Dan

One morning a few weeks ago I took my journal out on a field trip to the coffeehouse. My primary task was to process an elaborate nightmare involving being shackled by one of my Watch Commanders and escorted into a supermarket past some of the other officers from my place of work. As I was speculating on the "what the heck can all this mean?" phase I started to overhear an interesting conversation next to me between a graduate student and his advisor. After a few minutes I stopped writing and devoted myself completely to eavesdropping. The graduate student was saying some really brilliant things about Buddhist Philosophy that hung in my mind. When he mentioned that he was going to Delhi soon to study with the Jains I knew I had to speak to him.

The graduate student was there with his computer and books, evidently planning to do work. He had already been distracted by his advisor and I worried that he wanted to get back to work. I figured though that if he wanted to be left alone I would be able to discern that pretty quickly and I could leave immediately. When the advisor left I took a deep breath, turned to him, and said "So, I hear you are going to Delhi, I've been there twice." He looked up at me with surprised but friendly gorgeous blue/green eyes and replied "oh really, do you have any recommendations of things to see or do?"

I was in. "Stay in your hotel," I advised. "Stay in your hotel until the Jains take you to Ranakpur. He laughed. "Any recommendations on where I can get meat?" he asked, "the Jain diet is very strict, I know that I am going to need to go out and cheat."

Thus began a nearly 5 hour conversation on India, Yoga, Buddhism, third world diseases, et cetera. Neither one of us got refills, ate, drank, or hardly moved for the entire time. At the end numbers were exchanged. This is how I met Dan.