Nine Lives(11)

“Just after 1:30 p.m. I went to take my food, and was just about to start eating when Prayogamati cried out loudly. I rushed to look after her—it was clear her condition was not good at all. There was no one around except a boy at the gate, so I sent him off for the doctor. When I came back, I held her hand and she whispered that she wanted to stop all remaining food. Her suffering was too much for her now. She said that for her death was as welcome as life, that there was a time to live and a time to die. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘the time has come for me to be liberated from this body.’

“By that time, our guruji had returned, and he gathered the community. By early afternoon all the gurus and matajis were there guiding her and sitting together around the bed. Others came to touch her feet. The room was full of people, and so was the veranda outside. Everyone was chanting the namokara mantra, singing bhajans and kirtans and reading the Jain texts which explain the nature of the soul. Everyone was there to support Prayogamati, to give her courage as she began to slip away.

“Around 4 p.m., the doctor said he thought she was about to die, but she held on until 9 p.m. It was very peaceful in the end. It was dark by then, and the lamps were all lit around the room. Her breathing had been very difficult that day, but towards the end it became easier. I held her hand, the monks chanted and her eyes closed. For a while, even I didn’t know she had gone. She just slipped away.

“When I realised she had left, I wept bitterly. We are not supposed to do this, and our guruji frowned at me. But I couldn’t help myself. I had followed all the steps correctly until she passed away, but then everything I had bottled up came pouring out. Her body was still there, but she wasn’t in it. It was no longer her.

“The next day, 15 December, she was cremated. They burned her at 4 p.m. All the devotees in Indore came: over 2,000 people. It was a Sunday. The following morning, at dawn, I got up and headed off. There was no reason to stay.

“It was the first time as a nun that I had ever walked anywhere alone.”



The following day, after she had finished her breakfast, I went to say goodbye to Prasannamati Mataji.

“Her time was fixed,” she said quickly reverting to the subject of Prayogamati, like a pigeon returning to its coop. “She passed on. She’s no longer here. I have to accept that reality. All things decay and disappear in time.”

Mataji fell silent, apparently lost in thought. There was a long pause. “Now my friend has gone,” she said eventually, “it is easier for me to go too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have seen over forty sallekhanas,” she said. “But after Prayogamati’s, I realised it was time I should set out to that end as well.”

“You mean you are thinking of following …?”

“I am on the path already,” said Mataji. “I have started cutting down the food I eat. I have given up milk or curds, salt and sugar, guava and papaya, leafy vegetables and ladies’ fingers. Each month I give up something new. All I want to do now is to visit a few more holy places before I go.”

“But why?” I asked. “You are not ill like she was. Isn’t it an absurd waste of a life? You’re only thirty-eight.”

“I told you before,” she said. “Sallekhana is the aim of all Jain munis. It is the last renouncement. First you give up your home, then your possessions. Finally you give up your body.”

“You make it sound very simple.”

“When you begin to understand the nature of reality, it is very simple. It is a good way—the very best way—to breathe your last, and leave the body. It is no more than leaving one house to enter another.”

“Do you think you will meet her in another life?” I said. “Is that it?”

“It is uncertain,” said Mataji. “Our scriptures are full of people who meet old friends and husbands and wives and teachers from previous lives. But no one can control these things.”

Again Mataji paused, and looked out of the window. “Though we both may have many lives ahead of us, in many worlds,” she said, “who knows whether we will meet again? And if we do meet, in our new bodies, who is to say that we will recognise each other?”

She looked at me sadly as I got up to go and said simply, “These things are not in our hands.”





The Dancer of Kannur


In the midnight shadows of a forest clearing bounded on one side by a small stream and a moonlit paddy field, and on the other by the darkness of a rubber plantation and a green canopy of coconut palms, lit only by a bonfire and a carpet of flickering camphor lights, a large crowd has gathered, silhouetted against the flames. Most have walked many miles through the darkness to get here. They are waiting and watching for the moment when, once a year, the gods come down to earth, and dance.