The voice on the phone delivered a phrase most men dread hearing from a woman, “Ravi, I have something important to tell you!”
In this case though, despite being completely smitten with her during that period and even entertaining the rose-tinted fantasy that she was the one who got away, I had nothing to worry about. My strict code of not getting involved with married women kept me safe.
I was, however, totally unprepared for what followed and even less how to visualise it.
“My third eye has opened,” she announced with absolute seriousness, then launched into a ramble about Shiva Lingams, visions, stream of consciousness and pre-Columbian Hinduism as evidenced by how a US state, made famous by fried chicken, was actually named after the Sanskrit word for thorns. It is usually not very easy to unsettle or surprise me with things spiritual, bottled or otherwise, and her cosmic revelations too barely moved the needle. Well, except for the quiet thought, “Shit, I knew one woman with her head screwed on right, but even her third eye opened up.”
For once, I was relieved she had got away. Her enlightenment was now her husband’s problem, not mine. Besides, with all the sapiosexual lust that I had invested in her, I simply could not envisage how she would look like running or dancing naked in spiritual bliss.
Why ? Because, it's the only image with which spiritually enlightened women have been consistently cropping up in my life.
It all started with Mustak Bhai, the motorcycle mechanic at Abu Road. A thorough gentleman, a skilled and knowledgeable mechanic, and a measured talker. It took him a few days to open up to me, since I had become a daily fixture at his workshop, thanks to our team’s Enfields existing in various stages of death throes.
There was little to do in the Jain-temples-and-pizza, honeymooners’ paradise of Mount Abu, where my group had holed up, so I preferred riding down daily and hanging around his shop.
One day, while talking bikes, Mustak Bhai casually mentioned that two German women once rode in on huge BMWs for servicing.
“Big, tough ones,” he added.
“The bikes or the ladies?” I asked.
“Both,” he said flatly, then added without changing expression, “One of them went bonkers a week later.”
“She had some mental or hypnotic effect while meditating at Mount Abu. Went berserk and started running down the street stark naked.”
“And then?”
“After the initial shock, hotel and restaurant workers chased her with tablecloths and bedsheets.”
“They caught her?”
“Nah. She was tall, tough, athletic. Outran everyone. Finally, the police caught her. Embassy people came and took her away.”
“Did it happen at the ‘God is a Red Light’ ashram?” I couldn’t help asking with a wry grin. My brief visit there had left a distinctly unpleasant aftertaste.
“The same,” he said, without looking up.
The next tale of naked female enlightenment came from my friend Misha as we were walking to his place from the Ozerki metro station in St. Petersburg.
“I saw this weird thing the other day,” he said, pointing at a spot near the bus stop where street musicians usually play. “I was back from work when an attractive woman in a sari set up a boombox, played some of your Hare Rama songs, and started dancing. At first, it was graceful, but she quickly got into a frenzy and started stripping. By the time she was in her underwear, the ladies around began angrily berating her, waving their umbrellas. By the time she got naked, cops bundled her off in their car.”
“Russian or Indian?” I asked.
“Blonde, blue-eyed Russian, I am telling you. By the way, is it common in India?”
“Unfortunately not,” I replied sadly. But I had a fair idea who this ecstatic devotee of Lord Krsna might have been.
I first noticed her at the New Delhi airport security check, surrounded by a cluster of guards with thoroughly confused expressions. A petite, attractive blonde woman in her mid to late 30s, draped in an expensive sari. On the table lay a collection of small brass statues of Vaishnav gods - Radha-Krishna, Jagannath, and others. Technically, they were metal and therefore a no-no in hand baggage.
“But they are my Bhagavan... Krishna,” she explained, hand on her chest, in earnest Russian-accented English. Still confused and hesitant, they reluctantly allowed her to take them along.
On the flight, she sat a few rows ahead. Soon after takeoff, she arranged the idols on her tray table, produced a tiny bell, and began performing puja, to the bewilderment of the Indian passengers beside her.
Later she stood up, presumably went to the toilet, and returned somewhat dishevelled, her sari now loosely draped. She came straight to me and, with the sweetest expression and the saintliest eyes, asked softly in Russian, “Do you have an iPhone charger?”
I replied in the negative. She smiled sweetly, said no problem, and approached a few other passengers. Finding none, she grew noticeably distraught and agitated, and started pacing up and down the aisle and in and out of the toilet.
When she passed again, I asked why she needed one. She explained she had removed her sari in the toilet as required for ritual purity and now could not put it back properly. She had a video on her phone showing how, but the battery was discharged.
No, I didn’t offer to join her in the toilet to help dress up. Instead, I recruited a group of Desi aunties sitting nearby on a girls’ trip to Russia to help her. They tried their best, but she adamantly refused. No safety pins allowed - not religiously correct.
She returned to me, the sari barely holding around her now bare body, again asking me to please help her find a charger. The sweetness in her eyes was gone, replaced by wild psychotic desperation, her smile by now a grimace. Meanwhile, one of the Aunties angrily fished out her blouse and petticoat from the toilet. Alarmed, the air hostesses came and asked whether she was bothering me, taking hold of the discarded pieces of clothing.
“Nah,” I replied. “I have met my share of these.”
“This is what enlightenment does to people,” one of them sighed with a tired smile. Something told me it was not their first experience.
Finally, after a few stern words of warning by the head stewardess, she was upgraded to Business Class, where she spent the rest of the flight, sullenly sitting in a corner seat. Legs drawn up, still cocooned in her sari on her bare body, head covered, her beauty gone, and Bhakti fuelled bliss destroyed.
The aunties clucked angrily about how she had been demeaning womanhood and insulting Indian culture, until they dozed off one by one after their in-flight meal. Meanwhile, the man who earlier sat beside her smiled apologetically at everyone least they thought him a pervert or her partner.
My mother, who was sitting next to me, insists to this day that the Blonde Krsna Dasi was utterly enamoured with me.
“She had such clear blue eyes, such an angelic smile, and she kept coming back to you.”
“Yeah,” I reply dryly. “I always attract the spiritual, enlightened types, especially the ones with their third eye opened...”
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