Temple Slaves Read online

  Restlessness seized the audience in mind and body, the musicians, themselves concealed, assembled their subtle variations with clinical detachment, until the drug enhanced minds of the listeners led them to wail and grunt in sympathy. Faces and bodies glistened with sweat. Staring eyes showed their whites, pupils hugely dilated, bared teeth grimaced wildly.

  A collective hiss! The devadasis trooped forth out of the darkness, seeming to swim and sway between the dark pillars. About a score of female dancers, light footed, clad only in floating diaphanous silks that concealed little and elaborate jewellery that enhanced their curvaceous nudity. Some were barely in their teens, some much older. Darkness and the thickness of paint disguised their eyes, but all were slender, black haired and brown skinned, save one.

  Meg jerked alert, quivering in the darkness. One of the dancers was pale as ivory, her flaxen hair long like the others, but curling where theirs was straight, more nearly naked than they, without a scrap of jewellery upon her.

  The dancing was not classical, the participants’ main talents no doubt lay elsewhere, but was meant to arouse lust. These were no longer, as in former days, devadasis born into temple service, but loose women, whores and others who, lacking a protector strong enough to hold them, had found a secure livelihood in the service of the goddess.

  The swaying hot eyed worshippers were not discriminating; a new glitter had entered their eyes, they followed the gliding bodies of the dancing girls as if mesmerised, feeling the spirit of the goddess rise within them, perhaps marking down the one they specially desired. Meg trembled too, feeling her master’s heavy breathing alongside her, knowing that he too was sharing their arousal.

  When the signal came she missed it. Suddenly the devadasis had shed their silks and wearing only their jewellery, were poised nearly naked, beckoning, a row of poised bronze statues and one taller, and totally nude, ivory amid the bronze.

  A growl ran all through the heaving ranks of men. Simultaneously the line of females broke apart and the devadasis ran in among the clutching hands and eager embraces of the rampant devotees. The music roared wildly. The floor of the temple hall became a heaving mass of bodies, slithering, clutching, coupling, one or two participants coming briefly to blows, a girl or two screaming, whether in panic or from excitement was unclear.

  Meg followed the action no further. In the obscurity of the balcony she was crouching dutifully, head bent, tongue and lips sliding assiduously up and down her master’s cock.

  Unobserved by her, the tangles in the darkness on the floor of the temple began to resolve themselves eventually. Men were crawling from one to another group as they spread apart in little knots of bodies, each girl at the centre of a scramble by her particular fanciers. Experts at this, they strove to satisfy this masculine impatience by any means available. The intertwining limbs and bodies curled twisted heaved and parted, reformed in different combinations and heaved again. The music pounded in the ears, throbbed in the head, filled the hot dense atmosphere with lust. The coupling grew noisier and the girls screamed more often, but for the most part it was only the mindless expression of men like beasts in rut. The drugs ensured it was so.

  Amongst the striving bodies, Laura, the pale-skinned devadasi, a slave forced to perform with the rest found a momentary respite. Her screams, mingling with the roaring din, had been just another shrill chord in the orchestra of lust. There had been bodies all over her, hard male bodies two or three at once, taking her in every way possible, forcing her to comply, to use the skills she too had been practised in, carrying her unscathed from one vileness to the next. In the moment of the departure of the latest man to use her, she saw again with dazed eyes, the derisive expression of the goddess looming above her through the acrid smoke. The faces interposed themselves between her and the image above, wrinkled and shaven-skulled, calmly objective, not the distorted faces of the lust maddened men who had raped her. The pandars of the temple were intervening to protect the property of the goddess from serious damage.

  Now she was being drawn up onto the platform beneath the goddess, to be devoted to only a single user. She knelt upon all fours below the altar, distinguished from the rest as a special sacrifice to the goddess.

