Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 T H I R D M O O N 06There is nothing but water at the holy bathing places; and I knowthat they are useless, for I have bathed in them.The images are all lifeless, they cannot speak; I know, for I havecried aloud to them.The Purana and the Koran are mere words; lifting up the curtain,I have seen.Kabir gives utterance to the words of experience; and he knowsvery well that all other things are untrue.That was the beginning of the flow. A few years later, Nanak had arevelation while immersed in a river, and picked up the same theme—God is formless, not Muslim, not Hindu—then wandered, singing it.Those who heard and took Nanak as their guru became his disciples,learners, or in the Punjabi language, “sikhs.” For five hundred yearssince, the sayings of Nanak and subsequent gurus had been recited andvenerated as the Sikhs’ contribution to India’s treasury of teachings. Butthe next day we went in search of another kind of treasure.Jalan House was what we had come to see: a private museum thatone could only enter with the permission of Mr. Jalan himself. And yesterday,the incomparable Dr. Scott had tracked him down to one of hisjewellery stores. “Yes...and if I am not there, my son will show youaround.”The son was fourteen years old, from St. Paul’s School, Darjeeling,courteous and accomplished. And the house? Probably a hundred andsomething years old, struggling against the corrosive effects of natureand the Indian state. It had been fine under the British, but since Independence,some of the collection had been grabbed by the state, thenthere was tax and the cost of servants...it was hard to keep it all going.And surely there was a lot of stuff there to hold on to: wonderful oldinstruments—sitars and tamboura and vinods; coins from all ages; asizeable collection of Chinese porcelain; and ivory Kwanyins. Here(with a nonchalant wave of the hand) was the fine-tooled silver scabbard1 8 4