Gajanana, Lambodara, Soorpakarna,
Ekadanta, Vinayaka, Heramba:
Guard me at the back; guard me at the front,
Guard me at the right; guard me at the left,
Guard me above, guard me below,
Guard me on all sides, guard me all around.
image from www.uniqueholidaysindia.com
Khajuraho, Day 19
Having roamed for weeks through palace art collections of sculpture and paintings of kings and queens, Gods and Goddesses practicing the delicate arts of love, Ami felt the pull toward India’s sensual spirit.
It was Khajuraho, she told herself. Just the proximity to the Kama Sutra temples.
What surprised her was that she actually had to look for erotica on the walls of Khajuraho’s temples. She had to seek out the carvings of couples in coitus, whole orgies, the occasional act of bestiality. The erotica wasn’t all over the place, like everyone said, except for those sandstone women with breasts in defiance of gravity, twisting around and cutting their eyes, pole dancing without the pole, applying the same sun-blanched eye makeup they’ve been applying for hundreds of years.
When she did find the depictions of sexual postures, they were far above the line of vision and often surrounded by an entourage of heavenly bodies and snorting horses. They entwined in the exploits of accomplished gymnasts, arching elegant necks for a languid kiss. Gods in meditative repose looked on while guides lectured on the educational advantages of the Kama Sutra, and unabashed tourists snapped photos.
“Look,” said a guide, “Here you can see a series of events. The lady looks toward her lover from lowered eyelids. Next, the lady has a problem she wishes to hide from her lover. Finally they resolve the issue and commence lovemaking.” It was a peepshow; all business.
Ami stepped away from the gawking crowds, into the Shiva shrine, her bare feet instantly cold on the shadowed stone floor. An ambulatory disappeared into musty darkness behind the main idol. She veered softly to the left, embarrassed to be in a holy place knowing that she’d come not as a pilgrim but as a voyeur. A small and shoddily dressed man attending the idol spotted her and scampered down the three steep steps to block her path. She expected a scolding, but he grinned wide, revealing a mouthful of broken, brown teeth “Yes, yes, come see the shrine of Shiva.”
She looked down and tried for a gracious refusal. She didn’t want to climb into the shrine. I’m not Hindu, she thought. This will end up costing me money.
“Yes, yes, come. No problem,” the man persisted, already heading in that direction, his dhoti hitched up high between his legs to make the climb easier. So, she followed, struggling up the awkward steps, certain the steep hunks of stone would challenge the stride of most Indians.
Inside the gloomy room, the man lit a candle and flashed dim light around the small cave. “See the mural on ceiling? Many many carvings.” Ami couldn’t see much, except that she was close to a round altar and she had no intention of moving past it. “See Shiva alter?” the caretaker tried again.
Ami nodded.
“Very nice. Shiva Lingam. You know Lingam?” He was all friendly, full of good will and professionalism.
Ami took a hard look at the cylinder rising from the center of the altar. She knew its significance, its phallic shape, it’s relation to the Supreme Being, and nodded again, but the little man gestured vaguely toward his dhoti anyway.
Ami averted her eyes, embarrassed.
“Lingam rests on Yoni. Very nice.” The man offered, tracing the round shape carved into the altar that encircled the Lingam.
Ami crossed her fingers in hopes that he wouldn’t tell her about the birds and the bees.
“Touch the Lingam, no problem,” he insisted, the ever-patient Sex-Education teacher. Any minute he’ll pull out a handful of condoms and a banana and grade me on my technique, Ami thought. She wanted to laugh at the absurdity, but the man was watching her expectantly.
Instead of servicing the stone appendage, she decided to buy her way out of the predicament. She freed a small coin from her pocket and laid it on the altar, and then climbed out of the shrine. She doesn’t look back.
image from www.funbee.info
Khajuraho is the city of erotic desire, or so some say. The tourists come because they’re curious and the Indians come because it’s a holy site. Because wherever there’s a temple, there’s an unspoken rule that someone—perhaps anyone—must come to offer coins, toss flowers, circumambulate and mollify the Gods.
More than a pilgrimage destination, Khajuraho is a testament to the dichotomy that allows the monuments of ancient lust to sit peacefully in the midst of a country that frowns upon husbands and wives holding hands in public, women baring their shoulders, and sex from occurring between anyone other than those securely anchored by the proverbial ball and chain.
