Leaving Daijokyo Buddhist House after lunch, I was about to climb on the bus, when a wallah spoke to me and I raised my hand and shook my head but in the process saw that he held two cages full of birds: one of little dark green finches, and the other with bright green beautiful parakeets. I gasped and said, “Oh!” On the subject of birds, I also heard cooing in my bathroom this morning, so I’m thinking there’s a nest close by. When I stepped outside in the morning, I saw two hummingbirds at a bush sprouting fluffy pink flowers by the front door; one bird was iridescent medium blue. Bodh Gaya is quite the birdhouse, but I’ve also noticed that it has some really friendly dogs, including a blonde one that hangs out in front of Daijokyo.
Before we got off the bus to wander around in Bodh Gaya, Shantum explained that he has “friends” here. “Friends” are guys who latch onto you and want you to buy stuff from them and from their shops. Gail asked, “So what do they want, money?”
“Love, just love,” Shantum said with a Big Smile.
Something else Shantum explained on the bus is the meaning of the Indian head-shaking mannerism. He explained that it means, “I’m listening.” Maybe after another week, I’ll be doing it. It’s more like a head wobble than the emphatic head-shaking Westerners do that simply indicates, “No.”
After lunch, which was at the hotel/school Daijokyo Buddhist House, we rode across the river to the countryside, formerly the site of Sujata’s village, Uruvela. I should perhaps clarify that when I say “across the river,” that’s actually a riverbed of sand; it fills with water during the monsoon season and is dry this time of year. It’s the Phalgu River, or its ancient name, at the time of the Buddha, was the Nairanjana River. It’s a weird sight, a pale sandy riverbed with scarcely any water.
The bus stopped for a little homemade shrine displaying a glossy life-size Buddha in a brown robe with a yellow-clad Brahmin bowing to him and offering him a bowl of rice. Many Brahmins, according to legend, were suspicious and jealous of the Buddha, since he was a threat to their status, but happily some were exceptions. A bunch of children and even a few adults latched onto us, asking us questions and saying, “Namaste!” and “Hello!” They stuck with us as we walked a short distance from the bus to the shrine. Shantum had warned us about clingy bystanders right before we got off the bus, and he had said they’re harmless, but I’m starting to get accustomed to our sangha being a group of conspicuous foreigners.
We got out our straw mats and sat on the brick patio in front of the little shrine. Shantum sat cross-legged on a bit of low brick wall and gave us a lecture that included some background info on the village and the shrine. He told us about the village girl, Sujata, who found the emaciated Siddhartha lying on the ground because he had taken his aestheticism too far and nearly starved to death. According to legend, Sujata put rice or kheer, rice pudding, in Siddhartha’s mouth and thus revived him. Siddhartha went with Sujata to the village to recuperate, and they met up with village women. Shantum said, “Probably the Buddha became enlightened because those five men left him, and he had contact with village women and got in touch with his feminine side.”
When Shantum finished his storytelling, we got up, paid homage (and a little cash) to the shrine. We headed away from it, in the general direction of the farm we would eventually visit. We walked through what seemed more like an alley than a street, since it was a narrow dirt path surrounded by buildings, some bright blue and others white.
Meanwhile, the swarm of children came along and talked with us, and a couple of them even latched onto me, even though I’m not good with kids. I’m not sure, but it seemed like they were more inclined to latch onto women than men, so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if their fathers are distant and mothers much more attentive. A couple of these kids asked me, “What’s your name?”
I said, “Susan.” They smilingly repeated my name and asked where I was from, and feeling a bit uncomfortable with the question, I said, “America.”
In response to that, they said, “U. S. A.?” and I smiled and said, “Yes,” hoping they wouldn’t hold it against me but thinking they’re probably more familiar with the United States than, say, with Canada, which seems to have the good sense to mostly stay out of international news.
One of the kids pointed out his school, a simple two-story whitewashed mud structure on a corner, and he explained what a couple other buildings were. Later, when fields rather than buildings surrounded us, he pointed to a tree and said, “Banyan tree.” This gave me a smile, and I repeated it after him as I looked at the big gnarly tree with a trunk seemingly made of twisting ropes wrapped together, and with bright green rounded leaves; it had a resemblance to the Bodhi Tree. Now I’ll never forget just what a banyan tree looks like.
