We slept on the floor at Victoria Station, Bombay, <br />that old gothic, wedding-cake catherdal of a building <br />from the raj, my friend Adi and I. He'd started crying <br /> <br />as I'd passed, wearing a Meher Baba button, walking <br />on the streets of Colaba by the Arabian Sea. Told me <br /> <br />he'd grown up with Meher Baba's nephews in Pune, <br />they used to steal the shoes of people <br />who came for Darshan (Blessing) , that he'd <br /> <br />become separated by time and his habit, <br />his heroin habit, that had him on the street. <br /> <br />He remembered 'B im-Bom-Bay', the Pat Boone <br />song I sang to him, and I was surprised <br />it had also been popular over there. <br /> <br />He was a Parsee, looked like he might have <br />gone to my high school in America, and then <br /> <br />been through a few tough years. You know <br />how you meet someone once in a great while, <br />and you both feel like you've known one another before. <br /> <br />In some cases, you may never see one another again, either, <br />and in this case that was true. My passport had been stolen <br />as I'd tried to leave the country after my Pilgrimage — <br />that was the only plausible explanation for its being gone <br /> <br />when I'd come back to the ticket counter, having walked back <br />across the terminal to pay the Airport Tax I'd forgotten about. <br /> <br /> <br />That was an adventure: the thing that gets me <br />is how unsafe I was, how I survived adventure <br />after advernture in my youth. Not long after, <br /> <br />I had a dream I was losing blood, and I knew <br />if I 'lost' much more vital essense through fooling around, <br /> <br />I'd be done for. And here I am at 58, <br />solid as a bank.<br /><br />Max Reif<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mumbai-memories-1983/
