Sarasvati gazed down from the large, colorful poster I tacked to the wall. Dressed in a white and gold sari, her long brown hair crowned with headpiece of gold and jewels, and four arms holding a white rosary (for devotion), a small book (for knowledge), and playing a vina (for music and creativity), the Hindu goddess sat at the edge of a blue river, upon which floated lotus flowers and swans. Above, a peacock kept watch in a tree. Daily kneeling before the altar, I would do the yogic practice of anuloma viloma, alternate nostril breathing, to balance the channels of the ida and pingala, the right and left brain, my inner Feminine and Masculine. Breathing, I stoked the Goddess of Creativity within me.
On the opposite wall, I hung a bright red poster of Kali, just to keep the balance and tear up any humdrum ideas I might entertain.
Within a week, James and I had established our routines. Awaking early to enjoy morning’s few cool moments, I rode my newly-acquired bicycle to a yoga class at a nearby yoga school, returned to prepare my breakfast of yogurt and fresh papaya, mango, and bananas, and then, after setting a flower upon Sarasvati’s altar, I began a day of writing. James took off on our rented motorino (scooter) for his day at the beach, where he did water therapy for his knee and research for our book. Over dinner or late at night when I had quit work, James and I continued our running conversation about all the contradictions and inspirations we found about life in Goa.
India was saturated with a spirituality that was so immanent that it colored all the other hard realities I contemplated. I felt like a minnow trying to describe the sea. I guess that is how the aether feels, and aether was an appropriate element for India.
I would suddenly find myself awake around 4:00am, and discover that I was not alone... ideas were sitting on the end of the bed, waiting for me to notice them. Notice them I did. Upon deciding that it was too hot to go back to sleep – my body was damp with sweat and the night stillness was suffocating – I would get out of bed.
Sleepwalking myself to my computer, I would begin writing. I did not even need to open my eyes. The ideas entered my mind and silently put on the robes of words. “Don’t get up,” they told me, “We know our way in.” Silently they swarmed in, so quiet they did not disturb the monkey thoughts still slumbering in the jungle of my mind. They made their way to my hands and then split into letters for each appropriate finger, where they then flowed onto the keyboard and waiting screen. It was great. I did not even have to think.
The aether is ever present, like a humid mist that hangs by the seashore. You do not notice it sometimes. At 4:00am, before the whole honking, hawking, rumbling cacophony of India had gotten underway, the aether seeped into me and filled me up, until it spilled out and I had to write.
Then in the morning, I would make my grateful prayers to Sarasvati and place a flower upon her altar.
Days oozed into weeks, which melted into months. Content with our routines at the beach and in the writer’s studio, James and I fell in love, once again, with each other and our lives that served the Tantric vision of Venus and Her Lover. On occasion converting our bedroom into a Tantric temple, we celebrated the yoni puja with genuine Indian sandalwood and frangipani (plumeria) blossoms. The Indian air seemed to vibrate with our chants in a benevolent, intoxicating way, as if Tantra’s homeland invitingly bared its chest and placed our hands upon its beating heart.
On the spring equinox, our smooth days were roused to dance to a different rhythm. Rocco came to visit from Italy. I also met a new woman friend, Sienna, and began to do Shadow work with her.
Procuring Rocco a room to rent in the same compound in which we lived, we welcomed our old friend. Within a day, nevertheless, our mild-mannered Goan landlord was on our porch complaining how Rocco had offended him and was too loud, so he simply had to go! After painstakingly admonishing Rocco about his animated, full-volume Italian style of talking, we were able to unruffle everyone’s feathers, and before long, our sweet-natured landlord was taking Rocco on jaunts to find teas in the markets, the two of them laughing at each other’s jokes.
Every morning Rocco was clanging pots and cups in our kitchen preparing his tea, but soon enough James would escort him out for a day at the beach, so my writing settled back into its schedule. On the night of his arrival, we all sat on our porch, watching a pale yellow slice of moon peeking through the palm trees. Rocco lit his cigarette, and with an exaggerated exhale of smoke, he declared in his sonorous voice, “Bravo! Bravo! Venus and Mars have found Paradise!”
KAMA
How Do You Spell India?
The Dominator System impoverishes. It impoverishes social relationships, impoverishes our capacities, impoverishes our economies. In the hierarchy of rich and poor, society has ranked countries as if they were actually in different “worlds.” Here in India, James and I were living in the “Third World,” a ranking that implied insufficient infrastructure, widespread poverty, a high birthrate, and an economy distorted by dependence on developed (“First World”) countries.
Nations have psychologies, just like people, and under a dominator mentality, fear is a prime motivator. Because they are afraid of not having enough, the rich will get theirs at the expense of the poor. Because they are afraid of attack (arguably quite justifiably), militaries will hog a nation’s budget. India, flanked by Pakistan and China, has its own nuclear weapons. Nations pour resources into their militaries at the expense of social needs such as health care, education, transportation, communication, and other infrastructure.
