2009 10 12. Monday.

For a few days each morning I was getting my 1/2 liter thermos filled with chai. The guy who pours the unsweetened morning chai seems totally happy to fill up whatever container we give him. I was drinking all the chai before doing my morning sadhana, and then later on feeling a little wired and jittery. No surprise after a 1/2 liter of chai! Jeez. I'm outta control. Coming back to my senses, I now switched back to getting just one serving of chai. Much better. Just the right amount of buzz for a nice sadhana session.

After breakfast while walking back to my room I had a funny dialog with the Fake American Sadhu:

Me (seeing him come near): "Hare Krishna!"

FAS: "Krishna, Krishna! You passed my test. I was checking to see if Krishna was at the top of your mind."

Me: "Krishna is everywhere. The whole planet is Krishna!"

FAS: "No, this place is just a speck of dust at Krishna's feet. Sometimes this place should be called 'Planet Crapton'."

Me (laughing) "Planet Crapton! That's great! I'm gonna remember that."

He's totally nutty but he makes me laugh. Very cool.

Now whenever any of my friends visit the ashram the first thing they'll say is "Can you introduce me to the Fake American Sadhu?"

Mukhunda and I went to the big Amma metal shop across the backwaters to get them to make a long metal temperature probe I need for the compost work. As the metal workers are making what I need I look around and notice how OSHA would quickly shut this place down with all the egregious safety violations: unprotected welding work, frayed power cords on the ground, everybody wearing cheap sandals that offer zero protection, very loud banging with no hearing protection, long fluorescent bulbs with no protective covers, sharp scrap metal strewn all over the floor, etc, etc... I hope Amma's protective grace is working here!

Me and another guy are out at the cowshed this afternoon mixing up the bins of cow dung and urine for the day's compost. I see this well dressed Indian man take a standing position behind one of the cows. He puts a very long plastic glove on his left arm and then jams his whole arm up the cow's vagina. Wow! I get very nervous imagining the cow is gonna kick him and break both his legs. Scary. But apparently the man has done this hundreds of times and is a total professional. Then he takes a long thin metal tube and inserts it into the cow's vagina for a moment or two. A light goes off in my head and I guess that he's just giving an artificial insemination. Later on I ask and he's says that's exactly what he's doing. I admire his bravery. A cow can kick really hard!