A Daily Round of Rituals For Boys Becoming Priests

NEW DELHI Hidden in a tightly packed neighborhood of middle-class condominiums, cheap Chinese restaurants and garment sweatshops is a thriving 3,500-year-old Hindu tradition. It is a residential school that teaches young boys the art of chanting Hindu verses in classical Sanskrit and trains them to become Hindu priests. For eight years, they study religious rituals without material distractions.

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The day begins for these 27 boys at 4:45 a.m., when the lights are switched on in the basement, where they sleep on jute floor mats. When a supervisor calls out, they uncurl lazily under the sheets and stretch. Some go back to sleep, while others stare at the floor vacantly for a few minutes.

Sriram Sharma, a thin 13-year-old with large eyes and a shy smile, folds his sheet and mat and stacks them on the open stone shelf on the wall. He then steps tentatively into the cold shower and comes out shivering and chanting under his breath.

Sriram has lived at the school for more than two years, memorizing and reciting the hymns from the Hindu religion's oldest texts, called the Vedas. After six more years of training at the School of Vedas, he will become a Hindu priest who can perform prayer rituals involving fire worship and rhythmic incantations. He also studies math, English and Hindi for an hour each day.

"The Vedas contain the sacred knowledge of Hindu religion and were passed down orally by sages," Sriram says, standing in front of a mirror hung on a fading pink wall. He wears a white wraparound but is bare-chested and barefoot. In his palm, he grinds fragrant sandalwood, with which he cautiously draws a long U-shape on his forehead in a sign of devotion.

"I have to get the shape right. It is an important tradition," he explains as he drags his thumb up his forehead. Then he takes red vermilion powder and stamps a dot between his brows.

White threads hang diagonally from his bare shoulder like a sash, and a tiny tuft of hair is knotted at the back of his shaved head. Sriram is part of the old, unbroken chanting tradition that UNESCO, in 2003, proclaimed a masterpiece of "the oral and intangible heritage of humanity."

"Learning the Vedas is hard," Sriram says, massaging his tuft with coconut oil before sitting down to chant the first prayer of the day, around 6:30 a.m. "At first, the school felt like a jail. I missed my mother and cried for weeks, but now this is home."

Soon the hall resounds with chanting, loud enough to wake the neighborhood. The boys cannot understand what they chant because the meaning of the hymns will be taught only after eight years of memorizing the procedures of Hindu rituals.

A little boy sitting next to Sriram is having a bad start. He is seized by a bout of hiccups during the chanting but refuses to take a break.

The boys follow a grueling routine of do's and don'ts -- they cook and eat only vegetarian food, wash their own clothes by hand, cannot call or visit their families, cannot take medicine except for a physical injury, and cannot watch television. Parents cannot bring any gifts.

The teacher, a bearded middle-age man who set up the school 11 years ago, walks in to inspect their performance. He pauses in front of each boy, listens carefully and nods.