Anjuna: the number of the BeastOn the trip to India in February, 2003 after the Mahasivaratri festival we visited Morjim, Northern Goa, and in the evening I and a guy from Saint-Petersburg went to Anjuna - the homeplace of the Goa-trance music. After the festival it felt like following Shiva telling me about the world and its people. It was about midnight. A motley crew gathered at the “Baba-Yoga” cafe: Igor from Saint-Pete, the owner of the cafe from Moscow, a handsome guy from Portugal and a girl in red. I was interviewing the owner for the film “Goa’s coast” and after that we were sitting chatting. Suddenly a strange guy sat down next to me-red with a red goatee-and started saying strange things. After a while I understood he tried to find out if I was with the yellow press that wrote bad things about Anjuna. I still remember one of the things he said. Later I had thought over it for quite a long time…I asked him wondering how they managed to live here without coming back to Russia - there had to be rich parents or something… The red guy with the goatee just said: “You must get rid of the number of the Beast inside yourself and everything’s gonna be all right”. Then he read me the chapter from the Bible saying about it. Meeting at the Indian EmbassyA few months after I came back home I was invited to the Indian Embassy for the presentation of a new edition of “Mahabharata” translated into Russian by N. R. Guseva - an indianist and ethnologist, ph.D. in history, a winner of the international award by J. Neru. She is the author of more than 150 scientific and popular publications on the culture of ancient India. She spent a year in India traveling all over the country. I asked her:“Are there such pujas where the spirit of a god, e.g. the Cobra, gets into a pilgrim?” “Yes” - said she, - “only it doesn’t get in, but the pilgrim shows it gets in.” |
| * - The revelation of St. John the Divine |
Shivaratri |