Deus Ex Machina

I think it was Eric who told me that mosquitoes can't fly in any wind in excess of 7 mph, hence ceiling fans set on high are generally sufficient to hold them at bay. So it doesn't bode well when John and I turn the water heaters on in both bathrooms concurrently (unintentionally) and blow a fuse. As soon as the ceiling fans wind down the heat descends like a thick blanket and the mosquitos come out to party. With no air flow at all to contend with, what was once a no-fly zone is now a mosquito air show complete with two juicy targets. We call the utility company and they promise to send someone within the hour. After two hours of waving the mosquitoes off in the steamy confines of our flat I decide to try my luck out front where the trees rustle tantalizingly in the sluggish night breeze.

As I lay prone on the slate bench in front of Swarg I take stock of my bodily complaints starting with the sole of my right foot. It sports an open wound where two days previous a thorn gained unwanted admission. This infraction is just superior to a deep bruise that feels like a rock in the soul of my sole. Moving up my right leg something is amiss with the ligaments just behind my knee. If I flex my leg to relieve the build-up of tension something sproings like a guitar string that has been bent beyond the limits of the fret board and then snaps back into place. It radiates a wave of pain that crashes on the shores of sciatica, aka Mr. Chronic Companion. He holds sway, as is the norm, over the upper half of my right leg, my buttocks and lower, lower back. My posterior competes for attention as it pulsates in objection at all points where bone meets rock. My left leg aches dully where my varicose veins have returned to prominence. Chest and arms are just dandy save for the intermittent mosquito bite and dull ache in my hyper-extended right elbow. My neck is stiff from using what theoretically was a one-time cottony pillow, but is now quite solid. A throbbing headache threatens to dislodge my dangerously bulging eyes from their sockets. What little wisps of hair remain atop my skull itch mercilessly. I am incredibly thin and simultaneously fat, having lost all muscle mass months earlier. I am on day six of non-stop diarrhea combined with severe constipation. What goes in comes out explosively.

Darshan and Pooja's father brings his battle with insomnia outside and mutters something that sounds like amazement to find me lying in his preferred spot. He lights a cigarette, lays down on a bench some ten yards distant and sends his doppelganger in the form of a dense cloud of body odor to hover over me. My mind immediately goes to his wife and her frozen frown. Is there a connection between her state of unhappiness and olfactory offense?

In a pool of sweaty self-pity I take in the ominous edifice of Swarg looming above me. Years before, late at night a distraught resident had launched himself from the rooftop terrace and came to a sudden end where I now rest. I empathize with the mental and physical anguish that drove him to this one final act of desperation. When identification with one's pain is so complete that the spaces between seem only to connect the hurting parts then it must not seem so radical to want to terminate the host. How many in the slums retire nightly to unforgiving hard beds with pain lists far in excess to my own? Day in and day out spent collecting bits of paper, plastic and metal for recycling from fly-infested, roadside dumping grounds in the intense heat only to return home to quarreling roommates, a meager meal, goat droppings, endless flies, cockroaches the size of mice, and mice of all manner.

On a plane adjacent to our waking consciousness is a grinding, rusty, dirty, diseased, whirling nightmare of a juggernaut that causes physical, or mental harm wherever it happens to encroach upon our twin dreams of bodily immortality and perpetual happiness. In India the margin between this terrible machine and daily existence is exceedingly small and occasionally one may even catch a brief glimpse of its awful form when someone strays too near and is sent tumbling from their scooter onto the concrete or is engulfed forever in the waters of a flash flood. The ill-mannered machine is a Rube Goldberg creation gone awry, replete with flailing tentacles (ala Doc Octopus) wielding rough saws, needles, thorns, germs and abuse of every sort. Its wake is evidenced everywhere by missing limbs, massive scars, ugly welts and lifeless eyes.

