Dualism in Panang

As I read the fast-paced essay, "The Devil and Hare Krishna," I envisioned a glistening flopping silver fish caught in a net while the island of Panang smacked its drooling lips, waiting impatiently to devour her in its sordid nightclubs and brothels. Gough’s adventures in Panang consider two basic elements of religious philosophy—good and evil—as she wages the internal, eternal battle of Eve in the Garden of Eden. When I look closer, however, I see Gough buffeted between stereotypical roles and uncertain of her identity or which role she wants: the "good" traditional woman, the "bad girl," or the feminist.

In the story, Gough is a weary traveler—well-traveled, well-educated, attractive and young—a privileged, modern Western woman. She first enters Panang as a stopover to Fiji, looking for work as an English teacher, instead, to be taken by her sleazy cab driver (the "Devil") to the Ta-wa house of prostitution. It was a dark place where "women, or possible just girls, were harnessed into leather miniskirts, low-cut Lycra tops and pink pumps and they lounged on bar stools and couches and sipped bright red drinks from tall glasses with straws, like Barbie dolls. Barbie dolls gone wrong," and "twice from a room beyond, screams broke out" (Gough 54). Is the devil showing Eve a glimpse of hell?

Gough gives the respectable woman’s response—the place is ghastly. Then, however, another voice comes from somewhere deep inside her, "secretly the place fascinated me" (Gough 54). That voice is pushing back against the expected good girl role, curious to know more about life, about the forbidden. Her identity blurs. Who is she really? Where does she fit? How can she identify an identity in this place if she doesn’t follow the established essential rules of women’s roles?

Gough escapes the To-wa unharmed, only to find herself at society’s other extreme when she takes a room at a religious Hare Krishna temple for the price of attending a nightly spiritual discussion, early morning chanting rituals, and an hour of daily housekeeping. I meet Margaret, Gough’s Nurse Ratchet-like bunkmate, who is surely the opposite of a Barbie doll. "Something vaguely icy about her chilled the dorm room when she swept through it. ‘Hare Krishna,’ she said when she stalked by me.[...].as if by command rather than in spiritual greeting" (Gough 56). Who ever heard of a cantankerous Krishna? Before becoming a Hare Krishna in Malaysia, Margaret was a housewife in Missouri. She didn’t find happiness in the traditional role of housewife. For her the temple seemed to wash away her old life and replace it with tranquility. So why doesn’t Margaret’s personality show any serenity? Perhaps she serves as a stern gatekeeper to Gough, modeling the two ageless traditionally accepted roles for a woman—devoted mate or cloistered nun—though she knows that happiness is found in neither.

Gough teaches English to adults by day but at night she swims in the fleshly nightlife of Panang. On Gough’s shoulder next to Eve stands the more modern essence of a struggling Theresa from "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," a sister in arms, combating some inner demon wrenching her away from the suffocating serenity of the conventional woman. On the other shoulder stands the grim Margaret—and drinking and dancing are both forbidden by her hosts, the Hare Krishna.

At her school, Gough is puzzled by the Asian men’s view of Western women, "as not quite real, a little barbaric and aggressive, certainly sexually permissive, and possibly alien" (Gough 61). This is certainly not a correct formula for the traditional "good" woman. Ironically, the perceived behaviors she puzzles over are the very ones that Gough toys with, seemingly not puzzled by her own inconsistent behavior. She is searching for a wearable identity.

Re-enter the Devil.

"My friend, you want job now?" (Gough 62) leers her original nemesis who then begins to stalk her. He is everywhere and Gough evades his advances. But then she takes a step toward him by obtaining a night job as a hostess in a semi-sleazy nightclub, paid to sit and drink with the male customers. "I’ve always been intrigued by a world populated by lost and dangerous souls" she says. ".[..].part of me wanted to step down off the path again, just for a while, and explore the darker places, the places not understood" (Gough 64). Any clear, definable identity is now philosophically confused as she is pulled by two powers. Blurred.

