[…] We’re in an infinite land of yellowish earth, with a wide dusty road, a streaming multitude in the middle of a desert, a slow migration of innumerable people where cars pass together with buffalo-drawn carts, bicycles, camels laden with immense piles of hay, beggars full of scabs and mutilations, blind children with white eyes, women wrapped in saris, stepping like queens, workers: men of all kinds, thousands of them, in groups, in single file, solitary, with bare feet that raise thousands of tiny clouds of dust: this way and that, in an uninterrupted centuries-old flow. Thus we reach the banks of the sacred river Jumna, winding in its long course toward the Ganges. The bridge is being built and, amidst the dense crowds, we have to take a long way round on a narrow temporary passage encumbered with cows and camels. We can only go at snail’s pace: the Acharya’s pace. “Everything is done slowly here”, he says, “even cleaning your teeth with babul leaves: things happen just the same: plants are not in a hurry. Plants live like peasants. What is a peasant’s day like, an old peasant’s? He sleeps on a bed, or on the ground in his shack, or in the fields; he gets up at 4, looks around, says a prayer or two and sings a few songs. His wife is in the other part of the house or, if they have slept in the fields, she’s already gone somewhere else. He puts water and tobacco in his hukah, his pipe, lights it from the fire, and starts smoking. If he’s not sick, he goes out, with his long pipe, and walks around his fields; he finds some water and washes his face. When he has washed properly, he goes back home, drinks something, and maybe stops to chat a little with those he meets. It’s dawn. Then for an hour he washes, cleans his teeth with babul leaves, and starts chatting again. For breakfast, he takes a handful of rice or a bit of bread. If he’s very religious, before eating he bathes. Then he goes to the fields and starts working. He works hard, but is always chatting, arranging something with friends and acquaintances. He works and works; if the field is far-off, his food is brought there. If the fields are close, he goes back home to eat. If the weather’s fine, he eats a bit of sugar-cane or a potato, and goes back to work. If the weather’s hot, he stops work around 11 and goes home to rest. If he has things to do, he puts something on to protect himself from the sun and goes out: he actually goes out whatever the weather, even when the heat is lethal. If he’s very poor, he eats nothing. When he’s at home, he goes out every now and again to drink a lot of water. There are many ways of drinking: from a tap, a stream, a well, or a pond, and so forth. And as he goes to drink, he stops to talk with those he meets, and the subject is always the same, “Where do you come from? Which village?”.

Acharya has to halt: we’ve stopped for another bridge under repair, and are surrounded by a crowd of naked pilgrims, bearded, white with dust. “The pilgrim”, says Acharya, “is not perfect unless he’s completely covered with dust. This is a traditional saying that is put into practice. You should see the mass pilgrimages at Allahabad, where wayfarers arrive with dust from every part of India”. With such talk, we reach the village of Gabiadad, and once more have to halt because the road is impassable for some mountebank or magician who, amidst a crowd of inquisitive people, is hypnotising a child and turning his head round the other way. Then he takes a knife and is ready, if we give him 2 rupees, to cut the child in half. This is something we don’t see because the knife, immersed in the sheet that covers the child, instead of blood is covered with red flowers. Getting going is difficult: all around the car is a hedge of children’s faces, with bright teeth and shining eyes. The road is just as busy in the countryside: among trees appears a house with a large sign: “Montessori School”. Farther on, the countryside becomes vaster, more open, dotted with small Hindu shrines, between the fields of flowering sugar-cane and the isolated tall trees; and everywhere there are cows, thin hairy pigs, crows, enormous white-and-yellow vultures which, from a distance, in the tall grass, look like sheep. And, on the main road, between two rows of mango trees, we reach the village of Dadri.

Acharya’s sister, a pretty brown girl, is waiting for us on the road, and there she leaves us, vanishing with her brother on some kind of mission of preparation: they will come back and fetch us later. We stay in the sun on the main road, where there is a market, with peasants arriving from everywhere on carts as tall as pagodas or great bird cages, with wooden lattices and curtains, behind which are veiled women. The children wrap us round like a cloud: they look at us, surround us, but no one asks for a hand-out. On fires burning here and there, on large metal plates, they cook colourful grains and vegetables: on one side is a shack covered with notices and pictures showing a man without teeth and one with teeth: a brown young man is sitting up there, amidst tools and phials: on a small table set up in front of the steps leading to the shack is a large tray with a heap of thousands of teeth. Acharya suddenly reappears and we go along a wide country road, between bo trees, the great pipals, the trees of the Buddha. We walk a long way, through sun and shade, as far as a canal, on whose banks half-naked women are scraping the ground, squatting, with little rakes to remove weeds, and covering their faces with their veil as we go by. We climb the bank and continue through the countryside. “These lands”, says Acharya, “all belonged to my family, held under the samindari system. We were the landlords here, but now, with agrarian reform, all we have left is the house and a few fields belonging to my farmer uncle. It’s enough for me to come back and stay here in the village: I’ve kept a room for myself, where I can collect my thoughts and meditate”. Still talking, having crossed the canal by a little bridge, we take a narrow path and reach the house. The small house is of brickwork, with a tiny room on the ground floor behind the veranda, two rooms on the first floor, and a terrace instead of a roof. In front of the house, in the farmyard, a wild-looking black female buffalo seems determined to obstruct our passage; two thin cows, tied to pickets, are lying down farther off. On the veranda, on a peasant’s matting bed, solemnly wrapped in a blanket is an old man with flaming eyes; with him, inside the blanket, are two very handsome small boys, whose lively heads are all that we can see. This is Acharya’s old uncle; today he’s sick and can’t get up. Round the corner of the house, squatting on the ground, are his aunts, busy cutting up vegetables, lighting the fire, picking the grains of rice for our lunch. Behind them a primitive well and other cows wandering about. We climb a very narrow ladder to the first floor: one of the two rooms is closed with a padlock: through the glass panes in the door I can see some old books in disorder, covered with dust: this is Acharya’s abandoned room. On another ladder we climb to the terrace. Acharya tells us to wait here until the meal is ready. From here, we can see the countryside stretching in every direction, as far as the distant village, with its mud-brick houses, and an ancient mosque surrounded by trees. We can see the canals, the copses, the dusty paths, the carts passing, the peasants in the fields. Crows and vultures are flying through the sky: from one tree to another fly the parakeets, like green flashes. A dry and teeming silence enwraps us on all sides. Since no one calls us to lunch, we go downstairs and stroll in the countryside. Behind the house is a pleasant orchard of gigantic mandarin oranges and mangoes; then the paths dwindle away among the beds of reeds, where, under awnings, the peasants are carefully boiling sugar in large cauldrons, and hospitably offer us fresh cane juice. We make our way towards the tumbled-down mosque and the Muslim cemetery, along a dusty road with peasants’ carts drawn by small galloping buffalo.

