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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