17. BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON - FREE WILLY

HOLY COW.  HOLY SHIVA.  HOLY MOSES.

The entire world congregated in Kathmandu today.   

I have never seen so many people, in such a mob before, and I have been through a few Sydney NYE's.

I returned to the Pashupatinath Temple today, place of stoned sadhus.  About 500m from the temple complex, the roads were clogged so badly, the taxi driver begged me to walk the rest of the way, pointing up winding grubby lanes thronged with rivers of people he suggested I follow.  Dressed in their red glittering finery, carrying offerings, tinsel, marigold garlands, they swarmed to the temple.  Outside the red cross tent were lines of beggars: deformed children, stunted adults, the blind, the amputeed, the burned, the leprous. Police in camouflage gear were out in force, with rifles, batons, sticks and rope to tie themselves together as a human fence to prevent people going in the wrong direction.

I'd promised to meet Brigit here; she'd promised not to bring her dog Pakistan.  I waited in the sun, trying to find a small spot unoccupied by anyone else that I could stand on. She arrived: with a small Olivia, clutching her hand, and Pakistan on a leash, into this mob. Hundreds of thousands of people were coralled into concertinaed queues, some already sitting down, as they must have been there for hours. It was a frightening sight, and I had visions of being trampled to death for crowd panic can happen in an instant. Head to shoulder to head; toes touching heels of those in front. No sense of decency or space: push and be pushed because you will get in one millisecond before the next person.

I was so relieved I'd gone the day before, because I knew it would be impossible to take decent photos today, particularly as I wanted to help Brigit with Olivia.  I felt so sorry for the poor dog, ground underfoot by all those people.  Every turnstile we entered, Olivia had to be lifted up and over, while Pakistan was sneaked through.  And we were only allowed in ahead of the queues because we were Westerners, and by default had paid 10x the going rate for entry.  The human chain of police people were three deep.  They were ten deep, standing around goggling at tall blonde Brigit.

In an adjacent temple square, just above the burning ghats, I found a naked Babu Sadhu, covered in white powder. He was standing on a stone step, amidst choking smoke from a wood fire,  applying generous clouds of more powder to his body while 50 men took photos of him with their mobiles or small digital cameras.

Brigit and Olivia had gone into a small, smoky,  dark room where a sadhu applied red powder to their foreheads, marigolds to their hair and told their fortune. Pakistan was tied to my leg, as several temple dogs, all with special fanged attributes, were out to tear her alive. One mangy mongrel with yellow fangs and an evil temper apparently did a voluntary fast every month: perhaps this was his day to end his fast and Pakistani's day of reckoning, as she cowered at my heels, quivering.  

The naked Babu's speciality was to torture his Willy into eye watering contortions.  The poor, powdered thing hung low to his knees, looking like a snake that had been left out in the rain and then dipped in a floury batter.  The babu smacked a foot long wooden stick against his leg, laid it against his willy and began to work the crowd.

AsI raised my camera to take some photos of this incredible spectacle , our powdered hero rushed off the step, straight up to me, and demanded 1000 rp, which is ridiculous, considering a meal costs 50rp.   Ten policemen were sitting on the steps, a radio and film crew from Nepal were commentating and filming him;  they told me the going rate for a photo was 100rp, even though nobody else was paying.  I turned indignantly to the policemen and asked them to protect me from collateral damage from a powdered willy stick, but they just laughed. The film crew suggested I shoot from the hip, so nobody could see what I was doing. So I went to sit on the steps, among the policemen and when the Naked Babu started his "show" again I lifted my camera.

But I'd been spotted.  He saw me sitting there - rushed up again and grabbed my wrist with the travelling bead frog on it;  shouted and pulled at it - I assume he wanted it.  Hooray!  My first trade!  I pointed to a bead around his neck, and tried to indicate that it should be a swop. He went ape bananas, or whatever Sadhus do when their ire is up.  He pulled it again, I pulled away.  I didn't care what he would have given me, so long as it was an interesting swop.  He wouldn't remove even a powdery white hair in exchange for my bead.

His loss.

Below this spectacle, several dead bodies had been carried by grieving relatives on bamboo stretchers from the other side of the bridge where they'd been annointed by the filthy waters of the Bramaputri (I think) river; itself clogged with plastic, human remains, oil, the flotsam and jetsom of life - and death -  in this part of the world.  Their pyres were being stoked by the oldest surviving relative. Onlookers stood by, chatting on phones, laughing,  kicking the wood into the fires, or shoving a gnarled hand or charred ankle back into the flames. 

It was show time for Babu Sadhu.  He grabbed hold of his willy with his thumb and forefinger. He shook off the excess powder. He picked up a large metal double pronged prong from the accessories at his feet. He clamped it around his willy and rotated it several times as if he were winding a large clock or screwing the lid on a barrel.  Mens eyes glazed over.  Women went pale. Children were goggle eyed. Old ladies smirked. Dogs blinked.  Even the balloon sellers stopped trading for a few minutes.

