Ethey still exist sadhus, the mendicants who, like Siddhartha in Hermann Hesse’s novel, roam the country roads of India from place of pilgrimage to place of pilgrimage. In the country stretching towards modernity, they initially appear as if they come from a sphere to which the everyday present can no longer find its way. Strict, touching, crazy, that’s how they seem. Her way of life and her adventurous body painting are: otherworldly. There may be many rabble or poor people who hope to make a living with the ocher-colored monk’s robes without having to fulfill the toils of asceticism and pious exercises. They could even make up the majority.
But looking back on my life in India, I discover some moments of genuine other-worldliness, through which a ray of transcendence penetrates our everyday world. I remember that middle-aged man walking down a street in the Jain shrine of Udayagiri in Odisha. He walked slowly and collected, carrying a small brass jug in one hand, his eyes not down, but straight ahead. He was stark naked, his penis hanging freely. No one spoke to the monk or followed him, no street urchins teased or stared at him. The image of this enraptured apparition has stuck in my memory for decades.
