Priya stood beside Asha with Jagdish on her shoulder and her bamboo rod in her hand. “We don’t have to leave right this minute if you’re not ready.”
Asha looked out across the lake at the grebes gliding across the water. “I’m ready now.”
The nun touched Asha’s arm. “It’s all right to grieve.”
“Why would I grieve? He wasn’t mine, not even when we slept together. He was always hers. I didn’t have him before, and I don’t have him now. So his death doesn’t change anything.” Asha began walking away. “It doesn’t change anything at all.”
Chapter 4
1
Asha strode along the mountain path, only rarely pointing out the odd tree root or rock underfoot. Priya followed a few paces behind with her bamboo rod in hand and the little mongoose Jagdish perched on her shoulder. The blind woman never stumbled and never once complained about the pace or the path.
“How much daylight is left?” the nun asked.
“Too little.” Asha poked a sliver of ginger into the corner of her mouth and began chewing. “We may not reach the next village before nightfall. I’ll try to find someplace sheltered from the wind for us to sleep.”
They walked on. Asha minded the setting sun as she followed the path down the rocky hillside into the forest. Brittle brown leaves crunched softly underfoot as the fading daylight filtered through the yellow and crimson leaves overhead. Few scents remained to tell of the summer bounty and now the forest smelled only faintly of earth and decay, laced with the light fragrance of the white lotuses blooming in Priya’s hair.
“Asha?” The nun petted the mongoose on her shoulder as she swept the path ahead with her bamboo rod. “If you had a glass of water, and the level of the water was half the height of the glass, how would you describe the glass?”
“Half empty.” The herbalist glanced back. “Is that supposed to tell you something about me? That I only see the negative, the void, the failing, the disappointments in life?”
The nun nodded. “When we ask that question of children, yes. But I already know that you are a pessimist. I asked the question for a different reason. I wanted to point out to you the great deception of the mind, the deception of western philosophy.”
“And what deception is that?”
“The illusion of duality,” Priya said. “It’s a natural error, but the rise of the Ahura Mazdan Temple in the west has spread it far and wide, as far as my temple in Kolkata and probably your family’s home in Kathmandu. The Mazdans see the world in terms of opposites. Creator and destroyer, light and darkness, good and evil. They’ve been teaching this philosophy since I was young, and now it is common for people everywhere to see the world in such terms. Large and small, hot and cold, young and old. Everything must be labeled such, everything must choose a side, as though the entire universe were preparing for a great war.”
“Your point?” Asha continued down the path, deeper into the forest, deeper into the shadows. The air grew steadily cooler.
“My point is that there is another way to see the world. A better way.”
“Then how do you answer the question? If the glass is not half empty or half full, then what is it?”
Priya smiled. “The glass is larger than amount of water it holds.”
Asha sighed. “It’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. When you say that the glass is half empty, as you did, you are focusing on the half without water and ignoring the half that is full. But if you say the glass is half full, you make the same error, ignoring the half that is empty. If you are to see the world as it truly is, then you must see both halves of the glass at the same time, both empty and full. Thus, to describe the glass properly, you must describe all of it at once, which is to say that the glass is larger than its contents. Do you see the difference?”
Asha ducked under a tree branch. “Is that really better? I mean, who cares about the glass? The whole point of the glass is the water. Without any water, the glass is useless.”
Priya stopped abruptly, frowning. Then she ducked under the tree branch and continued on. “I’m just offering you another way to look at the world. A way that isn’t tied to your own feelings, a way of thinking outside the self. Dispassionate. Open-minded. I worry about you. If you spend your life only seeing the darkness, you may come to believe that darkness is all that exists.”
Asha pushed through a curtain of leaves hanging across the trail and saw two small houses in the distance, two little mud and wood shacks leaning into the shadows by the side of the path.
“Houses,” she said softly.
The left shack’s window and door gaped dark and vacant. One wall had lost several planks and the thatching on the roof was perilously thin, revealing the timbers. The right one stood in better repair, though still crumbling from neglect, and it had a tattered cloth hanging across the window and the doorway as well.
“Can you describe these houses?” the nun asked.
Asha heard a dry cough inside the house on the right. She heard nothing from the house on the left. She shrugged and said, “Half empty.”
2
Asha approached the curtained doorway slowly, calling out, “Hello? Is there someone here?” No one answered. She looked around the path and the empty house across the way, but there was no sign of anyone else around. Priya shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
Asha cocked her head and closed her eyes. She listened with her right ear, listening to the soft music of all living things, the harmonies of plant and animal and human souls. She heard the shushing and sighing of the trees and the frenetic buzzing of the forest’s ants and beetles, and even a few birds and snakes, some of them far away. And from inside the house she heard the beating of human hearts, the gentle tides of warm blood flowing through aged bodies, the faint humming of human souls only barely alive and barely aware.
“Someone’s here.” Asha drew back the curtain in the doorway and leaned inside. She saw six bodies lying on the floor, all resting peacefully on their backs or sides, eyes closed, chests rising and falling with an almost invisible rhythm.
“How many?” Priya asked.
“Six. All alive, but…” Asha stepped inside and knelt beside the first person, an old man with skin so dry and shriveled it felt like tree bark. He was cool to the touch. Moving on, she found them all the same. All elderly, frail, rough, and cool.
“Are they dying? Is it a disease?” the nun asked.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Asha said as she inspected the last body. “They don’t seem ill, just very old. Close to death, really.” She set her bag on the floor and rummaged through it for her tools. She pulled out a small mirror and held it over a woman’s mouth and watched the tiny plume of fog form on the glass. “Barely breathing, but the lungs are dry. Weak pulses, but steady. They may not be able to wake up. Too weak to move, no way to feed themselves. They’ll die soon.”
“How strange. Is there no one caring for them?”
Asha looked around the shadowed room. She saw six bodies in tattered clothes, each one covered by a moth-eaten blanket, each of their heads near the center of the room where a cracked and stained wooden bowl sat. The bowl was empty. “I don’t know. Maybe someone else lives here, someone younger who takes care of them. A nurse or a monk or a child. Maybe they’ve gone out for food.”
“What should we do?”
Asha glanced out the window. “It’s late. We’ll stay the night here and look after these people. Hopefully their caretaker will come back soon and then we can ask about their condition. Maybe I can help. Maybe not.”