Hidden deep in the foothills of the Himalayas is a super-natural site known as Shangri-la, where Rishis and High Yogis had meditated in the jungles and caves for thousands of years, emanating blissful vibrations so effective they have sunk in and become a permanent essence of the place. Here the sacred green Goddess of the River Ganges flows swiftly down from the glacial heights of the great Himalayas, and above the river’s silver beaches nestle monasteries and rest-houses wherein a community of like-minded soul-seekers reside, study and contemplate the wonder of existence. It was the paradise of spiritual learning that Arthur had been promised in all the grand myths he’d imbibed and he arrived in the town dusty and tired but with high hopes.
Though famous in folklore, Shangri-la’s exact location still remained an esoteric secret, an oasis hidden in the mountains, a small, medieval village with little traffic, scarce electricity, no multi-national consumer products and no advertising screaming from every wall. Cars were rare, only a few Indian-made white Ambassadors graced the roads, everyone got around on bikes, buses and horse-drawn tongas, and the latter-day plague of auto-rickshaws and motor-bikes were as rarely sighted as Western tourists. Pilgrims had to be ferried across the Ganges River in great heaving boats, as Ram’s Bridge had not been built yet, and in the monsoon flood it was a rollicking, wild ride. There were no televisions, refrigerators, air-conditioners or ATMs. Commonplace activities in the modern world like telephoning, ticketing, banking and posting were a horrendous chore where one had to fight amidst a riotous rabble to get to a window and still get nothing accomplished as the clerk wouldn’t have a clue what you were on about.
Modernity was best forgotten and an ancient, simpler lifestyle adhered to; candles to light the night, a thin cotton cloth used as sheet, towel, carry-bag and clothing, and with no phones connection to the greater world was severed. To Arthur’s mind, living with the animals was the most reassuring aspect of this devolution, many of them putting their heads through the door in greeting, cows, horses, camels, pigs, dogs, monkeys, elephants, snakes, squirrels, lizards, mongooses and bears, every space had some beast lumbering through.
To get on a horse-tonga one had to run up from behind and leap upon the backseat while the carriage kept moving for the horse didn’t like stopping. Perched precariously thus, in high spirits, Arthur rushed up river to the Sivananda Jungle University where he had an introduction from Compassion, who was an original chela of the big guru who’d founded the Ashram in 1936. Presenting himself at the reception desk with scraggy beard and tatty hippie clothes, Arthur was not the image of the ideal acolyte they were looking for.
“Hello, here I am, after travelling 7000 kilometres, I’m all yours!”
An officious old Swami in orange pursed his lips and sneered,
“Chello Swiss Cottage down town, that’s where you are belonging. We don’t want you, low caste dirty hippie!”
“But I’m a student of Swami Karunananda, I’ve done advanced yoga, I’m serious about Samadhi, I want it so bad I could die, you just can’t knock me back!”
“We’ve never heard of you, you’re nobody, chello Swiss Cottage.”
Shedding tears of disappointment he dragged his sorry ass down to the forested, rock-strewn banks of the Ganges River just outside of town. Stumbling across a field of round, white stones he discovered the improbable “Swiss Cottage” amidst a grove of trees, a two-story white concrete cubicle with a thatched hut at the back of it. The only other building in sight was a mouldy old ashram up the non-existent road. Created by Swami Brahmanananda, a disciple of Sivananda, from donations from some Swiss devotees, the Cottage was a sanctuary-lodge for foreign freaks, deadbeats and deviants who couldn’t fit in with the traditional regimes of the established monasteries. The cat was out of the bag, the uptight old monk at Sivananda’s had got Arthur’s number, and the gang of misfits in residence greeted him as one of their world-wide family. He was taken in by the kind Swami and given a berth in the thatch hut, which proved to be dank and hot, raining bugs upon him continuously, yet this exotic turn of events still pleased him.
His innocent pleasure at being laid-back in the thatch cottage was short-lived for within minutes an American lad poked his head through the low doorway and asked if he could enter, to take rest. He lugged behind him a small Rhesus monkey on a chain and he latched it to the doorpost. The poor creature appeared to have gone mad in separation from its tribe for it jumped furiously every which way as far as the chain could reach, chattering wildly and trying to bite anything that came near it. The emaciated Yankee then whined,
“Do you mind me having a hit here in the dark, out of the heat? I’m beat.”