We walked along narrow ridges between fields, and a kid told me what plants were growing, for instance, “Potatoes.” I cautiously watched my step because the ridges were about a foot high and I thought I might fall into the field. Yeah, samsara happens. We made quite a parade, walking single file. Tagging along behind us were two adult males with malas hanging from their arms, because they hoped for a sale; they would have looked less out of place to me on the streets of Bodh Gaya or Rajgir than out here in the country. Crops we saw included cabbage, cauliflower, fava beans, potatoes, rice in the form of haystacks, wheat, and mustard. The latter looked like a field full of tiny yellow flowers. Most of the plants were only a few inches high, but in the States they wouldn’t even be planted yet this time of year.
The Monet’s haystacks that I have frequently seen are really rice, and the stacks are a similar shape to a stupa, although they look exactly like the haystacks in Monet’s series of paintings. I wonder if someone from France may have been inspired by a trip to India, centuries ago, and brought the idea abroad. Threshers beat rice on a board—that’s called threshing--to get it out of the hay-like shaft, and they rake up the rice off the ground afterward.
The parade made its way to a small white Hindu temple with a rectangular tank in front of it. We climbed onto a slope around the edge of the tank and stood watching a ceremony in which boys pulled a life-size Sarasvati statue into the water. She was portrayed in the traditional style: white skin and black hair, seated on a swan, and playing a lute. The people grasping onto the statue and performing the ritual were all boys, about ten to twelve years old, wearing trunks, and they turned her around and moved her slowly in circles. It was quite ritualistic and accompanied by a guy calling on a megaphone the entire time.
The statue was very elaborate and colorful but made of wax or some other impermanent material that dissolves in the water and leaves nothing but a really big straw dolly when it’s over. But before I saw Sarasvati in this state, the statue half-floated in the water and remained partially intact. I understand that destroying the statue shortly after Sarasvati’s day represents impermanence and detachment to the work of art, but I’m dubious about the ecological effect of this ceremony on the water.
When the ritual ended, we walked around the tank, hopped down from the slope, and headed for the temple. I cautiously stepped around one corner of the tank and as I approached the next corner, I wished I’d climbed down sooner, because the slope became a lot higher and rather more intimidating. However, a little boy held out his hand, and I took it and jumped down. I gave him a big smile and bow, saying, “Thanks,” and pressing my palms together before turning and walking toward the entrance to the temple, where I slipped out of my sandals. A little girl in a purple salwar-kamiz helped me get up the steps, and now she was the only one latching onto me. It looked like I’d lost the boys who had walked with us from the Buddha shrine. This girl’s name was Puja…I forget the rest; it was a long name and I’m bad with names in general.
I found the temple fascinating, since I’m into Goddess spirituality in addition to Buddhism. It was a series of little old buildings linked together by a paved patio. Covering one section of the patio were rows of grey stone yoni and linga sculptures, representing female and male divinity, or more specifically Shiva and Parvati; the linga was a curved lump in the center of the yoni, which was a circle with one end open. I took photos of the linga and yoni sculptures, which were obviously really old and the most abstract art I’ve seen in India so far, compared to all the detailed Buddhist and Hindu art. I also saw a little room with a really old and worn sculpture carved in the center back wall, and it had traces of red paint.
This was no urban art gallery or the British Museum, a place where I’ve seen wonderful ancient art from different parts of the world. It was a little white temple out in the boonies, surrounded by fields of beans, potatoes, and tomatoes. Here was centuries-old artwork in its original location and definitely not in a tourist trap. It was truly amazing, as if we had stepped back in time. Even the air seemed to know this was a special place, and I felt a great deal of peace. I giggled as Valerie and I stood before a big Shiva linga with an elaborate face carved on it, and I said, “You know, that’s a phallic symbol.”
