A quiet place to eat lunch

Right in front of our section, five or six metres away from the door, there was a telephone booth. It was covered with glass. Many times I ate my lunch inside the telephone booth. Alo used to make food for me. I used to take only 10 or 15 minutes to eat.

The other workers used to go to the cafeteria in Central Park, which was across the street. But I did not have money to eat there, except on rare occasions.

Shivaram:

Guru and I were at the Consulate together until August 1964, when I resigned. At that time, Guru used to come to work with two little candy bars in a paper bag. That was his lunch. Then, at lunchtime, he would sometimes come and ask me if I would like to “go out for lunch and talk about God.” What Guru actually meant was that we should go into the park, sit on a bench and share the candy bars while we talked.

One day, Guru and I were sitting in a very small park having our lunch and talking about God. We did not know that there was anything wrong with that park. Then some people came up to us and said, “We can see that you are good people. This is not a good place to sit. You should go somewhere else.” And so we left.