Fear of Dying (24 page)

We took off for Dubai on Ali Baba Airlines—with its private roomettes, showers, and rose-scented boudoirs. Ali Baba makes other airlines seem like cattle transport. Flight attendants are forever bringing you hot towels—which really are towels and really are hot—and silk pajamas and embroidered slippers. Little plates of delicacies are available whether you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or none of the above. No forbidden foods are even seen or tasted. How the staff kept all this straight was amazing. But they did. We flew and flew and flew until we flew deep into the mythic past. And mythic present.

Goa was a Portuguese colony till the sixties—incredibly enough. Goa has gorgeous cathedrals, public squares that seem positively European, and the memories of its own Inquisition. Its history is endlessly fascinating.

The airport was typical Indian chaos. If you put down your bag or your cell phone, it will be stolen faster than you can say “maharishi.” You see Sikhs in turbans, Arabs in long white desert garb, women in burkas or blue jeans. The whole diversity of the world can be seen at an Indian airport. We looked around for some sign of our sponsors—Bollywood in Goa—and finally saw a sign proclaiming “Ms. Blair and guest.”

I presumed the waving, cheering contingent was for me. We had an entourage of five: a willowy young woman named Parvati wearing a cream and gold sari; her porter in a gold turban; and three other turbaned gentlemen from the conference whose roles were not immediately clear. They took our hand luggage and accompanied us to a car.

“I am your shadow for the conference,” Parvati said. “I am to take you everywhere and facilitate for you. Don't worry about your other bags. My colleagues will fetch them and bring them to your hotel.”

She took my baggage receipts from me and sent the three gentlemen away with a wave of her hand.

“We'll never see our luggage again,” I said to Asher with my typical anxiety.

“So we'll buy new things,” he said. “Don't worry.” India had already made Asher calm. But it wasn't only India—it was having survived his near-death crisis. And I had survived it too. If meditation is looking for the light in yourself, I had glimpsed the light. I had needed sex so much I didn't realize it was different from love.

*   *   *

It may be the climate, the damp, the riot of colors—or indeed it may be jet lag—but like nearly dying, India makes you feel different about your life. It's like a rebirth. There you are in the cradle of religion and ancient civilization and you feel the possibility of starting your life anew.

It's true that the quest for enlightenment seems hard-wired into the human psyche. Each civilization has conceived of this journey differently—and in our time the journey to India has held a special place in the human heart. It's where you learn who you are and what you believe. It's foreign and exotic enough to play the role Italy played for eighteenth-century connoisseurs. I have so many friends who have gone to India to change their lives, and most of them claimed that it did. India is a simmering pot of mythologies and mysteries. India is a touchstone more than a tourist destination.

*   *   *

When we got to our suite, we discovered rose petals strewn on our immense gold silk coverlet and two handsome young turbaned butlers ready to unpack our bags in a dressing room with a marble pool. Asher shooed them away with wads of rupees and collapsed, as did I, on the bed. We both slept for who knows how long. In my dreams I began to segue in and out of different phases of my life—time traveling again as if India were a wormhole into the past. My dreams were so vivid that they hardly felt dreamlike. Right before I awoke, I had one of my dreams of cocks—pink cocks, brown cocks, yellow cocks—all hard and ready to fuck me. Then Asher awoke and really did make love to me slowly. My dream had changed him, made him sensitive in a new way. We melded into each other like two parts of one person. I hadn't understood that before but now I did. We had never before taken the time for slow sex in a fast world. I remembered Isadora's phrase—“slow sex in a fast world.”

Or maybe it was India. His sexuality had returned. Or possibly we both had become young again, as I had wished, or possibly it was the first time I was giving up control. If ecstasy exists anywhere, it surely exists in India. Maybe I was experiencing for the first time what Isadora had talked about. Was this surrender?

