Dhumavati. A Voice in the Smoke

Sometimes she answered at once. Sometimes she made him circle round a question for several days. Sometimes she gave an answer that raised three more questions. And sometimes she was simply silent.

The worst of it was finding out afterwards that the silence had been an answer too.

Dmitry looked at the word again.

“Am I right in thinking that mantra is connected with Aghora too?”

Which one?

He gave the empty air in front of him an incredulous look.

“You know perfectly well which.”

I want you to say it.

“Dhum Dhum Dhumavati Thah Thah.”

After a short pause Ma answered:

Yes.

“So it’s Dhumavati’s Aghora mantra.”

In the lineage you were taught in – yes.

“A proper answer at last.”

Write down the date.

“I certainly will.”

Dmitry really did take a pencil and write in the margin: “Aghora”. Then he thought about it and drew a circle round the word.

He could have stopped there. A normal person probably would have. Dmitry considered himself a normal person – but only until a question came along that genuinely interested him.

“Then why the cemetery?”

Ma sighed. She actually sighed.

Dmitry grinned.

“Now I know for certain you’re fed up with me.”

I am not fed up with you.

“But there was a sigh.”

Because what comes next will take a long time.

“I’m in no hurry.”

That is not true.

“I’m in no hurry right now.”

That is different.

He said nothing.

“Why the cemetery?”

Because once again you want to begin with the place, and you need to begin with yourself.

“Explain.”

No.

“Ma.”

What?

“That’s not fair.”

Why?

“Because you say ‘you need to begin with yourself’ and then stop explaining.”

I want you to think.

“I think all the time as it is.”

That is one of your problems.

Dmitry laughed.

“All right. Let’s think.”

He closed the laptop – it was easier that way. While the screen was in front of his eyes, his gaze kept catching on the text anyway.

“The cemetery. Death. The absence of people. Fear. Isolation.”

Ma was silent.

“A person has less control over himself there.”

Silence.

“Everything familiar starts working differently.”

No reaction at all.

“Could you at least tell me when I’m heading in the right direction?”

Carry on.

“Thank you so much.”

He thought. It was already getting dark outside, and, unlike the evening before, the sky was at last about to turn into a proper night sky.

“In the city a person is always busy with something. Lights, cars, phones, people, noise. Even when he’s on his own, it’s as though he’s still among everyone else.”

Go on.

“In a cemetery at night all of that disappears.”

Not all of it.

“Most of it.”

That is more precise.

Dmitry got up and went over to the window.

“And what’s left is the man himself.”

There.

“That’s all?”

For a start.

“I was expecting something more mystical.”

That is why you did not understand.

He turned round. There was nobody in the room, but sometimes Ma’s presence was felt so distinctly that the absence of a physical body seemed a mere formality.

“So the point of the cemetery isn’t that the dead are there?”

They matter too.

“But they’re not the main thing?”

For what we are talking about now – no.

“Then what’s the main thing?”

You.

Dmitry was silent for a moment.

“Very convenient. Every question ends up coming down to me.”

Because you are the one who practises.

“That’s logical.”

It does happen to you now and then.

“Ma.”

She laughed.

* * *

He went back to the desk. On it lay the old Indian notebook he had already opened the day before. Dmitry picked it up again – this time he was not leafing through the dates; he was looking for something else.

He found it near the end. Several pages were covered with a jumble of Cyrillic, Roman letters and attempts to write down Sanskrit words as he had heard them; even back then he sometimes could not understand his own notes the next day.

In one place, in large letters, was written:

AGHORA

Below it, an arrow, then a few more words, one crossed out. Further down still:

“do not translate as horror”.

Dmitry smiled.

“When did I write this?”

Are you asking me?

“Yes.”

In India.

“Very helpful.”

You did not ask when exactly.

“All right. When exactly?”

I will not tell you.

“Why?”

Because you can remember for yourself.

He turned the page. On it was written: “Varanasi”. And a date.

Dmitry looked at it longer than he had meant to.

The memory did not come at once. First there was simply a smell: smoke, hot dust, water. Then a sound – voices, unfamiliar speech. And the feeling of a city where nobody tried to hide death behind a handsome door.

“So that’s where it came from.”

Ma said nothing.

“I remember.”

He closed his eyes, and the picture began to assemble itself slowly, in fragments.

He had been twenty-five, and his attitude to what he saw had been quite different. He had tried to classify everything, label it, find the correct name for it. To work out which tradition belonged to which, who worshipped whom, which school was older, which practice was “genuine”.

Now many of those questions seemed almost childish. But without them he would not have arrived at the others.

“When I first heard about the connection with you, I didn’t believe it, did I?”

You did not.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me then?”

You could not hear me.

Dmitry opened his eyes.

Now that was unpleasant. Not because the answer was bad – because it was obvious.

“True.”

He looked at the word in the notebook again.

AGHORA.

Then he opened the laptop. On the screen was:

Aghorācārasantuṣṭā.

Between the two entries lay almost fifteen years of his life.

“Funny.”

What is?

“Sometimes you can walk round a single word for ten years before you finally realise it was lying in front of you all along.”

It can take a great deal longer.

“That’s encouraging.”

I was not trying to encourage you.

“I know.”

* * *

Now the translation looked different. Not simpler – deeper.

Dmitry got rid of the first versions and wrote:

“Aghorācārasantuṣṭā – she who accords with the nature and path of Aghora; traditionally: satisfied by the practice of Aghora”.

He looked at it.

“Is that all right?”

For a note – yes.

“At last.”

Do not get used to it.

Dmitry saved the file. It was nearly eleven by the clock.

“That’s it. Enough.”

Good.

“I’ll carry on tomorrow.”

No.

His hand froze over the laptop lid.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

Tomorrow there will be something else.

“What?”

Ma did not answer. Dmitry waited.

“Ma.”

Silence.

“This is the bit I especially love.”

He closed the laptop, went into the kitchen, rinsed his mug and came back.

“I’ve got work tomorrow.”

I know.

“And the gym in the evening.”

Possibly.

“What do you mean, ‘possibly’?”

No answer at all.

Dmitry stopped in the middle of the room. The longer Ma was silent, the less he liked the situation.

“Where are we off to?”

Silence.

“We’re off somewhere, aren’t we?”

At last the voice came:

You wanted to understand Aghora.

“I did.”

Books are not enough for you.

Dmitry slowly sat down on the edge of the bed.

“And what are you suggesting?”

I am not suggesting anything.

“Then what?”

Get ready.

“For what?”

You will find out.

For several seconds he stared in front of him.

“When?”

Soon.

“A very precise timetable.”

It will be enough for you.

“Ma, when you say ‘get ready’, I’d like at least to understand what for.”

You would only start packing things you do not need.

“Possibly.”

That is why I am not telling you.

* * *

Dmitry lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head.

“Is it to do with the cemetery?”

Ma said nothing. He closed his eyes.

“So it is.”

Why?

“Because if it weren’t, you’d have said ‘no’.”

Silence.

Dmitry smiled.

“I know you too.”

Not as well as you think.

“But I guessed right this time?”

Sleep.

“I guessed right.”

Dmitry.

“All right, I’m shutting up.”

For several minutes he really was silent. Then he opened his eyes.

“Ma.”

What now?

“Why now, though?”

The answer did not come at once.

Because before, you wanted to know.

“And now?”

Now you are ready to try.

Dmitry stopped smiling.

The difference was small, only two words. But he heard it.

To know.

To try.

Until this evening Aghora had remained for him above all a text, an experience of India, other people’s explanations, odd fragments of practice. Now, for the first time, Ma had drawn the boundary between study and what would follow it.

“Understood.”

No.

“What is it this time?”

You will understand later.

Dmitry breathed out.

