Scents of Calcutta

Small chai shop around the corner of Kolkata downtown

In early November 2005, I landed at Calcutta airport. It was my first visit to India in about eight years. The new name of Kolkata may be better now. The facilities of the airport also seemed somewhat tidier and more stylish. However, it has not changed that as soon as I stepped out of the airport door, I got surrounded by hustling taxi drivers, who call to charge me exorbitant prices.

My heart was filled with joy. I am finally back in India. I once again have to fight with these annoying but lovely Indian dudes. This situation, to which I had become so accustomed before, was by no means unpleasant for me.

I shrugged them off while grinning and started to walk. Crossing the parking lot and the premises road and keep walking straight outside, I would come to the main road. My usual course was to catch a city bus and head to the city centre there.

Unconsciously, I’m faithfully following the route I used to go on a past budget trip. While grinning at myself again, I took a deep breath. As the main road approaches, the nostalgic scent of India intensifies.

The smell of cheap cigarettes Bidi. The smell of burning dried cow dung. The scent of dhoop incense. The aroma of various spices. The smell of oil for frying samosas and pooris. The aroma of the steam from the chai stall. The smell of the sweat of rickshaw drivers. The perfume fragrance worn by women and the smell of paan chewed by men. The cows that hang out on the streets give off a unique compost smell that can only be smelled at countryside farms in Japan.

The moment I am enveloped by the air that can only be described as the “scent of India”, I always have a strong feeling of “I’m back!”. And it was in Calcutta that I felt this emotion more strongly than anywhere else.

About two years had passed since I watched the program about Kalaripayattu on TV. During this period, strangely enough, several programs introducing Indian martial arts continued at intervals. However, what made me decide to revisit India was a book titled “Unveiled Indian Martial Arts” written by Takeshi Ito, an Asian martial arts essayist.

Takeshi Ito: Indian Martial Arts Unveiled

In the book, he talks about Kalaripayattu in great detail, from history to thought to practical skills. The oldest martial art in the world. A view of the human body that is common to yoga. The Science of Bows “Dhanur Veda”. Among them, what caught my attention most was the anecdote of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China.

Bodhidharma was born as the third prince of the Pallava dynasty in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu around 400 AD. As he grew older, however, he developed more religious inclinations, eventually renouncing himself to a Buddhist monk and becoming known as an excellent Zen master after rigorous training.

In his later years, he was asked to travel to China, where he ascended to the Shaolin Temple in the Songshan mountain range and left behind a legend of 9 years of meditating just facing the wall of the cave. At this time, seeing his disciples drop out one after another from the rigorous training, he taught them exercises derived from Indian martial arts in order to increase their physical and mental strength. It is said that this is the origin of today’s Shaolin martial arts.

Portrait of Bodhidharma: From Wikipedia

Although the Shaolin Temple is now famous for its integrated martial arts, its original speciality was stick fighting, Ito said. I remember seeing Shaolin films in which a monk turns a stick in a spectacular manner. Perhaps it was a stick technique introduced by Bodhidharma from India?

Turning Dharma Chakra. 転法輪（Tenpourin/Ja）
It is one of the most important ideas in Buddhism.

After a long period of asceticism, Gautama Siddhartha reached Buddhagaya, where he realised the Middle Path and decided to renounce asceticism. He declared himself not to get up until he got enlightened and entered into deep meditation under the Bodhi tree. He then overcame a stormy inner process and finally became the Buddha (an Awakened One) under the dawn star.

After that, in the land of Sarnath, north of Varanasi, where many spiritual seekers gather, he preached the wisdom of the enlightenment to ascetic practitioners for the first time. This is called the Dharma Chakra Pravartana. For the first time, the wheel of Dharma was turned by the Buddha.

Since then, the Dharma Chakra has become a sacred mark for all Buddhists, which symbolizes both the Buddha himself and the Dharma.

Ancient Indian Buddhists Worshiping the Pillar of Dharma Chakra: Sanchi Buddhist Site

When I was wandering around India studying Buddhism, I spent a lot of time at a Japanese temple called the Dharma Chakra Vihara in Sarnath. The shape of the Dharma Chakra and the episodes related to it left a deep impression on my mind. Maybe that’s why the moment I saw the spinning stick technique on TV, the image of dharma chakra flashed into my mind.

When Ito’s book crystallized the vague image of Indian martial arts in my mind, and at the same time synchronized it with Buddhism, I decided to visit India again. Thus I quit my job at a good timing, and came to Calcutta with full intentions.

Afterwards, I arrived safely at a cheap hotel on Sudder street by changing city bus and subway and enjoyed the town of Calcutta for a few days. Then, while visiting familiar places and people, I headed to my first destination, Rajasthan, which shares a border with Pakistan.

