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get out of the rain.
    I let it stream down on me. It ran over my face and down my arms. It flowed over my head like a blessing.
    I laughed and laughed.
    I felt truly free.
    I took the old man’s advice.
    I found a family living on the street. They had their bits of belongings piled around them – a few cloths, a pot, two cups. The mother and father were soaked to the skin, but their children were dry. The parents held up a sheet of plastic to shelter the little ones. The children sat under it, protected from the rain.
    As I walked up to them, the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The sun came out. The streets came alive. Peddlers pulled sheets of plastic away from the fruit, padlocks and pots they were selling. Shoemakers relit the flames under their pots of glue and started tapping away at their heels. Street dogs shook the rain out of their fur and sniffed around. People folded up their umbrellas and kept on rushing.
    â€˜Namaste,’ I said, pointing my hands together as best I could when they were full of soap.
    The family did the same, even the youngest.
    I held out the bottle of soap and the soap that was wrapped in paper.
    At first they shook their heads. They didn’t understand. They smiled and spoke in a language I didn’t know.
    I kept holding out the soap. Finally, they took it. They were happy. They showed the soap to their children. The children sniffed the flowers and spices. Smiles spread across their faces.
    I made the namaste again and walked away. It felt good to make the family happy and give them something they needed.
    But what now? I wondered.
    I felt a hand on my elbow.
    The woman was there. She gently pulled me back to the family.
    They wanted to share their evening meal with me.
    It wasn’t much. A bit of dal and a bit of roti. The mother broke the roti and shared it out. We dipped it into the small pot of dal. We couldn’t talk to each other, but when the meal was over, they shared songs from their land and I shared a Bollywood song I had seen on the shop owner’s TV.
    When night came, they made room for me on their bit of pavement.
    I slept between two of the children. During the night, one of the toddlers climbed up on my back. I was glad to be a softer mat than the pavement.
    In the morning, I left.
    Nobody really owns anything. We give back our bodies at the end of our lives. We own our thoughts, but everything else is just borrowed. We use it for a while, then pass it on.
    Everything.
    We borrow the sun that shines on us today from the people on the other side of the world while they borrow the moon from us. Then we give it back. We can’t keep the sun, no matter how afraid we are of the dark.
    We borrow our food. What we eat becomes fertiliser that goes back into the earth and gets turned back into food.
    Everything is borrowed.
    Once I realised that, I stopped worrying about how I would survive.
    I didn’t need to have anything. I just needed to borrow.
    Somehow, that seemed a whole lot easier.
    So that became my job. To borrow what I needed. Then to pass it on to someone who needed it more.
    It worked. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. I ate. I slept. I lived.

5
    Dead Englishmen
    S OMEONE WAS BEATING UP Santa Claus.
    I was trying to sleep down the street from the Chinese restaurant where the Santa statue usually stood, but the crash of the plastic Santa on the footpath woke me up.
    Two young men were laughing and talking loudly in English as they kicked the statue between them like a football. From my spot on the footpath I saw Santa’s white beard and red cap rise and fall as he was bashed by shoes and sidewalk.
    The stray cat that was sleeping beside me to keep warm was startled and got ready to spring. I stroked its fur, trying to get it to stay with me a little longer. But it was too spooked, and it ran off into the night.
    Park Street was usually quiet late at night after the restaurants closed up and the tourists