When I was a boy of five or six, growing up in India, I would climb the uncomfortably high staircase on my hands and knees when the governess wasn’t looking, and stealthily make my way into the area of the house that was otherwise forbidden to me. This wing consisted of the master bedroom, my father’s study, my mother’s dressing room, various storerooms and the library, all of which seemed like treasure troves to a young boy’s enquiring mind, and were, in fact, filled with artefacts of the most fascinating kind. The library would always be my first port of call, and often my last, as I was usually found out and frog-marched back to the nursery quite expediently.
But in those few moments that I escaped undiscovered, and moved triumphantly into the realm of dusty old books and precious manuscripts, I would always go directly to the very same place. Under one of the bookshelves my mother kept a large leather portfolio, longer and wider than I was at the time, overflowing with papers and loosely tied up with string. I had observed her browsing through its contents once, and despite assurances to the contrary, I truly believed that gave me the right to discover and re-discover them on my own.
So, with considerable effort, huffing and puffing, I would pull out the enormous portfolio, and attempt in vain to untie the string before giving up and breaking it with my teeth. Then I would open up the leather folds to reveal the vast wonders within.
With eyes wide, I would take in the lavish depictions of a blue god and pretty goddess speaking, embracing, dancing and walking together in the grove, amongst flowers and dancing and music. There were scenes of dalliances and naked bodies entwined that, though unclear to me, intensified my breathless fascination. Every image was verdant, luxuriant and a lesson to my young and untested senses, and I would wonder if such a place truly existed where peacocks roamed, flowers hung from trees in vines of pink, white, red and yellow, and gods and goddesses touched and kissed in the shadows of the branches. If it did I wanted to find it and be the child of those two such breathtaking divinities.
Where there were foreign words written on the page, I would turn it over and find, written in pencil on the back, numerous lines of poetry in my mother’s hand. I would trace my finger over, word by word, sounding them out in whisper,
"If you speak, moonlight gleaming on your teeth
Dispels the dread darkness of fear.
Let your moon face lure my nightbird eyes
To taste nectar from your quivering lips!"
They were words that challenged me, confused me and then left me enchanted.
Though I didn’t quite understand it in these terms at the time, what I was looking at was a priceless collection of miniature paintings dating back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Some of them were painted in my parents’ lifetime, some much earlier, but they all carried a common theme, and this was the love affair of the Hindu god Krishna and his consort, the goddess Radha.
This went on as I grew older, until after some time, I was left to explore the gardens on my own, or holding the hand of a servant with large dark eyes and an earring in her nose like the goddess in the painting, and I breathlessly discovered that all my life I had lived in a fortress that sat amidst the very paradise I had gazed at and longed for, for so long.
There were vines, peacocks, and trees with pink, white, red and yellow flowers. There were ornate terraces and lotus flowers that floated on sparkling blue ponds. There were hills and exotic scents that wafted into the garden on the softly blowing wind. This was my first realm of adventure, my dearest sacred place, and so it remained throughout my childhood and beyond, and indeed, so it remains to this very day.
But it was not until recently that I brought my Radha into this place, and tasted the nectar from her quivering lips.
To be continued...
|