Body And Soul Union
Haresh Shah
Actually our destination this Sunday is Las Mañanitas, more in line with an all day weekend outing for Playboy executives to spend a leisurely afternoon in the lush gardens of one of the most beautiful hotels and restaurants in the world. Enjoy sumptuous Mexican delicacies washed down with Tequila Sunrises and Daiquiris. Only a short half an hour drive from Mexico City, the town of Cuernavaca is heralded the City of Eternal Spring by the geographer, naturalist and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, is a perfect escape from the dense clouds of pollution, swarms of crowds and the constant dint of noise of Mexico City. It is the pride and joy not only of the town of Cuernavaca, but of the entire country. We sit under the open sky and under the cooling shades of the trees and sip on our psychedelic tropical drinks. We are surrounded by the tall royal birds among them the proud peacocks gracefully prancing up and down with their iridescent tails spread out into magnificent round throne like fans. Prancing along are other long necked beautiful birds swaying and strolling while jumping monkeys frolic up and down the tree branches. It feels like being in paradise, the garden of Eden as one would picture it. The only other time I would come upon such an exotic place would be several years later on my first visit to Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
Feeling euphoric, soon as we are settled, a waiter comes by, carrying a huge blackboard and sets it down on the ground. On it the menu of the day is listed in colorful and curlicued script. We order and then continue with our drinks. In no hurry to go anywhere, just letting ourselves loosen up and enjoy the moment. Time slips by and then we are invited to the table all set up for us on the terrace shaded with bright and vibrant umbrellas. The food! The food!!! This is my very first trip to Mexico, which was originally meant to be just a short orientation thing, but as has been with my life, it stretches into almost three weeks. Work! What else? I am required to dive right into the thick of it, as I had to several years earlier in Germany. And so I do.
The people I am working with are wonderful partners and the hosts. This is the rewards part of the hard work. Our taste buds are treated to the fat succulent camarones con ajos, and fresh red snappers and carne asada replete with Mexican flavors of chili and cilantro and lime. No hard taco shell anywhere in sight, like back in the USA. I didn’t know anything about the TexMex and the CalMex part of what I had come to think of as the authentic Mexican food. Soft shell flautas at McGill’s in Isla Vista washed down with XXX beer is as far as I had come to know of the Mexican cuisine. So it turns out to be the most deliciously pleasant surprise.
I am brought here by Carlos Civita, the partner of our Mexican publishers, Ampudia family of Editorial Caballero. Carlos, of the famed Civita family originally from Italy, but known for their publishing empire Editorial Abril in Argentina. During the political upheaval there, the family just decided to cash in and leave. His father, Cesar Civita is now living in New York City while Carlos has taken up residence in Mexico City. The delightful bunch, some of the most wonderful people I have ever been fortunate enough to know. Carlos basically takes me under his wing and the very first weekend that I am in Mexico City, he just hands me the keys to his little Renault, so I get to explore the city on my own. Now when I think back, it could well have been a disaster. Because driving in Mexico City is not exactly like driving in Chicago or even New York. Its more like Bombay and Saigon where the chaos and survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Not to mention extra attention I needed to pay to the car’s manual transmission. I remember, how the little Renault shuddered and came to a stand still right in the middle of a square with hundreds of cars zapping by and not paying any attention to stranded me. Not even the cops nearby directing traffic budge an inch. Somehow I survive and get the thing going again. I won’t even mention how many times I got lost during that weekend.
But the weekend after, he wants to show me around and picks Cuernavaca and Las Mañanitas as our destinations, accompanied by his visiting parents, and makes it in to a family outing. They pick me up from my hotel around ten. Early for Mexico, because the lunch is never served before two at the earliest. But before we settle down and splurge at Las Mañanitas, he wants us to attend that morning’s mass at Cuernavaca’s Catedral de la Asunción de María. That seems a bit odd because Carlos and his family are not exactly what I would call religious folks. Plus, they are born Jewish, though Carlos’ wife Marta is Catholic. But he has heard so much about the uniqueness of the mass performed by the Bishop of Cuernavaca cathedral, and how uplifting his sermons are and how they are devoid of religious dogmas.