The remaining temples at Khajuraho are just a fraction of those originally built. The majority of those tributes to eroticism have long since returned to dust, along with their intended meaning. No longer do ascetics school young princes in the love arts. The frolicking deities have lost their celestial luster in the wake of jaded, commercialized sexuality.
Outside the park surrounding the temples eager merchants hustle “Kama Sutra key-chains”, gaudy brass creations on which poorly crafted figures act out Larry Flyn’s fantasies. Some can be manipulated via a spring. Even the most unabashed visitor can’t help but blush as the terrible hawkers persistently swarm, flailing their wares. “You like Kama Sutra?” they shout. And tourists who were mildly curious and slightly guilty suddenly feel as if they’ve been caught outside an X-rated movie theater.
image from www.michigal.blogspot.com
Ami had lunch at a place serving thali plates, the place Dev explained as the only place in town worth dinning. He told her that the trick was to order the “Simple Thali” instead of going all out for the Rs.130 “Super Thali”. She took his advice and requested the smaller meal, which, when it arrived, was bigger than her head. Three kinds of curry, plus dhal, chapattis, and curd.
She gorged herself on eggplant and potatoes, looking around at the other diners. The Indian women scooping baingan bahji onto rhoti were all ample sized, especially in comparison to the women Ami had grown accustomed to seeing in fields and markets. The female diners were plump inside their salwar kameezes, their faces round with satisfaction. She wondered if the secret was in the food.
image from www.enjoyindianfood.blogspot.com
He ate khichdi in the hotel courtyard, sitting on a wooden crate left by one of the cooks. The dish was steaming hot and spicy enough that the steam made his eyes water. He ate with his fingers, rolling the rice into small balls with his fingertips, then popping each bite into his mouth. It was, as always, a guilty pleasure. The yellow egg among the turmeric-yellow rice, the cashews and golden raisins, flecks of green here and there from chopped herbs, bright red from the chili peppers. It was the egg, really. He was raised not to eat them, not to eat any animal flesh.
But growing up, leaving the village, taking on the life of the working man—he had to admit at times he was jaded. Sometimes he blamed it on the tourists, on the western influences he carted all over his country, but of course that wasn’t the truth. Only he was responsible for the eggs he ate, the liquor he consumed, the occasional bidi, sex outside of marriage, the longing in his heart for love, for connection, for saturation.
Every time Dev ate khichdi, he was overwhelmed by the bright colors, the strong flavors, the earthy grains and fiery spice. He loved the dish, craved it, and sometimes prepared it for himself if the cook would let him in the kitchen. He loved the hiss of chopped peppers hitting hot oil, the crack of the egg shell, the dank scent of cumin and the almost mustard taste of turmeric. The blend of sweet and savory, the way the food felt in his mouth, the way it almost satisfied the urge in him to have all of his senses bombarded at once.
He was a man of cravings, a man of desires. But he wasn’t sure that those desires made him a weak man.
Of course the drinking was a shortcoming, and he always told himself he’d stop once he came off the long road trips. And sleeping with women—again, a character flaw, but he suspected Lord Krishna could forgive him, because he didn’t really lust after the feminine form, or chase skirts, or harass women into sex. He only sought to relieve his loneliness now and then, to seek comfort in the arms of another. And wasn’t that, after all, what God intended? For human beings to find companionship, to seek out their mates? Of course, once he was married he would never stray. Dev was sure of that.
Even the occasional egg—what was the harm? He maintained his obligatory devotion to the cow and never partook of the flesh of any fully-formed creature. He drank butter milk and ate curd almost religiously, veered his car away from any bovine beast in his path, and now and then offered a chapatti to one of the city cows wandering thin and dazed through the streets.
His greatest sin, Dev figured, was his longing for love. The longing that drove him to be a loner, to avoid his mother’s attempts at arranging a marriage, to stay out on the road claiming he was saving his money to buy his dream.
That dream. The impossible vision of his own business, which loomed far out on the horizon, safely out of reach. If it weren’t for the love-longing, surely Dev would give up the dream, be happy with his lot as a driver, and marry the first sturdy girl his mother introduced. He’d be a devoted husband, a good provider, and a kind father. That was what his life required of him.
