Buddhist temples in Bodhgaya
Unfortunately we have had two things go missing from our packs, one a Maglite torch that was lifted from our room in Nahan, and a camera, which we suspect but cannot be sure, was removed from our hotel in Varanasi. Both these rooms had key locks; the safer rooms are ones which can be padlocked. Another time we sent a package home from Delhi and it arrived in England opened and rifled through, a 18th Birthday present of a semi precious stone bracelet had been opened and stolen, leaving (thoughtfully) the wrapping paper behind. Family had sent Eddie two presents by airmail for her Birthday to the poste restante in Varanasi, the cards arrived but the gifts did not.
It’s a shame that a country has so little respect for people’s personal belongings, and makes a mockery of their devout religious beliefs. Travellers are looked upon as being rich, they pay for one night’s accommodation that could amount to a month’s pay for an Indian. Therefore we are picked on, stolen from, ripped off and pestered into parting with cash; it’s a side of India I don’t like, and makes me wary of anybody that approaches us.
The train journey from Varanasi to Bodhgaya was a typical example. We had booked our usual A/C tickets in advance and had paid the full fee. On entering the train and arriving at our compartment we found it was already full with five people in a compartment meant for four. The occupiers looked disturbed that we were encroaching on their space and it took some patience to move them from our seats. So now there were seven people in our compartment, and I wondered where their seats were meant to be and why they were here.
The conductor arrived and we showed our tickets. With him were three more people he wanted to seat in our compartment. It turned out that he was selling A/C tickets to people with standard tickets for a fraction of the price and pocketing the money. I explained that if I wanted o sit in a crowded compartment we would have bought a cheaper ticket, maybe in the 3 tier A/C (6 person compartment). He argued that we were rich and able to afford the 2nd Class A/C, and he was helping these people get comfortable on a hot day.
This really irked me and I leant forward and took his lapel, read his name and wrote it down in my guidebook. He was quite affronted by this and asked me why I was doing it. I explained politely that I was going to report him to the head divisional manager of the Railway Grievance Committee and that I would give a detailed account of what he had said, and added that “according to my India Rail Guide, bribery or any kind of insobriety by any railway employee is not tolerated and I wouldn’t be surprised if he lost his job.”
I kind of felt guilty laying it on a bit thick, and he looked horrified at what I was saying. However, the traveller pays more to ride a rickshaw, more for entering places of interest and more for everyday things you buy from the markets. At least with train tickets we all pay the same and it was a right I was determined to defend.
Before I had even finished speaking the compartment was rapidly emptying. The conductor was shouting at our Indian friends in the compartment and hustling them out till there were only four. He humbled and tried to shake my hand and kept saying “Ok? Ok?” I gave in and shook his hand and reassured him with a begrudging “Ok, no problem.” He exited backwards and closed the curtains on our compartment. We had no further interruptions on our trip to Bodhgaya.
Bodhgaya itself is a very small town devoted almost entirely to the Buddhist religion. The people (the locals, that is) are very calm. The road from the station to Bodhgaya is a 45-minute trip by rickshaw, and although the roadside inhabitants were clearly very poor they also seemed full of happiness and life. Usually the poor have a resigned look, a “this is my lot, just get on with life” look. The mud huts were basic but well cared for and spotlessly clean, no rubbish discarded directly out side doors, the yards in front well organised and tidy, kids playing and laughing while mothers chatted in circles, doing something laborious as they did. It was a contented picture.
The main temple, Mahabodhi Temple, dominates both the town and the sky. It has a huge main structure that reaches high up, the first time we saw it was in the evening of the first day. It is bathed with orange/yellow lights giving the building an autumn glow. Floods of pilgrims and tourists mingled within its huge grounds, so large that you could still find an area where you felt alone. The gardens surrounding the main structure are full of small temples and structures dotted all around providing places for private prayer and meditation. Buddhist priests sit alone, heads held high and eyes closed in perfect stillness, you feel you have to creep by them so as not to disturb their train of thought.
