Ms. Ph-h-h-h-t! continued to look at me as if I’d crapped on her shoe. She was, I assume, a woman of solid proportions but it was impossible to tell. Draped from that luminous bosom to her ankles was a muu-muu of epic proportions. She had a suitcase full of them, regularly whipping out a new nylon offering at the slightest hint of perspiratory distress. The crew called her ‘The Tent’.

Her muu-muu’s were highly patterned affairs doubtless knocked up for a dollar in Cochin, one of which, when viewed from afar, gave the impression of a tie-died target zeroing in on her crotch - which kinda says it all. She was a juicy woman, not yet gone to seed. Those loins still panted for that one last man, her carnivorous thighs still ready to drag one victim into their embrace.

Over lunch I told Udit he would have to sleep with her as a matter of urgency. He was the youngest, least senior member of the crew. It was his duty.

The poor lad nearly fell into his curry in embarrassment.

She spoke to me as little as possible, so I took a certain perverse pleasure in engaging her in jaunty conversation, knowing she was much too, too polite to leave. Her voice, when she could be bothered to reply, came from somewhere deep between her shoulder blades, a faint distasteful minge, one that used the least amount of air and effort, as if this manky dog in front of her was really, too, too vulgar a thing to entertain - which, of course, just spurred me on. Armed with a bottle of the Dogslayer and a twinkle in my eye, I plonked myself opposite her at dinner one night. It was too juicy an opportunity.

‘So-o-o my darling, what did you think about today?’ I asked. I was going to ply her with questions and kindness, test her powers of endurance to the limit. She couldn’t get away.
From somewhere deep inside her a critique of the day unravelled, a check-list of minor infringements, a catalogue of infractions.

‘I do think that when their guests are disembarking the crew should genuflect,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes...’ I said.

‘And when drinks are served in the evening the glasses should be chilled.’

‘Oh, yes...’

‘And phw-w-w-aw laundry and phwa-php-wahhhh we were late, and ph-h-h-waugh bumpy rickshaw... don’t you think?

She was fading from my radar. All I could see were her breasts.

She was a woman for whom the tiniest moment of enthusiasm was an effort. Some ineffable fatigue seemed to dog her every word, she saw it all through a curtain of London society contempt. Her face was still round and full of life; it was her mind that had grown ineffably old and dry. She squeezed out the conclusion of her critique and, having finished with me, put her head down in the hope I’d go away. She grabbed at a spoon, looked at it, silently called the waiter over and showed him the offending object. A new spoon was brought, inspected and agreed on - all without a sound. She bent over her bowl and, with a delicate little slurp, sucked the mushroom soup from the spoon. Those luscious lips pursed, she looked briefly as if she had been poisoned - then, with the gentlest of motions, pushed the soup away. She attempted a gracious smile.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said sweetly, as the anxious waiter swooped, ‘take it away.’

I could tell that the affair of the mushroom soup would not be forgotten.

Her face uncurled a little.

‘And what is it that you do?’ she said, making it clear that she couldn’t give a damn.

‘I’m on a journey,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Ee-a-augh-h-h’ is how she said it.

I didn’t offer any more information.

‘I’ve been tremendously impressed with your muu-muu’s,’ I began, not quite knowing where this was going to end up, ‘there’s one of them that looks just like a targe...’

That’s as far as I got.

‘Muu-muu,’ she said dreamily, with a soft killer venom in her voice. ‘Muu-muu – is that what you call it...’

‘Everybody has been amazed at your wardrobe,’ I lied, ‘your array of muu-muu’s is much admired. Many compliments.’

She simpered. She actually simpered. ‘Oh,’ she purred, ‘how very kind. They never say anything to me.’

If only she knew what they were really saying. Ms. Pht-t-t-t!’s muu-muu’s were the stuff of legeand. From that moment till the end of the trip she kept appearing in her myriad muu-muu’s, striking a pose, flouncing round with a new-found vigour, convinced that the passengers were secretly admiring her dazzling splendour. Her sartorial originality reached new and spectacular height as the voyage wore on, a fashion statement of startling vulgarity - exceeded only by her disdain for her fellow man.

Across the dining hall Young Udit stood up from his meal. I could see him over Ms. Pht-t-t-t!’s shoulder. I caught his eye.

‘Udit!’ I gestured, ‘Udit! Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask my companion?’

He blushed and ran out of the room.

‘Udit! It’s your duty!’ I shouted.

Heh. That's it for today. I have a bit of chanting to do to get me in the mood for tomorrow's post. You'll see why.

Well I did try for an hour to do some work but just had to sneak back for a quick look - and was rewarded.

