The temple of lust

“The door of the historic Kamakhya temple will remain closed on Sunday morning for the Anbubachi Mela....” Excellent timing, again. But the rest of the Times of India report is encouraging: “The door will reopen on June 25. Over six lakh devotees from across the country and abroad are likely to converge during the four-day congregation atop Nilachal Hills.” So we proceed to the temple of lust, where a stone yoni is worshipped, hardly eight kilometres from Guwahati on the airport route.

For half the journey, the Brahmaputra flows parallel to the highway, till the hills hide the river. Barricades and khakhis mark the beginning of the road uphill. Only buses and other vehicles with a special permit are let on the hills for security reasons. We will have to trek uphill if we get down from the suffocating bus. All vehicles are packed by devotees of goddess Kamakhya - sages, elders, mothers, children, policemen, scouts, volunteers.

Despite the romanticism attached to its name, Kamakhya temple is like any other popular pilgrim centre, swarming with people and stinking of faeces. The bleaching powder-bordered road circumvents a bus station and goes up to an alley. The queue starts here. A sage-like figure stands like a statue. Enamoured by the trembling tableaux, people refuse to move on till the guards spur them on. There are more performers challenging motion in different positions.

The circular temple is besieged by a sea of spiritual people, men and women with matted hair, clad in red, yellow or saffron. Most of them seem to be regulars, from the fan following they enjoy. Smoking sadhus indifferently pull at their earthen pipes. The friezes betray little about the idol enshrined inside. While doves mate on the dome, men and women recite prayers inside the temple. The doors are closed. The goddess is menstruating. Meditating celibates in the temple of lust seem a bit out of place.

A young yogini in black sari and numerous bead garlands circles the temple. She smiles at a man in saffron, who calls her by the name - ‘O Tara’. As she passes, he turns to his companion in a group of alms-seeking men and cracks one of those did-you-hear jokes. The lascivious laughing men know what to worship. After all, this temple is dedicated to fertility and fecundity. Women pray for a child and loners for a lover. The temple aptly has a marriage counter.

Beyond the temple administration’s office is the sacred pond. The undecipherable chorus of reverence from countless tongues. People gazing at a spectacle in the pond. The pond is filled with submerged bodies; devotees bathing. On one side, two bodies float. Two sages are meditating in the water, each supporting his feet on the other’s stretched arm. They count their chants on the bead chain and look at the scorching sky. It has been going on for an hour at least, someone exclaimed.

Pious women let out that strange sound at regular intervals. The yogic practice is a boon, they believe. The floating sadhus’ companions, in similar attire, watch from the other side of the pond. Sometimes, they accompany the chorus with a conch shell and cymbal. Tara tests the waters. The eccentric woman attempts to float and sinks every time. Meditation in impossible circumstances and extreme positions pleases the gods, going by the mythological tales.

God hasn’t appeared, but fish have. Schools of fish come to the surface, breathing furiously. Some of them float dead around the sadhus. The family of swans flees the pond, polluted by hundreds of human bodies. The pious are unconcerned. More and more of them join the bathers. Women force their children into the dark green mossy water. The sadhus, too, are unconcerned. They gaze at the sky and chant silently. It’s noon but they are in no mood to end the show of endurance.

The sun is punishing. A week ago, when we touched Guwahati on the way from Shillong to Bomdila, the rain had flooded the roads. The monsoon is erratic, but the symbolic representation of rain is never abandoned at this time of the year. The goddess’ menstrual seclusion symbolizes the earth’s cyclical preparation for sowing. Red earth, pouring rain and the sprouting seeds. Even Brahmaputra turns red from the earth. Kamakhya is Mother Nature.

Kamakhya or Kamrup (The name of the district is also Kamrup, the form of lust.) is prominent among the Shakti Peeths in India, where Mother Goddess is worshipped in her varying manifestations. When mythology took over ancient thanksgiving practices, the gory tale of Siva’s anger functioned as an underpinning. The god of destruction flew into a rage after his wife Sati immolated herself in her father’s palace. Geo-mystic narratives link the Shakti Peeths as places where the god dropped his dead wife’s body parts. The goddess' yoni fell on the Nilachal Hills. A natural stream flows on the yoni-shaped stone, locked inside the temple for four days.

The four-day Anbubachi Mela is a celebration of rejuvenation. The life-giving natural phenomena - of the recharging earth and the bleeding female - are drowned in esoteric practices. The fair is a congregation of tantric practitioners from across the subcontinent. Impoverished villagers from Assam, Bengal and other parts of the country throng the fair seeking the blessings of the Mother Goddess and the mystics with matted hair. Strangely, like temples elsewhere, this place is for the spiritual rather than the sensuous.

We trek downhill, past the long queues in front of free food counters and the crowd shopping at the countless pavement shops. Rhino motifs are everywhere. The real thing, however, is out of bounds in Kaziranga National Park, closed for visitors during the monsoon. We ask for a rhino horn-shaped blower. A sage had said he got it from Tripura. The shop-owner suggests that we should look for it in music instruments stores in Guwahati. What we got was the pepa, the Bihu blower made of buffalo horn.

The heat is unbearable after a week of chilling rain in Arunachal Pradesh. On the highway, we get an autorickshaw to the town. Midway, however, the Brahmaputra beckons. Lovers promenade at the riverside parks. Labourers unload bags of corn from the boats rowed from Assamese villages on the river. We opt for an evening in a boat-turned-restaurant moored in the Brahmaputra. The long bridge at Saraighat is shorter when compared to those further upstream. The 2.284-kilometre Naranarayan Setu, connecting Jogighopa in the north to Pancharatna in the south, is the largest of the three bridges across the red river in Assam.

The Brahmaputra is deceptively calm. The 2900-kilometre-long river, which originates beyond the Himalayas and flows through Arunachal Pradesh and Assam before joining the Ganga to form the world’s largest delta on the Bay of Bengal coast, can flood villages which live by it. Last week, an entire district in Upper Assam was cut off by floods triggered by incessant rains on the Arunachal hills. Majuli Island, the world’s largest river island, was being evacuated because of the rising water of the Brahmaputra. The magnificent river, however, hides its turbulent avatar. Passenger and goods boats crisscross the river throughout the evening.

Tomorrow, we would be back to the daily grind, where economists forecast further rise in inflation, politicians cope with price rise and weathermen try to explain the failing monsoon. Kamakhya temple, meanwhile, would be religiously following the cyclical celebration of Nature.

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