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

416
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
‘I think you understand what is a stupid thing. Come!’ He grabbed
me by the shoulder and, flinging a huge pink scarf around his throat,
wheeled me toward the exit. ‘I will take you for a boat ride.’
Amar traipsed behind us, looking pissed off. Despite his years,
the dom raja fairly skipped down the precipitous steps, calling out
to a toothless old man in a rowboat. The man tried to stand, and
promptly sat again.
‘You remember you promise?’ Amar said as soon as his father was
out of earshot. ‘For the poor peoples? Some small gift?’
‘Sure, sure.’
Soon four or five of us seated ourselves in a long boat, rowed by
the man, who was probably older than all of us combined. We headed
north at an indescribably sluggish pace. The dom raja leaned back in
kingly fashion, lit a beedie, inhaled hard, deeply satisfied with the
result – until his lungs started to violently and noisily object. He
looked quizzically at the beedie. Illuminated by the shore lights, he
cut an extraordinary figure. Tourists braving the darkened ghats stared;
neo-hippies, stoned, gazed reverently. In fact, he looked like Central
Casting’s version of the ‘Indian Guru’: the eyes full of cosmic secrets;
the immaculate whiteness of the lavish but tamed beard; the suavely
sumptuous but traditional clothes. I think he knew this.
‘Look!’ He waved the crackling beedie ahead, toward where the
smoke and fires of Harischandra, Jalasai and Manikarnika Ghats,
his kingdom of death, reached upward, all the more visible beneath
the prodigiously dark, throbbing night. ‘Siva’s wife – Sati –
committed suicide, you know?’
I didn’t.
‘Yes. Her father gave some insult to Siva, and she killed herself,
because the pain was too much.’ His lungs reprimanded him for
several seconds.
‘So the god, the Siva, he carried his wife’s body over his shoulder,
mad with grief. And he passed by this very place, you see? As he
passed, Sati’s earring fell off into the well just over there.’ He pointed
without even looking. ‘But the priests, the Brahmins, they managed
to find the earring.’ He thought, his broiling gaze narrowing, directed
at the sky now. ‘No,’ he continued, correcting himself sharply. ‘They
found just the jewel in the earring, those priests. And they returned