79) Tripping Out at the Rama Palace.

I've just seen this f#cking insane movie, I was blown off my movie seat, I'm stunned. It was titled "RRR." Violent, macho warrior religious nationalist nutty... WTF? But engrossing, and anything depicting righteous revolution sucks me in.

Cinema is NOT dead, especially not in India. Yes, the giant screen, yes the loud sound system, but mostly the shared experience with a huge crowd, cheering, screaming, whistling, chanting, booing and stamping their feet, as a community. Yes, Indians really respond to the big screen.

Some of you may think I'm kind of mad, spending a large hunk of my life in India. As a kid I wanted to be a swashbuckling pirate or a sword and sorcery rebel flying on a magic carpet, just like I'd seen in the movies. Exploring India, especially in my youth, those "wild wild east" adventures and fantasies actually came true for me.

There are many fantasies in this world that we can dwell upon, chase and live out,  each of us chooses a number of fantasies that suit us, that we are compelled to desire, their wish fulfilment of achievement, sex and power satisfying us for awhile. Fantasies thick as a fog, gambling, kingship, Casanova, sharp-shooter, bank looter, airplane flyer, glamorous movie star, astute businessman, female president, whatever, take your pick, we choose a few dreams and attempt to realise them.

Of course there's harsh reality, I was a palliative care nurse, off and on, for 40 years, try that for in your face entropy. Yet for all those years I fantasised I was Sister Kenny, administering to the fallen and needy. Some fantasies can contribute to the community.

For what reason did I live out my Indian Jungle Book Sufi folktale magic I don't know. My DNA? My Hollywood brainwashing? My previous life? My narcissistic living inside my own head? You say. 

I hit the road, got lost, saw a lot of movies, met some Big Babas, meditated upon it, and try not to think at all. Yes, I'm mad; I call it being a Punk Outsider, and a vision-questing wanderer.

I've been all over the sub-continent, from the top of the Himalayas to the crashing together of the three oceans at the tip of India. I've visited many mausoleums, museums and monuments. Watched Hindu epics Ramayama and Mahabarata played out on stages on a street corner.

I've read a lot of Indian history and literature, danced with Bollywood movie stars at fantastic parties in Goa and nightclubs in Mumbai. 

I've slept on the streets and in Maharaja's palaces. I've thrilled to the wildlife and participated with glee in Indian festivals such as Diwali, Siva Ratri and Holi.

But to get much of Indian culture encapsulated in one quantum of experience I go to the movies. I've been to a lot of Indian movies in many of their cities, to imbibe their 10,000 year history, to cry during the enthralling music and dance pageants. 

But "RRR" tonight beat them all for heart-startling action and cut to the bone sentiments about love, loyalty and survival. The theme: the Indian revolt against the British Empire's looting, torturing and murdering the natives, set in the 1920s. If only we Australians were so brave as to kick out the British and become a Republic!

The crowd basically rioted, chanting prayers in unison; singing rousing revolutionary slogans; heckling the obese, ruddy and very nasty villain, a British Governor who with blue eyes and  white goatee beard looked somewhat like me and I was terrified the mob might tear the "Angrezi dog", me, to pieces out the back of the cinema, me wailing, "But I'm Australian! We hate the British too!"

They gasped, gurgled, giggled and gestured with surprise at some of the effects, such as a herd of captive animals set loose amongst the British elite at one of their elaborate, celebratory dinners: think tigers at Memsahibs' throats.

The crowd continued their half-riot after the movie, out the front of a cinema hall that was as big as an aircraft-hangar. They yelled, hooted, gabbled and laughed ecstatically, a grand thrill-ride of assured nationalism and brave spirituality had been had by all. 

They also shot around on their motorbikes yahooing like sub-atomic particles in a turbulent whirlpool. My over-excited driver, who up to then I trusted and half-felt safe with, suddenly turned our motorbike into oncoming traffic, head on, causing a young man tearing towards us to slam on the brakes of his giant motorbike and skid right up to us. My driver braked also, otherwise we would've collided. 

