2

THERE WERE FOUR PREPUBESCENTS when I took over the pod in the great ward that night, ranging in age from five years old to thirteen. Two of these girls were from the very lowest of castes, from desperately impoverished families in villages in the north. They were sold by their mothers in straightforward deals for a few hundred rupees to sex traffickers specializing in servicing locals and tourists who happened to prefer pedophilia. After many sordid encounters, they were ultimately delivered, battered and sick, from Kamathipura, the red-light district in Mumbai, to Rebbie-ji’s House of Holy Healing in Kolkata, rescued by the sheriff, Buki ben Yogli.

Buki also rescued the other two, sisters from Karnataka in the south, whose mother had unloaded each in turn at the age of five by dedicating them to the goddess Yellamma. In this way, they became temple girls or devadasis. They still wore their devadasi necklaces of red and white beads on a saffron-colored string when I met them. The older girl, Devamayi, was thirteen. She had already undergone her puberty ceremony consummating her marriage with Yellamma, following which her virginity was put up for auction to prospective patrons. From the aspect of the House of Holy Healing, therefore, she did not strictly fall into the prepubescent category. Nevertheless, a decision was made to let her stay in the pod in the spirit of family togetherness along with her eight-year-old sibling, Mahamaya. Shmelke felt very close to the sisters, he confided to me, a deep inner personal connection, he said, and not only to these two but to the whole universe of devadasis in general. When the story of my life ended three years later and I departed the shell of the House of Holy Healing, there were eighteen girls in the pod, all of them devadasis.

Rescuing devadasis became a major element integrally tied into Rebbie-ji’s overall master plan at the House of Holy Healing. He regarded himself to be a male incarnation of a devadasi. Ich bin ein devadasi, he would introduce himself to jubilant ovations. Of course, I understood. He too had been sold to the temple, like his namesake, the prophet Samuel, who had been offered by his barren mother, Hannah, to the Lord in a deal in exchange for a child, delivered as promised to the high priest Eli in the tabernacle at Shiloh after he was weaned as part of a sacrifice package that also included three bullocks, an ephah of meal, and a bottle of wine. “I never had a choice,” Shmelke said to me, in full awareness that I of all people would get it and feel his pain. “I never was allowed to find out what else was out there in the world. You think I was handicapped by an accident as an adult? I was handicapped from before I was even born. What else could I do when I grew up but become a rabbi?”

Devamayi and Mahamaya were the House of Holy Healing’s first devadasis. They were dedicated to Yellamma by their mother in the hope that the fertility goddess would intervene on her behalf and give her a son who would take care of her in her old age, unlike daughters who were nothing but a burden. From then on, the two girls were considered to be married to the goddess (as I was married to the goddess Geeta, a sacred gay marriage), and therefore forbidden to marry any mortal man as long as they lived. This insider connection with the goddess was a devadasi’s greatest asset even after her patron tired of her and dumped her in a brothel; it was a badge of pride and honor even in the pecking order of whores. A devadasi was not a sex slave, she was God’s slave. Yet despite these benefits, there is no question in my mind that the sisters were better off to have been evacuated from the squalor and degradation and abuse of that life. Neither girl remembered much from her initiation ceremony except having the pretty string of beads tied around her neck. Their duties during their novitiate included sweeping the temple, they recalled, among other chores. Sometimes they would perform ritual dances and sing traditional songs along with the other temple girls. They also would serve the priests, whenever they were summoned, day or night.

“Serve the priests?” Charlotte’s eyebrow arched into the punctuation of an exclamation point.

Charlotte, too, like my brother, had taken a serious interest in the sisters and in all devadasis, an estimated quarter million of them still operating in Mother India, even though the practice had been declared illegal, like sati, according to data gathered for her by one of her flunkies sent out on a fact-finding mission. She was already talking about bringing them all to the States and educating them properly. Clearly they were under threat of persecution, which definitely would qualify them for refugee status. She would pitch this idea to Michelle next time they met for hot yoga. Every one of the devadasis would become a member of her all-girls band, Lakshmi and the Survivors, along with its fabulous virtuoso wind player, Monica Lewinsky; they were already in show business, after all, trained as temple performers. It would be awesome, the world’s largest multicultural, diverse, all-female band, definitely a Guinness Book of Records contender.

After Buki enacted the first daring rescues not only of Devamayi and Mahamaya, but also of the two other little girls, Charlotte took on the cause, charging ahead with the full thrust of her formidable energy and resources. She put Buki at the head of the operation, ordering him to focus for the time being on the devadasis rather than the other sex workers, even the littlest girls, practically babies, no matter how pitiful and subhuman their plight, since the devadasis and everything they signified meant so much personally to Rebbie-ji and were so tied into his present mystical studies and teachings.

Buki was the one who introduced my brother to the institution of devadasis. He first learned about them when Rebbie-ji dispatched him to Mumbai to check out the place with regard to the Jewish scene there, in particular the Chabad center newly restored and up and running at last following the terrorist attack and all the subsequent sordid financial fallout. It was a secret mission. Despite his physical conspicuousness due to his height and Hasidic finery, he was still the perfect spy for this assignment thanks to his familiarity with the Chabadnik modus operandi from his time as sheriff in Postville, Iowa, keeping a watchful eye on their slaughterhouses, their meatpacking sweatshops, and all their businesses, on the table and under the table.

Nevertheless, he concluded it would be preferable not to pay an official call on the emissaries, Rabbi Mendy and his rebbetzin Mindy, due to the longstanding rivalry between the followers of the two dead rabbis, the rabbi of Chabad and the rabbi of Bratslav, and in particular the violent feud as to which of the two would rise up from concealment one day and return as the Messiah. On top of that there was his well-known close affiliation with my brother, regarded as an outcast and fugitive smeared with particularly unsavory false accusations, about which the Chabad boys, so media savvy, did everything in their power to keep the world up to date with timely reminders and bulletins. And from Buki’s own perspective, there was also the painful memory of the rumble between the two sects at the National Cattle Congress fairground in Waterloo, Iowa, over which of them could take the credit for his conversion and claim him as their own, as if he were a prime blue-ribbon bull. Then, to cap it all off, in an obvious ploy to humiliate my brother, Shmelke, to reduce him to the level of the dumping ground for all Jewish castoffs and undesirables, the Mumbai Chabad had passed on to him the old lady who smelled of chicken soup, or maybe it was stale urine, about whom no one could say who she was or what she was or whether she was dead or alive, and all the aggravation and guilt that leaked out from that toxic case.

So although it had been customary over the centuries for wandering Jews traveling in strange and hostile places to count on hospitality from fellow Jews, in this particular situation it was impossible. In Mumbai, Buki had to make do with the Taj Mahal hotel, with Charlotte footing the bill, five-star luxury accommodation it is true, but no kosher food, and a truly goyish, even heathen atmosphere. Forgive me, Shmelke, for bringing this up here, you know how much I love you, my brother, my twin. But when you sent Buki to Mumbai to spy out the land, why did you not send him to me? I would have been thrilled to receive him, with open arms. I would have rejoiced to be his Rahab. Why didn’t you order him to check on me too? Am I not also a Jew, brother? I needed him to save my life.

He went everywhere in the city, but he did not come to me. Had he come, maybe he could have intervened, as he intervened for strangers, the devadasis and the trafficked little girls. Maybe things could have been different. He visited all the slums, including Dharavi, but he never noticed her in her Muslim camouflage. He rode the trains, but he was not there to catch her in his arms when she was pushed out as if she were a lower form of life, trash, of no account at all, as if she were unloved, as if she were motherless, as if she did not matter to anyone on this earth.

He must have made a striking figure on the streets of Mumbai, six feet, six inches tall, solid muscle, with his long blonde beard and flowing blonde sidelocks, his best kaftan, satin, gold-and-blue striped, with its prominently displayed sheriff’s badge, a silver, six-pointed star on which he had proudly printed in indelible ink the word Jude, a silken tasseled rope belt girding his waist, or perhaps, as many who had seen him maintained, it was a leather holster bulging with two pistols, his black felt Borsalino hat with its extra-wide brim rakishly angled like a Stetson, and the personal touch of his impenetrable mirrored sunglasses, like the Lone Ranger’s black mask. Who was that masked man? Everyone wondered as he rode off, fighting for truth and justice. Passersby pulled out their cell phones and snapped, his image sluiced through the pipelines of social media. He looked like a supporting cast member from the thrilling days of yesteryear who had gotten lost, wandered off one of the Bollywood sets, like a Gary Cooper knockoff striding into the wrong ghost town too late, too late, long past high noon.

He made his way, bowlegged from having spent too long in the saddle, through the lanes of the Kamathipura red-light district as if tracking down the bad guys. What he was actually searching for though, like a vigilante, was any Jewish girl who might have been trafficked, or one way or another had taken the wrong turn and gotten herself caught in this shameful place—a post-army Israeli backpacker, for example, or a zoned-out, spoiled American kid from New York stricken with swami syndrome who had fallen down this black rabbit’s hole. As Rebbie-ji always said, “The kids are out there seeking, seeking—so why is it that they are finding them and not us? Oy, we have such a big job to do.” Whatever foul mess she had gotten herself into, if she was Jewish, Buki wanted her. It was his responsibility to free her in fulfillment of the exceedingly crucial mitzvah to redeem Jewish captives. And even if there was disagreement as to whether this mandate applied to women captives as well, Buki felt very strongly that it just was not nice for a Jewish girl to be seen in such a place.

