Never know what to do with this blog. Is it about now or about stuff that happened 40 years ago? I guess that which happened 40 years ago impacts today in someway - as long as one has memory. My journey to India and around the world shaped who I am today and certainly makes me a different kind of American. When a person spends 2 years out of the country and long enough in a place like India, you loose the American centric thinking. At least I did.



I found a piece I wrote some time back:



The bus shuttered to a dusty stop. The road and as far as eye could see was dry dust. We collected our packs and dragged off into the dry afternoon. John and I had arrived at the Ajanta Caves. I had met John a week or so ago as he was perched - for all the world- like a gangly white bird - on a pedestal outside of the Rex Hotel in Bombay. He had spent 3 months (count them 3 months) in a Bombay opium den and was just re-emerging into the alternate reality that I choose to refer to a the "real world". I mean - I liked by drugs as well as the next guy but 3 months?? His hair was thin, fine and matted into wads with shoots sticking out like rays from the sun in a kindergarten drawing. He wore John Lennon style glasses and white kurta and pajamas.

Now finishing the story.
We trudged up to the entrance of the cave area. In my mind I see these high cliffs where the Buddhas are set up in caves. There are steps slanted along the side of the canyon that you walk up to the caves. At the bottom is a green park with a pool of water fed by a waterfall at the end of the canyon. It is all super green from the dusty street we just walked through.

We decided to camp in the grass at the bottom of the caves. It is so odd, even now thinking about it, that I really didn't know this guy - he wasn't a lover, or even a person I particularly liked, just a guy that said to me one day, "I would like to attend the Ajanta Caves with you", so I said O.K. I had wanted to leave Bombay but didn't want to go back to Madras and it was getting closer and closer to visa expiring - and here I am - at the bottom of the caves with this guy whose grip on reality was rather frail and he was full of lice on top of it. I discovered that lovely fact when he was scratching for all he was worth and asked me to look at his head and see what the problem was. I did and saw my first case of head lice. What to do? Cut off all of his hair - that's what - so I did. I became a cosmetologist years later but this was my first hair cut. Fortunately, he needed all of his hair removed, that was easy.

We left our gear at the bottom of the caves and headed up to the chai stand at the top of the path before we started looking at the caves. A tour bus pulled up and a group of Rajistanies (people from the state of Rajistan), not sure of the spelling, but they are very colorful people. When National Graphic magazine does stuff on India, they frequently use these people due to their jewelry and bright clothing. The women cover their faces with coins, attached to their ears and lips, use scarves to wrap around their heads but their bellies hang out for all the world to see. They were just tourists out to see the caves.

We sat up at the chai shop and ate cookies and chai while we waited for the group to pass on by as it was quite a crowd with kids and all. So we sat. The afternoon was dropping into the end of the day and all of a sudden we heard wailing and crying coming from the pool area at the bottom of the caves, close to our gear. We were trying to figure out what was going on - there were too many languages and little English - so it was difficult. It turned out that one of the women leaned too far into the pool and fell in. She was drowning because she couldn't swim, so her husband jumped in after her to save her. He couldn't swim either so they both died. The tourists were all related to each other - so it was a disaster of the first order. Kids lost parents, parents lost their kids and siblings lost siblings. It was awful.

We left the chai shop and went back to our camp site so to speak. We were sitting on our bedrolls listening to the commotion. As we sat and watched there started an orange thread winding down the side of the cliff. It was a whole monastery of monks, each carrying a bundle of wood, walking in single file, to the bottom of the canyon to make pyres for the dead. Twilight was falling as they piled up the wood, wrapped the bodies and placed them on top. They chanted their prayers and set the wood alight as night fell. We sat in awe of the fire and the odor of burning flesh as they were cremated right there. What are the odds of that happening on a casual trip to the caves?

The family sat for awhile and then left just as they would have on the usual trip. We really had no choice but to continue our plan to sleep there for the night so we could take in the caves the whole next day. The fire burned until we fell asleep - oh to sleep the way of the young. Wish I could now.