Climbing Chamundi Hill

by Ariel Glucklich

  In his despair he decided to perform the Agnishtuta ritual. The ritual itself was not particularly dangerous, but because all the offerings in the fire went to Agni—the god of fire—a deadly threat lurked around the place of offerings. Because the ritual made no provision for Indra, the notoriously jealous king of gods could retaliate, his quick rage ignited by the slight. And, indeed, Indra hovered above the ritual, watching the proceedings like a hawk, waiting to angrily pounce on the king for any lapse in detail. As a result of the Agnishtuta, he obtained his wishes and in a very short time he sired one hundred healthy sons. King Bhangaswana raised them happily, secure in the knowledge that his royal line would survive and the kingdom would continue to prosper.

  Several years passed and Indra, who never forgets a slight, finally saw his chance for revenge. One day as the king set out alone to hunt in the dense Labha Forest, both he and his horse became disoriented and lost their way in the woods. As the hours went by, hunger and thirst further confused the two, and they wandered even deeper into the forest. Finally, they stumbled onto a clearing with a sparkling and transparent lake surrounded by ripe fruit trees and tall kusha grass. Crows nervously flew up from the branches and bees abandoned the rotting fruit on the ground when the king approached. The water looked refreshing, and the king quickly dismounted and led his horse to the water’s edge. After he watered the animal and tied it to a tree, the king disrobed and entered the lake in order to perform his ablutions.

  Bhangaswana dunked completely three times, pulled his hair to the back, and repeated several mantras. Then he walked out of the water to fetch his clothes, which he had left near the horse. He felt strange, and the horse twitched nervously, edging to the side as he approached. The king looked down and discovered that he had grown breasts while he was in the lake. He froze in disbelief, then turned quickly back to the water’s edge. In the calm water of the forest lake, Bhangaswana saw the reflection of a woman staring back up—it was his own image! He had turned into a woman, and the lake somehow caused it…The king felt no consolation that the woman staring back with wide-open eyes was lovely.

  Bhangaswana quickly recovered from his initial shock, but was suddenly overcome with a deep shame. “A woman! A weak, temperamental, vacillating creature—just look at me!” he thought. “What will my boys think?” He reflected on his athletic boys, whom he had raised to be disciplined and upright. Then he thought about their mothers—his wives—and grimaced. “So quarrelsome and judgmental. They will never respect me in this shape. What should I do?”

  Shaking and weak, the king struggled to mount his nervous horse and found his way back to the palace. People stared rudely, as they would never dare if he were still his male form. Everyone could see it was clearly the king, but it was also a woman riding that famous horse. The bustling palace came to a complete standstill, as everyone froze in mid-task. The one hundred boys came running out and gaped at their…father. The wives, attendants, and palace servants, even the dogs and the royal parrots, stood and stared at the transformed monarch.

  The king dismounted clumsily, with some unwanted help, and called a hasty meeting of his family and closest advisors. He told them everything that happened, blaming fate for this catastrophe. He knew nothing, of course, about Indra’s great vindictiveness. Then, crying, he added, “During my ride back I have been thinking. I can’t stay here in the palace or the city. How can I possibly govern as a woman? A king must be decisive and righteous—how can I possibly live up to such lofty standards as a woman? No, I shall retire to the forest and become a renouncer, and I shall let you enjoy your lives here…Please try and remember me as a man.” Several of the wives sobbed quietly, but no one said a word, and the king quickly left the room and disappeared into the woods.

  For days she wandered in the forest, surviving on berries, mangoes, and tubers and sleeping under the dense canopy of the forest. One day she walked into the hermitage of an ascetic, a kindly man of moderate austerities. His hair and beard were long, but he lacked the fiery intensity of those god-maddened ascetics, and he invited her to stay with him. They lived together, at first as friends, but eventually as husband and wife. In the course of time she gave birth to one hundred sons, all of them as handsome and energetic as their brothers in the city.

  The mother watched her boys grow, and tried to teach them as best she could about the world of Kshatriyas. It soon became clear that she was making slow progress with them, so she decided to have them educated in the palace. Bhangaswana, now called Aditya, took them to her former home and commanded her former sons to accept the new boys as brothers. The princes in the palace embraced the forest boys as siblings, joyfully sharing the life of royalty with them.

