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Then in October the government rescinded its ban and allowed foreigners entry and my friends and I rushed by bus to the sacred site, reaching it in a day.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...