by Tova Reich
For these reasons, Rebbie-ji announced, as a teaching in universalism, and to honor the divine cosmic mother, and as a way of showing his gratitude to Mother India for taking him in, for extending sanctuary and hospitality to him in his hour of need, he intended to bring the devadasis out of the closet, out of the House of Holy Healing to the temple of Kali Ma, creator, preserver, destroyer—not as human sacrifices, God forbid, but as a gesture of inclusion and goodwill, a form of outreach even to the heart of idolatry, a model of tolerance and interfaith dialogue. And just in case any of us was concerned, he was here to inform us that there was no danger at all in introducing these quasi-Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Hindu girls onto the incendiary temple grounds. No one would be offended. Everything has been arranged. He had already spoken to Charlotte, who has worked it all out with the chief rabbis of the property, the noble Haldar clan, the owners and priests of the compound for generations. Opening up their precious venue for a harmless little dance recital by our girls will be well worth their while, Rebbie-ji assured us. Charlotte absolutely loved the idea, she was wildly enthusiastic, she proudly claimed it had been inspired by the success of her own band, Lakshmi and the Survivors, she considered it a compliment, a personal tribute, she took full credit, backing it 100 percent and opening wide her purse, cost was no object. A protected space would be cleared in the temple courtyard in which the girls would dance, it was all under control, Rebbie-ji assured us. Our devadasis would no longer be hidden away from the eyes of men or anyone else, they had too much to contribute to the spiritual enlightenment of humankind.
Rebbie-ji thereupon gave the order to ready a troupe of devadasi dancers and musicians, our best and our brightest, to be brought out to perform in the Kalighat Kali temple the next day, raising his voice and pitching it in my direction where I was uncurling behind the partition no longer alone, Manika had slipped in as smoothly as a midwife.
There were eighteen devadasis in the pod that night, including Mahamaya, who over the course of those three years had always remained the youngest, the pampered darling, the pet. Every one of them felt the momentousness of the occasion. They swelled with a sense of purpose and importance, setting aside all other concerns, overcoming simple weariness to prepare for the coming day. The light in the pod burned through the night, we were under such pressure; it was only by a miracle that we were spared a blackout on this night of all nights. No one slept. The girls spent the hours working out the program entirely on their own in a heartwarming spirit of cooperation and generosity, forming smaller and larger troupes and ensembles of dancers and musicians, distributing parts to everyone according to their gifts, no one was excluded, choosing soloists for their skill and also their stamina and stage presence, making the arrangements with open hearts, for the good of all, untainted by pettiness or envy.
The goddess Yellamma, the kindly mother who blesses the faithful and to whom they had been dedicated for life was an aspect of Kali, yet not a single one of them had ever stepped into the temple next door to do puja. They seldom left the House of Holy Healing, and certainly never unescorted, it was against the rules as set down by Rebbie-ji. A few remained too weak or sickly throughout their stay at the ashram, rising from their beds with difficulty, and the schedules of the stronger ones were packed with dance classes to be taught, reading lessons, and other constructive self-improvement activities leaving little time in the daylight hours for anything else. Outside the walls of the hospice the frenzy of the city and of that neighborhood in particular was alarming even for the bravest of these village girls, and the shrill screams of the beasts being butchered next door filled them with dread, but now they would set out under protection to display their art, to honor Yellamma, to bring recognition to Shakti and Shekhina as well, as their guru, Rebbie-ji, had taught them, and they were throbbing with excitement.
Manika and I spent the night sorting out their costumes. There was general consensus not to go forth in the classic devadasi outfits, which we all agreed might be too provocative for the setting and the occasion; the girls would look like belly dancers to ignorant eyes, like prostitutes to dirty minds. We approved all their devadasi ornaments and cosmetics, however, after a delegation led by Devamayi came forward to make the case to us that these were necessary, the bells and the bangles, the kohl and the vermillion, it would be impossible to go on before an audience without them, they were the tools of their trade. Devamayi was the oldest of the devadasis, recognized as their natural leader and spokesperson, and we trusted her judgment.
