Mother Kali's Daughters

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MOTHER KALI’S DAUGHTERS

BY W.Q. FOXX

© W.Q Foxx 2013.

Photos © W.Q. Foxx

BARNCOTT PRESS

CONTENTS Chapter 1!

Chapter 2!

Chapter 3!

Chapter 4!

Chapter 5!

Chapter 6!

Chapter 7!

Chapter 8!

Chapter 9!

Chapter 10!

Chapter 11!

Chapter 12!

Chapter 13!

Chapter 14!

Chapter 15!

Chapter 16!

Chapter 17!

Chapter 18!

Chapter 19!

Chapter 20!

Chapter 21!

Chapter 22!

Chapter 23!

Chapter 24!

Chapter 25!

Chapter 26!

Chapter 27!

Chapter 28!

Chapter 29!

4 6 11 17 22 28 33 40 46 52 58 65 73 79 85 90 94 108 112 120 128 133 145 156 160 165 171 176 182

Chapter 30!

Chapter 31!

Chapter 32!

Chapter 33!

Chapter 34!

Chapter 35!

Chapter 36!

Chapter 37!

Chapter 38!

Chapter 39!

Chapter 40!

Chapter 41!

Chapter 42!

Chapter 43!

Chapter 44!

Chapter 45!

Chapter 46!

Chapter 47!

Chapter 48!

Chapter 49!

Chapter 50!

Chapter 51!

Chapter 52!

Chapter 53!

Chapter 54!

Videos!

About The Author !

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Chapter 1 As darkness heralded the age of Kaliyug, a powerful crystal disappeared from its throne on top a mountain peak in the Himalayas. It vanished into the unknown, and the future of the world was lost without its guidance. Lord God Shiva let the world spin out of control. The crystal was his sacred tool for mapping out the destiny of mankind. And for some mysterious reason Shiva had let it go. Perhaps, he wanted to give humanity the chance to decide its own destiny.

But as maya whirled through the darkness in confusion, and the dawn of a new era slowly appeared on the distant horizon, Shiva entrusted two witches, brewing a cauldron of magic oil, with the task of returning the crystal to its rightful place.

The two half-naked witches chanted magic incantations as they stirred their pot. They knew the importance of the assignment. They could make no mistakes. Everything had to be just perfect, or else confusion would take over, and nothing would exist, as it seemed.

So they magically manifested themselves into other forms and appeared on this plane of existence as a couple of earthly goddesses.

The suns rays glistened off the pieces of ice stuck in the crags between the rocks, and partially blinded the 1

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girl, as she surveyed her final approach to the top. It had been a long climb up the mountain, but she felt invigorated, rather than tired by the effort.

She’d had a dream about this journey. It came to her one night while camping on a desert plateau, outside Taos, New Mexico. She’d just visited the Hanuman temple with some friends. And after singing bhajans, they all retired to their camp on the desert.

That night, the girl’s sleep was colored with a vivid picture of her climbing to the top of Mt. Shasta. Upon awakening, she found herself constantly thinking of the mountain, and started drifting in its general direction.

It took the girl several weeks to reach it. And what finally brought her to the base of Mt. Shasta was a gathering of spiritual gypsies, who were assembling to celebrate the summer equinox.

There is a common belief in magic circles that all the sacred mountains in the world are bound together with one energy field. That’s why the gypsies chose the base of this mountain. They came to celebrate in the spiritual energy that would envelope it, as the earth moved from spring into summer. They would sing and dance and praise the Mother Goddess for all her blessings.

The girl had hooked up with a group of them in Santa Cruz, California. And when they offered her a ride to the festival in their converted school bus, she gladly accepted.

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This morning, she left her friends at the gathering, and climbed the mountain by herself. The trail was easy to follow most of the way up, and only got difficult nearer the top, as loose stones and ice constantly slid down the steep grades, to obscure the path.

But some divine power took her by the hand and guided her in the right direction. Before the sun had even reached half its journey across the sky, the girl found herself scrambling up the last few feet, to the top.

To prevent sliding back down the slope, the girl had to hold onto rocks jutting out from the side of the mountain. And just as she was about to pull herself over the crest, she grabbed something she thought was another rock. The weight of her body dislodged it from the mountain, and it came out in her hand. The girl nearly lost her balance and squealed, as she tottered on the edge of destruction.

Fate didn’t allow her to fall backwards though, and quickly pushed her to safety, because it had an important task for her to complete.

What the girl pulled from the top of Mt. Shasta was really Shiva’s sacred crystal. And now, it was her destiny to return it to its rightful place in the Himalayas. The girl didn’t know any of this though.

She had no knowledge of the crystal’s power. She only thought she’d found an amazing gift on top of the mountain!

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The girl held her treasure up to the light and examined it. A phantom pyramid appeared inside. She was thrilled at the sight!

“Om Nama Shiva!” she thanked God.

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Chapter 2 Sita applied the blue nail polish to her toes with the artistic intensity of a Picasso. She viewed the feet as very important in overall appearance, because they were the first point of romantic contact in her culture.

Lovers started with each other’s feet and slowly moved to other parts of the body. She wanted beautiful feet, but was dissatisfied with her own, because she thought them slightly too wide, and one toe was curled in. They weren’t perfect, so she colored her nails to divert attention from the flaws.

Physical beauty was most important to Sita, and the fashion magazines she read in the ladies’ beauty parlor set the standards of that beauty. Her daily vocabulary included such words as ‘lipstick’, ‘facial moisturizers’, ‘pedicures’ and ‘manicures’. She knew how to prevent wrinkles and which shades of mascara were currently in fashion. Her fascination with cosmetology had her constantly altering her appearance, so that she never looked the same two days in a row. Sometimes, she wore her hair in her face and at other times it was pulled back. It changed color to match her clothing, and that also had to match the color of her make-up. All these accessories to her natural appearance were very costly, and Sita had very little money. She needed to rely on gifts from friends 5

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and family to keep her in stock. Everyone knew what Sita wanted for her birthday.

And although Sita was judgmental about her own cosmetic beauty, and set standards that were difficult for her to keep, it’s not what she looked for in others.

She never expected anyone to be more beautiful than she was. The mirror on her bedroom wall told her that was impossible. This meant she had to be generous with her love, and she found herself being attracted to rather ordinary looking men. She classified Tamas in this group. He wasn’t a strong, handsome hero, but a rather soft, vulnerable man, plain and simple.

“How is that?” Sita asked her sister Maya for an evaluation of her work.

“If painted toes could catch a man, you would be married to the most handsome hero in Bollywood,” Maya complimented.

“I don’t think I want a Bollywood hero,” Sita surmised, as she repaired a flaw with a dab from her brush, “There are too many complications in such a romance. And complications lead to heart break!”

“What complications?” Maya demanded, not believing her sister wouldn’t jump at the chance of a Bollywood romance.

The girls lived in a fantasy world of make believe. It was like playing with dolls. The chances of them really meeting a movie hero were non-existent. Still, they talked as if they had a choice.

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“Well, for one thing, I’m very jealous,” Sita explained.

“I couldn’t watch him fall in love with another woman in one of his movies, so he would have to eliminate all romantic scenes. And I would also have to lock him up in the house, because I would want to keep him all to myself and not share him with anyone. That might create problems.”

“I think so,” Maya agreed, and then added as an afterthought, “but surely you would share him with his family!”

“Oh no, he would have to give up his family. He would have to cut off all contacts! Instead of his mama’s big babu he would be my little boy!”

Maya laughed at her sister. They always gave themselves regal positions whenever they fantasized their lives. They were Brahmin girls and deserved, through birth, to be treated better than the rest. It was God’s responsibility to provide this treatment, because God had hung the sacred thread across their father’s chest, and gave him the job of maintaining the ritual.

Their father was a pujari and their caste closest to God. But none of them could afford to be so fussy, and caste considerations had to be put aside, because there were three daughters living with a widowed mother, and none of them had a job. The family was surviving off their deceased father’s accumulated holiday pay and a few meager death benefits, with no fresh source of income. And the money would soon run out, 7

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because they had no control over their spending. If one sister made a purchase, the others needed to mirror her. Every time they stuck their hands into the money jar, it got emptier, and soon their fingers would scrape the bottom.

The pressure was on for them to find husbands. They had to do so before their situation deteriorated to such a pitiful condition that no reasonable prospects would want them. Most Bengali men of good standing expected something from their bride. Dowry might no longer be necessary, but prestige was very important.

“Is that why you are in love with Tamas?” Maya teased her sister, “Because he has nobody?”

“I’m not in love with him,” Sita denied with little emotion, “I hate Tamas.”

“You didn’t say that when he gave you the gold ear rings for your birthday!”

“Tamas is all fake drama,” Sita pretended she didn’t care for him at all, “He doesn’t really love me and only wants a girlfriend to impress people. He thinks it makes him look good, like he’s not a complete failure in life, because he has somebody.”

Maya felt that somehow Sita’s comment was an unintentional stab at her own situation, because she had nobody.

“He has never asked me to marry him!”

“Did you encourage him to do so?”

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“No, of course not,” Sita replied, as if in earnest, “I wouldn’t marry Tamas. He has no job, no money, nothing!”

“He has a foreign passport and can take you to far away places. You can see the world, shop in Paris, and dance under the Eiffel tower,” Maya pointed out.

“Tamas is America, not French, so if we went anywhere, it would probably be California,” Sita corrected her sister, without any real hope of going to America.

“Oh you poor girl, only California? You’ll have to tell your boyfriend he will have to do better than that!”

“A passport isn’t any good without money. It’s not an unlimited A.T.M. card. And besides, he’s not my boyfriend anymore, because I threw him out last night! Remember?”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because he’s unreliable, not of good character, and I hate him!”

She slumped back on the bed and buried her face in a pillow. It was her favorite way to escape the world and herself. She had lied about her feelings for Tamas, and now was afraid the lie might come true. And she didn’t want that to happen, because Sita really loved Tamas.

Her thoughts drifted to memories of them together.

They’d sat staring into each other’s eyes forever. Time no longer existed, as he’d hypnotized her with his gaze and took Sita out of her body, carrying her to 9

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the clouds. Their souls merged in flight and they transformed from two beings into one. Tamas was Sita’s first true love, and would have to be her only one, because Bengali girls were only allowed one real love in a lifetime. Sita had already chosen Tamas, so there could be no other.

She became frightened, and wondered why she’d been so hard on him, and had chased him away. As she remembered the incident, the anger rose again.

There was no excuse for what Tamas had done and he deserved to be punished. His behavior had insulted her, and she vowed she would not talk to him soon.

Let him suffer for a while longer. Love had nothing to do with it.

“Have a sweet,” Maya insisted, as she pulled the pillow off her sister’s face and stuffed the sticky ball into Sita’s mouth, performing an act of affection they’d shared all their lives. “It will make you feel better.”

Sita sat upright on the bed and chewed. It was one of her favorites. Tamas used to buy it for her, and the taste brought back sensations she would never forget.

The same taste had been on his lips the first time Tamas kissed her. She drifted back to that moment and felt his lips on hers. They’d only been there for a second, but the magic would last for all eternity. She tasted Tamas.

A sudden feeling of emptiness descended upon her.

A cold, icy wind blew through her. She came to the sudden realization that Tamas had always been so 10

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kind to her, and she had repaid his kindness with anger. His faults had never been intentional, and he was a very sweet,, loving man. Tears welled up inside Sita and she started to cry quietly to herself.

Maya noticed her tears and asked what was bothering her. Sita confessed to missing Tamas.

“But I thought you said you hated him?”

“I do!” she still insisted.

“Then why are you crying over him?” Maya couldn’t figure her sister out, because her emotions seemed to flip continuously, sometimes within the same breath.

“Because I love him,” Sita replied with genuine sadness.

Maya squirreled her face in disbelief. She hoped her sister wasn’t going to be weak, and would stand by her decision that she was finished with Tamas, because Sita had made a big scene, publicly throwing him out, and all the musicians were witnesses.

“You did the right thing,” Maya said with unwitting callousness. “Think of Tamas as no longer existing, as if her were dead, and will never return again, like our father.”

Those were strange words coming from Maya, because she had been least able to deal with their father’s death, locking herself in her room and refusing to come out for days; only being forced out of her dark hiding place by the necessity of a bowel movement, but immediately running back when she’d 11

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finished evacuation. Durga hadn’t been much better, and also hid in her room until the body was cremated.

It was Sita who’d taken on the responsibilities of death. There was no son to handle the duties. She even helped carry the body to the funeral pyre. It had felt cold to the touch, and in a final effort of desperation, she’d whispered into her dead father’s ear for him to sit up. She begged him to open his eyes, but he didn’t.

So she stood in silence as the flames consumed his body. She watched for hours, until there was not much left.

Tamas was there to comfort her, and took her home from the burning ground, his arm wrapped around her, as she sobbed on his chest. He’d devoted his time to her when she needed him most.

Now, Sita felt guilty for having forgotten. She felt stupid for her anger and wondered if Tamas would ever forgive her. She asked Maya this question.

“If he truly loves you, but I don’t think so, and feel that we will probably never see him again!”

Sita hoped not. She remembered how they’d first met. The sisters were folk musicians, who had built quite a reputation for themselves on the local scene as singers and dancers. Tamas was a foreign boy who sang Bengali folk songs, a somewhat rare species.

They were performing at a community festival when they noticed each other.

Sita’s attraction to Tamas was not sudden and overwhelming, but was gently spurned on by his 12

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interest in her. However, Tamas fell in love with Sita the first moment he saw her dance.

She was no ordinary girl, but was comprised of wild passion. The power of the goddess echoed in the rhythm of her drum, and her feet followed it to perfection. But it was the movement of her eyes that gave her dance a special quality. They were full of life, and invited the audience to participate with her.

Tamas did just that, and his spirit left his body, joining her’s on the stage. Sita felt his being enter her, but didn’t know to whom it belonged, until she searched the audience and found his eyes. Then she knew she was dancing with the foreign boy who sang Bengali folk songs. It was the start of their relationship.

There was no Cupid’s arrow, only the slow, steady, love song from Krishna’s flute. It crept up on her and wrapped her in its gentle arms.

Sita shivered as she revisited those memories, realizing her consort had entered her life and was now an intricate part of her fate. They had started a journey together and they would have to finish it as a couple too. There was no other choice. This parting of ways could only be temporary. Sita was sure of that.

“Om Nama Shiva!” she prayed.

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Chapter 3 The smell of human excrement permeated the air. It was a favorite place for passengers on the many trains that passed through the station to empty their bowels.

Flies constantly made trips between the feces that had built up between the tracks and the sleeping faces of the beggar children living with their mother on the railway platform.

The train to Varanasi was late, so Tamas had plenty of time to survey this scene and contemplate the inequalities of life. His personal drama had seemed so important before. He was sad, because Sita had kicked him out. He was confused, because he thought she no longer loved him. He was torn apart. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Tamas had cried all night when he got home from Sita’s thrashing. The sky cried with him. The rain fell heavily. He wanted to go back and beg for forgiveness, but doubt arose, because he had no new explanations.

Sita would have no reason to forgive him. Love wasn’t enough. She would only turn him away like a fool.

Maybe that’s what he was!

He started thinking about the issue and decided he had done nothing wrong. Yes, he’d been late, but that wasn’t his fault, and there was no ill intent on his part.

He’d even planned to sing that song for her. Tamas 14

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had offered her love, and she only returned abuse. He concluded he was a fool after all.

When morning came, Tamas hid himself in some bushes across the paddy from Sita’s house. He wanted to see her face one last time. She appeared at her bedroom window, brushing her hair, and singing to herself. She didn’t look sad. Tamas noticed she even laughed at something happening in the room. He imagined it might have been something one of her sisters had said, and wondered what it could have been that made his Sita smile.

Mosquitoes eventually found him in the bushes and convinced him to move on. He tried to withstand their assault until Sita left the window, but they were too much and bit him with ferocity.

Tamas didn’t know where he was going. All he realized was that he wanted to leave West Bengal and create a space between himself and the sorrow. He couldn’t stay there and be happy without Sita. So he went back to his room, packed a few possessions into a carry bag and went to the station.

He chose Varanasi as a destination while standing at the ticket window. He remembered reading it was the world’s oldest living city, and the Doon Express went there. It was scheduled to arrive in an hour. Tamas had to pay extra money to get such a late reservation on the train, but he didn’t mind.

There were several dogs on the station platform. One of them had part of an ear missing. He came and 15

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sniffed at Tamas, wanting some love, but Tamas noticed the dog was covered in fleas and other mysterious parasites, so he chased him away. Nothing could induce him to touch such a dog.

As the dog left Tamas, it proceeded to greet an old baba shuffling his way down the platform. The baba carried a trishul in one hand. It was made of a straight, but bumpy stick, with a brass trident fixed to the top, and tied with a pink flag. A serpent, formed from a jungle vine, crept up its shaft. He had a Shiva pot in the other hand and a magic bag, with many secret pockets, slung over one shoulder. The old, baba put down his things, and embraced the dog that greeted him. They rubbed noses and kissed each other’s faces.

When he finished showering the mangy dog with affection, the baba picked up his trishul and pot, and continued down the platform to Tamas.

Tamas noticed he wore a mala made of crystal beads and foreign coins. It wasn’t a traditional religious necklace by any sense, and Tamas concluded that he must have many foreign friends.

“It’s very hot!” the baba exclaimed, as he removed the orange head wrap he’d been wearing and wiped his face with it.

His jaw was covered with a bristly, white beard and his eyes peered through the thick lenses of his glasses.

He also removed them to continue wiping away the perspiration.

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“Yes,” Tamas agreed, not knowing what to make of the old man.

His ears and nose seemed excessively large, giving him an elfish appearance. His hands were covered in black dirt, and the Sanskrit symbol for Om was scratched childlike into the dirt.

“I’m very dirty,” the baba confessed with psychic ability, knowing exactly what Tamas was thinking, “But that is only on the outside, and inside I am very clean. Shiva only cares about the condition of the inside, and the exterior is like the emperor’s new clothes. It’s all a fucking illusion!”

Tamas agreed that bodies were interchangeable, with every incarnation bringing forth a new physical form, while only the soul survived the transition of death and rebirth. So, the soul had to be clean, as the clothing would eventually be discarded.

“Are you going to Varanasi?” the old baba asked him.

“Yes,” Tamas replied.

“Why?” Tamas didn’t know how to answer, and wondered if the baba could possibly understand his problem. He decided to give it a try.

“My girlfriend kicked me out!”

“Ho! Ho!” the old man chortled with glee. “Mother Kali in her most ferocious mood!”

Tamas laughed. Sita hadn’t been that bad. She didn’t chop off his head and add it to her necklace.

“I had to flee her kingdom!”

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“Good, because now you can travel with me,” the baba offered in a manner that indicated Tamas had no choice, “I need someone to help me get on the right train.”

Tamas didn’t know if he wanted a dirty traveling companion who smelled of cheap liquor and stale urine. But the old man had made him laugh, and it was the first time Tamas had done that since Sita threw him out. He felt alive again.

“Do you want to smoke a chillum?” the old baba offered, solidifying his position.

“Bom Shankar!” Tamas suddenly realized he now had a friend.

The baba rummaged through several pockets of his magic bag in search of his chillum. It wasn’t easy to find, with so many secret pockets, and the baba had to threaten the bag with dire consequences if it didn’t reveal the secret location. So the bag relented to his request and the baba found the small, clay pipe in one of the side pockets.

It was also dirty, encrusted with burned tobacco and baked on resin. The baba searched the railway platform for a piece of straw that he could insert into one end of the chillum to clean a passageway for air.

It took him several more anxious minutes to produce a lump of brown, Kashmiri hashish from the jhola. At the same time, he also materialized a pink, plastic lighter with a picture of Shiva on it. The old baba was 18

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very proud of his lighter, because when you turned it upside down, the picture turned into Ganesh.

“Where did you get that?” Tamas asked.

“Tara gave it to me,” the baba told him, with great appreciation in his voice.

“Who is she?”

“An Israeli friend I met in Katmandu. We danced the whole night together in the full moon.”

“Are you a dancer too?”

The baba saw the doubt in Tamas’s face, so he got to his feet and demonstrated his ability. He accompanied himself by singing the tune from a popular Hindi film.

“Hari Bol!” Tamas complimented the baba when he’d finished his dance. “You are very good. Who taught you to dance like that?”

“Shiva and Parvati,” the baba replied proudly.. “They are the sun and moon, mother and father. They are the cosmic dancers. They are the dance.”

The baba then returned to his original task of attempting to prepare a chillum.

“I only have half a cigarette,” he lamented, looking to Tamas for a solution to the problem.

“Sorry, but I don’t smoke cigarettes.”

“Then half will have to be enough. I’ll just make it strong.”

The baba had a difficult time heating the hashish with the lighter, because his fingers were too thick and his eyesight too poor. He burned his hands and dropped the piece. A sound of frustration, exhaled 19

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from the old man’s throat, told Tamas he had to finish the job.

He quickly found the piece on the floor and reheated it, crumbling the hashish into the tobacco. He mixed them together and stuffed it all into the chillum. The old baba handed Tamas a scrap of dirty cloth to use as a safi, but Tamas refused it and instead, tore off a piece of his cotton scarf. He then moistened the safi with a few drops of water, and wrapped it around the base of the chillum, to act as a cooling filter and prevent burning ashes from being sucked into the throat.

“Alek Bom!” the baba pronounced, as he lifted the sacred tool to his third eye.

Tamas flicked the lighter and put the flame to the mixture. The old baba drew hard several times and then inhaled deeply. He tried to keep it down, but the smoke found its way back out his face with a retching cough. His eye’s watered and the baba spat phlegm onto the station platform.

Tamas waited patiently for the baba to finish coughing .He hadn’t passed the pipe to him yet, but held onto it instead, until the coughing subsided, and then took another hit. This time he was able to hold it down. And now, he was also ready to pass the chillum.

As the hashish took effect, the baba grew dreamy and romantic, and sang a song he had learned a long time ago. It was the only song he knew in Bengali.

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“Where do you come from?” Tamas asked, realizing he wasn’t from that locality.

“Maharastra! I was born on a peanut farm, in a small village, two hours by bus from Bombay. Do you know Bombay?”

“Not really,” Tamas said. “It’s a big city.”

“Big or small doesn’t matter! What you find there is much more important. Bombay has Babul Nath Mandir and Maha Laxmi Temple!”

“I’ll have to check them out,” Tamas promised, thinking he might actually do it some day.

“And then you can visit my birthplace. My brother still lives there. I sold him my share in the farm for only twenty rupees.”

“Why did you do that?” Tamas queried, curious as to his motivation for selling so cheaply.

“When my mother and father died in a cholera plague, I was still a small boy and went mad,” the baba explained. “I had no light left in my life, only deep, sad darkness. I was completely lost. No one loved me, not even my brother. He tricked me into selling him the farm, but I didn’t care, because I no longer cared about anything. I wandered around as a beggar, until one day, a great tantric yogi found me on the side of the road.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked me. ‘Why are you dressed in rags and begging with that sad expression on your face?’

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I didn’t want to answer him, but her forced me, so I told him my mother and father had died.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ he rebuked me. ‘Your mother and father aren’t dead! They are alive!’

‘Where?’

He led me to a Shiva temple and instructed me to go inside and find my parents behind the lingam stone. I did as he instructed and found Shiva and Parvati.

They became my mother and father, and I have been in their service ever since. But now I am getting too old and every day I ask Shiva to take me, because I no longer have the strength to do the job properly. I can’t visit all the important places anymore.”

“Where are they?”

The old baba pondered his question for several seconds and then broke into a laugh, because he didn’t know how to choose.

“There are too many important places,” he replied.

“No one sacred spot is better than another. They all have equal value, and it makes no difference whether it is the black stone of Mecca, the place where they crucified Jesus, or Shiva’s throne at Mount Kailash that are worshiped!”

“Have you ever been to Kailash?” Tamas asked, as he had hopes of visiting there some day.

“Only once in my life. That was many years ago, when I was a young man. Hiking through the mountains, took us more than a month to reach there.

And then when we got to Kailash, we turned right 22

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around and walked back, because an early winter was approaching and we feared we would get snowed in, with no way out. What a beautiful ending that would have been!

But I was too young and didn’t have the courage to meet Shiva on his royal throne, or maybe Shiva didn’t want my company and chased me out, to put me to work as one of his foot soldiers. Now I’m ready to retire, and am waiting for Shiva to come take me.”

He sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating his life, and then concluded with, “Om Nama Shiva!”

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Chapter 4 Sita loved to cook. The smell of roasting spices was a favorite pleasure. She liked to combine the different odors to create her own exotic scents. They stimulated her taste buds. As a result, she had developed a small, plump belly that Tamas called his ‘love pillow’. It had been a very sensual point of contact between them.

Her sisters also liked to eat Sita’s culinary creations, and had acquired abundant attributes of their own.

Durga was proud of her large breasts and Maya enjoyed shaking her big backside at interested men.

But even though they felt themselves attractive, her sisters were not able to accomplish what Sita had done. Neither of them had a man in her life, and both were jealous of Sita, because she had a real boyfriend, a foreigner nonetheless. So, Sita was a big success in their eyes, even though they never admitted it.

“I’m so hot!” Durga declared one afternoon, as the sisters snacked on rice noodle sweets, while watching a romantic scene on the television. “I need a man!”

“We all need men,” Maya pointed out the obvious.

“But I need one right NOW!” Durga emphasized, squeezing her large breast together and rolling her eyes back.

“If any man saw you with that expression, he would think you are a very easy woman.” Sita teased her.

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“I am! And all I want is a man who loves me the way I need to be loved.”

“Like a big mama!” Maya laughed. “It looks like you want to feed him with those big tits of yours!”

“I don’t care, the right man can have all of me and do as he pleases, because the right man would never do anything wrong.”

Maya and Sita looked at each other in collusion, and then Sita asked, “What about the history teacher?”

Durga pinched her eyebrows together and scrutinized Sita. She tried to decide whether Sita’s question was in earnest, or if it was just another trick to ridicule her, because Sita and Maya loved to set her up.

“He has no penis,” Durga replied, thinking her answer would upset her sisters’ plan.

But that didn’t deter them, even though they chuckled at her amusing comment.

“How do you know that?” Maya asked. “Have you taken a shower with him?”

Durga didn’t answer, but shook her head in dismay at her sister’s foolishness.

“No, but she put her hand down the front of his pants!” Sita answered for her.

That was even too much for Durga, and she could no longer restrain herself. She snorted like a pig, trying to hold back, but eventually the laughter forced its way out, and she joined her sisters rolling on the floor. All three thought the joke extremely funny, because the 25

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history teacher was a very conservative man, who had a very difficult time finding himself a wife. His mother never approved any of his choices. She was even more conservative than her son. But the history teacher had recently shown some interest in Durga and had tried courting her.

“He is not at all sexy,” Durga wished he were different. “One time he tried to hold my hand, and was so clumsy, ended up grabbing my wrist. I felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong. Completely unromantic!”

“Maybe he’s had a lot of experience catching school girls by the wrists?” Maya insinuated.

“Who knows?” Sita added. “Maybe he’s one of those teachers who takes advantage of his female students?”

“Yes, and maybe boys too!”

“Don’t joke!” Durga sadly protested, “I’m not a school girl anymore. I’m nearly thirty, and the history teacher is the closest I’ve come to romance. My life is pathetic!” She started to cry.

Maya felt guilty and tried to console her, “I haven’t done any better!”

“At least a man sent you flowers and a card for your birthday,” “But what kind of man was he?” Maya questioned.

“He had a reputation for touching women’s butts. He loved crowded buses.”

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“Oh, how romantic,” Sita opined. “A finger up the backside is such a beautiful introduction. I much prefer it to cards, or flowers, don’t you?”

“Or even a poem,” Maya added. “Although, it might be slightly unnerving if one had piles.”

Sita laughed, but Durga didn’t join her.

“Men are sick!”

“Then why are you so desperate to get one?” Maya asked her.

“Because I want sex!”

“Maybe you should try the bus,” Sita tried to tease again.

Durga sighed at her sisters’ inexcusable immaturity . They couldn’t discuss the subject without it devolving into a stupid, joke fest. Sex was serious business. Durga had felt the urge and need for sometime now, and wanted to fuck herself silly, but her culture didn’t allow that. She had to get married first. There would be no fun before the donning of the mangala sutra.

“Not that kind of sex,” Durga continued. “I want a real man who will sweep me off my feet and proudly carry me into the bedroom. I don’t want a coward. I want a hero!”

“Ooo,” Sita cooed, “I hope he’s good looking?”

“Of course, I’m not ugly! But I care more about performance than appearance. Not only does he have to love me more than himself, but he also has to be a 27

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roaring, sex machine on remote control. One snap of my fingers and he will grow big and hard!”

“No wonder you are having problems finding this man,” Maya surmised, “I think you want too much.”

“I don’t need to find him! My lover has to come in search of ME!” Sita and Maya looked at each other in disbelief.

Durga had totally lost contact with reality and was way out in no man’s land with this, because there would be no such hero looking for her. It was impossible. Durga was already past her prime by Indian standards and very few men were searching for thirty-year-old wives. And they doubted any of those would fit her description of a hero, anyway.

“Maybe he’ll be a foreigner?” Sita inserted a grain of hope.

“Like your Tamas?”

“Tamas is too young for you,” Sita giggled. “And besides, he’s already taken. Tamas is mine.”

“Many foreign boys are interested in older women,” Durga fantasized. “Maybe I can find a nice student with blond hair and blue eyes. I’ve always wanted a blue- eyed baby.”

“Where will you meet such a boy?” Maya questioned her dreams.. “Our town isn’t full of them. I can’t even think of one. Sita’s Tamas has green eyes.”

“Stop mentioning Tamas. I already told you, he’s not available.”

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“I don’t know. You threw him out. Maybe Durga can have him now?”

“That’s not funny!”

“I could go back to college,” Durga tried to guess where she might meet such a boy.

“You’re mad! You’ve already graduated from college two times, and three degrees are too many, because you will be over educated and then no man will want you. He will think you are too smart, and sexy men like dumb girls. Only the history teacher wants a smart one!”

Durga wondered if Maya was taking another jab at her. Why did the history teacher come up in the conversation again?

“And where would you get the money? We don’t have a father to pay for education anymore.”

Durga didn’t really want to go back to school. It was just another illogical fantasy. She’d already spent many years in institutions, hoping they would lead to a life of happiness, but that wasn’t so. An education didn’t guarantee a job, which was as unattainable as a husband. There was always some trick to the system, and you had to know somebody, or have lots of money. Sometimes, it even required selling your soul.

The previous year, she thought she’d secured a teaching position at a good, local school, only to lose out on the job to a girl who could afford to pay a large donation to the school administration.

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Durga’s family had no money to compete. And besides, she didn’t want to buy a job, but wanted to make money from it. Years of accumulated salary would be needed to recuperate the amount of the donation.

Her situation appeared hopeless, so Durga had stopped looking for work, and now concentrated on finding a husband. She was the eldest of the three sisters, and it was her obligation and right, to get married first. Neither of her younger sisters was allowed to marry before her. She vowed not to let that happen.

Sita was happy being the youngest, because the marriage pecking order suited her perfectly. She was in no hurry.

Then there was Tamas. She might reconsider, if he asked her to marry him, but decided it would have to be on the condition they waited until her sisters got married first. Even that was a bit uncertain in her mind; because at the speed they were moving, she might have to wait forever.

Where was Tamas? Sita felt sad again. He hadn’t come back yet, and she’d heard nothing from him since throwing him out. She wondered what he was doing, and decided he must be in his room feeling sorry for himself. She became upset at that thought.

Why didn’t he feel sorry for her? Didn’t he understand that she was distraught by the situation?

Didn’t he care?

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Sita decided Tamas must be out of touch with his true feelings, or else he would have come back by then. She wanted to knock on his head and put her thoughts in there. Tamas needed to think like her, and everything would be all right.

“I’m going to visit Tamas’s room. I want to make sure he’s alright.”

“What, and give into him?” Durga questioned.

“I just want to see his face again.”

“Wait until he comes to you.”

“Yes,” Maya agreed. “Don’t let him think you are desperate.”

“But what if he’s afraid? I told him not to come back.”

“He should listen to his own heart, and not your words,” Durga advised. “That’s the true test.”

“What test? If we had to pass your tests, we would all be failures. Life is not like that! There is no single correct answer to any given situation. It all depends on how you view things.”

“And not all men are astrologers, so you can’t expect them to read our minds,” Sita added.

“Perhaps they should be,” Durga insisted. “Lovers need to know each other completely, and be able to read one another’s minds and have their hearts beat as one. That’s the test of true love.”

“You’ve eaten too many bananas and your monkey tests aren’t fit for human consumption.”

“Stop insulting me!”

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“But the kind of man you want doesn’t exist. What you are asking for is a God!” “Then maybe God is the only great lover!” Durga concluded, shocked by her own revelation.

“Om Nama Shiva!” her sisters exhaled in unison.

32

Chapter 5

Tamas pushed the old baba up the stairs, into the second-class sleeper car of the train. It wasn’t difficult, because he had no weight. It was as if the baba was made of air.

The reservation ticket told Tamas he had the upper berth, in a three-tiered sleeper. The beds were made of metal frames and wooden slats, with no padding. The seat bench became the lower berth, while the luggage rack turned into the upper one. And the middle bed hung on chains against the wall, and would have to be 33

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lowered in order to accommodate the sleeping passenger. Two small fans whirred overhead.

“Where are you?” Tamas asked the baba.

“I don’t have a ticket.”

“Then where will you sleep?” Tamas worried that the train journey would be too uncomfortable for such an old man.

“On the floor, by the toilets.”

“You can’t,” Tamas protested, not sure what to do.

“Why not, it’s the free seat on the train. We don’t have to pay if we sit on the floor.”

Tamas still didn’t like that idea and offered, “Come with me!”

“What about the T.T.?” the baba asked, not wanting to risk his free seat, as there were unwritten rules regarding passengers like him.

“I’ll take care of the T.T.,” Tamas replied, having had much experience dealing with low-level bureaucrats in India. They all spoke the same language.

The baba liked the idea, and a twinkle came into his eyes. He had discovered, in his life experience, that foreigners were good tools for dealing with Indian authority. The police didn’t hit them routinely, the way they did their own countrymen. And foreigners weren’t afraid to stand up to them either. They weren’t impressed with a cap, badge and buckle. Even guns weren’t a deterrent for them. So the baba felt quite safe and confident accompanying Tamas to his seat.

