Arthur’s concrete cave was far enough upriver from the Ashram to be out of sight of the nosy old Swamis who liked nothing better than to gossip about the waywardness of the Aussie wannabe yogi. He would sit out on its concrete veranda, shaded from the ferocious sun under a thatch awning, and sing sacred love songs whilst clinking Old Compassion’s hand cymbals frenetically. He adored the sadhu’s meditative life and when a diamond backed snake slithered around him he delighted in it as the cave’s penultimate mod con and genii loci. Carrying on like the king of the kooks he soon attracted a motley crew of western freaks with whom he held rollicking soirees, smoking chillums, beating bongos and playing guitars to the wee hours of the night as if it were some exotic nightclub he might have named “Sadhu Nick’s”.
The smoking of hashish was certainly anathema to his yogic disciplines, drug addiction a path he was inexorably led to after a life of disaffection, topping up the peace of his meditations, quelling his disquieted neurosis, soothing his nerves. It didn’t help that beautiful young men continued to swim daily in front of his cave like angels from paradise, perfect athletic bodies, innocently erotic in their play, virtually naked as their cotton loin cloths turned sheer in the splashing water. He felt as if his iron-bound nerves were unravelling from his eyeballs down.
In the midst of all this tantric jungle melodrama Swami Chidananda, head honcho of the Ashram, decided his errant nephew would benefit from the illustrious company of the austere young Aussie, suggesting the two of them hang out together, naïve old fellow that he was. Mukesh was about twenty-three and a mess, his body all chopped up with running sores and his face caved in from several years as a smack addict. He had created horrendous troubles for his Swami uncle by stealing anything not nailed down at the monastery, breaking into the hospital pharmacy and robbing the drug cabinet several times, dropping near dead from overdose at many of the spiritual functions, till his uncle was at his wit’s end trying to figure out how to help the lad get over it. Somehow Arthur’s worldly-wise, rock and roll nature would show the way to an upright, intelligent life for the unruly young fellow or so the abbot hoped.
For a few weeks the sorry chap followed Arthur everywhere, like a plague of flies, shattering his calm facade, for Mukesh was a demanding brat, badgering, whining, harping on about his sorry existence. He soon confessed that all his woes began at the age of sixteen when he was seduced by a British Swami residing at the Ashram, a guy who had renounced the world, dressed in saffron robes, dedicated himself to prayer and meditation, and then avidly fucked the arse off Mukesh every chance he got, the poor boy discovering he was gay in the process and turning to drugs to handle the abuse.
It didn’t take long before Mukesh demanded that Arthur have sex with him; he pleaded, cajoled, nagged to be sodomised, to have his cock sucked, to suck Arthur’s cock, whatever, anything, begging for it, on and on, day and night. Still trying to ward off his own sexual demons Arthur was having none of it, the ashram atmosphere was not appropriate and the guy was too screwed up, unattractive and uncool with purulent track-marks all over his body and cold sores around his mouth.
Weeks dragged by as Artie tried to impart stoic wisdom, cool attitudes, healthy lifestyle, but Mukesh wasn’t listening, he was too brain addled, he just wanted to be debauched. Arthur finally lost his patience, telling him he’d have to find himself another devious firanghi Swami to corrupt him. They argued and yelled insults at each other all the long days and finally, in a raucous fit, Artie threw him out of his cave, never to see the poor boy again, but to often contemplate his story and take care when any seduction seemed imminent. No god knows what Swami Chidananda did with him, he seemed incurable, but it was a chilling lesson for Arthur about how contact with foreign, salacious ways could be destructively influential to an impressionable pagan Indian, and perhaps why the wise Swami put them together in the first place.
With the saintly ambience of the cave devolving into an emotional swamp Arthur fled to Swiss Cottage nearer town and tried to avoid befriending the surfeit of good-looking guys that surged in throngs upon the roads. He resumed the life of the international freak lost upon the hippie trail, smoking a ton of charas, dropping Acid and making cacophonous music with other freaks, dining out on the myth of their transitory utopia, lolling under the stars in Shangri-la.
His final downfall was a beautiful man from Dehradune with whom Arthur had struck up a conversation in a chai shop. Without much delay they were trying to seduce each other with grabs at crotches under the table and Arthur, deciding his yogic disgrace might as well be total, wracked his brain wondering where he could take his eager paramour for their tryst. They trundled tirelessly up the mountain road, doubling upon a pushbike, looking for a private niche they could make hanky-panky in. Every tree and bush had its resident layabout Indian glaring at them in suspicion and Arthur despaired of achieving his immoral ruin when he suddenly remembered a likely spot, if he only dared.
