Read All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World for Free Online Page A

foot, by jeep, bus and sacred elephant. One of the sadhus ’ rights in India is to receive a pass that guarantees free travel on public transport. Despite their minimal worldly possessions, this sadhu ID card is a valuable part of their livelihood, legitimising their way of life. While police may harass beggars, they leave the sadhus be, allowing them an almost free rein to move through society at will.
    Early morning still and an air of calm over the Mela ground. I moved gently through the throng, my eyes boggling at every turn. Spindly old men stretched out in contortionist yoga positions. Barrows of fresh flowers. One sadhu walked past me dressed in a leopard skin, another wearing nothing at all, but with a heavy stone strung from his genitals. Much of India is now as modern as anywhere else but, save the odd detail, this was to step back a thousand years.
    Several passers-by, stained with crimson and yellow powders, stopped and welcomed me. Others merely raised their hands in a friendly namaste , both surprised and pleased to see a foreign pilgrim. Already the night chill was lifting and a mellow sun casting pools of light over the ground. Swarthy crows jostled each other on their tent poles. Above me, a vast lambswool sky.
    In the seventh century, the indomitable Buddhist monk Hiuen Tsang, apparently following the call of a dream, made a journey to India and back that would take him seventeen years. As the guest of Harshvardhana, the last of the Hindu emperors, he attended a Mela in just this spot, and remarked upon its ‘ageless’ bathing tradition. Even in his day, the festival was an ancient one, whose origins stretched right back to Vedic times.
    In my mind, as I picked my way carefully through the sea of tents, was the notion of the Mela as the living embodiment of Hindu dharma , or universal law. In the East, religion has always been more about practice and experience than dogma, and nothing so illustrated the fact as this gigantic confluence of humanity. What was important for these pilgrims was not so much the written scriptures or the canon of any specific tradition. It was the idea of religion as practice, as lived experience bringing one closer to God. Perhaps no Hindu saint so expressed this concept as Ramakrishna, the Bengali saint of the nineteenth century. For him the scriptures were ‘a mixture of sand and sugar’ and science ‘mere dirt and straw after the realisation of God’. Learned people, to him, were like wanderers in an orchard, who count the leaves and fruit and argue over their value instead of plucking and relishing the crop. These people here were the living embodiment of this belief, intent only on the fruit, and indeed racing in their millions through the dust to taste it.
    At one particularly busy crossroads I noticed a crowd of people who seemed to be arguing furiously. Were they fighting? They were huddled together in a scrum like conspirators. Curious, I went over to investigate, when suddenly, as if from nowhere, a cup of something warm and sticky was hurled across my back. It hit me hard and exploded. Instantly, I spun round to find two men sprinting towards me, their hands stretched out, seemingly about to attack.
    Holding my ground as tightly as I could, I prepared for a fight. But just as they came within grabbing distance, a tall sadhu leaped out from one of the tents, holding a wooden staff. With his pale, angular face bearing a ferocious expression, he looked like one of the Tibetan demons. The two assailants stopped in their tracks, shot each other a look of abject horror and then broke for the cover of the tents. Behind them the sadhu roared a terrible stream of obscenities in their wake.
    ‘What the hell just happened?’ I fumed, catching my breath ‘Those bastards!’
    ‘They’re thieves,’ said the sadhu in English. ‘They throw food on to you and while you’re disorientated, steal your bags.’
    As I turned to look at the sadhu who’d helped me, I realised