I was furious and I now lie in my bed thinking: I've taken on the challenge of 7 motorbike rides every day and only just made it through to here; but it's similar to Russian roulette,  sometime your number has to come up. 

I'm chilling with the motorbikes after this, the third close call. I  think I'll walk from now on, while I still have legs. But next day I didn't live up to my vow, like in that old sore, "it's like falling off a pushbike, you just get up and ride again." And I did survive, as if my guardian angel worked overtime.

Fantasy is soothing to the brain for a few moments, giving it a break from the hard work of tackling reality. But the real world crashes in eventually, bills have to be paid, illnesses dealt with, a better job sought, a boyfriend dumped because he revealed himself to be a mean, greedy, conniving monster. Thus pretty illusions get blown out the arse. Oh well, I can dream and hope can't I?

If you find my writing interesting and entertaining please buy my latest book, "Punk Outsider."

Order from Pass-Port Store and Gallery Oxford Square Darlinghurst Or The Bookshop Oxford Street Darlinghurst Or tobyzoates@hotmail.com 

The Money or The Box.

 

I have told this story in my first novel, Vagabond Freak, but I feel like rebooting it, to stretch the muscles of my short story writing.

In 1974, when I was 24, I was on the road in India. I wanted to visit a sacred site to Vishnu the Preserver that was in the High Himalayas, not far from the Tibetan, (Chinese), border. It is called Badrinath and it was forbidden for foreigners to visit.

We had tried once to reach there by walking along an ancient pilgrims' path that snaked atop mountain ridges for 300kms, this way hoping to avoid the government check-posts that would have repelled us. But after 2 weeks trekking we were caught by the police half way and sent back down to Rishikesh. 

Then in October the government rescinded its ban and allowed foreigners entry and my friends and I rushed by bus to the sacred site, reaching it in a day. It was bleak, with only one dormitory for pilgrims, sleeping on concrete blocks with freezing winds raging amongst the snowcapped crags outside. My best friend Vanyo couldn't handle it and left after a few days but my companion, a New Zealand woman named Moti, wished to stay on as I did.

During the days I sat by the road drawing Hindu mythology on flat rocks with oil crayons, the locals enjoying my art and often placing sticks of primo hashish in my hand so that I could be psychedelically inspired and weather the harsh conditions, stoned to the high heavens.

Moti Ma sat beside me, also 24 years old, very beautiful, with blond dreadlocks piled high on her head and captivating blue cat's eyes that caused every man to stumble when he looked into them. Along came the Big Baba who was head honcho of Badrinath and he was stopped in his tracks, stunned by my colorful drawings of the Hindu gods and praising me for them. He offered to let us stay in his ashram, out of the freezing winds, if I would paint Rama, Sita and Laxman on the white wall of his domicile. In reality the horny old dog was enraptured at the sight of Moti Ma and from then on thought up every wily trick he could imagine so as to get his hands upon her luscious body.

The old baba was Vishnu's representative in Badrinath, he took the name Narada, the cosmic musician who sang of Vishnu's glories, purveyor of peace and wisdom on Earth. He played celestial music on a veena for the God of Preservation to chill him and his consort Laxmi while they slept the Dreamtime and kept the Universe revolving peacefully. Perhaps the old fellow actually thought he was an embodiment of Vishnu and Moti Ma could play the part of Laxmi and together they would copulate and bring the Universe into harmony. Or perhaps his intense yogic practice made him overly randy as it's known that the energy flowing up from the base of the spine can swirl uncontrollably in the second chakra, the sex glands, and give a man a permanent hard-on. Whatever the cause, from then on the old boy attempted to seduce the blond goddess daily throughout the duration of our stay in that Himalayan fastness.

While I slaved in the high mountain sun painting tripped out avatars upon a blazing white wall the old Baba lured Moti Ma into his inner sanctum promising to reveal arcane spiritual truths and yogic disciplines that would bring on nirvana. He gargled on about Tantric Yoga and how the conjoining of two bodies in spiritual bliss was the answer to all her enquiries as to the reason for her existence. She was too street smart, she'd heard it all before, the old Tantric Yoga bullshit. Every guy she'd ever met on the road had tried it on her and she was heartily sick of the cosmic come-on. The old bag of wrinkles would slyly put his hand on he upper thigh while whispering seductive incantations into her ear and she would slap his hand away every time. Many days she went into his altar room to see if any spiritual secrets were to be had plus to ensure their room out of the wind and sleet continued to shelter us. And every time he tried it on her and every time she refused and slapped his hand away.

