Story World Research in Calcutta

Dateline

Dateline: January 1994

I was frightened. I was now facing KALI. The black Madonna of India who licked the sins of the world with her tongue. She was making me crazy. No words, no words …. inside KALI’S mouth. I began to hear her haunting refrain … CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, KOFFEE, KOFFEE … CHAI, CHAI, CHAI, KOFFEE, KOFFEE. I looked out of my window and saw a wall of thick haze and tropical vegetation. I could see industrial infrastructure everywhere. If Delhi was like Beijing, then Calcutta was like Shanghai. The train pulled into Howrah station. Howrah was a monster. I heard all kinds of noise. I saw squalor. I saw videos on the walls, beggars, huge queues, and waves of people, including touts surging towards me. I was in shock. I couldn’t afford a cab and didn’t know which bus to take, so I walked across the Howrah Bridge. It was mesmerizing. Zillions of people and vehicles swarmed across the bridge in both directions. The smog was astonishing, like a vision from hell. The Hooghly River was barely visible. Calcutta was sheer madness. I was in the belly of the beast and it was shaking me up and down, first sideways. Then I saw the monster walking, sitting, then crossing its legs, then uncrossing them, then standing up and rubbing its hands, then rubbing its dick, hitching its pants, then slitting its eyes to see everything, then grabbing me by the ribs and screaming, screaming. That was KALI’s song.

There was no money waiting for me in the bank. I had given my contact in America the wrong transfer instructions. I had to contact her now and start all over again. My money was running out and I was in a hot spot. I found accommodation in a Theravadan temple just in time. I threw myself back into the maelstrom and sent two telegrams. Then I visited KALI because she was the queen of Calcutta. Her face was everywhere. I found relief from the heat and noise in the unfinished metro and raced down to Kaligut. Here, KALI’s thirst for blood was quenched. Priest touts showed me the sacrificial altar where goats were killed every morning. I poured water and flowers over a Shiva Lingam, a kind of stone penis, and said prayers for my family. I swished around some incense and got slammed for a donation. I had red paste dabbed on my forehead. The cry of ravens could be heard everywhere. Beggars roamed in every corner smelling of strange purification. KALI knew how to work with the elements, with blood and water. The world was in turmoil. Hardliners were on the rise across the globe. Exotic knick-knacks and fast food occupied my attention as I walked back at night. Men were pissing right on the street. The smoke was everywhere. I had survived my first day in Calcutta. KALI laughed and mocked me, then made love to me, she was now my consort for this nightmarish part of my journey. I was protected.

I took a bus to Dakineshwar to see THE TEMPLE of the Bengali saint. I was now on his home turf at last. The air was different here. The oppressive congestion of Calcutta was gone and I felt a strange sense of release. This was the Bengali saint’s playground. It was impressive. There were pilgrims everywhere. I couldn’t go into the main temple because non-Hindus were considered impure. But I could feel Mother. The priests threw flowers at her. I walked barefoot and fell into a trance. Mother had her ways. Ravens, sadhus, beggars, and burning ashes competed for my attention. Pilgrims bathed in the ghats. The Hooghly River was peaceful here. Suddenly, I stumbled into the INNER SANCTUM. The Bengali saint’s room was now a shrine. I stared at his bed. The energy was dense, sweet, and uplifting.

Once more I pretended to address an unseen companion:

I’ve been in CAL for about three days now. It’s a nightmare, I know, but the pollution and noise seem to hide a sweet kinda magic. There are a lot of intriguing sights here and people, on the whole, are very friendly. Just this morning I woke up from a fitful sleep to the sound of Sufis chanting outside my window. The way they coordinated their hands and faces with their hauntingly beautiful sounds and tones put me into a deliciously temporary trance. I eat all my meals on the street. It’s so ridiculously cheap. What’s for breakfast? Sugar-buttered toast, peanuts, mango and banana bits, and egg omelets covered with diced onions. What’s for lunch? Kebabs on a roll, fried noodles, and steamed white rice, with Bengali sweets for dessert. Brown sugar dumplings swimming in honey syrup … LADY CANDY. Wash it down with sweet milk tea, coconut, and sugar cane juice. And all for pennies …. oh, how the sidewalks are teeming with life. My camera is snap, snap, snapping. Typists, barbers, and shoeshine boys are doing a roaring business. One half of the city seems to be selling something to the other half and vice versa. It just goes on and on … People have to fend for themselves here. The government seems useless. People who can’t afford bicycles become human horses here. It’s colorful, fascinating, horrifying, and shocking.

