I had always liked the milky sweet chai during my travels throughout India. I even grew to appreciate the charred milk patch, a silky piece of skin I would slurp with one inhale. But one day I was served something called “special” chai. It wasn’t laced with hash, but fiery spices that awoke my mouth and ignited my body with a sudden vitality. As I moved north I learned special was code for masala, which is a blend of spices such as black pepper and ginger.
When I returned from India and couldn’t find a chai that resembled “special” or masala, I began brewing my own at home in Nederland. My first bottling process began as holiday gifts for friends – mason jars of chai with Kabir poems as labels.
Bhakti means devotion through social action. I came to understand this meaning from the Swadhyay movement on the western coast of India – about the same time I became a Masala chai devotee.
*****
As the bus maneuvers through traffic, yanking and lurching as it tries to find freedom from Bombay’s congested streets, prayer bead size sweat drops roll down my inner thigh. The huffing and inhaling of the bus tempts vertigo as I clutch the damp metal pole, trying not to think about the feces chanting inside the metallic moisture. The splintering bus dashboard is cluttered with altar objects - incense wafting across nailed down Shiva statues that are perched in every direction.
We pass through shantytown, where collapsing sheds flap like faded frayed Tibetan prayer flags strung along the sidewalks, one million people living just above the curb of homelessness. The bus is slowly heading north, where I will visit the first of many Swadhyay villages to see how they’ve used Bhakti to improve their community.
Like an underground spring brimming transformation, the Swadhyay movement aims to create an entirely new type of individual and community. The two prongs of Swadhyay are self-knowledge and devotion through social action, or Bhakti. Devotion shouldn’t just be an introverted experience but should be a social force fostering universal family. Societal transformation then derives from this ideal of universal respect and unity, compelling individuals to serve their community by donating two days a month for the good of their community.
When the broiling eye slips through the hovering blackberry sky, and the shiny light tentacles begin to prance across the fisherman’s face, his Bhakti begins. Every fish he catches that day will go to someone in his community – his work is worship that day – a blaze of prayer on a floating temple. He’s not working to accumulate wealth or swaddle himself in materialism, but to ensure that everyone in his community it taken care of and fed.
Despite the low national and international profile of the Swadhyay movement, founder Pandurang Shasatri Athavale (Dada Ji) was recognized by the United Nations for creating innovative sociological models for change, and was awarded the Templeton prize for advancing the world’s understanding of religion in 1997.
“We can move to a coalition of world religions to safeguard a shared future blessed by god. Swadhyay proclaims a way to ensure violence never again, terrorism never again, and war never again. .May all the religions proclaim forgiveness, life, and love.” – Dada Ji
When I arrived in Kali, a fishing village of about 1200 people, I wasn’t prepared for the spiritual drunkenness I was about to encounter. My face was suddenly blazing, not from a quick sipped martini, but from the crowds of smiling Swadhyay faces welcoming me. They surround around me with smiles and namaste greetings, as if I was a long lost child returning from the war. Is there a mistake, I wondered. Do they think I’m someone else? Why are there so many people here to greet me? Finally, a man who would be my translator and guide for the next week approached me and introduced himself. There wasn’t a mistake, over 100 people had come to meet me and tell me their stories of how Swadhyay had changed their lives. This instant love felt like hot sherry down the back of my throat, moon dew bottled when God first lit the moon. They broke open the vintage bottles and shared extravagantly, spilling their love haphazardly.
They escorted me into a wall-less temple surrounded by clusters of stucco homes with wide mouth porches and I could feel the breeze from the nearby Arabian Sea. There was a small framed picture of Dada Ji and a television in the back corner where they watch weekly lectures/sermons from Dada Ji. Their brown foreheads were dotted with paint, marked and branded - but this wasn’t about conversion tactics or proselytizing, it felt like looking past affiliations and afflictions, into oneness. It was definitely a tipsy trance when separation dies and divine connection reveals its wink.
A chocolate Marlon Brando spoke first for the community, thanking god for letting them see their divine sister from America.“Tell me about Kali before Swadhyay?” I said scanning the faces of men and women for response. An elderly man spoke quickly to the translator, brandishing his fists around as he spoke.
“Drinking was the past time that brought men together. Because drinking is legal in Daman it was luring our fathers away. Gambling struck swords between long time friends and we didn’t even know the feeling of a community before Dada Ji.” I then scooted my body closer to the women and asked if a woman could explain her experience with the community before Swadhyay. All the women began to giggle and I watched closely to see if the men dismissed my request or tried to answer for the women. But chocolate Marlon Brando smiled at the women and encouraged them to speak their reality.
“It makes the hairs on my arm stand up with fear to think of all of us before Swadhyay,” a beautiful woman said as she cradled a drowsy moist toddler in her arms. “As a child I remember our families felt splintered and hazy, competition and jealousy between neighbors and family members. Now I’m in a women’s group with women from all around this area, not just my community and not just my religion.”
