Dire Poverty

After getting a job at the Indian Consulate, I took a small room on 108th Street, near Columbia University. I think I paid $45 a month for my room. Two other workers from the Consulate shared the apartment. The others had big rooms, but mine was so small that if I had been one foot taller, or even less than one foot, then I would have touched from wall to wall when I was lying down! There was a long corridor and my room was at the end. There were cockroaches everywhere. It was so bad, so bad!

At night my meal was two cupcakes and water. Then, in the morning, I used to take cereal without milk. Sometimes at night, around eleven o'clock, I used to go out and sit in a small park nearby. It is called Morningside Park. My friends used to say, "Do not go there. It is so dangerous. At night all kinds of drug addicts and bad characters come out." I went there only to meditate. I was in my own world.

One night an old lady was making such a noise. I did not know if she was laughing or crying. I did not dare to go near her.

It was in this park that I wrote my famous poems "I am a Thief," "I am a Fool" and "I am an Idiot."

[Source: "Dire Poverty" in Sri Chinmoy, My Consulate Years, Agni Press Aum Publications, Jamaica, NY, 1996.]