35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

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EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
He slept standing on one leg, too, this sadhu – although at the
moment he was leaning against a wall. He ate only warm milk in
which Kit-Kat bars had been soaked. Or so I was told. I wonder
which mystic treatise advised this diet as ideal for someone in his
position. How long did he propose to keep this penance up, anyway?
‘He will finish in just seven year,’ my best informant, a paan
wallah, said authoritatively, handing me a three-inch triangular
wad of leaf. On first bite I thought I recognised the taste of industrial
disinfectant mixed with birdseed soaked in eau de cologne, then very
sweet string, typewriter correction fluid, gravel of various flavours,
battery innards that made my teeth feel as if I were chewing on live
electric wire, and a good deal of the kind of stuff you scrape off
lawnmower blades.
It was not the best choice for breakfast, and I was still encountering
remnants of it hiding in crevices and folds of my mouth twelve
hours later.
‘Seven year?’ I tried to say through the mess in my mouth. ‘Woth
ee goan oo enn?’
That was anyone’s guess. Sadhus don’t seem to retire, and the
public would certainly miss the Changing of the Leg.
‘He is great saint,’ the paan wallah announced, as if he were
lauding the talent of someone who builds model ships in bottles.
‘The saints they do what the god he want them to doing.’ He nodded
to himself. ‘He has no, er . . . this thing . . .’ He tapped his head.
‘Ears?’ I tried.
‘Hah! No mind . . . yes. This saint he is not having mind of own
like you and me. Such man they are having too much the fate.’
‘Fate?’
‘Yeees . . . Fate in the god, isn’t it? They are not even noticing you
and me people.’
‘Oh.’ I finally got it. ‘Faith – you mean faith?’
He nodded sagely, repeating, ‘Fate in the god – like the god his
childrens, no?’
‘Ah.’
‘You have wife?’
I confessed that I did.
‘Any shoes?’