Seven plots of extraordinary

I have been traveling around India for about 15 years. And more and more with the feeling that I have not been traveling, but I have been living in my native land for a long time. These are mainly non -tourist places: a hinterland, jungle, lost worlds. Here, on the Colt, there were several of my publications about this - here , for example, here . Recently, a book of wanderings “Man and another” has been published, part of which is devoted to this experience. And a couple of years ago I began to shoot on camera and tell along the way; Gradually, a video clock formed, where there are already about 70 short episodes. For this publication, I chose several of them, but not related to campaigns in the jungle, but mainly with unusual ritual practices and other different extraordinary ones-like the Sanskrit garden with books on palm planks (“leaves”), or the execution of “Rigved” by the choir of the monks of an ancient temple, or ruins of the VI century lost in the mountains of the city, or a wonderful story about police officers, or a wonderful story about police officers. rehearsing at night "Mahabharata" in a county police station. And in conclusion-a film about the magical ritual of mystery Tayama “Moving the Scattered”, which is made together with Leonid Fedorov.

1. Amman

South of India, Tamilnada, the land of Dravidov - the oldest pre -Aryan population of India. Amman (or Mariamman) is the goddess of fertility, mother nature, in her name-rain and death. The cult of her older Hinduism, subsequently her image came closer to Kali and Durgha. The worship of her in the south of India, especially in villages, is perhaps more common than the worship of Shiva, Vishnu and other Hindu gods. This film shows the holiday of Amman, which lasted three days continuously in a small village inside the Tigerine Reserve Mudylai, where only once a year roads open, usually closed at night. Tens of thousands of pilgrims converge on these three days and three nights, break the tents around the temple, and an extraordinary marathon of radical practice of interaction with Amman begins. The ritual in which men and women, old people and children are involved. With a hundred violent drums, with an exhausting trance dance with heavy flowering pyramids on the heads and pots of burning coals, with shoes in the form of pads with nails upwards, with a chopper pierced with a public torture, with a drop in consciousness and a return through a bowed transformation ... a little to the side, near the edge The jungle, a free field kitchen is deployed, where pilgrims are fed around the clock. There will be a moment in the film when, to a night thicket sitting on Earth, an elephant, sowing a panic, comes out. But the drums do not silent, and the sacrificial dance continues. In the old days, this and similar rituals, which collects the limit of human forces - both physical and mental, took place in an authentic temple atmosphere; Now, more and more a fair holiday is sucked in-with handicraft lands, souvenir shops, rows of widen, inflatable Mickey Makes, and a damn wheel. The performers of the ritual, passing their sacred circles in this entertaining and profan space, are so immersed in themselves, immersed in amman that they literally see nothing and nobody but. In the course of the film, I will comment on as far as I can.

2. "Rigveda"

Did you know that today you can hear live on how the Rigveda sounded in Sanskrit thousands of years ago? And go crazy from the 50-and-powerful with the mind and the body of the half-naked monks of the oldest temple of Chelva-Naraan in the outback of India. And what do we know about the alvars - Indian trumpeters, who created the fifth (Dravid) fifth (Dravid), consisting of several thousand poems about mystical love? They are still performed in the south of India, and the case brought me to this temple on the day of the holiday of St. Amalvara, when his poems and hymns “Rigved” were performed. And this village is located in Karnataka, not far from Masur, and is called Melukota. You can go from the end to the end in half an hour. And life is not enough to get around it all. The ancient temples are innumerable - from cave to young, millennia. And even more unwritten and even unnoticed ruins, they are almost every rural court that has grown with houses, sheds, and triggers. The village stands on the hill, and in all horizons - quiet and surface with the Kaveri River. In the XII century, St. Ramanuja, a reformer of Vishnuism, expelled from the land of the Dravids and spent here in exile, like Dante in Ravenna, for many years. Since then, Melukota has become one of the main spiritual centers of Vaishnavas - surprisingly, to this day retaining its deep authenticity, and the good that still away from tourist crowds. This is an extraordinary place where all the times, which removes all new dimensions from the sleeve, has been ra sh that has been shuffled, I made several films. This one is dedicated to the temple and the execution of the Rigveda. Behind the scenes - long conversations with monks, followed by correspondence, needed to comment on this film.

