Dharma Sutra

by David Pugh

  Chapter 39: The Bard of Bakau

  Molefi’s Diary, Bakau, The Gambia

  I have drunk enough “Good Old Tassies and Coke” to have seen the proverbial Pink Elephant but a pink hippo was a first for me. There was a large man-size one standing sentry at the gate of the Happy Hippo Hostel Hotel. It looked knocked about a bit but don’t we all after too many years being stuck in one place in time. For me it was Mogadishu 1993, for the hippo a piece of orange soil in Bakau, now gazing at Bob’s Casino and Karaoke Club. A very tall, strong twenty-something young African approached me. I guessed it was either Jack or John Jallow, Remus Jallow’s sons. ‘You seem to be admiring our mascot a very long time, sir,’ my, he was well spoken, ‘may I help you?’

  ‘I’ve come to see Madam Sylvia,’ I replied.

  ‘And you have an appointment?’ I thought this young man could be a perfect butler.

  ‘No, but we are old friends,’ I tried to look as friendly and reassuring as is possible for the cold-blooded creature I am. Over the years I seemed to have snapped the thread of human kindness I once remember possessing.

  ‘Wait here, sir,’ Jack as it was, offered me a seat at the large covered bantaba, a gazebo which usually welcomed guests to sit together and talk. For those who might be interested, it is a Mandinka name for a spot, usually under a Bentennie tree, where men gather and get drunk. Jack clearly was not making me feel welcome, so I took the time to analyse the surroundings. The bantaba, which for all intents and purposes was a round bar, built around the trunk of a dead baobab. The tree had been hollowed out to accommodate a large fridge, which contained not just the usual Gambian beers but also Julbrew Strong 7.5% with the hippo on the label; this was the very same hippo whose likeness guarded the gateway. The fridge also contained several bottles of palm wine, with handwritten labels, the dates indicating the strength of the beverage. A few plastic tables and chairs were scattered haphazardly around, along with some hammocks, which could be rented overnight or offered to locals too drunk to make their homeward journey. The main accommodation comprised of two blockhouses facing each other, in the centre was a wee tended kitchen garden. The door to one of the rooms was open; it contained a small seating area with sofa, a twin bedroom and a very modern bathroom, quite pleasant, if a tad small.

  ‘Making yourself at home, Molefi?’ the well-rounded convent school English accent was one of the things that attracted me to Sylvia, along with the exotic mix of her parentage.

  ‘I’m happy to know that the lady remembers me,’ I bowed with a quote from the Bard,

  ’Who is Silvia? What is she,

  That all our swains commend her?

  Holy, fair, and wise is she;

  The heaven such grace did lend her,

  That she might admired be.’

  ‘I am so pleased that you retain your encyclopaedic knowledge of English poetry,’ she smiled, ‘I thought the years of Tassies and Coke might have eaten your brain. Now tell me, what the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I won’t beat around the bush,’ I thought the direct approach best, ’my new friend, Mr Aboboulaye Jatta, is prepared to offer you ten times more than you paid for this place, that is £200,000, providing you leave the country for good, after handing back his gris-gris.’

  ‘I’ve been expecting an offer of that size,’ she said, ‘but I have no choice other than to fight him openly; I insulted him in public and he wants me dead.’

  She stared me out, ‘Which I guess is the main reason you are here.’

  ‘Alas, this is true, Sylvia,’ she was a smart woman, ‘I have no respect for human life, but I still relish the workings of the human body.’ My eyes wandered down to her tight-fitting jeans, ‘Don’t you find those hot in this West African climate?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I should take them off,’ lowering her eyes.

  ‘In that case, madam,’ I proffered her a hesitant smile, ‘perhaps you and I could finish the business we started in the corridor of the Gaborone Hotel?’

  ‘Jack!’ she called, ‘Can you take charge of my lucky hippo necklace? Mr Molefi and I have some private business to discuss.’

  ‘If we don’t make an appearance in one hour,’ she instructed, ‘be so good as to press the little red button on his tummy.’

