Tantrika (21 page)

On my way to Shimla, I wanted to stop at a garden called Pinjore. I came to a turn in the road. Esther, Lucy, and I had turned to the left, to Chandigarh and the road to Manali, instead of to the right, to Pinjore Gardens and Shimla. It was supposedly from here that the losing warriors of the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, disappeared into the Himalayas. That was what I felt I was about to do, even if I won the war. Somehow, I passed the gardens. As I did a U-turn to find the gardens, I heard two uniformed schoolboys, carrying their book bags, exclaim to each other about my gender.

The first boy: “Is that a madam?”

The second boy: “What else?”

My adventure in nonduality was a trip into the world of the he-she.

As I crossed from the state of Harayana to Himachal Pradesh to ascend into the Himalayas to Shimla, I warmed myself on the heat of exhaust fumes expelled by lorries. I stared at Durga as she came toward me, painted onto the front of oncoming lorries. I'd put 362 miles on my odometer. I thought to myself, “I am Durga.”

To focus on the road and not the cold, I chanted another mantra, picked up from a billboard: “Food king. Homely food. Food king. Homely food. Food king. Homely food. Food king. Homely food.” I learned later that there is a Tantric teaching called
nyasa,
in which we
synchronize different parts of a mantra with the limbs and organs of the body. It sounded ridiculous, but it made sense as I rode up these narrow tarred roads, curling the fingers of my right hand around the accelerator and the fingers of my left hand on the clutch, synchronizing the changing of the gears with the gentle tap forward of my left foot to gear up and backward to gear down.

There are different levels of
nyasa
practice. In the first, the mantra is divided into six parts grounded in the thumbs, index fingers, middle fingers, ring fingers, little fingers, and palms through the power of concentration. This is called
kara nyasa,
synchronization of the mantra's power with the energies of the hands.

Next comes
anga nyasa.
That means synchronizing the six parts of the mantra with the energies of the heart, the head, the crown of the head, the chest and shoulders, the three eyes, and the space of the pranic body. This is what I did as I concentrated on the road, keeping a vigilant eye out for black dogs and piglets that might be jogging across the road.

As we climbed the mountain, my tiger stalled and fell in the middle of the road. I was in third gear when I should have been in second. The right-turn signal light cover shattered. Lorries could come around the bend straight at me. I chanted a Muslim
surah,
or Qur'anic chapter, that my mother had told me since childhood to recite for protection. An epiphany came to me. In this foxhole, I remembered God. She was not Durga. He was Allah. I didnt even know it, but that's just why the chapter was called,
alIklas,
meaning “The Purity of Faith.” With an energy I didn't even know I had within me, I lifted my bike and hurled it upright, rolled it into the side in neutral, and somehow with a power regained, I started my tiger, and he roared gentlty to carry me forward.

I passed a sign for Tara Devi, a temple devoted to the goddess Tara. I should have stopped there to pay my respects. But surviving this climb would, I thought, be respect enough to feminine energy. It was dark now, and we were mostly alone on the road. There was nowhere to stop to rest my head for the night. I continued until I saw the sign telling me I'd made it to Shimla. I pulled over at a roundabout, where I spotted an STD booth, the phone booths of the subcontinent.

I found a room at the Himachal Pradesh Tourism hotel and turned it into my cocoon. My lower back was aching from lifting my bike. Rudyard Kipling had written a novel in Shimla. I watched MTV and HBO.

On MTV, I saw a bump-and-grind dance party under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a place I used to retreat to, to feel the magic of the Manhattan skyline set behind the calm waters of the East River. It had been taken over by svelte young women in bikinis and young men with rippling muscles. I pressed my thumb to change the channel. The Palestinian intifada filled the screen on CNN. I wondered about this world in which we live between MTV's
The Grind
and Palestinian uprisings. Where did I fit in?

