‘Don’tgivehimany foodtonight!’Dadthundered,gettingup.

That evening I watched them eating. Later, Mum relented and gave me some food in secret, but I refused it. Dad slept peacefully that night, snoring like a bully. The next day I refused to go to school. I refused to play. I refused to eat. And I stayed in bed, growing in stature, full of vengeance. That was how I went into a curious state of being. I began to feed on my hunger. I fed well and had a mighty appetite. I dipped into myself and found other worlds waiting. I chose a world and lingered. There were no spirits there. It was a world of wraiths. A world of famine, famishment, and drought. I dwelt amongst them for a long time. Mum would sometimes wake me up. Dad grumbled incessantly about the amount of money it cost to feed me. He ranted about the cost of glass, the humiliations I had made him suffer in secret and in public, about the agony of his work and how I made his dreams wither because I was such a bad son.Istoppedlisteningtohim.Iwithdrewfromtheworldoffeelings,sentiments, sympathies. I refused to eat the next night. My mouth became dry. I lost energy and felt myselfbecominglight.Ifelt aterribleecstasygrowinginme.Ismelttheworldof holidays, the world of spirits. I saw the fields of music, the fountains of delights. My head filled with air. My face shrank. My eyes expanded. I listened to the music of famine.

On the third day of refusing to eat, I began to leave the world. Everything became distant. I willed myself away, wanting to leave, singing the song of departures that only my spirit companions can render with the peculiar beauty of flutes over desolate mountains. Mum’s face was far away. The distance between us grew. Dad’s face, large and severe, no longer frightened me. His assumption that the severity of his features gave him power over anything made him look a little comical. I punished him by retreating from the world. I tortured them both by listening with fullness of heart to the unsung melodies of spirit companions. My stomach, feeding on the diet of the other world, on the air of famine, grew bigger. I drank in the evils of history. I drank in the food of suffering that gathers in the space just above the air we breathe, just within range of all that we see. And then I heard Mother weeping. I refused to be moved. I sank into the essential indifferent serenity of the spirit-child’s soul- the serenity that accepts extremes of experience calmly because the spirit-child is at home with death. I did not sleep for three days. I did not eat. Mum wept. She seemed a long way off, in a remote part of the earth. I ranged deeper into that other world.

On the fourth day, the amnesia of hunger began to spread its curious ecstasy over my paradoxical soul. Then I found the three-headed spirit sitting beside me. He had never left. He had been waiting patiently. He could always count on the unintended callousness of human beings, their lovelessness, their forgetfulness of the basic things of existence. For a while, the three-headed spirit stayed silent. Dad was on his chair, polishing his boots. He looked at me furtively. I felt the frailty of parents, how powerless they really are. And because Dad said nothing to me, because he made no attempts to reach me, made no gestures towards me, did nothing to appease me, did not even attempt a smile at me, I listened to what the three-headed spirit was saying.

‘Your parents are treating you atrociously,’ he said. ‘Come with me. Your companions are desperate to embrace you. There is a truly wonderful feast awaiting your homecoming. They yearn for your lovely presence. You will be treated like a prince, which is what you are. Human beings don’t care. They don’t know how to love. They don’t know what love is. Look at them. You are dying and all they do is polish their boots. Do they love you? No!’

I paid attention to the words of the spirit. And his words led me into a blue terrain beyond thehungers of theflesh. Sunbirds sangfrombranches.Thetreesweregolden. I travelled on the wind of amnesia till we came to a mighty green road.

‘This road has no end,’ said the three-headed spirit.

‘Where does it lead?’ I asked.

‘Everywhere. It leads to the world of human beings and to the world of spirits. It leads to heaven and hell. It leads to worlds that we don’t even know about.’

We travelled the road. All the trees around could move and had their own form of speech. Every tree had a distinct personality and character. Some of the trees were quite evil and the bizarre forms of witches and wizards were perched on their branches, eyeing us with special interest. As we travelled on I saw a bird with Madame Koto’s face. It circled over us three times and flew on ahead. The road sloped downwards. The deeper we went the more vivid the colours of that world became. There were colours I never knew existed, colours so dazzling, so full of health and radiance, colours that blurred all distinctions between brightness and darkness, that seemed to occupy the highest octaves of new dreams, that I travelled in a state of perpetual astonishment. The world kept changing. The road began to move. It behaved like a river, and it flowed against the direction of our journey. Travelling suddenly became very difficult. My feet hurt, I was excruciatingly hungry, and with each step I felt like giving up. I had thought the journey to the other world would be an effortless one.

‘Are we travelling this road to the end?’

‘Yes,’ thespirit said, walkingas if distancemeant nothing.

‘But you said the road has no end.’

‘That’s true,’ said the spirit.

‘How can it be true?’

‘From a certain point of view the universe seems to be composed of paradoxes. But everythingresolves. That is thefunction of contradiction.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When you can see everything from every imaginable point of view you might begin to understand.’

‘Can you?’

‘No.’

Dad got up from his chair and stood over me. His breathing manifested itself as a heavy wind in the world in which I was travelling. The wind blew me on. I felt very light. Every time my exhaustion threatened to wash over me completely, this wind lifted me up in the air. The spirit caught me and dragged me down to the ground.

‘Don’tfly away,’thespiritsaid.‘Ifyoufly away Idon’tknowwhereyouwillland. There are many strange things here that devour the traveller. There are many spirit-eaters and monsters of the interspaces. Keep to the solid ground.’

Dad coughed, and I tripped over a green bump on the road. We travelled on. Then we came to the beginnings of an orange-coloured valley. The colours of the valley also kept changing. One moment it was blue, the next it was silver, but when I first saw it the valley was orange. Trees with each fruit as a human head populated the roadsides and the high grounds of the valley. I recognised some of the faces. The fruits fell, the faces dropped to the ground, the sun melted them, they became precious waters which flowed to the roots of the trees, and new faces appeared as beautiful fruits on the branches. The process of falling and regrowing seemed very quick and I saw several faces die and be reborn in moments between a single footstep.

The valley was essentially populated with strange beings. Instead of faces they had masks that became more beautiful the longer you looked at them. Maybe their masks weretheir faces. They hadhousesallalongthesidesofthevalley.They alsohadtheir palaces and centresofculturebelow,undertheearth.Theiracropoles,alongwiththeir fabulous cemeteries, were in the air. In the valley they were all hard at work.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked.

Dad crouched low, his face close to mine. He touched me, and I shivered.

‘They are building a road.’

‘Why?’

Dad held my hands. I felt cold and began to tremble. He breathed in my face and thewindalmost knockedmyheadawayandIkeptbeingflungupintothespacesand the spirit finally had to hold me down by my hair.