  Indra saw all of this. He was still hovering over the king he had vowed to destroy, and he now flew into a rage. “It turns out I only did this man…this woman…a favor. She’s too happy…That won’t do.” So the king of the gods assumed the form of a Brahmin and went to visit the palace. Greeted with the proper honor, he received an audience with the two hundred boys. Seeing them intermingle peacefully the Brahmin wasted no time. “How can you live together like this? Don’t you realize how perilous this situation is? You don’t share the same father, which means that sooner or later half of you will demand superior rights. There’s no doubt about it.”

  The boys looked at each other. Surely that couldn’t be right—they loved their life together. Still, this was a Brahmin, a respected elder. And the man continued, “Look, the sons of Kashyapa, the Creator, once fought to the death over their inheritance—the three worlds. Do you really think you are superior to them, better than the gods?” The boys now looked around uneasily, and the Brahmin kept up the pressure. He planted thoughts of jealousy, betrayal, and righteous indignation in their minds, and sure enough, eventually a fight broke out among them. The fight then grew into a battle, and within hours of Indra’s arrival at the palace all two hundred boys were dead.

  Aditya heard the news in her forest retreat while preparing a meal for some travelers. She collapsed on the hard ground, where she remained inconsolable. Days later the poor woman was still rolling in the dirt, lamenting her fate, when a Brahmin walked into the forest retreat and calmly approached her. It was the disguised Indra, who came to survey his handiwork. Coldly, he inquired of the pathetic woman what had happened to cause her such manifest sorrow.

  The woman looked up at the Brahmin and answered, “I had two hundred sons, sir, and all were killed. They were slain by the cruel hand of Time.”

  “My goodness, dear woman, how did you come to have so many sons?”

  So the sobbing woman told the Brahmin the story of her life. She told him about her life as a sonless king, about the ritual to Agni, her changed identity in the forest. She told him about sending her forest boys to the palace and the news of their destruction. “My life is over, sir, finished—worthless!”

  Indra looked down at the wretch, who was covered in dust that formed into mud stains on her cheeks. Suddenly he revealed himself to her, in his full majesty, swollen with self-righteous rage. “You brought this on yourself, Bhangaswana! It was not fate that destroyed your sons, but your own sin. During that ritual to Agni you completely forgot me, king of the gods—Lord of All Beings! Did you think I could be slighted in this manner and remain quiet? It was I who got you lost in the woods, who changed you into a woman in the lake. And it was I who instigated the fight among your sons and killed them all. And now,” the god’s voice reached and passed its highest pitch at once and now came down, “I am satisfied.”

  The woman clutched the feet of the god and begged Indra’s forgiveness. “Punish me, Lord, if you must. It was my fault. Tear me limb from limb—even death is too good for me—but please bring those boys back! They’re innocent…” The king of the gods, having satisfied his rage, was moved by the mother’s anguish and by her genuine remorse. His anger evaporated.

  “Fine. I shall return half of those boys to life. But you must tell me which of th
em I should revive—those born to you as king or as ascetic woman.”

  The woman did not hesitate. “Bring back those I have borne as a woman.”

  Her answer surprised Indra, who could not restrain his curiosity. “Why do you make such a strange choice? Why choose the children born to you from your changed self? Please explain this mystery.”

  The woman did not think it was an extraordinary choice at all. “As a woman,” she said, “I love more deeply. I carried those children in my body, I bore them, and I love them as only a mother can.”

  Indra was impressed and moved by this unexpected insight. As a reward he promised to restore all the boys back to life and added, “And you may now choose to return to your former self as king or remain a woman. What is your preference?”

  “I choose to remain a woman,” she answered immediately.

  “But why?” the stunned god shot back. “You can have all your sons back. Then you can return to the throne, to your manhood! What are you saying? Is it the life of the forest that draws you?”

  Aditya smiled and answered, “No, Your Lordship. I chose to revive my children because a mother loves best. I now choose to remain a woman because a woman enjoys the sexual act more deeply. I hope I do not offend you, sir, and all the males in your court, but having been both, I know what feels best.”

