Henna Hands and Hindu Songs

By Lily Gutierrez

It happened on my first day back in India. I had walked the length of the beach as the sea sung to me. The sun had set and lingering kisses of color stained the sky.

I found a sign that read,  Lotus Ayurvedic Massage. I traipsed up the steps to meet the owners black eyes.

“Do you do the massage with the dripping oil on your third eye?” I asked cloudily. “The one that makes you lucid dream?” 

“Yes.” he said.

We decided a price and I walked into his tent like hut and laid down on the hospital bed that was his massage table.

“Relax” he said, a word that never seems to have any effect on me ever, but as the warm and fragrant oil began running down my forehead and through my hair I began to feel myself melting.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked no one, without opening my mouth.  

The reply came from above, an echoed voice. God, maybe, or more likely the voices of the people I had loved and lost.

“Slow down.” they told me over and over again until my mind felt more still. 

A recent memory bubbled up to the surface, something I had overheard on Christmas day, some silly sentence said about me that had hurt me more than I had realized: “She doesn’t really belong here.”

The voices, as if seeing my memory replayed, answered immediately: “You belong EVERYWHERE!” they told me, “Wherever you land, you will belong.” I breathed happily with this new acceptance.

Something else bubbled up; a fear for the future, a need for some stability or security.

“You’re doing fine,” the voices told me, comforting words which echoed like a hug. “You can look after yourself, you’ll be fine.”

All the while fragrant oil dripped between my eyes.  

Outside the hut waves crashed, cell phones buzzed and dogs barked but none of these sounds could interfere with the world that I’d tapped into. I talked to the voices for an hour: "keep writing and your words will learn to dance," they said.

Questions arose concerning my hopes and fears and dreams and always the voices replied with what felt like golden truth.

"There is no right path." The voices told me, "every decision is fine as long as it's true."

Then I watched as Hanuman, the Hindu God, come down to me from the sky. He was dark brown with wide eyes. Without saying a word he pressed his lips to mine and breathed strength into me, a kind of smoke that made my entire body feel whole.

I left that hut feeling triumphant. A lifetime of therapy in an hour and the feeling of some sort of higher power. I walked down the beach, a Goddess myself, strong and content. Everything was clear.

Dogs barked and I bent to stroke them all. I swam and read and wrote and needed nothing, not even clothes, just strings of flowers to wear like a snake lazily coiled around my body. I felt love for everyone and everything and I was calm. I danced through the days with salty skin, white tan legs and glowing eyes.

I wore a cross on my forehead and petals in my hair. I named every animal I came into contact with, I smiled into the sun, I was awake with truth.  

Then the magic began to ware off, like the dust on a butterflies wings, my magic fell from me like dry sand.

What happened between then and now? I can hardly remember but it had only been two weeks. Screams came from the jungle, crows flocked, henna hands and hindu songs. The dog was killed in front of us.  

Whatever it was, the power was drained. I was no longer a tiger but a little kitten once again, curled on the end of the bed asking: “Do you  love me?” Worried eyes wandering forward, hair matted and skin pale.

I went back to Lotus Ayurvedic Massage but, as if imagined, the whole place was gone.

“They went back to Kerela,” a local told me.

“Oh,” I said with sad eyes.

I walked through the jungle like a child lost in the market place searching for a familiar face, wary of snakes but happy to see the cows, wondering how to get back to my altered state and if I even wanted it. I reached the sand and laid down listening to the crashing waves, the cell phones buzzing, the barking dogs.

“I belong here,” I told myself with unsure words spoken into the sand, but the spell was over and the words were no longer true.

Time again to search for my place in the world, I thought.