Bhavani and Uma

Bhavani must have been in her late twenties. She was a large woman. Not fat or plump, but wide and tall, with a blocky face to match. Her skin was unblemished, dark as roasted coffee. She had wiry hair, springy and curly, straining to get out of the short, ragged-tipped ponytail that used to follow her head, pointing backwards but never to the ground. I am sure it a trick of my weak memory, but I cannot help but picture her as having lips as dark as the rest of her skin was. Bhavani had cracked heels, like most women that work barefoot on rough, wet floors washing clothes and utensils.Bhavani would speak little, like most housemaids. It may have been because her dialect was slightly different from ours, but I doubt if Bhavani would care about nuances of pronunciation and accent. She had a beautiful smile. Not because her white teeth contrasted with her skin tone, but because of the strange expression in her large eyes. God knows how many other houses she worked in. She would come walking in the heat of mid-morning, when sham's mother was cooking for lunch, filling the house and the yard with an exquisite aroma. Bhavani would have a smile on her face. The smile rarely wore off. A cheerfulness that I now look back and find myself longing for.

A good night's sleep

There was once a fat young boy with a balding head littered with sparse hair. This young man would never cross the road unless there was a designated pedestrian crossing and other safety features. If the road had no pedestrian crossing, he would walk an extra half mile to get to one rather than risk crossing the road. However, this young boy would always try and rescue innocent lambs from the road if he noticed one in the path of an approaching vehicle. One day, the boy jumped into the path of a large truck that was hurtling down the street towards an innocent little lamb with big black eyes and filthy smelling fur that looked uglier than it smelt. He saved the lamb by throwing it across the street and out of the way of the truck. But the boy himself was run over by the truck. His bald little head was crushed beyond recognition. He died. The ugly, stinking lamb was shocked, and was walking back towards the boy, when it was run down by a sleek, shiny, new silver Mercedes coupe and was plastered all over the road.

Moral of the story:Lamb curry is delicious, but live lambs stink.

Green as the earth

"Desire is the cause of all misery and suffering." A brilliant observation. Siddartha, I think. The desire to live a life that has no misery and suffering causes all misery and suffering. Money cannot buy happiness, true. Most of us are into shit that no amount of money can get us out of. Money is not to blame, though. Its allright to have a lot of it, use it, or even flaunt it. Desire is the problem. We desire for things that money cannot buy. I think that's what gets us all. In the darkness of the night. No desire at all would be the best thing to desire for, but since that seems a little too much to ask of mere mortals like us, we should live with desires only for those things that money can buy. Desire for food, not contentment. Desire for water, not joy. Desire for murder, not revenge. Desire for death, not peace.