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There was only one vacant place on the bench that stretched from the walkway to the window. It was meant to accommodate three, seated passengers. A woman, eating home cooking from a Tiffin box, and her daughter, occupied the other two spots. Her husband sat opposite her. And two country boys, wearing identical patterned lungis and white shirts, sat beside him. Their heads were wrapped in rags, and their mouths stained red from chewing pan.

Tamas checked the seat number on his ticket, and then threw his bag into the overhead luggage rack, before sitting on the bench. He slid close to the girl, to make room for the baba.

The girl didn’t seem to mind, but her mother made large eyes and asked Tamas what he thought he was doing.

“Making space for him to sit,” Tamas replied, indicating the baba.

“Hari Om!” the baba greeted everyone with a friendly smile.

“Who is he?” the woman asked.

“My friend,” Tamas replied politely.

“Does he have a ticket for this compartment?”

“No, but he’ll share my seat.”

“He needs a reservation to sleep here,” the woman insisted.

“Don’t fret, he’s just sitting with me,” Tamas answered her firmly, knowing he had to hold his ground against such people.

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But the woman wasn’t willing to relent, “He’ll have to move when we make our beds!”

The baba put his pot on the floor and squeezed onto the end of the bench. He looked around for someplace to park his trishul. It was quite long and needed a standing place against a wall, preferably wedged in between something, so it wouldn’t fall with the motion of the train. A suitable spot was beside the window. He could plant the shaft between the luggages on the floor. But this was directly between the woman and her husband. And the luggage belonged to them too. The baba wrinkled his face in consternation, as he thought what he should do. He knew the woman wouldn’t approve, but decided there was no other option. So, he got off his tiny perch, and reached across in front of the woman, to place his trishul against the wall.

“What do you think you are doing?” the woman objected, not willing to accept any excuse for the behavior, and looking to her husband for support.

“You can’t do that,” he reluctantly agreed with her.

The baba didn’t respond. He concentrated on the arrangement of the pink flag tied around the trident.

He wanted it perfect. And when he was finally satisfied, he put his hands together, bowed his head and said a little prayer.

The trishul represented the holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Birth, life and death! It was the sacred staff, the weapon of creation and destruction, 36

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and a tool for divine purposes. The baba worshipped it with his heart.

“You can’t leave that here!” the woman shouted, wanting to throw it aside, but too afraid to touch it.

“Fuck off!” the baba replied.

Everyone was shocked by his words; even Tamas couldn’t believe his ears.

“I need to use hard language to deal with dirty minds,” the baba explained, as he returned to his seat.

“Soft words have no effect on idiots!”

“Gently baba!You have to be gentle with people who don’t understand. It’s not their fault. We are all God’s creations.”

“Why didn’t she offer sweets, or a flower from her hair to the trishul? Has she no respect for God?” “Your stick is not God!” the woman disputed from her corner.

“And you are a fat idiot, who only worships the food in your belly! But no matter how fat you get, or how much gold you adorn yourself with, you will still end up as a handful of dust when Shiva is through with you.”

“Now, now,” her husband put in timidly, “there is no need to insult my wife!”

“Then why does she insult my God?” At that point, the T.T. showed up to inspect tickets.

“He doesn’t have a ticket,” the woman immediately informed him, pointing an incriminating finger at the baba.

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The T.T. was slow in finding whom the woman was referring to, and the baba quickly flashed his tongue at her.

“He’s sharing my seat,” Tamas quickly put in.

“That’s not possible!”

“Anything is possible,” Tamas said, as he took the T.T. by the shoulder and turned him away from the other passengers.

Tamas removed a hundred rupee note from his wallet and offered it to the T.T., who quickly deposited into his own pocket.

“The baba can stay,” the T.T. announced to the other passengers.

“But he doesn’t have a ticket and that’s against railway rules,” the woman continued to protest.

“Madame, the railway makes special concessions for holy men. And if the foreign gentleman is willing to share his seat, then the baba can stay. That’s my final decision.”

“He’s not a holy man! He uses bad language, and frightened my daughter.”

The T.T. looked at the young girl and asked, “Are you afraid of him?”

The girl knew what her parents wanted her to answer, but it had been a long, boring train journey, and now a cute, young foreign man sat next to her. He was the baba’s friend. She didn’t want them to leave.

“No, I’m not afraid of him. He’s a very nice man.”

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Both parents snorted with disapproval and glared at her. The father reached over and snatched the bag of chips from his daughter’s hand. She was a traitor, and it was the only punishment he could inflict upon her at that moment.

“Don’t disturb the other passengers,” the T.T. warned the baba, as he moved on with his duties.

The baba was elated, because his foreign card had worked again. He took a dirty, hand towel from his bag and shook it out, then removed his glasses and proceeded to wipe his face with the towel, paying special attention to his large ears, cleaning them both inside and out. When he finished, he put his glasses back on and exhaled a deep sigh. You could tell something was bothering him, but he was holding back.

“What’s the matter?” Tamas asked him.

“We need to make the time pass and the journey more comfortable.”

“How shall we do that?”

“Do you want to drink some whiskey?”

“Good idea,” Tamas agreed. “But they don’t sell it on the train.”

“I have a bottle,” the baba chuckled deviously.

Regulations forbade alcohol on board trains.

As his hand emerged from his magic bag, it clutched a half pint of some spurious substance. There was no label, and it looked like it had been filled from a 39

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dubious source, because a cork was where a screw cap should have been.

The baba pulled the cork and took a swig on the bottle. The hooch hit him in the back of the throat and made his eyes water. It burned all the way down.

That’s just what the baba liked.

“Ah!” he smiled with satisfaction. “This stuff has some kick. I was afraid it might be watered down, because you can’t trust wallahs anymore. They sell you one thing, and you end up drinking something else. They like to dilute it with water.”

That’s not all they mix into the alcohol, Tamas thought to himself, as he’d heard stories of people going blind, and even dieing from such drink.

“Where did you get that stuff?”

“From a shop near the railway station. Every station has one, all over Mother India.”

He’d patronized a good number of them on his journeys, and concluded that some of the shops were good, and some bad, all depending on Shiva’s mood of the moment. The baba knew whom to blame if there was too much water in his drink. He took another swig and offered the bottle to Tamas.

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

That was a silly question. Obviously, the old man thought it was okay, because he was drinking it. But the baba decided to answer him anyways. He wanted Tamas as a partner in crime.

“It’s prasad. God put the bottle in my jhola.”

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Tamas took a small sip. It tasted the way Tamas imagined turpentine might taste, and wondered if it was turpentine. He didn’t want to swallow it. He wanted to spit it out, but there was nowhere convenient to do that. So with trepidation, he choked it down.

The baba told him to take another one, but Tamas disappointed him. The baba didn’t want to drink alone, so he offered the bottle to the two country boys.

However, they were much too afraid of him to partake in something that came from his bottle; and simultaneously giggled, as they shook their heads in the negative. Then they wrapped their arms around each other to feel safe and secure.

The baba turned to the woman and her husband. He wondered if they drank alcohol. The husband looked like he might, but his wife probably didn’t. He contemplated the situation and, wanting to be hospitable, offered the bottle to the husband.

“That’s not allowed here!” his wife spoke up before her husband could answer for himself.

“Would you like some?” the baba extended the offer to her.

The woman was offended and pushed the bottle away with her hand, threatening the baba, “Keep that to yourself, or I’ll call the authorities. And I don’t care if you have a foreign friend, because my daughter is of minor age. Alcohol is not allowed!”

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“I wasn’t going to give any to your daughter,” the baba assured, as he smiled at the girl.

She smiled back and wished he would offer her the bottle, so she could frighten her parents some more.

They were dull, boring people, who deserved to be frightened.

But the baba didn’t, and got very drunk, by finishing the rest of the bottle alone. He started singing bhajans and Tamas joined him on some of them. The young girl clapped along.

After awhile, the baba got tired and announced he was going to sleep by the toilets. The rest of the passengers adjusted the berths and made their beds.

Tamas climbed into an upper one. There wasn’t much space, but at least he was close to the fans and their cooling breeze soon put him to sleep.

The next morning, Tamas went in search of the baba, but couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t on the floor. He wasn’t in the toilets. Tamas even searched the adjoining cars for him, but no one had seen him that morning. The baba had disappeared. Tamas hoped nothing bad had happened to him.

“Om Nama Shiva!” he prayed.

42

Chapter 6 Durga whirled around the room in her tribal dress.

The light reflected off her mirrors and created moving patterns on the walls, floor and ceiling. It was a beautiful work of art that would vanish once she stopped dancing. The bells around her ankles rang with every step and provided the music for the light show. She wore white flowers in her hair, and the petals scattered with every jump and spin.

Sita slowly danced in another corner of the room. She beat out the rhythm on a small hand drum and waited for the right moment to sing the lyrics of the song.

Maya played the melody on her bamboo flute.

It was a song they all knew very well. It was by Rabindrinath Tagore, and they had performed it many times before. It was one of their favorites.

But just as it came to the part where Sita was to sing, she lost concentration and her mind drifted to some other thought, causing her to make a mistake. Her sisters stopped.

“That’s not right,” Durga complained. “Please pay attention, because we have to perform on Thursday.

And let’s try to be perfect. I heard that television producers will be there and this could be our big chance.”

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“I’m sorry,” Sita apologized for the lapse, “but shouldn’t Kokila be here by now?”

“He’s always late.”

Kokila was the other member of their band. He played the dotara, a small, fretless, stringed instrument that sounded like a cross between a banjo, mandolin and sitar, but with a lot less volume. He wanted to electrify his instrument and plug it into an amplifier, but the sisters talked him out of it, because they knew if they let him do that, he would turn up his volume and drown them out.

He also wrote a lot of his own songs, but wasn’t allowed to sing them with the band either, because although he had the name of a sweet sounding bird, he had the voice of a frog.

Sita waited in anticipation for his arrival. He was Tamas’s friend and might have some news of him. She hadn’t summoned her own courage to visit his room.

“Do we always have to sing the same songs?” Maya asked.

“That’s not true! We sing dozens of different songs,” Durga disagreed.

“But they are all Bengali folk songs. Can’t we do some film songs?”

“Yes, it would be great fun,” Sita said, as she spun across the room and mimicked the dance moves of a famous movie star.

Maya joined her and danced the male role. They laughed and hugged each other. It was great fun!

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They’d been doing this since their mother first took them to the cinema hall and they saw the lovers spin across the screen. Both of them instantly fell in love with the movies, and at any given opportunity turned into their own idols.

“Impossible, we are serious performers and don’t do film and pop!” Durga stated emphatically.

She wasn’t like her sisters and didn’t really care for the movies. She thought them all right, but felt they portrayed a reality that was far removed from hers.

She preferred the local, folk culture. It was something she could relate to and participate in. She could touch the people and speak to them. They didn’t exist in a two dimensional, pre-recorded format, projected onto a screen, but were interactive.

“What kind of television producers?” Sita wanted to know.

“A station from Kolkata. They’re doing a documentary on Tagore.”

“How boring!” Maya decided. “There are too many documentaries on Tagore already. I don’t think we need another one.”

“Wash your mouth out with soap! How dare you call Tagore boring?”

“I didn’t mean he was boring. If they want to do Tagore, they should make a romantic movie about his life, and I could play his wife; not another documentary!”

“Who would play Tagore?”

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“How about Jeet?”

Sita laughed at her, “Your movie would have an action packed poet in tight blue jeans! Very sexy!”

Maya found Sita’s joke funny and shook her butt at her.

“You two are outrageous! God will punish you for making fun of Tagore. He won the Nobel Prize for literature. He wasn’t a small fly on the scene.”

“We know!” both sisters replied in unison.

They were tired of hearing about that subject. Tagore had been taught to them from the first day of school.

Their mother had even sung them his children’s songs before then. Tagore was revered and worshiped in the community as a God. He was the supreme icon of Bengali culture.

Durga pursued the matter further, “What have your Bollywood heroes ever won? Only pats on the back from each other, and awards from themselves. The best actor is always ‘me’, and the best film is ‘ours’.

They’ve acquired no international recognition. I don’t think there are many fans outside the Indian community. Bollywood is a big zero outside itself.”

She made a circle with her fingers to emphasize the point.

“How do you know that?” Maya questioned. “Are you a film historian? Do you even know anything about the Academy Awards, or Cannes?”

Durga had to admit that she didn’t. Not that it mattered; because she was sure Bollywood hadn’t 46

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made a big impression on the international screen.

How could it? The stories were too silly for the outside world, and only an Indian could appreciate them.

“Well, we shouldn’t ignore praising our own culture, because we’re not such great over achievers that we don’t need support,” Durga insisted.

“And that’s why we still worship Tagore?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that! The English still admire Shakespeare. Greatness has no expiry date, like a box of cornflakes. It doesn’t go stale!”

“Now you’re talking like a poet, yourself,” Maya teased her. “Next, you will be dressed in a long flowing gown, carrying a notebook, and flirting with the cows.”

“She’s already a Baul and writes songs. That’s almost the same thing as poetry.”

“But Durga is only a part time Baul,” Maya corrected.

“All she needs is an orange, velvet gown to be a full member of their society,” Sita pointed out.

“Stop pinching me! I have the terrible misfortune of having two cruel sisters who derive great pleasure from teasing me, and I’m tired of it!”

“It’s our responsibility,” Maya countered. “We have to keep you from getting too serious about yourself.”

“But life isn’t always a joke, and some things need to be taken seriously.”

“What, your future career as a romantic poet?”

“No, my career will be singing the songs of Tagore. It is a bright future, and we could be very successful if 47

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you two got serious about it. Tagore may provide us with the key to escape the misery that faces us.”

“Singing at local festivals hasn’t made us rich,” Sita observed, not fully understanding Durga’s escape plan.

“It’s a start. First we will perform at local festivals, and then we will move to the world’s stage. We can conquer the universe with our song and dance!”

Durga started singing a song she’d written about their mother. Ma was in love with Krishna and brought him sweets every day. Krishna repaid her devotion by putting her to sleep with his flute at night.

The song was very beautiful.

Sita and Maya listened to their sister in silence. They loved this aspect of Durga. She was so committed to her music. They prayed that success would eventually come to her. It was even more important than finding a husband.

Maya took up her flute, and Sita joined in with a rhythm on her hand drum. They were both determined to help their sister reach her goal.

Kokila disrupted their song with the ringing of his bicycle bell. He was a wandering minstrel, singing in kitchen doorways and performing for donations on trains. He lived in a mud house that he’d built with his own hands, in a community of Bauls, on the edge of town. Everything around his home was made from recycled scraps. The facilities were primitive and 48

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ancient in design, but functioned, for their purpose, to a relatively satisfying degree.

Kokila had introduced Tamas to Sita. He now considered that a big mistake. He had hoped to make a favorable impression on Sita, by introducing his foreign student, but had no idea they would fall in love with each other. Because Kokila was also in love with Sita, and his error in judgment had caused him to lose her to Tamas.

“Joy Guru!” Kokila formally greeted them, as he entered the house.

The girls responded similarly.

Is that a new dhoti you’re wearing?” Sita asked.

“Yes, how do I look?”

Sita didn’t answer him right away, but scanned his figure up and down first. His hair stood out from his head like a spider’s web, and was ready to catch any female that came near it. He wasn’t ugly, but had childlike features that gave him a look of innocence.

He wore a double strand of tulsi beads around his neck that indicated he was a devotee of Lord Krishna.

His small, muscular figure was draped in a mustard yellow kurta, with the new, white dhoti wrapped tightly around his slim hips.

Sita would have found Kokila reasonably attractive, were it not for his ugly feet. They were too wide and flat, with many bumps and cracks. She only liked men with beautiful feet. Tamas had them.

“Have you seen Tamas lately?” she asked him.

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Kokila shook his hair with disbelief, causing it to vibrate on the top of his head. He was still waiting for a compliment on his appearance, and she’d already forgotten about him, and had moved on to Tamas. His luck with women was not good.

“Tamas is gone,” Kokila told her, hoping she would forget about him.

“What do you mean? Where has he gone?”

“His landlady doesn’t know,” he replied, happy to give the bad news. “He left some things in his room, but told the servant he wasn’t coming back. I think his rent is due soon, so I’ll collect his things and take them to my place.”

All Sita could do was clutch at her heart and pray, “Om Nama Shiva!”

50

Chapter 7

Hindus believe that death in Varanasi leads to direct salvation. The soul escapes the cycles of birth and death. A state of instant enlightenment replaces them.

“Ram Nam Satyam Hai!” eerily punctuates the air, as processions bearing dead bodies, wrapped in red cloth and covered with marigolds, wind their way through the narrow streets to the burning ghats.

It is the last journey in this world, before being consigned to the funeral pyres flames. The soul’s 51

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earthy abode would exist no more. Even the cows step aside to let them pass.

Mani Karnika is the main burning ghat in Varanasi, and in Indian mythology is where the Goddess Parvati lost her earring. The Doms, an ancient family lineage, have tended the fires since the beginning of time. They are very wealthy people, who have to step into the gutter to let others pass, because they are from a caste that is completely untouchable. Only one word, or even a glance from them, is too much contact for most conservative Hindus.

Mountains of wood are stacked in preparation for the never-ending stream of death that ends up at Mani Karnika. The fires never go out. They’ve burned like this for thousands of years, and even the heaviest of monsoon rains have no effect on them. Nothing can put them out, because only Shiva can stop death.

