Sunday, February 2, 2014
A Strange Mantra
Last night I was walking through Ogawa Plaza, on my way to get cigarettes and Indian food, when a short, stocky, elderly Asian lady with a wizened face beckoned to me. Ordinarily I don’t stop for strangers on the street, but this woman seemed harmless enough, and she was interesting too. She wore a funny cylindrical hat and colorful clothes of coarse wool, like maybe she was a yakherd from someplace super exotic, like maybe Bhutan or some place like that. So I stopped to talk.
She asked me, “Can you say ’NAH-moo’?”
And so I said, “NAH-moo.”
She nodded slowly, with measured approval. She said, “Now say ‘AH-mee’.”
“AH-mee,” I said.
She again nodded. “Tofu,” she said, it being understood that I was to repeat after her.
“Tofu,” I repeated.
“Good,” said the woman. “NAH-moo.”
“NAH-moo,” I echoed.
“AH-mee.”
“AH-mee.”
“Tofu.”
“Tofu.”
“Okay,” said the Asian lady.
“Thanks,” I said, nodding before turning and walking away.
As I strode off, the woman called out from where she stood: “NAH-moo.”
“NAH-moo,” I called back, over my shoulder.
“AH-mee!” shouted the woman.
“AH-mee!” I shouted back.
“Tofu!” cried the woman.
“Tofu!” I cried back.
Then, as I walked on in silence, the woman, who now had begun following me, yelled sternly: “Keep saying it!”
I kept saying it. “NAH-moo…AH-mee…tofu…NAH-moo…AH-mee…tofu….”
When I got to the corner at Broadway, I looked back to see if the woman was still monitoring me, but she was gone. She had disappeared, like a dying wildflower’s loosed petals blown across the valleys by a Himalayan wind.
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