[The names of certain parties have been changed. Other names were never known and are now lost in time.]

I get maudlin and nostalgic over the Christmas holidays, mostly for a past version of myself who actively left the house and went on crazy adventures in foreign countries every November / December. I miss that lunatic and wonder where he went.

On Boxing Day, I slip into my customary Internet browsing stance, reclined halfway down the torn seat of my office chair, the soles of my bare feet pressing up against a grimy patch on the embossed wallpaper. On a whim I make a virtual return to Tarapith, nearly a quarter of a century after I fled the place, mentally scarred by the baffling ritual sex, in which I had been a semi-consensual participant, and by the post-coital threats of extortion I had endured from sinister black-robed priests.

Through the looking glass of a second-hand Samsung monitor, I gaze down upon the grubby rooftops of the town as though I am a god or a spy satellite. The paved roads and functional concrete buildings come as a surprise. Tarapith is unrecognisable from the rural village it had been when I visited for the first and only time, during the final days of the second millennium.

Though it seems implausible now, back then the roads were unmade and many of the houses were little more than mud huts with thatched roofs, perhaps incorporating a stray fragment of a brick wall. Admittedly, I saw very little of the place. It is possible there was a thriving urban centre just beyond the horizon that I never got to experience, but it seems unlikely.

Back-scrolling the wheel of the mouse, I zoom out on the map until the entire state of West Bengal is bordered by the glossy frame of the monitor, and I can see the route that I took – a four-hour train journey from Kolkata to Rampurhat, followed by a short, bone-rattling bus ride into the country.

It is mid-December, 1999: On the edge of the village, at an arbitrary point along the road where the buses drop off their passengers, I make the acquaintance of two men. The first claims to be a former military commander in one of the larger Indian states. The other is a retired chief of police. Both carry themselves with an air of casual authority, which they demonstrate by shooing their well-dressed wives from the wooden bench seat of the ramshackle outdoor cafe where we have gathered. They are old men, well-seasoned, their faces lined with soft wrinkles; the kind that I imagine were laid down as deep furrows early in their respective careers, and then partly smoothed-out as they became more at ease with the harsh realities of their professional lives. They tell me they are visiting Tarapith on a pilgrimage. I am on a pilgrimage too. However, my intentions are far from righteous and the local gods are already onto me.

A few months before this meeting takes place, sometime in May or early June, I pay an impromptu visit to a friend at the University of Essex, in the south-east of England.  He is living in one of the tower blocks on the Colchester campus. I arrive just as he is getting ready to go out for the night. A smouldering joss stick fragrances the air with patchouli. In the background, the first Neil Young album blares from a pair of small black speakers. A common source of amusement is the theatrical exhalation that Young makes into the mic at the beginning of I've Been Waiting For You. It is obviously intended to be erotic, but Neil Young and eroticism don't really co-mingle as concepts.

My friend tosses me a library book that he has opened on a specific chapter and instructs me to read it while he cleans his teeth. I get to the bottom of the first page before he re-emerges from the tiny en-suite bathroom, dragging a comb through his long, wet hair, his breath smelling of mint. The only thing that I have been able to glean from the text is that, somewhere in India, there is a village called Tarapith where the locals observe some strange religious customs. More importantly, from my perspective, is the revelation that my friend, who is overly familiar with the country, hasn't been there yet. In the spirit of genteel one-upmanship, this means that I have to go to Tarapith before he does.

We fritter away the evening at a student bar that has been christened 'The Meat Rack'. On the return walk to the hall of residence we accidentally acquire a trio of girls: A boisterous duo named Daisy and Geraldine who resemble, in appearance and demeanour, the Fat Slags from the Viz comic strip. The third girl is sullen and introverted; one of those unapproachable women who spend their entire lives growing in the shade. She has obviously been dragged out by the others on the promise of a good time and now trails along reluctantly behind. I can't think of an overture that won't come across as sleazy so I leave her alone.

