by Smith, Skye
The two women looked at each other and did a girly scream of "perfect" to each other. They screamed again when Marique pulled a second one out of her shopping bag. "I knew you would want one. Besides, it made the bargaining easier for Ajay."
They had found a replacement for their very Muslim, very shapeless burqas. It was of the same gauzy cotton material, but had narrow bands of fabric sewn in lines to help it to keep its shape. When she first pulled it out of the shopping bag it looked more like a mosquito net than clothing. It was only when it was unrolled, and all the kinks swirled out of it, that it took form.
She tried hers on while Marique watched with a grin from ear to ear. Poor Ajay made a triple strength coco loco and sipped it noisily, mumbling in disbelief the whole time.
Together the two women attacked their burqas to pull the stitches that kept the face mesh in place. The one thing the new cloaks lacked was the face mesh. It was unfortunate that they were only available in white. The ochre colored burqas had proved resistant to looking dirty when they picked up the ubiquitous dust of the ochre tropical soil.
Marique showed Maya how to sew the face mesh in place in the hood of the cloak so that it could be stowed out of the way above the head, or pulled down in front of the face. The first face mesh was attached and tried out, and then they worked on the second. Meanwhile Ajay walked away mumbling to himself, to find some more coconuts.
With the cloak closed, the hood up and the face mesh in use, they were almost as covered up as in a burqa. The only noticeable difference was that the cloak did not drape to the ankles, it finished mid-calf. The advantage over the burqa, was that you could wear the cloak open or even wide open with the cloak notched behind your shoulders like a huge flowing scarf.
After a few more cocos, Marique taught her friends an old fashioned Belgian dance that was similar to a square dance but with more elegance and more twirling. It was a delight to dance it in their new cloaks because the cloaks floated out when they twirled and then swirled with them. Ajay called them the Dervish Didis, which they assumed had some religious meaning, but they never did ask.
Their giggles and laughter and voice orchestra was interrupted by a gentle knock on the veranda's post. It was the Sanjay the gardener, looking for Maya. He looked at the two mad women twirling in widows' cloaks and shook his head.
While Ajay dragged Marique inside the bungalow for you know what, Maya stayed on the veranda with the old man. She quickly found out that the new cloak did make an effective mosquito net. The little blighters didn't even like to land on it, because they were so visible against the white.
Strangely, the old man was not bothered by mosquitoes but he was shivering. She thought back on the picture of Gandhi, and realized that in just his dhoti the gardener looked like Gandhi. She went back inside and returned with her discarded ochre burqa and wrapped it around him. Wrapped thus in ochre he looked a lot more like a guru than a gardener.
"It is time for you to listen again," he said as he sat down facing her and picked up one of the cocos for a drink. If he realized that it was tainted with vodka, he didn't mention it, or put it down.
She did not tell him, for she had been ordered to listen. It did remind her of an old Cat Stevens song with the lyrics, 'from the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen'.
"I told you before of the effect of sex and drugs on my teachings and on my business. Now I will tell you of their effects on auras. To start with, you must have already noticed the difference in the reactions of the two sexes to your aura. Women are quick to accept them. They want to believe they exist. Men reject them out of hand and explain them away as mere sexuality.
Drugs, a few special drugs, put people in a state of heightened receptiveness, especially sensual receptiveness. To get most men to accept auras and admit they feel them usually needs some positive feedback. If they admit to themselves that they feel it a little, then next time they will feel it more. I first allowed drugs in this ashram only to help convince people that auras truly do exist.
The best drug for this is magical mushrooms, the psilocybin ones, the ones where the drug is in the natural blue dye. They highten a persons awareness of the subliminal, the natural, and allow them to sense. Often they become so natural that they attract animals to them, like butterflies and birds."
Maya perked up at the mention of butterflies.
The old man continued. "Of course, with most people, when the mushrooms wear off, they do not retain the wonder of their senses. I learned how to plant suggestions in their subconciouses to help them to find that wonder again without drugs."
"And the sex?" she asked.
"You are an impatient student. I am not finished with drugs yet. A few other drugs work but not as well, like the flower buds of marijuana, and LSD, and Peyote. They heighten the senses, and limit memory, and bring people into the here and now. All other drugs, especially downers like alcohol, block the senses."
This was not news to her, she was from California. "Now sex?" she urged.
"Yes please," he said mocking her. "Auras are a regressive sense. You know, like when you are listening to quiet sound, and a loud sound goes by. It as if the quiet sound stops until the loud one is gone. The quiet sound didn't stop, it's just that your ears are overwhelmed by the loud noise and no longer can focus on the quiet one.
If you are sensing an aura or sensing with an aura, and there is a loud noise, you may lose it. The surest way of losing it, however, is through touch. Touch is the strongest of the senses. Your entire skin, your largest organ, senses touch. In comparison, look how small your eyes, ears and nose are.
When you get wet or cold, or the wind blows on you, you lose the sense of the aura. When you put on clothes, especially heavy clothes, you lose the sense. Of course the strongest sense of touch of all, is sexual arousal."
"But..." she began.
