Confessions of a Librarian Read online

  “Please, do I look silly in this dhoti, I mean skirt? With a shawl round my shoulders, I’m wrapped like a package. But Indian garb keeps me cool in this blistering heat.” If Rhadu’s words were sometimes banal, his elegant movements reminded me of an Indian dancer’s. At every opportunity, he brushed against me with his fingers and palms. Pretending to remove dust, he explored my hair.

  “Let’s duck over to Elephanta Island. Just ten kilometers away but the energy is otherworldly. The weather is several degrees cooler too. Say yes, uncle will fuss if I don’t take you. Jolly old chap. Knows more about antiquities than all the pedants in academia put together.”

  If Rhadu had said the earth was flat, I would have agreed. The light playing across his mahogany skin and sun-dappled garment made me forget my research. What research? With spray drenching my hair, we left from Apollo Bunder pier near the Gateway to India.

  Lifting me off the launch at Elephanta Island, Rhadu pressed my underarms suggestively. From the sure-footed way he forged up the hill, it was obvious that he knew each rock-cut Hindu temple by heart. The closer we came to the temples, the more animated he became. Rather than a visitor, he seemed a native ravished to return home after a long trip.

  “These beauties date back to 600 AD. Most are dedicated to Shiva Mahadeva. There’s one to the fish-eyed goddess, Meenakshi.” Rhadu’s tone switched to reverential as his face suffused with a brighter radiance. Blinking in the bright sun, did I see goddesses leap down from the sculptures to dance round his head? Rhadu took my hand and we walked through courtyards and subsidiary shrines. Unable to concentrate on his elaborate explanations, my eyes fastened on a gold medallion of Shiva hung round his neck. I wanted to grasp it with my teeth to pull him against me. Playful monkeys along the paths weaved in and out between our feet. In a stately hall of massive pillars, an enormous Shiva lingam (stone sculpted penis) presided. Asserting its dominion over the temple, it surged aggressively upward. The fearsome energy it seemed to radiate prevented me from going too close.

  “Do not be frightened of this universal energy,” cautioned Rhadu. “Step closer, let its force inhabit you.” An old woman with jingling ankle bracelets and bright yellow sequined pantaloons crept up to the lingam to dance around it in intricate weaving motions. Reverentially, she kissed it, then left flowers and vials of fragrant oil at its base before veering off into the darkness.

  Abruptly Rhadu pinned me against the lingam. A relentless force, not to mention my own desire, held me fast. As the cold stone dug into my back, I opened my lips to receive his juicy tongue kiss. His saliva inundated my mouth, then flowed down my throat. Heated up to boiling, I sweated profusely. No other visitors passed while Rhadu, swaying back and forth, thrust his erect cock against me. If the entire city of Bombay had watched, I would not have cared. Elephanta cast a strange spell over me, numbing my sense of propriety. A mysterious current swept me along. Dare I call it magic? Suddenly jerking my arm, Rhadu pulled me away from the lingam.

  “Time to go,” he insisted. “We need more privacy now.” Silent, we ran toward the launch that sped back to Bombay. Disembarking, Rhadu hailed a taxi and ordered the driver to “hurry up!”

  “The Taj Hilton is my home away from home, my castle,” bragged Rhadu. “Wait till you look inside, darling. It’s Bombay’s best hotel.” Had I heard right? Rhadu called me darling? Over and over to myself, I chanted the endearment.

  The gorgeousness of the Taj, a gaudy replica of the famous monument in Agra, intimidated me. In the lobby, chic, pencil-thin women were being catered to by an array of fancy servants. Meanwhile I was a mess after being jostled from land to sea, then back again. “I’m thirsty, very hungry too,” I whined. “Nothing to eat since breakfast.” Odors of food coming from the Zodiac Grill made me salivate. The noise and bright lights reminded me that people were indulging in these shallow pleasures.

  “Everything you need, food, drink, all are abundant in my suite. What’s missing room service will provide,” insisted Rhadu.

  On the elevator, we rode up to just below the penthouse floor. Holding hands, we got out and entered a room identical to other Hilton’s worldwide except for a few paintings of Indian temples. A sound system wafted soft sitar music. Two doors painted red led to other mysteries. What lay behind them?

  “No one will disturb us here. My bedroom is the right door,” Rhadu winked at me suggestively.

