with Sri Ganesh

- 12-09-14:

… The weather remains unsettled and unyielding and the grass is drying… … Rs. 20/- are offered… I have needed to change some of the steps and movements of the puja, but it is still tentative and unrefined and confused, awaiting a new rhythm…

Namaste, Sri Ganesh, Namaste…

- 13-09-14:

… Just as I am singing the Aarti, ringing the little bell as I hold the deepam, the headman enters and at once gets hold of the rope to shake the big bell with full conviction, till I stop for a moment; only then does he calm down and simply attends, along with a young man who is, I found out, employed by those new developers I had a fight with recently… (They have named their place the “Royal Farms”, while others down the road have named their place “The Mother’s Farms” and of course there is also “AuroCity” and “AuroPark” and “Universal Farms” and so on, all set like parasites…)

Sweet Ganesha, Even with just these few flowers, Your wearing them is a celebration And honoring of creation… Asato ma sat gamaya Tamaso ma jyoti gamaya Mrityor ma amritam gamaya…

- 15-09-14:

… It drizzled for a few hours in the night, providing some relief to the plants… Today I give Sri Ganesh a bath and wash and clean the walls and the floor of the shrine… … P was waiting for me when I arrived, “just to see” me; when I asked him about work, he told a convoluted story about even his friends turning away from him and having lost the people’s respect and about someone poisoning his food and V’s relatives taking him to a temple to cure him of it and about his trying to work at the nearby Ashram Farm but meeting with a small accident there… But his whole intent is in fact that I should take him back, that he is lost without me and might lose

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