Nine Lives by William Dalrymple Read Free Book Online

can clear the cloud, and learn the method to get the ghee from the milk. Without the Jain dharma you are a soul tormented and you cannot know any lasting happiness. But with a guru to show you the right path, and to teach you the true nature of the soul, all this can be changed.
    ‘By following the Jain dharma, by living a life full of good deeds, you can gradually erase your bad karma. And, if you are lucky, and steadfast in your pursuit of this goal, you can finally achieve moksha .
     

    ‘At the end of two years with the Sangha,’ continued Prasannamati Mataji, ‘I finally made up my mind that I would take diksha. That November they plucked my hair for the first time: it’s the first step, like a test of your commitment, because if you can’t take the pain of having your hair plucked out you are not going to be ready to take the next step. That day, I performed a fast, and that evening one of the senior matajis of the Sangha applied the ash of dried cow dung. This acts as a sort of natural antiseptic if you bleed, as well as stopping the hand from slipping during the plucking.
    ‘I had very beautiful long thick hair, and as I was still very young my guru wanted to cut it with scissors then shave my head with a razor, so as not to inflict such pain on me. But I insisted, and said there was no going back now. I was a very obstinate girl: whatever I wanted to do I did. So they agreed to do what I wished. I think everyone was rather amazed at my stubbornness, and my determination.
    ‘The whole ritual took nearly four hours, and was very painful. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help crying. I didn’t tell my parents about my decision, as I knew they would try to stop me, but somehow they heard, and came rushing. By the time they arrived, the ceremony was almost over. When they saw me with a bald head, and scars and blood all over my scalp where my hair had once been, my mother screamed, and my father burst into tears. They knew then that I would never turn back from this path. After that, whenever the Sangha would arrive at a village, the maharaj would show me off: “Look, he would say. This one is so young, yet so determined, doing what even the old would hesitate to do.”
    ‘It was about this time that I met my friend Prayogamati. One day, our Sangha happened to walk into her village, and as her father was a rich merchant, who lived in a very large house, they invited us to stay with them. Prayogamati was the same age as me, fifteen, a beautiful, fragile, sensitive girl, and she came down every day to our room to talk to us. We quickly became very close, talking late into the night. She was fascinated by my life in the Sangha, and I had never met anyone who seemed to understand me the way she did, someone who shared all my beliefs and ideals. She was about to be engaged to the son of a rich diamond merchant, and the match had been arranged for her, but she told me that she was really much more interested in taking diksha. She also knew that her family would not allow her to do this.
    ‘After a week, we left the village, setting off to the next town on foot before dawn. That evening, Prayogamati borrowed some money from her mother, saying she wanted to go to a circus. Instead, she took two outfits from her room, and jumped on a bus. Late that night she found us and asked the maharaj to accept her. Her family realised what had happened, and her father and brothers came and begged her to return, but she refused and our guruji said it was up to her to decide. From that point we were together for twenty years. We took diksha together, and travelled together, and ate together, and spent our monsoon chaturmasa together. Soon we became very close.
    ‘Except for the chaturmasa , it is forbidden for us to stay long in one place, in case we become attached to it. So most nights we would sleep in a different place and our life together was full of variety. Some nights we would stay in the house of a rich man, sometimes in