In Kathmandu (Part Two): Pashupatinath
“That is the Pashupatinath complex,” one of our colleagues tells us, pointing to some pagoda silhouettes on the left. It is just after 5 a.m. and there is little traffic on the streets. Our plane to Delhi leaves in about two-and-a-half hours. Two of the group are nestled against a pile of suitcases and backpacks in the open back of the vehicle, choosing this over cramming into the front like sardines. Few jeeps were available at that unearthly hour to make the arduous trip up the washed-away, uneven “road” to the resort and take us back down to the airport, which meant that we had to subject a couple of people to the elements. We have to walk down a short, steep slope, by torchlight, take care not to slip on loose pebbles, to meet our jeep — this is a far cry from the memory of the resort I have stored in my head.
A long queue greets us at the entrance to the airport. I see a sign tacked on near the door: it mentions a cancelled flight and my heart skips a beat. While Kathmandu has been friendly and generous, and I need to come back some time to visit Pashupatinath, I want to be in Delhi today to meet G. We are spending a week there, visiting family and exploring the city. Time in Chennai has also weakened my resistance to cold winds, and while winters in theory are splendid — I can wax eloquent about warm sunshine falling gently on my skin, piercing the stillness of the chilly dawn — I have to acknowledge to myself that reality is different. I fear to think that, in a few years’ time, I will be carrying woollen scarves to concerts at the Narada Gana Sabha. I miss the tropics and palm trees (and Vizag).
I check the date on the notice —it refers to the last flight from yesterday. I feel a brief pang of pity for those who were on that flight, it passes, and my attention is devoted to finding the shortest check-in queue. There was no online check-in option and the place is packed. The queues move lazily. The staff confer. Passengers look at their phones and signboards. The wait is endless, and unknown to us, a storm is brewing. One spot away from check-in, we are told that the plane is full.
To condense the scenes that played out over the next few hours, the airline has moved several people from the cancelled flight to ours, and is now offering to move us to the next available flight (which would naturally mean a pile-up of disgruntled people through the day) or to another airline, the latter in case of an extreme emergency. Stories of ailing fathers and medical conditions fly fast and thick. Voices rise and hapless airline staff scurry around the airport. I find myself next to a woman from Slovenia who is scheduled to meet friends in Delhi, from where they will all go on to Dharamshala for a retreat. After much wrangling and attempts to get on morning flights, we are booked on a plane with a different airline, scheduled to take off in the afternoon. Why us? Why are we being punished for the airline’s ineptitude? We ask rhetorical questions.
Calls and text messages to our families follow. It doesn’t take long for a consensus to emerge: it is divine intervention. You didn’t visit Pashupatinath, did you? You know He is calling you. You know why this has happened. We do.
***
We take a cab to Boudhanath, another tourist haunt we had skipped (you see one stupa, you’ve seen them all, someone told us). We call our Nepali colleague, T., to ask him for a restaurant recommendation from among the several that sit on the circumference. Boudhanath is as commercial as it is spiritual. It reminds me a bit of Singapore’s Chinatown, with its Buddhist souvenir shops and restaurants, but in a more spacious, circular setting. T. gives us the name of a restaurant with a gorgeous view of the city, and as we hang up, we remember suddenly that it is his birthday and tack on a wish as an afterthought. Our self-centredness has clearly got the better of us.
Faint stains mark the white surface of the stupa, which is topped by a gleaming tower from which the Buddha’s eyes watch over the city. Streams of prayer flags converge at the tip of the gilded tower. On the horizon, blue hills struggle through the haze of pollution, and the distance in between is filled by concrete structures and scaffolding of all shapes and sizes.
Depositing our luggage and the unwilling part of our group at the restaurant, we set off on foot for the Pashupatinath temple. We find our cab parked a few hundred metres down the road — we had no idea it was here. At this point, we have stopped questioning why things are happening the way they are, and appreciate the gifts that are revealing themselves to us. We pile in and the driver takes us to the Pashupatinath complex. We walk past stalls selling puja articles and into the periphery of the temple.
I’ll take a moment here to tell you how overwhelmed I was as we stepped into the complex. I had first heard of this temple as a seven- or eight-year-old, while living in what was then Bihar (now Jharkhand), and my father talked of some time going to Nepal, which is just across the border. We can see the Pashupatinath temple, he said. That trip never materialised, but here I was, several years later, drawn to it by inexplicable forces — the same that drew G. and me, plainspeople, to Taktsang. It is true that the world has shrunk and you can easily go where you choose, but you don’t always make those choices consciously. In the books I read, in the music I listen to, in the people I meet, I perceive a sense of timing and reason. Little happens randomly. And some of these machinations bring me back to the mountains at least once a year, if only for a few days — to the Himalayas or the Nilgiris or elsewhere, but always home.
We join the queue which goes around the main shrine — it moves fairly fast and we are soon in front of Pashupatinath, the guardian of the living, resplendent in His simplicity. Ask, tell, thank, apologise, question, wonder, pray: there is so much to do in the matter of a few moments. Yet, when I am in front of the deity, thoughts flee, only to be replaced by the living, breathing present. I am grateful to be here and I have forgotten what I wanted to ask for. Anyway, His first responsibility is towards Kathmandu, the valley which is still recovering from the ravages of the earthquake.
***
We look in at the various shrines, most red-brick structures, and wander to the back where the Bagmati flows, bearing away the ashes of the dead from the ghats. The complex isn’t packed, but a steady stream of people flows through, lips moving in prayer, eyes beseeching, hands carrying garlands and other offerings.
The temple complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, worthy of closer examination, but given our time constraints and the fact that I haven’t done any homework for this trip, we have to be back at the restaurant in twenty minutes, so that we can leave for the airport. We return content and with a sense of fulfilment. Pashupatinath sets us free. We will fly back over the Himalayas; on clear days, Mount Kailash is supposed to be visible, and maybe we will see it. In a while, He will have seen us home, and maybe invite us back another day, with more time and less to ask for.