“Do whatever you want, I’m hip. Isn’t this thatched hut cool?”
“Yeah, real cute. Excuse me, I just gotta get off.”
Arthur didn’t fully register what the fellow meant, being ever the naïve liberal fairy, and in shock he watched as a junkie’s fit-kit was whisked from the guys tatty clothes and a piece of cruel theatre then played out. Arthur had been offered heroin since he was seventeen but he just wasn’t interested, he had enough handicaps, he’d never seen a junkie shoot up before and was horrified at the spurting of blood into the dank air, the dirty needle plunging into grimy flesh and the boy’s damned eyes clouding over as he collapsed onto his shrieking monkey. Artie scrambled out of the hut and walked along the river willing the drug-fucked zombie to be gone, monkey and all, when he got back.
Apart from a bit of speed in his teens and doctor-endorsed LSD, Arthur had never really taken drugs, only having smoked about seven joints up to this point in his life. But he’d heard about the splendours of hashish from hip folklore and he was curious as to its supposed enlightening effects. He followed the rumours of the mythic substance to Triveni Ghats on the Ganges River at the other end of town. He was directed to a lone ramshackle hut out on the rock-strewn riverbank wherein dwelt a witchdoctor-like Sadhu. The penultimate of social dropouts, Sadhus were infamous for hitting the road, smoking a marijuana resin called charas, and worshipping Siva, the God of Destruction and Lord of the Void.
The Himalayas are particularly sacred to this God of Gods, containing many numinous sites fabled to have experienced his mythological exploits. Just over the mountain from Shangri-la was a hotspot called Neel Khant, (Blue Throat), where Siva drank the chalice of poison whipped up from the cosmic ocean by demons, and smoking charas seemed akin to sucking down the poisons of the world. On stormy nights, with the mountains shaking and resounding from the thunder, one could almost imagine the Great God dancing and banging his drum at the heart of the Himalayan fastnesses, while many sadhus blew on their conch shells and shouted, “Bam Shankar” after which they toked down on their chillums to invoke the Void.
Arthur’s craggy, old hash connection crouched amidst his voodoo paraphernalia of desiccated animals, human skulls, images of Siva and live carpet snake slithering about, miffed that a firanghi was sullying his primeval decor. Silent and stoic, the Sadhu sold Arthur a finger’s length of charas for ten rupees, and hurrying back to Swiss Cottage he smoked a small piece enthusiastically in a private joint. He had dragged his rope bed out into the fresh night air and collapsing upon it, stoned, he gazed up at the stars, celestial music lilted down and his soul took flight. His body melted and his mind embraced the heavens, white light sparkled in his fore-brain and euphoria swept away his heart’s pain, his existential angst evaporated and he swooned. Like an experimental alchemist he sang from the laboratory of his heart that this was the drug for him, he’d at last discovered his personal elixir vitae.
While Aysha Bosle sang “Dum Ardha Dum, Hare Krishna Hare Ram” from the ubiquitous radio, he learned to smoke the tranquilizing resin in clay chillum pipes sitting around a sacred fire with the international Freak-set. It became a regular part of his neo-sadhu’s sadhana, that is, his drop-out’s way of discovering knowledge and forgetting trauma, while he continued his yoga exercises and sought out the most outlandish of the Babas to bathe in their charisma. As sex was simply not on offer from anyone, he quelled his libido and thought of other things, controlling his ideation flow by meditating on AUM. He let his hair matte into clumpy dreadlocks, grew a straggly beard and managed sexual continence for weeks and months on end like some biblical anchorite, and on those rare occasions when the energy build-up from all that healthy yoga got him too fidgety he would let off a bit of steam with a quick masturbation.
