with Sri Ganesh

- 08-12-14:

… The air is warming up and the sky is graying… I am relieved to see everything in its place…: Madhu’s visit had left me a little uptight and worried that there might be some burglary overnight, castigating myself for having left his offerings unchecked; I now count the crisp new banknotes he has laid there: Rs. 10,000/-… … B comes in to do the work of adjusting and fixing the new shelves and we both realize it will take a little longer than just one morning. Then Madhu phones me; it is an odd call: he begins by asking me whether I have counted the money because, he says, he has offered Rs. 7,100/- but is now not sure that the amount was correct… I can’t help the sense that he might have been, in his old devious way, laying a kind of trap to test my honesty – to see whether I would take the bait… So I just say that I think he has offered more than that and will check it up and write him a receipt for the same later, as just now I am busy… Another Rs. 10/- are offered… … I borrow one of B’s chisels and clean out the dead wood from the hollow between the new branches of the Prosperity tree… … Later I prepare the receipt for Rs. 10,000/-; Madhu phones and messages me about keeping the balance ready for him when he next visits; but I reply that I have made the receipt already for that actual amount and that I think it is perhaps not a very good practice to take back anything that was given to Lord Ganesha… And he at once accepts it.

Namaste Sri Ganesh Aum Namo Bhagavate Namo Namah

- 09-12-14: Sri Aurobindo’s Mahasamaddhi.

It is also today 45 years that I first saw You – in his life…! … I find out that I have mistakenly left a valve open yesterday and the tank has emptied out and people take great care to let me know there is no water at the public tap…! … B comes in to take up his work: it is actually an offering he makes, of both the fine wood and his own labor; we place new corner shelves in the two corners adjacent to the door in the inner shrine, and a larger one outside of it on one side, so I can neatly keep the puja utensils without leaving any on the stone floor, while I can reach for any of them easily during the service. … Rs. 10/- are offered…

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