Diary Excerpt: 05/02/09

Met Somnath Baba after seeing sunrise. Then Saddhu from Bangalore. Chillum after chillum. Sitting on a slope. Inclined. Laughing, talking about the empty Varanasi otherside (illusion and non-illusion), about tourists visiting Hindu holy sites as opposed to the non-touristy Khaba. Why? Hearing about the naga baba penis lock, the key (stick), vibhuti, the 18-year old anti-intoxicant vibhuti-smeared saddhu, the mobile-wielding cool saddhu who told me not to say cheers and say namonamai instead of "bye". Conditions. "We have everything, we got nothing." Time to revise, address these things. Keep wanting. Never stop. This car, that phone, bunch of crap. The cool saddhu asking to keep my fake ray-bans. Meeting Viswanath for the first time, asking him to guess my age and he says I look 60, in Hindi. "Aap tho saat saal ka hoga." Immediate friendship. (subtext: not knowing this would last for years). Then, sitting with Korean tourists in Mona Lisa Cafe. The caucasian sitting in front of me strangely looks like Toshiro Mifune. Class. All that Kurosawa-saddhu-fire (Ran and burning ghat) subconscious shit. There I accidently meet Rodrigo, tabla player from London whom I met when I lived in London when he was busking in Tottenham Court road tubestation. How weird. All this is... And then the japanese pundit...