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René Descartes

April 8, 2015 //
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rene-descartes

 Vivum
Sectus
Aperta
Sine
Anaesthesia

From the superior English torturers smirk we now arrive at the uniquely French pout of smug vanity. Going to the Egyptian “to speak of the dead is to make them live again” we’ll perform a vivisection on the reanimated nose of René Descartes returned to life as a cat:

Descartes_Cat

“I find it almost impossible to believe that René Descartes, not known as a monster, carried his philosophical belief that only humans have minds to such a confident extreme that he would blithely spread-eagle a live mammal on a board and dissect it” -Richard Dawkins

Well, one might nearly give Dawkins credit *BUT* this appears mere matter of degree when it comes to the philosophers. Did Dawkins note Francis Bacon was a torturer of men? I didn’t actually look into the question but will note Dawkins musings on Descartes was certainly not informed by fishing with live bait:

“Plants cannot think, and you’d have to be pretty eccentric to believe they can suffer. Plausibly the same might be true of earthworms” -Richard Dawkins

Well, Mr Dawkins, I can assure you, earthworms writhe mightily in pain, while being skewered the length of their bodies on a fish-hook, where technique requires the shank of the hook must be entirely concealed in the worm’s living flesh. And plants can’t think? That is one ‘almighty’ (Descartes God?) assumption. Let’s call Dawkins ‘Descartes lite.’ Where Descartes (and Dawkins) philosophy dies, is in the modern lab:

“The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment” -theoretical physicist Bernard d’Espagnat 

Last time I checked, plants & trees were still objects for purposes of science and yet are known to communicate  by land and by air … Dawkins might rather have considered how close he is to Descartes.

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Perverts of Western Philosophy

The Satires

Devolution Part 1

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Categories culture, philosophy, satire, science, transcendent warfare

Perverts of Western Philosophy

April 6, 2015 //
2

Mephisto

A Mephisto assessment of reality

It came across my mind the thought; with Western Civilization well on its way to collective suicide, it should do to examine the philosophers. Some of what has been set out by the following notable ‘thinkers’ reminds me of nothing so much as a statement by behaviorist Yuval Noah Harari:

“You can’t convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana with the promise it will get 20 more bananas in chimpanzee heaven. It won’t do it. But humans will”

Considering chimps would appear to have more common sense than certain ideas Indo-European-originated mentality worships, here is the growing work, beginning with the British or a “sorry” race of people:

John Locke Pervert of Western Philosophy (1)

Jeremy Bentham Pervert of Western Philosophy (2)

Francis Bacon Pervert of Western Philosophy (3)

David Hume Pervert of Western Philosophy (4)

Thomas Hobbes Pervert of Western Philosophy (5)

René Descartes Pervert of Western Philosophy (6)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Pervert of Western Philosophy (7)

Marquis de Sade Pervert of Western Philosophy (8)

With the English discarded and French dismissed, if I can get up the stomach for it, I’ll get on with the Germans… (no promises)

Special Offering: The Philosophical Dingleberries of Slavoj Žižek

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The Satires

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Categories philosophy, satire

David Hume

April 6, 2015 //
0

Allan Ramsay, David Hume, 1711 - 1776. Historian and philosopher

What is
Had ought
Not
Wish
To wash

David Hume’s impossible postulation…

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason”

…is summed up in Western ethics as ‘Hume’s guillotine’ or the ‘ought-is problem.’ Now, forgive my naiveté when faced with this immutable Western dilemma of philosophy where the ‘ought-is problem‘ is posed…

“how, exactly can an “ought” be derived from an “is”? The question, prompted by Hume’s small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory”

…as it occurs in my small universe if my ass IS dirty I had OUGHT to wash it. Correct? Or, if it is in the natural order of things one were to have a dirty ass as a matter of fact, expectation and normalcy, and those hairy-assed little shit-balls, quaintly known as ‘dingle-berries’ in the vulgar tongue, must endure .. would it be a violation of IS to pull them out? Had one OUGHT *NOT* do that? What I’m getting at is, there was this time during my progressing baldness I had my head waxed to remove what amounted to an annoying residual fuzz. Now, it’d never occurred to me (previous to faced with Hume’s ‘ought-is problem’) hairy people OUGHT to have an ass-wax-job, but now this seems a logical progression from dirty ass as a result of hairy ass-crack, or that is an IS to an OUGHT.

