4 Deprivation, 5 Indignation, 6 Mystery

Chapter 4 - Deprivation

Kamala's dream stretches thin and the sounds of the day press themselves through the membrane of her consciousness. She doesn't want to come out of it – it's one of those flying dreams she used to have so much more often as a child. It used to come with a feeling of urgent euphoria which filled her with so much energy that she couldn't - couldn't - stay connected to the earth but soared over it, the landscape below her, dark and moody, twisting and writhing... But as she grew older the power waned - she was weighed down with growing consciousness. Now sounds started to suck her back down to earth, and the dream evaporated from her memory - the sound of her clock radio purring into life...

They were interviewing a weeping woman whose son had just been called up. Kamala squeezed her eyes shut and put her head under the pillow - but it seeped into her through the compacted foam, shock and pain, the smell of something turned rotten, the sound of finger nails dragging across a blackboard. Kamala knew the government was trying to be fair by using this random lottery system for calling up new recruits, but it made everyone with a son or daughter between the ages of 17 and 35 reach for the post every morning as if it was a potentially venomous snake. She at least, was safe for a while, she knew. As a science student she’d be ok until five years after she graduated. Ironically, gentle Janey with her music degree was more likely to be called up. Or Commie Jez, the art student. Kamala smiled, despite the lurch the thought gave her stomach. She pitied the poor regiment that was landed with Jez!

Kamala was up, washed and dressed – in jeans and white t-shirt she'd laid out the night before - in ten minutes flat. She paused outside Amelia’s door, and heard a tinny crash and a strangled pinging sound as an alarm clock was swiped savagely against the wall. She continued down the stairs and sat coolly sipping her peppermint tea, until the thundering chaos of the house resumed. "Shit! Look at the time! We're due to catch the coach in 45 bloody minutes – why didn't you wake us?" Kamala shrugged. She wasn’t unkind - she had just been brought up to believe that people should take responsibility for themselves.

Soon they were all rushing around stuffing beer cans and packets of crisps into rucksacks, pulling on clothes, searching for lost left-foot sandals, rooting around for coins in coat pockets and under cushions. Amelia had half a bed sheet spread out on the kitchen table on which she was daubing in great blood red letters 'Damn the Dam!' ("Great slogan, Kam, cheers!") and then underneath - 'People Power, not Power Stations!' She'd been too ambitious with the size of the first few words, so "Stations" had to be squeezed in in wobbly little letters right at the bottom.
Kamala wondered again at the misery people caused themselves by foregoing a few moments of planning, but sensed this wasn't the right moment to mention it. Amelia was muttering bugger bugger bugger under her breath, and when Jerome accidentally plonked his coffee cup on the sheet leaving a brown ring, she looked as if she was going to cry. But once Kamala had swiftly sponged the stain away with a squirt of the Vanish they'd all laughed at her for buying and Janey and Jerome had dispensed reassurances that the banner looked great, she was smiling and raring to go again.

They trooped off, laughing and talking excitedly, towards the Students Union building where the Demo-Mobile, (emblazoned with the white 'Pro-Test Inc.' dove perched atop the raised red fist) was waiting to take them to London, staffed by cheerful white and red sash wearing ushers. A gaggle of students was already clustered round the coach. There was a holiday air about them – contrasting with the angry indignation daubed on their placards. The freezing night had given way to a scorching hot day with typical April fickleness.

Kamala sat next to Jerome – he was a bit of a pain sometimes but she sensed - like a bloodhound's sense of a finger-tip smear of nitro-glycerine in a mountain of blood-daubed rubble - that underneath that cynical façade the real Jerome was serious and genuine and caring.

