28) Moti Ma Meets the Electrified Baba.

It was mid nineteen seventy-four and the ghastly Indian drought burned on with accompanying food-riots and general disaffection. It might as well have been a dust storm on Mars for all that it affected Arthur contemplating his gonads up in the Himalayas. He lingered on at the Sivananda Jungle University for several months after his beloved mentor’s death, continuing his yoga practices and philosophical studies despite the sexual beast gnawing away at the underbelly of his psyche. He hassled Serenity to despair, creating estrangement with his fantasised love-obsession, making it difficult for the two of them to be together in relaxed bonhomie.

To soak up his energies, Arthur worked as a volunteer nurse in the Sivananda Charity Hospital and he even tended to the ailing lepers in the leprosarium colony up the river, dressing their wounds and cheering them up with his gracious attention, like some charitable princess.

He received permission from the Jungle University to move down to the river’s edge to a small concrete cave that some smart sadhu baba had built into the riverbank in seasons past. It had a little concrete veranda with a thatched awning and was just the thing for Arthur to do his yoga and pranayams upon. Its only drawback was that it faced a section of the river much favoured as the best swimming spot by the multitudes of local young men. Daily Arthur had to suffer the sight of their muscular frames, barely concealed by wet cotton sheaths, leaping about boisterously, with smiles that would put the morning sun to shame and innocently giving Arthur the come-on. His saintly resolve to again attempt celibacy was cracking and would tumble like the walls of Jericho at the blast of one young man’s horn. He was in paradise and gorgeous angels frolicked all about him and he just had to find something else to distract him.

It was about this time that Moti Ma, (Mother of Pearl), showed up and started hanging around with the Australian gang. She was a twenty-four year-old New Zealand woman who had wandered India for four years and looked the part, draped chastely in a faded sari from head to foot like the goddess Saraswati. She had long blonde dreadlocks massed in a beehive on her head, and bright blue cat’s eyes that fascinated every man she looked upon. She’d managed to travel the wilds of India by keeping the company of fellow international freaks and thus got protection from the constant advances of the multitudes of lustful Indian men. In the end, every one of her male protectors also tried to fuck her and she found it very tiresome, everything boiling down to sex, and never being left free to practice her yoga like a Hindu nun. Arthur assured her he was as pure and guileless as a newborn brother and she would only find the best of friends in him. Together they planned a pilgrimage to the Sacred Site of Badrinath, for the government had recently opened the town to foreign tourists after centuries of isolation and Arthur was determined to complete the quest Compassion had once had his heart set upon.

Arthur was obliged to get permission for the journey from the head of the Ashram, Swami Chidananda. Young women were forbidden in the monastery as anathema to the contemplative’s life, only old crones like the German Countess getting a look in, (having donated plenty of money) and, when the ascetic Swami clapped eyes upon the beautiful Moti Ma, radiant as a goddess, he forbade Arthur and her to travel together. Arthur didn’t have the courage to tell the old celibate that his sexual inclinations were more at risk with his fellow monks, yet never one to be thwarted from his intentions, he journeyed on alone to the top of the Himalayas and Moti Ma joined him a few days later, without directly disobeying the well-meaning old Hindu Abbot.

Badrinath was a magical place, revered for thousands of years as a sacred site to Lord Vishnu the Preserver and His Avatar, Rama, whose ascension to Heaven occurred somewhere in the vicinity, and rarely had a foreigner ever set foot there. India’s border with Tibet lay only fifteen kilometres away and the main attraction of the town, a clunky wooden temple surmounted atop a granite vault, had a Tibetan feel to its architecture and the idol of Vishnu in the inner-sanctum was in reality a Budha seated in meditation. It had been weathered to it’s barest outline from having been hidden for centuries in the hot-springs as safeguard against unsympathetic marauders such as the Muslims, then resurrected as a Hindu deity, the confusion of religions lending greater mystique to the idol’s cryptic, minimalist shape.

And deep within the blue-granite crypt of this Temple there were fabled to exist strange metallic plaques encrypted with hieroglyphics no genius could decipher. The celestial staircase up which Rama and his loved ones climbed when they were through with living in the mundane world was reputed to rise somewhere in the mountains nearby, a myth which led Arthur to imagine a UFO had visited long ago, delivering and picking up gods, the magic radiation still emanating from the very rock, making a magnet of the place. In front of the Temple lay seven granite tanks, each dedicated to a different god, and filled to the brim from hot sulphur springs. It was a sheer delight for Arthur to bathe daily in the mineral waters, warm and revivified while gazing upon the glaciers and snowy peaks of the high Himalayas.