  As Rhadu pulled me down on a satin divan that stretched along one wall, my hunger and thirst were forgotten. His impassioned kisses, which alternated with little bites on my lips and neck, made me want to stay in his arms forever. Yet he hardly touched my body, nor tried to remove my clothes. Wriggling around, I put my body literally under his hands, enticing him to go further. Why was he bringing me to the gates of paradise, then clamping them shut?

  “Let’s go in there. It’s much larger.” Massaging my neck, Rhadu steered me through the left door. Then we walked through two more small rooms into a big candlelit space. Six couples were seated on the floor in a circle with women on the men’s left. Seated in the lotus posture with eyes closed, as still as statues, the devotees meditated. Could this be a tantric ceremony? If so, I was thrilled!

  Garlands of flowers hung round the worshippers’ necks and were draped over miniature altars that contained offerings of fruit and incense. The center of the room was dominated by a giant altar to Shiva. Sculptures and paintings showed both couples and threesomes engaged in sex acts. Thrust back in time, I imagined myself living at Elephanta when Eros and art were in bed together. Persistently, the couples intoned the same mantra, which Rhadu translated as:

  “Peace and blessings to Shiva. And may death and dislike be slain—victims themselves of health and life.”

  “Sit over here,” whispered Rhadu. “Sssh! The ceremony is about to begin.” We settled into a large rattan chair with a high curved back. Pressing myself into Rhadu’s side, I wanted to crawl into his skin. Behind a latticed partition, we were invisible to the participants. All the men wore gold bangles on their left wrist. In the corner a turbaned musician alternated from flute to drum. Occasionally, he intoned tributes to Shiva in a reedy voice as high as a bird’s trill.

  “Each couple represents Shiva with his Shakti, or female energy,” whispered Rhadu. “A Shiva without his Shakti is a corpse. Combined they allow the wheel of life to turn.”

  A grandmotherly-looking woman wearing bright yellow pantaloons carried round a huge urn nearly bigger than herself studded with glittering stones. Putting it down, she lit oil lamps and made a tinkling sound with bronze bells. Eventually she sat down on the lap of her aged consort.

  I realized that this celebrant was the same old woman from Elephanta. Her slender body resembled my own as did her oval face and the way she kept her chin slightly elevated. Abruptly, her face changed into that of Meenakshi, the fish-eyed goddess worshipped at Elephanta. Then her fish face disappeared and mine replaced it. I watched as the image changed again—into a grinning skeleton. I rubbed my eyes to erase the frightening vision. Did I imagine she pointed a bony finger at me? Would I be in her place decades hence, performing this ritual with another partner or partners? What a dismal prospect! I looked toward the door, measuring how many steps it would take me to get there.

  “Will you marry me symbolically, or at least be my Shakti tonight? May I touch your yoni?” Rhadu inquired timidly. Without waiting for an answer, he placed his hand on my crotch, kneading and massaging without the slightest hint of eroticism. “Watch the men drink six cups of rice wine, then pour the seventh over their Shakti’s body. Notice, the cups are carved from human skulls. In tantric practice everyone is served according to seniority,” explained Rhadu.

  One couple appeared to be the most important. As they moved to the front, the rest formed a semicircle behind them. Every ceremonial offering came to them first. Something was familiar about how the man waved his extraordinarily long, oddly colored fingers as if he were tying a bow. Since I was a stranger in Bombay,
I must have been imagining things.

  “Ugh! Why are these people passing fatty pieces of meat from mouth to mouth? The smell reminds me of a slaughterhouse.” Starving, my queasy stomach flip-flopped in the stifling, airless room. Stiff, I curled and uncurled my toes to bring circulation back to my painful legs. I held onto Rhadu in order to stay on the chair. Patiently, he explained:

  “Pure meat of animals is nourishing to the body, gives strength and sexual power. It’s a particle of cosmic creative energy, the essential will to life.” As though on cue, the partners embraced each other. The females’ naked bodies were covered by long sari cloths. Gracefully, as they assumed sexual postures similar to those on erotic temples, flashes of breasts, thighs, buttocks and pubic hair became visible. While twisting and turning almost imperceptibly, they uttered low, bestial groans.

  “Now Maithuna, sexual pleasure, the highest level which brings supreme union with the universal power. How lucky you are to witness this sacrament of sacraments. Let us join the sacred dance of procreation and destruction.”

