Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

to be aware of every single step, and learn to look four steps ahead. If a single ant is in your path you should be ready to jump or step aside. For the same reason, we must avoid standing on green plants, dew, mud, clay or cobwebs – who knows what life forms may be there?
    ‘Not hurting any sentient being and protecting the dharma is really the heart and soul of the dharma. We believe there is a little of paramatma – the spirit of God – in all living creatures, even those which are too small to see. So much of our discipline is about this: only drinking filtered water, only eating in daylight so we can really see what we are eating. At the end of each walk we do a special ritual to apologise for any creatures we have inadvertently hurt.
    ‘But it was while walking that Prayogamati began to realise that her health was failing. Because she had difficulty in keeping up with me, we noticed that there was something wrong with her joints. She began to have real difficulty in walking, and even more so in sitting or squatting.
    ‘For ten years her condition got worse: by the end, it pained her to move at all, and she had difficulty moving or sitting. Then one afternoon she was studying the scriptures in a monastery in southern Karnataka when she began coughing. Her cough had become worse and worse, and she had begun to make this deep retching noise. But this time when she took her hand away from her mouth she found it was covered in blood. After that, there was nothing more for a week, but then she began coughing up blood very regularly. Sometimes, it was a small amount – just enough to make her mouth red – at other times she would cough up enough to fill a small teacup or even a bowl.
    ‘I guessed immediately that it was TB, and got special permission from our guruji to let her see a doctor. Western medicine is forbidden to us, as so much of it is made by using dead animals, or by torturing animals during the testing process. But given the seriousness of the situation, our guruji agreed to let a Western doctor look at her, though he insisted that only herbal medicine could be given to her and only at the time of her daily meal.
    ‘Prayogamati remained very calm, and for a long time she hoped that she might still recover her health. Even when it became clear that this was something quite serious, she remained composed and peaceful. I think it was always me that was more worried. She kept assuring me that she was feeling better already and that it was nothing serious; but in reality you didn’t have to be a doctor to see that her health was rapidly deteriorating.
    ‘Her digestive system became affected, the bloody coughing continued, and after a while she started showing blood when she went for her ablutions too. Eventually I got permission to take her to a hospital where she had an MRI scan and a full blood test. They diagnosed her problem as Cox’s Syndrome – advanced TB of the digestive system. They said that her haemoglobin was very reduced, and her chances were not good. One doctor said that if we had come earlier they could have helped, but we had left it much too late.
    ‘That same day Prayogamati decided to embrace sallekhana . She said she would prefer to give up her body rather than have it taken from her. She said she wanted to die voluntarily, facing it squarely and embracing it, rather than have death ambush her and take her away by force. She was determined to be the victor, not the victim. I tried to argue with her, but like me, once she took a decision it was almost impossible to get her to change her mind. Despite her pain and her illness, she set out that day to walk a hundred kilometres to see our guru, who was then in Indore, staying at the Shantinath Jain temple.
    ‘We got there after a terrible week in which Prayogamati suffered very badly: it was winter – late December – and bitterly cold. But she refused to give up and when she got to Indore she asked our guruji’s permission to begin