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As a young man,
journalist Tim Ward set out to explore the Buddhist faith and
the ancient places, remote from what we call civilization, in Tibet
and India. Along the way he met a beautiful German woman named
Sabina, pined for her, charmed her, entered into a relationship
with her, and came to find within her a semblance of the fearsome
goddess, Kali. In more ways than one, the journey Ward recounts in his
memoir Arousing the Goddess lives up to the title he has
chosen, with both a wink and a solemn nod to the Hindu pantheon, for
his book.
This likeable, highly
readable work is part travelogue and part philosophical primer, laced
with graphic moments of sex, love, and tantric energies so fierce as
to threaten Ward and Sabina with electrocution. Despite frequent
steamy passages, there is never a hint of raw salaciousness in the
story. Ward is awfully decent, given his subject matter, in handling
the issue of how forthright he ought to be versus how much to hold
back so as not to embarrass his reader or himself. The result is a
remarkable balance of the artful and the objective: Ward, following
the Buddhist path, looks back on his youthful self to note passions as
they rise and flare, unconcerned that he is discussing his own
intimate experiences. He does not shy from other emotional states
either: he recounts his struggles with jealously and pride, his
episodes of sulking and rage, and his eventually emergence into
clarity. It's an intense process, sometimes wildly funny and sometimes
harrowing, but the book seldom loses its affable tone and never its
integrity.
Much more disturbing
than the sexual scenes Ward paints with a precisely judged mixture of
heat and distance are the hallucinations he enters into, some of them
so hair-raising one has to wonder at his state of mind at the time. In
one fantasy, Ward conjures up a version of the story of Buddha's
enlightenment that takes the form of a Broadway musical; a little
later on, aboard a train, he alarms his fellow passengers when he
becomes so completely embroiled in an imaginary conversation with
absent acquaintances that he leaps from his seat and spills his coffee
(still imagining, as he does so, that the hot wetness dashing onto his
arm is human blood). But nothing can top the tantric experience Ward
quite inadvertently falls into as he's making love to Sabina: sparks
and jolts course through him, while a burning heat builds up and feels
like it's about to burn him to ash from within. ("Was it frightening
for you, too?" he inquires of Sabina, who is equally amazed.) Only
when the young Westerner does some research and discovers writings
that refer to these exact symptoms does Ward — and the reader — have
the relief of knowing that the poor lad's not gone barmy.
At least, not yet:
for as his relationship with Sabina ebbs and flows, his inner turmoil
mounts: as Ward comes to see Sabina as an incarnation of the Hindu
goddess Kali, both destroyer and nurturer of life, it proves to be an
insight that only stirs things up all the more as the young Canadian
struggles to make sense of the conflicts and nuances of the Hindu
faith. "She was an artist at love," Ward writes, and this means that
he is one more canvas for her: a relief, in a way, because our hapless
narrator figures Sabina can take care of herself and will not requite
any special handling: "Her pleasure seemed so esthetic," the author
tells us, and we know it's Ward himself who will be speared by need.
But if Sabina is an artist at love, she is also a terror to con men of
all stripes and especially cabbies, and toward her erstwhile lover she
runs hot and cold, all without explanation. The closest she comes to
clarifying her waxing and waning moods is to say that "most men never
have a clue" about women. Not that Ward hasn't been trying to make
sense of her, or at least fit her into his world-view, confiding that,
"She wasn't even nice to me sometimes, let alone divine, yet touching
her had seemed so sacred." The poor boy is surely on a crash course,
in every possible meaning of the phrase, taking in ideas at a
bewildering pace while his own turbulent emotional climate threatens
to shatter him on love's rocky shoals.
The experienced
Indian sojourner will appreciate Ward's spot-on depictions of the
multi-faceted and perplexing inundation of impressions and hassles
that define India's cities, as well as his tranquil serenity passing
through more rural regions. Once in a while, there's a surprising use
of words like "coolie" and "peon" that make Ward sound as though he
were one of the disdainful Brahmins that he evokes, especially the
dour bureaucrats that pop up, with frequently hilarious results that
Ward, their perpetual fall guy, takes in stride. Mostly, those who
have been to India will recognize, with a grin and a shudder, the
sense of chafed propriety that develops after too many encounters with
beggars and rickshaw drivers — and the deeper sense of ego fading away
that comes on in the wake of tattered Western sensibilities sent into
retreat. For those who have not traveled through that paradoxical and
enchanting land, this is as authentic a taste of India's — and Kali's
— simultaneously proffered benedictions and terrors as anything can
be, short of buying a ticket to New Delhi or Calcutta.
More universally,
anyone who has ever known the intertwined ecstasies and wretchedness
of love will find that Ward provides an even more inspired travelogue.
It's easy to smile and to fret with White, so familiar does he make
the territory within his own skin; the surprise lies in the
destination to which he brings his reader: not quite enlightenment,
but certainly a lighter, wiser, and more peaceful place. |
