The Adventures of Bindi Girl: (2012) (15 page)

Perfect! And today was the day! I skipped over to said location just as soon as my overheated self could motivate. Sure enough, there was the beautiful Indian Angel, smiling away, her half-Keralan, half-German baby son, Aaron (who, it turns out, is named after Elvis’ middle name), gurgling in her arms.

Next, I met her husband Matthias, originally from the Black Forest. He showed me two steel-string acoustics. One was a big boy, Johnny Cash-style. The other, I knew immediately, was my New Best Friend. She’s a sweet, medium-sized beauty—perfect for starters—and even comes with a plug-in for amplification, though I’m sure we’ll give it a month or two before we start rockin’ the rafters.

Now, my fingertips are raw and raging as I am working on my first batch of songs with chords downloaded from the Internet. I’m trying to practice at least two hours a day, learning a few songs at a time. I’m looking forward to holing up somewhere and plucking out the New Year perched on my straw mat at sunset.

Yesterday afternoon—sitting on my bed with the door open, the friendly old man who owns my bungalows came snooping around as I was practicing the guitar. The old man’s name is
Murli Manohar
—a name for Krishna in the form of The Flute-Playing God.

I had just started picking out Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee”—an eerily soulful and bittersweet ballad—when the toothless, loin-clothed Murli Manohar established himself on my stoop and indulged in a private concert. His English is practically nil, so I could tell his response by the whoops and hollers of praise.

After I finished the song, he blurted something out excitedly in the local language of Malayalam, smiled widely, wagged his dirty finger in the air, and disappeared. Moments later, he returned with something in his hand, paused, and respectfully wobbled his head in a manner that inquired whether he had permission to enter my room.

“Yes, yes, OK,
ji
,” I replied.

He bounded over to my makeshift traveling altar, which has photos of my mother and father, pictures of Shakti and Shiva, Maa Kali, some dried flowers from the beach kids, a rose quartz, and a miniature, sealed
kumbh
—a tiny pot of water from the holy Ganges.

“Here!” he joyously declared, placing his offering on my altar. “For you! Music! Krishna! Krishna!” I set my guitar down and came over to see what he’d gifted me with: it was a little cardboard cutout drawing of Lord Krishna, the Flute Playing God of Music.

“Oh! Thank you,
ji.
” I bowed my head to Krishna’s namesake—hands in respectful,
namaste
prayer position, deep in gratitude. Murli then leaped out my front door with glee, gushing incomprehensible Malayalam words of musical encouragement.

Music, magic,
darshan
of gods, joy and laughter—I can feel them returning to my spirit with the Solstice and the Coming of the Light. Indeed, precious moments like these give me strength to endure the shadowy side of India—until the good times roll again.

There are no direct roads to this beach—one must schlep their stuff two kilometers over the hill, or hire a boat—so the traveler that finds his or her way here has a little something special within. Call it grit, call it a desperate need for peace and serenity. Call it what you will. I call it a specialized homing beacon for paradise and magical lands.

And magic it is. I’m awed on a daily basis by the enchantment in the air. Imps and faeries, goblins and trolls, pixies and pilgrims—the whole cast of characters from your favorite childhood fairy tales are right here on this beach.

It’s never entirely free and easy in the land of magic. At times, true to form of any good Grimm story, Hans Christian Andersen adventure or Lewis Carroll concoction, a fairy tale can be frightening. One never knows what’s around the next bend. Danger is afoot. There are vipers on the paths, rats in the roofs, and stingrays in the surf.

Some nights, I lie in my hammock strung between two coconut trees outside my hut, snuggling into my sleeping bag like a banana in its peel, ready for launch into my other life—the Dreamtime. To my east, just beyond the jungle, the Moon rises over the Western Ghats mountain range. As
Chandra
the lunar goddess emanates Her rays over my drowsy body, I hear rustling in the towering trees above my head. I try to make out the sound: Is it a crow, aiming to shit on me? A coconut about to conk on my head? Or simply the evening breezes whispering secret, sweet nothings?
Ah well
, I eventually conclude.
One must sleep, and one must trust.

Besides, sleeping
inside
isn’t easy. My hut houses a family of mice that sometimes force me to leave with their
squeak, squeak, squeak-
ing. No longer do I attempt to keep fruit in my hut overnight. I also have several resident indoor spiders—dream weavers in Native American tradition have become a number-one totem. My first week in the hut, I’d dream of spiders, then awaken, and turn on my head lamp to come face to face with a huge furry, fangy arachnid—the size of a spread-out hand, pulsing with life and raw presence—standing guard on my water bottle or sprawled out on my rucksack. Intermittently through the night, I’d wake up to see spiders in each corner of the hut. I’d say a little prayer to the Spirit of the Spiderwomen: “OK, we can share this hut, m’ladies, just please don’t crawl on my face, or bite me.”

Once the crows quiet down, the rats stop rustling, the spiders find their web, and the ants have bit their way across my mattress enough times (we don’t even need to mention mosquitoes, now, do we?), and I’m lulled by the lapping waves of the mighty ocean, I let the whispering breezes from the jungle soothe me to slumber and dreamland.

But the real dreaming seems to occur in waking life, as this beach attracts a community of oddballs, misfits and mystics. The whole cast of the comedy of errors hides out in this magical rabbit hole for the entire season. We’re a makeshift family of divine fools.

