Toby the Punk Poofy Cat

Manu of the Mountains.

2011-12-01T22:58:00.021+11:00

I left Mughal Delhi behind me with some relief, saddened to hear 14 Eunuchs had died in a fire at a community hall. Because their families had disowned them, only their fellow Hijra, (trannies), came to claim their bodies. Many of them were old and couldn't outrun the flames and it was their young chelas, (acolytes), who they belonged to. I was surprised to note that many of them were previously Muslims.

Though I was happy to be on that
infinite dusty Indian highway , I got the heebie-jeebies as the bus trundled through Haridwar, Gateway to the Gods, where at the city's famous temple, Harki Padi, a week previously, their had been a stampede during evening Pujah, prayers, and 20 women and children had been trampled to death. The prayer group had been trying to overcome rampant sexism and empower the women by letting them lead the prayers for once, and that's why most of the deaths were female.
With 1200 million people life and death are writ so large it tears one's eyeballs out at every step, and for all the immense wealth piling up in India many poor flock from miles around when free food is to be given away, they'll squat and wait patiently for hours, patience is an Indian necessity.

On the road to Gangotri, source of the Ganges River, we found an ashram belonging to a mystic named Pilot Baba, (yes, he was once an airline pilot), he has a huge Russian following who built this vision for him and he now lives in Russia.

At last we broke through civilization's gates and was flying up into the high Himalayas, those magnificent mountains of mystics who have meditated there for thousands of years. As we drove through the jungle I noticed forest rangers walking the road with rifles slung over their shoulders. A rogue elephant had killed 5 people in the last few months, only recently dragging one poor fellow off his scooter and crushing him. They were hoping to tranquilise the brute and then shift him to a far-off jungle where human encroachment will not infuriate him as much. he's getting some animal revenge on so much human predation I guess. I wished him well as we cruised on by.

(Manu and I at the magic Temple to Nature.)

Up, up we flew, towards the snow-capped crags on the back of a golden motorbike, round hairpin bends and into hurtling traffic, monstrous jeeps that jostled us aside, through streams and over rock-slides, places where no road existed at all, an extreme sojourn so exhilarating it was worth any danger. We passed marvelous temples, the architecture of folklore, and a line-up of gods so manifold there seemed one for every person alive. We rode above the Ganges River turned into an endless lake by the Tehri Dam and yet again I pondered upon my youth when I did wander the valley paths and medieval villages with my mentor Compassion and beloved friend Serenity way back in the '70s, now all drowned beneath the turquoise waters.

We crossed the cable bridge into grungy, romantic Uttarkashi, town of my dreams, where I cream in my jeans, who all year I yearn for and always return for a night by her streams. But Time cascades on making all an illusion and I have to let go, next day we zoomed to Gangonani, with its huge tank filled by a hot-spring, supposedly the fountain erupting from Siva’s head, a healing embrace for my sore bones no matter the mythology.

It was at this small village clinging to the mountains side that I first met Manu, maybe seven years ago. He was from a tiny village 7 kms down the road called Buki but he hung about Gangonani most days hoping to find work with the passing tourists, offering to guide them to Gormukh, a site at the foot of the Glacier that is the source of the Ganges. He stepped forward from the crowd of ignorant peasant boys speaking fluent English when nobody for 70 kms could speak a word of it. He was honest, sincere and sweet natured and we became friends instantly.

He could never find enough interesting work to occupy his inquiring spirit, he felt he had greater potential than just toiling in the fields as his forefathers had done, he was made for bigger things but he knew not what. He was bored and restless, he’d outgrown Buki Village and knew there was a greater world out there, below the mountains yet had no means to attain it. Every year he told me his mind grew more clouded, his spirit more depressed, he was losing hope that there could be any future for such a misfit as he. I tried to give him pep-talks, encourage him to go down to the plains and take on the world, no matter the hardships but it seemed beyond him. I suggested he could turn his family farm into a miracle of modernity and eco-friendliness, his despondency found it a banal idea.

I brought him books that talked of the history of the world and might open his horizons, he ended up throwing them in the river, they hurt his brain with their difficult words and mind-bending concepts. There is no Medicare in the mountains, no shrinks with their anti-depressants and no money to pay for it, just priests and shamans whom he eschewed as backwoods mumbo-jumbo. Last year when I left I asked him what he wanted me to bring him next time I came and he requested dark sun-glasses, a very simple gift.

He became unpopular at Gangonani hot-springs for cracking onto the foreign tourists and taking the custom away from the locals, they were jealous of his language skills and thought him too big for his boots. This year he had a fight with the fat, gronky hotel owner, he must have beat the old grouch up for the police were called and he was put in some mountain jail for two months to cool his heels. I’ve never known anyone to come out of an Indian jail the better for it, it destroys the little spirit and stamina they might have harbored going in. I had great fears for Manu’s health and said so to my motorbike companion as we arrived at the hot-springs. Usually Manu was waiting there at the chai-shops, ready to greet any arriving tourists but this time he was nowhere to be seen.

We put our bags in at the wooden-chalet hotel and then drove back to Buki to see if we could get word to him through the old men that sat hunched over their brazier in the chai-shop there. We mentioned his name and they said he was finished, gone, dead, having committed suicide by drinking poison only three days previously. I couldn’t believe it, three lousy days too late, if I’d left a week earlier I might have picked his spirits up, with more pep-talk and the dark sunglasses he so desired. I stared down at the ancient cable-bridge that led over the nascent Ganges to the path that wound up over the mountain to his primitive village, a column of smoke issued from the place and I sadly imagined it to be the left-over haze from his funereal pyre. The old men of Buki shook their heads and indicated that his mind had gone, there was nothing to be done about it.

The next day we cruised all the way to Gangotri, sacred pilgrimage town lying below a stupendous snow-capped peak named Siva Lingam from whence the Ganges River flowed. We paid our respects at the great temple but I wanted to avoid getting caught up in any rituals as I don’t believe in them, find them tedious and time consuming, night was setting in, we were freezing and I wanted to get back down the mountain to the hot-springs. But this old Baba roped us in, promising us hot chai as he led us across the river to the small mandir he was in charge of where he made a great show of lighting up a chillum and shouting up to the gods. Before I could say no he’d opened up his little temple and proceeded to bless us with red tilak on our foreheads, water on our heads and manna in our mouths. His particular god was Hanuman, the monkey cohort of Lord Rama and thus I got a blessing from what I take to be the spirit of my evolutionary forebears, we’ve all still got millions of years of ape-men in us, and only seven thousand years of civilization.

Hanuman symbolizes strength, courage, loyalty and cleverness, all attributes I would need on my Indian idyll, he is the guardian of bachelors and protector from ghosts, which suits a queer adventurer like me just fine. I don’t believe in the reality of any gods but positive vibes and meaningful metaphors can’t hurt any. We thankfully said our goodbyes and cruised off back down the crumbling mountain road, passing a small herd of wild Himalayan mountain goats on the way. Not far off is a town called Dirauli and there built into a pit is a primeval temple to Nature, my favourite temple in all the world and to which I give myself a challenge to visit every year, if I can make it there I can make it anywhere. No God, no Master, no Intelligent Designer, just an awesome natural phenomenon that is Life and consciousness emerging from the quantum flux of this expanding Universe.

I had visited this temple with Manu some years previously, it seemed to lift his spirits as it did mine, to walk seven times around it and pray to the Universe, of which we were a conscious part, that It would take us to Its heart in safety, love and ongoing hope. It was not to be for Manu but it continues to be so for me. I’ve reached the miraculous age of 62 after countless hardships, it’s not easy being a ignominious queer pauper libertarian pagan adventurer cyber-punk artist, I’ve contemplated suicide throughout my life’s long journey, grand Oblivion always looking over my left shoulder, the promise of it reassuring enough not to need it.

The world can be such a sad, destructive place, especially in India, the newspapers tell me Jihadi Mujahidine are massing in Pakistan and India and we foreign tourists are “sitting ducks” for their pathological hatred. Yet India counters death with a great verve for life and this energises me and gets me surfing the wave of chaos ebulliently. After all, I'm a baby-boomer from Auz and as such am very privileged, far better off than maybe 7 billion other souls wrestling with their existence on this planet.

I was so depressed when I arrived in India this time round I thought surely this would be my last adventure, somewhere amidst the snow-caps of the Himalayas I would do myself in, I feel so tired and dead-beat I just can’t go on. Sweet Manu did it for me, and I have to carry on for him, till the very end, wherever that may be. I can't say I won't finish my life tomorrow, chaos may take over and do me in, but for NOW I will persist, I am still Alive, miraculously Alive. This story is in Manu's memory, for few will know that he also once lived and was Alive.

I Am the Rainbow Leopard..

2011-11-21T23:51:00.003+11:00

Today was glorious, my spirit s lifted and I flew like an eagle up the river in the morning sun, it was great to be alive and I was so happy I’d come to India again. My friend of 12 years, Balu the bear, he who’d brought me down so badly last year, picked my spirit up again, apologizing for his bad behaviour and promising to make amends. He took me in his car 30 kms up the Ganges River, the Himalayan foothills like primeval pyramids hanging over us, Hindi pop music pulsating from his sound system. He danced ecstatically as he drove like a madman around the precipitous curves, and I remembered why people forgave him his atrocious drunken brawling, he was so much fun to be with when he was straight.

After a whole lifetime spent in India I’m still learning the Indian way of things, as a people they have endless patience and are incredibly forbearing, putting up with a lot of shit, as life is too short and hard to bear grudges for too long. Of course, murder, robbery, rape, harming children and blasphemy are not forgiven, but gaffes, punch-ups, idiotic clowning, outrageous fuck-ups, extraordinary hitches are dealt with by a shrug of the shoulders and a quiet hunkering down till the brouhaha is over, no matter how long it takes. A simple example is a guy on a horse riding against the streaming traffic in the middle of the city, nobody batting an eyelid. Thus I forgive Balu his egregious insults against my character, I’ll just try not to be around when he gets drunk.

He took me to a river rafting camp where he had clients waiting to go white-water rafting down the Ganges. We had to row across a swollen river in a rubber dinghy to get to the camp, I thought we were just going for breakfast in some roadside village, such surprises are what I love about being on the road in India. With jungle and mountains as backdrop I was served coffee and eggs, the honoured foreign guest. On the drive back, again with our bodies jumping to the Hindi pop music, I reconnected with that incredible joie de vivre that many Indians possess, no matter their lowly station or poverty, they throb to the beat of some universal heart, a huge smile lighting up their faces. They, with their stupendous natural environment and colourful culture, refresh my wilting, thirsty soul.

And on this journey Balu told me a tale, of the Rainbow Gathering that he’d discovered camping on an isolated beach way up-river. Up to forty foreigners, mostly young, a few oldies, many with dreadlocks and wearing faded Indian hippie gear, carrying only a sleeping bag, cooking pot, a shoulder bag with a few items, they seemed to eschew the consumerist life-style, had little money, ate communally and shared the tasks. At the end of each meal they passed a hat around and those who had money put in some cash, those who couldn’t kissed the hat and passed it on. They had a charismatic German leader named Gabriel, who with strength of character enforced the few rules, like no alcohol.

They reminded me very much of how we freaks lived in India 40 years ago, and this crew were not only trying to relive the hippie lifestyle of old, in this go-get 21^st century they were succeeding. Not as easily as we did, in my day things were a lot freer and looser, no cops moved us on as they do nowadays, this Rainbow crew were made to shift further up the river, on and on, always finding a new hidden halcyonic jungle beach to camp upon. We also smoked hash without the proscriptions that harass the young today, we took acid, we fucked with abandon, we lived naked, now it’s all somewhat more constrained for the tribals by a new-age turned conservative.

I’ve seen these tribes of Rainbow people wandering the wilds of India and Australia but have no urge to join them in my old age. I’ve already been there and did it with the best of them, real big sadhu babas, now I prefer more solitary treks, with one or two friends at most. I also no longer fancy sitting around a campfire for weeks on end strumming guitars and singing bhajans, maybe for a few nights, but I love pop and techno music from machines too much to sing “Kumbayah”, and I'm too much of an atheist to sing the praises of God(s). My mind is ever inquiring, I need to read books, a wide range of them, I want to know everything there is to know, and then squeeze it all down into that most elegant of equations, AUM, the music of the quantum flux, a more minimalist E=MC2. And I love to be intrigued by the great art of novel writing, like the book I’m reading now in the quiet of my room, “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell, mind-blowing, a symphony of ideas that has my spirit soaring high and far in the Universal Mind.

Yeah, yeah, I could get cool stories told to me beside the campfire, and I do, every peasant in a chai-shop has an interesting story, I just don’t feel to do the hippie thing anymore, but all power to those who seek it, they are rebels against the body-corporate and I love them for it. My most tribal activity is dancing to trance in Goa with all the jungle bunnies, the body moving to the compound rhythms giving me Nirvana.

While spinning fast through the foot-hills Balu told me another cool story that had my hair prickling. He'd gone camping with the Rainbow tribe way up into the mountains and one dark night, when trekking with just two others, a big leopard approached them and was likely to pounce only Balu led his freaked companions away, walking backwards and shaking a sharp stick in the predator's face. He was considered a hero for this, hugged by all the hippies in thanks and cheered as a new member of the Rainbow Gathering. Their leader, Gabriel, must've been fooled as he made special dispensation for Balu, he was the only one allowed to drink alcohol in the camp. Maybe he recognised how nasty Balu could get if he was crossed and simply mollified him, hoping to guard his flock from the vengeful powers of a local.

(I was kidding myself, trying to be a nice guy, when I raved about how patient Indians could be; overcrowding and the pressures to get on top can cause Indians to finally snap, the outrageous murders and massive riots here proving the point. I still think many of the townspeople are very weary and wary of Balu's drunken antics. I made the mistake, after going to a wedding ceremony high in the mountains, of offering to buy Balu and gang a beer, like us Aussies are want to do. At the last minute they chose whiskey instead and proceeded to get filthy drunk, at my expense. Then Dr. Jeckyll turned into Mr. Hyde, I and my hotel manager were insulted till our ears burned, over nothing, an imaginary bug in our fruit salad. Balu barked at me like a dog and I roared back like a leopard. How oh how can a personality change so monstrously with just a few glasses of alcohol?)

Back to more utopian imagery, I think fondly of the young freaks at “childhood’s end” wandering the jungles of India, while world apocalypse threatens, oh that’s a life more interesting than getting drunk or carrying a briefcase around a dehumanising city! It so thrillingly takes me back to my youth when I wandered India in the Seventies, and that’s the breathtaking story I have to tell around the campfire.

In the Mad Square.

2011-11-20T21:01:00.002+11:00

In the deep of the night a hideous, nerve-wracking siren wailed on and on as if warning of an immanent nuclear attack, it was just some arsehole’s car alarm, waking me to the ongoing existential horror of living at Northcott Housing Complex. As always I fear an apocalyptic ending of civilization and my flat is a bunker wherein I hide and await the downfall. As I write my version of “Remembrance of Things Past and Future” I hear brain-damaged lumpen proles stumble thru the grounds shouting incoherently about their quashed hopes, frustrated desires and lost loves, they may crash thru my door or clamber over my balcony at any moment and I stay awake past dawn in trepidation.

In the early morning Department of Human Services’ bureaucrats have gathered outside my door haranguing Cursula, my neighbor, about her fire-trap apartment, overloaded with her retarded trashy treasures and tell her for the last time if she doesn’t clean out the dump she’ll be dumped herself, onto the street. She mumbled excuses then fled to her boyfriend’s flat to continue her hoarding there, and hasn’t been back to clean out a single garbage bag. She doesn’t seem to give a dam, her trash collection more precious than cheap rent, she ignores all entreaties even after they send Security guards to rip the lock from her door and threaten forcefully to empty her flat of the hoardings piled up to the ceiling. She rushed back in the nick of time, pleaded, cajoled and somehow bamboozled them and they marched off flummoxed, so much drama over a load of crap.

She left delicious silence in her wake, one small blessing as too much shrieking comes from the other end of the verandah, like it really is the end of the world, the gay couple fighting viciously like zombies over the carcass of a dead dog, and I pray fervently one will murder the other and then be sent off to gaol; the whole building would be thankful as everybody hates them, even fears them as they’re truly beastly.

Their alcohol-soaked arguments echo up and down the stairwell and all are made privy to their nasty secrets, one blaming the other of stealing from 90 year old Dolly who lives in the flat between us. They have harassed her for years in the guise of concerned and caring friends, elder-abuse as the raison d’etre to their meaningless lives. “Oh that old whore should be put in a nursing home, she’s nothing but a useless old cunt!” snarled Dravid, the walking-dead gay undertaker. In reply, his thieving wife, with a brain the size of a walnut due to a life-long barbiturate-addiction, accused his dead-drunk husband of burning the cars of neighbours that he felt had crossed him, their mutual antipathy then turned up a notch, the caterwauling unbearable. Oh what terrible species Human Services saddles us with, all for low-rent, and where oh where is the escape hatch?

Nogod, the dreaded local pyromaniac was living in our midst, all my fears compounded. I now suspect the very source of Cursula’s blaze that engulfed her bedroom thru her open window and very nearly torched our whole apartment block. And there’s no one to go to for help, no one to demand justice of, for the gay pill-head goes often to the Front Office to befriend the gay manager, to gossip, machinate and bitch about us who do nothing but mind our own business quietly in our flats. But that’s the way of these neo-fascist times, the villains make a life of informing to the authorities, another sign of the end of days, bad people succeeding and watching with cruel smiles the meek getting dispossessed.

Still, 2011 wasn’t too bad a year for me. After a traumatic start, what with the alcoholic violence of New Years Eve and the sudden death of a friend, some wonderful experiences were yet to be had, within the fleeting but awesome moment, for all the horror of a corrupt world trying to break in. I guess another word for entropy would be corruption, and as entropy is built into the fabric of nature one just has to accept that all things will corrupt with time, but Life, with its creativity, has a way of countering it, lifting one up, for brief nirvanic moments.

And music and art explode with life and give it meaning and joy. I went to awesome concerts, Mahler’s 7^th Symphony, Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp and most stunning of all, Gustav Holst’s “Planets” played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with a movie screen above it depicting digital video from the Hubble telescope and fly-bys of the planets of our solar system with their astounding moons and rings, all really mind-blowing. And the exhibition of German expressionist painters from between the wars at the New South Wales Art Gallery, called “The Mad Square”, with works from my favourite artist, Otto Dix, included, quite inspired me, to carry on with my own mad brushwork and scribbling, degenerate, hopeless and ignominious as I may be.

It’s hard to be an artist in these conservative state-sanctioned, fame-whore, media-witch hunt times. Satire, subversion and political critique are banished in favour of art that is more like wall-paper, matching the furniture of the middle-class living room or enhancing the emptiness of a corporate foyer without offending anybody, tracing photographs or copying and retouching other artists’ works all the fashion. My art, though censored and eventually destroyed, reflects the mad square I’m relegated to yet holds off world entropy for me, gives me life, for a few brief infinite moments.

Yet, entropy wears me down, I think I’m getting madder and madder and constantly rail like a demented curmudgeon at the world. Old age seems an insult to the young, you’re looked through like a pane of glass, pushed out of the way, you’re ugly and taking up space, that old adage applies, “nobody wants you when you’re down and out”, it’s sung from every doorway. But I’m a warrior, I don’t take it meekly and thus, even in poverty and ignominy, I’ve had a great life, the swashbuckling life I dreamed of as a boy.

