The Seeker (10 page)

A short man with studious glasses emerged from a taxidermy shop with a stuffed deer on his shoulders. He was elbowed by a woman carrying boomerangs and Spiderman masks, incongruous against her starched white saree and the red mark on her forehead.

The evening darkened. Yellow light bulbs and white flashlights came on in the shops. Spicy food smells filled the air. Max worried the market would close down.

“Shoe shop?” he said to the men following them.

A sudden silence and then a cacophony of shouts.

“Giant shoes, giant shoes, giant shoes, giant shoes.”

A ripple spread through the market. Touts shouting to shopkeepers, shopkeepers to other shopkeepers. Within minutes, a pregnant woman came running breathlessly through the crowd. She caught his hand.

“Come, come,” she said.

They followed her, wading through the crowd, stopping at a hut selling bangles—hundreds and thousands of them in red, green, yellow, golden, blue, every hue of color, suspended from strings on wooden beams, fixed on nails on the mud walls, strewn across a table with a white cloth. The woman pulled a wooden box from under the table and threw the lid open to reveal plus-size rubber and canvas shoes, sandals and flip flops. Nike, Adidas, Crocs, even Tom’s shoes.

“You like?” said the woman.

Max nodded, speechless. Some of those shoes would fit men much taller than him. Yet he hadn’t seen a single man taller than his six foot six inches in India.

“Can I take a photo?” said Anna. “No one would believe me if I told them.”

The woman shook her head. “Not take photo. Take shoe.”

Max put his hands in the treasure box, sat down on the mud floor and started trying on shoes. He had the luxury of choice. Four or five pairs fit him perfectly. Max bought a pair of black Nike running shoes for one US dollar and put them on. He put his weathered Merrill boots in a plastic bag to take back with him, then hesitated. From the Grand Canyon to Kilimanjaro, the shoes had been with him for years. But they hadn’t worked in India. Nothing had. He had to let go of everything he knew to move forward. Max gave the woman his hiking boots.

“How much you want?” said the woman.

“Nothing,” said Max. “Keep them.”

She stared at him. “Okay. No problem.” She put the shoes into her wooden box.

They stepped out of the hut.

“I want Marmite,” said Anna.

Again, a human wave surged through the market. Another man tugged them to a shop. Soon, Anna had a small glass bottle of black marmite—available for sale only in England and Australia.

“Barry M Dazzle Dust,” she said.

The British cosmetic was in her hands in ten minutes.

Next, Max got new socks, T-shirts and even running shorts that actually fit him.

Anna clapped her hands together.

“I thought I had seen everything but I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “They sell tiger claws and elephant tusks in Togo but none of the other stuff.”

A man with a light moustache and a bright red scarf around his neck grasped her hand. “Animals, madam, come with me,” he said urgently.

They looked at each other, then followed him.

Max’s feet breathed easily again in his new running shoes and socks. Past the clutter of shops they went, ignoring the solicitations of touts selling Parisian fur coats, Jamaican coffee, Portuguese porcelain and even a black moon rock. They reached the far end of the field. There, the crowd thinned and the din quieted. A herd of thin cows slept on the withered grass. Max stopped.

“Please sir, come with me,” said the man, his lips quivering.

He looked small and unthreatening. They followed him through the darkness, stopping at a thickly crossed barbed wire. The man flopped down and went under the wire.

“Please, please. Trust,” he said, sensing their hesitation.

They flattened themselves against the mud field and crossed over to a dark street. A turn. Another row of shops with yellow wick lamps and blue-white flashlights. Cries. Smells. So many of them.

Each shop-hut was full of animal cages stacked on top of each other. Max’s heart raced. Mewing cats. Yelping puppies. Aquariums with colorful fish. White signs with black English lettering. “Pets!” “Science Experiments!” “Exotic Animals!” “Protectors!” “Predators!”