“Ness, Ness, Ness,” Asher chanted, driving himself into my wet center. We rose after that and bathed in the marble pool. Sitting in the warm water filled with rose petals, I felt like I was reliving the first weekend we spent together in my hot tub in Vermont. We had spent hours communing, telling each other the stories of our lives. Time was abolished between us—as it was when first we met. I remembered all the reasons I loved him, and he could feel it. It was as if we had entered a new level of understanding.

“Nobody ever really knew me before I met you,” Asher said.

“Me you too,” I said. “And I want to be known by you, wholeheartedly.”

“Or wholecuntedly,” he said. “Is that a word?”

“It is now,” I said.

*   *   *

Jet-lagged as we were, we were invited to appear at a grand party on the seashore given by one of the sponsors of the conference—a cell phone mogul with more money than taste. His house was a white marble pavilion fashioned as a smaller copy of the Taj Mahal in Agra. His wife was in white, he was in white, and his footmen and waiters wore crimson kurtas. The food was a mélange of western and Indian dishes set out on mirrored trays.

“You were brilliant as Blair,” he told me. “Scheming, conniving, and hypocritical, just like most beautiful women. Are you also like that in your life?”

“I hope not,” I said. “She's meant to be a villainess, not an angel.”

“Well—Indian women love you and also Indian men—we are all at your feet. We think you no less than a manifestation of Kali.”

“Shall I feel complimented?”

“Without a doubt, my dear lady. Being evil is so much more dramatic than being good.”

At that point, his wife rushed up, grabbed my hand, and kissed it passionately. “You have revealed the soul of womanhood,” she blathered. “You have released the drama of the female soul.”

I wasn't sure how to respond but remembered that “Thank you” is an all-purpose salve.

“Thank you, thank you,” I told my hostess. “How very kind of you to invite me.”

“And you may notice that your episodes are playing in a continuous loop throughout the party.” She pointed to a huge screen on the far wall—and there I was as Blair, twenty years younger and wearing huge shoulder pads. It was odd to see myself somehow—like going into a time warp and becoming young again. Once, I had wanted nothing more. Now that it had come true, I wondered what the dues would be.

“I do feel young again,” I said to my new friends.

“And still as beautiful,” said Ash.

Our hostess commanded food be brought for us on mirrored trays, and she and her husband accompanied us to a nearby table where the four of us might sit.

“You know, of course, that all of India thinks you a goddess,” our hostess said.

“But you have so many more wonderful goddesses,” I said.

“Ah, but we worship images,” our hostess said, “flickering images from the West.”

“That is exactly our problem,” said her husband. “We have turned our faces to the West when India is the mother of us all. We must learn to worship her again.”

“I couldn't agree more. I would do anything to be an Indian goddess—or even to play one.”

“So you will stay and make a movie here?” our host proposed.

“Why not?”

“My dream is to reawaken the female soul of India with my movie about Indian goddesses. Then you will you read my script?”

“With pleasure,” I said carelessly. “As soon as I get over my jet lag.”

“Splendid!” said the mogul, whose name, it turned out, was Rajeev. His wife was jubilant at my answer. I was used to promises at parties that were never kept. How was I to know if there really was a script? Indians are exuberant and full of hyperbole—like the colors of their gorgeous land. They may flatter you one moment and completely forget you the next. They love the aura of fame—no matter how tarnished. They are fame-cravers as much as Americans and Brits are.

Which is why it didn't surprise me that Nigel Cavendish and his Vivienne were also at the party. Vivienne was perhaps twenty-five and heavily pregnant. Nigel and I greeted each other like old mates and introduced our spouses to each other.

“Why are
you
here?” I asked Nigel.

“I've become madly famous in India,” Nigel said, “so Bollywood called. I'm doing a movie here.”

“How delightful! Break a leg! You know I wish you great success.”

“And I you—always,” said Nigel.

There was no longer any electricity between us, and our partners knew it.

Asher reached out and shook Nigel's hand and Vivienne and I gave each other fake kisses on both cheeks.