  ‘One hour is too short a time, madam,’ adding, ‘at least we won’t have any interruption this time from that husband of yours!’ In conclusion, I asked, ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Back in India, trying to catch some Tibetan skirt.’

  Chapter 40: Momentarily Blessed

  Jeffrey’s Journal, India

  I’m back in McLeod Ganj for another month or so, helping out at Cho, and I’ve secured my old rooms on Tipa Road. My Tibetan co-worker and translator for this year is the quite charming Sangmu Yangchen. She is from the Kham province of Tibet, the same region as my dear Rinzen Choden, who is now in a refugee centre in Belgium. They both have an elfin slimness, both very attractive and, of course, being from the same region, have the same accent and sense of humour. I had had visions of Rinzen being smuggled in the back of a lorry from India and along the Silk Road. It doesn’t work like that; it is well run by criminal gangs. Rinzen borrowed the equivalent of £14,000 from the Dalai Lama’s bank, half going to the “travel agent” and half to corrupt officials in the Indian exit visa department. All she got for the money was a two-week concession to leave India for a holiday and in her case a flight to Warsaw. This was clever, as no one wants to claim asylum in Poland, most people want to leave there, so her papers were barely looked at. Once through immigration, Rinzen ate her identity card and took a Eurolines bus to Brussels.

  I put on my orange Buddha underpants this morning; they haven’t brought me too much luck as yet but today there was a day-long puja for earthquake victims in Tibet. The day had been declared a public holiday, so no classes for me. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was to give a morning speech. I made my way through a crowd of probably over two thousand at the Namgyal temple, to the centre of the lower level. There was a large-screen TV set up to relay the ceremony to the masses, which mostly consisted of Tibetans. After about an hour, a security team began to part the crowd, scooping up the people in the very centre and moving them to one side or the other. I found myself in the front row of the cleared walkway, with a security ribbon saying, “DO NOT CROSS” touching my forehead. My lucky Buddha pants were working for me at last, it had been decreed that I should have a front-row view of His Holiness leaving the temple, I felt momentarily blessed.

  His Holiness’ 4x4 drove to the foot of the steps to collect him, I was in the front row for the drive past. He came down the steps and sat in the front passenger seat, with the window open. It drove very slowly to allow him to wave to the crowd, and then he told his driver to stop right in front of me. Tenzin Gyatso had spotted an old Tibetan man sitting just behind me, who was clearly not long for this world, and I’m guessing His Holiness wanted to give him some words of comfort for his lone journey. The old man was lifted to his shaky feet by two family members; the Dalai Lama held him close and whispered something in his ear. All heads were bowed, not daring to look into the eyes of their spiritual leader, all heads but one. I was grinning like an idiot, oblivious to any disapproval I might receive. He turned his face full onto mine and gave me the widest grin; it was as if I was in a Spielberg movie, the sun seemed to shine even more intensely, it was indeed like looking into the eyes of God.

  Chapter 41: Life in Exile

  I’m helping Yangchen put together a video, entitled Life in Exile, which consists of photos and video clips of a group picnic up towards Galu temple. She liked the style of a video made by a group of Tibetans who had visited McLeod Ganj on Chinese passports. The visitors are very proud to display these passports in their short film, zooming into them on a work surface. Like many young Tibetans, Yangchen knows that their future lies in Tibet, even if it means embracing and accepting Chinese rule. She is such a lovely young woman, but her youth is draining away in an endl
ess cycle of computer classes, cookery classes and bookkeeping. I’m finding myself falling under her spell, just as I did with Rinzen, this time last year. I was ridiculously flattered when she complemented me on the vivid orange shirt I wore to the temple on Tuesday. It does wonders for my ego to receive some nice words from a beautiful twenty-eight-year-old woman.