There were more cages with parrots, sparrows, cockatoos, mynahs, crows, other blue and yellow birds, crying, cawing, shrieking. Smells of wet, mangy bodies, animal waste and the sweaty humans standing in front of them. They walked past the cages in a daze. The shops were smaller, even more crowded than the ones in the large field. A woman walked past them with a wicker basket full of hens, another with twelve squawking parrots tied to a stick with a string, a man with an aquarium filled with sparkling, blue fish, another with a burlap sack with a moving, squealing, indeterminable animal in it.

“Come, come, come fast,” said the man.

Their morbid fascination pulled them forward.

Sheep. Rams. A deer with antlers. How could the animals survive in this heat? They took a turn in the middle of the huts. The lamps dimmed. The men standing in front of the cages were tall and heavily built, unlike the thin Indians he had seen thus far.

A glass jar with six large turtles paddling in knee-deep water, colliding against each other. Max stared in fascination at another closed jar with a bundle of yellow and black snakes locked in an embrace, unnaturally quiet. A ten-foot cage with a moving black mass in it. Jesus. A black bear. Another cage next to the bear with two zebras flicking their hind legs restlessly, nuzzling each other, a terrified look on their faces.

This couldn’t be legal.

Grunting followed by a sharp growl. Anna dropped the bottle of marmite on the mud field. Her face was red, forehead lined with sweat.

“All animals. Everything. What do you want, sir?” said their guide.

The zebras cried.

Another growl.

Max’s pulse quickened. “Let’s go,” he said.

He found Anna’s hands and turned back. Their guide followed them. He caught hold of Max’s shirt.

“Do you want tiger? Leopard? What? We have everything,” he said. He bared his teeth and made a hissing sound. “Snake venom? Cure for sex disease, for all disease.”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Max, extricating himself from his grip.

“
Arre fakeer ho
,
sahib,
” said the man. “You are beggars, sir.”

They retraced their steps quickly, walking with their heads down, ignoring the terrified squeaks, yelps and mews, under the barbed wire, through throngs of people in the field, past the naked children sifting through the garbage in the alley outside and the stoned men in front of the huts, onto the main road. Civilization again. Max had never been more relieved to hear the pervasive Indian sounds that had been conspicuously absent from the market: the honking and roaring of vehicles, the scream of sirens, the blaring music from the roadside religious processions and marriage parties.

“What was that?”

“Don’t talk,” said Anna. “Just kiss me. Please.”

Max pulled her red face toward him and kissed her on the lips. She took a deep breath and pulled away.

“God, I’m sorry, I’m acting hysterical,” she said. “For a moment, I was sure the bear would break open its cage.”

“I didn’t mind at all,” said Max.

A woman on the sidewalk tried to sell them jasmine garlands to put on each other. Max took Anna’s hands and walked through the Colaba market, toward their hostel.

“God, that was a zebra, wasn’t it?” said Anna.

“And snakes?”

“That taxidermy shop had a stuffed elk,” she said.

“And so many shoes and clothes my size?” he said. “I can’t find such variety even in a Big & Tall Store back home.”

“My fiancé was as tall as you,” she said unexpectedly. “He was killed in Afghanistan six months ago.”

Hats for you, tall sir? Ayurvedic cream for you, fair lady? Half price only. The man selling cosmetics and hats from the afternoon was back with deeper discounts. Max bought a hat, the mindless act of giving money and getting something regular in return making him feel in control again.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you before,” said Anna.

“We just met,” said Max.

She put her hand through her hair. Again, Max caught a glimpse of the tattoo of the couple on her wrist.

“You got this after?” he said, pointing to the tattoo.

“Before. We were together since secondary school,” she said, her brown eyes dropping.

Max hugged her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, I must thank you,” she said. “I’ve been traveling since I left the army six months ago but haven’t felt alive until today.”

His heart lifted. “I haven’t felt more comfortable with anyone in years,” he said.

Anna kissed him lightly on his lips. “Should we head back?” she said.

Max put his warm, sweaty hand in hers. They cut through the Colaba causeway, dodging tuk-tuks decked in rainbows of colors racing past them, and made their way back to the hostel.

“How long are you planning to stay in Mumbai?” she asked, as they climbed up the stairs to the hostel on the second floor.

He pressed her hands. “How long do you want me to stay?” he said.