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Perverts of Western Philosophy

The Satires

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Categories philosophy, satire, transcendent warfare

MERGE

April 1, 2015 //
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“You can’t convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana with the promise it will get 20 more bananas in chimpanzee heaven. It won’t do it. But humans will” -Behaviorist Yuval Noah Harari

MERGE

National Public Radio interview with Professor Bwana Ungawa; Honkus Screed Chair in Philology; Noam Chomsky School of Linguistics, Lord Greystoke Institute of Technology

NPR: So tell us Professor Ungawa, give some understanding to lay science people and reporters like myself, what is the acronym MERGE? How were you inspired to this theory?

Ungawa: Macaroni Enhanced Radio Gestation Etymology or MERGE, came to me in a meditative state when attempting digesting pasta.

NPR: Ok, so that explains the ‘macaroni enhanced’ aspect but what is ‘radio gestation etymology?

Ungawa: As Descartes noticed, we appear to be speaking freely in a way deemed appropriate to circumstances but is not caused by the circumstances. Or in lay terms, ‘Just plain BS.’ So we can produce speech over an unbounded range, constantly inventing irrelevant crap, in a way that is not determined by external stimuli and in a way that does not seem to be caused by any internal structure. And we can produce this bullshit in ways that others with similar capacities to absorb crap can comprehend and recognize as nonsense similar to their own. Well, that sort of creative aspect of comprehension is a total mystery. But that’s my language. Now questions arise for everything; bullshit visionaries in science; bullshit organization of motion or the sport of cricket particularly; bullshit audition or hearing voices in our heads, particularly our own voices that tend never to shut up; bullshit arithmetical ability mostly prone to numbers that don’t add up .. for instance Keynesian economics; bullshit comparisons to chimps fluent in sign language whose paintings are as accomplished as those by masters of modern art, any pseudo-cognitive bullshit. Bullshit happens. In language, bullshit spreads like memes. So, all of this verbiage and related crap, gestated in idle imagination, is my etymology spread via media, for instance radio.

NPR: Ok, well said professor. But let’s followup that idea; for example we have Sesame Street consigns philosophy to an entity that lives in a garbage can…

Ungawa: As per your example, each of us has somehow acquired the capacity for crap which, from the very first step, is largely mysterious. Take a child. Almost instantly and reflexively, he or she is able to embrace, out of the environment, all datum which is garbage related. How? A chimpanzee has roughly the same auditory & visual system but plainly it does not. And that is just the first step that is not understood. How did we acquire the infinite capacity to produce and immerse in rather endless, inane bullshit?

NPR: What can we say points toward this human genius for constructs? Are there any clues?

Ungawa: The most elementary combinatorial operation which finds its place somewhere in every computational process is simply an operation that takes two objects already constructed and forms a new object out of them. For instance a toilet and seat to the combined brilliance of a toilet seat. That is MERGE. This occurred to me while I had the seat up, when hurling my pasta.

NPR: So, the regurgitation of ideas is innate?

Ungawa: Whatever the lexical genitalia are, they have to be put together, and the easiest way for them to be put together is for some process to attract them, like estrus or ‘heat’ in layman’s terms. That’s MERGE. If you need more than that, then ok, there’s more – like cunnilingus – and anything more will be specific to language. For instance ‘blow-job.’

NPR: So language is as old as any sex act would be a cognitive event?

Ungawa: You got an operation that enables you to take sexual objects or concepts of similar sort, already constructed, and make highly enhanced or imaginative sexual objects out of them. That’s MERGE. As soon as you have that, you have an infinite variety of hierarchically structured expressions, such as dildos, available to you. This is why obelisks, dildos on a grand scale if you will, are expression of language through symbolism throughout civilization.

NPR: So, it’s not a question of which came first? The dildo or the language?

