decided secretly that they were the guardian angels that had steered
me out of the way of any possible dangers in my life. Sometimes, for
example, when I’d nearly get hit by a car while crossing the street, I
almost felt as if they’d guided my feet to safety. It was incidents like
this that made me bend my own rules about irrational superstition
and give some credence to the possibility that my boots were in fact
mystical objects sent to protect me from harm. Of course I would
never admit such an irrational belief to anyone. All I knew was that I
had a close relationship with my shoes and that in itself was enough
to give my life meaning. The problem wasn’t that most people would
justifiably consider this strange, but that at the time I had no idea
what meaning meant. What did it really mean to mean something?
Since little had ever meant much to me outside of Charly and my
boots, I was hardly the person to answer that question.
CHAPTER 21
The plane landed safely in Calcutta, and we proceeded to the train
station where we were to book seats for the arduous 36-hour journey
to Bombay. I asked Oscar why it was necessary to take the train,
when we could fly for fifty dollars more and arrive there in three
hours.
“See Jake, you’re looking at this all wrong. We’re in India now,
and if we’re going to suck up the culture, we might as well do it right.
There’s no better way to get to know the Indian people than to sit in
a hot, cramped little box filled with sweating peasants wearing
bedsheets for clothes and emaciated salespeople coming by every five
minutes to wake you up and ask if you want to buy some of their
coffee.”
“Sounds dreamy,” I said while scratching my head, “Is
masochism a part of your new spiritual training?”
“I’m not a masochist. It’s just that if I’m going to learn to
become a spiritual leader, I might as well suffer a little bit. No one
takes country-club prophets very seriously anymore. In this so-called
‘New Age,’ enlightenment seems to be moving gradually from the sky
to the soil, and as a result, you’ve got to get a little dirt under your
fingernails to command respect these days. Don’t worry, chum, we’ll
have a good time. There’s supposed to be some great scenery, and the
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
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