Over the next two days, I eased my sore body through yoga stretches on a wool checkered blanket I lay on my hotel room's ratty soiled carpet. I ventured into the hillside of lights that was Shimla, wandering through narrow stairwells that climb into the city's town square. A gaggle of Muslim girls wearing head scarves filled the square, jostling each other, waiting for chai. They were on a school trip. They reminded me of Arina, although I doubted she would ever have been allowed such a trip, even escorted. I thought about their lives, protected and clear, in contrast to my own. Their lives held a temptation for me because at least they had more security and stability. No matter the attraction, I knew I was on a much different path.

The story of Shiva and Shakti continued beyond the love story I already knew. Shakti, also known as Sati, vowed that she would kill herself if her husband were ever insulted. Sure enough, her father insulted Shiva one day, and Sati burned herself alive in a
yagna,
a fire ritual. Silly girl. Hadn't she learned to transcend ego? Shiva was devastated. He picked up her body and spun in the cosmic dance captured on statues now popular. He rampaged through the three worlds. The other gods were frightened. They asked Vishnu for help. Vishnu unleashed his chakra, or power, in the form of a volley of arrows that cut Sati's body into fifty-one pieces to save the earth from Shiva's anger. The fifty-one places where Sati's body fell are known as Shakti piths. A Himachal Pradesh tourism magazine told me the state was home to several of the
fifty-one Shakti piths where parts of Sati's corpse fell. It was more than perfect for me to put at least one of them on my itinerary.

I set out again on the morning of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. I was nervous. My motorcycle seemed so daunting. When I had last sat on it, a few days earlier, I had been exhausted. I didn't know how I was going to be able to control it now. My doubts were confirmed. After successfully making it out of town, I veered to turn onto a back road. I found myself facing a climb. I didn't know what gear to put my bike into. I toppled in the middle of a village bazaar. Men I didn't even notice suddenly appeared. They picked my bike up from both sides and assured me that this was the last of the steep climbs.

“Drop down to first gear or second gear,” one told me, “and all will be fine.”

Another man offered to ride my bike up the hill. I accepted, although I wondered if I'd ever see my tiger again. I jogged up the hill behind him, my helmet still on. He sat waiting on a flat of land in the bazaar. I climbed on again, and I found myself in one of the most beautiful states of being I'd ever enjoyed. On this day when the mountains were mine to behold, the valleys mine in which to sink, and liberation mine to know, I felt like the caged bird who suddenly finds the flutter of the wind again under its wings. I pulled over to eat an apple. I took a photo of myself. I was so happy, calm woven with glee interspersed with awe.

A man in a tight Nike T-shirt stood in front of a shed that looked like it was set up for bicycle repairs. He confirmed that I was on the right road to a place called Naina Devi. It was a Shakti pith where Sati's eyes were said to have fallen. I really wanted to go only to the Shakti piths in a corner of India where her yoni supposedly fell. That was the one that Vishnu Uncle in Kathmandu had offered to show me, but I had chosen not to trust a guru and his Bagpiper Whiskey.

I turned off the back road onto a windy path that was National Highway Number 21. To my surprise, I saw the Hotel Hilltop sitting on a hillside at a bend in the lane. That was where I had stayed with my two
dakini
sisters on our first night on our own in India. Naina Devi sat not far away, tucked away in the many curves and hills of Himachal Pradesh on a hilltop in the state's Bilaspur District. The sun was setting. I found
myself again on the road as darkness neared. I chose to take the gamble and continue forward. This narrow bumpy road wound up through a mountain. A jeep full of passengers passed me. Then I passed it when the driver pulled over to let off passengers. At least I had company. Only the faintest light remained. I could see the glitter of white lights far away, like a white glow upon the hill.

The word
Naina
is synonymous with Sati's eyes. I wondered if she could be watching over me. I found myself at a gate. The man there pointed me to a new
dharamsala,
or hotel, where he said I could spend the night at the foot of the hill on which the temple sat. This would be the first time I had ventured into a
mandir
alone. Fireworks shot into the sky for Diwali, the Hindu holiday of lights I'd celebrated only once before in my childhood with my friend Sumita. Would they be inviting here? A Sikh Punjabi looking after the ashram guest house checked me into a room and offered to go up to the
mandir
with me. He was supposed to meet the temple's pandit up there.