Their hotel room was bleak as they had little money, the nights were freezing and it was with divine pleasure that Arthur sat in the warm morning sun in front of the Temple, drawing upon a flat rock with oil crayons, Moti Ma by his side. The locals had never seen such wild, western mendicants before and were highly entertained by their music and art, feeding them and getting them high with the local charas. It was as Arthur was drawing an expressionist Kali that the head honcho of the holy city, the Baba in charge of the Temple, came wandering past. He took one look at Arthur’s drawing and another look at the vivacious Moti Ma, and with his eyeballs spinning he insisted that they stay at his ashram up the hill a bit. Arthur had previously glimpsed him doing strenuous yoga by the riverbank and for a sixty-five-year old he was supple and fit, though skinny as a rake. He had the requisite long dreadlocks, except they formed a fringe around the bald dome of his head, he piled them up like a heap of snakes nesting on an egg, his face surly and forbidding.

His name was Narada Baba and he bought Arthur’s ‘Kali on a Rock’ artwork and put it on his sacred altar which was all locked up in a peculiar little room at the front of his ashram. Encouraging Arthur to gaze through the room’s one tiny window at the clutter of totemic objects stacked about the altar, the old wizard then asked him to make a wish and assured him it would come true, for the room gave off extraordinary, miraculous vibrations. Arthur thought the old guy was cracked as it was him who told them all the far-fetched myths about the place, the celestial staircase and the mysterious hieroglyphs, yet there was something in the Baba’s mad, dark eyes that caused Arthur to acquiesce. He thought he could outwit fate and, taking a deep breath, he made a wish and he wished that he would want Nothing. Amused by its double meaning, of attaining the ultimate peace of the Void, plus get everything he desired, he dreamed that he would want for nothing. The old shaman gave a satisfied smirk, as if he knew all of humanity’s little tricks, and a smart-arse like Arthur would get his come-uppance, all the pleasures he ever dreamed of attaining only experienced for a few, fleeting seconds, then dissolving, leaving him with nothing. And in the end, so jaded and tired with life, he would find nothing interesting. Devilish old Narada Baba had his own secret agenda and he set to with a will weaving his web of enticement.

He offered the quirky, western couple board and lodging if Arthur would paint a giant mural of Lord Rama on the side of his ashram. They readily agreed for it was a heavenly place to abide in and Arthur jumped amongst his art gear with gusto, sketching on the whitewashed wall the figure of a giant Rama looking like an alien astronaut. The old Baba’s yoga seemed to have increased his libido rather than restrained it, because he attempted to seduce Moti Ma from day one, forever luring her into his private quarters with the promise of tuition into the esoteric sciences. She would guilelessly enter his abode to humour him and would then have to fend off his roving hands, reaching out to stroke her legs in a sham massage with a rave about the glories of tantric sex thrown in as excuse. He was in lust with her blue cat’s eyes and blonde hair and he was willing to throw his yoga to the winds to get his hands on her.

This particular Big Baba had the natty talent of being able to play the Dattatraya Vena, a sitar-like instrument with one hundred and twelve strings. In fact he was a great master and was supposed to represent in the flesh the celestial musician, Narada, who plays divine music to Lord Vishnu as he dreams the existence of the Universe lying upon his bed of cobras floating on the cosmic sea. The crotchety old Baba played sacred music in the temple for an hour every morning and evening and he could truly create the music of the spheres. He had electrified his instrument and plugged it into a small amplifier and when he rippled his fingers across the multitude of strings he created noises Jimi Hendrix would have lived for. His talent was mesmerising, choirs and concertos in layer upon layer issuing from his flashing fingers, like Harpo Marx on Acid. They sat around in the Temple like junkies looking for a fix waiting for him to play some more of his exquisite music. When Arthur wasn’t too blissed out flying from his body into the golden light of an inner sun, he would notice the old wizard pointing his instrument straight at Moti Ma and waving it like a wand. She sat meditating, blithely unaware that he was aiming the stream of electric notes to wash over her and bring her under his spell.