His olive skin was freckle-dappled, his humour sarcastic and intense, his eyes large, greeny-grey, and always slightly bloodshot – as though he'd been reading, or drinking all night - he'd usually been doing both. Patches of auburn hair, verging on ginger, sprouted in corkscrews from all angles of his head, jaws and chin. Amelia and Janey sat in the seats in front of them – the top of Janey's soft blonde head exuding serenity and Amelia's wild auburn shock volcanoed over the back of her seat. Amelia, big and blousy and draped in acres of clashing cotton cast-offs from charity shops, which she wore like badges of honour, overflowed her seat. Every now and then she tried to get a protest song going "Weeeeee shall not, we-shall-not-be-moved..." but the others were too busy sleeping, chatting or snogging and her booming voice tailed off sadly...

"So what brings you on this jaunt, then, Jez?" Kamala asked.

"Same as everyone else, I object to western industrialists and bureaucratic governments fucking up people's lives just to glorify themselves and make a quick buck. And because I get to spend an hour and half with my thigh pressed against yours, you gorgeous creature." He growled caressing said thigh.

Kamala laughed and punched his arm. He buckled in mock agony...

"Oh, right, so western countries should have the monopoly on power and industry, should they? What's good for us... sorry you, isn't good enough for “us” darkies?"

"Cheap shot, Kam. Save it for someone who is racist. It's not the fact that they're trying to develop that's the problem, it's the way they go about it. I saw a few things on that VSO trip... people moved around like cattle – except you don't move cattle at gun-point. Oh sorry, folks, you're in our way – you can bugger off to this wasteland while we build this fucking great white elephant of a dam to make ourselves look important."

"Yes, but you can't say that the dams are completely useless. They do provide power, irrigation – they must be helping thousands of people...?"

"Look, in England, if the government wants to build a power station, it has to negotiate with the local community, buy people's houses, pay them good money, help them find somewhere else. There, people are already scraping the bottom of the barrel, trying to stay alive any way they can. They're on the edge of the abyss. Wrench them away from that precarious little livelihood they've developed and over they go – woosh, Destitution City, Shit-Poorsville, here we come!"
"You're avoiding the question, Jerome. What about the people the dam's helping? The economy... all that."

"Yeah, yeah, they help, I guess – but the price is too high. What they're trying to do is pull parts of the country into the first world, even if that means pushing other parts back into the stone age."

"Hmm, I don't know..."

"And it's not just that. It's bad enough that their own government is screwing these people, it's the fact that these international companies are helping them. You should see some of their head offices, Kam. They're colossal, Jags in the underground garage, mirrored walls, there's one with a whole tree in the lobby... It's just a classic case of the filthy rich getting richer and filthier by shafting the poorest, weakest people on earth. They're more powerful than governments, now – and they don't give a shit about democracy – just their bottom line..."

Kamala guiltily allowed her mind to wonder what species of tree they had growing in the lobby – something tall and elegant... But deciduous, of course - something with a shallow tap-root that didn't need too much humidity... she forced her mind back to the discussion.

"Simon says those companies are helping the poor by investing in the infrastructure."

"Yes, well, Superior Si would say that, wouldn't he? He got his hoity toity public school education on the back of daddy's efforts of "helping" (Jerome gouged the quotation marks in the air with his fingers) semi-developed countries... logging in Burma or something, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, but he's got a point, hasn't he? You can't expect commercial companies to just do things for free – they've got to survive."

"Listen, babe. Let me tell you about survival. I met this woman in Madhya Pradesh. She gets up in the morning before it's light, she's got five kids, right? While her husband's snoring she gets dressed and walks three miles to the nearest river, fills three huge pots with water – and they weigh a bloody ton when they're full, I can tell you, I tried lifting one – couldn’t - she carries one of these on her head and one under each arm three miles back again."

"Woah, woah! Major cliché alert!” laughed Kamala “Did you swallow an Oxfam leaflet this morning or what?!" Jerome looked at her with eyebrows raised. Kamala stopped laughing, and looked down at her hands, her cheeks suddenly warm. He carried on...

