The Lady of the Moment
By Korski
My Dear Yabe,
It seems like only days since I wrote to you of our marriage in the Ganga, the Great Mother, and so much has happened so fast that I barely said a word about the ceremony and all that followed. Of how when by simple unspoken agreement we came to our vows while making love in shoreline shallows. Of promising only two things: the giving of pleasure, and full attention to the moment. Nothing more. Nothing about fidelity, till death do us part, in times good and bad. Nothing at all of that silliness that came to you and me, even as we didn’t know what we were hearing and why, of the Christian world in which both of us found ourselves growing up in California, you in the south, me in the north.
But that is history, irrelevant really. Utterly so in these unending, ever-changing, fantastical travels on the Road to Poona with Nu.
Ah, Nu! Who but you and I would know that Nu is, in the jargon of that world in which you and I find ourselves teaching—or pretending, I should say—merely a generic term for the Lady of the Moment. Everything changing. The mind and the face we give our attention to at first light as we open our eyes and seek the lips, the warmth, the surprises of the day to come. Never thinking: Is this the same one as yesterday, or last week, or...two years ago? Never! That is, as you know good friend, the Road to Poona. That is not, emphatically not, the Other Road, the one so often traveled, the one you and I all these many years have worked so hard to leave behind, to erase from memory.
Nu—that name on her thin passport. I do not know what it is! And I do not care in the least. Honestly! And you, friend, do not even chuckle, and barely crack a smile at this old story of mine. Knowing that names like dates of birth are artifacts from that time when we both traveled the Other Road. But I am digressing...or am I?
What is it that I so want to tell you as I sit here overlooking the Ganga, temples on the lower slopes, having, alas, drunk a bit too much and spent too much time hugging my bong? Of the journey down the mountain in the rain? Of Nu wandering off and my not having an address, and there is no way for us to contact each other? No mobile phones, no email address that we share, no backup ways if there is a slipup. It will be as it must be! A moving on without regret, perhaps in a month or a year a chance meeting on a street full of beggars in Medán or Luang Prabang, or perhaps even again here in India’s elephant and tiger north? Who knows? Who cares?
So, this small part of a tale I must tell, if only for your amusement , and for those few dying souls who happen upon this letter, souls who live as we once did. That they come to you and ask, beg, get on their knees to know how to get on their own Road to Poona!
As I am sure I wrote in my most recent note to you, we had enjoyed each other all through the festive first night, and the second, and the third. Incidentally, did I write to you about the almost fatal slip of the tattoo’s needle and how painful it was? But I am lucky, my body still young in so many ways, making for fast recoveries from adversities small and large. But after that little mishap, that slip where there cannot be a slip lest I go mad, I did need a rest, and so Nu and I hugged and cuddled and smooched our way all the way up the winding road to Mussoori, one of those early British hill stations that is now, I hate to say, a festering sore of shops and stalls full of the most kitschy carvings and trinkets for Indians from afar during this their vacation time.
By the way, you bald-eyed fuck-minded juiced fruit-picking academic of a thousand weird ways and uncommon connections! Did I tell you how Au or Ika or...I forget that Nu’s name....dragged me into a bookstore in Bombay and there I came across Suketu Mhehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (What an awful title?), and now when I can steal a few moments I have found myself reading this genuinely great book. The best geography I have read in a very long time, and one to shame those many armchair brethren of yours (not mine, friend!). You will think I am exaggerating, made delusional by the mountain air and the ganja and Lao opium to which I am addicted, but I swear, you will know of what I speak when you pick this book up. But be prepared for one long delicious and utterly captivating motherfucking read—581 pages!
It seems only moments ago that I was writing to you of the long and slow bus trip up the mountain to Mussoori and how we checked into the Honeymoon Inn sitting high on the mountain slope with an enchanting view from our room onto the terraced fields and clumps of houses and the valleys with bottoms we could not see. I confess: this was utterly idiotic of me to have taken a room in a hotel at the foot of the Himalayas with the name of Honeymoon in it! And, Yabe, believe me, I would not have done so were it not for the circular bed and the dark stone walls in the room and, yes, of course, the ceiling mirror. There are times when I want to see the whole of Nu as she performs her magic on me (indulgent sort that I am at times!), and so…you are the same when with your Nu, are you not?
I could not tolerate the whole of the night in that room, and so as the temperature dropped and the streets began to empty and the rickshaw drivers were long asleep on their vehicles I quickly packed our few possessions and hustled us to the other side of town where we checked into the Rattan Hotel and a third-floor room with seven windows onto the street below. Comfortable, shower water too hot to touch, and a nice firm double bed with some blankets that I would have needed had I been alone.
Ah Yabe, to be with Nu, and if only you knew alllllllllll that you are missing, my confidant, my friend among friends!
In love, and in war, and swimming always upstream against the Inevitable Drowning Current, bubbling with joy as always in our groins, always keen to share our intimate secrets, Korski (of course).
Stickman's thoughts:
No comments...because frankly, I have nothing useful to add.
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