It is hard for her to emerge from the broad shadow of her friends, who we are just this moment learning could fuck for Britain in the Sex Olympics, if there was such a thing. They are debating, at length, the age at which Geraldine lost her virginity – at twelve when she gave herself freely, or three years earlier when her uncle raped her. She goes on to regale us with a graphic account of the vigorous arse fucking she enjoyed the previous Saturday, courtesy of a very well-endowed black man.

The danger of piling meaningless encounters on top of childhood sexual trauma, in an attempt to bury the past, is that you instead end up building an untidy monument to it. There is a lorry park in Grays or Thurrock – somewhere near Tilbury Docks; a bar or some kind of cafe where all the long-haul drivers congregate. Daisy and Geraldine go down there trawling for men who fuck them in the cabs of their trucks before crossing the English Channel.

Common sense prevails and we part ways at the foot of the tower block. Nobody gets fucked; at least no-one on our end. I leave the university a few days later, resolved to visit Tarapith before my friend can make tracks there. For once, he can follow in my footsteps.

Tell God your plans and listen to his laughter reverberate across the heavens. Tell the pantheon of blue-skinned deities who keep watch over India of your intentions, and listen as that laughter rises to a mirthful cacophony, underscored by the playful chiming of finger cymbals.

At the cafe in Tarapith, I bid farewell to the ex-Military Commander and the former Chief of Police. I nodded respectfully to their wives as they reoccupy the bench seat. As I walk out into the unmade road, I am intercepted by a young man who asks me if I am looking for a hotel.

“Lead the way,” I tell him.

We wander for a couple of minutes until we arrive at a large house, a throwback to the Raj. Most of the windows have been shuttered against the heat of the day. Where the wooden louvres have been left open there is no glass. In the gloomy interior I am greeted by the owner of the property – an elderly man with a bushy white beard, who turns out to be the boy's father. He shows me to a large room on the ground floor, with a narrow en-suite bathroom. Gazing through one of the windows, I am met with a view that resembles a photograph from a 1960s edition of National Geographic: An amorphous jigsaw of land and still water, slotted together like scaled-down continents and oceans. The ground is artificially flat. In places it is sparsely bobbled with the low-lying scrub of a wilting vegetable crop. The lily ponds have no discernable banks, just a slightly raised lip around the perimeter holding the dark water at bay. Beyond the ponds there is a cluster of adobe buildings, their roofs heaped with dense-thatching that appears to be in the slow process of sliding off. Livestock are roaming around here and there. Chickens and the odd goat. In the distance, there are some tall trees.

As I am unpacking my rucksack, the Hotel Manager reappears. He has not come alone. A procession of adults – a blend of multiple generations trailing an abundance of children – follow after him. They assemble themselves at the far end of the room, across the door, as though they are posing for a group photograph.

“Mr Redlark, I would like to introduce you to my family.”

“It's very nice to meet you all.”

The Patriarch's expression clouds over.

“Mr Redlark. You must be very careful while you are staying here. There are people who will try to do you harm.”

“I'll keep an eye open.”

In the uncomfortable pregnant pause that follows, I feel the silent and expectant weight of too many pairs of eyes upon me.

“Well, I'm going to shave,” I announce brightly, hoping that the spectacle of a man who has a chequered history with disposable razors will not warrant a curious audience. Instead I find myself being ushered out of the hotel and into a wooden contraption with a raised seat, that has been erected at the side of the road. A young man ties a bib around my neck. He lathers me up and proceeds to give me an unnervingly close shave with a straight razor. When he is done I pay him the amount he has requested; a pittance in rupees.

I return to my room clean shaven and invested with an urgent need to separate myself from the eccentricity that is being unremittingly focused in my direction. I throw a few items into my small rucksack. My drinking water situation is not overly dire. I have about three-quarters of a tepid litre, swilling around inside a crumpled plastic bottle, whose flimsy cellophane label has already lost most of its graphics – a mountain peak of some sort from where the liquid contents have allegedly originated. There is bound to be a shop or a kiosk by the roadside where I can purchase some more.

The hotel, that was previously bustling with human activity, now appears eerily derelict. I leave without seeing or hearing anyone. A similar air of desertion hangs over Tarapith. The entire village seems to have abruptly withdrawn into itself. The main road lies empty, abandoned to an oppressive midday heat that, according to Noël Coward, is the natural environment of mad dogs and Englishmen abroad.

