Ecstatic With Ecstasy (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

Catmandu, Catmandu, I'll be coming home to you (Cat Stevens).Sketch satisshroff 2007

ECSTATIC WITH ECSTASY (Satis Shroff)

The one-eyed and pock-marked Newar landlord

Had ‘rooms to let’ in Kathmandu.

In the sixties came the Hippies,

Flower Power, Make Love, Not War.

They left his flat a mess,

With the sweet smell of Cannabis,

And psychedelic paintings of the walls,

Seminal fluid and menstrual blood

Smeared on the once white sheets.

The Sahuji was plainly perturbed.

‘How could the new sahibs and memsahibs

Behave so inconsiderately?’

Thirty years later,

The grey-eyed Love Parade guests,

Were still lying prostrate on his terrace,

Golden brown baked bodies,

Kissed by the rays of Surya,

The Sun God.

One part of his brain whispered,

‘Oh, it’s delightful,

Where can you see so much exotic,

Eros and tantra,

Except at the bathing spouts of Balaju?

The other half of his mind admonished,

‘These shameless grey-eyed creatures,

Don’t behave like guests in the Nepalese sense.

During the Raj in India,

They came with uniforms, cannons and rifles.

Then with long unkempt hair,

Like Shiva’s ascetic followers,

In cotton home-spun clothes,

With the word ‘Ram’ in devnagari script,

On flimsy blouses, trousers and skirts,

Became high on marihuana.

And now with designer drugs,

Ecstatic with ecstasy

And techno-music.

A new nakedness,

A show of ethnic jewellery,

Tatoos in strategic anatomical regions.

‘Oh, it’s nevertheless a delight,’

Said the ageing Newari sahuji.

‘I don’t have to travel to see the world.

The world comes to me,

In all its splendour.’

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