3. Jains

The south of the carnaki, a small two -horned village of Schravanabelagool, which is called the "Vatican of Jainism." On one hill-about a dozen ancient Jain churches, on the other no less, and there is an Indian “Miracle of Light”-a 17-meter statue of Bahubali, who renounced the kingdom and became a hermit that went into the forest and plunged into meditation so deep that the vines of his body were fucked up and the birds rode nests in his hair. It is believed that this statue, erected in the X century, is the largest in the world of monolithic. Here, in Schravanabelagol, the great king of Chandragupt Mauria, who spread the boundaries of India to the Great Empire, graduated from life. Just as in Alexander of Macedon (with whom he, judging by a number of sources, was met and was in correspondence) was an Aristotle mentor, Mauria had Acharya Bhadarbachu. Following his teacher, Mauria accepted Jainism, renounced the kingdom and, having left for a deep austerity, exhaled life - just like his guru. The air over these two hills, it seems, is all woven from these last exhaust jains: those who have completed their earthly path here for almost two and a half millennia are innumerable. In Jainism, as you know, there is neither the creator of the world, nor the gods, the universe is self -regulates, it has neither the beginning nor the end. There are enlightened, guides - Tirtkhankars (“Creators of crossing”), there were 24 of them in history, the latter - Gina Mahavira, a contemporary of the Buddha. And there are Yakshi and Yakshini-like guardian angels, but they can be demons-according to the situation. The meaning and purpose of life is self -improvement, liberation from Samsara. One of the main commandments is Achims: the non -objection of harm to nothing of the existing (neither directly nor indirectly, including thoughts and speech), since all living things have a soul, and the soul is eternal and holy. The jain’s mouth is usually covered with a gauze bandage, at hand - a panicle of peacock feathers to fury the place before sitting down. There are two directions in Jainism, two sects: Svetambara (“dressed in white”) and more radical - digambars (“dressed in the sky”), naked. In the first - both men and women, in the second - only men. Compared to other areas of Hinduism, Jaina is very little - about five million, less than 1%. In the village itself, between the two hills there are several more ancient Jain temples, in one of them there is a fantastic wall painting, created in the 17th century by an unnamed genius (I show it a little in the film): the entire narrative cosmos of Jainism in miniatures that turn into one another. It is to this temple that the Jains who live in Ashram on the outskirts of the village go to this temple. Rather, not living, but stopping there transit on the path of their wanderings. I managed to get acquainted with some of them, these were Digambars, and after several private conversations in their room I was invited to the refectory - to look and even take on the camera what is usually hidden from the eyes of outsiders. They eat once a day, and since it is impossible to touch them directly with their hands, they are prepared and fed from them (but you can’t touch them either). Jains serve them, but not monks, but flocks from local and visitors. For example, that young woman in the white clothes, which is shown in the film, came here for several days for two thousand kilometers. All this causes mixed feelings. Perhaps the radicality of their sadhana and the discomfort from worldly life create this impression of a few emphasized hierarchical arrogance-sometimes to completely curious associations with Kin-Dza-Dzu. But, probably, it is not for us to judge here. In the end, not only religious communities are kept on various kinds of interchange, but in general all living things - up to bees and plants ... This film goes without comment.

4. Police "Mahabharata"

And in what, I ask Narayana, the main difference between the Vishnuis? In that, he replies that the world is real, not illusory for us. Real, but he is a game. That is, I say, not Maya, but Lila? But you can really understand this when the game will be over? That's the point, it laughs that it will never be over. I remembered this conversation, becoming a witness to a hilarious story, in which, as they say, “how in a drop” the whole wonderful unimaginability of India was reflected. And this happened in that village - the “Vatican of Jainism” - Schravanabelagool, which he wrote above. Where the air is woven from the thousands of the last exhalations of the jains, and the earth spreads the solitaires of the centuries, one of the nights I heard the heartbreaking cries of farewell to life, replaced by a demonstratively homerly laughter, broken into silence, from which a love song sprouted with lamentations. All this spread over the sleeping village under the barking of dogs. The sound came from a police station standing on the outskirts, not far from my guest house. Taking the camera and in a hurry without even shoes, I went to the site. In a small hall on the second floor, a group of police rehearsed Mahabharata. “Bhima,” the sergeant feldfebel in uniform and with a club introduced himself. “Krishna,” he held out his hand in another civilian. “This is“ Mahabharata, ”Arjuna approached,“ do you understand? ” Well, like your Greek drama “Othello” ... or, then he thought, recalling, - like his ... “Copperfield”! ” In the film - a story about this and what I managed to shoot in the site.

