Free JOHNNY GONE DOWN by Karan Bajaj Page A

has a standing record of missing Americans and is likely to process your paperwork immediately. You could be on a flight late tomorrow or the day after.’
    ‘Yes, I feel fine,’ I said sharply. ‘I would like to leave as soon as possible.’
    He nodded understandingly and I felt like a jerk. He had saved my life. He owed me nothing, yet Iwas speaking to him as if my foolishness in coming to Cambodia was his fault.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Thank you for saving my life.’
    He smiled broadly. ‘No apologies required. You have taken this extraordinarily well. As I said, you are a very courageous man to have made it out of there alive.’
    My missing arm began to hurt again. I looked at it in surprise.
    ‘It’s called a phantom pain,’ he said, noticing my reaction. ‘Soon it will get better as you… err… get used to it.’
    As soon as I got used to being a cripple, I thought bitterly.
    He stared at me. ‘You are at the right place to get the answers you are seeking,’ he said after a while. ‘Would you be willing to come with me for a discourse by the Maha-thera, the head monk of the monastery? You are lucky. We are inducting a few new monks today so he will give an overview of the Buddha’s teachings.’
    Great, lucky again, luckiest bastard in the world, wasn’t I? Lucky to get a chance to hear a cheerful, well-fed monk in the pink of health tell me what an ennobling experience my suffering was. I didn’t want to be a noble person, I thought. I just wanted my arm back.
    ‘Like you, I could never understand why the innocent had to suffer. That’s why I left the RedCross,’ David said as he helped me get out of bed and walk a few hesitant steps. The soles of my feet seemed to burn, and I grimaced in pain. Some suffering, I thought. Look at me. I didn’t even have an arm to balance my movements any more; if I fell, I fell.
    ‘Whatever your questions, the Buddha has the answers,’ he told me.
    Sure, I thought, who better to understand my pain than a thirty-something prince in the throes of a mid-life crisis who abandoned his family so he could ‘find himself’. Today’s junkie was yesterday’s Buddha.
    David laughed. ‘You don’t do a very good job of hiding your emotions. If you prefer to rest before your trip to Bangkok, please don’t feel obliged to come.’
    ‘No, no. I want to come,’ I said, suddenly ashamed of myself.
    So later that day, I limped my way through the silent, well-lit corridors to the common room.

    ‘The first noble truth is this: All life is dukha.’
    Despite my vow to keep an open mind, I felt a surge of irritation. What was I doing here, in the middle of these orange-robed, bald, stoned looking monks with impassive, content faces, listening to a phony Chink godman who had probably never seenthe outside of a secluded monastery spout paternal homilies on the nature of existence?
    Get me a man with an amputated arm or a man who sat for two years in his own faeces smelling his friend’s decomposing body - and I will hear him speak all day. But spare me this, I said silently to the fat, cheerful teacher, who looked ageless and radiant, nowhere near the eighty years of age David had said he was. I already know all life is suffering, in a way you will never know.
    The forty-odd monks in the small room were listening in rapt attention. Despite the location of the border village, most were westerners. Red Cross dropouts or trust fund hippies, I thought uncharitably. Crest cleans your teeth in ten days; the Buddha gives you nirvana in ten days. Salvation or the Buddha will give your money back. Try next door at Walmart.
    ‘Contrary to popular perception, dukha is not just suffering,’ the teacher continued. I focused my attention on him again. Unlike the pastors at church, he stated his position untheatrically and calmly, without trying to convince or provoke.
    ‘Dukha in Pali also means uneasiness, disquietude, restlessness, a vague feeling of incompleteness that