Part of the insufficient infrastructure of developing (“Third World”) countries is sewage treatment. Hence the unofficial designation of beaches as public restrooms. Most commonly we saw villagers defecating in an open sewer that ran alongside the road, or in open fields. According to the Union Rural Development Ministry, over 665 million Indians defecated in the open. Imagine being the investigator for that survey! In Haryana – where 70% of its houses had TV sets, but only 40% had toilets – the Ministry of Rural Development launched a Total Sanitation Campaign with the slogan “Won’t marry my daughter into a household without a toilet.”159 Arranged marriages always involved negotiation – dowry and such – and now a toilet was becoming part of the bargain. The campaign worked not only to combat the spread of disease but also sexual assault. As Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research said, “While men and children can go any time, women have to do so under cover of darkness.” The rigid restrictions on women circumscribed even their most basic body functions, so that answering Nature’s call was risking rape.
While toilets were a huge step in hygiene (and women’s safety), they had to be connected to proper sewage treatment to be completely effective, and very few towns had functioning sewers. Where we lived in Goa, everyone had septic tanks... and nearly everyone got their water from wells. Groundwater contamination was common, and so was gastroenteritis.
Seasoned Third World travelers that we were, James and I took all the precautions, including adhering to the basic rules: “Don’t drink the water!” “If you can’t peel it, don’t eat it!” At home, we purified our vegetables so we could eat salads. Despite our going to great lengths, however, suffering from amoebic diarrhea was inevitable. It was part of the developing-country experience. Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico, Mummy Tummy in Egypt, the Tourist Trots in countless countries.
So it was one day that I laid in bed, woozy and weak, gathering strength for the next trip to the toilet, which I had to do about every 30 minutes. James stood above me, asking if I needed anything, but I could not look at him because the overhead fan rotating above his head made me feel like I was on some diabolical tilt-a-whirl that was trying to throw me off. I gazed at the blue bucket James had placed at the bedside... blue, such a soothing color. A red bucket would have been too much! At this stage, even thoughts could make me dizzy, so I endeavored to keep them as simple and stable as possible. Blue bucket, good.
My body was numb and
puffy with pain... my hands like a prizefighter’s gloves, my head stuffed with cotton. Despite confusing sensations reeling around me, at the center of the maelstrom, I stood undisturbed. I... well, not just Becca. I, the high priestess, the gypsy, the man, the woman... but even deeper than that: I, the serenity of my meditations. Past and future were absorbed into the present moment. I could step into the center of that hurricane of sickness, and there it was quiet. So quiet. While by and large I was caught on the nausea tilt-a-whirl, it was a bedrock comfort to know that my interior witness was there, calmly emanating peace.
As the day wore on, I began to regain my senses, though by no means all of them. Lying in bed, my mind played with what made up India... literally.
Infernal
Nausea,
Diarrhea,
Infirmity
Arising
Well, at least that was what was making up my Indian experience at the moment. Trying to broaden my perspective, I contemplated the contributions of Gandhi, the Buddha, and yoga, for Indian traditions had truly given so much to the world:
Icons
Nonviolence
Dharma
Independence
Asanas
But the effects of its large population presented daunting challenges:
Infanticide
Nationalism
Dirt
Ignorance
AIDs
So this is the delirium of a writer, I thought, dismantling a word in flights of fancy. The anagrams kept my mind off my churning belly. INDIA. Five letters – like TANTRA – the sacred five.
It occurred to me that India was breaking me down. It must have done this to others, too, like how sword-wielding Muslim conquerors turned into Sufis prettily praising the Divine Beloved. The heat and humidity squeezed down upon me, making it hard to breathe. The metal bed frame was warm to the touch, as was the tile floor, which to me defied some kind of natural law that said that those things should always be cooler than the air. Sweat trickled through the creases of my shrinking belly. Heat and sickness were melting my identity, like some medieval alchemist that broke substances down into their baser parts... the alchemical process of dissolution to the nigredo. Nigredo – negro – black – the Void – Kali. Here I was again, with the Goddess of Transformation, this time on her home turf.
India put us face to face with extreme poverty and human misery juxtaposed against the glittery Bollywood personalities on TV, a hip internet-savvy culture and whole villages that moved – and had always moved – by bullock cart... How to judge a country with one billion people, five major religions (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, and Buddhist) and many minor ones, countless languages with different scripts (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, and Dravidian languages), and a landscape that ranged from deserts to tropical jungles to glacial mountains? How not to judge it?
India hits you where it finds you. It found James and me in a decade-long contemplation of the Masculine and Feminine in their divine emanations and human conditions, and our life in India was a continuous conversation about the repression of women we met and the confused or frustrated state of relationships we heard about. It was also an appreciation of the elaborate rituals and sincere devotion to gods and goddesses, beautifully depicted. And most of all, we were continually impressed by the strength of the human spirit, the ability to find joy in the moment, in the people we met.