I went to the planetarium, but it was a bit of a flop. I could barely hear the narrator’s voice over the miserable sound system. It was that bad, but it was also a welcome escape from the smog. It’s so thick here it’s amazing. No, frightening. Visibility is almost zero and it attacks your nose and throat until you get a terrible HEADACHE. Traffic jams are heavy too. The police are trying to control the chaos, but it’s a free-for-all. I know there’s a hidden order here, there must be. I just haven’t found it yet. It’s never dull here, it’s suicidal on the surface, but some strange saving grace keeps things from collapsing in this wrathful cauldron, this furnace of WHITE STRESS. The Indians opt for the WHITE SOLUTION. Lenin, Queen Victoria, Ramakrishna, they’re all good neighbors. ALL IS ONE.

Yes, the form and the formless are the way the infinite took shape. The saints understand this very well. They love to love us as they laugh and navigate this sublime duality. I don’t care for the crowds and the guards in these realms. Their mute mouths tell me that willpower accomplishes everything, and those broken tongues say that willpower is just a combination of light and dark strands of energy. NOW THIS: Harmoniously merge these strands and generate a laser. (Past regrets and future worries dilute the laser.) Concentration in the present is important. It’s about discipline, it’s about faith. This is so impressive: dark life shot through with light. That’s what scares me about this place. Monk types aren’t welcome. Arahats can go home! Even the bodhisattvas have a hell of a time here. The messiah is unpopular. No, no, it’s a different ball game in CAL. Who wears the lonely crown here? The great adepts. The MAHASIDDAHS. They are the apocalypse pilots. They look like rebels without a cause, but in reality, they’re living Buddhas. They’re HIGH STRESS masters of LOW STRESS. They scrunch and fuse it into glowing balls of light. These Maha-Lunatics have found a way to live on the subtle plane as perfect Buddhas with ordinary bodies in their ordinary societies and their ancient universes. They can be both women and men. They can be great scholars and writers but often look quite ordinary. They can be kings and queens, or merchants or farmers. Even bums! This airplane ride is not ordinary. It is IMMEDIATE.

Did I tell you I got through to my contact at the American consulate? Well, I did. She told me she was going to send me some money. I was able to make a collect call. She told me that none of my telegrams were getting through. She couldn’t send me much either. Just enough to get to Nepal. She told me to call her there. I don’t trust her. Crap, during these difficult days, everything in my mind is just going BOOM! It’s so terrible and hard. Oh, how this year is releasing such powerful shit.

I took a bus from Dakineshwar back to Calcutta. I sat in the front with the bus driver and watched this madman plowing through the streets and plunging into the complicated roar on the streets. The sight and sound show went right through me. I had become a veteran now. I had mastered Calcutta by mastering myself. I jumped off in the darkness and just watched. Calcutta never slept. Human activity and construction went on all the time. I was in Hades. The smoke and dust were so thick. People just disappeared into it and miraculously reappeared elsewhere. But was it really Hades? No, it was just KALI. You were inside her mouth. Retreat was neither possible nor necessary. All the confused traveler had to do was come to terms with the energy of creation and destruction.

I imagined Calcutta from outer space:

It seems that India is a freak of history. The British heaved India into the industrial age too quickly. Uneven vertical development. No horizontal luxury. Industrial medicine multiplied the population faster than it could create industrial jobs. Now, with the digital age wiping out jobs in the industrial world, India is caught in another numbing catch-22. The computer reads DOUBLE JEOPARDY. There are no jobs in the cities, but the millions from the agricultural era keep coming to Calcutta. The British brought industrial infrastructure to the local population, but also massive social and cultural dislocation. Profits failed to trickle down while England grew rich and the locals lost demand for their traditional skills. The average wage in British Calcutta was four rupees a month. Today it is eight rupees a day. Not much of an improvement when you compare the REAL PURCHASING POWER then and now. The British wealth drain was accompanied by DIVIDE AND RULE TACTICS and MILITARY OPPRESSION. The ringleaders of the Seapoy rebellion were tied to the mouths of cannons and sent straight to heaven’s gates. The Indian psyche feels violated. This particular karma is reaping a bad harvest. As the subcontinent invades London and Birmingham and the British begin to squeeze the tits of their immigration doors, there seems to be a deeper cause and effect at work. Our computers are overloaded and cannot calculate this deeply concealed chain of determination.