Ungawa: It looks as if – given the time involved – there was a sudden ‘great leap forward.’ Some small genetic modification somehow morphed us all into Maos and made this human capacity for dildoism possible. And with it came an entire range of lethal options that are available to humans within a theory of mind – a follows-orders theory of mind – so you know that some petty tyrant is trying to kill you because you don’t think what somebody else wants you to think.

NPR: A sort of ‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you’ phenomenon?

Ungawa: Well, paranoia takes place not only in a person, but also a group. We know, from physical anthropology, that this was a very small copulating group – some little group of bonobo in a corner of some playboy paradise – apparently. It was in that group, in Desmond Morris’ Tarzan, or that is to say within an anthropomorphized naked ape, some observation took place, leading to some future hominid adapted capacity of language; pointing to evolutionary event like Mao’s great leap forward. Dildoism wouldn’t have arisen without this critically important person.

NPR: Professor Bwana Ungawa, thank you for your time.

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note: this satire is based on actual interviews with Noam Chomsky whose quotes I have ‘modified’ (to say the least.)

Ron10

Satire by Ronald

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The Satires

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Categories culture, philosophy, satire, science, social responsibility, transcendent warfare

My Madcap Adventure Episode 18

March 14, 2015 //
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Crystal_Ball

The effects of this trip had reverberated in the core of my being for well over a month, following my return. Landed in New York, I traveled upstate and spent a week hanging out with a friend. It was a quiet scene, talking philosophy and spending time checking out the old Erie Canal. The mundane was beautiful.

Back at Helena, I was asked what I thought of the trip. By this time I knew the sisters had the then popular astrologer, Zipporah Dobbins, choose the trips date; it would be an ‘auspicious’ time. Based on this intelligence, I answered “Those girls should be jailed.”

I went to Starr School on the Blackfeet reservation, to pack up and head south for a few months, coming from the tropics into a Montana winter was not an appealing thought. I dropped by to visit Pat, my medicine man friend and he laughed at me … Native America has perhaps the darkest humor on Earth and the prevailing joke in the community was “Ron shot Mrs Gandhi.” It was a pun on the shamanic aspect of life not understood in western culture, but similar perhaps to a joke on someone who’d followed an astrologer into a disaster. Kind of like saying ‘your medicine man sucks’ relating to consulting over preparation for a journey.

Reprising a trip from over a decade earlier, when I’d driven a Volkswagen ‘bug’ to Arizona, to escape Montana’s cold, following my return from tropical Vietnam, here I was again, driving a Volkswagen bug to Arizona, to escape the Montana cold, following my return from tropical India.

It was at Agua Prieta, just on the Mexican side of the border with Arizona, I’d asked at the local grocery a simplest possible question; of a proprietor who’d probably never been beyond the borders of his native Sonora. My imperfect Spanish couldn’t find the impersonal ‘are there’ and instead I blurted out the personal ‘do you have’ .. eggs? His reply was:

“Sì! Dos grandes!!”

-end-

notes to follow-

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

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Categories assassinations, crime, culture, Folk Stories, philosophy, satire, Travel, Uncategorized

My Madcap Adventure Episode 17

March 13, 2015 //
2

It was mid afternoon on 4 November I was free in Cairo. I was able to amend my original return ticket from India and would be able to catch a plane from Cairo to New York with a plane change at London, on the 6th. I caught a taxi to Giza and checked into a ! Swiss Chalet ! or cheesy imitation thereof, a sort of motel configuration, not too expensive. I laid down and was dead-out until I heard the muezzin calling people to prayer at daybreak, or about 12 hours. It was that kind of sleep where you offload immeasurable amounts of stress. But surrealism apparently doesn’t simply vanish but follows some trips like a con-trail. Or maybe I was just tripping, but here is what I experienced: This ‘chalet’ had a dining room and I was by now thoroughly sick of curried vegetables, the mainstay on my diet for the past six weeks. I wanted red meat. English boiled beef, fine no argument with that. Feta cheese was a treat. But here is what made the journey cartoon just keep going on; the ‘chalet’ dining room had an American ‘Old West’ theme … with waiters dressed in paper-felt cowboy hats with plastic sheriff star pinned to vest and toy revolvers holstered on their hips! This was the very outfit American parents bought for their 10 year old boys and here we were in Giza, Egypt!! I understood I wasn’t hallucinating but still .. face in my palm.

