In general.....

Even though I am back in the USA, my heart is still roaming in India. Some wonderful people we met during our yatra made it more memorable. This time, the mice, the roaches that were on board on the train, did not bother me. That was part of the co-existence that I mentioned in my previous post. This time I saw lizards in the houses. They are helping us by eating the other bugs in the house!!! We even mused about the different types of beggars on the trains. Young mothers carrying the infants, older women with a stick in one hand (a walking aid?) and the other hand stretched asking for alms, a team of two, one would be blind and the other is the helper and so on. Did interesting non-spiritual things happen? --yes, if you call them non-spiritual. A boy in his early teens came into our compartment in one of the trains, trying to clean the floor and he was dragging himself on his knees. He had a torn shirt and dirty shorts on. Looked very cute. He bent his head down and was fully focused on the cleaning of the floor. Rao was really touched. he pulled out some money from his pocket and handed it over to the boy. Immediately, the boy stood up and ran with that money. That was the end of charity on the train for Rao. Everyone around laughed at the incident. The Telugu proverb 'koti vidyalu kooti korakey' (approximately meaning that a million skills are only to fill the stomach) sounded so true. I limited my charity only to those leprosy beggars sitting inside and outside of some of the Temple compounds.