15 March 2018

The Demise of Swami Paramanand


Early one morning as Gurujii and I were returning from our usual morning walk a typically scantily clad man came running up to us. He was very distraught and spoke a few rapid sentences in Hindi to Gurujii before bursting into tears. Gurujii turned to me and said, “His guru has died.”  ”Where?” I asked. Gurujii pointed at a small white temple halfway up the slight hill from the now dry Ganges river bed. This entire area of the Ganges riverbank is a jumble of temples and ashrams of all sizes which have been built over the past fifty years. The British built a successively higher and larger dike during their years of occupation attempting to thwart the mighty Ganges from flooding the nearby city of Allahabad during the rainy season. The dike or bandh was now fifty feet high and three hundred feet wide. The bandh began at the ancient fort with seventy-five foot high sandstone walls on the bank right at the intersection of the Ganges and Jumna. The bandh ran for about 3 miles into the small village of Daraganj which stood on a natural bluff overlooking the river.
The now three of us walked slowly up the hill. I asked Gurujii the name of the dead swami. “Paramanand”, he replied. I immediately thought of another Paramanand, my brother disciple and Gurujii’s only American initiate into the orange robed swami order. At Paramanand’s temple we went through the wrought iron gate to a small courtyard. Paramanand’s disciple and Gurujii removed their shoes and, stooping, entered the low ceiling temple. Gurujii soon came back to the doorway and motioned me over with his hand. “Do you want to see the dead body?” “Okay.” Slipping out of the unlaced tennis shoes that I slopped around in, I crawled through the doorway onto the black and white marble floor of the temple. The air had the sweet smell of temples everywhere, a humid mix of incense, flowers and the accumulated prayers of countless supplicants. Up against the front wall was the usual statuary, flowers and urns and alongside the altar, propped up in the corner in a slumped cross legged pose was Paramanand. Paramanand’s body was small and thin. His disciple explained that the first thing he had done in the early morning was to fold the body into the traditional meditation pose before rigor mortis set in. The distraught disciple was very relieved to have Gurujii to consult about the traditions to follow upon a swami’s death. At that time, in the mid 1980’s, Gurujii was one of the two longest lived inhabitants of the bandh area and he had lived in his ashram for over fifty years. Gurujii told Paramanand’s disciple to sprinkle eucalyptus oil on Paramanand’s robes so there would be no smell of decay. I never detected that this was done. Gurujii is sensitive to odors of any kind and keeps a small piece of camphor with him at all times in one of the small pockets of his orange robes.
By now several other of Paramanand’s devotees had arrived at the temple to pay brief homage on their way homeward from a morning bath in the Ganges. We all gathered outside and Gurujii gave orders to some people to go off to the city to summon Paramanand’s followers and to others he gave directions for the ceremony itself which was to be burial in the Ganges. Hindus traditionally burn the bodies of all who have reached puberty to quickly liberate the soul from its encasement in the flesh. I am certain also that in India the tradition of cremation developed for health and space considerations as there is abundant firewood. The Hindu tradition for children who have not yet reached puberty is that their bodies may be thrown directly into the Ganges as children are considered pure and undefiled by carnal desires. Snakebite victims, of which there are many in India, may be thrown directly into the river as its ever pure and sacred waters have reputedly miraculously revived some of these corpses. Although the corpses of swamis are frequently burned, burial in either earth or water, especially the Ganges, is another option. The bodies of the orange robed are considered pure and free from desires. The tangerine orange color of the robes symbolically represents the color of the inner fires of renunciation through which those initiated into the swami order have passed.
With Paramanand’s devotees going off in all directions throughout the city reporting his demise, Gurujii and I completed our walk up the hill and down the dike road the short distance to Gurujii’s small ashram enclave. Since the burial wasn’t scheduled until 2 PM I went about my usual and lengthy morning ritual of meditation, exercises and picking through the dhal removing small stones and then setting it to cook while I stood on my head for a half hour or longer. Just as I finished eating Gurujii came and got me announcing that the death ceremony was soon to take place. As this was several hours before the previously announced time I wondered if many of Paramanand’s followers would miss the ceremony. When Gurujii, myself and Swami Sevanand arrived at Paramanand’s small temple only a small crowd of perhaps 10 or so had gathered. I presumed a much larger crowd would be here for the ceremony.
Paramanand’s body was seated on a large high back wooden chair and tied to the chair at the feet, waist and chest with strips of orange cloth. Long bamboo poles were lashed to the chair legs for the bearers. We set off on the mile walk toward the confluence with Paramanand sitting almost five feet off the ground in the chair borne by four men. Gurujii soon ordered us all to stop as Paramanand’s head was bobbing around. The chair was brought back down to the ground and a strip of cloth was tied around Paramanand’s neck and then around the back of the chair. We set off again and as I walked along in the warm February sun slightly behind the bier I suddenly heard scuffling and shouting behind me. Looking back I saw a young boy carrying a large water bucket full of 5 and 10 paise coins. The boy would periodically take a handful of coins and scatter them on the ground behind the procession like grass seed. This created a long comet shaped throng of young boys and ambulatory beggars following behind us, much increasing the apparent number of mourners.
We reached the riverbank after about forty-five minutes and negotiated for a large flat bottomed boat to take us out to the exact meeting place of the muddy Ganges and the clear blue Jumna. This spot is called Tribeni and here it is said the unseen river Saraswati surges up from the bottom and these three together create or are absorbed by the mighty Ganges which passes onward to the west to Benares, Calcutta and finally the Bay of Bengal.
About ten of us got into the boat with Swami Paramanand’s chair placed amid ship facing forward, a silent tangerine robed captain. We were rowed the several hundred yards downstream and out to the deepest part of the confluence. At Gurujii’s direction we untied Paramanand’s body from the chair and balanced it on the wood plank boat seat and tied bricks into the hem of Paramanand’s robe. With two people holding the bricks in the hem and two others holding the body over the side of the boat and others balancing the boat upright leaning on the opposite gunwale, we all let loose at the same time. The body quickly sank out of sight but for a brief unforgettable moment a loose hem of his orange robes flickered in the sun shafts in the muddy water like a large goldfish. Then nothing.
We ordered the boatman to take us in closer to shore where the water was only knee deep and tied in to the many other boats. Everyone except Gurujii and me stripped down to skivvies and jumped overboard to bathe in the river. Gurujii didn’t bathe in the Ganges at all anymore. He was then eighty-three and hadn’t bathed in the river for some years as it was too cold for him. Sevanand yelled at me in Hindi and Gurujii translated, “He wants to know why you are not bathing in the river.” “Too cold”, I replied. I asked Gurujii about bathing right here at the confluence and he said it was the holiest spot and that Hindus believe that to bathe here was to be liberated from the necessity to be reborn. He pressed me a bit with an unspoken but clearly intelligible ‘this might be the only way you can get saved’. Remembering the terrible earache I had gotten some years before and the slight chill of the wan late afternoon sun, my mind scrambled for an out. I had a sudden insight and asked Gurujii, “How much water does it take to be saved?” He reflected for a moment before giving, what I later saw was the only possible answer. “One drop is sufficient.” So I leaned over the side and scooped a little water in my hand and poured it over my head letting it dribble down my face.
We rowed back to the riverbank and walked back to our respective ashrams and homes. The next time I was to take a boat out to the confluence was four years later when six of us took a clay pot filled with the still smoldering ashes of Swami Sevanand and sank it in the sacred Tribeni. I did bathe in the river that time.

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