  The men wrapped themselves and their partners in extra lengths of sari cloth. Within this multi-colored cocoon some couples were immobile while others established a thrusting rhythm that made their saris ripple. My eyes fastened on the main couple who moved hardly at all. Treating his partner like a goddess, the man gave her a sensual massage, adoring every inch of her body with his hands, lips and tongue. I watched them embrace, heard their loud, rapid breathing, during which time the man maintained an enormous erection. When not inside his Shakti, the tantric adept’s penis bobbed up and down. At one point the man swiveled his head in my direction: Dr. Murghesan, the antique dealer!

  I gasped but did not dare to betray my presence—not that Murga would have cared. His face was like a saint headed to heaven. He looked twenty years younger and his limber body—the opposite of his usual stiff demeanor—assumed a variety of positions.

  “Our time now,” whispered Rahdu, snuggling closer. “Did you know that tantrics employ more than one hundred sexual postures with poetical names such as splitting the bamboo and tail of the ostrich?”

  Rhadu opened a closet to retrieve a long length of golden sari cloth. Draping it over my body, deliberately he began to remove my wrinkled clothes. As the hands I had yearned for all day caressed my body, I awakened from a stupor that had rendered me numb—plastered to the chair. Beguiling Rhadu had been Murga’s confederate to initiate me into their cult, a tacky imitation of the bygone glory of the days of David-Neel and the British Empire. Murga had set me up for this!

  Frantically, I threw my clothes together and disentangled myself from an amazed Rhadu. Not looking back, I bolted from the chair, ran through the hall and tripped into the elevator as though Kali the vengeful Hindu deity pursued me. The sleepy hotel staff stared quizzically.

  At six A.M. light was creeping up over the Gateway to India. A businessman in a suit carrying a briefcase was peeing onto the street. I walked briskly along Apollo Bunder boulevard, nearly stumbling over a guard dozing beside one of the BMW’s parked outside the Taj. Its chrome and horsepower did not stop big rats from scampering between the tires. As one brushed my feet, I felt its greasy fur. A rickshaw driver parked nearby asked, “Ride miss?”

  “Take me to Nirvana!” I said. He hoisted my trembling body onto the seat and, as Bombay awakened, he pedaled back to my hotel.

  Mechanically, I packed up, summoned the owner and paid the bill. Making my way to the train station, I did not regret leaving Bombay where the monsoon sweeps people out to sea. Dr. Murghesan and Rhadu had almost swept me to sea. I acutely regretted having read only half of David-Neel’s rare volume, which aroused my curiosity about tantric sex. Perhaps, as I chugged through India, another copy would turn up. Did Murghesan consult her book for pointers? He certainly guarded it more ferociously than anything else in his collection.

  On the train chugging toward Delhi, I put my feet up and relaxed for the first time since arriving in Bombay. I realized that my tantric experience qualified as voyeuristic because I had only wet my feet but stayed out of deep water. I remembered that David-Neel once wrote, “Who knows the flower best? The one who reads about it in a book, or the one who gathers it on a mountainside?” Was I an “armchair Orientalist,” the type of scholar David-Neel disparaged? In India I had, at least, climbed part way up the mountain.

  SIX: INTERMEZZO

  See this floating world like a dream, like a mirage, like a fantasy.

  Buddhist saying

  When I walked into Marilyn’s a couple of weeks later, familiar aromas assaulted my nostrils. “Indian food, delish! Let’s put on the feedbag! A few of the gang dropped in,” said Marilyn, grinning. “Come into the parlor.”

  Marilyn had draped colorful Indian scarves over the practical furniture. Dressed in a purple midriff top with matching tight pants flecked with gold, a yellow silk scarf round her neck, her feet bare sporting a toe ring, Marilyn glided across the room setting out the feast. A red dot sparkled on her forehead. Had she escaped from Bollywood?

  A wonderful surprise! Sarah and Chloe, engaged in an intense conversation, were seated on a couch that could have accommodated our entire Confessions Club. The three of us hugged while the pusses trotted over to rub their furriness at our feet.

