"Richard Preston - The Demon In The Freezer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

Brilliant didn't know how to answer.
Neem Karoli Baba switched to English and kept on chanting. "You are no doctor ... U N O
doctor ... U N O doctor."
UNO can stand for United Nations Organization.
The guru was saying to his student (or so the student now thinks) that his duty and destiny-his
dharma-was to become a doctor with the United Nations. "He made this funny gesture, looking up at the
sky," Brilliant recalled, "and he said in Hindi, `You are going to go into villages. You are going to
eradicate smallpox. Because this is a terrible disease. But with God's grace, smallpox will be unmulun.' "
The guru used a formal old Sanskrit word that means "to be torn up by the roots." Eradicated. The word
unmulun comes from an IndoEuropean root that is at least ten thousand years old-the word is probably
older than smallpox.
"So I said, `What do I do?' And he said, `Go to New Delhi. Go to the office of the World
Health Organization. Go get your job. Jao, jao, jao, jao.' That means, `Go, go, go, go."' Brilliant
packed a few things and left the ashram that night-the guru seemed to be in a rush to "unmulate"
smallpox. The trip to New Delhi took seventeen hours by rickshaw and bus. When Brilliant walked into
the office of the WHO, it was nearly empty. It had just been set up, and almost no one was working
there. The government of India was then headed by Indira Gandhi, and she was skeptical of the
Eradication program and had not yet approved it. The first person Brilliant met was the head of the
office, Dr. Nicole Grasset. A FrenchSwiss woman who had been raised in South Africa, she was in her
forties, raven haired, and dressed impeccably. Nicole Grasset has been described as a hurricane in a
Dior dress.
"I was wearing a white dress and sandals," Brilliant says. "I'm five feet nine, and my beard was
something like five feet eleven, and my hair was in a ponytail down my back." Grasset had no job to offer
him, so Brilliant returned to the monastery and, having not slept in at least thirty-six hours, reported back
to the guru.
"Did you get your job?"
"No."
"Go back and get it."
Brilliant was half dead on his feet, but the guru was looking as if he could become angry, and
Brilliant did not want to have to deal with that. So he departed for New Delhi, another seventeen-hour
trip, where Grasset was a little nonplussed to see the young man again so soon and looking so haggard.
But nothing had changed.
"I went back and forth between New Delhi and the ashram at least a dozen times. All my
teacher kept saying was, `Don't worry, you'll get your job. Smallpox will be unmulun, uprooted." When
at the ashram, Brilliant meditated. He would assume the lotus position, shut his eyes, and utter the sacred
word Aummmmm.
Neem Karoli Baba would notice he was meditating, and he would walk up to Brilliant, yank an
apple out from under his blanket, and throw it at Brilliant's crotch. There would be a whack! and
Brilliant's Aumm would turn into Oww, God! My balls! and he would assume the "writhing lotus" position
on the floor. The guru seemed to be hinting, Brilliant says now, that he needed to stand up on his feet
and get back to the WHO in New Delhi, where his job awaited.
"On one of my trips, there was this tall guy sitting in the lobby of the WHO office. He looked up
and said, `Who are you? What are you doing here?' "
"I've come to work for the smallpox program," Brilliant replied.
"There isn't much of a program here."
"My guru says it will be eradicated. Who are you?"
"I'm D. A. Henderson. I'm the head of the program."
Brilliant was surprised to see the head of the global program sitting on a chair in the lobby doing
nothing in particular. He later came to feel that Henderson was a little bit like the Lion in the Narnia
books by C. S. Lewis. The Lion appears at key moments in the story, and he is a powerful presence