By Barbara Foster

OH INDIA ABSURD AND MARVELOUS

Great Ganesh with your single tusk
and conch shell in your hand
What is on the other side
of the Blackness?
Michael McClure

The train pulled into Bombay’s Churchgate railway station. Scorching air blasts nearly asphyxiated me. Had I confused the months and mistakenly arrived in August rather than February? Legless beggars, their shriveled arms covered with canker sores, grabbed my dress from creaky wheelcarts. They jostled each other to disgorge rupees from the dazed foreigner. Derelict about changing dollars in New York, I needed to find rupees straightaway to placate this ragtail army!

As hordes rushed hither and yon, some with scraggly poultry in tow, the enormous station felt stifling. Any moment these masses might panic and trample on me. Had Bombay’s thirteen million inhabitants congregated in this smelly station? My queasy stomach had rebelled against the sluggish rock and roll of Indian trains; now hungry among these swarms, I was leery about drinking or eating anything. Flies buzzed around the vendors’ carts landing everywhere, especially on my nose. Smothering in winter clothes, I looked ridiculous next to Indians in their flowing cotton garments.

A grant from my university, which involved interviewing certain Indian librarians, made the trip possible. But I had a more pressing mission: to do research on a biography of Alexandra David-Neel, the French explorer of Tibet who also spent extensive time in India. Last year at the British Museum, a curator of Asian antiquities gave me the Bombay address of Dr. Murghesan, the former head of his department, an expert on the scholar who studied eastern occult practices. While David-Neel spent nearly twenty years in Asia, a couple of times facing down wild animals, would I be hardy enough to make it out of the station?

I handed my bags, not caring if they were lost or not, to a hovering porter. He rescued me from throngs of beggars who persisted in trying to touch me as though I were a Hindu goddess. He escorted me to the government office that changed money. The bored official, after I plopped down a pile of travelers checks, deposited an indeterminate amount of rupees in my sweaty palms.

Too giddy to count the money, afterward I realized that he awarded himself an enormous tip. To thank the porter for bundling me into a taxi, I handed him a wad of filthy rupees. He squealed with such delight that, by mistake, I must have given him all large bills. Weaving through the maze of animals, cars and rickshaws, the driver deposited me at the Norman Guest House.

Conveniently located on Marine Drive, the guest house had a few basic rooms plus a garden birds and butterflys cavorted in. At least the room was clean with adequate, if threadbare, towels. And it was quiet, an unexpected luxury in a metropolis that rumbled from dawn to dusk, where traffic zig-zagged in every direction. A shower restored my good humor, although nighttime felt hotter than during the day.

Next morning I purchased several light cotton outfits, which made it possible to move around without fainting. I decided to spend a week in Bombay before moving on to New Delhi for my library research. This gave me an opportunity to reread David-Neel’s first book on India, the talisman I carried to stay calm while being jostled by masses who swarmed like bees in a hive. Her descriptions of India captured the essence of the simultaneously grimy and glorious land where illusion and reality were indistinguishable.

Braving the scorching sun and dust, buttressed by a drink of coconut milk from a sidewalk vendor’s stall, I hunted down my quarry--the scholar I hoped would reveal secrets about the mysterious David-Neel’s life. Dr. Murghesan’s shop was located near Chowpatty beach. Scuttling along the sand like a crab plucked from its shell, I breathed in a facsimile of fresh air.

In need of perking up, I got a vigorous head massage from a malish-wallah. His impersonal hands made me long for someone to touch me erotically all over. Then I would feel less lonely in this land of graceful men whom I suspected were learned in the arts of love. Concentrate on your research, I repeated to myself like a mantra. However, the moist air laden with sweet and tart scents kept me off balance.

In late afternoon, I found the modest curio store grandiosely named the British Museum. Dusty windows obscured its contents from view. Going through a door wobbly on its hinges, I met the proprietor of this curiosity shop who ushered me inside, Floor to ceiling cases full of eastern statues, statuary and jewelry were jammed together in a makeshift fashion.

When Dr. Murghesan heard that I had been sent by his colleague, he behaved like a host rather than a proprietor. He insisted I call him by his nickname Murga, and handed me a cup of tea brewing on a primitive burner that rested on a mammoth encyclopedia. Sweets dripping with honey were served on porcelain plates that looked as though they belonged to a maharajah.