The Narada Baba’s Ashram consisted of his private room with his little cell of sacred relics at the front, and out the back a room where slept a gang of his cronies, aged sadhus who lived only to eat and gossip. Arthur and Moti Ma were given the comfy spot in the cronies’ ante-room, directly in front of the swinging outer door, the icy winds howling in to chill their butts. Narada Baba had given them voluminous quilts to sleep under but still they had to huddle together every night to keep warm. The old cronies were forever toddling in and out of the door and, espying any movement under the blankets, would swear Arthur and Moti Ma were having sex, continuously. They daily reported their pornographic imaginations to the Big Baba who grew more and more irate that Arthur was getting all the white pussy and he was getting none. He stepped up his guerilla campaign of seduction, insisting she take his private tuition in the wonders of Tantra and she resolutely fobbed off his every advance and clever ruse.

Two months drifted by with the old boy never getting any satisfaction, he even grumbled about Arthur’s mural, it wasn’t his idea of what Rama looked like, and he’d like the pantheon of Rama’s cohorts painted as well, Sita, Laxman, Hanuman, sweated out under the hot sun. For aeons women had been banned from within the vicinity of the Badrinath Temple if they were undergoing menstruation and as the weeks skipped by, morning, noon and night the old satyr questioned Moti Ma about her periods and the danger of her defiling the sacred environment. For two months, through sheer yogic will, she kept her periods at bay and could honestly assure the Baba that his precious, phallocentric sanctuary was safe. He could not believe her, it defied the rational universe, and it exacerbated his angry frustration over never getting a handful of her luscious blonde flesh. Arthur struggled with the mural in the hot, midday sun while Moti Ma struggled with the old Tantric witch-doctor in his voodoo lair.

Meanwhile, down at the seven sacred hot tubs, the atmosphere was sultry and provocative. The Indian Army had a border camp not far up the road and the soldiers frequently visited the baths for rest and relaxation. Arthur happened to be soaking in the smallest of the tanks when a group of soldiers joined him, crowding the water and getting in his face. One young man kept lifting his lithe torso from the water and flashing his elephantine cock, perfectly outlined in his sheer, wet underpants, for all to admire. All his buddies laughed at every homo-erotic expose but for Arthur it was a devastating exhibition and he sunk into the water with his eyes peeled just above the waterline, like a canny crocodile, watching the handsome soldier’s lascivious display. Arthur then responded by lifting his own muscular frame in and out of the water, his cock bulging enticingly from his loin-cloth. Signals of desire ping-ponged between the two ‘wet-undies’ contestants and the rest of the crew faded into the sulfurous mists as Arthur made distant, celestial love to this gorgeous warrior.

The sexual tension in the tank grew thick, Arthur feared he might drown with all the dunkings he gave himself, and he fled to a larger pool, where family groups splashed about innocently. Moti-Ma showed up and paddled her feet at the shallow end of the pool, nattering on about the latest amorous ploy of cranky, old Narada Baba, while Arthur was sweating on the soldier who stood near them, drying himself off. Moti-Ma kept up the banter unaware that Arthur was fixated upon something beyond her shoulder. The handsome, athletic soldier had turned to face Arthur and flash open his towel, revealing a gigantic erection, sturdy as an oak and worthy of a fighting man. Arthur spluttered and flapped about in the water, unsure of what to do next. The soldier dressed languidly and indicated for Arthur to follow him as he disappeared out the baths and up a mountain track. Arthur remained sunk in the water, beyond belief that he should score the perfect man, up here in God’s abode, and he dared not surrender to such explosive temptation. He couldn’t imagine where the soldier was prepared to take him for their surreptitious fuck as every crevice, crag and cave in India has a peasant plodding through it. To him these high Himalayas seemed magical enough that divine angels could descend and devour one entirely, so for safety he hid in a dressing shed till the sun set and his lust waned.

In the two months they dallied in Badrinath they experienced intense euphoria, the rarefied air, the sulphur springs, the pure hashish, the people’s love and the cosmic vibes, all of it had them singing in the street as if they were divinely mad. Late one night Arthur sneaked into the Women’s Only Pavilion and danced like Pan, joyously, mindlessly, around the tank dedicated to the Goddess. Suddenly it seemed to him that he was struck by a bolt of lightning, he slipped on the slimy, wet granite and fell into the pool, a wrenching pain shooting up his leg, a clear white light exploding and enveloping him. He dragged himself up onto the pool’s edge and laid out prone, the white light filling his void, and he thought he was leaving his body. Moti-Ma rushed to his aid and sat by him at a loss as Arthur murmured commendations for his soul’s salvation, truly thinking death was taking hold of him. Eventually the white light faded and Arthur regained lucidity, finding himself flat on his back in the real world with Moti-Ma hanging onto his hand, desperately praying to all her gods, and his right knee aching furiously from where he’d torn the cartilage in his fall.

