An excerpt from Mark Itzler’s autobiography, Becoming Divakar
Every day was hot in Pune, but today was the hottest I’d ever felt.
The deafening white noise of cicadas in full song filled the air, as my rickshaw pulled up to the entrance of the Blue Diamond Hotel. Although we had been in India for nearly a month, I was only fourteen years old and still trying to adjust to being in a completely alien culture. One place I’d been frequenting, and felt was at least a bit familiar, was the Hotel’s poolside coffee shop. Being only one block from the Ashram, it was a focal point for sannyasins to meet in slightly more elegant surroundings than the rest of Koregaon Park.
The palm-surrounded swimming pool sparkled in the sun as I wandered in and flopped into the beige vinyl booth. It was a covered but open-sided restaurant, surrounded by tropical plants and vines with a view out over the pool and lawns. It was the middle of the afternoon and, unusually, the place was empty. I had struck up a friendship with one young waiter, a well-groomed, stylish, and confident dude who, weirdly for an Indian, went by the name of Kevin. He saw me from behind the bar, grabbed an order pad, and headed over. “Hey Divakar, how’s it going, man?”
Kevin’s accent was a mash-up of Westernized Indian and some kind of hippie twang.
“Hi Kevin, can I get a plate of chips please, and an iced coffee?”
He returned to the bar and yelled my order into the kitchen. A moment later he was back. I looked at him, a bit surprised, wondering why he was standing there with nothing but a cheeky grin. He leaned forward over the table. Lowering his voice:
“You smoke, man?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, glancing down at the packet of Benson & Hedges on the table.
“Not cigs pal, this.”
As if performing a magic trick, he revealed a small hand-rolled joint.
I felt a bit caught out. I’d never smoked hash, but didn’t want to appear uncool.
“Uh, yeah man, sure… sure, I smoke.”
His eyebrows did a double bounce as he thrust the joint towards me.
“What! You mean smoke it here? Now?”
“Ya man, it’s cool.”
I hesitantly took the thing and stuck it in my mouth, keeping my best ‘casual’ face on, but Kevin was reading me like a book and his mischievous grin widened. He took a casual glance around and struck a match. I gave a few pulls to get the joint going then took a deep hit. Kevin strolled back to the bar, settled on his stool, and resumed chatting with the other waiters. I took a bigger hit, and let out a big blue smoky cloud. It smelled wonderful – heady, dense, and heavily scented. The taste was rich and sweet with a deep, bitter, honey flavour. I glanced over to Kevin. He and the other waiters were sitting and watching me. He gave me a big ‘Ok’ sign and smiled an even bigger smile.
A few moments later my order arrived. Alone again, I sipped my coffee, took another toke, and watched the pool, sparkling and dancing in the sunlight.
Another chip, another sip, another toke, watching the pool, watching… watching… “Oh fuck, oh shit, what is this?”
A buzzing wave of energy reared up through my body and into my head, pulsing with my heartbeat. I shook my head, blinked, and tried to get ahold of what was happening to me. My vision began to change. Everything became much more three-dimensional than usual! Colours were becoming brighter. My hearing began to distort. The ambient noises around me turned into a dozen distinct sounds, all clearer and richer than anything I’d ever heard. The birds, the palm fronds rattling in the warm breeze, the clinking of plates from the kitchen, Yadow, the poolwallah, gently dipping his net in and out of the water, tapping insects and twigs out onto the hot flagstones. The distant sounds of traffic out in the street sounded as though they were right next to me. I was hearing, seeing, experiencing everything super-concentrated, super-focused. It was so different, and so totally amazing.
For the first time in my life, in that hot and humid tropical garden, I was high! ‘Really’ high! “Ok, this feels… good… I think.” I felt a tickle of deep happiness rising in my stomach. A wave of blissful relaxation washed through my whole body. I thought of my dad, the consummate hippy, and his old buddies back in our life in London. “This was why he was always such fun after he’d had a joint. I get it now.” I started to smile at the memory. All of them lying on the lounge floor for hours, eyes closed, listening to Ravi Shankar, Santana, Miles Davis, Dylan. Their animated and inspired conversations and laughter that left them helpless, with tears running down their cheeks, gasping for respite from their hysteria. It all made perfect sense.