Occasionally, a group of “passers-by,” fall down the hole—backpackers
en route
stopping by for a day or three, or even a week. But they quickly realize they’re not going to get many creature comforts here—creatures, yes; accommodation comforts, no. They have to come to terms with the mud floor or straw door, or find their way back to upscale Goan beaches, where things like beds and mattresses, electricity, toilets, and showers are ready at the helm.

It is the long-term, seasonal residents that bring the beach to life, making for a real-time animation feature that would give the likes of Disney, Spielberg, and Lucas a real run for their wizardry money. Just to give you a taste—here’s a few
freaks fabuleaux
that would make their way into the script.

1. The Divine Madman

A Russian schizophrenic, Ivan. One never knows if he is “on” or “off.” Playing with a full deck or short a few marbles? It’s easy enough to write Ivan off as a lost soul; but then, as a Divine Madman is wont to do, he’ll suddenly toss out a gem of a phrase, a missing link, in the midst of a slew of verbal dribble. He might invoke in you the spirit of Saraswati, the goddess of music and writing—just at the moment you were doubting that you could ever learn guitar—by randomly shouting her name out to you across the café.

Ivan only occasionally wears his false teeth, giving him a precious, happy-go-ghoulish appearance. He evokes compassion in me when I see him wandering the beach in the morning, dazed look on his face, muttering about building a royal family and a Russian kingdom, and something about Anna Karenina.

2.
The Seeker of the Sacred

B.J., from L.A., is a long-term resident of the subcontinent—he’s been here upwards of six years, with no return to the West in sight. B.J. is a spiritual renunciate, or modern-day baba. Traveling with only a few possessions and even fewer rupees, he’s taken a hard path—one of immersing himself into the sacred rites and rituals of Indian sadhus. B.J. tells me he is viewed with skepticism and is even disdained by his native Indian counterparts, who aren’t sure what to make of this American baba practicing their traditional path. As a result, B.J. is convinced that a number of gurus and babas are practicing black magic on him.

Once, after receiving an unsolicited blessing mark (a
teeka
of paint marking the third eye) by an Indian sadhu on the beach, he proclaimed to me that the man had cursed him. That night, B.J. had intense nightmares and visions, and his head began to pound. The tree outside his hut began to smell like human feces. In the morning, I tried to reassure him he could walk away from such negative energies, and dispel it as the illusion it surely is. But he would have none of it, and the next time I saw B.J., he was hightailing out of his hut, meager possessions in tow, off to find a nest where the energy was not so dark.

Are his fears real? What
is
real, anyhow? When I think back to my time in “Darkala,” where I hit a spiritual rock bottom a few weeks ago, I’m reminded that one is bound to come across the occasional troll or hobgoblin in Wonderland from time to time. Whether the tape playing is live or Memorex—it doesn’t really matter if it’s splitting your head in two, now, does it?

3. The Faeries of the Flowers

I have come to adore the precious little girls who sell strands of flowers every evening on the beach. They’ll approach me in their singsong voices while I am meditating, doing yoga, or practicing guitar: “Sapna…flower?”

I am especially fond of the very youthful 15-year old, Kavita, the daughter of the owner of my jungle huts. Kavita comes by the hut daily and listens to me pluck my guitar as I attempt to croon some folk-rock number and my fingers struggle to find that elusive F-chord. Mornings, Kavita sells fruit to the tourists on the beach, carrying a heaving basket of produce atop her jet-black, braided tresses. I buy pineapples, coconuts, bananas, and papaya from her regularly. Even when I hem and haw, saying no thank you, I don’t need anything today, she starts cutting up the pineapple and placing the yummy nuggets in a baggie for me to eat later. Smart girl. She knows I’m a sucker for nature’s own sweets.

In the evening, Kavita sells tiny flower leis, which I dutifully purchase with glee—only 12 cents a strand. Happily, she has begun to get a wee bit more comfortable in my presence—she has probably figured out that I’m not going anywhere anytime soon—and gives my hand a quick squeeze upon saying goodbye. We had a nice girly moment the other day as I pulled out a little bottle of nail polish—Kavita and her older sister painted their toes a lovely deep burgundy before hustling off to sell their fruity wares to the sunbathers.

Kavita calls me “Sapna,” as do her friends, the other Flower Faeries. I see their smiling brown faces at sunset, their colorful skirts whipped by the wind and their strands of posies dangling from their wrists, and my heart simply melts with joy for the innocent beauty found in the spirits of children.

4. The Queen of Wands

And who might this mystical character be? I think you already know her quite well. Her intuitive skills are in great demand. Once the news hit the etheric airwaves that astrological consultations and tarot readings were available on the beach, Sapna was inundated with opportunities to be of service. It seems she should have a sign on her mud hut: “Come on by and get yer cards read, yer aura cleansed, yer horoscope analyzed! Head-sorting done here!”

Yes, get your head sorted, because even if you’re Alice herself wandering through Wonderland, occasionally you need a check in—a landing pad. A cozy stoop you can sit on for an hour or three and recalibrate. When India is fiddling with the cerebral dials, performing psychic surgery, Goddess knows a proper spiritual midwife is in order.

I don’t know if I am, in fact, that midwife. Yet, I do try to assist the traveler in birthing whatever transformational, mind-blowing baby that’s just begging to be born. On that note, it’s time to put on my paranormal parachute, don my divine diving gear, and join my fearless flock of freewheelin’ faeries and electric elves for sunset. A girl ought to be properly prepared if she is going to plunge headlong down the rabbit hole of creative rebirth and transformation, right?