Holy Holy Pushkar

In India, there are temples on every street corner and in every shop, kitchen, restaurant and family hearth. There are tiny temples to Ganesha, Hanuman, Shiva, Lakshmi, Saraswati and the rest of the Hindu pantheon. There might be 1000 Ganesha temples in a city alone, probably more!

Except for one god, the creator of them all - Brahma. In Hindu mythology, three main aspects of god are personified in three personalities - Brahma, the creator of the world, Vishnu, the upholder of the world and Shiva, the destroyer. Like the Father, the son and the holy ghost in Christian lore, this idea of the trinity seems to transcend many religions. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. My main point was that, in a country filled with literally millions of different temples to the same god, Brahma has only one. And it's in the holy village of Pushkar. Therefore, it's an important pilgrimage place for most Hindus.

The town of Pushkar is centered around a beautiful lake with 52 ghats, or sets of steps leading down into the waters. Legend has it that Brahma, from his kingdom in the heavens, let one lotus flower fall and decided that wherever it fell, this would be where he would build his first temple. And so the lotus fell, found this place and in its place grew a lake, and the town was named Pushkar - being a kind of flower.

One night, on the sunset ghat, my friend of 7 years, Lala, told me the story of why there was only one Brahma temple. Yes, he may share a name with a teletubbie, but Lala is a good man, a tour guide who I met on my first trip to the village. Since last seeing him he has been married to a woman from Mumbai and they have their first son, whose name I forget, but is one of the many names of Shiva.

Forgive me if I forget or misinterpret this tale. It's been a few weeks now and some of the details have escaped me, and some I never got a chance to ask more about. But it seems that Brahma and his wife Savitri (although I always thought he was married to Saraswati?? Maybe it's another name for her, I don't know.. one of the many bits of missed information I have) had a son, and the son was a trickster, perhaps like New Zealand's Maui. And it was nearing sunset and Brahma needed his wife beside him in order to do the holy fire ceremony of Arati on the lake. For some reason, his son didn't want his mother to be there, so she told her to wait in heaven and that Brahma would come there for her. Meanwhile, Brahma was waiting on earth impatiently for his wife Savitri to turn up, not knowing his son had tricked them both. He really needed a wife to complete this ceremony, so apparently he married another just for the ceremony. And when Savitri found out, she was so angry that she cursed her husband, the creator of the world, and told him he could never build another temple.... that he would never be worshipped anywhere else on earth...

I could have checked this out I suppose, but I'll leave it up to anyone that;s interested. This is pretty much the story that Lala told me as the sun was setting over Savitri mountain, which is apparently where Brahma's first wife waits and pines over her love. Those gods!!! Geez, I don't know...

So this is why the place is so sacred and why Brahmin priests will practically chase you so you throw their flower into the water. Unfortunately, this has become a commercial venture, and tourists are often wrangled out of lots of cash for something that only costs twenty rupees - a quick blessing, some rice and red paste on your forehead, a flower thrown in to the waters, some Sanskrit prayers repeated after thee. I was well onto the scheme, known as the 'Pushkar passport' as afterwards a red and yellow string is wound around your wrist to show that you've participated in the puja and are now free to roam the streets! Honestly, they used to wait at the bus stops for tourists... I didn't notice this this time, but then again I did come at crazy hot season with not many tourists around in general. But one sunset I gave in to an older priest who assured me I could pay what I wanted, and didn't try to dissuade me from giving only twenty rupees. He must have known that I was an old hand at the Pushkar passport... writing this from Rishikesh, a similar things happened to me two days ago down by the Ganga. this baba has 100 rupees proudly on show on his tray of flower petals and red paste, as if this was the asked price. When I paid him the same price he looked at me sadly, and asked 'only twenty?'. Of course baba! It costs almost nothing for you to draw a line on my forehead and say some ancient words - it is nice however, but twenty rupees will buy you a good dinner at least... sadly, there are so many holy men who are not really who they say they are, and are just after another get rich quick scheme... like most people in India, they are just trying to get along, get ahead and save a bit of capital until they have to pay some baksheesh of their own...