Category: Singh

Foreign Madam and The White Yogi – Chapter 01

Foreign Madam and The White Yogi
by Chris Mooney Singh

An ‘Australian Mahabharata’ connecting the Southern Continent to India, via South-East Asia, USA, UK and Europe told as an epic love story with ethical choices and consequences.

Who Do You Miss – Singh

29.12

Yogi was glad for a side-way door to leave.

The satsang circuit had become a weight.

Forced to wear his heart on a holy sleeve

he had to role-play as every person’s soul mate.

Barhai had said. “Ah, Utterakhand! We’ll wait.

You go and see the Himalayan snow.
Amrik will bring you back by the due date.

It will be a rare experience. Go, just go.”

Margot’s signal! Was she trying to break through?

Oneiric words were pushing his heart rate.

To hear so clear a message was deja-vu;

so he’d slept little when Amrik came at eight.

29.13

They took a bus to Meerut to catch a train

and walked the streets of musical instruments —

a local industry of drums and horns

for Indian brass bands. Amrik stepped into

a roll-a-door store and flicked a latch.

The harmonium gasped and coughed to find its voice.

Amrik’s hand ran up and down the keys,

then song took flight with intricate raga rills,

elaborating flightpaths for a line of birds.

Yogi was shocked, hearing such classical heights

of an Indian voice in love with syllables.

Who’d have thought this merchant talked to mountains?

Yogi’s kirtan? A Simple Simon version.

29.14

Time to rush on for the Chandigarh train

second-class sit-up, six hours to Punjab.

Amrik yanked Yogi up and through the door

as the long snake slithered away from Meerut.

They wedged into sweaty vinyl seats,

four moustaches leering back opposite

at the foreigner in his crisp white chola.

Amrik Singh, the short and stocky Sikh

in dark blue turban, business suit and tie

squeezed their bags onto the luggage rack.

Some psycho-bluff was needed to gain a hold

in this give-no-dog-an-inch demesne on wheels.

Yogi clamped his guitar between his knees.

29.15

Above and opposite two young newly-weds,

off now, to visit relatives in some

village perhaps, or honeymoon in Himachal,

had managed to sit up happily jammed together

on the luggage rack – now a romantic nook,

an invisible zone of public privacy

away from myopic eyes of home in-laws

ready to walk in on, and ogle a pretty bride

with hennaed hands, jangling wedding bangles

that she must wear for months to say ‘hands off’

to any male. It was a luxurious bed

for a giggly couple, while those below ignored them.

Yogi half-peeped and thought of Margaret.

29.15

The train moved on. Ragpicker boys boarded

between stations brooming the floor for tips.

Some got a kick and a curse. Snack-wallahs packed

salty treats in newspaper cones for zilch.

One of the four moustaches bought some grams

offering Yogi. He crunched a roasted chick pea

nodding his thanks.

A gift demands a gift.

Amrik dug out a tin-foil wrap of paronthas

with dollop of pickle oily at the core,

offering around. One of the four tactfully

took just one, sharing the Sardar’s wife-packed

travelling luncheon. Ghee-spread rotis oiled

the wheels of the railway journey, clacketing north.

29.16

The compartment soon became a gaming parlour,

the clip-on wall tray attracted playing cards

with popping eyes and gesticulating hands.

“Are you feeling comfortable?” Amrik asked.

They’d only traded glances since leaving Meerut.

“I’m fine thanks. How long will it take to reach?”

Yogi had not inquired about the journey.

“We stop in Chandigarh. I have seva there.

Tomorrow we will join the Hemkund yatra.

My friends are waiting.”

Yogi knew that ‘seva’

meant ‘selfless service’. Enigma still held its cards.

Impoliteness might have pushed, calling his hand,

but he knew he had to play a game of patience.

29.17

In the next compartment a group of schoolgirls

started to sing and clap. “What’s that Amrik?

Is it a party?”

“No, Sant ji — Antakshri

a parlour game. He listened, then translated:

Baithe, baithe, kya karein? Karna hai kuch kaam,
Sitting, sitting what to do? Pass the time with a game?
Shuru karo antakshri, leke prabhu ka naam!

So let’s play Antakshri, invoking first God’s Name.

Amrik said : The letter ‘m’ starts off the next round:”

Mehfil Yeh Humari Hain
Toh Bol Do Yeh Saare Zamane Se
Men Not Allowed, Men Not Allowed!

