The Seeker Read Free Page B

overcoat. “It’s very cold here.”
    The man laughed and his eyes lit up. “Thank you for caring, sir, but I am not in need of a coat.”
    “Please. Just a small gift from my sister and me. It’s not safe to be like that in the winters in New York.”
    “Indeed, sir, that is very considerate, but I am very fine indeed,” he said. “Please believe me when I say I can buy a coat for myself. I have been in America for one whole month but I have not felt cold here. It is much colder where I come from.”
    Max put his coat back on and huddled closer to the warm cart. “I didn’t know it was that cold in India,” he said. “I mean, you are from India, aren’t you?”
    The man nodded. He pulled a mug of water from the metal tank under the grill surface and washed the grill.
    “India is a big country, sir. I am from the mountains, up, very far up in the Himalayas, beyond Kashmir, where people rarely visit,” he said. He splattered oil on the grill. “Will you have something to eat, sir?”
    It was 8 p.m. Max was restarting work the next day after a week off and he hadn’t slept well for several nights. But he felt like talking to someone who didn’t know of his mother’s death and wouldn’t offer unwanted condolences and homilies.
    “A falafel gyro,” said Max, stooping and moving closer to the cramped, warm interior of the cart.
    “Sit, sit, sir,” said the man. He wiped the stool outside the cart with a dry, white cloth. “You are tall for my small cart, sir.”
    Max sat on the stool. “I’m tall for every cart,” he said. “And please don’t call me sir, I’m Max. Max Pzoras”
    He smiled. “Indeed,” he said. “My name is Viveka.”
    Viveka took out some falafel from one of the stainless steel containers on the shelf and put them on the grill. The falafel sizzled. Just inhaling the hot metal smell made Max shiver less. Viveka broke the falafel gently with his tongs, snowflakes falling on his naked back.
    Max shook his frozen fingers. “You must feel at least a little cold,” he said.
    Viveka looked up from the grill. “Oh me, no, not at all, sir,” he said. “If you live in cold weather for long, your body changes. I am nothing. The Himalayan yogis sit in their caves wearing nothing for months even when the temperature drops thirty or forty degrees below zero, much, much lower than here.”
    “But that’s just a myth,” said Max. “No one has actually seen them.”
    Viveka put the tongs down. He raised his eyebrows. “Why, I have, sir. Indeed I have. Every day for years and years.”
    “Up in the Himalayas?” said Max.
    Viveka nodded.
    “Can anyone see them?” said Max. “Just like that? You hike up the mountains and there they are, sitting in the caves?”
    “Oh no, no, sir, very much the opposite. Indeed, the yogis do not want contact with people,” he said. He began chopping the onions again. “I grew up in the Himalayas but I did not even see them until the army posted me up in Siachen glacier, the highest military base in the world, more than 20,000 feet above sea level. You can only get there by helicopter. There were just some of us in the Indian army station, a few Pakistani soldiers across the border, and the yogis sitting meditating in the caves nearby. It was a miracle how they got there on foot.” He shook his head. “Very unusual people, sir. Indeed, I did not even understand the things I saw in those years until much later.”
    Max didn’t fancy hearing about more religious nutters after listening to hymns praising God’s infinite mercy and justice at the memorial service that day. But he was vaguely interested in meditation as were some in the private equity firm he worked at on Wall Street.
    “What are they meditating on?” said Max.
    “These are things I do not know very well, sir,” said Viveka.
    “Why are they at the top of the Himalayas? Why don’t they live in a more comfortable place?”
    “The silence, the solitude, is necessary for