Chapter 582. We Are Losing Her!

Proserpina

I was floating above the room.

Once, a very long time ago, I had listened in as a visiting Hindu nun was having a conversation with the novice nuns in that amazing little monastery in Bhutan.

She had been addressing a group of young nuns who were still learning to imbibe the teachings of various other religious doctrines. The old lady, clad in a saffron-coloured sari, her shaved head bare and brown as a nut, had a strange dignity and grace as she sat at ease, cross-legged and serene. Having traveled all the way from India, she had been answering a whispered question from one of the young novices who had asked her about death.

‘When one dies, our spirit leaves the body,’ she had been saying in her soft voice and I had leaned against one of the cool pillars, in the shadows, listening as she went on.

‘The spirit, the soul, hovers above the body for a few hours. And then it leaves.’

One of the more outspoken young nuns pipe