Even before you open the door to the Korma Sutra, located at 447 Pennsylvania in Westport, the erotically colored windows entice you to think of trying more than one position. Once you're in, there's no better spread than the lunch buffet, weekdays 11-2:30 for only $8 per hedonist.

The price includes endless naan (barely leavened Indian bread), chai tea, and mango lassi (mango puree and yogurt you sip through a straw to cool your palate). It's fresh and sweet, but go easy on the lassi - more than three can make you full and possibly gassy.

Speaking of atmosphere, Korma Sutra excels. My friend Cassie, seated but already high on her first lassi, waxed rapt and marveled at the flavorful artwork that adorns the tall walls and windows.

"Check out that one," she said, nodding to a sumptuous Eastern-style mural to our north, Devi and the Lion. Brightly colored with splashes of turquoise, the art and interior were designed by Seraglio Interiors and Murals, a project of Patty Catto, associate professor at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Catto worked on the Westport Korma Sutra while on sabbatical, following a sojurn to India, where she had studied Gypsy folk dancing and Mughal miniature art, puppetry and costuming. Undoubtedly, this is what inspires her art with a sensuous warmth and whimsy, which mingles in the air of Korma Sutra with the aromas of cumin and curry and hot naan.

  After some conversational groping and foreplay, Cassie and I rose as if in unison with the plangent Hindu voodoo song playing somewhere, drawing us hungrily, inexorably - and repeatedly - to the buffet table. There, a heavenly gauntlet of gustatory delights stretched before us, divinely overprotected by the awning wings of the Indian deity Sneezegard.

  We made our way slowly down the line, piling on sample after sample of korma, masala, tandoori, biriyani, and those wonderful dumpling balls in sweet syrup, called jamun balls, that are mighty fun to jam in your cheeks and masticate gently like wads of fine French toast.

  Somewhere in the passion of sensation that ensued, Cassie and I found the aplomb to speak between bites. I remember she said something about being Scottish, to which I huskily murmured "lukka thungle mawt?," which is how one quips "like a single malt?" with a mouth full of naan and tandoori chicken.

   My own heritage is predominantly English, so we plundered that buffet like the Anglos did India. When finally we thought of ending our rapacious frenzy of colonial s/m, Cassie was on her third lassi, and I was greedily tippling chai.

"Holy mother of Vishnu," I managed to ejaculate between jamun balls, "that was great, Cassie." Lazily, I smeared my moist forehead with the back of my korma-dappled hand.

  "Yeah, that was fun," she breathed, obviously still seeing stars. "Thanks for inviting me." I could tell her world had been authentically rocked by the dazzling variety of the buffet, if not my witty finesse otherwise.

  Eventually I was able to peer through my beached-whale afterglow, and meandered over to the register. I paid the bill with casual swank, and walked Cassie back out to an unusually balmy, sunny winter day.

  We stood together on the sidewalk, savoring the last moments of what we both knew had been something strange, wonderful, and rarely shared. We hugged briefly and smiled at each other, and parted. As Cassie elegantly crossed Pennsylvania to her car, she let loose a magnificent rolling hula-popper fart, which thundered up Scot-free from the cobblestone corridor.

  My port brow arched high and a squint unopened my starboard eye. Aye, thought I, zipping up my mack with fond relish, there's a fine lassi!

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