You are a naughty doggie aren't you - much the best sort.

So now back to it and do some real work - won't look again until tomorrow but can't wait.

I'm hoping to stumble into a bookstore in Melbourne and find a book of your musings under the name "Dogster, The Dogster?" Give me a hint so I can find the book that will enthrall me for the many hours on a plane.

Ain't nuttin' in no bookstore with my name on it, moremiles...

Publishing in Australia is run exclusively by youthful lesbians with bright red lips and very bad haircuts. Even though I am an 'honorary lesbian', I fear my line of communication with Sappho's literary sisters has, finally, snapped.

So, apropos of nothing at all, here's my latest post...

‘Hare Krishna!’ cried the man and lifted both arms in that special Hare Krishna way.

‘Hare Krishna!’ I replied and smiled my special Hare Krishna smile.

This is my brainless, ‘wow, how great to be here, wow, what an incredible place, wow, I am just blown away,’ smile. This is my empty-headed, enthusiastic embrace of all things Hare Krishna smile. This is my great facial lie.

I’m in Mayapur, walking down the main boulevard of ISKON, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Strangely, it reminds me of Main Street in Disneyland. There is a sign that says ‘Do Not Disturb Krishna’s Birds’ and another that reminds me ‘Not to Drop Litter on Krishna’s lawns’. In a low-lying temple just inside the gate is a non-stop, twenty-four hour, three hundred and sixty-five days for twenty-million years prayer vigil. People come, people go, the beat goes on forever.

On the other side is a bizarre, Italianate temple for something or other. The huge dome floats in the air like a great white ribbed teat. This is Mission Control Hare Krishna World – the centre of the known universe if you are of the Hare Krishna persuasion - this is where they all come from, those orange-clad, cymbal-clinking, chanting bald people. This is where they breed. This is Planet Hare.

This is obviously where all those donations went.

The Dogster was carrying baggage. All those years of loose living in the Seventies, all that dreary ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare...’ parading up and down the streets for the last thirty-five years – that irritating Cling! Cling! Ching! Ching! – those pious empty-headed, student novices sent out to spread the word of – whatever... that irritating sense of certainty, the loss of independent thought, the mindless mantra - something was pushing my buttons, something had locked on and wouldn’t let go. I realised I could see nothing at ISKON but my own attitude, reflected back at me.

‘Hare Krishna!’ they smiled and shouted.

‘Hare Krishna!’ I shouted back.

Keep smiling, Dogster, keep that Krishna smile clamped tight on your face.

I wandered into the temple and nodded to an old monk sitting cross-legged on a throne. No response. He was looking straight at me. That was a bit rude, I thought. I nodded again and wiggled my head. ‘Hare Krishna,’ I mouthed and smiled.

Nothing.

Oh, well – bugger you, I thought and turned away.

The life-size plaster statue of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu continued to stare placidly ahead.

I felt like a bit of a fool.

Perhaps this was the first lesson Lord Krishna was offering. Perhaps I should just dump a bit of that baggage I’ve been collecting and carrying around unnoticed for years.

‘Hare Krishna!’ she said as she zeroed in.

‘Hare Krishna!’ I smiled and bled a bit more inside.

Both eyes radiated inner wisdom, she beamed a beatific smile. I gestured widely around the room. I was standing in a vast empty theatre, with a stage dominated by an array of life-size gold statues, all dressed up in the finest fabrics, posed against a backdrop of extraordinary rouched curtains and drapes.

‘Well here I am,’ I said, full of ersatz Krishna love and joy, ‘in the centre of the world!’

She liked that a lot.

‘You know about the Lord Krishna Consciousness?’ she asked. She had a gentle New York accent.

‘Well, I’m fifty eight, I’m an old hippie,’ I laughed, ‘there was a lot of Krishna consciousness around.’

“I’m fifty-nine,’ she said. ‘I joined in 1967.’

Gawd, I thought, that’s a long time without a drink. She was one of them – one of those flower children who found religion. It didn’t much matter what it was at the time. She found it and it found her and unlike most of her chums – she stayed. She’d been a pilgrim for over forty years. She’d been living in Mayapur an eternity, through all the bickering, the resignations, the in-fighting and soul-searching of internal Krishna politics in that time – and now. We chatted away, rather as if we were at a diplomatic cocktail party, her eyes always searching the crowd, keeping watch for gormless travellers. I think she’d already given up on me. There was a New York edge to her piety, a cut and a thrust to her chat. She was a businesswoman – all in the service of Lord Krishna, of course. There was rat-cunning in those eyes, I thought, a furtive dart, a flash, a trap for willing souls. She seemed a perfectly gentle woman, but I knew she could kill with a prayer...

