al-Ghazali - The Alchemist of Happiness

"God caused my tongue to dry up, so that I was incapable of lecturing. Each day I tried hard to speak so as to please my students, but my tongue would not utter a single word, nor could I accomplish anything at all." This is how al-Ghazali described one of the symptoms of the profound existential and spiritual crisis that he went through at the age of 36. Besides this loss of speech, he also fell sick, and the doctors were baffled. They simply said that the illness lay in his soul and not in his body. Nobody could do anything to help him – not even his brother Ahmed al-Ghazali, a Sufi mystic and poet, who was close to him.

‘al-Ghazali – The Alchemist of Happiness’ is a remarkable documentary, or rather a creative docu-narrative directed by Ovidio Salazar that examines the life of this man who was the leading intellectual of his time and is considered amongst the most influential thinkers of humanity. His name was Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali - aka Algazel to the western world. The title derives from a work by al-Ghazali, ‘The Alchemy of Happiness.’ The reason why I say this documentary is remarkable is because it deals with a subject that is very difficult to deal with – the inner transformation of a human being. And it does so quite well. It does not delve deeply into any intricacies or attempt a biographical account of his life. It portrays him as a human being, his concerns in life, his crisis and how he cured himself by finding himself and experiencing the mystical union with God that the Sufis spoke about. It also brings out very well his relevance for us – because he too lived in times of great confusion, just as our modern times are also confusing in terms of the choices we have to make and the path we have to follow. His was also a time when established religion, becoming increasingly violent, radical and splintered, held no meaning for him as a person seeking the realization of truth or the understanding of things are they really are. Interspersed in the documentary are interviews with contemporary scholars of Islam, al-Ghazali and his era, which are insightful.

Ghazali was born in the city of Tus, Khorasan, and lived from 1058-1111. The Islamic civilization was then the most advanced in the world – the medieval renaissance of the western world was still far away. Even as a child, he was an intellectual prodigy and a seeker of truth. As he says, “From an early age I constantly thirsted for a grasp of things as they really are. For me this was something instinctive, a part of my God given nature, a matter of temperament, and not of my choice or contrivance.” He studied in Tus under a caretaker with whom he was left as a child upon his father’s death & later in Nishapur under a leading scholar and intellectual of his time. He exhausted all the books and intellectual possibilities of his time. He grew up to become the most prominent jurist, theologist, mathematician, philosopher, scholar and intellectual of his times. His stature was such that people called him the “Proof of Islam.” Gaining the patronage of a Vazir called Nizam al-Mulk and the Caliph of Baghdad, he was asked to head the Nizammiyah University in Baghdad. He was a man who could win any debate on any topic under the sun. Yet, it was this very same man who was also deeply aware of the futility of all debate, because it is about the ego and its self-aggrandizement. Two people could speak, and speak sense, only if both were together concerned with finding out what is true. Certain events in his life coupled with his own realization of how his knowledge and his personality were just a mask hiding his ignorance and darkness led to a crisis in his life.

Try to imagine what it must have been like for him. The most eloquent speaker, the intellectual leader whom to hear hundreds gathered, the advisor to Kings, the social reformer who attempted to lead his society towards sanity and unity, realized that he was ignorant of his own self. What a pitiable condition he must have been reduced to – his tongue could not utter a single word! And that was just an outer symptom of the inner crisis. The documentary then follows his journey briefly as he left Baghdad to become a Sufi and attained self-realization. I say briefly, because it was primarily an inner journey than an outward one, and that inner journey cannot really be followed. In his later years, Ghazali returned to Baghdad and his family and also taught for a while.

Making this documentary and following al-Ghazali’s journey, was like a journey that Ovidio Salazar the director undertook. As he says, “The afterlife approaches and this world passes by. The journey is long but the provisions are scant, and the danger is great. Having set out on this journey to discover more about Ghazali and to dispel some of my own doubts, I have come to realize that the certainty of knowledge lies in the taste of it. And while not achieving Ghazali’s certainty, at least I am beginning to understand what I need for this path.”

I hope that this write-up or review of the documentary interests whoever is reading this to watch it. For me, above everything else, it was a reminder of what needs to be my ultimate concern as a human being.


