All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (10 page)

In the end it took several weeks; I was beginning to give up hope. But at last I saw her. She appeared one evening without a sound, shuffling across the worn flagstones on her leathered feet. Paying me no heed, she sat down, cross-legged, on the edge of the parapet. Around her neck, she wore a
mala
necklace of bone skulls – a sure sign that she was a tantric practitioner of some kind. She had a long dreaded braid of hair which fell to beyond her waist, and very pale skin.

I watched her furtively, my heart suddenly racing. Was she an enlightened one in the guise of a crone? Or just another wandering charlatan of the kind that Prabir Ghosh spent his days debunking? The
sadhus
said she told the future for money, but was she wilfully deceiving people? Did she believe she had such an ability but actually did not? The third possibility – one that made me inwardly flinch even as it occurred to me – was that she had actually gained supernatural abilities.

This last idea seemed to stir up all the conflicting ideas that, to this point, I’d been struggling to keep apart. Though I was intent on understanding the varied mystical paths of India, I remained deeply sceptical – a product of scientific empiricism, a cynic. Buddha, with his non-dogmatic, ostensibly rational mysticism, seemed entirely credible. But these Hindu saints, who flew through the air, passed years without eating, claimed the ability to give and take life upon a whim – were simply stretching my beliefs too far. And yet if I was entirely sure then why was I here, sitting in this abandoned fort as the dusk fell . . .

That evening we made no acknowledgement of each other. Neither did we on the next, when she appeared at about the same time, walking in like some ethereal Miss Haversham, trinkets swinging from her neck. On the third evening, however, feeling that the time had come to see if she would talk to me, I approached her.

‘I am
not
a Westerner,’ she said, as I came close.

‘I didn’t say you were.’

I was surprised that she had spoken at all.

‘People
think
I am,’ she said, in a voice that seemed ill-accustomed to conversation. ‘I was born in Kashmir, before Partition. There we have white skins, a relic of the Aryan invasion. Mine is even whiter than most.’

‘You speak good English.’

‘I was a scholar once. My father educated me in the finest schools. English once came very easily to me.’ She was looking ahead. Was she talking to me, or merely to herself?

I sat down beside her tentatively, as one might approach a wild animal. Up close she seemed feral, her breath as rotten as that of an old wolverine. She had the glassy, milk-blue eyes of an effigy.

‘Can I talk to you?’

‘Are we not talking already?’ she said. ‘Do you want something more?’

‘Just to talk.’

She tilted her head. ‘Have the people told you I’m a witch, then? A
daayan
?’

‘No.
Are
you a witch?’

She shook her head. Perhaps there was even a smile. ‘Some of the locals are thinking so. They avoid me most of the time. But then when they’re having troubles, they come to me. Is human nature not strange?’

‘Do you tell them the future?’

‘Future is not possible,’ she hissed. ‘But patterns are there. Patterns can be discerned. Likely outcomes. Not always correct.’

‘Would you look for me?’

‘Why?’ she snapped. ‘Have you lost your way?’

‘Who wouldn’t be interested in the future?’

‘The wise,’ she said. ‘The wise are not interested. The foolish look forward.’

‘Perhaps I’m a little lost,’ I confessed. ‘I’m looking for something. I’ll keep looking until I find it.’

This seemed to animate her. For the first time, she really met my eyes. It was a palpable effort for her to rouse herself from the dreamlike state she’d been in.

‘I had that feeling once,’ she said. ‘My father cried out behind me as I left home. But I didn’t look back. I was still a child.’

‘Do you mind me asking why not?’

‘Because he was dealing with his own attachment. Nothing I could do would change that. But I
could
see it – could see that the only thing worthy of my attention was absolute liberation. And so I left him, and I had no regrets, not even a desire to turn round and wave my hand. To do so would have been to draw him deeper into the fire.’

I peered from the parapet to the surface of the Ganges, turning brown now as the sun descended. On the other side of the river, a flat plain stretched out until it disappeared into mist. I could see several cows walking across it, seemingly unaccompanied.

‘Why are you always alone?’ I asked.

‘How do you know I am?’

I felt embarrassed. ‘The
sadhus
told me. I asked them who you were.’

‘My path has always been one of solitude,’ she said gently. ‘I’ve never needed people, neither a family nor an
akhara
. With those things come rules and regulations. Expectations. Constrictions. My life has been about discarding those things. I do not consider myself a
sadhu
.’

I thought for a while about what she was saying. Despite the slowness of her speech, she was highly eloquent. I could believe that she’d been a scholar once. And then she turned her back on it all, in search of the numinous. Perhaps that was what I was trying to do, although I lacked the will to cut myself off entirely from the past.

She raised herself to her feet with the help of a bamboo staff. ‘I will see you again,’ she said.

I returned the following night, immensely curious to find out more but unsure whether she’d return at all. If the truth be told, I wasn’t sure if she was entirely sane. Something of her manner, her rags and rank smell, made me think she was barely hanging on to the world.

And yet there
was
something which fascinated me. The other
sadhus
who’d shown me the abandoned palace, despite their kindness, showed few outward signs of being more spiritually evolved than anyone else. They were cheerful, fond of badinage; they seemed to lack any special gravitas. This old woman, however, filled the room with her presence. Her eyes, when they settled upon me, seemed to burn with an unwavering flame. Amongst the spiritual crowd, the word ‘enlightenment’ seemed to hang upon everyone’s lips and yet both the true nature of the state, and the means of recognising an enlightened person, remained mysterious to me. ‘How does one rooted in wisdom speak, sit, walk?’ asks Arjuna, protagonist of the Bhagavad-Gita.

