BANGKOK, Thailand — US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's rebellious daughter Maura voted with her feet to escape America, "in fear and terror," 25 years ago.

Now she has written a satirical book skewering American diplomats, United Nations officials and others for being mindlessly indifferent to Asia's religions, poverty and political bloodshed.

Her father was the American ambassador to India in the mid-1970s, but in her book, good people are desperate, sensitive souls, seeking harmony through Hinduism and Buddhism.

Upper-class Indian characters also appear, constantly leeching on Americans for US visas, expensive gifts or forbidden sex.

Poor, humble and pious Indians, meanwhile, nobly offer the book's class-conscious foreigners refreshing wisdom and revelations.

Puta and Pula

Moynihan, who resides among the lofty, decaying pagodas of Kathmandu, Nepal, said in an interview, "We have a joke in Kathmandu, that some people come visit us and they have a virus called, 'PUTA, Psychologically Unfit to Travel in Asia.' "

Moynihan laughed and quipped, "Well, I have another virus called, 'PULA, Psychologically Unfit to Live in America.'

"My real fear, and terror, and dislike of the West comes from the fact that that civilization created the atom bomb.

"I'd rather be in the civilization that created the Buddha 'dharma'."

Dharma refers the teachings of Gautama "Buddha" Siddhartha, and a handful of other Hindus and Buddhists, who lived on the Indian subcontinent about 2,500 years ago.

They proclaimed people could free themselves from life's woes by abandoning desire and achieving a heightened psychological, moral and spiritual awareness.

After an upbringing in her father's liberal, Irish-Catholic family, Moynihan said, "I'm just much more inspired and stimulated and interested in ancient Hindu-Buddhist civilizations, and I would just prefer to live in an ancient Hindu-Buddhist civilization.

In America, "technology has way too much intrusion and control, and technology is defining our culture. Not mythology, fantasy, community rituals.

"When I get back to India or Nepal, I just go out in the street and there's some wonderful festival going on, and it unites the community, and it allows for celebration and ritual and fantasy, and continuation of tradition, and definition of identity.

"In America, there's none of that. People seem lost and unhappy.

"Unfortunately, after living in India, you know, any place outside of Asia seems terminally dull. I can't adjust."

She added, "In America, I always feel like I have to defend myself, and hide and conceal myself."

Appalling Malls

Thankful she is able to live amid the ancient, wretched opulence of street life in India and Nepal, Moynihan added, "I loathe cars and shopping malls and football."

She considers Kathmandu home, and has been shuttling between America and the Indian subcontinent, "in and out, 25 years."

Grinning, Moynihan added, "Had I had control of my karma, and life, I would have been here full-time during the 25 years.

"I've mostly made a living as a writer. I've written several screenplays, which are the only times I've made a lot of money as a writer. None of them have gotten made, but I was paid, which is fine by me.

"I sold one (screenplay) to Oliver Stone who I met in Tibet," in 1995.

"It was a tremendous experience to work with Oliver, I learned so much. We're still friends."

Her business card lists her as involved in "art, design, imports," but some of her best work appears in her new first book, titled, Masterji and Other Stories.

Published in 1999 in India, by New Delhi-based Roli Books, some of her hilarious, fictitious tales describe how male low-caste servants compete with upper-class Indians to seduce and bed distraught, bored, adventuresome American and European women.

The foreign females, meanwhile, often appear neurotic, tormented by their experiences in India while schmoozing, slumming or trying to transcend.

Some of these question-plagued women, including a timid US embassy official, become frustrated and emboldened enough to cast off their sheltered, geocentric upbringing and escape into the lusty and amazing world of the Indian subcontinent's chaos, while occasionally pondering obscure guidance from obscure gurus.

The Joy of Lust

Her stories also track India's absurd, contemporary culture clashes.

Moynihan's chirpy Indian-English dialogue is also accurate: delightfully loopy, kitsch and eccentric.

Plots agonize over the lameness displayed by some US Embassy envoys based in New Delhi, and how everyone grapples with India's poverty and often-bizarre society.

Some stories entwine scenes of blushing lust.

When the New Delhi-based American embassy official named Sara sleeps with Bob, who is a randy British official at the World Bank, she is eyed by his Indian servant, Hari:

"Sara came out, in her underwear. Hari crouched low so he could see through the slats in the door panels. Her skin was the same hue as her white underpants, her stomach sagged, her breasts hung limply under her raised arms."