  She was conscious of a sudden stilling of movement in the body of the hall, of a hundred staring faces. Brass cymbals clashed, conches and long curved trumpets droned, drummers beat frenziedly at long tabla drums. The chosen man, a great fat bellied brute, his eyes bulging, saliva glistening upon his double chins presented his prick to her lips. He wobbled so wildly that she could hardly take him in, as she knew she must. She had to grasp his penis to hold it steady, feeding it into her mouth and throat. He was shouting and raving above her, sounding so wild that she sucked and licked, gurgling and snorting in frantic terror. He jerked back suddenly and let her breathe. Laura screamed, seeing the knife in his hand. He spun away, flourishing the knife, its blade glinting long and sharp. It was not for her. Laura gaped open-mouthed as he slashed the air as if at invisible demons, perhaps in his own mind. He was stark naked, panting like a foundered animal. His body gleamed with sweat that rained from him; the pupils of his eyes were like pinpoints. His free hand held his genitals, the penis greasy with Laura’s saliva projected beyond sagging only a little. He gave a weird cry. The knife hesitated then swept down.

  Whatever further noises he made was submerged by a clash of brass and the roar of voices. Laura’s view was half obscured but she could not mistake the bloodied severed parts that were thrown down on the altar. This fanatic had dedicated himself as a eunuch to the service of the goddess.

  The sexual frenzy of the rest was suddenly abated. Men broke away from their partners, had recourse to water jars, panting like dogs and drifted into the shadows. Slow strokes of a gong heralded the closure of the temple hall and hurried the few lingering vigorous participants.

  Satiated men emerging into the hot thick blanket of darkness mingled with those who had been without the entry fee or had been restrained by the need to guard their families. They had been seeking refreshment or amusement among the little vendor’s stalls lit by flickering oil lamps selling sweets and trinkets or lucky tokens and forecasts of fortunes. The women servitors of the goddess were left behind in the closed and darkened edifice.

  Among the crowd, almost anonymous in the darkness, the Founder on his wheeled tray was talking earnestly to a companion seated cross-legged beneath the sacred tree. The other was a tall man, whose hideous folds of loose flesh sagging from his bones, product of a period of hard living, were beginning to fill again into bulging fat. This, the Founder’s recently acquired advisor, was a man whose reputation for knowledge of the left hand path had preceded him, whose brain was fashioning the plans for the greater Annagaruyah to come and who had given to the service of the goddess the newest and most exotic devadasi.

  Stepping from the shower in her modern suburban house a week before the Catastrophe, Laura Allen Pandarannahdi had reflected upon her relatively fortunate position. The city lay high up out of the reach of Tsunamis and set upon a rocky plateau. Her house was secure from earthquakes being single storey and frame built. Her Pandarannahdi in-laws filled half the positions of power in the place and would see that their eldest son didn’t starve even if it meant feeding his detested foreign wife as well.

  She picked up a soft towel and dabbed at the wetter places. The power supplies had been restored at last after the latest terrorist bomb and so the water was back on. The bathroom was moist and cool. A pleasant breeze from the louvered windows caressed and dried her skin very pleasantly. The air was scented by garden flowers with only a trace of the smell of charcoal cooking fires that pervaded the distant city. She stretched languidly, arms high above her, enjoying her own reflection in the tall mirror. Not bad, she reflected complaisantly as she ran her eyes over the curves of her hips, the flatter curves of her belly and the firm, high roundness of her breasts. Ashad, her husband, had always said that she could have taken her place amid the rows of devadasis, the round breasted round hipped females who accompany the gods.

  Even her skin colour fitted; the sculptures were usually painted pink on the temple facades. She noticed with irritation the difference where her sari left shoulder and arm bare. Whilst they had lived in the UK she could have sunbathed without restriction. Since Ashad and she had been forced to return to his ancestral home and his conservative family, she had been thwarted in a lot of things.

