multi something-clearly Krishna

There is something about the way one can reflect on one's own life- when talking to a specific person. Shows up a specific facet

It could have something to do with the 33 crore Gods that I am used to, instead of the One and only. At any given time, I can feel one way inclined, and there is a special God who caters to just that angle :)

I am in the US with my son- came over just this month- 6th. We are in California- Palo Alto, and it is a remarkably beautiful neigborhood.

Makes me rethink.

For one I no longer feel the need to persuade my son to come back to India. If I did not have a very strong reason to go back, like a visa that limits my stay, I would prefer it too. There is nothing I do which means anything anywhere- so I might as well hang around in what appeals to my eye and the heart.

Maybe the beauty palls.

I wonder how long that takes- for the present everything I see is wonderful. The weather is lovely- eye candy in plenty.

People I see on the roads when I walk around look well- no one is ugly, or fat or suffering- and it is difficult to believe they have a secret life on the psychiatrists' couch. I actually saw an old person on the road reach out to a flower on a tree by the road- just to smell it. He did not break it from the branch- just leaned a bit. I caught his eye, and he smiled too. He was a frail looking person- not someone on a power walk. But not poor, and lonely- like the stereotype of the aged in the west- in my head

I saw children with parents- they were enjoying each other.

Generally a smiling kind of life all around me, and friendly , unlike what one reads about the lack of open-ness in the West- from India. Classifications of people are really very misleading.

Last evening I got into a chat with a woman sitting in front of a huge pile of dried bamboo shoots, and cutting each dried leaf, piling it up on one side, the twigs going up on the other pile. The flowers in her garden looked special and she looked sort of frail. I could not make out her nationality- she was white to me.

I am still new enough to be cautious about initiating a conversation- but I could not help asking her what she was doing.

She said she would use the main bamboo shoots to make a gazebo - a shade under which one can sit down. The smaller twigs would support growing vegetable/flower plants- like her tomatoes. And most of all she just felt that the speed of life around her sometimes got too much and it helped just to sit and do something like this.

I asked her what she did to speed up things so- apparently it is not her, it's the society around her. She is originally from Iran , in the US for 35 years, and spoke of her sister who rushes around from Santa Xruz to San Francisco on a day- something she did not admire really.

I hope I get to see her again. It would be nice to sit around- she doing her gazebo, and me knitting a muffler- in the sun.

Will my son be able to sit back earlier than I can- he did say he would like to begin at 30.That is just 5 years away. I might even be around.

A friend - from my college days- in Bhopal- was speaking of his joy in his son's coming of age and making the choice to work with his father. As a parent, my friend sounded like his heart was really full. I think I would like to be there one day, during my life time.

Usually I have travelled on work with something to be done, achieved. Even holidays were like that- one needed a change with an objective to do more at the end of it.

This does feel as close to a vacation as I can imagine. We are not planning places to see, things to do while I am here. And it is just great.

I do not have a phone at home- and the internet is the only way I can communicate with anyone I know, from home.

Who is the God that matches this inclination?