On the walk from the temple to the farmhouse, the little girl Puja stayed with me and discussed not ancient artwork but the vegetables growing in the fields we passed. We continued walking through the ridges between fields, and Puja was behind Val, who noticed her and asked what her name was. Unlike me, she had no trouble repeating the name after Puja, and I felt foolish. Perhaps I overestimate my telepathic powers, but it seemed to me Puja looked up at me as if to say, “She had no trouble with my name. I think she’s smarter than you,” and I certainly felt ignorant, a sense that I frequently have around people but not animals. I have a poor head for even the simplest of Western names and have once in a while even blanked out on the name of someone I knew really well. On the bright side, I’ll never forget Puja’s big-eyed face, or her messy hair that was brown from either dirt or malnutrition, or her bright purple cotton kamiz. Sometimes I think I could communicate better if people could speak in pictures.
We reached a chain link fence around the remains of an ancient stupa, a huge crumbly pile of stone many feet tall. Thanks to the fence, we couldn’t get up really close to the stupa. It doesn’t really have a recognizable stupa shape, although it still obviously forms a circle. But it looks like it must have been huge, given how big around it still is and taking into consideration the tall bell shape typical of stupas. But that’s assuming it originally had what I think of as a typical stupa shape. Maybe I hadn’t made such a terrible impression on Puja after all, because she stayed with me throughout this walk. As we stopped to look at the stupa, she said, “That is Sujata House.”
I thoughtfully repeated, “Sujata House” after her while I stared out at the huge structure, tried to picture what it looked like centuries ago, and wished we could get on the other side of the chain link fence and walk up to the stupa. I wondered if it really had been a residence, or whether that was just what the local kids called it. I imagined it must have been gigantic originally, with a dome rising perhaps fifty feet into the sky, in which the sun now set beyond the stupa.
We all gathered around and stopped walking. Shantum said, “They’re saying this is Sujata Stupa or Sujata House. This is probably where Sujata offered rice to the Buddha.” I pictured, where the stupa loomed, Siddhartha lying in the dirt and the girl Sujata, looking much like these village children, shyly walking up to Siddhartha, squatting, and offering him a terra cotta bowl full of rice pudding.
Meanwhile, I pulled out my journal and pen and wrote some notes about the stupa, and Puja begged for my “book and pen.” I gave her the pen and she begged for the book, but I said, “No, it’s my book.” If I had had a blank notebook or sketchpad, I would have given it to her. She then asked for money, which we’re not supposed to give, and I remembered my experience with the fruit by the chariot tracks. I was tempted to give Puja an orange that still lurked in the bottom of my bag, but I certainly didn’t want all the other kids to come after me for fruit.
It turned out that I had another pen in my bag, as I discovered on the roof of the farmhouse, so I sort of wish I’d given it to Puja. I thought that if she followed me to the bus, then I’d give her an orange and quickly climb aboard, but by the time we left the farmhouse, it was dark out and I didn’t see her. Um, I’m undergoing a bit of guilt here.
Now as I write this, despite that sense of guilt, I’m almost tempted to laugh at myself, because I remember the film Schindler’s List, at the end of which Oskar Schindler experienced similar guilt and pointed out things that he could have given away to help more Jews escape. I was a college student taking a class called Holocaust Literature when that film opened, and one of the books we read for class was Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally. I brought the book with me to a writing workshop and sat next to the instructor, Joe Schuster, who asked me if I’d seen the film. I started to speak, laughed, and said, “I was just about to call it Schuster’s List.”
Joe picked up his pen and said, “I could have given away this pen!” He then picked up a notebook and said, “I could have given away this notebook!” Really, you give what you think of giving at the time, and it’s no use wallowing in guilt afterward, because that’s a form of worrying about something that is over, something that it’s too late to change. Shantum would point out that worrying is pointless.
Sujata Stupa wasn’t far from our next stop, the farmhouse. The ultimate reason we had taken this outing was to visit a local family at their farmhouse. Shantum explained that he met the dad when he, Ragish, was only fourteen years old, and since then Shantum’s been taking pilgrimage groups to visit Ragish. The house was a simple brick building without electricity, and we walked as a parade past a doorway through which I could see a cow.
We stepped single file up a narrow wooden staircase, to the flat roof of the house, where we got comfy on blankets spread out like rugs, and a couple people sat on a sort of couch that was a wooden rectangular structure with a hammock-like rope seat. We drank masala chai out of our metal tumblers that Shantum gave us on the first day of the pilgrimage, and we hung out with the family, which Shantum sponsors. He interviewed the family in Hindi and translated for us, and he also added some of his own comments. I wrote down some notes before it got too dark.
Community things include chipping in to build a well, a bathhouse for the women, etc. Ragish started out in a mud house but has built this brick house since then (probably thanks to Shantum’s support). The couple has two daughters and one son; another son had died. The living boy got into the nearby school, but they only allow so many kids and wouldn’t let the older girl go to the school, so Ragish is trying to get her into a different school.
The barber, or hair cutter, wanders to different villages and has a big hand in helping the community. Some places, such as Rajasthan, still have child marriage. The vast majority of Indians still have arranged marriage, Shantum explained, and only a tiny percentage, really liberal people, don’t do it. Seventy percent of Indians are the poorest people.
Sharecropping is common, but Ragish owns a plot of land. He’s both a farmer and a laborer, and his wife sells vegetables. She buys them in the village and crosses the river to sell them at a higher price, just like the people we previously saw with baskets of colorful veggies at the side of roads, in New Delhi and other places. In the process of interviewing him, one of our sangha asked what Ragish’s hope in life is, and Shantum translated and gave us Ragish’s answer: to help his children be independent and to read and write and get on in the world. “If the child studies and is healthy, all’s well,” Shantum translated. Ragish feels the same way about his daughters, not just the son, and wants the older girl to go to school “so she won’t have the stigma of illiteracy.” The parents are each twenty-eight years old, the oldest daughter is twelve, and the boy is ten.
The family, including two of the kids, spoke in Hindi to Shantum and he translated for us. We had a question and answer session. Ragish asked, “What do you do for a living?” and several of the group answered. That’s how I found out that Peter’s a retired scientist and specialized in studying oil and gas.
Gail mentioned to Shantum that a lot of the kids are named Kumar, and Shantum said, “The name Kumar means Prince, and it is a common name here. Some people change their surname to Kumar to hide their caste. It’s a sort of leftist movement.”
“Mulchis are shoemakers and live outside the village. Muslims are casteless. So are tourists,” Shantum said. “That’s a new caste,” he added with a Big Smile.
After we rode the bus from the farmhouse back to Bodh Gaya, the bus driver stopped on a busy road and most of the sangha climbed off to go shopping and do errands, but I desperately needed quiet time to myself. Thus I was one of only six people who remained on the bus to go back to Daijokyo Buddhist House at about six thirty. Noticing how few were returning to the hotel, I thought of myself as an old fuddy-duddy, but I nonetheless was glad to take it easy in my room alone after so much socializing.
I tend to bounce off the walls if I’m by myself or just with cats, but if people surround me, they can be like vampires who suck away my energy instead of blood. That was how I was feeling at that point in the day, even though the people in question were not verbally abusive relatives or other negative people. I am inherently introverted, and in this situation, even the positive energy I was getting from the group of Buddhists didn’t prevent me from needing some relaxing solitude.
It was pitch dark out when the bus dropped us off by the Daijokyo Buddhist House, and the six remaining sangha members wandered down the narrow dirt road. We were confused about where we were, since it was so dark and we weren’t directly in front of our temporary residence. Therefore Viru, the driver’s assistant, led us to the front gate. Meanwhile, a bike swerved within inches of us, and someone said, “Watch out, kids.” As a second kid on a bike swerved around us, I noticed he wore Tibetan robes.
I laughingly said to Feroza, “You know you have bad karma when a Buddhist monk runs over you with a bike.”
After dinner, I went with most of our sangha into the lobby, where we sat at the little coffee tables and where Shantum asked for masala chai and introduced us to a young British-looking blonde Canadian named David. I had my ubiquitous notebook handy and took notes between sips of sweet, milky chai during our talk with the guest. He told us about the attention the village is getting from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Not only is the village experiencing charitable support, but there is also concern over historic preservation of such structures as the Mahabodhi Temple, and there is the issue of developing the area. Locals are Hindus who aren’t interested in Buddhism, there is a fairly new bridge, and there’s even threat of a golf course in Bodh Gaya. New schools are opening, which is a good thing, but quality can be questionable.
At every hotel where we’ve stayed, the electricity runs on generators, and the lights go out periodically. It doesn’t take long to get accustomed to this. I’ve also noticed some hotel rooms have a special light switch that the cleaning staff apparently turns off during the day, no doubt to conserve energy. In response to a comment that he’s able to laugh at a frustrating and depressing situation, David said, “You have to be light with it.” The lights went out.
Before we got off the bus to wander around in Bodh Gaya, Shantum explained that he has “friends” here. “Friends” are guys who latch onto you and want you to buy stuff from them and from their shops. Gail asked, “So what do they want, money?”
“Love, just love,” Shantum said with a Big Smile.
Something else Shantum explained on the bus is the meaning of the Indian head-shaking mannerism. He explained that it means, “I’m listening.” Maybe after another week, I’ll be doing it. It’s more like a head wobble than the emphatic head-shaking Westerners do that simply indicates, “No.”
After lunch, which was at the hotel/school Daijokyo Buddhist House, we rode across the river to the countryside, formerly the site of Sujata’s village, Uruvela. I should perhaps clarify that when I say “across the river,” that’s actually a riverbed of sand; it fills with water during the monsoon season and is dry this time of year. It’s the Phalgu River, or its ancient name, at the time of the Buddha, was the Nairanjana River. It’s a weird sight, a pale sandy riverbed with scarcely any water.
The bus stopped for a little homemade shrine displaying a glossy life-size Buddha in a brown robe with a yellow-clad Brahmin bowing to him and offering him a bowl of rice. Many Brahmins, according to legend, were suspicious and jealous of the Buddha, since he was a threat to their status, but happily some were exceptions. A bunch of children and even a few adults latched onto us, asking us questions and saying, “Namaste!” and “Hello!” They stuck with us as we walked a short distance from the bus to the shrine. Shantum had warned us about clingy bystanders right before we got off the bus, and he had said they’re harmless, but I’m starting to get accustomed to our sangha being a group of conspicuous foreigners.
We got out our straw mats and sat on the brick patio in front of the little shrine. Shantum sat cross-legged on a bit of low brick wall and gave us a lecture that included some background info on the village and the shrine. He told us about the village girl, Sujata, who found the emaciated Siddhartha lying on the ground because he had taken his aestheticism too far and nearly starved to death. According to legend, Sujata put rice or kheer, rice pudding, in Siddhartha’s mouth and thus revived him. Siddhartha went with Sujata to the village to recuperate, and they met up with village women. Shantum said, “Probably the Buddha became enlightened because those five men left him, and he had contact with village women and got in touch with his feminine side.”
When Shantum finished his storytelling, we got up, paid homage (and a little cash) to the shrine. We headed away from it, in the general direction of the farm we would eventually visit. We walked through what seemed more like an alley than a street, since it was a narrow dirt path surrounded by buildings, some bright blue and others white.
Meanwhile, the swarm of children came along and talked with us, and a couple of them even latched onto me, even though I’m not good with kids. I’m not sure, but it seemed like they were more inclined to latch onto women than men, so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if their fathers are distant and mothers much more attentive. A couple of these kids asked me, “What’s your name?”
I said, “Susan.” They smilingly repeated my name and asked where I was from, and feeling a bit uncomfortable with the question, I said, “America.”
In response to that, they said, “U. S. A.?” and I smiled and said, “Yes,” hoping they wouldn’t hold it against me but thinking they’re probably more familiar with the United States than, say, with Canada, which seems to have the good sense to mostly stay out of international news.
One of the kids pointed out his school, a simple two-story whitewashed mud structure on a corner, and he explained what a couple other buildings were. Later, when fields rather than buildings surrounded us, he pointed to a tree and said, “Banyan tree.” This gave me a smile, and I repeated it after him as I looked at the big gnarly tree with a trunk seemingly made of twisting ropes wrapped together, and with bright green rounded leaves; it had a resemblance to the Bodhi Tree. Now I’ll never forget just what a banyan tree looks like.
