Chapter 13
Veranasi
I was a wreck on the train. I had a high fever and had little appetite. I lay crumpled on my bunk bed oblivious to the world, even to myself. The Dakatia energy was still wandering inside me. The old Kali priest was still trying to claim me. His little sari angel kissed me on the lips. I was delirious. An Indian businessman gave me some medicine, but it was just the prelude to another hustle. He wanted my Walkman. I refused to sell it. I asked him why India was the way it was. “Oh, everybody’s into rackets here. Nothing works because NOBODY CARES,” he calmly stated. There was a low moral index in India.
As soon as the train arrived in Veranasi, the touts attacked in full force. I knew where I wanted to go. My guidebook suggested a Japanese establishment right next to the river. If it was Japanese it had to be clean, I reasoned, and HONEST. The touts were ready. “No it’s been flooded,” they sang in chorus. “No, it’s ONLY for Japanese,” they whooped. “No, no, it’s under renovation,” they cried. A Muslim on a bicycle rickshaw saw his opening. “I’ll take you to the river,” he urged. “You can find the Kumiko House there. Don’t trust these Hindus, they all get a commission.”
The Veranasi touts knew the tourists were on to them and lied by saying that their commissions were paltry. The Muslim was from Calcutta, so I felt a sense of kinship with him. All he wanted was a tip. At the river, the kid touts took the offensive. They made me march needlessly through a maze of fluttering alleys, this way and that. I hated them. They took me to their hotel. I said, “KUMIKO!” The little kids brayed and demanded a tip. They were shameless. But they finally took me to Kumiko House and it was like a dream. I had found a refuge and clean water with a Japanese twist.
Kumiko was owned by a long-bearded Bengali who reminded me of an exhausted but amiable Santa Claus. The Bengali’s wife was a tall Japanese woman who spoke no English. “Konichi wa!” I stammered. “HAI!” the tall Japanese wife sharply bellowed. I was in heaven. I was given a room facing the Ganges river. It was a place with a powerful vibe. The mist and the sun played with the eternal river in a bashful sweet sort of way. Everything was gleaming. Boats drifted lazily by the sandy riverbanks. Children screamed throughout the crumbling scenery.
Everything looked and felt old. Buildings and towers hugged the western side of the snaking river; the eastern side was bare. This was Shiva’s city and Mother Ganges fed the endless stream of sadhus and holy men. Her waters were for purification. I was too sick to venture out and lay weakly in bed just soaking my sins in sweat. Summer seemed very far away. I ate my Japanese food slowly. Kumiko was filled with Japanese brats too shy to talk to a Gaijin. “Some things never seem to change,” I muttered to myself.
The Ganges. I took a boat ride and saw endless hordes of people bathing. Ba-be-bi-bo-bum. Wriggling like an eel, bodies being burned. Sadhus meditating, yogis doing their monkey trip. RELEASE and PURIFICATION. I was navigating through different worlds and through my own mind. It was a twenty-four-hour proposition. My landlord Santa took me to see a madwoman. Her name was Ganga Ma. She was mourning her husband. Ganga Ma gave me a wicked grin and propped her feet on my lap. I sensed strong psychic power as she stroked my hair. It was maternal, sweet, and erotic. She was like Summer, but with higher voltage. KALI was nearby. I could feel her close by. I was introduced to a catty priest who told me Ganga Ma sometimes spaced out for days. Eating no food and saying not a word. Ganga Ma fed her priest by hand. I was repulsed by this and would not allow myself to be fed in this manner. “Your pride is your weak point,” the catty priest said. “It separates you from other people, why can’t you see this?”
I was introduced to Ganga Ma’s daughter. She too was psychic and would go into a trance by mere mention of anything remotely spiritual. The daughter had vampire teeth and enjoyed having her hair stroked. I escaped into the alleys, but Ganga Ma followed me into my room. Her mind was aggressive and ticked off. I refused to be claimed. I soon fell asleep all caked with psychic mud. It had seeped in somehow, and when I awoke, it had solidified. A spaced-out Japanese woman made a pass at me. She was lost and had nowhere to go. She was NOT REALLY Japanese. I let her attend a puja. This Mama-san was clean and orderly like Japan, like Kumiko House. Outside, India ruled. Dirt and chaos ruled and it simply never compromised.
Quasars as seen from Veranasi:
Funny objects were found many years ago in space. These funny objects were found to be receding at speeds approaching the speed of light. But, it was concluded, if they really were receding at such speeds, they would necessarily be very far away, and to be so DISTANT and yet be BRIGHT ENOUGH. It looked like these stars were putting out MORE ENERGY than an entire galaxy! The number of quasars seems to grow rapidly as we look farther into space and back into time. It is argued that quasars are possibly white holes where things just expanded into existence as they popped out of these strange female orifices. Others argue that quasars have black holes in their hearts powerful enough to raise a BLACK TIDE on any star that fatally orbits nearby. The real story of these cosmic candles has probably only begun to unfold. So far there are only hints .... the darkest object of all making the brightest bodies .... farthest away, then throwing sneaky clues about what lies in the center of the Milky Way, practically next door.
And practically next door:
I was getting tired of the predatory nature of Veranasi’s hustler population. Like swarming flies they buzzed and clung around you. I visited the Golden Temple and the Blue Mosque nearby. It was a hot zone. Soldiers had occupied Veranasi. The Muslims and Hindus were at each other’s throats. It was a grease job blackened by religious bugs on a cold winter morning. I saw a child attacked by a monkey. My illness was easing now. A celebrated astronomer had said that there never had been a Big Bang and thus no BIG CRUNCH was coming. The Universe was the way it had always been with no need for a creator. WHAT AN EARTH-SHATTERING CONCLUSION! The astronomer had found religion. He was a closet Buddhist. In Calcutta, I had explored unconditional misery. KALI’S cooking pot transformed all pain into bliss. I stared at the ceiling in my room. Soft cries wafted in from the outside. The radiance of a saint was the same as that of a star, I thought to myself. The darkness of space echoed the darkness of some eternal slum misery. Black holes spewed out LIGHT. Hell holes spewed out the same deep mysterious GLOW .... gravity and light, misery and bliss, slavery and freedom .... the laws of nature and of the mindheart seemed to be the SAME. Both came together and both then transcended together. I rose from my bed and struggled to come to terms with this paradox. I heard a knock on the door. It was Santa Claus. “Sir! Would you like to rent a boat today?” he boomed in a fatherly and caring voice. “No, not today,” I retreated. “Sir! Do you know that Japanese and Sanskrit are the same language?” my pushy host volunteered. My face lit up. In my mind, I could see myself shrieking and racing out of the room, possibly in hysterics. This was IT too. VERANASI!
Dear Guardian Angel:
I met this really young South African girl with the kind of bulbous forehead that usually reflects superior intelligence. She was another twenty-something feeling the brunt of The Third Wave. You know, I guess I was lucky. Us thirty-forty somethings had a taste of the Second Wave’s final flowering. You know before this crazy cybernation hit like a typhoon. These twenty-somethings are total Third Wave creatures. It’s so weird, you’d think in this age of rapid flux generational differences would be magnified, and they are, but on another level this doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. This constant pressure to re-invent yourself and one’s networks makes generational mind-sets kinda goofy and irrelevant. Here in this crazy country called India, you see the waves clashing more easily. There’s just no time luxury here. No horizontal flux. It’s VERTICAL FLUX all the way. But this vertical flux seems to be the wave of the future for EVERYBODY. What kinda awareness will that create? Where will the mind rest? Breakdown is highly possible. There is no guarantee of a breakthrough. I don’t care what Captain Kirk says. You need to think on multiple levels now. You need to give your mind more time to rest, so it can hyper-organize. The spiritual path is a tricky one. INDIVIDUAL ACCUMULATION is critical for determining progress on the spiritual path. You can’t just rush things. NO! Spiritual ego-tripping is a real danger here. Finding a good teacher is essential, NO! Critical .... Hah! Many seekers already want to teach! Did I tell you, I bussed over to Sarnath? Well, I did! It’s the place where the Buddha gave his first sermon. There’s this huge stupa there. It’s huge! A stupa’s this kind of chunky pillar that commemorates a holy happening. It also radiates spiritual energy. I like Sarnath. It’s got this subtle peace that just creeps up on you. That is, when the Goddamn Indians aren’t blaring their irritating music at three in the morning! They just don’t care .... they just space out and they’re zombies. You can’t talk to them. There’s no more dharma kings here. They split the scene long ago. These kings would build stupas all over the place, and give money to build monasteries. It was like lighting holy fires in the darkness. These kings were good at it. Some were worldly kings, others mystical ones, and some of these kings lived in heaven. Here is also a strange and wonderful country called Shambala, it’s somewhere secret, possibly in the sub-Arctic, where thirty-two kings exist magically, until a future technological war will usher in a new Golden Age of world freedom and enlightenment. Am I talking about the Second Coming? I don’t know .... which way is the wind blowing?
