As a sannyasini, I was as if dead. The first person no longer was present to continue my tale, and this brought it to an end. All that remained for me now was to enact my own funeral to achieve liberation. I set out walking on the Grand Trunk Road from Kolkata to make my way on foot to Varanasi. Moksha awaited me there in the lap of Mother Ganga. My only garment was an ochre-colored robe. In my right hand I carried a single staff, a sign of my penance, for surely I had sinned in the confusion of my heart.

I ask you to forgive me.

In my left hand I carried a pot with a handle that contained a cup for water, and also my bag of excrement filling constantly, proof that I was still alive, tethered to the nipple of the new stoma in my body by a long translucent tube passing through a slit in my robe. I had cut off all my ties to the world, detached myself from everything in this life, except my excrement. This I would carry with me in a bag in my pot every step of the way as I walked along the Grand Trunk Road. The pot also held a little bell that I would take out to ring like a leper, like an untouchable, whenever I saw someone approaching, to warn of oncoming defilement and pollution.

I intended to walk on the Grand Trunk Road alone and unaccompanied to the river of life and find enlightenment and liberation at last, but already at Howrah I could feel the breathing behind me, something grazing my heels, casting a black shadow, a stagnant pool into which I was sinking with every step. Had I been armed with the necessary discipline at that stage, I would not have turned around and congealed into a pillar of salt. Behind me walked Manika pushing the old lady in an ancient pram she must have found while rummaging in the black hole of Calcutta, left by the British when they absconded. Without a word I turned my back and continued walking as if I were alone.

If by the time I reached Varanasi the old lady had not yet coughed up the last of the scum blocking her liberation from the wheel of life, I would walk on to Lahore. If still she held on, I would continue walking to Peshawar. If she still refused to let go, I would walk onward over the Khyber Pass all the way to Kabul, the end of the road. There I would sit down in the midst of the dust and carnage, pry open her mouth, and root in the sludge to release her soul and deliver it in a long albuminous cord and set us free.