Flesh and Stones: Field Notes from a Finite World (Harmony Memoir) - Hardcover

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From...Ellora

Careening along National Highway 211 in the dust of western India?s Deccan plateau, I was quietly directing Anna when to let me die. ?If I lose both hands,? I whispered, gripping the back-seat door handle. ?If I?m paralyzed from the neck down. If I?m badly burned.?

?What??

?If I?m burned.? I was speaking low to spare our mad driver?s feelings. Despite the fact that he was apparently trying to kill us?or was, at best, indifferent to that outcome?I adjusted my volume to ?culturally sensitive, non-judgmental,? a diplomatic decibel we liberal Americans try to effect while traveling?when in Rome, die like the Romans. My terror, however, had no dial and as he pulled right again and tore down the packed highway toward an oncoming truck, jerking left at the last second to avoid collision by cutting off a bus, then veered back into approaching traffic I gasped, ?What about you??

?Me??

?When do you want me to pull the plug?? Not a question I?d ever considered asking my 20-year-old daughter, but as our driver sped down the road from Aurangabad to the Ellora Cave Temples, death?or worse?seemed imminent. A small, gay idol swung from the rearview mirror: Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, who seemed redundant the way our driver simply dived and wove among them.

?We?re not going to die, Mom.? That was youth; I knew better.