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But Mani Karnika isn’t the only burning ghat in Varanasi. There is also a smaller one located a couple of miles upstream from it. Hari Chand Ghat has an electric crematorium, besides the wood fires, and is a much cheaper way to send the dead off.

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Tamas found himself at Hari Chand Ghat his first morning in Varanasi. He hadn’t planned it when he’d gotten off the train, but arrived there by asking a rickshaw puller to take him to the river.

Smoke from the fires drifted over the scattered remains of leaf boats that had carried tiny, flickering, oil lights down the river, the previous night. The bloated carcass of an unrecognizable animal floated amongst them, and was joined by discarded marigolds. Together, they nudged their way past some wooden boats tied to the embankment, and floated further on the journey downstream. Other ritual items, which had been offered to Mother Ganga, attached themselves to this colorful mosaic of life and death.

Devotees took their sacred baths in all of this. It didn’t bother them at all, because they were true believers, who didn’t see any pollution. All the shit, decay and garbage had been instantly transformed into the pure nectar of Mother Ganga. They drank this water and even took it home to their loved ones, filling many plastic bottles with the sacred liquid..

This was Shiva’s playground, a place where believers could transcend the mundane illusion and enter the world of the Gods. Even illiterate beggars knew this, and came to die here.

Tamas sat on a stone slab and watched a body burn.

He’d had no experience with death, until Sita’s father died. He’d never even attended a funeral before his death, because no close friends, or relatives had 54

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passed away yet. That first journey into the cremation ground had been a little unnerving to Tamas, and he had to steady himself. He had to be strong for Sita’s sake. The memory of her father’s corpse, curling up in the intense heat of the fire, was still very vivid in his mind. He had never seen anything like that before, and was sure it would never leave him.

Tamas felt strange to suddenly feel love for Sita at the sight of a burning body, but that’s what happened to him. He missed her terribly and wanted to hug and kiss her at that moment. A few tears of sadness appeared in the corners of his eyes. He held them back, stopping his sorrow from flowing freely. There was no point in getting depressed.

A strange man, dressed in all black, approached the burning fire and examined the roasting corpse. He exchanged a few words with the Dom tending it, and then looked up and down the ghat, until he spotted Tamas. He immediately started in his direction.

Tamas wondered who he could be. He didn’t appear to be of Indian origins, but had the face and body of a European man. He seemed to have a problem with one of his legs, and had a difficult time walking, dragging it behind him.

When he got nearer, Tamas noticed he wore a necklace made of bones. From their size and shape, Tamas surmised they might be human. The odd stranger also had a piece of black cord tied around his 55

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left ankle and carried a black, cloth bag over his shoulder.

“Hey man, do you speak English?” he asked Tamas with an American accent.

“Ya, and I think that I come from the same place you do.”

The Aghori laughed, “And where might that be?”

“America?”

“Maybe in a simple geographic sense, but to be more specific, I would say from the Divine Mother’s yoni.”

He waited for a reaction before adding, “You ever been there?”

Tamas shook his head and wondered if he should try to answer the question, or just let it be. Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be taken literally, unless the Aghori had intended it with sexual connotations. Tamas thought not.

But the Aghori didn’t wait for his answer and quickly moved on to another subject.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

“No, I don’t smoke them.”

“Too bad, because I could show you some real magic if you had one.”

The Aghori searched his bag, and then exclaimed, “Eureka, I found a bedi! I thought there might be one hidden someplace in my bag.”

He then took out a complete human skull from the same bag and stuck the lit bedi into its mouth. Smoke 56

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curled up, inside the skull, and out, through the nose holes. The skull smoked the entire bedi by itself.

“How did you do that?” Tamas asked, impressed by his trick.

“I didn’t do anything, except light the bedi. The skull smoked it without my help.”

“You’re putting me on!”

“No, I’m not. This skull has a life of its own. If you look into its eyes, you can see many things about yourself. It’s like a mirror into your soul. It will tell you things about your past, present and future.”

“Let me see.”

The Aghori relented, and Tamas held the skull directly in front of his own face. He stared intently into the empty eye sockets. At first, he saw nothing, but after a short while, images started to appear. They grew in clarity, until Tamas recognized them as two, old women, who looked like witches. They were halfnaked, with exposed breasts, and had long, matted hair. One of them held out a small, green bottle for Tamas to take, but he couldn’t, because it was like trying to take something from a television; the image was there, but not the physical item. Tamas wondered who the two witches were, and as he handed the skull back to the Aghori, asked him for an explanation.

“I don’t know. I can’t see them, because they have nothing to do with my life. The skull will show me something completely different. Our lives aren’t the same.”

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“Then how will I find out the meaning?”

“Just live your life and it will come to you. There are no secrets in the skull. It only shows the truth.”

Tamas felt there was something very familiar about the Aghori, even though the man was quite a bit older than Tamas.

“Have you ever been to San Francisco?” he asked him.

“Oh ya, I’ve been there. I spent a summer living in my van outside Golden Gate Park. I ate a lot of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and it’s the only thing I miss about America, because you can’t get that kind of ice cream over here.

Back then, I was a member of ISKON and did a lot of chanting on the streets. It was a good way to meet girls.”

“Did you ever meet any nice ones?”

“Sure, my last wife was a devotee. But she was crazy as a kite in a lightening storm, because she married a cripple like me, and then brought around all these strong, young bucks to make me jealous.”

“Did she succeed?” “ Back then, I was in love with Krishna, and not her.

She was only part of the illusion. There was no point in hanging onto that.”

“Aren’t you a Krishna devotee anymore?”

“Oh, I love all the deities. Only now, I’m on a completely different path from ISKON. I lean a little 58

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more to the left, and worship Mother Kali through aversion.”

Tamas didn’t understand and wanted an explanation.

“Most people deal with a life centered on desires.

They either chase, or try to sublimate them, but I deal with aversions, and dive right into things most people find disgusting.”

Tamas still didn’t get it and asked for an example.

“You see that body roasting on the fire?” he indicated the funeral pyre with his hand. “When it’s cooked enough, the Dom will crack the skull with a piece of bamboo, to let the spirit out. I’ll wander over there with my cup and he’ll fill it with cooked brain. I’ve already examined the body and lunch should be ready in about ten minutes. Do you want to join me?”

At that moment, Tamas was very happy that he was a vegetarian and had a legitimate excuse to refuse the invitation.

“I’m mostly vegetarian too,” the Aghori confided to him. “I only eat human brain occasionally. It’s like prasad. Dog, crow and human body are sacred foods, which I don’t eat every day.”

Tamas had a difficult time understanding why this man was living his life. He couldn’t see how the Aghori had shifted from eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to the extreme of consuming human brain! Was there no difference between the two, or was it all just prasad?

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“Why are you in Varanasi?” the Aghori asked him with curiosity.

“My girlfriend kicked me out.” “ It’s the same old story of love and hate. I’ve been on that merry-go-round many times myself. Women show pity on me, because I’m a cripple, fall in love, and then turn on me when they discover I can’t dance.

Don’t they see the dead leg when they fall in love with it?”

“What happened to your leg?”

“I’m a polio victim, and have to wear a heavy brace, just to hobble this badly. And I don’t like people looking at it either, so I wear a long robe to hide everything.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s all the wishes of the Divine Mother. I probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for this leg. Who knows, I could be an insurance salesman in someplace like Hawaii instead!

This leg has forced me out of the main stream. I’ve been a freak all my life. But I haven’t let that bother me.

There have been certain advantages, because I’ve always been able to collect social benefits. The government has been good to me. The money is not great, but it’s kept me alive at times. And I’m still collecting too. They direct deposit the money into my bank account. Only I’m not very computer literate and don’t know how to access it from over here. I don’t 60

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have an A.T.M. card, or anything like that. Maybe you could help me? Do you know anything about that kind of stuff?”

Tamas didn’t have much knowledge about banking, and wondered if the Aghori’s account was even computerized.

“When were you last in America?”

The Aghori thought for a moment and then replied, “Must be close to fifteen year now. But somehow it seems more like a thousand. Time goes slow when you’re having a difficult life.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Well, it’s been a struggle. Maya isn’t always easy to deal with.”

“What about your passport?”

“It expired a long time ago, and I threw it in the Ganga. Some people cut off their hair and throw it in, to wash away all bad karma, but I threw in my passport instead.”

“Do you have any problems with the police?”

“Na, the police don’t bother me, because they’re more afraid of Aghora than the public. We eat what they kill! So it’s a good way for the police to dispose of unwanted bodies.”

Tamas was shocked to hear that such a symbiosis existed in nature. And as he pondered this new revelation, the Aghori lifted his robe to piss into a metal cup he had hooked onto a piece of rope around his waist.

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“Do you want any of this?” he jokingly offered Tamas, before drinking his own urine.

Tamas wasn’t that surprised by the act. He’d heard of people drinking their own piss before. It was supposed to be extremely good for longevity.

“Do you drink that for health reasons?”

“No, it’s to keep the ghats clean. There is no point in pissing in Mother Ganga. Besides, I was thirsty.”

Tamas hoped the Aghori might have something he wanted and asked, “Do you smoke chillums?”

“Sure, why do you have some charas?”

“No, but I thought you might have some.”

“Well it’s your lucky day, because I have a little piece left. Only that was my last bedi and you’ll have to get a cigarette someplace to put in the mix.”

Tamas ran off and found a small shop, not far away.

He quickly returned with the cigarette and the Aghori made a blend. He then pulled a chillum from his bag and packed it with the mix.

“Om Nama Shiva!” he said.

62

Chapter 8 Sita gathered big, red, Hibiscus flowers in the garden to make a garland for Mother Kali. She planned to take it to the temple later. A bird landed on the compound wall near her. It was a Mynah bird, and predicted the day’s luck! So Sita anxiously searched for its mate, because only one bird meant bad luck, and two indicated a good day. She was relieved when the second bird appeared from a bush.

Sita firmly believed in superstitions. Her fortunes could easily be manipulated through the use of amulets and healing stones prescribed by the family astrologer. Her dharma wasn’t a fixed entity, and could be altered with the right application of magic powers.

The family astrologer was a mix of Brahmin priest and psychic interpreter of the stars. He answered questions and concerns about the past, present and future. He could explain dreams, decipher omens and foretell a crisis before it happened. He was a practitioner of the occult, and was able to remove, or cast spells.

The astrologer had given Sita silver amulets filled with flower petals gathered at a Kali temple, and three healing stones on a chain, which she wore around her upper arm.

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The petals were the protection of Mother Kali, and kept her safe from outside forces. No demons could invade her, because the Divine Mother would chop off their heads.

The stones were to counter certain negative aspects in her aura. They had specific light refractions that influenced such things as mental being, spiritual awareness and physical balance of energy. All this translated into good health, and the astrologer prescribed them as medicine.

Sita also wore a coral, finger ring on one hand and a pearl on the other. The pearl was to be faithful. She was sure it worked, because she still loved Tamas.

And the coral was to subdue her anger. But Sita wasn’t so sure of its effect, because her anger was the root cause of her current misery. If the stone had worked, she wouldn’t have thrown Tamas out. She realized she had gained nothing from that action and had lost everything she really wanted. Sita wasn’t happy with this realization and blamed the astrologer for it, because he had promised the stones would all work.

She felt cheated somehow. She preferred to blame the astrologer and his powerless stones, than herself.

Sita finished gathering the flowers and sat down in the shade of the wall to fashion the garland. The sun was already too hot. The clouds had dispersed and the scorching heat had returned.

She didn’t like the sun, because it burned her skin black. Sita didn’t want to be black. Only tribal people, 64

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rural farmers and low caste women exposed themselves to the open sun, because it had been encoded in their fates from birth. Girls like Sita, hid themselves from the sun’s glare and applied creams and bleaches to lighten their skin, trying to make themselves as fair as possible. But Sita knew she would never be really white; her genetic make-up guaranteed that. Still, she hoped for a miracle.

She tried singing a love song to herself, but didn’t get very far into it, before she started crying. The love song made her sad, because she was reminded of her own loneliness. The tears streamed down her cheeks, but weren’t enough to wash the feelings away. Tamas wasn’t there, so she felt empty and hollow without him. Not even a bouquet of colorful balloons would have made her happy right then.

Maya found her in the garden and asked, “Crying again?”

“Yes. There is nothing wrong with that. It helps me release some of the pain.”

“You will only exhaust yourself with tears, and drain all of your energy, because tears won’t change the situation and bring him back.”

“I wasn’t crying over Tamas,” Sita lied, not wanting her sister to know the truth, because she feared Maya would show no sympathy and only make her feel worse with ridicule.

“What then?”

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Sita didn’t know how to answer, so she responded with silence. Maya understood what that meant, because Sita had never been able to fool her. She always knew when Sita was lying, so Maya glared at her.

“Alright,” Sita confessed, “I am crying over Tamas.

I’m worried something bad may have happened to him, because there’s been no word from him. No letter, or phone call. Nothing! Do you think he’s still alive?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Maya replied with disinterest, as Tamas’s fate was of no concern to her.

“But the astrologer is coming today, and maybe he can answer your question.”

“What a bunch of nonsense,” Durga protested, as she joined her sisters in the garden. “That man knows nothing!”

“Yes he does,” Sita disagreed. “He’s very intuitive, and has been correct about my future many times in the past.”

“What, with vague generalities? He’s no good at specifics, because every time he gave me my lucky numbers, I believed him, and played the lottery. Did I ever win?”

Sita and Maya sat in stone silence.

“Come on, answer my question. Did I win the lottery?”

“No!” they both shouted at her with disgust.

“That proves my point; the man is a total fraud.”

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“It’s not his duty to give out winning lottery numbers to non-believers. Why should he reward you with such valuable information?”

“Then why doesn’t he reward himself, instead of wandering around as a beggar?”

“He’s not a beggar and never asks for anything. We like to give him gifts.”

“But he expects those gifts, doesn’t he! If there were no gifts, he wouldn’t be an astrologer, because that’s how he makes his living!”

“So what, and why shouldn’t he expect something?”

Maya asked, seeing nothing wrong in being paid for his work. “We want his wisdom.”

“Wisdom? I wouldn’t call it that! Wisdom comes from understanding the inherent principles in the laws of nature, and the word of God, not some hocus pocus, black magic, and the false destiny of the stars.

That man possesses no wisdom at all!”

“Well, I’m glad you still believe in God, because your Darwinian laws of nature would paint us all as monkeys, and you would be a big gorilla!”

“Of course I believe in God,” Durga responded, not knowing what nasty words to throw back at Maya to avenge the insult. “God is the only one who decides past, present and future. And God doesn’t need any gifts either, only devotion. Even if you don’t offer flowers, or incense, God will still be there and love you, because God doesn’t disappear without prasad.”

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The astrologer rattled the gate on the front porch, and Sita called out for him to come around to the back garden.

“See,” Durga pointed out to her sisters, “he didn’t even know we are in the garden. What kind of intuition is that?”

“Be quiet and don’t insult him,” Maya warned. “Go into the house if you can’t behave yourself.”

“What, and miss all the fun! I want to see you under his spell, drinking in his false predictions. But don’t worry, because I will be there to protect you, so he doesn’t take advantage.”

The astrologer was a very thin man with prominent features. His jaw was angular and jutted out sharply.

The nose was straight and long. But his eyes looked perpetually sad, and deep lines creased his brow, as if he spent too much time worrying about all his customers’ futures.

He smoked a lot of bedis, and their aroma clung to him like a pungent perfume. Sita knew the smell very well. It always gave her a sense of apprehension, like the smell in a doctor’s office, waiting for the diagnosis with uneasy anticipation.

This day Sita looked forward to that smell, because she wanted answers to specific questions, and it appeared the astrologer was the only one capable of giving them to her.

Maya was first to have her fortune told. The astrologer looked at the palms of her hands. He’d 68

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examined the lines etched in them dozens of times before, and interpreted different meanings with every reading, as if God had burned the new ones into her hands while she slept. Maya wondered what he saw this time. Had the map been altered? She hoped so.

The astrologer wrote in his notebook with a pen. It was a mixed blend of optimism and pessimism. Maya was not to set her expectations too high. She should accept the first opportunity for employment. The job might appear small at first, but would blossom in the future. Her health would remain good, although she might feel weak at times. This was nothing serious.

She shouldn’t pay attention to suspicious thoughts that would arise, as nobody was plotting against her.

There was nothing about love, or romance.

“How about marriage?” Maya asked, not satisfied with his diagnosis.

“Not soon.”

Maya didn’t like that answer, or anything else he’d told her. She didn’t want to work at a small job until it blossomed into something bigger, because it meant a boring life. Maybe Durga was right and this astrologer didn’t really know anything. A doctor’s job was to make his patient feel better, and if the astrologer wasn’t going to do that, then Maya didn’t want to hear his predictions. She had enough depressing thoughts of her own, and didn’t need the astrologer adding to them.

“I want to change my future,” Maya flatly demanded.

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“How so?” he enquired, tapping his pen against his front teeth.

“The marriage part; I need a husband.”

The astrologer sighed and scratched his head, before coming up with a suggestion, “Put a drop of rose water on your yoni before going to sleep at night, and you will find a husband through your dreams.”

Maya smiled and thanked him, but she doubted his suggestion would work. And she had enough fantasy husbands anyway. She wanted a real one now.

“Do me next,” Durga pleaded.

The astrologer was surprised and asked, “Why today? You’ve never wanted my advice before. All you’ve ever requested were lucky numbers!”

“Please,” she begged, “I apologise for the past.”