It was only natural that James and I both suffered over the state of the man-woman situation in India. James ranted against the injustice while I mourned all the senseless anguish. From our perspective, the cycle of abuse was rooted in people’s sexual identities. As Michael Sky had pointed out in Sexual Peace – Beyond the Dominator Virus, the first act of abuse was the denial and suppression of vital sexual energy awareness in the child.160
Inhibiting
Natural
Desires
Invites
Authoritarianism
The domination/submission dynamic was well established in the traditional Indian family, making the resultant fear, violence, and suffering so widespread. Mistreating women – the people who primarily raised the children – reinforced the cycle of abuse.
Indulging
“Normal”
Domination
Impoverishes
All
By the end of the day, much of my sickness had left me, but my despair over women’s lot in the dominator Patriarchy had not. In my weakened state, I was completely overwhelmed with that despair. When James returned from his day at the beach, he came into the bedroom to check on me.
As he related his day to me, he said, “Hey, Becca, have you ever thought of how to spell India?”
I glared at him, since I had spent the day doing just that. He continued. “I met a British woman on the beach today, and listen to what she told me: INDIA:
I’ll
Never
Do
India
Again!
Laughing, he walked into the kitchen. Staring at the ceiling, I settled into the realization that such an option held no meaning for me, for India was doing me. And like in Pele’s Hawai’i, I had a feeling it would not let me go until it was ready to do so.
The Beach Women
Nine-tenths of the violence and unhappiness in this country derives from sexual repression.
~ Khushwant Singh
Since James was a daily denizen of the local beaches, he made friends with the beach peddlers who walked the sandy stretches hawking jewelry, clothing, fresh fruit, hair braiding, and small art pieces. As they came to know him, he would buy them a cold Coke or pineapple slices, which they shared under the shade of his beach umbrella. Even at the beach, the women wore full saris, and in a modern twist, some sported baseball caps to protect them from the relentless sun.
Many of the peddlers were “gypsy women” from the state of Karnataka, tribals of the Lambani (Banjara) people, easy to recognize by their bright attire: long skirts and bodices in primary colors (red – especially red – yellow, blue, and green) of patchwork fabric with embroidery, sewn-in mirror pieces, and dangling ornaments of metal or bone, topped at the head by a long cloth mantle, edged with cowrie shells, tiny brass balls, or coins. Most striking was their abundant jewelry: a large hoop nose ring, gold earrings, dangling ornaments in the braids of their black hair, layers of silver and gold necklaces, arm bangles, ankle bracelets, and rings on their fingers and toes. Some had tattoos on their faces or hands. These vivid women – wiry, with nutmeg brown skin and wide feet, festooned with color like gleaming parade floats – carried the weight of their bundles with a dignity that intrigued James as to what kind of histories they might also have been carrying.
As the months passed, these histories were revealed to him.
From mountain villages, the beach women migrated to Goa each winter to sell. For the Lambanis, the gypsy rhythm seemed natural to them. They camped together in cheap rooms, and were harassed by the local mafia and predatory police, having to pay them off for the “right” to peddle. By in large, these women were illiterate, the breadwinners, and mothers. Since they were not deemed worthy of sending to school (being female and all), most began working when they were aged eight to twelve. Their arranged marriages seemed a reasonable bargain to them, many of them enduring abusive or alcoholic husbands so that they could have their children.
As I got to know them, too, we were mutually surprised to discover our ages. We would guess ourselves to be contemporaries, only to find out I was in my 50’s and they were in their 30’s. Their years weighed onerously upon them. When I would accompany James to the beach, they would gather round, draping me in clothes and jewelry as if I were a Barbie doll. Of course, they wanted me to buy, but we were also playing, like little girls in a dress-up closet.
Because of their work with tourists, they spoke some English, which s
moothed the way for James’ friendships with them. The very fact that these male-female conversations happened at all was itself revolutionary, and then what they confided in him, and what he said to them... well, these conversations were quite amazing. James’ favorite was Sima, a woman in her late 20’s whose fresh face easily lit up with a guileless smile, a crowning adornment to her attractively wrapped sari. Her beauty bloomed like a dewy rose. Mother to three young children, she was happily married, declaring that she loved her husband, having successfully followed the progression of “first marriage, then sex, then love.” She had hardly known him before the wedding.
Returning home from his “day at the office” one late afternoon, James looked into my studio to greet me.
Sitting at my computer, I said, “Well, I found something on the internet today that confirms what we’ve been observing. Listen to this: ‘India at the bottom in man-woman equality index.’ It’s ranked number 114 out of 134 countries.”161
“No surprise there,” James commented.
“How was your day?” I asked, standing up to hug him.
“Good. They were serving Goan fish curry for lunch, and ya know, hot curry and a swim in the sea... ya can’t beat that!” Then a frown pursed his lips. “But Mridula was upset today. Remember which one she is?”
“She wears a sari – she’s not a gypsy woman, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, and a red baseball cap. Anyway, she and her husband had a fight last night. He beat her for not bringing home enough money, and then he demanded sex, and she gave in to him. She had bruises on her arms today,” James described.
“Mridula? She’s married? But she’s so young! She wears those heavy gold earrings, shaped like bells, right? I’ll bet she’s stashing her money away into gold. That’s what those ladies do, and I don’t blame them!” I said. “What did you tell her to do?”
Venus and Her Lover Page 36