Monday 23 January 2012 Gentle Repose

In the witching hours just after midnight, the Ajmer train station is as bustling as any other time we've been through one. Our host, Mr Bhargato, is from the very start warm and welcoming, helpful, meeting our every request and inquiry with a head wobbling "don't worry, we will take care of it." Transport from the station is an old beat-up bus half the size of those we'd filled in Delhi. Ha,ha, why would I bother to specify 'beat-up?,' they all are! Three slips-of-men lug our bags along side, push and pull heavy roller bags and 40 & 60 pound backpacks straight up to the roof. "Don't worry, I am strong Indian boy!"

It goes like this. The ground man hefts the bag to his head, then presses it up to locked elbows. The roof man reaches down over the edge, way down, and does a pull-up the rest of the way. We watch, amazed. I'm glad mine is one of the first taken, so it ends up on the bottom layer - the last bags up wobble precariously. One of the porters perches on the bottom step, hanging out of the open bus door, to keep watch for bounce-offs for the five minutes ride to the Inn.

The Havali Heritage Inn is a family mansion molded into a BnB by the Mr.'s Bhargato, who were born within these walls. As was their father, and his father before him and his father before him, his father having built the original first floor of a dozen rooms surrounding two open air courtyards ringed by veranda walkways dripping with bogenvalea. Alcoves in these inner-outer walls frame intaglio Hindu idols of various aspects of God. A waist-high fountain plays in the first courtyard across from the glass roomed family shrine of Krishna. Wicker chairs encircle the inner garden, inviting repose.

Sadly, this may be the end of the line - their two families grew here, and none have shown interest in keeping on. With their sons married and moved away, the brothers added a second story on the back section. They still live in a few rooms on the first floor, and play host to guests from around the world, including foreign dignitaries and India's own statesmen. Gandhi stayed here whenever he was in Ajmer, and one of our rooms houses the couch upon which their father sat for a chat with the martyr.

When next I come to India, I'll stay here at least a week. It feels like home - especially the home-cooked meals! Ooooo, the banquets they prepare - the best food we've had so far! I am beginning to feel a rhythm to the days, sleeping soundly, eating scrumptuously, walking miles of hilly streets.

Monday morning begins with a full Inn breakfast, then scooter-shaws to a delightful introduction to the Sufi Saints School - a non-profit, totally donation-supported humanitarean miracle. Children ages 3-1/2 thru 10 from the poorest of the poor are given free quality education. They giggle and wiggle as we pass from room to room, radiating the love and joy of a community of every religious and political presence of India come together with the common cause of learning. The over-riding message of the school is Love, Harmony, universal peace and brotherhood. By bringing children from various religions and beliefs together, and teaching them under one roof, the school promotes the message of world peace and co-existence.

No child is left behind. All who inquire are accepted. These are probably the very first generation of their families to ever be educated. They are today's hope for tomorrow's India. Just $30 provides one child's education, uniforms, materials and a nutritious lunch for a year. From a start of 14 in 1993, the school now blossoms with 300 pairs of shining eyes. Here is a cause I will support into the future.

Moinudinn Chisti's cave is shocking, like a flame thrower to my 3rd eye and then my heart, too, glows a-fired. Everything else falls away into a sea of disorientation. I surrender to the deep, deep, basso profundo of energy. The furnace within throbs, I work to bring it down, down, down, absorbing each chakra, by chakra, to the root. Each plexus sobs with relief as it becomes attuned to the deep, broad, solid force. Then - zip! an express elevator to the crown and zoom! up beyond perception.

More and more pilgrims carry more and more languages into the low ceilinged tenXten windowless, airless space. Bodies press from every side, the air thickens, people are shouting. Intensity beyond explanation. Some of our number cannot bear the pressur, so we leave. My soul cries: "no! It's not enough! This was just a sip, a tease!"

Another flight of stairsteps farther up the hill, we pause to reflect at the tombs of the first Gudri Shah baba, then the second, Hazrat Nawab Kadim Hasan, and then Dr. Hazrat Dr. ZahurulnHassan Sharib, Gudri Shah Baba IV, author of many important Sufi books and a dear friend of our teacher. Here we sit again for a time, re-collecting.

The view from this height helps me regain perspective, a sense of being in the world again. It seems I can see the world from here - the whole world is comprised in this colorful market place below, this road which parallels the edge of a lake so large it could be a bay, these villages dotting the rimming hills.

Now it's a long trek through Magar Marketplace which seems to bustle no matter the hour. Shopers offer friendly smiles, merchants shout "Hello! Hello! Come into my shop"

Turning the corner towards the Daragh Sharif, the atmosphere shifts to... less polite, less allowing of our presence. Up a gently winding hill framed by open sewers running we climb, the shops smaller and meaner with each turn. Passers-bye busily going about their evening shopping stare at us interlopers, offer no smiles.

Typical rose sellers signal the shrine is approaching. This is the Daragh of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, a sufi saint and root of the sisila (heritage) of the Chisti International Sufi Order. Moiniddin arrived in India from Persia in the 1192CE, and died here in 1236. For Muslims of India, this site is a close second to haaj, Mecca. For sufis it is nirvana. Knowing security is tight here, with too frequent threats and occassional bombings by fundamentalists, we've come carrying nothing. So we can simply deposited our shoes and salem malecuemm past layers of Kurta and cap clothed guards.

Another series of courtyards separated by short steps offer fanciful plates of rose petals, strings of blossoms, a rainbow of plastic tasbih. The main courtyard is filled with the faithful of every continent. Garb of a plethora of countries paints a rainbow of a different sort. Conscripted beggars drag towards us, eyes pleading. Dargah Wallas, each claiming to be the direct descendent of the Profit, Saint, or some prominent Imam, offer "sign my book, sign my book." For a small donation my name could be recorded at the Daragh of the founder of the way which I follow.

Circumambulating we come upon a platform set back from the sea and we sit, waiting for evening prayers to be accomplished, the crowds to lighten, waiting for our time to go in. It's surprisingly quiet. Suddenly, banging drums bring the crowds to their feet as one body to stand facing the tomb. Hundreds of swooping birds similar to our barn swallows gather in a tremendous canopy tree on the corner of the courtyard, their chirping cries picatto to the yearning harmonies of man. The sky has shifted to that marvelous deep blue of sun's last hour of light.

Evening prayers completed, the birds as one body fly away.

We enter.

The pressing crush of bodies moves as one, clockwise around the crypt. Huddled by the silver rail, our little group is further joined when Dargah Wallas throw a family-size prayer shawl over our collective heads. We remain for a time, bowed in reverence, genuflected in awe. Lightyears later we are brought forth, rose petals pressed to our palms, to eat of the sweetness of His love. I am numb to the in sensibilities of the walk back home.

The whole troup congregates back at the Inn as dusk creeps into the inner courtyard and the bogenvaleas become frilly silhouettes against evenings' last light. The fire pit is lighted and the banquet begins. Hmmmmmmmmm yumba! India's version of BBQ chicken, rice with peas, and vegetable curry punctuated by yogurt with fruit. Ahhh, the grand finale of sweet, light, gulag juman balls, like lightweight krullers briefly soaked in syrup.

Sleep is sweet, still, complete.