with an on-going dicky tummy that leaves me feeling lacklustre (why oh why did i boast of my iron gut??) i don't have very many words at the moment. but i do have other peoples' words - those, namely, of Annie Dillard, whose book 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' has been The Find of my century. this one gos out to Andy, in response (sort of) to your letter. (and thanks for the truffles!)

'i think that the dying prayer at the last is not 'please' but 'thankyou', as a guest thanks his host at the door. falling from airplanes the people are crying thankyou, thankyou, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. divinity is not playful. the universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. by a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. there is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. and then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing what you can , like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part'.

we are in Varanasi, the City of Light, for two days and one night and it is raining. we witnessed a couple of cremations yesterday, the air foggy with a familiar tang of - what was it now? ah yes, the smell of barbeques on a warm summer's evening... Mum insists that one night is quite enough, but me, i know i will be back.

shuffle me to heaven and back...


someone has a beautiful pink tinklebox back in her arms... someone managed to erase everything from her ipod, whilst in the process of trying to put stuff on.... who on earth could be that stupid, i hear you cry.

ahem.

well anyway, it's back and nicely stocked. so, courtesy of one kindly fellow traveller who has since returned to Yookay and one shuffle button i get to hear Morrissey shouting at Nick Drake who sidles up to P J Harvey who's talking to Pulp who's chatting up Karen O who's arguing with Neil Young who's punching Cat Stevens who's looking for Leonard Cohen who's ignoring Van Morrison... etc.

there is more, much much more to say, but this keyboard is insufferably slooow so it will have to wait.

Of grass and sparrows: Day 3.

Meet the Everywoman. Her skin is black, her limbs like sticks, folded away as she sleeps. Her head is shaved. One breast hangs exposed like an empty balloon, the other is a scar like a cruel lop-sided smile. Crowns of femininity stripped. This is humanity stripped. I can see your skull and your skeleton but your eyes glitter with a dark light: an old, low light that is remembrance. He will remember you is the promise - like the sparrow but infinitely more so, over and over again, world without end. Let us see that we are as the grass. We bloom and are gone. We are remembered and redeemed. It has taken place. And yet. There is more to come. More than we could ever dare to believe.

Caves and Ashrams.

The Buddist caves of Ellora were pretty special (photos to follow). What was not so special were the 'friendly' tour guides - "i am just wery wery friendly ma'am! i ask no money! i do for good karma only!" (no, i don't need to come into another tiny dingy cave with a huge great lingam in it and i really don't need to hold your hand, or be kissed by you etc etc) I was reminded of the bit in A Passage to India, with the Malabar caves and their bizarre echo:


The crush and the smell she could forget, but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued it had managed to murmur 'pathos, piety, courage - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value'. If one had spoken vileness in that place or quoted lofty poetry the comment would be the same 'ou boum'. If one had spoken with the tongues of angels and pleaded for all the unhappiness and scandal in the world, past, present and to come, for all the misery men must undergo whatever their opinion and position, and however much they dodge or bluff it would amount to the same, the serpent would descend and return to the ceiling'


I then took what would have been a very comfortable, nay luxurious overnight bus (were it not for the itch factor (fleas? in the seats??) to Sevagram - to Gandhi's ashram. There i installed myself in the hut that was once inhabited by Bapu himself, but is now inhabited primarily by a family of rats. These were friendly rats, i felt - country rats. I settled myself into the daily routine of prayer, bread labour (preparing vegetables - organic, homegrown of course) or weeding, or cleaning grain, and talking to the other guests, and walking in the Maharashtran countryside.

And now, taking myself from the sublime to the mad, the bad and the downright dangerous, i am in Calcutta. And it is snowing. Well not really, but the fire we used to heat the water for the laundry was giving out big white flakes of ash and i thought, for a minute...My first morning at Prem Dam hospice found me washing poo and blood encrusted rags, in stages: scrape 'matter', cold rinse, hot wash, hot rinse and wringe. Stage one is obviously the most, er, distressing, and we squealed when, thinking we'd scraped the last we saw, sitting on the pile of washing a round turd, looking up at us like a toad. It sure was filthy work. The stuff we washed, by hand, we would have burnt or binned, like, straightaway at the Nightshelter. I cannot see why they don't invest in a washing machine. Apparently they could but don't, out of some principle or other. Well, enough of the schatology, bring on the eschatology! This place, Calcutta/ Kolkatta, is fast getting under my skin and infecting my blood (in a good way, not in a Malarial way...). More adventures of the fully not boring kind to follow!