An online addition to My Head for a Tree
Journeys between the main Bishnoi temples wind through narrow Rajasthani lanes and head off-road across desert. Heading from Lalasar to the village of Jangloo, a villager climbs in and offers directions, and commentary, from the car’s front seat. He laments the lack of camel’s milk and all its health benefits. The camel eats what other animals don’t, including the fog grass which grows like green steam clouds by the side of the road, so its milk is unusually nutritious. Camels do still pull carts through these streets though. And we pass one pulling a tire, switching from side to side, being trained to pull straight by two men.
This is village India, but the man who leads us around Jangloo lives an hour away, in the city of Bikaner. Trucks on Rajasthan’s highways, decorated as gaily as carousel rides, often belong to Bishnoi families. And are likely as not made by Tata Motors. Rajaram Ji owns Tata truck dealerships, along with motorcycle suppliers and the gas stations that operate from their forecourts. His hair is dark grey and oiled back across his head, his face marked by laughter lines.
He shows me around a sathri, one of those sixteen temple-and-accommodation complexes built to house pilgrims in places Guru Jambhoji once stayed. It is remote, and a work in progress. Extensions are half complete, rubble strewn around. Its custodian wears a blue checkered dhoti, his round belly taut above it. He and Rajaram greeted each other like old friends, but now words get heated. The place is unkempt; it could be swept, tidied. What are we paying you for?
‘I have ten cows to look after,’ the man laments. The cattle are grazing placidly between the trees. ‘And an old man at home I have to do everything for.’
Inside the temple, a lamp is burning in front of Jambhoji’s shrine. Follow Rajaram’s eyes around the building’s structure and you keep noting areas for repair.
The land is planted with saplings. As we prepare to leave the site, Rajaram puts all construction worries to the side, raises his arms into the air, and tilts back his head to gaze into the sky. He turns a half circle and then points toward a young khejri tree. ‘Jambhoji did not need a palace,’ he says. ‘His palace was a tree.’
He leads the way to a lake, with a temple on its bank and changing rooms for when Bishnois come here to bathe. The lake is man-made, the responsibility of Barsingh, a disciple of Jambhoji’s, and a miracle is associated with it. On a nearby sand dune, a wandering holy man appeared to a shepherd and told him to spread the alert. Heavy rains were about to come, people must gather and clean the edges of the lake, so the cow dung deposited there wasn’t swept into the water. People knew the signs of oncoming rain, the sky was clear, they expected nothing, but even so they rallied in the sunshine and made sure the long perimeter of the lake was swept clean. As they finished, the downpour came.
The implication is that this sadhu was an apparition of Jambhoji. More historically, Jambhoji is known to have sat beneath a kankeri tree on the dune where that holy man appeared. The tree is still standing, thickly adorned with saffron flags.
The most prized relics of Jambhoji are held in a glass case at the heart of the temple in Jangloo village. The image of Jambhoji hangs behind it, the man cross-legged beneath a tree, his right hand raised in blessing. He is wearing his conical saffron cap and the kurta, the loose saffron overshirt, seen in all such images, and this kurta and cap are in the glass case. Beside it is the ladle that was also once his. They were brought to the town by one of his disciples and have rested here since.
The kurta has been spiralled liked a turban, the fabric turned brown and fragile, the cap hidden beneath it.
‘It used to be hanging,’ Rajaram explained. ‘Then we became aware of its condition and closed it into a case.’
I wonder if the kurta had given them any sign of the height, the size of Jambhoji, before it was closed away, but Rajaram’s ‘we’ had given a sign of the long tradition of which he is a part. The relics were encased in glass two hundred years ago. The clothes would crumble to dust if disturbed.
Across the way from the temple, beyond a village square of packed earth, is the dharmasala, the community hall. ‘Take therapy,’ Rajaram suggests as we pass a cow in the square. ‘In the USA people pay for this therapy. It is very good.’ And he sweeps his hand firmly down the cow’s flanks, long soothing gestures.
He’s right. Sweep your hand over warmth, a hide of hair packed close to muscle and strength, connect your human body to a beast that is so much larger yet placid and unquestioning, and it is a shift out of the bother of maintaining self-importance.
The community building has several rooms built along a covered corridor. It’s free to all who wish to stay here. We settle onto beds for discussion.
How easy is it for Rajaram to follow his Bishnoi practices in the city?
He starts by speaking of Amvasya Day, the Bishnois’ monthly sabbath. On the day the first new moon will appear, people stop all work and fast from sunrise to sunrise. That is when this temple becomes busy, as it also is on the two packed days of its annual festivals.
And your dealerships? I ask. They are linked to the wider, non-Bishnoi, city economy. Do they close for this monthly holy day?
A slight shake of his head, but then, ‘No construction work, no agricultural work,’ and of course domestic work can relax for the hours of fasting.
Rajaram then tells me how before his workday in the city he rises at 4am every day, first takes his shower, and then does his havan and ghee fire ceremony before doing his chanting.
The twenty-nine Bishnoi rules include never lying. ‘In my business, I never lie. At the petrol pumps of my stations I never charge more than the dial shows, and instruct my people to do the same.’
How does never telling a lie work, when he is in competition with other businesses?
‘They are struck by my honesty and it spreads. They become honest themselves.’