Anna smiled. “I’ll have to know you better to decide, won’t I?”

She walked him to his room.

“Are you sure?”

Anna nodded.

Max’s groin tightened. He felt a familiar rush of blood. He opened the door to the small room with its dim light, peeling paint and hard wooden bed. Water had seeped onto the bedroom floor from his bucket shower in the bathroom earlier that afternoon.

“We can take a hotel,” said Max.

She walked into the room on the tips of her toes. Max hardened. He followed her inside. She sat on the bed.

“Is this for me?” she smiled, looking at the bulge in his pants.

She unzipped his cargo pants and fondled him. Max blanked his mind, trying not to come immediately. She put him in her mouth and sucked vigorously. Max put his hands on her head. Her back arched. He bent forward, unbuttoned her shirt and fondled her warm, full breasts. She sucked harder.

Max pushed her back onto the bed. He took his shirt off and kissed her thin, angular body. The smell of her perfume mixed with the smells of the market. He entered her. She moaned, moving her arms up against her head. In a frenzy, he thrust harder. She thrashed around wildly. Max came with a cry.

She nestled in his arms, her eyes wet with tears. He put his arms around her warm, naked body. The red tattoo on her wrist glistened with sweat.

Anna whimpered.

“It’s okay,” he said, ruffling her hair.

Max stared at the dirty pink bed sheet, feeling the familiar emptiness after the overpowering sexual urge had drained.

How long do you want me to stay?

He was fronting as some kind of a lover-boy now. Just who was he? He had come to India to find the end of suffering and here he was fucking a vulnerable woman with a dead fiancé.

Max held her tight. Icy mountains. Afghani opium. Exotic markets. Zebras. Tigers. Sex. This was India. There was much to see, more to do. But he wasn’t a hippie on a sightseeing trip. He had wasted too much time already, he had to get his act together. His backpack, soaked and dirty, lay propped against the bathroom door. Inside the zipper at the top was the address Anand had given him. Now he understood why Anand had been reluctant to share the address with him. Max didn’t have the seeker’s focus.

He touched the tattoo of the couple embracing on her wrist.

“Anna,” he said.

She opened her eyes. His chest tightened.

“I have to leave.”

She smiled, covering her breasts with the bed sheet. “To get dinner?” she said. “I’ll come. I could do with a good nosh up.”

Max pulled himself up. “I have to get on with my journey.”

Anna stared at him blankly. “Why so suddenly?”

He got up from the bed. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before,” he said. “My mother died. I came to India to find truth, some insight. But again and again, I’m just not . . . moving forward.”

“I know what it feels like,” she said. “You’re just taking a break.”

Max put on his pants. “No, I wasted many years after college like this,” he said, tying his shoelaces. “I’m still the same person, still looking for things and experiences, getting carried away easily. I have to get away from all this.”

She sat up, pressing the bed sheet against the curve of her body. “Where will you go?”

“I know of an ashram down in the South.”

“And you have to go alone?”

Max nodded. “I need to learn to be silent. I need to become someone different altogether.”

‘The Yogi is superior to the ascetics and even superior to the men of knowledge. The Yogi is also superior to those who perform action with interested motive. Therefore, O Arjuna, be thou a Yogi.’

Lord Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita

At least he wasn’t lost, thought Max. No one could get lost here. Everything was flat land, not a crop, farm or shelter in sight, just orange earth and the narrow yellowish-brown dirt track on it. He poured another half a bottle of water on the towel around his head and gulped the other half down, his eighth liter since morning. Walking in the one hundred and ten–degree heat made him a little dizzy but he wasn’t worried. He had packed enough food and water to survive a week if things went wrong. The shoes were his only mistake. Even the Nike running shoes were too thick for the scorching earth. His feet were full of blisters now. He should’ve gotten sandals instead. Not that they would have been much better. Avoiding physical discomfort in India was harder than seeing God face-to-face.