~to be continued~

Prologue

That day, it was around 5:30 PM as usual when I got back home from work. After taking shower and dinner, I relaxed on the sofa in front of the TV set.

Six years had already passed since I returned to Japan from my last trip. What were those experiences in India and other Asian countries? The days had been so ordinary, yet so fulfilling, that I couldn't help but think so.

However, it was also true that somewhere in the back of my mind, I continued to harbor a longing for India. It was a different world from Japan in every way. I can’t explain it clearly, but it was the original landscape of human existence that I missed so much. I want to go back to India again. I always had such thoughts in my mind, even though I was satisfied with my peaceful daily life in Japan.

The program came suddenly as if driving a wedge into my heart.

It was a popular long-running program called "Ururun Stay Diary," in which young TV personalities go abroad and live in the homes of local specialists of various traditional cultures, living and training together with them.

I watched it every week and liked it very much, so habitually checked the program listings, and at that moment my eyes were glued to the contents. Yoga martial arts? Kalarippayattu? Those words dancing on the paper grabbed my attention. Since it was called yoga martial arts, it must be an “Indian martial art”.

For three years since 1995, I travelled extensively in India and other countries in South Asia. It may sound cliché, but I spent my days practising and wandering, learning the Hindi language, yoga, and Buddhist meditation.

But yoga and meditation were too calm for me. I had always enjoyed being outdoors and being physically active, so much so that I jumped into the forestry fields after graduating from college. While fascinated by yoga and meditation, I was half unsatisfied with the practice of sitting quietly and looking intently into my inner self.

After three years, I settled down in Japan and decided to start Aikido. Because of I was strongly attracted to the expression "Dynamic Zen," which I heard by chance from a Japanese man during my last tour in India.

Through an acquaintance, I was admitted to a dojo in Ibaraki, called the "innermost sanctuary" of aikido. And there I was hooked on "dynamic Zen" and spent almost three years practising morning and evening every day.

After that, I left Ibaraki to return to the forestry work in Wakayama and interrupted the practice, and was secretly frustrated by the lack of a suitable dojo nearby. In that situation, I happened to come across the term "Indian martial arts," which intrigued me greatly.

What’s the hell, Indian martial arts are?

Having spent a total of more than 20 months in India, I felt that there was no greater mismatch between Indians and martial arts training. How in the world could one do such strenuous exercise in such a heat climate like India?

What appears to be a lazy Indian lifestyle to Japanese eyes at first glance is an adaptation to the hot climate in fact. If they worked there as hard as we do in Japan, they would quickly be overheated and fell. 

I wondered if it was possible to practice martial arts in such a place. The aikido dojo I belonged to was famous for its rigorous training, so I could not easily connect that image with the image of India.

With various questions dancing around in my head, I prepared to record a video of the program and waited for it to start.

The young actor visited Cochin in the state of Kerala. Located in the southernmost part of India, this state was known for its scenic beauty, sandwiched between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, full of water and greenery. 

Along with the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, it was one of my favourite states, and I remember travelling all over it for several weeks. But was there such a thing as martial arts in Kerala?

The show host explained that Kalarippayattu is a traditional martial art of Kerala and was once shown in a TV commercial where a 3-meter-high suspended ball was lightly kicked up. As soon as I heard this, my memory began to tingle. I remember seeing a vivid commercial in my boyhood, with the catchphrase, "Oh no, he’s a bird man!” What was that commercial about?

The show went on regardless of my thoughts. And suddenly, a group of half-naked men began to perform stick practice in a dojo.

In the dojo where I studied aikido, training was conducted with a trinity of sword, stick, and empty-hand techniques. This was my first encounter with the stick since I had never practised martial arts before, and I was fascinated by it. Swords and body art each have their own flavour. But it was stick fighting that grabbed my soul the most.

And now, the Indian stick technique that unfolds on the screen, was really strange.

Grabbing the middle of a stick as tall as he is, he rotates it with one hand. Without stopping the rotation, he changes hands from his right hand to his left, and from his left hand to his right, and just keeps spinning it around his body in all directions.

At first glance, it is difficult to understand how they do it. The young actor, who was given a stick to hold, tried to imitate the senior student’s moves. But he could not get it right and hit himself in the head many times with his own stick. 

But the moves of stick spinning played by the brown-skinned men were so beautiful that it looked as if a big rotating wheel was flying around their bodies.

At that moment, like a revelation, I had an intuition.

This must be a stick art that symbolizes the rotation of the Dharma Chakra!

It was an intuition completely unfounded, yet full of conviction.

I had no way of knowing at the time that this would be the beginning of an incredibly long and far journey. I just kept replaying the beautiful wheel created by the trajectory of the spinning rod over and over in my mind.