Meeting the New Sangha

Entrance to the Crafts Museum in Delhi, India

The taxi driver from the guesthouse didn’t know the way to Gandhi Smriti. I had explained to the guesthouse manager that it’s near a certain hotel, and he explained this to the taxi driver, who didn’t speak English. We went around in circles and passed the rather prominent and regal-looking hotel a couple times, and eventually the taxi driver resorted to pulling over and asking people if they knew the way to Gandhi Smriti. I’m a bit surprised, since it’s a major landmark: it’s Mohandas Karamchan Gandhi’s final home and where he was assassinated in the garden.

On a busy street, kids approached the taxi and tried to sell magazines through the window. They were school age and probably desperate; perhaps their parents insisted that they go work on the streets because the family needs money right now and is too poor to wait till the kids have an education and could therefore have jobs that would pay much better. I felt sorry for them, but I was completely not tempted to buy magazines like Cosmopolitan. Yuck.

As we took a wide street, a clan of monkeys ran across the street in front of us, and I laughed like a little kid. To the right, a painted elephant carrying passengers slowly walked in the opposite direction. I grinned and thought, “I love India!” I was living in the moment and trying not to worry about the fact that we were lost; the worst thing about that, in my view, was that I was holding up a group of people with my tardiness. It occurred to me that they might give up waiting for me and drive off.

I saw a mud wall with some vehicles parked in a row in front of it, and some food stands at the side of the road—the typical Indian shop made of sticks—and on one section of the wall I saw the engraved words “Birla House,” which I recognized as the former name of Gandhi Smriti. I exclaimed, “That’s it! Now I wonder where are the people I’m supposed to meet up with?” We sat there idling on the other side of the street, while I looked at the row of vehicles and noticed that they included more than one tour bus.

A guy in a yellow shirt ran into the street, calling to the driver, who stopped. The guy in yellow climbed into the taxi and sat down next to me and said, “Susan, how are you!” Jagdish gave me a one-armed hug.

I said, “Jagdish! It’s good to see you!” I grinned from ear to ear. Soon I saw Bina in a purple and dark grey salwar-kamiz and waved back at her. She was by a blue tour bus. It turned out that everyone had been waiting just for me! The group was at this stage approximately only a dozen people, but we would be meeting up with others elsewhere. As I got out of the taxi, I looked at Bina and said, “I’m sorry I haven’t scanned or faxed my passport yet!” Bina said that it’s fine and I don’t have to worry about that, they’ll give me my tickets when I get to Kathmandu. Whew, what a relief!

Bina said, “You look great! Have you lost weight?”
“I’ve lost thirty-five pounds, so far,” I said.
“That’s almost a whole person!” she said smilingly.
The taxi driver was about to drive off, and I anxiously tapped the trunk roof and said, “Oh, my suitcase!” But it turned out that Jagdish had already taken it out of the trunk and put it on the bus.

Delhi is even more chaotic than I remember. Looking out the window at the traffic, I had trouble refraining from laughing. It’s like I’m a different person when I come to India.
We all got out of the bus at a restaurant, the Taj Mahal Restaurant, where we had a South Indian dinner, or lunch rather, with metal dishes and little pots of various spicy goopy things to dip pastry-type things into, and some of us drank laasi. I ate a generous portion and remembered how, on the pilgrimage, I had pigged out at first and later developed enough discipline to eat smaller portions from the buffets.

The lunch conversation involved where people live, and I mentioned that I currently live in Kansas and want to move to the west coast, particularly Berkeley. Some of the tour members, at least two, live in the San Francisco Bay area and talked about what a great area it is to live in. After I mentioned that I’m probably going to move to Oakland or Berkeley, Etiel mentioned that they’re too congested with traffic for her. I could always live in Berkeley for a time and then move somewhere that isn’t as congested with traffic, but I have no intention of contributing to urban sprawl: I imagine staying in a small apartment and possibly reaching a point when I don’t own a car but only walk and use public transportation.

A guy named David is from Florida and he’s a novelist. He’s written speculative fiction that is however neither science fiction nor fantasy, and he is currently working on a horror novel.

Somebody asked Bina if she’ll be with us in Dharamsala, and she said no, but “Shantum will be there, and he’s wonderful.”
“Oh, he can’t be as good as you!” someone said.
“Yes, he’s much better!” Bina said.

Not long after that, one bunch of white people, the rest of the group, showed up, and Shantum was with them, at a table behind us. I didn’t think he saw me; he was behind our table and talking with someone. He came to the head of the table, stood next to me, and made an announcement, and he spoke of already knowing some of us. He looked at Etiel and said, “I know you.”
“Oh, you do?” she said. They hadn’t met yet after all, but I was tempted to say, “In a previous life.”
When Shantum greeted me, I said, “Hey, glad to see you! I mean Namaste!” and I pressed my palms together.
Shantum asked me, “Are you doing well?”
I said, “I’m doing great, since coming here.” I didn’t think to ask how he was. Typical.

Shantum put an arm around me and said, “This is Susan, and I’m glad you’re back!” and he gave me a kiss on the forehead. I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. A bit later, when he told the group that I’ve been on the pilgrimage, he gave me another hug and a kiss on the forehead. Somehow I refrained from asking him to adopt me. Ever since Jagdish hopped into the taxi with me, it has felt like all is right with the world, and that I have a place in it. That’s a highly unusual feeling for me.

After lunch, we went to the Crafts Museum; this was a great coincidence for me, because it was one of the places I meant to visit on my own, if only I hadn’t arrived in New Delhi twenty-four hours later than originally planned. Outside, to the left of the building, we passed terra cotta figures, some life-size, some larger than life. I found them breathtaking.

Inside the museum are many glass display cases full of sculptures, puppets, dolls, and textiles.

Inside the building are sections of an old aristocratic Rajasthani house with squirrels scampering around, and I kept hearing birds.

I left the wall and found where just about everyone else had gone; they were out in a courtyard behind the museum. Vendors and musicians performed on the square; one dancer was dressed like a Hindu deity, in many bright colors and with fake hands. The dancer was accompanied by musicians, one of whom played a loud bleating wind instrument.

After I stepped back outdoors, I noticed a stone wall, several yards long, was completely covered with little, elaborately carved stone archways, typically about two feet wide by three or four feet tall. They looked ancient and very beautiful with all the detail. The arches were typically scalloped and reached a point above a nook that might have contained a Hindu deity at some time; perhaps they were all shrines that archeologists collected and brought to the museum.

New Delhi and Old Delhi

Heritage Inn (guesthouse)

I’m finally here! I’m confused and don’t know where the guest house office is located (although I suspect it’s through the front door) and have several questions to ask but feel hesitant to cal the front desk, especially since I’ll likely have trouble understanding what they’re saying over the phone and they’ll probably have the same problem with my awful voice…but at least I made it to Delhi!

Several incidents have reminded me of Sarah MacDonald’s memoir Holy Cow. Like at the Doha Airport after we waited in line to get to the gate, we went down an escalator to a very small waiting room, and as the shuttle came to the open sliding glass door, the crows was anxiously pushing forward, and I was afraid I would be trampled. That was definitely a Holy Cow moment. As all these guys (most of the people were male, and just about all were Indian. On the other side of the door, a guy in a navy blue uniform was looking at each boarding pass stub before letting passengers get on the shuttle that would take us to the plane. One guy cut in front of me and held out his boarding pass, and the uniformed guy, who was stern and unsmiling and therefore a bit intimidating, told the guy who cut in front of me, “Wait your turn! Let the lady go first. Have some common courtesy.” I smiled at him and said, “Thanks!” He looked at my boarding pass stub and let me get on the first shuttle. I was almost the last person to get on it.
At the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi: More pushing and cutting in line at the money exchange place. Crazy. Again, only males did this, but it was a bunch of them! I must have waited there fifteen minutes. Finally an Indian guy urged me forward and told a guy to stop cutting in front, and he commented to me how they tend to do that. So I finally got my turn and I thanked the guy profusely. Really, I wanted to laugh.

There was another incident that reminded me of Holy Cow. The plane arrived in Delhi, and people were undoing their seatbelts and getting up and reaching for their luggage…while the “fasten seatbelts” light was still on. It started the very second the plane stopped moving, perhaps seconds beforehand, like people had springs in their bottoms and suddenly popped up.
OK, I called the office, and the phone was staticky and all, and the manager asked if he could come and talk to me in person, which was a relief. So he knows about the cat—12:30—he said I could even have a couple extra hours. They do have an Internet computer, and I can use it, but there’s no scanner and the fax machine doesn’t work—he commented that people don’t use fax machines so much, they’d rather use e-mail. Yes, I certainly prefer e-mail. I don’t know why Tandem, the company I work for, doesn’t ditch the fax machines and switch to scanners.

There’s I think an ashok tree right outside the open French window in my guest house room, but I’m not sure if that’s the right kind of tree. Long, very skinny leaves with ridges. I might have it confused with the sal tree, the kind under which the Buddha died.

The ride from the airport was interesting. I sat in the back seat of a white car, and I had trouble understanding the driver; he had a thick accent, or maybe it’s because I’ve only just gotten here and haven’t adjusted to Indian accents yet. And he had trouble understanding me. I have a speech impediment and after this journey I’m less coherent than usual. Dry mouth and all. I gawked and gawked at the scenery. It’s good to be back! The derelict, dingy buildings; the crazy honking traffic; the rickshaws and weird green motor rickshaws that look like something a little kid assembled in a shed; the pedestrians in bright salwar-kamiz or pale kurtas and pants (really, Indian women generally wear prettier clothing than men); the dogs lying on the sidewalks, even right outside the airport….

I saw plenty of apartment buildings with balconies, across which people had strung laundry to dry including towels of a wide variety of colors. I saw walls made of red brick plastered in white—and could tell there was brick underneath because the plaster had come off in places and exposed the brick. Before I noticed this, I assumed the walls were mud. We passed through the embassy neighborhood, like last year, and I noticed one building with lots of police and security vehicles, and we passed an intimidating police station. At some point, I saw behind a fence a mound with a soldier walking on top of it.

We turned a corner, and straight ahead was an elaborate red wall and behind it I saw an impressive red (sandstone?) structure with a huge dome. The driver said, “Do you know what that is?”
“Is it the Red Fort?” I asked dubiously.
“No, it’s the president’s house.”
“Wow! It’s gorgeous!” It makes the White House look like a ranch house. “I didn’t think it was old enough to be the Red Fort.”

It wasn’t long before we saw a high red stone wall with quite a bit of detail work, and beyond it was a huge red stone structure with elaborate little cupolas here and there, and the driver confirmed my suspicion by saying, “That is part of the Red Fort.” Soon we were going past a lot more of the Red Fort, which does indeed look much older than the president’s house, which can’t be more than two hundred years old (and I didn’t mention—the parliament house is near the president’s house, and though it’s Neoclassical it’s circular). Anyway, there was a white structure or series of structures along one wall of the Red Fort, with curving archways filled in with white grillwork. The walls around the Red Fort have curvaceous crenellations. It was all very Mughal-looking, which of course it is. And the red walls went on and on as we went through crazy traffic, and I stared open-mouthed.

When I thought of the Red Fort before the trip, I remembered the story about the emperor who fell down a flight of stairs and died, so I decided to walk mindfully around the Red Fort; it doesn’t look like I’ll have that opportunity. Much as I fantasize about living in India for a year or two, is that ever really going to happen?

Now I’m worried about getting to the Gandhi Smriti on time. The manager said he’d call when the computer’s up, but it’s a quarter after 12, and he confirmed with me that the cab would come at 12:30, if I don’t check my e-mail, that isn’t as important at this stage. I should have asked if someone would bring down my suitcase, and if I should be waiting out front for the cab. All these simple little things, and I just don’t have a clue.

Gandhiji’s Ashram

A tall white wall encircled the ashram, Gandhi Smriti, the last house where Gandhi lived and where he was shot and died. Outside the mud walls around the ashram stood shabby-looking little booths where merchants cooked and sold food. Stray dogs lurked around as if they were waiting for something, perhaps food from the cooks.


Shantum explained that Gandhi slept in the room at the back of the house and that he lived at the ashram during his last fourteen days. Shantum said, “Gandhi is the closest to the Buddha we have seen in this lifetime.” Hearing that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling and brought a smile to my lips. I have been reading Gandhi’s autobiography a little bit at a time, and Shantum’s comment made sense to me.

We first entered a nearly empty room that contained to our left a low bed with simple white cotton sheets and a huge cotton tube. The tube was gathered at each end, nearly two feet tall, and at least three feet long. In response to a question, Shantum explained that it was a type of bolster pillow. If you were quickly cleaning house before guests arrived, you could stuff plenty of dirty laundry into a pillowcase like that. Very tall arched windows without curtains circumscribed the room on three walls. The white plaster walls consisted of almost as much glass as wall, no doubt an advantage in a hot climate.

The second room was as small as the first but with fewer windows. The inner wall included a white tile fireplace, perfectly clean and devoid of any logs or fire tools. To the right of the door, a glass display case was attached to the wall and contained Gandhi’s last possessions. This only included about seven items, such as two walking sticks, a razor, a pair of wooden shoes, and a rock that, Shantum explained, Indians use in lieu of soap. I suspected I’d get a rash using a rock like that.

Seeing these simple possessions, I thought about the paraphernalia that I accumulate so easily and that clutters up my messy house. Gandhi’s system seems so much better and less complicated, and sometimes it occurs to me that if I had fewer things, I would have fewer problems. Yet I suspect I shall have a lot more than seven possessions when I die.

Among the items by the simple bed is a brown wooden sculpture of three monkeys lined up in the parable: See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. Shantum told us that a Buddhist monk gave this to Gandhi, and he thinks it’s a strange thing for a Buddhist to give someone. The parable does not come across as a particularly Buddhist attitude, given the focus on seeking truth and confronting it even when you don’t like the truth. But Val pointed out that perhaps it’s in this case about using mindful speech rather than, say, spreading rumors.