Whores, pimps, madams converged on him gesticulating lewdly, trying to pull him into their web, enticing him with samplings of their wares, but he shook his head and swatted them off, muttering in a deep drawl that the only thing he’s out here shopping for in this decrepit mall of India is a nice Jewish girl, did they happen to have one by any chance? He would settle for nothing less, he was not in the market for anything else. Nobody could understand what he was after. The workers who had picked up some functional English to service the foreign tourists couldn’t figure out what he was babbling about, no one had ever heard this word Jewish, this was the first time in their memory that any prospective client had requested such an item, it was obviously an extremely rarefied fetish or perversion, probably the latest new invention from America, blank looks came over their faces like window shades drawn down with a snap, and they shook their heads yes in the Indian way, which meant no.

He did his best to convey a sense of what is generally meant by Jewish using a kind of sign language. He rotated thumbs against forefingers to indicate avarice, rubbed his hands together and leered to signal lasciviousness, folded downward the tip of his nose, which in its normal state was splendidly snubbed. It was turning into a game, charades, a mockery in such a setting, yet they all participated eagerly, it was a welcome diversion, they threw out their guesses enthusiastically, but to everything they produced Buki just shook his head, deflated. He was considering showing them his member of which he was justifiably proud, circumcised in its maturity in Postville, Iowa, by a slaughterer who doubled as a mohel, but restrained himself when he realized they would only conclude he was a Muslim and lead him to a whore naked under her burqa. He angled his two hands together in front of his face like an open book, and began swaying as if in prayer, but they only shrugged. Their excitement was waning, they were losing interest, a few were already turning to go. Whatever it was he wanted, it no longer was worth their time, it was obviously a very particular commodity not in general demand and therefore not worth stocking. In desperation, to keep them tuned in just a little longer, he leapt into the air and began to dance ecstatically, whirling with arms uplifted, a Hasid transported to divine heights.

Devadasi! a voice from heaven cried out.

Buki stalled, then nodded his head heartily—Yes ma’am, that’s it, a doxy, thank God!

He had come here searching for a nice Jewish girl; he had never expected to find an Orthodox one. That was a huge bonus. It was his lucky day. Rebbie-ji would be very impressed when he came home with a doxy. It was a tremendous relief all around. They had solved the puzzle, customer satisfaction—a temple dancing girl, that was his thing. Every man had his thing, you just had to probe patiently to figure out what it was. They knew now exactly where to deposit him.

Buki had complete faith in his own physical strength in just about any situation, and he also had faith in God. It struck him that now he might need to put himself in God’s hands to find his way back out again through the maze of constricting lanes and alleyways, courtyards within courtyards overflowing with trash, reeking with sewage, to wherever he was being taken. Buried somewhere in the net of this serpentine world there was a tiny dark room that he was forced to stoop to enter. Without stepping inside, his escort pointed to the narrow bed against the wall across from the entrance, and motioned for him to sit down. Then he closed the door and walked away. Buki heard the key turn in the lock.

He sat there with his long legs spread wide, his elbows on his knees, his head lowered in the sling of his palms, waiting. A rat shuffled across the cement floor. There was a basin and a pitcher against the wall, a rag of a towel on the stub of a peg. The room was lit by one small yellow bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling with a pull spotted with dead black flies. He made out a small shrine in the corner with a glossy picture cut out from a calendar of the goddess Yellamma. Squatting beside it was a girl, a child almost, plump as if she had only recently been fattened in order to be eaten. Her face was far too heavily made up for such a young human specimen, and she was wearing a sari made of synthetic cloth with a bright pattern of Santa Claus faces on it with a white beard like Rebbe-ji’s, which she was beginning to unwind. Buki raised one large hand, palm outward, pushing it forward like a traffic cop to compel her to stop. She was very dark skinned, so black she was almost blue. Maybe she was a Bnei Israel or a Bnei Menashe or something like that, Buki speculated—one of those ten lost tribes of Israel who had wandered to the subcontinent and gotten lost in this whorehouse. “You sure don’t look Jewish,” he suddenly heard himself blurt out.

She was not a Jewish, but the Jewish will be the winners in the end of days, that is what Muhammad always says, you just have to face it, nothing you can do about it, the Jewish are the children of apes and pigs but they will rule the whole world in the end, she would like to be a Jewish if he would be so kind. She went on in this way for a while until it suddenly dawned on Buki that she was speaking English. Where had she learned? From Muhammad’s TV, she replied. Muhammad was her patron, the man who bought her virginity. He sent one of his Hindus to her town, Saundatti, to buy him a new devadasi virgin every year. A devadasi is very holy, they don’t sell us to Muslims. He is very rich man, Muhammad, main man in Mumbai for Gulf States for buying and selling Indian slaves, Dalit men and women, boys and girls, but never devadasis. Devadasis he keeps for himself, private, until he stuffs them so full they are too fat to dance any more. Then bye-bye, finished with you, he dumps us here on Red Street, in Kamathipura. He is also very fat, Muhammad, more than one hundred kilos. When he is on top of you, you cannot breathe, all the air is coming out of your balloon. Sometimes he cuts with a razor blade, sometimes he burns with fire, sometimes he hits with a strap. There are marks on her body in places you could not see, she would show him for extra price. Soon I am going to buy your sister, Maha—Muhammad says this to her, many many times—I will buy her after her first period when they put her on sale, Mahahaha. If the priest got his dirty hands on her first I will return her, damaged goods, not like advertised. My name is Deva, if you wanted to know, my sister is Maha. I will tell you something big. They are going to steal everything you have, your hat, your coat, cut off your beard halfway and half the hair on your head and your two thumbs and your two big toes and strip you naked, they are going to beat you up and poke out your eyes and maybe kill you Mister Giant if you do not hurry, get out of here soon, soon, fast, very fast. But how will you get out of here? You do not know the way out. You need the help of the goddess. She would show him how to get out if he took her along, she would be his guide, but he must also swear—swear by Yellamma Renuka and also your Jewish God, Elohim, and also Allah—to take her to Saundatti in Karnataka after they escape and together they will kidnap her sister Maha from the temple. She will save his life today if he will pledge to save her sister tomorrow. Then they will all go together to where the Jewish are, and they will all be Jewishes together.

“But I came here to get me a Jewish girl to bring home to my guru. It’s okay if she’s not religious.” Buki still could not let go, he did not like to fail.

“There is a madam,” the girl finally offered. “The most mean, fat like an elephant. She is a Jewish, they say.” Buki considered this option briefly. Rebbie-ji welcomed Jewish victims of all sizes and shapes and life experience to the House of Holy Healing, nobody was considered unworthy or a lost cause, in some select cases you didn’t even have to be Jewish. Still, it might be too dangerous to tackle this one at this time. They could come back to get her later, with a battle plan, maybe a few men, take her out with a truck. The girl pulled the end of her sari over her face, and lowered her head.

“Are you telling me now there’s not one single Jewish whore in this whole damn whorehouse?”

There was a long pause, and she lifted her head sharply. She had just remembered. Yes, two girls, very small, only four and five years old maybe, in cages, their virginity sold already many times, worth many lakhs of rupees, she had heard they were Jewishes, it would be very hard to save them, not possible.

“Let’s go git ’em, girl. It’s a major mitzvah.”

Buki stood up in a flash, his head ramming against the ceiling, pancaking his Borsalino. He followed the girl’s glance. She was staring forlornly at the door, locked from outside. “No problem, sister.” One pull with his mighty hand, and it opened like a can of beer.

It was surprisingly easy to carry out this rescue, Buki commented to me soon after I had taken over the prepubescent pod, when he recounted the whole story as part of my orientation. At first their hearts were pounding, the girl’s and his too he admitted. They would run a short distance, press themselves against a wall and take cover, poke their heads out cautiously to check if the coast was clear, then dart out again. Soon though, they realized nobody was around, it was midafternoon in India, the unforgiving heat of the day flattening everyone, they were all sleeping, recharging for a long night’s work ahead. The few who were awake and might have noticed them must have concluded that it was nothing out of the ordinary—just another newly inducted devadasi whore following orders, leading an overgrown transgender or cross-dresser or other hormonally challenged type, maybe even a hijra eunuch, to whatever he was paying for.

Everyone was also fast asleep in the segregated area where they kept the youngest girls and babies in their cages, including the two little targets of their raid, as if a spell had been cast over the whole castle. Buki simply lifted them up and carried them off, careful not to disturb their sleep and startle them; they were almost two-dimensional, the only material weight was that of their wooden cages. They were wearing flounced synthetic chiffon-and-netting dresses in pinks and lavenders, tinseled ribbons in their hair, smears of glossy red lipstick, black kohl on their closed eyelids, gold-colored rings in their ears. Curled up in their cages they looked like tropical birds of many colors captured in the jungle.