The astrologer read Durga’s hand and told her to stick with her ambitions. Success was just around the corner. Money would no longer be a concern, because she would marry a rich man, who would help her with her music career.

“When?”

“Within a year.”

Durga liked what she heard. Maybe this astrologer knew something after all. Why not? Even modern science now acknowledged the existence of psychic phenomenon.

And he was a Brahmin priest too! God could easily have given him the power. How else would God send messages? Intermediaries were necessary. There had 70

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to be a conduit through which information could travel. And the astrologer was just that; he was a messenger from God! “Can you tell me what type of man my husband will be?”

“Exactly what do you mean?” the astrologer questioned with slight trepidation, as he was reluctant to reveal details that might entrap him later.

“Tall, or short? Handsome, or ugly?”

“I don’t see anything about physical appearance, only that he will love you and help you. Isn’t that enough?”

“Of course, but if you could visualize a foreign man, with blond hair and blue eyes, my dream would be complete.”

“I can’t see what is not there.”

“When will you know what he looks like?”

“The future only appears when the time is right,” the astrologer answered, hoping it was the end of her, and he could move on to Sita.

Sita also thought it should be her turn now, and told Durga to stop pestering him for more.

“Oh excuse me, I didn’t know there was a limit to the number of questions I could ask.”

“The questions are infinite,” the astrologer explained, “but the revelations are limited. I can tell you no more.” He tapped his pen against his teeth again to indicate he was finished with her.

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“Yes of course,” Sita apologized. “We understand that, but my sister is a bit greedy!”

“How dare you call me greedy!”

“He already told you that you’ll have a happy marriage, and still you aren’t satisfied.”

“I only want a few more specifics about his predictions. This man can’t grant me wishes!”

They decided to ignore Durga and proceed with Sita’s future. She showed her palms to the astrologer.

He examined them carefully, and then wrote in his notebook again. Next, he deciphered the electronic vibrations of her aura, by placing his hands on either side of Sita’s head, without actually touching her. This time, he wrote quite extensively, and when he was finished tore out the page with a flourish, handing it to Sita.

The first part constituted a short poem on separation and sorrow, with the conclusion being that neither was permanent.

The rest of the page was filled with the description of an elaborate wedding. Sita assumed the wedding must be her own, because it appeared in the palms of her hands. And of course, the groom had to be Tamas, because she would marry no one else. Sita was extremely happy with the reading.

“Om Nama Shiva!” she chanted with gratitude.

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Chapter 9

The Rainbow Family is comprised of an organic tribe that follows the philosophy of peace, love and freedom. Anyone can be a member, so long as they adhere to those simple principles.

The seeds of the tribe were planted in America, and then spread to the rest of the globe by members, who scattered themselves in the wind, germinating wherever they landed. They spontaneously appeared at festivals and gatherings that coincided with full moons, solar eclipses and other astrological 73

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happenings. They lived in harmony with nature and focused on existing outside the system. Sometimes they traveled together, as small bands of gypsies and vagabonds.

Such a gathering was happening on the edge of Varanasi, when Tamas arrived in the holy city. The American Aghori had told him about it, as he’d already visited the site several times, and had previously attended some of the big gatherings, in the early days of the movement in America.

“ISKON always liked to make their presence at those events,” he explained. “It was a good place to find kids with open minds and get them interested in Krishna consciousness. I had a lot of fun and met plenty of cute girls too!”

He promised to take Tamas to the campsite on the following morning, and they agreed to meet where the Aghori slept.

The tomb was partially flooded by the high waters of the river, and Tamas had to remove his shoes to wade through it. A platform occupied the rear of the cavern, and a large, stone carving of the monkey God, Hanuman, stood on it. The idol was larger than a man and left little space on the platform, but it was enough for the American Aghori. The cavern was very cold and damp.

The Aghori was rolling up his blanket when Tamas arrived.

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“Good morning,” he greeted, surprised at the sight of him. “I thought you might not come!”

“Why not?”

“No reason, it’s just that a lot of people say they will do things and then they don’t.”

“I’m pretty good about my word.”

“Ya, I see that,” the Aghori replied, as he looked around to make sure he had all his belongings.

“Anyway, let’s get out of here before the tourists show up and start clicking their cameras. They won’t leave me in peace, and always want to ask me questions, like I’m some kind of tour guide to the mysterious. I can’t really blame them though, because no one else is able to tell them anything of significance.”

He paused for a moment, and then reluctantly asked Tamas to help him carry his stuff through the water.

“I’m going to leave it with a friend who has a chai shop, because it will just get stolen here. I have a hard time packing my stuff in and out with this bum leg of mine and I would greatly appreciate your assistance.”

Tamas helped him out of the cavern, and they climbed steep, stone stairs to the walkway above. It was still early morning and the chai shop wallah was just opening his shop. The first pot of tea had only started to boil. He added half a cup of sugar to it and stirred. Making chai was something he had done all his life, having inherited the tiny shop from his father, who had inherited it from his grandfather, who had it gifted to him by the Maharaja of the ghat, because he 75

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made such a good cup of tea. The current descendent was proud to tell that story to all new customers, and he related it to Tamas.

“And he still makes the best chai on the ghats,” the Aghori confirmed. “Do you want one?”

“Sure, how can I refuse such an offer?”

“I need the stuff to properly wake up,” the Aghori confessed. “I’m addicted to it, and don’t know it it’s the caffeine in the tea, or the milk and sugar? But I understand that it’s not particularly good for me, and will probably shorten my life by a few years, but I don’t think that matters, because I figure we live too long anyway. Don’t you find it all too boring at times?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, “Of course you wouldn’t, because you’re just a young buck, and life is still fresh and exciting for you. I know it was for me when I was your age. But now, I’ve passed fifty, and life has become more of a chore than a thrill. It’s kind of like a job now, and the reasons for waking up in the morning are getting fewer and fewer. If it wasn’t for the pure joy of worshiping the Divine Mother, my life would have very little meaning.”

He paused his monologue long enough to order the chai, and to put his bag and blanket behind the shack, covering them with a piece of cardboard. Then he said a little prayer for their safety and returned to the bench beside Tamas.

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“Do you know much about the Divine Mother?” he asked him.

“A little, I’ve lived in West Bengal and have been to Kali Ghat and Tara Pith.”

“Then you know something. You’ve at least met her.

She is so beautiful and compassionate, so loving and merciful! You wouldn’t think so, with that necklace of human heads that she wears, and the way she is stomping on Lord Shiva. Do you know why she is jumping up and down on her husband?”

Tamas didn’t.

“Shiva placed himself under her feet to cushion her anger, and prevent it from destroying the universe.

Now that’s what I call a brave husband!”

Sita was also a strong Mother Kali devotee and the mention of the Divine Mother reminded Tamas of her.

They had visited many temples together and even went on a train journey to visit Tara Pith. It was the sacred place where Mother Kali’s third eye had fallen.

And it was this spiritual devotion, more than anything else, which had bonded them together. Sita gave herself completely to the Mother. Tamas saw it in her eyes and concluded she must be Mother Kali’s daughter, because even the divine anger was there.

Because the Aghori couldn’t move very quickly, he compensated by embellishing the journey with a continuous stream of conversation. He wove a tapestry that was embroidered with such detail, any rational mind would have judged it to be a work of 77

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fiction. The events could not possibly have taken place on this plane of existence.

“Have you ever heard of Transcendental Meditation?” he digressed from his monologue.

“Something to do with the Beatles, I think.”

“Ya well, they made it popular, but it’s an ancient practice. People have been trying to transcend this existence for eons, and meditation is only one way of doing it. There are all kinds of plants and chemicals that will also create the same affect. The trick is to maintain the high, so you don’t come down, otherwise it turns into a roller coaster ride, with all the twists and turns, screams and vomit. You don’t want that!

Permanently floating with your head in the clouds is the preferred state. The Hindus call it, ‘Moksha’, and the Buddhists, ’Nirvana’, and the Christians, ‘Heaven’.

It’s a simultaneous state of being and non-being. There is no ‘now’! The path to enlightenment isn’t easy though, because the ego acts as a force of gravity that sucks the soul back into the body. It’s hard to resist that pull, because we all love ourselves so much.

You would think that if men can make machines that transcend physical gravity and go into outer space, then they should also be able to do the same with the spirit. And they have. Psychedelics are those machines. The problem is that the orbit with them is very limited, and I want to stay in outer space permanently.”

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“Maybe you will,” Tamas liked the Aghori’s concept of no return.

“I hope so, or else why am I doing this? Jim Morrison said that no one gets out of here alive, but I don’t necessarily agree, and think it’s possible to escape before I die.”

An Indian man dressed in slacks and a button front shirt rapidly approached them. He looked as if he had something serious on his mind.

“Oh shit, here comes trouble!”

“Where’s my money?” the man demanded angrily.

“You were supposed to pay me yesterday.”

“Sorry, but I didn’t have the money yesterday, and I don’t have it today either,” the Aghori held out his hands so the man saw they were empty.

The man frowned with disgust, and then verbally exploded, with spit flying from the corners of his mouth, “I want my money and I want it NOW!” There was a funny connection between how the man demanded his money and a line from a Door’s song that made the Aghori chuckle. And they’d just been talking about Jim Morrison too! God had a very strange way of linking everything together.

“What’s in your bag?” he asked the Aghori.

“Nothing much, only my personal things, no money!”

“Let me see,” he grabbed at the bag.

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“I told you, there is nothing inside for you,” the Aghori strongly objected, but reluctantly let the man search the bag for his own satisfaction.

Tamas wondered if he should get involved and defend the Aghori, because the man had become belligerent. But he decided to stay out, as the situation could easily turn nasty.

The first thing the man found was the ‘dumaroo’, a drum rattle fashioned from the tops of two children’s skulls, with skin stretched across both sides. The Aghori explained that it was quite old, and the children must have been twins who had died at a young age, because the skulls were identical.

The man’s face turned ash grey, and he quickly returned the bag.

“I told you there was no money.”

“But you still have to pay me.”

“And I will, when I get the money,” the Aghori apologized to him.. “I very much appreciate you giving me credit. There aren’t many people who will do that. And if you’re willing to trust me some more, I’ll buy another tola from you, on credit of course.”

He thought about his offer for a moment and then asked, “When will you pay me?”

“Tomorrow,” the Aghori promised. “The bank says my money should be here by then.”

The man had too many tolas in his pocket, and too few customers, so he decided to take a chance, because he’d convinced himself that the Aghori was really 80

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going to sell the tola to Tamas for a profit anyway, and would pay him once he did that.

He gave the Aghori a small packet and disappeared further down the ghats in search of other customers, having decided he could get his money later.

“Yahoo, looks like we’ve got ourselves a free lump of charas to smoke!” the Aghori exclaimed, as he unwrapped the packet, to smell its contents.

“I thought you said you would pay him tomorrow?”

“I don’t have any money coming to the bank, and only said that to appeal to his sense of greed. And it worked! This stuff smells like Manali.”

“Aren’t you afraid of him?”

“Hell no! What’s he going to do? Kill me and throw me in the Ganga? That would be like throwing Peter Rabbit into the briar patch!

Let’s sit down and sample some of this. I think I got a good deal, because this looks and smells like the real thing!”

Rubbing the resin off the female cannabis plants, onto the hands, makes Manali charas. The black, sticky substance is then scraped off and built up into balls, sticks, or small patties. Rubbing each plant only one time produces a quality referred to as ‘cream’. It is the most potent and tasty.

The Aghori thought this piece might be just that, but didn’t want to jump to any conclusion immediately.

“You can’t always judge a book by its cover, and things that look and smell good, don’t always turn out 81

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that way, because people have a bad habit of mixing other substances into the charas for profit, so I say we give it the final test.”

He prepared a chillum and they happily smoked it together. It tasted good.

The song of a bird stood out against the splash of a boatman’s oars, as sounds became more clear and distinct. They mutated from the ordinary, into a magical music. It was God’s little symphony.

Tamas watched the clouds form a giant Sanskrit Om in the blue sky above, and he felt himself float away on the warm breeze. The piece was defiantly of superior quality.

“Om Nama Shiva!” he thanked with gratitude.

82

Chapter 10

A narrow path crossed the lush, green paddy field, in the direction of the temple. It was built up, above the 83

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muddy water and the patches of rice. Sita had to concentrate on her footing. Some of the earth had collapsed and it had become quite slippery. She didn’t want to make a mistake and fall, because she wore her new sari.

It shimmered like peacock feathers in the sunshine.

Her mother had given it to her, before the ceremony in honor of her father, as a gift of gratitude for what Sita had done a year earlier. Sita hadn’t worn it until now, because there had been no reason to do so, no occasion to celebrate.

But this day Sita was on her way to perform a puja and pray to Mother Kali for protection and guidance, so she wore her new sari, and carried the hibiscus garland, a packet of incense and some matches.

A twelve-year-old boy, pushing a bicycle, entered the path from the opposite direction.

“Hey!” Sita shouted, not liking the situation. “Go back!”

The boy stopped and looked at her. It was much easier for her to turn around, or step to the side, then for him to back up his bicycle, to where he had entered the footpath. So he decided to pay her no mind, and continued towards her. Within a few seconds, they were facing each other. The boy tried maneuvering his muddy bicycle tire past Sita.

“Stop! I will kill you if you dirty my sari!”

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But he wasn’t afraid of her, as he could easily knock her off the path with his bicycle, and she could do nothing to prevent him.

“Step aside please,” he requested.

“I will not! What kind of boy are you, to be speaking like that to a woman?”

“I’m a bad boy,” he confessed, “so step aside and let me pass.”

“But I might fall into the paddy field, you idiot!”

“That’s your problem.”

Sita quickly searched for something to say, because her initial anger had now mutated into fear.

“Mother Kali will punish you for this! These flowers are for her,’ she threatened him with divine intervention.

The boy looked at the hibiscus mala in her hand, and contemplated the wrath of Mother Kali. He didn’t want to anger the Divine Mother. He’d learned from past experience, he could end up with a spanking.

Still, he didn’t want to give in to this girl. She thought herself so beautiful in her new sari, like she was a princess and he was only a lowly, poor boy. He didn’t like her attitude one bit.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he offered. “I’ll move off the path, if you give a stick of incense and a single flower to Mother Kali for me.”

Sita didn’t like that proposition at all. She’d made the mala with her own hands, and didn’t want to share it with anybody, especially not a low caste boy. She 85

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couldn’t possibly enter the temple on his behalf, because she was a Brahmin. He would have to find some other way to worship Mother Kali. The temple was not for him.

“Alright,” she agreed, without sincerity, because the agreement had been extracted with threats, and she wouldn’t have to abide by it.

The boy moved his bicycle to one side and balanced himself on the edge of the footpath to make room for Sita to pass.

“Remember,” he called after her, “one flower and one stick of incense are from me!”

Sita huffed as she pointed her chin in the air and continued in the direction of an ancient banyan tree, with its long, dread locks, hanging to the ground.

A Baul sat under the tree. He played his dotara and sang a song. A group of children had gathered around him, clapping and dancing to the music. Sita knew this man. He always wore the same clothing, a multicolored, patchwork robe and an orange, head wrap, with a peacock feather stuck in it.

He had three wives and several children. Sita thought it a pitiful shame, because the man could not even afford to feed them all properly. There was only so much food he could beg, by playing in kitchen doorways. Sita thought a man had a responsibility to provide better facilities for his wife and children. She wondered why the three women had married him.

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Durga had tried to explain it as sexual power, but Sita didn’t believe her, because he didn’t look very sexy. In fact, his appearance was very unappealing to her. He had bad teeth, which were discolored, and stuck out at odd angles, and Sita didn’t believe a man with bad teeth could be sexy. Durga had to be wrong with her assessment.

The funny thing was that Durga thought she was the expert on the subject of sex, even though she’d had no real personal experience. She also assumed all relationships were ruled by that singular factor. Good sex meant a happy marriage, and bad sex was the recipe for disaster. Sexual power was what mattered most, and it decided who was boss!

The Baul saw Sita walking past, and called out to her.

He wanted to talk.

“Not now,” she replied. “I don’t have time.

“It’s very important,” he said with urgency in his voice.

Sita wondered what that could be, and decided to stop for only a moment.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Kokila fell off a train and broke his arm.”

“That idiot!” Sita shrieked in disbelief, as the anger started getting the better of her again. “He knows we have an important program in a few days, and now he wants to ruin us by breaking his arm. He will destroy everything with his stupidity. He’s been riding the trains for years; how could he fall off one?”

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Peacock Das told her to calm down. He was afraid she might somehow twist her anger to include him, and decided she probably ate too many chilies for breakfast. That was really the major cause for her getting upset.

“Kokila didn’t break his arm on purpose!” he tried to make her see reason.

“You don’t know that idiot like I do. He is a jealous little monster, who doesn’t want to see us succeed, because he wants to be the star, and thinks by destroying us, he will rise to the top.”

Peacock Das concluded there was no point in arguing with her. The woman was obviously mad. She was just another casualty on the landscape. He had encountered many of her type in the past.

“Maybe, you can find a replacement?”

“Who could that possibly be?”

“I’m available,” he said, rising from the ground and bowing from the waist. “Peacock Das at your service.”

Sita didn’t know what to do. It was a decision she didn’t want to take alone.

“Come to our house this evening and talk to my sisters,” she told him and continued with her journey.

Sita didn’t like this new problem. She’d started out for the temple in a happy mood, with her mind set on devotion. She thought it would be a simple excursion.