"I know. Usually the first reaction to an aura is sexual arousal, especially in men with their hair triggers. Their shishn blocks out the feeling of the actual aura. Sexual arousal is so loud that one cannot hear the quiet aura."
"But I often ping their sex first just to get their attention..." she tried to interrupt again.
"I know, but sex is a bit like marijuana. A little bit of good stuff helps to bring the aura on. A lot of it blocks the aura. I missed that fact. I missed it for years. It caused me to mess up many lives, including my own."
His face became very serious, very business like, and he lowered his voice. "After Manfred took over running the ashram, I discovered that I was losing my aura. I tried to use sex to rebuild it. I didn't realize that the sex was causing the opposite to happen. For years I pushed the sex. I used my aura to arouse women sexually so that they would ravish me, hoping to strengthen my aura.
You have probably heard the stories. They are so embarrassing. Now I shudder in embarrassment at how I pushed sex in my ashram. I was not only on the wrong track, I was rushing in the wrong direction. Luckily for me, once my aura had virtually disappeared, the women didn't want me as a sex partner any more, so my aura started to grow again."
"But this ashram teaches tantric sex. Isn't that a way of using sexual energy to stimulate and heighten meditational trances?" she asked.
"If it were two yogic masters using the technique, I would agree with you somewhat. Here all it amounts to is that some rich dark men overpay for a room, for the privilege of playing sexual games with young fair women. The tantric training and teaching and supervision is just the packaging. There is nothing tantric about what actually happens. How do you Americans call this? Ah yes. They are just getting their rocks off."
"But the women companions must know that, yet they stay on despite it," she said.
"How far would they get with no money and no passport. They could accept a ride to Mumbai with one of the businessmen, but how would that end? Badly, I am sure. Have you talked to the companions? They are so young and so naive.
They come from good Christian homes, where they learned wel
l the habit of obeying the church leaders and their elders. Do you know the latest? Manfred is filming the sessions so he can blackmail these naive Christian girls into staying on. Who knows what other uses they will make of the videos. I shudder to think."
"Then it is sex slavery, and Manfred is the slave master," she said almost under her breath.
"Welcome to India. Sex slavery is one of our biggest industries. Certainly one of our most successful. That is why the HIV rate is so high." He took the empty coco, and his bush knife down and away from the porch and hacked it in two and then chipped two pieces of the shell away to use as spoons to use to scrape out the meat. He came back and handed her one of the halves. "I have said too much. Much too much. It is your turn."
She thought about what to tell him next. "I can sense the color of auras, and the scent of auras. Mine is white, pure white. Its fragrance is lily of the valley. Yours is cream tending towards orange. Its scent is like spicy dust."
"Turmeric," he filled in. "In the mine yesterday, I smelled it for the first time in years. Thank you."
"I don't just massage by focusing the aura through my hand. The aura explores the inner body. It senses sickness. I see it as a darkness, ranging from light grey to dark grey, to black. If I bathe the areas of darkness with my aura's whiteness, then it often becomes a lighter grey. If I try again and again over days, it sometimes disappears."
"Then you have a healing touch, er healing non-touch," he told her. "Unfortunately it is not one of my talents." He got no response. The woman was looking out into the garden. He saw some yellow hair flashing in the sun as someone came out of the shade of the trees in front of the next bungalow. It was Vasini returning from servicing the VIP's.
As Vasini climbed up onto the veranda, Sanjay climbed down, pretending to be humble. He bowed to her with his fingers in prayer position and said "namaste", and then quickly and quietly disappeared beyond the first plumeria bush.
"Are you all right, sweetie?" asked Maya.
"No. I'm not ," Vasini moaned and changed positions on the seat yet again to get comfortable. "Those men must be using one of the boner drugs, a lot of it. They never go down. I'm so sore. They really aren't interested in the techniques that we teach. It was all bump and grind. No subtlety, no art, no holding off on the moment to let the meditational energies build and then explode."
"Did you really expect a bunch of salesmen to be interested in meditation?" Maya asked, "They just want to hump blonde women so they can brag about it at home."
"I suppose. Sessions like that destroy my faith in what we do here. They need to filter the men more carefully."
"They do filter them. Only rich ones can afford you," Maya remarked, and then felt immediate shame and regret for mocking this poor young victim.
"Fuck off," Vasini hissed, and then ran off the veranda and stumbled across the courtyard, weeping.
Watching the girl cross to the main buildings, Maya realized that she was blowing it here. She had found the teacher she had been looking for, and instead of using her time to soak up as much knowledge from him as she could, she was getting involved in the local social dramas.
The sound of a rhythmically creaking bed made her look towards the bedroom window. Even they were spending their time more constructively than she was. Instead of envying them, she should be thanking Marique for keeping Ajay so distracted that he hadn't begged his leave to go back to his duties in Mumbai.
She put on her sandals and followed the path that Sanjay had taken when he'd left her. It led behind the bungalows to a sub-compound where the dirt laborers lived. The untouchables. A few of the two hundred million Indians who were destined to do all the filthy chores of this land in order to earn a few mouthfuls of food a day.