Cowboy

May I take your order?

This was the evening of 5 November. Earlier in the day, I’d been visiting the home of the taxi driver who’d fetched me from the airport and brought me to Giza, his home village. We’d had lunch with his family and he was wanting to know when I’d like to see the pyramids .. Haji Hassan El-Koly was stunned to hear a westerner state, and his daughter nearly fell on the floor laughing at his amazement .. when I’d gestured to the window and said “I see them, they’re there.” It was almost inconceivable to him I was more interested in discovering who the Egyptians of the present were, than going to some presentation or touring any archaeology site. We spent part of the afternoon discussing contemporary Egypt and regional geopolitics, as well he became curious and was asking questions about myself. El-Koly stated he would never forget me on account of my name: “Where the Sun goes down.” He probably never did forget me; I had paid him an honest fare for my trip to & around Giza and return to the Cairo airport .. but then tipped him one inferior quality counterfeit USA $100 bill, courtesy of a Guardian Angel.

Cairo_to_London

Arrival in London (L) from Egypt (R)

At Heathrow in London, I had to clear customs to walk across a street into another concourse, to catch my plane to New York. Two British counter-narcotics officers were waiting for me as I entered the second concourse, they wanted a look inside my carry on day-pack. I had a collection of perfume oils I was returning with, to give to a woman friend. Eight brown glass vials about 3 inches tall and one inch wide, probably seen in some x-ray scanner my pack had been through. Asking me questions about the movie ‘The French Connection” as they pulled out the flat box containing the vials, I merely replied ‘Not everyone’s life fits a movie script.” They sorted soon enough it was oil of musk & other scents and one of them asked “What are you West, some kind of a rat?” And then let me go. I ate a ‘drop into dead sleep over the Atlantic’ pill I HAD smuggled, just for that purpose, and woke up at JFK in New York.

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

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Categories Author, crime, Folk Stories, narcotics trafficking, philosophy, politics, psychology, satire, Travel, Uncategorized

My Madcap Adventure Episode 16

March 13, 2015 //
2

On 2 November in my room at the Taj Palace, watching Indian state tv was like watching science fiction; with expressionless humanoid faces telling us not to believe “rumors of communal violence.” As I watched Rajiv light his mother’s funeral pyre on television, I could coincidentally look out the window at a column of smoke rising in the distance. Indira Gandhi’s body going up in flames or another Sikh home? There was no way for me to know, as these were simultaneous phenomena. So, what was the point of the television lie? Another trait India holds in common with the western democracies – ‘what you’re told isn’t the reality.’

Meanwhile I’d picked up a security detail shadowing me, no one believed for a New York second I was Old Babette’s grandson. It’d been better if she’d said nothing. I took care of that with fortuitous circumstance. I was sitting in a lounge in the morning when some vile looking, dowdy and incredibly wealthy (her gold and jewels hanging on her like kites tangled in utility wires) old woman decided to abandon her huge purse that appeared to be so heavy as to be filled with gold bars and leave the room. I spotted my security man across the room in a doorway, looking the other way. I walked swiftly over to him and, without mentioning the owner, I told him “There is an untended bag.” He immediately followed me into the lounge where I pointed out the purse, as it happened the old woman was returning to claim it. After, there was no further suspicions; they didn’t care who I was, other than an extra set of security eyes. No one wanted a bomb going off. A little later I frightened the ‘bejezuz’ out of myself with a stupid trick. Heading back to my room I turned the corner to see the elevator doors were beginning to close. With a sprint & leap worthy of some caped hero, I flew into the elevator as the door closed behind me: squarely into some VIP”s armed security detail! And fortunately for me, sans VIP. I wasn’t shot. If only they’d taken a photo of my face in that moment, some things are absolutely priceless. Recovering my composure in the stare of several ‘men-in-black’ security types, I simply said “Sorry” and pushed the elevator button to my level.

3 November simply dragged on in some sort of time warp that makes a day seem as though it will never end, as Indian television insisted despite rumors, there was no communal violence. Meanwhile I’d encountered an American who said a mob had boarded at a stop and killed Sikhs on the train he’d taken to Delhi.

