Read The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico for Free Online Page A

reincarnation, a confession I haven’t the audacity to consider a mere whim. Even Hindu thinking, despite believing that the way of Karma is already written, maintains the secret hope that harmony of thought and mindmay open paths different from those already assigned. I sincerely wish you a different incarnation from the one you foresaw. At least I hope it may be so.
    I am, believe me, your
    X AVIER J ANATA M ONROY
    Vecchiano, 18 April 1985
    Dear Mr Janata Monroy,
    Your letter touched me deeply. It demands a reply, a reply I fear will be considerably inferior to the one your letter postulates. First of all, may I thank you for allowing me to use part of your name for a character in my book; and furthermore for not taking offence at the novelistic portrayal of the theosopher of Madras for which you provided the inspiration. Writers are not to be trusted even when claiming to practise the most rigorous realism: as far as I am concerned, therefore, you should treat me with the maximum distrust.
    You confer on my little book, and hence on the vision of the world which emerges from it, a religious profundityand a philosophical complexity which unfortunately I do not believe I possess. But, as the poet we both know says, ‘Everything is worth the trouble if the spirit be not mean.’ So that even my little book is worth the trouble, not so much for itself, but for what a broad spirit may read into it.
    Still, books, as you know, are almost always bigger than ourselves. To speak of the person who wrote that book, I am obliged, in spite of myself, to descend to the anecdotal (I wouldn’t dare to say biographical), which in my case is banal and low caste. The evening we made each other’s acquaintance in the Theosophical Society, I had just survived a curious adventure. Many things had happened to me in Madras: I had had the good fortune to meet a number of people and to meditate on various strange stories. But what happened to me had to do with me alone. Thanks to the complicity of a temple guard, I had managed to get inside the compound of the temple of Shiva the Destroyer, which, as you know, is strictly forbidden to non-Hindus, my precise intention being to photograph the altars. Since you appreciate the meaningI attribute to photography, you will realise that this amounted to a double sacrilege, perhaps even a challenge, since Shiva the Destroyer is indentified with Death and with Time, is the Bhoirava , the Terror, and manifests himself in sixty-four forms, which the temple of Madras illustrates and which I wanted to photograph for myself. It was two in the afternoon, when the temple shuts its gates for siesta, so that the place was entirely deserted with the exception of a few lepers who sleep there and who paid not the slightest attention. I know this will arouse a profound sense of disapproval on your part, but I do not want to lie. The heat was oppressive, the big monsoon had only just finished and the compound was full of stagnant puddles. Swarms of flies and insects wandered about in the air, and the stench of excrement from the cows was unbearable. Opposite the altars to Shiva the traitor, beyond the troughs for the ablutions, is a small wall for votive offerings. I climbed upon it and began to take my photos. At that moment a piece of the wall I was standing on, being old and sodden with rain, collapsed. Of course I am giving you a ‘pragmatic’ explanationof what happened, since considered from another point of view the affair could have another explanation. In any event, when the wall crumbled I fell, skinning my right leg. A few hours later, when I’d got back to my hotel, the scratches had developed into an incredible swelling. It was only the following morning, though, that I decided to go to the doctor, partly because I hadn’t had myself vaccinated at all before coming to India and I was afraid I might have got infected by tetanus – certainly my leg showed every sign that