Authors: Asra Nomani
Tantrika
T
RAVELING THE
R
OAD OF
D
IVINE
L
OVE
On this earth, to my mother who gave me life
My father who let me live
Bhaya who revealed to me the complexity of life
Bhabi who showed me love waxes in life like the moon
Safiyyah and Samir who taught me so much, most of all play
And precious Shibli who allowed me to touch the divine in this life
In the heavens, to dear Danny
You made me laugh so much while you were among us
May you and the Little Prince now laugh a plenty at us from the stars
The sounds of flutes in the bamboo grove When the winds blow
Rustling of pipal leaves
Singing of crickets
Falling of streams
Croaking of frogs
Hissing of snakes
Hooting of owls,
All this deepens the mystery of dark.
The whole of creation is awake,
Even the stones and plants meditate.
â“M
Y
V
ILLAGE
,” I
FTIKHAR
A
ZMI
T
HE VILLAGE ELDERS
had never before set their eyes on a blossom-headed ring-necked parakeet like Cheenie Bhai.
His head was an iridescent shimmer of plum and rose. His beak, the color of sunflower petals. A goatee of black fell to his full chest, the green of lime. His necklace, a fine strand of dark purple pearls uninterrupted. From it burst turquoise light found in the most tranquil sea. Gentle ruby red marked his wings, each a soft reminder of the frailty of creation. His tail feather was the blue of the most precious lapis, trailing behind him in a dignity no royalty could imitate.
My friend Anaya, whose real name was Deborah, rescued him from a
shikarwalla,
a bird catcher, as we traveled on the road outside a city called Jhansi, and gave him to me before she returned to America. He traveled with me through India, by foot, train, car, auto rickshaw, and bicycle rickshaw. I brought him with me to my ancestral village of Jaigahan tucked amid the fertile farm fields of Uttar Pradesh, a wide expanse of a state in
northern India. Anaya kept calling him Sweetie Pie, and I could find no better translation for
sweet
than
cheenie,
which means sugar in Urdu. Anaya called him Cheenie Pie. Our driver kept hearing her say, “Cheenie bhai.” That's how Sweetie Pie became Cheenie Bhai, or “sugar brother.”
Alas, he was a caged bird without his flying feathers. Anaya had clipped them so he wouldn't have to be imprisoned, but that act meant that he was grounded, even though I wanted to free him to the skies above. Cheenie Bhai gave me the excuse to learn how to say “parrot” in my native language of Urdu, the language spoken by most Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.
“Tho-thah.”
It wasn't something I'd had much occasion to learn during my childhood in West Virginia, where the bright red cardinal and the full-bellied robin were the birds of the wild.
One morning, Cheenie Bhai's distinctive twerp mixed with the
azan,
or call for prayer, as the village muezzins told us that it was time for
fajr namaz,
our predawn prayer.
“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar-Allahu Akbar,”
rang from one
masjid
to the next. “God is great” four times if you didn't get the point the first time around.
Cheenie Bhai had kin that I rescued from the Nah Kaus bird market in Lucknow. I named her Cheenie Apa. “Sugar Sister.” I didn't clip her wings but kept her with Cheenie Bhai so she could remind him of the way of parakeets.
Her shrill call pierced the crisp air.
“Twoight! Twoight! Twoight!”
For four days, as I hauled water from the well and ate purple carrots at night by lantern light, they twerped into the clear air.
On the fifth morning, an amazing thing happened. A flock of blossom-headed, ring-necked parakeets swooped over the village houses. The birds were wild,
jungli.
They were barely visible in the predawn light. But their distinctive twerps swept from the southeast over the fertile wheat fields to the northwest, where the birds landed on the thick branches of a bael tree that stands like an age-old sentry beside my ancestral home. There was a shine on the leaves from the rains that had lulled the village to sleep the night before. The tree stretched its branches toward a balcony where the Cheenies danced upside down in a stainless steel cage I had hung from an awning. The leaves, the bale fruits, the ants,
the bulbul birds, the sun witnessed the glorious reunion of the
junglis
with the Cheenies. They erupted into the magnificent song of nature recognizing itself.
I sat on a
charpai,
a low bed with rope strung tightly around a frame, in the room off the balcony. I sat under the same
machardani,
dani mosquito netting, that used to protect my maternal uncle, Iftikhar Azmi, who was a Sufi poet. I didn't want to frighten the Cheenies and
junglis.