Meanwhile Old Babette had been showering me with promises. Grateful, at least momentarily, for engineering our escape, she insisted I was going to be put up in Cairo and take a boat tour with her on the Nile, all on her dime. I listened but said nothing. Underneath, both of us knew we were absolutely incompatible personalities. That, and I recalled her brief episode of delusional belief she was a siren of eternal youth. That made me more paranoid than the rioting city we were looking to escape.

On the morning of the 4th, the Guardian Angel Sister’s Muslim travel agent manifest, to be certain Old Babette and myself made it onto the airport shuttle. For that fact, I totally forgive her for -on my departing the Hotel Imperial- passing off to me two, inferior quality, counterfeit USD$100 bills as a means of getting rid of them. On the other hand, her Bandit Sister was prone to absolutely angel moments (time to time.)

Cairo

Cairo

In our (cheap) silk kimono jackets courtesy of 1st class tickets on Japan Airline, we were among the first people out of Delhi. No sooner than we we’re in the air, Old Babette’s immense gratitude began to wane; she  was certain I wouldn’t mind a 2nd class hotel in Cairo. The truth is, other than reassurance as escort on absolutely insane taxi rides, there hadn’t been much I’d done she couldn’t have done for herself. It was the Muslim friend of the Guardian Angel Sister had made our departure possible. I don’t know if Old Babette had ‘male companion’ in mind for Egypt, but as far as I was concerned we were parting ways. As we were disembarking our plane in Cairo, her plans for us were getting reiterated and I said nothing until we’d passed through customs; her needing assistance with luggage, and myself with two carry on totality of luggage, I turned to her and said “I’ll take a rain-check” with a wave of the hand I strode away .. and the look of complete surprize-shock-amazement on her face was the last I ever saw of Old Babette.

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

 

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Categories assassinations, crime, culture, Folk Stories, philosophy, politics, satire, Travel

My Madcap Adventure Episode 15

March 13, 2015 //
0

Of the numerous photos of the 1984 ‘riots’ I could have chosen, of Sikhs being beaten to death, burned alive, arson of their businesses or simply bodies of children, women and men alike murdered by the mob, I decided instead to show a taste of the opulence I’d escaped to .. and is likely an accurate picture of the Gandhi family’s life; even as Rajiv was setting fire to his mother’s funeral pyre while powerless Sikh families were being burned alive in their homes:

???????????????????????????????

^ Interior of Taj Palace Hotel at New Delhi

I’d put on my day pack and shouldered my small sport duffel, the totality of my luggage, grabbed one of Old Babette’s suitcases (she had two) and escorted her out of the Hotel Imperial’s gate, past the Sikh security contingent, all armed with swords or batons, one of whose face was severely beaten. We turned right outside of the gate and walked maybe a hundred meters or so to an area where there was a taxi business. The taxi people pointed us down an alley where there were a few taxis with drivers willing to risk exiting the area and hired one to drive us to the Taj Palace Hotel … for one hundred US dollars. Working was an affront to the memory of Indira Gandhi and could get a taxi driver killed, with no safety promise made to the passengers. We made the trip with a wide-eyed, nearly panic stricken driver speeding through the empty streets of Delhi – it looked like a ghost city with scattered debris and the occasional smouldering ruin. Suddenly we breezed through an army checkpoint into the upscale area of the city where life looked like a calm calendar holiday. We arrived at the marble & brass edifice that we’d call home for the following three nights, without incident. Then, Old Babette made her first screw-up. She quite spontaneously decided to create an alibi for the character she was traveling with (that would be me) and went into an unrequested, convoluted, unconvincing explanation I was her “grandson” at check-in. Of course all this did was raise suspicions; as I bore no resemblance whatsoever to her. A medium-short, dark, muscular male with no scent of money whatsoever in his attire, in the company of a clearly wealthy, slender, taller, translucent-White woman who’d burn in the sun in less than 10 minutes without her protective hat and sunscreen. For purposes of cover, I would never bring myself to pose as her male prostitute; as well, we had separate rooms .. otherwise that might have almost been the story that fit her unnecessary, unwanted, counter-productive attempt at an alibi. In a way, we WERE using each other. But now I was marked by hotel security in a venue that was filling up with high profile guests arriving for a state funeral.