This is an old story in India and many a woman, enraptured, or even mesmerised, by the "spiritual" power of a yoga baba fell for the mumbo jumbo nonsense, perhaps seeing the degrading behaviour as the saint's "lila" or cosmic game-playing, divine harmless fun. She would allow herself to be sexually molested, raped, sometimes over and over, thinking this is what yoga entailed. Not Moti Ma, she knew an arsehole's dirty tricks when played out upon her and she steadfastly remained chaste, she saw herself as a yogini, a Hindu nun, and fucking a gonad-inflamed baba was out of the question.

The town of Badrinath had a river, the Alakananda, flowing down the middle of it. On one side was the Holy precinct of the temple and babas quarters, on the other was the pilgrims' hostel, a chai wallah and a few shops providing a few daily necessities. Women undergoing menstruation were forbidden to enter the temple side of the river as they were considered to be polluters. We were staying near the temple and every day Narada Baba questioned Moti as to whether she was having her period to which she would assure him she wasn't. As the weeks drifted by he became more hysterical about the assured appearance of her poisonous menstrual blood and if so we would have to leave pronto, blizzards regardless. Somehow, by sheer yogini discipline and willpower she kept her periods at bay.

Baba Narada played an instrument called the Dattatraya Veena, similar to a sitar only it had 112 strings and he had it electrified, plugged into an amp. He played it like a testosterone-fueled Jimi Hendrix, morning and evening during his satsang, a religious talk given to pilgrims to boost their enlightenment. I sat entranced as the music took me to the 7 heavens, the rising sun shone through the open verandah of the temple and pierced my third eye and white light exploded around me as the music reached a crescendo. I fancied I was enlightened and opened my eyes in wonder to see how the Baba performed this magic. 

His fingers rushed with a blur across the 112 strings, plucking and stroking, a whole orchestra emanated from his touch. He was aiming his instrument in Moti's direction, who sat beside me also in a trance. He shook the veena up and down as if it were a magic wand, washing her in the sound waves, engulfing her, pulling her towards him, luring her into his will. I nudged her and she snapped awake, the spell was broken, she stared demurely at the floor, the Baba's efforts waned and squeaked discordantly to a close, and he looked at me with a sour eye.

Most days I kept furiously painting the tableaux the old Baba demanded on the hot, white wall, the high sun sending me delirious, the searing light blinding me. I couldn't resist giving my interpretation of the Avatars, rainbow psychedelic with planets and galaxies spinning out of their heads, their garments made up of trees, flowers and ice crags, the bountiful earth held in their hands. This drove the traditionalist Baba crazy, he harped and carped to change the figures back to calenday stereotypes, so banal in my mind. Plus he wanted me to add Hanuman, Garuda the Eagle and Ravana the Demon king, all too much hard labour for the joy of sleeping in the doorway of his ashram.

Moti and I slept in the ante-room, beside the front door, which constantly swung open to let in a gang of the Baba's deadbeat sadhu cronies who then rushed into a back room, all snug and cozy. A fiercely cold wind swept in with them, ice particles pouring down upon us. We cowered under a ragged quilt, trying to keep warm, me cursing the old bastards as they restlessly charged in and out. There were times Moti and I clung to each other in desperation and the squinty eyed sadhus seeing us trembling under the quilt fired up their pornographic imagination.

They told Narada Baba I was fucking her every night, they were witness to our humping and pumping, and the old goat was furious, I was getting all the blond pussy and he wasn't getting any. He hissed like a cobra whenever I crossed his path and his anxiety over Moti's menstruation grew more fetid as the days straggled on.

