The Days of Chai and Roses

The image of an outsider:  a big camera, an awkward headscarf, a pale complexion, a false confidence.  The Indians would rush into my frame and ask me my name, where I was from, and how I liked their country.  “Sundar,” I replied.  Beautiful.  That was my Abra Kadabra, my Alakazam, my secret password into the inner world of Ajmer.

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I had been in India for less than twenty-four hours when two friends and I boarded the AC II Tier compartment on the train from Delhi to Ajmer.  Ours was the most upscale section of the Bhuj Express.  Our miniature compartment consisted of two sets of levitating bunk beds with ripped brown plastic-covered cushions and questionably clean sheets.  Little bed lights clung to the walls with rusted screws.  Only a thin curtain shielded us from the narrow path connecting ours with the other compartments.  We sat eating lunch on the hanging cots while the air conditioning battled the immense heat that had consumed the world outside.  As hour five of our journey rapidly approached, we drifted off to sleep.

A monotonous chant woke me from my nap.  I peered out through the curtain and saw a tiny, bronzed man carrying a heavy, silver caldron.  The chaiwalla was distributing steaming, spiced tea to his patrons, seemingly unaware that the temperature threatened 90 degrees outside.  The thin plastic cups looked as if they might melt from the heat of the milky beverage.  The sight intrigued me, and I followed the man along the compartments toward the end of the AC II Tier car.

I expected a fresh breeze to dance through my hair and the clatter of the rail to fill my ears.  Instead, when I opened the door to the platform adjoining the two cars, I was bombarded by the sour stench of boiling urine, the shrill cry of babies, and the jolting image of two young boys hanging from the side of the speeding train.  Despite the sudden and complete assault on my senses, my attention quickly shifted.  I was mesmerized by the backdrop of green fields bejeweled with vibrant saris, a bare-chested old man with ornate facial hair, a gaggle of children playing among the sacred cows.  I wanted to become part of this scene, to explore and to understand.  I inhaled the pungent air and moved toward the edge of the platform to join the pair of wily little boys.  They did not budge.  I pushed my body out into the rushing air and looked back at the others for validation.  They seemed unmoved at my display of adventure.

I trailed the chaiwalla as he moved gracefully into the next car.  If the platform awakened my senses, this place oppressed them.  I stood paralyzed while my body adjusted to the darkness and the din.  I squinted into the dim, sweaty atmosphere.  In each little compartment, no less than eight or ten people crowded together, while ours housed only three.  Families huddled trying to entertain their restless children; mothers napped with babies on their chests; men sat joking with cups of chai in hand.  The people overflowed into the aisle, eluding the bit of privacy that the curtains could provide.  The vignettes merged into an isolating silence that flooded the few open spaces.  I felt inquisitive and suspicious stares descending upon me.  My sense of adventure was exhausted.  I feigned a smile and rushed back towards the AC II Tier car.

My friends awakened as I arrived back to the safety of our compartment.  The train halted at an anonymous station and people began to rush to and from the train.  A middle-aged man walked up to the window and peered down at the tracks.  We were prepared to greet him, excited to make an exchange through the comfortable distance provided by the glass barrier.  He began to pee.  We released a latent sigh as the train jolted to a start and crept toward Ajmer.

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I walked into the bustling bazaar amid an explosion of paradoxes.  Colorful wares, rich culture, and profound spirituality intermingled with grime, abject poverty, and human decay.  A row of ancient, gnarled men rolled on the ground, groaning and extending deformed torsos and misshapen faces in the direction of passersby.  These beggars looked as if they had been born from the filth of the road, nurtured only by the elements and the occasional rupee placed near the stumps of their limbs.  I sidestepped their mangled bodies.  I was but one of thousands who had neglected them that day.  I stopped.  I turned and looked into their eyes.  An innate sense of humanity gurgled within the pit of my stomach, up my esophagus, and into the corners of my lips.  They nodded in response to my smile.

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If “sundar” was my password into the world behind the Ajmer bazaar, chai was my ticket to sharing our common humanity.

Despite the early morning hour, my friends and I walked down the dirt road with eyes wide and cameras perched.  A beautiful woman leaned lithely against an iron gate.  We began to snap photographs of her.  She laughed shyly and pulled the material of her rainbow sari across her face in defense.  Nonetheless, she gestured for us to follow her into her home.  She led us to a worn bed frame behind her small concrete abode and offered us chai.  Her eyes beamed when we accepted, and she disappeared to boil the water.

