Notes on Pawan's Story

I'll tell you my story. I used to be, one time, when I was 17, mafia. I took people by the neck, I put gun in face and one time I kill somebody. Then I needed to go away, on a boat, I needed to go away.

Now I changed. Good karma. I'm 34, I'm married. I have two children, I sell flowers in the morning.

(Do people change?)

(What a life.)

Marriage is important, he says. You have children, you see then, teach them, in his eyes there is love. There is also a longing. He looks into the distance, over the Ganges, beyond the other bank.

I know people who sell drugs, he says. Every morning I see them, they ask for money, I stay out. He needs to lean on someone, just a little, even though he is married – even though family life has shown him a way back, on his boat, back to the same port, but to a different life. He needs to move his feet now, 34 is too young to sell flowers here.

He pays me back. A family, he says, marriage. Like all men he believes, shamelessly – there is something more, in this life, he knows this. Pawan, father of Hanuman, now a man. Feeling the current he will now rise, dig inside himself and sail.

Come back, he says. Next time you come back, come see me, we go on my boat.

(People need to believe and there is no weakness in that.)

My English is not good, he says.

- Write more of Powan, there

is something noble about him, his

river, the unknown he

refuses to be afraid of