( from a letter I sent to a friend, a few years back) You ask me about how I imagine God to be like. No joke, but I think of a pretty black hooker with an afro hairdo, in a dark alley, wearing a snakeskin miniskirt and fluffy pink blouse, with a big yellow pin on it saying : “Free Angela Davis”. She is smartly holding a cigarette and humming something with a husky voice. I think that image comes from a graffiti I once saw, saying: “God is black ! ” to which somebody else had added: “Yes, She is !”. Influenced by this image, I once depicted Shiva, in a story I never finished, as a smart black man, Marvin Gaye style, wearing an Armani suit, with neat dreadlocks, and a silver ring with a skull on it. He was the owner of an amusement park. He was soft spoken, moved with feline grace and a casual sort of authority among fire breathers, snake charmers and lion tamers. Parvati was a luscious blonde in a clinging red dress, à la Rita Hayworth, with long cigarette holder and gloves reaching her elbows.

You would think I am making fun of God, but I am not. I am attracted to the idea of God as an outsider, which is why I find the figure of Jesus appealing. But he talks too much, and gets very serious towards the end. I am not that much in tune either with Salman Rushdie’s depiction of God in one of his novels ( “ Exhausted, he fell on the bed. But at that moment, God appeared at the foot of the bed. He was in the form of a middle aged accountant, with a balding pate and a small pot belly. “What is happening, Lord ?” “Lots of problems yaar”) though it is engaging to imagine God as looking somehow like Woody Allen.

I imagine God – among - us as maybe the leader of a group of bums, jumping into cattle trains and eternally criss crossing the United States, from coast to coast. A medicine man in a small town in Congo, served by an old rusting steamer – interesting. A travelling vacuum cleaner salesman in Eastern Europe – not so much, too insecure and obsequious. God- with- us would be poor but pretty self confident. An eccentric circus manager in Siberia, whose performers would be tattooed ex cons, juggling with chainsaws, clowns twisting balloons into obscene shapes, alcoholic elephants ( they easily get addicted to booze) – we are getting there.

Vishnu has a cycle of incarnations, the boar, the tortoise, etc. The characters I am imagining would be for a cycle of incarnations of Shiva. Mahadev is the quintessencial outsider. He lives half naked in the Himalayas, and threads a necklace of human heads for his sharp fanged wife, At midnight, sitting on a burning funeral pyre, he drinks wine using the skull of his enemies as a cup, and smokes marijuana, in the company of ghosts and demons. At noon, he plays with children in the dust of the road. Shiv Shankar Bhagwan, the hoboe king, the African snake oil merchant, the Siberian circus manager with a Russian war song tatooed on his back. Or the disco king in a dingy night club, in a small town near the border with Mexico. He wears an Elvis outfit, complete with rhinestones and huge belt buckle, and sports a glistening hairdo. Parvati is the dance floor queen, a hard drinking middle aged latin dance teacher.

Vaishavism imagines God as transcendence. Vishnu coming down on earth would therefore bring with him something “from above” – a message, teachings, a model of behaviour. Hence the seriousness of Rama, and of Krishna, in his later years, when he teaches the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna. Saivism is an immanent religion. Shiva and Shakti pervade the world. In the puranas, when Parvati tells Shiva she wants a baby, he is reluctant: “Shiva is in every man, Shakti in every woman” he says, “why do we need a child ?”. Shiva’s avatars would therefore be like more incadescent bits of melting rock, in a flow of lava, or like the foam on the crest of a great wave, or sparks flying from two clashing swords – they belong to the world, but are overflowing , in a splendid manner , with the divine energy of creation which pervades everything. We have all met people like this, who “ate” life, who radiated sex, or beauty, who gave the impression that reality, around them, bends like a light wave does when passing near a massive star. We meet them more in high school than in college, because most can’t bear the treadmill and drop out. Hence the odd professions.

But some avatars would make it to college. One would be a former Indian Institute of Technology physics professor, who continuously comes up with theories on matter which could blow up the universe ( Bhava Bhayankar). He lives in a tent with his wife, a sublimely beautiful gypsy sorceress, and her tribe, which keeps moving to and fro in desert areas between India and Pakistan. The generals of both countries keep trying to lay hands on him, sending their best commando units in hot pursuit. But Parvati keeps a watchful eye and they come back wild eyed, and shaking, telling tales of having pursued over the dunes an ever receding gypsy camp, trembling in the hot air, in which a huge headed, pot bellied boy flew a kite – sometimes hovering just above their grasp – made of paper on which were scribbled equations – and at night an extraordinarily beautiful woman would dance by the fire, and even atop of it- her feet would send burning logs rolling over the sand, as she kicked and heaved, like a living tongue of fire, sometimes joined by her husband, a sort of hopping – bumping Einstein with a booming laugh. Attempts to interrogate the professor’s other son, a renowned piercing artist in Chennai, have proved unsuccessful – he seems immune to all forms of torture.

There would probably also be animal avatars- a wild mustang in Arizona – the Chinese imagine the Ying principle as “ a wild mare running all over the earth, uncatchable”, and the yang as “ a dragon rising over the horizon”.