Chapter 20 - Leaving India 1973

"So what will you do down there?" M asks, squatting down to blow upon the embers of his dhuni, cooking up their final chai together.

B shrugs, conscious of how dim he seems, unable to explain himself.

"I don't know. I suppose I'll stay in the mountains for a while - I can't leave them just yet."

"Well," M concludes philosophically, "If you get stuck just look down and follow the direction in which your dick is pointing!" They both laugh at the obvious truth of this. For many months D had been unable to discern the root of the restlessness that throbbed discord through his meditations. He could not bear to recite any more mantras and his bottom is sick of sitting on stone. Finally a wet dream brought him to the conclusion that he needed a woman. He is, after all, a young man of 25.

Still, the idea of descending is not quite real to him. He wonders how he can possibly enter the worlds of money, family and society again. These things are now quite foreign to him and he has no idea for how long he'll float above it all. His brain has been blissfully clear of all this but he guesses that at some point his old bad habits will be evoked. Then he'll be hustling for his happiness in the dust and the heat along with all the other dissatisfied souls. He's afraid of losing his serenity and realistic enough to know that he surely will. He'll begin to worry about rupees, to examine his complexion in the mirror, to criticise the failings in others and boast of his own merits, to stuff his stomach with yoghurt and cake to the point of stupidity, to fill his head with worthless information and knowledge, and to throw his heart into the ruthless hands of capricious, beauties. He is electing to chain himself hands, feet and penis to the mercy of his own desires once again.

He has had the chance to be so free, untouched or tainted by all these worldly things that are the treasures of the multitudes. Now, he too will reach out for these prizes with greedy hands and thirsty mind, fooling himself that happiness awaits him in a healthy bank balance or beneath the next cotton dress.

He has turned down the chance to continue floating in a Paradise of simplicity where his kingdom encompassed the graces of Nature and even the mountains were at his beck and call. M tried to teach him how to never need again for anything. He could have achieved emancipation from the fear of future survival and livelihood that plagues the minds of billions across the globe. M knows how to live for years on boiled-up tree roots and tubers submerged in the ground. He holds the secrets of how to cure any and every condition of the body or mind by use of the bark, leaves and flowers that Nature provides in abundance, yet which are worthless to all but the healers. Although D has been led on several educational excursions through the jungle, he couldn't help but immerse himself in the beauty of everything around him except the particular piece of plant that M held up for his attention.

"If you ever decide to return to your practice in solitude," M tells him "Don't come back to this way of life. Dreadlocks and deerskins are not the qualifications for enlightenment! Just find yourself a small house in some remote place and buy all the food you'll need for a few months at a time - You can't concentrate on emptiness if you're calculating tomorrow's grocery bill."

M rocks back on his heels and looks his disciple straight in the eyes. D wonders if the old man is disappointed in him or even a little sad that he's given up. He wonders how many more disciples M will live to teach. Not many, surely. M smiles and says:

"Don't regret a thing. Now get out of here - You're in my way." D nods and as he gathers up his things M turns his back on him to wash the chai pot at the nearby stream. He watches the old man amble down the slope to the water, tendons taut enough to earn reverence from a goat. How can seven years come to an end in just a moment?

It's a beautiful morning and D doesn't want to leave. But he can't see himself staying either. He drags his feet to the edge of the plateau with his sadhu's bag around his shoulder with the essential blanket and water container. He takes his leave of the heights that have kept him such faithful company for so long and then he turns to behold his guru once again. M sees him lingering at the edge and stands up yelling:

"What are you waiting for? Go on - Get out of here!" He bends down to pick up a couple of rocks and charges at D, letting loose one of the missiles with surprising force. D finds himself skidding down the path with his heart beating wildly in his neck. When he's sure he's out of range he stops to catch his breath and calms the adrenaline kicking into action for the first time in years. He's not sure but it seems that the wind carries traces of ancient laughter from above. Once he calms down he understands that M's final lesson is that there is no going back.

After that his descent is pretty steady and he pauses only to eat some green apples from the orchards that he passes. The path is eaten away in a few places by the recent monsoon but the mountain has been home to D and he has no trouble making his way around on it. He comes by a few shepherds who are trying to hit a tree with stones from where they perch on a large rock. They nod deferentially to the thin sadhu with long beard and jata that are proof of his venerability. They invite him for chai but he is in no mood for small-talk.

