Andrew Blackwell - Visit Sunny Chernobyl - And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places

Five in the morning again, and we woke up, Mansi and I each in our individual mesh pods of mosquito netting. For Mansi, the mosquito net served double duty as a sadhu net. We didn’t put it past Creepy Baba or some other insufficiently detached holy man to come climbing in next to her, hoping to play Krishna to her Radha.

It was Mansi’s last morning on the yatra. She had things to do back in Delhi. When she announced that she would be leaving, though, Creepy Baba had suddenly announced that he, too, needed to go to Delhi.

Oh god, Mansi said. I’ll never get rid of him.

I emerged to the sight of the pre-dawn mortifications. There was always a sadhu balanced on his head in the tent across the way, or complicating his nostrils with yogic breathing, or inflicting himself with some other reverent difficulty. Somehow it always took me by surprise. When I leave a tent, I guess I’m expecting a campfire, or some beef jerky—not a holy man tied in a square knot.

More substantially, I wondered why there weren’t any young environmental types kicking around. Where were the young green-niks of Delhi and Agra? R. C. Trivedi and Bharat Lal Seth had both suggested that secular environmentalists and Hindu spiritual groups were finally working together, after decades of pointless division. I had thought India was the place where someone was finally building the bridge between conservation and religion. And maybe so. But then where was everybody?

Mansi made her escape shortly after we started walking, hitching a ride to the bus station in Sunil’s jeep. For a moment it looked like she would get away without Creepy Baba in tow, but at the last minute he realized what was going on. Running to the jeep, he piled in next to her, and they rode off together, Mansi staring at the ceiling.

A month later I would e-mail her from New York, asking how things had turned out when the yatra had reached Delhi. I hadn’t found much in the papers.

She would tell me she had gone to see the protest. There had been nothing like the predicted half million people, she said, but there were sadhus from all over the world, and a strong showing from the farmers’ union. Creepy Baba had said hello, and another sadhu had grabbed Mansi by the hand and dragged her up front to sit by the podium. There were speeches, and some loose talk about taking a sledgehammer to the dam at Wazirabad. But nobody in Delhi noticed.

“Sad,” she wrote me. “There’s so many of them, and zero press coverage.” It seemed the media had exhausted itself earlier in the month, covering an anti-corruption hunger strike. In the end, Delhi would pay the Yamuna yatra about as much attention as it does the Yamuna itself.

I continued with the yatra for a few more days. Because he spoke decent English, Mahesh installed himself as my new minder.

“I will be your translator!” he said, walking beside me, his arms swinging wide. “I am going to tell you SO many stories about Lord Krishna!”

An earnest, ever-smiling man in his mid-twenties, Mahesh looked more like a young computer science graduate than a sadhu, but his enthusiasm for Krishna was unrivaled. Thus was I treated to stories and digressions about Krishna and heaven, about Krishna and the boy stuck in the well, about how Krishna had been “naughty” and gone “thief-ing water.” About how Krishna had ordered his minister to “make women more lusty,” and had then vanquished the minister for criticizing him about it. About how Krishna had told the people to worship the forests and the hills instead of the lord Indra.

Mahesh on sin. Mahesh on how if you invoke Krishna you will prevent illness. Mahesh on sin, again. Mahesh on how he had so many sins. SO many sins! I began to wonder just what kind of sins we were talking about. The sin of attachment? The sin of being full of stool and urine? The sin of being member to a ruinous species? Or something else that shouldn’t count as sin? Was his sin something he had done? Something he wanted to do? Something that had been done to him?

We walked. We sauntered. We made embalmed relics of our hearts. Mahesh on how with Krishna at your side, you will avoid car crashes at the last instant. How if someone tries to hit you, they will fail. How if they shoot at you, they will miss. So many things. SO many things, Gore Krishna! The stories of Lord Krishna are real history. This is not only scripture, no. It is scientific!

I began to wither in the grip of the sadhus’ hospitality, guiltily dreading the second and third and fourth helpings of food, served with smiling insistence. My belly became bloated with lentils and bread. But I had no choice. When I chose to skip lunch one afternoon, it threw the yatra into a near uproar of concern.

And Mahesh’s solicitude knew no bounds. Had I eaten? Had I eaten enough? Had I washed my hands? Had I used soap? Did I need a bath? Did I know I could take a bath under the spigot of the water tank? Would I like him to show me where this bath could happen? Was I going to take a bath? When was the last time I took a bath? I didn’t like being reminded that out here I was less competent than a five-year-old.

“You have been to the forest?” he asked me after lunch.

“The forest?” I said.

“The forest! Did you not go, for letting? Toilet? Two or three days…”

“Oh. Yes.” I gave my report. “I went yesterday and the day before. Don’t worry. Three days without, that’s not possible.”

“Everything is possible!” he said.

And still we hadn’t seen the river. Tomorrow, Sunil said. We’ll get there tomorrow.

At the same time, part of me became convinced of the sadhu life. The evening found a dozen of us crammed into a single tent, singing, drumming, clashing symbols. The young man leading the songs was the best singer and drummer on the yatra. He probably spent a good five hours a day in rapturous musical performance, whether on the pickup truck or in the evening, in camp. Tonight, he drew verses from an open book of scripture, knitting his brow as he strung out a melody, before throwing it out to the group, to repeat in a throaty, musical roar.

On my last night, sitting on the ground eating dinner, I was befriended by Ravi and Ramjeet, two fifteen-year-old sadhus who had worked up the nerve to try out their English on me. I wondered if they were runaways, but they said their families had both endorsed the move to Maan Mandir. They were inseparable. Like Gabe and Henry on the Kaisei, they had known each other since early childhood.

“Ramjeet is ideal friend,” Ravi said, clapping him on the back.

Our conversation was soon joined by Ravinder—a hotel manager from Calcutta who spoke perfect English—and another sadhu, a fierce-looking man with a shaved head and goatee. After dinner, we retired to one of the tents to practice English and talk about how I should stay on with the yatra, go to live at Maan Mandir, and devote myself to Krishna.

I couldn’t, I said. I had to go home. I was done traveling. I missed my friends. I missed my family.

“But God wants you to be here, wants you to be at Maan Mandir,” Ravinder said.

Maybe I should have considered it. I’m sure there was a bedroll for me up in the temple building. I could sleep under a mosquito net in a row of sadhus. I could wake up to the words of Shri Baba, and a view over the hills and ponds of Braj. Was that so much less than I had to look forward to in New York? And I liked these guys. Usually I bristle at people trying to convert me to their religion, but sitting here I was somehow gratified by how they didn’t insist.