I had learnt that the cave of Mahavatar Babaji was somewhere nearby and I longed to meditate in his presence, assured that would bring on my samadhi. He embodied universal love, compassion and wisdom, was reputed to be over a thousand years old having overcome death and the wheel of rebirth, somewhat like Gautama Buddha. Indeed the Badrinath temple was of Tibetan design, the border of Tibet being only a few kilometres away and the idol in the temple, having been rescued from a hot-spring where it had been hidden for centuries, had been eroded to the point that it was now a minimalist, featureless figure, seated in meditation, and could've been of Buddhist origin rather than Hindu.

I was enamoured of the myth of Babaji and longed to experience his all-encompassing love. Their was an army camp just up the mountain road on guard in case of a Chinese incursion and daily the soldiers came to bathe in the tanks of hot sulphur spring water, of which there were 7, one being for women alone. But splashing about in the other six I often found myself next to extremely handsome men, virtually naked in their underpants, one of them particularly attracted to me, as I had a well-sculpted physique from all the yoga, dancing and trekking. My bright blue eyes were the killer and we only had eyes for each other. Raging lust overtook universal love and I was inflamed uncontrollably but the sight of his huge, bulging crotch.

The soldiers were as randy as hell having been stuck in the snowy heights with no women and only each other for company. The masculine beauty who fancied his chances exhibited his huge erection for me while he was dressing and then indicated that I should follow him up the mountain path. How I longed to go, but not only was it inappropriate in these celestial surroundings, the old sadhu buggers from Narada Baba's posse forever had their beady eyes on my comings and goings as if they were spies sent to get further details of my seduction of Moti Ma. And so I had to forego lust in the dusty snow with a magnificent Indian warrior, watching that beauty disappear into the mountains has lingered in my third eye into my old age.

Many days I hung out with the true sadhu babas, those who stayed on in Badrinath once winter had set in, living in the snow and freezing winds, capable of enduring the cold on little sustenance due to their yogic ability to induce heat from their solar plexus while holding their breath for long periods in meditation. When available they were inordinately fond of eating the highly nutritious milk cake and Tibetan tsampa, and smoking hashish from chillums, all of which I endeavoured to supply them when I could. A few of them eschewed eating or smoking anything at all and I have often fantasised that one of them could've been Mahavatar Babaji, the supreme yogi, hiding in plain sight, to study these foreigners who had been the first of their kind to wander into his icy fastness.

By mid November it started snowing heavily and Moti and I realised our time in that celestial abode was coming to an end. Then one day she breathlessly came up to me and whispered that her period had finally come and we should leave poste haste. Narada Baba somehow sussed it out, as we'd been their for about 7 weeks and when we ran for the bus he chased us with wrath beaming from under his bushy eyebrows. 

The bus was chugging slowly away and we managed to jump into it before it picked up speed. I looked back and spied Narada Baba standing upon a rock, right arm upraised, him howling a curse and directing a lightning bolt our way. "Whew!" I thought, "escaped in the nick of time. That old dick will just have to pull himself into orgasm all on his fucked up lonesome." I watched the Badrinath temple recede into the distance, the snow eventually blanketing it from sight but not from my memory as I'd had one of the most incredibly fantastic times of my life there.

The bus was crowded with pilgrims, men, women and children, and many soldiers going on leave. Moti and I sat up the back with a sadhu baba and I was dozing in the lap of a handsome soldier, happy to get away from Narada baba's wrath, at peace with an awesome universe. I felt a strange weightlessness lifting me up and swinging me about, the soldier was nice but he wasn't levitating me and the bus was picking up speed, swaying and trembling unnaturally. I was being shaken to and fro as the bus swerved sharply around the bends to close to the edge for comfort.

Something was wrong, the bus rocking as if in a storm, and all the passengers around me sensing trouble and moaning for it meant disaster was upon us. When the bus screeched as if metal was being torn from it and shuddered as if in a death throe when taking the corners, faster and faster, and the crowd screamed louder and louder, overcome with terror, For we all realised the brakes had gone and the bus was careering down the mountain out of control, a sheer drop of hundreds of metres to the river below barely avoided at each turn of the road.

To be continued...

The Proof of Life Book.

