When lunch ended, the plumber/poet from New Zealand slipped me a note. It said to meet him after dinner; he wanted to show me something. So after dinner that night I met him over by the meditation caves, and he told me to follow him, that he had a gift for me. He walked me across the Ashram, then led me to a building I'd never been inside before, unlocked a door and took me up a back set of stairs. He knew of this place, I guessed, because he fixes all the air-conditioning units, and some of them are located up there. At the top of the stairs there was a door which he had to unlock with a combination; he did this swiftly, from memory. Then we were up on a gorgeous rooftop, tiled in ceramic chips that glittered in the evening twilight like the bottom of a reflecting pool. He took me across that roof to a little tower, a minaret, really, and showed me another narrow set of stairs, leading to the tippity-top of the tower. He pointed to the tower and said, "I'm going to leave you now. You're going to go up there. Stay up there until it's finished."

"Until what's finished?" I asked.

The plumber just smiled, handed me a flashlight, "for getting down safely when it's over," and also handed me a folded piece of paper. Then he left.

I climbed to the top of the tower. I was now standing at the tallest place in the Ashram, with a view overlooking the entirety of this river valley in India. Mountains and farmland stretched out as far as I could see. I had a feeling this was not a place students were normally allowed to hang out, but it was so lovely up there. Maybe this is where my Guru watches the sun go down, when she's in residence here. And the sun was going down right now. The breeze was warm. I unfolded the piece of paper the plumber/poet had given me.

He had typed: