A SADHU STORY.

Pushkar, 07-03-1995. Again I felt restless this morning and went to the Brahma temple to have an early morning smoke with my new friend, the sadhu that guards the temple. He even serves me chai and chapatis. Told me this amazing Lord Braham story this morning. BRAHMA REACTED THE WORLD, BRAHMA CREATED THE HOLY COW, BUT FELL IN LOVE WITH HER, HE CHANGED HIMSELF INTO A BULL AND WENT AFTER HER FULL WITH LOVE AND LUST, TO ESCAPE HIM THE COW TURNED HERSELF INTO A BIRD, BRAHMA TURNED HIMSELF INTO A MALE BIRD, THE COW THAN TURNED INTO A TREE, BRAHMA DID THE SAME, THE COW TURNED HER FORM AGAIN AND EVENTUALLY WENT THROUGH ALL STATES OF CREATION, SPARING NO SACRIFICE BRAHMA FOLLOWED SUIT TURNING INTO ALL THE STATES OF CREATION AS WELL. I sat there stunned and my drugged mind desperately trying to understand the hidden message in his story, trying hard not to look like yet again a stupid foreign tourist......not even bothering to hide his triumph, he explained BRAHMA FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS OWN CREATION, EVERYTHING COMES AND EVERYTHING GOES, ONLY LOVE REMAINS, DESPITE THE INFINITE NUMBER OF LIFE FORMS ON THIS WORLD, AT THEIR BIRTH OF EXISTENCE AND AT THE MOMENT OF THEIR DYING AND ALL THE TIME BETWEEN, THERE IS ONLY ENERGY AND ENERGY IS LOVE.

A strange Sadhu .

Pushkar, 06-03-1995. It is early morning and Christine is snoring contentedly at my side. Despite the passion of last night and all the booze, charas and pot that came with it, I feel restless and ill at ease. I leave the bed quietly and dress trying to pick my own clothes out of a multitude of garments strewn all over the room. Pieces of left over food and empty bottles of Khazana Superstrong Beer, a french bottle of red wine we acquired mystreriously on the way home late last night. I leave the chaos and Christine stark naked asleep on the bed in the middle of all this, and walk the short distance to the nearby temple that is dedicated to Lord Brahma. It is only 06.00 h. in the morning but a shruffy looking Sadhu is already happily puffing away at his chilam, he probably wants to get stoned together with the approaching sun, not a bad idea and I join him. It does not take me more than 10 min. to realise the poor sod`s brain cells have been burned away by a life time of heavy charas smoking. His religious queeste for Lord Brahma came to bumby stop years ago leaving him with fried brains. I see his orange colored robes flashing through the temple when he gets up to boil some water for chai. I can see the orange color brighten up when he passes through the rays of early sunlight that filter through the holes in the roof. The shadows start to play tricks on me and I realise I might very well be a few mental levels higher as I originally thought. Pretty good charas this sadhu has got.

Christine in my bed, fast asleep.

Pushkar, 05-03-1995. Christine - my new New Sealand love - left me shortly after breakfast this morning. She wanted to go back to her room to pick up a few belongings. Still feeling pretty worn out from our nightly sexual conduct I wandered off to the main square to have a bangh lassie at my favourite chai shop. I have spent a lot of time at this chai shop since arriving in Pushkar, drinking luke warm chai and knocking down bangh lassies. It is a good chai shop with a great location on the main square, great spot for people watching while being under the influence of a relaxing spliff or assie. I`m not the only foreign tourist at this chai shop, the place is a real meeting point for the foreigners in Pushkar. Apart from a great location for people spotting, the also serve suburb bangh lassies. When late afternoon I return to my room I find Christine in my bed fast asleep. After chasing away the inevitable kids from the hotel from the cracks in my door, I take off all my clothes end join her in my bed.

A lady from New Sealand.

Pushkar, 04-03-1995. We chat for hours while sipping at our bangh lassies and watching the chaotic Pushkar street life. Slowly the darkness is becoming total and before the hordes of stray dogs that rule the nights in indian cities, come out of their hiding places and will give us a hard time, we decide to return home. Home is my place and she coming along is no question but a fact acompli. I don`t need to invite her over and she doesn`t bother to ask. We roll and smoke spliffs from the tola of charas I have hidden in my bathroom. After a while we feel so stoned, almost like the walls of my room are coming at us and we hide under my single sheet that is supposed to be white but hasn`t been washed for so long, it has turned a dirty dark grey. We kiss and let our hands go exploring the other body. We are both hot to the touch and excited like 16 year olds, wanting each other badly. We feel like we are rolling around on clouds so stoned we are, and our minds are even higher, some place just before what is supposed to be heaven. We quite literally fuck ourselves to sleep. When I wake up she is still there and the kids from the hotel family outside my room peeping through the cracks in the door, trying to spot our naked bodies on the bed with the aid of the first morning light that comes filtering through the windows of my room.

Weddings in Pushkar.

Pushkar, 03-03-1995. Pushkar being a holy hindu village, it is small wonder that the place is highly popular among young couples about to wed. The idea is that the bridegroom will fetch his bride from her parents house sitting on his high mount and all dressed up in his best clothes. Mucisians have been hired to accompany him and people to carry these rediculous TL tubes vertically on top of their heads. A small boy will usually walk along side the horse carrying a ventilator that give some relief to the bridegroom from the intense rajastan heat. His relatives will en masse walk along as well and at the very end of this weird procession a noisy generator is dragged behing on a wooden cart to supply the electricity for the ventilator and the Tl tubes. That people don`t trip over all the electric wiring that goes hither and tither between the TL tubes and the generator is an amazing feat in itself... Just outside the village the young couples and their friends and relatives wait in the dozens for their turn. Puskkar`s small and already congested streets will have to put up with about 20/30 wedding processions every day.

Processions in Pushkar.

Pushkar, 02-03-1995. Just outside my hotel is a hindu temple dedicated to whatever god in the hindu panthenon of gods and deities. From the balconey of my room I watch, a bangh lassie down my throat and as spliff hanging from the left corner of my mouth, how the local vistors to Pushkar hire some of the numerous musicians that wait just outside Pushkar for customers, and under the accompaniment of extreme out of tune music set off for this temple. They pass underneath my balconey and I watch how their women folk dance in front of the temple while their men encourage them on. After the dancing they all enter including the musicians and their continuing out of tune music, lots of chanting sounds from the inside and the heavy odour of indian insence coming out of the temple in smoky walms invades my nostrils. Eventually it is all over, they all come out, the musicians get their pay and wander off in search of new customers while the devotees head off for the chai shop at the end of the street. This sort of processions go on all over Pushkar, at all the numerous hindu temples in Pushkar.

A bangh lassie in Pushkar.

Pushkar, 01-03-1995. The first thing I did last night after dinner was going back to my favourite chai shop on Pushkar`s main square and have a bangh lassie, a joghurt drink mixed with a heavy dose of mariuana. The bangh lassie quite nearly wiped me out but I kept enough grip on the situation, mentally as well as physically, to survive the experience. Staggering home after my bangh lassie I discovered quite a few familiar faces in the evening twilight of Pushkar`s colorfull streets, fellow travellers seen before on the Lonely Planet road in south/east Asia. Most of them seem to recognise me as well but being in a mental state quite similar to my own, we merely nod our heads at each other in mutual recognition....further conversation will have to wait untill another day, untill the time we have come down enough to chat and exchange our latest travel stories.