esalen! esalen!

Karim, le jeune narrateur, reste un moment chez sa mère après la séparation de ses parents. Enfin il va habiter chez son père (le Bouddha du titre du livre) et sa compagne Eva :
"That night Eva put me in her clean little spare room. Before getting into bed I went into the large bathroom beside her bedroom, where I hadn't been before. The bath was in the center of the room, with an old-fashioned brass spigot. There were candles around the edge of it and an old aluminium bucket beside it. And on the oak shelves were rows of lipsticks and blushers, eye-make-up removers, cleansers, moisturizers, hair-sprays, creamy-soaps for soft skin, sensitive skin and normal skin; soaps in exotic wrappings and pretty boxes; there were sweet-peas in a jam-jar and an egg-cup, rose-petals in wedgwood saucers ; there were bottles of perfume, cotton wool, conditioners, hair-bands, hair-slides and shampoos. It was confusing : such self-attention repelled me, and yet it represented a world of sensuality, of smell and touch, of indulgence and feeling wich aroused me like an unexpected caress as I undressed, lit the candles and got into the bath in this room of Eva's."

 Et pour les initiés :
"Pyke was a star of the flourishing alternative theatre scene. He was one of the most original directors around. He'd worked and taught at the Magic Theater in San Francisco; had therapy at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur with Fritz Perls ; worked in New York with Chaikin and La Mama."

The Buddha of Suburdia, Hanif Kureishi