The Lure of Shiny Things
What it all came down to, of course, was the monkey, but he had nothing to say about it, and I do not intend to speak on his behalf. I wouldn’t have chosen to travel to such a place, but Benny criticized my desire for the safe path and goaded me into taking the trip with him to India.
In the end, what I thought I wanted and what I really wanted turned out to be quite different. My mother always chided me for not revering the old and sacred. She said I was too much the modern woman, attracted to the sanitized, modern, and new-fangled. She said I wanted everything new and shiny, and in the end she was right. Now I realize how much Benjamin sounded like her. He had the ability to push the same guilty buttons Mommy did.
I was always a good packer, taking only what was necessary, but what was necessary in India? Benjamin was a professor of Anthropology, confident and articulate; he was either loved or hated by his colleagues. My area of expertise was Sociology. We both felt we could do some good research from the travels in India. Benny was studying Temple Architecture and I planned to look at crowd behavior in sacred places.
On the second day in India I had to stop wearing my contact lenses; the dust kept my eyes perpetually dry and unknown allergies began to plague me. I started wearing my glasses, which I was constantly cleaning because India is hot, dry, and grimy. The slow persistent heat and the stench of human and animal life dismayed me, along with the cows wandering in the lanes and the Indian intrusiveness. No place in public was private and no place private was quiet. My senses were over-stimulated by the persistence of the people; the visual eroticism, the auditory strangeness, and the fragrance of life lived loud and desperate.
My senses cowered, while Benny’s raged. He seemed intoxicated the whole trip, drunk and in love with the strangeness. He seemed more in love with me. We had the best sex, urgent, risky, sweaty sex in dirty hostels and hotels between Delhi and Agra.
In Mathura, Uttar Pradesh we encountered the Temple of the Monkeys. “Did you know that cows can’t roam the Temple of the Monkeys, asked Benny. I knew, but I didn’t answer Benny. He wasn’t really listening anyway he was postulating.
“It’s the sacred place of the God, Hanumaan who was the Vaanara (monkey) attendant of the God Rama. Hanumaan represents the qualities of loyalty, unstinted devotion, and love,” Benny said as we walked. In the lane leading up to the Temple of the Monkeys, villagers with red henna stained teeth shouted in Hindi at us. Someone translated, “watch out for your glasses, the monkeys love shiny things!” At the same time I felt Benny’s hand on my shoulder, the pressure was soft, but firm. I felt his hand snake around my face to my glasses and felt a moment of panic as I thought he can’t take off my glasses; I can’t see without them. I turned quickly to face Benny and raised my hand to my face as a small brown monkey leaped away from me with my glasses in his tiny hand. He danced away waving the glasses while I screamed. Benny gave chase, but the money climbed effortlessly to the top of the temple where I could only vaguely make out his dancing form. The villagers all around us laughed and other tourist shouted and pointed. Benny stood with his head back, his damp curls glistening in the sunlight, shading his eyes with one hand, while the small monkey danced and chattered. I stumbled towards Benny, trying to close the gap between us and swallow the sob that threatened to embarrass me further.