I have not been walking long when a rat-faced woman, of indeterminate age, falls into step alongside me. I do not see where she came from. Suddenly she is there, matching her quick shuffling footsteps to my longer and more leisurely stride. She chatters away quietly in what I presume is Hindi. Her sentences are indeterminate in their endings and their beginnings, trailing from her mouth like birdsong, while she ignores my repeated protests that I can t understand her. She is carrying a clear plastic bag containing what appear to be sausages, submerged in a gathered-up puddle of translucent, pale-brown gravy. It beats an erratic rhythm against her cream coloured skirt, which is fashioned from a light satin fabric, splashed blood-red around the dusty hem. A rumpled orange robe has been pulled down over the bodice and bunched up around her waist.

She points to the bottle of water that I am carrying by my side, my fingers pinched around the neck in a crane grip. In the process of handing it to her I end up holding her plastic bag. What I have mistaken for sausages are Indian sweets, pooled in their own nectarous syrup. She makes an eating gesture with her free hand. All of this happens without either one of us breaking step. She upends the bottle of water and begins to greedily gulp down the contents, the buckled and beaten plastic issuing dulled cracks in protest. When she finally hands it back to me, there are perhaps three inches of fluid sloshing around in the bottom. I return the plastic bag to her with its contents untouched. Even with my lifelong sugar addiction, I find Indian sweets, and their overt promise of incipient diabetes, to be a bit much. When the temperature is nudging 40 degrees Celsius, they are the last thing you want.

We have arrived at the shell of a large, two-storey brick house, of a similar vintage to my hotel. Growing just inside the low wall of a small yard is the kind of gnarled tree that you more commonly see as a woodcut illustration in books of Germanic fairytales; very broad around the trunk and clearly ancient, but stunted in height and stooped over. Votive offerings, comprising small trinkets and bouquets of tiny flowers are jammed into the deep furrows in the bark, which has been daubed with orange paint. As we pass through a gap in the wall that once held a gate, a gaggle of children pour from the door of the house, surrounding us, showering my female companion in adoration. I manage to extricate myself from the group and take a position to one side, happy to no longer be the centre of attention.

From within the crowd of her admirers, the woman gestures towards my bottle. Suppressing a sinking feeling, I surrender it to her without protest. The children watch as she paces solemnly around the circumference of the tree. After she has made a full circuit, she bows her head in reverence towards the trunk and splashes a little of the water on the ground. She hands the bottle to one of her young disciples who does likewise, before passing it on to another. By the time it comes back around to me there is hardly any water left. The woman indicates that it is now my turn to pay tribute to whatever animistic deities reside within the old tree. As I complete my circular mini-pilgrimage around the trunk, an unexpected groundswell of superstition prompts me to be overly-generous with my offering. A small brown hand reaches out and takes the bottle from me. The ceremony continues as before, until the water is gone. The sight of a young boy holding the bottle upside-down in front of the tree, patting out the last of the drips, is grimly amusing. I feel the need to go somewhere quiet where I can lie down for a while.

We depart from the school house. Weary from the heat, and now somewhat dehydrated, I wave a mechanical farewell to the children in the yard. Somewhere inside, an unseen teacher or teachers are preparing them for a world that will shortly change beyond recognition, from a rural backwater to a town; one that is destined to be absorbed by other neighbouring towns and reconfigured as a suburb, and to eventually form part of an urban sprawl. Whether the sacred tree, that has been reinvigorated by the last of my drinking water, has any place in this rapidly secularising future remains to be seen.

The woman has restarted her trailing monologue. For all I know, she may have taken up from where she left off. We have strayed from the road and are now walking among a gathering of adobe dwellings with thatched roofs. The fine grooves of broom bristles territorially mark the dust around each smallholding like a fingerprint. Outside one of the houses, a pair of women, dressed in colourful sarees, are chopping piles of vegetables on a raffia mat, in front of a low fire. The woman motions for me to sit down. A glass of heavily-sugared black tea is passed in my direction. Out of politeness I drink it much slower than I would have liked. The three women commune quietly with each other. I follow their conversation without understanding a single word of it. There is some shared facial similarity between the pair who are chopping vegetables. They seem to be around the same age. They are probably sisters. I cannot fathom their relationship with my companion who clearly isn't related to them. Though are friendly towards her, the tone of their conversation lacks the playful conviviality of friends bantering back and forth.

