A Cult above

Satan, full moon nights, desperate housewives, Elvis lovers and the colour black. These, and many more such offbeat interests, bring together Mumbaikars. Suparna Thombare reports.

On a breezy January night, a ferry slowly drifts on the Arabian Sea, away from the Gateway of India. The full moon casts a hard silver light on the seventeen people aboard. A woman stands at the head of the group, speaking in a soft, deep voice.  After a while, at her behest, the group hold up something in their hands and turn towards the moon.

It is a piece of rose-coloured crystal. In the other hand, is a piece of rectangular card. There is an air of anticipation as the light from the moon lights up their faces.
“Hold the crystal to the moon and energise it,” says the woman. “Keep it close to your heart and feel the vibrations. Repeat after me: I love myself. I am at peace with the universe.”

Welcome to the monthly meetup of the Mumbai branch of Tarot India Network.  The woman is Swati Prakash, founder of the group and instructor for the night. The oddball group — financial brokers, models, housewives, men, women, the young and not-so-young — is on a tarot journey on the first full moon night of autumn. The rectangular piece of card they are holding is a tarot lovers’ card.

They have come together for this mystic tarot session straight from their work. Fauzia, for instance. She is a 40-something ad filmmaker from Goregaon who has been reading tarot for the past eight years and she came to the session with a sole intention: to render her spell. “The atmosphere is intense and the night is truly beautiful.” A full moon night, say tarot enthusiasts, lends tarot sessions a lot more energy. “The moonlight brings the crystal’s healing touch into our lives,” says Fauzia.

As the night moves on, the conversation drifts from tarot to the their own lives. The mystic night ends with, as Swati puts it, “people leaving the ship
energised”.

The tarot card group is just one of the many offbeat urban cults that Mumbai is home to. In a city known for breeding loneliness, it’s no surprise that people come together over common interests. Interests which can sometimes take a turn towards the bizarre.

Across the city in a dim garage in Bandra, a group tattoo artists form of Mumbai’s many Goth cults. They like to set themselves apart from the crowd with their trademark long tresses, body piercings and tattoos spread over almost every inch of their bodies. And they wear black. Because the Goth subculture emphasises darkness. “Throw in all the colours in the universe and what you get is black,” says Alwyn, the Goth who owns a tattoo parlour on Hill Road in Bandra. “People say black is evil. But everything, including life, has a dark side to it. Darkness is always there, it’s the light that pierces the dark. So we accept the dark emotions like anger, anguish. That’s the way to be”.

Alwyn and his fellow Goths listen to trance music, idolise Wolverine and Hulk, and zoom around on their Bullets. The ten of them are bound together by another factor — the bio-mechanical tattoo. “This kind of tattoo doesn’t end and doesn’t have any definitive meaning. It is just a symbol of the oneness of metal and nature,” says Nash.

Another cult that derives from metal and darkness are the Satanists. There are several youngsters who follow the eleven rules of Satanism drafted by Californian Anton Szandor LaVey in 1969. Aditya Mehta is one of them. This 23-year-old Gujarati had always been anti-God and anti-idol worship. “Satanists never put anyone else above them. It is about self worship,” says Aditya who got into Satanism after a brush with Death Metal bands.

A member of the rock band Exhumation, he lives his life by the rules of the Satanic bible. A sample: do not kill non-human animals unless it is for food or unless you are attacked.  “I draw from the rules as and when I need them. But the biggest rule of Satanism is ‘don’t be stupid’.

Satanists can never be stupid,” pronounces Aditya.

There are many other cults and sub-cultures in the city that never sleeps. From the innocuous Mumbai Nightlife Group to the loaded Mumbai Desperate Housewives group (fans of the serial) and the Sex and the City cult (not fans of the serial), Mumbai’s cults are a colourful lot. But in a city perennially suffering from a time crunch, it can be difficult for cults to stay afloat. Meetings become infrequent, and then peter out.

The Raellians, a group that believes the beings from outer space created humans, had a cult here, but had to wrap it up due to declining numbers. And the London-based organiser of the Elvis cult had to call it a day and went home, disappointed by the lack of response.