We couldn’t get close enough to the beach to really size up the talent on offer, so we disembarked at one end and took our cocktails for a prowl. Ranj seemed to have a kind of sexual radar which could detect women from huge distances, and as the signals got stronger, he almost went into a trance.
‘I can feel something good. There’s something good coming. Eyes left. Eyes left.’ He was almost running now, and with my feet sinking into the hot sand, I struggled to keep up.
Then Ranj stopped dead, and I almost bumped into him.
‘Bingo. Seven blondes.’
‘Where?’
‘There.’
‘Where?’
‘By the water. Down there.’
‘Can we have a rest? I can’t walk that far.’
‘Shit – look at that!’
‘What?’
‘Those two.’
He pointed inland, and I saw two Europeans in the middle distance, dressed in white saris, sitting in the shade. I realized that amongst all the women I’d seen in the whole country, I’d never seen a white sari before. I’d also never seen any Westerners in saris, so it was a strange sight. I couldn’t quite make out their faces, but there was something vaguely familiar about them.
‘That’s weird, that is,’ he said.
‘I think I recognize them.’
‘You know what a white sari means?’
‘No.’
‘It’s like wearing black in England.’
‘What – for mourning?’
‘Yeah. Widows have to wear white – it symbolizes giving up on worldly pleasures and all that shit.’
‘D’you reckon…?’
‘She’s smoking a joint. She’s dressed up like that and she’s smoking a joint.’
‘I really think I recognize them.’
‘It’s spooky. That gives me the shivers, that does.’
‘I’m going to have a look.’
‘Suit yourself. I’m off down there to check out the babes.’
As I got closer and the faces became more distinct, I realized that the two girls were Fee and Caz. And they both looked like death: even thinner than before, with pale, blotchy skin and greasy hair. When Fee saw me approach, she did a huge double take.
‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘It’s you!’
‘Yup.’
She stared at me with a look of horrified revulsion.
‘What happened to you?’
I was about to say that I’d got ill when I realized that she was referring to my Hawaiian shirt and lemon-yellow shorts, my cocktail and the snorkelling gear hanging round my neck.
‘Oh, you know. The usual,’ I said.
She didn’t know how to answer that one.
‘But… what are you doing here?’
‘Just – you know. Hanging out. What about you?’
‘Same, really.’
Caz, I noticed, was sitting bolt upright in the sand, staring into the middle distance and rocking backwards and forwards like an autistic child. She still hadn’t looked at me or even, apparently, noticed my presence.
‘Is she all right?’ I said.
‘No. As it happens, she isn’t,’ said Fee, in a tone of voice which seemed to imply that I was to blame.
‘This is the most incredible coincidence. What are you doing all the way down here? I thought you were on an ashram with Whatsername.’
‘Whatsername, as you so rightly call her, is not in our good books.’
‘What d’she do?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ve got time,’ I said, sitting down in the sand, and registering that Ranj had already infiltrated himself into the group of blonde bathers. Caz was still rocking and staring out to sea.
I could tell that Fee was wound tight with stress, and though she didn’t want to admit it, she was obviously pleased to see me. She stared at me for a while, puffing on her joint, before passing it over and beginning her story.
‘It all comes down to this guy. He’s called Ping…’
‘Ping?’
‘… and he’s the teacher of Intimate Yoga on our ashram. Anyway – we’ve been there twice before, and this was our third visit of the year, and each time we’ve been, Caz has developed more and more of a thing with Ping. Anyway – this time, we take Whatsername with us, her to Ping – and it’s not as if she doesn’t already know about the Caz-and-Ping thing – and… and… I can’t go on.’
She went silent and stared into space with her lips pursed.
‘What happened?’
‘Well – to cut a long story short, we were in an Intimate Yoga lesson, and Ping was helping Liz… I mean, Whatsername… to locate her centre, when Liz starts moaning in a completely inappropriate way for a novice. I mean, she was obviously faking. We’d only been there a week. Anyway – Whatsername starts moaning like a cheap slut, and the pair of them just stand up, hold hands and walk out. Now – because Caz can sense Ping’s moods, she knows exactly what’s going on and she waits a few minutes then goes to the private-tuition room. And… and… I can’t go on.’
There was a long pause.
‘And. What?’ I said, eventually.
‘Well – imagine Caz’s surprise when she pokes her head round the door and discovers that… that… they’ve gone Tantric.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘They’ve gone… Tantric.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘You don’t know what Tantric is?’
‘No.’
‘Tantric meditation?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there are sixteen chief meditative states, and each of the five main schools of thought divides the sixteen into three main categories. The Red Hat and Yellow Hat Tibetan schools follow a basic subdivision…”
‘Please. Forget the other fifteen. Just tell me what Tantric means.’
‘It’s not one of the sixteen, silly. It’s a whole school. It’s one of the five.’
‘Fine. Are you going to tell me what it is now?’
‘It’s very hard to encapsulate in a sentence, but it’s basically the striving for nirvana through the ultimate centring of the sexual self.’
‘What?’
‘Basically, you meditate by having sex.’
‘So when you say that Liz and Ping had gone Tantric, you mean that they were shagging.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘Jesus! That’s unbelievable! You took her to this place, and within a week she fucked the Yoga teacher.’
‘Do you have to be so crude? The point is, Caz is on a bit of a knife-edge at the best of times, and the whole thing just tipped her over.’
‘Over what?’
‘She had a collapse. Just – oh, it was terrible. She saw the Tantric going on and started screaming and smashing things. Then she took all her clothes off and ran around the entire compound, saying offensive things about the usefulness of meditation. Eventually, one of the spiritual helpers had to put her in a strait-jacket.’
‘A strait-jacket?’
‘She’s fine now, though. I mean, she’s not . She still hasn’t spoken or anything. But she’s not dangerous or anything.’
‘That’s awful. How come they’ve got strait-jackets in this place?’
‘Oh, apparently it’s quite common. The pressures of a strict Yogic regime can get to some people. There’s nothing wrong with Caz, you know. She just needed a rest. So after we got thrown out of the compound…’
‘They threw you out?’
‘Of course. You can’t have mad people running around when you’re trying to meditate, you know. It’s for the good of everyone. Anyway – I decided to fly her down here so she could just relax on the beach, away from all the crowds. Then, once she’s got her faculty of speech back, I’m going to take her home. I think if we went home like this, it would upset her parents.’
‘Right. This is… it’s terrible.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean, she looks like a zombie.’
‘Yeah, and we’ve both got to start university in… in around a month.’
‘Shit.’
‘A bit over, actually. I mean it’s going to be hard enough for to get reacclimatized to Western culture. Just the thought of wearing Western clothes makes me feel all itchy – they’re so restrictive, you know – but for Caz… I don’t know.’