Nagusami / 35

Forgive me if you’ve heard this before. A few moments in any life are small durable flashlights to clutch against the pitch vast lurching dark.

In Banaras, around the time of the Sarasvati festival, I went walking alone on the ghats late at night. The steps of the ghats are steep and uneven and there are sudden drops. The riverfront, famed for its colors at dawn, is ghostly at night, lit only by an occasional cold floodlight from the old fort or ashram.

Walking down by the river, I saw someone standing wrapped in a blanket on the river’s edge. I couldn’t see much but I could hear him chant very slowly, in baritone, a name of God. At the end of each mantra he threw into the water what sounded like a tiny pebble.

I sat behind him on the stone steps, not too close, but near enough to be warmed by his voice chanting Sri Ram. . .Jai Ram. . .Jai Jai Ram. No other sounds but footsteps on stone faraway or, a few times, an oar in the water.

Finally, at the end of his devotions, the man turned around and saw the scrawny foreigner who’d huddled by his voice as by a fire. He smiled, showing his teeth in the dark and held his hand out to me. His cupped palm still held a few tiny pieces of sugar candy.

His voice was quiet and certain. He said, “It is important work－fish-feeding.”