Suddenly, a file of young girls and their mothers entered the backyard, breaking from their school preparations and morning routines to peer at three American students.  The woman handed us cups of thick, creamy chai.  She paused, smiled, and murmured something to the girls.  Almost instantaneously, they ambushed our arms with tubes of henna, drawing whimsical designs between our knuckles and around our wrists.  We draped our cameras around their necks and pressed their fingers onto the shutter button.  The women giggled and gazed at us with utter pleasure.  As we sipped the last drops of chai, the delight reflected across our faces and theirs.

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From the cacophony of the main bazaar of Ajmer, I stepped into a shadowy alleyway.  I thought to turn back, to stay where the crowds shifted about the shops with tidal motion, but some instinct pushed me to explore deeper.  Out of the darkness emerged a room filled with bright fuchsia flower petals.  Three suntanned men in tank tops sat surrounded by roses on the wet floor.  I stepped over the threshold and greeted them.  The quiet warmth of their smiles conveyed an invitation to return.

The next day, I rushed back to the rose room to discover that a new shipment of roses had just arrived from the countryside.  The men recognized me as I appeared in the doorway.  They offered me a wooden box to sit, but with deliberate steps, I walked to the center of the room and crouched with them on the damp, concrete floor.  The three flower men regarded me with a curious glance every few minutes.  A chaiwalla rambled down the alley advertising his sweet drink.  One of the flower men quickly intercepted him.  He passed me a glass, and his eyes implored me to accept.

I spent time with the flower men nearly every day that week.  They welcomed me as I entered the room to assume my position with them on the floor.  Together, we shared the space and shared the blissful silence.  We sat in peaceful immobility until a customer appeared, and we bolted into action.  They rushed about to fill the customer’s order and I squeezed in behind them to capture a photograph.  The customer left satisfied, and we restored ourselves to our posts once more, our eyes smiling over the rims of the chai cups.  As the sun began to set, I departed with my headscarf dripping from the dew of that morning’s flowers.

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The sky turned bright pink and cobalt blue to herald the arrival of night.  Days earlier, I had envisioned my photograph, and this was the moment I had been waiting for.  Suddenly, a deep, booming voice beckoned me from behind my shoulder.  I turned to find a khadim, one of the many Sufi Muslim spiritual leaders of the Ajmer shrine, sitting on a rug with his devotees.  He gestured for me to join him for a cup of chai.  I tried to stall my response and capture my intended image, but the khadim called to me in a commanding tone.  I pondered my options, but knew I could not refuse the chai.

I resigned myself to join the khadim, and he showered me with inquiries into my work and with endless offerings of chai.  I had barely reached the bottom of my second cup when he made a phone call and insisted that I accompany him to dinner.  The khadim told me that his wife wanted to meet me.  Night had fallen, and I doubted his intentions and unassailable persistence.  Nonetheless, I followed him to his guesthouse for dinner.

Smells wafted down the street several hundred yards before we reached his door.  As we approached the building, enormous cauldrons sat in the street, bubbling with hunks of lamb and with sweet kheer.  The khadim led me through the house, explaining that tonight he was the host of the weekly dinner that circulated throughout the guesthouses of the hundreds of khadim.  Upstairs, he pointed out the room where women and children quietly dined.  I started toward the room, but he stopped me and showed me out to the balcony where dozens of boisterous khadim sat on the floor eating along a red carpet that spanned the length of building.  He signaled for me to sit, a young American woman among throngs of khadim.  In front of me, he placed a cup of chai.

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After two weeks, I had become part of the variegated landscape of Ajmer.  I had dined with khadim, sold flowers with shopkeepers, and shared customs with mothers and their daughters.  Even the beggars became accustomed to my presence, no longer pleading for money, but greeting me merely as another inhabitant of the bazaar.  The chaiwalla of the Bhuj Express had inspired my exploration, and his chai had found me a home.

Keeping the Faith

The Dargah Sharif and its surrounding bazaar teem with thousands of pilgrims every day.  While mostly Hindus and Muslims occupy the city of Ajmer, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis, and Sikhs flock from around the globe to descend upon this sacred site, the holiest shrine of Sufi Islam in India.

