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“Kabas (rats) scampered and squeaked and feasted” |
An edited version to be published in Diversions magazine by Karen Watkins
If you visit India, whatever you do, don’t try to understand the religion. With its extremely complex and long history and more than 35 000 gods, there’s no shortage of shrines and temples. One of these is a most disturbing one, rising out of the scrub in Deshnok, not far from Bikaner in the north of Rajasthan state. Devotees come to this unique temple to admire the active, after-death experiences of a bardic people!
“There’s good, better and best,” informed my guide. “It’s good if you see one, it’s better if one touches you and it’s best if you see a white one!”
Barefoot, we entered the carved white marble entrance of the temple, passing between silver doors, embossed with images of Hindu divinities. The doors were donated by Maharajah Ganga Singh, ruler of Bikaner for 55 years from age six. A grey rat greeted us.
The Temple of Karni Mata is not a place for the squeamish. As we walked through the outer courtyard towards the sanctum, there were rats everywhere. They scampered and squeaked, sunned themselves on pillars, preened and dozed, poked sensitive whiskered noses out of holes in the walls and feasted on food, a veritable army of little rodents.
And thereby hangs the tail, or tails to be exact. As I waited (impatiently) for the worshippers to leave a space for me to snap a picture of the goddess, rats scuttled at my feet making me jump onto my guide, who was totally oblivious to my plight. This made me realise that the temple is not a sideshow and is a holy place of worship and an important pilgrimage site.
While waiting, the guide told me the story behind the Temple of the Rats, as travellers know it. According to legend, in 1387 a girl was born into the Charan family. After her marriage was dissolved she devoted her life to the service of the poor taking the form of the Hindu goddess Durga with people worshipping her as Karni Mata.
Karni Mata wanted to bring the dead child of a storyteller back to life but failed because Yama, the god of death, had already accepted his soul and reincarnated him in human form. Karni Mata, famed for her legendary temper, was so inflamed by her failure that she announced that no one from her tribe would fall into Yama's hands again. Instead, when they died, all of them would temporarily inhabit the body of a rat before being reborn into the tribe. Therefore, the kabas (rats) are considered to be incarnations of storytellers, who wait in the temple as another life form between successive reincarnations as humans. And so, when we walked through the temple, we trod with great caution, although for me it was for a different reason.
Worshippers pushed in front of me to kiss the statue and the ground, place offerings of prasad (food) or puja (flowers), or to daub red ochre paste onto the doorway. Some people rang a ghanta (bell) during worship in order to eliminate distracting sounds and to help their mind to concentrate on the object of worship. I was able to catch glimpses of the sanctum sanctorum of the temple depicting Karni Mata after slaying the buffalo-demon Mahishasura, with her inverted trident impaled in the demon's head.
Achieving my goal, we circled the sanctum in a clockwise direction along with other worshippers, treading amongst the filth of food and rat pooh, the after-death kabas scampering fearlessly. A little boy passed me, hanging from his fathers arm, screaming in terror. My heart went out to him.
“I’m not the only one,” thought I as I gingerly avoided the rats.
Needing air I walked back to the courtyard and noticed men sitting on steps drinking tea and talking, totally oblivious to the rats. A little further, sword-like tails twitched contentedly as rats surrounded a large flat bowl of milk. In a corner was an elaborate fence decorated with rats, some sleeping and yet miraculously clinging to their perch. A group of musicians played behind a group of ladies and children dressed in colourful saris and jewellery, their foreheads dotted with tilaka.
“White rat,” said a man as he grabbed my arm and dragged a reluctant and pessimistic me to a fenced off area.
I had decided that seeing a white rat was probably an urban legend, but no, as the man pointed, I followed his finger and sure enough, there it was, a grey-white rat.
The guide pointed out special holes around the courtyard that assist the rats' movements throughout the temple. I later heard that it is claimed by believers, that eating the holy food offering, which has been salivated over by these holy rats, will bring good luck. This was going too far, although I was willing to take their word for it!
In 600 years there has been no disease, and yet the following day I was ill.
“It’s the plague,” thought I!
The author travelled as a guest of India Tourism, for further information contact goito@global.co.za
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