The whole area has a very spiritual feel whether you are a believer or not (I am not, not of any God, Eddie is Catholic and feels that she can pray to her own God in anybody’s holy house), especially with the myriads of burning candles that pierce the night. In one area there were maybe a thousand or so candles flickering in the gentle breeze spreading a calm golden light into the shadows. Elsewhere people had lit candles and placed them on the smaller surrounding Buddhist structures with private prayers and offerings. It’s another place where we do what we do best, sit and absorb the atmosphere. It is a really good place to come and think, work things out, even if it’s only where you are going to eat that night.
Another time we came during the day. We sat and listened to a group of eleven pilgrims dressed in purple robes sit in two straight lines facing the main temple and chant. It was a continuous melodic chant in harmonies which, when you concentrated on them, would take you away to another place for a moment…until some Indian tourist came through clearing his throat in that phlegm collecting way that they seem to learn at an early age.
We met a couple of local Indian guys where we were staying; one was a teacher, the other a friend of the guesthouse owner. We asked them why they do this drawing up of phlegm, and they didn’t have an answer. There was no reason as such, they did it because they did it, everybody did it, it was an Indian thing that they all did for absolutely no reason. Weird.
To walk to the school that the teacher worked at we crossed the river which was nothing more than a stream utilising a dry river bed maybe 300 meters wide. We wading from a ghat on the west side to the collection of villages on the other. Walking through the maze of corridors and alleyways it was clear that this was an area of extreme poverty, a full set of clothes was a rarity, a quick glance into a few of the mud shacks revealed little more than a bare space with a few pots and pans, no furniture of any kind was present.
Past the villages there were miles of well-tended land, mostly rice at this time of year, with a sprinkling of maize, or corn on the cob as we call it in the UK. Women toiled in the fields planting one by one the rice plants at equal spacing, while it seemed the men were nowhere in sight. Thinking about it, most of the people lazing in the village were men.
Out in the middle of nowhere is Sujata Temple, a small unassuming and uninteresting building with nothing much to see. However, it was apparently some special place for one of the Buddhist Gods or something as we had to sit down and listen to the lengthy history in broken English that we didn’t understand. Of course we were expected to give an offering to their God, which continues to piss me off a bit actually.
The school is attached to the temple and consists of a single room smaller than the room we were renting in town. There are two teachers who teach voluntarily, and the school survives on donations alone for uniforms, books, slates and chalk, pencils etc. About 25 kids were present that day, ranging from a 3 year, 5-month old girl who seemed very intelligent, outwitting most of the other older children, to 6 to 7 year olds.
We sat in on the morning’s class and attracted more attention than the teachers (of course). We sat on the sacking mat that covered the floor and watched the children watching us with little glances out of the corners of their eyes, the teacher continually commanding “Eyes front” but the temptation seemed too much for many of them, little sideward glances and straight faces that cracked into beaming smiles and shyness when they caught our eyes as if we had given them great joy by looking at them.
Kids here are so innocent. Most, if not all of them, don’t have a TV at home and make do with each other or an old bit of wire fashioned into a circle that they run after with a stick to make it roll for their fun, the kind of hoop and stick game you see kids in old black and white movies play with when they are depicting a poor family scene. We rely on so much that we take for granted when these children and their families are making do with nothing. If we don’t have a car, we use public transport. Here, if you can’t afford the bus, you walk, or you don’t go. We sit on chairs and sit at the table to eat with a roof over our heads, we pack the dishwasher and play computer games, these are normal every day things for us and we miss out on how special just the most basic things in our lives may be pure luxury in someone else’s.
We helped correct maths and set new problems, teach basic English words like cat, mat, sat, and helped with spelling. We gave out mango sweets and took photos; the kids had never seen a digital camera before so it was a wondrous moment for them to see the image immediately displayed on a tiny LCD screen. (The teachers were quite impressed too.)
School broke early for lunch as the children weren’t concentrating and the teachers had given up trying to keep their attention, so we left leaving a good sized donation for the school to go towards the India Independence Day celebrations for the kids, and a bit over for books and stuff. It’s a great feeling giving something that we consider is not a lot to those who can use it to great ends and bring education and celebrations to an area that is so depleted of resources. The children followed us as far as the villages chattering amongst themselves excitedly, and the last we saw of them was a cloud of little brown hands waving behind us.
Bodhgaya is not a place to dwell unless you are a Buddhist or interested in learning about the Buddhist religion, so two nights was enough for us and we left on the evening train to Calcutta.
