When men whip themselves with knives

The contrasts that central Bombay can throw up are almost too many and too obvious to mention, but one of the biggest is the huge disparity between the modern & inspirational streets of the west side of the city and the traditional & ignored districts that are mostly on the east side of the city.

No more than a mile or so from the sleek, glass, 21st century Stock Exchange is Dongri.

Dongri is a devout and emotional Muslim district. It is poor and ignored by tourists – not another European face did I see there. During the Islamic month of Muharram, I came to be walking Dongri’s hot hot streets (and this is January!), looking for the traditional scaled-down representations of the tomb of Imam Hussain that usually line the streets of Shia areas across the world on Muharram’s tenth day, Ashura (which is an official holiday in India). Hussain was the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and the third Imam of Islam.
But, in a whirl of events, I came to be where I never thought modern Bombay would ever lead me.

The tombs, made of plywood and then covered in gorgeous cloth, line the sides of the streets. Men and women sit (separately of course) at side-street cafes.
But, judging by the shouts and drums from a distance away, the big event seemed to be elsewhere.
When the drummers drum in Bombay, it is such a compelling sound that it just draws you. When such passion is in the air, as they beat incessantly at the huge barrel-skins, who would not want to find its source?
Following the sound, I came to high walls that seemed to hold beyond them a communal hall. So many people, mostly dressed in black – both men and women – were trying to get in and out the entrances, it was a crush to get through them to the spectacle inside. Though some men were wary of me, yet there were some pushing me forward in the forceful but kind way that Indian people do to curious strangers.

I have no idea what it was I was then seeing… In that first space hundreds of men were crammed into a covered hall no bigger than a tennis court. Above the melee you could see some thirty or so furled banners held high and representations of the Imam’s tomb, travelling in a waving, shaking procession in furious continuous circles.

Someone explained above the din that Ashura remembers the day that the Imam and his followers were surrounded and slaughtered at Karbala, which was about as much as I could understand of what he said (my knowledge of the history of Islam is poor, sadly), so I think what I was seeing was the battle flags being readied and the re-enacted frenzy of the warriors of that great struggle of almost fourteen centuries ago.

Shoved back into the street, where there were now perhaps thousands of spectators looking down on the scene from balconies, scaffolding, the tops of walls, as well as at ground level where they lined the passage-ways, I was pushed into other doorway (a man rushed up to me: “be careful of your belongings!”, and rushed away again) where it seemed that most of them were women (again, top to toe in sweating black).. Was I in a women’s section?
Sensing my confusion, a woman seized me (she did not use half-measures) and jabbed me forward and more forward into the pressed clumps of women watching the main event. Eventually, now almost at the front of this group, jammed in a soft hot mass of female flesh (I could only wonder that, as a foreigner, perhaps I was regarded as sexless, because no one seemed to object), I could see clearly was happening.

We were looking into a high and open courtyard with just a thin piece of roof to hold off the sun. If it had been a car-park, it would have held no more than twenty cars. Again, there was not a square inch of space in it to be had.
The arena was a swirling sea of men in black, with some figures and objects making laboured swaying circular processions through the scrum of people. Two “characters” were on horseback (incredibly placid horses when you think about it) – one looked like a Roman centurion in red, his face painted in black, and one was a shaven-headed man with a sword aloft. A costumed group of three were crowded on a tiny board (though who or what was carrying this platform I could not see) and were also taking part in the endless round. Curiously, three or four babies, costumed in green silk, were being held aloft and jiggled for the crowds. Not surprisingly, one of these babies was screaming at terror at the noise and confusion of it all, not to mention the drop beneath it, but no one paid it much mind.What it all signified, I am sorry to say I do not know…

The steaming heat of my squashed position was getting too much… so I hassled and squeezed-by and retreated, when a lady at the back took me aside. It was impossible to hear all she had to say against the drums and noise, but she explained about the line of Imams (and the lineage of prophets, including Jesus) and that the man in red was the enemy at Karbala – “a terrorist.” The babies, she added, were to remind us of the women and children that were massacred in the attack, including Hussain’s own baby son. And, knowing exactly the political implications, she stopped and held my wrist tight and made the point clear: “we are not friends to terrorist….”
I suppose that moment was true Bombay - a city that will come up with a modern debate against the background of an ancient pageant.
In a cooler corner by one of the back walls, I managed to hide. The stares were fewer now, because another development unfolded and took attention away from me… Teenage boys, chests bare, smeared in blood, drifted past. By me was a small stall on which was stocked a large number of medical dressings, from which the boys would take one or two and wrap them round their wounds, while a man with a water-tank dispenser periodically squirted liquid over them. Of course, I couldn’t see or guess at why they had blood on them – I wondered if it was just youthful over-enthusiasm while taking part in ‘the battle’?

But now it became clear. A space opened up in the press and some of the twenty-something young men, also bare-chested, formed a rough circle. They were holding short chains, at the end of which was a clump of three curved attack-knives. Cautiously they swung them to and fro (the drums hammering, and watching men striking the tops of their heads with each beat) and then they would fling the knives full circle over their shoulders to thud against their backs – whereupon the flesh is immediately clean cut, and blood squirts off the skin in tiny droplets. They were flagellating themselves with knives. Again and again. And the floor gradually became as soupy as that in a butcher's shop.
Curiously, in my first walkings, I’d seen the knife-grinders in the streets, all busy sharpening these dagger objects. Naively I had thought they were ceremonial weapons only.

As you would guess I would, I thought – it’s got to be a trick… surely they are making it so that only the flat sides of the knives are striking? One further look told me that that was not true. What’s more, the flagellators were joined by other young men, who, with a single knife in their hands, rocked back and forth, before with a final flick, cruelly running the knife’s sharpened blade along their own scalps in a line to their foreheads – from where blood would run down and daub their faces, and leave their hair stickily bloody.
The spectators watched with admiration at this devotion and courage. Many had their cameras at the ready (the contrasts of Bombay!) to take photos of these young heroes.
And when the older men felt they had had enough, and stopped them from continuing, still these young men often crept back into the ring, bypassing their elders, to continue the self-torture.

I suppose one can be sensible about it all, and say that the knives only seem to cut the surface of the flesh, they do not break through to the muscle, and they do not go low enough to harm the kidneys. From what I saw, no permanent damage is done, though some boys showed the evidence of the previous year – old weals, looking like small twigs trapped beneath the skin. And the older men were there and watchful to see no ‘excesses’.
Of course I can only say what I saw. Some tell me I saw just a mild manifestation of Muharram. But I know one young man was weeping with the shock as he continued to bleed.I’m a foreigner – I leave it to anyone who has the knowledge, and cares to post, to do the explanation of what happening.

Oh Bombay!
You know, it’s a heck of a shock to be in a shiny air-conditioned international coffee-shop at breakfast surrounded by stock-brokers (wondering in a dull way what French pastry to buy) and an hour later to see a whole community gather to remember its ancient past and history and traditions and beliefs – and all with overwhelming commitment to what is before them. And then, let’s not forget, to see men’s faces warping with the pain of what they are doing to themselves.

Is it good for me to be so confused by this city?