The facts on the ground in Calcutta:

I walked the streets with a sense of quiet panic. Tibet was in danger, I could feel it. The screenplay had to be written soon. But where? I was now a familiar fixture in my neighborhood. I ate and drank with the toiling locals hiding in mysterious alleyways. In Bodhgaya, I had learned the lesson of emptiness. Now I was being taught how to fuse and transmute energy by KALI herself. My fears and confusions were harnessed and transformed into GOLD. That was the purpose of Prague and Jerusalem. I visited the Indian museum and studied some stone maidens from exotic Khajuraho. I had already visited this erotic blizzard of hidden emotion many years ago. I needed no further explanation. Every woman’s womb was sacred. Every menstrual flow was a holy river. Women all over the world had been repeatedly desecrated by two-headed monkeys and five-footed goats. I watched as they were displayed in strange pickled jars. These biological freaks reminded me of India. I found myself inside a deformed embryo of a monster. Its body was far too big for its head. I was exhausted. It was scorching hot outside. The KALI YUGA floated in heavenly formaldehyde here on Sutter Street. I was the lord of a tantric ferris wheel. KALI danced for me with exotic grace. She had ankle bells and bare feet. Calcutta moaned and groaned under her weight. Would Calcutta survive? Only KALI knew and she wasn’t telling.

I tried to find Nihar, the Bengali I had met at Tiger Hill. The streets were a hopeless maze, but the cab brought me close enough to Nihar, who was surprised and delighted to see me. His house was being renovated. Nihar introduced me to his family. Nihar’s son Babulal was an angry twenty-something with a polio limp and an agitated heart. Babulal was unemployed and looking for a break, ANY BREAK. I quickly became the main attraction in the neighborhood. Babulal introduced me to his gang. The boys played cricket in the street and laughed a lot. I felt at home. There was warm hospitality here. KALI’S children were OK.

Nihar treated me to a Kalia lunch, fish stewed in a delicious curry. Nihar was a Marxist, but a nice one. A sad, mystical glint in his eyes betrayed a lost romantic. Nihar had no spiritual practice, but his soft and gentle manners resembled those of a neighborhood priest. Nihar had much to fear. India was a freak of history. The British had squeezed her like a mango, but Muslims and other invaders had also screwed her too. The confusion in Calcutta was almost suicidal. I had visions of a giant Bulgaria. But this Bulgaria had spiritual immunity. There was hope here. The STRESS was WHITE and it was GROSS, but it was LIGHT. Sofia’s STRESS was BLACK, SUBTLE, and HEAVY. The agricultural family was still alive and well in Calcutta and most Indian cities. The extended family was India’s safety net. Babulal’s relatives all lived under one roof. Many of them were urban and sophisticated. “Cal’s a tough place,” echoed Babulal. “All the people you see selling food and other things are pooling their resources and living in a heap in one room. The rents here are high and you have to bribe the police and the local mafia if you want to ply a trade on the streets. All those beggars you see on the sidewalks have been abandoned by their children. The food is pretty cheap though.” I listened to Babulal’s explanation with fascination. I found the Bengalis a sophisticated bunch, they were go-getters with class. Biharis were considered stupid and transparent. They only wanted money. My hosts in Gaya were all from Uttar Pradesh. “Oh, those guys, they just want a visa,” laughed Babulal. He was right. Bengalis wanted a relationship.

Life was getting tougher in CAL by the day. The population pressures were stressing the ecology, and solutions to the mess were becoming harder and harder to find. Babulal’s contemporaries had no interest in spiritual matters. I had to look for a meditation partner elsewhere. Babulal’s uncle was okay with that, but he was now retired. I fell asleep next to one of Babulal’s gorgeous sisters. The other sister, Chumkyi, lovingly assured me, “Don’t worry, treat her like your own sister.” I was now part of the family.

