The huge eyes look at me in the night, I was asleep, sleeping quiet in my bed of water, floating over it, floating over my memories my future over the whole world, floating over the ocean of milk that is the universe, into the infinite possibilities. I was sleeping without thinking without dreaming only floating in the nothingness when the light wakes me up, and the light is two floodlights, pure white beams of light, and the floodlights are two eyes, and the eyes look at me, huge the eyes, they are the eyes of a god, the eyes of the Lord of Time, the Lord of the Big Void, the Lord of the Dark Sea of Consciousness, the Lord of all the Yesterdays and Tomorrows, they are the eyes of that ancient photo of the Jyotirlingam of Ujjain, already capital of another age before Kaliyuga started.
Shiva Mahakaleshwara calls me in the night and I have to go, I have to run, I have to recover Rodolfo and I run through hot far out dazed eons, and I run and my running has the floor of the ancient temple vibrating while Rodolfo thinks is the drug, the amphetamine he bought at the chemist outside, that has all the earth vibrating, instead they are my steps, so powerful steps since they are the passes of an envoy from Shiva. Shiva who plays the damaru, the double drum made up with the skulls from two previous incarnations, and the bigger side of the damaru, the one made from the Neanderthal’s skull, plays and invents the human language, and so the Neanderthal shrinks his head, less mass of telepathic circuits and more neocortex, and the next side of the damaru is the skull of a Homo Sapiens. And the floor vibrates under my steps running on the earth that vibrates at the sound of damaru and the whole world vibrates at the echoing of the words of a god.
The night ends and the day finds Rodolfo trying to reach the temple again, it is the only reference point he has, the only place where he thinks he may find Jean-Jacques and the others, he is going by cycle-rickshaw. But a huge bunch of children will not let it go along, they are shouting, the children are shouting to go away to go back home and the rickshaw has to stop. The stalemate is interrupted by another screaming swarm of children suddenly coming out from an alley to fight the first group, and they are very resolute and with fists kicks and stones they manage to open way for the rickshaw, and the driver takes advantage fast of the situation starting again to pedal, while Rodolfo is crying and says no, at this condition I don’t want to go, I don’t want the children fight for me! but the driver doesn’t hear, doesn’t understand his pain his desperation his terrible sense of guilt, no the driver accomplishes his duty and leaves the weeping passenger in front of the main entrance of Mahakaleshwara Temple.
Rodolfo gets in running to not meet again the Baba, the one who the other day, after having him spend his last 32 rupees in chai and biscuits, wanted to have a temple being built around him, he had already called the masons with bricks towels and concrete building up the walls just around where he was inviting him to smoke chillums, saying: stay here don’t worry Kumba Mela is coming you’ll be greeted as a holy man, but no Rodolfo said no and fled away running just as he is running now to go into the temple chased as he is by fear.
Once into the temple area he doesn’t know where to go and crosses the big yard in the middle of which there is a temple and so he gets in to find a yogi immersed in deep meditation in padmasana just in front of a small lingam, with the hands in jnanamudra and the eyes shut. Rodolfo sits troubled at his left and watches the saffron robed swami and watches the lingam and watches the swami and watches the lingam and he believe not to think anything while he is watching the swami and watching the lingam, until the swami opens his eyes, gazes at him and does a gesture with the head pointing at the big mirror in the wall of the temple in front of the entrance, and in the mirror Rodolfo sees Jean-Jacques crossing fast just outside the door and so immediately he stands up and mumbling a greeting runs outside to catch his friends, at last, after days of waiting.
But Jean-Jacques is not there, nowhere to be seen… the only possible place for him to have gone so fast is to the Jyotirlingam, who is underground exactly under the small lingam in front of which the yogi was meditating and which entrance is just there on the left; and I see Rodolfo running down the steps and in this very moment I become the pundit, the master of ceremony who is putting back the head, the five silver heads, to Sheshnag, the cobra-god who is around Siva’s neck.
Rodolfo doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know properly the mystery of the blue neck, the mystery of the poison of the world that Shiva drinks to permit life to exist on the material plane, that poison of the world, the foam coming out from the greatest alchemy that had him became blue, but Rodolfo doesn’t know yet that Shiva stops the poison in the neck, without swallowing it, he just tastes it, as has to be done while smoking holy tobacco, and Shiva tastes the poison of the world drop by drop allowing so all the eons of the existence in this material universe.
Rodolfo doesn’t know, he is looking for Jean-Jacques and wonders how he is not there and so he doesn’t understand the message the happening is transmitting, that of the complete Freedom of Creation, and he risks and risks a lot… so I know while I’m here now, why the Lord of Time has called me, to save Rodolfo and so I take a flower necklace from the Jyotirlingam, one of the twelve lingams not made by man hands all over India, and I put it around the yet nearly beardless Rodolfo’s neck. Rodolfo flees away running up the steps chased by total embarrassment, chased by holy terror, who am I? he thinks, who am I to have around my neck the flower garland of Shiva, the God? And so he crosses again the yard, remembering that on the right side of Mahakaleshwara Temple there is another smaller temple, the temple of Punchmukhi Hanuman, the monkey god, and his decision is taken, he goes in fast and put the flower garland around the five heads of Hanuman.
He saved his life by doing so, he doesn’t understand yet the mystery of the poison and the creation, but he will not die with the monkey on his shoulder, he did the Offering, the biggest, to the Monkey, the monkey in his noblest aspect of Force and Devotion.
And now Rodolfo is outside panting, and there is an Indian policeman who talks to him saying that during his eight years of living in Ujjain he has been to the Jyotirlingam only once, and Rodolfo feels it as a reproach, feeling guilty to have been down in the sancta-sanctorum twice in a few days and guilty about the children of the road... he doesn’t want to know that the Indian man and the children admire him and are already his devotes.
copyleft by Rodolfo de Matteis