“Sometimes you’re impossible.”

I know.

“And you’re happy with that?”

Completely.

He laughed. Then he looked at the laptop again: under the closed lid lay a text with one long Sanskrit name.

Aghorācārasantuṣṭā.

Only yesterday it had been just a line among dozens of others.

What exactly Ma meant to do, Dmitry did not yet understand. But over many years he had managed to learn one simple thing: if she said “get ready”, the question had already been decided. All that remained was to find out what for.

Chapter Three

Varanasi

At twenty-five Dmitry saw Varanasi for the first time, early in the morning.

Until then the city had existed for him in photographs, books and other people’s stories. He had a rough picture of the Ganges, the ghats, the narrow streets, the temples, the smoke of the funeral pyres.

The picture turned out to be useless.

That was always the way with India. You could find out the air temperature in advance, look at photographs of the area, read a dozen guidebooks and even learn a few essential phrases – and then go out into the street and discover that nobody had explained the most important thing to you.

The city did not piece itself together from separate details.

It came down on you all at once.

Voices, car horns, motorbikes. The smell of spices, smoke, dust. Dogs, cows. People hurrying somewhere, although to an onlooker it sometimes seemed that nobody was in any hurry at all.

Dmitry stopped outside his cheap guesthouse, put his bag down at his feet and for a while simply looked.

After the flight he wanted to sleep. After the journey he wanted to eat. After his first look at the street he wanted to get up to his room as quickly as possible, drop his bag and go straight out to see the city.

The last of these won.

He carried his bag upstairs, washed, changed and went out again.

He did not have much money. The trip had only happened at all because for several months beforehand Dmitry had economised on almost everything, taken on extra work, done shifts driving a taxi, and every time he was tempted to spend his savings on something more sensible he had reminded himself what he was saving for.

Now the “what for” was all around him.

At first he kept trying to remember everything. Then he realised it was not going to work, and took out a small notebook.

On the first page he wrote:

Varanasi.

Below it, the date. Then for a long time he did not know what to write next. Finally he put down:

“Too much of everything at once”.

Half an hour later he added:

“Can’t understand a thing”.

An hour after that:

“Must learn the language”.

Later those three lines seemed to him an almost perfect description of his first day in India.

* * *

He reached the Ganges from a different direction from the one he had planned: he took several wrong turnings, asked the way twice, once misunderstood the answer, and ended up by a flight of steps that was not on his map at all.

He went down.

And stopped.

The river was wider than it had looked in the photographs. Boats moved on the water, people sat on the steps. Someone was washing, someone praying, someone talking, someone selling flowers. One man was calmly brushing his teeth as he looked at the river; a little further on a woman was washing clothes. Behind him a bell was ringing.

Dmitry stood there with his notebook and could not tell which of all this was religion and which was everyday life, or where the boundary between the first and the second lay at all.

A few days later he realised that the very attempt to find that boundary had been one of his first mistakes. Here, often, it simply did not exist.

He walked slowly along the ghats; he wanted to take everything in. Some things were awkward to look at for too long. Others it was impossible not to look at.

* * *

He saw his first funeral pyre from a distance. First he noticed the smoke. Then the people. Then the fire. And only then did he understand what exactly was burning.

Dmitry stopped.

Until then death in his life had always been something people tried to shut away. Hospital, morgue, coffin, cemetery, relatives, flowers – a sequence of actions that turned death into a separate event, isolated as far as possible from an ordinary day.

Here, life went on right beside it. People walked past, talked, worked. Someone was carrying tea, someone was arguing hotly about something. A few dozen metres away a human body was burning.

Dmitry stood there much longer than he had meant to. Not out of curiosity – rather because something inside him simply would not settle into its usual place.

He knew that death existed. Of course he knew. But knowing that death existed and being able to watch calmly as a body turned to ash turned out to be completely different things.

“First time?”