To really get away from civilization he often secluded himself on a tiny silver beach hidden under the cliffs up river, sheltered by a giant Banyan tree and needing a long scramble downhill through untamed jungle to reach. He spent whole weeks there, living naked, swimming in the cool waters, communing with the wildlife, especially fascinated by a tribe of black-faced Langur monkeys which favoured the Banyan tree’s fruit as an afternoon snack. The Langurs were bemused by Arthur’s homo presence in their lair but in their timid benevolence played around him, leaving him to his own devices and thus he lived out his childhood fantasy of being Tarzan for a blissful, short interlude. Hindu India was a pagan’s paradise, the people revered innumerable gods, many armed, animal headed; they worshiped the trees and rivers, mountains and stars, in awe of a life and death chaos which they could only try to supplicate, through prayer, song and dance, and so make their magic way through the wondrous mire. Arthur tried to strip down to his pagan roots, to be a real jungle boy, at home with primeval nature, swinging with the jungle universe and, naked by the green river with only what he could carry in a shoulder bag, free from all civilisation’s cares, he experienced the happiest days of his life.
But humanity always called him back. Late one night, sleeping under the stars at Swiss Cottage, he heard wild, primitive drumming and tribal chanting shaking up the quiet air from the near distance. His blood throbbing in time to the beat, he followed the primordial sound to its source, crossing fields of stones and thorns, climbing wattle fences till he came to an enclosed compound where a tribe of natives sat in a large circle, beating drums and wailing at the sky. At their center was a small girl dancing in stylized undulations while on the sidelines an old man called out instructions on the movements required of a great female dancer.
Arthur could hardly restrain himself, the thump thump thump had his blood surging, he leaped into their midst and danced the male’s response to the girl’s seductive sashaying like it was some great fertility ritual. The crowd exploded in appreciation and hilarity, the drums went orgasmic, the natives clapped to the beat, the couple danced a seductive mating game, the boy weaving in and out, chasing the hip-swinging temptress, leaping, undulating, spinning, the mob whipping itself up into a furore of clapping, chanting, drumming and, as Arthur leaned close to receive a mock kiss, the girl dropped her veil to reveal she was a boy with a mustache, the crowd laughing uproariously at his surprise. But Arthur danced on regardless, dance was beyond sex, dance was better than sex, dance was the epitome of being alive, he felt like he’d been dancing for a million years.
His greatest wish was to find the supreme guru who would put him on the path to Nirvana, and stick with him till he gained IT. The early 1970’s was the end of an era when money, self-promotion and magic tricks had not yet replaced saint-like renunciation as the validation of great Babahood and there were still a few remarkably charismatic characters residing in the nearby jungles, though fame was fast making inroads. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had already been discovered by the Beatles and was last seen ensconced in a golden palace in Europe with Mia Farrow. There was one powerful dude called Master Ram Baba who lay his huge carcass upon an island at a bend in the Ganges River and Arthur spent many days sitting on top of a sand dune nearby soaking in the aura of his Samadhi. Every Baba needs some Grand Schtick to stand out from the crowd and Master Ram’s was eating other people’s karma. With his eyes rolled up into his head, his mouth open and receptive, he was in deep ecstasy and way beyond mortal Karma. He had an endless line of female devotees shuffling up to shovel food into his fat face, his gargantuan body getting bigger and bigger by the day, and it was no wonder he lay in a big, indolent heap most of the time as he could only walk by leaning his vast bulk on others.
Master Ram wore a sublime, droll look upon his swollen face, as if challenging the whole world with his appetite, while spoonful after infinite spoonful of goop was doled into his pouting mouth. There was one veiled foreign woman waiting eagerly on the end of the line, clutching her karma heaped in a bowl, eyes glazed over, she was firanghi and last in the pecking order. Arthur couldn’t imagine what life would be like for this Westerner at the back of the Baba’s tin-shed to which they all trailed at sunset, to him the scene was outlandish and ultimately unappetizing. Arthur fantasised that the denouement of being inflated so grotesquely by everybody’s karmic shit would be the Baba swelling and swelling till he exploded into smithereens, to meld his dust with the cosmos, and indeed his heart did eventually explode.
Another Big Baba who got too well known for his own good was a giant named Tatwallah Baba who lived in a cave in the jungle above Vedniketan Ashram. His yoga had given him tremendous strength, powerful Shakti, and he was famous for carrying whole trees upon his back, up and down all day like the labour of Sisyphus. Meditating outside his cave, Arthur would go into a profound trance, testimony to the potency of Tatwallah’s charisma. The Baba never acknowledged his presence except for an annoyed glare, and stern of countenance, with dreadlocks hanging to his heels, he would throw these colossal logs about as if he were some god shaking up the world.
