Being a cow can really help in India given the massive cultural respect and significance paid to the bovine race by those of a Hindu persuasion. For Indians honouring the cow is believed to inspire in people the virtues of gentleness and connectedness with nature.
Foreword: I have put my shoulder to the wheel of the Dharma and nudged it round a fraction more. A week in near silence as a respite from India was just the tonic. But it was not all silence.
There comes a time on almost every extended trip when one finally loses the desire – hopefully temporarily – to get back in the ring. You have been under the cosh a little too long and things that you once thrilled to now have a grey and grimy lustre to them.
In India you will find buildings of a sort to transfix and transport your sensibilities to the highest planes and also to drag them to the saddest and most desperately sorry depths. And often they are near neighbours.
This afternoon I performed my last filial duty and scattered what remained of my father’s ashes at the Taj Mahal in India.
We landed in Jaisalmer at 5am on a cool morning and, swaddled in a fluffy pink blanket bought expressly for the night-bus, we drank sweet masala chai for an hour. A short tuk-tuk ride then dropped us at the outer gate of the fort and for the second time in my life I had the pleasure of walking up into this sandstone marvel in the desert a hundred kilometres from the border with Pakistan.
We left Anandwan over a fortnight ago and now, with time and distance under our belts, it is time to reflect on the time there and our transition back into everyday India.
The circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in can be bizarre. I never could have imagined that one day I would wake up and think ‘I’m looking forward to going to an Old People’s Home to massage the leprosy afflicted residents’. But nonetheless today was that day, my third on the job.
My lake-side seat has become my favourite place to sit at Somnath. Every morning after breakfast I head to the concrete plinth beneath a Mimosa tree and assume a position of dedicated intent; buttocks and feet are planted to establish a tripod and then I survey the scene (I am more of an eyes-wide-open meditator).
Ashby's World 