Takshi Sheela

(1)

28 January 2004
(9: 00 AM)

The car swerves and stops abruptly, piercing the resolute silence of the dusty countryside in this remote sleepy town known as Takshi Sheela in old Indian scriptures. We have arrived at Taxila. Children and adults pour out from both sides of the car. As I get out, I can read the Taxila Museum sign on the façade of an aging building and leap towards it. Before we cross the street, Rick, our American friend is tempted by the heaps of dry fruit precariously lumped on metal trays on the three-wheeled contraption called rehri. Rick is a white American. Sometimes we worry about his enterprising spirit that can snag trouble for him due to his pale-white color. He is trying to come up with exact amount of Pakistani currency for the goodies he purchased from the sidewalk vendor. He pops dried fruit and candied sugar in his mouth to challenge his taste buds. Before we make to the museum, the group stops again to buy oranges. Our Pakistani hosts warn us not to buy oranges here because “maltas” from a nearby “bagh” can be reasonably cheaper and fresher. The shop-keeper slices an orange with a sharp knife, red juice drips from the twin halves and as he waves them up high. He proclaims he owns the near-by bagh and hence there is no need to drift away. We buy sacks of oranges and load them in the trunk.

On our way to the Museum, we stop to buy tickets. Rick has to pay Rs. 200 for the museum ticket while we pay only twenty Rupees each. “Government-sponsored discrimination!” Rick argues with the clerk. We finally enter the brick building. It is very narrow, lacking the luster of museums in the western world.

Inside, I am greeted by a glittering, stunning stupa, almost 2400 hundred years old! I touch it and feel its aging texture with my inquisitive, caressing fingers. “It contains Lord Buddha’s ashes,” my niece, a student at the Lahore College of Fine Arts whispers. I suddenly remember the lyrical music of William Belote: “The Son of Brahmin” in his work Siddhartha. I am looking around, overwhelmed. I try to remain calm but my insides are shifting. I cannot keep pace with the inner transformations. “Sir, Can I show you a few things around?” He asks in clear English. “Some of these treasures are not open to the public view”. My eyes are glued at him. I notice his facial features. The hawk nose! Piercing, observant eyes! Twenty-five hundred years ago, this area must have been inhabited by his look-alikes! I ponder. We follow his foot steps. He unlocks a room to let our party in and starts opening caskets full of jaded gold ornaments, preserved in the anonymity of this quite room. My arts-student niece chuckles: “We can commercialize these designs”. I ignore her. The guide lets her take pictures, a privilege that handful of dollars can buy in Pakistan. I hand over whatever cash I can grab from my pocket. The guide accepts the offering, looking around.

We move over to other areas of the museum as the guide excuses himself. The place is humming with the whispers of tourists and students. As I look around, I do not find swords, bows and arrows in the exhibit rooms. Instead, I see caldrons, hammers, spindles, sowing needles, stuff that ordinary people use to engage in domestic pursuits. The most overwhelming experience for me is a solitary grain of preserved wheat turned black like a hardened residue of carbon. It is here that I imagine the universal determinism of food and hunger, a theme common across all ages, cultures, and worldviews.

We are now heading to Taxila which is minutes away from the museum but stop at a dhaba. Tall, bearded men stand in circles, talking. Some ogle at us eerily as we have females in our party. They wear loose shalwars, long flowing kurtas, and black or brown vests. Some have wrapped woolen shawls around them. Although their eyes are fixed on us, we sit down carelessly on the steel chairs on the road side and order tikkas, kabobs and naans. The master chef flattens ground meat and fat on his bear palm and launches the patties in the animal fat simmering in a blackened karahi. The patties sulk, their aroma wafting to our nostrils. We try small bites of the chappal kabob. Particles of sand crunch in my mouth. “There is sand in the meat.” Someone protests. “Yeh naa mumkin hai”, the shop-keeper asserts stoically, ignoring the dust that constantly settles on the meat and cooking utensils as scores of trucks and lorries drive past, leaving clouds of smoke and dust behind. I keep eating. I have written poems glamorizing the dust of Pakistan. “So be it.” I say calmly as the dirty, unhygienic food is fills the howling crevices of my stomach. After I am done eating I run to a gas station across the street to wash greasy hands. The hand pump is broken. I buy a Coke and spill its contents on my hands to get rid of the stench of grease and spices (It was here that I contracted diarrhea).


A terraced walkway is being built by construction workers. They don’t mind as we step on the rectangular frames containing concrete to be leveled. No handicapped person can walk up those heights. We leave Phupho Ji alone at the bottom of the hill since she cannot walk up.

The view is panoramic up the hill. The sky is indigo blue. All around there are constellations of small boxy houses perched on the mountainous slopes. Goats, lambs, stray buzzards and small children roam. It is difficult to know who is watching who!—such is the nature of the silent covenant among elements. I notice that small boys do not have underwear or shorts on. They walk around unhindered.

Further up, the plateau unfolds to the entrance of a stone structure. A bearded guide leaps up to show us around. Again, I am overwhelmed by a huge stupa in the middle of a room. I want to kiss this testimonial of spiritual and architectural serenity, replicating it in many forms and structures. The geometrical shapes of chiseled stones, meticulously cut and arranged in a rhyming scheme like stanzas of ancient epic poetry, laid out in a divine scheme, inspiring awe in a native son! I am savoring the past.

All around there are statues, in different sizes and shapes, tight-lipped, silent and eternally lodged in the dilapidated radiance of this ancient structure. There are ghastly openings in the walls, their inhabitants removed and placed in private homes and museums, like kidnapped children. This used to be a Buddhist university for mendicant monks and renunciant bhikshoos, traveling from far away lands to learn the regimen that Siddhartha mastered in order to transcend the normal human condition--misery, pain and suffering and to find perfection in an imperfect world. There is a community kitchen, a pool, and prayer rooms. I see a hole in one of the stones of the kitchen wall—a receptacle for placing for spoons used to distribute food among guests.

I extricate myself from the guide and members of my party to steal a moment of silence, to infuse the rapture and serenity of the environment in my spiritual expanse. I touch the walls and rest my burning face against the rectangular stones once carved by my ancient relatives. I am back, I tell them. What happened to you, after all? I imagine ascetics in saffron robes, their feet mired in dirt, frozen in delirious silence, chanting inwardly--their anointed faces ablaze with fire and passion! This dirt absorbed the sweat of monks from the neighboring hamlets, some coming on their royal chariots while others on foot, to embrace the kingdom of truth. I bow down to touch the dark brown clay under my feet.

“It is dark now, time to go home.” Someone chirps and my reverie is broken. “Sorry, I have to leave but I shall return!” I announce silently.

(To be continued)