Small with ebony skin, Murga came from Trivandrum in the deep south of India. He wore his grey hair shoulder length. Tiny glasses with gold rims kept falling off his nose. His extraordinarily long, pinkish-colored fingers, never still, moved in hypnotic patterns. An ingenious system of small fans made Murga’s shop the coolest spot In Bombay. After Murga heard I worked as a librarian in a university, he made me promise to return every day for philosophical discussions. When I asked him about Alexandra David-Neel, he changed the subject.

Next morning I showed up and Murga lectured me on the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses. To illustrate his stories, the dignified proprietor danced on tiptoes to imitate the blue Krishna, or lumbered from side to side simulating the clumsiness of the elephant god Ganesha. Spontaneously, wearing a white smock while dusting the cases, Murga chanted in a heavenly voice: “Jaya Shivaya,” paying homage to the multi-faceted Shiva.

Boldly, after much tea and high toned chatter, I approached the lone bookcase. A librarian accustomed to a sensible cataloguing system, the symbols blazoned on the spine of each book confused me. This weird system made it impossible to find anything. Selling seemed the farthest thing from Murga’s mind. Suddenly my eyes fixated on a battered brown book. When Murga placed this second volume David-Neel wrote on India in my lap, I clasped it so tight the damaged binding fell off.

“There are naughty things in this French book, inappropriate for profane eyes,” admonished Murga. Hurriedly grabbing the book away, he tied the binding together with a blue silk cord.

“See, I own the first volume.” Dipping into my large shoulder bag, I showed him L’Inde ou jai vecu , which had never been translated into English. “I’ve been carrying this one around with me. The second’s very rare. Where did you find it?”

“Never you mind! This book gives Indians a nasty reputation. It makes foreigners think we have phalluses twenty feet long, carry on sex continuously for weeks, prefer disgusting positions for the act.”

“Sell me the book, please, for my research.” I pleaded with Murga who vehemently tilted his head from side to side the way Bombay denizens did to emphasize a point.

"No, no! I cannot! Save your rupees for souvenirs.” Indicating a high backed rattan chair, Murga sat me down and placed the book in my hands.

“Read it here during business hours.” So that I would not spirit the book away, Murga planted himself at a desk piled high with antiquities--which he sorted through--directly across from me. If I made a sudden move, he eyed me suspiciously. For two days, because of my rusty French and the faded pages, I progressed slowly.

At the end of the fifth day, I reached chapter six in which David-Neel discussed the subject respectable Indians spoke about in whispers: tantric sex. Had David-Neel personally participated in this arcane ritual whereby a devotee gained occult powers by employing physical sex to gain spiritual enlightenment? For fear he might exile me from his magic shop, I hesitated to question Murga about David-Neel--a subject he avoided.

Next morning, about to plunge into chapter six, a smiling male who looked about forty, bounded into the shop. It was impossible to ignore this huge presence whose complexion shone with a rosy vigor that lit up the dim shop. The stranger's shoulders were so broad they almost got stuck in the narrow door. When they hugged, Murga's head barely reached his chest.

The visitor wore a sleeveless, saffron colored robe. It exposed long, slender arms--graceful rather than muscular. A gold bangle encircled his left wrist. His lustrous eyes, as I pretended to read, flirted with me.

“Rhadu, darling boy, it has been ages since we went to the Ganesha festival together. Three years or five? My cobweby brain forgets so many things. And you keep getting taller, younger. Someday perhaps you will move back from Canada? How long will you be in Bombay, dear boy?” Murga, holding the stranger's hands, gazed up at him hopefully.

“Only two weeks this time uncle ‘cause my real estate business demands I be on hand. Mother sends her regards. So does auntie Mira.”

I watched the relatives gab about family matters, pretending to read until both approached my chair. Abruptly, Murga wrested the David-Neel volume from my hand.

“Reading, reading, all day long. What have you seen of Bombay, foolish woman? Did you come from New York this far to sit in a bookshop all day with a dried up fossil like Murga. Out, out with you! Take her to Elephanta Island, Rhadu. Show her the sights hereabouts we natives treasure.” Murga winked at his nephew.

“But I want to finish this chapter.” Too shy to mention tantric sex in front of the handsome stranger, I placed the volume on a front shelf so I’d be able to find it again. Murga hurriedly introduced us, then summoned the driver of a rickshaw stationed on the street corner. As we headed into the swirling dust toward the harbor, Murga waved goodbye.

