Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"My friend when he travels without wife never eats onions." He was enumerating vegetables on his fingers. "Carrots. Root vegetables. I don't eat, because it is killing the living plant. I eat tops only."

"Potatoes?"

"Some people eat. But for me—no. So many live things can be found on a potato."

"Live things, such as...?"

"Bacteria and molds. Why should they be killed because of me?"

For this reason, Jains habitually wore masks, so as not to inhale any gnats that might be hovering near their open mouths; and they swept at the surface of water to disperse—what? water bugs? mosquito larvae?—before they drank. It was a strict interpretation of the Do Not Kill stricture: nothing must be killed, and that included flies and mold.

"Fruit is good, but ... bananas can be tricky. It depends on time of day." Up went his admonitory finger. "Banana is gold in morning. Silver in afternoon. Iron in evening. One should not eat bananas in evening. Also, no yogurt in evening, but yogurt in morning is beneficial."

"Indian food is spicy, though," I said.

"Not beneficial. Chilies and pickle make angerness. They increase cruel nature."

I could see that he enjoyed putting me in the know, because there is a freight of detail in Indian life—an ever-present cargo of dogma, of strictures, of lessons, of distinctions—that turns Indians into mono-loguers. Their motive seemed pedantic, not to convert you but to exaggerate how little you knew of life.

I ate some of the food I'd brought and offered a bit to him. He looked confused, but took it. He said, "I am so ashamed. I didn't offer you anything because you were writing. But now you offered. This is my fault. You set a better example."

"That's a compliment."

"Shake my hand," Kapoorchand said suddenly. I leaned across the rocking railway compartment and did so. He said, "You are generous. Good. I have many theories about handshakes. If you do it like this"—he extended a limp hand—"you are not generous. You are a cheat. Or it might mean you have only daughters. I shook a man's hand like that once and asked him, 'How many daughters?' He said, 'Three.' Then he said, 'Why did you not ask about sons?'" Kapoorchand paused, allowing me to savor this moment. "I said, 'Because you have no sons.' Man was astonished. 'How did you know?'"

"What's the answer?"

"Handshake. Weakness. Weak sperm cannot make sons."

"Any more theories?" I reminded myself that this man was a chartered accountant on his way to Jaipur to spend a day looking through the entries of a company's ledgers.

"Yes, many. Those who become angry but do not express their angerness get sick. Many die of cancer. They hold the angerness inside their body and it kills them."

"Possibly."

"Do you have theories, Mr. Paul?"

"I have a theory that no house should be taller than a palm tree."

"That is good. I have a haveli some distance from here. Modest size is there."

"I also have a theory that nothing matters."

Kapoorchand stared at me, looking dismayed.

Feeling that I had shocked him (I was simplifying something that Leonard Woolf had once written), I said, "And I sometimes notice that when a man is looking at you and telling a lie, he touches his eye or his face."

"That is so!" Kapoorchand said. "There is so much untruth in the world. That is another reason I will become a sadhu. My brothers did so. My father became a saint." He fumbled with his wallet and drew out a small faded photograph. "Here is his picture."

Even faded and in black and white, the photo showed a man with a kindly face, gray-bearded, a white turban on his head.

"First he waited for some years. When he saw that I was settled, he said that he would become a saint. He lived for fifteen years as a saint."

"How did he go about this?"

"He came to me. He said, 'Look after your mother.' I did so. I do so still. He then renounced all worldly things. He gave up shoes, going barefoot only. Sleeping on floor. Owning nothing. He became a sadhu, a holy man. He went about by walking in bare feet. Simple clothes, living in ashrams, going from place to place, sometimes walking fifteen kilometers a day. He could not visit me, but I could visit him, if he allowed it."

"Was he happy?"

"Very happy."

And Kapoorchand explained that another branch of the Jains, the Digambara sect, renounced clothes, too. They kept to the forests, living naked, appearing in public only every dozen years or so for the great spiritual gathering, with ritual bathing in the Ganges and other rivers, called Kumbh Mela.

"You mentioned that you meditate."

"Three hours daily, in morning time. I recite Jain scriptures. I say prayers."

"Tell me one. I want to write it down."

He said, or rather intoned,

I forgive all beings.

May all beings forgive me.

I have friendship with all,

And vengeance with none.

He went to sleep soon after that, while I scribbled, thinking: This man is the perfect traveling companion.

***