[…] By now it’s evening; the meal is still not ready, but a message comes from the village to say that Acharya’s mother and sisters are awaiting us in the village. We set off through the already dusky fields.

On the outskirts of the village, like an army camping all around in tents, are the gypsies: they peek at us, avid and dark, these women of good fortune. The village is a closed enchantment of walls, earth, indoor voices, mysterious life. In the last of the light, already star-coloured, we wander through the little streets with the returning herds. In front of a painted house sits an old man with enormous moustaches. He’s Acharya’s uncle, a former police inspector, whose meticulously regular habits make him the villagers’ living clock. The whole family comes to the door and we greet each other with joined palms. A little farther off is Acharya’s mother’s house. His sisters, his nieces in their saris, like figures of archaic Greece with their long black tresses and black eyes, bid us enter a cobbled courtyard, where friends, family, peasants and children come and go, and offer us water to wash with. Acharya is happy to see us in this house, and as a mark of love invites me, first of all, to visit the family gods. We climb a very narrow ladder, without any balustrade, leaning against the courtyard wall, to the upper rooms. We remove our shoes and enter, reverently, the room of the gods. The gods are many: those of his mother, of his sisters, his own; there are the principal gods: Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Ganesh, and many others. There is a round stone, another shaped like a lingam, a shell, there are flowers, rice, fruit, garlands, and there is also, among the gods, an image of Christ, and of holy miracle-makers. Having visited the gods, while waiting for our meal, we go to another room full of bed-mats. Acharya’s niece, a beautiful girl with a violet and pink face, sings us ancient religious songs. An oil lamp provides an oscillating yellow light on the wide bare floor of the empty room. Lying on the meagre beds, against the wall, we listen to these sacred dirges. On the floor, the children with their large round heads listen to the songs, open-mouthed.

Finally, fasting since that morning, we go down to supper, on the veranda. Again we remove our shoes (eating is sacred too) and crouch down against the wall. The night is cold, cold the matting on the floor for our bare feet. In front of each of us a copper tray is placed, and the women kindly offer us food with their elegant poverty: rice that is almost cold and a few microscopic bowls of vegetables, of curry, of curd: a vegetarian meal, for which so many of them had worked all day. Once supper ended, India becomes the topic of conversation, with its spiritual principles, and its politics. Acharya, standing bare-foot, in the middle of the veranda, with his black fitted coat and tight trousers of white cotton, starts a long discourse, speaking of Gandhi, non-violence, the religious tradition on which all policy is based, dwelling on case law as to when it is licit to defend yourself even with weapons, speaking of the eternal question of lives and deaths that forbids violence to all men, ending with the value of yoga and holiness. Moved by his own eloquence, and loving me all the more for it, having finished his discourse, Acharya wants to show me his most secret treasure which, he says, he has never shown anyone. It is a metal box locked with a key. Inside are the things most sacred to him. His father’s photo (meaning, to use his symbols, the image of the past), his father born a peasant who then went to Oxford and became the Minister of Education. Beneath his father id the holiness of the present: the image of his guru, Bansuria baba, a miraculous guru, who does not teach miracles, however, but the love of the gods; and a drawing of another guru, with a young man’s feminine face and long hair, a guru who lives in the Himalayas but, in extraordinary circumstances, appears simultaneously elsewhere, mysteriously young despite his age; and lastly, the most sacred of sacred things, his god, a black object made of two little spheres stuck together, of some indefinable material, perhaps fossil wood or stone, a divine object created from nothing in the miraculous hand of Bansuria. For the first time, I can touch a god, and I keep it long, smooth and black, in my hand.

Finally we get up to leave, and make our way towards the street, through the twilight courtyard. From a black doorway giving on to a dark cubbyhole, his mother suddenly appears. She’s a little old woman, her sari wound round her legs like a peasant, wrinkled, bent, thin, minute and black. She comes towards me, places her hands on my head and lets them slowly slide down around my face, my neck and, ancient mother that she is, she blesses me. We walk through the dark streets of the sleeping village. The taxi is waiting for us outside. Back over the river Jumna, we race towards the city. The great moon idles, sailing through the sky, among the pristine stars.