Swadhyay encourages women to come together for discussion, silence, and connection. Women begin to see women in neighboring villages as one sister, regardless of caste. This ultimately fosters understanding and the common thread between generations, religions, cultures, occupations, and ages. For centuries women were denied entrance to spiritual ceremonies and spiritual study, but now through the Swadhyay teachings of equality, women are not only participating in philosophical studies, but becoming spiritual leaders and teachers.
For more information on Swadhyay visit www.swadhyay.org
*****
India Inspired Poems…….
When the phlegm filled male voices
cease from barking over the loudspeakers,
and when the street dogs retract their claws
and flop in the shaded corners barricaded from the streetlight,
India’s silence resonates.
When the electricity prongs are yanked from India’s consciousness at night,
a magician’s quick spin behind his cloak,
sipping light and sound with one inhale,
eyes trying desperately to adjust in the buried coffin darkness.
And before the generators shake and crack,
can you detect the velvety voices of women in the temple?
They beat drums in chanting circles for Shiva,
the divine cosmic dancer,
bells dangling from their moving little wrists.
Tambourines strike warm thighs for hours.
Massive sounds underground in mantras.
Vibration pounds through pelvic bones.
Sanguine alarms seizing our souls.
Feces
The curried cosmic heat awakens each pore.
The bus passes through a transparent cloud
leaking the smell of dead fishy bodies simmering in the sun.
I attempt to inhale the bitter stench,
but unlike a skunk smell,
where I can find a manageable peppery center,
this enveloping odor leaves even the locals grasping
their shirts and sari’s for relief.
Like the cows wandering around the temple and lounging in piles,
gazing lucid men clump close to the entrance of the beach.
A few are sprinkled at the waters edge, squatting.
The salty white waves roll against the ground cardamom sand,
washing away coils of human shit like sleeping intact brown cobras.
You’ll realize the mercilessness of mosquitoes
when you travel the night train through India.
A pile up of swollen red bumps on the bottom of your feet,
sizzling skin you’ll itch compulsively,
interrupting a frigid feigned sleep.
A Hindu woman sings a song you won’t understand,
but you still feel the melodies early morning comfort.
Diarrhea smokes out the car with its pungent odor,
spicy over cooked green beans wafting through the dark cars.
The selling cracks down the isle.
“Coffee…Coffee…Chai…Chai.”
You almost consider sitting up,
buying some tainted murky water Chai,
maybe feeling comfort for one warm second before it leaks out your ass.
A man lying across from you brings phlegm to his throat every few seconds,
searching and unearthing his clogged lungs for a satisfying thick spit.
Crumbs of beetle tarnished on his teeth.
He’s getting off the cot now.
Standing, swaying side to side.
The scraping of his throat becomes louder.
Will he wait and throw the wad down the hole in the bathroom,
where the dark tracks rattle,
or will it splatter near your burning feet?
Vicissitude Train
Bombay’s snarled digestive train station
snatched me,
a lubricated ecstasy pill,
a crisp pomegranate morsel slipping down my oily throat,
gone,
no turning back.
The train compartments broiled sweet thick air.
Whipped warm malty clouds wafting through
crammed chambers brimming with smiles.
Mouths like gleaming polished dominos,
never having tasted whitening paste.
Between wisps of flying hair and sun patches crisping my skin,
I stare across acres of seared soil
speckled with sari’s,
vigorous vibrant splatters of color on the cracking canvas of India.
When a thorny tremor halted the train,
my bliss turned bitter,
ginger bark chewed too long.
Yanked from my floating bubble, a flash before my glazed eyes.
Snatched,
tangled,
dropped with cocaine’s vengeance into the dark despair of death.
Whisked on Willy Wonka’s psychedelic bad-trip ferry.
Harsh tongued Indian men looked under the humming steel wheels,
blowing quick puffs of air through their lips with disgust.
I loitered in the scorched sun and looked under the train,
just as one of the men became audible,
grunting the word “suicide.”
A coiled contorted bloody body was left to show us.
Limbs whipped with hot grease and charred,
a carcass of wisdom.
This man’s body looked less severe than the internal torture
which thrust him under the train,
absent of our pause.
His cerebral burns and suffocation,
throbbing for years,
couldn’t be soothed in this world.
Our collective consciousness
comfortably consenting
suffering to swell.
People all over the world with an appetite for the divine.
Hunting for peace in a new zip code.
A Palestinian taped with explosives.
A raspy crone poet letting the blood soak into the bed of damp leaves.
A village woman in China floating in the mucky brown river.
A Leukemia patient whispering “thank you,” as the death serum pokes his vein.
An Indian man was just dragged off the train tracks!
I brought my wrist to my nose,
and inhaled imaginary comfort.
A child hiding her thumb,
as it slides into her mouth.
I smelled sweet water blisters and snow cones,
tethered not to the reality of this world, but the unseen reality.
I closed my eyes and truly saw this man before me,
not the scalded flaccid shell,
not the crumbling husk,
but the soul pregnant with light finally soaring.
He feels a salve of peace now.
Like the Japanese women who labor in sweaty factories
to afford their own burial plots,
one day unfettered and slumbering on a cool slab of freedom.