This blurring is evidenced when she describes the job. She declares it is fun talking with the men, then turns to shiver at the patrons in mutual disgust with a co-worker. Gough is scorning the apple as she tastes it, perhaps to alleviate the guilt of biting in. Derision justifies actions our mothers wouldn’t approve of. We say, "I’m doing this—but I’m not enjoying it. I’m just curious." There is more going on here than curiosity. Gough is bucking society’s strict code of conduct for women by swinging to the opposite end of the female experience—being a bad girl. However, she can’t get away from Margaret. Gough’s mind is chanting non-stop Hare Krishna. Hare Krishnas believe the body and spirit are at war. Perhaps this mental chanting is the spirit calling, and personified in Margaret.

Meanwhile the corporeal curiosity of Eve is winning: "I could feel my old self draining out of me" (Gough 67). She even finds herself waving back at the Devil through traffic.

Gough now dives in to fully experience the forbidden when she and her nightclub pals decide to visit the disreputable Ta-wa club. Keyed up and plumed in provocative attire, they arrive at the Ta-wa and Gough reasons, "I had to go inside because as a wandering sightseer of this world I had paid my admission at birth and had long since given up my card to live by the rules" (Gough 70). Gough is now fully asserting the existentialist outlook, choosing the freedoms of life’s experience over essentialist spiritualism or rules of behavior. She wants to make her own rules, her own fate and her own path.

And who is waiting on that path, but the Devil. He is tending bar at the Ta-wa, welcoming them to his lair. Gough watches enigmatically while her friend, Stella, throws back booze with the Devil. But her other friend, Belinda, becomes a catalyst for making choices when she nudges Gough.

"Laur, we’ve got to do something. This is dreadful, this place. Why are we here? This is disgusting. This is sick and wrong." (Gough 71)

Belinda has caused a new role, the feminist, to emerge in Gough. "I felt truly nauseated at the idea of women wooing and pampering men for money, however ancient the dynamic might be" (Gough 71).

Belinda throws a glass of beer in the Devil’s lap, the music stops, the lights go out and mayhem ensues.

But Gough isn’t worried that the lights have gone out. She has seen a light in some of the women’s eyes, something she needs to see: "that life burns like fire inside these seemingly captive women and I knew they wouldn’t allow the Devil their souls" (Gough 73). Gough acknowledges her confusion and wants out. She wants her old life back.

She awakens the spirit and chants Hare Krishna aloud, over and over, in the darkness. I’m struck by this jarring mental picture of Gough, dressed in a black miniskirt, gold tank top and lace-up leather sandals, chanting Hare Krishna in the dark melee of the Ta-wa. It’s like she is now walking a tightrope, trying to find a bearable identity in a world of roles that are defined by extremes. One extreme proffers a woman with the controlled life of a rigid and unpleasant Margaret, while another offers the corruption, danger and degradation found in the Ta-wa house. And we know it’s no fun being a feminist! I’m also struck by how the roles themselves distort—the role of aggressive feminist becomes a good role, protecting the safety and self-respect of women when they are seen as sexual objects. Being a sexual object could be considered a traditional role for any woman no matter how she identifies herself.

Gough finds an exit and escapes safely from the Ta-wa, luckier than Goodbar’s Teresa who is violently killed before she can resolve her identity. She’s luckier than Eve who is cast out of the garden and brings an eternal curse on all women.

I think Gough sees and rejects the absolutism of "good" and "evil" in terms of a traditional good girl, or a bad girl, or a feminist. She discovers that a fluid and flexible balance is vital to an authentic identity. It sometimes blurs. She acknowledges that the Devil is always there—tempting—but she is in charge of the experience. She discovers a higher power to ward off evil but she doesn’t have to wear it like armor or cloister herself in a garden, away from a life rich in experience.

"Good" and "Evil" are a duality—the premise that everything has an opposing force that must be, or will be in balance. Gough explores then rejects the extremes of good and evil she encounters in Panang, settling on an uneasy walk on the spectrum between the two extremes. To look realistically at the complexities of human existence, is to know that the roles of women are blurred and contradictory. Both good and evil. We can’t label our identity. There’s no pat answer to who we are.