Yours,
Apocalyptical determination
I trudged over to Lama Gosar’s monastery. It was close to the big stupa. Dust and grime caked the place, but Lama was roused out of his sleep. I asked for a MO. The Lama breezed through his beads. My fortune hung in the balance. “You better do your prostrations. Even ten is important. Don’t shoot for the moon. Keep the commitment,” Lama yawned. “You’ll finish your screenplay and you’ll sell it, but it’s the computer game that will rake in the bucks, and pay attention to the fine lines on the contract. NEXT QUESTION!” Lama exclaimed. “She’s yours. Stop worrying about it. Both of you are bonded by karma. You have the same outlook on life. She’s your spiritual wife and she’s got VERY STRONG FEELING for you. I can also feel a third party here. Don’t worry about it. He’s been out of the picture for many months. Take your time. Don’t make any hasty decisions. Anything else?” Lama asked. “Will I get into Tibet?” ¦ nervously inquired. You could hear a pin drop in the room. “Yes, but I don’t know when.” Lama responded. “But, if you can get to Kailas, you’ll earn a lot of merit.” Lama yawned and offered some tea. He was a squat dark sort of fellow. Totally humble in his demeanor. “I’m just a simple monk,” he declared.
Poor India, suffering from vertical flux. The first two waves were “impure” here. You had poor peasants with TV. You had poor peasants with stereo. THEY WERE SOUND FREAKS! They made me anti-Indian and I hated myself for this. My eyes were red and swollen. The Tibetans descended in swarms to pray for world peace at Sarnath. The furious waves were rushing beneath the shell of the planet and its bottomless depths underneath. I could feel my mind unfurling and flying and hissing at incredible speeds across the groaning subcontinent I was lost in. There seemed to be NOBODY at the wheel. All creation was unwinding into me. Flashing shadows of hungry ghosts vibrated all over the walls of the stupa. There was no escaping it. I resigned myself to all.
The rains began to fall on Veranasi. The alleyways of Godalia turned into rivers of mud. I was still groggy from the antibiotics. Even in the rain the beggars, money-changers, pimps, and touts assaulted you. They haggled, they pleaded, THEY NEVER SETTLED. My rickshaw tailgated a truck carrying a corpse. It was a thin one wrapped up like a hero sandwich. It was a creepy overcast day with dark mourning skies and a depressing pitter-patter of shocking circumstances. Veranasi was a hassle. Pure and simple.
I couldn’t really understand RAGA. It was a strange WHITE KINDA MUSIC. It floated and lifted itself from the depths of some mysterious form of pious suspension. Raga stretched a single color of musical tone, exploring its redness, or its blueness thoroughly like a long hypnotic meditation. It was different from Western music which was BLACK and CLAMPY and MULTI-COLORED. Mozart the king of WHITE STRESS would have been a BLACK MUSICIAN in India. The Blacks in America with their WHITE JAZZ were the closest equivalent to RAGA in the Western hemisphere. It was all very strange.
It was time to go back to SILLY-GURI. It was time to leave INDIA at last. I sat with Santa Claus in his living room. I could hear the chatter of the satellite television. A major earthquake had hit LA. I felt a quiver of doom. “Why do the Indians play their music so loud?” I complained. “Oh, Sir! It is a Muslim custom. The Muslims injured us. Why does America support the Muslims? They are your enemies! Why doesn’t your country support Hindus? I will tell you in one word: O-I-L!” Santa was pleased with his tirade.
I said good-bye and walked into a disaster at Mogulsarai. The crazy conductors gave me the wrong platform instructions and I missed my train for North Bengal. My mind went CRASH! I walked into the dispatcher’s room and started cursing at the confused Indians. I could see the rats scurry back and forth in deep fear of the ugly American. Three hours later, I was on the next train to New Jalpaiguri. It was also late by four hours. We passed Bihar again. It was all quite familiar now, the grinding poverty, the intense heat, and the downcast sullen population. It was dreary. I felt completely lost in this dry and forsaken Mafia world. A boy pulled up in front of my window and lifted his shirt to reveal a swollen belly covered with flaky scabs. I threw him some coins and calmly munched on some peanuts. Yes, New Delhi seemed like centuries away now. All the novelty had worn off. I was trying to escape India.
The train arrived in New Jalpaiguri in the middle of the night. I had no choice but to spend precious rupees on a miserable room near the train station. The next morning I was in Siliguri with a new idea. Why not go to Sikkim? It was close by and it promised more and better kicks. The Kagyupa capital was in Rumtek, and I wanted to talk to the Lama who had found the little boy in Tibet. It sounded like an adventure worth having. I hurried over to little Kalu’s monastery in Salugara and saw heavy and enormous military traffic, on the ground and in the air, on my way there. THE CHINESE WERE CLOSE BY. Indian jets screamed viciously through the excited skies as my rickshaw driver relieved himself in the bushes. The end of the Cold War seemed to have gone unnoticed here. I could feel Summer’s energy shifting and fading. Danger was now just around the corner. Eurasia was preparing a final examination and I knew I had to pass it.
