holy cows & goddamns

hbd to me. i made my own bday cake (under a wicked nani’s guidance) & i’m eating most of it too (almost everyone in this house is off sugar for different reasons).

going to a temple can be a birthday party if you go with the right people. we woke up late because we were up late the previous night, cutting cake. so we go to the only temple open at 11am, which is in the heart of the city. my dad stays in the car, which is good because it takes a certain degree of seriousness to pull off a good party & my dad is very unserious about god. my mom is taking mural painting classes so we stop at every mural we pass, and evaluate images of god, reducing millenia of abstractions into shapes, characters, and most importantly, feelings. i ask my nani to tell me about shri narayana guru even though i’ve read plenty about him just because i love to hear her talk about caste. i joke to them saying “nana itne pareshaan kyu lagte hai mandir me”, why does nana always look so distressed in temples, but mom quickly shuts me down saying it’s bhakti. how does bhakti take the form of a scrunched nose & eyes that look like they're recollecting every misfortune he has known. do men who believe in god save all their repressed emotions for the odd temple visit? maybe. or maybe he thinks it's a party too. parties always make me emotional.

you're more likely to run into god at a party than a temple anyway.

there were three cows tied to three nails dug in the ground in the lawn beside the temple. they seemed bored, the way most cows usually are. a man came & untied two of them & the third one started moo-ing restlessly. as he guided the first two away, the third one excitedly attempted to join his mates, only to be stopped short by his rope, his moo-ing becoming more desperate, more hurt, & almost betrayed, as the man walked away with those two. i couldn't bear to keep watching him strain so i started walking away. my mom, nana, & nani stood transfixed though. other people were beginning to look. there was glory for a moment, as the world turned away from god to witness pain. briefly, we were all so simple. eventually, the cow quietened & everyone went back to god. we walked a little further away but when my nani & i turned back around, we saw the man come back. the cow was quiet this time, waiting for the man to untie him. he started as soon as the knot came undone, the man didn't even need to direct him.

my nani & i smiled at each other, then she said, “sabke paas khud ki cheezo ke liye buddhi hai.”

god, i love her so much. everyone has enough intelligence for their own matters. i think of the mumber of books i have read on evolution & neuroscience that could be condensed so simply into that line. we continued walking.

we walked out of the temple. we had left our chappals in the car but the others’ were spread out in front of the entrance. nana & ma turned around to bid the gods farewell, when exactly then, a man started yelling near us. he was calling out to another man walking away from the entrance with a pair of chappals in his hand. he was wearing another pair of chappals on his feet. “keep those back!” the man close to us was yelling.

the man with the chappals turned around and said, “these are old ones! they've been lying here for many days! i always take those away.”

nani wondered aloud why anyone would leave their chappals here for many days. maybe some kind soul donated their old pair to sustain the temple’s chappal theft economy without losing any brand new chappals. anything was possible, you see. the man yelling tried to reason again but he had already walked quite a distance with the chappals. a man in khaki pants standing at the nearby chai stall took over and jogged to the new owner of the chappals. the man standing next to us kept murmuring, “i was looking towards the temple. that's why i couldn't stop him earlier. i was looking towards the temple.”