The answer, like much in the Hindu scriptures, reads cryptically. ‘When a man completely casts off, O Arjuna, all the desires of the mind and is satisfied in the Self by the Self, then is he said to be one of steady wisdom!’

Sure enough, she appeared as the sun was setting. I was reading in my usual spot, and watching a boatman’s son fly a kite far out on the surface of the Ganges. He was shrieking with glee as he cut his opponent’s kite from the sky, and his father was hastily rowing over so that they could collect their prize before it tumbled into the water.

Just then a scuffling sound turned my attention back to the empty palace. The old women shuffled into view, looking neither to left nor right, wholly absorbed in her own orbit. I raised my hand to wave and she came over, wordlessly, and sat beside me. If anything she seemed even more dishevelled than before, her long braid almost brushing the ground as she crossed her legs beneath her. She wore red robes, a fur hat despite the warmth of the evening and, on a dirty finger, a white skull ring made of bone.

‘What does the skull mean?’ I asked.

Silence. Then, ‘The
kapala
reminds us we are impermanent,’ she said faintly. ‘It is made of human bone.’

‘Are you a Hindu?’ I asked. ‘Or a tantric of some kind?’

She smiled at me. ‘You like books. You’re hungry to learn. I can’t tell you much. I’m just a poor old woman.’

‘Why are you speaking to me?’ I asked. ‘The
sadhus
said you didn’t speak to anyone.’

‘I felt like speaking English,’ she said. ‘I haven’t spoken this tongue for a long time.’

She was quiet again; she had sounded unwell. There was a stain on her robe. She was old, I thought. She should be surrounded by grandchildren, warming her feet before the fire.

‘Do you live here in Varanasi?’

She shook her head. ‘We can have no home once we begin,’ she said. ‘The scriptures say we should be girdled by wind, eat only air. All activities should be aimed at purification of the self. That is the path to enlightenment.’

‘When did you know you could read the future?’

She scowled a little. ‘Such things are child’s play,’ she said. ‘In the great silence, many things are revealed. Sometimes I use stones: the ways in which they land can be understood. The Chinamen use I Ching – do you know of this method?’

‘I’ve seen it once.’

‘And did this convince you?’

‘It seemed compelling,’ I admitted.

‘Exactly! Not miraculous but scientific. The falling tells a story. To a mind that is clear, this story can be spoken. That is all.’

Almost roughly, she grasped my hand. She pulled me nearer so that my upturned palm was resting on her robe, so close that her rotten breath blew against my face. I struggled to compose myself.

Her palms were coarse. I could feel her sharp black nails probing various parts of my hands on both sides. Perhaps two minutes went by in this fashion. I watched her eyes as they scanned the whorls and patterns of my hand. Her hand felt scarcely human – an animal’s hand – impassive and tough. But there was a hurriedness to it all; she seemed anxious to get it over.

‘
Acha
. You are highly sensitive,’ she said finally. ‘Health is good except for a slight imbalance of the humours. You think and live independently from your family. You do something creative, is that so?’

I nodded.

‘
Acha
. But you are determined. A little stubborn. If you meet a woman she will have to live with your work. You will not give that up for anyone. But better if she has a skill of some kind – a weaver, a potter.’

Another pause.

‘You are a sensualist, in that you like food and drink. You would rather see velvet than burlap.’ She paused reflectively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as there is no attachment. You can enjoy food but try to distance yourself from the pleasure of it. That is important. In attachment begins all the problems of the human mind. And yes,’ her eyes flicked momentarily up to mine, ‘you are not as peaceful as you would like.’

All this was true, I thought. Not miraculous but a little disturbing in its accuracy . . .

‘You are drawn to emptiness,’ she continued. ‘You’re looking for it,
burning
for it a little. But you should know that there are no immutable truths, no enlightenment which is graspable. That you will have to let go very quickly if you are to evolve.’ She laid down my hand. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’

I was disappointed. She hadn’t said much.

‘One more thing,’ she added. ‘You are frightened. You’re very aware of mortality. At one point in your life your spirit felt the great emptiness itself –’ she tilted her head. ‘Part of you wants to return to that emptiness. But you have to find the courage to live in this world.’

I froze upon hearing this, astounded and a little afraid. I had a scar on my face which might be telling, but what she said smacked of a deeper knowledge than this. Beneath the outward chaos of the hit and run I’d been involved in, I’d felt a peace that was limitless. But how could she have known this?

That was it. She would say no more, no matter how much I pressed her. Neither did she ask for money, as I cynically imagined she might. Rather, she turned her attention to the river, which was now filling with oil lamps set adrift on the evening current. Every evening, people set their prayers upon the water, commending them to that which, it is believed, once filled Brahma’s sacred vessel. After a while her eyes seemed to film over, as they had been when I first saw her, and when I stood to leave she seemed not to notice. To the sound of roosting crows I climbed from the palace courtyard and made my way back through the narrow streets to my guesthouse.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Monkeys clattered around on the corrugated roof outside my window, and the moon shone so brightly over the river it was like sunlight sheering off glass. At last, utterly awake, I pulled my blanket around my shoulders, opened the window and sat upon the ledge watching the dormant city. The air was chill, tinged, even now, with wood smoke from the funeral pyres at the Manikarnika Ghat.

Perhaps there will never be certainty, I said to myself. Perhaps every encounter in this strange journey will be like my meeting with the
sadhvi
; simultaneously profound and unsatisfactory. Even after many months in India, nothing seemed to stay in clear focus. This country, these myriad paths and traditions, were like the river itself, each wave made up of infinite drops, each one of them breaking apart to form a million others. Everything was in constant flux.