3rd Day in India

Early morning, our third in India. We are in the waiting room of the bank manager of The State Bank of India. We have only come to cash some travelers cheques but when we ask for a couple of bundles of two rupee notes, we are referred into the manager’s office. As we wait in chairs, our children on our knees, we see the manager at his desk conferring busily with a group of men. Their voices are rising in agitation and they seem to be upset about something.

The manager’s face is stern, his tone strident as he apparently admonishes the men. Then, in a moment, he comes over to where we are sitting. His face is transfigured. Smiling radiantly almost sweetly he asks what he can do for us. The change in energy in the room is startling. We request the bundles of notes and he returns to his desk barking a command and one of the men departs.

The angry conversation continues for about 10 more minutes and then the man returns and hands the manager the money we requested. Immediately everything stops and the manger returns to us smiling so sweetly, so gently that I can’t believe it’s the same man.
         
I am familiar with the labyrinths of bureaucracy from my travels and know that running into a burned out official in some office can cause wasted time and headaches over the littlest thing. Seeing the angry situation we walked into I expect the worst but this is something new. In the instant of walking toward us the angry manager has transformed himself into a smiling holy man and as he hands us the crisp bundles of notes, it is as if he is bestowing a blessing upon us and as he waves good-bye, it feels like a benediction.
         
Our bundles of rupees in hand we prepare ourselves for the task of bargaining at the cab stand. Perhaps the bank manager is a saint but our first experience with Delhi cab drivers has warned us to gird our loins when we approach them and take nothing for granted. We have already inquired at our hotel for the taxi rate to the Nizamuddin bazaar and have been told not to pay more than 20 rupees including a tip. We have also been advised to settle the rate with the cab driver in advance so as to avoid arguments at the journey’s end.

Many of India’s taxis are curious little motorized three-wheelers called rickshas and as we approach the first driver and ask the rate to the Nizamuddin bazaar there is an immediate misunderstanding. Two or three cab drivers join in the conference. They can’t understand where we want to go even after we’ve pointed it out on a tourist map. Finally it becomes apparent that my pronunciation of NizaMOODin instead of NizamooDEEN with the accent on the last syllable has confused them and we are immediately quoted a rate of 40 rupees, double the suggested fare.

We counter at ten which quickly angers the cabby and he won’t speak to us further. So we approach another one and he quotes us 25 rupees. We settle on 20 and off we roar in a cloud of dust.
         
We are all in ecstasy. Our first cab ride in India and we are in this crazy surrey-with-a-fringe-on-top, wide open to the elements. After our long trudge through the streets the day before, this soaring through the city at high speed is exhilarating. Add to this the cabby’s natural daredevil approach to traffic congestion and it feels like we are on a circus ride.

We pass oxen and donkeys in the street, pulling heavy loads and we even pass elephants. Elephants! All of this mingled with cars and trucks zooming along at breakneck speed.  Soon my mind is reeling!

Before long we arrive at Hamayan’s Tomb, a tourist landmark on the outskirts of the bazaar. The cabby points the way across the busy street and we find ourselves entering the portals of the 1001 Nights.

Central New Delhi is still very Western in look and feel but this bazaar is old India. We are asking directions as we progress, “Where is Inayat Khan’s tomb?” The responses are conflicting to say the least and we soon find ourselves walking along a street filled with the scent of roses. Flower sellers line both sides of the narrow lane, selling all manner of fresh and dried roses of all shades of pink, red, yellow and white.

Also there are incenses, perfumes, essences, books, icons, rosaries and everything to do with the life of the bazaar which is basically the business growing up and around the site of the tomb of a great saint. We do not know yet that the saint is not Inayat Khan who is being venerated here but rather a 13th century holy man who was one of the founders of the Chishti Silsiliyah, or lineage, in India, to which Inayat belonged.

His name was Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia. His tomb and courtyard called a dargah, is the center of this bazaar. To it flock thousands of pilgrims annually, from all corners of the globe seeking the barakah or blessing of the departed saint which is said to pervade this holy site. Legend has it that anyone who visits this place with a request or desire will have it satisfied after coming here.
         
I am carrying my guitar with us because I have it in mind that we will find Inayat’s tomb and we’ll maybe say a prayer, light some incense and play a wee bit of music. My image of a grave site is that of a western style cemetery, peaceful and grassy with no one around. As we progress down the seemingly narrowing lane this image is slowly being squeezed from my consciousness. Buildings and people are crammed in here like sardines. There is no breathing space in this riot of color and sound. Now it is obvious that we are on the only path towards our goal.

I feel a slight nervousness growing in me. The only way I can explain it is to compare it with the sense of nervousness I felt when I first visited Paul Reps in his little trailer on Vancouver Island in the mid 70’s. In a deep sense that was the beginning of this journey.
         
About the same time I met “reps” as he was familiarly known, I had also come across the writings of Inayat Khan. I did not know at first that there was any connection between them. I can’t recall nor do I seem to have any record of my first encounter with Inayat but I believe that my reading of Idries Shah’s “The Sufis” led me to be curious about anything to do with Sufis and that I had already seen pictures of Inayat but did not make the connection with his books until I specifically chose to purchase second hand copies of the first two editions of this 12 volume series on Sufism. The connection between music and mysticism drew me as much as the sufi reference but I feel I was most strongly impacted by his picture which I’d seen several times before.

A great energy seemed to emanate from his picture in a tangible way that is difficult to define, almost as though the picture radiated energy. There was something very compelling that drew me to this being and I knew that I had to find and read his books. Of course, money was always a problem and purchasing new hard cover books was usually impossible but eventually they came my way.

My photographer friend Robert James in Duncan on Vancouver Island where I was living at the time who took a photo of Inayat from one of the books and made me a copy. I put it in a little gilded frame and kept it by my bedside where I meditated each morning and night. Inayat’s wise and deep ecstatic eyes seemed to observe me in my meditations and I in turn felt that I was not sitting alone but in the presence of a friend, no matter that he had passed away in the 1920’s.
         
I felt that I was a sufi at heart without really knowing what a sufi was although Idries Shah’s “The Sufis” had been given to me a couple of years earlier by my then partner and friend, Veronica.  What prompted her to give me this gift I will never know but it heralded a significant change in my life just prior to our eventual breakup.  I read this book with a mixture of avid curiosity, excitement and familiarity that I think has been echoed by many other readers around the world.  The spinner of these tales of mystery, Idries Shah  was at the same time a stern task master who cautioned readers against glib and false interpretations of the doctrine he was expounding.  The fantastic nature of the material however seemed to belie his admonitions. 

I drank from the pages of this little book for many a year and still do.  What kind of medicine I am extracting I am not sure but it has soothed and comforted my disturbed spirit on many a long and difficult day.

There are many of these days to negotiate between the time I first read of the Sufis, meet Paul Reps and finally find myself on the rose-scented lane of this Indian bazaar.  There is a surrealistic sense of moving in slow motion or even backward in  time as we make our way along the crowded lane, our attention captured at every turn by the unfamiliar sights and sounds surrounding us. 

Karen stops at a flower seller’s booth to buy several necklaces of roses which she places around my neck and the necks of the children.  We do not seem to stop and question why these roses are being sold but bathe ourselves in the fragrance and beauty of them and the rose scent that pervades the streets.  The presence of my family and the weight of my guitar case are the only things anchoring me to reality as we proceed.