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
‘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
‘What’s she meant to be studying?’
‘French and Spanish at Bristol.’
‘How’s she going to do that when she can’t even speak?’
‘It’ll take a while, but she’ll be fine. When you’ve been living with lepers, this kind of thing seems like nothing. I mean, you’ve got to put things in a proper perspective.
She’s still got more than any Indian could possibly wish for.’
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘You haven’t seen the underbelly. You don’t understand what a huge privilege it is just to be Western. Financially, I mean. Spiritually, of course, we’re utterly impoverished. That’s why we’re prone to this kind of breakdown.’
‘But… she’s… how long has she been like this?’
‘Oh, a few weeks.’
‘And all because Liz shagged Ping.’
‘That was just the final straw, but basically, yes.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I mean it’s stupid really, because Ping slept with everybody.’
‘What?’
‘It was part of the tuition, I suppose. If he thought you were getting somewhere, he’d help you go Tantric’
‘What – even you?’
‘No – I deliberately didn’t let him find my centre, because I wanted Caz to have a chance to get there first. She’d had her thing for so long that I kind of hoped if I acted coldly towards Ping, he’d get the message and concentrate on Caz.’
‘And did he?’
‘No. That’s the tragedy. He concentrated on Liz. By the looks of things he found her centre quicker than he found Caz’s knee.’
‘Centre? Is that – like – your…?’
‘No. Don’t be disgusting. Don’t you know what Intimate Yoga is?’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘It’s a way of finding the central point of the bodies’ energies through the laying on of hands of a qualified Intimate Yogi.’
‘Laying on of hands?’
‘Exactly. He teaches the whole group the basic position, then, while you’re meditating, he comes up to you one by one and manipulates you into position. When you’ve found a perfect balance and are at peace, he lays his hands on, and together you locate your centre.’
‘Where was yours?’
‘I never found it exactly, but it was somewhere here.’
She crossed her legs and sat bolt upright, then placed the fingers of her right hand a fraction above where the pubes would have started.
‘Wow! Is that where everyone’s centre is?’
‘It depends. It’s different for each person.’
‘Don’t tell me. Fat old people have it on their shoulder, and young nubile women tend to have it bang on their clit.’
‘You are such a cynic. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.’
‘This guy’s a genius. Where was Caz’s centre?’
