"This is why killing and stealing are wrong-not because a book tells us they are wrong, or a law tells us they are wrong, or a spiritual guide tells us they are wrong, but because if everyone did them we would not move toward the ultimate complexity that is God, with the rest of the universe. And the opposite of these is also true. Why is love good? Well, what would happen if everyone loved everyone else? Would that help us or would it hold us back?"
"It would help," I agreed, laughing from within the trap he'd set for me.
"Yes. In fact, such universal love would greatly accelerate the movement toward God. Love is good. Friendship is good. Loyalty is good. Freedom is good. Honesty is good. We knew that these things were good before-we have always known this in our hearts, and all the great teachers have always told us this-but now, with this definition of good and evil, we can see why they are good.
Just as we can see why stealing and lying and killing are evil."
"But sometimes..." I protested, "you know, what about self defence? What about killing to defend yourself?"
"Yes, a good point, Lin. I want you to imagine a scene for me.
You are standing in a room with a desk in front of you. On the other side of the room is your mother. A vicious man holds a knife to the throat of your mother. The man will kill your mother. On the table in front of you there is a button. If you press it, the man will die. If you do not, he will kill your mother. These are the only possible outcomes. If you do nothing, your mother dies. If you press the button, the man dies and your mother is saved. What would you do?"
"The guy's history," I answered without hesitation.
"Just so," he sighed, perhaps wishing that I'd wrestled with the decision a little longer before pressing the button. "And if you did this, if you saved your mother from this vicious killer, would you be doing the wrong thing or the right thing?" "The right thing," I said just as swiftly.
"No, Lin, I'm afraid not," he frowned. "We have just seen that in the terms of this new, objective definition of good and evil, killing is always wrong because, if everyone did it, we would not move toward God, the ultimate complexity, with the rest of the universe. So it is wrong to kill. But your reasons were good. So therefore, the truth of this decision is that you did the wrong thing, for the right reasons..."
As I rode the wind, a week after Khader's little lecture on ethics, weaving the bike through ancient-modern traffic beneath a darkening, portentous tumble of clouds, those words echoed in my mind. The wrong thing, for the right reasons. I rode on and, even when I stopped thinking about Khader's lesson, those words still murmured in the little grey daydream-space where memory meets inspiration. I know now that the words were like a mantra, and that my instinct-fate's whisper in the dark-was trying to warn me of something by repeating them. The wrong thing... for the right reasons.
But on that day, an hour after Didier's confession, I let the murmured warnings fade. Right or wrong, I didn't want to think about the reasons-not my reasons for doing what I did, or Khader's, or anyone's. I enjoyed the discussions of good and evil, but only as a game, as an entertainment. I didn't really want the truth. I was sick of truth, especially my own truth, and I couldn't face it. So the thoughts and premonitions echoed and then whipped past me into the coils of humid wind. And by the time I swept into the last curve of coast near the Sea Rock Hotel, my mind was as clear as the broad horizon clamped upon the limit of a dark and tremulous sea.
The Sea Rock, which was as luxurious and opulently serviced as the other five-star hotels in Bombay, offered the special attraction that it was literally built upon the sea rocks at Juhu. From all its major restaurants, bars, and a hundred other windows, the Sea Rock scanned the endlessly shifting peaks and furrows of the Arabian Sea. The hotel also offered one of the best and most comprehensively eclectic smorgasbord lunches in the city. I was hungry, and glad to see that Lisa was waiting for me in the foyer. She wore a starched, sky-blue shirt with the collar turned up, and sky-blue culottes. Her blonde hair was wound into the praying-fingers of a French braid. She'd been clean, off heroin, for more than a year. She looked tanned and healthy and confident. "Hi, Lin," she smiled, greeting me with a kiss on the cheek.
"You're just in time."
"Great. I'm starving."
"No, I mean you're just in time to meet Kalpana. Just a minute- here she comes now."
A young woman with a fashionably western short haircut, hipster jeans, and a tight, red T-shirt approached us. She wore a stopwatch around her neck on a lanyard, and carried a clipboard.
She was about twenty-six years old.
"Hello," I said when Lisa introduced us. "Is that your rig outside? The broadcast vans, and all the cables? Are you shooting a movie?"