  Indra quietly studied the woman for a while. A number of times he opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Deciding that some things are beyond even his ability to fathom, he bade her farewell and returned to heaven.

  We stopped climbing next to a large boulder that was jutting out of the hill on the other side of a dry creek. A tiny stone shrine stood along the path, but I could not make out the god because an old man wrapped in rags lay curled up in front. Was he asleep? It was a fairly common spectacle, a man who may have been ill or drunk, but then again could have been in the midst of complete god-intoxication. Was there a way to tell? I returned to the story.

  “That’s a totally implausible story for a culture like India. I mean what Indian man would ever express a desire to be a woman? Men here have all the power, without a doubt. No, it’s sheer male fantasy, something about how great it must be to enjoy the pleasure that only a man can give…”

  The guide waved his cane enthusiastically. “Yes, a fantasy…It’s wonderful that the story appeals to you, my friend. Can you now connect it to the previous story? What we were discussing then?”

  “You mean giving up the thought of moksha?”

  “Yes, that’s precisely what I mean.” He tapped the ground—the rags in front of the shrine stirred a bit.

  “Well, there’s a gender reversal here. The king becomes a woman and prefers the children born to him…to her, as a woman. And he also chooses to be a woman…”

  “In a patriarchal society, correct?”

  “Exactly. And switching gender or social identity is like giving up binary thinking altogether, including the thought, ‘I do not have moksha, but I would like to have it.’”

  “That’s exactly right!” The old man’s voice rose. “And what does it look like in practice?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember, we agreed that it makes no sense in theory, but it works in practice.”

  “Yes, I remember, but I wasn’t sure what you meant. Doesn’t meditation help you get rid of binary thinking?”

  “It does, but we want to go further. We now want to actually change our identity.” He moved softly toward the figure in rags and bent down over it. But he kept talking. “If you are a man, become a woman. If you are rich, act like a poor man. Practice reversal in gender and in all things, and you shall move beyond binary distinctions.”

  “But how do I do that? It sounds far-fetched.”

  Satisfied with what he saw, the guide straightened up. He spoke with a softer voice now. “Yes, there are extreme forms of this practice, but there are lesser ones too. Some of our Tantric masters teach students to reverse their sexual identity during the sexual act. That is very difficult, and certainly not for you. But imagine that you are in Calcutta in April and you get on a bus that has no air conditioning. It is so hot and humid that you feel as though you are suffocating. What is the first thing you do when you sit down?”

  “I open the window.”

  “And loosen your shirt button.”

  “That too.”

  “Next time you find yourself in this situation, do the opposite. Button up. Close the window. Feel how cold it is in there. And try the flip side too. You step out of your house in America in midwinter and it’s freezing—open up your coat a bit.”

  “That’s crazy! I don’t see what any of this can do for you.”

  The old man ignored my protest and continued. “You are in a traffic jam and you feel angry and impatient, and then someone is trying to cut into your lane from the side—you know this situation? You move forward and block his way, correct? Why not let him in? In fact, as you let him in, give him your best smile. The angrier and more rushed you feel, the nicer you might consider acting.” He smiled at me triumphantly, expecting some type of reaction.

  It was all absurd—he was asking me to be a saint. “I’ll just become a passive-aggressive neurotic, then explode like a post-office clerk.”

  The old man laughed at this—he had no idea what I really meant—and said, “Perhaps. I’m not telling you to go to extremes; just play with the situation as far as you can. Try doing the opposite of what your natural impulses tell you, reverse your habits of body and mind—eat a sweet when it’s time to meditate and meditate when it’s time to balance your checkbook—get into practice of exposing your rigid approach to life and see how dualistic it is. Do it in minor ways, but do it consistently, and you will start seeing through your mind’s entrenched mode of enslaving you. Don’t worry about a goal. Forget about spiritual goals—those are also habits of the mind.”

  I remained quiet.

  Suddenly the guide said, “See that little cave?” He was pointing at the boulder. “Let’s take that little path and see what’s in the back!” He started moving toward the rock.