A typical Hindi-English Bollywood mix.

The last line rang out like a strident challenge

and the four moustaches shouted their own version:

Women Not Allowed, Women Not Allowed!

29.18.

The station coming up was Saharanpur.

The newly-weds were getting down. He jumped

to the carriage floor, grabbing their bag.

It was her turn. She dangled hennaed feet,

ankleted, over the edge. Her nose-ring jiggled,

while necklace and gold earrings made her more

resplendent in blood-red salvaar kamiz,

her vermillion sindoor parting married hair.

All eyes turned up. It was too far. The train

was stopping fast, so she took a leap of faith

into husband’s hands about her petite waist.

The warm crushing together of shy bodies

made all sigh at the starting heat of love.

29.19

After Saharanpur they measured time

by flashing stops: Pilkhani, Sarswara,

the ochre earth, the thorny kikar trees,

green fields of paddy and wading buffaloes,

next Kalanaur then onto Yamunangar.

The Yamuna was swollen with monsoon

as they crossed the pylon bridge into Haryana,

green miles of farmland and more rail sidings:

Mustafabad, Barara, Tandwal and Kesri

three clackety hours until they reached Ambala.

The blue snake pulled up. There was delay.

The four moustaches left and new ones came.

Chai-wallahs boarded with aluminium urns,

white plastic cups while coolies in red coats

fought over luggage. Yogi and Amrik waited.

29.20

As Yogi and Amrik moved to window seats

a woman was taking a shortcut over tracks

baby on hip, lugging her ragpicker bundle.

She struggled, but none on board could help,

fearing the train would leave. She stepped from rail

to rail over bitumen fill, struggling her bundle

onto platform concrete, then tried to climb, but her

baby slipped from her hip, plummeting headfirst

onto a steel rail. She jumped back screaming,

but the picked-up infant was now a thing of jelly.

It was hopeless to watch as the passenger train inched out

of Ambala Station — lives transformed forever.

29.21

As fire is covered by smoke and a mirror by dust

the obvious cannot be seen.

As an embryo grows through love or a moment of lust

death reneges on the life caught in between.

As Yogi thought of the child with a jelly-dead head

he tried to accept what he saw.

One slip of a hand had lost the gold in the thread

and wrecked a natural law.

What lay uncertain ahead was a curtain of rain,

shrouding the nothing that’s there.

And the capital Chandigarh, also ahead on the plain

might just leave him gasping for air.

Singh – Nanobots (The Lakshmi Plot Pt 6)

(The Lakshmi Plot Pt 6)

59
Bhim followed the shaman downstairs to inspect the tiger tracks.
“Uncle was here, Baba,” Bhim said.
“Shh,” chided the shaman in his brusque manner, gesturing for Bhim to be quiet.
Both of them knelt while the shaman traced the impression with his index finger.
“ A new beast has come,” Bhim suddenly realised that, for the old baba, a pug mark was like a fingerprint, or perhaps there was some other meaning that only the shaman could divine. Now he squatted, testing the air like a wild dog and then got up to climb the temple rungs. Bhim followed dutifully behind him.

60
They bowed. He hunched over withdrawing himself, arms shrouding his head like wings; soon the shaman jerked upright shaking his head wildly from side to side. His eyes glared and his grunts shifted back and forth across male and female registers as an entity spoke through him. Instead, he reached across and gripped the young man’s head with his hand, thumb pressing hard into the centre of the forehead. Something passed into Bhim. He was eased onto his side, convulsing as if having had a massive electrical shock. The shaman sat back and closed his eyes auditing what was going on.

61
Where before Bhim had journeyed down Daksin Ray’s path of blood and death inhabiting the body of hunter or the hunted, he now became the tiger’s rider, the controlling goddess force who grabbed hold of soft neck fur and willed the beast above the estuarine Sundarbans. Instinctual power held in check by intelligence could fly down to see deep into the heart of tree, animal, bird or ant and speak with its spirit. Now Bhim perceived the forests and human settlements as pores on the body of one vast living organism, each a microscopic mouth expressing the same truth of coexistence.

