The Kissing Tribe

“I made the overland journey to India in the early Sixties. I was one of the first to make the pilgrimage and though I was untutored at the time, I had already dedicated myself to a lifetime of vegetarianism and celibacy.” Baba Gene paused for dramatic effect.

“Forty years of unreleased manhood.” Gypsy Lou sighed with a lascivious tilt of the neck.

“Indeed, I have learnt to channel my sexual impulses into opening the heart chakra to feel unconditional compassion for all sentient beings.”

“What a waste.” she sighed again.

“And so it happened that I came to the foothills of Pakistan." He continued. "I was climbing slopes off the beaten track and the fallen leaves of autumn crunched beneath my sandals. I didn't know where I was going or what I hoped to find, just driven by an unconscious urge to penetrate deeper into these valleys lost to the modern world.

One afternoon, as I started to wend my way up a slope covered in moss and dead wood, something told me to look up. And there, just a few metres above me, stood a beautiful woman with an amber cloth about her waist. Her hair was braided with flowers and vines that trailed down onto her breasts and her skin shone in the autumn sun filtering through the trees to glisten upon her blood red lips.

She approached me slowly but without fear, staring at my face intently. She leant in close and then pulled my head to hers and kissed me as I had never been kissed before. Her tongue explored every contour of my mouth and her lips swallowed mine. It felt as though she was probing for something and felt puzzled that she could not find it.

Yet though her mouth touched mine with an intimacy I had never before known, there was nothing sexual about the kiss. Being but a young man, I was swept away by passion and forgot my vows. I moved my hands down her body but she withdrew with a look of shock upon her face and shook her head ever so slightly.

She flicked her tongue against my chin and then turned to walk quickly up the hill. After a hundred metres she swung around in surpirse that I was still waiting at the bottom. She hesitated for a moment and then made an awkward gesture with her hand that I took as an invitation to follow. I could not keep up with her as she strode on barefoot over thorns and bracken and she had to wait every few minutes to let me catch up.

It all seemed like a dream and I began to grow afraid that I might suddenly wake up. I followed her without much thought as to where we might be going, entranced by this strange meeting. But after a couple of hours of walking, the sun was low in the sky and I began to worry a little as to where we'd find a warm place to sleep in these chilly heights. My fears faded, however, when we climbed a small hill and were met with the view of her village. It was sunk on a plateau in a very small valley that ran from east to west and still enjoyed the last of the day's sunshine. The huts were made of clay and wood, the rooves thatched with stone and straw. Everyone poured out of their homes and assembled to see what was going on, all of them wearing next to nothing in the dropping temperature.

A hundred sets of eyes fixed upon me and no one said a word as they formed a circle. The woman who had brought me here ran down to take her place but I remained where I was, thinking it wiser to wait until I saw what kind of reception awaited me. My guide turned to the man on her right and kissed him with vigorous rolls of the head. He turned and put his lips to the next person in the line who did the same until the kiss passed around the circle like a slow-motion wave. The message spread from lips to lips and seemed to vary in tempo and intensity as it went.

The kisses circulated for some time until they seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. My guide disappeared somewhere into the back of the village and returned a few minutes later, bringing an old man with her. His face was painted blue and he wore strange necklaces of bone. He held onto her arm for support and as his sight was fading she needed to point out where I was standing. The silence was finally broken as he called out to me in broken Hindi:

"Welcome. Welcome. We are happy you are here. Come with me and I will explain."

His voice sounded cracked and out of use, and he had trouble remembering the words. I was led to a small hut with a floor made of dried cow shit. We sat down upon a straw mat and water and fruit were brought for us as the old man endeavoured to help me understand. His face was a mass of crinkles that rippled with every word.

He told me that this was once a village like any other, full of unhappy, angry people, unable to relate to one another without arguments, jealousy and intolerance. They could not comprehend why this should be, since they knew that everyone was basically good-hearted, yet there was no avoiding the fact that people just didn't get along. So the people of the village had asked him, as village shamman, why things were like this.

He promised to put their question to the gods and went to meditate deep in the forest. For three days he took no food or water and fought off the call of sleep. Finally the gods were satisfied with his austerities and revealed to him the root of the problem.

They announced that the blame belonged to the air. Every time someone said something, the air took hold of their words in mid-flight and corrupted their meaning so that the other person always heard something slightly different than what was intended. With everybody's speech continually adulterated by these small alterations, the gaps between people grew so that each person lived in his own island reality, unable to communicate purely with anyone else. The result was the distrust and animosity that beset them now, the shaman had said.

The answer therefore was to bridge the gap. He declared that for one day of each week, speech should be forbidden and that communication should instead occur through touch alone, using the most sensitive receptors available, the tongue and lips. The village followed his advice and, though they could only express basic meanings at first, with practice their capacity grew and they quickly realized that this was the only really honest way to relate to anyone - In a kiss, no one could ever hide their true feelings or lie and they had a direct channel to each other's hearts.

The next year they increased the practice to two days a week and to three days the year after that until, when seven years had passed, no one even felt the need to put their ideas into words. It was only the elders among the tribe who knew how to speak at all and if I had come ten years later, there probably would have been no one left alive to explain the story to me.

The old man smiled with toothless gums and then darted forward at unexpected speed. He seized my head firmly with his hands and then explained the whole tale to me again - Through a kiss. When he finished, I was gasping for air and didn't know where to look. Though I couldn't grasp the details of his touch, yet his rasping tongue passed onto me an understanding of the story in a way that bypassed my intellect, settling deep within me.

I stayed with the tribe for a couple of months and learned something of their ways and language. They all found my progress hugely amusing but, as time passed, I felt the need for words become less and less. Winter came and without the natural hardiness of these folk, I could not bear the winds and the snow.

Everyone already knew of my intent to leave, having felt the distance grow in my kisses over the previous few weeks. It was with great reluctance that I left them and I promised to return with the first buds of Spring. The entire village assembled to see me off and each one of them blessed me with their kiss. However, life has since borne me away on other currents and I never made it back.

Still, now, when I meet a stranger I must fight the urge to introduce myself in the true tongue - But I fear my intentions would be taken the wrong way.”

Chapter 2