The money arrived. It was only two hundred dollars, but in India that was a lot. The smog was killing me and the flu bug brought back bad memories of Berlin. I began to plot my escape. I bought a ticket to Varanasi. The Theravadan temple kicked me out and I hired a human horse to take me to Sutter Street. I sat there as if in a trance as my rickshaw driver skillfully navigated me through the maze of alleys and spitting crowds. Did he do that with ESP on Sutter Street? Where the prices were high and the vibes were lousy? There was no trust in this tourist toilet bowl. I felt the energies shift again as I browsed the bookstores and haggled with the tape merchants. Everything here was bootlegged and cheap.

I rented a tiny cubicle and felt utterly miserable. Sutter Street was a noise trap. The Indians had to play their music FULL BLAST at all hours. It was useless talking to these people. The Indian mind tripped out on sound. It was the ONLY ESCAPE. I took a train to Bahirkhanda, a tiny hamlet lost in the boonies, an hour north of Howrah. Once there, I took a bicycle rickshaw to Horispor. This was the home of KALI, off the beaten path. Here you can find the Dakatia temple. This is where robbers had sacrificed their human victims to KALI. It was chilling to be home again. A KALI puja was in progress. The place and time felt sublime. A priest was performing an unknown ritual and I felt happy and very close to him. Women surrounded me and knelt on the floor. Who was this strange foreigner? Drums were banging a rhythm of snakes. A beautiful young virgin wrapped in a colorful rainbow sari stared at me as she blew a conch. She resisted all my attempts to snap her soul. She was barefoot and moody. I fell in love with her and watched her escape with the modesty and swiftness of a wild antelope. It all felt so familiar. There was liberation here. A new subtle alignment was taking place. The white-haired priest invited me to lunch. He spoke no English, but I felt happy and content. Here was my new father and here was his long-lost son. I WAS FREE.

I returned to Calcutta’s teeming masses and their unconditional misery. It was a new experience, like none I had ever had before. This density produced saints. Their bliss spread to the big world. It was an unforgettable experience. I was blessed even though my physical and mental health was going. Calcutta was crushing me, fucking me, licking me, and finally releasing me. I took one last bus to Howrah Bridge. I wanted to be in the middle of the vortex. To feel KALI’s hot, humid breath in my lungs. The Hooghly slept in the mist. The dirty, sweaty crowds surged forward like an angry tidal wave. I was slowly dying. It was time to split before it was too late. KALI’S witch’s brew was killing me. On the bus back to Nihar’s neighborhood, I almost lost consciousness. The sweat of the sardined passengers created a steam bath. KALI was screaming. She was black and she was white. Her ferocious eyes glared at me.

“Are you all right?” asked a hidden voice. I turned around and KALI gave me another surprise. It came in the form of a young psychiatrist. He invited me in for tea. “Oh, I can’t stand this pollution,” I moaned. “We Indians don’t have time to worry about things like pollution. We’re just struggling to get by, you know,” said my new friend. He was handsome; he had dark skin and a mischievous smile. “What do you tell your patients?” I asked. “Oh, that they should fall back on their families, that’s the only advice I can offer them. I’m doing my time in a government hospital. When I finish my studies, I’ll see what I can do next. May we exchange addresses?” My new friend felt sincere. I scribbled a few words on a crumpled piece of paper.

I hurried back to Nihar and said goodbye to him and his family. I could hardly wait to leave. The thought of staying in KALI’s mouth for even another hour was unbearable. The cab ride to Howrah was a nightmare. The screeching and howling of rush hour traffic felt like pipe organs going to war. During a break in this cosmic concert, the cab driver stopped to pick up some passengers. I felt sick and was sweating profusely. Every inch closer to Howrah made me cry. The violent ride over the rapids was nearing its end. At last, we were on Howrah Bridge! We heaved and jerked. Screaming drivers with unlimited energy hunched over their steering wheels looking for an opening. ANY OPENING out of the cauldron jam. KALI laughed. She had started it all, and now she didn’t want it to end! I found my train. It was ready to leave without me. I collapsed on a seat. My strength was spent. I looked at my wrist. My watch was gone. KALI had taken one last bite.