62
Bhim wondered how the survivors from his old village community were coping with the aftermath of the cyclonic storm surge. Through speed of thought the flying tiger travelled and saw the rescue helicopters, the army barges, the vehicles bringing in supplies. Trying to stay alive, survivors massed before the back of every truck and sides of boats, or retrieved stray parachutes with ration packs from waterlogged fields of dead crops. It wasn’t enough. Crowds clambered over each other like mud crabs competing in a bucket. They pulled back the top climber into the claw pit. Yes, desperation succeeded and created savagery.

63
The tiger’s amber eye showed Bhim that humanity was no less bestial under the skin. Life spoke through the spiky pores of mangrove suckers and retributive cycles where nature was forced to right the balances drowning hundreds of thousands. It was hard to travel with that electrical current coursing up the spine and frothing over from the mouth. Bhim felt the sensation of being a bubble in a bloodstream and he might drown at any moment. The shaman’s power igniting Bhim’s own ability began to wain and the young man’s focus also blurred. Soon, both were gasping awake like landed fish.

64
Devika greeted her husband and Baba when they returned. She passed each a cup from the morning’s milking and served the left over catfish from a pandanus leaf. She was feeling the lack of starch in their meagre diet and longed for a handful of rice with her own fish piece that she took after the men slumped on their mats. Yet, she was grateful to her husband and Lakshmi whose worship she did twice daily. It made her mourn the loss of Meera Devi, her mother-in-law, whose company she pictured while swirling communal hands in the rice pot.

65
Bhim was woken by a vigour shake of the shaman’s hand. Again, he was dream-travelling into the jungle.
“Here,” the old man said, and passed him a white mask. It looked like the face of a ghost. There were empty sockets for eyes to see through and a crudely painted watermelon smile. He ran his finger over the rough-moulded face made from papier-mache. Flipping it over he could see the raw newsprint inside and that excited him. He remembered those week visits to Sitapur on market day and bringing a paper to read to the women at home.

66
One strip of the glued paper was readable. The headline said: Nanobots Crawling under your Skin. The lead sentence followed: “Imagine an army of robot spiders doing surgery on your eye, fixing a faulty value in your heart, or patching up blown out brain tissue.” How strange and unbelievable especially sitting in this hut where real spiders and scorpions climbed the railing at night. Even stranger was the thought of wearing this story close to his face. Then the shaman pulled out another. Made of rubber, it bore a comic caricature of with a moustache and learing smile.
“Put in on,” he said.

67
Surprising the shaman stretched the elastic and wore the mask on the back of his head. His was standard issue for licensed honey gatherers and wood cutters. Devika laughed. The shaman wasn’t impressed, stared back and addressed Bhim.
“If Uncle come for you, it will be from behind.” With that he gripped the young man at the nape of his neck. “Like this.” Then he explained, “But if he sees a face, he won’t attack. They come from behind.”
This new strategy has been thought up recently by a psychology student in Kolkata at the university, and strangely, had been working.

68
“Come. Put on your mask.”
Bhim hooked the band on his forehead. Again, Devika couldn’t help giggling. Grown men putting masks on backwards. She was beginning to even doubt the reality of tigers.
The shaman passed another mask to Bhim. “Tell her not to leave the hut without it.” The young man was also irritated no. She was not showing respect and spoke harshly. “You heard, woman. Put it on.”
She picked it up with picqued reluctance
“It is time,” the shaman said and climbed down.
They followed the trail to the boat.
“Get in. I will paddle,” the shaman said.

69
The double man travelled up the creek between their island and the one opposite. So far Bhim had not come this way. But he was glad to be away from the tension at the hut. He saw a rainbow krait skimming poisonously in the water, and two mudskippers with locked jaws fighting over a female. They threw the net and trawled, picking up two cracks and a panga. The shaman poled for a long time. Bhim wanted to ask where they were going, but knew better. Sure enough, the shaman veered to the right and slid into a new mud beach.

The Jet Age Geomancer (for Anonymous) – Singh

The Jet-Age Geomancer

1

Mr Bagua was an anonymous, in-transit mystery. A jet-age geomancer. Morgan, one of his best clients was about to collect, bring him to the office, then send him on home.

“Shall I fix him lunch?”

“He’s between flights.”

“Will there be time?” she worried.

Morgan felt for the Singapore dollar given by Bagua years back — the talisman that had started their luck. It still had embossed flowers and lion crest reversed, both within their octagons, their baguas.

“I’m worried,” she said.
“Here,” flipping her the coin. “Relax. Bagua has always been true to his name, has he?”

