It took 6 men to pull me out of the quicksand

It took six men to pull me out of the quicksand drums.jpg (30626 bytes)

Chapter Four - Part One

Before taking rest that night I wrung out my muddy dhoti and reflected on the latter part of the days activities. I'd certainly had a close call that afternoon.

Since some of the villages were not along the river bank, it was often necessary to go up the tributaries. It was difficult to work out our directions because the tributaries were very swampy. On this day, the captain had said that he would take us up the tributary in the small boat but we would have to stop sankirtana at a certain hour so he could guide the small boat back to the big one in the light.

We had left the boat in the afternoon, crossed the river, gone up a small stream and found ourselves in a huge swamp. A swamp is a pretty amazing place. There are stumps sticking out everywhere. Sometimes there is water, sometimes muck and you don't know really what's happening. But we crossed this area because we could see the smoke of the village and we knew in which direction to go. Finally, after some difficulty we arrived there. This village was very receptive to Krsna consciousness. We had a big pot of kichari to distribute. We had three devotee women with us, all good cooks, who prepared nice prasadam every day.

Well you know how it is on sankirtana! Sometimes it is so ecstatic that one just can't stop. That's what happened that night. We stayed too long. It was dark and the captain was furious.
"How do you expect me to take this boat back through the swamp to the main river?" he roared.
By this time the mosquitoes were out. They attacked in hundreds. As soon as you lifted your sleeve up, they blackened your arm. Not only that, these mosquitoes carried many dangerous diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever and we had forgotten to get any shots. We had to get back to the boat. We were very tired and the humidity was high. We hadn't eaten prasadam. We'd given it all out. This was the scene at about eight o'clock in the evening as we drifted further into the swamp.

We were still in the swamp one hour later, and the captain informed me that we were lost. You don't know what that means when you're in the middle of a swamp in the Amazon Jungle. Not knowing what to do I said, "Just go that way." But it was pitch black and as we travelled in the direction I had suggested, the swamp was getting thicker. We weren't escaping at all. The boat stopped. We were motionless.
The captain announced, "We're stuck. Somebody has to get out and push us off this sand bar."
I answered, "OK. You're the captain. You do it."
"I'm not getting out there," he said.
Understanding what was expected of me I put my right foot over the side. As soon as I put it in I could feel it being sucked under. In my mind it was like a demon sucking my foot. After a few seconds I realised that I had stepped into quicksand. Everything happened very quickly and so it is quite hard to describe. In my hasty effort to free myself I put my right hand in. But just like a fly caught in a spider's web, where every effort he makes to free himself results in him becoming more entangled, everything I did in those few short seconds just pulled me deeper and deeper into the quicksand. The left side of my body was in the boat but the right side was being sucked under with a force that I knew I couldn't resist.

With a voice loaded with panic, I began to scream out to the devotees.
"HARE KRSNA! PRABHUS! HARI BOL!"
It took the devotees a few seconds to figure out what was happening. As soon as they realised, they began to pull. It took six men to pull me out. I was trembling and broke out in a cold sweat.
"It's okay, Maharaja. You're all right. It's all over." I could near the devotees comforting me but I was in a mild state of shock and could not respond.

The force of pulling me out of the quicksand resulted in the boat becoming free and we started drifting away.

I asked the captain for his penlight and shone it in the direction of the quicksand. Have you ever been driving down the road at night when the light of the car shines in a cat's eyes? They flash. The same flashing was seen that night as I shone my flashlight on the water.
I asked, "Captain, did you see that?"
"Do it again," he said.
As I shone the light I heard the captain mutter, "Ah, jakara."
Jakara means alligator in Portuguese. On either side of the boat were two alligators.
The captain joked, "O Maharaja, you are a big devotee you would have made a big feast for the jakaras."
I wasn't laughing. He continued to explain that the alligators stake out near the quicksand which is usually near the side bank of the swamp. When an animal comes down to the water to drink, it will often fall into the quicksand. It is then that the alligators come. Their tails make them very powerful swimmers. They can kill just with their tails. They glide across the quicksand and bite their victims, taking them with them as they go. I wouldn't have had to worry about going under the quicksand. I would have been eaten by the jakaras.