walking the days away

well, last wednesday i just watched as Dr. Rebecca Paul, older sister of one of my best friends Peter Paul, walked down the aisle with sparkling smile leaving her father's arm to be united for a lifelong journey with Dr. Benjamin Ross, now her husband by way of the ceremony in the school's packed chapel, the presentation of the thirumangalyam (a gold neclace worn constantly by married women), and the reception where the couple sat festooned with colorful flowers on a stage while all the guests consumed biriyani, tandoori chicken, raitha, and a runny reddish sweet sauce with cashews called halwa, while the groom serenaded his bride with a self-written song on guitar

and on saturday and sunday i took a few walks with my family down the beach at Kovalam, a coastal tourist town in the state of Kerala, on the southwestern edge of India, looking out over the stormy monsoon-season Arabian Sea with a vicious riptide running under the powerful breakers, imposing rock promontories between separate stretches of beach, and black sand draping the shore

my mom and i took our own little walk to do a little shopping for postcards, wade in the unpredictable water, and taste the fresh coconut water we were craving in our sweaty dehydrated bodies until the coconut-walla cracked his curved knife across the top of one, stuck in a straw, and walked around while we sucked down the wonderful warmish but refreshing rehydrating liquid

and yesterday i walked up to school to meet a friend for the afternoon, ended up meeting four of my classmates to go out for dinner to a new restaurant in Kodai called Cloud Street, where they advertise as serving Israeli, Mexican, Thai, Indian, and Western food; we talked, listened to the interesting background music they were playing, ate, and laughed, before walking Pavi home, playing with her puppy named Toshi, and the guys walking me home

and this morning i woke up at 6:30 to meet Peter for a walk around the lake and a cup of coffee at Amsa's, that popular little steaming hole-in-the-wall 'hotel' that serves up the sweet milk-made stuff in a small glass cup for four rupees (=10 cents), ladled hot out of a tin vat for its local customers to sip, either standing on the crumbling cement sidewalk or sitting on one of the rickety stools with peeling blue paint in the tiny cubicle out of which the restaurant operates

we pass a lame beggar on the side of the road
mi amigo gently jingles a bit of change into the rag in his lap
with that genuine gesture i almost believe the offering could help
my pockets are empty, but i bow a little in respect to say 'good morning, sir'

Pushpa and i were sent around 10 a.m. to shop for some necessities in the bazaar, walking the cobbled potholed cow-and-motorbike-dominated streets up and down the slopes of our mountain-town to get to the vegetable market, the egg stall, opposite the meat shop with the chickens in cages or hanging stripped from strings tied to the tin roof overhead, and then over to the coop for sugar/flour/butter, to the bakery for some muruku and mixi, and finally on our way back up the budge hill, stopping to buy a bunch of bananas from a makeshift roadside hovel, 'sorry, not today' to the mango sellers hawking their mounded baskets of ripe fruit, and then home

she wrapped artfully in her silky blue sari

me squeezed self-consciously in my fraying blue jeans

she's in her everyday element
i'm thrilled when i hear and understand the word for 'eggs' in Tamil (=muttai)

my dad and i set out about 11 a.m. in search of 30-liter water cans (more like gasoline tank-shape) to take to camp with us tomorrow, asked in a few shops before finding the last 3 of these cans in Kodai, at the M.M Stores, which insists on selling everything "from A to Z and Pin to Plane", and my dad got excited at seeing a big green bin like the ones used for collecting rainwater or recycling plastic, and he bought it, so we tossed the water cans inside, each grabbed a rim-side of the bin, and walked back through the budge and home

my mom and Kara and i then walked to Tava's for lunch later, to eat our delightful pav baji and aloo paratha, then up to Meenakshi store for some mango juice...then home

need a walk
need to work out in my head and heart what i
need to do to love this world,
to love the widow-beggars and weak child-laborers of this country,
to love my weary family,
to love my wonderful friends,
to love the wisdom and works of God more than ever, more than everything