2

The new rising tower had eight sides. Morgan was terribly proud of it.

“Very good,” the old Chinese said, approving.

“Put goldfish fountain here,” Bagua pointed as they passed through the lobby.

Then they rode the elevator to the 88th floor.

The property developer’s open plan spaceo was noisily productive.

Bagua sniffed. “Put work cubicles in eights,” he said.

In Morgan’s office Bagua unscrolled the feng shui grid, dividing Fame, Marriage, Children Travel, Career, Health, Wealth and Wisdom. All looked fine, except for the ’Children’ square.

“Future leaking down the toilet.” Bagua sniffed.

Morgan knew already. “What can I do?”

3

Mr Bagua had fixes for everything – sometimes simple shifting of furniture, placing an octagonal mirror above doorways (for protection), or mumbling Om Mane Padme Hum inside cupboards and hallways to flush away bad energies. His injunctions were:

“No goldfish in bedroom – give you sinus, allergy. Suck out your chi.
No bookshelf behind desk – these sharp knives – people gossip behind your back.
Keep phone, computer in north-west of room.
Keep picture of tortoise, or mountain behind for support, built confidence.”

As for parent-child issues, he had re-decorating strategies, but would Christo and Christie his twin sister play along?

4

Morgan had always wanted a big large family, but after the twins’ caesarian birth, Cheryl couldn’t risk more kids. Thus, they over-indulged their offspring hoping that love would rebound tenfold one day like a maturing insurance policy. Instead, privilege begat poison. Christo had had scrapes with the police and Christie just slothed along for the ride. They partied away as much time and parental allowance as possible. Christie’s friends were her sidekicks in excess, while Christo’s cuties became expensive fashion projects. Morgan was worried, but had faith.
“I go residence now,” Bagua said. “Time short. Must do my work.”

5

“Show me Christa room,” Mr Bagua asked. Cheryl had trouble with his clipped English, but thinking her son the problem, brought Bagua directly into the disaster area of his bedroom. A mobile lampshade reflected a hooded figure with raised sword slicing through swirling snakes. It cast dizzy patterns on red walls. There were heavy metal and zombie movie posters and a mural of phantasmagoric creatures entwined on the wall. Whether possessed or soul-abducted by aliens, Bagua knew Christa had definitely turned into some kind of she-wolf with nocturnally raging hormones.

“Blocked chi. Too much yang! Poison arrow everywhere!”

6

In a rush, Mr Bagua, pointed to the clutter and violent iconography. “Remove. “Need happy colour. Green wall, pink bed quilt. Wind-chime. Hang crystal.”

Strange, though Cheryl, but noted everything, liking most the mounting of a parental portrait somewhere to exert ‘gentle authority.’

Meanwhile Christa Number 2 room, quite ‘yin’ and girly was to be ‘strengthened’ with sky-blue walls, sporty pictures, a stripy bedspread and the dressing table mirror was to be removed, or shrouded at night.

Satisfied, Bagua looked at his watch.

“Please, have some lunch, Mr Bagua,” Cheryl implored.

“Sorry. In transit. Must go airport now.”

7

Two months passed and Mr Bagua the jet-age geomancer from here or there was on a follow up visit to his Australian clients (and collect cheques). He had a string of similar rich clients in neighbouring countries. Morgan sent a limousine to bring Bagua to the Octagon Tower.

“Business good?” asked Bagua.

“Yes, business is very good.”

“You and wife are healthy?”

“We are both fine, Mr Bagua.”

“Family problem ok now?”

“Well yes,” Morgan started. “Christie is more confident and Christo, well, he stays home at night.”

Then Morgan’s phone rang. “They have? Ask them to come up.”

8

Morgan sat in uncomfortable silence. The patient wall clock continued its sluggish story.

Finally, Christo arrived. He had transformed to combed hair, lime green shirt and cream slacks. Greeting Bagua, he sat attentively crossing his legs.

Then, Christie burst in – a born again Goth girl yelling at her mobile: “Listen dude! No one’s messing with my band!”

“Christie!” Morgan interrupted.
“Whatever, creep!” And ended her call.

“Hey, Bagua. Very cool redecoration job you did. I put in some of Christo’s old stuff too.”

Mr Bagua usually inscrutable and unshakeable, now looked slightly embarrassed. “Maybe, you two better swap room, ok?”