82. the life cycle
is the minimum criterion. So long as you feel you satisfy this criterion, you are a san-
nyasi. If you do not, you are not a sannyasieven if you are born of a Nambudiri fa-
ther and a Nambudiri mother. Now go and lie down, and be ready before midnight.
Try to sleep—for the brahmacariwill die tonight—it is your last sleep... as a brah-
macari,” he added with a smile.
I woke up at a quarter before midnight. I took a quick bath downstairs and put on
a clean lajgothi(loincloth), the last white lajgothiI should wear. I had already dyed
a set of robes with the gerrua color that I had bought weeks earlier at the bazaar in
Loha Ghat. I hesitated to take the dyed cloth along and called a servant, asking him
to find out from the Swamiji whether he wanted me to take the dyed cloth with me
to the ghat. But the Swami had already left an hour earlier. I told the servant to take
the cloth and to follow me at a distance.
It was a fifteen-minute fast walk to the ManikarnikaGhat, through the meander-
ing alleys of Banaras (see figure 6). I hastened my steps. The air was bright and in-
cense laden; people looked at me more than usual, as though they sensed that I was
on an important errand. There loomed the four dark silhouettes of the temples near
the ghat. I stopped for a moment at the Manikunda, the deep well—allegedly un-
connected with the Ganges from which it is separated by no more than fifteen
yards—into which Fiva’s earring fell when he was carrying the dead Sation his
shoulders. From time immemorial, this has been the most important cremation
ground in India. Pious Hindus consider it great spiritual merit to die near this ghat
and to have their bodies cremated there. Day and night, the pyres burn. One can see
them from a great distance, even from the train coming in over the bridge, from
Moghul Serai, when one travels at night. Corpses seem to burn brighter on this ghat.
I never saw funeral pyres from so great a distance as I did here, for the bridge is at
least two miles east of the ghat.
I did not quite know where to find the acarya, the senior sadhu; there were sev-
eral monks about and several brahmacaris. I found out that about half a dozen
novices were to take sannyasahere tonight. Swami Jagadifvarananda, a famous
monk from Hardvar, was to confer sannyasaon four young men, a monk told me.
“Do you know if Vifvanandaji will give sannyasato anyone?” I questioned him.
“The Madrasi Sadhu? Yes, I heard he is giving sannyasato a mleccha[foreigner]!
What do you think of that?” “Is it quite impossible?” It was too dark for him to see
my color. “How do I know?” the monk answered with a shrug. “It is certainly not
customary. But the Madrasi Sadhuis a learned man. He must know what he is
doing.”
A tall swami, obviously a Northerner from his looks and his intonation, approached