by Indra Sinha
‘You’re sure you hadn’t just overdone the tea leaves?’ I asked him, when he’d finished his tale, but he swore, no, he was sober.
‘According to Don Juan,’ he told me, ‘we assemble our reality through a point on our luminous bodies. When I walked into Michael’s shop, the way he talked to me shifted my assemblage point and suddenly I was assembling a different sort of reality: I knew that I was in a chair and he was a barber, but there was something else that was much finer going on.’
The week of the five weirdnesses
I. Monday morning. Belfast is one vast outdoor art gallery. Wherever you turn, exuberant paintings glare off the walls. Heroic hooded figures stand or kneel, Armalites at the ready. In similar streets across town, identical figures adorn walls branded with a red fist, the red hand of Cuchulain. Some of these murals are eighty years old, dating back to the Easter uprising and the Somme. Successive generations, going over and over them, brush old hatreds into the fabric of the city. In news reports, Belfast seems twinned with Beirut but really it is ordinary, a damp city under a watery sky, pavements slick with rain; Victorian churches, parks with tired green grass and municipal railings: could be anywhere in these islands. Passing along a street of terraced houses with well-kept gardens, it is hard to believe that this is the Ardoyne, a stronghold of the Provisional IRA, a name I’ve only ever heard in the news.
We’re in a car, being shown the sights. Our guide has a finely tuned sense of the macabre. ‘See that bookie’s? Nine men were shot dead in there a wee while back.’
‘This road, Official IRA gunned down a Provie eight years ago.’
‘That corner shop, a bomb killed four Catholics.’
Coming down the Falls Road away from Andersonstown, he says, ‘See those railings? That’s where the two British corporals got caught up in an IRA funeral, dragged from their car and beaten to death on the grass, over there.’
Turf Lodge. We pass a girl of about ten, wheeling a baby in a pram. A five-year-old with a dirty, tear smudged face spits at us. In Ballymurphy, Provo territory, a car behind us starts hooting. We ignore it, turn a corner in the narrow maze of terraced houses, and the car follows us. We make another turn, it’s right behind us, and now it begins flashing its lights. Shit. Dead ahead, the road is blocked by a tall brick wall covered with IRA murals and graffiti. We’ve reached the ‘Peace Wall’ that separates the communities. No escape. The car behind is still hooting and flashing. I sit tense in the back, feeling my bowels twist as we come to the wall, stop. The hairs crawl on my neck. I realise that I’m expecting to be shot.
II. Monday evening. Safe home in Sussex (‘Ah, it was just some feller waiting for his girlfriend’ the driver said when I finally plucked up courage to ask) the phone rings. It’s Molly, Eve’s mother. She’s choking and I think she’s having an asthma attack, but it’s fury. ‘That bloody man, he’s . . . Oh, it’s . . . Bear, you . . . Eve won’t . . . How could he . . . ?’ Molly eventually says that she has just watched Biffo (Eve’s father) write a cheque for £21,000 to two Scientologists who came to the house. ‘They just stood there while he did it. And so did I.’
III. Tuesday evening. Eve switches on the television and our friends Zek and Misha Halu appear on screen. They are (Czechoslovakian) Tibetan-tantric sex-therapists, but this does not explain why they are wearing hats shaped respectively like a penis and a vulva and attempting to copulate them.
IV. Thursday morning. London 8 a.m. I enter a film studio near Tower Bridge and find a naked couple fucking vigorously on a mattress. They smile, wave and say ‘Hi there!’ Tones, teeth and tans proclaim them to be Americans. They are looped in wilting marigolds.
V. An hour later. I am in the Tower of London knocking at the door of the Governor’s House. It is opened by the Governor, who asks if I have an idea yet for his TV commercial. I haver and he says, ‘Bear, I am Her Majesty’s Governor of the Tower of London and Keeper of the Crown Jewels and unless you instantly reveal your idea I will have you thrown in this dungeon.’ (He adds that it is the one where Sir Walter Raleigh lived until his execution.)
Ancestral voices
It is twenty years, but hardly seems a moment, since I first met Biffo, and his daughter coached me how to behave. ‘Careful what you say For God’s sake keep off Rhodesia. In fact don’t mention Africa, Harold Wilson, the Labour Party, politics.’