5. Sanskrit garden

On the outskirts of the village of Melukota, about which I wrote above, there is a small Sanskrit Academy - a one -story building of a research center with about ten employees, the same library building, two guest houses drowning in the garden, and an ancient temple pond with Ghats. The library has about 10 thousand books, including ancient manuscripts, drawn on palm planes (“leaves”) similar to measuring rulers. On each - 24 lines of the smallest handwriting, they are tied with thin twine; This is the book - the volume with the War and the World, for example, and more. There is “Mahabharata”, and “Ramayana”, and “Upanishads”, and Puranas. We walk around the academy with its leading employee Mr. Narayana, the namesake of the temple (Narayana is one of the names of Vishnu), look, talk. Then, when it comes to one village in India, where they still talk in Sanskrit in everyday life, and I ask if they are talking here, we go to one of the rooms where a completely wonderful librarian tells us Purana in Sanskrit as if we were talking about today and with whom he had seen. And in the next room, another employee, covering his eyes and abandoning the papers on the table, sang a fragment of the “Rigveda” exactly as it was performed three thousand years ago, according to the unchanging rules of harmony prescribed by “Samveda”. Then Narayana and I still had a lot of conversations. About Sanskrit, the grammar of which was already in the 5th century BC Filigreely described Panini that only in the twentieth century European linguists came to such a level of description, having borrowed a lot from him. The fact that this phenomenally rich language was already ready for the most unusual flights, but stood several centuries among the Indians, like a spaceship, in the backyard - for written unnecessary. Since a living oral tradition, like all living things, is primary - or, simply, from God. The fact that the world in Hinduism is conceived from the voice, that the world is based on Spanda, cosmic vibration, or, as stated in sacred texts, “a rope and its tension” (whether to recall the theory of strings?). And about the limits of speech possibilities - with all its divinity. Then, already on my other visit, we returned to this conversation and talked about the translations of the sacred texts and the Indian epic into Russian. Yes, we have wonderful translations. But to read many of them, not being a specialist, to read these academic trolleys as living, like the air that you breathe is hardly possible. The meaning is translated, narrative, the letter. And the original and meaningful in these texts is poetry, music, sound. Fortunately, all this lives, and exactly in the form as millennia ago, and today it can be heard, discussed, try to find consonance in Russian, approaching this side. And such an idea arose - whether to try. Take a small text (for example, from the 10th Mandala “Rigveda”, the one that ends with extraordinary: perhaps the Creator does not know how this world was created) and devote a couple of months to work on him together with these monks of Ashram and the staff of the Academy. Despite the fact that the goal is not the result of the translation, but the process of this listening, discussion, search. And keep a video of this process. Well, of course, Narayana said, come, let's try. Agreed in the fall. And this film is about the first meeting and about the library.

6. Tela

The village of Tala is the hell where. I found it with a magnifying glass on the map of Jaipur, when, as I expected, I realized that I had nothing to do in the city. This village was on the border with the Tigrin Reserve of Sarisk, but as if from his back, where roads do not lead. And there, some extraordinary temple of Nilnath, miraculously preserved either from the VI or from the VIII century, squealed there. That is, literally by a miracle: according to legend, he was saved by bees, with a live wall that blocked the path to the moles who came to hook him with the ground, like many Hindu shrines throughout India. This temple, according to meager information on the network, with three altars - Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, with sophisticated stone carvings, decorating the facades with scenes from epic and “kamasutra”. It stands inside the reserve, in the saddle of the plateau, invisible to anyone except the clouds and several yards of the farm located nearby. This huge - from the horizon to the horizon - the saddle is surrounded by a fortress wall; Once there was a great city from which the ruins of several temples remained. The road to this plateau, judging by the read reviews, except for a motorcycle, and even then in dry weather. None of the dispatchers at the jaipur bus stations could indicate the way to this Tela. Finally, Riksha took somewhere to the suburbs, where in the bushes, it seemed, an abandoned bus stood for years. And not a soul around. And suddenly everything somehow settled down, the bus was filled with the news from where the people came from and started. "Tela?" I asked the driver, not counting on the answer. He did not answer.

7. "Moving the disparate"

One of the most precious discoveries that India endowed in the last few years of my travels became Teyyam (Teyyam) -the oldest magical rite of the mystery of extraordinary beauty and strength, which until recently was known. They perform it only in winter and only in one place on Earth - in the village outback in the north of Kerala. As far as one can judge, this mysterious action came to us almost in the unchanged form as it was in pre -indouche times. Teyam is the name of God, and at the same time it is the very mystery of the entry of God into the medium-actor and the broadcasting of His energy and the message. Here, on the Colt, there was my detailed text about Teyama with the premiere of a large film about him . Since then, I have seen a lot of different Teyamam, and everyone was special, with their own plot, the performing troupe, the place (temple courtyard by the fire), spectators. The unusualness of Teyama, which is shown in this film, is also in an unexpected finale, when at the predawn hour, arising from the jungle from nowhere, an endless string of women swims around the temple, clutching half -sleeping children with one hand, in the other to carry living fire, and all this celestial round dance to the rotating magicians of Tayama ... the vision of the end of the world and at the same time, Svetlia, Svetlia Apocalypse. Although in fact, the villagers simply dedicated children to Tayyam, blessing and gaining a blessing. Already upon returning from India, the sound path was recorded to this video: the music of Leonid Fedorov and Igor Krutyolov, my text is from the book of the wanderings “Man and more”.

And three more unusual plots can be seen here.

Murga

A person suspended on hooks. Unique shooting of radical practice of initiation to the god Murugan.

Shakti

The holiday of the great female energy is Shakti, from the smile of which (Kushmanda) the world began, becoming manifested.

Happiness

Forest School with Heavenly Children.

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