As my van made an abrupt stop at the gateway to the bazaar, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.  I swept the dust from the window to view the scene outside.  The international devotees to the Dargah Sharif were beginning to crawl toward the epicenter before five in the morning, or perhaps they had never left.  By eight o’clock, the place heaved with sweaty customers, rival solicitations, and wilting goods.  By noon, luggage, religious offerings, and people were being carried by the tanned crowd, simultaneously shoving its way into the gateway of the shrine, out toward the shops, and up away from the stench of the streets.  I had persuaded Sara and Asim, our two photographic mentors, to let me brave this electrified landscape alone.  They had given me one caveat:  do not tell anyone that I was Jewish.  If an alternate identity was my receipt to such a thrilling exploration, I was willing to pay the price.

I believed that price would be a small one to endure.  Despite the obvious dominance of religion as a matter in and around the shrine, I did not expect that my faith would be called out of the shadows or into judgment.  So I donned my headscarf, practiced my Hindi, and unabashedly marched into the shrine with my camera and notepad.

I had arranged to meet with Anas Kaptan, a young, liberal khadim who presided over the spiritual practice of a number of pilgrims to the shrine.  We stood on the balcony of his guesthouse in the steaming mid-morning air while he answered my questions and corrected my assumptions about the Sufi faith.  The conversation paused for a moment while I made a photograph of the slick white marble of the shrine below.  “Why have you come to Ajmer?  Are you seeking prayer at the shrine?” he asked suddenly.  His tone was in no way interrogating or incriminating, but I felt unprepared and apprehensive as I fumbled for the appropriate answer.  I explained that I was merely a student and a photojournalist.  And a Christian.  He had not compelled me to state my religious identity and had in fact emphasized the tolerant values of Sufism, but somehow the words were tugged from my throat.  That was the first time I had ever lied about my Judaism.

Unaware of my deception, Anas invited me to join him and his mother the next day for lunch and continued discussion.  I relied on my limited Hindi to steer me through the meandering alleyways of the Dargah bazaar, and within ten minutes, I arrived at Anas’ home.  The servant showed me upstairs.  I entered a carpeted room with austere pink walls and a small square window.  The room was empty save for a middle-aged woman kneeling on the ground, her forehead nearly touching the ground.  Tears streamed down her face as her lips moved in silent meditation.  Her fingers twitched melodically, uniting her prayer with her rosary.  I stared at her hands, desperately trying to keep pace with the beads shifting rapidly from right to left, three at a time.  She smiled for a moment as she realized my presence, but seemed completely unaltered in her state of tranquil emotion.  She stood up with her eyes pressed closed and bowed toward the wall.  Her knees bent resolutely as she lowered herself to the ground once more.  I was a voyeur to an intimate and powerful prayer.  I wanted desperately to give her a glimpse into my form of prayer, my mode of worship, but I had promised to conceal my faith.

Suddenly, the clicking of the rosary stopped, and the woman looked up at me.  She spoke a few words of Urdu before realizing my lack of recognition and proclaimed “Hello!” with a toothy grin.  “Mother,” she said, pointing at her chest.  The young servant opened the door, but did not walk in.  She gazed at me with keen interest.  I welcomed the curiosity of the girl and felt comforted by the mutual desire to understand the culture and customs of the other.  Anas’ mother called for two cups of chai, and the servant rushed toward the kitchen.  I was suddenly lonely without the girl’s inquisitive presence, and I feared minutes of uneasy silence with the middle-aged woman.

Despite my concern, the ensuing conversation transcended our clumsy attempts at verbal communication.  Even without a comprehensive vocabulary, she described her long-distance relationship with her son and daughter who both resided in the States.  Anas was her youngest and only child left at home in Ajmer, the chosen one to sustain the patriarchal responsibilities of the hereditary khadim.  But Anas was also her only child without legal access to the States by means of a green card or visa.  The conversation intensified as she begged me for help.  I insisted that there was little I could do as a student in America.  She persisted, but our discussion had clearly exceeded the limited of our verbal ability.  Suddenly, she picked up two statuettes and held them together in a little dance, peering at me mischievously.  A set of doves and a bride and groom stood on little white pedestals, but before Anas’ mother could propose the marriage plans, Anas walked into the room.  His mother simply winked as we sipped our chai.