Coming back to myself, I realized that I had slid right down and was slumped in my seat staring up at the ceiling with a wide grin glued across my face. I quickly sat up and attempted to collect myself. “Chips! Oh yeah, I have chips!” I grabbed one, dipped it in ketchup, and munched it. “Oh man! These chips… are amazing!” They disappeared in an instant. They were just so munchable, so salty, so… ketchup-y? Every normal experience was now totally new, completely intense, and absorbing.
I looked down at my watch and went blank. The little red numbers meant nothing to me. I had lost my sense of time completely. I was in a dream, and time was moving so strangely, so slowly.
Eventually, with some no small degree of mental effort, I realized I’d been sitting for over half an hour, staring out into the garden.
“Why am I smiling? What’s so funny?” It became very clear that everything was now funny. And for no reason. Just being alive, was now the funniest thing ever!
“Okay,” I thought, “time to go and do something else before I get stuck here forever.”
I slowly managed to find my way to an upright position. My head, pulsing with sounds, thoughts, and images. My body, somewhere below my neck, was attempting to co-ordinate itself.
I headed to the counter, doing my best ‘normal’ everyday walk.
Kevin was leaning back on his stool, watching me approach. He dropped forward, leaning over the counter. His Cheshire-cat grin was now much, much wider and brighter than ever.
“Are you zonked, man?” he whispered.
“Uh huh… yeah.” I blurted out in my most stony, trying-to-be-cool voice possible.
“It’s good stuff, hey Divakar. Good charas, ya?”
“Yeah, it’s a… yeah.” I was so amazed by the sound of my voice that I wasn’t paying any attention to my or Kevin’s words.
Still smiling uncontrollably, I managed to pay my bill. Thanking Kevin, I wandered out into the garden. The sun hit me like a laser beam. “Oh man… bright, this is very bright.” Squinting and blinking, I found myself by the pool, mesmerized by the movement of the water. Yadow strolled over with a big grin. Nobody messed with Yadow. Although well into his sixties and bendy-legged, he was stocky and strong as an ox. Always dressed immaculately in his white shorts, plimsolls, and polo shirt, his Gandhi cap tilted to one side on his coarse grey hair.
He always kept the pool pristine, the changing rooms perfect, and the towel rolls precise. Although he was master of his domain, he maintained a polite reverence for the well-heeled Western sannyasins and hotel guests who graced his poolside. A teenager like me, however, received much less, if any at all. Taking one look at me, he instantly knew that I was in fact ‘zonked’. He had probably been tipped off, if he hadn’t just smelled it wafting from the coffee shop.
Suddenly he grabbed me in a tackle from behind, swinging me around like a floppy rag doll. My arms were pinned to my sides in his vise-like grip. In my state of blissful stoniness, I was helpless and going nowhere except for an involuntary dip in his pool. I hit the water laughing. It felt so wonderful. Silky, soft and so refreshing on my skin. I surfaced, gasping and giggling.
“My clothes!” I spluttered.
Yadow said nothing. He seldom did. He just smiled, showing his red betel-stained teeth, and bobbed his head to the side and back, as if to say, “Job done.” Kevin and his crew were whooping with laughter from the coffee shop. Yadow had made their day.
I pulled myself out of the water, removed my t-shirt, and lay on the hot stone, catching my breath. Yadow returned, dropped a towel on my belly, then, chuckling to himself, went back to his net to continue his never-ending mission of keeping the pool perfectly clean.
I lay there, drying in the afternoon heat, watching the palm trees swaying above me, luxuriating in the divine strangeness of this new, vibrant intensity filling my head and body. In awe at the sounds, the colours, and the strange feeling of timelessness. My brain was introducing me to a completely new state of being, an alternative experience of reality and myself. My senses heightened, and my mind, which was exploring thoughts and notions in a completely new way. I had taken my first baby step into the realms of expanded awareness, and in that moment, I didn’t know how, but I did know, that my life would never be quite the same again.
It took a few hours before I returned to what felt like a normal state of mind. I sat out on the balcony of our room, high up in the tower of Mobo’s, watching the endless activity passing on the streets out beyond the garden. I was in deep thought. It had been more than just a strange few hours. Something in me had shifted. Even though I felt a bit groggy, I was definitely not high anymore. But something new was here. Some part of me that had been dormant my whole life had been activated. It was subtle and hard to grasp, but I felt somehow more open, more connected to something. As it was, being now in full puberty, I had been experiencing so many changes over the last year. All kinds of ‘firsts’ had been happening to me, but they were all physical. This was something else. Like a gate to a new level of reality had been unlocked.
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