Bandeep Singh is India’s best photographer of his generation blessed with divine sight; he sees in the way very few can. He’s not doped but high on life. The genius of the man lies in his eyes.
And Bandeep has the uncanny ability to capture his vision by a camera, which is an extension of his eyes. He hones the images and makes the occult accessible to all and sundry. His pictures than become an experience, manifesting the unmanifest. The evidence is his show Bhasmang—The way of the Naga Sadhus.
I set out to describe something that doesn't lend itself to words. Bandeep’s eye—the bridge between the mortal and the occult.
It is difficult to describe the indescribable, but Bandeep’s pictures came to my rescue. I have picked a few to interpret. It was not easy because every time I walked through the show ‘Bhasmang’ that has 34 images of the Naga Sadhus, a different image would enthrall me, and struck a chord. Therefore, my choice is not hierarchical but random in nature. And randomness is the order of the universe epitomised by the life of a Naga Sadhu.
Bandeep’s eye has demystified the mystics.
A visual journey into an age-old tradition where the naked sadhus ‘wear infinity’ like a blanket, as Bandeep puts it, symbolised by smearing bhasmang—the ash of a yagana (the holy fire). Ash is real, rest is maya (illusion).
Soaking in images, beautifully radical and radically beautiful, I get a glimpse of how Bandeep sees. And his area of enquiry, the cult of the Naga Sadhus was challenging, to put it mildly, for they are not models, and they do and do not do things for no rational reasons. Bandeep was able to make them face the camera. This is easier said than done. He’s a bit of a charmer too. The Nagas Sadhus would be equally amazed to see these images like all of us.
Dispossession is the greatest possession they say, a rich man is endowed with santosh dhan or contentment. The way of the Naga Sadhus is a way of life that makes them the richest people, for they don’t have a need, or greed, or ambition, are emaciated from the conditionality of living a mortal life in a social normative set up.
They shun clothes and live in the present moment that extends over a lifetime. They play the game without being a player. They have nothing to gain or lose. They celebrate their being in sync with the cosmic energy, epitomise and dissolve all paradoxes at the same time. They are the followers of Shiva. And to capture them in the way Bandeep did, one has to be a bit of Naga oneself. Fairly evolved, I know for sure he's a Sufi.
I have been documenting people in the nude by way of pencil sketches for more than two decades, and I have come to understand that my subjects reveal a part of me to me in their bareness.
When I look at the images of the naked sages, young and old, brawny or degenerating, I see the beauty that is devoid of vanity, experiential, intriguing, provocative, riveting, and humbling as well. I see their dynamic energy as a static spectacle. And it’s not about me anymore, but more. Bandeep’s eye, I reemphasise, has demystified the mystics.
Iconic are these images, will remain synonymous with the Naga-hood in the years to come. A visual journey into an age-old tradition where the naked sadhus ‘wear infinity’ like a blanket, as Bandeep puts it, symbolised by smearing bhasma—the ash of a yagana (the holy fire), which can also be a funeral pyre. Ash is real, rest is maya (illusion). The Naga Sadhus are aggressive because they detest attachments. The moment they feel for a thing or a person, or a sentiment, they rebuff it, rather vehemently. Emaciation from the worldly attachments engages them with the divine.
Reality is malleable, one can manipulate reality by smoking pot, for instance, one of the many ways they do it. “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one,” was famously said by Albert Einstein. The Nagas have known it for centuries. The reality in their mind is very difficult to fathom, these images, however, give you a sense of illusionary reality.
In the stillness of their consciousness, the Naga Sadhus witness the cosmos perform for them. I’m reminded of Fritjof Capra’s seminal book The Tao of Physics, where he explains that the metaphor of the cosmic dance—which is symbolised the Nataraja—thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics. Bandeep’s eye has accomplished something akin.
The picture of an aged Naga Sadhu raising his right arm skyward; the wrinkles on his emaciated hands and face has a pattern, fractal, and to me looks like the bark of a dead tree. Combustible like dry wood. Yarning to be converted into bhasma. Eyes radiating light, like a bright star in the womb of deep cosmic darkness, hope in adversity, vitality in the numbness. There’s something trippy about the image, something that I have seen, perhaps experienced, and yet can’t put a finger to it. The whole is in the hole of his eye socket. The Ananta (limitless) is confined in a sphere, a glimpse of the divine.
There’s beauty in the bareness. Austerity and youth and bhasma make a sculpture, for it calcifies in your mind. If Michelangelo was Indian, this would be his David. To me he’s moon personified. On another occasion, it seemed like alluring kaal (death) manifesting as lifeforce.
The dynamics of a soul relinquishing an old body to enter a new, the cycle of karma is the force behind. And the uncertainty is the possibility depicted by the dark, the hand extends to embrace uncertainty that has the possibility of renunciation or the moksha. The old life, as it fades away, prepares and propels a new life for another cycle of karma, a bit sceptical yet encouraging. The glitter in the eye is hope; bhasma has a dynamic vitality, only symbolising fallibility, mortality.
This is a powerful image. Mortal life is an intermingling of positivity and negativity, is either driven by love or fear, and the two aspects are so beautifully depicted in this picture. A naga sadhu, perhaps, is able to reconcile the two, annihilate the duality, into innate nothingness—dynamic.
I call negativity fear and positivity is love to me. Fear is always so close to you, like a monkey on your back. To act is to activate it, and the stillness of divine engagement makes fear robust love. Distractions are alluring, engagement has a high threshold, to cross it requires a certain discipline, unflinching faith in the good when surmounted by fear.
And love is the absence of fear, but in this mortal life, fear is lurking around, waiting to pounce at the slightest opportunity. And sometimes, when conflicted, not acting is a great action. I see the poise of the dark sage so vitalising, darkness visible, festive tranquility. I love this image for it gives a foresight: evil is egotistical and love is annihilation of ego. Yet, they find a way to coexist.
Perhaps, now I see what Bandeep saw. The door of perception has to be open to see what he saw. Bandeep’s perception, it is fairly obvious, has no doors.
Here there's a mergence of the subject with the context--the Naga Sadhu with the tree and surroundings. And if you look intently at the context, you see the subject variously, multiple Naga Sadhus. And the subject, the body of the Naga Sadhu seems like an arid landscape, embodies the whole context and more.
Nakedness here seems so authentic. In this bareness, you see the same life-force flowing in the Naga Sadhu and the tree and the rest. The subject and the context are so distinctively similar, merging to become one.
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