She was dancing ecstatically down the street towards me as I emerged into the early morning madness surrounding Pune railway station – the alien sights and sounds, smells, chaos and dirt filling all my senses to overload - so foreign, yet so familiar. It was only six am, but already the noise of the rickshaws drowned out the cries of street vendors, the exhaust fumes mingling with the smoke from thousands of breakfast fires. A city of three million people waking and already throbbing with life, the temperature rising moment by moment with the sun.
I’d landed in India six hours before, arriving in Mumbai at midnight,
and sharing a taxi with two friends I’d met by chance on the flight.
One of them lay in the back of the cab with a blanket over his head all the
way from the airport to Pune, muttering to himself over and over ‘I
can’t believe I did this to myself again, why am I in India again, why
did I come here again?’ It was my question too. My second journey home
– I’d had a life and death encounter with Mother India on my first
visit, and wasn’t sure what to expect now except the really really unexpected,
and I was excited to be back – I’d been away in the West and dreaming
of India for eight long years, never sure it could ever really happen that
I would return.
We arrived in Pune at four am, found a hotel room near the station and turned
out the lights, but I was too wired to sleep, and as dawn started seeping
through the curtains I ventured out into the street to find what awaited me.
Just outside the hotel gate I met a wretched beggar woman clutching a baby
wrapped in dirty rags, and thought briefly about giving her all the money
I had in my belt – that is, everything I had in the world – in
an instant an avalanche of worst-case scenarios flooded my mind and I decided
against it. I had been in India without money before, and did not wish to
repeat the experience – at least, that’s what I thought. Little
did I know.
I was still mindfucking about poverty, charity, what can I do?, why her not
me?, the whole banana, when the piercing clamor of finger cymbals ricocheting
off the cobblestones drew my attention to the street in front of me, where
I saw the most stunning spectacle of my life – a beautiful Indian woman
clad in sky blue silk sari, her thick black hair unbrushed tumbling in riotous
Medusa-like cascades below her waist, dancing in slow motion to the hypnotic
rhythms ringing from her fingertips and the mantras pouring from her lips,
all while balancing a large silver tray on her head. On the tray were artfully
arranged a vase of flowers, incense sticks, fruit, a mirror reflecting the
sun, a glass of water, a statue of Shiva.
She was swaying from side to side, bouncing up and down on one foot for eight
beats while her other foot moved gracefully forward to meet the earth. Her
hennaed hands traced delicate mudras in front of her heart as the rhythms
rang from her fingers and the tiny bells on her ankle bracelets,. She was
accompanied by a sadhu with knee-length dreadlocks, carrying a Shiva trident.
He walked quietly like a shadow down the side of the street, almost invisible,
his presence like that of a guardian angel to his queen holding center stage.
It was obvious they were Tantricas, even though I’d never seen Tantricas
in their natural state before. Devotees of Shiva who walk the path of Tantra,
the ancient science of the soul, much maligned and misunderstood, their tradition
is almost invisible in modern India. I had heard that centuries ago, thousands
of Tantricas had been killed because they moved as couples, man and woman
together wearing the one blue robe, which offended the moralists of the day.
Since then they had basically disappeared from view. It was rumored that perhaps
they were to be found in hidden temples in the mountains, but I never expected
to meet some in the marketplace of a teeming city, and performing their rituals
in public.
As the woman came close to me our eyes met, and for an instant I was transported
into the beauty of her world, the depth of her soul – the trance dance,
no-mind ecstasy passionate abandon, raw uncivilized life-giving primal woman
sex energy, totally on fire. Her wild eyes spoke to me laughingly, they said,
‘I really don’t give a fuck.’ And we passed each other by,
she dancing ecstatically down the street behind me disappearing out of my
life forever, the most amazing woman I ever met.