Now, things became more stupid in a blessed sort of way; We discovered there was to be an ‘inaugural’ Japan Airlines flight out of Delhi on 4 November, the day the airport would reopen for regular commercial traffic. This stroke of luck made available to us was on account of the Guardian Angel Sister who’d an Indian professional travel associate who came to see if we’d made it to our destination alive. This Muslim man, I do not recall his name, impresses me as one of the finest people I’d met on our trip. The catch was, I subsequently discovered, in order to secure tickets, we had to visit the Japan Airlines travel agency office, precisely located one city block from Hotel Imperial! Old Babette and myself had to get a taxi and retrace our route and return!! Argh!!! None of the travel businesses were overtly open but if we went to the back door of the business, we were told, we’d be allowed in to acquire plane tickets. This would be my fifth trip across the burning city in two days, if one counted destination and return separately. I told Old Babette she could either come up with a few thousand cash for myself to transact the business for us or take the ride and bring along her credit cards. She got into the taxi with me. Two wild rides & two hundred dollars in taxi fees later, we were back at the Taj Palace with a pair of first class tickets to Cairo.

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

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Categories assassinations, Author, crime, culture, Folk Stories, philosophy, politics, satire, Travel

My Madcap Adventure Episode 13

March 12, 2015 //
0

Eight Finger Eddie’s legacy needs the whistle blown on him. Back in Katmandu, this was the man we all (the Bandit Sister buddies) were told we had to meet. This patron saint of the anti-materialist Goa commune of South India, spent his summers in Nepal, probably to escape the heat. We had a precise address of where to find him, thanks to Jasper® and his unfailing ability to tie dubious connections together throughout South Asia. Eddie was not at home, having returned to Goa something like ten days previous to our arrival at his door, or so we were informed by the very well dressed lady who came to quell the commotion in front of the gate; at a posh townhouse in a very upscale neighborhood of Nepal’s capital city. Eight Finger Eddie sounded like a name of some pool shark who’d hustled the wrong people. Anti-materialism? Enough said.

When our Katmandu days had run out after this last (aborted) misadventure, we flew back to Delhi. This departing Katmandu is where two amazing but very suspect characters, Jasper® & Socket™ (and constant aroma of ‘herbal’ chillums), drop out of our story. Jasper® is now known as ‘The Late Lord Whatever’, born an English aristocrat destined to a next life as a dope dealer running a chai shop in Almora.

At the airport, on arrival in Delhi, an Indian Army major asked my nationality. “USA” I answered. He kept staring at me, but now with a skeptical look and I stated “American.” He accepted my second answer, even if it did not seem wholly satisfactory. Back at the Hotel Imperial, I had a by this time urgent medical matter to attend to. My innumerable sins determined to leave my body by the route of my ear in the form of a fungus (initiated with my ‘cleansing’ bath in the Ganges) had to be addressed. I called the American embassy to ask who they sent their people to, for ear problems. I took this measure because the hotel’s doctor on call had prescribed antibiotics to the Canadian minister for his malaria, at the beginning of our trip. They connected me with a Sikh trained in the USA and I made an appointment.

Ear_fungus

After a couple of days in Delhi, the Bandit Sister took Sensible Sue, the Montana dyke & Bummer John south, to some baba’s ashram. The Guardian Angel Sister and Old Babette stayed in Delhi. The Tibetan headed north to Dehradun and I was supposed to catch up with him there, in a few days, after I’d resolved the sins in my ear. I’d seen the Sikh doctor and he’d used something like a tiny ball on a wire attached to a power device that made it spin. Inserting this tiny ball into my ear, he powered on the device and beat the sins out of my head. Now I was to use anti-fungal drops in my sinful ear but he wanted me back in a few days, to make certain I was clean. I never returned to the doctor or Dehradun. This was on account of the next day, Indira Gandhi was shot.

