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almost two or three years. I had, from my very childhood, as long as I remember, needed sweets before going to bed, otherwise I could not sleep. So she was not only preparing my bed, she used to go out and buy sweets, the sweets that I liked, and she would keep the sweets by my bed so that I could eat; even in the middle of the night if I felt like it again, I could eat. She would put enough so that if you ate the whole night there would be no problem.
I asked her, "For whom do you bring these sweets? -- you don't eat them; since Nana died you have not tasted sweets." My Nana loved sweets. In fact it seems he gave me this idea of sweets; he also used to eat before going to sleep. That is not done in any Jaina family. Jainas don't eat in the night; they don't even drink water or milk or anything. But he lived in a village where he was the only Jaina, so there was no problem. And it is perhaps from him that I got the habit. I don't remember even how I started it: it must have been he, eating and calling me also to join him. I must have joined him, and by and by it became a routine thing. For seven years he trained me!
I could not go to my house for two reasons. One reason was those sweets -- because in my mother's place it was not possible: there were so many children that if you allowed one child, then all the children would ask. And anyway it was against the religion -- you simply could not even ask. But my difficulty was this, that I could not go to sleep without them.
Secondly, I felt, "My Nani must be feeling to be alone, and here it is difficult to be alone so many people, it is always a marketplace. Nobody will be missing me if I am not here" -- nobody ever missed me. They just made certain that I was sleeping with my Nani, then there was no problem.
So even after those seven years I was not under the influence of my parents. It was just accidental that from the very beginning I was on my own. Doing right or wrong -- that was not the important thing, but doing on my own. And slowly slowly, that became my style of life, about everything -- for example, about clothes.
In my town I was the only non-Mohammedan dressed liked a
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