  Buddhist nuns don’t wear underwear; walking up Tipa Road, Sunday evening, a nun stopped over a drain, hiked up her skirt for a standing pee. It was a very striking image; one of those missed photo opportunities. The street was far from quiet, thronged with crowds heading for the Miss Tibet final at the Tibetan Institute for Performing Arts. Maybe the nun was making a protest against the beauty pageant, Buddhists should be looking for inner beauty, but there are many contradictions here. The Five Precepts of Buddhism are very flexible amongst the Tibetan community. Tibetans are not vegetarian by choice, like many nomadic societies they have to eat whatever is available, for the Tibetans that means Yak. The rise of HIV/AIDS demonstrates that they are not as celibate as they like to make out. A young female student of mine has gone off on a three-week holiday with her much older boyfriend, a friend of her father and a monk. Sex is something they don’t talk about, not even in gossip; it’s definitely kept under the sheets and with the lights out. It’s perfectly okay for young Tibetan men to have Western girlfriends, but it’s almost regarded as a sin for a Tibetan woman to go with a Western man. There is a fear that her body would be contaminated if she were to carry a foreign child and the race diluted.

  The months have gone too quickly, my Indian visa is about to run out again, and I’m tempted to go back to Thailand to get some of the activity John Betjeman thought he’d missed out on. Unfortunately for my libido, I’m still in love with two Tibetan women, both from Lithang. One love is totally unrequited and the other just a fond memory of fleeting kisses. I need to confront these longings; I have a Chinese visa and one month to get to Lithang and back. Yangchen thinks I won’t make it and I’ll end up in a Chinese prison.

  Chapter 42: The Song of Suliman – Waiting for Rama

  Chennai Airport

  Remus was taking David Marat’s advice, getting as much as he could from the airport ATM.

  ‘Anirudh Ramachiranjiv?’ someone was addressing him in Tamil, Remus looked blank. The man was staring directly into Remus’ confused face, nodding his head side to side, as every Indian across the subcontinent does, when deciding whether to say yes or no.

  ‘My God, it is not you, same hair, same eyes, same skin and same height!’ the rather small portly man now spoke in English.

  ‘You know man look like me, where?’ Remus couldn’t believe his luck; he might have found the goal of his new quest. He had come here to look for his brother, Jeffrey, but now, like so many before him, he was in India looking for himself. The man introduced himself simply as Chandran and insisted Remus come with him to meet his doppelganger. Remus told him he had seen a photo of the man and that he believed it was his destiny to find him.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ agreed Chandran, he had just got off a flight from Kolkata. The two went in search of a taxi. The taxi dropped them very far south on Chennai beach; Chandran asked the driver to wait for him. Remus was very dubious about the isolated location.

  ‘How he eat, drink here?’

  ‘Rama has his own delivery service, very enterprising chap, you know?’ Chandran was pointing to a tent. ‘That is his house,’ still pointing, ‘if he is not there, just wait, the taxi is waiting to take me home, my wife you know?’ Chandran took off in the taxi.

  Remus thought a better plan would have been to go home with him. Apprehensively he approached the tent; it was square with a front awning in the Rajasthan style and made out of a stout tarpaulin, gaily painted with images of lions. Remus saw the lion as his own spirit animal, but in truth he had never seen one. ‘Conquering Lion of Judah, it good!’ feeling far more confident. He pushed apart the fabric door, not knowing what to expect; a touch of fear gripped him at the thought of meeting a living mirror image of himself. The evening was growing dark and there was no light in the tent, perhaps the man was asleep and would be terrified to be woken by his twin. The one room seemed empty, at the back there appeared to be an altar; Remus had good night vision and could make out some candles and boxes of matches. Lighting four candles was enough to illuminate the tented room, the altar being the centrepiece, with a framed photo of himself as the sadhu, garlanded with tulsi, holy basil flowers, some long incense sticks were still smouldering near the frame and a bowl of fresh fruit had been left as an offering. Remus helped himself to a mango and took in his surroundings; a double mattress with mosquito net was left of the altar. To the right was a low table with ornate cushions scattered around and by the table, a blue 20-litre water container, on a stand with a plastic tap at the base.

  ‘Nice, very nice,’ Remus smiled and filled a metal cup of slightly warm but fresh water. A small chest contained an assortment of coloured lengths of cloth, which could be worn as the South Indian lungi, pulled up between the legs and tucked into the waist. Then, joy of joys, he found nestling amongst the cloth, a bottle of Officer’s Choice. Pouring a cupful he lay on the mattress, the O.C. brought back sweet memories of Martina and Fufu.