The sin was that he didn’t fulfill his obligation, didn’t live out his karma as a good son, a good Hindu man. And by not embracing karma, he, in a sense, turned his back on dharma—his very religion.
Even before Ami, he’d known this of himself, but being with her, sleeping in her bed, he found himself facing his demon head on.
The right thing to do would be to apologize to her for his lascivious behavior and finish out the trip as a dutiful driver. He’d drop her in Delhi, take a week’s vacation and return to his mother’s village where he’d make offerings at the temple and spend a significant amount of time in prayer asking for forgiveness. Then, he’d swallow his pride and agree to let his mother find a suitable wife. That was that.
Dev mulled all of this over, the afternoon sun warming his face. He searched his heart for the bruise of shame he knew he should be wearing, the shame that drove him to whiskey as often as sleeplessness did. But in the green garden of Khujaraho, in that ancient city of divinely inspired love, he felt no bruise, no stain of his transgression. He could find only a small well of joy, as warm and welcome as winter sunshine, as steaming khichdi, as sunny yellow eggs.
image from www.adventureus.com
In the evening the town fell quiet and the hotel seemed empty. Dev knocked on Ami’s door, his face serious. “I have for you a ticket to the village dancing,” he announced.
“What’s that?”
“A traditional show of village people,” he explained. She shrugged and grabbed her jacket, following him to the car.
“Are you going, too?”
“Yes, I am driving you.”
“No, I mean are you going to watch the show?”
He looked at her, his eyes warm. “Yes, I am watching.”
They drove out of town to a large restaurant—obviously a tourist trap. A tent of canvas and thatch took up most of the front lawn, and men who appeared to be laborers by day, wore wrinkled white shirts and greeted newcomers, their voices bouncing around in the darkness.
Ami went into the tent while Dev parked the Ambassador. She was surprised to find that she was the first to arrive, and self-consciously she took a seat near the back in a plastic lawn chair. The show’s emcee swooped over to her, ushering her to the front. “Be comfortable!” he shouted, and promptly disappeared.
As it turned out, the audience included Ami, Dev, and two other tourists. They all huddled awkwardly in plastic chairs while the emcee explained about the nature of the dance; “a tradition in cases of marriage and other important events,” he announced, as if there were any other events than the endless wedding comprising January in India.
The musicians, seven of them, filed on stage in gold-trimmed dhotis and sorbet colored headbands carrying their array of instruments. The boys’ teeth were red with betel nut. As soon as the music started, a thin woman in flashing skirts and bangles swirled on to the stage and began a repetition of twirls and hand gestures. Her eyes, either angry or bored, shone with a hardness that never faded from them.
After three dances in which the angry woman twirled to the beat of a grinning boy with a hand drum, the emcee reappeared. “These are the real village people!” he shouts, but Ami was the only one who giggled at the thought of the 70’s New York City disco group. He then announced that the audience—all four of them—were about to see something a little different. New musicians in multi-colored caps filed in, and then the same dour girl with her bright scarf over her dark face. The “different” part was that she was joined by a man with an eyeliner moustache whose face seemed lit from within, his sparkling gaze taking in the whole of the sad little audience. He caught Ami’s eye and refused to drop his gaze. Ami, in a mood for a little combat, stared back.
In India it’s generally a bad idea for a woman to stare down a man—Holly had explained that in no uncertain terms—and for the most part Ami tried not to make direct eye contact unless engaged in conversation. The dancer was different though. He was on stage, making the roles clear: Ami was going to somehow be part of his performance.
She wondered if that was his gimmick—that each night he peered out into the audience and picked one woman to focus on, and then he danced his whole dance, his whole tradition in cases of marriage and other events, just for her. She wondered if she should laugh at him, laugh at the absurdity of it all. She wondered if the other two tourists noticed what was going on, if Dev was aware. She found herself excited, a slow heat rising from the base of her spine.
The series of dances was energetic, involving lots of bouncing and crouching. The mustached man did an impressive job of dancing backward alongside his grouchy companion, all the while keeping his electric gaze focused in Ami’s direction. She turned to see if someone had come in behind her, perhaps a relative or friend of the dancer, but found the back rows empty. She tried shifting her gaze to the musicians, studying their instruments. Hand drums, flutes an ocarina. The men sang, throwing their voices toward the top of the tent. Ami looked back toward the dancers, who were finishing their performance. The woman fluttered her hand in an elegant gesture and glared at her long fingers. The man raised his arms triumphantly and leveled Ami with a steamy gaze.
