Ripple and the Yatra (20 January 2022)

Playing music has brought me into many surprising situations. As part of ‘the band’ I’ve seen a lot, as well as heard a lot–entree into special events I would never get invited to otherwise, witness to spontaneous dance exhibitions, individual and whole-room musical transcendent moments. Of course, I have gig-from-hell stories aplenty, too, but fear not, this is not one of those. In fact, it wasn’t a gig at all…
In 2018, my wife Kathy’s years-long study of Ayurveda brought her to practice/apprentice in a clinic in India for a month. At the end of that time, I joined her and we spent another month in 3 different regions of that beautiful country. The whole trip was a true gift from the universe, but the middle segment was memorable in many ways.
For months or maybe years before we started planning this trip, Kathy had been reading the work of Hareesh (Christopher) Wallace, a Sanskrit scholar and historian (and practitioner) of Kashmir Shaivism. Occasionally she would read something from him that compelled her to read it out loud to me–and I was impressed. At the time I was chronically overworked and not about to take up new spiritual study, but what I heard from her readings, Hareesh was onto something big. Once we knew the time frame we would be in India, Kathy took to figuring out what we might do and see, and one night she finds, “Oh my! Hareesh is leading a pilgrimage-tour of temples across Tamil Nadu (the most Southeastern state) for 10 days, right in the middle of our time in India. Should we join it?” Well, first we verified that they didn’t require me to be literate in the practices, and then, assured that respectful was the only requirement, we jumped at the opportunity! So after a first 10 days in Rajasthan with a side trip to the Taj Mahal [Picture tour], we flew into Chennai and met up with Hareesh and joined the Yatra–meaning a spiritual pilgrimage–spanning several temples.
The temples we saw were sometimes purely archaeological sites in various states of restoration, but some were in full operation. The photos from this segment are cool, but do not capture the core of what we experienced–the major temples prohibit cameras, and our Yatra was conducted in full respect of the rules. Photos could not begin to convey the spirit of these temples, anyway. Often when we neared the sacred sites, we would encounter other Yatra buses–while we traveled in a relatively deluxe bus, other Yatra vehicles were often quite humble, full of people who were fulfilling lifetime’s devotional practice by getting to the temple. And they seemed always thrilled to see our collection of 30 or so Westerners, from all across the world, coming together in similar journey. We were especially striking in that when we came to the major temples, we dressed in Indian formal wear for the shrine. This was but one of the genius elements of Hareesh’s guidance; at each of these, he and the local guide, Yusef, worked with the proprietors of the temple to request special access. Sometimes that came as time in the inner sanctum of the shrine, in close observation of the priests as they performed the rituals, and in one temple we actually commissioned a ceremony that only happens on request–and the worship team was excited to perform the ceremony since it’s rare for them. Negotiating/requesting this access was a sort of “pitch” where Hareesh and Yusef would team up to explain the nature of our journey… Hareesh’s deep knowledge of the practices, representing our group, dressed for worship–it was genuine, but it also worked well!

Even Hareesh and Yusef were impressed at the level of access we got.

We spent New Year’s Eve and Day at Arunachala, visiting Arunachalesvara Temple where the renowned Sri Ramana Maharshi practiced, as well as the cave up the mountain from the temple where he lived for decades.

One of the features of this Yatra was the singing. Most of the Yatris (the individuals on the Yatra) were steeped deeply in the rituals and formal practices of the tradition we were exploring, including the song/chants. Hareesh has a formidable voice himself–when the yoga-oriented Yatris greeted the new year’s sunrise at Arunachala with 50 consecutive sun salutation sequences (no kidding!), Hareesh was singing and playing harmonium to accompany, for the duration. I sat and meditated in witness (awe, really) to this. Sometimes at temples and at other points in our days, always conscious of when it would be appropriate, he would start a chant, and to my repeated amazement, the group would join in en masse. There were some really good voices among this group! Since I was always unfamiliar with the chants, I took up the practice of listening until I could follow the melody and most of the syllables, then add a harmony part–almost always when the chant was nearly over.
Traveling for a month also meant this singing was my only musical collaboration in all that time. I brought my first mandolin to India (not, given all the unknowns of this journey, the better model I play regularly on home turf), mostly to fend off musical rust that sets in if I don’t play at all. On New Year’s day, amidst the Arunachala adventures, I found myself relaxing poolside at our (deluxe) hotel among the Yatris, playing an extended solo improv on Auld Lang Syne. The Yatris were complimentary, and some version of this circumstance recurred along the journey. The 10-day journey included some extended time on the road, much of which would be taken up by Hareesh providing fascinating historical lecture about the locations we were seeing and the traditions of each temple we visited. But there were less academic moments, and Hareesh asked me somewhere along the way if I could play Ripple on the mandolin. Well, sure I can–and he said OK, we’ll do that together at some point. In spare moments after that, I figured out a reasonable way to play the song with the mandolin working as a solo instrument, and trusted he’d find the right moment for the song, if that were to arise.
The last full day of the Yatra was at Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, an it was a fitting finale, intense and amazing. After a full morning, (navigating into and out of the major temples is a nontrivial exercise, and at each one, the devotional engagement is palpable, intensifying as we approached the inner sanctum) we had the afternoon to unwind before we were scheduled for a closing meal and celebration hosted by Yusef at his home. Upon returning from the temple, I decided I would not change out of my ‘temple formal’ attire–it was as cool as anything I had to wear, it would be a nice look for the party, and after that day, who knew when the next time I’d feel like wearing it? During the afternoon, Hareesh got my attention and said to be sure to bring the mandolin… no problem. As the party wore on, Hareesh told me we would close the night with Ripple. Sure thing–but I had realized that when I had dressed for temple in the morning, because of the extreme security at the temple, I had put exactly nothing in my pockets. Every other day of my life, my right pocket has picks in it–usually two each of my preferred model of guitar picks and mandolin picks. Hareesh brainstormed a few ideas, the best of which was a credit card — I had none on me of course, but “someone will.” So, after plenty of dancing to recorded material, devotional and otherwise, and a verbal tribute from Hareesh to each Yatri on the journey (which had become quite a cohesive group over 10 days), the time came to close the evening. I had the mandolin ready, and tuned, and I introduced the song… saying “I’m about to ask for a favor…” and explaining the rare circumstance of me being well dressed but without any picks. “Normally I would advise against handing over your credit card to an under-equipped musician…” Then, after figuring out the best way to hold a credit card to use it as a mandolin pick, I turned the tables on the roomful of singers, “While many of you know will this song right off, and if so please sing the whole thing with us, the rest of you can do what I’ve been doing–wait, learn the melody, and then at the end, the last verse is for you–it is just the melody, without words, and everyone can sing that.”
As I said at the outset, being a musician has brought me to many unusual circumstances, but as a full-room Yatri chorus joined in on that last chorus, as I accompanied solo on my travel mandolin, picking with a credit card, in India, I was fully amazed. And as weird as it was, it somehow recalled the original recording, which adds a many-voices singalong to that wordless last verse.
What a journey!

After the Yatra, we went on to the third leg of our sojourn in India, which included a story for another time–when I was injured by an armed guard in a Tiger Preserve…