Blue Poppies

Siddhartha We reached Rishikesh around eight. This is a city situated at the foothills of the Himalaya, on both sides of Mother Ganga, as the locals call the river. Its name refers to one of the aspects of Vishnu, as Lord of the senses. Near Rishikesh, there is the place of the confluence of the Bhagirathi and the Alakananda rivers, the point where the two streams become one, the sacred river Ganga. One of the main routes to the source of Bhagirathi, the Gangotri glacier at Gomukh in the Garhwal region, which is traditionally thought to be the source of the Ganga, begins in this city. Rishikesh is also the gateway for the pilgrimage Char Dham, a pilgrimage to the four holy abodes Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. In the spring, Rishikesh hosts the International Yoga Festival. It is a city of over a hundred thousand people. Come spring, with all the pilgrims and the visitors for the Yoga festival, the city is so overpopulated that, on photographs, it looks like a place where the entire world population has gathered, just before the planet explodes. I have never seen Rishikesh like that. After mid-May, the time when I usually go to India, Rishikesh is quieter and more peaceful – or so they say. Most Yoga schools and meditation centers stop giving classes toward mid-May and many of the famous teachers leave the country for some cooler places on other continents or retreat to the Himalayas. However, this is the time when Indian schools have vacation. So, in addition to the pilgrims who keep coming in smaller or larger groups from all around the country, in the months of May and June Rishikesh is full of Indian tourists who could afford to travel, to pay for vacation, and to participate in the most fashionable recreational activity in North India nowadays – river rafting. When we entered the city the dim lights had made the colors of the marketplace and the commercial signs above hotels and shops soft and less aggressive. The noise, however, was powerful. There was a lot of traffic, considering the small size of the city. Perhaps eighty percent of this traffic and the noise it produced were due to the scooters – India’s most affordable and loudest means of transportation. Mohan thought that he knew where the ashram that I was looking for was, so we kept driving up the main road. The air was terrible. I wanted to open the window and stick my head out, in order to look at the people and the buildings, but I could not breathe. Luckily, I was too excited about meeting my host and beginning my Indian month to be put off right in the beginning. As I was thinking what it would be like for me to stay here for a long time, Mohan suddenly stepped on the brake, just in the middle of the road, and pointed at a young man in white, who was standing on the right hand side of the street. “It must be him,” he said. It was him. Sri Siddhartha Krishna – my host, who over the next few years became as close as a son to me. I did not even recognize the face which I had seen on the website of the ashram. Siddhartha was standing there in a white robe and flip-flops, his hands put together in front of his chest, as if for a prayer, a beautiful big smile on his face. I opened the car door slowly and got out into the evening heat. I wanted to ask the man if he was Siddhartha when he said: “I knew this was you. Namaste!” and he bowed down slightly. I love hearing the Hindi greeting namaste. I knew, since the time of my first trip to India, that this word meant “I greet God in you.” What a profound sense of respect for the fellow human being this greeting expresses! As long as people mean what they say, of course. Greetings, I have always thought, could tell us a lot about the beliefs, the customs, and the mentality in a particular culture. Many of my European friends have asked me if it wasn’t terribly superficial for Americans to greet each other with “How are you?” Cashiers in grocery stores or bus drivers, everybody says that, even though they may not be interested in hearing the answer. It always annoyed me when people asked me that question. I never thought the phrase “how are you” was superficial. There are formulaic greetings established in each language over the course of centuries or even millennia. Some of those formulae disappear with time and are replaced by new ones, and some stay – as if forever. Such formulae reflect deep levels in the tradition of the respective culture – a way of thinking, religious beliefs, or perhaps basic ethical principles. Both Jews and Muslims wish peace when they meet someone and when they part. In Europe people wish each other predominantly a good morning, or a good day or evening. In Bavaria you say Grüss Gott – Hail God or Greet God, and in the Austrian Alps you say “Fuerti” – which comes from a phrase that means “may God lead you”. Somewhere in the history of all cultures and religions, perhaps in their very origins, there must have been reasons for establishing such beautiful phrases. Never mind that they may not be always sincerely meant, never mind that they may not be always consciously used. So be it. In the memory of poetry, of songs, or legends, however, they still carry their ancient symbolism, the symbolism of something that used to be reality. In most places of the world such phrases are the rare remnants of oral tradition, and oral tradition is a magnificent expression of collective memory. I do love greeting formulae, and I love thinking about them. “Namaste,” said my host Siddhartha, the monk in white. He said it consciously and meant each single sound of it. I realized this fact much later, but I felt the immediacy of that conscious greeting when I heard it from Siddhartha the very first time. Can you imagine how you might feel if someone greets God in you? Maybe exactly as one was supposed to feel when that phrase was originally used – as part of God, a loved and respected part of God. “Namaste,” I said and bowed deep down.