Winter was setting in, the Tibetans were taking their herds of yaks lower down the mountains for pasture and soon the town of Badrinath would be closing, snowed in for the season. All the tough ascetics girded their loins, ready to meditate in the deepest cold by generating their own body heat. Arthur and Moti-Ma had hung around the market place and the temple precincts with many of these weather-hardened yogis, lapping up their tales of ancient, wondrous happenings and ongoing enlightening austerities. They especially enjoyed the company of one old mendicant who’d led a full life and had reached a state of tranquil wisdom and sweet contentment and who had climbed all the way to Badrinath to die in its harsh winter. He had no money, no power, no egomania and no desire except for Moksha, freedom from his weary, old body and its earthly endurance. He had no pretensions and was refreshing in his lack of ambition, to him life was a dream already dreamed, and with equanimity he had placed one foot in the Void. As snow flurried down upon them, sitting in the hot baths, they all sang love songs to a munificent Universe together. Arthur and Moti-Ma shared all they had with the frail, old pilgrim and he endeared himself to their souls as one of the sweetest babas they’d had the pleasure to meet along the treacherous hippie trail.

They had outstayed their welcome with the horny old Temple Maestro, his patience with the blonde bombshell having run out, he was irate at their every meeting, obsessed with the idea of them polluting the Temple with their provocative presence and foreign ways. As Narada Baba was spiritual supremo of the entire town, his will was law and his displeasure greatly feared and Moti-Ma could not relax anywhere without all eyes pinning her as the scarlet temptress. On the very morning the duo had planned to leave, Moti-Ma got her periods and had to run for the other side of the river. Narada Baba had somehow sensed her condition, scuttling after her and frothing at the mouth in vexed frustration from his perch on a rock by the bridge. Arthur snatched up their meagre belongings and ran across to join her, and when he looked back over his shoulder he saw the wrathful Baba, standing with one arm upraised in a curse that he flung after them as they clambered aboard the departing bus.

They safely made it out of town still in possession of their integrity and were happily zooming along, Arthur dozing off in a soldier’s lap, when he snapped awake to the burgeoning hysteria gripping the bus as it sped relentlessly down the mountain road, out of control, for the brakes had failed. Going from dumb silence to panicked howl, the crowd of passengers screamed louder and louder as their conveyance rolled swift and sure, faster, faster, metal squealing as death hovered all around. The bus rushed on and on, hurtling down the mountain-side, swerving at the bends, lurching over the bumps and skating along the edge of the thousand-foot drop to the river far below, and Arthur and Moti-Ma could only clutch at each other in terror, rocking with the rolls, leaning into the curves, stoically restrained.

As the awaited catastrophe suddenly, finally struck, the whole world spun and the crowd roared, like at the ending of a movie, except the driver was smart enough to crash the bus into the low, rocky wall bordering the rice paddies, and the stunt movie continued. Its momentum retarded, rebounding from the wall, the bus was flung on its side and skidded along the road for an eternity, emitting a heart-stopping screech until it came up just short of a vertiginous drop, balanced lengthwise along the edge of the precipice.

The passengers had all been turned upside down, and in a great flurry of limbs they scrambled on top of each other, shrieking their heads off. The soldiers trampled upon the pilgrims, men stomped on women, each trying to climb over their neighbour to smash the windows and be the first to escape before the bus fell into the chasm. Arthur, Moti-Ma and a sadhu were up the back struggling to get out from under the pile of luggage that had fallen on them. Arthur had felt the bus come to rest, solid and steady underneath him and he felt no need to panic, calling out “Shanti! Shanti! Peace! Peace!” The rest of the human cargo ballyhooed and launched themselves into a reckless stampede, shoving each other out of the way to get through the windows. Arthur assured himself that Moti-Ma stood unscathed amidst the wreckage and then he tried to pry open the back door, but like in all bad disaster movies, it refused to budge. As he wrestled with the door, every one else got out through the windows, except for Moti-Ma and the sadhu, who hoped Arthur would break through. Finally someone came around the back of the bus and opened it from the outside, and Arthur was the very last survivor to stumble from its ruins.