Muscles, nerves and sinews seemed not to exist. One more twist, and Free Willy would be reality as it snapped off.  Suddenly our benevolent, holy sadhu, giver of light and love and free of all human greed and needs, noticed I had taken some photos. He rotated his prong anticlockwise,  set his powdered, tortured willy free and rushed up to me, brandishing his powder covered double pronged willy-twister. He shouted a wild Hindu curse, accompanied by frothy spittle.  He smacked me on the knee with the prong, leaving a powdery mark on my pants. He waved his fist in my face, demanding money.  His spittle landed on my eyelid and cheek.

"Don't you TOUCH me with your white double prong that just touched a powdery white mangled Man Thing!" I shrieked back at him. This time, the policemen reacted, shouting something far more threatening to him for he retreated, brandishing his prong into the crowds.  I took out some money, but the Sadhu spat three more curses at me. I threw the money on the sand. The policemen ordered me not to leave him any money, so I picked it up and took one more photo just for good measure.

I fought through the crowds for another half hour, by which time I'd lost Brigit and her  gang, watched a few more cremations, was moved off the bridge by the police, saw the sun was getting lower and the crowds even thicker, and started working my way out and towards "home".  I crawled over bamboo poles, under wires, through cordons, beneath vendors tables.  I had no idea where I was going as I couldn't see over heads and there were equal numbers of people leaving and arriving so exits were impossible to find.  Prayers, music and instructions blared over many loudspeakers at the same time. 

I was carried along with the throng which eventually thinned out. Fighting her way out alongside me was an American woman who was doing a Buddhist meditation retreat.  We were the only westerners in about 100,000 people so we were immediate allies.  We inched and scratched and limped our way out and up to what was earlier a road, but was now a thick river of people, between which vendors were selling candy floss, shirts, woks, plastic windmills, bras and underpants, shoes - necessary as many would have lost one shoe.  

This way, she said, "No, this way," I said, "No no this way, no! " she said - eventually we clambered down and over a rubbish tip which led to a bus station - which meant wheels - which meant possibility of returning to our hotels before dark. A taxi driver was picking at his chipped toenails up on the dashboard of his rusting car ,and reading his text messages; even at the sight of a fistful of grubby rupees, he refused to start his engine. Another stared blankly across the oceans of people when we asked for a ride. A third asked for 1000 rp - I paid 300 to come in and Kathy the American had walked here.  Eventually we settled on 700 to take us both back to our different neighbourhoods. The taxi driver drove straight up the rubbish dump, his tyres squealing and slipping on the plastic and mud, his hand hard on the horn. Cows looked up lazily, the crowds ignored him. At one stage a gang of bushy haired, sunglassed teenaged boys slammed their hands on the bonnet and roof and a pack of urchins started pounding the windows shouting MUNEE! MUNEE!

"LOCK!" screamed the taxi driver, closing the windows as he gunned the engine and vomited mud onto the scattering urchins.  It would have been very easy for them to have rocked the taxi over onto its roof.

We inched out. The driver took back roads, through sandy lanes and remnants of forest, past thousands of parked motorbikes, stacked like locusts after a storm.  Negotiating very large potholes on eroded white sand, for a brief moment, as his tyres spun and we sank a bit, we had visions of either sleeping in that forest tonight, or pushing our taxi back to Thamel.

Eventually, though, with sweat running down our faces and my thinking about risks involving total strangers to transport me back to relative safety, the taxi came out the back end of somewhere, and we were in a town of beautiful old Newari houses, toppling sideways, their bricks falling out, their magnificent teak carvings being left to ruin.  Children had blocked the road with string boom gates, which they'd only drop when we'd paid money.  No money, then hands on windscreen and possibility of taxi being turned over. No sooner had we paid one string gang, we were up against another.  The kids thought it hugely funny.  Apparently, it's "that time of the year".  The American got out "near the big stupa" as the sun was setting behind the temples, old buildings, and choking dust in the roads.  I got home an hour later, and talked for ages to a young Swiss woman who has just come from two months working in the Mother Theresa Foundation in Chennai.

So much child abuse here, created by mothers who want their children for begging material.   The Swiss woman told me how she'd tried to wash and clean a little 5 year old who'd been brought in very dirty.  The little mite was terrified to be undressed and sobbed and resisted nervously, but managed after a while, allowed her top part to be cleaned. As soon as they got to try to change her underwear and wash her, she became completely hysterical and eventually five people had to hold her down while she was being washed and changed.  We all know why.  Her mother was a prostitute. And its likely she'd been abused.

What a sad world we live in.   I saw also, at Pashupatinath, a child of indeterminate age who'd been burned so badly the scar tissue had formed webbing from her thighs to her ankles, so she couldn't stand or walk and just sat folded up on a mat on the sidewalk.  So simple to fix, and there was a Red Cross tent nearby - but so much to do and so many, and so little time and what's the point, because the young woman from Mother Theresa said that she had such a hard time trying to dress burns because the patient's mothers would sell the excess bandage outside, then return with the wound dressed with newspaper which was impossible to remove and caused more scarring. 

And so to bed: I tried to watch the movie "It's complicated", but it was such a bad knock off dvd it jammed my mac.

Life's complicated. Everywhere.

NO HOT WATER FOR TWO DAYS ... BRRRR!  But I can walk, and run and dance and see and hear and eat and sleep with a roof over my head.  And my hair is starting to grow back!