As a boy I wandered far to see what lay over the horizon. At 21,  in 1971, I disappeared up the highway, a deadbeat Vagabond. My parents weren't sure where I was except it probably had something to do with India, a fabulously mythic land I'd been obsessed with since imbibing The Jungle Book, Jungle Jim and Baden Powell's Boy Scouts, for I was a Cub.

Since then India has become my second home, though I've been many places, it is my favourite haunt. After the 2 year house-arrest of Covid the planes flew again in '22 and borders opened.

I took my chance and rushed into the wild blue yonder where adventure, love and mystery rained down upon me. Riding the shaman's winged horse, the Sufi's flying carpet, arriving in Rama's silver chariot, I rode upon a djinn's broad shoulders to the top of the Himalayas where jagged white crags hovered close enough to kiss the cool sweet air.

There is a primeval temple there to an unknown God, a nature spirit, awesome, containing the entire Universe. When you stand before it you can't ask for anything, it's not a wishing well, you just have to BE, and what will come will come, what you deserve. If you are cool, a cool life is yours.

I'm not religious, a militant atheist in fact,  but I am still aware of the sacredness of conscious existence in a stupendous Universe. This temple is difficult to reach, sometimes snow blocks the road, or money is short or there is no transport available. Yet I try determined, if I make it there I can make it anywhere.

I have learned of my place in this crazy wonderful dream world, I am central to IT, as everybody is, and I carry IT with me wherever I go, I am the Temple and when I dance abandoned my ego craxks, the wall that cuts me off from the WHOLE, dissolves. Yes, I know this is cosmic claptrap but as a close friend has said to me, "Whatever gets you through the night, baby!"

• 

Travelling further up the road I reached Gangotri, the source of the Ganges River. It used to be at the foot of a glacier, Gormukh, which has now retreated 19 kms up the mountain, but the temple to Ganga Ma remains fixated, and millions of devotees flood to it.

As we marched across the ice I slipped and fell face first into a pool of melted snow and got drenched to the bone. When later my friends said it was auspicious to bathe in the freezing river I replied, "No thanks, I've already done it, fully clothed."

I flailed about in the slush and 7 Indians hurried over to rescue me from my debacle. I reverted to my Speedy Gonzales Mexican mouse alter ego and loudly squeaked, "Aye, Yay Yay! Aribba, arriba! Yow, yow, yow!" 

My Indian rescuers each grabbed an arm and a leg and almost tore me in half as they dragged me from the water. One of them promptly announced he was a physiotherapist and asked if I needed medical attention. "Yes! My legs are broken! Achy wow wow! Work on them now!" He then asked me for my contact number. "Huh?"

In a fever I mumbled, "1538740063373621153859553168843276308876652913335869911..."I stopped to take a deep breath and he exclaimed, "But sir, surely that is too many numbers?" I wisecracked, "No! I've come along way to get here sweetheart, what do you expect?" 

They all looked confused by my comic routine. Indians don't seem to get firanghi humour, they buy it as reality, the physio furiously rubbing my legs as if he were a miracle worker while I plonked down upon a mound of snow. I love Indians' naivitie, they are sweet and innocent like children. They can also be mean, venal and abusive as attested by a nasty incident that occurred further down the road.

Sorry to indulge in more superstitious nonsense but I'm a Libran, the balance, in the above incident the balance went up, but it didn't take long for it to come crashing down as I'm an unbalanced guy. One of my biggest problems is insomnia, especially when I'm on the road I go without sleep for a week. This winds me up BAD. I also get heat exhaustion easily in my old age, and in India it gets very hot, my brain gets turned into a fried egg.

Late in the afternoon, after a wondrous journey, me feeling smugly satisfied with my self, we were trundling along a narrow, dusty mountain road. Up ahead there had been a landslide and a road crew was trying to clear the rubble from the road while traffic banked up. In Indian traffic jams it's every man for himself and a few cars pushed into the narrow space available, confronted by a giant bus that bulldozed its way in from the opposite direction, blocking any further movement for everyone.

A scraggy little guy, head of the road gang, stood screaming and waving his arms about like a scarecrow. He was yelling for the cars to back up and allow the bus through. Twenty cars had to reverse as if conjoined, similar to a human centipede. I could stand the irrational arrangement no longer and jumped from the car, rushing up to the centre of the traffic mele.

