The shrine has a mosque-like roof, white as a meringue. People, some in robes, walk among evergreen trees laden with jackfruit. It’s the rainy season in Bangladesh and everything is hot and wet. Muhammed Ali fixes us with a calm gaze beneath authoritarian eyebrows. Behind him, a woman sweeps around the grave of saint Lalon Shah and that of his mother. The two six-foot-long prisms are covered with patterned material and spicy smoke threads through latticed burners. More of Lalon’s disciples are buried outside the small mausoleum. Ali points out one of the graves. “My father lies there. I inherited the role of caretaker from him,” he says. He takes us to the main hall. We slip off our shoes and step onto cool, white stone. Inside, devotees recline in the midday heat. Women and children sit around bags of spicy peas and rotis, their saris the color of oak and red squirrels and emerald. Lalon Shah lived and taught here, in Kushtia, Bangladesh, throughout the 19^th century. He died in 1890 aged over 100 years old.

“Lalon was one of the most influential mystic saints of the Indian subcontinent. He inspired millions with his songs,” says Lalim Haque, a researcher and Lalon expert. “His lyrics are so profound. He has been able to touch the lives of not only people who have a taste for music but all people.” Haque said Lalon’s songs, especially when heard in their original Bangla, have the power to propel people to spiritual heights. Estimated to have composed thousands of songs, Lalon and his followers went on to influence 20th-century greats like Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagor, American poet Allan Ginsberg, and even Bob Dylan. To contemporary Bangladeshis, he’s like Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., and Eckhart Tolle rolled into one.

Outside the shrine, there is a park overlooked by a ten-foot portrait of Lalon. The air wafts of weed and tobacco. Rumana, a former lawyer, has been a full-time Baul for 22 years. She plants a clay pipe between her fingers, cups her hands and inhales. She is charismatic, intelligent, and, unlike many of her companions, reveals clean white teeth whenever she smiles, which is often. She can speak English but refuses to be interviewed until we come back with a translator, saying that Bengla is the only language she can use to describe these sacred things.

After returning with a translator, she tells us that she smokes weed every day to help focus and access a meditative state. “We believe that Lalon’s songs are as important as the verses in the Quran. In Islamic law people are obliged to recite verses from the Quran every day; similarly, we Bauls sing Lalon’s songs every day,” Rumana says. She exhales a plume of smoke and passes the pipe to a friend with a matted beard and bloodshot eyes. She picks up her ektara and starts to pluck, making up for her rudimentary singing talents with her sincerity. Her bearded companion calls for tea, prompting a sari-swathed woman in a nearby stall to bawl at her daughter, who jumps up and soon arrives with tiny cups of tea that would be unpalatably strong were it not for the large scoops of sugar.

Muhammed Ali places his teacup down on the shrine floor and strokes his beard. Behind him, a Baul group start to sing “A Strange Bird,” one of Lalon’s favorite songs. Below is the song translated by Azfar Hussain.

“Look, how a strange bird flits in and out of the cage!
…
O mind, you are a bird encaged! And of green sticks
Is your cage made, but it will be broken one day.
Lalon says: Open the cage, look how the bird wings away!”

Even though I don’t understand Bengla, the song touches my heart with its longing; it makes me want to rush over to someone and fling open my arms. There is no applause when it’s over, instead, the Bauls bless a finished song by praising the lord, saying “shai shai, shai shai.”

Contributors: Nathan Thompson, Jeremy Meek
Photographer & Videographer: Jeremy Meek, Nathan Thompson