  “Karmala! Tea please!” she called to the girl through the open bathroom door before returning to the view in the mirror. She wondered what the chances were of persuading Ashad to let her return to London until any possible trouble was over. There was still a whole week to go before anything could happen. Ashad had been more and more difficult lately. She suspected that his family were trying to poison his mind. They were probably behind his absence, particularly the old Begum, as Laura jokingly named her mother-in-law. Strange how, in a world where men were supposed to be all that counted, an old woman could still rule the roost! The old woman had no scruples about being one of the privileged, took it for granted and didn’t think her daughter–in-law worthy of them.

  The family were formerly hereditary office holders under the old Maharajahs, of the highest caste and intimately connected with the former ruling house. They had never forgotten past glories, for which new wealth and political office was an inadequate substitute. Revivalism had attracted their support. Laura grimaced into the mirror. The old lady would probably prefer Ashad to strangle his low-born English wife and set up a harem of Dravidian beauties in her place.

  Karmala came in unexpectedly with the tea as Laura was caught up struggling with the arms of her bathr
obe. The girl was a beauty, Laura thought, but probably didn’t count as Dravidian since she was a Goanese by origin. Putting down the tea tray, she hastened to help Laura with her bathrobe. Laura’s former maid had left unexpectedly a week before on the strength of a dowry provided her by a rich uncle, but she had strongly recommended Karmala as her cousin.

  “You could be an actress, Karmala!” Laura had said to her at once. She felt that kind of beauty would go well on the big screen. The girl had given such a start that Laura had apologised, assuming that some Indian prudishness was offended by the notion of kissing strange men in public. Standing, drinking the tea while the girl cleared away the towels, Laura reflected upon her own feelings of guilt and loneliness. She had a comfortable home even if the electricity supply was uncertain at times. She was married into the richest and most powerful family in the state, so she was reasonably safe, even though in the present disturbed conditions she had to wear a sari and keep her hair hidden under a scarf so as not to attract notice. Foreigners were blamed for everything these days. She only wished that Ashad was at home more often but the old Begum kept him busy travelling between the family properties. There was no knowing when he would return and she felt both lonely and at a loss for comfort.

  She sighed, remembering the story about the Chief Minister of an Indian state who resigned upon the grounds that his mother disapproved of his activities. Being the only son he had explained, he was not in a position to disobey her. He had never done so, he said, in his life. The same habit of obedience ran deep in Ashad, she knew. Far away in London she had no trouble with that. Here, she wondered uneasily whether he felt she was too much of a handicap, but she could only go so far in adopting local dress and conduct, giving up sunbathing and hiding the alcohol, just to propitiate an old witch who had no intention of allowing herself to be won over.

  Laura fumbled her feet into high-heeled slippers and emerged unsteadily from the bathroom. Her limbs seemed somehow to have lost co-ordination and her brain unable to keep her balance.

  “Karmala! I feel strange …” She seemed to be slurring her words a bit too.

  “Madama!” The ayah sprang forward and helped her solicitously to the big leather covered couch. “It will be the heat today! I will fetch a drink. Rest and it will soon pass!” The girl rushed to the cupboard where Laura hid the booze. It was not easy to get anything decent and Ashad had lately taken to being difficult about it.

  The drink was a stiff one; the ayah had produced it with the air of someone conniving at dissolute behaviour. Laura smiled. Prohibition had that effect. She reached for it anyway and found to her astonishment that she missed her grasp on the glass. Karmala promptly lifted it to her lips as if was medicinal. The fool girl seemed to expect Laura to take it in a gulp. She spluttered and coughed, getting half of it down her front.

  “Oh Madama! The ayah assisted Laura out of the brandy soaked robe. “I shall bring you something else to wear!”

