| |
my own choice. Nobody else is responsible for it, and I have no complaint. I enjoyed life. I enjoyed denying all that was bogus and borrowed. I enjoyed being myself And if this is the reward that existence gives to an authentic man, I take it with grace.
"But what about you, when your boat -- made of paper, holy paper, made out of scriptures -- is drowning? You missed your life. You cannot feel grateful, because for what will you feel grateful? Life, that may have made you feel gratitude, has slipped out of your hands, and now you are drowning and you don't know how to swim because you never doubted the boat. I have every chance of reaching the other shore if I can swim."
He was a good swimmer himself. And I loved swimming so much that whenever my family wanted to find me they had to go to the side of the river to find where I was -- because I had to be somewhere in the river. For four to six hours every day I was in the river. Once in a while we both used to go for a swim. I used to invite him particularly in the rainy season.
And he would say, "Don't do that," because in the rainy season the river was a mountainous river. It would suddenly become so wide, and so big; otherwise it was a small river.
In the summer you could not conceive how much bigger it became -- a hundredfold at least -- miles broad. And the current was so heavy that if I wanted to cross the river -- and I have crossed that river hundreds of times in the rainy season -- it would take me at least two to three miles downstream. Only then would I be able to reach to the other shore. Directly it was impossible. To move directly from this point straight to the other side was impossible. The current was so strong that crossing it I would be carried at least three miles down river.
But I said, "I manage it, and you certainly are a better swimmer, with more strength than me. I am just a child. You are a strong man, you can make it. Only once he came with me, and that too because I created a situation that he had to come.
My sister had got married and her husband had come to visit us. He was a wrestler; he was the university champion. It was a joke in the university,
|
|
|