A journey into a disturbing strangeness that would change this traveller's life...
This city, they say, is variously five-hundred to five-thousand years old. It was built on the tumulus of earlier cities that had decayed in upon themselves, just as this one is gradually dissolving into the mounds and swells of their remains. Ribs of palaces grow organically from cliff faces that – on closer inspection, can be seen to have been carved from the same living rock as the grottoes that stretch into immeasurable labyrinths behind them. Caves receding in distance and time, one fancies, to the very heart of this ancient land. Here, Keeps with collapsed domes and amputated minarets take on the appearance of reefed vessels settling through the earth to imaginary sea-bottoms, their geometries listing at remarkable angles – as if arrested in the act of falling over, and consumed by a wild slow tide of creeping grasses and vines splashed with violent sun-bursts of yellow trumpet-flowers.
And everywhere there are wells of moist shadow and dark recesses hidden from the sun where people have constructed newer, less grandiose accommodations for their teeming families. Lean-to's, shanties and ramshackle huts that spread in the manner of some virulent and unsanitary disease. Some had merely colonised convenient arches or pantiles in the corner of abandoned courtyards or cloisters, elsewhere they cannibalised masonry in an architectural devolution to simpler and cruder forms. I was forcibly minded of Armaka, the god Indra in its role as Purandara – breaker of cities. This must truly be his domain.
We'd come upon this place after travelling inland for several days across the north-west sector of this vast and infertile continent. Until suddenly, out of the encircling jungle, we could discern these mountains of masonry rising in successive ranges, entering a domain of great tumbling screes of plinths, pillars and lotus jambs. A place where trees spiral up out of the barrel-vaults of shingled temple-roofs like the flying buttresses of some phantom Gothic cathedral, and branches knot their way over Sanskrit inscriptions, before curving around the bas-reliefs of multi-limbed lion-headed and elephant-headed figures, gods and godlings, sprites and tree-spirits.
A lost city, but one which lies on the spice-caravan trade-routes so some provision has been made for the board and entertainment of travellers. My companion, Captain Ralph Forsythe, makes a striking figure in his scarlets and white solar-topee helmet. Me, I fear, creating a more bumbling impression in my dull fawns, struggling with my baggage and the typewriter on which I strive dutifully to fulfil my commission to the 'London Geographical Journal'. Sending sporadic reports back as frequently as local conditions permit. We establish ourselves, for a few coins, at the hostelry of an unpleasantly fawning but English-speaking Hindu. A deformity of the spine giving him the semblance of a grotesque scuttling insect.
We rest and bathe as best we can, then – refreshed, set out upon a meandering exploration of the bizarre locale in which we found ourselves. It was late evening by now, and a huge red sun was setting, casting long webs of shadow that lent the swarming squalor an exotic magical quality. One that extends even to the constant pestering of skeletal-thin cripples, beggars and whores, while above us the high citadels and solid buildings evaporate to mist and are enfolded by cloud. Yet eventually, such attractions pall and we feel the need to escape from the rippling tide-shifts of people and their incessant babble.
I confess, my companion was also intrigued by promises of a more prurient nature, and against my more cautious instincts, we succumb to the sales-pitch of a betel-brown native's salacious catalogue of insistent and knowing innuendo. We pay him well – rather too well in my estimation, then allow ourselves to be conducted through paths where snake-like tendrils of pepper-vines finger their way through window-portals and up door-jambs. Where cracked lintels covered in mosses and bright lichens were supported by the roots of thousand-year-old banyan trees, which wrap their way over broken arches, coiling in spirals like the tail of some slumbering guardian dragon. As the shadows deepen, he leads us through terraces of overgrown galleries, narrow corridors and down dark staircases, all the while turning to beckon and urge us on, across courtyard after courtyard, the sculptures gradually losing their definition, crumbling into shadows of dusk.
Finally, a precariously erected souk, beneath a decorated false-fronted awning opens into a turgid gloom neither day nor night, and down a long series of wide stone stairs into what I took to be the remains of a temple or palace. Across high inner-walls roots like fused spiders' webs grip fallen finials and crumbling friezes portray spear-brandishing warriors in war chariots, and long-haired, cross-legged and meditating sages. Then bare-breasted dancers in girdles and anklets. Which in turn give way to images of a more sensual nature. Whatever this place had been, it had long since been given over to more lascivious practices.
As dark and cluttered as the souk beyond, the haze of kif – opium smoke, was everywhere pervasive, and through the twilight of our descent, illuminated only by the flickering ochre glow of torches, rows of ornate cages could be glimpsed, which were foul with the stench of bodies and stale sexual odours. Two or three youths were drugged to docility and permanent sensual arousal in each cage, most of them nude with gaudy ribbons laced into their pubic hair – or shaved of all body hair to appear even more voluptuously naked. They were selected for the size of their pendulous penes and for their rampancy. Others, the hijras in invitingly vulgar kohl and lip-shade, wore short sheer dresses outlining their genital attributes provocatively. It was a lair of sexual inversion, and although a little disturbed by its blatant display, no-one who has endured the English public school system could remain totally unfamiliar with such predilections.
