Gloria

patron saint of the dismembered

CW: if your trauma language is boobies, you’ll need an emotional shepherd beyond this point.

I sat with paperwork that had my name, followed by orders - mammography, diagnostic right. My name doesn’t belong in the “patient” field, I thought.

The room was dimly lit, with decor that said more parlor than radiology - soft uplight, lush fabrics, and artificial plants standing in for those who require direct solar radiation.

I thought back to the hellish predawn drive I once took to a Himalayan temple built to honor God’s left breast.

Did I pay homage to the wrong one?

Should I go back?

We woke long before dawn, only a week after floating above Greenland and across the mountains that make my dear Rockies blush like tinker toys at a motorcycle dealership. The early wasn’t worse than jet lag, but equal in stride. Plus, everything in India is off from the rest of the globe by 30 minute increments, so I was thrice disoriented.

It is not probable that I was squashed into the back right corner of a nameless two-door hatchback, but again, the trickster of time warps and unleavened memory has me convinced that it was my mode of transport. From Rishikesh it was up. Uphill, not North (I’m not sure cardinal directions apply there anyway). Just up and up and up, through shreds of switchbacks carved first by devoted two leggeds, then by pack animals, and finally by loads of micro cars packed with tourists.

As all tourists, I’d sincerely prefer not to be considered one. I longed to be seen as the true and righteous visitor there to pay homage to a temple I’d never heard of. But indeed I was just another emaciated white woman with a shawl over my head handing over wads of cash with hubris and vanity and the inability to perform basic maths due to the jet lags.

500 rupees is $7 I kept telling myself.

But due to a swap of paper currency (bureaucracy is the third largest religion in the subcontinent) we couldn’t get any back in the US in advance of our departure, and so it was only after landing at the one gate airport that I shoved my ATM card into a machine and pulled out too much money.

In the US I think I’m allowed $200 cash per day, but the ATM did not have English or conversion metrics, and I had no idea if I was holding $5 or $5,000 once it spit out clean and colorful bills.

10,000 rupee notes - that was $140. the savvy airport attendant quickly offered me a can of Prngle’s and nine 1,000 notes, saying no one in town would take the larger bills.

$14 Prngles. Just like a hotel in New York? A worthy tax.

Idiot tax.

Thin white woman tax.

Tourist tax.

Gross.

I exchanged no more cash in Rishikesh, but did leave some in the outstretched hands of humans far too small, and brought the rest to the top of a hill where I sat with so many others chanting as the sun rose and revealed a mirage of peaks. Layers and layers indiscernible in the smog of daytime, but and majestic as I like to think I am at exactly the right angle with appropriate lighting.

The story of Shakti is something we’re supposed to impart meaning to and interpret for ourselves, with guidance of teachers. I’m not your teacher, and I’m not teaching you the story. I’m fracturing it into bits to make a white woman’s mosaic.

Oh look - something that doesn’t suit me as it is. Perhaps I’ll smash it up and reassemble it in service of my narrative?

I’ll get it wrong here, which is the curse of the tourist who doesn’t speak the language or understand the culture, whose nourishment is a tube of compressed potato whose label is missing a letter. She can’t even decide if she’s paying 10x market price.

Shiva was a jerk, if you ask me. I was once into guys like that, so I don’t disparage you or the hundreds of others who legitimately worship him, but man. His stories are rich with short fuses and poor temperament and destruction. This one starts with him refusing to go to a party with his beloved, which she gets codependently bummed about and launches herself into immolation.

Shakti shattered into 52 pieces, which fell to create 51 temples called shaktapithas. Her heart was merged with that of Shiva, which isn’t totally not a story about a rib…. But could be seen as romantic or predatory. Or a solid case for copyright infringement.

But in the case of Shakti and the Shaktipithas, devotees can wander to all 51 sacred sites of her pieces, or worship Shiva (which includes her heart) and get a two fer.

A near decade into my recovery, I’ll take the long slow path thank you.

In the interior lobby of the radiology clinic, devoid of makeup and lotion and deodorant, wrapped in a confusing trapezoidal garment with two arm holes I consulted the googles. Not the doctor variety, but the all knowing map with Yelp reviews of shakti’s body parts.

Yelp reviews of sacred sites are written in English principally by women who probably look a lot like me. They speak mostly of parking and toilets, occasionally of food, and always of consumerism.

I didn’t write one of the temple to Shakti’s left breast, but if I had it would have included chanting, and clockwise, and socks.

And monkeys.

You must chant to someone as the sun rises. Row row row your boat is fine, if that’s the best mantra to represent your faith, but we chanted the Gayatri mantra 108 times. Worth it. Bring water or buy chai.

Clockwise is the way you circumambulate things in India, like temples. It’s how you stir yogurt. Maybe not everything, but probably. The toilets don’t flush, but everything else prays to the god of Northern Hemisphere physics, so why tempt fate?

Socks. It’s cold. If you’ve been undernourished for a long while and are afraid of everything but bananas and boiled food, you will be too. I bought some in the same time and place as Gurmukh, who has endured unthinkable horrors and who shucks and eats peanuts while she teaches.

Monkeys. They want your stuff - your glasses and headwear and anything in an open pack. They plan to take your offerings directly to god, by way of their intestines. They want to be in your hair. They are feral. This is wise.

I compared this briefly to how one might yelp the radiology clinic, which is quite different with many of the same clients I’m sure.