Eternal Bliss

Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us." — Marianne Williamson

A strong nudge made me turn indignantly only to find a little girl looking at me serenely. She was roughly nine years old and had a little boy accompanying her. She was  dark with gleaming eyes, wearing a long  skirt and blouse, her curly hair left open with an orange mark on her forehead. The boy was younger than her, untidily dressed in a white shirt and coloured shorts. They were holding a flat plate with a few idols of Gods and Godesses in it. I nodded my head in disapproval and moved ahead. It pained me that these little children found pride in begging, and giving them money would turn them into scrupulous vagrants.

They did not mind it, and walked briskly down slope on the mall road in Manali which  was filled with tourists who were gay and debonair. We were put up at hotel Kanishka which was just half a km away from mall road in Manali.  The mall road has a large central clearing with shops lined on both the sides of a long road. There are paved spherical firmaments and benches designed for tourists and others to sit and watch. We saw a group of localites who danced depicting their customs and traditions in this clearing.  The  shops were bustling with people. There were eateries, shops selling artefacts, shawls, woollens, toys and many more. It was late in the evening, We could see the Majestic Himalayas from one end. There were hordes of tourists from all over India who had gathered there. There was a masseur who was giving a professional massage to an old lady sitting on a bench in the square.

I noticed a larger crowd at a place. We peered to see people listening to a foreigner who was singing in all reverence. He had a sandalwood mark on his forehead, his fingers moved smoothly on the keys of a  harmonium, an Indian lady accompanied him on the dhol kept there. It took me  a few minutes to grasp that he sang  a bhajan (hymn) in Sanskrit. There was an another foreigner, a young lady, dressed in a long skirt and blouse with her hair left loose reminding me of the little vagrant as she came near and showed us some  thin small Hindi spiritual books.  She said ‘give me anything’ in Hindi. I walked away unknowingly wondering whether I must appreciate or help.

 The day before we started back we asked the driver to take us to Vasisht Kund, a hot water spring which was found by the mythological sage Vashishta.My son tired after the Rohtang pass visit preferred  staying back. We reached the place soon. Since the roads were narrow we had to get off the car and begin climbing a steep path. There were shops lined on both the sides of the road leading to the temple, we found that  the spring was in the temple. We had plenty of time on hand so decided to walk ahead to see a waterfall called Yogini waterfalls. It is  a 45 minutes trek in the lonely mountain paths.The road  past the temple grew narrower and we could see motels and small rooms and tenements closely packed with horses and cows being led to the mountains for grazing. There was a small opening, plastered with cement with a water pipe where I saw men and women washing their clothes. I saw a cow jump into it, to drink water. I looked ahead to reach the waterfalls, we climbed and moved ahead, we I found a half built home on a slope. 

There was a tent put up  in the yard and there were a few more foreigners living in miserable conditions with shrewd Indians serving them. While returning back I observed the place better,  a little away from the temple I saw a young foreigner sitting on the bare ground in a room whose doors were thrown open facing the narrow street. He stared into nothingness and seemed to be in a trance. I started rushing back as the warmth of the afternoon sun was now unbearable, perhaps it was the realisation which had turned me hot and angry.  I began speculating as we  travelled back. They say spirituality is a feeling of contentment and peace, an eminent state of rational awakening, a world of significance where a person raises as a personality with the love of God, and  goodness defusing stress, leading one to an everlasting world of bliss. The little girl  begging in the market square was aping the  foreigners in the path of spirituality as they gained the  consideration of the tourists through their sophisticated ways of begging. They were on narcotics and drugs with the money plundered while playing with the sentiments and convictions of people. I came to know that they had these rented places to live because they stayed for months in these places with no one to evict them, their families having written them off. The little girl’s resentfulness towards tourists was their refusal to acknowledge her spirituality. Was her adoration for God lesser than the foreigner's? Is spirituality an escape from our duties,  is it just high thinking  in a limited world of eternal contentment of self?

The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of  spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God." — Mother Teresa