The Server

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SEX IS FORBIDDEN at the Dasgupta Institute. That’s one of the big advantages of working here. Of course I’m a volunteer, they don’t pay me, so I don’t mean really working. I’m a server, officially. Harper says it’s unusual for anyone to serve for more than three or four retreats in a row. Which makes sense. Parents don’t put you through school to have you spend your life cooking and cleaning for free. They have ambitions for you, they have their plans. It’s hard to disappoint.

All the servers here are young, or youngish, between things anyway. I suppose, if you think about it, people are always between things, there’s no other way to be. But you know what I mean. Summer jobs, gap years. Sometimes I wonder what things I’m between. I suppose it should be pretty easy to say what the stuff behind you is, how you came to be here and so on. Most people’s worries are about the future. But the longer I stay at the Dasgupta Institute the less certain I am about what happened before. In the early days here, when I first sat and tried to meditate, the past hammered on in my head. Everybody gets that. You sit and close your eyes and the thoughts start barking like crazy dogs. They used to, and I haven’t forgotten. Just that nowadays I’m not so sure any more what it added up to. Perhaps, churning over and over, the old thoughts have worn themselves out. The torment has faded. Perhaps the truth is I’m not between things at all at the Dasgupta. I’ll live here for ever maybe, or if I go, the Dasgupta will live with me.

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