In special circumstances it is permissible to skip over one or two of the four stages in life and head straight to renunciation well before the designated age of seventy-two, or to personalize and tweak the stages in some way, or even to invent a fusion of sorts. This was the option I was forced to accept for the interim, under pressure from my twin brother, Shmelke, revered and reviled worldwide as Reb Breslov Tabor, Rebbie-ji, who had beseeched me to stay. The time had not yet come when I could indulge the luxury of dying, or even of withdrawing to a hermitage in the forest for the third stage of retirement and meditation to prepare myself for the fourth and final act, sannyasa. I was obliged to remain at Rebbie-ji’s ashram in the throbbing heart of Kolkata. My involvement was still mandated, I was still needed it seemed. I had not yet won liberation, a reprieve from my life sentence. I had not yet earned the privilege of setting out in search of moksha as a sannyasini, my face smeared with ash, my hair matted, nothing on my back but a garment made of grass chewed and regurgitated by a cow, nothing in my hands but a stick and a beggar’s bowl, but with full conviction of my sanity, oblivious to the world that might think me out of my mind.

Still, until the blessed moment arrived of complete renunciation, I could improvise. I could practice austerities and carry out various forms of asceticism. The ultimate goal was to achieve a state of detachment as if I were already dead. I regarded myself as my own widow. My husband who had died was myself. Instead of throwing myself on my pyre as a sati, I gave up all of life’s pleasures like a pious Hindu widow. I shaved my head, cast off all ornamentation, shrouded myself in a borderless white sari, fasted three days a week, and withdrew. I was dead in this world as if I had been reduced to ash.

I was doubly dead, since a sannyasi is considered to be dead too. Like a sadhu, I renounced all ambition, all striving and desire, except for the desire to be dead. During the day I collaborated at my brother’s side, counseling and strategizing, but it was as if I were doing nothing at all. At night I slept in a primitive coffin, a stretcher bier, on the floor of the cell I shared with the cast-off girls whose care Rebbie-ji had entrusted to me in his House of Holy Healing, formerly Mother Teresa’s Kalighat Home for the Dying Destitutes.