We climbed hundreds of stairs that ascended past stalls with shutters rolled down over the front of them. A giant pipal tree stood to the left after we crossed the main gate. It was a calm scene tonight. I took my shoes off at the foot of the stairs and climbed upward. We circled clockwise, and I found myself in front of a dark goddess figure. She had a daunting black face with a gold
teeka
hanging from the part of her hair to the space between her eyebrows like my mother wore on her wedding day. I offered my
prasad,
my gift of food to the goddess. The pandit smeared a
teeka
on my forehead.

As I sat on the cool temple tile, another pandit told me the tale of how the gods were confounded by the terror of an evil monster. The legend said that only a woman would be able to destroy the demon. The gods created Durga to destroy the monster. The evil force tried to seduce the beautiful Durga. He could not entice her. She destroyed him. “From sky, fire fell. There was so much power. She used to kill with her
phoonk,”
the short breath that I knew in a different way from my childhood, my mother breathing upon me for protection after reciting a verse from the Qur'an.

“Look,” he said, gesturing to the shrine, “this is Ma's power.”

I settled in a corner of the small room in which Naina Devi's shrine sat. Christmas lights strung around the mother goddess image flickered red, yellow, and green. “Jingle Bells” wafted out of the lights. Then came “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Flowers were scattered around Naina Devi. Two men in robes fed her. The smoke from incense spiraled upward. A brass railing divided devotees from the goddess, and a padlocked silver-colored box sat in front of the railing, past which devotees trickled to pay their respects and drop coins and folded rupee notes.

As the story goes, Durga threw her
paseena,
or sweat, behind her at Naina Devi, leaving her presence behind. The Muslim in me couldn't relate to this devotion. Barbed wire surrounded the temple. A monkey squeaked. Hindi music filtered up the hill to the temple from down below. More fireworks popped. This was a temple like many where a pandit's family ruled.

Back at the ashram guest house, the pandit's children tumbled inside, fresh faced and eager. They were normal young boys with dreams. Aditya Gautam, thirteen, aspired to be a businessman. Abishek wanted to be an air force pilot. The eldest was headed to cricket camp the next morning with the dream of becoming a cricket star. They asked me to climb to the rooftop with them. Once, they had stood here, they said, and the power of the goddess, whom they called Mataji, or Mother, swept into their hands in the form of lightning that sprang through the sky.

“Mataji is power,” said Aditya. Mother is power.

Their father wandered by the next morning, his hair twisted into a small ponytail. There was a smear of yellow on his forehead and on his earlobes. He wore a gold pendant of Durga on the end of a gold chain, a peek of the white cord that marked him as a Brahmin underneath a dirty shirt. He said he went to a degree college for one year but was unemployed. He wasn't warm or engaging like his sons. Still, I ventured to ask him to tell me about Tantra. He didn't want to talk about it. “It's secret.”

I headed one last time up to the temple to see it by day. The stalls in the bazaar, now open, sold the coconuts and red ribbons of Hindu temple worship. They also had black plastic toy guns, another fixture at temple bazaars, just like the one a boy was shooting at the Kalachakra initiation
in Ki. Durga was painted upon the white tile in the temple, supposedly at the top of 213 steps. I lost count at thirty-nine.

Cries of “
Jai
Mataji!” broke out every few minutes. “Victory to the Mother!”

I was told to go search near a
goofa,
a cave, for a baba. Someone yelled at me. I turned around. It was the baba, looking very much a sadhu with unruly hair and leathery skin. Only this one lived in a well-equipped room with a television in one corner beside a telephone. He sat in front of a fire in the middle of the room, tridents stuck in a cauldron, a symbol of Shiva's weapon against three evils that have to be destroyed in order to get to enlightenment: anger, lust, and pride. I sat down.

He said, “Shanti comes from being cool.”

It soon became apparent that he got his peace of mind from something else. He talked to me between hacks of coughing, as he smoked what smelled like marijuana. He seemed a rather unhealthy person to be dispensing advice. Men trickled inside until the room was full of company. They passed his cigarette around. He flipped through a photo album and stopped at a photo of a Western woman. “She is my student.” Every baba seemed to have a token Western disciple.