More sweet tea is offered and is gratefully accepted. Feeling restored, I immerse myself in the prosaic alchemy of the vegetable piles as they are reshaped by the calloused hands of the two sisters. Idly, I contemplate their lives. Is every afternoon defined by a new mound of vegetables to be chopped; a linear range of low hills the span of an adult life? They begin combining the different piles, gradually adding them to a pan in a deliberate order. When the meal is ready we sit around the fire, eating in silence. The sun is beginning to set. The heat of the day has lost its potency but maintains an ambient grounded presence where it has been absorbed by the earth and soaked into the walls of the houses. I start to think about how I might politely extricate myself before it gets too dark to find my way back to my hotel.

When my companion rises to her feet it seems like a good opportunity to take my leave. As I stand up she gently takes a hold of my hand. To my surprise she leads me inside the hut. The darkened interior consists of a single room. She urges me towards a narrow mud-brick staircase – an unexpected architectural addition – I had assumed the building was all on one level. I ascend cautiously ahead of her, uncertain of what might be lying in wait for me at the summit.

The upper floor is empty; a room similar to the one below. A blank square of fading daylight is framed by a small glassless window carved into the mud-brick wall, tilted slightly towards the ceiling, deliberately I think. The only furnishing that stands out in the gloom is a round tablecloth, dyed with the kind of pattern that one might find woven into an Indian carpet. It had been spread across the middle of the floor like a rug. The woman sits down in the centre of the cloth which seems to merge with the fabric of her dress, pooling around her as if she is expanding her area of influence.

I sit down opposite, cross-legged on the bare floor. Her words unspool from her mouth in a continuous sentence, their meaning evaporating in the space between us. All that remains is their lulling cadence which is hypnotic, like sitting alongside a brook, listening to the placid babble of the braiding current. Her eyes are fixed on my own. They are heavily ringed with khol, the whites luminescent in the gloom, dark circles of fierce intelligence burning at the centre. The brown smudge of a bindi, marking the location of her third eye, has faded, with the light, into her complexion. We remain like this for some time, locked in communication stalemate, with her talking and me listening, then abruptly she stands up and leaves.

At first I am reluctant to move. I remain cross-legged on the floor, like a child awaiting punishment. A few minutes pass and I begin to wonder whether I have been given my cue to exit. Are the two sisters downstairs, forbidden by the traditions of their culture to occupy their own property until the westerner departs? I wander over to the window and gaze out across darkened fields. In the distance there are lights. I am certain that a few of them belong to my hotel. I do not relish the walk back, where the throaty growl of a leopard from somewhere in the silhouetted undergrowth can ruin your evening; a sound that I would only recognise on account of all the hours that I sunk into Tomb Raider where, in the guise of Lara Croft, I have laid waste to an abundance of digital snow leopards.

On the stairs I hear movement. The woman has returned. She lights a candle. The dance of the flame floods the pronounced creases above her cheeks with deep shadow, the lines of care altered by a trick of the light to resemble a pair of ritual scars that have been etched into her face by downward slashes of a knife. She has made changes to her appearance, dragging her abundant dark hair into a backward frizz, the excess gathered up in a bun that is cosied underneath a dome of purple fabric, ribbed with gilded seams.

She motions for me to sit. I see her gesture more as a shadow on the wall merging with my own shadow. Settling down alongside me, she places her head close to my own. A long string of softly-spoken words are carried to my ear on the current of her hot breath, lulling me into nodding trance. In a sudden assured motion she takes hold of my right hand and inserts it into the loose bodice of her dress. It happens so quickly that the pliant softness of her bare breast is under my hand before I know what has happened, her small, erect nipple pressed against my palm. In the same movement her lips have advanced, touching my own which part for her tongue. I feel myself moving with the grain of the universe, falling slowly backwards underneath her fragile, bird-like weight, my shoulders pressing against the bare floor. l raise my pelvis. Through a combined effort, the pair of us work my jeans down to half-mast.

