The Maharaja’s Lodge

We’re off on the road to Kapilavastu, the kingdom where the Buddha grew up and got married and had a kid. It was the beginning of sunset when, surrounded by fields and swampland, we saw big white birds with red heads, and Shantum explained over the microphone that they are sarus cranes, the largest bird in the world. At his request, the bus stopped before Shantum stood up to announce this. He said, “Susan?” I raised my eyebrows at him. He said, “Susan’s going to stalk them!”

People started getting off the bus with their cameras, and I had to get my shoes back on and get out my camera, so I slipped my sandals on while simultaneously moving down the aisle. I stepped outside into a swampland under the vivid orange sun in the pink-grey sky, and we walked slowly and carefully on bumpy wetland with patchy grass and hay while looking out at the huge birds in the distance. I took several pictures using my zoom.

I caught up with a few other members of our sangha, and Peter let me use his binoculars. The birds looked so much closer through them that I considered placing my camera up against the lenses. My eloquent reaction to the view of the cranes through Peter’s binoculars was, “Wow!” After we climbed back on the bus and started moving forward, I sat next to Gail again, and we drove further down the road before she pointed out to me two much closer cranes, only a few feet from the bus.

Shantum said the sarus cranes mate for life and have two eggs at a time. When one dies, the other is alone for the rest of its life. I hope the females don’t shave their heads, wear white saris, and eat only once a day, like many Hindu widows. Rumor has it there are two hundred couples of cranes in this area.

During one of our bathroom breaks, or at least some sort of break that involved the bus sitting still while we sat in our seats and I wrote in my journal, Gail and I witnessed very bad behavior on the part of a boy probably about ten years old. I looked out the window and noticed that he was giving us, or at least the bus, a horrible scowl, and I smirked and made a comment about it. Gail said not to look at him, that he was really nasty and had been acting downright obscene. This was shocking news, given the reception we usually get. Typically people, not always just children, smile and wave at the bus as it goes by, and lots of children are very friendly toward us. This was very different behavior indeed, which just goes to show how problematic it is to generalize.

I don’t believe I’ve stressed how common Indian dress is in India, even among young people. That’s pretty cool, I think, and unusual compared to other countries. I’m getting new ideas for my wardrobe. That may suggest that I’ll have an awful lot of clothes, but really, I’m leaving behind so much old clothing on this trip, and after I get back I’m likely to take other clothing to thrift stores, so that should even things out. Many salwar-kamiz and scarf color schemes have leaped out at me on the pilgrimage, and they include: orange and turquoise, dark red and either teal or turquoise, yellow and turquoise, orange and purple, purple and blue, really bright blue with really bright yellow, orange and pink, and finally a red kamiz with black salwar or trousers.

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The tour bus, in the early evening or late afternoon, slowly made its way down an elegant and perfectly straight tree-lined lane. We came to a breathtaking view of a garden, or rather the Maharaja’s grounds, with many trees and flowering bushes and various marble benches and flowery metal archways. We had a fabulous view of the Maharaja’s hunting lodge, our home for the night. It looks like a small yellow art nouveau palace, though it is only small for a palace. The house is two stories tall and curvaceous and has a spacious wrap-around porch facing the grounds. I think I’ll like it here.

Out front Shantum stood next to a tall Indian guy and introduced us to him. I was the third in line. When Shantum introduced the stranger to Christine, she said, “Namaste!” and bowed with palms together. Natalie said and did the same. I held my bag in one hand and a meditation cushion in the other, and when Shantum got to, “This is Susan,” I grinned and said, “Hi!” The moment I said it, I realized that the guy standing in front of us was the Maharaja, or as Shantum had said on the bus, “the king.” But the king didn’t seem to mind my informality. After introducing all of us, Shantum held his hand out toward the stranger, gave us a big smile, and said, “Devendra.” That’s pretty informal, too.

We climbed onto the porch, where white Victorian-looking patio chairs and tables were arranged along with potted plants, and we entered through the double doors. While servants handled our luggage and Shantum, Jagdish, and Mukesh sorted through the room keys, the pilgrims sat around the Victorian sitting room and chatted. I found a deep window seat and plopped down, hiding behind a lace curtain, peering out and saying, “Peek-a-boo!” to Feroza. She was seated in a chair next to the window seat. We commented on the two empty tigers on a wall of the living room. They looked like antique tiger skins, so on the bright side they hadn’t been killed recently but rather many decades ago. I said, “I recently read that in Nepal there’s a royal tradition of entertaining guests with tiger hunts, and that this tradition has continued even in recent times, resulting in the tiger being endangered. It’s thanks to idiotic machismo.” “Yes, indeed, it’s ridiculous,” Feroza agreed.

I noticed a certain irony to a group of mostly vegetarian Buddhists staying at a hunting lodge. Several people commented on this, especially because of the (ew) empty tigers and tiger heads on the walls. As we settled down in the living room, Shantum smilingly said, “The path is full of unBuddhist elements.” Otherwise, I like the décor. All the furniture consists of Victorian and Edwardian antiques and I expect the place to be haunted.

The living room has a formidable fireplace with an elaborately carved dark wooden mantel. Two large old bookcases, with glass doors, full of old British books, some of which are a bit on the crumbly side, flanked the fireplace. Throughout the center of the room are carved wooden sofas and chairs upholstered in yellow velvet, and amid them are little round end tables. Everywhere the furniture was accessorized with old paintings, old photos, and brightly painted glass vases. The white plaster walls reached high up to a white beamed ceiling.

John later mentioned that he should have grabbed his suitcase, because the guy who was supposedly bringing it to his room just stood staring down at it. He said that he had had trouble with getting his luggage at other hotels, and I remembered the incident in Patna. John said, “Apparently I’m the pilgrim whose luggage just gets stared at instead of taken to my room.” My bedroom was the first one on the left in a long and wide hallway. Oddly, the key was for a padlock on the outside of the big wooden double doors, which were painted white. I unlocked the doors, swung them open, and stepped inside with a gasp.

It looked like I got the princess’s bedroom. The window across the room from the door was big enough to be another door and had dark blue and white patterned curtains. To the left stood a white fireplace with a large framed photo of presumably a past maharaja hung on the chimneypiece. Nineteenth-century antiques furnished the entire room. A dressing table occupied the far corner by the fireplace and had a mirror old enough that it was losing its silver and looking grayish and fuzzy, but charming for all that. Straight across the room from the door was a tall double bed with a brass frame, covered in a bright blue and white cotton print bedspread with a rolled up yellow print bedspread at the foot, and next to the bed was a nightstand and lamp.

I set down my bags on an old dark brown table and walked across the dark blue industrial carpet, noticing that old black and white photos sprinkled the room and that as with the rest of the house, the ceiling was extremely tall and molded, with beams running the length of the room. In all, I have a very charming room that looks like something out of the late Victorian era. Out in the hallway, I could hear Jennifer visiting different people’s rooms to see what the décor looked like, and Shantum said, “Are you inspecting your castle?”

To the right of the door, near the bed, stood another door, and I stepped in to see the white-tiled bathroom, where the tub had feet, the toilet was modern and Western, and the sink was huge. I heard echoic voices and footsteps ascending stairs on the other side of a glazed French door next to the toilet.

I had glimpsed the dining room while we were still hanging out in the living room, and after I left my new room, I entered the dining room and sat at the largest table. In addition to the long main table, two small ones stood nearer the fireplace. Along one wall stood an antique glass sideboard, and along the back of the room stretched a long table covered with silver buffet dishes, with footmen, I mean servants, wearing black uniforms and standing by.

The table where I sat was not only very long, but also unusually wide, much like the dinner tables I picture while reading, say, a dinner party scene in an Oscar Wilde story or play. You’d almost have to have a wide table to accommodate so many plates and glasses. Rikki seated herself at the foot of the table, and to her right sat Christine, and I sat next to her. Shantum was one of the last people to enter the room, and as he sat down at the head of the table, Rikki called to him, “Hey, Shantum, could you pass me the salt?” Shantum picked up a saltshaker and comically raised his arm as if to throw it to her, like it was a baseball.

Erika looked around at us and said, “We’re looking more and more Indian.” Sure enough, lots of us wore shawls. I gasped and said, “I didn’t put on a shawl!” and scooted away from the table. “With all the shawls you have now?” Ann said with a smile. “I’ll be right back!” I said as I got up. Feroza said, “You have plenty of time; there will be seven courses at least.” Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who thought of Oscar Wilde.

When it was time to go out to the concert, we all headed for a set of French doors at the back of the dining room, and as I passed the fireplace, I noticed Valerie looking up at the three tiger heads displayed on the mantelpiece. I had been making a point of trying not to let my eyes rest on dead body parts. Valerie said, “How fast do you think those tigers were running, to get stuck in the wall like that?” The three male servants—I’m tempted to call them footmen, especially since it looked like we’d gone back to the Victorian era—smiled broadly at that comment.

We strolled across the back yard toward a grouping of chairs and three little log fires in three-legged metal pots that stood within the semi-circle formed by the chairs. Behind the chairs loomed several trees, the lawn was closely mowed. Overhead the sky was very dark and the moon was full. I gazed up at the moon while I stood near one of the trees and remembered that today is the Celtic springtime holiday Imbolc. I sat down in the center, by Elly and Feroza, and I gazed at the bonfire that was directly in front of me.

