Becoming a Naga Sadhu

We had been at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar when Maha Kumbh began and we saw children who were preparing to become Naga Sadhus and we wanted to find out more. We met many and interviewed a few, including 11-year-old Manish Giri whose parents had donated him to the Akhara. He followed his Guru through the day and sat chewing toffee. Sagar Puri was another young boy who had shaved off his head and was excited about being called a Naga Baba. He had run away from home and found his Guru.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Indian Express on January 24, 2010.

Chinki Sinha
Hardwar, January 21, 2010

He staggered towards where we were sitting, his eyes wild, and remote. He was performing the part of a detached young man, a man who was about to renounce everything so he could pray for the world, and redeem it. Quite like Jesus, only that Sagar Puri, who is training to be a Naga Sadhu, would pick up arms and fight if his religion was threatened. After all, they are the warrior sadhus, he said.
Camping at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar, trying to impress his teachers, Sagar Puri, the 17-year-old boy, is preparing for the initiation ceremony where he will be taken in the order of the Naga Sadhus and henceforth, become a powerful man.
Leading up to the Royal Bath where thousands of Naga ascetics will march to Har-ki-Pauri for the holy dip in the Ganges, the akharas – 13 in the city – are busy with the preparations.
The band played in the distance, their garish uniforms the colour of Sadhus’ saffron as they played sample tunes for the grand procession on the Royal Bath of the Sadhus in Hardwar on Feb. 12, and 17-year-old Sagar Puri mingled with the old, most of who huddled together outside the Bhairon Mandir and smoked chillums, or read newspapers, and the young who looked a little dazed with so much going around. The preparations had already begun for the celebrations, and Puri wanted to belong, to rise up in the ranks of the akhara.
In a couple of weeks, his own initiation ceremony would begin, and he had networked enough, running errands for Sadhus.
But in Sagar Puri’s contrived demeanour, in his convoluted sentences that linger between his restlessness, his zeal to prove that he is indeed a true ascetic, and his yearning for powers that a Naga Sadhu has, you could make out he wanted to awe the world with his status. He carried a cell phone, posed for pictures with his chin up, and renunciation was the last thing on his mind.
Almost three years ago, Sagar Puri, who is one of the thousands of young boys who have come to the Juna Akhara in hopes of becoming a Naga Sadhu this Kumbh, ran away from his house in Chandigarh.
He wouldn’t say why he left home but he said he felt lost, didn’t identify with what everyone else was aspiring for because that didn’t lead anywhere, he said.
So, he found a Guru with dreadlocks who smeared his body with ash and talked about Nirvana, and he was enchanted with the glamour. It was also a way out of poverty and struggles to break it even in life.
He followed the Guru, gave up on the pants and shirts he wore, shaved off his head, and took on the saffron robes.
It’s dark outside. The fog, dense with the smoke from the fire and the chillums many sadhus smoke in order to focus and keep away numerous distractions the world throws in their way, seeps in through the chinks of the doors, from the windows and it’s like waking up in a dream, surrounded by the winter haze. He walks barefoot; the holes in his socks haven’t been darned. Because he is on own here.
During the initiation ceremony, he will do the pind daan, or perform funeral rites for his parents and self, a symbolic act implying he has now left the world he was born into, and crossed over to another one, a point of no return.
“I talk to my parents on the phone. They came to reclaim me once but later signed a letter saying that they had given me to the Juna Akhara. I am their only son but I was different,” he said. “You see we are lost in this world. We find our refuge. This is mine. I am happy here. I see my parents in my Guru.”
On most days he walks to the river to bathe in icy cold waters with others. Then sit in front of the Gurus and perform rituals for hours.
His time at the akhara is a test. They watch him, and he has to be careful. He has to prove his mettle so he can graduate to the second stage.
“He will become a Naga Sadhu at the Vijay Havan, and take on the samskara,” Girija Datt Giri, a Shri Mahant at the Juna Akhara, said.
More than 5,000 young boys and men will take the oath to become Naga Sadhus this Kumbh. It is only at a Maha Kumbh that initiation ceremonies can be held.
“It is tough. We don’t let them drink water for 24 hours before the ceremony. He sits in front of the ritual fire, and we also ask him if he wants to go home in case of those who ran away from home,” he added.
It is only after the long puja that Puri can eat. The akhara, the biggest in town, has its own cooks who prepare meals.
Post breakfast, Puri sits outside the temple, watching others, as they smoke their “peace pipes”. If they pass it on to him, he takes a drag.
From the rooms, the news from the television filters through the walls, and he runs inside to catch the telecast on Kumbh.
He returns and listens in to the sadhus,, whose matted dreadlocks fall below their knees. “The life of a Naga means a life of all possibilities,” a Sadhu said, and that’s what sent Sagar dreaming about all the possibilities – of people coming to him, praising him for his ultimate sacrifice, he walking the streets covered in ash, naked, in his Naga Baba avatar, shutterbugs clicking away at the speed of light, his photos appearing all over the world.
Over lunch at Jwalapur, a nearby kasba, where many Naga Sadhus who have come from different parts of the country, are camping before they march to Hardwar in a grand procession on Jan. 30, Sagar Puri wields a stick, calls out to a couple of foreign photographers and asks them to click his pictures.
At 17, he wants to be the star, and he speaks about soul and attachment, and the cycles of birth and how if one doesn’t try to be liberated, they could end up being born as dogs that’d be running in the streets licking garbage, or worse, as an insect who’d suffer an inglorious death on a wall.
Most afternoons, he watches National Geographic channle, and sits with his gurus, smoking, chatting, and giving interviews to the media.
There’s no routine here. Sometimes, like other young boys, he goes to the restaurants to eat sweets.
He won’t tell you his real name because he is forbidden to talk about his former life. This is his short cut to a comfortable life, to nirvana.
His father, a shopkeeper, wanted him back but then it meant school, entrance examinations, report cards, and a list of other responsibilities. So, he broke free long ago.
Sagar Puri is excited about the Kumbh, about the rituals, about his own part, importance.
In the room that he shares with others, they live a communal life. Everything is shared.
There’s no fixed time for bed.
“You sleep when nobody needs you,” h said. “You get up when they call you. Nothing is time-bound.”