The devadasi led him easily through the labyrinth of Kamathipura, following directions whispered into her ear by her inner goddess GPS. They came out into the street where a black-and-yellow taxicab awaited them, as if hailed in advance by the good fairy. He did not even go back to the hotel to collect his things, including his precious sable streimel that added five inches to his height when he wore it on the Sabbath, and his cherished velvet bag containing his prayer shawl and phylacteries, trusting that a premium operation like the Taj would overnight it all exquisitely bubbled and bowed back to him in Kolkata. He ordered the driver to take them directly to the airport where he bought two first-class tickets from Mumbai to Kolkata, flying with the girl beside him in the window seat gazing out, marveling at the bed of clouds while gorging on peanuts and Coca Cola, and the two other little girls as his hand luggage stowed at his feet, their cages blanketed with his striped satin kaftan, the silver sheriff’s badge prominently displayed.

“I’m sorry, but they don’t look Jewish to me,” Rebbie-ji concluded after a long silence, when Buki set them down still in their cages at his master’s feet.

Nevertheless, he gave his permission for the two little girls to stay on for the interim at the House of Holy Healing until a suitable home could be found for them through Charlotte’s benevolent intervention. It was an act of hessed; loving-kindness is not an exclusive commodity to be dispensed only to other Jews. He would call them Bilha and Zilpah, like the concubines of Jacob, and maybe when they got a little stronger they could help out around the ashram until their case was settled. In general, however, it would be preferable not to bring any more such unfortunates into the sanctuary of the House of Holy Healing, if Buki didn’t mind, he should not take this as a criticism.

The devadasis, on the other hand, were another matter. True, they too were not Jewish, but they represented a feminine model for union with the divine so sorely missing in Jewish practice. We need our nuns, which is why it is permissible for us to squat here in the strict Mother’s old convent still creaking with the agonies of the tortured Christian God, and we also need our devadasis. There was a great deal to be learned about divine female power from the devadasis through dance and other physical forms of worship. They are artists of spirituality. Rebbie-ji charged Buki with the task of organizing a team to buy up as many devadasis as possible. Buki would have access to unlimited funds to purchase them when their virginity went up for sale, and bring them back to the House of Holy Healing. In the meantime, Rebbie-ji gave Buki his blessings as he set out the next morning to Karnataka to keep his word and rescue the sister of the devadasi who had saved his life, like Rahab the harlot.

It was an arduous journey from Kolkata to Saundatti the next day, Buki recalled, requiring two flights each way, and the exclusive full-time service of a taxi to bring them to their destination, and to wait for them in a designated spot for a quick turnaround and getaway. But that was the least of it. It was above all the emotional wear and tear. And the truth is, it would have been far more difficult, on the face of it, almost impossible, to execute this rescue without the help of the girl, the big sister, not only because she spoke Kannada, one of the babel of languages in the Indian loony bin, but also because this was a very inside job, and she was a supreme insider, she knew the territory, its map was scored with a blade on her brain. In the future, Buki assured me, acquiring more devadasis for Rebbie-ji will be a much more routine affair. He would take along one of their Indians, Mottel Patel-Aleph or Mottel Patel-Zayin, suitably costumed for the occasion, and simply buy a devadasi when a good one went on the market in the normal course of events. Price was no object, and it made no difference to them whatsoever if the priests had fooled around with her beforehand. She only had to meet Rebbie-ji’s specifications for female spirituality insofar as they could determine this endowment from her outward appearance—and the Patel boys were true connoisseurs from their years in the motel business, sizing people up in a blink. If they found out later she wasn’t a virgin, no big deal. They would not consider themselves to have been ripped off. Even the Virgin Mary wasn’t a virgin, yet she still was good enough for the holy ghost.

When they arrived in Saundatti toward evening, the girl instructed the driver in their language to go directly to the Yellamma temple on a hill a few kilometers outside of town. Buki had offered her the opportunity to make a quick detour to say hi to her mom, but she shook off the suggestion with a shudder, as if it were a spider. It was already dark, but they could tell from a distance that some sort of ceremony was underway at the temple. Fires were burning and drums beating.

They made their way up the hill on foot. Beggars with stumps for limbs crawled around them on their bellies like worms. Women clutching naked babies turned their faces up to him, jabbing a finger into their mouths, miming hunger. Peddlers lined the path, hawking glass bangles, brass images of the goddess, peacock feathers, flower and food offerings. Every eye noted then dismissed them—a devadasi serving the goddess, leading by the hand a giant in a bizarre costume, an eccentric rich patron perhaps, or a pilgrim of no recognizable gender in a woman’s long robe afflicted with a rare disorder, coming to petition the goddess for a cure. The air was ripe with the smell of turmeric and incense. As they entered the open courtyard of the temple where the rites were being enacted by the light of the fires, to the sounds of drums and bells and conches, a creature leapt out of the dark and emptied a pail of yellow powder on them. “Hey, watch it buddy!” Buki shot out as he attempted to wipe the stuff off his best kaftan and hat, but the girl dragged him away before he could teach the perpetrator some respect.

The same yellow powder completely coated the women dancing in the center of the courtyard as if they had been rolled in it—their hair, their faces, their arms, their saris. They were dancing in a frenzied state of total abandon and ecstasy, their arms grasping upward, their eyes sealed. They reminded Buki of Hasidim in rapturous bliss, blocking out from their consciousness the whole earthly scene, soaring as if in a trance, but he had never seen women in this state, he had believed they were not capable of it. They were channeling Yellamma, letting themselves be filled up by the goddess, their lover, their bridegroom, their husband. Devotees ran up to the bewitched dancers, tugging at their saris, dusted with yellow powder, urgently petitioning, supplicating desperately for the intervention of the goddess, then stuffing something in a hand that lowered from its exaltation to snatch the baksheesh. All around them children and young teenagers, mostly girls, danced completely naked or adorned here and there with the green leaves of a neem tree, and a sprig of neem in their mouths.

She spotted her sister instantly among these children, a lithe, heartbreaking fawn with dark eyes that seemed to have puddled over most of her face. You could see the resemblance, she too might have looked something like that before she had been sold and bought, though the child was blessed with a much fairer complexion, mocha latte—a different father for sure. She charged forward, scooped up her little sister, and hauled her back toward Buki so that they could make their escape, but the child managed to slither out of her arms and ran to one of the dancing women in the center of the ring, clutching her sari from which the yellow powder rained down over her velvety bare skin, crying, Ma, Ma, Ma. “Seems our girls come from a long line of devadasis, a very yikhusdik family, distinguished lineage, a dynasty like some of our top Chabad rabbis,” Buki gave himself permission to interject; I chose not to respond. By then he was hovering over the family reunion, the huddle of devadasis, the mother devadasi and her two devadasi daughters, casting his large shadow over them, listening to their exchange though not understanding a word. The mother was raging that she no longer was receiving any money from her working-girl daughter, Buki learned afterward. The daughter announced that she had come to take the sister before the mother sold her too—or before the priests got their dirty hands on her. The mother let out a cackle, universal language that Buki comprehended, and spat out, Too late, ha ha. Her eye scanned Buki from head to toe, appraising his worth. She expected twice as much money now every month as it looked like her girls had snagged themselves a rajah, she screeched as she spread her wings and transported herself in a puff of mustard-colored smoke back into the inner circle of the goddess’s handmaids, sorceresses, and oracles.

They left the temple precincts with the little girl carried by her big sister, tucked inside her sari like a baby marsupial, crying, Ma, Ma the whole way down the hill. She cried in the taxi on the long trip to the airport, and through both plane rides, all the way to Kolkata. She has been crying for her mother every day and night, Buki informed me. She misses the mother she has; you can’t argue with that. They had gotten used to her crying, crying was the white noise in the House of Holy Healing, muting the screams of the slaughtered goats sacrificed instead of children in the temple of Mother Kali next door. Only recently they had noticed that the crying had died down, maybe even stopped, Buki said. They figured she simply had worn herself out and had given up. But then they made the connection that the change had coincided with my arrival in the pod. I had become her new maternal figure, bestowed on her by Rebbie-ji in his wisdom. I was Mother, the darkness of the all-encompassing and all-accepting embrace, and she was comforted.

Of all the devadasis who came and went over the next three years, leaving eighteen at the end like buboes on the wasted body of Rebbie-ji in his punishing pursuit of tikkun, the first two, Devamayi and Mahamaya, remained our favorites, our most beloved, my own and my brother’s. He called them Shakti and Shekhina, drawing on his power to encapsulate in a name the essence of the soul. Thereafter, everyone in the House of Holy Healing was expected to refer to them by their true names, which Rebbie-ji had uncovered—Shakti for the creative female cosmic energy force of the goddess in Hinduism, Shekhina for the feminine aspect of the divine presence on earth as elaborated in the Jewish mystical texts. Rebbie-ji struggled every day for world repair not only through the male–female union of the divine feminine with the masculine godhead, but also through the universal sisterhood of those sacred attributes of feminine power in the teachings of both faiths.