In the candlelight her kholed eyes appear two-dimensional, like they have been painted on, as if I am trapped underneath a temple idol that has been infused with sentience. I am the foundation for a ritual or perhaps I am an offering, yielding to disciplined contractions that break over me with the rhythm of waves – a mantra of the flesh. Her necklace – a repository of various charms made out of bone, metal, and wood – dangles like an open noose a few inches overhead.

When I reach forward and grab hold of one of her buttocks, it feels like a profane gesture, and I immediately let go. We are screwing at cross purposes. She is a silent gathering force, internalising her pleasure, marshalling it towards some higher goal. For her, the sex is a stepping stone towards an elevated state of being that transcends physicality. I am being manoeuvred along a more predictable earthbound rut, towards the low hanging fruit of an orgasm; that headlong charge into a brick wall that, for a moment that is already fleeting as it happens, seems like the best idea ever.

A gasp from my mouth, accompanied by some enthusiastic movement of my hips, ignites something within my partner; a response that is almost muscle memory. I catch sight of the downward blur of her hand, the split second before the heel of her palm strikes me hard on the forehead, dead-centre between the eyes. I stumble into ejaculation literally seeing stars, like an unwary animal that has been taken in by some predatory ruse, only to be snatched up in the jaws of a creature that has been patiently waiting in ambush.

When I come to my senses, she is sitting astride me, straight-backed, her satin dress pouring over my midsection, her arms bent upright at the elbows, the fingers of her hands arranged in indecipherable runic gestures, her eyes burning within their painted-on void. It is like staring into the face of death. Gently I pull her down until our foreheads are pressed against each other and I can feel the reassuring warmth of her consciousness emanating from behind the wall of skin and bone; our third eyes touching each other.

Without speaking a word she gets off of me. A watery rivulet of cum dribbles down her legs as she rearranges her skirt. She disappears downstairs, abandoning me to the wavering flame of the dripping candle. I pull up my jeans, wrapping the front part of my underwear around my cock and wiping it clean.

She returns with the two sisters. We gather around the space where, a few minutes before I was lying on my back; the four of us drinking tea as though nothing has happened; as though none of us can smell the stagnating odour of sex that still occupies the room. I am anchored on the spot out of politeness and uncertainty of what is expected from me. What is the etiquette after you have fucked a stranger in someone else's home? Do I give the woman or the two sisters money, or will doing so cause offence? 

Meanwhile, somewhere off stage, the whisper network of the village has evidently reached the portals of a nearby temple. The acolytes, stirred into action like soldier ants, have their own ideas about my immediate future. A commotion on the staircase yields three bearded young men, dressed in black robes. As they enter the room, the women deferentially rise to their feet and move to the walls.

The leader of the group is shouting at me. I haven't a clue what he is saying and stare at him, dumbfounded. This only seems to anger him more. He pushes me forcefully in the centre of my chest with a set of unusually strong fingers. I am unprepared for his assault and stagger backwards. The warning from the hotel manager now seems more like a prophecy.

“I don't understand what you want.”

He pushes me again. This time I catch his hand as it withdraws, pinching it between my thumb and fingers. His two companions have come around on either side, flanking me in a pincer movement. I am on the wrong end of a losing battle, past the point of no return. From here-on, the common tongue of violence will be spoken. For one time only, in this baffling place, where everyone's intentions are shrouded in layers of mystery, we will all be on the same page and we will all understand what is said. In the darkness by my side, I fold my left hand into a tidy fist. Mentally I prepare for myself for an inevitable beating, or perhaps something worse.

In the instant before we come to blows, the woman forces herself into the gap between me and the head priest. She begins chastising him. The unbroken sentence that she whispered into my ear is now laced with a raw fury that appears to surprise everyone in the room. The man who pushed me begins to argue with her, then thinks better of it. The three of them turn and head back down the stairs and into the night.