In America the juggernaut is pushed as far into the shadows as possible--so much so that it is possible to believe that it might one day be utterly banished from the realm of the civilized. The old and infirm are tucked away in the far corners of sprawling hospitals or closeted in retirement homes to the numbing strains of Muzak. The dead and ugly are nipped, tucked, drained, stuffed and dyed for public presentation. The abused and addicted are counseled in secret societies that periodically lend the graduates to the talk-show circuit as titillating reminders of the dark side. Sharp edges, unmarked holes and things that might choke are legislated into oblivion. We have constructed high palace walls around our Buddha in an effort to hide his eyes from the frailties of fleshy existence. When someone near and dear strays from the palace grounds and is laid low by the juggernaut it always comes as a shock. Studies are ordered as to where the breach occurred and the walls are reinforced and doubled in height to prevent a repeat occurrence. PIlls are popped and injections given whenever pain somehow manages to slip past the guards. But the truth is that the macabre enemy we fend against is encoded in our DNA, so no matter how impregnable we make our palaces of pleasure it is always lurking within our bodies and minds. One curious advantage to the raw pain and poverty in the slums and villages of India is that this reality is laid bare, making it futile for its residents to invest in castles of sand. In spite of the pain, life goes on and doesn't. Life and pleasure are only as real as death and pain. The coin is balanced on its edge with both faces immediately evident. Christ allowed himself to be ground down by the machine at the various stations of the cross only to show the higher possibilities of selfless transcendence. But his body and mind were ground down--reduced to a threadbare, tatter of flesh draped from the cross, momentarily gripped by doubt. In spite of this His spirit persisted and was ultimately emancipated from its corporeal confines. We aren't the body or mind, nor are we their pain and pleasure. Even as the body breathes its last and the mind stills, we go on. Don't believe me? Try it now!

Is it possible that the gruesome machine that ruthlessly shatters bones and claims lives may, in fact, be one rickety, hideous chariot to liberation? If we accept, or even embrace this cruel contraption as we do our imagined pleasure--if we view it without prejudice--perhaps we create the possibility of transcending the dualistic paradigm altogether. We are afforded the opportunity to see things in their totality and the effortless beauty therein. But to do so we must willfully loosen our death grip on the padded, pampered and privileged lives hard won through incarnations of aversion to pain. We must, in fact, give up our attachment to life, and fear of death. Perversely this offers the potential, then, of our being able to live (and die) fully, without reservation. Our pain is a bedeviling reminder of the suffering of our fellows and prods us to venture forth, while our pleasure lures us into tightly circumscribed concepts of self--we simply are encouraged to secure more. Pleasure opens our mouths (More! More!) while pain can pry open our eyes and pierce our hearts. Derek used to joke that my sciatica had sensitized me to the sitting pain felt by various roadside chipmunks and squirrels on rough perches: "If only I could fashion little butt cushions for them all!" Time and time again on my stay here in India I find my aches and pains to be immediately translated to concern for others with more intense inflictions of the same. When the sun scorches my feet, I find my attention flowing out to the shoeless street children that beg at the smog-choked intersections.

The American traveller in India is seduced into believing that the protective (albeit illusory) bubble of home has accompanied them abroad. The dis-ease of the Indian masses is a Discovery channel spectacle that can be enjoyed from the safety of our portable embassy. We are privileged to enjoy one standard of life and they are unfortunate to suffer through a wholly lesser experience. Upwardly mobile Indians and the neaveaux middle-class are furiously engaged in bubble building of their own. Cars are being built bigger and higher to avoid making eye-contact with the ragged rickshaws and ubiquitous beggars. Daisy-chains of AC are strung from home, to car, to office to turn the oppressive heat into breezy cool. Dams are erected, rivers redirected and water filtered, effectively negating any and all worries about floods and the universally be-spoiled waterways.

A piercing horn punches my body upright. Bright headlights seer my distended eyes setting my optic nerve afire. The electricians have arrived and shout for confirmation of the correct address from their van. Darshan's father yells back at them and a party of three disembarks. The eldest of the trio, probably in his late twenties, twists a single wire in an outside box and then asks to be escorted up to our flat. His two companions follow and comment with wonder about finding a whitie in the Jain-only society. With my sheet wrapped around my body I approximate the look of a sadhu. I open the door to find everything electrical in the flat in full animation. Wire Twister and Co. push past me to poke their heads into my bedroom. So this is how a foreigner lives they cluck with disapproval. John, also in mummy wrap, comes out to survey the trio. The youngest pushes open the bathroom door and looks to John for permission to relieve himself. A few minutes later he emerges along with the stench of his deposit. Our society has no running water after midnight for reasons no one can explain to my satisfaction. After the crew exits John grabs one of the three buckets of water he keeps stockpiled in the bathroom and dumps it down the bowl. The toilet gurgles with contentment.

I lay down on my fan-cooled bed and become aware of the fact my headache is twice as sharp as before. It is to remain like this for the next two days. At its worst I just want an out of my garment of pain, incapable of translating the agony into liberating energy. I long for an emergency rip cord to pull that will send me soaring into the airy blue a safe distance from the flaming arc of my corrupted corpse. In less intense moments I make vows to relieve the suffering of the street lifers in new creative ways; vows I will comfortably forget once I extricate myself from the machine.