I'd watched the affair from a shady spot beneath the branched dome of a tree. At the time, I was working on my own small reference dictionary of the Marathi language, based on phonetic spellings of the words I heard every day in the village. I gave the ceremony little attention, and I never bothered to ask its purpose.

As we stood in the numbing, drumming rain and watched the prowling advance of the river, Prabaker explained that the wooden stakes were part of a flood-game that was played every year. The oldest men in the village, and six lottery winners, were given the chance to predict the point to which the river would rise.

Each wooden stick, with its flag of yellow silk, represented a best guess.

"You see, this one little flag?" Prabaker asked, pointing to the stake that was furthest from where we stood. "This one is almost gone. The river will reach to him, and cover him, tomorrow or tonight."

He translated what he'd told me for the crowd, and they pushed Satish, a heavy-set cowherd, to the front of the group. The almost submerged stick was his, and he accepted, with shy laughter and downcast eyes, the good-natured jeers of his friends and the sneers of the older men.

"And this one here," Prabaker went on, pointing to the stake nearest to our position. "This one is the river will never be touching. The river never comes more far than this place. Old Deepakbhai has picked for himself this place, for the putting of his stick. He thinks this year will be a very heavy monsoon."

The villagers had lost interest, and were already drifting or jogging back to the village. Prabaker and I stood alone.

"But... how do you know that the river won't rise past this point?"

"We are here a long time, Lin. Sunder village has been in this place for two thousands of years. The next village, Natinkerra, has been there for much longer, about three thousands of years.

In some other places-not near to here-the people do have a bad experiences, with the floods, in monsoon time. But not here. Not in Sunder. Our river has never come to this far. This year, also, I don't think it will come to this far, even so old Deepakbhai says it will. Everybody knows where the river will stop, Lin."

He raised his eyes to squint at the unburdening clouds.

"But usually, we are waiting until the rain it stops, before we come out of the house to look at the flood-game sticks. If you don't mind, Lin, I'm swimming in my clothes, and I will have to squeeze the water out of my bones before I go in my house."

I stared straight ahead. He glanced up at the black tumble of cloud once more, and asked a question.

"In your country, Lin, don't you know where the river stops?"

I didn't answer him. Eventually, he reached up to pat me on the back a few times, and then walked off. Alone, I stared at the rain-soaked world for a while, and at last I lifted my face to the drowning sky.

I was thinking about another kind of river, one that runs through every one of us, no matter where we come from, all over the world. It's the river of the heart, and the heart's desire. It's the pure, essential truth of what each one of us is, and can achieve. All my life I'd been a fighter. I was always ready, too ready, to fight for what I loved, and against what I deplored. In the end, I became the expression of that fight, and my real nature was concealed behind a mask of menace and hostility. The message of my face and my body's movement was, like that of a lot of other hard men, Don't fuck with me. In the end, I became so good at expressing the sentiment that the whole of my life became the message.

It didn't work in the village. No-one could read my body language. They knew no other foreigners, and had no point of reference. If I was grim or even stern, they laughed, and patted my back encouragingly. They took me as a peaceful man, no matter what expression I wore. I was a joker, someone who worked hard, played the fool for the children, sang with them, danced with them, and laughed with an open heart.

And I think I did laugh like that then. I was given a chance to reinvent myself, to follow that river within, and become the man I'd always wanted to be. On the very day that I learned about the wooden stakes of the flood-game, not three hours before I stood alone in the rain, Prabaker's mother had told me that she'd called a meeting of the women in the village: she'd decided to give me a new name, a Maharashtrian name, like her own. Because I was in Prabaker's house, it was decided that I should take the family name of Kharre. Because Kishan was Prabaker's father, and my adoptive father, tradition decreed that I should take his first name for my middle name. And because they judged my nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness, Rukhmabai concluded, the women had agreed with her choice for my first name. It was Shantaram, which means man of peace, or man of God's peace.

They nailed their stakes into the earth of my life, those farmers. They knew the place in me where the river stopped, and they marked it with a new name. Shantaram Kishan Kharre. I don't know if they found that name in the heart of the man they believed me to be, or if they planted it there, like a wishing tree, to bloom and grow.

Whatever the case, whether they discovered that peace or created it, the truth is that the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the chrismal rain. Shantaram. The better man that, slowly, and much too late, I began to be.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"She is a beautiful prostitutes," Prabaker pleaded. "So fat she is, and in the most serious and the important places. A big handfuls you can grab, anywhere you like. You will be so exciting, you will make yourself sick!"

"It's a tempting offer, Prabu," I responded, trying not to laugh, "but I'm really not interested. We only left the village yesterday, and I guess my mind is still there. I'm just... not in the mood."

"Mood is no problem, baba. Only first you get bumping and jumping, then your bad moods will so quickly change, futt-a -

_futt!"

"Maybe you're right, but I think I'll pass, all the same."

"But she is so experience!" he whined. "Those fellows told me she has made sexy business too many times, and with too many hundred of customers, in this hotel only. I saw her. I looked on the inside of her eyes, and I know that she is a very big expert in the sexy business."

"I don't want a prostitute, Prabu. No matter how expert she is."

"But if you only see her. You will be crazy for her."

"Sorry, Prabu."

"But I told them... that you will come and look at her. Only look. There is no harming for a look, Linbaba."

"No."

"But... but I can't get back my cash deposits if you don't come and do some looking at her."

"You paid a cash deposit?"

"Yes, Lin."

"You paid a deposit, for me to have sex with a woman in this hotel?"

"Yes, Lin," he sighed, raising his arms, and letting them fall to his sides in a helpless gesture. "Six months in the village, you were. Six months with no sexy business. I was thinking you must be feeling a big amount of your needs. Now, no cash deposits returned for me, if you don't take one very small peeking at her."

"Okay," I sighed, copying his helpless gesture. "Let's go take a look, just to get you off the hook."

I pulled the door of our hotel room shut, and locked it. We set off along the wide corridor together. The Apsara Hotel in Aurangabad, north of Bombay, was more than a hundred years old, and built to serve a different, more splendid age. Its high, wide rooms were graced with open balconies facing the busy street, and they featured fine detail in their cornices and ceiling rosettes.