“Please, do I look silly in this dhoti, I mean skirt. With this shawl round my shoulders, I’m wrapped up like a package? Traditional Indian garb keeps me cool in this putrid, blistering heat.”

If Rhadu’s words were sometimes banal, his body movements reminded me of an Indian dancer’s. At every opportunity, he brushed against me with his fingers and palms. On the pretext of removing dust, he explored my hair.

“Let’s duck over to Elephanta Island. Just ten kilometers away but the energy is other worldly. Weather’s several degrees cooler too. Say yes ‘cause uncle will fuss if I don’t take you. Jolly old chap. Knows more ‘bout antiquities than all the pedants with cushy jobs in academia put together.”

If Rhadu said the earth was flat, I would have agreed. Staring at the light playing across his mahogany colored skin, which contrasted dramatically with his sun dappled garment, made me forget my research. What research? Spray drenching my hair, we left from Apollo Bunder near the Gateway to India.

Lifting me off the launch at Elephanta Island, Rhadu pressed my under- arms suggestively. From the sure-footed way he forged up the hill, it was obvious he knew each rock cut Hindu temple by heart. The closer we came to the temples, the more animated he acted. Rather than a visitor, he behaved like an inhabitant ravished to come home after a long trip.

“These beauties date back to the fifth century AD. Most are dedicated to Shiva Mahadeva. There’s one to the fish eyed goddess, Meenakshi.” Rhadu’s tone switched to reverential, his face suffused with a radiance even brighter than usual. Blinking in the bright sun, did I see goddesses leap down from the sculptures to dance round his head?

Rhadu took my hand and we walked long distances, through courtyards and subsidiary shrines. Unable to concentrate on his elaborate explanations, my eyes fastened on a medallion of Shiva round his neck. I wanted to grasp it with my teeth to pull him up against me. Playful monkeys along the paths weaved in and out of our feet.

In a stately hall of massive pillars, an enormous Shiva lingam(penis) presided. Asserting its dominion over the temple, it surged aggressively upward. The fearsome energy it radiated kept me from going too close.

“Do not be frightened of this mysterious, universal energy,” cautioned Rhadu. “Step closer, let its force inhabit you.” A wizened woman with jingling ankle bracelets and bright yellow sequined pantaloons crept up to the lingam to dance around it in intricate weaving motions. Reverentially, she kissed it, then left vials of fragrant oil at its base before veering off into the darkness.

Abruptly Rhadu pinned me against the lingam. A relentless force, not to mention my rampaging desire, held me fast. As the cold stone dug into my back, I opened my lips to receive his juicy tongue kiss. His saliva inundated my mouth, then flowed down my throat. Heated up to boiling, I sweated profusely.

No other visitors passed while Rhadu, swaying back and forth, thrust his erect cock against me. If the entire city of Bombay watched, I would not have cared. Elephanta cast a strange spell over me, numbing my sense of propriety. A mysterious current swept me along. Dare I call it magic? Suddenly jerking my arm, Rhadu pulled me away from the lingam.

“Time to go,” he insisted. “We need more privacy now.” Silent, we ran toward the launch which sped back to Bombay. Disembarking, Rhadu hailed a taxi and ordered the driver to “hurry up!”

“The Taj Hilton’s, my home away from home, my castle,” bragged Rhadu. “Wait till you look inside, darling. It’s Bombay’s best hotel.”

Had I heard right? Rhadu called me darling? Over and over to myself, I chanted the endearment.

The gorgeousness of the Taj, in part a replica of the famous monument in Agra, intimidated me. After my shabby lodgings, such grandiosity made me feel like a big footed peasant among the nobility. In the lobby chic, pencil thin women were being catered to by an array of employees dressed like maharajahs. Meanwhile I was a mess after going from land to sea then back again.

“I’m thirsty, very hungry too.” I whined. “Nothing to eat since breakfast.” Odors of food coming from the Zodiac Grill made me salivate. The noise and bright lights inside reminded me that people were indulging in shallow pleasures. Submerged in dreams about Rhadu, i could barely put one foot after the other.

“Everything you need, food, drink, all are abundant in my suite. What’s missing room service will provide,” insisted Rhadu.

On the elevator, we rode up to just below the penthouse floor. Holding hands, we got out and entered a room similar to those in other Hilton’s worldwide--except for paintings on the wall of famous Indian temples. A sound system wafted sitar music into every nook and cranny. Two doors painted red led to other rooms. What lay behind them?

“No one will disturb us here. My bedroom's the right door.” Rhadu winked at me suggestively.

As Rhadu pulled me down on a satin divan that stretched along one wall, my hunger and thirst were forgotten. His impassioned kisses, which alternated with little bites on my lips and neck, made me want to stay in his arms forever. Yet he hardly touched my body, nor tried to remove my clothes. Wriggling around, I put my body literally under his hands, enticing him to go further. Why was he bringing me to the gates of paradise, then clamping them shut?

“Let’s go in there. It’s much larger.” While massaging my neck, Rhadu steered me inside.

We entered the left door, then walked through two more small rooms into a big candlelit space. Six couples were seated on the floor in a circle, women on the men’s left. In the lotus posture, eyes closed, as still as statures, the devotees meditated. Could this be a tantric ceremony? If so, I was thrilled!

Garlands of flowers hung round the worshippers’ necks and were draped over miniature altars that contained offerings of fruit and incense. The center of the room was dominated by a giant altar to Shiva; sculptures and paintings showed both couples and threesomes engaged in sex acts. Thrust back in time, I imagined myself living at Elephanta when eros and art were in bed together. Persistently, the couples intoned the same mantra, which Rhadu translated as:

“Peace and blessings to Shiva. And may death and dislike be slain--victims themselves of health and life.”

“Sit over here,” whispered, Rhadu. “Sssh! The ceremony, is about to begin.” We settled into a large rattan chair with a high curved back. Pressing myself into Rhadu’s side, I wanted to crawl into his skin. Behind a latticed partition, we were invisible to the participants. All the men wore gold bangles on their left wrist.

In the corner a turbaned musician alternated from flute to drum. Occasionally, he intoned tributes to Shiva in a reedy voice as high as bird’s trill.

“Each couple represents Shiva with his Sakti, or female energy.” whispered Rhadu. “A Shiva without his Sakti is a corpse. Combined they allow the wheel of life to turn.”

A grandmotherly looking woman wearing bright yellow pantaloons carried round a huge urn nearly bigger than herself studded with glittering stones. Putting it down, she lit oil lamps and made a tinkling sound with bronze bells; eventually she sat down on the lap of her aged consort.

I realized that this celebrant was the same woman from Elephanta. Her slender body type resembled my own as did her oval face and the way she kept her chin slightly elevated. Abruptly, her face changed into that of Meenakshi, the fish eyed goddess worshipped at Elephanta.

Then her fish face disappeared and mine replaced it. I watched as the image changed again--into a grinning skeleton. I rubbed my eyes to erase the frightening vision. Did I imagine she pointed a bony finger at me? Would I be in her position decades hence, performing this ritual with another partner or partners? What a dismal prospect! I looked toward the door, measuring how many steps it would take me to get there.

“Will you marry me symbolically, or at least be my Sakti tonight? Mind if I touch your yoni?” Rhadu inquired timidly. Without waiting for an answer, Rhadu placed his hand on my crotch, kneading and massaging without the slightest hint of eroticism.

“Watch the men drink six cups of rice wine, then pour the seventh over their Sakti’s body. Notice, the cups are carved from human skulls. In tantric practice everyone is served according to seniority.” explained Rhadu.

One couple appeared to be the most important. As they moved to the front, the rest formed a semi-circle in back of them. Every ceremonial offering came to them first. Something was familiar about how the man waved his extraordinarily long, oddly colored fingers as if he were tying a bow. Since I was a stranger in Bombay, I must be imagining things, I decided.

“Ugh, that’s disgusting! Why are these practioners greedily passing fatty pieces of meat from mouth to mouth? The smell reminds me of a slaughterhouse.” Starving, my queasy stomach flip flopped in the stifling, airless room. Stiff, I curled and uncurled my toes to bring circulation back to my painful legs. I held onto Rhadu in order to not to tumble off the chair. Patiently, he explained, “Pure meat of animals is nourishing to the body, gives strength and sexual power; it’s a particle of the cosmic creative energy, the essential will to life.”