But following Rebbie-ji’s mandate, it seemed to us that the costumes should in some way combine visual elements of several faiths, a delicate harmony very difficult to achieve in any sphere including fashion. The Hindu side was now covered with the trinkets and the paint, we decided. Devamayi then produced from somewhere in the former Christian hospice a stash of white saris with a blue border stripe, leftover habits of Mother Teresa and her nuns. It would be far from easy to dance in these shrouds, they were by no stretch garments meant for dancing, it would be almost impossible to see, let alone appreciate the complex artistic movements of the feet, the legs, the torso, but in the end we decided this form of dress was appropriately modest and sufficiently effective in delivering the ecumenical message, it would do the job. A devadasi was a kind of nun, after all, or put another way, a nun was a variation on a devadasi: each was married to a god or a goddess, depending on sexual preference and orientation; each had taken herself out of circulation and been declared off-limits to mortal men; each was a form of erotic expression, which seemed to be the only career path fantasy would permit for women in religion, yet both, as Rebbie-ji liked to point out, represented in the end a noble and generous attempt, however mean and constrained, to provide women with a spiritual outlet, so flagrantly and totally lacking in Judaism. There was much to be learned from this, Rebbie-ji said, it would not hurt us to look beyond the chosenness of our big Jewish noses and pay attention.
That took care of the Christian side, leaving the other two main contenders still to be dealt with, the Muslims and the Jews. My suggestion of a hijab was instantly rejected. First of all, it definitely wouldn’t go with the saris, which could in any case be extended by the pallu into its own built-in head covering. But above all, it was entirely in conflict with the entire aesthetic of the dance, it would confine the head and restrict its movements as if it were mummified in a bandage, it would ruin the whole effect, Devamayi sensibly noted. It was decided then to omit any direct reference to Islam, since either way, inclusion or exclusion, the Muslims would not be satisfied, they would take offense, fly into a rage, anything was possible, including a full-scale riot or massacre. As for the Jewish component, we determined that it would be sufficiently represented by our escorts to the temple grounds, Rebbie-ji and a band of his followers in their stereotypical Semitic garb. In any event, Jews do not believe in images, either to project or to worship. We reject any help we can get to reach the level of faith. It is a crutch, we spurn it.
As it happened, though, Rebbie-ji was unable to join us at the temple the next day, he was shaking with fever. He remained in his suite with Devamayi/Shakti to keep him warm. Buki, his chief minister, who was also ailing, stayed back as well, looking after them both. My brother, Shmelke, had requested at first that Mahamaya/Shekhina remain with him, but the child pleaded desperately to be allowed to come along with us for the show, her beautiful big eyes glistening with tears, she was wild with excitement, and in the end my brother who could refuse her nothing allowed her to go, settling meanwhile for the older and darker sister.
With a band of Rebbie-ji’s Hasidim in our train keeping a proper distance behind us, Manika and I led the devadasis in their Mother Teresa nun habits, their jewels and makeup, on the short walk from the House of Holy Healing to the Kali temple. The moment we stepped outside it was as if a curtain lifted on another planet, swirling with color, pulsing with movement and noise. Along the way hustlers were planting themselves in the paths of tourists
, pressing to serve as guides into the sacred precincts, fake priests demanded a nonexistent price of admission, beggars and pickpockets pushed against the mass of bodies, hawkers touted all kinds of supplies for the goddess, wreaths of red hibiscus, offerings of sweets and incense.
The girls made their way slowly, dragging their feet, wide eyed, especially transfixed by images of Kali Ma made up of strips of plastic that they could angle to morph into the image of Mother Teresa, pausing at these displays to jiggle them endlessly. They could have played with these novelties all day long, flicking them back and forth between the faces of the two weird sisters, ultimately one and the same, made out of the same stuff, until it became necessary for Manika and me to assert our authority to get the show on the road. Yet even in the midst of all this turmoil, with all of its stops and distractions, a path almost magically was cleared for us as we proceeded. We moved ahead unimpeded like guests of honor before whom a red carpet was unfurling. I don’t know how Charlotte accomplished it, but it could not have been cheap.
