17.5

Charminar.

Charminar.

A void opened as an increasingly forbidding and moody night swelled around him – magnifying his insignificance. And into this bleak void crept the weak voice of doubt, warning him again and again that it was all going to end in ignominy – failure.

The ravenous weed of doubt grew voraciously through the vacant lot in Max’s mind. He was still upright and moving forward but the pace had gone from his step. The filmy clouds of uncertainty he’d so easily brushed aside when he took off from India Gate now loomed dark and ominous on the horizon, sporadically breaking into a storm of second thoughts.

What if renunciation wasn’t, in fact, easy? What if it required some skill that he didn’t have? What if this attempt took forever? What then?

Now he was no longer some kind of Galleon, flying free in the breeze.

Now he was a leaking raft of uncertainty… alone, adrift in the bleak and forbidding sea of doubt.

What a delusion – a broken down footballer trying to pull off something like this.

What hope did he have of really witnessing God?

What a fool he was for even trying.