The best concert I attended this year was also at the Sydney Opera House, Nigel Westlake’s “Requiem for Eli”, where he shared his great loss at the death of his young son, with full orchestra, choir and harps and rock’n’roll bass drums and boy sopranos singing like angels, that took us down into the darkness and hopelessness of death and sorrow and then back up into the light of the sun, to life and optimism and love and courage. My depression lifted and I lost my fears, I can and will take on the world: being alive, still with brains, heart and guts, is everything. And so I run away again, to the wild, wild east, to tiger-jungles, mystic high mountains and the Arabian Sea where I will once more rub the magic lamp and set free the light of my very own genii.

Subvertising the Anti-brand.

2011-07-21T22:01:00.009+10:00

Been lying low for awhile, stormy weather chilling my soul while I contemplate the contradiction of pursuing notoriety under my artist's brand-name and my contempt for fame-whores in a vacuous pop-culture civilization. Nothing much else is happening here on the Northcott Ghetto front, the TV antenna for the whole complex has been knocked out, 1000 apartments left to stare at blank walls, I fear the joint will go up in flames tonight as the maddened denizens look for something to fill the void.

I knew what I was doing way back in 1978 when I came up with the anti-brand name of Toby Zoates, it was outre, cutting and ridiculous. I'd noticed a television commercial for a famous Aussie breakfast cereal where the voice-over slurred his "s" into a "z" and I had an epiphany, Z for Zorro, Zapata, Zippie the Pinhead, Zarathustra, Ziggy Stardust and Zen, even scientists eventually named the all-round nutritious ingredient in oats the "Z factor." As a renegade artist I saw riots and civil disobedience as my "performance art" and wrote/drew comix/cartoons with salacious, subversive content, satirising "consumer capitalism" via the breakfast of champions. No wonder the"System" was never going to give me a GO, my name is unmentionable, the works destroyed or banned from the light of day, no invites to anything, my post-modernism too clever by half.

Yet every seventy seconds there's an add on TV eulogising "Uncle Toby's Oats", for many years now the announcer very careful to pronounce the words clearly, separately, no "Z". And lately Donald McRonald is selling bowls of Zoates in the mornings from their golden arches, again the TV commercials careful not to connect the words, it's "Uncle Toby's heart-tick oats" they're flogging, much to my amusement. Oh the joy of undermining the sacred cow of advertising and TV-land, as an artist in the gutter I could only have dreamed of reaching such sublime heights, to actually have an effect upon the over-arching cyber-sphere.

Sydney is a cruel city, it uses you up and spits you out, and gets the last laugh at you for being a smart-ass. I recently designed a poster for a classical music concert for a friend of mine, he decided one way to get noticed would be to donate the proceeds to the community radio station, 2MBS FM, a worthy cause. But when they put my design on their newsletter, mentioning the concert and sending it to 70,000 subscribers, they cropped the artwork and lopped off my signature, like it was done by no one, I don't exist. It's long been that way, every job, either no recognition or when promised payment, of a few lousy dollars, they refuse after they've got the art, or they make me go to the back-door, seven times, to beg. That's what I get for being a smart-ass, subvertising an anti-brand name like Toby Zoates.

Though the cone of silence permanently upon me is dispiriting, poverty painful, ignominy humiliating, the pouring rain outside bitterly cold, (poor little orphan me), yet the exhilaration of creating art, leaving a long trail of it behind me, was worth it all, my mind is blown, my heart is full. I might not get a VIP invite to Lady Googoo at the Town Hall along with gangsters and media-whores but I can thank nogod I have a peaceful life, there's no papparazi stalking me with their blinding flashbulbs, I'm absolutely persona non grata. To be really radical and subversive one has to stay anonymous, under the radar, that's what anti-branding is all about, otherwise you become "state-sanctioned", status quo.

Read "Alec Farthing" in the anthology "Being Different" or my comic "No Future", or the strip in Penguin's "Aussie Underground Comix", view my posters in the National Gallery in Canberra, (hidden in the dungeon), read the stories in this Blog, do you think I'll ever surface from the Underground? Not bloody likely! I'm rattling on about this shite because I'm considering having a show of my art, past and present, at a fairly respectable gallery whose curator seems eager to have me. It's a bit like Banksy coming in from the shadows, (yeah, yeah, with not as much talent and no Brangelina cachet.)(More like Mr. Brainwash trying to flog a whole lot of trash that's overflowing from my apartment.) I'll have to surface from the sewers for it, work hard, promote, advertise, risk money, get exposed: why bother? So much nicer to hide out and read science-fiction novels. But nogod, I'm not dead yet, life's a challenge, being a recluse is boring.

What's my problem? Why the chip on my shoulder? Why do I have to eternally stick the finger to the System, the Beast, Consumer Capitalism? (Again I'm a walking contradiction, my art is possibly just another product to be consumed!) First, because as a cheesy smiling sacred cow white-washing exploitation, pollution and destruction the Beast cries out for satirisation, and, secondly, because I got fucked, twisted, stunted on the journey to here and I can't Get Over It. Toby Zoates is my "fuck you" to the Beast. Hee hee hee! I'm also quite mad but madness is a healthy response to a terrible world history. Who wants to be normally adjusted to all this crap raining down upon us in the name of, what? The one true god, Money!

29) The Fallen Yogi.

2011-07-04T01:08:00.005+10:00

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.

28) Moti Ma Meets the Electrified Baba.

2011-06-18T01:12:00.003+10:00

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.

27) With Compassion, Serenity and Humility.

2011-06-16T00:52:00.003+10:00

As a result of Arthur’s spiritual travails in the variegated, outlandish Baba camps of India he came to the conclusion, and clung to it, that he had the best of all mentors, patrons and guides in his dear, old friend back in Australia, Compassion. Indeed, the Old Fool had told him on his departure for the mystic wonderland of India that he couldn’t find there what he didn’t already have on his front doorstep, possibly meaning his own humble self. No matter what forceful, alluring come-on Arthur was subjected to by the army of ravenous saints he encountered, he held the white-haired image of the Australian yogi shining clearly in his heart, warding off all the intrepid imposters that tried to bewitch him.

He’d gone adventuring in Kashmir and whilst getting embroiled with the Sid Quartz Gang in their houseboat flotilla Arthur received a letter informing him that Compassion had arrived in Shangri-la and was awaiting his attendance. Without much ado he disentangled himself from his fellow freaks’ machinations and split the scene, rushing from the paradise of Srinigar’s lakes to be at his old friend’s side.

He found the Old Fool living naked in a small brick hut deep in the jungle behind Sivananda Ashram. He was shocked to discover the old boy was dying from cancer, he’d lost his voice, could hardly swallow, and his arms hung uselessly at his sides like limp spaghetti. Compassion communicated by tapping his big toe upon an alphabet board and over the months Arthur became quite adept at reading his flashing toe, he could even finish the sentences for him, mental telepathy having taken over.

Alternatively, the old fellow was a little nonplussed at Arthur’s devolution, he’d lost a front tooth, his bald head was peeping through his sun-bleached dreadlocks and his skin was so tanned he looked like a native. With a scraggly beard hanging like moss from his face, Arthur had made himself look extra ugly and it was possibly for this reason he never got seduced by Indian men, most of whom hate hair, ashamed of their own hirsuteness. Also, Gay Lib hadn’t yet made it to the subcontinent and homosexuality was taboo, Arthur keeping this side of himself hidden, even from his old mentor.

Arthur’s nursing skills came in good stead for Compassion required an industrious healing program to stay afloat. This was a man who’d endeavoured, for the latter half of his life, to lead the healthiest of regimes, exercise, fresh air and unprocessed food, and absolutely no drugs. He’d caught some weird viral disease called Kalazar, Black Fever, in India in the 1960’s and it had resurged with a vengeance in his fifties, destroying vital nerve connections in the vertebrae of his neck. The old codger refused all medications, especially pain-killers, and he must have suffered terribly, yet in all their time together he never made a murmur about being in pain.

The old yogi had brought two Australian youths with him as attendants whom he dubbed Serenity and Humility, the former a sweet angel who thought only of the old man’s welfare, the latter a spoiled monster who whinged and bitched and wouldn’t lift a finger to help out. Compassion also dubbed Arthur with a new tag, Ananda or Bliss, perhaps because Arthur had a disposition towards depression or maybe the Old Fool saw himself as Buddha come again with Arthur as his most assiduous disciple. As Compassion was a long-time chela of the great Sivananda and had been ordained with the name Swami Karunanada, Bliss of Compassion, by the saint himself, the Ashram was both honoured and obliged to accommodate him in his last days. They had to take on board his rambunctious, young companions as well, refugees from modernity and standing out from the crowd like a gang of silver space cadets in a saffron convent.

Serenity took care of all Swamiji’s personal needs like spoon-feeding him his mashed baby-food and bathing and toileting his withered old body. Arthur organised their camp in the jungle, procuring the victuals, doing all the washing and cleaning, handling the visitors and attending to the old fellow’s physical deterioration nursing-care wise. Humility became part of their daily burden, always obstreperous and peevish; with outrageous demands and emotional break-downs he made every task more difficult and was simply a nuisance with a personality that would grate on Mother Theresa’s nerves. Humility had a constant lament, that he’d been screwed in the arse in Majorca, Spain, by a black magician, then had gone crazy and had to be repatriated back to Australia and was still searching for his dispossessed soul. No god knows why the Old Fool brought him to India, except he always did have the ability to attract nutcases who would attach themselves like succubi and were near impossible to shake off.

Compassion had been an accomplished artist in his time, working under the moniker of “Latimer” in Adelaide and achieving critical acclaim, his work hanging in the South Australian State Gallery. Even in decrepitude he was as keen and bright for art as a neophyte, and to give him joy Arthur fashioned a drawing implement for him out of an oil-crayon placed in the end of a piece of split bamboo which he held between his toes, like in “My Left Foot”. Upon large sheets of paper, with the set of oil crayons, he drew gorgeous, vibrant images of the Hindu gods and his jungle Ashram surroundings, all to the edification of Arthur who avidly studied his every move like an apprentice at a master sorcerer’s laboratory.

The old seer enjoyed having the great Hindu epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata read to him aloud, and they would then discuss the philosophy underpinning the text and the poor dying fellow would swoon over the luminous poetry inherent in all things and bemoaning that few had the sense to see it. The dear old cripple lived poetry, the latter part of his life spent singing out praise of belonging to an awesome universe, conflating it into his version of God, he was unashamedly god-driven and referred to himself as the Old Fool accordingly. Now he had to content himself with having his young companions sing the bhajans for him, especially Tweetie-Pie Arthur, who could out-shriek Bette Midler when it came to drivelling on about the glories of the god’s creation, still trying to find his way through the mythic mystic mists clouding his vision.

A lot of curious people found their way into the jungle to visit as Compassion was a fascinating fellow, dispensing yogic wisdom and advice to all comers whilst residing at death’s door. He collected a little gang of fans that included an old American woman, a young Indian Brahmachari, a boy from New Zealand and an old Chinese Swami from Malaysia. Whenever the Old Fool walked naked through the village of Ram Jhula, his white beard in long dreadlocks, his arms hanging like frail ropes and his gang of spiritual misfits in tow, the locals would stand agog and be elated at their passing. He liked to ramble up the long stony path along the Ganges River, to Laxman Jhula where they would have to march past the long line of lepers begging upon the bridge or crouched outside their hovels that crowded the track up to the road. Arthur took in the disfigured faces, the rotting flesh and purulent stumps and he looked over to his Swamiji and asked, “Why are they like that and why am I so lucky?” The Old Fool could only answer with a cryptic, knowing smile, as if to say, “Are you so different?” Then he’d plod on, like everybody else on the planet, with his own hard path to tread, Arthur in tow, somewhat mad, certainly an emotional cripple.

For six months they led an idyllic jungle existence, delighting in the wildlife, beating off tribes of monkeys when the ashram delivered their delicious, unrefined meals, and swimming in the Ganges River at full flood whilst riding the logs that swept down from the deforested heights of the Himalayas. They dressed and acted like characters from Hindu myth and were intrigued whole-heartedly by all the cosmic babble that frothed about their ears. In between looking after the multi-faceted concerns of old, ailing Compassion and enjoying a primordial lifestyle, they frequented the daily satsang lectures at the Sivananda Jungle University. Arthur’s favourite sessions were supervised by the head of the Music College, Narayan Sri Mali Guru, who was a master of all instruments but a supremo at singing. While directing the tabla, harmonium and vena players, he would sing in a quavering manner, holding the notes, tripping through the scales, sending his voice out from his fingertips, his navel, the top of his head, to any corner of the room. Arthur spent many hours imbibing his instruction and example, for singing was one of his seven talents, from childhood on a song had inexorably issued from his heart-springs, he walked every byway singing and, to him, life really was like a science-fiction musical movie.

In his sleep, dreaming, Swami Sivananda in person came to visit Arthur, vivid and luminous, and bestowed upon him the radiance of his smile. The young wannabe yogi settled into the mantra “AUM”, the Primal Sound of the Big Bang made realisable, India’s greatest gift to mankind, concentrating his wayward thoughts and soothing his inflamed soul in the tranquil sea of its infinite repetition. It became the bedrock of his ongoing psycho-emotional life and whenever in distress, turmoil or confusion, he would only have to chant it inwardly and a protective light would envelope him and he could surrender and relax. For the duration of his healthy sojourn in the jungles of Shangri-la Arthur didn’t feel the need for charas smoking or masturbation, his meditation held steady, he was consistently elated and he felt like he walked seven inches above the ground, gliding around like Peter Pan.

There is an ancient myth of India that tells how Lord Siva, in supreme bliss, experienced a sacred river to gush like a fountain from the top of his head. This river was so vital and invigorating it attracted all the great rishis and yogis of the time to live and meditate beside it. Siva was well pleased with their disciplines but wanted to try the true strength of these hardy seers with one final, ball-breaking test and he changed the river into the form of a gorgeous damsel who danced lasciviously before each of the adepts. And every man to the last of them fell flat on his face in love with the goddess, losing his cool and his prowess, wanting to fuck her badly; sex is such a mighty lure and the hardest nut to crack.

Throughout their idyll, Arthur was relentlessly thrown in the company of sweet, beautiful Serenity, a boy two years his junior, turquoise eyed, lustrous black hair and athletic build, twenty-four hours dedicated to the wellbeing of Compassion. Whatever the old boy wanted Serenity rushed to satisfy, he lived and breathed to serve, and he endeared himself to everyone. His nature was as angelic as his looks and Arthur couldn’t help but fall hopelessly in love with him, like one jet crashing into another mid-air. The realisation of this passion hit Arthur slowly and he hid it for a long time, his love becoming obsessive, he doted on Serenity’s every move, the equanimity-shattering clincher being his discovery early on in the game that Serenity had an extremely large penis. It took ages for the poor boy to realise that whenever he opened his legs and revealed the robust bulge of his loin-cloth, Arthur had a fit of lust. Somehow Arthur kept his cool and their monastery life trundled on, harmonious and tranquil, except for the querulous griping of Humility on the sidelines.

Then Brigadier Ghasi Ramji showed up in Shangri-la all the way from Bharatpur, he was an old admirer of the Aussie yogi and insisted they accompany him to Rajasthan and live on his farm where he was positive Compassion’s declining health could be improved. On the farm in Bharatpur they experienced the Indian pastoral life, up at dawn with the birds, chatting with the peasants working the fields, roaming the countryside and sleeping out under the stars. They ate produce freshly picked from the garden and prepared with expert care so that the gang all lived for dinner-time. Waited upon by servants and treated by a team of doctors, Compassion’s welfare was fully catered to, leaving the boys plenty of free time to explore the medieval town and the extensive parklands of the famous Bird Sanctuary nearby. The palace grounds of the Maharaja of Bharatpur backed onto the Brigadier’s farm and Arthur and Serenity loved scaling the walls to wander the palace environs. The old Maharajah himself would chase them out, waving an ebony cane in a fit of temper, for he and Ghasi Ram had a nasty, long-standing feud going between them.

Three months slid by in a delicious, pastoral dream, the Old Fool requesting several of Carlos Castenada’s works read to him, annotating its otherworldly esotericism as they went along. The supernatural witchery of the text mystified Arthur who had not yet awakened to the concept of the Underworld, communication with animals and the “way of the warrior”, the Old Fool trying fable-wise to undermine Arthur’s rigid reality paradigms. Nature continuously called to them to visit other levels of consciousness, Arthur tripped naturally in the wild fields a few times but was too intellectually distracted to hear clearly. He was always busy, reading philosophy, copying mind-blowing text, drawing and writing fantasies while the others took rest and he often found the old boy’s bright, inspired eyes upon him, ready to lend advice and encouragement, for the old Maestro was keenly aware he had an apprentice artist on his hands.

There came a day when the Brigadier was extra-cheerful, for India exploded its first atomic bomb in the deserts of Rajasthan, not that many kilometres from their sanctuary down on the farm. As the winds possibly dumped radioactive particles upon them, the old retired Indian soldier rubbed his hands and chuckled.

“Trust Indira Ghandi to have some trick up her sleeves to win the day.”

“But it’s terrible! India might drop nukes on Pakistan”, bemoaned Arthur, visions of the end of the world ever on the edge of his hysteria.

“We are a responsible nation but Pakistan has to know we’d wipe them out if they continue with their war-mongering.”

“I’m scared your P.M. is becoming a tyrant. Arresting those twenty-thousand rail-workers for striking and throwing them in jail is shocking.”

“Fernandes and his rail union are holding the nation to ransom, we need modern technology and investment, not communist collectives. See this farm, it is part of the Green Revolution Indira has fostered. We’re breeding new strains of wheat that will yield more tonnage per acre and double the nutritional value. That’s the kind of progress we need. Remember, we’ve been in drought for three years, there are riots all over the nation. Food is what we need, and strong leadership. She has ended the subsidies to the big landowners, nationalised the banks and given finance to middle-class entrepreneurs like me. That’s what will defeat this famine, not strikes.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not clued in with hard-nosed politics, I didn’t realise.”

“You are a sweet boy, you should stick with your yoga and looking after old Swamiji, leave the politics to experienced war-horses like me.”

Still, to Arthur the nuclear test was nightmarish and extremely unsettling, and the Brigadier’s farm lost its pastoral innocence. Arthur and Serenity had cared for Compassion unremittingly for so many months that the old fellow encouraged them when he heard them talking about taking a break from the nursing toil, enthusing with them when they decided to go into the wilds of Rajasthan for an adventure. They felt safe leaving him in the capable hands of Ghasi Ram and family, cushioned from the guile of the recalcitrant Humility by an army of servants, and off they ventured, with only a cotton cloth to wear and a blanket to sleep in.

They were determined to walk the entire gritty road to Jaipur, some three hundred kilometres to the south and it took them a month to do so, visiting the most peculiar sites along the way. At one point they wandered off the main thoroughfare down a rutted track into a thorny desert to arrive at day’s end at a Hanuman Temple. They stumbled into the inner sanctum where a crowd of hysterical women sat whirling their heads upon their shoulders in unison, deliriously spun out, wailing devotional chants to their god, like an army of banshees from Venus, and Arthur realised how out of place he and his mate truly were. Yet everywhere the two friends went the locals treated them with great reverence, feeding them and showering them with honours. One dear fellow seemed to think he’d met up with Lord Rama and his brother, Laxman, in person, insisting on placing flowers in their hair and pouring milk on their heads. He begged them to return with him to his home village and, unwilling to insult his hospitality, they trudged the many weary miles through the sand dunes and baked mud to his far-flung abode.