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

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Categories Author, Folk Stories, philosophy, psychology, satire, Travel

My Madcap Adventure Episode 12

March 11, 2015 //
0

Our days at Chitwan behind us, the bus we hired to bring the group back to Katmandu broke down. The Tibetan stayed with the main group and the bus together with the Angel Sister, while the Bandit Sister, with some of the more adventurous souls, took off up the road to ‘hitch-hike’ back to Katmandu. I rather quickly strode out beyond these people and when about two hundred meters ahead of them, looking back, I saw a commuter bus blow past this crew dressed in western clothes with thumbs out, as though they did not exist. ‘Thumbs up’ likely meant to the driver of this bus ‘it’s all good.’

I’ve worn something resembling a turban exactly twice in my life; the first time in 1972 when hired as an extra; for a movie that bombed at the box office, a remake of ‘Lost Horizons.’ Oddly coincidental, this movie was supposedly set in the Himalayas (however filmed in the USA.) I’d like to believe this dubious literary venture will someday fare better.

While in Nepal, I’d purchased a long piece of brightly colored cotton cloth, a print, and wore it wrapped around my head in a manner similar to some of the locals, enhancing the native dress I’d adopted. Extending my hand, palm down, at the approaching bus, with a sort of wing-flap gesture I knew from Vietnam, the vehicle stopped for me. Climbing onto this typically jammed with people commuter bus at the rear entrance, as there was no possible space to enter at the front of the bus, I sorted the fare by deliberately producing more than it could possibly cost, an Indian twenty rupee note. Nepal was, in those days, a triple currency nation; Nepal rupees, India rupees and American dollars. The India twenty rupee note was passed, hand to hand, from the rear of the bus to the front of the bus, where it was deposited and a Nepal ten rupee note and some coins were passed, hand to hand, back to the rear of the bus and given to me. The simple people are good to, and honest with, each other. I didn’t initially know the fare but the result proved I wasn’t cheated.

Bus

^ Similar but my commuter bus was bigger

By using the India currency, it put the curious off the mark. To each language put to me by fellow passengers, I merely smiled and shook my head in the negative. Nobody asked me a question in English and clearly no one suspected I was a westerner. Normal in Nepal or India, this all took place standing at the open rear door of a bus that would see the driver jailed and company shut down, if it were to happen in the States .. there were that many people on board.

I was the first back to our hotel in Katmandu, by several hours. The Bandit Sister and the few with her wandered in next, followed by those who’d stayed with the bus, that evening. Meanwhile, Jasper® was in an ebullient mood, regaling us with stories, no doubt solo immersion in the Katmandu hashish/opium dens had lifted his spirits considerably in our absence. Or perhaps he was actually, genuinely, happy to see us. One story he told has remained etched in my memory, something one such as myself would never be prone to forget. But first: One must understand these sisters have known South Asia intimately since the 1960s. Covering India (the Guardian Angel Sister primarily), Pakistan (both sisters) and Afghanistan (the Bandit Sister primarily), among other nations, if one could reinvent Kipling’s ‘Kim’ as two 20th Century sisters who’d discovered the South Asian street life and could competently negotiate the associated intrigues of the latter era, it would be these girls. With that said, I’ve no real idea what the sisters were doing in Islamabad in December, 1971. Especially considering they were in the company of not only Jasper® & Socket™ but Kathy McNamara! As Jasper® warmed to his story of the hotel room they were together in subject to air-raid blackout during the short India-Pakistan war of 1971, he brought up the fact of former (and much reviled) United States Secretary of Defense and then World Bank President Robert McNamara’s daughter present in the involuntarily darkened room. Then, with an expression of amazement apparently undiluted over the 13 years that’d passed since; Jasper® announced and I’ll never forget this .. “And Socket™ screwed her!!”

Socket™ did not deny anything, rather looked, for the only time ever, somewhat uncomfortable. Normally, he was gathered and complacent image of cool, closely resembling another drummer anyone should recognize, that is if one were to imagine his face thinner & darker:

Socket

Who knows what method might have been employed to seduce Kathy McNamara ..  no matter circumstance .. when a daughter of one of the world’s most powerful and evil men is seduced by a village musician from Bihar, that my friends, is the stuff of legend.

*

My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

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Categories culture, Folk Stories, philosophy, politics, satire, Travel, Uncategorized
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