"When she gets home, she lights the fire, makes food for everyone, milks their two goats, dresses the kids – her kids...not the goat's..." He grinned, impishly, then snapped as suddenly back into serious mode. "Oh, did I mention, she's pregnant with the sixth kid? And then, when everyone's fed and watered and gone (her husband does labouring in the local worthy’s fields for about 1 pence a year and the kids herd the goats, skivvy for various people in the village and occasionally pick over the village garbage pile for extra treats) she goes off and cleans people's houses in the local town. Then I guess at night, she's got to service her beloved husband again so he can give her more kids. They used to have a bit of land, before they were moved on to make way for yet another dam, they used to grow vegetables – they 'survived'.

"Now she says that she often goes hungry so that her kids can eat – forget them going to school. Oh yeah, and those five kids? She'd lost two of them... diarrhoea, apparently. Can you bloody imagine? Some stupid comedy illness that we shrug and accept as part of the costa del sol holiday package! She had this other kid on her lap as she was telling me this. It was all snotty and dusty. Its hair had faded from black to brown. It just sat there staring into space. The VSO guy with me picked up its arm and pinched the skin like this!"

Kamala gasped at the sudden unexpected pain as he pinched her arm...

"When he let go, it stayed all wrinkled up, didn't ping back again like yours – sign of malnutrition, he said, won't last the winter. You could see the woman knew it. She just accepted it, like a dog that's been beaten so much, it doesn't expect anything other than pain. She kept stroking the kid's head, waving the flies away from it..."

They sat in silence for a while. Kamala didn't feel in holiday mood any more. She wished she hadn't come. This always happened with anything to do with India. It lured her and at the same time repelled her. In the back of her mind she suspected that it was the idea of India that had lured her into her tropical agriculture studies programme. Whenever the subject of India came up in England, it always came hand in hand with poverty. Never the music, the art, the science... never the IT boom, the satellites, the nuclear weapons... just poverty. And elephants. And tigers. And overpopulation. But mostly poverty.

And people were always trying to get her to talk about it. She was half Indian, so she should feel especially guilty, as though it was more her fault than theirs. She didn't bloody well see why. They were human as well, they smugly ate their high calorie breakfasts and spent a bonded labourer's year's earnings down the pub of an evening too. They were part of the same humanity – lived on the same planet. If anything they should be the ones feeling guilty – living on the wealth of the empire built on the backs of those bonded labourers. But she did feel guilty. Not just because of the poor, but because of the whole culture, the family back there that she'd never contacted, would never contact... And especially because of Aunty Seema...

Chapter 5 - Indignation

The coach slowed for the long queue at the Perivale Security Checkpoint. It took an hour to get through. The politeness of the soldiers was tinged with aggression as they ordered everyone off the coach one by one, asked to see their identity cards, frisked them and then groomed the coach with their humming metal detectors. Kamala stood, pale faced, her heart hammering, in the shadow of the coach, cursing herself for letting bloody Amelia talk her into coming. How could she have thought of it as a jolly outing? With all the terrifying things going on in the world at the moment, demos weren’t just tolerated and gently policed any more, like in Mother’s day.
Kamala had heard about the singalong sisterhood sit-ins, the Make Poverty History marches and what not that Mother and her colleagues had gone on in their youth. Nowadays, going on a demo - even a tightly organised teddy bear's picnic one like this - could be seen as a potentially dangerous political act. Kamala wasn’t political. She didn’t give a damn about the bloody dam, and now here was that idiot Amelia getting into a row with one of the soldiers by trying to scratch his Alsatian behind the ear. The red-and-white-sashed ushers flapped ineffectually around while mutterings about military oppression started to emanate from the rainbow clad students.

Kamala shut her eyes and wished hard (she would never had called it praying) that it would be over. She felt a hand squeeze hers. It was Jerome. “How you doing, kid?“ She opened her eyes and tried to smile at him. “All this isn’t quite your style, is it?“ Kamala shook her head. “Don’t worry - look - music soothes the raging beast…“ Janey was murmuring gently to the soldiers, her hand rubbing Amelia‘s back, and once she had calmed Amelia and charmed the soldiers, peace was regained and they finally got on their way again.