But first, she encountered difficulties with the boy, and then came the news of Kokila’s arm. These things made her angry, and she didn’t like to visit the Divine 88

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Mother in such a mood. She didn’t trust her own thoughts, and was afraid she might insult Mother Kali with her anger. She needed to calm herself, before she got to the temple.

A pagoda structure, with vines covering it, stood where the path met the road. It had been built as a picnic house by rich people from Kolkata, but the family had lost interest in visiting the area and had left it abandoned for many years. Sita decided it would be a good place to gather her thoughts.

She pushed aside the vines and stepped inside. The air felt cool, but stale, because there was no movement. Everything hung in stillness. The light was dim, and it took several seconds for her eyes to adjust.

She received a shock when that happened, because she wasn’t alone. There were two half-naked women, with their breast exposed, and long, matted hair, sitting on the dirt floor.

“Come in, we’ve been waiting for you,” one of them invited her to join them in the center of a hexagon that had been drawn on the dirt with colored powder.

Sita hesitated, but wasn’t afraid, because she felt a kinship to these women. She didn’t know how to explain it. They were so strange, yet felt so familiar.

She decided to join them in the hexagon.

“Now, you’ve entered the world of magic,” one of them told her. “Your future depends on how you use it.” She held out a small, green glass bottle for Sita to take.

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“What is it?” Sita asked.

“A magic potion that you will need someday, but be careful and use it wisely, because there are only three drops.”

Sita thought this was all a crazy dream, but couldn’t extricate herself from participating. “How does it work?”

“Put a drop under the tongue of another, and they will do your bidding. Cast whatever spell you wish.

Once consumed, it is impossible to resist.”

“How do you know this was meant for me? We’ve never met before!”

“Your name is Sita, like the Goddess, and destiny sent us here, to bring this potion for your dharma to continue without fear. Feel safe in the knowledge that you have three chances to escape a fate you do not want.”

“Thank you,” Sita said, as she took the bottle from the witches.

None of it seemed real. Sita stepped out of the hexagon, and everything that had been there, disappeared. There were no witches, not even a hexagon, only some dust in the air.

But of course, the magic bottle still existed. Sita held it in her hand. She carefully wrapped it into the waistband of her sari, and hurried on to the temple.

Mother Kali was waiting for her there.

Along the way, she thought of the two witches again.

Who had sent them, and for what purpose? They were 90

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obviously practitioners of black magic. Sita had been warned by the astrologer to avoid them at all costs.

Only he could deal with black magic. She was never to accept anything from a witch, not even a flower. The astrologer had assured her that to smell the flower would put her under their power. Now, Sita had accepted a bottle of potion from some witches, and she wondered if it had been a wise decision.

Wise, or not, she would keep the bottle and keep it her secret. She would hide the potion and tell no one, not even her sisters.

Mother Kali held the severed heads of demons in her outstretched arms as she greeted Sita. Sita knew the demons were her own angry thoughts, so she prayed to Mother Kali to destroy them all.

Mother Kali responded by showering her with infinite love. It was the only way to destroy demons.

Sita gave thanks by offering the garland of flowers to the Divine Mother.

“Om Nama Shiva!” she chanted

91

Chapter 11

The rainbow camp was located on an empty piece of land, past the last guesthouse, directly on the river.

The shelters comprised of three t-pees and a straw house. A giant, rainbow colored flag, with a peace sign, fluttered at the end of a long, bamboo pole. There was a sacred fire pit, with a cow dung floor, and a lingum stone sitting in a yoni, placed at the end, facing north. Marigolds and rose petals profusely decorated the ‘dhuna’.

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Two girls, wrapped in shawls that blended with the color of their own golden hair, sat on one side. They sang morning bhajans, praising Mother Ganga. The drone of a harmonium accompanied their voices.

They looked like they could be genetic sisters, but they weren’t. Lotus came from America, and Amanda was born in England. Their backgrounds were completely different too! Yet fate had brought them both to India, to visit their common guru, a mataji who gave darshan through love. She had an ashram in Kerela, and that is where the two girls met.

They became inseparable, as they visualized themselves in a reality with no hate. That’s what the mataji taught, and they both subscribed to every thing she said. Love was the only element, with all actions and reactions being the wishes of the Divine Mother.

Nothing could disappoint the girls, or make them sad in any way, because they would instantly turn it all into love. Ma wanted them to live their lives completely in her grace, without any doubt, or question, devoid of all fear.

Han returned from the river, where he had taken a bath, after doing yoga, and was still wet. His strong figure glistened in the early morning sunshine. He wrapped a cotton lungi around his waist, as he listened to the girls sing. He was in love with Lotus.

But that kind of thing wasn’t allowed in her world.

No personal lust could exist, only universal love. He didn’t know how to deal with the situation, so he only 93

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stared at her, wishing she wasn’t so perfect. He was afraid to invade her sacred space and dislodge her from the spiritual reverie. He didn’t want to drag her down to the mundane world of romance. His mind was in conflict with his heart and left him with a frustrated internal struggle.

The t-pees belonged to a French man, who claimed he was part Native American, on his mother’s side. His ancestors had been fur trappers in Canada.

Fleur said he had chosen his own name, Rainbow style, because it meant ‘flower’, and he considered himself colorful and fragrant. He juggled fire sticks at night and had a small business making, and selling, hand-made perfumes. His clientele ranged from the very rich, staying in five star hotels, to economy minded backpackers. He adjusted his prices accordingly.

He was close in age to the American Aghori, and the rest of the Rainbow Family treated him as a respected elder, which he liked, because he’d gotten very little respect anyplace else in his life. Most people didn’t understand him, and viewed him as somewhat of a degenerate, because he didn’t have a regular job and didn’t pay taxes. Hitler’s Nazis would have killed him, but the Rainbow Family loved him, and he loved them back, pure and simple.

A young, Indian, hippie boy was the other resident of the camp. He handled all the dealings with the locals.

He arranged the food, wood, camping privileges and a 94

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variety of oddities that constantly arose. Shankar was an extremely valuable asset to the camp, because it took a special talent to organize everything; and he had it.

Shankar was in love with Amanda. Her white skin looked too soft. He wanted to touch it, to see if it was real. Her eyes sparkled when she looked at him. And at first, Shankar thought she was also in love with him, but he soon realized that the sparkle was there for everyone.

Tamas and the American Aghori arrived at the Rainbow Camp, while the family was sitting in a circle, holding hands and chanting.

“I was expecting more people,” Tamas commented with disappointment.

“There were a lot more here a few days ago. They must have all left,” the Aghori tried to explain. “But that’s okay, because the best always stay until last. It’s like that with everything in life.”

“I guess what they say, isn’t necessarily true then!”

Tamas laughed.

“What’s that?”

“The good don’t die young.”

“There are always exceptions in life, and things that don’t fit any pattern, but Jimi Hendrix died pretty young, and he was very good. Although you would expect that, with Jimi being a rock n’ roller. It comes with the territory.” He paused to take a breath and then asked Tamas if he played guitar.

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“No, I’m a singer.”

“Oh ya? These kids like to sing bhajans. Maybe you can join in?”

“Maybe I can!”

The meditation ended just as Tamas and the Aghori arrived at the circle.

“Welcome home, brothers!” Fleur greeted them, with the others echoing him.

The Aghori slumped down on a straw mat with a sigh. It had been a difficult walk for him, and the pain in his hip had returned. He thought he could teach himself to love the pain, but that never happened. He still hated it. He was unable to transcend that aspect of his dharma.

“Complete detachment isn’t as easy as it seems,” he proclaimed to anyone who listened, feeling a need to publicly expose his dilemma. “A lot of it is our mind playing tricks on us, fooling us into believing we’ve made some advancement, escaped the drudgeries of our bodies. And that’s just when Shiva injects a dose of sharp pain to let us know who we really are, and bring us right back to where we started. And we discover ourselves locked up in our bodies again. I haven’t escaped anything, because I still hate this pain!”

“Then just be,” Lotus suggested. “Everything is Ma. All is good, even pain.”

“Aren’t you the beautiful philosopher? Poems of truth and wisdom come from your lips so freely. But is 96

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any man strong enough to endure? Isn’t the Divine Mother a bit too much sometimes, in her expectations from her children? I don’t think there are many humans who can do it. That’s why we keep coming back. It’s kind of like failing in school, and having to repeat the grade. I got an, ‘F’ in pain appreciation.

Maybe that’s the weak link in my devotion, and maybe that’s what is keeping me attached to this crippled body? What do you think?”

The Aghori looked around the circle, hoping someone would speak, but no one did. They had all drifted off with their own thoughts.

Han disappeared into the straw house and returned with a stringed instrument. Tamas immediately recognized it to be a dotara. To everyone’s pleasant surprise, Tamas also knew the words of the song Han played on it, and sang along. He was very good, and managed to sing the difficult part of the chorus, flawlessly.

“Wow!” Han complimented him, as he strummed the final chord of the song. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

Tamas told him about his life in West Bengal, “I lived with the Bauls, ate with them, slept with them and sang with them. If my life hadn’t suddenly unraveled, I would probably still be with them. But you play that dotara very well. You must know all about them?”

“I’ve put in my fair share of time with them too,” Han admitted. “I love the music!”

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“Who was your teacher?”

“Kokila. Do you know him?”

“A little,” Tamas laughed. “I recognized your technique. You play just like him.”

“Thank you, but I won’t return the compliment and say that you sing like him, because it wouldn’t do you justice.”

Tamas knew what he meant, and smiled with appreciation.

“Strange, that we’ve never met before.”

“Everything has its appropriate time,” the Aghori interjected, “with the paths of karma dharma interlinked at specific points. You were destined to meet here and now!”

Tamas and Han smiled at each other, both sensing an important friendship had begun.

“Shall we forward to more bhajans?” Amanda asked, as she removed the cloth cover from the harmonium.

“A smoke before more music,” the Aghori suggested.

“Things go better with charas.”

“Music is enough in itself,” Amanda countered, doubting the validity of his last statement.

Lotus saw she was about to slip, and came to her rescue, “It’s all good; music, charas, everything, because it’s all the beautiful and wonderful creation of the Divine Mother. Ma! Ma! Jai Ma!” “Jai Ma!” Amanda agreed, as she hugged and kissed Lotus, staring deeply into her eyes.

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Their relationship was one of total bliss. They were mirror images of each other, verifying to one another that they were real, not just fantasies in their own minds.

“Do we have all the ingredients for the rice pudding?” Lotus asked no one in particular, waiting for a volunteer to answer.

“I’ve taken care of everything,” Shankar replied. “We have rice, sugar, milk, raisons and cardamom; enough ingredients to feed a hundred people.”

“I think we need more leaf bowls,” Amanda said, as she evaluated their stock.

“The woman, who makes them, is bringing some more,” Shankar informed her, happy to be interacting with Amanda. “But the only problem I have, is finding a pot big enough to cook that much rice pudding. The restaurants won’t lend me one, and I think we may have to rent it.”

“From where?” Lotus laughed, finding such an idea silly. “Where do you rent a pot for the day?”

“I know a place. They charge a hundred rupees for one the size we need!”

“Another hundred rupees isn’t in the budget,” Han informed him. “We’ve nearly spent all the money we collected.”

“Why are you cooking all the rice pudding?” Tamas asked, thinking they were preparing for a wedding, or some other celebration.

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“Ma is going to feed the beggars,” Amanda replied.

“And we are her hands and feet.”

“Which beggars?” the Aghori asked, hoping it might include him, because he liked rice pudding.

“The lepers on the stairs at Dasheshwamed Ghat.”

“That’s an awful long way to be hauling all that food,” the Aghori stated with disappointment. “It’s too far for me to walk.”

“We have a friend with a rickshaw.”

“Too bad you don’t have a friend with a pot, because, as one of those Freak Brothers once said, we can get through times of pot and no money, better than we can get through times of money and no pot.”

Only Fleur laughed at the joke. The others were all too young in age to have known the Freak brothers .

But they thought there must have been some wisdom in what the Aghori said, and scratched their heads in search of it, without any success.

“Alright, it’s time for brother Fleur to light the chillum. And may he bless us all with his undertaking.”

Fleur looked upon this assignment with seriousness.

He viewed lighting the chillum as a sacred privilege, because ganja was the sacrament of Lord Shiva. It was God’s favorite plant. And joining Shiva in the communion of the chillum was a royal honor, reserved for those with no fear of their own destinies. Fleur was one of Shiva’s ganja warriors, and felt he’d struck a victory for good over evil every time he lit a chillum.

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That’s the way he viewed things, and how he lived his life. Only those in agreement mattered, because everyone else didn’t even exist.

Tamas thought about what these people were trying to accomplish. They weren’t rich by any standards, and in fact, appeared to have very little money. But still, they wanted to feed the hungry leper beggars.

The task didn’t seem insurmountable to them, as all that stood in the way of success, was the acquisition of a large pot. And that only cost one hundred rupees.

Tamas envied their sense of dedication to the charitable work. He decided pure love would not be denied, and fished a hundred rupee note from his own pocket. He wanted to be part of this beautiful experience.

“Here,” he said, handing the money to Shankar.

“Now, you can get the pot.”

“Jai Ma, and blessed be!” Lotus cried in appreciation.

Shankar took the money, but didn’t go for the pot right away, because he wanted to smoke some of the chillum first. He also loved the ritual, as he felt this is what had brought him into the family. It was the key to the door of their world.

Shankar had discovered this world at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad. The Rainbow Family had set up camp in a mango grove, on a hillock, overlooking the main event. He’d stumbled onto it by accident. And at first, he was afraid he might not be accepted by these foreigners, but soon discovered, that in many ways, 101

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they were just like him. He fell in love with them and joined the tribe. He took one last puff and went off to fetch the pot.

“He’s a good boy,” Fleur complimented, as he watched him leave. “He’s like a son to me, whatever that means, because I never had a father, and don’t know what it’s like to be one. But I feel a special bond with Shankar.”

The girls started singing again, and Han accompanied them with his dotara. Tamas sat back and thought of Sita. She would have liked this scene.

Her style was completely different, but the heart was the same. She had the same love for this music, and her devotion was no different from theirs.

Shankar soon returned with the pot and proceeded to cook the rice pudding. Every few minutes he left the makeshift kitchen, behind the t-pees, to join the group for another puff. Sometimes, he stayed long enough to join in on a few lines of singing. He was extremely content with his assignment of cooking for the beggars.

When the rice pudding was ready, Shankar went off to find the rickshaw. He quickly returned with the man who had promised to help them. They loaded everything and prepared to leave.

“I’m not coming,” the Aghori sadly regretted. “It’s too far for me.”

“Wait here until we return,” Fleur told him.

“I may disappear before then.”

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“That would be in accordance with your kind,” Fleur laughed.

When they were all ready, they formed a circle and chanted, “Om Nama Shiva!”

103

Chapter 12

Her sisters were waiting for Sita when she got home.

Kokila had already been there, and showed them his 104

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broken arm. They wanted to discuss the crisis with her, but Sita had other things on her mind and rushed past them without a word.

“What’s the matter with her?” Maya asked, surprised at her behavior.

“It must be something big,” Durga decided, as they both jumped up, in pursuit of her.

But Sita had already locked the door to her room, and they couldn’t follow, so her secret would be kept. She brought out the bottle and examined it. There was nothing to indicate what it actually contained. Exactly, what was the magic potion made of?

Her mind swirled in search of an answer, but nothing made sense, because she’d had no contact with such things before. She found no connection to the two witches from any past experience. They weren’t from her dreams, or her fantasies, and certainly didn’t come from any form of reality. They had appeared from nowhere, entered her consciousness, and then disappeared in a cloud of dust. Sita didn’t know them.

And yet, they seamed to know her so well, as to present her with a magic potion, formulated specifically for her future needs. Her mind told her none of this was possible. It was beyond her grasp of reality. But she held the bottle in her hands, and that was more convincing than any doubts her brain could invent.

What surprised Sita most was the fact she had taken the bottle, and hadn’t thrown it away, but carried it 105

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home, and would hide it in her jewelry box, for which only she had the key. Her actions were a mystery to herself, as if someone else was secretly directing her life.

Her father’s face suddenly appeared in her mind, and she wondered if it was possible for the dead to interfere with the living, but decided it wasn’t.

“Open up!” Durga demanded, as she banged on the door with her fist. “Is there something wrong? Please open the door.”

“Come on Sita,” Maya added, “you have to tell us what’s happening!”

Sita hid the locked box under a pile of clothing she no longer wore. She kept them for memories. Every garment had its own story, and Sita knew them all.

They were her diaries.

Everything calmed down, once Sita put away the bottle, dissipating the confusion caused by it. The mad dizziness vanished, and she now felt that reality was back to normal. She could face her sisters again, so she opened the door.

“Nothing is wrong,” she immediately told them.

Her sisters didn’t believe her, because she never locked the door to her room, unless something was wrong. They certainly hadn’t been the fault of her current problem, because there had been no exchange between them when Sita had entered the house, so it must have been something that happened outside 106

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home. Both sisters were sure of that, and became intent on squeezing the truth from her.

“Then why did you lock your door?”

“Is there no privacy?”

“Not in this house. We all live here together and share our lives. This isn’t a block of flats, where you don’t even have to say good morning to the neighbors, if you don’t like them. This is a home, with a family, where we care for one another, and get involved with each other’s lives. So please tell us the truth!”

Durga didn’t like the unknown, especially when it concerned one of her sisters. Life was difficult enough, without secrets. They only produced stress.