We walked along narrow ridges between fields, and a kid told me what plants were growing, for instance, “Potatoes.” I cautiously watched my step because the ridges were about a foot high and I thought I might fall into the field. Yeah, samsara happens. We made quite a parade, walking single file. Tagging along behind us were two adult males with malas hanging from their arms, because they hoped for a sale; they would have looked less out of place to me on the streets of Bodh Gaya or Rajgir than out here in the country. Crops we saw included cabbage, cauliflower, fava beans, potatoes, rice in the form of haystacks, wheat, and mustard. The latter looked like a field full of tiny yellow flowers. Most of the plants were only a few inches high, but in the States they wouldn’t even be planted yet this time of year.
The Monet’s haystacks that I have frequently seen are really rice, and the stacks are a similar shape to a stupa, although they look exactly like the haystacks in Monet’s series of paintings. I wonder if someone from France may have been inspired by a trip to India, centuries ago, and brought the idea abroad. Threshers beat rice on a board—that’s called threshing--to get it out of the hay-like shaft, and they rake up the rice off the ground afterward.
The parade made its way to a small white Hindu temple with a rectangular tank in front of it. We climbed onto a slope around the edge of the tank and stood watching a ceremony in which boys pulled a life-size Sarasvati statue into the water. She was portrayed in the traditional style: white skin and black hair, seated on a swan, and playing a lute. The people grasping onto the statue and performing the ritual were all boys, about ten to twelve years old, wearing trunks, and they turned her around and moved her slowly in circles. It was quite ritualistic and accompanied by a guy calling on a megaphone the entire time.
The statue was very elaborate and colorful but made of wax or some other impermanent material that dissolves in the water and leaves nothing but a really big straw dolly when it’s over. But before I saw Sarasvati in this state, the statue half-floated in the water and remained partially intact. I understand that destroying the statue shortly after Sarasvati’s day represents impermanence and detachment to the work of art, but I’m dubious about the ecological effect of this ceremony on the water.
When the ritual ended, we walked around the tank, hopped down from the slope, and headed for the temple. I cautiously stepped around one corner of the tank and as I approached the next corner, I wished I’d climbed down sooner, because the slope became a lot higher and rather more intimidating. However, a little boy held out his hand, and I took it and jumped down. I gave him a big smile and bow, saying, “Thanks,” and pressing my palms together before turning and walking toward the entrance to the temple, where I slipped out of my sandals. A little girl in a purple salwar-kamiz helped me get up the steps, and now she was the only one latching onto me. It looked like I’d lost the boys who had walked with us from the Buddha shrine. This girl’s name was Puja…I forget the rest; it was a long name and I’m bad with names in general.
I found the temple fascinating, since I’m into Goddess spirituality in addition to Buddhism. It was a series of little old buildings linked together by a paved patio. Covering one section of the patio were rows of grey stone yoni and linga sculptures, representing female and male divinity, or more specifically Shiva and Parvati; the linga was a curved lump in the center of the yoni, which was a circle with one end open. I took photos of the linga and yoni sculptures, which were obviously really old and the most abstract art I’ve seen in India so far, compared to all the detailed Buddhist and Hindu art. I also saw a little room with a really old and worn sculpture carved in the center back wall, and it had traces of red paint.
This was no urban art gallery or the British Museum, a place where I’ve seen wonderful ancient art from different parts of the world. It was a little white temple out in the boonies, surrounded by fields of beans, potatoes, and tomatoes. Here was centuries-old artwork in its original location and definitely not in a tourist trap. It was truly amazing, as if we had stepped back in time. Even the air seemed to know this was a special place, and I felt a great deal of peace. I giggled as Valerie and I stood before a big Shiva linga with an elaborate face carved on it, and I said, “You know, that’s a phallic symbol.”
On the walk from the temple to the farmhouse, the little girl Puja stayed with me and discussed not ancient artwork but the vegetables growing in the fields we passed. We continued walking through the ridges between fields, and Puja was behind Val, who noticed her and asked what her name was. Unlike me, she had no trouble repeating the name after Puja, and I felt foolish. Perhaps I overestimate my telepathic powers, but it seemed to me Puja looked up at me as if to say, “She had no trouble with my name. I think she’s smarter than you,” and I certainly felt ignorant, a sense that I frequently have around people but not animals. I have a poor head for even the simplest of Western names and have once in a while even blanked out on the name of someone I knew really well. On the bright side, I’ll never forget Puja’s big-eyed face, or her messy hair that was brown from either dirt or malnutrition, or her bright purple cotton kamiz. Sometimes I think I could communicate better if people could speak in pictures.