She swallowed hard.
He winked.
Ami wondered if everyone else in the room noticed this strange occurrence, but they all—even Dev—seemed oblivious. Dev was picking at his fingers. He stood up, whispered he was going to have a smoke. The stage cleared for a costume change and the emcee returned to announce the final series of dances.
“These are the peacock dances,” he yelled excitedly at the three remaining viewers. “Some are with feathers, some are with sticks.” He smiled expectantly and Ami nodded as if she had a clue as to what was going on. Then the music began again; more of the same drumming and singing, and the dancers returned, this time with reinforcements. Four men in shorts leaped onto stage and commenced a raucous dance with peacock fronds atop their heads. The mustached dancer had removed his fake moustache and was, once again, directing his smoldering gaze in Ami’s direction.
His motions were perfectly synchronized with his fellow performers, yet he never looked at the others. It was like a test of some sort. He was testing himself, proving his prowess on the stage, proving that the silly tent, the uncomprehending audience, the pathetic plastic chairs were all beneath him.
In sync, the dancers began a complex routine of jumps, spins, and stick clapping. Their peacock feathers bounced with them, like four regal birds about to fan their magnificent tails.
Then more feather props in the final performance, fanned out and twirled around the stage. Ami had given up avoiding the eyes of the dancer and allow herself to be led by his magnetism. His eyes never leave hers, only lowered sometimes, maybe demurely, maybe suggestively. His body strained with the dance, but his face retained the same sultry composure.
Ami found herself sweating despite the cool night air. The other tourists, of course, were oblivious to the rising heat. In the final drum beats the men swept their fans in front of them and landed on one knee in a bow. The lead dancer held his fan extended toward Ami for a full minute, never lowering his eyes like his partners did.
She was breathless.
He rose and nodded to the audience, then joined the others as they filed out. At the doorway he met her eyes one last time and, again, winked.
image from www.matchless-gifts.com
In the car she was insatiable. In the shadow, her breath coming quick in his ear, a ragged rhythm somewhere between panting and sighing. He grasped her waist, the narrow circumference of it, glided his hands over the smooth skin. Cool in the night air, but warm underneath. He slid his lips down her neck, resting in the dip at her clavicle.
She was on fire, all traces of cool detachment gone. No longer on stage, no longer dancing the steps that had long gone stale with nightly repetition. She was beyond speaking, her fingers clawing at his hair, his face, gripping his shoulders and pulling him to her.
He knew better, knew bits and pieces of her life—it happened naturally from working together so long. She belonged to someone else, still wore her family wealth around her ankle in a thick silver cuff—a manacle is what it made him think of. She possessed that awkward balance of two worlds—the peasant mystery, the new-world cleverness. She was dark everywhere, her skin and eyes dark, her moods, her ideas, the pheromones rising from her sweaty skin. She was almost dangerous.
He eased his hands under her hips, lifting her slight frame, wondering how a girl who lived her life could remain so light. The other women around her grew thick by late girl-hood, their bodies turning heavy, earthy, preparing for children and hard labor. But this girl—she remained fiercely ethereal, almost floating up into his hands. He lifted the wide skirt, sliding it up her narrow legs.
She unbuttoned each button on his shirt, pressing the bindi on her forehead into his chest. His eyes were still lined in coal. He looked, to her, at times like a girl. But then he was pressing against her, growing between her thighs, insisting that he was a man.
She threw her head back, the long braid loosening, swinging away from her face. Strands of hair glued to her face and neck with perspiration. She welcomed the cool air on her back when he shoved away her half-sari, fumbling to untie the tight choli, freeing her small breasts.
He slid her to him, lifting her onto his lap, taking her that way. He wanted to push her back, beast-like, but there wasn’t room in the cramped, borrowed car. She clung to him, riding each wave of heat that passed between them, glaring into his face.
He couldn’t hide from her, couldn’t escape her smoldering eyes, the unspoken demand.
Only me, she was saying. Not that white girl. No one else.
But what about me? He wanted to ask. You have a husband. And there are others, too, I’ve heard.