Some Links:
Information about the documentary on IMDB
Reviews on IMDB
The Heart and Mind of al-Ghazali
al-Ghazali – Wikipedia article
‘The Alchemy of Happiness”

Trek to Sudhagad

Yours truly went on another solo trek on a Saturday (July 7) to Sudhagad. Ascent from Thakurwadi & Descent to Dhondse. I was too eager to do this trek & so did it solo in 1 day as could not spare Sunday. However, I would recommend anyone else to do it as a 2 day trek & preferably in a group. Just a day would not do justice to this beautiful destination. If you have 3 days, then Sarasgad, Khadsamble caves & Thanale caves can also be done. Or you can just stay on the plateau atop Sudhagad - nice place & one can find shelter in the wada or in the Bhoraidevi temple. Only 1 family from Thakurwadi has a hut near the wada - when I went there, just an old woman & her grandson were there. Advisable to carry your own stuff if you want freshly cooked food - don't count on being able to find someone to cook.

Lot of travel involved in reaching base village. Reach Panvel or Pen first. From there take a bus to Pali - confirm that bus is going to 'Sudhagad Pali' 'cos there are other places also called Pali. Buses to & from Pali to Thakurwadi & Dhonse are available approximately every 1 - 1.5 hrs. There is a bus from Dhondse to Thane at 4.00 in evening - good for return, else one would have to change bus 2 times. Lots of transport to Mumbai from Thane, Pen or Panvel.

Don't have time to do a more detailed write-up - might post more details later. Happy trekking!

Trek to Kohoj

I still have to scratch my hands and feet now and then due to the mosquito bites on the trek. The memories of the trek too are still quite fresh and so I thought I’d do a write-up on it right away.

With no one else being willing or able to take leave, I had to cancel my plans of a 3 or 4 day trek this week. I decided to do a solo trek on July 04, which was a holiday for me due to it being the US Independence Day. I decided upon Kohoj as the destination since I could travel to Palghar on the western line easily after work, and also because it affords a bit of shelter at the top. Besides, since I would be trekking without any sleep after work, I thought an easier trek would be ideal.

I left office at 0245 and took the 0310 drop to Vasai. The Sumo dropped me at Vasai station by 0415. After buying the tickets to Virar & Palghar, I stood on the platform for a while not knowing when the first Virar local would arrive. After a while the indicator showed 0519 as the arrival time. Since I had another 35 minutes, I read the Sahyadri Companion again for a description of the route to the top.

The local reached Virar by 0535. I did not enquire immediately about where the shuttle train to Dahanu would be available and missed the first one at 0540. The next one was at 0630. Lesson well learnt. I went out to have some potato bhajia and chai and again killed some time on the station. It was quite crowded even at this hour, with college boys and girls, office goers and tradesmen. I felt a bit funny observing all these people and wondering what they would be doing all day long while I spent the day on some remote fort / mountain that they must’ve never even heard of.

The next shuttle at 0630 was not crowded and I found a place to sit. The scene around changed drastically within a minute or two of leaving Virar behind. There was no smell of human excrement and no ugly buildings visible through the window. I stood by the gate after Vaitarna station. This area has the Vaitarna lake which is one of the sources of water supply for Mumbai. As Saphale approached, Tandulwadi was visible on the right. This is another beautiful and easy trek. It started raining and the doors had to be shut. The overcast sky with layers clouds in various shades of gray seemed to be promising me a very wet day ahead.

It had stopped raining by the time I reached Palghar at 0710. The ST stand is opposite the station. Any bus going in the direction of Thane or Kalyan via Hamirapur stops at Nane too since it is located further along the same road. I boarded a bus at 0730. It passed through some hills reaching Manor at 0800. Mastan Naka on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway is just 2 kms from here. In case a bus to Nane is not available soon enough, one can take another bus or a shared rickshaw (a tamtam / vikram) to Manor. From here, a shared rickshaw to Nane, Vaghote or Ambit would be easily available. These are the 3 villages from which the 3 different routes to the top of Kohoj begin. Vaghote & Ambit are on the road to Wada, while Nane is on a different road going via Hamirapur village.