In the next week, Anas and I spent an afternoon viewing photos from his cousin’s wedding and discussing our first crushes.  He promised me a ride on the back of his new cobalt blue motorcycle before I departed.  We swapped numbers and email addresses, and he gave me a box of chocolates.  For me, the relationship was by no means a crush or even a logical interest, but more of an intense curiosity.  I began to wonder genuinely if in some alternate universe a devout Sufi khadim could ever end up with a liberal American Jew.  What would happen if I exposed my identity?  Would Anas be horrified at my Jewish heritage?  Would he condemn me for my lie?  Would our shared love of dancing and music and our mutual belief in pluralism and faith bridge the stigmas, stereotypes, and cultural divides?  My questions were merely rhetorical, an intellectual exercise, but they transformed the joke into a profound exploration of the limits of tolerance and exchange.

I returned to the Dargah for my last day of work, filled with the confidence of cultural immersion and new photographic prowess.  I happened upon a refuge from the anarchic and cacophonous setting of the shrine, a little cemetery where a pilgrim was placing flower petals on the tiny tombs.  I trailed the ancient man in his quiet act of devotion, compelling myself to trace his exact steps, adopt his state of focused piety, and observe every delicate movement of his dry, wrinkled hands.  A khadim sat cross-legged on a carpeted perch to the edge of the graves.  “What is your religion sister?” he called to me.  The voice seemed to me an echo, jolting me out of my shared moment with the old pilgrim.  The question registered, and I responded hastily, “I am Christian.”  “Very good.  It does not matter your religion.  We have here Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Yehudis,” he announced.

Yehudis.  Jews.  Instantaneously, I desperately regretted my lie.  My self-denial was clawing at my insides, and I felt the words pounding on my lips and teeth.  I wanted to shout, “I am a Yehudi!  I am one of them.  I represent those people!”  Instead, I remained silent.  The cost of my silence amassed with the vengeance of my questions.  Was this espousal of tolerance merely a canned value unearthed for the benefit of spectators?  Was it a practiced truth tested daily by the constant flux of diverse pilgrims?  Was it a test of identity and personal integrity?

A week after my departure from Ajmer, I received a request from Anas to become friends on Facebook.  My profile lists my religious views as “Jewish.”  No denial.  I was paying the debt to my identity, embracing it unapologetically.  But somehow, I was still concerned about Anas’ reaction.  Days passed before I finally clicked on “Accept Friend Request.”  Perhaps Anas never saw my proclamation of identity.  Perhaps he saw it, but had suspected it all along.  Perhaps he saw it and was shocked.  Whatever his response, he never said a word.

Lal Gulab

The gulab—a symbol of devotion, commerce, prayer, and peace laces a delicate thread through the heterogeneous topography that surrounds the Dargah Sharif, the impressive shrine to the Sufi Muslim saint Mu’in al-Din Chishti of Ajmer.  More than a flower, the gulab is the bearer of blessings for devotees and a declaration of love for pilgrims; it is a mechanism of mutual exchange for shopkeepers and a promise of wealth for residents.  The Ajmer rose builds a humanity that transcends secular life and religious boundaries and constructs a community that shares in both commercial gains and spiritual pursuits.  I set out across this rich landscape on a journey to discover the intricate web of diverse relationships and luminous metaphors.

As the concrete and metal landscape melted into green and pink, I chased the rising sun.  My anxiety about capturing the right light, the perfect subject, the proper composition dissolved the instant I saw the sprawling ocean of magenta roses.  The sun cut shimmering crescents across the faces of three beaming girls.  Tara, Puja, and Suntos invited me to follow them into the fields.

To the girls, I merely observed their daily chore of picking flowers for sale at the bazaar around the Dargah Sharif.  They giggled as I clicked my camera in their direction.  These girls were from a family of mali, the traditional gardeners of India, whose flower farm suggests a mundane lifestyle that grandfather has passed to grandson, and mother has passed to daughter.  What the girls did not realize is that their history was part of a vibrant story of faith, commerce, and coexistence.