Meeting a girlfriend’s father for the first time is always a nervous experience. I stood in their drawing room, clutching a sherry as some anodyne, forgettable drama unravelled on the television, and reviewed what I knew of him. Born in Ireland before partition, orphaned young, brought up by a guardian. Went to Cambridge (same college as me), then the 7th Hussars. Had a good war, was in Egypt, recruited to the SOE and parachuted behind enemy lines in Greece. Lots of action. Had invested a small fortune in Rhodesia – this was before it became Zimbabwe – buying a hotel and land. Most of this I knew from Eve’s mother, Molly, who in the (Anglo-) Irish tradition is a great woman for reminiscences.
‘He used to be so gallant, Bear. He came on leave from the army and we went riding together. We went to Kilmacuddy to his cousins who’d made a sort of race-track around their fields. For some reason I did not have a saddle, so he gave me his and rode bareback. He vaulted up onto his horse, he was so dashing.’
Biffo turned out to be a dapper man with a military moustache and bright, amused eyes.
‘So you’re Eve’s chap, eh? Hahahaha. Help yourself to a sherry or something. Got one? Splendid. What’s this you’re watching? Any good?’
Trying to think of an utterly uncontroversial reply, I came up with, ‘Don’t know, I’ve never seen it before.’
‘Nor me,’ he said immediately. ‘Been away. Out of the country. Africa. Rhodesia, actually.’ Defiantly gun-cracked his glass onto the mantelpiece. Barked, ‘I’m for ’em!’
Ten seconds. Masterly.
‘He’s always been like that,’ his daughter explained. ‘When he gets an idea into his head, it won’t be budged. He never does things by halves.’
At eight Eve was a happy little girl with biscuit coloured pigtails that stuck out sideways from her head. She had an autograph book in which her friends wrote things like, ‘By hook or by crook I’m the last in this book,’ and ‘When you’re far across the sea, look at this and think of me.’ Eve went to her father and said, ‘Daddy, please will you write in my autograph book?’ He said, ‘Hahahaha, very well. What shall I put?’ She said, ‘Anything you like’. He thought, then got out his fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and sat at the table for a very long time. When Eve got the book back she found that her father had written in his beautiful sloping hand:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea . . .
And so on for the whole fifty-six lines, filling eight pages.
Eve’s brother Orlando tells how Biffo found himself on a beach in Ireland with his children. What on earth do you do with children? Biffo picked up a stick, traced some lines in the sand and said, ‘Now then. Which of you has heard of Pythagoras?’
Biffo is a qualified man-of-the-world. He’d spent his Egyptian service charging round the western desert in a tank. Leaves were spent in Cairo, playing polo and buying champagne for a Greek nightclub dancer known as Blacktops. Inter alia he had composed a long and extremely filthy ballad which displayed considerable metrical skill. In short, as fathers-in-law go, he was absolutely and utterly everything one could wish.
One day Molly finds him puzzling over something which has fallen out of a book. A questionnaire. Biffo unscrews his fountain pen and begins laboriously to fill it in. There are two hundred questions, which ask things like:
1. Do you make thoughtless remarks or accusations which later you regret?
2. When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed?
3. Do you browse
through railway timetables, directories, or dictionaries just for pleasure?
Biffo puts down his pen, reaches for his coat. He says he can claim a free personality test if he takes the completed questionnaire to the London Scientology Centre in Tottenham Court Road.
Zek and Misha
Last time we saw them they were sitting in our wild garden, under an overgrown rose bush which, like a slave at a Roman banquet, was showering them with petals.
Misha was telling me, ‘Bear darlink, you need help, promise me you will do exactly as I say.’
Zek said, ‘Yes, Misha darling knows best, Bear, you better take your medicine like a good boy.’
‘What must I do?’
Misha said, ‘First you agree to do what I tell you then I tell you what you have agreed to do.’
‘You listen to Misha darling,’ said Zek.
‘Bear darlink every morning you must drink a glass of your own urine. You can mix it with orange juice. You will like this. You will be healthy and happy and . . .’
‘You will be a new man, darling Bear,’ said Zek. ‘Just think of it, a new life. Just for you.’
Zek caught Eve staring at an amulet he wore around his neck.
