Dear K,

Another night and another letter. I had been feeling quite restless and began to write this in my mind as I took a walk around the neighborhood. It has been a cloudy-rainy day, one made for reading or spending time in similar communions.

So I went to the local library for a dose of books. One of the best things I love about this country are these libraries and this availability of books to all those who want to read them. One can find all the classics, the recent good books, all the current popular magazines, a large section of children's books, audio and video tapes, CDs and even pulp fiction. Also one can check out as many books as one wants to read and can carry out.

When I was a kid, this I think at the end of my third or fourth grade, my father, who was still then a part of the working class and yet to become bourgeoisie, after much deliberation took out a subscription at what we call the lending library. It was fifteen minute walk then from our house and for one month or so, I could for about a kingly sum of 25 paisa (1/4 th of a cent!), borrow one slim comic book for just one day, not that I required more time because I used to finish reading it by the time I got back home.

Why those fifty page Amar Chitra Katha comics and not other more substantial books? Well of course because the others would be more expensive and exorbitant, costing up to two rupees (1 cent!) and this my father thought wouldn't do or is perhaps a little to excessive for a kid spending his summer vacation. But then I suppose all is well, for if I didn't have those experiences, and years of desperate and furtive eating, I wouldn't be as thankful as I am when I go to the library here and see the 'moveable feast'.

Also I must admit, I did enjoy those comics as lot; Supandi, the simpleton whose troubles are always miraculously solved by his own unintentional actions, Shikari Shambo, the bumbling hunter who always manages to trap the latest escapee from the zoo, Kalia, the wise crow who always tricks the fox and thus saves the rabbits from becoming his dinner. All these Tinkle characters, along with the other stories, form the first layer of my mental swamp.

Dredging up those memories has helped me clear the brooding thoughts I had as I walking. A few of these were on the passage of days and how they taught me what my fundamental archetype is - someone who exults in words and fools around with them. Perhaps one can call such a person a writer or a poet, but such labels are immaterial for yearnings like these come with one's own epidermis.

Other belief systems, knowledges, techniques, like religion for example, are merely clothes that one learns how to or is schooled how to wear. Few people however, forget that these are just ornaments and fool themselves into thinking that this is what their skin looks like. But then when all hell breaks loose and when one is broken down, all this glorified stuff gets jettisoned, sometimes in less than a blink of an eye. For example take these religious fundamentalists, some of whom run governments, here and there. For them religion is not any more weighty than an overcoat or even as flimsy as some toilet paper. Will any of these people dare turn the other cheek say? No they won't. In fact if possible, they will try to kill the other person who smote them, with their bare hands.

Coming back to the question of skin, I was also thinking of those days when I was in Bangalore, after resigning from that job in a huff and going through all those motions of leaving India. What I realize now was that I was trying to leave my own skin and take refuge in something else. At that point, this something else happened to be an idea of a woman who will be my wife, a future house, a dog, kids and so forth. I grabbed the first and the most convenient person in my way, thinking yes this is what my skin is. And then how hard I struggled to suppress, what Hesse calls, the true promptings of the self

And this does not mean that I am any better now. The impulse is still there in my mind, the impulse to flee from my own self and seek refuge in something which is the 'other'. Perhaps the only difference between now and then is that now I am more aware when I am going around the bush, fooling myself, pulling wool over my own eyes. And then I am also for perhaps the first time aware and have come to an acceptance of my fundamental skin. All I want to do now is to develop and train this power. You can make the millions alone, for both of us!

I also think, only when one has seen his own self, this 'other' vanishes. Perhaps the 'other' exists to test and to instruct. This is also St Augustine's definition of sin, that state when one is not aware of his own true self. This is also what the perennial philosophy of Gita and Buddha point out to colossal fools like me!

Love, Sashi