From Mastan Naka the bus took a right on the highway and soon turned left again going off the highway. A prominent mountain became visible on the right now and I wondered if that was Kohoj. I reached Nane by 0830. The spur of a longish hill below Kohoj ends right in the village. Kohoj with its two pinnacles at the top was also visible in full. On the right of the road, at quite a distance, 4 – 5 other mountains were visible. The only one of these that I could identify was Kamandurg with its twin peaks that I had climbed last year. I walked in the direction of the departed bus & asked a villager how further the route to Kohoj began. He said it would be difficult for me to find the route going to the base of the mountain where climb began since there were lots of paths criss-crossing and planted fields in the monsoon. The prominent route beginning on the left after walking away from the village no longer exists. I asked if he knew anyone who would be willing to come with me for a part of the way. He called out to someone and asked him to go with me. Saying thanks, I departed the other villager. We started chatting and he asked me how come I had come all alone, whether I loved going to mountains and forts, where I stayed, what I did for a living etc. He told me of a boy who too had come alone earlier, and how he had a map & a book with photos and did not need any directions. Then, he told me of a doctor from some Vedanta association who loved Kohoj so much that he kept coming there alone often, spending days and weeks at a stretch on the mountain top and the village. He said he came there for ekanta and did tapasya up there. Once he had stayed for 3-4 months, surviving on water at the top, barely eating anything and coming down to the village when he felt very hungry. At another time, he had come with his wife too. It sure made me wonder what she thought of all this. Just before we turned left off the road and into the fields, he pointed out a half-constructed house belonging the doctor who had bought some land in the village.

The hill below Kohoj was on our left now and we were approximately walking in the direction of the col which connects Kohoj and the hill. I learnt from the villager that they mostly did subsistence farming out there. Some industries had come up in the area, and some people worked there. Others worked in Vasai or Palghar. There were many people from the village who had studied up to graduation level. Some had done MA too. Then, he told of how the tribals had usurped many small plots of land that actually belonged to the government. I kept quiet since he was probably telling only his side of the story; there seemed to be some turbulence between the tribals and the non-tribals in the village. We went in different direction once, and had to ask another villager who pointed out the right path through the fields leading to a dam. This was a very small dam, built by the government. The forest department too had done a lot of reforestation, he said. I could see that there were a lot of trees, on the mountain as well as in between the small plots on land on the plains. He was to leave me till the dam, but he walked a bit further ahead since there were more fields and still some criss-crossing paths. He left me at a point where the small climb to the col began. (In stead of walking through the fields, one can also climb the hill from the village itself, and walk along its top, climbing up and down in parts, till one reaches the col. That would, of course, take more time.) I paid him Rs. 30 and he seemed happy with the amount.

I began the climb at 0915. Reaching the col, one has to turn right and keep walking along the spur of the ridge that descends from the top of Kohoj. The 2 pinnacles at the top are always visible on the left. Except in parts, the path is quite prominently visible here even in the monsoon. I stopped at a point along this path to change into my track pants; it was windy here and so the mosquitoes would not bother me much. After climbing over a small hillock, one soon reaches a plateau. Walking straight across this plateau, one finds the path going a little to the right. As per my reading, after about 10 minutes one comes across a path on the right coming from Vaghote. From that point, the 2 paths meet and turning left begin climbing the way to Kohoj. I must not have been attentive ‘cos I missed seeing this path. After a climb of about 15 minutes one reaches the machi or plateau of the fort. There is a small and easy rock patch just before one reaches this smaller plateau from which the top of Kohoj seems very close now. Off the path, on the left, there is a small pond and a renovated Shiva temple further ahead. The temple has just a somewhat broken shivling inside which seems to date back to the times when the fort was constructed. I rested near the pond and had my first drink of water since beginning the trek here; also had some snacks since I was a bit hungry. The pond’s water is not potable. There are also ‘7 interlocked tanks’ as described in the Sahyadri Companion whose water is again not potable.

Near the temple, I met a tribal man and 2 girls who were collecting mollusks. He smiled as I said “Namaskar” but seemed eager to get along with collecting mollusks, so we didn’t talk much.

