The Lessons of Ananga Sukhada Kunj

The Vraja dust is not so dramatic,
just a thin film that covers everything.

I cleaned the house today.
It looks like a bachelor pad again.
The house is empty.
Not just of you, but of me also.
Any vestiges of me, other than Giridhari, gone.

We sat here, arguing, for five months,
each refusing to make this a home,
locked in a daredevil game of chicken,
negotiations never going anywhere.

This house, Ananga Sukhada Kunj,
on the auction block, the joy that was its name
fleeting, a shadow, a chimera, a dream
that no one had the energy to fulfill.

Ananga Sukhada Kunj, my guru sakhi's home
where she has told me how I cannot live in
the bower of the Bodiless's One's joy.

Times have changed, I have fallen behind;
no one listens to me any more. No one cares.
We can't be householders, we can't be vairagis,
We can't be lovers, we can't be free.
We can't be free of each other.

I crossed a law of nature as fatal as falling from a cliff.
A womanizer, who needs the energy that comes from
the admiration of the opposite sex.
Who finds fulfillment in the successful seduction of the spirit.

A gigolo. A man who looks to women as his meal ticket.
A child. Immature, with unresolved mother issues.
Must be that my mother ignored me as a child
for me to be so needy now. So needy.

And all I think about is sex.
I am under the illusion that sex is the source of love.
Long ago, I was fooled into thinking celibacy is a solution;
I repressed it for years, and now
I have bounced in the opposite direction,
as if making up for lost time,
in even more illusion than before.

The Kumaras wisely opted out of adolescence,
I chose adolescence as a way of being!
Lazy! I could have finished all my projects by now,
I could have written a book, ten books.
Ten years... ten years all for nought.

And do I think myself an expert in Rupa Goswami?
What do I know of Rupa Goswami,
or anything to do with the spiritual path,
just more and more smoke to put in people's eyes
as I grub for puja and pratishtha.

And moreover, a patriarch, a macho,
who thinks that his word is the law
and that a woman should follow it.
And who becomes abusive when she doesn't.

Vrindavan, how can anyone live here?
It is turning into just another crappy Indian city,
filled with crappy, grubby, sleazy Indians
pawing white women in the buses and trains.

Radha and Krishna, who believes any more?
Who believes in love any more?
You no longer believe in mine, nor I in yours.
So much for my Sahajiya nonsense.

For days, I sat like Winston Smith,
sipping gin and tonic in a café
that all good citizens studiously avoid,
staring into space, my shocked mind a vacuum,
slowly disintegrating into the dust,
all ambition crushed.

But today,
Ah, Vrindavan is so empty today,
the heat is oppressive,
why do I feel so free?