There were a few hundred people at the demo. The London street, blistering hot, thronged with students, earnest middle-aged women, bearded environmentalists, bright orange coated policepersons. Amelia bustled about getting their group organised and positioned in the right optimum spot in the procession - “We don’t want to be stuck with the Buddhists, they just do silent protesting so we won‘t be able to use our slogans and it‘ll be no fun… yes, I know they do drumming too, but we haven’t got any drums with us… and keep away from the bloody Socialist Workers party lot - they always try to twist every demo into their own message, whatever the hell that is… ok, this’ll do fine, between the greens and the pinkos - perfect!”

The red-and-white-sashed ushers gave their little pre-march lecture ("Stick to the official route, do not antagonise the police or the military, do not throw anything or hit anyone, drink plenty of water from the complimentary Pro-Test Inc water bottles provided, meet back at the coach park at 3.15 precisely..." ) The march set off down the street, drums throbbing, whistles shrieking, slogans belting out. Amelia, in her element now, led the chanting in a lusty, strident voice, and this time the crowd shouted back... "Extronn OUT! Damn the Dam! Extronn OUT! Damn the Dam! Extronn OUT! Damn the Dam!". The rhythm of the chant took on a mesmeric quality, and the beat was taken up by hundreds of pairs of footwear, Jesus-sandals, tattered trainers, steel-toed army issue boots, bare feet, sneakers, flip flops.

* * *

Poor, innocent ones, the danger is so much greater than that you fear! So much bigger than bombs, more damning than dams and fizzled out fuel... How you do fret about your mundane little affairs! Mundane, mun-dã n', adj. worldly: earthly: ordinary, banal. [L.mundã nus-mundus, the world]. Yes, I don't deny these are dangerous, like earth tremors are dangerous... but these are the mere preliminary tremors before the tsunami cracks through your little blue marble of a world and shatters it utterly.

I shouldn't blame you. You, caught in the flow of Time or, more often, stuck in the sludge of it, like a driver in an M25 jam, see only the bumpers of events immediately in front, just about to happen, the headlights of events immediately past, the horizon… and maybe a traffic sign or two giving a clue as to what might be a little way beyond it - August 10th - Baby‘s due date, June 30th - Job interview... and beyond that…?

But some of us (you have invented different names, faces, powers, personalities for us at different times and in different cultures - but deep down you know we are beyond all those tinny trappings), some of us are swooping this way and that over your heads, we need to see the whole huge ring of Time, the swing of it - the segment you’re stuck on, the one where you started, the one you’ll be on in forty years’ Time… we’re popping those warnings onto the overhead signs, destiny spelled out in orange light bulbs… Slow Down, Delays Possible, End of Restrictions, Dead End… We can guide you, but we can’t steer you - your own little capsule of life, that’s your responsibility. It’s the big picture we have to worry about. And right now, we are worried. Very worried. Why else would I have made this journey to weigh myself down with your gravity? Why else, but to save you from yourselves... or to bring you a saviour...?

* * *

Kamala started to feel the power of it. The crowd all moving together, the crescendo of sound all screaming a common purpose, against a common enemy, (except the Socialist Workers, of course…) was infectious. Each marcher’s little packet of indignation, belted out, joined with the others to form a wave of ire - iridescent over the moving crowd. It glowed at first, warming the pit of Kamala’s stomach - then it started to bristle and prickle, her scalp itched, her eyes stung, her palms began to sweat and finally the feeling caught light and blazed, and Kamala’s skin was on fire, her heart was going into overdrive, her eyes were alight with the sense of outrage shared by all those around her.

"Extronn OUT! Damn the Dam! Extronn OUT! Damn the Dam!".