From the Shiva temple, there is a path that leads straight up to the top in 10-15 minutes. There is another path that goes to the right, encircling the base of the top while gently climbing up. Following this path, one comes across what seems to be a part the wall of the fort dating back to 800 AD which now look like just a heap of rather shapeless stones. After this, on the right one sees a cairn like rock formation about 20-25 feet in height. From here, the nagnath lingi or pinnacle is visible. The path descending steeply down to Ambit village also begins here. I climbed up the rock formation and sat the top for a while to admire the almost 360 degree view from the top. However, I found myself dozing off and half-afraid that I would fall off, I climbed down. I had already decided that I would descend by this route.

Going back to the path, it then turns left, and soon joins the path that comes straight up from the Shiva temple. The cairn like rock formation near which the path descending to Ambit begins is actually on a small hillock to the right of the Kohoj top (visible on the left from the top). Passing through the remnants of the bastion reconstructed by the Portuguese, one reaches the top very soon.

I reached the top at 1145 – in 3 hours and at a very relaxed pace with stops in between. At a fast pace, it is easily doable in 75-90 minutes even in the monsoons. It started raining heavily now, and so I took shelter inside the Hanuman temple that has barely enough space for 1 person to sit comfortably. I finished the remaining theplas, biscuits & til chikki while it rained. The rain stopped after a while but it was still a bit foggy – I was in the clouds that I had seen from the village below.


There are 2 pinnacles at the top, of which the one on the right is shaped like a human or a rather stout scarecrow. I dumped my bag at the base of this one and tried climbing up it from the left side. The initial part is easy but one needs to be a bit careful at the end. I reached the top soon, and sat on the head of the scarecrow. But it started raining immediately and I had to climb down to the shoulder. It suddenly got very windy too and the rain was lashing strongly. I hid behind the head on the other side since the wind was coming from the opposite direction. There was just enough space for one person to sit and I held the head for support hoping that it would not fall on me, or that the scarecrow would not get decapitated by a bolt of lightning. Since the wind and rain did not stop for 5 minutes, I felt worried about my climbing down. Presently, it stopped and so I immediately decided not to wait or sit further at the top of the pinnacle and in stead climb down. It was a bit more tricky to climb down but I managed by finding 1-2 good footholds. As soon as I finished this, it started raining again, but the rest of the climbing down was easy. I found my bag all soaked and taking it went into the hanuman temple again. The rain stopped again in a few minutes and so leaving my bag in the temple I went out to explore the fort.

There absolutely nothing left of the original fort as such, except perhaps the 3 water tanks and the somewhat broken shivling in the mandir on the plateau below. The fort was originally constructed sometime in 800 AD, probably by Bhojraja of the Shilahar dynasty, and around the same time as Kamandurg was constructed. Nothing is known of its history since then till the time the Portuguese renovated it. A small part of the bastion and a few steps leading to the top are the only remnants of it. It was controlled by the Marathas for while till the British finally captured it. There are no canons visible at the top. All of them have probably been buried in the sand by nature. The villager I met below said that one of the canons has been installed on a kind of pedestal in the village. They had simply rolled it off the top of Kohoj, 2-3 times, in parts, ‘cos it is not a straight fall. Then 30-35 men carried it into the village.

It does not take long to explore the top of the fort – perhaps 15-20 minutes at the most. There is a temple dedicated to Krishna at one end. Kohoj is said to be the only fort with a Krishna temple on top. The idols inside didn’t seem too old for they were quite crude as compared to the delicate, although broken, shivling. Same with the rock-carving of Hanuman which was again quite crude.