His fame got him marching in the cities to protest cow slaughter and visits to his jungle lair by politicians and gangsters looking to tap his Shakti power for their own ends. He must have gotten too embroiled in the world’s nefarious machinations because one morning some hit men turned up at his cave and fired four bullets into his muscular frame, and for all his Shakti, he was shot dead. The tentacles of his karma spread wide for the entire police command of Shangri-la died in a car crash racing to the scene of the crime. Arthur by chance was passing by as the Hindus poured milk onto the dead Baba’s dread-locked head and then threw the body into the Ganges for the sacred fish to eat. All that strength quickly devoured, his sainthood sullied and humanity flawed, with little Arthur left to ponder the transience of all flesh as he wandered on down the road.
Arthur considered that any Baba worth his salt would have fled the public limelight of the mind-numbing, busy metropolis with all its temptations and distractions and hid deep in the jungles and high mountains, their only interest the bliss of super-consciousness, whatever that may be, and open to approach by only the purest and most steadfast of acolytes. All Babas flogging their wares in public seemed lesser saints, available to lesser souls, for in the market place everyone gets the guru they pay for and deserve, and possibly late twentieth century capitalism and the neo-religion of celebrity killed off the humble, unworldly anonymous Master. Not that India hadn’t come up with the greatest of souls in its long history and Arthur had a pantheon of heroes for his inspiration, Shankaracharya, Chatrapati Shivaji, Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramakrishna, Mahatma Ghandi, Dr. Baba Sahib Amedbekar, to name the foremost, a few great men who worked in the mundane world, surmounted its crassness and won through all obstacles. Many great saints never got publicised, they remained hidden and secret, they thrived in the silence, and folklore suggests their untainted peace and love vibrations beamed out to a troubled world are what holds disparate humanity together.
At many junctures Arthur himself tried to be a Baba, hanging out with gangs of sadhus at their campsites, practising austerities near the Masters or trying to be secluded away from the bustle of humanity so as to experience lengthy, peaceful meditations under his own steam. He explored the jungles and scoured the mountain-tops for the ideal recluse, a hidden cave with fresh spring water, mango tree and no electricity tower in sight. Yet wherever he squatted, within five minutes the multitudinous Indian peasants would come trooping through, collecting firewood, herding goats or jut plain nosy, and stare at him wild-eyed, then attempt to practice speaking English. And wherever he fled, he took his tumultuous mind with him, into the darkest of caves, like a frisky monkey, it wasn’t long before he would tire of his own company and scurry back to civilisation, to see the latest movie and eat a choctop ice-cream.
His old mentor Compassion had written a letter to the chief honchos of the Sivananda Jungle University complaining of the shabby treatment they’d given his talented student, whereupon Arthur was recalled to that hallowed institution and permitted to attend lectures on Yoga and Vedanta philosophy. Still there was no place for him in this strictest of Hindu academies; they didn’t like long-haired hippies, women were not allowed, no smoking, no radios and a nine o’clock curfew. Next door was the Yoganiketan Monastery offering profound meditation techniques made easy to all-comers, still with strict rules but not as uptight. With alacrity he bid farewell to the chillum-toking freaks at the Swiss cottage, heaved his backpack up the hill and became one of the serious aspirants at the Yoganiketan. This Ashram was founded and regimented by a surly old master yogi known as Yogeshwarananda, whose gruff-faced, square head scowled from photos on every wall making Arthur feel he was under constant, stern surveillance. After cultivating a repertoire of yogic talents through a long life of austere practices, the old grump had fabricated his personal cosmology of arcane, tantric mumbo-jumbo and published it all in glossy, obtuse books made available for purchase in the front lobby. When Arthur first attended the Yoganiketan the big guru was away in the Hindu Kush Mountains and he was replaced by a cranky old granny in a sari who sat on his throne of power and directed the proceedings through the skewed perspective of a Hindu-widow.
It was in one of her awkward meditation sessions that Arthur visualized the inner light of his mind’s eye coalesce from a vague, luminous cloud into the clear, white brightness of a full moon. Excited by his burgeoning mental prowess, he resolved to join the Guru at his summer camp high in the mountains of Kashmir, for Yogeshwaranand was reputed to be “the real thing” while much else in Shangri-la seemed to have devolved into mere simulacra of enlightenment, like actors in television commercials with cheesy smiles waving consumer products hypnotically.