Kalliyam

Saturday, December 16, 2023   Aho’ Rajanaka,   I hope this finds you well.    I spent this past week at the office with students talking about their final papers, due at the end of next week.    I will give them to the very last minute.    Get on with it, I tell them.    They would have to petition the Almighty Itself to get an extension and that dude does not have tenure, at least not in  this  department.    Let’s wish them well, ‘cause like the rest of us, they’re going to need all the help they can get so long as it’s  not  from AI or ChatGPT.   We’re leaving for India on December 27 th .    It’s been a few years, what with pandemic and the world ablaze.    I’ll offer a Daily Pilgrimage Diary, and with any luck publish this as a podcast each day of the yatra.    Come along.    I tell you about the gods and the folks we meet and our fellow pilgrims.    Word has it we’ll be having baby Krishnika on the bus---Babu and Bharathi’s new baby girl.    It’s a family affair.    Please subscr

  Sunday, December 10, 2023   Aho’ Rajanaka,   I hope this finds you well. I’ve never been very good at writing to myself and as vain as it is to say, I think anyone who writes, write  for  himself if not  to  himself.  (Or herself, or is that they?  I think you take my meaning.)  Rilke wrote dozens of letters every day, never the same one twice, most of them to people he’d never met.  I think he found a way to say what he needed both for himself and for others.  Now that’s something.  We’re all playing for time.   I’m grateful to be writing to you, to friends, most of whom I think I’ve been lucky enough to meet in person at some time or another, all of whom I would like to meet, see again, time will tell.  Rilke was right: writing reveals what’s turning about inside.  I’m not sure just what I feel or think until I take those turns.   Patanjali and plenty of the inward turners want us to turn less towards pesky thoughts and feelings to find out what more there lies beneath the din.  No