The chairs faced a small one-story building, on the front patio of which were a couple of musicians seated cross-legged on a long white-draped table. Both musicians were male, which didn’t surprise me, and the younger one tuned a harmonium, while the skinny old guy sat behind a set of traditional drums. I was excited at the prospect of listening to live classical Indian music and enjoying the bonfires under the full moon at the Maharaja’s lodge. Wow, what a treat!
Shantum introduced the Maharani; her name is Rashmir; she was also at the bonfire, wearing an elegant silk sari, and she settled down up front with the Raj. Shantum and Devendra told us about classical Indian music and musicians, before the musicians started performing.

“Royalty patronized musicians in the past,” Shantum said. “Now classical musicians are mainly teachers, such as at schools and colleges. Musicians follow a guru, and there are houses of music, such as the Banaras School of Music. A musician can have a different style of raga, if they have a different teacher. It takes thirty years to master music. They start out taking eight hours just to practice on a single note, and it takes six years to acquire a master’s degree.” Eight hours on a single note? That has got to take a plethora of patience.

Shantum and Devendra continued to explain things to us between ragas. The older guy might not sing tonight, Devendra said, because he had a cold. He sang anyway, though not as often as the younger guy.
“All music is a form of prayer,” Devendra said.
Shantum said, “The highest form of music is vocal: singing the notes instead of words. They write a few notes and create the mood.”

The music, drums and harmonium, an accordion-like instrument, is rhythmic and hypnotic. The younger guy was at least my age, and the other looked very old. They really grooved on the drums. Harmoniums are wooden boxes about one and a half feet long by less than a foot, and placed on the floor or on the ground, if played by street musicians such as the woman we saw playing one by the colorful box-like Muslim shrines in Kushinagar. Sure, the harmonium is a sort of keyboard instrument, but the sound reminds me of an accordion.

Devendra said of music teachers, “Of course they are very strict. They will give you a thrashing,” and that’s why lots of students don’t stick to it.
Shantum said, “Gurus are often related. The father or uncle passes it down to the son.” I would like to think that maybe, once in a blue moon, the father passes it down to the daughter; Ravi Shankar taught his daughter Anoushka Shankar to play the sitar, although she’s probably the exception rather than the rule, judging by how common it is to see men employed but not women. It’s no wonder so many beggars are women. Shantum also said, “Men usually sing women’s parts—beautifully, and they sound like young women but are usually fat, balding men! Love songs contain a double meaning: they are not only addressing the boyfriend but also a deity, such as Krishna.” Well, for a blue guy, he is pretty.

The bonfires consisted of three little cauldrons on stilts, inside our semicircle of chairs. A couple of the bonfires were quite ornery and pieces of fiery wood periodically fell on the grass, and each time this happened, a servant came and picked the wood up with bare hands.
We drank delicious masala chai, followed by hot lemon ginger water, while we listened mesmerized to the beautiful music. I felt the air getting chill, and I wasn’t the only one swathed in a woolen shawl.

During the concert, I heard barking, growling, and running right behind us. At first I thought the animals were jackals and I gasped, but looking behind me I saw they were a group of four stray dogs. They were having an argument and running. Even the grounds of a maharajah’s lodge aren’t exempt from stray dogs. I remembered when Feroza and I watched dogs playing on the lawn at the Thai temple in Bodh Gaya, and she said they’re dangerous in packs, so this situation made me a bit nervous. However, the servants easily ran off the dogs.

Listening to the music, I rocked from side to side slightly, like a charmed snake. The music reminded me of Gypsy music, which isn’t surprising since earlier I overheard Liz say that Gypsies originated in India. The Romani are one of those groups of people I would love to get around to researching someday; so far I’ve only read portions of a book on Gypsy fortune telling, to help me out with tarot cards. When the music stopped, I heard jackals howling from all directions. I joined in.

The concert is over, and I’m back in the princess’s suite. Even from my gorgeous room, I occasionally still heard the jackals. The lodge’s ceilings are about twenty feet tall; Feroza had said it’s because hot air rises, and this way the hot air would presumably be overhead on hot days, since the house of course predates air conditioning. After dark, the house seems more echoic than earlier; I could swear people must be able to hear all over the house when I merely put down a glass of water or a toothbrush. Yeah, tonight I met a Maharaja and I’m staying at his hunting lodge. This is living it up.

As I settled down to sleep in the big soft bed and turned out the light, to find myself in pitch darkness, I felt glad none of the tiger parts are in my bedroom; I’d have nightmares. I would not be a bit surprised if this house is haunted; it feels like it is, but not in a bad way.