He rounds a corner in the path and catches sight of the uppermost village in the valley. There's hay and corn drying on the roofs, crowning the houses in yellow and orange. Women of all ages amble up steep sloes with machetes in hand and swathe grass so that their cows have something to eat in winter. The cuttings are piled up and tied into bundles that will obscure their small frames when they hoist them onto their backs. But they never miss a step.

B comes down to the village barely conscious of his surroundings and he's among the houses before he knows it. It's something like graduation day. His senses are suddenly bemused by the psychic intensity of so many other people. He hears with an eerie clarity the arguments of cloistered families, the shrieking play of children, still innocent of the paid lunch, and the familiar banter of shopkeepers as they argue about their prices with suspicious old women who have been through this routine a thousand times.

His nose is appalled and screams protests to his brain at what a cacophony of smells it's suddenly asked to deal with: Shit of humans and cows, masala spices from nearby kitchens and rotting vegetable matter all combine into an unmistakable Himalayan perfume.

He strolls through the mud paths and into the village square. Without fail he attracts namaste's or just flat, startled stares. The invitations for chai grow in number and volume until he eventually consents, having nowhere else to go. The rumour quietly spreads as to whose student he is and the reverence given to M's name is immediately conferred to D. As he sits a crowd forms around him, edging as close as they dare. It's as if they want to soak up the invisible glow that he emits and many see fit to touch his feet. D's solitude has endowed him with a glow that marks him out amongst the crowds even faster than by his white skin.

There is no avoiding this reception and D just sits through it as just another scene in the movie, watching how his mind deals with all the sudden external demands upon his attention, after so many years of looking only inside. He remains in the village for some days, living in the temple and eating whatever the villagers bring for him. He stays silent most of the time and wishes his ears could be equally inactive. It's almost painful to digest the babble of the disordered minds that fills the air. He's shocked that everyone seems to have so much to say for themselves and he feels like a different creature.

By the fourth day he begins to adjust and even form attachment to some of the people who bring him food. He finds himself waiting for the old woman with the endearing smile who brings rice in the evenings: Life has not managed to steal the twinkle from her eyes. And, as he grows used to them, so too his attraction starts to fade for the villagers until his only visitors are the hopefuls who come to receive a blessing to remove illness or grant good fortune. For these he mumbles a few words of broken mantras and does his best to look mystical until they go away content that forces on other planes are working on their behalf.

B has passed the point of no return and cannot see further than the few feet of space he occupies. That in itself is hard enough as nothing happening around him seems real. For all he knows it could all just burst at any moment like the fragile expansion of a bubble. The childlike conviction resurfaces that everything might simply disappear if he can just remember the magic words.

The hardest thing of all to accept is that he's required to interact with other people. He's filled with an expansive, timeless awareness that finds no context in the day-to-day continuity of the village and though he speaks their language, he has trouble understanding what they mean. No sooner does he answer somebody than he forgets the question. He has little memory of yesterday and tomorrow is just too far away to be bother about.

He roams around the mountains for some weeks, receiving enthusiastic welcomes in every village that diminish in intensity as time goes on. He now finds himself eating too much and hungering for the next meal. He sees the young girls returning from the hillside with their baskets of hay and he wonders in what secluded grove they might meet Words of curses begin on his lips and, most alarming of all, he begins to fear. Fear that he might get stuck in India, unable in his head and heart to live anywhere else. Fear that he may be sexually inadequate after so may years of abstinence. And fear most of all that, in walking away from the caves, he may have turned his back on the best chance that Fate had to offer him.

With each day that D wallows in the quagmire of the society of other people he also begins to take on the foul odours of the swamp, rancid lechery steaming forth from his eyes and putrid malice trickling from his mouth. Where is his purity now? Whence have gone the crystalline revelations of a fruitarian diet at 3000 metres?

B doses himself by contact high of worldly passion and in return, the world takes him on as one of its own. For the sake of good form he becomes jealous, petty and obsessive. Lusting, lazy and craven. If you can't beat them, join them?

With his halo and aura of shining white light departed, D can now finally see things clearly. He had thought to stay on in the Indian Himalayas but everywhere he looks he can see the English teenager with pious ambition on his back, trekking up and down the hills in search of a guru. In the end, he decides, the student must be his own teacher. He leaves all these ghosts behind and heads down the valley to hitch truck rides on the long, broken road to Kathmandu.