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

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EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
‘Siva!’ he uttered abruptly, the word – as it usually is – more like
rumbling thunder than language.
His friends were closing in now, nude Rasta ghosts with attitude.
Everything seemed to be closing in. I started to take some
photographs, wondering if they’d ever be developed.
‘No!’ the dom raja snapped. ‘No camera now!’
One of the women hurled a rock at the sadhu’s head. It landed
hard on his left cheekbone, splitting the skin, which instantly poured
blood. The man scarcely flinched, blinking slightly on its impact.
Then he opened his broad, dark, glistening mouth, as if to howl in
pain. Instead, he intoned a lengthy Sanskrit chant, presumably an
invocation of heavy gods. Blood trickled through the crisp, dry ash
covering his skin, crimson rivulets weaving down his chest, circling
his formidable gut, snaking down the vortex of his groin, to collect
in his pubic hair, then roll out over his crumpled penis.
The dom raja shouted firm commands in various directions.
Many people ran from the shadows. The old women were seized, as
respectfully as possible, and dragged away, protesting at full volume,
to a huddle of very nervous and embarrassed relatives. The king of
death briefly mumbled something to the sadhu, who nodded
condescendingly – as if admitting the night wasn’t going as planned
– and turned to stalk back with a robot’s steps through the smoke to
where his colleagues lurked. All of them muttered and nodded.
They turned to retreat some fifteen yards, where they squatted crosslegged
as one, starting up a droning chant.
Back in the boat where the aged oarsman had either passed out or
died from fatigue, I asked the dom raja what had happened. It was all
an occupational hazard, the way he explained it. Amar and the other
henchmen nodded grimly. The widow and her sister thought the
sadhus were stealing her husband’s soul. They wanted the aghoris to
leave the soul where it was and go away.
‘They do not understand how aghori must be treated,’ said the
lord of the burning ghats sympathetically.
‘How should they be treated?’
‘A little gift . . . something.’
Amar rudely shook the venerable oarsman awake, ordering him
to head for home. The old man groaned, coughed, wheezed, hefted