Jai Mata Di Jai Maa Kali

Oh Narayaani, Oh Shivi, Oh Gauri, you fulfill the desires of all. I pray to you.

Leave Haridwar on a Somwar evening (Monday, day of Soma = Moon) and next Mangalwar (Tuesday, day of Mangal = Mars, Jai Hanuman) you will have arrived in Katra, Jammu.

The overnight air-conditioned bus rolls into Katra early in the morning and only option is to walk down the main and possibly only road, towards the hills. The aim is to find accommodation and information about the yatra up the hill, to Vaishno Devi cave.

The government offices and army checks are all gathered around a central square. 1100 INR (13$) for beautiful government hotel, a large room with balcony overlooking the inner gardens. That first day and evening are spent walking around, entering a Chintamani mandir (temple for goddess) and a Hanuman mandir, then eating with a group of young street beggars. Katra is a gorgeous and tiny circular town at the bottom of the impressive rocky peak and crevice called Devi Bhavan. It’s hot and towards the evening, an angry storm starts. This is a Durga, Devi, Mata Di town, so everybody salutes with ‘Jai Mata Di’. In English, ‘Long live the Divine Feminine!’

When I say the town is a Durga town, I am referring to the spiritual identities assigned to some of these old pilgrimage cities of India. Each of them will have a patron deity – Mahadev (Shiva) in Kashi (Varanasi); Hari Om (Brahma) in Pushkar; Sat Sri Akal (Guru Nanak) in Punjab… In Katra town, the ruling deity is an avatar of Durga that contains all three manifestations of Devi, Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati, called Vaishno Dev. We salute each other with ‘Jai Mata Di’. The story goes that for some long and convoluted dharmic reason, Vaishno Devi Narayani is followed by asuras, rakshas or demons, so she walks up the mountain overlooking Katra and enters a deep cave. There she sits in tapasya (austerities) and meditation, in the company of her three mother-protectors, who materialize themselves into three lingams (ellipsoid-shaped stalagmites).

The first full day I spend walking around town. I get out before sunrise to get some bottled water and medicine. I walk down the mountainous streets, not yet open or crowded.

Once the morning starts, they will be filled with honking motor-units of any number of wheels, screaming people and the animals, watching the madness and trying to get some food out of it all. I take another circular stroll around town. Begging children abound, this is a very poor place. Many tourists from other places in India, mostly the directly southern provinces, Haryana, Punjab, Chandighar. Large crowds, full families or groups of friends, no foreigners. Someone opens a locked temple in a dharamshala where we share some food with some street kids and their irresponsible street mothers.

The Muslims are the poorest, cleaning the streets here in town or carrying large Brahmins on their shoulders on the metal chair-like stretchers up on the yatra walk.

Four Muslim wallahs per one fatso. I apologise for the fat-shaming, but these people have a slave-owner attitude and they expect to be carried for the equivalent of less than 10 euros all the 20 kms up the mountain. All the army officers are Sikh, probably to minimize the political conflicts that are always happening between Muslims and Hindus. All the policemen are Hindu, and with this we covered the social groups. Christians are represented by myself and Jesus, in the astral. In the town there might be a few more, but none on the trek.

On Guruwar (Thursday, day of Jupiter the guru), I start early. Leaving the hotel at 6am, I reach the office and get a yatri pass by 7am and I am on my way. The place is auspicious, full of green and water springs. The trek to the cave is a 20 kms steep-ish climb through tunnels covered with corrugated iron roofs. Rocks fall and monkeys attack. Mountain goats and deer graze. Birds fly.

We walk, although some of us take donkeys, horses and human carriers. When I say ‘us’, I’m trying to be inclusive – I walk barefoot, the only respectful and authentic way to walk any yatra. One cannot meet god with boots on.

At 8.30 I sit in dhaba and smoke the last beedie, drink the last chai. Yatra, or holy journey has started and all my senses will be on it until I get darshan, which means seeing the idol of God with your physical eyes. It’s usually some natural formation or event, a mountain or a waterfall, a periodic and impressive natural occurrence. The chai is given to me for free, Jai Mata Di.

The path goes in winding left and right turns, at some corners there are water fountains of eating & drinking huts. The ‘guide’ wallahs line the walls, offering their customized services. Your options are these, from cheapest to most expensive:

– an old, skinny wallah follows you up, carrying your luggage or your young children in a beaten up children’s trolley designed by The Joker

– a sickly donkey or horse covered in open bites and wounds carries your inefficient carcass up the hill, its owner beating it into activity with a whip

– four wallahs, younger and angrier than the trolley-carriers, carry you on their shoulders on a chair stretcher while you hold on to armrests that look like a Garbage King’s scepter

Around one of the lower bends, a group of transvestites spot me into the crowd and they come quickly to touch me, bless my hair and ask some random details. They are very excited, wherever I meet India’s third gender I receive a strange special welcome. Now, they see the tulsi mala and call out Krishna mantras – they recognize me from Vrindavan. Radhe Radhe. Jai Mata Di!

I reach the upper gate at 11.11, no exaggeration. This is less than 3 hours for a trek that should take 5 hours, so I’m pleased with myself. I was fast, I could tell. Something was carrying me up, maybe it was adrenaline. Isn’t adrenaline, God? I enter the gate and go straight, where the crowds seem to pour. I still have the bag and the shoes, so I ask one of the Sikh army officers where could I leave chapal (shoes) and backpack. This is a ‘Hindus only’ temple, we know this so he asks me if I am Hindu, he asks it as a rhetorical question. We silently conclude that I am and takes me to the back, very jolly, where the army lockers are. He then says, the queue is very long, so I’ll get direct darshan. He passes me on to a middle aged, intense-looking yatri who points forward and starts walking fast. We run past crowds of people stepping on each other in a queue of hundreds, that must take hours to go through. Construction is going on the sides and these are the shortcuts we take. It feels wrong and powerful to walk past all these folk being directed here and there like cattle. Break loose, my brothers and sisters! Revolt. Get a Life. Find Devi inside. Stop degrading your humanity in the name of culture, ritual or social identity. Be real, be that. Tat Tvam Asi.

