Shankar Karki

The first day I met Shankar Karki he took me around his one acre property, pointing out the fruit trees and the big tree that marked the edge of his field. We sat with his neighbors in a concrete public shelter with an aluminum roof, and he named the landscape for me in Nepali: tree, rock, stream, road. Little children run up to him with pinches of tobacco leaves, which he grudgingly accepts. "Bad habit," he says with a wry smile. He points to his chest and adds, "Hard drinker, also." He tells me a story, which I could only partly follow, about a time when he got drunk and crashed a motorcycle. "Do not tell Prakash," he adds, chuckling.

The second day I showed him the articles I had to read on Hinduism. He slowly read the titles aloud, and then quickly launched into a description of his religious philosophy. Because there is only one Supreme God, he explained, he worshiped all gods equally, and all of the various personages that God had been when born as a human here on earth: the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Sai Baba the living god, a picture of whom hangs over our front door. His reasoning behind this seemed to include an elaborate conspiracy theory about man's first landing on the moon. When Neil Armstrong stepped down the steps, apparently saw and felt red clothed hands push him down towards to the lunar surface. He never told anyone until coming to India.

The third day he greeted my return home with sharp Nepali commands shouted out the family dogs. "Bite! Attack!" he barked, laughing and smiling warmly. The dogs ignored him.

The fourth day I asked him if he did Hindu astrology. He giggled and shook his finger at me. "Who told you? Who told you?" I admit that it was one of my language teachers, and he chuckles all the harder. He promises to give me a reading later that week.

The fifth day when I wake up I see him walking down towards the stream. "Namaste!" I call after him, but he doesn't seem to notice. Later that night I catch my host sister reading lips. Sharkar Karki is nearly deaf.