He was a Brahmin and could only drink from certain places miles apart causing them to wither from thirst and envy the camels racing past with their turbaned riders blithely sitting aloft, calm and at home, water flask at their side. At the halfway point they came across a huge congregation of people at a religious mela, thousands of worshippers waxing ecstatic over buckets of water thrown over them from the window of a small, daubed hut. Arthur and Serenity, mystified, were led to the top of a small hill outside the village and sat upon a rope bed and the whole, vast throng made obeisance to them as if they were indeed the Hindu gods come to bless their gathering. They were given handfuls of blessed, sacred candy and their feet touched constantly, till Arthur begged them to resist.

When they finally reached their newfound friend’s village they were feted like Maharajas till Arthur wondered if they’d ever be able to extricate themselves from the villagers’ embrace. In return for their generosity, Arthur sang bhajans and danced in the village-square under the stars, the men fiddling furiously upon their traditional instruments, the women all gathered on the rooftops around and ululating their voices in ecstatic support.

Serenity’s contribution was to teach yoga asanas at the local school and all went well with the lesson, with a room full of children informed about healthy exercise by his agile stances and the teacher smiling benignly. Then Serenity lifted one leg to complete his next posture, the flying stork, his longhi fell open and his long, fat cock flopped out and swung like an elephant’s trunk in full view of the class which erupted with hilarity, the bemused teacher to the side of Serenity missing the whole thing. Serenity stood there oblivious to the sensation he was causing and Arthur had to signal repeatedly, pointing and grimacing, to get his attention and bring the curtain down on his offensive appendage.

They enjoyed the simple village life for three days then begged their leave, striding off under a deluge of tears and entreaties to stay. They ambled on and on, refusing all lifts except for when some Rajashani gypsies piled them into the back of their bullock cart and lurched a few kilometres up the pot-holed road, whipping the animals into a running lather, the lads hanging on for dear life, the wild woman driver standing up with mirror-braided hair flying out behind her. They were dropped under a huge banyan tree and given chapatti and pickle for sustenance which they munched as they trudged on up the highway.

Walking took them right into the native’s heartland, the picturesque sights were up close and personal, and they rarely wanted for anything, such was the prevalence of the cult of guest-reverence. For every person who was kind to them, the boys gave a small token from their kitbags, a pocket-knife, a ballpoint pen, an empty wallet, and the peasants carried on as if they’d been given the Crown jewels.

During an idyllic sunset beside a buffalo pond Arthur observed a luxury bus speed by on the highway, its occupants vague shadows in the tinted windows. He pondered the mystery of these tourists paying a fortune to be whizzed through the scenery whilst he actually got to live it in three dimensions, for free, in abandoned exhilaration with the natives and their buffalos. (Many years later he swapped places and he was the comfortable tourist in the bus rushing by, gazing out the window, wondering how on earth the young neo-hippies could put up with lying about in the dirt.) It was at this tranquil moment Arthur broke down and made his first play for Serenity’s abundant affections. In the afternoon they’d been swimming in a pond with the peasant boys, riding the water-buffalos’ backs, and they were drying off in the dying sunlight, stretched out upon the grass. Serenity lay relaxed in only his loincloth, his flesh glistening and his cock a long tubular hump perfectly outlined by the wet cotton sheath. Arthur fell towards him like a magnetised robot, reaching out to clasp the enticing bulge, hoping to stroke it into engorgement, only Serenity pushed his hand away, firmly.

“Please, let me play with it, just for a few minutes, I’m crazy abut you. I’m so horny I could die.”

“No way! I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen. I’m not into guys, not in the least. You’re my friend, I like you a lot but it’s never gonna be physical.”

“Don’t be like that, lie back and relax, you’ll enjoy it, I promise.”

“I said No, forget it! All I care about is the old man and if he’s OK I’m OK. I’m worried about him, left alone with Humility who I bet is giving him hell. I don’t mean to hurt you but having sex with you is the last thing on my mind.”

“The old fool’s got Ghasi Ram to look after him, don’t worry. Here we are in paradise, enjoy it, be here now, with me.”

“Let’s just be friends, OK? Best friends, forever, without the sex. Come on, you know it’ll only fuck things up?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. It’s hard being homo and hanging out with you, you’re the best. Don’t worry, I’ll be cool.”

Poor Arthur had yet again chosen the unattainable to lose his equilibrium over, and resigned but not defeated, he convinced his beloved friend to continue their desert odyssey, even though his guts were wrenched and his heart was aflutter.

They arrived on the outskirts of Jaipur on the auspicious night of a big festival, at the same time when millions were taking a karma-cleansing dip in the Ganges River at the Kumbhla Mela in Haridwar. From the top of a small mountain range that rings the city of Jaipur there issues forth a spring that the locals swear is in reality an offshoot of the goddess Ganges Herself. On this night, considering themselves as blessed as anyone up in the Himalayas, the people gathered in throngs to bathe in the seven sacred tanks built into the side of the mountain, filled by the run-off from the magic spring. They welcomed Arthur and Serenity with much feasting, ganja smoking and the festival specialty, bhang, made of crushed marijuana with nuts and honey in milk, of which Arthur drank his fill late into the night. On a veranda on the mountaintop a gang of old mystic masters deftly plied musical instruments to create a symphony for the stars and an intoxicated Arthur danced around them like Sheherazade, as if his life depended on it.

They stayed for several days swimming in the tanks, feasting at the continuing celebrations, doing yoga and saluting the sun from the balcony of a Sun Temple built near the celestial spring and looking down upon the city of Jaipur. Throughout their sojourn at the seven sacred tanks Serenity fretted about frail, old Compassion, worrying about his condition and anxious to get back to him. Arthur could only make goo-goo eyes at his tolerant friend and acquiesce to his wishes to return to the farm, though he could have dallied for another thousand and one nights in the wilds of Rajasthan with his handsome prince.

They hitchhiked back to Bharatpur and arrived to find Compassion well but in a dither, Humility having driven him to despair with his nutty intrusions, and they set to and gave the old convalescent the loving company he deserved, keeping cranky Humility at bay. Arthur’s lustful sweats over Serenity did not let up and after some weeks of melodrama down on the farm he was crawling up the wall with frustration. He took his leave of Compassion, explaining that he needed another break, and fled to the city of Delhi for a weekend, seeking relief. He went to the movies and got his celluloid fix with “Siddartha” dazzling him as it was set in the very Bird Sanctuary they all lived next to in Bharatpur. In a back-alley of the Connaught-Circle shopping arcade, sleeping on the pavement, he got a signal from a hairy Sikh wallah sleeping nearby who lifted his blanket for Arthur to get under with him and there, on a squeaky rope bed, he blew the guy. But it was all quite hurried and sordid, no affection, only tugging and slurping, so far from Buddha’s detachment that Arthur felt like a scarlet whore, unclean and unsatisfied.

He rushed back to Bharatpur in a tizzy, arriving late at night and hiding under a table to lick his wounds. The old boy came out of his room at the sound of Arthur whimpering and under his compassionate gaze Arthur burst into tears and confessed his city misdeeds, owning up to the devastating condition of his homosexuality. The frail old man swung one of his spaghetti thin arms up to make it lie across Arthur’s shoulders in a comforting caress and he tapped upon his board a consoling message.

"Not a problem… natural… part of the human condition… relax… do yoga… meditate on Aum in your heart…”

“But I sucked that guys’ cock, it brought me down, it didn’t satisfy my lust in the least. I’m scared, it’ll make for a terrible life, nobody likes homosexuals, not here in India either.”

“It’s your nature… sex is life… look at animals… happy... homo part of evolution... necessary for humans... artists...shamans... healers.”

“I feel I’m a freak of nature, how can I purify my tainted soul?”

“Not tainted… Light-filled… sex is love… I confess… I was homo when young… even in army… enjoyed it… after war I married… expected to… still homo… life hard… went to India in late forties… did yoga… meditation… met Sivananda… took sanyas… became yogi… found more than sex… found God… live your life with courage…”

“There’s a complication… I’ve fallen in love with Serenity, I’ve asked him for sex but he’s knocked me back, it’s driving me crazy, he’s so beautiful, I can’t help myself.”

“Difficult… Seren straight… you work it out… all will be OK… try to stay friends… sex not last… am tired… end of my days… you young… go with flow… Seren good soul… be friends... bed now…”

Pondering the ramifications of these revelations, Arthur took the old man into his bed. All this time he’d thought the white haired fellow was a saint, oblivious to their nakedness, and Arthur had let it all hang out accordingly. Was all this yoga stuff an unconscious scam and the old dick was secretly getting his jollies eyeballing his naked young followers? Sex was a slave-driver, the Mind was a trickster and the universe loved to play games with its denizens, everyone play-acting at being holier than thou but sex, money and power ruled.

The next day, while Arthur was giving him his full-body massage, as if to make a joke, the guru’s “lila”, the emaciated yogi cracked an erection. His bedraggled little penis peeped up from his lap and a cryptic grin lingered on his face, Arthur pretending not to notice the mottled mushroom as he rubbed and rubbed the withered flesh of his back. He spun into an emotional maelstrom thinking of the old boy’s tale, wondering about the hidden agenda behind the Swami’s big fuss over him all those years ago when they first met at the Theosophical Society. The big honour wasn’t because of his spiritual precociousness or yogic adeptness, not even his nursing skills; it was his beautiful blue-green eyes and athletic build that had been favoured.

He grew resentful of the old man’s patronising insights and he got his nose out of joint when Compassion made comments to him like,

“You best with people… Serenity good with nature… compliment each other…” Arthur felt he was as in touch with nature as anyone.

One day he tapped urgently on his alphabet board, “People will only like your art if they like you”. Arthur believed he could overcome all obstacles with sheer talent no matter who disliked him and the Old Fool shouldn’t limit his potential, (Arthur learned later, with great difficulty, art was all about the selling of personality and background.) He acted quite the temperamental brat, worse than Humility, refusing to do his chores, storming off into the fields to watch the birds flying in synchronous flocks, not speaking to his old mentor for days on end. For all that, farm life carried on and they continued to bliss out on its natural rhythms, reading to Compassion, pursuing hobbies, eating delicious Indian food together, at times quibbling over any and every non-issue.

Out of the blue, one day Compassion announced that their departure for the Himalayas was imminent, he must hurry there at all cost and no entreaties from the Brigadier Ghasi Ram would divert him from his firm decision, as if he knew his day of reckoning was coming soon. Piled into the Brigadier’s white Ambassador car, they were delivered poste haste to the Sivananda Ashram in Shangri-la where Swamiji again secluded himself in his concrete box deep in the jungle. None of the long stream of doctors and specialists supplied by the Brigadier and the Ashram had cured Compassion of his illness and he grew daily more feeble, his body going to rack and ruin. Arthur despaired as he assiduously treated cancerous sores on his legs that he managed to reduce in severity but never entirely healed.

The Hindu monastery routine took over their lives again and they tried to be mellow, with Arthur struggling to maintain his yogic cool in the face of his sexual maelstrom. All was steady as she goes until the hot, sweaty night he slept down on the bathing ghats beside the river. He was about to doze off into sleep when a group of young men came down to fool around at the water’s edge. A couple of them pried their penises from their pants and set to masturbating each other. Arthur watched surreptitiously from under his blanket, excited, and one of the guys noticed him watching and crept under the blanket with him, letting him suck his gorgeous big cock, all vows of celibacy instantly forgotten as they blew together in intense, mindless pleasure. The fellow then informed all of his mates and they all lined up with their dicks hanging out, demanding to be sucked off also, creating a ruckus down on the sacred ghats, Arthur refusing their attentions and made to run and hide in the jungle to quell the riot. The next morning he nervously informed his old mentor about his outrageous, sleazy behaviour. Compassion’s face fell and he gave a curt nod, as if this communication of sexual ribaldry knocking down their door was the signal he was waiting for.

The next thing, the decrepit old devil wanted to go on a march to the top of the Himalaya Mountains to the most revered site in Hinduism, a place called Badrinath where exists an ancient temple to the god Vishnu the Preserver. He desired to walk naked and bare-foot, with few provisions, along a three hundred kilometre goat track across the top of the mountains that used to be the old Hindu pilgrim trail before the tarmac road was built for cars on the other side of the river. Nothing could sway him from this obsession though his declining health prohibited the arduous journey. Unbeknownst to his gang of empathetic followers, the old fellow must have felt his demise drawing nearer with every breath. He was long intimate with the workings of his body through his mastery of yoga and he had the romantic notion that he wanted to die at a sacred spot high amongst the glaciers, his karma cleansed, the devil take the consequences. Arthur, as a nurse, had an inkling of his condition but loved the old man so much he blindly refused to take note of all the signs of death rattling at the windows, wishing for his friend to be immortal, or at least resilient in the face of deep suffering.

Arthur unconsciously knew that the game of life was up with Compassion and he refused to go along with the jolly trekking plans, throwing temper tantrums at any request for help, pretending he would see them go to Hell rather than join their foolhardy trip to the heights of nowhere. Still the Old Fool was adamant about the journey and only as the party set off up the jungle trail did Arthur hurriedly pack and, barefoot, run after them. Humility had gone off somewhere on his own business and they would not be encumbered by his cantankerous participation and Arthur was thankful for small mercies. They were a party of five, with little money, heading off into the unknown and far away from civilisation, one of them was dying and none of them could speak the language.

The old invalid strode ahead of them in a loincloth, his dead arms swinging like inexorable clock-pendulums, the rest following in single file. Serenity, always at the old man’s elbow, carried all of Compassion’s personal needs, followed by the sweet, old Chinese-Malaysian Swami who’d come along for the stride. Next in the line was a big lug from Adelaide named Robert who’d appeared from nowhere and agreed to carry all their foodstuffs in a hefty backpack. Arthur brought up the rear lugging their expedition’s camping gear and he suffered at every footstep for he’d left his sandals behind in the rush and the mountain path was littered with sharp stones that sorely cut into his tender, bare feet.

They followed the Ganges River heading for her source, trudging up a winding track that led over mountaintops, along ridges, through valleys, skirting towns and villages, rarely a local was met with and the vistas of Himalayan nature opened grandly before them.

In 1974 Badrinath was taboo for non-Hindus, nary a foreigner ever having made it there, and Compassion hoped to avoid the highway patrols and check-posts along the tarmac road by travelling the ancient footpath camouflaged on the opposite side of the river. All might have gone blissfully for the old fellow if it wasn’t for Arthur griping like a petulant child from the sidelines. They were heading away from human habitation, their food was depleting rapidly, Robert, the South Australian giant, ate like a crocodile, and Compassion was getting weaker, though he still out-walked the lot of them. Arthur’s feet were cut to shreds and he moaned and carried on, arguing for crossing the river at the next foot-bridge to transfer to the asphalt highway where he could buy decent footwear and nutritional food for them all. He was afraid the old Swami was going to drop dead on them at any moment and he would be unable to cope.

They camped in the most gorgeous of natural surroundings, visiting areas that would disappear under a hydro-dam in the future, and the old man thrilled at nature’s magnificence spread like a feast around him. The old Chinese Swami was a wonderful travelling companion, a wise humorist who kept them all laughing even when emotions were fraught from the tussle between the opposing wills of the Old Fool and Arthur, romance versus pragmatism. His temper tantrums were compounded by Arthur’s belief that he played second fiddle to Serenity in the old man’s affections, a hangover from a childhood fear of abandonment. Whenever they camped, Arthur would deduce the amounts of attention given to each of them by their old wizard, and he was often outshone by the innocent Serenity. As Arthur cooked their meals and scrubbed their dishes, he would pout sullenly and snipe peevishly at them all, spoiling the blissful ambience of Compassion’s last days on earth. It didn’t help Arthur’s repose that he caught sight of Serenity’s mammoth shlong hanging like a third leg whenever the boy’s dhoti swung open. The last vestiges of his sexual continence came crashing down upon his head like a fortress made of spun sugar, he felt compelled to sneak off and masturbate in the bushes whenever he could and his psycho-emotional turmoil waxed pathetic.

After many days they came to the one and only bridge over the Ganges River, civilisation, comfort and the army patrol on one side, the wilderness, solitude and deprivation on the other. Arthur had a showdown with the Old Fool by the bridge, he refused to go any further on the goat path and Robert with the supplies and the good humoured Chinese Swami were persuaded to support him in his revolt. Compassion was an obstinate old dick and he carried on up the rocky track provision-less, Serenity following faithfully on his heels, while Arthur’s gang of rebels crossed the river and feasted at a chai stall on the highway. Arthur knew he only had to bide his time and wait, for the old boy had no hope of carrying on over the mountains with only Serenity’s goodwill to sustain him. Sure enough, an hour later, the Old Fool tottered up to them, defeated and acquiescent, and it was Arthur who now led the way, new thongs on his feet, up the comfy tarmac of the highway to Badrinath.

Though trucks and buses harassed them with loud horns and foul exhaust, they still enjoyed many splendiferous natural wonders and they also ate heartily at the many rest stops along the way. It was at one ideal location beside a waterfall that Chidananda, number one Swami of the Sivananda Ashram, showed up in the ubiquitous white Ambassador to assure himself that Compassion was still alive and kicking, and with many blessings, wished the party good luck in its venture. Compassion had been withdrawn and sullen since the coup d’etat, then he cheered up after Chidananada’s visit to their campsite and Arthur didn’t feel such a total party-pooper.

But the Old Fool had good reason for his machinations because their expedition did indeed get halted at an army check-post just beyond the mountain town of Srinigar, only half the distance to Badrinath. They were refused permission to continue their journey and were turned back, loaded onto a bus that dumped them lower down the mountains in Deva Prayag.

They made camp in some caves at the confluence of two mighty rivers that crash together to form the Ganges proper and it was here that Humility rejoined them, to provide the cherry on the sour cake. The old boy was quite peeved at having been thwarted in his grand plan and Arthur was smarting from his fall from grace. When the party decided to move on down to Sivananda Ashram, Arthur elected to stay behind at the Meeting-place of the Angels, to have some time to himself and contemplate his precarious existence. For three days he sat by the roaring rivers dwelling on his stupidity, letting all his worries wash over and off him by clinging to a chain deep in the river’s embrace and body-surfing the rapid white water till he was cleansed of his disgruntlement. His third night in Deva Prayag happened to be the full moon of July, a special night traditionally dedicated to the Guru, and Arthur missed his old friend sorely. He seemed to envisage the old man’s wizened face, with its nimbus of white hair, smiling down at him from the giant white orb of the moon. With this vision he received a strong impulse to hurry on down to Shangri-la, he felt the Universe shifting and he was duty-bound to be by his old friend’s side to help out with the rough ride.

He arrived on the scene to find Compassion dying in one of the Ashram’s cool rooms, fever had set in and the old boy’s eyes had glazed over. He acknowledged Arthur’s presence with a wan smile, lifting and placing his foot on Arthur’s thigh in welcome, and with a sigh of relief, he gave himself up to his illness.

