“And my time is now,” I answered, agitated.
“There may be a chance that you will be killed, too,” he warned.
Sudden silence fell, and for a moment I felt strangely free. I was
no longer afraid to die. There was simply no question about what I
had to do.
Realizing that I had inadvertently played Arjuna to his Krishna,
I inquired whether or not Haridas considered himself a Hindu. “That
is a good question,” he said, scratching his long beard. “I once read
something very striking, written by a tourist on a bathroom wall in
Kathmandu. Three famous philosophical views of the world were
inscribed:
To be is to do, — Socrates
To do is to be, — Sartre
and
Do be do be do, — Frank Sinatra.”
Haridas grinned sweetly and admitted, “I agree with Sinatra.”
That night I had a dream in which I finally confronted the fellow that
had been following me throughout this trip. In the dream I was
sitting in a cafe in India, sipping tea and reading the paper when a tall
figure walked up and sat down at my table. He laid down his sickle
and pulled his hood back to wipe the sweat from his brow. His face
looked vaguely familiar, as if I had seen it sometime, a long time ago.
Maybe before I was born.
He was also surprisingly friendly. “Goddamn it’s hot around
here,” he grumbled. “This heavy black robe sure keeps in the heat.”
He was tired. I poured him a cup of tea.
“You must really have your work cut out for you in this country,”
I said in-between sips.
“Barely time for a break,” he said, pulling out a pack of
cigarettes. “Care for a smoke?”
“No thanks, I’m trying to stay healthy.”
“You?” he laughed, “Aren’t you the guy who keeps trying to kill
himself? Seems like I keep getting false alarms from you all the time.”
He pulled out a clipboard from under his robe. “Let’s see…On the
beach in Israel, on the beach in Thailand, in the mountains in
Nepal…Jeez, you’re bad at this. You narrowly missed the earthquake
in Cairo, a plane crash in the Himalayas and an FBI bullet too. Listen,
if you want to end it, the best way is a plastic bag and some duct
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
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