Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
girl to her father.' But the sages laughed for they knew the whole
secret, and Brahma laughed too.
Rumours of lengthy tantric rituals involving Klaus Kali Das and
Joy abounded among the gossip-prone Westerners of Puttaparthi.
It was said he wore a jade ring at the base of his penis to prevent any
possible loss of that vital fluid, and had trained himself to perform
intercourse uninterrupted for twelve hours at a stretch. By the look
of Joy during those weeks, such rumours seemed entirely believable.
There was, however, something about the gigantic German that
made it difficult to believe he derived a purely spiritual satisfaction
from this tantric jamboree. He swaggered around Puttaparthi like a
stud horse, terrifying the struggling celibates among the women,
and tantalising those men who had often wondered if the tantric
path might well be a more pleasurable shortcut to the nirvana they
were seeking.
Clearly Joy was not the only eager disciple Klaus acquired during
his stay. When a vicious cat fight broke out in the village bazaar
between her and a New Yorker renamed Bliss, Klaus must have
decided it was time to move on. He'd often talked wistfully of
hacking himself out another canoe and sailing off down the
Chitravati; but the river had dwindled to a stream about a foot wide
and an inch deep by now, and whatever else he did, wherever it was
he went for days on end, boat-building was not a part of it. He
finally left on the dawn bus for Anantapur, still wearing his skulls,
the begging bowl and trident his only luggage. A month later Bliss
left for New York, carrying inside her what she firmly believed was
the son of Siva. Two years later I heard she'd miscarried a girl in the
fourth month and committed suicide two weeks later.
Joy herself, perhaps feeling her reputation as Baba's bride-to-be
and chief gopi was a little tarnished by the whole Klaus episode, left
for an extended holiday in Bombay. To those who would listen she
explained that Klaus had been Baba in another form, come to elevate
her consciousness in a way the guru could not, for obvious reasons,
manage to achieve in his usual form. She never returned to
Puttaparthi.