Having looked into his eyes, Arthur knew for certain he was dying, he could smell Death arriving, while the rest of the gang were oblivious to the harsh reality. They didn’t want to know, including Serenity, and for the duration of the old boy’s ordeal they all hid out in the back room and lolled about in a panic, smoking charas and pretending nothing was amiss. For the next three days and nights Compassion suffered a devastating fever, sweating his guts out, deliriously raving in tongues, thrashing about upon his wooden bed and Arthur nursed him throughout, cooling his body down by sponging him all over, cleaning up his wastes, making him as comfortable as possible. The Ashram doctors had put a plastic tube up his nose and down into his stomach allowing him to be fed plenty of fluids. Arthur realised that this was extremely irritating to the old yogi so on the second night he slowly slid the tube out and gave him his fluids via a large, plastic syringe squirted slowly into his mouth and down his parched throat. By the third night Arthur was exhausted but still he kept vigil for his mates remained obstinate in their refusal to recognise the severity of their old master’s illness. Death was a new and terrifying experience for them whereas to nurse Arthur it was an old acquaintance, an irrevocable part of life’s cycle.

Throughout that last night, his fever somewhat reduced but still virulent, the old yogi tried desperately to sit up in the Lotus position to meditate for the last few hours he had left on the planet. But Arthur didn’t want him to die and thinking the old fellow’s struggles were further debilitating him, tried to get him to lie back down in the prone position like all good patients should. All night they wrestled with each other, Compassion trying to go into Samadhi sitting spine straight, legs folded in the Lotus, Arthur relentlessly tussling with him to get him to lie back on the bed, his every attempt to straighten his unco-operative body futile. Towards dawn Arthur’s lack of sleep got the better of him and he fell unconscious in the hallway and at last the dear old fellow was able to sit in his favourite yogic posture and meditate his way through death’s pearly gates.

The next thing Arthur knew he was launched into a new morning by Humility running around screaming, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” Arthur rushed into the room to find Compassion had been flung backwards from his sitting position by his death-throe and cracked his head open on the concrete floor. Arthur could tell at a glance the old man was dead, his legs still folded in Lotus, and as he and his fellow Aussies shifted the body over to the bed Swami Chidananda came in to pay his last respects, Arthur clinging to Compassion’s cold hand in disbelief. To Arthur’s surprise, the rest of the Sivananda Swamis rushed in and placed the stiffened corpse, still seated in lotus position, upon a chair and, draped with necklaces of marigolds, he was carried through the marketplace of Ram Jhula, radiating Samadhi, the Australian youths trailing behind, mystified as to the weird Hindu funereal rites.

Tradition has it that yoga masters must have their skull cracked with a hammer by their chief disciple so the soul could be freed and take flight. Compassion had provided for this contingency by cracking open his head himself when he fell backwards to the floor and thus not embroiling any of his young, squeamish friends in such icky dramatics. The locals all danced behind the funeral procession as if it were a festival occasion, cheering and throwing golden flower-petals in a rain upon the corpse, and he was trundled back and forth like a sacred relic at a carnival with Arthur dancing along in a tearful daze. They finally plopped him down by the Ganges and put flowers in his hair and poured milk upon his head as all the Swamis chanted their prayers to the Final Curtain. They then put the body in a hessian bag, loaded it down with a few white Ganges rocks and heaved it aboard a waiting motor boat. Arthur, Serenity, Humility and Robert hopped on board with a few other Swamis and the motor-launch sped up the heaving river till they reached the Laxman Jhula Bridge where they threw Compassion’s body into the deep, rushing water praying the sacred fish would eat him quickly. This was a great honour for the Australian yogi as only India’s most respected saints and Babas have their corpses disposed of in this manner, everyone else getting a funeral pyre beside a river if they’re lucky.

Arthur was determined not to bawl his eyes out at the loss of his trusted guide and friend, instead viewing the incident as one of joyful release from pain and freedom from the arduous, long trek down life’s road. He sang his song of fond recall and danced gaily with the peasants, celebrating Compassion’s feat of attaining Moksha. Yet his heart was sad and weary for he knew his life would now have to take another turn, in the direction of the unknown, and without his dependable old friend to guide him. Years later, he wondered if it wasn’t for the best that Compassion died early in Arthur’s life. He might have outgrown the old idealist and held him in contempt, as the Punks did the Hippies, instead of holding him dear and luminous like a warm beacon in the dark night of his soul for the rest of his long life.

Serenity was lost, cast adrift and heartbroken, not knowing what to do with himself, he felt his purpose in India had been fulfilled. He and Arthur got on famously except for Arthur’s insufferable lust ruining the ambience of their adventures, and Serenity finally had to disassociate himself to wander off to the south and on home to Australia. There he became a heroin addict for seven years, a long flight into the Void from which he eventually emerged to make another attempt at the serene life, carrying on to a jolly old age, much loved by everyone who knew him. And he and Arthur did go on to have a caring, life-long friendship, all the demons of lust and resentment swept away like the water under Laxman’s Bridge.

Humility became even more neurotically annoying in response to the Old Fool’s demise, running around trumpeting the delusion that he had been Compassion’s chief disciple and deserved to wear the old sorcerer’s mantle. At some stage Arthur found himself back in Deva Prayag with the dickhead, sitting at the river’s confluence and smoking charas. A gang of sadhus joined them, their leader a heavily built, powerful dude with the required pile of dread-locks and innumerable rudraksha beads strung about his robust body. They passed a chillum around and Arthur toked down with the best of them, taking no notice of Humility’s carrying-on, seeing nothing especial in the ash-smeared ascetics sitting placidly in a circle.

Hours drifted by and Humility had disappeared when suddenly a crotchety old sadhu approached Arthur and asked if he could be given Humility’s gear. Arthur refused but still he kept on demanding the goods, stating that Humility was finished and wouldn’t need them any more. Arthur clung to his countryman’s bag of crap and queried the old creature’s tale, deciphering all the gobbledy-gook to be informed that Humility had thrown himself into the raging rivers. This is where they usually threw dead bodies, and Humility was done for, as no one had ever returned from that kind of a swim. Arthur could not believe his ears, and intuited with his sharp inner eye that Humility was still in existence, somewhere, and he absolutely refused to hand over Humility’s kitbag though several sadhus whined on and on about their right of claim.

Hours dragged by, midnight loomed, and out of the dark crept a wet, bedraggled Humility. He raved hysterically, claiming the big sadhu baba they’d smoked chillums with in the afternoon was a devil, able to mutate his face to a skull’s death mask and had thus hypnotised him, compelling him to leap into the rivers to his destruction. He’d been swept down and under and twice he surfaced only to go under again, and when he was almost drowned he’d had a vision of Compassion smiling from above the water. On his third surfacing he’d grabbed a log floating by and was miraculously saved, only he’d been swept many miles down river and it had taken him hours to walk back. He blubbered on, claiming he still felt the Death Baba’s willpower honing in on him and he was compelled to jump into the raging waters again. Arthur had to hustle the gibbering idiot up to the Ram temple on top of the hill and sing jolly songs with him till dawn to ward off the evil spirits. They survived that devilish night of threatening shadows to flee Deva Prayag, the Meeting Place of the Angels, and to continue a shaky friendship down in Shangri-la

In the end, the guy wasn’t worth all the effort. They shared accommodation for awhile after Compassion’s death and they argued over any and everything, Humility’s hubris and stupidity shredding Arthur’s good humour. In a furious bitch session one day Humility stood over and threatened Arthur where he sat on the floor telling him some home truths about himself,

“You weren’t Compassion’s main disciple, you were his number one pain in the ass!”

“And what were you, nothing, just an interfering little guttersnipe. I’ve a good mind to kick the shit out of you!”

“It would be typical of a rat like you to hit a man while he’s sitting down. Arsehole! All you were good for was making Compassion’s life miserable!”

To this Humility gave Arthur a swift hard kick in the chest, bowling him over, and then the bastard ran out the door. His slack attitude dictated that a few days later he should get a piece of glass in the same foot that he dared kick Arthur with, and an infected blister swelled up to the size of a baseball on his sole. When he had the poisons cut out, it left a hole you could put your fist in, and it definitely slowed down the irascible Humility(Not) so that he had to keep his malicious schemes to a minimum. He’d gotten his karmic payback and he fled to Australia without much ado, as his temper did not suit the Indian climate. It seems that for many years he earned his living as a quack psychologist then he married a nice British woman who seems to have straightened him out, they settled in England and he outgrew his impish ways, lightening up and proving Dame Fortune to be blind.

Arthur remained on in India, to have many more adventures and escapades with the likes of Moti Ma and the Sid Quartz Gang, and all the while he felt forlorn, incomplete and somewhat guilty, scared of being as big a brat as Humility. He figured it was meant to be that his Swamiji died in a reasonable manner at the ashram: the coincidence of Chidananda finding them on a far-flung highway and then the expedition being so resolutely turned back from their quest for Badrinath smacked of contrived kismet; he wasn’t meant to die in the middle of nowhere. And besides, what did the old fellow think the naive Aussie lads would do with his dead body high in the Himalayas? Perhaps he counted on Arthur’s Indianised know-how to just dump him in the river?

The high Himalayas are stupendously magnificent, making for an awesome site to die in: who wouldn’t want to die in such glorious surroundings? And it is incumbent on Hindus to make pilgrimage to Badrinath, on foot, if they truly want to be absolved of their bad karma. Compassion had high hopes for all the mumbo-jumbo and had walked himself to death accordingly. Whatever, what happened was what happened, and in the end, things were made easier for everyone as all the formalities of death were taken care of by the Ashram and Arthur was free to be the irresponsible lad he had studied so hard to become.

26) Of Big Babas and Grand Cinemas.

2011-06-13T21:05:00.006+10:00

It took an inexorably long year for his old mentor Compassion to show his wizened face upon India’s sun-stroked shores and in the meantime Arthur led the itinerant’s life, wandering along as many arcane byways as he could discover, mulching down into the landscape in crusty “Ali Baba meets Kim” fashion till he was golden brown and glittering, like jewels in the dust. No matter what outlandish locale he found himself in, he zealously performed yoga, meditated on his inner-light and studied esoteric texts. He relentlessly searched out reputable Babas to ponder on the nature of existence via their lila, “existential game-playing”, and to get his inspirational batteries charged in their charismatic presence. Homo-sex was non-existent but still nagging from his subconscious, and while yoga, trekking, drawing, music and dance joyfully soaked up his energies he longed to get over his hang-ups by experiencing Nirvana under the guidance of a supreme guru.

During his many interludes in Shangri-la he imbibed philosophical lectures on all the Indian sacred texts from wise old Swamis like Chidananda and Krishnananda at the Sivananda Jungle University, concentrating on Vedanta philosophy with its void full of creative, blissful consciousness as the basis of all existence. Swami Sivanada, the founder of the Divine Light Society, was a most illustrious dude, fabled to have been illuminated by the Master yogi of yogis, Babaji, who was reputed to be hundreds of years old and to live on sunlight and water high in the glacial Himalayas near Mount Kailash. Sivananda entered his final Samadhi in nineteen-sixty three after a life dedicated to providing free medicine and education to all comers, and all of Sivanada’s disciples became powerful Babas in their own right, establishing centres of Divine Light throughout the world. Arthur tried to absorb wisdom from them all when they called in at home-base in Shangri-la to give pep-talks to the restless, celibate Brahmachari students, the cynical swamis and voracious westerners.

Yet throughout this endless seminar on the Blissful Void and the wiles of Samsara he yearned for sensual gratification and meatier myths to sink his turbulent mind into. He would then sneak off into the city of Delhi to ogle mystic movie treatises like “Vanishing Point”, about a misfit car-driver chased into infinity, and “The Last Valley”, some shining knights holding out against the dark forces of ignorance in Medieval Europe. The celluloid equivalent of his whole Indian odyssey was the Bollywood schlock-buster, “Hare Krishna Hare Ram”, about Indian gangsters infiltrating the dope-addled hippie scene, the music-soundtrack of which followed Arthur to all the far-flung corners of India, from Kanyakumari to Kathmandhu, “Dum adha dummm…”

Whilst in Delhi he took the opportunity of visiting the Maharaja of Shakti Babas, Swami Muktananda, ensconced in a giant marquee on a trashed up back-lot on the edges of the city. He was reputed to raise Kundalini energy by a mere touch of the finger, his devotees fainting in a fit of bliss as he passed amongst them. A multitude of adoring fans crowded the tent trying to get to his hallowed feet, Muktananda brooding like Jabba the Hut upon his throne, soaking up the adulation. To Arthur it was an absurd saffron circus show, marquee and all, and the Shakti Baba came across as a captive King Kong chained to the podium and Arthur felt terror at getting anywhere near him. He edged his way calmly out of the clamouring mob and beat a hasty retreat to the cinema where he saw “The Towering Inferno”, visualising the flaming Shakti Baba come crashing down upon him like a falling skyscraper.

At some stage, when he was wandering around South India, he obsessed about sitting at the feet of Satya Sai Baba, he who produces gold watches out of the air for rich men, and sacred ashes for the lumpen proletariat. Arthur hoped to give his burgeoning Nirvana a booster shot and he set out with determination to tread the hot, dusty road out of the town of Mysore in search of the renowned magician’s lair. He trundled on and on up an endless dirt road, thinking up a storm of twaddle of how he’d win over the charismatic saint and receive various boons, and in a daydreamer’s fugue he walked straight past the ostentatious front gates of the Baba’s ashram, and on into the sunset. He espied a temple-like structure atop a hill on the far horizon and the closer he got the more it looked like the exalted Parthenon of Democratic Athens and, in his fevered mind, it surely had to be the celestial abode of the remarkable Satya Sai Baba.

He hobbled to the top of the hill as the black heavens descended and the multitude of stars winked on, and he discovered his temple of enlightenment to be in reality a grand cinema-house with “Ben Hur” as the night’s attraction. Lost deep in the Indian interior, longing for familiar territory, instead of retracing his weary steps back to the ashram, he opted for the ‘swords and crucifix’ epic to while away the balmy evening with. The vast cavern of a cinema was packed with excitable Indian peasants who screamed, cheered, wept and stomped their feet right up to the chariot race, and that’s when all hell broke loose and Arthur thought the ceiling might collapse with all the ballyhooing. He’d seen the film as a child but only fixated as memorable the gory bits of ships exploding and limbs severed in great spurts of blood. This second viewing, wherein the tale of Christ’s tribulations projected itself into Arthur’s brain as the main theme, came as something of a shock to his confused religious sensibilities, seething and curdling atop a hill in pagan India.

If he tried to live up to the Christian ideal of the life of Jesus as he imagined all good souls should he knew he would be accused of having a messianic complex. He staggered out of the cinema with the hordes of babbling Indians, stunned and guilt-ridden that he wasn’t even as stalwart and honourable as Charlton Heston and thus undeserving of healing, (though the relationship between Charlton and Stephen Boyd was suspiciously homo-erotic.) He forgot all about the big Sai Baba in his sacred fortress with his magic ash, and in a wistful daze wandered down the road a bit and curled up under the stars and cogitated over the heroics demanded in redeeming one’s soul.

The next day he returned to the front gates of the saint’s Ashram, only now he felt like Barabbas let loose from the cross and had lost his enthusiasm for notorious Babas, hauling his sinner’s body off into the dust to explore the multifarious hotspots of an ancient land. He did eventually get the touch from Satya Sai Baba a year or so later when the old huckster showed up at Sivananda Ashram in Shangri-la. In bright orange robes and fuzzy Afro hair, he stood upon a bench and hectored a hysterical crowd of Swamis milling around his knees. Arthur sent his Indian mate into the swarm to get some of the highly desired sacred-ash the Baba was conjuring out of thin air, and wresting some ash from the claws of the scrabbling Swamis, his friend returned to smear it upon his forehead as a blessing.

Arthur then tripped down to the river Ganges’ edge to meditate, experiencing an intense euphoria, a brightening of the world, a clear, lucid thrill at being alive and conscious. He wondered if he’d absorbed the mass hysteria and been hypnotised or if the Baba really did have magic powers and was the Baba of his dreams. Jaded with the showbiz hoopla of great Babahood and disillusioned by their obvious, stolid humanity, he whined that there was little personal touch and no room for his own ego to garner special attention from any parading saint. Accordingly he went on his own merry way, dancing to the music of his own pipes. In later years old Satya Sai Baba was accused by several of his young male followers of taking advantage of his powers and sexually approaching them, (it was just his "lila" explained his loyal followers.) Perhaps Arthur had missed his perfect Guru but he couldn’t have cared less.

The Big Baba that scared the shit out of Arthur the most was Prabhupad, founder and Grand Master of the International Hare Krishna Movement. In his youth he’d been married with kids, an astute businessman, manager of a chemical firm, he knew how to sell a message. He took the vows of Sanyas at the age of fifty and at sixty-nine was sent to the West by his guru to make converts to Lord Krishna. The ditzy hippies of New York and San Francisco, searching for alternatives to Christianity, capitalism and its Vietnam War, were ripe for his cult of worldly renunciation, sexual abstinence and meditation. Hypnotised into mindlessness by chanting non-stop “Hare Krishna Hare Ram”, an army of them spread across America and the world selling incense and Bhagavad Gitas on the streets and living in their own cut-off communes. He set up the world centre of this cult in Krishna’s reputed birthplace of Brindavan in Rajasthan and returned there to eventually die in ‘77.

At one point in his Indian sojourn Arthur happened to be strung out in that very town, penniless and starving, when he spotted some yellow-garbed Hare Krishna acolytes handing out prasad, consecrated food, in the bazaar. He approached the group, considering them to be fellow westerners, and asked them if they couldn’t help him out with a few rupees and they disdainfully directed him to their headquarters where they promised a grand feast was to be had. He hurried to the Hare Krishna ashram and blundered into an international congregation of the crazed zealots, a thousand shaved white heads with hardly an Indian face amongst them while Arthur stood out like sacred bull’s balls with his dreadlocks and hippie mien. From the moment of entry they tried to direct his every move, he couldn’t eat, drink, walk, sit, shit without having the Vedas dictated to him. For three days they held mammoth feasts and Arthur filled his sadhu’s belly to maximum capacity yelling “Hare Krishna Hare Ram” with the best of them, though in his sadhu’s garb, seated in lotus position on an old spotted deerskin, he invited their irate Hindutva scrutiny.

Every night, on a large outdoor screen, they showed dreary home movies that extolled the glories of Hare Krishna consciousness and the blissful life the members led on their communes, toiling selflessly under the sun. To Arthur it looked like the inmates of a concentration camp acting out a parody of religiosity dressed in bizarre costumes. He didn’t rush to sign up with the “Club from Pluto” though every morning they glared at him with proselytising zeal, waving their Bhagavad Gitas like quack hypnotists while he continued to stumble about the bald throng, stuffing his face under their baleful eyes. The pressure to convert got on his nerves and when the Morals Patrol caught him smoking a chillum on his rooftop and castigated him mercilessly, he started looking for an escape route.

On the penultimate night of the International gab fest, after yet another boring home-movie, they made a big hubbub about hauling out their Guru, Swami Prabhupad, on a chariot and hoisting his craggy, old butt up onto a podium. There enthroned, with jowls quivering, he jabbered militant Hare Krishna consciousness to the serried ranks of devotees lined up in front of him. They were grouped in order of rank, the platoon leaders in red and orange, the brahmachari students in yellow, the householders in white, the women all clustered up the back somewhere, out of sight. His lieutenants and sergeants had wicked iron-tipped, wooden staffs that could knock the teeth from a water-buffalo and with which they banged the ground and shook as a threat to the sky, the whole crowd stomping up and down like Zulu warriors at every rabble-rousing pronouncement of the Hindu demagogue.

“Krishna is the only God, He is love, He is power. Krishna will conquer the world, if not with love, if not with gifts, then with the sword. See it as a Holy War, for the world’s own good. You must dedicate your lives to fight for Lord Krishna. Hare Krishna Hare Ram!”

