All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World by Piers Moore Ede

humours. You think and live independently from your family. You do something creative, is that so?’
    I nodded.
    ‘ Acha . But you are determined. A little stubborn. If you meet a woman she will have to live with your work. You will not give that up for anyone. But better if she has a skill of some kind – a weaver, a potter.’
    Another pause.
    ‘You are a sensualist, in that you like food and drink. You would rather see velvet than burlap.’ She paused reflectively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as there is no attachment. You can enjoy food but try to distance yourself from the pleasure of it. That is important. In attachment begins all the problems of the human mind. And yes,’ her eyes flicked momentarily up to mine, ‘you are not as peaceful as you would like.’
    All this was true, I thought. Not miraculous but a little disturbing in its accuracy . . .
    ‘You are drawn to emptiness,’ she continued. ‘You’re looking for it, burning for it a little. But you should know that there are no immutable truths, no enlightenment which is graspable. That you will have to let go very quickly if you are to evolve.’ She laid down my hand. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’
    I was disappointed. She hadn’t said much.
    ‘One more thing,’ she added. ‘You are frightened. You’re very aware of mortality. At one point in your life your spirit felt the great emptiness itself –’ she tilted her head. ‘Part of you wants to return to that emptiness. But you have to find the courage to live in this world.’
    I froze upon hearing this, astounded and a little afraid. I had a scar on my face which might be telling, but what she said smacked of a deeper knowledge than this. Beneath the outward chaos of the hit and run I’d been involved in, I’d felt a peace that was limitless. But how could she have known this?
    That was it. She would say no more, no matter how much I pressed her. Neither did she ask for money, as I cynically imagined she might. Rather, she turned her attention to the river, which was now filling with oil lamps set adrift on the evening current. Every evening, people set their prayers upon the water, commending them to that which, it is believed, once filled Brahma’s sacred vessel. After a while her eyes seemed to film over, as they had been when I first saw her, and when I stood to leave she seemed not to notice. To the sound of roosting crows I climbed from the palace courtyard and made my way back through the narrow streets to my guesthouse.
    That night I couldn’t sleep. Monkeys clattered around on the corrugated roof outside my window, and the moon shone so brightly over the river it was like sunlight sheering off glass. At last, utterly awake, I pulled my blanket around my shoulders, opened the window and sat upon the ledge watching the dormant city. The air was chill, tinged, even now, with wood smoke from the funeral pyres at the Manikarnika Ghat.
    Perhaps there will never be certainty, I said to myself. Perhaps every encounter in this strange journey will be like my meeting with the sadhvi ; simultaneously profound and unsatisfactory. Even after many months in India, nothing seemed to stay in clear focus. This country, these myriad paths and traditions, were like the river itself, each wave made up of infinite drops, each one of them breaking apart to form a million others. Everything was in constant flux.
    And yet despite the ambiguity of India, or perhaps merely its complexity for someone like myself, it was by far the most absorbing place I had ever been. Religion, as I had learned it in childhood, seemed to divide the world into two halves: one sacred, one profane. In India that division was gone. Here everything was sacred, everything was set apart for the worship or service of God. People saw Him everywhere – in elephants, in river stones, in the whorls upon a human hand. Were they ridiculous? Should we be against religion because, as Richard Dawkins suggests, ‘it