《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 37 (79):來到印度大綱

When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen of them at any given time and whenever one died off—taken away by hawk or fox or by some obscure chicken illness—my father would replace the lost hen. He'd drive to a nearby poultry farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock. You can't just toss it in there with the old chickens, or they will see it as an invader. What you must do instead is to slip the new bird into the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on a roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don't notice the newcomer, thinking only, "She must have been here all the time since I didn't see her arrive." The clincher of it is, awaking within this flock, the newcomer herself doesn't even remember that she's a newcomer, thinking only, "I must have been here the whole time . . ."

在成長過程中，我家裏養雞。我們在任何時刻都有12只雞，每回死去一隻——被老鷹、狐狸攫去，或罹患某種不清楚的疾病死去——我父親便補上一隻。他開車去附近的家禽農場，回來的時候，袋子裏裝着一隻新的雞。問題是，想讓新的雞加入雞羣行列，必須非常謹慎。你不能只是把它丟進舊的雞羣，否則會被當做闖入者看待。你必須在三更半夜，趁別的雞睡覺時，把新來的雞偷偷放入雞籠中。把它放在雞羣旁邊的窩，然後躡手躡腳地走開。雞在早晨醒來時，不會留意到新來的雞，只會以爲：“它肯定一直待在這裏，因爲我沒看見它被送來。”重要的是，新來的雞在雞羣當中醒來時，自己也不記得自己是新來者，只以爲：“我肯定從頭到尾都待在這裏。”

This is exactly how I arrive in India.

這正是我到達印度的情況。

My plane lands in Mumbai around 1:30 AM. It is December 30. I find my luggage, then find the taxi that will take me hours and hours out of the city to the Ashram, located in a remote rural village. I doze on the drive through nighttime India, sometimes waking to look out the window, where I can see strange haunted shapes of thin women in saris walking alongside the road with bundles of firewood on their heads. At this hour? Buses with no headlights pass us, and we pass oxcarts. The banyan trees spread their elegant roots throughout the ditches.

我的班機大約在凌晨一點半降落於孟買。那天是12月31日。我領了行李，而後找計程車出城，前往數個鐘頭車程外、位於某偏遠鄉村的靜修道場。我一路打盹兒，穿越夜間的印度，時而醒來望向窗外，看見身穿莎麗服裝的瘦小女人們詭異神祕的身影，她們走在路上，頭上頂着柴火。“這麼早？”不亮前燈的公車超越我們，我們超越牛車。榕樹伸展着優雅的樹根，遍及溝渠。

We pull up to the front gate of the Ashram at 3:30 AM, right in front of the temple. As I'm getting out of the taxi, a young man in Western clothes and a wool hat steps out of the shadows and introduces himself—he is Arturo, a twenty-four-year-old journalist from Mexico and a devotee of my Guru, and he's here to welcome me. As we're exchanging whispered introductions, I can hear the first familiar bars of my favorite Sanskrit hymn coming from inside. It's the morning arati, the first morning prayer, sung every day at 3:30 AM as the Ashram wakes. I point to the temple, asking Arturo, "May I . . .?" and he makes a be-my-guest gesture. So I pay my taxi driver, tuck my backpack behind a tree, slip off my shoes, kneel and touch my forehead to the temple step and then ease myself inside, joining the small gathering of mostly Indian women who are singing this beautiful hymn.

我們在凌晨三點半左右抵達道場，停在寺院門口。我下了計程車，一名身穿西方服飾、頭戴羊毛帽的年輕人從黑暗中走出來，自報姓名——他是阿圖洛，24歲的墨西哥記者，我的精神導師的追隨者，他向我表示歡迎。我們低聲互相介紹的當兒，我聽見我最喜愛的梵語讚歌熟悉的第一小節從寺院傳出來。是清晨的“燈儀”（arati）：每天清晨三點半在道場起身時所進行的第一次晨禱。我指着寺院，問阿圖洛：“我可不可以……？”他做出“請便”的手勢。於是我付了計程車費，把揹包塞在樹後，脫了鞋，跪下來，在寺院階梯上磕了頭，慢慢移身進去，加入大半由印度女人唱出優美讚歌的小小聚會。