2009 07 13. Monday.

2009 07 13. Monday.

I'm spending a lot of time recently making all kinds of drawings for various equipment for the compost project. I've drawn up simple designs for a compost cart, a stackable compost box design, a spinning compost sifter, some hooks for hanging tools, specialized hand tools, etc. I enjoy making the drawings. Reminds me of long ago when I was an engineer for the US Army and drew up all kinds of things.

Had a fun chat with with Svayam today at the compost work. We were dumping some very wet yogurt food waste into a pit filled with water (if the food waste is too wet, we can't put it on the compost pile unless we mix it with tons of wood chips). Svayam was joking that the pit could be our secret swimming pool. I told him that Amma would kick us out if she found out about it. Svayam paused for a second, lit up with a bright smile and said: "You know. It would good if Amma kicked us out!"

"What!?" I replied, "How in the world would that be good?"

"Think about it. What would happen if we got kicked out?"

"I'd go crazy being separated from Amma, of course."

"That's just it. We'd spend the whole day crying and yearning for Amma to take us back. We wouldn't eat or sleep. We'd just cry for Amma. That's perfect devotion! With that kind of devotion, we would merge with Amma in no time!"

I laughed. He was exactly right!

In the hot afternoon sun we smiled and walked back through the muddy ruts to the compost pile. The crows behind us hungrily dived in and slurped up the old yogurt, squawking and fighting.

As I was walking back to my room from the compost work I saw the elephant (Lakshmi, a female) coming up the path along with two of her handlers. In the big hall one of the dogs (wisely keeping its distance) was barking madly at Lakshmi. All I was thinking was "Dear God you stupid dog. Please don't spook the elephant!" I quickly changed directions and took a different route to my room, giving Lakshmi a wide berth. Lakshmi apparently was totally ignoring the dog. Good. Lakshmi and the dog have both been here a long time so they're probably totally used to each other, and like to play their little games.