“It’s no big deal,” Sita tried to brush them off.

“Let us be the judges of that!”

“Okay, I was putting away a present that someone gave me.”

“A boy!” Durga guessed wrongly.

“Who is he?” Maya questioned, not sure Durga was right.

“I’m not telling anymore,” Sita firmly stated, widening her eyes to emphasize the point.

Durga grew jealous, and attacked her sister, “So now you have a secret boyfriend, and he’s given you a present, but you don’t want to share this with your sisters, so you have hidden the present in your room, thinking we’re going to steal it from you, or maybe you’re afraid we might steal him from you? Well we’re 107

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not interested in your boyfriend, because he can’t be much of a man if you have to hide him from us.”

“Think what you want,” she replied with disinterest, hoping it would put them off, and they would give up. They could create their own lie. She wouldn’t stop them.

“What did he give you?” Maya persisted.

“None of your business.”

Durga felt her authority, as the elder sister, being challenged. They’d spent all their lives in a relationship, where Durga was second, only to their parents, in making decisions. Durga was the boss when their mother was absent from the process, and her word was final.

She had assumed this position from childhood, and still carried it in her mind, even though all of them were now adult women. She assumed that because they were still living in the same house, nothing had changed, and they had only aged, with everybody carrying on with the same roles they’d always played.

“I should slap your face. How dare you tell us to mind our business? This is a family, not a business!”

Sita had started feeling the need for privacy when she’d gotten involved with Tamas. She no longer wanted to share her thoughts with her sisters, because she had someone new to do that with. It was her lover!

But her sisters hadn’t understood, and continually harassed her for information. And she ended up 108

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confessing more than she’d wanted to, regretting it, because she thought she’d compromised the trust Tamas and her had built together. There hadn’t been much to tell, but even so, she felt uncomfortable having done it.

“We will find out who he is,” Maya promised. “Don’t think you can hide him, because someone will tell us.

There are eyes everywhere, and we’ll probably know his name before this day is finished.”

“Fine, do as you like. Make yourselves into fools, by running around to all the neighbors, in search of information. I don’t care.”

Durga saw there was no point in continuing, because Sita wasn’t going to reveal anything, at that moment, and there were more pressing issues to deal with.

“What will we do about Kokila?” she asked.

Maya didn’t want to change subjects. She didn’t have a satisfactory answer yet, and didn’t want to be left hanging, so she protested. But Durga told her to let it be, because they had an important program in two days.

“We don’t have a dotara player,” she lamented.

“Yes we do,” Sita said, happy to have that information.

Both her sisters looked at Sita in disbelief, and then Maya told her about Kokila’s arm, thinking she must not have heard the bad news.

“I know, and I’ve already found a substitute.”

“Who is it?”

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“Peacock Das; he’s coming here this evening.”

Durga searched her brain for a face to match the name. It couldn’t be a real name, and had to be a title they’d bestowed on someone as a joke. But suddenly, Durga realized who it was, and the name wasn’t one they’d made up, but actually existed as the identity of a man she feared and despised.

“Not him!” she screamed, holding her own face with both hands.

“Why not?”

“Because he has three wives, and I don’t want to be number four, do you?”

“We don’t have to marry him!”

“That’s what you think, and that’s what his wives thought too, before they all ended up married to him!

I warn you to beware of this man and his unearthly power.”

“I’m not afraid, because I’m in love with Tamas, and no man can take me away from him.”

Both her sisters laughed. Tamas was nowhere to be found.

“What about the new boyfriend?” Maya asked, thinking she may have caught Sita in her lie.

“A present doesn’t always have to mean love.

Sometimes, it’s only friendship!”

“Then show us what it is.”

“No.” Peacock Das showed up much earlier than expected, and the girls had not yet agreed to include him in the 110

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group. They were still debating the subject, when he appeared.

“Joy Guru!” he greeted them, holding out his arms to receive a hug, which wasn’t coming, because Durga had planted fear in her sisters, and also blocked the path between them and Peacock Das, to make sure this man would not put a spell on them. She wasn’t confident her sisters had the strength to resist him.

“Bad news about Kokila,” he continued, sensing the cool reception to him. “The man has bad luck, because he ran away from his wife in Assam. He should not have given up his first wife, just because he fell in love with another woman. Love is expandable, and he should have accommodated both of them. That was Kokila’s big mistake, leaving one woman for another, and now that woman has also left him, and he finds himself all alone. He should have kept both women happy, and he would also be happy. Bad karma reaps its results, and now Kokila has a broken arm too.”

Durga listened with scorn. All men were the same, and thought multiple wives were all right for themselves. But the wives had to be strictly monogamous, faithful to the king, washing his feet and then drinking the water. The wives weren’t even allowed to look at other men. And the virgin bride was still preferred.

She was glad her parents were different, and had encouraged their three daughters to be liberal and friendly with boys, although that never led to any 111

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romances, or sex. Durga surmised that friendship wasn’t enough to get a real boyfriend, because it hadn’t worked for her, and fairy tale beauty was beyond her reach, because she was very earthy and ordinary in appearance.

“I’ve come to demonstrate my talents,” Peacock Das stated, “as I believe you may be in need of them?”

Durga hoped he was referring to his musical abilities, and not some other talents. She didn’t want any weird drama, because this program was much too important for her.

“Just keep your hands on your dotara, and we’ll see how you do,” Durga instructed him. “You must already know most of the songs, as they are all from Tagore.”

“I can sing all of his songs. They are the blood in my body.”

“You’re not going to sing,” Durga flatly informed him. “The three of us will sing, and you will only play the dotara.”

His facial expression indicated Peacock Das was not happy with these rules. In fact, he was astonished at such a suggestion.

“But I am a Baul, and have to sing,” he protested. “It is the nature of the being!”

Durga thought that typical. They all wanted to be the star, and nobody wanted to play a supporting role. It was the major downfall of the Bauls, and had caused the breakup of many friendships.

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However, this wasn’t a Baul gathering, where casual rules could be usurped by a man’s ego and his desire to sing. Durga wanted this to be a professional act, and Peacock Das would only be employed as a musician. He had to understand his position in the group and follow direction from Durga.

“If we like how you play, I will pay you two hundred rupees for each performance. But you don’t sing, and only play the dotara, understand?”

Peacock Das had never agreed to anything like this before. Was it possible to ask a bird, not to sing? They would have to cut out his throat in order to stop him.

But he agreed to her demands, anyway, because he needed the money.

The girls got their instruments and arranged themselves around the room. They told Peacock Das where to stand, and told him to dance in a refrained manner, so as not to upstage them. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue the point, and tuned his dotara in preparation for the audition.

They started the first song, but Peacock Das stopped part way through it and issued a rude noise from the back of his throat.

“What’s the matter?” Durga asked him.

“You’re not singing it correctly,” he criticized her.

“What do you mean?” Durga narrowed her eyes at him.

“Your voice should go up a half tone, at the end of that phrase,” Peacock Das instructed, and then 113

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demonstrated what he meant, by singing the part himself.

“Stop! You can’t tell me how to interpret Tagore. I am no illiterate like you, and I understand the meaning!”

She would have chopped off his head, if she had a sword, because words were not enough to satiate her anger.

“I may be illiterate,” he politely responded. “And I confess that I am unable to read the words of Tagore, but I can sing all of them, as they are etched into my heart. I don’t have to think when I sing. The songs come automatically from within. And so, it is not my willful choosing, but something inherent in the song itself. That is why I corrected you.”

“We don’t care what you think,” Maya put in. “We’ll sing them the way we want to, and not the way you suggest, just because you think you are the chosen disciple of Tagore, installed by God, as his sole interpreter.”

It had been a very strange day for Sita, and she didn’t feel like dealing with Peacock Das and the audition any longer. She would have preferred going to her room and trying to sleep, but that wasn’t possible, because Durga had bigger issues to resolve, and would insist that Sita participate. There was no escape.

“This isn’t going to work!” an exasperated Durga exclaimed, when Peacock Das also disrupted the following song.

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“Never mind him,” Maya suggested. “Just ignore what he does and continue with the song. He’ll have to make up his mind, if he wants in, or out? Let’s not waste anymore time, playing his childish games.”

Durga thought Maya had a point, and hoped it might work, so decided to give it a try. And next time Peacock Das stopped, they kept right on playing and singing. Peacock Das was bemused, and scratched his head, before strumming some out of tune nonsense on his dotara. Still, they didn’t stop.

He wanted to cry, because he felt he’d lost control of the situation, and would have to play the way they wanted him to. He realized they could go on, without him. So he had no choice, but to play the songs how Durga requested of him.

“Very good,” she complimented him. “That’s the way we will perform on Thursday.”

It meant he had passed the audition. He had to do that, to get the job, but there was nothing to prevent him from changing things during the program.

Peacock Das felt he knew how to deal with women and keep them happy, but still get what he wanted.

Juggling three wives had given him lots of experience, and he felt these sisters were no challenge. They would be no problem. He would sing on Thursday night. Peacock Das was absolutely sure of that!

“I will pay you the two hundred rupees after the program,” Durga informed him.

“Some advance please,” he gently begged.

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“No pay, until you play. If I give you money now, we may never see you again!”

“That’s not true, but have it as you like, and I will find my necessary resources elsewhere. I’ll come here on Thursday, then?”

“Yes, good, see you!” Durga bid farewell, happy with having replaced Kokila.

“Om Nama Shiva!” Peacock Das sighed as he departed.

116

Chapter 13 Tamas woke up from a very, short sleep, feeling a bit disorientated. When he opened his eyes the surroundings were not at all what he’d expected. He found himself inside a t-pee, instead of a room with four walls. It took him a few seconds to remember how he’d gotten there.

After feeding the beggars they all returned to the camp. The Aghori had disappeared, but was replaced by three, young travelers, who already knew Lotus and Amanda. They had a jar of magic mushroom honey with them, and everyone partook of the sacrament. The night turned into a mystical event.

Gopal and Govinda were two brothers, who wore colorful women’s petticoats, instead of trousers, or lungis. Their heads were wrapped in bright scarves, accenting their well manicured beards. They played flute and mandolin respectively. Forest was the third boy, and he was a master of the African D’jembe. He tied the festivities together that night with the rhythms from his drum.

Tamas had fun. He hadn’t expected such a scene, and was happy the Aghori had introduced him to it. The mushrooms still continued with their mild hallucinations, so he let himself drift to wherever they wanted to take him. The music played on, in his head, 117

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and he had visions of the girls dancing around his bed, as the shaman conjured up images that seemed so real, he could touch and feel them. Waves of colors washed over him. It would take him awhile to come down completely.

Gopal started to stir on the other side of the t-pee. He was having romantic, sensual dreams about Lotus.

Gopal was in love with her, and had followed her to India, from America, even though she told him not to.

Gopal justified his actions, by saying it was too dangerous for a young woman to travel alone in India, and it was his responsibility to ignore her request, for the sake of safety and love.

When he unrepentantly showed up at the ashram in Kerela, Lotus wanted to be angry with him, but Ma had advised her to turn all emotions into love, so she displayed warm behavior to him instead. But Gopal misinterpreted that to mean, it was okay to be doing what he was doing, and continued, focused on ultimate victory.

He wanted Lotus back as her old self, the girl who had been his lover, before embracing Ma. They’d had a life together, although very short and scattered, but one that Gopal cherished and wanted to recapture.

She hadn’t drifted that far away, and Gopal was sure he could bring her back.

Govinda was in love with nobody. He didn’t know why, but he had never had a sensual thought in his entire life. No dreams had occurred, no fantasies and 118

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no erections. He didn’t really care, because he considered himself free, with no unfulfilled expectations, or sad and lonely regrets, He felt sorry for his brother, chasing Lotus around the world, willing to sacrifice everything for a moment with her.

Govinda saw that his brother was lost, no longer respecting her freedom of choice, and forcing himself into Lotus’s space. But there was nothing Govinda could do about it, except stand by his brother’s side, waiting to catch him when he fell.

Han was in a t-pee by himself, and was also dreaming of Lotus. Gopal’s arrival had upset him, because Han sensed he was competition for her attention, and this created a spark of jealousy that Han feared might force him into action. He had enjoyed loving Lotus from a distance, with nothing really happening, and no unnecessary interaction. Things had changed now, and it was Gopal’s fault. But Han didn’t blame him. He couldn’t blame anybody, because another wave of mushrooms washed over him. His thoughts fragmented, scattering across the universe, only to find them being pulled back into the warm embrace of Lotus again, as lips caressed lips, soft and sweet to the taste. Han melted into the dream.

Shankar wasn’t sleeping at all, because his mind was on Amanda. He’d never been in love before, never had sex. He was a virgin on all counts. And now, Amanda had touched him. The whole idea appeared doomed to him, because it was impossible to win her heart, 119

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when it wasn’t available, not there for the taking. His mind played a game of ping-pong, with love and desire alternating control, and lust looming as a dominating factor.

Fleur was in love with the divine. He was in love with Shiva. He’d tried women a few times, and although he liked their company, and enjoyed the sexual experience, was unable to form lasting relationships. Everything always ended, before it started, and his lovers disappeared, just when he was beginning to feel secure in the relationships. It was all too heart- breaking for him, so he turned to Shiva instead.

Shiva was an infinite lover, one that lasted forever, and never failed to satisfy. Ecstasy was guaranteed, anytime and any place. Fleur could dance in the clouds with him, sleep in his arms, and share his dreams. The key into this erotic world was Fleur’s use of psychedelics. ‘Jadoo’ was the word for magic, and that’s what it took to open the passageway through the darkness, into the light. And psychedelics were the main ingredients of this magic potion, the essence of Fleur’s enlightenment.

Lotus and Amanda were in the straw house that Shankar had built for them, with the help of a local farmer. Some of the straw had fallen out of its weaving, leaving spaces for the sky to come inside.

The light didn’t disturb the girls, as they’d left their bodies and journeyed to an alternate dimension, 120

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having been sucked through a tiny, black hole, at the center of the cosmos, into a reality where there was no ‘up’ or ‘down’, no ‘backward’ or ‘forward’, and no ‘inside’ or ‘outside, not even a ‘here’. They floated in nothingness and absorbed each other’s feelings. Lotus loved Amanda, and Amanda loved Lotus. The mushrooms discarded everything but the pure love for each other.

Forest watched the stars in the night sky as he listened to the river tell him a story. He entered the world of make believe, and left his body behind, sitting on a stone, as an empty shell, at the edge of the Rainbow Camp. The journey wasn’t long, and seemed like less than a second, transporting him through a molecular grid work, into a different reality that was truly amazing. Everything was just perfect. He wrapped himself in the warm comfort of perfection, until the grey light of dawn creased the horizon, and the sun poked the tip of its crown over the opposite shore of Mother Ganga. The birds changed their song, and a shrill morning call came from their throats. It was a new day that Forest welcomed with love.

Washing men slapped wet laundry on flat stones, creating an off beat background to the sound of morning aarti coming from a nearby temple, where a priest blew a conch shell and cymbals clanged, as bells rang to announce, “Good morning, Varanasi!”

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The American Aghori reappeared, and was sitting by the dhuna, packing a chillum, when Tamas came out of the t-pee.

The Aghori sniffed the air like a dog, and then said, “Smells like there was a party here last night?”

“There was,” Tamas confessed, “a good one.”

“Where were you?” Fleur asked, as he joined them.

“We all went on a mystical trip together. You missed something special.”

“I had more important things to do.”

“What could be more important?”

“I had to accompany the dead.”

“Ah, work,” Fleur laughed.

“Something like that! Only I don’t collect any pay until the end. And if I put in some overtime, Mother will reward me with a bonus.”

“What kind of bonus would she give an Aghori?”

Fleur wondered out loud.

“Well, I don’t think it will be a new car, or a gold watch, although you never know, because I have a history of receiving gifts I don’t want, which makes me a bit afraid of my next incarnation. She might make me president of America! Wouldn’t that be a change in the consciousness of the world? And I don’t even know if I would be the first president to have eaten human brains either! Because it’s a good way to find out what the other person was really thinking, literally digest their thoughts. Some of these past presidents were capable of doing it too. Idi Amin ate a 122

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man’s heart in front of him. He just pulled it out of his chest and took a bite, before he could die.”

“It doesn’t sound like much of a reward to me,” Fleur objected. “Permanent retirement is more inviting. I mean, who wants to deal with all the losers in maya? And that’s what those people are, even though they think they’re the winners!”

Fleur and the American Aghori were like two peas in a pod, because they’d both had similar experiences, dealing with strange people, in strange situations.

Each knew how the other thought and could appreciate the fact that they were both on a journey to the same destination, albeit in different colored vehicles. The Aghori drove a black hearse, while Fleur was in a pink, pickup truck.

“Bom Shankar!” the Aghori loudly announced the morning’s first chillum.

Shiva’s call stirred Han out of his t-pee, and he joined the others for the morning ritual. They squatted, as the ancient yogis and mystics had done for thousands of years, and worshiped the compassionate God of death and destruction through the communion of the chillum. Smoking the sacred herb was their way of praising the divine.

“Jah Rastafaria!” the Aghori exhaled in a giant plume of smoke, before expounding his theory on the subject.

“Have you ever contemplated the connection between the Rastas and the Naga Babas? Think about it. Bob Marley was a guru, with maybe millions of disciples 123

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all over the world. And what did he preach? One love!

