A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India by Josh Donellan

Author:Josh Donellan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd)
Published: 2010-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

The air in my room is musty and sour. I am suddenly afraid that the walls will crush me. The space seems to be shrinking, disappearing. Gasping for air I burst open my door and run outside. The stars are still, the air is humid and sweaty but there is a cool breeze that comes in rhythmic bursts from across the holy river.

Standing at the edge of the roof is a tall woman clad in loose cotton pants and a green scarf covered in the OM symbol. Her short auburn hair is flowing gently in the wind. As I walk closer my footsteps seem to echo cavernously across the rooftops. As she turns slowly to look at me I see that there is something that at first glance appears to be a cigarette dangling from her lips. She turns in my direction but appears to be looking at the space around me rather than directly at my face.

“You want some?” she asks offering me the joint as she exhales out of the corner of her mouth.

“No, thanks,” I reply, the words seem to warble and stumble into the air and then nosedive clumsily to the floor.

“Maybe you don’t need it?” she says, picking up on my affected state. She has a light European accent that I can’t quite place.

“Um…I had some Valium. I needed help sleeping. Today has been like the final act of Macbeth in fast forward.”

She nods and looks at me directly for the first time, “I thought so. You have something strange in your aura. It’s shifting, uncertain.”

“You really see auras?”

She shrugs, “Only sometimes. If I have been doing my yoga, my meditation, and if someone has something strong in their aura, then maybe I can see something.”

“So you’re a very spiritual person, huh?”

She laughs and looks at me like I’ve just asked if she likes minigolf. “Listen, after a month at the ashram here…I can tell you that anyone who claims to be a spiritual person, is probably nothing like it, y’know?”

“You were studying at an ashram?”

“Yes. I was trying to maybe find some answers. This guru, he tells us he knows EVERYTHING but he can’t tell us the easy way, he will choose us when we are ready to know. It turns out that the only ones that are ready are the blonde American girls who don’t have much in their heads but plenty in their t-shirts, you know? What about you, are you a ‘spiritual person’… um…I’m sorry I don’t know your name?”

“Levi. Australia.”

She shakes my hand with surprising strength and replies, “Sabine. Germany. So…are you a spiritual person?”

“Well, actually…I’ve been told I’m quite the opposite.”

“Okay…sure. However, I don’t mean to be rude, but I asked you what you think about yourself, not what others have said about you. That’s a different thing, right?”

I like the way Sabine speaks. She’s smart without being arrogant and confident without being intimidating. “To be honest,” I say, “it’s not a question I would have really asked myself until a few weeks ago.

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