A pink organza sari with a golden border fluttered above me like a royal canopy. The dawn light cast itself through the sheer fabric, creating the illusion of silver thread where there was none.
These parakeets showed me an amazing truthâthat the essence of all creation reveals itself. We might be disguised. Our feathers may be clipped. Outwardly, we may be caged. But we will triumph over our cages. We will turn ourselves upside down. We will cry out. We are part of something greater. Ultimately, our fundamental essence will demand liberation.
Ultimately, we can be freed if we give ourselves voice and hear our own singing. In Sanskrit, it's called
mahamudra,
a state of enlightenment in which we know the expression of divinity that lies both within us and outside us as a single breath, much like the sweep of the wind upon our faces. We are not defined by boundaries. We embrace the beauty in the present moment without judgment, expectation, acceptance, or rejection. It is as pure and clear as the flight of the
junglis
before me, whose wings in flight touch nothing, but it is filled with everything that is glorious. It is a state of liberation,
moksha
in Sanskrit.
I sat watching this play during the gentle spring after a winter chill, just before the summer
loo,
the hot air that embalms you and sucks your life force out of you so that you are raw electrical wiring ready to ignite. I was sitting in my maternal home, Latif Manzil. It was a palace of endless rooms. When my uncle, Iftikhar Mamoo, first brought a beautiful young British woman named Rachel here to wed, she rounded the dirt alley that leads to Latif Manzil's gate and thought, “It's like a wedding cake lost in the jungle.”
It was a curious thing that I should find clarity here, but it was a curious mandate that had brought me here. I had come to India to uncover the secrets of the ancient art of Tantra, a philosophy that weaves sexual
energy into its unique brand of spiritualism and religious devotion. It is a mysterious practice that is said to have sprung from goddess worship in the ancient Indus Valley civilization, weaving its way into Hinduism and spreading into Buddhism through Tibet.
One of the aims of Tantra is to recognize the divine perfection of the world by visualizing it as a celestial mansion, a mandala that is
vimana,
Tibetan for a “measureless mansion” in the middle of Buddhaland. Latif Manzil was my mandala.
When I first came through the same alley through which Rachel Momani had traveled, it was as if God had put this house here as a palatial gift to his subjects. The jungle had been stripped away, leaving mile after mile of fertile land. My mandala rose from the earth with a wide expanse. It towered to the sky with a large center veranda over which hung carvings like
jalee,
or netting. Each side was balanced with a balcony from which I imagined princesses could drape their tresses. Three solid pillars held up the majestic roof under which our white Ambassador rolled to a stop with my sheer green
dupatta,
a scarf, holding closed the driver's door. The front gate was bent awkwardly on its hinges, but it didn't matter. The window was cracked on the door in the middle of the front veranda, but it didn't matter. The white of the walls was yellow from the monsoon rains. It didn't matter. I walked through doors that led to more doors with more rooms.
With my cousin-sisters Lucy and Esther, I walked the corridors. They were born to Iftikhar Mamoo and Rachel Momani in England, but they were daughters of the village, their bare feet touching the soil of their ancestors as toddlers. They were now spirited, mystical young women, guiding me into this magical place with our elderly aunt, the sister of their father and my mother, as our chaperone.
“I'm walking through my own dream,” I told them.
This home was the living incarnation of a recurring dream through which my subconscious had led me for years. Sometimes I was in an apartment. Other times I was in a house, but I always discovered rooms I didn't know existed. Each led me to more doors that led me to more rooms. Each time, the dream left me amazed. I thought my dream was the fantasy of a modern-day urban dweller, but a yogini in Gujarat
explained to me, “The dream is a walk through the endless rooms of your soul.” Maybe she knew. Maybe she didn't.
When I first began my exploration, I was thirty-three and had the legacy of a modern Western woman's quest for happiness: ill-suited boyfriends and a failed marriage of three months. Tantra, as it was sold to me, had an appeal: creating a spiritual partnership with a man in which he worships you and you worship him. The Sanskrit texts said that through specific Tantric yogic practices done with a partner,
karmamudra,
we can reach
maithuna,
a sacred union that moves us toward enlightenment.