Well, Nigel and I had been faithful in our fashion. As Cole Porter wrote, “I'm always true to you, darlin' in my fashion.…”

So there I was like Nigel—forgotten in my own country but famous in Asia. How strange it was to be famous again. Walking through the hotel lobby, I'd be accosted by gushing fans telling me how Blair had changed their lives. It was astonishing. I had wished to be young again, and somehow by coming to India I was.

Yet I was an orphan now. When your parents live as long as mine had, you think they are never going to die. I had not processed either death. I had run away instead. My father and mother haunted me. They were constantly talking to me, telling me not to forget them.

I've always believed that ancestor worship is the oldest religion. Parental voices in our heads are the strongest prayers. The dead live within us. We keep them alive. They never die.

*   *   *

Tourists usually visit Goa for the beaches, but there are ancient caves in the vicinity—perhaps not as famous as Ellora or Elephanta, but even older and more mysterious. I had read about Avalem and Khandepar and was eager to visit. Ash was tired and jet-lagged and not so sure, but when he had rested for a few days, I convinced my shadow, Parvati, to take us there.

She hesitated, said we must purify ourselves first, that the caves were a test for the imagination, that they were not easy to visit. She was clearly discouraging me—which only made me more curious. Eventually, I had to agree to do yoga and cleansings with her for a week before she consented to take us.

“These caves are more than a tourist destination,” she told me. “They are sacred and dangerous, and many travelers have never returned. You will only return if you have the proper humility. Once you get there it will be too late to purify yourself or to depart if the god commands you to stay. You must have respect and calmness. You must agree to have forgiven all your enemies.”

“What difference does that make?” I asked.

“All the difference in the world,” Parvati said. “People who are full of rage never appear again aboveground.”

*   *   *

It is always harder to get to places in India than you anticipate. The roads are bad, the weather unpredictable, and you may be constantly waylaid by beggars, animals, traffic jams, buses full of tourists, and herds of cattle. What happens on the way from here to there cannot even be called traffic. It's more like a hurricane hitting Noah's ark. We traveled in a rundown Volkswagen buslet begrimed with the dust of the road, decorated with silken banners, driven by a chauffeur and a navigator who argued about the route.

After what seemed like several hours, we arrived at a rock-cut temple guarded by a huge gargoyle. We seemed to be the only tourists.

The driver and navigator offered us water, face wipes, and snacks but declared that they would rather wait outside than enter the caves. They were reputed to be dangerous, possibly haunted, and full of unmarked turnings. There was also a hidden lake where, it was said, tourists had drowned. Oh no—they were not going in with us—never mind the rupees.

As Parvati, Ash, and I walked in, the first object we saw was a huge lingam stone—the tireless penis of Krishna, with which he had fecundated the world and all its beings. We heard the sounds of running water, felt the dampness to our very bones, and soon came into a chamber where the life of a human being was told in monumental statues: the little boy, the adolescent, the bridegroom with his beautiful melon-breasted bride, the father surrounded by children, the mother with her children worshipping her and kissing the hem of her garment, the old father as a sadhu with his ash-covered limbs and his begging bowl. As we wandered past these statues in the gloom, the cave became colder and colder and we began to shiver.

“We can go back,” Parvati said. “We can cut our visit short.” Her words only made me want to stay.

We climbed down and down on slippery stone where we nearly lost our footing. Was it the face of my friend Isadora I saw peering out of the mouth of a cave? Well then, everything would be all right. She would forgive me for selling her out as Will Wilde. She would laugh that I had not asked her permission. After all, there was no way she would have sent the manuscript out herself. I knew that and she knew that. Had I asked her, she would have found some way not to answer. I knew Isadora. Like all real writers, she had no faith in what she had written. Only amateurs think their writing is perfect. Was it Thomas Mann who said, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”? I knew that Isadora wanted to be read as we all want to be read. Words can defeat death. Most books turn to dust, like most people. But a few of them remain—sometimes only in fragments like the books of Sappho. Never mind. Even those fragments can fly.