‘I am a VIP,’ he explained. ‘Very Important Penis.’
The amulet was a tiny lingam, dangling uncomfortably by the balls from a thin golden chain.
‘Misha darling is also a VIP,’ said Zek, ‘Very Important Pussy.’
But she was wearing no amulet that I could see.
Undress rehearsal
‘Marigolds?’ says Eve.
‘They were rehearsing. The actress was called Madison. She was rather nice.’
‘Obviously enjoyed her work,’ says Eve. ‘I suppose you’d call it an undress rehearsal.’
Bear-wallah Sutra
Pustaq Keet has a head like a polished potato which splits, at mouth level, into rows of teeth as I enter his bookselling premises.
‘Bear-ji, just as well you have come. I have news.’
Keet, historically, has taken pleasure in repeating to me, at great length and from impeccable memory, the conversations he inflicts on his customers. There they will be, peacefully browsing shelves full of his strange stock – where else will you find titles like Spores of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, Hints on Tiger Shooting, or P. Sankaran’s classic Indications and Uses of Bowel Nosodes? – when a stealthy rustling, growing louder, announces the subtle arrival of the proprietor. Turning too late, instantly transfixed by the potato grin, they see a shimmering figure clad in a silk kurta which drapes over the gentle swell of his belly and cascades in a fine sheen, like a waterfall, from the overhang.
‘Ohé, sir, treat it like your mistress, not like your wife,’ Keet will loudly advise the man who is trying to cram a book back onto a shelf. And to the girl who is looking for Teach Yourself Gujerati, he’ll say, ‘Quickest way is marry a Gujerati boy and learn from the slaps of your mother-in-law.’
I discovered Keet and his Sanskritik Pustakalaya by accident. Years ago, while researching the Kama Sutra in the Oriental Reading Room at the British Museum, I listed dozens of medieval Sanskrit erotic texts with long, expressive names like ratiratnapradipika and srngararasaprabandhadipikamanjari. Across the road was an Indian bookshop, a realm of smudgily printed books with out-of-register pictures, impregnated with the fearful whiffle of subcontinental ink. I placed my order and left. On my next visit I was halfway into the door when Keet bellowed across the crowded shop, ‘Oh Mr Bear, I have got those SEX BOOKS you wanted!’
Now, several years later, as I step through the same door, Keet bares his teeth in a friendly and terrifying grimace, dives his hand into an inner garment and extracts a piece of paper.
‘You should thank me, Bear babu. I have done you a favour. Yesterday, someone came into the shop, asking for you. A young lady from a TV company.’
‘Asking for me?’
‘Yes, I found her poking around the sexy books, so I said “Is there something I could help you with?” ’
‘She said, “I am looking for the Kama Sutra”. So I told her, “You don’t look in need of such instruction.” ’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘She smiled. What else could she do? Then she said “There is a modern translation by someone called Bear.” ’
‘She actually asked to buy it?’
‘Yeeees,’ says Keet. ‘So I said, “Look over there, you will find a heap of Bearwallah Kama Sutra”. She was pleased. I asked her, “Why do you want it? Just to look at the pictures?” She said “It’s not for me, my company is making an educational video.” ’
‘So I said, “If it’s academic side you are interested in, Bear did uncover some orthographical errors in Burton. For example where the Sanskrit says yaksha ratri, Burton had translated aksha ratri, thus the ‘night of the goddesses’ became ‘night of dice’ . . . There are a few other things of that sort.” ’
‘She started laughing and said “No no no, I don’t think that’s the type of information they are looking for.” I gave her a straight look and said, “What is your honest intention?” And she said, “We need the help of someone who knows the text.” I told her, “Madam, you are in luck. I have studied Sanskrit since a small child. My father hung me up by my chhoti, which was a single lock of hair left on top of my shaved head, and forced me to read great classics by sooty lamplight. I can sing verses of Ramayana. I recite Kalidasa. What lines from Shakespeare can rival Jayadeva’s lalitalavangalatáparishílanakómalamalayasamírémadhukaranikarakarambitakókilakúnjitakunjkutíré?” ’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘She said, “I’ll just have the book.” So I told her, “Beware. Bear’s translation is no doubt poetic, but in that sense he has taken full licence and some might say his sensibilities are crass and underinformed. If you meet Bear you will see that he is the wrong shape to be a master of the erotic arts.” ’
‘Thank you, Keet,’ I say, remembering that on meeting Eve, he had congratulated her with many winks on acquiring a ‘properly educated’ husband. (‘Kama bridges Cambridge’s gaps.’)
‘Ploy backfired,’ says Keet. ‘She said “You know Bear? We would like to contact him.” ’
‘So did you give her my number?’
He looks shocked. ‘Of course not. Would I do so without your permission? No, I said to her, “Madam, aforesaid author is a friend of mine and in all matters pertaining to hard and soft currency, I must consider myself his agent.” ’
It transpires that someone from the film company came across the pirated verses on wiretap.spies and had the idea of hiring me as a script consultant. This is what led the unfortunate girl to enter Keet’s weird realm of bowel nosodes, and how he became the unlikely midwife who brought into the ‘real’ world a chain of events which had begun in cyberspace.
Kissimmee quick
The fantasy goes like this: writer gets development deal from Hollywood film studio, leases huge car and house with pool in Beverly Hills, leads the life until money runs out. This is not quite the same. Yes, I’m sitting by the pool working on a screenplay, but the pool’s in Kissimmee, Florida, enclosed in a mesh insect cage. True, there is an enormous car in the drive, but we are here for only two weeks and the screenplay isn’t exactly an Oscar contender . . .
A few days after my visit to Keet the film company made contact. They had problems with their script. Would I advise?
Keet urged me to accept. ‘Bear dost, what is there to lose? Read script. Suggest a few changes. Pocket fee. Give me a percentage.’
‘I don’t know . . . It’s the absurdity of it that’s attractive.’
‘Yeeeees,’ he said. ‘That and money too.’
The script was chunks of Burton’s 1888 translation taken out of context. The meaning of the work was lost. They had homed in on the sexual positions and paid only lip service to kisses (hahaha, this is Keet), and the rest of the syllabus of love.
‘It’s incredible
,’ I said to Eve. ‘Can you believe? They have no idea that the tilatandula embrace leads to the veshtitaka posture.’
She glared at me. We were due to leave for Florida with the kids the next day.
‘You’ll have to tell them you can’t do it.’
‘But I can . . . When we arrive I’ll hire a PC and modem, and squirt the file back via Gawain or Lilith.’
Eve is not at all happy about this. But it’s what happens. At the airport, we take charge of a car built like a small aircraft carrier and spend most of our first day driving round Orlando looking for a computer store. The house we are staying in (it belongs to Lilith), backs onto a lake in which there are alligators. I sit staring at the laptop, while huge insects batter at the mesh cage, trying to gnash their way in. The script is risible, but all I can change is the voice-over. The sets have been built, filming will soon commence. The producers want the piece to have ‘contemporary relevance’, so there’s a scene where the heroine is ravished on a kitchen table (‘Bear, can you come up with some good positions?’), and another where she practises what modesty compels me to describe as nimita, leading to chumbita and parshavodashta, under a papier-maché oak.
I scour Vatsyayana’s text for references to kitchen and garden. Sutra IV.i.18 states ‘The kitchen should be clean, well-ventilated, properly lit and situated in the heart of the house where guests and strangers cannot see inside.’ No mention of a table. This section, where Vatsyayana is specifying the duties of a wife, is one of the most fascinating parts of the Kama Sutra. In her garden, he bids her plant sugarcane, turmeric, coriander, ginger, cumin and mustard-seed. She must obtain and plant moss roses, pearl jasmine, Arabian and Spanish jasmines, amaranth, queen-of-the-night, kadamba and the China rose. So much for flowers. Vegetable-wise, she is enjoined to collect seeds of radish, yams, olibanum, mango, wormwood, cucumber, muskmelon, aubergine, pumpkin, calabash, parsnip, pomegranate, cowhage, caravalla, garden-quinine, garlic and onion for sowing at the proper season. Nowhere does the sage command the planting of oak trees. Nor does he suggest what may be done in, under, or up against them. I plug in the modem to see what the local cyberverse looks like. The Osceola Horticultural BBS has a library of files instructing the folk of Kissimmee how to grow lawns, flowers, vegetables and herbs.