From a high window of one of the towers Jerome had described – a steel and glass fuck-you finger to the world - lenses zoomed in on the crowd and video tape whirred, capturing Kamala's upraised fists, her wild-eyed zeal, her yelling mouth…

A finger pressed a button and data started spattering across the screen beside the image: name, address, current occupation (Student), mother's name (Mary Steel - assumed on adoption, no birth certificate), father's name (Gavin Steel - deceased), criminal record (none), most frequently purchased grocery items, bank account details, credit rating, ethnicity (Asian-White mixed/Other), most frequently dialled numbers on land line, on cell phone, most frequently watched television programmes, most frequently emailed addresses, medical status (complications of reproductive system), blood type, life expectancy...

Chapter 6 - Mystery

So, are you ready for me yet? Have you fallen into pace beside little Kamala on her march towards her fate? That's where all this is leading her. But before we get there, long before, you need to hear my story as well... Come, ride the big swooping loop with me... I‘ll take you there and back to Kamala in no Time... But first, let me introduce myself... my name is Kamala.

My hair is mapped in inky rivers across the purple, silken floodplains of the bed. Rubies and diamonds flash in shafts of sunlight at the knuckles of my lover as he grips the slippery folds beside my body. We turn as one, my hair swinging forward to cage his face. Despite the wafts pulsing slowly from the embroidered punkah overhead, beneath his shuddering back, the purple darkens with his sweat...

“Kamalaaaah!” he moans softly….

Beside the bed stands a screen gorgeously embroidered, curling vines bearing ruby and amber fruit, peacocks wrought in purple and green silks, pale, doe-eyed bathing gopis, mythical dairy maids, shyly covering their breasts with long, silk fingers... Behind the screen, beyond the reach of the cooling breeze, a trio of musicians play – timing their trills and pauses, their crescendos and quivering tremolos to the tempo of our gasps and sighs and moans. Sweat pours from their foreheads and trickles down their backs. The thick fug of incense – which wafts ambiently over the screen, to us - stings their eyes. But they are as oblivious to their surroundings as we are... they are part of our lovemaking.

Only one of them, the young apprentice on the tanpura - no more than a boy - blushes as he hears his mistress' moans and bird-like cries. His job is to maintain a soft curtain of continuous sound as a backdrop to the rising, falling, twisting drama of the sitar and the urgent pulsing of the tabla. The apprentice, less preoccupied by his (literally) monotonous task, caressing and caressing his strings, is tortured by images of his mistress – so dignified and gentle, he thinks, so... maternal, plying her trade.

Beyond the screen, they hear my breath quickening in tempo (the tabla keeps pace, urging us on), my lover’s throaty grunts grow louder, the pace of our duet steps up, our dance is frenetic now (the sitar builds up to a storm), and though the raging river threatens to break its banks, we contain it, control it… we have been practicing this art together for years, we are masters. The climax we are seeking is far beyond the one our bodies are yearning towards. A flock of parakeets scattering, shrieking from the parapet outside the window is reflected in my still, dark eye – an explosion of green sparks from some unearthly flint. The walls and the ceiling and the earth fall away and there are no barriers now between us and the Universe. We have transcended ‘here’ and ‘now‘, space and time - our ecstasy echoes through eternity...

"Kamala! Kamala! Kamala-a-a-h-h!"

And then later...

"Marry me, Kamala, I can't live without you!"

...sliding his jewelled hand over the great silky mound of my hip.

"My Lord, you flatter me" ...pressing my painted, silver ringed toes into the small of his back.

"I'm serious. I pine for you when you go away – I can't bear to think of you with other men. Give up this wandering life of yours. You can live in comfort here." ...twining his fingers through my heavy black tresses. "You won't have to live with the other wives. I'm building you a palace of your own... it's almost finished and we can make love day and night...what do you say, my sweet bird?"

