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Macabre salvation

Pankaj Purohit talks to Amrita Madhukalya about the aghoris in his documentary, Belly Of The Tantra

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Stills from Pankaj Purohit’s 2012 documentary Belly Of The Tantra
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When you are more than 200 kilometres away from civilisation with a woman in the midst of a bunch of fanatics who are beating a dead body, you don't say no," says director Pankaj Purohit, as he recollects the time he drank his own urine. Surrounded by crazed aghoris, who they were secretly trying to shoot on camera, Purohit and his producer Babita Modgil had no option but to do as told. The filmmaker remembers the scene in vivid detail. In the midst of a trance, the excited and drunk aghoris were beating the dead body of a friend so that he would be free of disease in his next birth.

The 2012 documentary Belly Of The Tantra was Purohit's way of unravelling the fascinating world of the "Shiva-crazy, flesh-eating, vagina-worshipping" aghoris. "When I was 15, my orthodox father asked me to touch the feet of a foul-smelling, yellow-toothed aghori. That image stayed with me. It took me 15 years to get it out from my system," says 36-year-old Purohit, who comes from a staunch Brahmin family. He went to the US to study filmmaking at the University of California, but returned to India in November 2011 to make Belly Of The Tantra.

In a striking moment from the 70-minute documentary, an aghori pockets a bone from a burning pyre. "This femur is very important for mantras," he says, adding that he will eat the flesh off the bone. In yet another scene, an aghori in a trance during the Ambubachi Mela, held annually at the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, bites off the head of a pigeon before he chomps on it.

Aghoris hate intrusion of normalcy in their lives, and most of them keep interactions with the outer world to a minimum. "They are attracted to anything which is dark and morbid and drum up a mad energy about that. You will surely do something unusual if you are surrounded by that kind of energy," says Purohit.

The documentary, publicly screened in India for the first time at NCPA last fortnight, was banned by censors for its extreme content. "There was frontal nudity, flesh-eating and animal sacrifice. Our censors will agree to their existence but not have that shown on screen," says Purohit. The documentary will also be screened at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi in July. It was screened at London's Portobello film festival and Portugal's Cine-Rebis film festival.

"I did not shave for three-four months and barely bathed. There is no other way. You cannot win over their trust if you are not one of them," says Purohit about the aghoris.

And it wasn't easy with a woman by his side. "There were many times when the chelas (assistants) of the babas tried to enter the dormitory to molest Babita. There was this time at Tarapith when drunk aghoris were spiralling out of control. I decided to stop shooting and come back to our hotel," says Purohit. Though few in number — two per 1,000 — there are women aghoris too, he discloses. On screen, you meet Durga Prasad, an Italian woman who has been an aghori for a while.

Purohit, who is now working on a movie on Buddhism, is trying to work out a wider release for the documentary.

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