His legions hoo-haaed, “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram!”

“A king must do his duty, so said Lord Krishna to Arjuna at the battle of Kurukshetna. We must win the world for Krishna!”

“Hare Krishna, Hare Ram!”

Then they all plopped down on the ground while Prabhupad launched into an erratic monologue covering life, history and the end of time and Arthur grew more perturbed by the minute as the rabid old guru croaked on and on about how Krishna consciousness was the only “way to go”, the crowd mechanically crowing “Hare Krishna Hare Ram” to his every utterance.

Arthur fumed where he sat, thinking strong thoughts of what an irascible old villain the ranting Guru was, cogitating on comparisons with Ghengis Khan, repetitively beaming out “you nasty old bastard” in the old boy’s direction till suddenly Prabhupad stopped all proceedings and glared piercingly in his direction. Like an ancient crone he lifted one bony finger and pointed it towards Arthur, blubbering what sounded like a voodoo curse, jowls shaking and spit flying. The army of zealots froze and stared at what the all-powerful one was jabbing his finger at, a sea of bald heads in front of Arthur turned and rubber-necked the environs, searching out the culprit who dared disturb their Master’s inspiring performance, all eyes alighting upon Arthur’s lone dread-locked head.

Arthur sweated out the mob’s hostile gaze, shifting in his seat, shutting down his scabrous thoughts, pretending blithe innocence, but still the old mug jabbed his finger at him, growling and spluttering furiously, “Him, that one, grrrrr… ggrrr… gobble gobble gook gook.” The higher-echelon warriors scowled and the crowd peered earnestly about them and Arthur thought he was about to be set alight by the mob, Hindu-style, for Prabhupad was scorching him with his Third Eye.

Prabhupad kept jabbering and pointing and Arthur had to brazen out the murderous atmosphere till finally a young brahmachari in yellow sitting directly in front of him glanced around at everyone, sheepishly, nervously, then jumped up and ran off into the shadows. This seemed to satisfy the old despot for he grunted in satisfaction and turned back to face the crowd and carried on with his righteous harangue, and all the acolytes relaxed, ignored Arthur, and got engrossed in chanting their acquiescence to their Lord’s will.

Arthur gradually let out his tensed breath and slowly but surely extricated himself from the gathering, creeping away into the night, climbing fences and crawling across thorny fields, the sonorous caterwauling of the Hare Krishna fracas booming like a threat in the background. He imagined them hooting and jumping like pogo cannibals around an unbeliever tied to a stake and boiled in a big pot of oil, and he quickened his pace to put a gratifying distance between him and the reverberating, howling chants. He had escaped with his skin intact, his stomach full and his bowels evacuated, never to enjoy Hare Krishna food again, in his life, no matter how “free” it might be.

Years later he saw a documentary on the Krishna cult, how the women were treated as third class citizens and made slaves of, how the children were all separated from their parents and beaten, starved, unschooled and horribly sexually molested while the vast amounts of money collected were used to build more elaborate temples and clothe the idol of Krishna in gold. Most bemusing of all was that the only film the kids were allowed to see, other than commune home movies and Krishna life-stories, was “The Day After”, the post-nuclear Armageddon schlock-buster, as if the cultists believed they would have the chance to take over the world once it was reduced to cinders. Arthur could only bless the rationalist, cool side of him that did not allow him to be a sucker for such rubbish.

The kookiest Baba of them all was Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, a stand out in the crowd of outrageous cosmic poseurs it was Arthur’s kismet to brush up against. In 1973 Arthur had been sleeping on the streets of Bombay when a German friend waxed ecstatic over his grand discovery of a great new Guru and took him to an apartment tower on Malabar Hill to meet him. Whisked up to the penthouse in an elevator, he was first sniffed over by Rajneesh’s chief promoter and zealous front-person, Susheela Tough Titties, who deemed him unworthy of being in the great man’s vicinity. She must have been able to smell money and as Arthur looked like Kipling’s Kim gone native, grungy brown and fresh from the Great Game, he was quickly evacuated down the chute and away from the palatial penthouse.

He was happy to be rejected from the Rajneesh Seed Club for he’d had a bellyful of restraints and surveillance by spirit-mongers and wanted very much to have fun, and Bombay was the city for it. While sleeping out in the central park or Maidan he discovered it was the main homo beat, many an evening stroller wandering over to his blanket in the hope of cracking onto some prime Euro-trash flesh. He stoically refused all approaches until the most gorgeous of souls lured him from his yogic discipline by quietly sitting next to him and gently kissing him on the lips. Hidden by the night they lay on his sadhu’s blanket and kissed like sultry cinematic lovers, passionately, swooning, as if no other love would ever be found as sweetly innocent as this, the Indian guy’s arms entwined lasciviously around the white Sahib’s neck like a grown-up Sabu being kissed by a young Errol Flyn. Better than sex, this erotic escapade was a rare happenstance in Arthur’s Indian journey, it informed him that love between Indians and Europeans was indeed possible, and he lapped up every delicious moment.

Otherwise he dawdled at the cinema, Bombay being a city that loved movies, making them and showing them. His favourite movie house was a crumbling Art Deco monstrosity called The Regal, situated near the waterfront in Colaba. The projector went in and out of focus, the soundtrack switched from stereo to mono, the movies were slashed by the censors till they jumped-cut to absurdity, and still he cherished the thrill of being swamped by raucous Indian cinema-lovers. It was here that he saw “The Poseidon Adventure”, during which the Indians themselves seemed to be drowning, climbing the walls and screaming from the rafters, and at the end they all left the movie-house looking like their own lives had been swept away. Arthur got the melodrama of this movie mixed up with the mythologies created around Rajneesh, little realising how spot on he was. (After a fun-filled cruise, a luxury liner goes belly-up in a storm, the captain of the ship sent to oblivion, and a few tenacious voyagers and diehard crew claw their way through the ruins back to the top, to relaunch the ship and carry on with immensely profitable lives.)

Two years later he was again sleeping on the streets of Bombay, out of money and busking outside the seedy Colaba hotels, sometimes fed by the crippled beggars who enjoyed his singing. Then his German friend, Peter, reappeared to rescue him and take him to the Rajneesh Ashram in Poona. He was sniffed over at the front gates for the alien scent that could kill their over-sensitive guru with his many allergies and this time he passed the examination as the Rajneesh crew probably wanted to rope in all westerners, no matter how ragged the outcaste be, in their desire for the organisation to grow into a global empire.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was a Jain Professor of Mathematics at Bombay University who one bright morning saw the light and realised an eclectic approach to enlightenment therapies would make an attractive package for hungry western soul-seekers. He mixed Yoga and Vedanta philosophies with other Eastern religious practices such as Zen meditation, Indonesian Subud, Dervish dancing and Sufism, Taoist art and T’ai Chi movement, and then threw in liberal doses of western psychological practices like primal scream and psycho-drama to keep the punters fully occupied and dizzy. It was not only his clear, lucid rendition of the simplicity of attaining eternal wisdom that made him explosively popular, he also promulgated Tantric Sex as a staple discipline on his menu card. He became infamous for pairing off the most unlikely of candidates and encouraging them to practice the divine art of fucking with no hang-ups. Many a dull, ugly no-hoper joined up and got themselves some self-realisation, a spinal tap, a foot massage, a jolly good screaming session and a nice juicy ‘root’ to boot.

Rajneesh was a groundbreaker, trouncing straight-jacketed tradition, cutting away the mumbo-jumbo detritus of religion and using any world-practise that had the potential to provide knowledge and fitness. He offered what the westerners were accustomed to, a surfeit of choices, not an abstinence of desires. He was basically a good guy who wanted to revolutionise the world with love but he didn’t quite realise what kind of monster he was unleashing as he was adrift in Maya like the rest of humanity and, getting involved with other humans, venal and cruel, he got “brought down.” He often prattled on about how his fans would deify and make an institution out of him, he just didn’t figure how badly out of hand it would get.

Arthur was offered the array of mind-blowing therapies, seminars, books, tapes, incense and orange outfits but he wasn’t interested, particularly put off by the photo of Rajneesh’s ugly mug hanging heavily from clunky wooden beads strung around everyone’s neck. There was the usual pressure to “join up”, at such and such a price, it all smacked of brainwash therapy to him and he preferred to hide out in Peter’s room smoking ganja and reading science fiction. He was still curious about this so-called great God-man so he went along to the sunset dance and pep-talk presided over by the old rascal himself. Inside a marquee a crowd of vacuous foreigners were asked to dance blindfolded, abandoned and free, to raucous electric music, and they all flopped about like fish in a net, while Rajneesh watched from a podium. Arthur pretended to fling off his inhibitions and prance about like an epileptic fairy, all the while peeping from under his blindfold, watching the Maestro squint his voyeur’s eyes at the crowd, coolly appraising every lithe movement.

When the posse of frenetic punters were loosened up and quietened down, Rajneesh launched into his pat spiel, droning on and on, tantalising and mesmerising, about how everyone present was already enlightened, they had ‘It’, they were ‘It’, they’d simply covered ‘It’ over with heaps of crap. His mixed-up mysticism could clear away the crap, or, if they wanted, load them up with more crap than they could handle until they exploded and in the end they’d realise they’d been ‘It’ all the time. They don’t even need to be sitting here listening to all this crap, because they’re as enlightened as he is and they always were.

The audience cheered and asked for more, Arthur got restless and wondered indeed why he was sitting there, for he had a flash about his own inner light, knowing he’d always bathed in it, and didn’t need the next instalment of the how-to-get-illuminated manual. Hanging around the ashram, his patience was stretched thin by the constant, relentless referral to Bhagwan’s ubiquitous presence, his every word, gesture, move, blink and fart mulled over ad nauseum by the army of would-be Buddhas. He resisted donning one of the variegated shades of orange ‘sanyassi’ robes they tried flogging to him and, at the first opportunity, ran away to Goa where there was no Master as well as no God and he could really get his rocks off. He’d had a fortunate escape for if he’d truly been desperate for direction, and somehow wangled his way into Bhagwan’s select high guard, he might have got trapped for years in the old fakir’s money-grubbing menagerie getting his brains convoluted every which way.

Bhagwan Rajneesh was a wimp who fainted in the proximity of alien molecules, and he was a zen trickster who created tests to discover if one stank or not. Actually, he was a bit of a cold fish with a secretive private life, one voluptuous white woman as long-term lover and Susheila Tough Titties as administrator sticking to his arse like a limpet mine, and only the chosen few faranghi power-mongers allowed into his personal quarters. It was rumoured they had orgies in the inner-sanctum and Bhagwan, as a world-weary voyeur, liked to impassively watch all variations on sexual congress, but that was more like Arthur’s pornographic imagination at work, the egghead mystic was too uptight and queasy for any such action.

It came to pass that the masses of Indian men got wind of the free sex with white women going on in the ashram at Poona and they tried storming the front gates and climbing the back walls. The scandal and the ruckus that ensued from all the primal, sexual screaming caused the Poona Council to expel Rajneesh from the city and in 1985 he fled to America. In the ‘money talks’ USA his movement grew exponentially till it went into meltdown with ninety-six Rolls Royces, the buying up of a whole County and the incarceration of Rajneesh in a prison cell for a lengthy period as a tax-evading, illegal alien.

Throughout the ordeals his delicate constitution was much put upon and he was slowly, surreptitiously poisoned to death with untraceable thallium by Susheila Tough Titties to get her hands on all that money, or so urban myth has it. The mad professor come avatar died in 1990 at the age of fifty-seven and left behind as his legacy a franchise of eclectic spiritual conundrums and simplistic instant-wisdoms via books, tapes, incense and orange underpants. Arthur long found it difficult to discover the truth of Rajneesh’s downfall, of whether the Authorities or his own disciples killed him, and he wondered where all the millions in royalties went. And he was bemused by the poor fool’s white-washo-ed resurrection in the mid ‘90s with the scrubbed up presentation of ‘Osho’, a new brand-name dreamed up by his barnacle-like followers. Arthur felt kind of saddened by the fact that, long after his death, Rajneesh’s acolytes continued to throw themselves at the feet of his empty throne, screaming his name hysterically and worshipping a piece of empty space, the antithesis of what Rajneesh himself promulgated, but a few dudes made a lot of money and that’s what counts.

The sweetest of all the Babas into whose presence Arthur had the good fortune to be introduced was a female saint by the name of Ananda Mayee Ma, Universal Hindu Goddess made flesh. She was so renowned that Indihra Ghandi, “Mother India” herself, wore to the end of her days a mala, a sacred wooden-bead necklace, Mayee Ma had given her. She had been discovered as a young woman in the early twentieth century, totally blissed out, eyes rolled back in Samadhi, exuding profound peace and love, and even her young husband worshipped her as the Goddess made manifest.

Without really knowing where he was going, Arthur travelled with a party from Sivananda Ashram to Her temple abode in Haridwar, and stepping into the antechambers he gasped over wondrous, brightly coloured wall murals depicting the many forms and acts of the Goddess. Even the domed ceiling told a fantastic story in images Michelangelo would drool over, and to Arthur it was reminiscent of the décor of the old Plaza Cinerama Movie Palace in Melbourne where he’d seen many a wrap-around, mind-blowing movie, the epitome of Maya, trickster of illusion. Taken through psychedelic, painted corridors with the Goddess Laxmi as the central motif, he was then ushered into Her celestial company, female attendants fussing over Her while She sat, tranquil and Nirvanic, upon a cushioned divan under the windows of a small room. He didn’t have a clue who She was except that She gave off an effulgent light that filled the room and induced peace in his troubled mind.

Along with the twenty or so other adorers, he was allowed to meditate for half an hour in front of Her, She radiated an expansive Universal Consciousness that made his heavy flesh evaporate, and the taste of celestial nectar dripped from his palate and joy surged up his spine to melt his rigid headspace.

Next thing he knew he was stumbling out of the door in an ecstatic daze, and the bright, sunshine-splashed day seemed to welcome him as a chorus of Indian peasant drummers in the temple courtyard set up a blood-thumping rhythm, loud and compelling, drawing him in. He couldn’t help himself, he leaped amongst them and danced wildly, primordially, mindlessly, Kali’s dance of destruction, Saraswati’s dance of creation and Laxmi’s dance of munificence. His euphoric dancing mimicked the universe spinning and in mid-swing, when he glanced up, he saw that Ananda Mayee Ma watched his inspired ballet from her window, her attendants huddled behind her, and she smiled unreservedly, delighted and beatific.

Afterwards, when the drumming had stopped and he was out on the roadway panting, one of the Sivananda party-members approached him, her face scrunched up in a fury, spitting chips. Arthur had always referred to her as the German Countess, she sat around the Ashram in a mock-pose of enlightened beatitude, false teeth thrust forward and jutting out of the silly grin on her face, she was always dressed in a glowing blue-rinse sari, her hair in a grey-white pageboy style. She once favoured Arthur fondly, chucking him under the chin and telling him what beautiful blue eyes he had, like an old tart. But then she must’ve heard the salacious rumours about him being a homosexual, making her sour old puss drop every time she saw him, till outside Ananda Mayee Ma’s she had plummeted to hissing depths of apoplexy. She was scathing in her abuse of him, declaring,

“Your sexual, cabaret dancing was disgusting, how dare you act the fool at such a sacrosanct location, have you no shame? You danced like a male prostitute!”

He dashed back to Shangri-la crestfallen and dehumanised, yet still hanging onto the memory of the compassionate face of the Goddess made flesh, Ananda Mayee Ma, smiling down upon him from her window, and the joy it communicated to him. At Christmas he gave the uptight German Countess a card with a poem by Paramahamsa Yogananda that read,

“In this world Mother, no one can love me. Where is there true loving love? Where is there truly loving me? That is where I long to be.”

My Latest Poster: Mid-Winter Recital.

2011-06-13T16:10:00.002+10:00

25) The Thugees of Manali.

2011-06-11T18:24:00.003+10:00

Arthur dallied for a few months in Shangri-la doing yoga diligently, yet enlightenment seemed to recede with the horizon, no matter how much he strove towards it. He was fed up with the travail of surviving India and decided to move on to swinging London and rejoin the world. Then he received a letter from his old friend Compassion, asking him not to leave India, to wait for the old Maestro’s imminent arrival, as Arthur’s companionship was soulfully required. He therefore cashed in his flight ticket and made sojourn to Manali in the Kulu Valley, most hallowed site of the connoisseur dope-smoker where he figured he could have a relaxing time before his beloved Compassion showed up in Shangri-la.

In late 1973 Manali was a small village with barely a hotel on offer, tourists lodging in stodgy backrooms of the locals’ huts built half into the mountain-sides, dank and gloomy as buried coffins. Pine forests crept to the village edge and deep within the chaos of the trees was a primordial wooden temple dedicated to Kali, the Dark Goddess of Destruction and in the vicinity of which the freaks often held their psychedelic parties.

It was at a full-moon shindig in the forests of Manali that Arthur had his big emotional freak-out and psychic breakthrough. A gang of assorted international freaks had dropped Acid collectively around a roaring bonfire and proceeded to create hypnotic music upon whatever instrument came to hand. Arthur couldn’t resist the charm of the Acid-rush moment and, slithering like a snake around the seated crowd, he danced the dance of Salome asking for the head of John the Baptist. His dancing was magical, flowing naturally as if following the land’s energy lines, and the musicians kept him afloat, his fluid motion matching their cadence perfectly. The music quickened pace and abandoned sweet order, became cacophonous, chaotic, and Arthur found himself propelled out of control every which way, stumbling over his fellow revellers, in and out of the fire, spinning onto the laps of the musicians, till he broke down, crying,

“Oh help me someone, I’m so lost, I don’t know who I am, I’m so scared. What’s it all about? What are we doing here? I’m such a fool, please don’t hurt me…”

The freaks were annoyed by his pathetic blubbering and whining, kicking him away when he flung himself at their feet, demanding he “fuck off”, one of the French musicians hitting him on the head with his flute. It eventually dawned on Arthur that he was not about to be roasted and eaten at a demon’s midnight feast and this particular crazy crew were actually benign beings. He soon settled down, curled up in his blanket on the edge of the circle, projecting kaleidoscopic epics on the movie-screen of his mind, and ignored by everyone.

The next day, as Arthur made his way around the village, all the freaks were very friendly, introducing themselves and beaming encouragement. A craggy-faced American, a classic India-freak in pyjama pants with a Kulu hat propped over his long stringy hair, clapped him on the back,

“How are you mate, over your freak-out? You had us worried last night.”

“I’m sorry for making such a fool of my self, acid really lets the demons out but I think I finally got over them. I’m feeling pretty good today, like I’m my real self at last.”

“Every village needs its fool, but don’t worry, we love you for it. You’re a fantastic dancer, really, we were all very impressed. The winter solstice festival is soon, you could be our King for the day if you’ll dance for us.”

“Gee thanks, I’ve been travelling alone so long, I’d love to hang out with some cool dudes for awhile. King for a day, sounds like a lot of fun.”

