Kakar - Ecstasy

First published in the United States in 2002 by

The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

New York

www.overlookpress.com

N EW Y ORK :

141 Wooster Street

New York, NY 10012

Copyright 2001 by Sudhir Kakar

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

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ISBN: 9-78146-830-7-771

FICTION

T HE A SCETIC OF D ESIRE

I NDIAN L OVE S TORIES , Editor

NON FICTION

T HE K AMASUTRA, OR T HE B OOK OF S EX : A N EW T RANSLATION

(with Wendy Doniger)

T HE I NDIAN P SYCHE:

T HE E SSENTIAL W RITINGS OF S UDHIR K AKAR

C ULTURE AND P SYCHE:

S ELECTED P APERS ON P SYCHOANALYSIS AND I NDIA

T HE C OLORS OF V IOLENCE:

C ULTURAL I DENTITIES , R ELIGION AND C ONFLICT

L A F OLLE ET LE S AINT

(with C. Clement)

T HE A NALYST AND THE M YSTIC

I NTIMATE R ELATIONS : E XPLORING I NDIAN S EXUALITY

T ALES OF L OVE , S EX AND D ANGER

(with J.Ross)

S HAMANS , M YSTICS AND D OCTORS : A P SYCHOLOGICAL

I NQUIRY INTO I NDIA AND ITS H EALING T RADITIONS

I DENTITY AND A DULTHOOD , Editor and contributor,

with an introduction

T HE I NNER W ORLD : A P SYCHOANALYTIC S TUDY OF

C HILDHOOD AND S OCIETY IN I NDIA

C ONFLICT AND C HOICE : I NDIAN Y OUTH IN A C HANGING S OCIETY

(with Kamla Cowdhry)

U NDERSTANDING O RGANIZATIONAL B EHAVIOR , Editor

(with Kamla Chowdhry)

F REDERICK T AYLOR : A S TUDY IN P ERSONALITY AND I NNOVATION

To the memory of my father Sardarilal Kakar,

a confirmed agnostic,

and my mother Bimla, an equally convinced believer.

ecstasy. The state of being beside oneself;
An exalted state of feeling which
engrosses the mind to the exclusion
of thought; rapture; transport

Oxford English Dictionary

I feel like dancing

The beat comes from you

Like a puppet on a string

You make me swing

T UKARAM , Tuka Says

G opals visions ended when he grew breasts.

He was fifteen. His were not the flabby breasts of an old man but the small, firm and perfectly pronounced ones of a young girl. He had always been a plump child but now the loose flesh on his chest had gathered itself neatly into two distinct little mounds. For a while in the beginning, he kept the upper half of his body covered with a wrap even in the heat of summer. Sometimes, when he was alone in the fields, he would slap his breasts, saying, Go in, go in!

There were other changes in his body. His genitals, too, were thickening, and grew darker than the rest of his skin. His shoulders broadened, but so did his hips, which again had a distinct swell to them. At the time he felt that his ecstatic states had ended because the gods had withdrawn from him since he was no longer a child, that they did not like the ways in which his body was changing.

Ever since he was ten years old, Gopal had been in great demand at religious ceremonies and festivals in the village, where he loved to sing in praise of whichever god or goddess was being celebrated. What so attracted his listeners was not only his sweet voicea lyric sopranoor his ear for melody and rhythm, but the intensity and depth of feeling he put into his songs, especially those in praise of Krishna, his favourite god. It was as if he was in a trance. There were three occasions when sitting in front of the congregation, singing along with the others, he had seen the idol of the god come alive. Involuntarily, he had stood up and stretched his arms toward the deity. While an awed hush fell on the gathering, his body began to sway rhythmically as songs of praise came to his lips from somewhere deep within him, without his having made a conscious choice of a particular song or an effort to remember its words. The ecstatic mood deepened as he sang, and tears of joy streamed down his face from his half-closed eyes. After a while, the rapture was so sublime that his song stopped in mid-sentence. His limbs stiffened, his body became as rigid as a statue and he had to be supported by others lest he fell and hurt himself.

He was almost fourteen when he was graced with the last and most striking vision of his boyhood. It was early in the evening, at the beginning of the monsoon when the storm clouds have not yet covered the heavens in one dark, turgid mass but are still small and playful, jostling each other across an indulgent sky. He was returning home, munching on puffed rice, walking on a narrow mud embankment between the ploughed fields, when looking up he saw a flock of white cranes fly in an arc against an ink-black cloud that was rolling in to blot out the setting sun. The contrast in forms was so beautiful that he was filled with wonder and sank to the ground on his knees. And even as he went down, a tremendous force pulled him off the ground and placed him in the picture he had just seen. The cloud and the cranes curved in to enclose him and fill his entire vision. The clods of ploughed earth in the fields and the scarecrow made of dried millet stalks standing a few yards to his left disappeared. He felt he could almost touch the cloud, push his hand through the sliver of crimson light lining its edges. He could smell the coming rain, feel the cool breeze that was about to blow, and his feet tingled in anticipation of contact with wet earth.

Then the outer edge of his vision began to darken. The cloud and the cranes were swallowed up by the spreading darkness, which deepened for an infinitesimal moment before the sudden emanation of an inner light, as if in a rapidly accelerated dawn, that illuminated his whole field of vision. What he now beheld was Lord Krishnas blue-black chest with a garland of white jasmines thrown across its broad expanse. The invitation to rest his head against the Lords dark flesh was irresistible, and as his cheek brushed against the dusky skin, ecstasy surged through his limbs in such a powerful current, filling him with a rapture so sublime, that he no longer knew himself to be in the body.

When he came back to the world that eveninghe had not been unconscious but only absent, ecstatically absenthe found himself at home, lying on the familiar straw mat spread on the mud floor of the hut where he lived with his mother. A kerosene lamp burnt in one corner, throwing flickering shadows of his mother and the two squatting men on the wall in front of him. His head nestled in his mothers soft lap. The upper part of her body rocked back and forth as she made short, mewling sounds of distress. The two farmers who had found him lying in the field, apparently unconscious, and carried him home were vainly trying to reassure her that there was nothing wrong with the boy, that he had only fainted. When she saw him open his eyes, she gathered up his head in her arms and pressed it to her heart. Weeping uncontrollably with relief, she kissed him all over his face.