We reached a chain link fence around the remains of an ancient stupa, a huge crumbly pile of stone many feet tall. Thanks to the fence, we couldn’t get up really close to the stupa. It doesn’t really have a recognizable stupa shape, although it still obviously forms a circle. But it looks like it must have been huge, given how big around it still is and taking into consideration the tall bell shape typical of stupas. But that’s assuming it originally had what I think of as a typical stupa shape. Maybe I hadn’t made such a terrible impression on Puja after all, because she stayed with me throughout this walk. As we stopped to look at the stupa, she said, “That is Sujata House.”
I thoughtfully repeated, “Sujata House” after her while I stared out at the huge structure, tried to picture what it looked like centuries ago, and wished we could get on the other side of the chain link fence and walk up to the stupa. I wondered if it really had been a residence, or whether that was just what the local kids called it. I imagined it must have been gigantic originally, with a dome rising perhaps fifty feet into the sky, in which the sun now set beyond the stupa.
We all gathered around and stopped walking. Shantum said, “They’re saying this is Sujata Stupa or Sujata House. This is probably where Sujata offered rice to the Buddha.” I pictured, where the stupa loomed, Siddhartha lying in the dirt and the girl Sujata, looking much like these village children, shyly walking up to Siddhartha, squatting, and offering him a terra cotta bowl full of rice pudding.
Meanwhile, I pulled out my journal and pen and wrote some notes about the stupa, and Puja begged for my “book and pen.” I gave her the pen and she begged for the book, but I said, “No, it’s my book.” If I had had a blank notebook or sketchpad, I would have given it to her. She then asked for money, which we’re not supposed to give, and I remembered my experience with the fruit by the chariot tracks. I was tempted to give Puja an orange that still lurked in the bottom of my bag, but I certainly didn’t want all the other kids to come after me for fruit.
It turned out that I had another pen in my bag, as I discovered on the roof of the farmhouse, so I sort of wish I’d given it to Puja. I thought that if she followed me to the bus, then I’d give her an orange and quickly climb aboard, but by the time we left the farmhouse, it was dark out and I didn’t see her. Um, I’m undergoing a bit of guilt here.
Now as I write this, despite that sense of guilt, I’m almost tempted to laugh at myself, because I remember the film Schindler’s List, at the end of which Oskar Schindler experienced similar guilt and pointed out things that he could have given away to help more Jews escape. I was a college student taking a class called Holocaust Literature when that film opened, and one of the books we read for class was Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally. I brought the book with me to a writing workshop and sat next to the instructor, Joe Schuster, who asked me if I’d seen the film. I started to speak, laughed, and said, “I was just about to call it Schuster’s List.”
Joe picked up his pen and said, “I could have given away this pen!” He then picked up a notebook and said, “I could have given away this notebook!” Really, you give what you think of giving at the time, and it’s no use wallowing in guilt afterward, because that’s a form of worrying about something that is over, something that it’s too late to change. Shantum would point out that worrying is pointless.
Sujata Stupa wasn’t far from our next stop, the farmhouse. The ultimate reason we had taken this outing was to visit a local family at their farmhouse. Shantum explained that he met the dad when he, Ragish, was only fourteen years old, and since then Shantum’s been taking pilgrimage groups to visit Ragish. The house was a simple brick building without electricity, and we walked as a parade past a doorway through which I could see a cow.
We stepped single file up a narrow wooden staircase, to the flat roof of the house, where we got comfy on blankets spread out like rugs, and a couple people sat on a sort of couch that was a wooden rectangular structure with a hammock-like rope seat. We drank masala chai out of our metal tumblers that Shantum gave us on the first day of the pilgrimage, and we hung out with the family, which Shantum sponsors. He interviewed the family in Hindi and translated for us, and he also added some of his own comments. I wrote down some notes before it got too dark.
Community things include chipping in to build a well, a bathhouse for the women, etc. Ragish started out in a mud house but has built this brick house since then (probably thanks to Shantum’s support). The couple has two daughters and one son; another son had died. The living boy got into the nearby school, but they only allow so many kids and wouldn’t let the older girl go to the school, so Ragish is trying to get her into a different school.