He would summon the two girls to his suite, or stop by the pod, simply to delight in seeing them. He would stroke their silken black hair, ask them to perform a ritual dance or song for him, then as a reward draw the younger one up onto his lap as the older one was invited to push them in his wheelchair racing at top speed all around the ashram, all three of them shrieking hilariously as if they were riding the cyclone at a carnival. It was an immense privilege to see my brother Rebbie-ji playing again as we had played when we were children, to witness him setting down even for such a brief interval the heavy burdens he bore day and night for all of us. He deserved this small pleasure, no less than Gandhi-ji who had also sacrificed his health with all that marathon fasting and walking and so much more, and who had also enjoyed the company of young girls nearby to minister to his personal care before he was assassinated, and no one begrudged him either. The girls were a great comfort to Shmelke, he told me. They reminded him of his daughters whom he had not seen for so long, over the many years of his exile and flight, his nine daughters, my nieces, several of them, so far as I knew, already proper grandmothers.

Let us not invoke daughters. I implore you, Shmelke.

For my part, though, these two, our first best beloved devadasis, would always remain Devamayi and Mahamaya, and, whenever possible (preferably out of the hearing of others so as not to give the appearance of flouting my brother’s ukase), I would call them by their true names—Devamayi, Mahamaya—in order not to traumatize them even more by cutting them off so radically from their roots, discarding even ownership of their given names.

But the truth is, my daily involvement with them and the pod was limited, my responsibilities did not permit me to interact with the devadasis full time or to keep on top of every detail of their lives. Sleeping in the pod was not for me a caregiving assignment. It was in reality another aspect of the austerities along with fasting, chanting, meditation and additional practices that I had taken upon myself in anticipation of the day when my brother no longer would need me and I could be released to set out as a sannyasini, emptying my life totally. My main duties were above all as Rebbie-ji’s counselor and confidante, his chief of staff as it were. There was no one on earth he could trust more than me, his sister, his twin, his didi—his feminine emanation.

With regard to the prepubescent pod, I along with Rebbie-ji were of course the two major players in the making of the big decisions but not hands on in implementing them. That was left to Manika, she was the one who made things happen. It was she who managed its day-to-day operations, with the assistance of other low-caste Indians to carry out the menial work, sorely needed since the devadasi population at HHH was not only growing exponentially thanks to Buki’s shopping sprees, but also turning over constantly. New girls were arriving all the time, old ones disappearing. One even gave birth at the ashram not long after she had been purchased, an eleven year old, though within a few weeks the baby swelled up, stopped feeding, and died. Three of the devadasis also sickened and died during the first year alone soon after they arrived, an unfortunate event that at the time some of us attributed to the occasional gifts of surplus prepackaged frozen kosher meals in compartmentalized aluminum foil trays shipped to us in trucks from the Goa Chabad.

It also became obvious as the pod took shape that the term prepubescent had become a misnomer, applicable in reality only to the divine nymph Mahamaya, whom Rebbie-ji called Shekhina. All the other girls were acquired post the curse of their first period, which is what put them on the block in the first place where they caught Buki’s eye—and all without exception were illiterate. Manika came to us one day to make the case that the girls be taught how to read without delay, while the window of opportunity was still open, when the mind is still malleable and can still absorb new skills. It did not escape me that she was flattering herself while petitioning us, as she had picked up her reading skills in several languages in no time even at an advanced age. She threw me a complicit glance as she bent down to touch Shmelke’s feet, muttering that the reading lessons I had arranged for her were the best gift she had ever received, there was no way she could ever repay me. “And your mouth is full of teeth,” Rebbie-ji in his wisdom pronounced cryptically, in this way reminding her of another gift I had given her and what else she owed me while at the same time gently indicating that he appreciated the fox-like cunning of her manipulations since they were clearly meant to benefit the girls—and promptly he put her in charge of organizing the reading program.

She set to work at once, recruiting as teachers foreign volunteers, mostly women seekers passing through for longer or shorter stays. A gratifying number of these souls were soon caught up in Rebbie-ji’s irresistibly powerful mystical aura, some returning to the faith if they were already Jewish, others going to even greater extremes and converting if they were not, after which they were quickly married off to one of his eligible detoxed Hasidim, horrifying their families back home who were convinced they had been brainwashed by a cult. Yet others, Jews and non-Jews, used their community service and internships as reading tutors to the devadasis as the topic of their college admission essays or for other applications, with nearly universal acceptance even to the most competitive schools and programs. Not a single one of them emerged unchanged in some way, inwardly or externally, from their exposure to my brother, Shmelke.

English, naturally, was the chosen tongue for the reading lessons. It was in any case the lingua franca of most of the travelers and even as it happened of many of the devadasis, who came to us already possessing a selective English vocabulary, limited mostly to sex and prices for services. Whatever the language, though, knowing how to read could only benefit our devadasis in the long term, Shmelke and I concluded. Even if they chose ultimately to return to a career in prostitution, which we accepted as their inalienable right, at the very least they could parlay their literacy to become effective spokespersons for the rights of sex workers.

Our gem, our Manika, as I knew so well from my own personal experience, was simply a natural born manager, a quality that Shmelke had also very quickly picked up on even before I awoke to find myself in the House of Holy Healing crying out from the depths, despairing beyond words that I was still in this world. Within a few weeks she was supervising the entire HHH infrastructure, not only the care of the devadasis and their literacy program, but also the kitchen and all the services, including the hospitality end, accommodations for seekers and pilgrims and so on, and overseeing the dark-skinned workers, Bengalis, as well as Bangladeshi and Tibetan and Nepali refugees, along with the fair-skinned wives of Rebbie-ji’s Hasidim who were responsible for the cooking and meal preparation to guarantee the kashrut level. Even they set aside their pride and sense of entitlement, and deferred to Manika’s executive authority. She was in charge of the laundry and cleaning staff, the maintenance of the entire macro-enterprise, heat and light, but under no circumstances did she neglect the micro side either. With exceptional tenderness, she looked after the old lady shriveling up in the bed in Rebbie-ji’s suite, neither living or dead, flipping her over like a latke several times a day to prevent bedsores, dribbling sugar water into her ulcerated mouth with a teaspoon, extracting long green strings of gunk from her throat. She also took exemplary care of my brother and me, if for no other reason than to honor our mother, whom she loved beyond measure, and whose picture she kept in her room, the centerpiece of a small altar shrine decorated with garlands of marigolds and votive candles, doing puja there every day with offerings of flowers and the sweets so hard to find in India that she knew Ma could never resist, chocolate kisses and licorice twists.

The suffering of my soul had spread to my body. The fasting I had taken on three days a week as a form of ascetic practice was eating me up. My appetite for nourishment as for everything else in this life forsook me. Finally I was as skinny as I had ached to be all my years, but there was no satisfaction in it now. My stomach twisted in pain, I sat on the toilet and poured out my guts like water against the face of the Lord before whose seat of glory every orifice is open. Manika herself administered ayurvedic panchakarma therapy to detoxify and purify me, massaging, oiling, brewing, cleansing with herbal remedies, nagging me until I submitted. I had not properly metabolized my sorrow and sadness, she said, it had spread to my entire system and poisoned it, I was completely out of balance, body and soul.

Manika also saw to it that my brother, Shmelke, was properly cared for, especially in matters of personal hygiene pertaining to his paralyzed lower body, which he could not attend to himself but which was so crucial in preventing infection in that vulnerable area so prone to contamination, and ensuring overall health and a long life. Toward that end, and in line with her conviction that the devadasis should not be lounging around all day in idleness except for their reading lessons, she received permission to create and strictly enforce a schedule—two girls in the morning, two in the evening dispatched to Rebbie-ji to perform the needed tasks gently, respectfully, with dignity. Only the pretty ones, please, Shmelke had said with such an endearingly innocent smile. But whoever showed up, he wasn’t complaining, though he did put in a request for Shakti and Shekhina as often as possible, they were his preferred personal handlers.

Until then this intimate service had been carried out cheerfully and competently by a Filipino convert named Jerry, short for Jericho, who had been working in Israel as a metapel, taking care of a senior citizen rabbi in Jerusalem. He had come under my brother’s influence after having had the good fortune to be in the path of Shmelke’s inner circle racing in the night to the graves of the righteous, and as if struck by the hand of God instead of a motorcycle, had become a Hasid himself after he recovered, following my brother into exile.

The truth is, Jerry was not only stronger, but also far more adept and efficient than the devadasis in doing what was needed for Shmelke’s personal physical maintenance, but the aging of his own parents required his return to Manila in compliance with the fifth commandment of the Torah, to honor your father and mother, whose suffering I had heard was mercifully cut short when they expired soon after Jerry’s arrival, most likely from shock the instant they laid eyes on their son again after so many years in his beard and sidelocks and full Hasidic regalia. My poor afflicted brother did not seem to mind the changing of the guard however. He looked forward to the girls’ ministrations however clumsy, he tolerated with good humor their fumbling and ineptness, he gave himself permission to relax and enjoy. The girls, even the not so pretty ones, were still so young and fresh, they smelled so sweet, their hands were so soft.