He ate yet another melting, gooey chocolate bar, one of the twelve he had bought in a shop outside the Pavur bus stand. His backpack straps cut into his shoulders. Four hours of continuous walking in the relentless heat. At this pace, he had at least six more miles to go to Ramakrishna’s ashram. He didn’t regret his decision to walk the twenty miles from the village. Not yet, at least. He had needed to overcome the sinking inadequacy he felt after his Himalayan misadventure. So he trudged along in the blazing afternoon sun, marveling at how quickly he’d gone from shivering in the Himalayas to sweating buckets in Pavur. It wasn’t just the weather that had changed. The people in the South seemed smaller, darker and quieter. They ate more rice and gave less advice. No one asked him why he wasn’t married or judged his travel plans. They’d probably give him the same blank good-natured smiles they had during the journey if they saw him now—stripped down to just his underpants. Not that anyone was looking. He hadn’t seen one sign of life in his fifteen mile walk yet, not a man, animal or insect. Just hot wind and him, the last life in the universe. The heat seemed to have burnt everything else to dust.

Two more hours of walking. Still nothing. His heart beat faster. He would turn back after forty-five minutes sharp so he could walk back to the village before dusk. Half an hour later, he saw four thatched huts in the distance. Tears stung his eyes. He thanked the red sun above and sat down on the burning earth. A small round black beetle, the first life form he’d seen all day, scuttled by. He put his T-shirt and pants back on, wincing as the rough cotton touched his sun-burnt skin. He removed his shoes and walked the remaining distance barefoot. The hot earth pressed against the blisters on his feet yet it pained less than wearing shoes.

Max knocked the wooden doors of the four thatched huts one by one. No one answered. The guru must be out in the fields. He took off his backpack and sat down on the long bench in the space between the huts, resting his head on the bare wooden table for a moment before going in search of him.

A touch on his back. Max looked up with a start. A thin, lightly bearded, middle-aged Indian man with big, silent eyes stood by his side. Max couldn’t take his eyes off him. The man’s smooth, unblemished skin radiated a white light.

“I’m sorry. I think I fell asleep. Are you Ramakrishna
ji
?” said Max.

Ji, the Indian suffix of respect he had read in the guidebook but struggled to use, came without effort now.

The man nodded.

“I’ve come from far to see you,” said Max.

“Did you walk from the village?” said Ramakrishna.

He spoke in perfect English but pronounced his words softly, politely, reminding Max of Viveka. Just fifteen days ago but it felt like a different lifetime.

Max nodded.

Ramakrishna closed his eyes. “Mahadeva. Strong, self-willed and obstinate,” he said as if to himself. He opened his eyes. “You may rest now, if you prefer.”

Max put on his shoes and followed him toward one of the huts. A toned, auburn-haired white woman in her late twenties swept the dust off the packed, orange mud in the courtyard. She looked up at them through her scholarly horn-rimmed glasses.

“This is Shakti,” said Ramakrishna, extending one long flowing hand in her direction. “And this is Mahadeva,” he said gently touching Max’s shoulder.

The woman nodded at him without expression.

Mahadeva
. Max’s eyes burnt from the salty, stinging sweat that poured down his temples. The blisters pressed against his shoes. No, he didn’t need a new name. The woman resumed sweeping with complete concentration. Max stared at her. He wasn’t a typical Westerner with a daddy complex looking for a guru to control his life. If he was going to learn something, he could learn it under his own name. What did this name and identity business matter in the spiritual world anyway? He’d bring it up once he knew the guru better.

Max stooped but still managed to bump his head against the hut’s mud wall. A chunk of dried grass and twigs fell on his neck. Max wiped it away and entered the thatched hut.

Two colored pieces of cloth partitioned the bare hut into three parts.

“Hari is on the left, the middle is empty, you can take the space on the right if that is convenient,” said Ramakrishna.

The roped wooden bed on his side of the partition was covered with a clean, white sheet, freshly made as if they were expecting him. Had Anand called? But he hadn’t seen a single phone cable anywhere on his twenty-mile hike. How did the man know he was coming then? Max shivered despite the heat.

“May I get you food?” said Ramakrishna.

Max shook his head. All he wanted just then was to be alone and put his head on the thin pillow.

