“What does that mean?”
“We have the perfect answer right here in front of us,” he
indicated a bowl of vegetable curry, once again employing food to
explain his message. “Curry was invented a very long time ago in
India to hide the taste of rotten meat. Today, most of India is
vegetarian, and as a result curried meat is rare. Curried vegetables,
however is the country’s most popular dish. Is this not absurd? Sure.
But it is also very tasty. Life is the same—perhaps it is accidental,
perhaps not, but this line of thinking is pointless anyway. Life is
wonderful. Curry vegetables. That is all the meaning there is.”
“And you eat curry vegetables for breakfast.”
“We eat whatever we can. This is a very poor country.”
CHAPTER 33
The time was right for me to share my dark secret with Haridas. For
too long a time I hadn’t dealt with the reality of being HIV-positive
and although he wasn’t a true doctor, I felt that he could offer me
some advice about living my life in the specter of death.
“We all live in the shadow of death,” he said. “None of us know
whether we are going to live to see the morning sun. We all have the
disease of mortality in our blood, not just you. The difference is that
you can see your mortality better than someone without this
affliction. But perhaps you are lucky. Is this not the thing that pushed
you to uncover the wonder of existence? You certainly have come a
long way in the short time you left home, and since you first came
here.
“So let us say that you have ten years to live, or more. Would
twice as much time, spent in sadness be better than a shorter, but
greater life, full of joy and truth? Lives are short no matter how we
look at them. We can’t control their length, but we must try in earnest
to control their depth.”
Then, one remarkable day, when my ankle was sufficiently healed
and I could walk without pain, I ventured out into the nearby woods.
After an hour of careful exploring I sat down on a rock and merely
observed my surroundings, letting them come to me rather than
running to them in my mind. Yards away I could make out the
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
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