Who could have a problem with that? I was rebounding most recently from a relationship with a man I thought was the soul I was destined to worship. I was mistaken. He was a twenty-nine-year-old technical virgin without plans to upgrade his twin-sized loft bed that I called a bunk bed. I was an urbane New York City single with boxes of Kenneth Cole shoes piled in a walk-in closet in my sweeping apartment in Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood where Truman Capote wrote
Breakfast at Tiffany's
and Walt Whitman printed
Leaves of Grass
long before President Clinton gifted a copy to sex siren Monica Lewinsky. I thought my journey began that summer when things went so wrong with him.
But with each passing day I realized the journey had begun long before. Tantric teachers say that we can't achieve liberation in mystical union with another until we begin to deconstruct our ordinary selves. We must liberate ourselves from the doubts, fears, duplicities, and confusions that make up our unenlightened selves, the ego. Then we release into a philosophical nonself that is our
sunyata,
Sanskrit for emptiness, our absolute nature. I had a dream early in my exploration that I was wandering the streets naked. No underwear. No nothing. I awakened wondering, knowing I would have to strip myself like that if I were to continue. I remembered what a friend told me when I began: “Asra, you're going to have to tell the world everything.”
I chose to continue following the trail without censor. That was the Tantric way. To practice Tantra well is to be a Tantrika, a woman who isn't defined by anything, living compassionately, lovingly, blissfully, and fearlessly with appropriate wrathfulness when necessary. To master Tantra is to become a
dakini,
a woman who dances in the sky, flying free
of the things in life that keep her hostage to ego, fear, and boundaries. She is a sky dancer whose flight takes her through a spiritual voyage of clarity, fearlessness, and ecstasy that liberates her from worldly existence. A Tantrika is a divine creation, a goddess with a small
g,
respected, honored, and worshiped, liberated from shame, fear, expectation, exploitation, and suppression. She is free to be adventurous, aggressive, and bold in her efforts to find enlightenment. She is a yogini who has awakened her inner fire and helps others light their own.
She isn't defined by the dualities of worldly life. Man. Woman. Old. Young. Good. Bad. Sane. Insane. East. West. She moves beyond those boundaries to a place of nonduality where she exists with simple honesty, compassion, and wisdom.
It was in the stillness and emptiness of Latif Manzil that I started to find clarity. I saw the dualities that had torn me apart, and what it was that I was freeing myself from in this odyssey taken in the name of Tantra. The heavens were my canopy. I stared at the glittering sky before I slept and felt my ancestors shoot over me in the stars that darted across the sky. I could feel their spirit when clouds floated overhead against the darkened sky.
It was here a young widow taught her daughter decades earlier the rituals and code that would make her a good Muslim girl. That girl became a virgin bride married to a man she didn't see except for a glance until three days after her wedding. Both of their ancestral histories held secrets and mysteries little spoken about, reaching into the worlds of Hinduism, alleged murder, and madness. Together, they journeyed across the ocean to create a home fashioned out of a World War II barrack painted bright red at 208 Bevier Road in Piscataway, New Jersey, a honeysuckle bush outside the window of a bedroom painted to resemble a jungle. They left behind in India a young son and daughter. These two later crossed the ocean on a TWA jet with only each other for company.
I was that four-year-old girl. Except for two summer trips to my homeland, my connection to my roots was limited to my parents' efforts to teach me my culture and the adventures I read about in Nancy Drew's
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm,
in which Nancy tries to reunite a circus
boy, Rishi, with his father, a lost maharaja of an imaginary wealthy Indian province.
I was to grow into a woman whose journey into the ancient art of Tantra would become a discovery of one of the key ingredients to Tantra,
atman,
or true self. And with that true self, Tantra teaches, we can realize
raga,
passion, and
kama,
sexual desire, on the path to enlightenment with another. Little did I imagine that Tantra would turn out to be a path that allowed me to uncover my secrets as a native child born of India, a girl raised in West Virginia, and a woman who felt like an immigrant in both cultures.
Liberation. Equanimity. Mindfulness. Fear. Ego. Samsara. These words that meant little to me would make me give away my Aveda face toner, make peace with a former boyfriend named Paulo, and transport me to a land where peacocks run wild in the fields. I started my travels to India with the clearest of mandates, spelled out to me during a commercial break during
NYPD Blue
in the living room of a friend outside San Francisco.
“It's about finding the force within you,” I told her and her husband borrowing the Star Wars mantra of our generation.