He felt like he’d finally arrived, he had been accepted into the global tribe of Freak-heads after baring his vulnerable soul, he could carry on fearless and hoped hence forward his flights to the netherworlds would be only euphoric and enlightening. For the next few weeks he danced unreservedly at the parties, ashamed of nothing and he made friends with everyone, particularly the French flautist, a wicked opium addict named Pierre. He trekked through the jungles and high mountain valleys to swoon in the hot spring baths at the sacred temple of Mani Karam. He ate tsampa with the Tibetan refugees in their chai shops and commiserated with their dislocation; and he drooled over the Kulu handicrafts on display in the bazaar, especially the hip, rainbow shawls that he couldn’t afford. In a Manali Buddhist Monastery he was shown his first, authentic Tibetan Thanka painting and the vivid, multi-coloured style inspired his artist’s lust to emulate its divine look. He even got to see the Dalai Lama, who stepped out of a doorway one rainy morning and stood for a seven gun salute some seventy yards from where Arthur stood. The sun broke out and shone upon the smiling priest/king for a few short minutes, he took great breaths of the fresh mountain air and then he was gone, like an apparition from a Lobsang Rampa fable.

Then came the night of a dark moon and the Kulu natives lost all semblance of passive normality, in some mid-winter rite of passage they threw themselves into an atavistic frenzy in the forest’s embrace, dancing in ritualised formations to the raucous bellows of giant trumpets within the purview of the Kali Temple. Then they led into the clearing one of every animal their livelihoods depended on, a bull, a goat, a pig, a sheep, a fowl, a duck, whatever, and in a howling delirium, wielding huge machetes, pagan priests stepped forth from the crowd and chopped every one of the poor creature’s heads off, blood flowing in torrents. Arthur had come to watch the dancing, naively unprepared for the massacre, and being a vegetarian peacenik, was horrified when all the blood suddenly poured forth. Paradise again took on a sinister edge, he got the willies wondering if his demonic haunting wasn’t yet finished with him.

He’d been told the stone slab in the Kali Temple’s inner sanctum had been used in days of old for human sacrifice, and when he inspected it, he thought he could see the outline of a child’s body grooved into the rock. The Goddess Kali was a powerful figure in the collective psyche, having ruled for countless aeons and been the progenitor of all the subcontinent’s gods, Her presence imbued the dark pine forests with a spirit of primeval gloom, the Kali Temple possibly attracting all kinds of kooky cultists from around the world looking for a deranged, motivational idol.

The next day, with the sun shining and Arthur’s fears banished, he met a charming Afro-American guitar player in a café in town, they sang a song together and Arthur was entranced by the guy. There was one creepy old hotel called the Bombay Guesthouse way up on the mountainside that Arthur had always avoided due its reputation as a junkie haven. A creaky two-story wooden box, it could have stood in for the house in “The Amityville Horror”. The handsome black guy invited him up to the Bombay Guesthouse for a songfest and, following him up to its brooding, foreboding presence, Arthur felt his skin crawl but ignored it, he was longing for some hot male company. He hadn’t had sex in over a year and this tall black man was extremely charismatic, leading him on.

They drank chai, dropped Acid and made music in the grungy downstairs parlour, the handsome Yank a dead-ringer for Jimi Hendrix as he strummed away at his guitar, the few hippies passing through all deferring to him as if he were indeed the great rock’n’roll god. The sun set and the night grew eerily quiet and black, and all the freaks had disappeared upstairs, including the Hendrix look-a-like, leaving Arthur alone on the couch, tripping, befuddled and elated, singing like a silly canary. The black guy returned and coaxed Arthur to come upstairs to the dormitory where the party was really happening.

Arthur felt reluctant to enter such an intimate space as the collective bedroom of what appeared to be a hippie family, and the house reeked of weird vibes, dampening his enthusiasm, but reassurances in a seductive voice got him up out of his addle-brained warbling and treading gingerly up a kaleidoscoping staircase. As he wavered at the top of the stairs he gazed through the forbidding, dark doorway into the dormitory space, a large room full of people dressed in black, standing by their black-shrouded beds. An aisle between the beds led straight to an altar dominating the back of the room, dressed in black cloth and bearing a clutter of occult paraphernalia. Amongst all the occult junk, shining in the ethereal light of candles, were a silver chalice, a gold dagger, a bloodied goat’s head on a tin plate and a human skull, affixed to its dome a black iron Kali Ma dancing on a prostrate Siva.

All the while the gang of freaks had been murmuring some mumbo-jumbo chant which increased in intensity as Arthur staggered between them and on hallucinating “King for a day” and “Hail Satan” amidst the wailing he gathered his wits and focused on the altar and the smiling Hendrix double beckoning him forward. He zeroed in on the shape that was hanging above the altar, distorted by the lighting, indecipherable amidst the psychedelic fractals, it slowly morphed into a black, wooden, upside-down crucifix. He took in the two lines of chanting hippies, recognising a few callous faces from the parties in Goa, and they smiled evil encouragement for him to walk down between them to the altar. But as he gazed deep into their eyes their vacuous smiles twisted into vampiric grimaces, and everywhere he turned he saw a reversed cross hanging above a bed. Images from “Rosemary’s Baby” zigzagged across his vision, the hideous goat’s face and hairy claw rending pristine skin, the distorted mugs of the cultists intoning grim sing-song, mesmerised and moronic, but with glee in their ancient eyes. Shrieking in fright he stumbled backwards and, before they could grab him, he fell headlong down the stairs, then jumped up and ran out the door, yelling religious hysteria and unstoppable, like a spirit escaping from Hell.

He scrambled his way up the mountain in the dark on his hands and knees, projecting a protective egg of clear light around him and mumbling a prayer to his guardian angel to aid him in his flight from the evil beings he imagined scrambling out of the Guesthouse after him and baying for his blood. He was lost in total blackness, stumbling up a vertical slope, scrabbling to find a handhold and drag himself up, up, up into the starlight with the Thugees of Manali hot on his ass eager to tear his bowels out. Shredding his hands and knees on sharp rocks he lumbered through the inky darkness to the safety of a peasant’s lodging-house and barricaded himself in his room, to wait out the night. He came down from his drugged mania past dawn, wondering if, yet again, he’d hallucinated the whole ridiculous drama, his childhood Christian brainwash seeping out of his hind-brain with its devils trying to claim his soul. LSD is a powerful psychotrope and anything can be imagined, and he prayed to his personal god to purge him of these paranoias.

Over the next few weeks several hippie tourists were found dead in their rooms, overdosed on heroin, a poison in proficient supply in Manali. Without much ado, their corpses were burnt on pyres by the river, few people attending the funeral rites and nobody giving a damn about the death of dumb junkies; lost faranghis were such easy victims, nobody to claim them, so far from home. More horror movies flashed in his cracked mind, deviants on the run after the downfall of the Hippies Utopia at the end of the ‘Sixties, ending up attracted to the Kali Cult in India, hiding out in the lawless pine-tree groves of Manali, trying to appease an unpredictable universe with the blood of naïve hippies.

It all gave Arthur the willies and he fled the Kulu Valley, happy to still have his head on his shoulders. Ironically, Kulu Manali eventually turned into an Indian honeymooner’s playground with a zillion hotels for consummating couples, love-locked newly-weds on every pathway staring into each others' eyes. Sadly the town also got put on many a foreign embassy’s “notorious, dangerous hotspot” list as more and more tourists were found dead under their beds or deep in the forest or up in the mountain fastnesses where they’d gone for an innocent trek. But Arthur had survived, from yet another snake-pit, as if, being harmless he just could not be harmed.

24) On the Hippie Trail to Kathmandu.

2011-06-10T23:34:00.002+10:00

The converse of Arthur’s profound sense of freedom as a nobody out on the wide-open highway was Indira Ghandi’s growing power mania at the Centre of things. Her dictatorship of absolute control from Delhi, deposing state leaders who didn’t comply and dispensing patronage to a chosen few so that corruption in public affairs exploded, was all a long way from Arthur’s frivolous ken. The needs of the individual might be subordinate to the State for the disaffected Indian but not for this spoiled westerner, he was “footloose and fancy free” and didn’t give a shit about politics as long as he could be on the move. Tedious bus journeys taking several days got him to the mystic town of Hampi deep in the interior of the state of Karnataka, a landmark of his dream flights.

Hampi was an arcane site, hard to get to and known only to the freak cognoscenti. In the future it would become a hotel hell but when Arthur arrived there were only about seven freaks wandering the vast labyrinth of rocks and river, most of them hanging around the cave of a crazy Siva Baba who made the most sought after black clay chillums in the whole of Hippiedom. The town had one dinky chai shop outside the temple; otherwise it was a ghost town, the ruined stone streets haunted by the thousands of Hindus slaughtered by the Muslims five centuries ago in the downfall of the Vijayanagar Kingdom. Decrying pagan sacrilege the Muslims tried to smash all the sculpted Hindu icons, but there were thousands of statues carved in every crack and crevice and many got overlooked or simply had their noses and arms lopped off, the place remaining a vast art gallery of fallen idolatry.

The countryside around Hampi was a surrealist’s dreamscape with countless boulders piled atop each other in magical balancing acts, hundreds of small caves, temples and pavilions sequestered in their interstices and sculptures of the gods littered everywhere. A placid river wound like a shroud throughout this maze of rocks and to the bedazzled hippies it seemed like a wondrous psychedelic theme park. The mythology of the place avowed that Lord Siva had meditated in the town’s colossal temple and Lord Rama had made obeisance to this Supreme God as He passed through on his long search for the kidnapped Sita, His beloved wife. It was here, in the dinkiest of caves, Hanuman hid Sita’s jewels from the avaricious eyes of Ravanna the demon, and the tumbled rocks of Hampi were the leftovers from the colossal bridge the Monkey God had built to cross over into Sri Lanka to help rescue the celestial princess.

Arthur took Acid in the cave of the Chillum Baba and tripped his guts out, crawling away to vomit up multicolored universes into the dark river from the sanctuary of a carved stone temple, a torrent of archetypal junk and acculturated poison pouring out of his head. On coming out of his psychedelic spin he heard a woman’s voice pleading hysterically for help, over and over in echoing urgency. On tottering outside his refuge, he could just make out the figure of a woman splashing up a storm across the river and a group of Indians glumly watching from the shore. She screamed repeatedly, “Help me, I’m drowning!” But no one nearby moved a muscle, like Elloi from “The Time Machine”, they seemed disinterested.

Arthur called out reassurances and dove in, swimming hard against the current, yelling small comforts every few strokes as he dashed on towards the frantic spray of her splashing and screaming. He sprinted three hundred tedious yards to reach her only to find he could stand next to her as she’d been drowning in chest-deep water. He dragged the spluttering hysteric to the riverbank and left her in the puddle of her profuse thanks, the Indians gazing on with serious, perturbed mien, for most of them couldn’t swim to save themselves. His mind still reeling from the Acid trip, Arthur felt the mystic, tumbled city emanated menace, too downbeat ominous for his awakening soul. He wasn’t interested in learning the art of making chillums or listening to the Chillum Baba’s tirade of Siva parables, and he couldn’t connect to the other freaks that gossiped a scatter-brained sludge of cosmic drivel and tried to outdo each other in freaky Indian-ness, shouting louder than the next bum, “Bam Shankar!” He witnessed the great festival at the Siva Temple, watching from under the wheels of the juggernaut chariot that the natives had dragged out with an idol of the Lord of the Void riding upon it and everyone cheering wildly, and he felt lonely, it was fascinating but it was not his world. He decided he’d had Hampi and he hoofed it out of town.

He made it down to fabled Cochin, Queen of the Arabian Sea on the coast of Kerala, only to find she’d been turned into an old whore by the countless waves of restless sailors and colonialists who had washed up there. All Arthur saw was a cluttered town of concrete and cardboard decaying in the salt wind, fronted by a dirty swamp of a beach with desultory, rubbish-choked waves crawling upon it. He took refuge in the local grungy cinema and got the detritus of his Christian upbringing overwrought by that metaphysical pot-boiler “Doctor Faustus” starring Dickie Burton and Liz Taylor, another woeful tale of a soul traded to Satan for the fulfilment of all desires only to have them turn to ashes in his mouth.

The movie terrified Arthur, he staggered from the cinema to forlornly wander the concrete-cancerous backstreets of spooky Cochin unable to escape the repetitive nightmare of his soul being propositioned by the Devil, his self-worth forever questioned. He called on his guardian angel to give him strength to carry on in the face of his spiritual dread, he would somehow brave it out and would yet reach his full potential, and the Devil could wait an eternity and never claim him, or so he fancied.

He hitched a ride over the Nilgiri Mountains with a Sikh truck driver who kept reaching across him where he sat in the middle and slapping the young assistant hard to prevent him from sleeping till Arthur, the peacenik, pleaded pathetically for an armistice. The slaps kept coming, just missing Arthur’s ducking head, causing him to climb up to the open roof of the cabin where he lay upon a tarpaulin in the luggage rack. Rushing through the night he had his breath swept away by the fathomless stars splashed over his head and the plains of South India opening out into infinity way below him and he delighted in the freedom of being lost on such an exotic, endless road, anonymous and unobligated.

He landed in Bangalore and slept in a park in the city centre where he was lured into a hut made of hessian bags and given opium to smoke. A shrivelled old man prepared the pipe for him and as the smoke curled up into the dirt-brown sacking he sunk into the floor upon his mat with a nice, fuzzy feeling numbing his existence, romanticising the scene as a poet’s inspirational milieu, the denizens’ supine, cool and tranquil. In the dance of the swirling smoke he hallucinated through the haze memories of his childhood, cigarette fumes pouring from his parent’s head like dragons, in front of the TV, over the dinner table, out driving in the car. Beer bottles piled up under the sink, musically clinking when he carried them to the garbage bin, light refracted through the brown glass to dance upon the pavement. Gleaming innocently from the top of the family refrigerator was a clutter of pill-bottles: pain-killers, anti-depressants, anti-biotics, sleepers, his father’s “purple hearts”, pretty shapes and colours, innocuously mysterious. Wagging school, delicious freedom with the midday movie swashbuckling from the TV, he’d break out a giant family-sized bottle of Coca-Cola and utilise his mother’s favourite champagne glass in a euphoric, fizzy toast to himself, it was the ‘Fifties and Coke was the ‘real thing’ and he got very high. Chasing the flying dragon, the smoke whirlpooled, the world spun, his guts heaved and it felt like Coca-Cola was spurting out of his nostrils.

He loitered in the park toying with the opium limbo for a few days but for all the sumptuous, lavish dreams, the stuff made him vomit, an experience he detested, and he renounced it after throwing up his guts for the umpteenth time in the grungy hessian doorway. Arthur had strenuously avoided being a habitual poly-drug abuser, he took his poisons in moderation and had long resolved to eschew hard drugs, sorely aware of the seedy, sleazy destruction it wrought. He already suffered the handicaps of sex addiction, impulsive adventurism and Tourettes-like verbal temper tantrums, he didn’t need to add more drugs to his daily flip-outs. He was of a generation that lived fast and died pretty, he absolutely believed he wouldn’t reach the age of thirty given his feral, madcap exploits on the infinite highway; he just didn’t want to cramp his style and slow his pilgrim’s progress with hard drugs.

He understood the seduction of opium but it didn’t fit with his ‘up’ disposition; he couldn’t see the fun living in a continuous, nauseous doze and dissolving into the gutter. Though it is true he was enthralled by the LSD experiences, enjoying them like confabulated, new-age vision quests, he endeavoured to limit the trips to special occasions, sacred and festive, when he could really appreciate the hallucinating, abandoned dancing.

Marching forthrightly from the grungy hessian-bag hutments, he climbed the ten thousand steps up the sacred hill to the Siva Temple, Lord of the Beasts, and hung out by the colossal, marble sculpture of the white Nandi Bull, and tried to find inspiration in their lofty metaphors. Then he fell asleep on the veranda of the Maharaja of Bangalore’s palace, listening to the roars of the lions from the zoo way down in the city below. The next day he ate the best strawberry pie of his life in a hippie restaurant wallpapered with posters of Alice in Wonderland in bright-fluorescent colours on a black field, a style that enchanted his artist’s heart and which he would hence forth try to emulate. In placid, ‘zonked-out’ mood he stumbled into the town’s hottest cinema and in shock watched “Dirty Harry” splatter the nasty deviants all over the big screen and thus, with his guts truly churned, he fled the city for the refreshing innocence of the open countryside.

Stopping off at every temple and swimming in its sacred tank, he travelled all the way to the tip of India, to Kanya Kumari, where he sat on Vivekananda’s Rock and contemplated the three oceans crashing together, exhilarated and at one with the ends of the Earth. He made pilgrimage to the hallowed temple site of Tiruvanemeli and imbibed the tranquil bliss the great Indian saint Rama Krishna had left behind him at his Ashram after his Samadhi death. He climbed the sacred mountain behind the astonishing, psychedelic temple, visually thrilled by its multi-coloured statues of the gods piled up into the sky, then he had to fight off the tribe of sacred monkeys who tried to tear him to bits to get at his packed lunch.

He journeyed on to Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal and took Acid with a gang of Indian middle-class brats who’d escaped Madras to create mischief by the sea. They’d built a huge, thatched hut near the beach, installed a loud sound system and partied on every night with any western hippie that showed up, smoking ganjha and tripping amongst the sculptured, Dravidian caves to the tune of Elton John’s “Yellow Brick Road”. In ancient days there had once been a great city on these shores, predating Babylon and Egypt, more marvellous and sophisticated, revealing the subcontinent to have nurtured civilisation as much as any other place in the mid-east. The mysterious city’s huge stone edifices now lay submerged deep under the sea with Mahabalipuram lingering on its ocean-swept rim. There had long been seven Temples on the shore’s edge but the sea had drowned six of them. One lone Siva Mandir remained as silent sentinel, buttressed with sandbags, gradually being inundated as the sea crashed against it.

On the darkest of nights, his mind soaring on ganjha, Arthur would sit at the centre of this mystic structure with his back up against the black, octagonal Siva lingam, broken-in-half from some ancient, cataclysmic happening. He hallucinated the presence of hungry, primordial entities swirling around him in the dark trying to find ingress to his inner self and, to outmanoeuvre them, he meditated his way up a silver staircase to imagined celestial heights, light banishing the darkness, troubles forgotten, redemption found. High as a fire-fly he congressed with benevolent spirits, resonant echoes of ancient Atlantis-like priest-scientists from whom he must have learned new dance-moves for at the end of his séance he came to his senses and found himself dancing fluidly, mindlessly around the Siva Lingam. Once a worldwide religion, India was the last place where Phallic adoration remained sacrosanct, the Lingam erect in a Yoni, a fountain of milk erupting from its top, its glamour something Arthur could easily relate to.

It was near the Siva Temple in Mahabalipuram that ditzy, deadhead, complacent Arthur fell asleep on the beach with his wallet by his head and it got stolen, money, passport and all. Suddenly he found himself in desperate straits, as nothing was more unpopular with the Indians than a pretentious, money-less hippie. Western freaks had by now become notorious for ordering up big in restaurants then proclaiming bankruptcy by turning out their empty pockets and the manager, disinclined to rough up the precious firanghi, had to wear it. Usually these importunate fellows were die-hard drug addicts who had no qualms about sponging off the Indians, but sweet-natured Arthur was loath to be one of them. He wrote to an Aussie friend asking him to send him money and in the meantime tried selling hand-painted paper flowers to bemused Hindu tourists, without much success. His fellow hippies helped out as much as they could but no one had much money; his plight dragged on for weeks and for days on end he starved. He had long worn a gold ring, much treasured as it had been given to him by his first love, Tony, when they were teenagers. As he got ready to hock it for enough money to feed him for a week he came to a late realisation that Tony must have indeed loved him to give him such a precious token for it was his own mother’s wedding ring. He sighed as he handed it over, true love as sorely lost as he was.

He’d daily hung around the post office hoping against hope and finally his rescue letter came and he pled with the post master for it.