  Remus awoke next morning, under the mosquito net, naked and still nursing the empty bottle of O.C. Someone was in the tent with him, a woman with red dyed hair was laying the table with food. Remus looked around for his bag and clothes, anything to cover his nakedness. He could see his bag had been unpacked and everything neatly folded on the chest at the back of the room. He made a move towards his clothes, but the lady’s small hand on his bare chest restrained him, while she fed him a slice of very sweet papaya. Remus decided to remain as he was and consumed the breakfast, while staring into the eyes of this beautiful young woman. Did she really think that he was this Rama? He decided to remain silent and see what might develop; this tent offered first-class room service. A kettle was boiling on a small oil stove; she had already made a deliciously spicy masala tea for him.

  He indicated that he needed to wash; she nodded and laid a hotel-style towel on the bed, encouraging him to lie down. His manhood was stirring at the thought of being washed by this exotic young creature. She poured hot water into a bowl and added some essential oils and dipped a washcloth into the mixture. Remus could hardly believe what happened next, she stood up and removed her blouse and saree. She let the saree fall as far as her waist, covering her flat chest completely with her hands.

  ‘Oh God, no,’ Remus, brain raced, ‘she a man!’ Remus had seen many Indian she-males during his travels and found them very scary. This woman had no breasts as such but when she removed her hands, she revealed two very long and thick dark-brown nipples with large areolae. Remus’ member stood up for a better look, as she let the saree fall. Naked underneath, she revealed a neat thick carpet of hair between her legs, providing a curtain of mystery over her womanhood.

  The woman worked over his entire body with the hot cloth, squeezing it occasionally into a separate bowl and anointing him with a fresh solution from the still warm vessel. Remus wanted those long nipples in his mouth; his hand was already nursing the soft fur between her thighs, edging one fingertip into the source of creation. She was most carefully caressing his now very hard member with the soft cloth. She lowered her mouth onto it, the teeth ever so gently touching his skin; he pushed his finger deeper into her and her lips parted with a light whisper. Her legs were already straddling his body; she brought her vagina to the tip of his penis. Remus then showed some panic, he had no condom but it was too late to stop, she took his long shaft inside her. He was impressed by the how much of him she could contain, he seemed to have penetrated her cervix and was touching the wall of her womb. He had never experienced this deep a penetration. How was the woman doing this? She was clearly in a high state of orgasm, this was becoming an almost spiritual experience. She had worked her finger into his anus and was stimulating his prostate glan
d. Remus was near the edge of panic, was the woman a witch? He didn’t care he was reaching an intensity of pleasure he never knew possible, he was having an out-of-body experience now, looking down from above at his body and hers entwining. They came together, for the first time in his life he was experiencing a multiple orgasm, something he thought impossible in a man. As the pleasure peaked, his astral body crashed back to Earth, penetrating him with an earthquaking shudder, such was the intensity of the force, he thought his death had come.

  Sometime later Jeffrey talked to me about cervical and prostate orgasm, what they describe in Tantric sex as a full-body orgasm. There is an increase of pleasure, not just in the clitoris, it spreads through the woman’s body, sending pleasurable vibrations from her brain to her toes and can last for hours, while a clitoral orgasm only lasts for seconds.

  Chapter 43: The Fisher of Men

  Remus thought he must have passed out; there was no sign of the woman but everything in the tented room had been tidied away and worryingly his bag seemed to have gone. It had his precious VISA card and his passport inside. Any worry he might have felt disappeared as he relived his more than sexual encounter with the beautiful woman. The morning seemed to drift away; he walked down to shoreline wearing a lungi and took a shit in the water, the sea washing him clean. It was not the cleanest of oceans, but to Remus everything was beautiful, life was sheer simple beauty. Back in the tent a light lunch of rice, dal and sabjee had been prepared by the girl, he supposed. A supply of bhang had been left on the table, along with a pipe to smoke the cannabis in.