“We stay silent here for nine out of ten days. This is the fourth day of this cycle. If you need something, please come to me in the other hut. Tomorrow, I will explain more if you prefer,” said Ramakrishna.

Max thanked him. He left. Max flicked the switch for the small light bulb on the ceiling. No light came on. He took his shoes off, examined his swollen, blistered feet in the light shadow of dusk and lay down on the hard rope bed. The mud walls and the straw roof gave some respite from the heat. He sweated less. A gecko darted toward the dark bulb on the ceiling. Max closed his eyes to stop himself from crying. He felt so lonesome.

A sharp pin-prick awoke him. Buzzing. A mosquito. Max clapped it. A hundred more attacked him, filling his face, hands and arms with stings. He wrapped himself like a mummy in the bed-sheet and closed his eyes.

Malaria.

Max sprang out of bed. He hadn’t had any of his antimalarial pills since arriving in India. He’d be fucked if he fell ill in this wilderness. Max got the pills from his backpack and gulped two down with a bottle of water. 2.40 a.m. Morning was still far. Max went back to bed and slept immediately, unbothered by the buzzing, stinging mosquitoes.

The wall shook.

Max woke up groggily.

Someone rapped on the partition wall again.

It was 3.30 a.m. Who was it at this hour?

“Mahadeva,” said a deep voice.

Were they all psychos? Like a mad cult? They could kill him in a ritualistic sacrifice and no one would ever know, except perhaps Anand, who could be part of the cult himself.

The mud wall shuddered again.

He clenched his fists, then remembered Ramakrishna’s glowing face from the night before. Relax, don’t be an idiot. He opened his fists.

“Yes, I’m awake,” said Max.

“Time for yoga asanas.”

Now?

Max got up and pulled the separating sheet aside. A broad-shouldered, muscular giant with curly hair and bright green eyes stood in the middle room.

“Hari?” said Max.

The man nodded.

“Okay, coming,” said Max.

He took a cue from Hari’s red T-shirt and loose pants and pulled out a cotton T-shirt and baggy shorts that he had bought in Mumbai.

Max walked out into the black night lit up by two oil lamps kept on the long wooden bench. Ramakrishna sat cross-legged in the packed mud, wearing a bright white tunic and an orange cloth around his waist. Three rubber mats lay in front of him. On one sat Hari, on another, Shakti and the third was ostensibly for Max. Max sat down on the thin, gray mat, mirroring Hari and Shakti’s cross-legged pose. His thighs screamed. He shifted position, pushing his knees out and bending forward but remained uncomfortable.

“First we do
pranayama
, expanding one’s vital energy using the breath,” said Ramakrishna.

He demonstrated while he instructed, likely for Max’s benefit. Inhaling deeply, he thrust his abdomen out, then pushed it in sharply. He repeated the in-and-out motion two hundred times. Immediately after, he retained his breath for ninety seconds. They repeated the cycle three times, retaining the breath for longer and longer, going up to three minutes.

Max sputtered and swallowed, trying to follow along. He managed the in-and-out motions but couldn’t retain his breath for more than a minute and a half at a time.

Next, they applied
bandha
s or breath locks. Max had read about this ancient yogic breathing practice to improve blood circulation in a book he had picked up in London. Now, he followed Ramakrishna’s instructions closely. First, Max took a deep breath in, then pushed his chin against his throat so that inhaled air couldn’t come up the neck. Simultaneously, he pulled in his perineum—the region between the navel and the anus—toward the spine so that the breath couldn’t leave his abdomen. The fresh inhaled oxygen was now trapped in his torso. As the logic went, until one released these breath locks, the oxygen circulated slowly, deliberately, in and around the heart, liver, lungs, intestines, the bladder, and the pelvic area, rejuvenating every nerve, every vein, every cell in them. Oxygen was energy. Energy was life. If one applied bandhas long and well enough, the oxygen would revitalize the cells, slowing the body’s aging process, even reverse it. The yogi’s body would become a complete, self-generating system in itself, succumbing to neither age nor sickness or decay; he would conquer time as it were. Maybe that’s why Ramakrishna’s face shone like a lamp and the Brazilian doctor’s perennial youth was mentioned in every blog post. But there was a flaw in the logic somewhere because . . .