At last, it seems that everyone is in agreement that I should go. I bid farewell to the two sisters. What am I supposed to say these women? “Sorry for fucking a stranger in your bedroom while you were both downstairs, and then drawing the wrath of the temple to your door.” Is there a thank you card that I can send that will embody that sentiment?

At the bottom of the stairs, the woman takes my hand. We walk through the village, back to the main road, as if we are a boy and a girl taking in the evening. My hotel is in sight, tantalizingly close, when she utters the one English word that she will ever speak in my presence:

“Police.”

So at last we have reached the end of the long con. My heart sinks. A story will be told. I will have to barter for my freedom; that is assuming that a bribe is even an option. My big head scrambles to come up with a strategy that will extricate me from the mess that has been made by my little head; a tale as old as the first penis, however many aeons ago that was. Ever since I arrived in this place I have not understood a damn thing that has happened. My ignorance, along with my unwillingness to offend people, has delivered me to this low point.

The police station is an unassuming building. In the distant past it was probably someone's home. The lobby is deserted. On the corner of the unmanned desk, the head of a grimy fan creeks back and forth. We wait there is silence. After a few minutes I finally lose my patience. I walk to the door with the woman following in my wake.  

“I'm going to bed, on my own. If anyone wants me, I'll be over there.”

I point diagonally across the empty road to the hotel.

When I am halfway across, I call out to her without looking back:

“Thank you for walking me home.”

The first thing that I do after I reach the safety of my room is take a dribbling shower. I am dehydrated. I have no water to drink or to clean my teeth with, but there is no way I going back out there. A knock on the door is followed by the appearance of the hotel owner.

“My Redlark, I was concerned for your safety.”

“I'm okay, I think.”

“The men who shaved you this morning overcharged you.”

He begins forcing banknotes into my hand – significantly more than I paid, but I am too tied to argue.

~

I awaken filled with resolve to put as many miles as I can between myself and Tarapith. The train to Kolkata doesn't leave Rampurhat until the afternoon. I don't care. I will wait in the station; anything to escape this insanity.

There is young man at the desk. His father has yet to rise. I ask the boy to pass on my thanks. As I exit the hotel, I am ambushed by my lover who has evidently been lying in wait for me. As before, I do not see her until she is walking by my side, chattering away.

Outside the cafe, where the buses convene, she is joined by a pair of children with shaven heads – girls, I think, but it is hard to tell. She points to them, then makes a gesture with both hands beginning at the centre of her head, each palm travelling down her temples and over her shoulders.

“Clothes? You mean clothes... For the children.”

Reaching in my pocket I fish out the notes the hotel owner gave me and hand them to her.

“Not for the priests.”

She watches as I doodle a man with a beard in my notebook, pressing down hard with the pen as a draw a cross through it.

Nodding, she murmurs something under her breath.

As I climb onto the idling bus she hands me a clear plastic bag of sweets for the journey. The driver puts the engine in gear and we rumble away. The last I see of her and the children, is through a window that has been sepia-toned by a thick coating of dust. They are walking away up the road towards god only knows what future.

I am standing on one of the crowded platforms of Rampurhat Station, waiting for a train that will take me back to Kolkata. I am clutching, in one hand, a bag of Indian sweets that I do not want, but feel that I have eat. They are a gift from someone with whom I have been intimate; someone who has stared into my soul; who perhaps knows things about me that I do not know about myself.

A group of young men are spitting small balls of paper at me. When I move away from them they discretely shuffle through the crowd and resume their covert bombardment. Eventually I lose patience and walk over to them.

“Enough, alright. You do not spit at me.”

I emphasize my displease with a pointed finger. I have raised my voice deliberately so that other passengers in the vicinity will be aware of what is going on. When I withdraw, this time the boys do not follow.

The tea vendors, who board the trains with their kettles, serve chai in clay cups, the size of shot glasses. When you are done, you throw them out the window where they shatter harmlessly on the ground. On this journey, for the first time, the chai is poured into flimsy plastic beakers. They have to be handled with a lightness of touch in order to avoid depressing the sides and pushing out the contents. Through the window I watch herds of these discarded white cups bouncing alongside the rails, raised from the ground on a wind of change that is blowing in the direction of Tarapith.