Miraculously no one was injured except for a Dutch boy who was riding on the roof and was catapulted to the ground, breaking his wrist. Arthur’s right knee had been jarred into dislocation and he needed a crutch to hobble about. Arthur, the Sadhu and the women pilgrims smirked knowingly to each other as all the brave men had their photos taken next to the up-ended bus, proudly standing with one leg propped up on the dead beast as if it were some prize dinosaur they had slain. The injured Dutchman was whisked off to hospital in a passing jeep, the rest of them gathered around a cosy bonfire and they sang jolly love songs together to keep their spirits up as the cold night set in, the surrounding glaciers luminous blue-white under the stars. Early in the morning a rescue bus turned up and whisked the intrepid pilgrims off for another roller-coaster ride down the mountain but Arthur and Moti-Ma had lost faith in that mode of transport. They opted instead to walk and hitchhike the two hundred kilometres down the winding road to Shangri-la, even though Arthur limped and had to lean on Moti-Ma’s shoulder on the difficult stretches.

They were picked up by caring Indians in their private cars and dropped off at mountain towns along their way, and beyond all the difficulties, they had a fantastic journey. For great stretches of highway they limped and ambled along, revelling in the spectacular mountain scenery and bartering their kit in return for the simple food the peasants proffered them. Most nights they found shelter in village dharmsalas, sleeping on the veranda of shacks set aside for visiting wanderers, but one night they were caught out on the highway past dusk and could find only a small shrine built into a Banyan tree to take refuge within from the cold. The surly sadhu who dwelt inside the shrine indicated that Arthur could go into its warmth but the blonde female sadhu had to go elsewhere and no amount of pleading would melt his stony disposition. Arthur took Moti-Ma by the hand and led her to the most sheltered spot he could find and together they lay down upon the cold, rocky ground and with only a thin blanket covering them they clung to each other and froze the endless night away.

Towards dawn Arthur thought he truly might freeze to death, yet fatigue swept him to dreamland and he slept for an hour, long enough to go to Heaven. He dreamed he flew to some celestial domain where he alighted upon the portico of a chaste, white marble temple that radiated kaleidoscopic, psychedelic rays of light from its inner sanctum. He was drawn in towards the scintillating, opalescent light display, which resolved and coalesced into the exquisite form of the Goddess Laxmi. She blessed him with a smile and a shower of fragrant rose petals and asked which boon he desired from her, wealth of money or wealth of character. Arthur went for the personality prize as he figured it could always get him out of a fix whereas it would be the living end to be a rich deadhead. (Maybe he made a mistake as he learned after a hard life that old saw, “nobody wants to know you when you’re down and out.”)

When he awoke, morning had broken the night’s icy grip and they rejoiced to bask in the warm sun. In the near distance, at the confluence of two streams, like synchronicity, stood a small Temple to the Goddess Laxmi and as Arthur bathed in the invigorating waters in the vicinity, his dislocated knee clicked back into place and he was able to walk properly again, without the need of a crutch. Walking was a pleasure and it never worried them when they couldn’t get a lift. Happy to be alive and eager for more adventures they strolled into bad old Srinigar, a previous site of disappointment for Arthur, where Compassion had been turned back from his quest by the army patrol.

They discovered a busy country fair in progress at the edge of town, innumerable tacky plastic tents spread out on a muddy field with a crowd of peasants milling about excitedly but no sophisticated entertainment actually on offer. There were several displays of transistor radios set up like modern objects of worship, and every other tent flogged fried pakora, or ‘throw the ring around the bar of soap’ type side-show, but there was nothing exotic except for the tiny wooden Ferris-wheel hand-pushed by a wizened old peasant in a turban. Arthur was a bit bemused by the clunky triviality of the not-so-amazing fair until a real life midget showed up and gathered a fascinated crowd around him. He was a fully-grown adult male about eighteen inches high and perfect in every feature and he stood upon a table and hectored the crowd in a high, squeaky voice like a stand-up comedian, and he had his audience eating out of his hand. Arthur gazed upon the animated midget in wonder, questioning if he hadn’t indeed found his way into fairyland.

