LAKSHMI SHE AIN'T

Today's God:

Lakshmi = goddess of wealth and wife of Vishnu; usually depicted sitting on a pink lotus with gold coins streaming from one of her right hands.




Today I earned Rs500 teaching yoga, or about $10.

But I am rich in photos. So here is a wealth of words. Or maybe just a few thousand, since Blogger won't let me upload more than a handful at a time:





Home sweet home, where one month's rent is about $80 and a steaming cup of chai is just a phone call away. Long-time students wax poetic about the olden days in Mysore, when they practiced at the old shala, Guruji knew their names and "we all rode push-bikes and stayed at the Kaveri Lodge." Now they must suffer in tony Gokulam* with in-house WiFi, Coffee Day espresso and Royal Enfield motorcycles. (For the record, Caca-come-lately also stayed at the Kaveri Lodge and rode a push-bike to the olde shala. And Byron Bay Jack hasn't let Gokulam or two children stop him from riding a push-bike. So there.).



'Twas a sad day indeed when Caca found out that female urinals exist outside of her nightmares. These are at the Rajkamal Talkies. Apparently you squat and face away from the wall...Or is it the other way around?







Garbage collection; it really does exist. When the cow-pig-dog-horse Streets & Sanitation Dept. volunteers finish foraging through the cement tubs used as municipal garbage cans-cum-dumps and whatever is left has been burnt, these men finish the job. They use round, flat baskets to gather the garbage -- which is usually strewn everywhere -- by hand. Then they dump the stuff into the truck. It's dirty, thankless, backbreaking work, and one assumes that it's the job of the so-called "sweeper" caste.



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*Now there's a nom de plume -- Tony Gokulam.