A space had also been cleared for us in the central courtyard inside the temple grounds. It was late morning when we arrived, the optimal time as we had been advised by our high-level temple contacts—not yet in the heat of the day and therefore the audience would be sizable, but above all before two in the afternoon when the Kali Ma viewing area would be closed and the compound would empty out so that the goddess could have a chance to eat her lunch of freshly killed goat meat in peace, followed by a pleasant, well-deserved afternoon nap on a full stomach. Our devadasis were immediately directed to the center of the courtyard. They began to dance almost at once, like true professionals, to the accompaniment of their own singers joined by two men, naked except for their blood-spattered lungis, who had stepped out of the animal sacrifice quarter with their instruments to jam with our musicians, having finished their morning’s work of banging out a drumroll each time a goat was beheaded with a single stroke of a sword.
We stationed ourselves on opposite sides of our dancers, Manika and I, in order to keep a close watch on them and alert officials if we happened to observe anything unusual or threatening. The program was proceeding exactly as rehearsed, Mahamaya’s solo was especially enchanting, and the large audience that had gathered was clapping rhythmically, their faces ridiculously stretched into smiles even unbeknownst to themselves. There were some occasional murmurings, some questioning could be heard as to who we were and whether this dancing was a sacrilege or a mockery of some sort, an alien form of worship impermissible on these holy grounds, whether it represented an attempt to take over the temple by some menacing rival religion, but any sudden or untoward movement was swiftly detected and squelched by the alert guards.
I could see that matters were under control. I felt I could allow myself to relax for a minute, give myself permission to turn my head and look toward the sanctum sanctorum where the Kali idol sat on her throne in splendor across the pavilion directly opposite from where I was positioned. I had a clear view of her black stone face, her three eyes, her four arms, her long tongue hanging down wrought from gold, I could see the crowd of worshippers performing their puja, circling her bearing gifts along the pathway of the viewing area, human traffic propelled expertly in the desired direction, a commendable and sophisticated example of crowd control devised well before it had become a science. On the perimeter of the courtyard, away from our circle of dancers, devotees were sitting cross-legged on the floor in meditation, chanting mantras. Fire rituals were being enacted against the walls. A naked tantrika smeared with ash jerked toward me, moving in too close, holding a skull filled with blood, tipping it toward my lips, drink, drink, he was urging me to drink.
A spell of dizziness swept over me, I felt as if I were reeling, I was overcome with nausea, I thought I might collapse, so that for a bracketed space of time I must have lost my bearings and could not precisely follow the swift unfolding of events. It was as if I were a young girl again in Brooklyn at a wedding or holiday celebration, dancing sedately in a circle with the women when a mass of men charged forward to lay claim to our floor space, forcing us to retreat, to scurry to the sidelines, pushing us against the wall as they took control of the center.
Rebbie-ji’s Hasidim had displaced our devadasis. They were circling ecstatically in the center of the courtyard, stamping their feet, crying out at the top of their voices in rhythmic song their longing for Nah-Nah-Nahman from Uman, rapturously extolling the great mitzvah of remaining perpetually in a blissed-out state. They succeeded in carrying on their wild dance unmolested far longer than anyone other than persons maddened with faith would have anticipated possible, while officials, in uniform and plain clothes, huddled all around trying to figure out if this was part of the program too, if this trancelike whirling was also something that the stupendously rich memsahib had paid for. It took a single cry from a voice in the crowd—Musalmans!—and everything became electrified, as if a fire had broken out in the theater and lit it up, unleashing the panic coiled up in wait just below the surface. For what else could these strange extreme creatures be spinning fanatically but another species of Muslim dervishes desecrating their Hindu place of worship yet again, attempting once again to blow up their gods and take over their temple mount? The gates to the Kali viewing area slammed shut. Loose objects began to fly—stones, shoes, coconuts, candles, animal entrails, balls of congealed blood mixed with incense and excrement from the goat pen, people were running frantically in every direction, some struggling to escape, others falling murderously upon each other, guards were swinging their lathis, there was screaming, crying, human and animal, I cast my eyes over the chaos searching for my devadasis, but could make nothing out in the masses writhing like worms under a canopy of white smoke.
