I don’t even know what that instrument’s called. Some kind of hand held, plucked string, gourded, drum skinned thing. Tambor? You were clearly seeking to seduce us, approaching, gazing, singing, playing as we walked – in our own practised openness – to the ashram gates.

I passed you many a time and met your smiling eyes. You sang softly, lovingly, with what felt like (but clearly I can’t mean) literally an open heart. Some perception I had of the way you held your chest, of posture – or some sixth sense? – makes me say it so.

I’d be walking in, perhaps wheeling my bike – although I can’t recall where I might have then parked it – tuning in to beauty and approaching the ashram I felt as some greater embracing heart. Openness. Softness. Femininity. At the “post office” stall inside, I’d sit tightly enclosed with my boss and sometime lover, and watch the rain falling on marble paving and lily pads. Besotted and undefended. Her blowing hot and cold rendering me weak, until petulantly striking out. And one outburst from my side was enough to bring all to an end: “You want a proper girlfriend.” And so the other guy wins.

I just couldn’t swallow it, condone it, that you’d voluntarily been sterilised in – what – your twenties? You said you felt free, and perhaps now dedicated your life to a path of enlightenment, but I just couldn’t make it feel right. I’d heard tales of childless women mourning having been misled in this way, and it horrified me to hear your choice. But it was yours, of course.

But you, singing Indian man with the wild hair – you played us all, played me, each morning on the way. Wending past the vendors selling tacky robes and poorly tuned flutes, dodging rickshaws and passing the money lender’s grand gates. You were one of the few who asked for nothing.