Felix the Frog 2

                       “Frogs, ye gather round the pool to honor this day of all the year...”
                                                                                 Rig Veda, Hymn 113, Frogs

The chocolate gondoliers poled furiously, to no avail. The passenger that finally pushed us off the rock was a big man. I kept hoping the rifle he had slung over his shoulder wasn’t loaded. Minutes later we floated to rest, under the Baya weavers nests, hanging like flasks, in the thorny acacias on the far shore.
The waiting bus took us the rest of the way to Khajuraho by mid-afternoon. Two rickshaws cycled us to the Hotel Apsara, name after the celestial nymph, mythological female spirit of the clouds and waters, whose erotic embellishment of the temples here, we had travelled all this way to gaze upon. Apsaras were able to change their shape at will, and ruled over the fortunes of gaming and gambling. My own celestial nymph was using the last of her energy, getting a little bent out of shape, bargaining for the room. I used the last of mine to end the bargaining. We slept through the heat of the rest of the afternoon.
How hot the next morning was going to be could be estimated by the speed at which the hordes of flies raced your corn flakes for the inside of your mouth.
As the sun rose slowly-slowly over the western temples, we came upon a lawnmower, constructed out of half an oil drum cut lengthwise, and pulled by six barefoot men, running in harness. The driver behind the contraption could have been Santa, if he had been fatter, whiter, bearing gifts, and dressed more appropriately. He sprayed a wave of green grass in our direction as he passed.
The landscape of the original 10th century temple setting was nothing like the mowed lawn, rose beds and ornamental treed parkland we encountered on our visit. The Chandela Rajputs, who had taken two hundred years to built these monuments, worked in semi-desert tree gardens devoid of herbaceous plants. The whole twenty-kilometer area was enclosed by a wall with eight gates, each flanked by two golden palm trees. Of the original eighty Hindu temples, we saw the magnificent twenty-five that had survived. Constructed with sandstone megaliths weighing up to twenty tons, the builders used no mortar, but put them together with mortise and tenon joints, and gravity. And then carved a thousand year old orgy in stone.
Balloon-breasted heavy-hipped apsaras ran riot across the wall panels, putting on makeup, dancing, playing games, and knotting and unknotting their girdles. One freshly bathed beautiful celestial nymph had been sculpted arranging her wet hair, from where falling drops of water were drunk by the goose below. And below and within and above the fleshy curves of other bejeweled damsels were carved contortions of Tantric magic. Interlocked lovemaking couples and other numbers of participants and activities had been extravagantly portrayed in sedimentary bedrock.
I felt sorry for one particularly stoic horse, less impressed with the liberating path of the unity of form, than his more voluntary playmates. In India, spirituality came in many hues, usually in orange and white and skin tones. Its portrayal, in the ash gray sandstone temple art of Khajuraho, lifted it beyond the material world. This color of the Supreme never fades. Here, divine ascent was not the removal of the body, but the outcome of engaging it with its sensual organs. Here, sex was divine.
There was a fly in the ointment or, in an approximation of breakfast, at least two. The first was the original name of the place was Kharjuravahaka, scorpion bearer, representing poisonous lust. The original fable of the scorpion and the frog dated back to the 3rd century BC Indian Panchtantra. If the world had been supported by a giant frog, he shouldn’t have been carrying poisonous lust on his back as well.
The second problem was that the ointment was melting in the unbearable Madya middle heat of the day. We needed to cool down. And down was direction along the road where our reprieve waited.
There was a colorful doorman at the entrance of the Jass Oberoi Hotel, both of which seemed to be on another planet, considering our remoteness and recent hardships. A cousin to other opulent Oberoi operations across India, the Jass was still a far pavilion compared to the others. For one thing it had no guests. For another it had a buffet the length of a small town airport runway. Most importantly, it had a swimming pool.
Not the clay colored cholera puddle ponds of Indian prehistory, but a real rectangular large pure crystalline aqua pool. With water in it. That reflected the green around it, and the modern white hotel behind it. With deck recliners, and carpet-sized towels with the plush fuzz still attached.
The manager appeared out of the recesses of the inn. Robyn went into apsara mode, and negotiated a treaty that exchanged fifteen rupees for the afternoon use of the pool and the buffet, with complimentary gin and tonic welcome drinks. Here, divine ascent was not the removal of the body, but the outcome of engaging it with its sensual organs.
So we buffeted and swam, and lay by the pool. And Trevor, with the uniform and the white gloves brought us gin and tonics.
Trevor must have been a little underemployed or bored or both, but the gin and tonics didn’t really stop. We were beginning to feel really, really welcomed, and we knew that Trevor wasn’t going to try to lure Robyn off the pool deck to Abu Dubai, or something silly like that.
I began to do a lot of diving into the pool. This became more competitive as the afternoon took hold. I exhibited all the classical positions, straight, pike, tuck, and free, sometimes simultaneously. The girls would hold up virtual numbers. I was doing so well, I was sure I would eventually end up back on the podium.
Out of the chlorinated corner of my eye, I spied another swimmer. Scooping him up on a diving board pass, I looked into my palm of my right hand, to find a frog. After my learning of the Rig Veda frog who carried the Earth on his back, the Panchtantra fable of the frog and the town’s poisonous lust Kharjuravahaka scorpion, and considering the number of flies around to feed this amphibian, I knew at that moment that I was not in possession of any ordinary frog. This frog could fly. I knew this because, wherever he flew, he landed unharmed in the pool. Here, divine ascent was not the removal of the body, but the outcome of engaging it with its sensual organs. He kept pace with my sidestroke, to the accompaniment of a One Froggy Evening serenade:

                           ‘Hello, my baby hello, my honey hello, my ragtime gal.
                            Send me a kiss by wire baby, my hearts on fire
                            If you refuse me honey, you'll lose me then you'll be left alone
                            Oh baby, telephone and tell me I'm your own.’

I named him Felix, long before Felix the Flying Frog became a western management paradigm for schedules, cycle times, and shaping new behaviors. And long before there were other frogs in the pond. Thirty years after Robyn and Julie and I swam with Felix, after the Jass Oberoi had become the Jass Radisson, a fellow traveler, befittingly named Deepall, wrote a critique of his stay:

‘We found frogs on the side of the pool. We call housekeeping to clean the same but they took ages to even come for help. Even when they came they could do much as frogs were stuck to the sides of the pool and could not be removed with a net. This was very disappointing!’

Deepall should have considered this incarnation a lucky one. He could have been born a thousand years earlier, as a horse.