A Hue and Cry

I get a lot of mass emails from my friend Bantu--here's today's fare.

IDOL worship ?
or
IDLE worship ?

or

IDEAL worship ?


After immersion .. ?



The Day after ..



Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ?


and treated like this ... ?


or dumped like this ?

left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ?

Lying at your feet ....Helpless .. Abandoned by worshippers !


Maimed ?

Desecrated ?

And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ?

You burn down busses and call for bandhs ?



Was that statue a GOD,

OR

Is this GOD only a Statue ?

You decide.


--
Wake Up!
~
Friends,
nothing will happen to you if you don't forward this mail.
But it would be great if you can do it to avoid real desecration !

Hope you will help save the environment for our future generation.

Nothing like using a small idol that we have at home.

Jaipurian Lament

Oh! To be able to post pictures, videos, anything! To type on a not-sticky keyboard! To share with you, my loyal readers of one post, tales of my Southward travels!

Upon my return to Jaipur, I discovered that:

The walls of my bedroom, which were bright pink, are now bright purple.

Instead of living with one Rajasthani villager in my teacher's music school, I was now to live with an entire family of Rajasthani villagers. The usual "guard," Sohanlal, had returned to his village for his daughter's wedding, and my teacher's wife had engaged a new fellow to look after the place. So he brought the whole family. I am still not understanding the logic of having someone off the street look after your house so that no one off the street will break in. At some point Chandra, my teacher, realized that it was probably not a good idea to have me stay there with them and asked them to leave (much to my relief); however, it appears they have used all of the bathing buckets to mix cement.

In sum (as I have shared with Essąn):

The Goan Surf Sitar movement is in full swing, Portuguese Christian style;

In Bombay I saw the Mask of Eternity;

Keralan buses are for Small People who don't Brush their Teeth;

Vipers look precious sleeping in Bulbophyllum orchids

Let me see if I can get this picture of Drosera burmannii to post

Success! My first carnivorous plant seen in the wild (in a bog in the mountains outside of Ooty, or Udagamandalam, as it's now known, on one of my many walks with Swami Vyasa Prasad, friend of Steve the Landlord of Santa Fe New Mexico, the Royal City of the Holy Faith of San Francisco de Asis).

12 Bits of News from Hindoostaan

1. A buffalo has been cloned. Yes, read the story here, folks.

Apparently, "India...has the largest population of the best buffaloes in the world. However, the percentage of elite animals is very low and there is a need to enhance the population of these buffaloes. The cloning technique is expected to address this gap."

Yes, so it shall.

In other news, the buffalo has died of pneumonia.

2. मैं हिन्दी में यह कंप्यूटर पर लिखना सकती हूँ

3. "Pak" did it.

4. Hot water heaters are called "geezers"

5. The concepts of yesterday and tomorrow are expressed by the same word (कल)



6. I have been watching these giant Indian fruit bat flying fox creatures from the roof. They are, like, huge.







7. I do not yet have the ability to move images captured on my camera obscura to any sort of electronic numerical integrator type device; hence the pirated images you see above. I will also treat to you to a handsome collage of Gayatri Devi, Maharani of Jaipur:


8. My 26th Birthday was celebrated with a cake, upon which was written "Happy Birthday Allen!"

9. Word is going round my Indian family that "my father is a rich and famous dentist."

10. Went to buy bedsheets for Ravi Shankar with my pal Krishnaji, student of Raviji. Attended dinner hosted by Raviji in Delhi, delivered bedsheets. What was I doing at a dinner with Ravi Shankar?? Good g-d.

11. The plumeria and jasmine are in full bloom.

12. Phone booths are called STDs.