He took the young man to old Swami Compassion’s concrete cubicle in the jungle behind the Ashram, for it was abandoned and he had the key to its padlocked door. At last he’d found a secret, private place where he could fully indulge his homosexual desire, only it had to be upon the very spot Compassion had spent his last months meditating into the Void. Unashamedly, as if he’d come full circle, Arthur was ravished by the lad where once he’d tried to find Nirvana, and with much groaning and squelching, slurping and sighing, they created a symphony of lust instead of the music of the spheres. When they were finished and tidied up and Arthur creaked open the cell-door, he found one of the old Ashram Swamis sitting on the doorstep, his ears flapping and his eyes rolling. Arthur’s true proclivities were now known and gossiped about like the latest happening in a television soap opera. Attending a lecture on comparative philosophy, the German Countess hissed when she clapped eyes upon him and he realised his idyll at the Sivananda Jungle University had come to an end.
The last satsang Arthur attended was presided over by the wizened old Swami Chidananda who gave the main evening lecture on celibacy as a necessary part of yoga sadhana. He claimed that the vital juices had to be retained and directed upwards to fountain out of the top of one’s head in cosmic bliss and not leaked from the lower chakras. He reiterated that he included masturbation and homosexuality in this discipline and the monks were not to think they could have a free-for-all just because there were no women involved.
Arthur took note, knowing that the Sanyassi’s life of austerity was no life for him, and he looked for a way to finish with his shaky vow of yogic renunciation. He’d received news that his freaky friends, the Sid Quartz gang, were again sojourning in the playground that was Kashmir, living the worldly life he felt himself more suited to. He contemplated floating upon the pink-lotus lakes of Srinigar and flirting with all those horny Moslem men that plied her placid waters, much more fun than running the gauntlet of a mob of frustrated old biddy Swamis.
He thought of when he’d first met Sid Quartz at Shangri-la’s one palatable restaurant, the Neemal Hotel, a dark, grungy cavern patronised by the hippie set for its half-western cuisine. Arthur heard a Yankee accent broadcasting loudly from the backroom, telling some deadbeats “how it is”. He followed it to its source and introduced himself, intrigued by the American’s ‘know-all’ attitude. They discovered they were both studying yoga at the Yoganiketan Foundation and quickly became fast friends, the English language and popular culture as the common bond. Sid Quartz was a Jewish New Yorker in India pondering his existence, questioning tradition, searching for other paradigms. He looked a bit like Al Pacino crossed with Droopy the Dog, sad, wily and disappointed. He was a drop out from the American entertainment industry, once a successful agent to the stars and, having brushed up against the trappings of fame and wealth, was jaded, had wised up and gotten hungry for riches of the soul, something difficult to find in Hollywood.
Arthur was fascinated by his street smart confidence and “been there, done that” attitude and he in turn was charmed by Arthur’s Australian laid-back humour and larrikin nature. Sex did not come into the equation, Sid being straight as an arrow and Arthur closeting his homosexual nature behind a façade of mysticism. As well as yoga and meditation, they had many common interests and they discussed Life, the Universe and Rock and Roll movies earnestly and endlessly as young people are want to do.
For all his soul-searching and hippie ways, Sid was still a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, and no one could outsmart or hoodwink him in a business deal. Throughout his yogic practices and Indian adventures he was always scheming on how to make a buck, as his travel expenses had to be paid for somehow and he wasn’t about to sleep in the dust like the grunge-bunny hippies. Sid’s favourite saying was, “If you play, you must pay.” As an artistically inclined space cadet Arthur never let economics bother him, he roughed it when he had to like the quintessential vagrant, and still Sid took him on over the years as companion and pet antipodean freak, in his kindness and his coolness. They had joined forces later in Kashmir, after Swami Yogeshwaranand folded his summer yoga camp in the mountains, and it was with Sid that he lived the life of a prince for awhile, out on the lakes of Srinigar.
And now Sid was king of the Mughal Gardens again and calling to Arthur to return to that cloud seven, for his ebullient, intelligent and artistic soul was needed to enliven their tranquil Arabian Nights idyll. Thus he determined to jump the ship called “Fallen Yogi” before he was made to walk the plank, it being the houseboats of Kashmir his heart was set upon.
