rishikesh

I just had a lovely memory of a most beautiful town square in India. Rishikesh to be precise. The town is most famous in the West for the visits The Beatles made to it in the sixties, but even in India it is well known. The town sits in the foothills of the Himalaya, straddling the newly born River Ganges. 25kms or so down river is Haridwar, one of the sites of the quadrennial religious gathering known as the Kumbha Mela; the largest gathering of humanity on the planet. As both Haridwar and Rishikesh are holy towns, meat is forbidden. They are strictly vegetarian towns.

Rishikesh itself is split into two parts, the main town, which is a very hectic, typically Indian town, full of blaring horns and holy cows. But on the far side of the river there is a part of the town where cars cannot come, populated by ashrams and the occasional guest house. To get there, one must take a boat or cross a lovely footbridge (which was built by the British during WWII). On the peak of the hill on that quiet side of town, there is a very serene, and seemingly very ancient, town square, which I stumbled across late one afternoon in 1993.

The afternoon light was lovely, and there were many sahdus (Indian holy men) sitting around. One sahdu was standing, but leaning on a swing hanging from a large tree. "He's been standing for nearly 10 years", one of the sahdus later told me proudly. "He sleeps standing, he eats standing, he even shits standing". Wow, I thought. Impressive.

I smoked a chillum with a few of the sahdus as the light went from yellow to gold and the afternoon shone in its final glory. Whether it was the surroundings, the light, or just the hash, I will never be sure (most likely it was a combination of all three), but I felt a connection to the human social condition that afternoon that I have never felt since. The symbolism of the town square was intensely powerful - particularly without the modern irritations of traffic, noise or advertising. People came and went about their business, as they purchased vegetables for the evening meal, or just sat and talked to their neighbours at the end of the day. I was very envious of the standing sahdu. It was certainly a nice place to hang around (groan..) for a decade. Not that I envied him his feat of religious asceticism.

Just the view.