35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘IT IS NOT MY FIRE THAT BURN YOU HERE’
legal hassles entailed in banning the religious rites of these spiritual
Hell’s Angels. Besides, how do you fine renunciants? There have
been enough problems over banning sati, the burning of widows.
The Govt. Shop of Bhang also sold opium and milk sweets. Tax it,
cash in on the sweet-toothed munchies the drug incites while you’re
at it – no doubt Western governments will shortly be eschewing
‘principles’ for such revenue, too.
But it was not to the government’s dope emporium that Amar
took me. Instead, we weaved through various twisting alleys pungent
with spices, arriving at what looked like a café. High on his counter,
a skinny old Brahmin in loincloth and sacred thread sat cross-legged
by a vast cash register, his well-stocked naked belly like a football,
selling drinks to passersby, eagerly pouncing on the till’s keys, almost
smacked aside each time its drawer’s maw pinged open and he fed it
more rupees.
Inside, past an extremely rudimentary kitchen, was a small back
room with wooden benches lined against its four walls. The place
was packed beyond capacity with both men and women.
Amar and I squeezed in beside a fat, jolly fellow sparkling with
sweat. ‘South Indian peoples,’ Amar explained, indicating the other
customers. ‘They like too much the bhang – even the woman, she
like it. Good for sex, you understand?’ He clenched the fingers on
his right hand, shaking it in a universal gesture that seems to have
everything and nothing to do with sex.
All the tourist-pilgrims here were dressed in their best silks and
satins. Dark, small, restrained in this alien environment, the women
scarcely spoke or looked up; and the men continued a seamless
conversation, really a barrage of simultaneous monologues in those
massively polysyllabic Tamil words that sound like Italian played
backward. Everyone held a large glass of milky ochre liquid. One
man pushed the glass his woman was holding – she seemed somewhat
dubious of its contents – toward her lips. She smiled nervously, then
obediently drank. The man laughed, his elbow pressing briefly against
the silk swaddling her breast.
‘I ask for extra strong,’ Amar announced. ‘You like the strong?’
Eventually, we were handed bucket-sized tumblers of the same
wizards’ brew the South Indians were swilling. It was lassi – thin
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