The barber, or hair cutter, wanders to different villages and has a big hand in helping the community. Some places, such as Rajasthan, still have child marriage. The vast majority of Indians still have arranged marriage, Shantum explained, and only a tiny percentage, really liberal people, don’t do it. Seventy percent of Indians are the poorest people.
Sharecropping is common, but Ragish owns a plot of land. He’s both a farmer and a laborer, and his wife sells vegetables. She buys them in the village and crosses the river to sell them at a higher price, just like the people we previously saw with baskets of colorful veggies at the side of roads, in New Delhi and other places. In the process of interviewing him, one of our sangha asked what Ragish’s hope in life is, and Shantum translated and gave us Ragish’s answer: to help his children be independent and to read and write and get on in the world. “If the child studies and is healthy, all’s well,” Shantum translated. Ragish feels the same way about his daughters, not just the son, and wants the older girl to go to school “so she won’t have the stigma of illiteracy.” The parents are each twenty-eight years old, the oldest daughter is twelve, and the boy is ten.
The family, including two of the kids, spoke in Hindi to Shantum and he translated for us. We had a question and answer session. Ragish asked, “What do you do for a living?” and several of the group answered. That’s how I found out that Peter’s a retired scientist and specialized in studying oil and gas.
Gail mentioned to Shantum that a lot of the kids are named Kumar, and Shantum said, “The name Kumar means Prince, and it is a common name here. Some people change their surname to Kumar to hide their caste. It’s a sort of leftist movement.”
“Mulchis are shoemakers and live outside the village. Muslims are casteless. So are tourists,” Shantum said. “That’s a new caste,” he added with a Big Smile.
After we rode the bus from the farmhouse back to Bodh Gaya, the bus driver stopped on a busy road and most of the sangha climbed off to go shopping and do errands, but I desperately needed quiet time to myself. Thus I was one of only six people who remained on the bus to go back to Daijokyo Buddhist House at about six thirty. Noticing how few were returning to the hotel, I thought of myself as an old fuddy-duddy, but I nonetheless was glad to take it easy in my room alone after so much socializing.
I tend to bounce off the walls if I’m by myself or just with cats, but if people surround me, they can be like vampires who suck away my energy instead of blood. That was how I was feeling at that point in the day, even though the people in question were not verbally abusive relatives or other negative people. I am inherently introverted, and in this situation, even the positive energy I was getting from the group of Buddhists didn’t prevent me from needing some relaxing solitude.
It was pitch dark out when the bus dropped us off by the Daijokyo Buddhist House, and the six remaining sangha members wandered down the narrow dirt road. We were confused about where we were, since it was so dark and we weren’t directly in front of our temporary residence. Therefore Viru, the driver’s assistant, led us to the front gate. Meanwhile, a bike swerved within inches of us, and someone said, “Watch out, kids.” As a second kid on a bike swerved around us, I noticed he wore Tibetan robes.
I laughingly said to Feroza, “You know you have bad karma when a Buddhist monk runs over you with a bike.”
After dinner, I went with most of our sangha into the lobby, where we sat at the little coffee tables and where Shantum asked for masala chai and introduced us to a young British-looking blonde Canadian named David. I had my ubiquitous notebook handy and took notes between sips of sweet, milky chai during our talk with the guest. He told us about the attention the village is getting from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Not only is the village experiencing charitable support, but there is also concern over historic preservation of such structures as the Mahabodhi Temple, and there is the issue of developing the area. Locals are Hindus who aren’t interested in Buddhism, there is a fairly new bridge, and there’s even threat of a golf course in Bodh Gaya. New schools are opening, which is a good thing, but quality can be questionable.
At every hotel where we’ve stayed, the electricity runs on generators, and the lights go out periodically. It doesn’t take long to get accustomed to this. I’ve also noticed some hotel rooms have a special light switch that the cleaning staff apparently turns off during the day, no doubt to conserve energy. In response to a comment that he’s able to laugh at a frustrating and depressing situation, David said, “You have to be light with it.” The lights went out.
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