He was brought rudely back to reality when a smug group of businessmen introduced themselves to Moti-Ma and himself and offered to lavish a feast upon them if they would only sing a song to the towns-people from a stage erected at one end of the field of sludge. The naive and hungry pair of freaks readily agreed, and were led into the shadows to what they thought was the back of the stage. Instead they were ushered through a rickety door into a small wooden shack with a dirty mattress on the floor that took up most of the space. Arthur looked about him in dismay as the fat businessmen crowded in behind them and when he inquired about dinner and their intentions, the leader of the pack pointed at the manky mattress and croaked, “First we fuck her, then we fuck you!”

Arthur snarled back, “Like bloody hell you will!” and pushed the fat guy in the face with the flat of his hand, toppling him over and onto his fellows. He then grabbed Moti-Ma by the wrist and ripping the door from its hinges charged out of the hovel, dragging his friend behind him and leaving their would-be ravishers flailing about on their dirty mattress. The overly attractive duo stumbled through the labyrinth of tents and out to the edge of town where they found a dharmsala, a wooden shack with a smoky hearth in the centre around which travellers slept. They hid out there for the night knowing its precinct was sacrosanct and safe from any marauders.

After three weeks of dawdling and taking in the mountain sights they straggled into Shangri-la, the Swamis at Sivananda Ashram stunned at their arrival for they’d heard gossip that the two of them had perished in a bus crash high amidst the glaciers. Old Narada Baba had made it down the mountain before them and spread the malicious rumour that they had indulged in an orgy under the quilt in the backroom at his joint. Arthur convinced the Abbot, Swami Chidananda, his relationship with Moti-Ma had been chaste, like brother and sister, and was allowed to again take up residence in the little concrete cave by the Ganges. Here he continued his yoga and music and Moti-Ma lingered often upon his patio, her eyes all starry and wistful. The Ashram was still reluctant to welcome young women as nuns and saw Moti-Ma’s constant attendance at Arthur’s funky crash pad as a provocation for hanky-panky. Trying to calm the waters with the Ashram as he felt his gang had caused enough trouble, he tried explaining himself to her.

“Moti, I know we’re just friends, but it’s not a good look, you coming here every day. All the swamis think there’s something going on between us, you know what terrible gossips they are.”

“What do you mean, I’m only listening to your singing, it’s harmless.”

“Yeah, but you’re always here, I can’t get a peaceful moment to meditate. Please, give me a break, don’t come so much, I need time on my own.”

“I’m fed up with the way women get treated here, it’s not fair. I thought you were the real thing but you’re as flawed as all the other fakers!”

“Oh Moti, please don’t take offence, it’s just the way it is here.”

She threw her veil over her face and flounced off and wouldn’t look at him for weeks, angry, humiliated and heartbroken. Arthur pondered the meaning of her sighs and dissatisfied mien and realised she might have come to like the strength of his character a little too much for his comfort and her repose. While he had hoped she’d not noticed that his eyes always strayed to the good-looking men in their vicinity, he’d not noticed that her eyes had always strayed towards him. Of all the freaks she’d travelled with and been put upon by, the one guy she felt deserved her love was simply not in the running.

She must have resigned herself to his true yogic nature, austere and virginal, or maybe raw reality hit her on the head suddenly one night, whatever, she smiled at him again and was his friend. She was a sincere and caring person and her virtuous, winsome ways eventually got her entrance to Sivananda Ashram as a Hindu nun. She distracted herself with elaborate rituals of idol-worship, morning and night hanging marigold garlands around stone statues of the Hindu gods in the Ashram temple, pouring milk on them and dressing them like dolls in regal robes, as if in a fit of infantile regression.

At some point her diligent devotions and blue cat’s eyes were noticed by the second in command of the Ashram, Swami Krishnananda, and he made her his private secretary for a few years. The old boy was probably over it, incapable of any action but he still liked to look, and all ran smooth till Mother Nature had her way and Moti-Ma fell irrevocably in love with one of Krishnananda’s spunky, young Brahmachari attendants. She eventually fell pregnant to him, scandalising the whole monastery and bolstering its paranoia that women were a monk’s greatest distraction. Jungle lore has it that she was made to marry the guy and they were shipped off to New Zealand to spread the Divine Light amongst the Kiwis, and there they lived happily ever after. Or so Arthur hoped, he didn’t really know for he’d run off to Kashmir long before Moti Ma’s denouement.