Don’t go there, Doggy, don’t you dare. She is connected to the mother-lode, she is the Queen Bee. She’ll suck you away with her certainty, she’ll cripple you with her correctness and she’ll unravel you, unhook you and drag you away... run, Doggy, run! Soon it’ll be you, shaven-headed, draped with robes, adrift with a look of blissful Krishna consciousness on your face, dancing gaily down the street.

Some bleak certainty had crawled into my brain all those years ago, some karmic rucksack of fear. It all said far more about me than it did about Lord Krishna and his devotees – my spiritual blinkers, I discovered, were jammed on tight.

So this was the second lesson of the day.

I was in a powerful place.

‘Hare Krishna...’ said the woman.

‘Hare Krishna...’ barked the dog.

i thought for a minute you were hooked....and i thought that poor pious woman would be led back to the bad way of a ny'er.....she is the lucky one....

did you mention the tent to her?

As I realise, after your post, rhkk, both women were remarkably similar. Both trapped in that tragic sense of certainty, lost deep in their own decisions - and both, in my humble opinion, needing a good shag. Heh.

[just as well THAT comment is buried deep in a trip report... lol]

(pssst... Doggie... one of our businesses is publishing)

I think I'll continue on before I get abused. I'd like to finish this off now - I have some writing to do about the Sadhus of Maheshwar...

So here are the last available pieces of that great Hoogli jigsaw puzzle.

For some reason I have this old, old song running through my head..

'We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band..
We hope you have enjoyed the show.
Bhoomp Bhoomp Bhoomp Boom

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely...
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely...

Howard was a big-bellied, fun-loving ex-publican who had recently lost his wife. He couldn’t yet shake the grief. Every so often a cloud would cross that big open face and you could see him thinking; ‘If only Janine was here right now.’

Alas, Janine was up in heaven and she’d left Howard bereft and all alone. His grief for her was as big as his heart and Howard was a man with a big, open heart. He was guileless, an innocent abroad, a man who had been loved and coddled and fed and cleaned for all his life. Now she was gone and his heart was broken. But, like the Hoogli, life meanders on. Howard, to his great credit, had decided to take a river cruise...

Howard liked a drink and, at the conclusion of the designated sightseeing, found himself all alone on the upper deck with a Dogslayer in his hand. We were sailing, so of course the Voyageurs had retired to their cabins, to snooze and read and grizzle. On occasion I’m sure they glanced out their window for a glimpse of where they were, a snort of delight at something ‘rural’ but generally the top deck was left alone. This afternoon Howard tied one on. By the time anybody knew it there were empty bottles of Dogslayer littering the deck, Howard was suddenly very loud and it was way, way too late to stop him.

Then the Bauls of Bengal got on.

The word Baul means ‘afflicted with the wind disease’ – by this I don’t think they meant flatulence. They are ‘minstrels, uncaring travellers, selfless wanderers - lost in search of their souls.’ Charles H. Capwell, the noted ethnomusicologist, noted that ‘the Bauls are the folk heroes of Bengal, strange people who forsake all comforts and binds of the family and choose streets as their home, austerity as their way of life’. They sing of love and life and politics, question and provoke without fear, ‘carry with them from village to city the soul of Bengal, perhaps of India...’

I felt like a bit of a ‘Baul’, myself.

So, seven Bengali Bauls arrived on bicycles, changed into suitably Baul-ish costumes and presented themselves on the upper deck for a ‘cultural event’. One played the drums rather well and looked wistful, one sat on the floor and tootled a flute, one sat serious and rattled a pink plastic jingly thing, one man, dressed entirely in orange, sang his heart out in his own private Paralympics of sound. Sometimes he made it to the finish line, sometimes he didn’t. One young girl sat silent the entire time, sang one song rather badly then sat down again and yawned. She quite forgot that she was on stage at one point and had a little chat with a close pal on her mobile phone. One man sat there and didn’t appear to do anything at all.

The leader of the group was the last to perform. He passed over the strange box-accordion he had been playing and stood, a little uncertainly, to sing. It did occur to me that the Bauls of Bengal, as witnessed that night, may have had a passing acquaintance with the divine fruit of the Ganja tree on their way to work.

He held his head back and belted out the most divine song you ever heard. His voice rang pure and clean and loud, sent shivers up my spine. He was doing a little jig, his bum held out, a shuffle-dance round the deck and as he sang the air grew quiet, the engines stopped, the hum of the boat fell away – it was just him and the Hoogli and that song... ahhhh, that song...