Love-struck Hari, jealous of big boss Bob, aches for taboo Sara. Hari wants to upgrade.

"He'd gone to prostitutes but the rooms were filthy and the girls were sullen and bored and it was all over so quickly. Bob didn't go to dirty hotels in Old Delhi, Bob took women into his large, comfortable bedroom which Hari cleaned for him."

When Sara finally makes it with the shy Hari, the American's libertine enthusiasm stuns the squirming servant.

"He never imagined a girl with a good job behaving this way. Sara pulled off her dress and lay on top of him. Hari was shocked. He held his breath, afraid of what she might do next. Suddenly she yelled and collapsed, panting on the bed. Hari exhaled."

Report: Starvation Kills People

Not everyone is groping.

Moynihan's book also describes the selfishness and gallantry among some Indians, Tibetans, Americans and others, who are fueled by cynicism and hope.

"Sending checks to Save the Children, or UNICEF, pays salaries for more rich white people to write reports about how starvation kills people," Sam, a foreigner, tells his friends in one short story.

In another tale, an American who becomes the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi, starts to feel empathy toward Tibetans who are allegedly being tortured by Chinese in Tibet.

But the American diplomat then suffers a nightmare:

"In his dreams he heard people howling and sobbing and saw a wasteland of corpses and skulls stretching across the entire continent of Asia."

The American diplomat awakens, ditches the Tibetans, flees the area, and notes in his sanitized official report: "Would much rather be in Bangkok."

Born in July, 1957 in Albany, New York, Moynihan writes from experience as a privileged daughter who grew up in the corridors of US diplomacy.

Her love affair with the Indian subcontinent began when her father was posted to New Delhi.

"For high school years we all moved to India, and he was the United States Ambassador to India," she said during a recent stopover in the Thai capital.

"And that was the transforming experience of my life. The greatest experience of my life. I've never been able to, never gotten over it. And I hope I never do."

Her father —whose New York, Democratic Party seat in the Senate is currently being contested by First Lady Hillary Clinton — was the American ambassador in New Delhi "from '73 to '75," she added.

The ambassador's spunky daughter was "15, 16, 17" years old.

"Imagine being that age and moving to the vast, teeming, extraordinary Indian subcontinent and, you know, you're a student so it's your job to study.

"I studied Urdu and Hindi and Sanskrit, and Barianattiyan dance, and Indian history, and yoga and, you know, as well as math, French, science. But it was this total full immersion into the Indian subcontinent."

She certainly looks immersed in the color photograph which graces the reverse side of her book.

A Guitar Way of Knowing

The photo shows Moynihan sitting under tree at a temple in Nepal, strumming a guitar, while flanked by seven exotic-looking Hindu "sadhus" — self-proclaimed holymen who have dropped out of society to achieve unimaginable bliss.

Moynihan added, "I want to work as a nurse in the slums of South Asia. That's how I want to spend the next 20 years. It's been my plan for about four or five years now."

Moynihan also hopes to do more work for the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees, and write two more books — one fiction and the other non-fiction — about Tibet.

"I consider myself a cultural refugee from McDonald's, and they (Tibetans) are political refugees from Mao."

Loyal to the party of her father, Moynihan blasted her family's newest political opponents back in America.

"These extreme, right-wing Republicans are such a harsh, ugly new breed," she added, frowning.

"A lot of my friends who work in the Senate prefer (Republican) Jesse Helms. He's gracious and courteous to his Democratic colleagues.

"He invited me to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on humanitarian aid to the Tibetan refugees" sheltering in India, Nepal and elsewhere.

In her 1997 testimony, Moynihan told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

"Exhort China's leaders to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, continue aid to the UNHCR [United Nations High Commission for Refugees] mission in Kathmandu, and assign a full-time protection officer to supervise the Tibet-Nepal border" to prevent vulnerable refugees from being beaten, raped or killed during their escapes.

She also advised the committee that US taxpayers should "continue to provide financial and technical assistance" to the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile, "until such time that the Tibetan refugees can return to their homeland without fear or persecution."

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Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

Richard S. Ehrlich's Asia news, non-fiction book, plus hundreds of photographs are available at his website http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent