route. People were hanging on the Alaknanda bridge and other vantage points, neither expecting the lady to sit up nor being sceptical. “If it works then it is useful” was the general comment of anyone who was questioned.

Landslides: The right half of the building where we stayed had caved in and been carried away due to a landslide that happened sometime back. The workers were clearing away a stone at a time and taking happy peaceful breathers in between. Some of the workers were from Nepal, I believe.

Monkeys : The monkeys that scampered across our paths from tree to tree, looked quite scared of us (not like the tame monkeys of Rishikesh). But we were warned that they did turn aggressive and would bite, so we were advised to be wary.

Stairs: There are an awful lot of stairs in Devaprayag. Where there are no stairs there are slopey roads or bridges. For a middleaged woman with arthritic knees, this can be really hard especially with a backpack.

B. The Spiritual Experience

Devas: I went to Devaprayag for the Devas actually. I wanted to learn something by going there, that I could not get in a book or travelogue. And I was not disappointed. The first and dominant feeling was that the Devas are very large. Just think, if the Ganga is just a small stream of water from Mahadeva’s hair, then what must be His size? I kept experiencing that Siva, Sri Rama and Hanuman were all huger than the hills and I felt that Hanuman was just stepping through the Devaprayag town, the whole thing coming to his calves. The second feeling was that they were eternal and they were still there! I realised that Veda was Deva when reversed using the Niruktha rule of reversal. I felt I understood the true point of a piligrimage – to become tuned to the presence of the divine. God is everywhere by common admission, but most of the time we are tuned to our own minds or to the minds of other people. For example in Haridwar there were so many people and so much fun, that there was no conscious thought of God. For most people beautiful, natural places help with the tuning, for some physical pain and hardship help, for others mortal fear – say the thought of falling down a mountain may help with the tuning. So though Siva is as much here as He was at Devaprayag, I felt or experienced his presence much more strongly there. And I was scared. There were 3 mountains facing east from the doorway of our room. The middle one was the scariest of the three in my mind. And it didn’t help when there was a power outage and the rains started.

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I hardly slept at all and kept looking at the mountain all night long. I learnt the next morning on the bus back to Rishikesh, that Yama Dharmaraj meditated one of the hills near  place called Pauri. What was I scared of? I know I did not want to die just then, though normally I talk as if I am ready to go anytime.

I also realised another thing, that when I was frightened, I could not sleep or quiet down when I thought of Siva or Rama. It was only the thought of Sri Krishna, that gave me calmness, peace and courage. It was then that I realised who my Ishta Daivam was. Krishna is my Sakha, my friend, that is the form that I can deal with. I think today that I can understand how terrified Arjuna was when he saw Krishna’s Viswarupa. I know that fear. I dont know if humans such as myself can even hold the concept of the Divine in our puny minds and hearts without fear. Back to Delhi and then to the familiar bangalore where I detect the presence of God as a small, pleasant, benign, background hum to whom I turn when I need help. I sometimes think that half the mindless activity that we engage in is to numb our minds to the presence of the divine, because we cannot deal with it. I guess I have to become much, much braver before I go seeking the Devas again.

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