Bhaja and Karla Caves… and surprise festival
One of my last cave excursions in India was to the Karla and Bhaja caves, outside a small town called Lonavala. Both Bhaja and Karla are Buddhist, dating back to 2nd century BC. I went to Bhaja first. I befriended a shopkeeper in the village so he would take care of my bag fr a few hours, climbed a hill that nearly killed me in 100-plus heat, enjoyed the view over scorched Maharashtra landscape dotted with clusters of straw huts and the occasional Hindu temple. In the caves, I found a group of Indians performing a puja (prayer) ceremony. Lots of colorful body paint, a man with a whip, the remains from some sort of sacrifice. India is unfailingly photogenic. One man was so excited to have his picture taken, he climbed on top of the stupa in the main cave, which I can’t imagine wasn’t some form blasphemy. The stupa is the domed cylinder at the back of the cave. It’s a shrine: the representation or avatar of whatever god they are worshiping. People throw coins on top of the stupa as offerings. The guy monkeyed his way up on top of the dome and started pocketing the coins, while everyone laughed. Later, a group of older women showed up dressed in matching vivid green saris. With them was one beautiful younger girl in yellow. Between not terribly discreet sidelong glances to make sure I had my camera on her, she started dancing and twirling, moves straight out of Bollywood films. I approached her later and she acted shocked, ‘You took pictures of me?’ While her elder escorts glared at us, she made me flip through every one, requesting that I zoom in on the ones she liked. See Bhaja Cave pictures here.
After a while, I left Bhaja and made my way over to Karla, which is about five km away. I had been surprised to see anyone at Bhaja; it had probably been my most eventful cave visit. Usually, these sites are deserted. Most are carved into cliffs in remote areas. Places you really have to make an effort to get to. Occasionally a few tourists, but otherwise quiet. Appropriate, I suppose: these places were built as retreats for Buddhist monks to meditate and pray. At both Ellora and Ajanta, I napped in smaller caves. At Aurangabad, Pitalkhora, and Kanheri, monkeys outnumbered humans 20-1. Which is why I was a little surprised when, on the road to Karla, I started noticing large crowds of people. By the time I reached the foot of the mountain where the caves were located, I was in the middle of what looked like a gypsy camp. Hundreds of tents. People sleeping under their trucks. Kids running around naked. Groups of young guys playing drums. Others dancing to music blasting from car speakers. Roads packed with people selling wares from ad-hoc stands: watches, cricket bats, chickens, candy, fruit, toys, cucumbers. The scene seemed to sprawl for miles. There must have been two thousand people there. Someone explained that this was a Hindu festival. These people had made a pilgrimage to Karla from East India (Karla is in the West). Someone told me they were ‘people who fish’ and had come to worship the goddess of fishermen. The next three hours would be full of equally enigmatic and usually contradictory explanations. The path winding back and forth up the mountain to the caves was marked by a slowly moving crowd of people. I could hear singing and drumming coming from above.
On the way up to the caves, I passed a parade coming down. Lines of drummers. Men yelling into bullhorns. Trumpets. There was a canopied chair carried on shoulders that someone told me was the goddess. When it passed through the crowd, people touched it and said (yelled) prayers. People were excited to see a westerner and my progress up the mountain was slow for the photo requests.
When I made it up onto the plateau where the caves have been carved into a cliff, I noticed things in a particular order. First, the grandeur of the caves. As I said, 2nd century BC. The centerpiece was a beautiful, monumental Chaitya (prayer) hall, perhaps the largest in India, with vaulted, ribbed ceilings, thirty-forty feet high. Second I saw a Hindu temple painted in outrageous blue and red and yellow dayglo colors, adorned with flags and bells, that had been constructed about twelve feet in front of the entrance to the main cave. There was a procession of about 200 people lined up, shoving to get into this very small temple. Another 200 or so stood in front of the cave, apparently waiting for something to happen. Some with faces painted, and bright pink powder on their shoulders, in their hair.
As I approached the cave, I saw that the neon pink dust had been cast over the ornate 15 foot high Buddhist sculptures carved into the façade. Inside, the entire floor of the cave, the columns running along each side, the stupa in the back had all been coated in the same pink. Around this time, the drumming began and, from there, everything became more or less incomprehensible. Just when I thought India couldn’t get any more baffling. I’ll try to describe what I saw and maybe you can help me decipher what the hell was going on.
There are two teams. One wearing yellow shirts, one wearing white shirts. All men. Women, for the most part, are seated outside of the cave. The teams face off in the cave. The competition, if this is what it is, seems to be based around drumming and dancing. Each team has a band of drummers and dancers. Before the competition can really get going, however, someone from the white team says something that upsets the yellow team. They start pushing each other and what I presume are insults ring off the pink-dusted columns of the cave. People climb on each other’s shoulders. I can’t help but think of the Buddhist monks who lived and prayed here two thousand years ago rolling in their grave. After a few moments, the disagreement is settled, but the yellow team ejects the white team from the cave. During a short interlude, the yellow team goes into a sort of huddle, evidently talking strategy. This is interrupted by the sound of loud drumming from outside. The white team has begun their demonstration. The white-team drummers drum while the dancers dance with great vigor. Much laughter and cheering accompanies the dancing. Energy escalates into fervor and the chickens that many people are holding escape and fly onto the roof the Hindu temple or into the upper eaves of the cave. There are a significant number of umbrellas. An older woman seems to become possessed by something – music or spirit or some combination of the two – and everyone stands back while she jacknifes and moans with her eyes rolled back and wiggles her fingers towards the sky. Pentecostalism, but better, because it’s EXOTIC. When she is taken care of by someone, the dancing continues. Eventually, it is the yellow team’s turn. They undertake pretty much the same routine as the white team, with comparable vigor. They wave a flag of impressive size and have trumpets and an organized band with some kind of conductor. Beggar men dressed in rags with long beards watch passively from the side. Beggar women try to bless people on their foreheads and are pushed aside. The spirit of their dancers, in my opinion, is less than that of the white team. Finally, the procession is diverted when someone carries out the canopied chair holding the avatar of the goddess. White and yellow teams seem to forget their differences and both follow the goddess on their way down the mountain. There is no sign of anything to do with fishermen. I take about 300 pictures and remain completely and utterly confused.
In retrospect, I have a feeling that all of this was a political event. The elections were coming up in India and I did see a few signs that could have been political. Political event masquerading as religious festival? But I don’t know. Look at the pictures here and let me know if you can make sense of what is going on.