Then Howard let loose from the darkness.

‘Mmph-h-h-h!. Ooooh-h-h! Aw-a-a-a-agh-hh!’

This was a terrible explosion of misery, a grief that could not be contained.

‘Mmmm-g-h-h-h!’ from the deck.

I looked around. Six of the Voyageurs were fast asleep, open mouths yawning, all pretence abandoned, gone directly to god. The rest were heading for a huddle around Howard, who was howling his eyes out.

‘Mrrr-g-g-h-h-h! Wao-o-o-o, Jani-i-ine... smr-r-r-rpfh-h-h-h!’ he said.

‘How-a-a-a- rd’ shushed Jan, my favorite.

Jan was sixty-three with bright purple hair, growing old disgracefully. I don’t mean purple in the ‘purple rinse’ sense – I mean purple as in, well... purple! She was a great gal with tons of style and an outlook on life that belonged to a woman thirty years her junior.

‘How-a-a-a-rd...’ shushed Jane, her companion.

Jane and Jan were travel chums out on a girl’s vacation to adventure. They both laughed and cried with great abandon, relishing their time together, away from home and hubby and grown-up kids.

‘Mmmr-o-o-o-o-o!’ sobbed Howard, ‘If... only... she’d... been... h-h-he-e-e-re...’

‘How-a-a-a-rd...’ they both said at the same time

He knocked over his bottle of wine. Luckily it was empty.

‘Argh-h-h-h,’ he said, ‘I’m sho sorry... I’m s-h-h-ooo sorry-y-y...’

He noisily sucked in a lung-full of air.

‘Snor-k-k-k! Oh-h-h-h...’

Poor Howard couldn’t finish the sentence. He was really ‘tired’ and extremely emotional, bellowing out his grief with a passion that surprised even him. It certainly surprised the Bauls of Bengal. A swift despatch had to be sent to assure them that yes, this was an unhappy man and yes, he was really drunk - and most importantly no, it wasn’t their fault...

There was more Bauling, from both sides, then the evening crumpled to an end with the presentation of enormous tips from a still-emotional Howard, now looming passionately over the band, ungainly hugs all around as confused Bauls tried to wrap themselves around his enormous belly, a huddle of the few sober Voyageurs still left awake and an escort of crew to get him to his cabin left he fall headfirst down the stairs.

carol---do you publish pornography or on the edge items??

‘Uncle, what is your name?’

So began the letter by the boy from Baranagar. It was written laboriously in large ‘joined-up’ letters with a leaky ball-point pen – along with a great many crossings-out. At the top of the page was the name and address of the author, one Kalgan Mandal. He stood in front of me at that moment, holding the folded piece of paper.

‘Is this for me?’ I asked gently.

‘Yes, uncle,’ he said seriously. Young Kalgan was about thirteen.

I unfolded the letter and started reading.

‘Uncle, what is your name? Please tell me. You know uncle when you and your party are come at our village, I am very happy. Yes, uncle, yes. But when you and your party will go from our village, I am very sad.

I can speak little english not more.

I have a wish that I want to go with you in your country but I and our family is very poor. The previous year when your party was come at our village I am very happy but they are went again so I am very happy.

Our village name is Baranagar. It is a historyele place.’

There was a line of arrows pointing sideways, then the last line.

‘Thank you for read.’

He stared up at me silently and smiled. I truly think that, at that moment, this young lad believed that I would adopt him there and then. In his mind, it was just a matter of popping home, grabbing a spare pair of trousers, saying a cheery farewell to Mum and Dad and heading off to New York.

Now, how to break the news gently...?

‘I could change his life,’ I whispered to Sunit, our guide, as I showed him the letter later.

‘Yes, you could,’ he said evenly. He smiled. ‘Then, next trip, there’d be a hundred children clutching letters...’

‘Sukapha’ slipped away from the bank and slowly turned downstream. We sailed and stopped and sailed and stopped, for the next five days following the bloated body of that killer-buffalo all the way back to Kolkata. I grew reflective on the return journey, withdrawn, content to sit and watch the world glide by from my open cabin window.

Perhaps those two cone-shaped packets of Jangipur’s finest ganja had something to do with it; perhaps it was the giddy thought of diving into Ms. Pht-t-t-t!’s ample breasts – or maybe the Bauls of Bengal had me lost in their thrall – I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I was tumbling down the Hoogli - I’d moved on.

Wonderful reading! Thank you.

Thank you Dogster. Love reading your stories along with everyone else here. :-D

Keep in touch with us.

Yes, thank you very much!