Manika is also the genius who deserves the credit for coming up with the idea of a devadasi dance program that for a period of time turned the House of Holy Healing into the go-to place on the entire subcontinent for female empowerment through movement. The girls were always practicing their intricate dance steps in the pod, and naturally Manika, who missed nothing, took note of this. In typical fashion, never wasting a thing, not a single grain of rice, not a rag, not a clump of dung, the righteous Western innovations of recycling and sustainability coded into her Indian DNA from prehistory, she pondered how to make the best and most constructive use of these unique and in truth dying skills in the interest of the community at large.

She called me over one day to watch as a few of the girls were engaging in one of their favorite pastimes—a contest of nonstop rhythmic foot movements of infinitely subtle refinement. The winner was the one who could make the fewest jingling sounds with her anklets studded with bells. She proposed that I broach the idea with my brother of opening a dance studio at the House of Holy Healing for the sake of bringing in some income independent of donors, and not least, raising the self-esteem of the girls who would serve as the instructors, giving them a sense of pride and purpose, compensating them through this public appreciation of their gift and skills for all the ways in which they had been humiliated and discarded. The idea reminded her of the compost toilets she had emptied during her time at Ammachi’s ashram, Manika remarked—taking a thing that stinks to high heaven and turning it into something that makes the flowers bloom under the sun.

Shmelke was receptive to the suggestion. We had several intense discussions on the matter. The biggest stumbling block for him was that most of the classic dance routines as far as he could ascertain included devotional worship of the idols, Kali, Shiva, Ganesha, Yellamma, the whole wild polytheistic gang of divine thuggees and goondas and dacoits. At first he rationalized that it was only art anyway, so it didn’t really matter. Still, it was a problem. In the end, he ruled that this glut of Hindu deities were in reality aspects of one God, like the ten kabbalistic emanations of the sefirot comprising the single God of the Jewish people. Faiths evolved, they bled into each other, they dialogued with each other, they impacted each other, they took from each other whether they realized it or not, to the enrichment of all. And as a bonus, from the practical side, the wives of his Hasidim who would also be learning these movements in the dance classes could then bring them home to their bedrooms. This could only contribute to peace on the home front, Rebbie-ji pointed out. Anything that contributed to shalom bayit may be considered to be the highest form of mitzvah.

This was Rebbie-ji’s reasoning, his responsum, and he put his stamp of approval on the dance studio, provided it be limited to women only. He called it Devadasi Yoga, and in a stunningly brief period of time it became a legendary success with a huge following, not only among the wives and daughters and occasional mothers and grandmothers of my brother’s Hasidim, but also the expat community, travelers and seekers coming through, as well as the upscale and wealthy local Bengalis, of whom there were still surprisingly quite a number, notwithstanding the general decline of the city and the tourist attraction eyesore of the wreckage of humanity sleeping and defecating in the streets. The demand was tremendous. More and more classes had to be added to accommodate applicants, everyone was clamoring to get a spot in the program, it was the hottest new thing in town. Devadasi jewelry and ornamentation became the rage, headdresses, belts, earrings, bangles and bell anklets ecumenically decorated with little gold encrusted Indian swastikas and Stars of David.

Men were not only banned from participating in the classes, they were also forbidden to observe. This restriction did not apply to my brother, however, who was, after all, not only a rabbi, which is something like a doctor, a trained professional licensed to see it all, but he was also a martyr and saint who carried the sins of all humankind in his desiccated, out-of-commission lower quarters. As master of the domain, he asserted his rights and came out often, several times a day, to sit and watch with full entitlement. It was for me one of my most personal delights to crouch in a corner, doing my utmost to render myself invisible, and watch my brother watching. He radiated ultimate pleasure, swept up by the pure grace of the complex ritual gestures of hands and feet, the sinuous flow of the body defined by the waist like a vessel that could be grasped for pouring, the artful poses of the head, the flirtatious side-glances of the eyes. They were meant to be dancing for the gods, the devadasis, but I knew very well that Shmelke believed they were dancing for him alone. I watched him nodding his head to the beat of a small band of drummers and bamboo flute players or the a cappella of an impromptu group of devadasi singers, or to music streaming from a computer, stiffening sympathetically with the dancers as they froze into a statuesque posture, becoming once again the little boy I had grown up with as he breathlessly followed a story unfolding through dance, always a sad tale, a tale of heartache, love spurned, love forbidden, love lost, and more than once I saw tears slipping down his cheeks into his white beard.

I looked at my brother, Shmelke, and saw the florid rash near his mouth showing through under his beard where the tears had landed. His beard, once so rich, so patriarchal, had grown sparse—when did this creep up on him? He had been put through so much, more than any single human being had ever been meant to endure, it was no wonder he was in such a weakened and vulnerable state, so susceptible to the invisible pathogens lurking in the atmosphere. He had become so thin, taking up so much less space in his wheelchair. Every few minutes he was clearing his throat of a thick mucus, or covering his mouth, trying to suppress a cough, and I could see the sores on the back of his hand. I pleaded with him to let me bring in a doctor, but he refused with unrestrained fury, so uncharacteristic in his dealings with me. This is the House of Holy Healing, he reminded me—and if there’s no healing, then we can always go back to hospice mode.

A hospice for the dying, of course, that’s what this place was and that’s what in the end it would always be, contaminated by that grim reaper Mother Teresa and her lepers—it explained everything. Our living quarters were infested with plague and disease. It was Charlotte’s fault completely. So efficient, so famously in control, and yet she had never taken the obvious precautions, never bothered to have the premises checked out, fumigated, disinfected, sterilized, as if our kind were not worth the extra expenditure of mental or material resources. The great gift she had bestowed upon my brother with such fanfare and noblesse oblige was nothing but a sick building, sickening everyone who dwelt within its confines. I too was feeling unwell, contorted with bowel pain, canker sores in my mouth, my ankles swollen. Until my brother with his divine insight connected it all for me to the hospice, Charlotte’s gift, I had attributed my own physical symptoms to my unspeakable losses, aggravated by my ascetic practice.

Others too who spent time in this former hospice were showing signs of illness, including some of Rebbe-ji’s followers from his inner circle, which they then went home to spread to their wives. The devadasis were also presenting with all kinds of physical complaints, to lesser or greater degrees, among them a new girl who was found dead one morning on her soaked sheet. Even Buki, a giant of a man, seemed diminished—fading, shrinking, his face puffy and blotched, his eyes red and swollen, his swagger lost. We assumed these changes were due to exhaustion from his nonstop travels, his constant grueling trips across the breast of Mother India from Kolkata to Maharashtra and Karnataka and back to save devadasis, taking along with him the Patels, Aleph and Zayin, along with Devamayi/Shakti after all, because of her indispensable insider’s knowledge of the workings of the temples and the brothels, and her cleverness and boldness in negotiating them. Devamayi too we noticed was coughing continuously, she seemed unable to shake a flu of some sort, though her little sister, Mahamaya, whom Rebbie-ji called Shekhina, appeared blessedly immune to the toxins that seeped through the walls of our building, she floated like an angel above us all in pure air, possessed of a kind of divine exceptionalism. If ever she had been gripped by whatever this affliction was, she had gotten rid of it through the act of giving it to someone else, which made complete sense. Manika also was largely untouched, seamlessly adding to her daily labors the care of the sick and the sweeping up of the rats that staggered out of the walls, turned belly up on the open floor, and expired.

Why should all this sickness surprise you? Shmelke demanded to know. Was he not the gilgul of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, and did not Rabbi Nahman also have to deal with so many health issues in his lifetime, such a weight of mortality—the death in infancy of two daughters, the death in their first years of life of his only two sons leaving him no male heir to carry on the dynasty, his first wife’s death from tuberculosis, and then his own death, also from tuberculosis, at the age of thirty-eight? Rabbi Nahman lived in a house of death too, his home was a hospice that he transformed into a house of holy healing with his divine powers, through stories and music and dance, deploying his spiritual art to erase the tears from every face.

During this period, the darshan that Rebbie-ji gave daily to his followers seated on the floor before him in the great common ward always began with this focus on himself in his prior incarnation as Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav. For that reason alone it was explosively heretical, but what he revealed about himself in his former embodiment made it even more so. I was the only woman present to hear his darshan (this is how he referred to his appearances in deference to his status among the gurus of his host country), curled up in the fetal position behind a screen, I who had spent nine months alone with him naked in the same womb, which is why I am able to transcribe his words as Rabbi Nosson of Nemirov transcribed the teachings of the original Rabbi Nahman.

Rebbie-ji admitted that even then, more than two hundred years ago in the personification of Rabbi Nahman, he had already been a universalist, borrowing from other traditions and faiths, advocating openness and inclusiveness. His signature concepts of seeking out solitude and immersion in nature—these he had inhaled like a drug from the Romantic movement in the arts bouncing on the airwaves across Europe and Asia, from Byron to Pushkin, then down to him in the pits of Ukraine. Confession, needless to say, he stole from the Christians.