I encircled the other pinnacle and found that it was easily climbable from one side. I climbed up this one too since it had more space to sit at the top – 2-3 people can sit easily. I sat there for almost an hour and a half with the wind blowing strongly and the rain lashing me strongly as it came and went in spurts. The rain was coming from the clouds far above. I was witnessing a curious spectacle. The string wind was blowing the lower clouds in which I was sitting in the direction of the central or main Sahyadris. Every now and then, after a big cloud as blown away, the visibility became clear and the entire region in the front, on the right and down below right up to fields and the road was visible. When it was less windy, the sound of vehicles miles below was clearly audible – the horns, the sound made by the tires of heavy vehicles. No human voices, of course. The vehicles looked like a few ants crawling in a line. As the wind blew the grass, in some patches it looked like a river of green flowing upwards. As another groups of clouds was blown in, the visibility reduced again to about 25 – 35 feet. These were very light, fluffy clouds with not much moisture in them. Sitting at the top on the pinnacle on the left, the other human shaped pinnacle looked a bit eerie in the reduced visibility. It would have made a good photograph – but I was not carrying any camera.

It felt very peaceful sitting all alone at the top, with not a single other person visible anywhere on the mountain. Sitting there in the midst of nature, although a lot of thoughts passed through my mind, it was still very calm. I felt I did need not any other thing at all. I could have sat there for hours if I did not have to climb down – in spite of the strong wind and the lashing rains.

I climbed down at about 1430. The largest water tank at the top has potable water. I drank some water here and refilled the empty bottles. Began the descent as 1445 after spending a great 3 hours at the top. I climbed down in 5 minutes to the Shiva temple and then climbed to the cairn like formation from where the path descending to Ambit began. Soon after it begins, it forks into 2 paths. The one on the right leads to the small col connecting the nagnath lingi and kohoj. From below, it looks as though the lingi is part of the contiguous structure of Kohoj. This path can be used by rock-climbers wanting to climb the pinnacle. I took the path on the left that descends steeply through quite a thick jungle. I sure felt better knowing that there was no wildlife in this jungle. The path is overgrown and strewn with leaves in some parts and there are boulders and rocks in parts which make it seems as though the path ends suddenly. After a steep and quick descent of about 30 - 40 minutes, during which a stream flowing down the mountain was always on my left, I reached a point where I had to cross over the stream. Crossing over, I dropped by sack on some rocks and decided to take a bath and some rest. As I removed my shoes and dipped my feet in the flowing water, it seemed to take away half of the tiredness in them in 1 or 2 minutes. Finding a point where the stream flowing down made a small waterfall, I stripped and had a bath in the buff. It felt very refreshing. After changing into a pair of dry clothes, I continued the descent with the stream now on my right. Another descent of 15 minutes brought me to a point where the descending path met a broad path coming from the right and descending gently to the left. This is where the jungle to almost ended. Turning left, I followed the broader path with a village visible further on the right. I guessed this was Ambit. I ought to have found some path turning right and leading to Ambit, but I guess I missed this as I kept following the broad path that looked prominent. It ended abruptly in some fields that were fenced. Stepping over the fence, I walked along the bunds of the fields and reached a hut. An old woman here told me I had left Ambit behind. I saw another path from the hut which seemed to lead towards the road and confirming this I followed that path to reach the road in another 10 minutes.

As I hit this road which went to Wada, Ambit was further down on the right and Mastan Naka was on the left. Within 2 minutes I got a tamtam that took me to Mastan Naka. I thought of having some chai and nashta here but I saw a bus to Palghar coming and stretched my hand asking it to stop. I was lucky again. One can also take a tamtam right up to Manor from Ambit, and then find many buses, jeeps or rickshaws to Palghar. The bus took me to Palghar in 30 minutes, from where I took the 1840 shuttle to Virar after a wait of 40 minutes. The shuttle was quite crowded since the passenger trains plying between Mumbai & Valsad, Surat etc were irregular.

At Virar, I incidentally met some colleagues returning from a picnic and we together a local to Andheri. Reaching Andheri by 2000, I was home by 2030.

Trek Expenses:
Vasai – Virar local Train – 4
Virar – Palghar Return ticket – 20
Chai & Nashta at Palghar – 12.50
Palghar – Nane ST bus – 23
Villager at Nane – 30
Tamtam from Ambit - Mastan Naka – 5
Mastan Naka – Palghar ST bus – 15
Virar – Andheri local – 10
Andheri – Vijaynagar, Marol rickshaw – 43

Total – Rs. 162.50/-

Calvin and Hobbes