We are taking pictures here. (Albeit with a very basic digital camera - you know one with only a few pixels and a huge delay-and so I haven't taken anything very artistic or particularly noteworthy at this point.) For instance yesterday there was this very large procession on Ferguson College Road. I thought i would take a picture of this decorated cart that was being pulled by these very stately oxen that was across the road. So even though I snapped the picture while the cart was in plain sight, the picture that I actually took has a bus in front of the cart. Oh well. (Maybe it is actually an artistic statement...Like how cars and technology are always coming in front of spirituality...) Anyhoo---

Later yesterday evening I went to make phone call at a nearby shop. The shop owner speaks very good English and was is very friendly, so I asked him about the parade and events that were going on yesterday. (The reason we even saw the festivities was because we walked down Fergusson College Road to the Reliance Phone Company to buy a phone card that I could use on the phone in our flat to call Kelly. The streets were all sectioned off, there was a big parade and there were booths blaring music and talks and big pictures of people who were either gurus or political leaders (we couldn't tell which), and lots of people decked out in religious-looking finery.

On a side note, I got to the store, managed to communicate what I wanted and then the clerk said I will have to come back tomorrow. I am thinking, Listen buddy, you do not know what I went through to come here today. I say, "Why can't I get this today?" Evidently the computers were down and so they couldn't do it. I was pretty bummed.

So we went next door to console ourselves with a snack at the Coffee Day cafe. It is kind of like a Starbucks, but then again, not really at all. I think Barista is actually the Indian Starbucks and Coffee Day, I am told, is kind of a step below that. One of our guidebooks about India said that one's need for privacy is to be abandoned here. It is just not their way. And the principle seems to apply across the board. There are crowds everywhere, the walls are thin, there is not really enough of anything to go around so there is a lot of sharing and so on. But is is particularly evident in the customer service domains. In America we kind of shop in private, decide and ponder in privacy, and then go make a purchase. It is just not like that here. Everything is set up so that the entire shopping process depends on at least two other people. Even at the smaller convenience stores you have to ask for what you want and they tell you whether or not they have it. It is hard for me to get used to.

So at Coffee Day we walked in and proceeded to the counter where we were then scolded, ushered to a seat, given a menu and then walked through the ordering process. While we were waiting I got to thinking that maybe some cookies would be good. So I walk over to the display counter to look at the cookie options where I am immediately told to go sit down and he would come show me the cookies! Anyway, after a very long wait, some very mediocre cookies, Anne enjoyed a yummy coffee frappe thing and I had some tea.

Which takes me back to my phone call at the very nice Indian man's shop. Although I do not know his name I do know that he is a Hindu, married a Muslim woman in a love marriage, not an arranged marriage, he has a daughter who is sixteen (very pretty, I saw the picture...She has her mother's mouth and eyes and coloring (I saw the mothers picture also) but she is tall like him, which he says will make the match very hard to make but probably by the time she is getting married he will not be allowed to interfere as such is the way these days even though he had a love marriage and is now a divorced person.) Also his mother is coming to visit him from Mumbai.

I asked him about the festivities on the street that we had seen. He said that it is a 300km procession across the region where some God (he told me the name but it did not ring a bell- he also told me the Hindu religion has 36,000 gods and he also finds it hard to keep them all straight) is processed across the region from city to city and each town has these festivals and people come to worship as a pilgrimage.

We had class with Geeta last night. The sequence was nothing short of brilliant. (And for those of you reading who are my students, I have lots to offer you to help open the groins So that is something you can look forward to! Some really grueling stuff, in fact. YOU WILL LOVE IT.) What was kind of neat was that right before class I was telling Anne that I felt like my S.I. joint was kind of out and that I was really feeling a tightness in my low back. The class was actually a made-to-order class- all about releasing and making space in the sacrum, lengthening the low back and opening the groins. Quite fabulous in that agony and ecstasy way that yoga can be.

Class with Prashant tonight. We practiced last night's sequence this morning, ate lunch (very yummy cauliflower) and then I fell asleep on the couch since it is my couch day. (I will have to explain "couch day" in a future post. I am running out of time.)