"Forgive me, my lord. I am conscious of the great honour you are offering me, but you know I cannot accept."

"Why not, in damnation! I am the most powerful rajah for a thousand miles – what do you need the others for?"

"I do not need them. They need me." ...languidly combing my long, black hair with a heavy, carved ivory comb.

"Oh, so you don't need me, then?"

"My lord, you know I have the greatest respect and affection for you. You are my oldest friend, but I have a calling, you know that too. I am married to my art. I am on a spiritual journey. In fact...." I paused and my gaze passed through the arched window and skimmed over the heat-hazed plains, towards the hills which rose like a dream out of a sleeper‘s head. I knew it made the rajah afraid, but something more powerful was craving my attention.

"What? Kamala, what are you saying?"

"I think I must soon be leaving, my lord."

"Oh? Is it time for another of your retreats to the forest, my flower?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"What is it you do up there, my dove? Won't you tell me?"

"I replenish...."

"Yes, yes, I know, that's what you always say - you replenish the source... but what does it mean? Is it some kind of forest witchcraft? Do you have some jungle wild man up there who satisfies you more than I do?"

"I must go, my lord."

"No, stay, my sweet! I'm sorry, I tried to cage a wild bird - don't fly away. You can carry on your art – as you call it. I'm powerful enough not to feel threatened by other men, Kamala, my queen, my angel, say you won't go!" ...wrapping his arms around the great, graceful girth of my waist.

"When the time comes - I must go, my lord. It is not in my power to choose. I am sorry."

"Go, then, whore! I'm damned if I'm going to beg...Go on, get out! Go!" And he threw himself back on the rumpled sheets and scattered cushions, sulking like he had when he was a little boy and was told he couldn't go on riding his pony after night fall.

I smiled sadly at him, summoned my musicians, who had continued playing unobtrusively behind the screen, and swayed towards the door with what the maharaja’s poet once called “an elephant's dignity and grace…” In the wide marble corridor, a courtier bowed and handed me a small, but heavy silk purse. I received it with both hands and lifted it to my forehead with a murmur of thanks – not to the courtier, but like one saying grace before food. Then I passed the purse to the head musician who tucked it into his amber cummerbund. Four servants awaited me with a sedan chair out in the courtyard and bowed deeply when I emerged from the palace.

Although I was a large woman, and they were not notably strong, they lifted the chair effortlessly, and set off down the long straight dusty road, the musicians carrying their instruments walking in single file behind us. One of the bearers stumbled, but the chair did not wobble... if anyone had noticed they would have though it odd... or, more likely, think they‘d imagined it. After we had travelled a mile or so, a horseman galloped up behind us from the direction of the palace, stirring up clouds of red dust in his wake. He handed the head musician a small parcel of red silk. The musician, holding it in his cupped hands, like a baby bird, passed it through the window to me. Inside were a pair of entwined golden serpents on a fine gold chain. I understood; not that I was forgiven, but that my forgiveness was asked. I smiled and slid it inside my bodice next to my heart.

Even the most powerful rajah for a thousand miles wouldn't risk offending the great courtesan. Mine, he knew, was a power beyond earthly borders. Though at that time, caught in the shrunken dimensions of my own little Time capsule, I hardly realised myself how great my power was. My human eyes had got in the way and were blurring my vision, my human brain limiting my thoughts, my human legs pinning me down… but, of course, not quite as hard as yours pin you down, my poor children.

The sedan chair and its entourage entered the teeming streets of the town. Camels bearing bulbous loads trod heavily, but somehow daintily, through the thronging crowds. People, cows, dogs, pigs, carts all milled about never seeming to go forwards, and yet magically made it to the end of the street. We turned off the main street and down a narrower one, overhung with ornately carved balconies. The open drains stenched in the hot sun and the musicians – picking their way carefully round the black puddles (each one its own little universe, teeming with life) – held scented silk handkerchiefs to their noses. But although the thin muslin curtains of the sedan chair did nothing to keep the smells out, when I breathed them they turned sweet.

