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scholar's black cap on his head enters the veranda with a tea tray. Tariq Mia is an acknowledged Islamic scholar, and there are always young clerics studying under him. I can see the student trying to hide his grin. I do the same. We both know Tariq Mia enjoys the solemn ritual of surprise although he watches for me every day.
"You should not have troubled to order tea. Your students will resent me for delaying their instruction."
"My students will thank Allah for their good fortune, knowing they must endure me the rest of the day. Come, little brother, bring your cup to the chess board."
Although I am past middle age, Tariq Mia is nearly eighty years old so I am not offended that he calls me "little brother," or that at the chess board he often conducts a gentle tutorial as if I, too, am his pupil.
The old mullah seems able to read my mind. If I am downcast he will suddenly banish my gloom by breaking into song. Too conscious of my own dignity, I never fail to be moved by the uninhibited delight in that quavering voice as he sings his Sufi songs of love to God.
    "My heart is tangled in the locks of Your hair. I swoon in the gaze of Your narcissus eyes. My whole being circles You.
CanYou see my blood turning into henna To decorate the soles of Your feet?"
    Or he will tell me stories while he waits for me to move a knight. I concentrate so hard on evading capture, I do not grasp what he has told me until I am retracing my path to the bungalow.
    In our early encounters I could not see the pattern in Tariq Mia's musings, attributing them to the changes of mood brought on by his age. Now, when he stares at the chessboard for too long I know those eyes, as alert as a panther's in that lined face, are about to fix on me, and I affectionately watch creases appearing on the high forehead above the hooked nose, already reconciled to my checkmate.
    Today Tariq Mia is not pleased by my gloomy thoughts about dead ascetics.
"India's greatest poet also floated down this river," he remarks with some acerbity. "Kabir, the man whose poems made a bridge between your faith and mine. Meditate on Kabir's toothbrush. You will find it more useful than thinking about an ascetic's corpse."
Dismayed by Tariq Mia's disapproval, I confess that I have never heard of Kabir's toothbrush.
He shakes his head in irritation. "Don't you know the story? How Kabir was sailing down the Narmada, cleaning his teeth with a twig? He threw the twig onto a mud flat in the river. The twig put down roots and grew into a huge tree, the Kabirvad. Poets and singers and mystics have come from all over India to praise God by his many names under the shade of the Kabirvad, even in the worst times of religious slaughter."
Then Tariq Mia asks me why I am suddenly so concerned with ascetics. I tell him about my encounter. Tariq Mia is too wise to question my distraction over the Jain monk. He keeps his eyes firmly on the chessboard, allowing me to reveal the monk's story as I recollect it until I surprise myself by discovering the source of my confusion.
"The fault was mine, I suppose. I was so fascinated by his lavish renunciation ceremonies that I never asked him to explain his first words, 'I have loved only one thing in my life.' Now he has gone without telling me what it was."
At last Tariq Mia raises his eyes from the chessboard. "But of course he told you."
"What was it? The prayer of the Hindu ascetic who asks for eyes in the soles of his feet so he can keep his own eyes on the face of God?"
Tariq Mia puckers his lips in disappointment. "He followed in the footsteps of a man, not a god. What good would eyes in the soles of his feet be?"
I plead with Tariq Mia not to play with me and tell me what the Jain monk loved.
"The human heart, little brother. Its secrets."
"What secrets?"
"The human heart has only one secret. The capacity to love."
Seeing my perplexed expression, Tariq Mia sighs. "Oh, little brother, are you so unfortunate? Have you never been scalded by love?"
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