Beyond the display case is a very tall casement window that almost extends to the floor. Shantum pointed out this window because, as a sign outside indicates, Gandhi stepped out of the window and followed a red brick path outdoors. He was headed for the prayer meeting at which he was shot.

Inside the museum I lagged behind the group and wandered through the hallway and rooms that contain many framed pictures, quotes, and placards; the latter gave a detailed account of what happened during Gandhi’s last days. Every room in the house had white walls, and all the doors and window frames were made of dark wood. I read some of the quotes and some of the story about the end of Gandhi’s life, and Rikki asked me if it’s known who killed him, but all I remembered was that the assassin was a male Hindu, so we searched for the name and description of the perpetrator. I learned that the murderer shot Gandhi earlier than he had intended, because it was easy to get him point blank while he walked on the path with his nieces.

Staff members were young people dressed like Nehru in white kurtas and pants and maroon vests. They approached the few remaining visitors and said it was five o’clock and closing time. I looked around and realized that everyone else in our group had probably already gone outdoors. A young woman dressed just like the guys said to me, “The exit is this way.” I didn’t want to hold them up and rushed down the hallway in the direction she indicated. The door I saw to my left was closed, so I hurried past it, but the young woman called me back and directed me to that door. I turned around, laughed, and headed for the large, dark wooden door she stood by. Fortunately, she took it well and smiled amusedly back at me. That seems to be common here; Americans don’t necessarily smile back at you, and they’re likely to be brusque and even rude.

The exit led to a path in what looked like a side yard, and I wandered around admiring lush plant life. I came to the enormous World Peace Gong, which stands in a pavilion and is covered in painted flags from all over the world. I think many people must have funded the making of this gong, and it is comforting and encouraging to know that large numbers of people are serious about world peace. Ironically, it frequently seems as though the sane people are treated as if we are foolish, naïve, or crazy because we believe in peace and even know what it is. Anyone who comes to Gandhi’s ashram can see this World Peace Gong, get some inkling of what Gandhi was talking about if they didn’t already know, and become more conscientious about waging peace.

I wandered back into the garden and soon spotted the exterior view of the window through which Gandhi had stepped. Along this path are beige clay footprints that stick up a few inches from the sidewalk. They are shaped like traditional Indian sandals, complete with a circle carved into the clay indicating where a knob would go between the two biggest toes. Centered in the path, the steps lead to the shrine out in the garden and stop where Gandhi was assassinated. When walking along a parallel brick path approaching the column shrine, I gawked at the shrine, which is a very small white marble pavilion encasing a white column engraved with Hindi script. Shantum and some of the others stood before it, palms together.

Shortly after I removed my sandals, I stood on the green path near the shrine while Shantum spoke to the group, and I caught sight of a calico cat walking along a decorative brick outer wall of the garden. The cat looked up at a tree full of agitated noisy birds. Its ears pointed straight up and forward, its tail twitched, and it crouched as it stared up at the birds. “Cat! Cat! Cat!” they shrieked. That’s my translation.

In another tree, I could see a couple of bright green parrots, or rather parakeets, Shantum called them. He gently said, “The time is now 5:17,” and finally had my full attention. “That was also the time when, ten days before today’s date, Gandhi was shot.” The garden, Shantum explained, was like it is now, with the same trees and the same type of parakeets, so it was basically the same setting. I found this a bit disturbing, really, given that it was where Gandhi was shot. It was like a time machine.

Walking on the garden path at Gandhi’s ashram, Shantum was ahead of me and said, “The world wasn’t ready for Gandhi’s message and is only just starting to understand it.” I smiled faintly in agreement, aware that he put into words something I have vaguely thought a few times. Now I thought: the world had better understand it soon, rather than die in nuclear warfare. It is so weird when people who are so obviously not pacifists mention Gandhi, such as when a book about him shows up at my workplace; so many people have heard of Gandhi and know he was a famous Indian, but I’m not sure what else they really know about him.

Later Shantum said, “Buddhists don’t like Gandhi, because he wasn’t anti-caste.” He pointed out that while Gandhi believed that Dalits, or Untouchables, should be treated with some respect and called them “Children of God,” he didn’t actually say anything about putting an end to the caste system. I found this astonishing. But obviously this dislike toward Gandhi doesn’t apply to all Buddhists. Shantum admires Gandhi, and I realize he was certainly not perfect, but since he was such an advocate of ahimsa and practitioner of satyagraha, I’m willing to overlook things like that, even though nobody could be more anti-caste than I. The caste system is a blatantly hierarchal social structure that totally conflicts with egalitarianism and social justice. Regardless, it’s useful to read up on Gandhi’s nonviolent methods for inspiration.