Ajay had told her that many of them were mentally and physically retarded because of hunger when they were kids. She could not even fathom a social problem of such immense size. Even in this sub-compound where there was plenty of food provided, some of the folk had an empty look in their eyes, as if they were seeing but not understanding.
Well they certainly couldn't understand why a tall blonde in a yellow sundress would be dirtying her ten dollar sandals, almost a month's earnings, to walk through this compound instead of through the formal gardens.
"Sanjay?" she kept asking, "Sanjay." Everyone just stared back at her with dark wide eyes.
"You look for Sanjay the gardener?" said a tiny voice behind her.
She turned around. The voice belonged to one of the Nepali sisters. She was carrying a bundle of freshly washed and dried clothes. "Yes, the gardener." She looked at shirt on top of the pile. The label was of a California fitness line. The kind that country club women in La Jolla bought for a hundred bucks for no other reason than boredom.
The Nepali girl explained her presence in this compound sweetly in very good English, "The untouchable women may touch the dirty clothes to wash them, but not the clean clothes. I must come and fetch the clean ones."
"You speak English well, better than me, er I."
"I had six years of school before my father died. My English is the blessing that has me serving here rather than in a brothel in Trivandrum."
"Where is Trivandrum?" Maya asked, cursing her lack of geography. She attended school for twelve years and never learned where any cities were, outside of the USA.
"It is further south somewhere. All I know is that there are many Arab tourists there. They come on sex tours. That is the fate of most Nepali girls like me. If you wish Sanjay, then follow me. Sanjay does not live in this compound. He is not really an untouchable."
Maya looked at the girl. She was dark yes, but fine featured. She was short, yes, but shapely. Perfectly proportioned. If she had been tall she could have made it as a fashion model. She watched her put her basket of clothes on top of her head to carry. Even with the clumsy basket, she did it gracefully. Her posture as she walked under the basket was stunning to watch, but her grace of movement was breathtaking.
The girl noticed that she was being watched, "In my village we must walk up and down mountain paths to do anything. There is very little 'along' unless you go to visit a neighbor. Everyone has some bottom land and some high pasture and some middle land with a house. Up, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, up, down, down, down. That is why the Arab men like us so much. Nice tight bottoms."
Unlike Arab women, Maya thought. "There is more to it than that. You are very pretty, like a delicate flower."
"You," said the girl with an accusing tone, "you tell me that there is more. Of course there is more. We are Hindu. That means we are infidels. They believe that sex with us is not a sin. Because we do not believe in Allah, or God, or Jehovah, we are not human."
"So you do not mind that sometimes you must have sex with the VIP's here?"
"If I refuse they will sell me in Trivandrum. It is better I stay here. That is why I tell Vasini not to make trouble. In Trivandrum she could be sold for much gold."
"What," Maya stopped still, amazed at what she just heard. She felt sick. When a brothel was the fate of a Nepali girl, she was disgusted but accepting of it. Like it was a thousand miles away. When it the fate of someone that looked enough like her to be a sister, that brought it right home, right to her stomach. She had been a fool to think it was different just because it was the fate of a Nepali girl. "Who?"
"Who what?" said the girl turning her whole body so that the basket would keep balanced as she turned. Even that was grace in motion.
"Who would sell you?"
"I don't know who would sell me. Master Dagh would probably drive me south in his car, but the profit would come back to Master Manfred. He is the bossman."
They walked along in silence until they reached a hut beside a tool shed. This was Sanjay's. She watched the Nepali girl walk away with her bulky load. Unbelievable grace.
* * * * *
She found Sanjay working the pedal of a large grinding stone, while he sharpened bush knives. "Are you busy?" she asked.
"Sit down," he said pointing to a three-legged stool. "I can talk and sharpen at the same time." He held the blade of a machete up to his eye to make sure the newly honed edge was absolutely straight.
"I think it is time that we speak about how you can use your aura to change people's thinking," he began. "It is fashionable in the west to call it hypnosis or the power of suggestion or even hidden persuasion, but the same techniques have been used by religious and political leaders forever. The methods are the same. Put their conscious minds to sleep so you can plant your thoughts into their subconscious directly and unfiltered."
She looked confused by his last words so he explained. "The subconscious is not logical or questioning, it is simply reactive. It depends on the conscious mind to process complex thoughts. The subconcious wants to know the answer, and only the answer. Leaders and advertisers, do not want you to think about their message, they just want you to accept it. This means they must bypass the concious mind and feed it directly to the subconcious."
"I know this," replied Maya. "I used some hypnosis on you in your cave, like to train you. First you must put the conscious mind to sleep, and then you must talk directly to the subconscious."
"Acha," he said, "I learned many tricks to put the conscious to sleep, but they all work by grabbing the attention of the eyes, making the eyes tired, and then boring the person until they are half asleep."
"Such as?" she asked, wondering if this was not off topic. What did this have to do with auras?
"Such as a typical television advert. They flash pretty pictures and colors at the eyes to hold their attention. They play an oldie feel-good tune to make them feel happy. Afterwards they have a gentle or deep voice, or sometimes an urgent voice, plant the message. Ahhh, if only the public would learn to mute TV advertising, they would spend a lot less money on things that they don't need."
"I mean an example of something that you or I could do," she replied.