“Sir, can I have my letter? It’s come, I see it in the Post Restante box.”

“Show passport and you are having it,” said the officious babu.

“But I told you my passport has been stolen, you saw it already weeks ago when I collected a letter here. Please sir, I’m hungry, there’s money in that letter for me.”

“Am sorry, without passport am not allowing letter.”

“You’ve seen my bloody passport many times, it got stolen a few days ago. I need that money or I’m dead. Give me the fucking letter.”

“Bad manners are not getting letter, chello abi. Go!”

“You stupid bastard, that’s my fucking letter. Give it to me!”

Reduced to a babbling idiot by the Postmaster’s heartless intransigence, Arthur lashed out with a kung fu scream and smacked his cold face. The babu reeled back in shock, the Police were urgently called and one riotous hippie was hauled off to a gaol cell to cool his temper. It was the same Policeman he’d reported his stolen passport to and, as he was sympathetic to Arthur’s dilemma, took him back to the Post office and demanded Arthur’s letter be handed over forthwith, after a heartfelt apology from a once-proud firanghi. The nearest Australian Embassy was a couple of thousand kilometres away in Calcutta, he had the munificent sum of twenty dollars which got him food and a cheap ticket on a slow train and off he went. He ate a lump of opium to withstand the arduous three day train journey as he lay upon the carriage floor with the Indians using him as a footrest and, in a soporific, turbulent dream-state, he crossed Tamil Nadu, Orrissa and West Bengal. He arrived in Calcutta looking like a zombie fresh from the grave, covered in footprints and eyes glazed over.

The Embassy staff thought they had a mad junkie on their doorstep, accusing Arthur of selling his passport for drugs, giving him tiresome lectures on the evils of dope-slingers, then making him wait a week for his replacement passport. He had no money while he waited and slept on the streets and would have starved if it weren’t for the kindness of a gang of Calcutta shoeshine boys who took him on as their mascot and fed him assiduously. With his new passport he was able to pick up several hundred dollars in income tax returns sent to the Calcutta GPO by his father and then he reciprocated the generosity of the shoeshine kids by treating them to a grand feast. Afterwards he lay down in a trashy park to doze in contentment for an hour or two but kept one lobe of his brain functioning, he’d learned the hard way and wasn’t going to be easily victimised again.

He came out of his snooze to find a villain crouched close by his side with his hand ever so slowly sliding into Arthur’s shirt pocket where his new passport and cash were sequestered. He grabbed the creeping hand in mid-air and threatened to scone the goonda with a coke bottle if he persisted and, having met his match, the desperado ran off. Arthur had been a split-second away from disaster and with a great sigh of relief he headed out of the bleak hole of Calcutta determined to make the big trek up to the hippie wonderland of Nepal.

Trains, buses, a ferryboat up the Ganges River and several hitch-hiked truck rides over the mountains got him to the legendary city of Katmandhu, Mecca for addled-brained potheads and spiritual misfits. He revelled in the rainbow-coloured Marijuana Cafes, drooling over his choice of different grades of hashish, enchanted by all the souvenirs of calendars, post cards and smoking implements, all of it glorifying the wonders of THC addiction. J.J.Cale and Pink Floyd echoed through the doors of the innumerable cheap, gaudy restaurants in an attempt to lure the hippies who wandered about in bewilderment dressed like extras from a Z-grade ‘Mystic Orient’ movie, the Nepalese locals nipping constantly at their heels trying to hustle some tourist business.

Katmandhu gelled into an over-busy, commercial city with hordes of Indians visiting to test drive foreign cars fast around narrow streets already cluttered and polluted without the addition of a ‘smash ‘em up’ derby. Arthur had to run the gauntlet of this cacophonous free-for-all to play the wide-eyed tourist and have his naiveté stunned by the pornographic statuary decorating all the little temples. Every fucking position dreamed up by the salacious imagination of mankind was displayed in reverent detail, homosexuality and bestiality included, and Arthur felt a healthy reassurance about his own bland, sexual deviancy.

He hung around the famed Buddhist Temple of the Glowing Eyes to scope the colourful hippies parading past and learned that in a few days time it was Buddha’s birthday and the hippies were going to indulge in a spiritual wedding party on this auspicious day. With the happy couple in white khirtas, flowers in their hair, dancing mindlessly about to strummed guitars, Arthur fantasised about the nuptials that he himself longed for. First he had to get his visa extended, and dressed like an Arabian Nights prince, kohl blackening his eyes and a turban wound around his dreadlocked head, he marched off to the government offices as if he were Dorothy off to see the Wizard of Oz.

Unbeknownst to Arthur the CIA had just bribed the Nepali Government into cracking down on the hash trade and curtailing the inebriating activities of the soul-seeking hippies. The visa official took one look at Arthur and knew he had a ripe scapegoat at hand. He asked Arthur if he smoked hashish and, having just come from a state-sponsored Ganjha Boutique, and being on a ‘truth’ quest, Arthur saw no reason to lie and confessed his partiality to the gooey black nerve-candy. Instantly he was arrested and incarcerated in a back room, grilled as to the full extent of his illicit proclivities, then escorted to his hotel where they searched his luggage. He had some lumps of hash at the bottom of his bag and as the cop’s hands went deeper and deeper, Arthur sweated a cool nonchalance; the hands got closer and closer, sweat trickled from his armpits, he whistled a happy song and the cop smiled enigmatically, took mercy on him and relented, giving up the search. As they found nothing incriminating they decided on expulsion from the country as a fitting punishment for his shocking transgression of getting mildly intoxicated.

On the day of the Full moon, up on the Temple Mount, the hippie marriage party danced up an orgasm to celebrate Buddha’s birthday, but Buddha was not smiling upon Arthur, disappointed and miserable in a prison cell awaiting his police escort. It took three slow days to be taken by the cops back over the mountains, in trucks and jeeps, handed from one police station to the next, till thankfully he was kicked through the border-post and into the blessed, tolerant country of India. So much for the compassionate land of Buddha’s birth he thought as he hauled his heavy but free heart up the dusty road that led back to his special oasis at the other end of the Himalayas, Shangri-la.

23) The Hungry Gods of Goa.

2011-06-09T23:32:00.003+10:00

Bombay, Bombay! What a forbidding, magical labyrinth of a city to get lost in! Seven Islands made as one, built around the temple of Mumbai Devi, a captivating goddess playing by the Arabian Sea, bubbling over with creativity and hope. In the early seventies it was struggling out of its British colonial straight jacket, an English modernity still strived for, the streets clean, the traffic mostly pedestrian and under control, red double-decker buses competing with a few white Ambassador cars, Enfield motorbikes and a swarm of peddle-pushers.

But at night the footpaths were crowded with the sleeping poor, attracted to the city by the promise of making it to wealth, with Mumbai Devi’s help. Every square foot of pavement space was reserved for a specific family, and being very poor himself, Arthur often had to sleep on the streets with them, wandering for hours searching for an available space, outside a shop in the old Fort Area with the shopkeepers, on the steps of the Regal Cinema in Colaba with the crippled beggars, in the cricket Maidan with the city’s outlaws, and on Chawpati Beach with the family picnics and coconut pedlars.

A few times he was refused entry into the seedy Colaba Hotels, the firanghi tourist Mecca, because of his neo-sadhu appearance, the grunge of dusty, hippie glad-rags aglitter with beads and jewels he’d picked up along the way. Those flea pit hotels thought they were too good for him and, rejected, he had nowhere but the streets to sleep. In the night a rat as big as a cat leaped upon his chest and snarled into his face, his screaming causing his fellow pavement dwellers to laugh, the great firanghi reduced to being eaten by a rat. In the morning he awoke to find his shoes and the shawl that covered him missing, but his passport was still tucked down his undies, for no Indian hand could venture there unnoticed. Yet in the main, the people of the streets were kind and made space for him and he survived his many caste-away sojourns in Bombay unscathed, singing high from the ebullient city’s hustle and bustle.

In those long-gone days there was a steam ship that sailed from Bombay to Goa and what joy it was for Arthur to rush upon the boat with a horde of hippies and stake his place upon the open deck where for three days they’d loll about playing guitars, smoking chillums and eyeballing the jungle coastline they slowly cruised along. Huddled together in the chilled sea-breeze they’d argue philosophy, politics and the minutiae of the drug culture, Arthur slowly losing his shyness.

“There aren’t many real saints left in India anymore, money is fast taking over as the one god here. Have you noticed the difference between the rich and the poor, it’s shocking!”

“Everybody’s got to earn money in this world, even the big babas. Some of them use it to build hospitals and schools”, quipped an Italian freak, dressed like Ali Baba himself.

“But surely that’s the job of the government?” whined Arthur.

“According to urban myth there’s supposed to be only seven true Masters guiding the planet’s progress at any one time so that doesn’t leave many for India to hang on to.”

A long-haired American chipped in his seven cents worth,

“You can blame the Congress Party for the mess, they’ve ruled since Independence, and corruption is rife, at every level of government. You can’t make a move here without paying a bribe. The Nehru family dynasty and the high caste elite run it all, and in twenty-five years they haven’t achieved much for the millions of peasants. Nixon met Indira Ghandi before he got kicked out and they couldn’t stand each other; the American establishment have worked to suppress India’s advancement, they don’t want another big competitor on the world stage.”

“Yeah,” said a British lad after passing the chillum, “and Russia’s meddling too, their ‘great game’ of winning influence, selling India factories and tanks, even nuclear technology, and encouraging her to invest in grandiose, five year industrial plans that soak up much government funding but do little to relieve the living conditions of the people.”

“It’s a good thing we’re running away to Goa, all this shit won’t find us down there.” This from Arthur had them smirking, “Sure, kid.”

He was reeling from this political blab-fest, the other bums seemed to know much more than he, he hadn’t thought it out much, he didn’t want to stir up his stoned meditation with harsh realities but the world had a way of breaking into the most secret hide-outs, for globalisation was on the march and he, unwittingly, was part of its advance guard.

By this stage he had dreadlocks and therefore joined that elite group of funky Indiaphiles who stood out in any crowd, flicking their manky braids about like badges of honour and deferred to by newcomers, grunge-bunny Arthur the cynosure of all eyes as if he were the prince of thieves camped out on their pirate cruise-ship. This hairstyle became ubiquitous over the years, one could buy it at a hairdresser’s and it soon lost it’s cachet, deadheads were not special, they just didn’t comb their hair and Arthur later came to loathe the look as dirty and cheap, but for Goa it was de rigour and he trained his matted locks to be more frightful than a gorgon’s snakes nest.

The 1972/73 New Year’s party season in Goa was the last hurrah of the first wave of hippies that had invaded those pristine beaches in the sixties, before the junkies, thieves, peddlers, beggars and cashed-up package tours descended like swarms of locusts on the place. In those days there were only a few hotels and houses to rent, with several hundred foreigners stretched thin across the seven beaches. Bagga Beach had a beautiful lagoon and waterfall, and no concrete jungle. Anjuna Beach had a couple of private cottages hidden deep in the coconut groves, a chai shop at either end of the beach, and a clearing in the middle where the best parties were held. Arthur landed in the virgin jungle at the next beach along, Vagatore, where a community of international drop-outs lived in grass huts at the edge of the Arabian Sea, everyone naked and everyone stoned. Each freak outdone the next in the elaborate design of his/her hut, veritable palaces made of woven palm-fronds, towering from the terraced cliffs or swinging from the palm trees like live-in mobiles.

The freaks lived in various tribes with language as the common bond, the French refusing to speak English at their elite encampment; the Italians in their own feral nest, notorious for cheats and hard drugs; and the disparate English speakers lumped together to console each other for their uncouthness. They played at creating a tropical Utopia, with no God (but plenty of pagan demi-gods), no master (but a hierarchy of India-freak hipness), and no inhibitions (except for the western cultural baggage they had brought with them like heterosexual supremacy, European hygiene and techno-superiority).

Arthur gravitated towards a camp with a British girl acting as hearth-mother and a Dutch guy filling in as the wise, counseling papa. They lived under a large lean-to of woven mats near a waterfall at the end of the beach and shared everything communally, as there was very little money between the lot of them. While Erica ladled out food from the collective pot the boys would sit around the fire discussing their dreams and attitudes, the sea crashing upon the beach nearby, the stars shining through the palm-frond matting of the hut. Arthur would bang on about his spiritual kick as the chillum of hash got passed around.

“I’ve been studying yoga for years, I’m trying to realise my true Self amidst all the bullshit the System has piled upon me.”

“There is no true self, that’s the bullshit”, opined sagacious Dutch Hans, “like there’s no god, you’re chasing a will’o’the wisp. I bet you’re a different person with whoever you meet. Just be strong and smart.”

“Yeah, but that’s the point, surely deep in my centre there’s a core identity that’s never changing, cool, equanimous, compassionate.”

“I hope you hang onto that cool soul, be him all the time, that’s what I’d like,” murmured Erica, ladling more vegie stew into Arthur’s bowl.

“Good hashish, a meal, a beautiful woman and a grass hut to bed her in is all I need. You know, the best hash comes from Manali, it’s primo,” burbled another English lad.

“I’m sure the Vietnam War will be over soon,” pondered an itinerant American, “and maybe the beast of capitalism will fall and we’ll all be able to go home and live communally, sharing, not worship profit, and not having Big Brother always watching. That’s my dream.”

“I want to take India to my heart, melt into her, become one with her and never go home.” This from a dreamy Arthur, the others smoking quietly.

There were no taxis or motorbikes and buses were infrequent, everybody walked from beach to beach, barefoot, with only a cotton dhoti to cover their nakedness if they covered it at all. Not many Indians dared venture onto the beaches for the hippies were seen as foreign devils with an incomprehensible lifestyle and capable of any madness. And there were definitely some villains about for the psychedelic-befuddled hippies were easy pickings for anyone with a cold heart and the gift of the gab. Arthur was cautious, not easily suckered in by a smiling face and honeyed tongue, having come up through the school of hard knocks that was Australia. He put his few valuables in the trust of the chai-shop wallah on Anjuna Beach, and dressed in cheap Indian cloth he did not present an attractive, rich target, his passport the only thing worth scamming him for. In that one clunky chai-shop on Anjuna beach he sat next to Charles Sobraj, the infamous serial killer, and ignored the blandishments of that handsome French-Vietnamese monster out scouting for potential victims. Lounging nearby was a young American girl mouthing off unashamedly to catch the ears of the hippie crowd around her.

“We had the wildest time last night, I’m still tripping. And all these guys kept grabbing at my arse, I must of fucked seven of them in the jungle, my cunt is sore as all heck but I really think I saw God in there somewhere. It was like those blue gods the Hindoos worship, eight arms groping me, it was amazing. I’m thinking of dreading my hair, does my bikini-line show? Did you see that movie “Candy” with the levitating guru? I think I levitated last night. Do you think I could make it in the movies? I think I can act... blah blah, blah.”

“Where you from buddy?” smiled the gorgeous Eurasian guy, Arthur glued to the girls rant, impressed by her unabashed attitude, she didn’t care what anybody thought of her, out-front loud like a hippie Sally Bowles.

“Australia, but who gives a shit? What’s with her? She’s too cute.”

“She’s yours if you want her, I’m sure she likes you too. Come back to our room and party, we’re all friends here.”

“Ummm… no thanks. There are people waiting for me. I’m off.”

The creep must have murdered at least twenty-one people in his ugly career, in India and Nepal, winning their trust, pretending friendship, volunteering as a tourist guide then drugging and killing them, burning some of them alive, for their money and passports. Arthur had met a lot of lethally charming guys in his sleaze-bag life and he didn’t give a flying fart for them, they were interchangeable in their smooth beauty. Charles Sobraj was like a false mirage on a desert road, Arthur looked past him to real horizons possible to reach.

The main parties of the season were on any Full Moon, Christmas and New Years Eve. Recalling the deep cosmic trance and euphoria of his psychedelic aversion therapy back in bleak Melbourne, he hoped to recapture the pseudo-nirvana at the notorious parties, maybe even defeat the creepy-crawlies that welled up from his unconscious and overcome his deepest fears. In his stupid enthusiasm he ingested a double barrel of Orange Sunshine LSD before arriving at his first big shindig. A couple of hundred freaks had gathered around a bonfire on Anjuna Beach and without much ado fruit salad was dished out to the crowd by a blonde called Gypsy, luscious matriarch of the French clan. Unbeknownst to Arthur, it was heavily laced with Clear Light Acid and so the fool got himself an overdose of the mind-boggling substance.

As the crowd whipped itself up into a bacchanalian delirium, thumping drums, banging bongos, twanging guitars and shrilling flutes, Arthur watched his world disintegrate, eyeballs popping out of people’s heads, their hair lifting off like wigs and their ears floating away. Freaks cavorted about the blazing bonfire, dancing with demonic abandon, leaping through the flames, pirouetting upon the hot coals, voices wailing and ululating like cats being barbequed. Someone started screaming as if their very soul was being torn from their body, a scream of terror that went on and on, till Arthur thought his own skin was being flayed from his back.

Suddenly a little Indian beggar boy, with no legs, threw himself onto Arthur’s lap, cackling in glee at Arthur’s alarm, for he thought he’d somehow given birth to a misshapen imp that now clung to him like a succubus from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. All the freaks sitting around smoking chillums joined in the ugly, cackling laughter, looking like a chorus of deformed witches at a Black Sabbath about to curse Arthur with a shape-change. Shrieking in horror, he flung the cripple from him, and with his rational mind in a meltdown, he crawled away from the conflagration on his hands and knees, around a dirty sand dune and down to the beach, the terrible scream from the midst of the revelers following him like a tortured fiend.

He had dragged his blanket with him and, with all the furies from fairyland clambering at the gates of his existence, he curled up under it, like a child, hoping its thin cover would protect him. The cacophony of the atavistic party jarred against his frazzled consciousness, bursts of wild laughter and agonized screaming punctuating the heart-thudding drums and ear-piercing flutes. He imagined them all as devils leaping joyously amidst the flames as the beat quickened to some unimaginable climax of howls and breaking glass, where maybe Satan himself stepped from the shadows to accept a sacrifice. He still had some religious conditioning to cleanse from his cortex, the last grubby stains of good versus evil, God versus the Devil, Christian uptight sexuality versus pagan nature worshiping rapture. In every gutter along every highway Satan hung in there threatening to drag his soul down into the darkness while he reached arduously towards the light.

Hypnogogic mind-scape swirling, Arthur buried himself in the sand where the turds and trash glittered like jewels hoping to hide his diamond soul from those who might steal it. When he peeped from under the blanket he could see the shadows of the frolicking imps elongated and distorted against the surrounding coconut trees. From the tops of the palm-fronds erupted multi-colored dragons that poured to the ground like streams of incandescent water, slithering towards the party and breathing long plumes of fluorescent fire into the air, like electricity seeking to be earthed by quivering human flesh.

Arthur withdrew into his own inner-cosmos, the archetypes and myths of his own particular, psychic make-up washing over him like the tide of a mystic ocean tugged by seven moons. Occasionally he took a look at the chaotic tableau beyond his blanket, making sure no one came near him to take advantage of his vulnerable mental derangement. A crescendo of howls signalled a hallucinatory group orgasm, the primeval music segued into mellifluous harmonics for the agonised screaming had stopped, replaced by choral music and sweet laughter echoing around the coconut tree grove. Arthur imagined the crowd of freaks skipping and dancing like innocent children following the seductive pipe-music of Pan as He led them through the pearly gates of Paradise, leaving the world of mean adults behind. And in his mind Arthur chased after them, only his crippled nature did not allow him to catch up, and all he got was a glimpse of Heaven between the closing gates, forever the stranger looking in. He saw the freed children swooning in delight at the flower gardens and crystal palaces, dancing and flying about like cherubim, laughing in liberation, then the gates slammed shut, and he was locked out and left to wonder in the shadows.