I screamed for the bus to reverse and allow the huge crowd of cars to snake through. The scarecrow screamed at me to shut my chapati hole and leave the disentanglement to him. I shrieked at him to get a brain, it would be simpler to have the bus back up. He shrieked invective in return, two other guys ran over and gabbled insults that I understood to mean, "Fuck off!" 

I cursed them all, particularly the bus driver, its passengers hanging from the windows and enjoying the spectacle, the usual firanghi (foriegner) flip out, after two years tourists were back, "Hallelujah!"

In the middle of the fracas, with guys tugging on my arms, the Scarecrow hissing in my face and me yowling, I suddenly stopped the show by shouting, " Matta chud! (Motherfucker.)" I had heard this word in a hundred Bollywood movies and, while it was a nasty insult, usually the audience laughed. They didn't laugh this time. The three amigos road crew attacked me and attempted to tear me to pieces, me caterwauling like a cat thrown on the barbie.

I stumbled back to the car with three irate trogladytes s hanging off me. I got into my seat with them tugging at the doors and implicating my driver in the ruckus, screaming at him as if it was all his fault. The Scarecrow reached into the car and pulled out the car keys, then stood in front of us gabbling into his phone, incriminating us, me, to some official bigwig. 

I semi-shat my pants.

My driver yelled at me, "What did you do that for? Now he's calling the police!" Dread and horror, the Indian cops can be monstrous. I sneered, "Fuck 'em! He's full of shit. Go and get the keys!" My driver wimped out, "No." I growled a bit louder, " Go and get the keys! He's nobody." Again I got a wimpy, "No, I can't do it!" Now I shouted forceful enough to blow his eardrums out his arse, my eyes bulging, "Go and get the fucking keys!"

He scrambled from the car and begged, whined and apologised to the scraggy arsehole who was still jabbering into his phone, pointing at me and taking down our license number. Eventually, with much humiliating kowtowing he handed back the car keys and we relaxed. Disaster had been seemingly averted.

By this time the bus had passed us with its load of mountain peasants jeering. The cars in our lane had also passed through the logjam, we were the last to straggle through, much chagrined. My driver moaned, " Now the police will be waiting for us in Chamba!" "Bullshit!" I grumbled, "the cops are too lazy to deal with this nonsense."

Sure enough we shot through the grungy town of Chamba, rubbish and shit piled up on either side of the truck-stop road, with nary a cop in sight.

We cruised on further down the road, and, as always, the scales of my balance swung back up again. We passed a road crew's camp with its tarred tin huts. These road labourers lead a very harsh life along with their children. A boy of about 7 flagged us down and said to me through the open window,  "Well, what have you got for us?" I had passed this way before and knew of the children's deprivation and longing for some small relief. Thus we had brought ten packets of butter biscuits to hand out.

As we got out of the car a crowd of kids appeared from nowhere and rushed us, near rioting. While I took photos my friend handed 3 biscuits to every kid reaching out for one. Soon the biscuits were gone and I noticed two little tykes at the back of the crowd with sad, disappointed faces as they were unable to push their way through the crowd. I went over to them and gave each a ten rupee note which will buy a heap of sweets or be proudly presented to their mothers. 

As the cutest little fellow stared at his note in wonder an older and much bigger boy tried to take it from him but he rebuffed the bully with a deft shove and I realised he had already learned to take care of himself.  It was Lord of the Flies in the High Himalayas. 

I determined that the next time I came I would bring a whole carton of biscuits and each kid would get a packet. Maybe I'd even buy a load of cheap toys to hand out, they were plentiful in the town market. 

We cruised off, I was satiated with satisfaction, happiness and purpose, a child's smile is the greatest gift one can receive on this planet. We settled back and I got lost in watching the passing world, the ups and downs, the winding road, the rolling hills, the setting sun. 

This is not an exercise in "virtue signaling", it's what happened, the story I feel to tell. I've made it apparent that I can be a right little, flip out bastard at times, a mixture of angel and devil, like most. Still I find that the adventure of life is grand.

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