Palolem, March 18

I finally parted with my two young companions in Udaipur, but not after being taught something about the meaning of friendship. And how to overcome the fear of fear itself.

I'm in Goa now, cause after the bad experience I didn't want to stay in Rajasthan. It's humid, tropical and there are beaches and churches. The latter because this is a former Portuguese colony, and the Portuguese were quite active in spreading the one true faith. Amazing to see a church fill up till people were standing outside the doors, during mess. Although the religion is different, the people are as serious about it as in the rest of India.

The loss of my travelling companions made me think of the man who, according to the stories, meditated under a bodhi tree on the edge of the forest of Uruvala 2500 years ago. While sitting there, the Buddha was found by the demon Yatala, who told him about suffering and pain and asked him to tell the meaning of life or die at his hands. The Buddha replied that every human being is unfortunate but every human being is part of the world and has a role to play. Nobody is better than another; nobody is useless. He came to this realization right there and then, so in a way the demon helped the Buddha reach enlightenment.

I have never been visited by a demon the size of Yatala. Instead I had two Norwegian girls for travelling companions. They helped me, unknowingly. More concrete: my fear was of the fear I saw in my father's eyes when speaking of dying. The memory has long kept me sleepless at night and troubled me at daylight. The depth of that fear, the void, the total nothingness, it haunted me especially during the last week in Rajasthan. When I grew ever more absent-minded, grumpy and annoying, at last the girls left me in silence. I realised I had been thinking only about my own fears and too little about the friendship and good time we had. I learned that the living are always more important than the dead. In fact only the living are worth the effort of pondering over and over again. I now feel like I am one step closer to enlightenment, so to speak. I understand now how to overcome this second fear, so much more potent than the fear of dying itself (a fear I learned to overcome during my first visit to India 12 years ago).

When the girls had left, I collapsed on the roof of our guesthouse and started crying. The amazing result was that suddenly every person present was around me, trying to help me and comfort me. Such a thing, I'm sure, would never be possible in the west. The landlord even began ordering a network of spies around the city to find out where the girls had gone. After some time this became a little creepy, with reports on their every movement, hour by hour. At the same time my fellow guests, a bunch of hippies, tried to give me spiritual comfort. One, a seer, predicted me that I would only leave India after obtaining five turbans, objects of status. She was right about the monkeys visiting the guesthouse's roof top kitchen the next day, so maybe there is truth in this as well. As always, there are many truths to find in India. Almost as many as lies.