The Bishop is more like a secular philosopher and a teacher than a Catholic priest. Apparently very popular among his followers, majority of them very young. He seems to have a rock star status within his congregation whom I end up naming the Pop Priest. His manner of conducting the mass is nothing like I have ever experienced. Flamboyant and colorful, his words that I don’t understand, sound so uplifting and optimistic. And he has built himself a reputation that surpasses that of the historic cathedral – a proud landmark of Cuernavaca that rivals even Las Mañanitas. Thus making them the perfect twins in balancing the material world with the spiritual life, symbolized so appropriately by its revered Bishop.
Probably in his late Fifties or the early Sixties, he wears an easy smile Wrapped over his white cassock is a green shawl. And his choir is made up of a six piece rock band, containing of three guitarists, two violinist and a drummer. They all wore long frizzy hair and are dressed in their blue jeans, t-shirts and such – tops normally worn by teenagers. His voice is gentle and natural. His congregation is dressed not in their Sunday best, but in their ordinary street clothes. At this point, my Spanish is non-existent, but I like the soothing and even tone of his voice vibrating in the air.
Post mass, he stands outside the front gate greeting the exiting crowd, making small talk. He breaks up in a smile when he sees me emerge from inside and folds his hands together in traditional Indian gesture of namaste.
‘How did you like the mass?’
And we converse for a while. He asks me about India and refers to Buddhism and Hinduism and tells me how the message remains the same; be it Jesus or Buddha or Krishna. Devoid of any theatrics, what strikes me the most is that unlike other services I have attended, he certainly does not talk or constantly repeat the name of Jesus in vain. He doesn’t make you feel that unless you believed in Jesus you were doomed to be engulfed by the long and thorny tentacles of the wild hell fire. Likewise, I don’t once get a feeling, the one I normally got in the past from the priests whose message was loud and clear: Jesus is the way and the only way. I see in him an image of Gandhi – who though extremely religious, and very much into his Hindu beliefs and rituals, never lost the sight of the fact that there were other beliefs and they had to be revered and respected. Like my own dad.
My dad remains the most religious person I have ever known. He followed his Vaishnava faith to the T. An entire room of our home was and is still devoted to his in-house temple designated as Thakorji no room. His daily rituals lasted an average of four hours. Longer on the religious holidays. Of us eight siblings, the rest could be said to be more or less religious to the extent that they all follow bits and pieces of my parent’s total devotion, but as for me, it would be fair to say that even for a long while I identified myself as an agnostic, finally I have come to realization that that was a cope out on my part, because what I really am is: an atheist. After holding out hopes for me up until I was in my early thirties, my dad astonished me one night. I had just returned from paying my tribute at the shrine by our house – something I did out of sheer respect for my dad and expressly to please him.
‘You don’t have to go to the temple just to please me. You’re just crowding it and taking a place away from a true believer.’
What he didn’t verbalize was what I read in the look on his face. I know you’re a good kid and that’s all that matters.
Not withstanding occasional and almost always politically provoked sectarian violence in India, especially in it’s most metropolitan city Bombay, is where you also grow up respecting every religion, every culture and every custom. No one ever walks past without bowing his head, be it a temple, a mosque, a church, a derasar, a gurudwara or a Parsi fire temple. As religious and as devoted as my father was in his belief of Nirvana and reincarnation in his worship of Bal Krishna (infant-playful Krishna), he never had anything denigrating to say about other religions. The person with that kind of tolerance and accepting of the other faiths is in my eyes a true Vaishnava.
Just as the Spanish inscription carved in the most modern typeface on the large marble plaque on the wall behind us says:
NADIE HA VISTO NUNCA A DIOS
PERO
SI NOS AMAMOS UNOS A OTROS
DIOS PERMANECE ENTRE NOSOTROS
***
NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN GOD
BUT
IF WE LOVE EACH OTHER
GOD RESIDES WITHIN US (AND SO DOES HIS LOVE)
Atheist or not, I certainly can say Amen to that.
© Haresh Shah 2014
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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Next Friday, January 31, 2014
LET IT BE A SURPRISE
Not sure which one of the ones I am working on will be ready to go over the weekend. Just let’s wait and see, because I am afraid that’s how inspiration works! I promise whatever comes out on the top will be GOOD:-)
playboy stories 
wonderful….and ? what is real meaning of religion…need more such persons…with warmth.