As though on cue, the partners embraced each other. The females’ naked bodies were covered by long sari cloths. Gracefully, as they assumed sexual postures similar to those on erotic temples, flashes of breasts, thighs, buttocks and pubic hair were visible. While twisting and turning their backsides almost imperceptibly, they uttered low, bestial groans.

“Now Maithuna, sexual pleasure, the highest level which brings supreme union with the universal power. How lucky you are to witness this sacrament of sacraments. Let us join the sacred dance of procreation and destruction.”

The men wrapped themselves and their partners in extra lengths of sari cloth; within this multi-colored cocoon some couples were immobile while others established a thrusting rhythm that made their saris ripple.

My eyes fastened on the main couple who sometimes moved hardly at all. Treating his partner like a goddess, the man gave her a sensual massage, adoring every inch of her body with his hands, lips and tongue. I watched them embrace, heard their loud, rapid breaths. Throughout the man maintained an enormous erection.

When not inside his Sakti, the tantric adept's penis bobbed up and down. At one point the man swiveled his head in my direction: Dr Murghesan, the dealer in antiquities.

I gasped but did not dare to betray my presence. Not that Murga would have cared. His face was transfigured with bliss like a saint headed to heaven. He looked twenty years younger as his limber body--opposite from his former stiff demeanor--assumed a variety of positions.

“Our time, now,” whispered Rahdu, snuggling closer. “Did you know that tantrics employ more than one hundred sexual postures with poetical names like splitting the bamboo, tail of the ostrich?”

Rhadu opened a closet to retrieve a long length of sari cloth. Draping it over my body, deliberately he began to remove my clothes. As the hands I had yearned for all day caressed my body, I awakened from a paralysis that had rendered me mentally numb--plastered to the chair. Beguiling Rhadu was Murga’s confederate planted to initiate me into their cult. Murga, with his faces as multiple as the Hindu gods he discoursed on so eloquently, had set me up!

Hastily I threw my clothing together, then disentangled myself from an amazed Rhadu. Not looking back, I bolted from the chair, ran through the hall and tripped into the elevator as though Kali the vengeful Hindu deity pursued me. The sleepy hotel staff stared at me quizzically.

At six am. light was creeping up over the Gateway to India. I walked briskly along Apollo Bunder boulevard nearly stumbling over a guard dozing beside one of the BMW’s parked outside the Taj. This display of chrome and horsepower did not stop rats the size of dogs from scampering in and out of their tires. As one brushed my feet, I felt its fur. A rickshaw driver parked nearby noticed my distress. He hoisted my trembling body onto the seat and, as Bombay awakened, he pedaled back to my hotel.

Mechanically, I packed up, summoned the owner and paid the bill. Making my way to the train station, I did not regret leaving Bombay where the monsoon sweeps people out to sea. Dr Murghesan and Rhadu almost swept me out to sea.

I did acutely regret reading only half of David-Neel’s rare volume, which further aroused my own curiosity about tantric sex. Perhaps, as I chugged through India, another copy would turn up? Did Dr Murghesan consult her book for pointers? He certainly guarded it more ferociously than anything else in his collection.

On the train chugging toward Delhi, I put my feet up and relaxed for the first time since arriving in Bombay. I realized that my tantric experience qualified as voyerisitc because I wet my feet but stayed out of deep water.

I remembered that David-Neel once wrote, “Who knows the flower best? The one who reads about it in a book, or the one who gathers it on a mountainside?” At least I am not an “armchair orientalist,” the type of scholar David-Neel disparaged. In India I had climbed part way up the mountain.

Barbara Foster is an Associate Professor and research librarian at CUNY. She is co-author of three highly acclaimed books, including the biographies Forbidden Journey (Harper/Collins) and The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel (third printing Overlook, 2007). The New York Times reviewed her biography of David-Neel favorably on three occasions: the “Bear in Mind” column called it “a wonderful biography,” and “New and Noteworthy” stated: “Hers was a great human life very well written up.” The New York Review of Books rated the biography "one of the best books of all-time."

Barbara is a world traveler in the tradition of the heroic women she writes about. She has lectured on David-Neel (the French explorer of Tibet) at universities, conferences, museums, and libraries worldwide--including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Cal Tech in the U.S., and Sidney, Buenos Aires, Prague, Mexico City, and Calgary among international venues.