Even more shockingly, he confirmed certain rumors about himself in his previous life as Rabbi Nahman that had been circulating for over two centuries but had never before been definitively verified. It is true, he admitted, that in his travels as Rabbi Nahman, when he had stopped in Istanbul, he had shaved off his beard and sidelocks with a razor, and yes, even removed his yarmulke and gone around bareheaded, yes, even without a head covering he had frequented the opium dens and the Turkish bordellos, where they specialized in a very rare form of sadism from which he still shamefully carried the scars, like a tattoo carved into his flesh, an ineradicable reminder of his erotic debasement. At home in Uman he would also on occasion in those days as Rabbi Nahman set out in disguise to the underworld of sin and pollution and immerse himself in the forbidden as in a ritual bath filled with black water in which the divine sparks scattered during the fall from paradise had sunk. This is why, in case any of his followers had ever wondered, he has never, as Rebbie-ji, condemned those pilgrims to his gravesite on Rosh Hashanah who may be emulating him even without full awareness, by seeking redemption through transgression. Over two centuries ago in his incarnation as Rabbi Nahman and now in the new millennium first as Reb Breslov and then as Rebbie-ji, in Israel and in exile, he had sacrificed himself, the health of his body and soul, in the performance of tikkun to bring about the messianic age by plunging to the lowest depths to retrieve the lost light of creation. But by no means were his followers to conflate his acts of sacred depravity with the corruption of such false messiahs as Shabbtai Tzvi and Jacob Frank, who were nothing but dissolute conmen and degenerate seducers, Rebbie-ji cautioned severely. “I am not the false messiah,” my brother, Shmelke, enunciated, vocally italicizing the key words. His Hasidim instantly got it, and were awestricken. From behind the screen I too was shaken, torn loose.

As if all of this were not mind-blowing enough, my brother, Rebbie-ji, then proceeded to come out with perhaps an even more stunning revelation. Between his incarnation as Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and his present embodiment as Rebbie-ji, he informed us, he had also appeared for fifty years on this earth as the Bengali Brahmin mystic Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa of India. He was not only Nahman’s gilgul, he was also Ramakrishna’s gilgul. This revelation illuminated many hitherto hidden mysteries, including why Rebbie-ji’s feet, so to speak, led him back to Kolkata as if on their own, without regard to his personal free will. Everything now became clear. And as in the days when he had walked the earth as Ramakrishna, now as Rebbie-ji he was again following the painfully difficult path of left-handed tantric teachings, breaking down all the barriers between the sacred and the profane in every realm, including forbidden carnal temptations, food, drink, sex, all of the base appetites in order to transcend them, to see the face of the goddess in all things and realize the exaltation of the cosmic mother. Just as in his Ramakrishna incarnation he had embraced Shakti, the primal female energy source, the active principle, the root of all creation and creativity, now as Rebbie-ji he opened his arms even wider to also include in his embrace Shekhina, the feminine aspect of the divine presence on earth, as a child embraces his mother. His openness as Rebbie-ji to the wisdom and sacredness of all faiths was no different now than in the days when as Ramakrishna he had made his devotions not only as a Hindu, but also as a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian, with the difference that as Rebbie-ji, he also worshipped as a Jew.

When I walked the earth as Sri Ramakrishna, I had lost contact with my prior life, my roots as the Jew Rabbi Nahman, Rebbie-ji revealed. As Ramakrishna I would perform the tantra discipline of sitting for hours meditating on Mother Kali, the chant, Om Kali Ma, fusing with my breathing. I would sit in the cremation grounds and see her ferocious image with tongue lolling down and her bloody garland of fifty severed heads. I would sit on the banks of the Ganges and see her emerge from the river, open her legs and give birth to me, lift me in her arms and nurse me so tenderly at her blue-black breast. Then she opened her mouth and ate me. Brokenhearted and weeping, plunged into darkness, I despaired that I would never see the face of my mother again. Only then, when I had reached the lowest depths, did she take pity on me and spit me out. Mother, I cried, my good mother—stay. She was the divine mother, absolute consciousness. I knew only joy then, I did not know from Jews. How delicious it was to be rid of this Jewish burden for just one lifetime, a reprieve, but it could not last forever, something would rise up from the depths to engulf me or drop down on my head from the heights to crush me, and I would be forced back again to my place in the world.

Now as Rebbie-ji, his journey had taken him back Kolkata, to the territory of his past life as Ramakrishna, to this former Christian hospice of the saint Mother Teresa alongside the Hindu temple of the goddess Mother Kali (the two witches, as he called them, but privately, for my ears only). It was all for a purpose: to restore the Jew into the mix where we rightfully belong. Our numbers may not be many, but our voices are loud, we give the impression that there are a lot more of us than actually swarm on the earth. We Jews are the kundalini of faiths, coiled up at the root like a snake waiting for the awakening of all the chakra centers, when all will bow down and acknowledge us as the source. Thanks to our ministrations, our devadasi dancers within these walls have now absorbed all religions, Rebbie-ji declared, our devadasis are the fusion of faiths—Hindu girls sold to Muslims rescued by Jews sheltered in a former Christian hospice, and so on, with other assorted pluralistic variations on the theme flowing from their diverse individual stories.

For these reasons, Rebbie-ji announced, as a teaching in universalism, and to honor the divine cosmic mother, and as a way of showing his gratitude to Mother India for taking him in, for extending sanctuary and hospitality to him in his hour of need, he intended to bring the devadasis out of the closet, out of the House of Holy Healing to the temple of Kali Ma, creator, preserver, destroyer—not as human sacrifices, God forbid, but as a gesture of inclusion and goodwill, a form of outreach even to the heart of idolatry, a model of tolerance and interfaith dialogue. And just in case any of us was concerned, he was here to inform us that there was no danger at all in introducing these quasi-Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Hindu girls onto the incendiary temple grounds. No one would be offended. Everything has been arranged. He had already spoken to Charlotte, who has worked it all out with the chief rabbis of the property, the noble Haldar clan, the owners and priests of the compound for generations. Opening up their precious venue for a harmless little dance recital by our girls will be well worth their while, Rebbie-ji assured us. Charlotte absolutely loved the idea, she was wildly enthusiastic, she proudly claimed it had been inspired by the success of her own band, Lakshmi and the Survivors, she considered it a compliment, a personal tribute, she took full credit, backing it 100 percent and opening wide her purse, cost was no object. A protected space would be cleared in the temple courtyard in which the girls would dance, it was all under control, Rebbie-ji assured us. Our devadasis would no longer be hidden away from the eyes of men or anyone else, they had too much to contribute to the spiritual enlightenment of humankind.

Rebbie-ji thereupon gave the order to ready a troupe of devadasi dancers and musicians, our best and our brightest, to be brought out to perform in the Kalighat Kali temple the next day, raising his voice and pitching it in my direction where I was uncurling behind the partition no longer alone, Manika had slipped in as smoothly as a midwife.

There were eighteen devadasis in the pod that night, including Mahamaya, who over the course of those three years had always remained the youngest, the pampered darling, the pet. Every one of them felt the momentousness of the occasion. They swelled with a sense of purpose and importance, setting aside all other concerns, overcoming simple weariness to prepare for the coming day. The light in the pod burned through the night, we were under such pressure; it was only by a miracle that we were spared a blackout on this night of all nights. No one slept. The girls spent the hours working out the program entirely on their own in a heartwarming spirit of cooperation and generosity, forming smaller and larger troupes and ensembles of dancers and musicians, distributing parts to everyone according to their gifts, no one was excluded, choosing soloists for their skill and also their stamina and stage presence, making the arrangements with open hearts, for the good of all, untainted by pettiness or envy.

The goddess Yellamma, the kindly mother who blesses the faithful and to whom they had been dedicated for life was an aspect of Kali, yet not a single one of them had ever stepped into the temple next door to do puja. They seldom left the House of Holy Healing, and certainly never unescorted, it was against the rules as set down by Rebbie-ji. A few remained too weak or sickly throughout their stay at the ashram, rising from their beds with difficulty, and the schedules of the stronger ones were packed with dance classes to be taught, reading lessons, and other constructive self-improvement activities leaving little time in the daylight hours for anything else. Outside the walls of the hospice the frenzy of the city and of that neighborhood in particular was alarming even for the bravest of these village girls, and the shrill screams of the beasts being butchered next door filled them with dread, but now they would set out under protection to display their art, to honor Yellamma, to bring recognition to Shakti and Shekhina as well, as their guru, Rebbie-ji, had taught them, and they were throbbing with excitement.

Manika and I spent the night sorting out their costumes. There was general consensus not to go forth in the classic devadasi outfits, which we all agreed might be too provocative for the setting and the occasion; the girls would look like belly dancers to ignorant eyes, like prostitutes to dirty minds. We approved all their devadasi ornaments and cosmetics, however, after a delegation led by Devamayi came forward to make the case to us that these were necessary, the bells and the bangles, the kohl and the vermillion, it would be impossible to go on before an audience without them, they were the tools of their trade. Devamayi was the oldest of the devadasis, recognized as their natural leader and spokesperson, and we trusted her judgment.

