Soliloquy

He had seen the sunset over the fire-ravaged hills of Sigiriya, and he had witnessed the prostitutes of Saigon at work. He had glimpsed Everest on a misty, cloud-covered early spring day, and he had heard the echoes of silence after dusk in Thimphu. In Kuala Lumpur, he was taken for a student peddling his way home and asked to wait on tables while being proffered roti canai; in the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh, he had wept openly in the company of strangers.

In Luang Prabang, he had been shaken from his reverie of self-confidence on the Mekong, and he had been dazzled by the lights of Bangkok. In Banaras, he had asked the Ganges for answers she would not have known, and in Rishikesh, he had seen her descend from the locks of Siva in a fury seldom associated with her.

In Calcutta, he had hobnobbed with the bhadralok of the Coffee House, and in Bombay, he had stumbled across Ballard Estate for berry pulav at Britannia. In Madras, he was taken for a local, and in Bangalore, he was mistaken for a foreigner. In Pondicherry, he had grown fat, and in Amritsar, he had grown obnoxious.

In Bodh Gaya, he had tried to walk in the footsteps of Sakyamuni; in Sarnath, he had faltered and sat down in awe of the Ashokan pillar. In Delhi, he had merged himself into Chandni Chowk; in Chandigarh, he had been impressed by the idea of an India of the future. In Cochin, he had fallen, and in Margao, he had learnt to rise. In Surat, he had learnt the best way to eat fafda-jalebi with sweet-smelling kadhi, and in Poona, he had come out of his trance. And in the Deccan, he had learnt to dance.

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