The surging throng pushed me out of its path, to a corner near the opening to the chamber where the goats were sacrificed. Someone ran past me with Mahamaya under one arm, he was kidnapping her. Her legs were flailing, her arms fluttering, she was howling. He entered the sacrificial space, set the girl down between the two posts planted in the ground where the goats were positioned, and clamped her head in place. Laughing hideously, he raised a sword to bring it down in a single stroke on her outstretched neck—loosening everything inside me. I was spurting out vomit in great painful heaves. Emptied, hollowed—and then I must have passed out.
When I opened my eyes again in a strange white cell, I did not know how many hours or days or years later, Manika was sitting on her haunches against the wall opposite my bed, her chin propped on her knees, the end of her sari drawn forward over her head like a cowl. Geeta saved her, she said. Geeta came down from Delhi to take the child away to her exclusive orphanage.
I did not probe. She had contacted Geeta, she had sold her again.
I inspected my body. There were needles in my arm attached to plastic tubes hanging from a metal pole on wheels. From between my legs a tube extended, ending in a clear plastic bag filled with yellow liquid. Another plastic bag ballooning with what looked like a thick brown lentil soup was lying on the floor nearly bursting, attached to a tube that came out of a hole slightly northwest of my umbilicus that had once attached me to my mother.
It is an autoimmune disease, a medical attendant in a white sari with a blue stripe informed me, inflammatory bowel, Cohn’s disease, a notably Jewish affliction, she added, looking at me meaningfully, Ashkenazi Jewish, like my mother’s gefilte-fish cancer. My intestines were destroyed, nonfunctional, rotted away. That is why I was vomiting—my mouth was my only outlet. They had been forced to perform emergency surgery on me to create a bypass. Henceforth my waste matter will be detoured through the hole they had created at my midriff, it will come out of the tail of my small intestine now sticking out of that hole with lips hardening into an alternative anus and collect in a bag that will fit very neatly in the space under my sari blouse.
Ma, see what you have done to me!
So that is what has been going around in the House of Holy Healin
g. Everything was clarified—a plumbing backup, sickening everyone.
No, she said, those patients have been infected with something else. Your punishment is autoimmune, you did it to yourself, it is your own fault entirely, you have been peeling off the lining of your own gut and squeezing it out into the toilet, you have been eating yourself up alive. The other inmates at the hospice for the dying have a different disease, contracted from mixing their fluids with the libations of the temple girls, the devadasis are all positive.
Positive? Positive is good, positive is—positive.
No, she said, positive in the House of Holy Healing is negative—it is lethal, a virus, plague. They are all terminal.
Rebbie-ji, my brother, made his final darshan on the night of the fire. He was curled up in a corner of his wheelchair, pitifully frail, skeletal, swaddled in blankets and shawls pulled over his head like the angel of death to conceal as much as possible the purple blotches that had erupted on his skin. Buki ben Yogli, slumping over the handlebars of the chair, had pushed him out of his private quarters into the great communal ward packed with his followers, among them also the wounded warriors, survivors and heroes of the anti-Semitic riot at the Kali temple with bandaged heads, arms in slings, on crutches, some also in wheelchairs like their master himself. Women also came out that night, sensing the weight of the occasion, willingly taking their places behind the partition, desiring to pay homage to the holy man their guru who had endured such agonies on their behalf and whom they sensed was now being recalled from this mortal travail to enter a phase of concealment in advance of coming out of the closet as the one we all await. A special alcove completely enclosed was set aside for me due to the impurity I now was carrying in a bag attached to the outside of my body, instead of hidden internally packed away in my bowels like everyone else. Manika and the devadasis, and every other outcast untouchable disease carrier, were also invited to join me in my quarantined isolation booth.