  The brandy seemed to have made things worse. Laura lay on the couch with unfocused vision, feeling exhausted and unwilling to move. She was aware of Karmala fussing about her, wrapping her in a black lace negligee that had been Ashad’s favourite. She felt warmth welling into her loins as she thought of him and tenderness towards the girl. Glass clinked. Music suddenly swelled up, romantic strings. The smell of brandy seemed to grow stronger making Laura’s head swim, surely she hadn’t drunk or spilt that much! She tried to judge how much was left in the glass but her eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “Karmala …” she murmured drowsily. “Please … you … I want …” she faded out, uncertain of what she wanted.

  “Yes Madama!” The ayah came over, soothing, her voice warm and purring. “I will look after you… You will have anything you need …”

  Laura stirred briefly but failed to hold her concentration. Her mind kept wandering off. How had this started…?

  Karmala caressed her, murmuring reassurance, shifting onto the couch beside her comfortingly. Laura felt rather like a limp puppet. The Indian girl giggled and squirmed against her. The negligee was hardly more than a decoration and Laura lost track of its folds, her limbs sprawling nakedly. Her body throbbed and tingled in the most intimate places, thighs, breasts, cheeks and lips seemed swollen and tender. Her hair had come undone and tumbled damply about her.

  She tried unavailingly to close her thighs, conscious of her exposure and found Karmala’s warm body on top of her and between them. A glass was thrust into her hand and she clutched it tightly with both hands afraid that she might let it drop.

  “Karmala … love … dear…” She had really meant to protest but her tongue seemed incapable of framing coherent sentences.

  “Madama …” Karmala murmured huskily, kissing Laura, the effect of lips on lips was so astonishing that Laura let them linger a moment. She tried to raise herself and thrust the girl off but it made her so dizzy and her limbs responded so slowly that she only found her fingers slipping over wriggling flesh finding that the ayah had somehow become naked too. Squirming round on top of her, Karmala and she ended up head to tail and Laura clung convulsively to the girl’s smooth flanks as she felt a slow, creeping, incredibly lingering tongue exploring her vagina.

  She heard her own involuntary squeal and tried to pull herself together, not understanding what was happening to her.

  From the doorway a cool draught swept across Laura’s over-heated belly and thighs, making her groan and wriggle in relief. Then, realising where the air was coming from, she threshed in panic, striving to collect her wits. Before she could get as far as voicing her dismay, Karmala’s hot pubic bulge rammed down like an impromptu gag against her open mouth, while the tongue raised trickles of ecstasy between her legs.

  Laura was submerged under warm flesh, her high heels lifting and kicking wildly but without aim, in reaction to the diving tongue. Nothing of what she thought she should say was now audible above the dreamy music, only muffled gurgles. One of her hands still clutching an empty glass waved it in the air above Karmala’s brown rump, the other at first clawing at the fleshy curves that threatened to smother her, turned without any intention into a circling enjoyment of their softness.

  “Ahhh … Daaarling … Laura …” Karmala clung to her confused mistress with tenacity, controlling her reactions and raising her voice loudly enough to be heard in the next room. “You are sooo … good to me … daaarling …!”

  Laura’s weak protest, surfacing through a throbbing daze of desire, was rendered totally inaudible, muffled by the other’s hot loins rotating vigorously over her mouth.

  “Ahhh … Daaarling … I love you so … that’s right … suck me … daaarling … suck me … darling Laura …”

  Laura was dazed, breathless, half fainting, wholly bewildered. Suddenly the soft feminine flesh lifted from her face and she turned her head to gasp for air. Her startled eyes went past Karmala’s lifted rump.

  Flash! Flash! Bright, dazzling shocks. Karmala screamed with sudden theatrical effect. Flash! Flash! A door banged and men’s voices, elderly and indignant clamoured incomprehensibly, close at hand. Karmala sprang up with astonishing speed.

  “It was the Madama who made me!” she shrieked hysterically and, hurling incoherent abuse at the interrupters, she ran out naked through the door to the kitchen. Flash! Flash! Laura struggled upright on the couch, hair tangled and dishevelled, hot and flushed, to all intents and purposes, naked herself.