I was assigned to read A River Sutra, by Gita Mehta. It is set on the Narmada River, home of 400 billion sacred places.

It is a story about life, the people who renunciate it, and the people who find it again when their renunciation has run its course. It is a story about the Indian holy community.

One character in the story struck me…the Naga Baba, an ascetic of Shiva, living and meditating among the funeral pyres of the recent dead, spreading their ash on his body to increase the power of the meditations. He carries with him the trident, symbol of his god.

What struck me most was the brief mention of a mutiny when 20,000 of his kind swept down the hills and battled against the english. The book is fiction, is this part fiction as well? There are documented guerilla wars of raiding ascetics in the 1800’s, and a popular uprising in 1959. I believe that what is mentioned in the book would have taken place in the 1800’s, before the british had fully gotten hold of the land.

Imagine being a british soldier, stationed in a village among the foothills of the himalayas, among perhaps twenty of your kind, sitting around a fire with some cards, some dice, and some drink to keep you company when the night comes and the light is gone. Then imagine three or four of these ascetics, who have not bathed and who’s meditations and deprivations have put a manic glint to their faces, run screaming toward you and your companions, calling out to their god to help strike you down. Their tridents waved and pointing at your heart, glowing orange from within and from the wavering light of the fire.

Would your hand shake as you took aim and saw the depths of their eyes?