Dmitry turned round. Beside him stood a thin man of indeterminate age – perhaps about fifty. A light-coloured shirt, old trousers, sandals.

Dmitry nodded.

“Yes.”

The man said something else in English. Dmitry did not catch all of it.

“Sorry. Slowly.”

The man repeated it.

“You are afraid?”

Dmitry looked at the pyre.

“No.”

Then he thought about it and corrected himself:

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

The man smiled.

“Good answer.”

And walked on.

Dmitry watched him go, opened his notebook and wrote:

“Are you afraid? – Don’t know”.

For some reason it was this short exchange that stayed with him for years.

* * *

In his first weeks in Varanasi Dmitry mostly learnt to look. Not to understand – to look. Understanding, out of habit, he tried to add afterwards.

He quickly fell into a routine: tea in the morning, then the city. Sometimes books, sometimes conversations, sometimes simply hours and hours of walking with no particular aim.

He tried to talk to people. His English was enough to ask questions, but often not enough to understand the whole answer. Hindi he had practically none. Sanskrit existed so far only as a few familiar words and a strange feeling that one day he would have to learn it anyway.

This irritated him. He would see an inscription, understand that there was a text in front of him, and be unable to read it. For Dmitry this was almost a personal insult.

* * *

One day he stopped outside a small bookshop. Calling it a shop was something of a stretch: books stood on shelves, lay in piles on the floor, were stacked on a chair, took up part of the table and, by the look of things, were gradually preparing to take over the rest of the premises.

Behind the table sat its elderly owner.

Dmitry picked up a thin book and opened it. Devanagari. A few words he recognised, most he did not.

“Sanskrit?”

The owner looked up.

“Sanskrit.”

“Tantra?”

The man held out his hand. Dmitry passed him the book, and the man looked at the cover.

“No. Stotra.”

“Dhumavati?”

The owner looked at him again, more attentively this time.

“Dhumavati?”

“Yes.”

The man was silent for a while, then got up and began looking for something on the top shelf. He took down two books, put one back on the shelf and laid the other in front of Dmitry.

“Hindi.”

“Sanskrit?”

The owner opened it and pointed a finger at the page.

“Sanskrit. Hindi.”

That is, a Sanskrit text with explanations in Hindi. For Dmitry this was rather like being given a book with two locks instead of one.

“English?”

The owner laughed.

“No English.”

“Of course.”

Dmitry bought it all the same.

That same evening he opened it in his room. For five minutes he tried to read, then for ten minutes he tried to use the dictionary, and after twenty he realised he was wasting his time and put the book down beside him.

It lay there for several days. Then it travelled on with him. Later – to Russia. Then back to India. Several times it moved from flat to flat.

And only many years later did Dmitry really begin to understand a good part of what he had once bought almost blindly.

In those years the word “Dhumavati” did not yet mean to him what it came to mean later. He knew the general image, knew about the Mahavidyas, had read the descriptions that were available. But the more he asked, the more irritated he became: the answers did not agree.

For one person she was the goddess of misfortune. For another, of renunciation. For a third, of emptiness. For a fourth, of the knowledge that arises after illusions are destroyed. Someone even advised him not to take an interest in her unless he had to.

That last piece of advice had the opposite effect on Dmitry. If he was told “better not go there”, his first question was usually “why?” and his second “what’s there?”

This quality later caused him a fair amount of trouble. But at twenty-five he still considered it purely a virtue.

* * *

One evening the conversation turned to Aghora.

Dmitry was sitting on the steps not far from the river with two people he had met a few days earlier. One was Indian; the other had come from Europe and for several years had been living in Varanasi on and off.

The conversation jumped from subject to subject. Shiva. Sadhus. The cremation ghats. Mantras. Kali.

Then came the word:

“Aghora.”

Dmitry had come across the word before, but mostly in superficial accounts, where Aghora was almost always turned into a list of the most shocking details.

He asked:

“What actually means Aghora?”