  “Everybody sit on the floor, it’s more fun,” Marilyn insisted. She spread out a large mat embroidered with elephants and tigers. “Let’s eat with our hands like natives do.” Marilyn arranged shiny bowls on a revolving tray. The aromas of curry, asafoetida, and chilies transported me back to India where the soil seemed to exude a heady perfume.

  Sarah took tiny portions, examining each one meticulously, while Chloe scooped up large pieces as though she were starving. Chloe looked thinner and distracted, a far cry from the bacchante, so avid to enjoy the favors of Greek males who’d caught her fancy.

  Smelling food, the pusses, practitioners of a feline yoga, lined up before their respective bowls. Beneficiaries of Marilyn’s kitchen wizardry, they promptly finished their treats.

  “Trust me, these snacks”—Marilyn’s misnomer for this bountiful repast—”are the genuine article, no cheating on spices or ingredients. Start with the coconut soup, then dip into the marinated tofu with spinach and pine nuts, and two kinds of bread, chapatis and parathas. My favorite’s this delicious yogurt drink, lassi. Don’t neglect the condiments in the red bowls: dahl, chutney, and tamarind paste. I cribbed the recipes from a food guru on the Net.”

  “Cuisine in India is scrumptious, right?” Marilyn turned toward me.

  “Actually, I got the runs there,” I admitted. “Your food’s better!”

  After we had savored every crumb, Marilyn cleared away the dishes and put on a CD of Ravi Shankar’s sitar music. “Are these sounds putting you in an Indian mood?” Marilyn moved next to me. “ That book you wrote about the explorer who went to India. Doing research, bet you explored a few bedrooms not included in the text.”

  Marilyn giggled. “Sexy stuff happened there, I sense it. I’m not at the top of my profession for nothing.”

  “That’s Barbara’s private business,” Sarah burst in.

  “Barbara?... Barbara Foster’s so, so... librarianish.” Marilyn sniffed.

  “Anyway, our club member wrote the biography about a Frenchwoman’s pilgrimage to forbidden Tibet. Why should she cheapen her scholarship by telling smutty stories,” Sarah objected.

  Dressed in powder blue slacks and matching sweater, which clung to her well-proportioned figure, Sarah wore more makeup than I remembered. Not that she needed it with her luminous complexion and huge, blue-grey eyes that radiated an innocence left over from her Catholic school days. Re-styled, her grey hair billowed out in curls that cascaded over her shoulders. However, the expression on her face reminded me of a judge about to fine an offender.

  “David-Neel’s adventures were part of her search for enlightenment,” Sarah continued, brushing away Demeter who played a game with her ankles.
r />   “Last week, I mentioned her at my Buddhist group on the West Side. Personally, I’d like to hear more about her time at the Sorbonne when male students kicked their female classmates down the stairs. Next time, maybe we could read and discuss her Magic and Mystery. Its full of occult secrets that were unknown in the West.”

  Sarah lowered her voice. “Do you believe monks in Tibet actually flew through the air?”

  Before I could answer, Marilyn stood up to chide Sarah: “Since when are we studying Buddhism here? We’ve agreed to confess intimate details of our lives that would be unacceptable elsewhere. Addressing personal sexual issues is liberating. Right, Chloe?”

  Squirming, Chloe stared at me apologetically. “Sorry, making any decision is beyond me. Greece set me back. You folks come to some agreement.” She shrunk back into the couch as though wanting to be invisible.

  Encourage me, I silently implored Chloe. A story about a sexual drama that I experienced in Benares languished in my backpack. Would I be invited to share the details of my near abduction beside the river nicknamed Mother Ganges?

  “It must be swell being a librarian,” continued Sarah. “Meeting such interesting people, students and faculty. Because I quite college, I’ve had a series of glorified secretarial jobs. Nothing that would let me go to India, like Barbara.”

  “Sure, the job had great features like research leaves and long sabbaticals. But I had to maintain a respectable academic façade, no hint of my shadow existence. That’s why I started writing stuff down.”

  “We want to hear everything,” announced Marilyn. “Today’s a cozy group, a perfect opportunity to tell what’s bottled up inside, ready to spill over. Repression is unhealthy. Barbara, maybe we can help you write a sexy memoir.”

  Though Marilyn chuckled as she said it, and neither Sarah nor Chloe responded, the word “memoir” struck a chord within me. This was the direction I was moving in but hadn’t articulated. Now, I felt able to reveal experiences that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.