One God! The matted, long hair and ganja aren’t just a coincidence either. They were bestowed by Shiva, or Jah, or whatever name you give to the Supreme Being, because Mother comes in all forms; male and female, sometimes half and half. The Muslims like to think she is formless, and really, there is no necessity for God to have a form, other than to mingle with us in this illusion. It seems humans can understand better if they can visually relate, so I think that is why God appears as all these Hindu deities. Hinduism is the world’s oldest surviving religion, and it’s where God began his great experiment, or game, or whatever this is, because I don’t really know, and only have my beliefs and opinions, but I may be totally wrong.”

“Nobody is wrong. Our beliefs, opinions and religions don’t matter when we die, because there is no second guessing, and all this will be gone, with only our very last thought, maybe having some effect on the next chapter, if there is one.”

“There has to be,” Tamas put in. “Otherwise, why bother with all of this?”

“Maybe, we’re all just biological mutations in the void,” the Aghori answered. “And there is no meaning to anything! It’s possible. I’m not saying, that’s my belief, but it’s possible!”

“I don’t agree,” Fleur responded. “There has to be a reality, because even illusion is a form of reality. And 124

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because we experience the illusion, we exist, no matter if the form is varied, or even imperceptible.”

Han and Tamas both nodded in agreement.

“You’re all just afraid of the void,” the Aghori accused them. “You’re afraid the atheists may be right.

I do my practice, because that’s what I have to do, being my fate, but I don’t overlook the possibilities of the atheists, and I’m not afraid that this might all turn out to be a biological joke, because it would mean, we all get instant salvation when we die, no matter what, with there being no such thing as karma dharma. And if that’s true, a wise man would make most of the situation.”

Shankar admired their intelligent reasoning, considering all the substances they’d consumed in their lives. He concluded that psychedelics opened up the mind, to better understand the truth. These men were not brain dead. They were very aware.

He went to the kitchen and started the chai. There would be no need for breakfast, as the mushrooms were still feeding the soul, and their bellies desired no food.

Han invited Tamas to join him for a swim. Mother Ganga called them into her cooling waters, and they splashed each other, before diving below the surface.

They swam out to the middle, and floated for quite awhile on their backs. The current carried them quickly downstream.

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Tamas gazed up at the sky, and saw Sita’s face in the clouds. He grew sad, with tears misting his vision.

“We should swim for shore soon, or else we’ll have a very long walk back,” Han advised, as he started in that direction.

Tamas followed Han to the embankment.

“What’s the matter?” Han asked him, when he noticed the tears still in Tamas’s eyes.

“I miss my girlfriend.”

“Where is she?”

As they walked back toward the Rainbow Camp Tamas related his problem to Han. Then, Han confessed his love for Lotus. They consoled each other.

“Lotus is a very beautiful woman. Maybe she’s just confused about her sexuality, and Ma will change her mind, so she falls in love with you?”

“Om Nama Shiva!” Han prayed he was right.

126

Chapter 14 The astrologer’s mud house was in a grove of tall, shade trees, and had a small shed, attached on one side, which sheltered a milk cow and her calf. The roof was made of straw and the floor was cow dung.

There was a temple, dedicated to Mother Kali, a short distance from the house, and the earth around it had been trampled into a hard, smooth surface by the feet of devotees, who came to worship there. The blood of animal sacrifice stained the mud, as a father and his son had offered a goat that morning, and the astrologer had officiated over the proceeding.

Sita took a bicycle rickshaw to the astrologer’s village, because there wasn’t enough time for her to walk, and make it home before the performance. She had wanted to come the previous day, but wasn’t able to find a convenient excuse to escape her sisters, until this morning, when they went shopping, and left Sita alone at home.

She hadn’t gone with them, because they didn’t plan to buy anything for her. The purpose of the expedition was to replace the sari that Maya usually wore for performances, because it had a hole in it. Sita also wanted a new sari, but was told there wasn’t enough money to accommodate her wishes, and they could 127

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only afford to buy one. So she stayed back when they left, and took the opportunity to visit the astrologer.

She’d had a dream that she couldn’t understand. Her father was with the two witches, playing some kind of game on the chalk dust hexagon. They were using stones and bones for markers. Sita’s face was at the center of the hexagon, and the object of the game was to move the markers, to points around her image. The witches had the stones, and her father had the bones.

Sita couldn’t tell who was winning, as the dream faded away before she finished counting the markers.

The astrologer had helped interpret Sita’s dreams in the past, explaining the mysteries that appeared in them. And she hoped he would be home to unravel the meaning of this dream too. She found him finishing his duties at the temple, and followed him to the house.

He was a small man, with his Brahmin dhoti clinging to his narrow hips, giving him a boyish figure. As he led her to the house, Sita examined his backside and found it rather attractive. His sacred thread was slung over his left shoulder, and under his right arm. His whole being had a demeanor of detached sexuality.

And sometimes, Sita wished he wasn’t the astrologer, but an ordinary man instead, because she could never fall in love with a man, who contained his powers.

Even though, she admired him.

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“Why have you come today?” he asked her, as he lit a bedi, inhaled it deeply and let the smoke curl out, through his nose.

Sita knew she could trust him, because the astrologer was a man of his word, and she asked him not to mention her visit, or the contents of their discussion, to her sisters. The astrologer knew the fickle nature of the future, so he usually didn’t make such promises, because uncontrollable circumstances might force an alteration, and his reputation would be ruined. But he had a responsibility, as family advisor, to assist Sita with her problem, to make the correct decision. So he promised, as she’d requested, and then Sita related her dream.

The astrologer didn’t look happy. He didn’t like what he heard, and told Sita she should be careful not to contact the witches again. They were in competition with her father for Sita’s soul. And her father playing the bones was not a good sign either, because the witches had the upper hand with the stones. Sita would have to help her father win the game.

This news shocked Sita, because she’d already been in touch with the witches, and accepted the magic potion from them. She was too afraid to tell that to the astrologer, and wondered what to do next.

“What will happen if the witches win the game?”

“That’s for them to decide. And because I don’t know where they come from, I have no knowledge of their 129

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motivation. But their appearance is not a good sign for you.”

He gave her a powder to put in her eyes, before going to sleep, that would prevent the witches from invading her dreams, and an oil to massage on the temples of her forehead, so they could not enter her thoughts.

Sita left the astrologer’s house more confused than ever. She didn’t know what to think of the green, glass bottle, and wondered if she should throw it away. But something told her the witches were not her enemies, and the astrologer was wrong with his interpretation of the dream. She decided to hold onto it, and test its power, at the first available opportunity.

Maya wore her new sari as she danced in front of the mirror. She stopped to pose, the way she would do on stage.

Durga applauded every move, and complimented, “You look fantastic! I wish I could look like that.”

Maya didn’t take her compliment with gratitude, but assumed she deserved it. She unsympathetically returned, “You’re too short for a sari. The folds won’t fall properly. Space is needed to give it the long, slender effect; that’s what makes it look good. A kurta and lungi are much better suited for you.”

“I will not go on stage dressed as a man!”

“Not a man, but a Baul! You will be transgender, with long hair, perfume and girly mannerisms. And besides, you look like you’re drowning in a sari.”

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Durga glared at her. Maya always liked to point out Durga’s physical inadequacies. She thought Durga was too short and too plain in the face. As if Maya was a top flower in the universe herself, waiting to be plucked by handsome royalty. Well she was still waiting, and Sita’s Tamas wasn’t exactly a prince either.

“You need to wear a deeper shade of lipstick,” Maya continued to give advice without request. “And draw your eyes bigger, because you have to make your facial features stand out more. Try to exaggerate them for the stage!”

“Thanks for the tip, but I like my eyes the way they are, and pink lipstick is my favorite.”

Maya gave up. Her sister was hopeless, with absolutely no taste in fashion. How was she ever going to find a husband, if she didn’t even know how to wear make- up properly?”

Sita was already dressed when she entered the room, thinking she’d returned to the house without being noticed, because her sisters were too busy with the sari.

“Where have you been?” Durga immediately asked her.

“Dressing in my room.”

“No, you were not, because I looked in your room.”

“When was that?”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“Maybe I was in the toilet!”

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“I looked there too, and could find you no where in the house!”

“Did you search the whole house?”

“Don’t try to make me a fool, because I know you weren’t at home!”

“Do you have any proof?” Sita shot back at her, looking Durga straight in the eyes, as if she were telling the truth.

Durga sighed with disappointment, because she didn’t like the change in her sister. A distance had grown between them, and it all happened so suddenly, without any warning. She felt she’d lost her little sister, and this was some alien confronting her now.

“You think that you’re all grown up, and don’t need me anymore, and my advice doesn’t matter. But I am still in charge here, and you still have to answer to me.

Do you understand?” Durga rolled out her authority one more time.

“Stop it!” Maya interrupted. “And don’t be so overly dramatic! God knows the truth, and we don’t have time for bickering, because we still have to do my makeup. Please help me Sita. Durga is hopeless!”

“Putting me down all the time isn’t good for my selfconfidence!”

“I know, but it’s the truth, and we don’t have time right now to flatter you with lies.”

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Sita liked how the conversation had turned away from her, and Durga now had to defend herself from Maya’s criticism. Sita’s secret would survive.

Peacock Das turned up on time, and was accompanied by his three wives, who varied in age, size and shape. The youngest was the shortest and quite fat, while the middle one was thin and shy, like a child, hiding behind the others, and the eldest was most proud, with fire still in her eyes. She stood beside her husband, to indicate that she was still his favorite.

“What are they doing here?” Durga asked, perturbed by the unexpected and uninvited guests.

“They are my wives. And they are accompanying me to the program this evening.”

“But there isn’t any room in the rickshaw for them!”

The eldest of the three faced Durga defiantly and said, “I always go with my husband. And don’t think that just because he plays the dotara in your band, he is available for other services? He is not!”

Peacock Das smiled with pleasure at his wife’s audacity.

Durga’s mouth dropped open in shock at the accusation. She wasn’t interested in this woman’s husband. Durga carefully examined her. She saw a very pretty face. And she didn’t appear to be stupid either. So what was she doing with this ugly man, and willing to fight for him too?

There had to be some hidden secret.

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The two other wives also said they needed to accompany their husband. They all had the same rights and privileges. Peacock Das contained enough love in him to please them all, and treated them as equals.

Sita liked the young wife, relating to her courage. It must have taken great strength to resist her family and marry someone like Peacock Das. For surely, there must have been much opposition to the union. No father, or brother would have willingly given her into such matrimony. And there may even have been death threats issued to both the bride and groom, as such things were common when there was a perceived insult to the family honor.

Sita wished she had such courage. She barely had enough to defend her relationship with Tamas, and he was nearly the same age as her, with no other wives, or children. Her sisters had only reluctantly agreed to him, because they hoped it was the beginning of better luck for the family, kind of like priming the pump.

They hoped Sita’s romance would start the process flowing for them too.

Sita felt sorry for the three wives, realizing they had to share the love of Peacock Das, and neither one of them could wholly claim him. Sita felt it wasn’t fair, and prayed nothing like that would happen to her. She only wanted real, personal intimacy that would last a lifetime, and belong to no one else.

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“We’ll have to take a taxi,” Maya reluctantly suggested.

“Who’s going to pay for it?” Durga asked.

“Two rickshaws will cost the same as a taxi. And we can’t all walk there, because we would look like a bunch of poor, village people!”

Durga was pissed off at Peacock Das and decided to inflict some punishment, “Do you have money to pay for your wives?”

Her attempted blow didn’t seem to faze him much, as he casually replied, “If I was a rich man, I would take us around the world in a golden taxi, but unfortunately that is not my current condition.”

“The world would have to be very small with your budget,” Durga continued with her punishment of the culprit. “And anyways, you can’t afford your wives at all!

“The world is only as big as the heart. So please, open your heart and make the necessary arrangements for my wives to accompany us, or else I will not play.”

Peacock Das firmly planted his feet on the floor, and threw his chest forward, with his chin in the air. He had taken his stand on the issue, and resolved not to budge.

“Let’s take the money from the household budget,” Maya suggested.

“Yes,” Sita agreed. “Mother won’t even know, because we’ll put it back before she returns.

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Durga didn’t like the idea. They were supposed to get approval on any unauthorized spending. But their mother was away, at her ancestral home, and was inaccessible by telephone, because there was none in the poor tribal village where she had been born. She’d already journeyed to the nearest pay phone, and had placed her daily allowance of one phone call, so she wouldn’t telephone again, until the next day.

“Make up your mind, or else we’ll be late.” Sita tried to hurry things along.

Durga finally agreed and got the money from its hiding place. They all rushed out of the house, and quickly hurried along the path, to the taxi stand.

A large crowd greeted their arrival at the venue for the program. Bright lights and excitement seemed to be everywhere, as cameras clicked at all the famous celebrities. Durga had a pass for her group, and was ushered, along with the celebrities, past the television equipment, to an area backstage.

“Look at this!” Sita exclaimed, as she pointed at the cameras.

“I know, I can see,” Durga said, her eyes growing big with anticipation. “This is better than I expected. I’m going to ask for more money!”

“Don’t ruin our chances over money!” Sita pleaded.

A group of village, folk dancer were first to perform.

The rhythmic clapping of their sticks spurred them on, until they were in an ecstatic trance, moving in unison to their own clapping. They were very good, and the 136

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audience applauded vigorously after their performance.

The sisters were backstage, applying last second makeup and adjusting their costumes, when Kokila suddenly appeared with his arm in a sling. He approached Sita with a smile on his face.

She saw him coming, and wondered how he had gotten into the restricted area. She put her hands up as a barrier in front of her and told him not to talk to her.

“But I only came to wish you good luck, and to apologize for breaking my arm.”

“Alright, you’ve apologized now, so please leave!”

She pointed his hopeless face in the opposite direction.

“Come on, we’re next,” Durga coaxed, as she grabbed Sita by her outstretched arm, and pulled her up the stairs, to the stage.

The loud speaker announced them, and they immediately went into their first number, with Durga and Sita singing alternate verses, as Maya played her flute, and Peacock Das accompanied them in fine style on the dotara. The girls danced beautifully, and Peacock Das threw in a few shuffles of his own, for which the audience roared its approval. Durga quietly signaled him to tone down the dance. He obeyed her, but didn’t like it.

The audience loved the first song, and just as their applause started to die down, Peacock Das walked up to Sita’s microphone and started to sing a song of his own. The girls looked at each other with horror, not 137

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knowing what to do. Suddenly, it dawned upon Sita that they should all play along, because she realized, the audience obviously thought this was part of the show. So Sita joined Peacock Das with a rhythm on her hand drum, and then Maya also figured it out and joined in with her flute, as Durga started dancing. The audience loved it again.

Peacock Das had accomplished what he set out to do.

He was satisfied with having performed one song, and stepped back when it was finished, taking up his role as an accompanying musician again. He figured the girls might be angry, but they wouldn’t be disappointed, because his song had been a success.

And now they could continue with the rest of their program. Peacock Das would play the best dotara possible.

Maya sang the next song, while Sita and Durga danced. They hopped in unison, from side to side, and made large, expressive gestures with their arms. The dance left them out of breath, and they weren’t really paying attention to what was happening around them.

When Durga next turned back to her microphone, she discovered Kokila occupying her station. He explained to the audience, that he was an actual member of this band, but had broken his arm, and couldn’t play the dotara, but he could still sing!

“Then sing,” someone shouted from the crowd “Yes, sing a song,” several others encouraged.

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A silly grin appeared on Kokila’s face, and he started croaking out a terrible tune. At that moment, Durga wanted to put a gun to his head, because her dream was ending in disaster.

Instead, she prayed, “Om Nama Shiva!”

• Video clip - Baul sisters performing.

* The full version of Mother Kali’s Daughters by W.Q. Foxx is available as a Kindle Edition ebook published

by Barncott Press.

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Videos

Sacrificial chopping block outside Mother Kali temple.

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Some video clips (filmed by the author) related to the text: • Video clip #1 - Baul sisters performing (Chapter 14).

• Video clip #2 - Bole Baba and the one eyed yogi (Chapter 29).

• Video clip #3 - Snake Charmer dance. (Chapter 41).

• Video clip #4 - Amar Bharti and the magicians (Chapter 51).

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About The Author

Walter Q. Foxx was born in 1951 in Winnipeg, Canada of dubious ancestry. He was sent to India by his university philosophy professor to explore the role of marijuana in the Hindu religion. This led him into an esoteric world of ascetics and yogis. Upon returning to the West, he encountered an Amsterdam art gallery and wrote reviews and feature stories for Ins & Outs magazine, Gummi, Revival and Stik. He then moved to San Francisco, where he published Ganesh Baba, San Francisco Terror, Letters to Jodi and other paranoid works and wrote pornography for The Spectator. His sudden disappearance from the Bay 142

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Area literary scene fueled rumors that he'd died fighting beside Che in the jungles of Bolivia. That wasn't the case, however. Instead the goddess Saraswati intervened. And after saving Walter from the hands of fate, resurrected him in India, where he returned to his old ways of conniving with hitherto little known secret and sacred elements. In the process he produced seven CDs of vanishing Indian folk music as well as a spoken-word interview with an American Aghori who eats charred remains from the cremation grounds. He also completed three novels, Mother Kali's Daughters, Indian Cinderella, and Goddess of Destruction, and is currently working on a fourth entitled King Solomon's Child. Walter lives with a Bengali wife half his age in a house on the beach in Goa. He is pure vegetarian and mostly heterosexual.

BARNCOTT PRESS

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