On the right, there’s a tiny hidden cave, which is maybe the gupta gufa (secret cave). The yatri whistles at me when I sit down in front of its tiny entrance and close my eyes. No time for meditation now. There’s a spring of water where we do some quick, basic ablutions. He sprinkles a little water over his head, whereas I put my whole over-heated head under the creek and then I drink as much as I can. We join the queue just at the entrance to the cave, a tunnel as high as a person, and three times as wide. People are walking in and out on paths designated by a rope. The yatri accompanying me walk in front and he has a fit halfway through the tunnel, shaking his head vigorously from side to side and muttering something in bursts. It looks like religious fervor, i.e. Tourette’s. He touches the ground, then he calms down.

We reach the bottom of the cave, where a pujari (Hindu priest) awaits. He ushers everyone very quickly past, darshan is allowed for a few seconds. When he sees my alien-hood, he calls me back and explains the set up – the small stalagmite on the right is Kali, the largest, whitest one in the middle is Lakshmi and the one on the left, Saraswati. The goddesses representing destruction of ego and ignorance (Kali), abundance (Lakshmi) and knowledge (Saraswati), the consorts of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, respectively. Sri Ganesha is also there, a lingam with a silver snake above it. These three swayambhu (self-generated) lingams represent Vaishno Devi. I receive some prashad in the form of nuts, raisin, sugar and coconut, we get a kumkum red tika in the name of Tridevi, and that’s it. One more visit to the fountain on the way out, and I continue following the yatri until his mobile locker. I then realize I should split and I sneak my way on a small path above the entrance to the cave. Large langoors, the black-faced monkeys of upper Himalayas, move in the forest surrounding the path. I’m scared but the view is too good. Eventually, after some sitting, an army man walks by and asks me questions about my origin. He’s friendly and allows me to stay longer, if I so wish. It’s very peaceful and I can see and hear the crowds below.

Eventually I leave the upper silences to retrieve the bag and find out if sleeping here is an option, or if I’ll descend today. Rooms can be pre-booked online, fully booked for many days in advance; they cost 40.000 rupees, which is more than 400 euros, and it’s the sanatan dharma gift the rich indian tourists will treat themselves to. The poor devotees will sleep on the floor, in some specially assigned spaces, called free accommodation.

They’re in the open and groups will watch out for the safety of the members and their possessions in turns, during the night. I must be the only solo yatri on the whole thing. I sit in one of these accommodation areas, large balconies on the sides of the tunnels directing the queues, and write. I try to have a light afternoon nap and even that’s difficult, so it’s unlikely I’ll sleep too well here, alone. After an hour or so, I leave and return to the entrance gate at the top. Needless to say, it’s crowded. Swarming with constant flux of people. Everybody throws wrappers on the ground. I eat a chole bhature, which means deep fried chapati and chickpeas stew. Then, I see a sign in Hindi for ‘Sri Bhairon Mandir’. Could this be Bhairav, the Lord of Time? Let’s find out.

The signs advertise 170 steps up, tough thing. The air gets rarer by the step. A few men have been following me for half an hour or so, so I ask them if they are the demons that Devi had to run uphill from. Everybody listens to the question, because everything that happens in public is a public show. The leela (divine play) of Devi is soft and steady, as you’d expect from Goddess. I reach the top and leave my shoes but somehow get mesmerized by a hot iron plate with coal in it, above which a sign in Hindi says ‘Babaji Ki Vibhooti’.

Everything is in Hindi script, so it helps to know the alphabet and at least a few words. The babaji reference causes me to miss the entrance to the temple and continue the trek up a few kms, past mountain jungles and crevices, beautiful shila in the shape of interlocking triangles facing upwards and downwards, like the Sri Yantra. Similar to the Star of David.

I reach a point called Om Viewpoint and smoke a beedie with the monkeys while thinking of Mahavatar Babaji, the immortal siddha yogi that is Jesus Christ’s neighbour in Siddha Lokam, the realm of realized astral beings. A helipad is visible below, helicopters land and take off. The beedie has been of the special kind, so I’m stoned. Some kids ask me where am I from, and I tell them I’m from ‘Angrej Lokam’ – the land of the foreigners. ‘Angrej’ is the hindi term that insultingly calls all ‘non-Indians’ as ‘angrej’, or the phonetic hindi version of ‘english’. Oh. Colonialism, how we all miss you… But don’t worry, you’re still alive in our hearts, languages and social dynamics.

I ask someone where is Bhaairav. Far below. I return to the vibhooti spot, join the people but I’m spotted by a Sikh army officer straight away who orders me to skip the queue. This feels like a deja-vu. I get to the front and look straight at Sri Bhairav Babaji, black lingam with a round orange face, and Sri Hanuman, orange. People behind me call out Babaji’s many names and I add the ‘jai’ at the end. Sri Bhairav Nath ki…. JAI. Sri Bhairav Baba ki… JAI. Sri Hanuman Ji ki…. JAI! I cry a little, it’s emotion and exhaustion.

The trip down is like a slide, Jai Mata Di. It’s tough on the body and easy on the mind, walking 40 kms up and down a mountain in one day. Om Namo Narayani.