A Book, Bikni and Two Smiles

 

It’s a small beach, obscured by trees, rocks and kutis, somewhere between Ram Jhoola and Lakshman Jhoola at Rishikesh. The gradient falls steeply towards the water. Bathing is prohibited. There is a warning signboard.

‘The water level suddenly goes up to 1-3 meters. People have drowned here!’

Sitting cross-legged with waters up to my chest, I am chanting mantras. I am trying to emulate the advice given to me by a swamiji that if I do this, miracles will manifest. Well, who doesn’t want miracles in life? Everyone seems in dire need of them. I was thus no exception.

A sun-glassed white beauty arrives with a seductive gait and spreads a cloth on the sand. Her skin’s urge to get sun-kissed must have prevailed over the authoritative pull of the clothing that uses our feelings of shame and insecurities to keep us under the garbs. So there she drops all her clothing and lay sunbathing in her bikni.

At a distance, to the south, on the high boulders over the band, some Indians are looking over, mesmerized by the Goa-type spectacle. They but hesitate to come near. How will you come if you have your legs tied by guilt, suppression, lust and scores of spin-offs born of repressed sexuality? So they made the most of it from a distance.

A white-woman crazy Indian approaches her. She politely exchanges greetings. Her courtesy is taken as consent. The Indian stays staring at her. She picks up her book to tell him indirectly to respect her privacy. He moves away with defeated but terribly unwilling steps. The way he walks it looks as if a river is trying to go uphill.

She isn’t too far from me. Her bluish tainted glasses face me as I take a little slice of the spectacle from the corner of my eye, like a child steals a toffee from the counter jar while mama buys grocery. I have to keep my chanting holy, so I try my level best not to steal another toffee from the counter. All of us have our weaknesses. I can easily overlook a woman in bikni if I choose to, but I fail to ignore the spectacle of a woman reading a book at a public place, bikni, no-bikni or fully veiled. The book draws me to steal the toffee again. The title glares even more profoundly than her curves under the sun. Fifty Shades of Grey. I stumble on my chanting and I am caught picking up the entire jar. She smiles. I find myself smiling back. Isn’t this world better with smiles among strangers? She is engrossed in reading the events. Nourished by two spontaneous smiles between two strangers, my chanting feels even better now.   

A haggard looking tall backpacker is sitting near the shore, trying to explore the meaning of life. Two white girls, all aglow with the spirit of youth, run down the beach and jump into the water. They shout playfully. Their male accomplice is reserved in merrymaking though.

Two policemen wearing lifejackets arrive at the scene. They repeat the warning, impose their authority and the little bit of fun and floridity is disturbed on the hidden beach. The lost-looking tall foreigner moves up the boulders to go to the main path. In a small alley, a few steps down the main street his ears grab the calling of his heart.

‘Hello hasheesh!’ a sadhu whispers with mischief. They exchange the contraband. Money changes hands. As more foreigners walk along the path, the sadhu keeps trilling, ‘Hello hasheesh!’ The sadhus are much in demand and get a lot of respect from the tourists because some of them sell ganja.   

The peeping toms on the boulder get bored of just looking at the bikni woman and the book. So they also vanish. She gets plenty of sunny kisses on her skin and still more plenty for the fantasies of heart from the pages in the book, gets up, gets into her clothes, packs her things and moves back, but not without a wave of hand and a gentle friendly smile. I still maintain my chanting but smile back and wave also. Ganga Ma blesses with her cool shoves all around me. I have to chant for some more time for my miracle to happen, so I continue chanting.