Blood rushed to Max’s face and his heart thudded from the influx of fresh air.

He just couldn’t think anymore.

“Lie down, my child. Corpse pose,” said Ramakrishna.

Max lay down on his back, spreading his hands and legs apart like a corpse, stealing a glance at his able compatriots who had moved on to the next breathing exercise.

Next he learned sun salutations, a series of stretching and bending exercises that worked every part of the body, from the tops of the arms to the back of the legs, in an elegant dance.

. . . ten, eleven, twelve sets, again his heart threatened to burst out of his chest.

He lay down, watching the others complete eight more sets. This was so different from the one yoga class he had attended in a studio in Chelsea. It had been taught by a slender, smiling woman chanting Oms and urging the class to go deep within and feel their vibrations and energy fields. He had dismissed yoga as too soft and new-agey. Now, he was dizzy from the effort. His stomach felt hollow and the nagging ankle and knee pains from the hike had flared up.

The “warm up” was now over, said Ramakrishna. They were ready to begin the asana practice.

Begin? They must be an hour in already. A wave of dread surged through Max. The black night had given way to a blazing sun. Hot air stung his eyes. Orange mud, rivers of sweat on the mat, miles of desolation around him, how many days could he do this? Where would it take him? He hadn’t traveled ten thousand miles just to sculpt his muscles.

“We’ll start with
Sirsasana
, the headstand,” said Ramakrishna.

Shakti and Hari bent forward, planted their forearms on the ground, propped their head on their palms and lifted their entire body up, standing inverse in a straight line.

I’ll never be able to do that.

Max knelt down on his mat, his mind an agitated knot. He didn’t need to stand on his head. His body was fit. He had quit his job to learn Eastern philosophy, life’s why and how, not to twist and turn his body. He’d leave that day itself.

“You can also try this: just be here. Thoughts cannot depart to other dimensions in asana.”

Max looked up at shiny-faced Ramakrishna. He wanted his stillness, his certainty.

“Now, place your forearms on the ground, chest width apart, and interlock your fingers.”

Max followed Ramakrishna’s movements. His elbows were on the ground, now his wrists, then his head. His back arched. He walked a few steps forward. His legs lifted from the ground. Just a few inches up, not all the way straight up like Shakti’s and Hari’s but at least, he was in the air.

“Just stay here. Feel the weight on your forearms. Tighten your abdomen. Don’t go any higher today.”

Max didn’t want to go anywhere ever. Cool waves of air went down his body. He felt silent, awake. He closed his eyes.

“Now, come down slowly.”

Max came down to the mat. Shakti and Hari were still in the air, balanced on just their elbows and heads. Max took a deep breath and looked up at the blazing sun. He’d been similarly outclassed before. In his second week at Trinity, the English teacher had asked everyone to read aloud their homework essay about a family vacation. Other kids had written about visiting indigenous tribes in the Amazon, going on museum tours in Florence, building churches in Guatemala, and rescuing tigers in Tanzania. Max had written about a lunch his mother, Sophia and he had in the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park after saving up for a year. His classmates had stared at him in surprise and he’d had a crushing feeling in the pit of his stomach that he would never be able to catch up with them.
But he had.
He just had to work harder than everyone else.

For the next two hours, Max worked in the same state of feverish suspension he had worked years ago to get into Trinity and Harvard. He drowned out all his thoughts. There was no future, no past. This moment was all there was. This was his one chance, he had to give it all he had. He followed the others, going from lifting his body supported only by the tips of his shoulders to inverting into a plough like position with legs stretched beyond his head, arching the upper back like a cobra, lifting legs up like an insect and making them taut like a bow. Up and down, backwards and forward they went, stretching and elongating the spine, exhaling stale air, inhaling streams of fresh air, rejuvenating all parts of the body. He kept pace, picking himself up when he fell behind, and fought the pain to hold each pose like Ramakrishna insisted.