It wasn’t always possible for me to keep these things… these little differences, hidden. Some souls were more in tune than others, some noticed… and drew their own conclusions. They said I did not sweat for example, and some swore that the wind did not move the tresses of my hair. Yes they moved, but it seemed to the more perceptive of my companions, that the movement was coming from within me, or somewhere far beyond me, slightly out of synch with the breeze.

Eventually the ceaseless, peaceless dust-and-sweat churning streets gave way to wider avenues. There were fewer and fewer dwellings, more trees, and at last, as the chair and its entourage turned towards the green mirage of the hills, a pure white wave rose out of the shimmer of heat. It was the great arched gateway of the House - carved out of marble in the shape of two giant cobras, it gave the ‘impression’ that one was entering a different world, a different field of energy. To human eyes, the marble cobras had the blazing stillness of the after-image burned into the retina by a soaring firebrand. They enclosed the house, the grounds, the hills beyond in a scorching, icy embrace - and yet, thought my musicians and my maids, seemed to bow a fraction when the chair and its entourage passed through it.

It was things like this, I suppose, things that frankly were rather hard to explain, that gave rise to the many rumours circulating about me. But also the fact that I was a kind of celebrity in those days. The other girls in the House whispered to each other, to customers, to travelling salesmen and ayurvedic masseurs... that they'd heard that I had been brought up by monkeys in the forest up on the hill above the town, that I had simply appeared one day walking on the forest road into the town, naked and nubile, that the House 'Mother' had taken me in, starved and beaten and tamed me, then taught me the trade. They said that she'd seen quickly that I had a natural talent for it - a super natural talent, almost - so she'd brought in a Tantric master to instruct me further. My career had been meteoric - the news of my prowess had travelled fast and soon I had risen to the top of society, like cream to the top of the milk, right up to the maharaja's palace itself.

But the Mother, when she could be persuaded-nagged-cajoled to say anything about it at all, denied that she had found me wandering naked and taught me all I knew. She whispered that I had already been there, a grown woman, skilled in my art, when she arrived as a young acolyte. It must have been the previous Mother who had taught me, she said. But that would make her about a hundred years old, Mother! Her charges would cry, laughing at her silliness. And look, she's still young, her flesh is firm, her eyes are bright. And the Mother would say, I am just telling you what I know. If you don't believe me, don't ask me. And would wedge a large betel leaf parcel in her mouth to signal that the conversation was over. Then new rumours started; that my monkey mother had fed me magical forest roots which had made me immortal, given me eternal youth, that I was an incarnation of the goddess Kali, that I was a rakshasi, a forest demoness...

Nobody asked me. If they had I would have told them the truth. Well, the bits I thought they could cope with, at least. I would have confirmed that I had been brought up in the forest... though not by monkeys. I'd have confirmed that one of the House's many generations of Mothers had taught me the art... but would perhaps have glossed over which Mother... I would have confirmed that I had been taught the Tantric art, the Tantric science, the Tantric religion - which bound the universe together through the sexual act, the climax of orgasm and enlightenment as inextricably intertwined as the limbs, the eyes, the bodily fluids, the souls, of me and my partners... I never like to think of them as customers.

But I might not have mentioned the other things the Tantric master whispered into my ears... the reminders of why I was here. Of what I needed to do. For now, it was only to maintain the status quo, to go regularly back to the source, replenish it, spread the seed, keep the spark of that first, furious energy alive and sow it back into the field of humanity. And wait. Wait for the next messenger to tell me when it's time.

I would have reassured them that I was indeed mortal (that was the whole point, after all...) but might not have mentioned that I had pulled on my mortality like a cloak, a disguise, a craftsman's apron for the task ahead, a suit of armour for the battle ahead. Or that I would set it aside when my job here was done. And not before.