None of that matters, she told him, her eyes narrowing with the effort of their thrusts. You need only think of me. That is how this works.
image from www.martinfrost.ws
As Ami made her way back to her room, the night swelled with strange magic. She leaned back, languid against the seat of the Ambassador, letting the air run over her skin, feeling intoxicated.
“What are you thinking?” Dev asked, looking over at her.
“Nothing,” she sighed. “Everything.”
He looked back out the windshield and turned on his plastic dashboard shrine to Ganesh. It blinked, red and green.
Ami rolled the window down a little, let the wind lift her hair.
Dev reached over, not taking his eyes from the road, and rested his hand on her thigh. His hand was warm, solid. Ami closed her eyes, watching the village dancer behind her eyelids. Dev stroked her skin through the fabric of her skirt, tracing the outline of her quadriceps, drawing a line of goose bumps along her flesh.
They drove the rest of the way in silence, didn’t discuss stopping for drinks, didn’t try to make small talk to pass the time. Dev parked in the dark alley, and Ami put her hand on the door latch.
“Come to my room,” she said, her voice low. She didn’t know if he’d agree. She didn’t wait around to find out.
As she walked around to the front of the building, the boys who called from pay phone stalls and email cafes seemed friendly rather than devious. The shopkeepers locked up and left their businesses for the night, perhaps to the arms of loving wives who would drop their daytime composure in favor of feverish kisses. Gardens, thick with shadows, kept their secrets. Ami imagined that Khajuraho was like that, hundreds of years earlier when the night skyline was cluttered with temples housing sleeping deities and praising the many acts of passion carved lovingly on sandstone walls. So many years ago, she imagined, the bougainvillea bloomed as brightly as it did below her hotel window, and in some ancient garden a peacock strutted into view and fanned the whole magnificent span of its plumes.
image from www.world-mysteries.com
Love me, he wanted to say. Maybe he didn’t even know he wanted to say it. Love me beyond this blood-lust, this heat, this bodily craving. He feasted on a breast, a thigh, his own skin damp with sweat despite the cool air of night coming in from the balcony.
The coo of peahens in the courtyard. The sounds of workers finishing up their work, the last bit of cleaning done, the hotel set to bed, the tireless laborers finally free to creep off to their corners for a few hours’ rest.
Let me know something of you, he was pleading wordlessly. Give me something, some secret code to your heart, to your mind. Let me in. He ran his fingers over every inch of her smooth, languid form but found no entry to the soul.
The sex is not the way in. Only the way out for the next generation, the next soul reduced to physical gesticulations in lieu of true language. Speak to me.
She parted her lips, a sigh, a moan almost inaudibly low. In her arms he could almost forget his desire, the act of extinguishing lust so all-consuming. The way her hands stroked his body, gripped his flesh, pulled him into her. But awareness wouldn’t release him.
Odd how it’s always the same, he thought. Always different, but always the same, the act of love. The art of coupling. It seemed that each woman should be different, and an American woman should be even more exotic than an Indian woman. But the greatest variation was the extent of her shyness or lack there of. Beyond that, it was the same gestures, the same dance, the same smoothness of skin, weight of body, welcome warmth, sweet darkness, odors mingling—sweat, curry, musk of sex, sweetness of hair oils and perfume.
Even as she sprawled against the sheets, wide open and welcoming, he couldn’t get close enough. Tell me what you really want, what you long for, what you believe, he wanted to say. Wanted to whisper the words, feed them into her ear. Comfort me. Tell me I’m not alone in this world. Give me something I can keep.
She arched her back with each thrust, gave him full access, her own hips driving toward him, devouring him.
But there was only that. The body. The rising heat that would decline again, the sweat that would dry, the exhilaration that would give way to exhaustion. And then they’d fall away from each other, each washed up on a separate shore, touching only with fingertips, the occasional cool kiss.
He couldn’t say love in the night, didn’t trust the word. But he searched himself, searched the darkness and the corners of the room for something to use in place of the treacherous syllable. Nothing.
I have nothing to give you, he finally admitted, his voice horse and low from exertion. I have nothing, and yet all of it is yours.
And the girl turned, her spine curling, knees pulled in toward her chest, and fused her body to his, back to front, without even waking.
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