  “But wait!” I called out. “Is that what this sex-change story is about? Reversing habits?”

  “Oh, who cares? Just do the little things. Come on. This is fun!”

  “But if that’s all I do, how will the big things happen? I don’t understand the connection between the little techniques and the big results, which I have to avoid contemplating.”

  The old man turned and nodded sympathetically. Then he reassured me that the big results were not so big, and that I did not have to think about them just then. Instead, he said, “Please come back here and tell me about your life after the injury—I hope you don’t mind my asking. When did you first come to India?”

  The path led behind the rock, around the shoulder of the hill, to a small clearing where I was suddenly treated to a broad view of the countryside west of Mysore. The clouds were amassing higher on the horizon, playing with the light of the sun, which was past its zenith. We found a comfortable spot, and I felt just fine. “By the time I got out of the hospital I was addicted to several painkillers. I was always drowsy, my short-term memory was gone, and, worst of all, I was depressed. I mean, rock-bottom depressed, almost suicidal. The yoga may have helped a bit—but not with the pain. Chronic pain is like nothing else; even when you’re not hurting you’re a victim. You feel stuck in your own cave, and time stops—not that it matters; there’s nothing to look forward to anyway. Your best bet is sleep—unconsciousness, really—and you fantasize about death a lot.

  “Anyway, Rony finally managed to get back from Pune, although the first thing he said to me was that either I went back with him or he was gone. ‘I’m not your nurse—let your mom play that role.’ He also said I could try Ayurvedic medicine. It might not work, but at least it wouldn’t turn me into a narco-zombie either. So I went with him. Not out of optimism, mind you—there was just no other way. I was sick of my mother’s
long-distance nursing, the constant fussing, her own depressions. Rony felt like the sun in midwinter.”

  “So you went to Pune with your friend?”

  “Yes. The Ayurvedic medicine was worthless, of course, but Pune got me through six months, for which I am still grateful. My friend was renting a flat in the Deccan Gymkhana neighborhood. He spent his days in the Oriental Institute, and I just wandered around and explored. In the evenings Rony would show me around on his Enfield Bullet. It was a shiny white motorcycle that ran ‘taga-taga-taga,’ and Rony was a spectacle riding it. He’s a large, muscular man who favors white pajama bottoms and light blue kurta tops, and he wears biblical-style sandals, which he had made himself a couple of summers earlier when he apprenticed to a cobbler. He drives too fast and would look almost glamorous in a Bollywood sort of way, but on his head he wears a helmet that’s no larger than a bishop’s skullcap with a pink strap that fastens under his chin. I would just hang on in the back and watch him split the traffic.

  “At first the sheer novelty of it overwhelmed me: the smells, the colors, the sounds. And the food—burning hot thali platters for thirty rupees, masala dosa—I loved the food. And the sunrise on the eastern Deccan hills, the film music from the small restaurant in the back of Rony’s place, the cows in the street—it was such a sensory overload I was euphoric for a whole month. For days I would forget my back. But then after about six weeks the thrill gradually began to wear off, the afternoons started to drag. I got sick of drinking tea with Marie biscuits on the roof.

  “Anyway, one day I had this unbelievable craving for steak: raw, juicy, rare rib eye, American style, you know. I dragged Rony out of the institute at midday and told him I had to have a good steak. Being a vegetarian, he was clueless about finding one. So we roared around town on the Enfield for an hour and ended up at the fanciest hotel in town, the three-star Blue Diamond. We ate in a polished dining room with a glass wall overlooking the hotel swimming pool. You could see the usual assortment of lobster-skinned Australians, Americans, and Germans. The Aussies were real loud. One of the women jumped into the pool in her underwear, which gave the attendant fits. He ran around the pool, balancing a huge stack of white towels in one hand while desperately gesturing at her to get out with the other. Everyone howled and guffawed at the man’s puritanical upheaval. But what really caught my attention were three foreigners, studiously serene in all this madness, wearing orange robes like those of renouncers I had seen near temples. The women had short hair, and the man’s hair was shaved, but there was nothing self-denying about the way they carried themselves or the self-righteous way they smiled at each other over the towel boy’s petty consternation.