The story of the Ajmer rose has no beginning and no end.  Instead, the native flower has a ubiquitous presence that meanders from the flower farms of the countryside, to the dim stalls of the Dargah bazaar, and into the tomb of the saint, lovingly known as Khwaja Gharib Nawaz.  To each person who encounters these flowers, the rose has a different meaning.

Narayan Saini oversees the administrative side of the flower farm where Tara, Puja, and Suntos pick the Ajmer roses.  Narayan’s life is a series of measurements and notations.  Every day at six in the morning, Narayan arranges along the edges of the fields large canvas bags, which the girls fill with over a hundred kilos of flowers.  At precisely ten o’clock, Narayan arrives at his storeroom in the Dargah bazaar, where his scale seesaws under the weight of the flowers.  He peers at the scale as if contemplating the worth of his life.

I follow Narayan out of the storeroom.  He stops by the stalls of Hindu shopkeepers in the bazaar and those of Sufi vendors inside the Dargah.  He chats with buyers and occasionally accepts chai.  Although a sharp mark in his ledger book punctuates the end of his visits, the intermingled voices of Narayan and his customers linger in the space.

As I begin to explore the shrine, other voices express similar ideas.  “We are materialistic.  I am not shy about that,” Anas admits, caressing a rose.  Anas Kaptan is a thoughtful and progressive khadim of twenty-three.  Although the life of a khadim revolves around the spiritual maintenance of the Dargah Sharif and the guidance of its pilgrims, Anas explains the khadim have become very wealthy from nazrana, monetary gifts from their followers.

Many khadim have invested their assets in restaurants and guesthouses above the Dargah bazaar and rent the ground shops to largely Hindu shopkeepers.  The close proximity of Sufi and Hindu has the potential to fuel sectarian tensions, and the opportunism of Hindu shopkeepers so close to the spiritual site could breed resentment.  Nevertheless, Anas insists that any jealousies that may exist remain unspoken.  Instead, Anas emphasizes the value of tolerance.  “We respect each and everything that belongs to the shrine space,” he says referring not only to the pilgrims, but also to the flowers.  “The moment they touch the shrine, they become sacred.”

To many pilgrims, the unique spirit of Ajmer grows out of the doctrine of love and acceptance espoused by Khwaja Gharib Nawaz.  Today, people of all religions coalesce at the Dargah Sharif.  Ishrat Khatri, a Sufi devotee from Mumbai believes that whether Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Parsi, the rose is a gift of peace and purity from God that is available to all.  “The faith is in the flower,” Ishrat proclaims.

The young woman’s soft cheeks glisten as the evening namaz ends.  Ishrat has come to Ajmer with her new husband to offer her thanks directly to the saint.  Nevertheless, she maintains that wherever she goes Khwaja Gharib Nawaz is with her.  She digs into her purse, searching for a tissue to dry her eyes.  A bag of rose petals sits prominently among her possessions.  This flower is the “blessing of Baba,” as she calls it, a constant reminder of the gracefully intertwining lives of Ajmer.

I write now, staring down from time to time at the Hindu henna that Puja drew on my hand.  I have pinned in my hair a rose that I took from the flower shop, but few can see it beneath my headscarf.  I can feel that my eyes are all lit up as I reflect on the gift given to me by the three mali girls.

I had been at the farm for over an hour when Suntos looked at me with a devious smile, appreciably aware of my camera.  “Lal gulab,” she says pointing at the rose that I had been photographing.  I set down my camera and tried to mimic her words.  The girls laughed hysterically at my pronunciation.  I repeated the words aloud.  “Lal gulab,” the girls recited encouragingly.  Laxmi called the girls in for chai, and we sat sharing the few other Hindi words I had learned.  The sun was high now, and Tara, Puja, and Suntos stood to return to the fields.  Suntos looked back at me.  “Lal gulab,” I chanted.  Red rose.  The girls echoed “lal gulab.”

The lifecycle of the rose embodies the syncretism of the place, the parallel reality of faith and commerce and the symbiosis of Hindu and Muslim.  Few know of the legendary existence of the Ajmer rose and even fewer seem to imbue the rose with a conscious definition.  The rose is a means of income and it is an offering of beauty, but at its core, the rose of Ajmer is a symbol of coexistence and beacon of hope.

See the photo essay.

See “Spirits of the Shrine.”