The pink light of dawn finally banished the necrotic black horrors of the night and Arthur, safe and sound, crawled from under his blanket and staggered back to base-camp along a milky-green ocean shore, the waves tumbling in exquisite slow motion in time with the languid thoughts of his now quiescent mind. He went to many more parties to see if he could make it through those Pearly Gates but he failed every time, each trip becoming a screaming bummer, fairies turning to demons, his wings refusing to sprout, his courage too faint-hearted. He took all the varieties of LSD in hope that one of them would push him past the ‘heebie-jeebies’ threshold, from Clear Light to Strawberry Fields, Purple Haze to Black Pyramids, they all brought on Satan and the fear that Arthur’s soul was up for grabs. He would run from the parties and wait for the nightmares to mellow and dissipate, then get lost amongst the coconut groves, terraced cliffs and rice-paddy fields. Tripping on a tab of Mr. Natural Acid out in real nature proved the best experience, for the moonlight created intricate mosaics upon the ground as it shone through the palm-fronds. The jungle around him came alive, every space occupied by a little furry mammal with huge mirror-black eyes, all of them purring and chirruping like friendly marsupials, making Arthur step lightly as he walked amongst them.

His elation was rudely interrupted when he stepped over the edge of a deep canal, disguised by all the kaleidoscopic optical illusions. Attempting to walk on thin air, he did a double-somersault and landed heavily upon his hip on some sharp rocks far below. All the yogic and dance exercise had come in good stead for his body was very supple and he only sustained a deep cut in his side and a few bruises.

He treated all of his psychedelic journeys as vision quests, exploring the strange depths of his Id for knowledge of his self, his antecedents, limitations and potentialities. He felt flawed and so much wanted healing. If Mind was meshed with the universe then he hoped it was possible to inquire into the very fabric of existence, to gain real knowledge, of human nature, of history, the origin of life and of consciousness, the purpose of sapiens sapiens, knowing that you know: why did he have eyes to see and mind to ponder? Why was humanity so fucked?

It was a comfort for Arthur to return to his campsite after the wildest parties and regale his fellows with breathless tales of amazing, visionary experiences under the influence of LSD, Dutch Hans disclaiming cautionary tales and English Erica laughing in sympathy at Arthur’s wide-eyed ingenuousness. While she made him breakfast of whole-wheat porridge and fruit, he’d rave,

“I flew on a magic carpet to wondrous realms where I wielded the sword Excalibur and cut through the obstacles on my path. I drank from the Holy Grail and united all my opposing energies, male and female, and for awhile I was free of sex. I threw the Spear of Destiny into the sun and knew where my path should take me. I wore magic armour made of golden light and faced my childhood fears. I polished Allah’din’s lamp in the middle of my brain and summoned forth a genie to grant my heart’s wish. I rode a UFO to the centre of the galaxy and thought I’d solved the mystery of existence. Then it all melted away like honey on my tongue. In the dying moments of the trip I glimpsed from the corner of my eye the Green Man dancing, beckoning me on to try for Paradise and cripple though I am I limp on and on in hope…”

Dressed in a sari, tying her hair up with sprigs of jasmine flowers, Erica would listen patiently and with a cryptic smile reply,

“Crazy boy, I think you should come back to earth, get real. Here, have a nice cup of tea, that’ll calm you down. Go native, do as the Indians do, keep it simple, forget about fairyland, it’s here you’ve got to survive. There are evil creatures roaming amongst us, a lot of lonesome hippy-trippy tourists have gone missing. You’d better watch your lovely little bum at those LSD parties.”

Hans, as the wise patriarch, added his counsel as he also cared for the innocents he’d taken under his grass roof.

“Yeah mon, I’m thinking a gang of killing, thieving, devil worshipping weirdos have fled the West after that Manson Family cult got exposed in America and some of ‘em ‘ave probably run to anarchic India to hide out, maybe even Goa.”

With terrified mien, Erica whispered, “I’ve heard stories from the locals of body parts found washed up on the shore’s edge after the parties, severed hands and limbless torsos. Ooooh, it gives me the proper creeps! And there’s always plenty of gibbering maniacs left lost and penniless upon the windy beaches at the season’s end, when everybody else has moved on. You don’t want to wind up one of those do you, Arthur? Do your yoga, eat healthy and leave the drugs alone.”

She was strong, good-hearted and clever and Arthur took some heed of her advice. He was able to keep his wits about him no matter what imbroglio was induced in the hippie mobs by the heavy doses of psychedelics, thus he survived several months in this wilderness of chemically induced rapture, nightmare and clashing world-paradigms beside the Arabian Sea, ever the fool but getting wiser by the day.

In spite of the much hyped Utopianist free love and lack of restraints, there was no sex for Arthur as the Adam and Eve motif ruled supreme, back to Nature meant the congress of sexual opposites and, as a poof, Arthur was the freak of freaks. No fellow nudist male gave him a lascivious glance that he noticed and he was resigned to permanent abstinence, sensual gratification satisfied by dance, sun and sea. He sublimated his sexual urge with yoga, meditation and copious drawings of the Goan hippie scene with pastel crayons in a sketchbook he carried with him everywhere. The psychedelics purged him of his aberrant compulsions, drifting upon the beaches he didn’t long for much, except to belong, somewhere, to some tribe, but he found himself ever the loner.

There was no honest space for him within this milieu of aberrant normalcy and ultimately the hedonistic, inebriated scene fatigued his naturalist’s sensitivities. He felt like his pineal gland had been squeezed dry by all his visionary exploits and he just couldn’t face another outrageous party. Campsites broke up around February/March as the various tribes moseyed off on their treks into the hinterland and Arthur, his third-eye glowing like a radioactive jewel, decided to venture forth on his own odyssey, to travel the full length of the entire subcontinent, explore every site of ancient splendour and get truly lost in India.

Not long after he left Goa, Erica, the generous, good-natured earth goddess in the flesh, with a sprig of Jasmine in her hair Goan style, racing to her marriage ceremony with the Goan man of her dreams was killed in a car-crash. She died young, for all her good sense, and Arthur lived long, for all his recklessness, such is the hungry blind god of Chaos.

22) Lotus Eating In Kashmir.

2011-06-06T15:06:00.002+10:00

Nineteen seventy-two was to see the rains fail in India inducing drought and famine, with food riots across the nation, but hippie-trippy Arthur was oblivious to such harsh realities, privileged firanghi that he was. He had about a thousand dollars in savings which he parsimoniously drip-dripped to the squabbling masses as he cruised about living the fantasy of the wandering soul-seeker, India and her variegated peoples an exciting, colourful backdrop to his rambunctious adventures. The ruling Congress Party had split in 1968 into right and left with Indira Ghandi as Prime Minister centralising power in her hands. Promoting herself as “Mother India”, she appealed to the people as the saviour of the poor and achieved a landslide victory in 1971 with a promise to “remove poverty”. She nationalised the banking, insurance and coal industries, removed the privy purses of the Princes and made repressive amendments like MISA, the Maintenance of Internal Security Act where an individual could be arrested without trial for up to a year, thus the rights of the individual were subordinated to those of Society.

Three million people were killed by West Pakistan in Bangladesh’s war of Independence and ten million refugees fled into India. In December of 1971 Pakistan attacked India which went on to capture Dhaka and win the war. In July 1972 Indira Ghandi met with Pakistan P.M. Bhutto in Simla to thrash out the ownership of Kashmir but no agreement was reached. She had a special relationship with Kashmir as the Nehru clan originated from that province; she spread her father’s ashes over Kashmir from a plane and returned again and again throughout her life to its natural beauty considering it as the one place where she could find peace.

With all this seething unrest and deprivation whirling around him twenty-two year old dumb, naïve Arthur, the last of the incorrigible individuals, aimed his sights at that same vale of wish-fulfilment, Kashmir, though his inspiration came more from the surreal rock music of Pink Floyd rather than national affiliation. After a harrowing journey along a vertiginous road leading up through the mountains of Jammu, Arthur was relieved to make it in one piece to Srinigar, capital of fabled Kashmir. On alighting from the bus he was mobbed by over-zealous tourist guides who each took an arm and a leg and tried to pull him apart. Fighting them off he espied an old man waiting patiently, humbly at the back of the crowd and he chose him as his honoured host, going off with him to his rickety old houseboat on Dhal Lake. He was the sweetest, wisest old Muslim Arthur was ever to meet, waiting on him as if he was a long-lost Maharajah, smoking Kashmiri Black hash with him from his water-pipe while perusing antique logbooks full of quaint testimonials going back to the British Raj. Arthur lolled around the houseboat in Lotusland for weeks, reading “Myra Breckinridge” and flirting with the beautiful Kashmiri men, their Greek-influenced looks unhinging him. One long cruise on a pleasure boat lay ahead for him if it wasn’t for that old grouch of a Baba, Yogeshwaranand, glowering up in his mountain retreat and promising something better than orgasm of the flesh, i.e. freedom from the flesh.

Swami Yogeshwaranand had established his summer yoga camp at a holiday house in the small town of Pahalgam, two hundred kilometers above Srinigar in the Hindu Kush Mountains. Arthur was permitted to camp out the back of the house in a tent and attend the morning and evening yoga sessions. The old Swami was a hard taskmaster, getting Arthur to twist his legs into such complex knots that he tore the cartilage in his right knee, an injury that plagued him for the rest of his life. Then the old mug sent him cross-eyed by encouraging him to meditate with his eyes open, to truly go beyond the phenomenal world. The image of the gruff old yogi got forever imprinted upon Arthur’s third eye, sitting before him swathed in glowing saffron, solid as a carved Buddha, beady penetrating eyes searching out every breath of the seated acolytes.

And he was eighteen years old behind his father’s flat attempting his first meditation on AUM. And he was seven years old again lying on the laundry roof gazing into the blue sky, aware of his existence. And he was an infant crying for his mother when a lightning bolt struck his head. And he was a baby sitting up in his cot eyeballing the new world he was to find his way in. His mind quiescent, his spine tingling, he was back in front of the Master whose saffron hulk emanated intense presence. Hence forth, Arthur would only have to close his eyes, wherever he might be in the world, and he’d be right back there in front of the Swami, meditating on eternity.

For three months he kept up the Spartan diligence, sublimating his sex-drive with yoga, avoiding the men in the town, meditating on the arduous journey his sex-addiction had taken him on. His shaky temperance was vexed by the presence in his class of a handsome Indian with hairy legs who would exercise in front of Arthur in the shortest of shorts, with his crotch bulging fit to burst an eyeball. He groaned with frustration knowing he’d have to maintain super-human strength if he was to perfect his yoga and gain cosmic consciousness as the world was filled with attractive sights.

Arthur started hearing weird voices in his meditations and feeling an army of soldier ants crawling up his spine to eat the base of his brain, causing an inner light to spark and explode diamond white like a camera’s flash, a veritable fire in the head. When he reported the sensation of a skyrocket having gone off in his spine, the irascible Baba chuckled and informed him he’d just had his Kundalini raised. The latent power of his whole being had uncoiled from the base of his spine and surged through his system to invigorate every nerve centre, particularly that which snaked about his gonads, his sexual dynamo getting charged and his randy desires intensified, sex had him by the balls and intimated it would never let him go. Towards the end of this yogic marathon, unable to handle the mounting pressure of channelling his excess energy, he sneaked hashish into his tent and smoked it in a water pipe to try and chill the threat of his spontaneous combustion.

Pahalgam was a picturesque medieval village surrounded by flower-strewn meadows and backed by snow-clad peaks. The air was pure, the water fresh, the food from the Swami’s kitchen nutritiously wholesome and Arthur thrived, his spirit soaring. This town was the devotee’s gathering point for the pilgrimage to the holy Cave of Amarnath, a necessity for any Hindu wanting to be absolved from his karma. For millennia Armanarth has been one of four required yatras or hallowed walks to divine sites that underpin the fabric of the Hindu religion, and part of why India so religiously hangs onto Kashmir. Young and ancient, rich and impoverished, sadhu and householder, all must trek at some time in their lives into the glaciers high in the Hindu Kush Mountains in the full moon of August to witness the peak formation of an ice Siva Lingam, the world’s greatest phallic idol, inside the sacred Cave.

Amidst thousands of ordinary householder devotees camped in Pahalgam were hundreds of the wildest, most outlandish sadhus Arthur was ever to clap eyes on, each with a freakish rigour to prove his eminence. One guy had held his arms up in the air for years till they were withered sticks, while another guy never lay down, sleeping by hanging across a rope swing hung from the branch of a tree. Next to him was a guy with three-foot long fingernails and dreadlocks he could walk on, and another guy who had innumerable pieces of metal piercing his flesh while he slept on a sharp bed of nails. All of them were naked and, waving huge hash chillums, they’d shout “Alack! Bam Shankar!” Then they’d inhale great plumes of the noxious smoke, get high as kites and as mad as two-headed snakes. The Hindu householders revered them and spoiled them unstintingly, one of the few times in the year the sadhus got as much as they could eat, each guy’s belly swelling large enough to contain a winter’s larder. To Arthur they looked like a circus from Mars, reminiscent of the twisted lunatics he’d once nursed in the mental hospital, and he dreaded having to join their ranks and rend his flesh to find self-realization. Asceticism was too much hard work for this dilettante party boy.

Back at the farm, the motley crew of wannabe yogis quivered and quaked at the feet of Swami Mahesh Yogeshwaranand, complaining of their personal, existential dilemmas, making of the camp a soap opera of frustrated wish-fulfilment. This included a European princess who erupted into the foulest of temper tantrums, throwing her dinner tray up against the wall and running to the Swami with endless grievances of how she wasn’t being treated respectfully by the servants, beseeching him to cure her cancer-riddled body. Another character was Walter, a retired cop from Chicago, who confessed to Arthur that he was once the biggest fucker to ever walk the streets, more corrupt than Capone, hornier than Satan, fucking every woman he could lay his hands on. In thick American twang he told his tale to a stunned Arthur.

“Then came the day I saw the light. I’d cruelly screwed this bitch after stopping her for a traffic violation, the tortured look on her face gave me an epiphany, I saw how really fucked my life and attitude was and I felt I just had to change my ways. Now I’m on my way to salvation, throwing my energies into yoga as zealously as I did at being a bad cop.”

He contorted his body till it cracked, held his breath till he fell off the bed unconscious and tried hard to not even think of sex because he wanted to store his vital juices and shoot them up to his pineal gland. To test his mettle he had his long-time girlfriend with him, who he used to fuck stupid but now couldn’t touch, not even to dream about, though she was always in his face. Every day for months on end Arthur had to hear Walter’s lament,

“I’m dying to fuck Barbie, what a temptation she is, bending over in yoga, showing me her luscious arse or splayed out on my bed with her fucking legs spread. I’ve got to be so fucking strong to resist her, she’s so fucking gorgeous! Oh god, I want to fuck her so bad!”

After the camp split up Arthur didn’t see Walter for a lifetime and always wondered if he succeeded in resisting the urge to blow his load upon Barbie’s scrumptious body and thus reach enlightenment. Thirty years later he met him again in Shangri-la, now looking like a wise old man, smug smile on his kisser, he’d been back in India for the last fourteen years, very lofty and serene he seemed to float along the ground full of wisdom and inner peace. And Arthur thought the burly fellow had really made it, achieved Nirvana and was a high dude while next to him Arthur felt like shit, a fallen yogi, a sinner, a fucker. He asked Walter what he did for a living these many years in tough India and he calmly told how he taught meditation to Japanese tourists. They rarely spoke again but Arthur often saw him in the market place, dressed in luminous white, with a pretty vacant Japanese girl in tow, him murmuring placid wise platitudes to her ga-ga nodding, and Arthur cringing because he felt unworthy of being in this saint’s presence.

Then the guy disappeared and Arthur made inquiries in the market-place about what had happened and it seems beatific Walter got kicked out of the country because he’d raped one of the female Japanese meditation students. Such is the explosive power of human sexuality rued Arthur, squash it down as much as you like, it’ll geyser out somehow, every cell and nerve is programmed to orgasm. And he wondered if Nirvana, freedom from all woes, was just a myth, like a bullshit Hollywood happy ending?

Eventually the old tyrant Swami had had enough of the mountains and the wailing demands of his western followers and he rushed off to rest in the bosom of his wealthy, placid Indian patrons in the plains far below. The very night the ogre left his lair, with all his retinue chasing after him, Arthur mischievously decided to sleep in the Master’s bedroom. The yoga camp was empty, he was free at last, and the first thing he did was have a damned good wank on the Master’s bed and then blow a big fat joint while he nestled back onto the old boy’s comfy mattress. Then to his dismay the universe turned bleak, demonic imps tapped at the windows and ghosts howled in the shadowy recesses of the Guru’s room. While the beady glass-eyes of the big Guru peeked accusingly through every crack and hole, Arthur felt his very soul was about to be carried away on a shrieking wind. He spent most of the night stiff on the floor, shivering and praying for forgiveness, and determined never again to underestimate the influence that these old saffron-clad witch doctors could wield.

He too fled back to civilization, only for Arthur it meant floating dreamily on a house-boat beside the Moghul Gardens of Dhal Lake and flirting with the drop-dead gorgeous local guys who had noticed his homo-erotic mannerisms. Arthur had veiled his beauty with an unruly beard and to the Hindus this meant he was out of the game, but to Muslims the beard is the epitome of the masculine ideal and they found it attractive. Arthur’s sky-wide, lake-deep blue-green eyes didn’t hurt his chances either, giving him that dazzling Alexander the warrior look that certain dark-eyed men are magnetised by. He was twenty-three, at the peak of his sexual strength but abstinent for seven months with his steadfastness leaking away in the attention from dark, handsome men. A stranger in a strange land he was too paranoid to attempt a liaison with the Muslim men, instead dreaming of his peers, orgiastic hippies dancing to Pan’s pipe music somewhere over the horizon.

Still it was wondrous to float upon the lake amidst swathes of pink lotuses, their perfume competing with the roses growing in profusion in the landscaped gardens that swept down to the water, inducing euphoria in his already addled brain. Indian Kashmir was a paradise of weeping willow groves and hilltop fortresses, houseboats like wooden palaces suspended against a horizon of ethereal, snowy peaks. Tourism and handicrafts was the big employer, and everyone made money, made merry and was happy, with barely a word of dissatisfaction or secession that Arthur noticed. Though their Referendum had been denied them and they must have grumbled about Independence over their coal braziers, Arthur never heard any sympathetic longings evinced for life in Pakistan. People went happily to the movies, enjoyed music, made good business and raised thriving families peacefully. It was a munificent garden-state populated by life-loving angels and everyone wanted to possess it, including Arthur.

But winter came, harsh and inhospitable, snow blocking the roads and the houseboats frozen on Dahl Lake, and Arthur desired to chase the sun. Somewhere along the way he’d heard about the scene in Goa, where Dionysian parties raged in naked, jungle-bunny splendour, and realising he was pagan at heart with a nature-worshiping spirit, maybe a Tantric sensory overload and sex binge would bring him that elusive Nirvana promised him in books like “Be Here Now” and “Jonathon Livingston Seagull.” Therefore he decided to go the whole hog and go to Goa, and he was gone.