The European answered first:

“Hard to explain.”

The Indian shook his head.

“Not hard. People make it hard.”

What followed was a conversation half of which Dmitry misunderstood at the time. He realised that much later.

But one thing he remembered: Aghora could not be reduced to outward behaviour. It could not be reduced to the cemetery. It could not be reduced to what you could show a tourist to frighten him.

Dmitry wrote down a few words. Then one of the others mentioned Dhumavati.

Dmitry looked up.

“Dhumavati and Aghora?”

The Indian looked at him.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then learn.”

The conversation moved on.

Just a few seconds. No initiation, no great secret – simply two words side by side for the first time.

Dhumavati.

Aghora.

In his notebook Dmitry wrote a question mark between them. The entry survived.

* * *

A few days later he went back to that place alone. Not because he expected to find the same people there – he simply wanted to think in peace.

It was already late. The city was changing, but it never became completely quiet: voices carried on somewhere in the distance, people passed by from time to time. Dampness drifted up from the river, and the smoke of the funeral pyres mingled with the city’s other smells so naturally that Dmitry had already stopped noticing it every minute.

He opened his notebook and found the entry:

Dhumavati ? Aghora

Under it he wrote:

“check”.

Then, below:

“don’t believe the first explanation”.

He thought some more, and added:

“or the second”.

He smiled wryly and closed the notebook.

On the other side of the river almost nothing could be seen. Darkness, water, the lights of boats.

He sat there a long time.

Back then Dmitry could not yet hear Ma. Could not hear the sisters. Did not know that fifteen years later, in a quite different country, he would be walking into a cemetery at night and saying a mantra before taking his first step across its boundary. Did not know that the word “Aghora”, written down now almost by chance, would become part of his own practice. Did not know that he would have to study Sanskrit not out of interest, but because one day someone else’s translation would no longer be enough.

For now everything was a great deal simpler. He was a young man who had come to India on money he had saved. He had a cheap room, a limited budget, poor Hindi, practically non-existent Sanskrit, a book he could not properly read, and an enormous number of questions.

That suited Dmitry. He expected to find the answers himself.

He put the notebook in his bag and got up. On the way back he bought tea; the seller named a price, Dmitry paid. A few metres further on he realised he had paid about twice as much as he had that morning.

He went back.

“Why more?”

The seller smiled and explained something. Dmitry did not understand a word.

“All right,” he said, in Russian this time. “Let’s call it your win today.”

The seller went on smiling.

Dmitry walked on. Ten minutes later he discovered he was lost and stopped where three narrow streets met. He looked left, right, behind him. All three options looked equally wrong.

“Brilliant.”

Nobody answered. Back then that was normal.

Dmitry took out a paper map, tried to find himself on it, and after a few minutes was finally convinced that the map knew no more about where he was than he did. He had to ask the way.

He got back to his room almost an hour later. He took off his shoes, put down the book, opened the notebook and at the very bottom of the page added one more line:

“Varanasi cannot be studied from a map”.

Then he thought about it and crossed out the word “Varanasi”. What remained was:

“Cannot be studied from a map”.

He liked that phrase better.

He switched off the light. Outside the window the city went on making its noise.

Dmitry lay awake for a long time. He thought about the river. About the fire. About the word “Aghora”. About the strange goddess whom different people described as though each had seen a completely different Dhumavati.

And for the first time he allowed himself the thought: perhaps the problem was not that one of them was mistaken. Perhaps he was simply asking questions that were too simple.

Fifteen years later Ma would tell him almost the same thing. But back then there was nobody to prompt him, and he had to reach the thought by himself.

Chapter Four

Manali

After Varanasi, the quiet of Manali at first seemed almost wrong to Dmitry.

Not real quiet – the town lived its life all the same, cars drove about, people talked, traders opened their shops, the smell of food and sweet tea drifted out of the cafés. But after Varanasi it was as if the space around him had stopped demanding his attention from every side at once.