But following Rebbie-ji’s mandate, it seemed to us that the costumes should in some way combine visual elements of several faiths, a delicate harmony very difficult to achieve in any sphere including fashion. The Hindu side was now covered with the trinkets and the paint, we decided. Devamayi then produced from somewhere in the former Christian hospice a stash of white saris with a blue border stripe, leftover habits of Mother Teresa and her nuns. It would be far from easy to dance in these shrouds, they were by no stretch garments meant for dancing, it would be almost impossible to see, let alone appreciate the complex artistic movements of the feet, the legs, the torso, but in the end we decided this form of dress was appropriately modest and sufficiently effective in delivering the ecumenical message, it would do the job. A devadasi was a kind of nun, after all, or put another way, a nun was a variation on a devadasi: each was married to a god or a goddess, depending on sexual preference and orientation; each had taken herself out of circulation and been declared off-limits to mortal men; each was a form of erotic expression, which seemed to be the only career path fantasy would permit for women in religion, yet both, as Rebbie-ji liked to point out, represented in the end a noble and generous attempt, however mean and constrained, to provide women with a spiritual outlet, so flagrantly and totally lacking in Judaism. There was much to be learned from this, Rebbie-ji said, it would not hurt us to look beyond the chosenness of our big Jewish noses and pay attention.

That took care of the Christian side, leaving the other two main contenders still to be dealt with, the Muslims and the Jews. My suggestion of a hijab was instantly rejected. First of all, it definitely wouldn’t go with the saris, which could in any case be extended by the pallu into its own built-in head covering. But above all, it was entirely in conflict with the entire aesthetic of the dance, it would confine the head and restrict its movements as if it were mummified in a bandage, it would ruin the whole effect, Devamayi sensibly noted. It was decided then to omit any direct reference to Islam, since either way, inclusion or exclusion, the Muslims would not be satisfied, they would take offense, fly into a rage, anything was possible, including a full-scale riot or massacre. As for the Jewish component, we determined that it would be sufficiently represented by our escorts to the temple grounds, Rebbie-ji and a band of his followers in their stereotypical Semitic garb. In any event, Jews do not believe in images, either to project or to worship. We reject any help we can get to reach the level of faith. It is a crutch, we spurn it.

As it happened, though, Rebbie-ji was unable to join us at the temple the next day, he was shaking with fever. He remained in his suite with Devamayi/Shakti to keep him warm. Buki, his chief minister, who was also ailing, stayed back as well, looking after them both. My brother, Shmelke, had requested at first that Mahamaya/Shekhina remain with him, but the child pleaded desperately to be allowed to come along with us for the show, her beautiful big eyes glistening with tears, she was wild with excitement, and in the end my brother who could refuse her nothing allowed her to go, settling meanwhile for the older and darker sister.

With a band of Rebbie-ji’s Hasidim in our train keeping a proper distance behind us, Manika and I led the devadasis in their Mother Teresa nun habits, their jewels and makeup, on the short walk from the House of Holy Healing to the Kali temple. The moment we stepped outside it was as if a curtain lifted on another planet, swirling with color, pulsing with movement and noise. Along the way hustlers were planting themselves in the paths of tourists, pressing to serve as guides into the sacred precincts, fake priests demanded a nonexistent price of admission, beggars and pickpockets pushed against the mass of bodies, hawkers touted all kinds of supplies for the goddess, wreaths of red hibiscus, offerings of sweets and incense.

The girls made their way slowly, dragging their feet, wide eyed, especially transfixed by images of Kali Ma made up of strips of plastic that they could angle to morph into the image of Mother Teresa, pausing at these displays to jiggle them endlessly. They could have played with these novelties all day long, flicking them back and forth between the faces of the two weird sisters, ultimately one and the same, made out of the same stuff, until it became necessary for Manika and me to assert our authority to get the show on the road. Yet even in the midst of all this turmoil, with all of its stops and distractions, a path almost magically was cleared for us as we proceeded. We moved ahead unimpeded like guests of honor before whom a red carpet was unfurling. I don’t know how Charlotte accomplished it, but it could not have been cheap.

A space had also been cleared for us in the central courtyard inside the temple grounds. It was late morning when we arrived, the optimal time as we had been advised by our high-level temple contacts—not yet in the heat of the day and therefore the audience would be sizable, but above all before two in the afternoon when the Kali Ma viewing area would be closed and the compound would empty out so that the goddess could have a chance to eat her lunch of freshly killed goat meat in peace, followed by a pleasant, well-deserved afternoon nap on a full stomach. Our devadasis were immediately directed to the center of the courtyard. They began to dance almost at once, like true professionals, to the accompaniment of their own singers joined by two men, naked except for their blood-spattered lungis, who had stepped out of the animal sacrifice quarter with their instruments to jam with our musicians, having finished their morning’s work of banging out a drumroll each time a goat was beheaded with a single stroke of a sword.

We stationed ourselves on opposite sides of our dancers, Manika and I, in order to keep a close watch on them and alert officials if we happened to observe anything unusual or threatening. The program was proceeding exactly as rehearsed, Mahamaya’s solo was especially enchanting, and the large audience that had gathered was clapping rhythmically, their faces ridiculously stretched into smiles even unbeknownst to themselves. There were some occasional murmurings, some questioning could be heard as to who we were and whether this dancing was a sacrilege or a mockery of some sort, an alien form of worship impermissible on these holy grounds, whether it represented an attempt to take over the temple by some menacing rival religion, but any sudden or untoward movement was swiftly detected and squelched by the alert guards.

I could see that matters were under control. I felt I could allow myself to relax for a minute, give myself permission to turn my head and look toward the sanctum sanctorum where the Kali idol sat on her throne in splendor across the pavilion directly opposite from where I was positioned. I had a clear view of her black stone face, her three eyes, her four arms, her long tongue hanging down wrought from gold, I could see the crowd of worshippers performing their puja, circling her bearing gifts along the pathway of the viewing area, human traffic propelled expertly in the desired direction, a commendable and sophisticated example of crowd control devised well before it had become a science. On the perimeter of the courtyard, away from our circle of dancers, devotees were sitting cross-legged on the floor in meditation, chanting mantras. Fire rituals were being enacted against the walls. A naked tantrika smeared with ash jerked toward me, moving in too close, holding a skull filled with blood, tipping it toward my lips, drink, drink, he was urging me to drink.

A spell of dizziness swept over me, I felt as if I were reeling, I was overcome with nausea, I thought I might collapse, so that for a bracketed space of time I must have lost my bearings and could not precisely follow the swift unfolding of events. It was as if I were a young girl again in Brooklyn at a wedding or holiday celebration, dancing sedately in a circle with the women when a mass of men charged forward to lay claim to our floor space, forcing us to retreat, to scurry to the sidelines, pushing us against the wall as they took control of the center.

Rebbie-ji’s Hasidim had displaced our devadasis. They were circling ecstatically in the center of the courtyard, stamping their feet, crying out at the top of their voices in rhythmic song their longing for Nah-Nah-Nahman from Uman, rapturously extolling the great mitzvah of remaining perpetually in a blissed-out state. They succeeded in carrying on their wild dance unmolested far longer than anyone other than persons maddened with faith would have anticipated possible, while officials, in uniform and plain clothes, huddled all around trying to figure out if this was part of the program too, if this trancelike whirling was also something that the stupendously rich memsahib had paid for. It took a single cry from a voice in the crowd—Musalmans!—and everything became electrified, as if a fire had broken out in the theater and lit it up, unleashing the panic coiled up in wait just below the surface. For what else could these strange extreme creatures be spinning fanatically but another species of Muslim dervishes desecrating their Hindu place of worship yet again, attempting once again to blow up their gods and take over their temple mount? The gates to the Kali viewing area slammed shut. Loose objects began to fly—stones, shoes, coconuts, candles, animal entrails, balls of congealed blood mixed with incense and excrement from the goat pen, people were running frantically in every direction, some struggling to escape, others falling murderously upon each other, guards were swinging their lathis, there was screaming, crying, human and animal, I cast my eyes over the chaos searching for my devadasis, but could make nothing out in the masses writhing like worms under a canopy of white smoke.

The surging throng pushed me out of its path, to a corner near the opening to the chamber where the goats were sacrificed. Someone ran past me with Mahamaya under one arm, he was kidnapping her. Her legs were flailing, her arms fluttering, she was howling. He entered the sacrificial space, set the girl down between the two posts planted in the ground where the goats were positioned, and clamped her head in place. Laughing hideously, he raised a sword to bring it down in a single stroke on her outstretched neck—loosening everything inside me. I was spurting out vomit in great painful heaves. Emptied, hollowed—and then I must have passed out.

When I opened my eyes again in a strange white cell, I did not know how many hours or days or years later, Manika was sitting on her haunches against the wall opposite my bed, her chin propped on her knees, the end of her sari drawn forward over her head like a cowl. Geeta saved her, she said. Geeta came down from Delhi to take the child away to her exclusive orphanage.

I did not probe. She had contacted Geeta, she had sold her again.

I inspected my body. There were needles in my arm attached to plastic tubes hanging from a metal pole on wheels. From between my legs a tube extended, ending in a clear plastic bag filled with yellow liquid. Another plastic bag ballooning with what looked like a thick brown lentil soup was lying on the floor nearly bursting, attached to a tube that came out of a hole slightly northwest of my umbilicus that had once attached me to my mother.

