Aum Namah Shiva on the Waterkaant in Paramaribo

Corentyne River

The man looked at the food (chicken fry rice) I was eating and made signs for the rest in the box and spoke in Dutch. Indian (Hindustani?) man, clean shaven, hair combed nicely, clothes neat but old. Sun is setting. 

The man looks at me and says something about "Bharatdesh"  and I realise that he is asking me if I am from India . I say Guyana and he switches to English.
His English is perfect. I am shocked. He tells me that I am not rough like the Guyanese he knows and I say like you never meet any rough people from Bharatdesh.

He takes the box and spoon from me , takes out the pickled pepper and is eating slowly and looking at the water. I ask him about work and he says he is a carpenter but has not worked for a while as work is hard to get. He is waiting for the graduation ceremony for Anton de Kom at a nearby hall so he could park /watch the cars because 'the junkies will break them'.

I ask him if he goes to any church and he says no ' I am a church' and I am in awe of the English still . I ask him where he learned English and he looks at me and says school, where else?
 He proceeds to chant some mantras to Lord Shiva and I recognise some words which I thinks is the Surinamese accent on the mantras.

I feel a twinge of guilt at the carcass we have been consuming before this prayerful moment.

He shows the Lord Shiva pendant near his neck. He then shows me his forearms and says that every time he calls the name of his Lord, he gets.. (dutch word) and I say 'goosebumps' and it is true, his skin's pores are raised up.. and the place is not chilly.

I ask him if he knows any bhajans, he smiles and then bursts into this version of Aum Namah Shivaya in the most beautiful singing voice. 





You sing good - I say, and he laughs and he sings bits of other bhajans.

He asks me if I have anything to drink and I say no, because I have been drinking the tap water and he asks for money to buy water. I give him some.

I ask him about drugs and he said for 20 years he smoked marijuana but stopped when his son was born. He said he did not drink. His son's name is Shiva and he said his son is blessed.

My ears are still ringing from the quality of English.

I ask him what happened, how come he knows English and sings so beautifully and is begging. He says he was in a band for two years but it was not good. He said his voice was a gift from God and the band was not clean and he could not be in it.

I asked him what songs he sang and he said Kishore Kumar and Rafi. He sang bits and I asked if I could video him and he laughed and said no, no.. but I could give him some money.

He told me that he would give me a blessing that six months from now I would see that my life is elevated to another level and I would remember that moment.
He said that he has visions of his Lord and that a swami from India had told him that the drug use had opened his 'Naam chakra'  . I said man, you could be a swami, change these clothes.

He said no, no .. he wanted to live a clean life. He sees things when he prays through his third eye (and he has a dot on the middle of his forehead)

I asked him again, what happened, how did you come to this and he looked into the water and said that he did not want to talk about it. And then he asked me if I knew this song.. and he sange the opening lines  which he translated "my life was a white paper, it remained white , whatever was written there was cleared away .." 

Kishore Kumar (Mera jeevan kora kaagaz kora hi reh gaya)




I had never heard the song before and I wrote it in the book and he asked me what I was writing and I said I am making a note because I wanted to write about this and he laughed and said, write what?

He said his brother was a programmer at Microsoft but he does not hear from him or others.

We shook hands - I said my name is Vidya and he laughed and said 'knowledge'. He said his name is Sanjai.. and smiled and said yes, the man who was telling the battle to the Maharaj in the Mahabharata...

The carpenter who wanted the food , water and money knew Dutch, English and Hindi?

He said that he has some work to get but the contractor has to wait for the government official to sign the contract and take the payback.

I asked if he ever did fisherman work (two of the Guyanese on the ferry coming over were fishermen) and he said no, he liked to catch hassar (kwie kwie he said and then translated for me) and that he caught only in the real swamps, not the rice swamps which had pesticides in them. And I listen to the English.

When time came to part, he asked me for money again , if I had any coins, I gave him the coins I had and then he asked why don't I go to the nearby place and change the 50SRD note I had. I said no.. and I keep wondering now if I should have given the 50SRD as dakshna (offering) even if it went to buy more marijuana or whatever it was that Sanjai had said he stopped using?