A New Day
The following morning at breakfast, one of the Sydney men asks them how they slept and they reply:
“Very well!” in unison.
"Like a baby," Bruce adds, obviously itching to tell more.
Then the man's wife comes in, sits down and asks exactly the same thing. Is that a sly smile and twinkling eye she detects as they repeat the performance?
Now they politely listen to the man, as he holds forth about the butter and milk, and how the Indians hold cows to be sacred but somehow, this doesn’t apply to buffalo.
Bruce interrupts him by saying, rather naughtily, that Jennifer had an interesting dream last night. Jennifer has to immediately cut him short, forestalling any in-depth revelations, by explaining that she had dreamt that the statue of Parvati, in their room, had come to life and was singing for a soul, for a new baby she was making.
“Ha!” the Sydney man exclaims. “It’s amazing how almost all religions insist on a life force that's separate to the body.”
“Well,” says Bruce, “without it we couldn’t have everlasting life. Or gods who breathe life into inanimate objects. Maybe it’s a hangover from a primitive belief in the unattached souls of ancestors looking for a body to inhabit. I suppose it goes along with a belief in reincarnation.”
At that point the other Sydney couple appears.
“Talking about religion again?” the wife says.
They explained the conversation. To which her husband responds:
“It’s easy to see how the ancients thought that the spark of life was contained in a man’s seed and went into a fertile woman to produce a child. It was just like a seed going into fertile soil to produce a plant. Apart from being 'fertile' or 'barren' she had no other part in it. It was his child - to do with as he liked.”
He pauses to take a bowl; half fill it with breakfast muesli and top it with milk - buffalo or cow it's hard to tell - before continuing:
“Yet the myth of a separate life force, a spirit breathed in, granted or inherited at each conception, goes on - particularly here in India."
“Because it allows the possibility that we can go on, to inhabit another body, in different circumstances,” his friend contributes. And then as a throwaway, as he points at his empty cup to the waiter: “After all, it's written in ancient texts, so it must be true.”
Having finished their omelettes, the wives have been at the fruit table, chatting about gifts they intend to buy in the markets, for children, relatives and friends. And which of the stalls, that line the road up to the Fort, they might look at first.
“So, if it comforts those, who like to think that their soul might have been born into different circumstances - or might still be - why shouldn’t they believe it?” asks the taller one, returning with her fruit plate.
“Yes, why shouldn't they dream of being reborn as a prince or princess?" demands her friend, close behind.
“That’s all very well. They can believe what they like,” her husband responds. “But ignorance and untruths lead people to make bad, often harmful, life decisions.”
A second round of coffee has been distributed by the waiter and Jennifer sits silently, listening and thinking, as she often does in the salon at home, when she's drying someone's hair or waiting as they tan. Of course, everyone knows that babies started as an already living egg, that was fertilised by an already living sperm. If either the ova or spermatozoa was dead, no baby would result.
But people so often talk about a new life, giving the impression that life is somehow freshly created each time. But it's already-living cells, that combine and multiply to become a baby. She hadn't realised, until she listened to these people talk, and thought about it herself just now, that a baby's life is not 'new' but: 'separate'. As the men had agreed, creating life anew, at conception, is just an ancient myth, that goes back to when people were more ignorant.
So, her vision of Parvati was just a dream, brought on by all the erotic images and aromas and sounds in this romantic and exotic place. But it was a wonderful dream, because through it, she and Bruce have discovered a new exciting side to each other, that she can hardly wait to explore again. And just perhaps, a couple of new, separate, beings, are now on the cards?
Jennifer's very stimulating remembrances and hopes for the future are interrupted, when the shorter wife renews the wives' attack on their husbands' lack of belief in anything mystical:
“Although you two may think it's ‘ridiculous’ in the ‘light of modern science’, people want to believe their myths. Including, that there but for circumstance, 'they' would have been born later or conceived somewhere else. Even by someone else. They don’t want to hear that they would not exist at all... You two have no souls.”
“That’s funny”, says Bruce, impishly: “That was the last thing Jennifer said to me last night. But she got over it.”
First published: October 2013