The Locusts

Tuesday, October 19^9h

Musette and I purchased much needed plates and cups for the kitchen. It was our offering to the ashram, and today I would again offer seva. Prema has asked me to help her clean the meditation hall, and has intimated that it carries a special blessing. After lunch we gather the mops, brooms, and buckets needed fort the tasks and set about the job of cleaning the floor. The meditation room is a large circular dome with a circumference of more then 100 feet. The prospect of cleaning the floor with a dust pan and broom was daunting. I got down on my knees and began to sweep the coarse matting covering the concrete floor.

It is hot work and within minutes I am sweating profusely. The roped weave of the carpet cut through the thickness of my jeans and burned into the tops of my bare feet, and I knew I had been suckered. No reward could be possibly be recompense for my hard labour. Hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, and choking on dust, I dedicated myself to completing the job as quickly as possible. One hour and thirty minutes later I emerged from the meditation hall in desperate need of a shower.

Bathed and dressed in clean clothes, it was all but forgotten. I went in search of Manus, the manager, to ask about getting Internet access. He sent me to the Sony shop across the road. I joined the queue of people, pressed single file against the length of the sales counter. I asked the clerk if I could buy a drive for pay as you go Internet connection. He handed me a form that asked for my passport number, two passport photo's, he name of my mother and my father, and a letter confirming my place of residence. In a country of over a billion people, there was no possibility of anonymity in cyberspace.  I gathered the necessary documents together and returned to the shop. The clerk duly documented the information in a hand written ledger, activated the drive and handed me my connection to the outside world. I left the store feeling triumphant.

After dinner I knocked on Sridhar's door too ask him to help me set up the drive, as this was way beyond my technical know how. He invited me into the inner sanctum of his room, and I discovered that he had a desk, a chair and most enviable; a hot water geezer! I joked that he had the luxury suite, and he replied that “if you don't ask you don't get.” Here I was feeling noble about not complaining,the when the smarter course of action would have been to play the diva. As he fiddled with the laptop, I caught up on the local news and listened to the chill music that was streaming form his computer.

Once he had figured out that my laptop was reading the data from the Internet connection that I had borrowed from him the day before, he deleted the data and I was successfully plugged into the Internet I said good night to Sridhar, making a mental note to speak with Manus tomorrow about a room change. I am desperate to have a shower!

I settled into my own room and set about the task of sending out the diary entries for the past few days. I hadn't been in the room more than ten minutes, when I noticed a dark patch developing on the wall opposite where I sat. The patch shimmered with movement. Closer inspection revealed that a swarm of tiny flies had entered through the closed windows and draped themselves on the ceiling and walls, forming a canopy around the naked light bulb. I was horrified. Instinct told me to switch off the light, and turn on the light in the bathroom. I did this and in moments they had all migrated to this new source of illumination.

In the darkened room, I returned to completing my entries, battling with the few stubborn flies that refused to leave; hovering above the fingers of light that emitted from the keyboard. After a week with almost on insects in evidence, I was at a loss to know the cause of this particular invasion. They had descended like locusts and were another proof of the irrepressible and unpredictable nature of life here.