It is an autoimmune disease, a medical attendant in a white sari with a blue stripe informed me, inflammatory bowel, Cohn’s disease, a notably Jewish affliction, she added, looking at me meaningfully, Ashkenazi Jewish, like my mother’s gefilte-fish cancer. My intestines were destroyed, nonfunctional, rotted away. That is why I was vomiting—my mouth was my only outlet. They had been forced to perform emergency surgery on me to create a bypass. Henceforth my waste matter will be detoured through the hole they had created at my midriff, it will come out of the tail of my small intestine now sticking out of that hole with lips hardening into an alternative anus and collect in a bag that will fit very neatly in the space under my sari blouse.

Ma, see what you have done to me!

So that is what has been going around in the House of Holy Healing. Everything was clarified—a plumbing backup, sickening everyone.

No, she said, those patients have been infected with something else. Your punishment is autoimmune, you did it to yourself, it is your own fault entirely, you have been peeling off the lining of your own gut and squeezing it out into the toilet, you have been eating yourself up alive. The other inmates at the hospice for the dying have a different disease, contracted from mixing their fluids with the libations of the temple girls, the devadasis are all positive.

Positive? Positive is good, positive is—positive.

No, she said, positive in the House of Holy Healing is negative—it is lethal, a virus, plague. They are all terminal.

Rebbie-ji, my brother, made his final darshan on the night of the fire. He was curled up in a corner of his wheelchair, pitifully frail, skeletal, swaddled in blankets and shawls pulled over his head like the angel of death to conceal as much as possible the purple blotches that had erupted on his skin. Buki ben Yogli, slumping over the handlebars of the chair, had pushed him out of his private quarters into the great communal ward packed with his followers, among them also the wounded warriors, survivors and heroes of the anti-Semitic riot at the Kali temple with bandaged heads, arms in slings, on crutches, some also in wheelchairs like their master himself. Women also came out that night, sensing the weight of the occasion, willingly taking their places behind the partition, desiring to pay homage to the holy man their guru who had endured such agonies on their behalf and whom they sensed was now being recalled from this mortal travail to enter a phase of concealment in advance of coming out of the closet as the one we all await. A special alcove completely enclosed was set aside for me due to the impurity I now was carrying in a bag attached to the outside of my body, instead of hidden internally packed away in my bowels like everyone else. Manika and the devadasis, and every other outcast untouchable disease carrier, were also invited to join me in my quarantined isolation booth.

The electrical power had failed again, and the entire ward was illuminated with flickering lights from the memorial candles set out that we always bought in bulk. The weight of parting pressed down on everyone assembled there that night, yet Rebbie-ji, my brother, when he spoke briefly, as if for himself alone, in a voice so quietly intimate but nevertheless audible aimed at our most vital inner cells, alluded to nothing about farewell. He chose to talk about Shakti and Shekhina. Where do they reside, these two essential cosmic female energy forces, these two goddesses, the Hindu Shakti and the Jewish Shekhina? That was the question he was asking. He had searched for them everywhere—he had sought them but he could not find them.

He was speaking discursively, my brother, with no plan, giving voice to his thoughts as they came into his head. He made reference to the complex rite of intense preparations for the entry of the high priest into the holy of holies of the holy temple in Jerusalem once a year on Yom Kippur day—and how the congregation was filled with such elation when he made it out, alive and in one piece, with a glowing countenance, unscathed by divine wrath. If the holy temple is where the Shekhina, the feminine aspect of God’s presence, dwells on earth, Rebbie-ji asked, where then is its holy of holies? He paused, then answered his own question, using the Sanskrit word. It is inside the Shekhina’s yoni, of course. It has been my burden in this life to serve as the high priest sent in to penetrate the sublimely dangerous territory of the Shekhina’s yoni, her holy of holies, every day and night for the sake of carrying out tikkun, healing the holy congregation of Israel, he began by saying—but he did not utter out loud the remainder of his thought. Instead, in the most expressive of gestures, his hand moved up, opening toward his ravaged face as if to say, Behold how I have fared, there will be no rejoicing. Then he pulled his hooded blanket down over his sacred countenance, masking its lesions and sores.

No one doubted that the fire that broke out that night in the House of Holy Healing was started by a memorial candle, though many commented later that it was a miracle that such an accident had never occurred before. It was not a subject I cared to discuss, but I knew for certain that it was far from an accident. When plague broke out in the villages of India, I had once told my brother when we were children, they cremated the dead in their hovels, burning everything to the ground along with the bodies inside. I did not know if this was true, I had only read it in a book about India, I had been fixated on India from a very early age, it was the place on my inner map filled with all the starving children I could have saved with the piece of potato kugel I was leaving uneaten on my plate. But Shmelke remembered this tale, he made reference to it over the years. Lying in his bed after his darshan that night, I could envision him flinging out his arms with clear intention—even in the womb I already bore the scars from his habit of deliberately thinking and dreaming with his hands—knocking over the candles and shattering their glass.

The flames were confined to Rebbie-ji’s suite, but the entire hospice filled with black smoke. The devadasis and whoever else was in the building were herded out by Manika. I could hear her calling my name frantically, but I stayed hidden in my corner curled up around my bag of shit and these pages that I had been writing every night by the light of a memorial candle, which I had grabbed instinctively, to fuel the fire. Now let the whole house burn down with us its dead inside, I prayed in my corner. I prayed for liberation, there was nothing I desired more than for my story to come to an end.

Let me go to Shmelke to die together with him as I was born with him, I told myself, but I was vanquished by my own weakness and did not venture out of my cave to cut through the smoke like a thick web and make my way to my brother’s side. Instead, I lay there through the night as my bag continued to fill with the story of my life. When they found Rebbie-ji the next morning he was black and charred like a piece of wood consumed in a furnace where the martyrs are cast. Buki ben Yogli and the temple girl Devamayi were found on the floor melted together in an embrace from which they could not be prized apart. The status of the old lady on the bed in the next room remained the same, perhaps somewhat more withered and shrunken to the discerning eye, but still no final determination could be made whether she was dead or alive. The devadasis along with everyone else who had inhabited the House of Holy Healing, except Manika, had fled forever. It was a demonic place, cursed and desecrated from the days of Mother Teresa and the lepers from whom she had contracted her sainthood. It could never be cleansed.

From behind a partition I addressed my brother’s Hasidim, commanding them in Rebbie-ji’s name to contact the Israel government to set in motion their master’s extradition. They had wanted him so badly, the Israelis, now they could have him, with our blessings. They were experienced professionals well versed in handling the ashes of dead Jews. Come and get him. Let them do with him as they saw fit. Wear gloves and a mask, I advised. Should they require some DNA for identification purposes, here it is. And I tossed over the partition a grotesque clump of my own hair that I had broken off—dry as straw, matted and twisted into ropes, gray like soot. I had considered offering them the gift of a bag of my excrement, now already prepackaged, since I had read somewhere in a magazine that hunted terrorists were traced by the DNA in their droppings deposited along their flight paths. But to avert the possibility of making a mockery of my brother’s memory, I opted for my hair instead, which I had let grow out in anticipation of this very hour, when no one would need me anymore and I would be free to renounce everything, close my book of life, and set out as a sannyasini.

As a sannyasini, I was as if dead. The first person no longer was present to continue my tale, and this brought it to an end. All that remained for me now was to enact my own funeral to achieve liberation. I set out walking on the Grand Trunk Road from Kolkata to make my way on foot to Varanasi. Moksha awaited me there in the lap of Mother Ganga. My only garment was an ochre-colored robe. In my right hand I carried a single staff, a sign of my penance, for surely I had sinned in the confusion of my heart.

I ask you to forgive me.

In my left hand I carried a pot with a handle that contained a cup for water, and also my bag of excrement filling constantly, proof that I was still alive, tethered to the nipple of the new stoma in my body by a long translucent tube passing through a slit in my robe. I had cut off all my ties to the world, detached myself from everything in this life, except my excrement. This I would carry with me in a bag in my pot every step of the way as I walked along the Grand Trunk Road. The pot also held a little bell that I would take out to ring like a leper, like an untouchable, whenever I saw someone approaching, to warn of oncoming defilement and pollution.

I intended to walk on the Grand Trunk Road alone and unaccompanied to the river of life and find enlightenment and liberation at last, but already at Howrah I could feel the breathing behind me, something grazing my heels, casting a black shadow, a stagnant pool into which I was sinking with every step. Had I been armed with the necessary discipline at that stage, I would not have turned around and congealed into a pillar of salt. Behind me walked Manika pushing the old lady in an ancient pram she must have found while rummaging in the black hole of Calcutta, left by the British when they absconded. Without a word I turned my back and continued walking as if I were alone.

If by the time I reached Varanasi the old lady had not yet coughed up the last of the scum blocking her liberation from the wheel of life, I would walk on to Lahore. If still she held on, I would continue walking to Peshawar. If she still refused to let go, I would walk onward over the Khyber Pass all the way to Kabul, the end of the road. There I would sit down in the midst of the dust and carnage, pry open her mouth, and root in the sludge to release her soul and deliver it in a long albuminous cord and set us free.