Posts Tagged ‘Puttaparthi’

I Know Just How You Feel

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Prickly Pear

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While we waited for the chicken to cook, we walked with a gaggle of kids and their various parents so they could show us the crops they were growing: corn, mulberry, coriander, and much more. Along the way they pulled these prickly pears from some trees and ate them. Beautiful things, but mine had some prickles still in it after it was opened; my tongue was sore for 15 minutes. Life is terribly difficult.

It’s What’s For Dinner

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No, seriously. Ten minutes after this photo was taken, this chicken was bled, plucked, and in a pan. As you will see when you click through the slides above :)

Nuts.

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It’s 110 degrees in the shade, no shops for miles, and we are out of potable water. The village farmers here welcome us generously, offering us the best of their recent harvest as refreshment.

Turns out they are peanut farmers.

“Mmmfhhththh. Fhengyou. No, no, nonono more, AHHH, ok then… mmmmffthhh.”

Puttaparthi People

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We are off to Puttaparthi for the weekend. We are traveling there with the people in the picture above: our maid, Rathnama (at right), her daughter, and grandson-with-no-name, plus our stalwart driver Bhaskar. Their native village is close by there, and Rathnama’s 12-year old son Harish (not seen in this pic) goes to school there at one of Sai Baba‘s facilities. Will we see the man they call Swami? You will be the first to hear if we do.

If you want to learn a bit more about Sai Baba, a strange, powerful, and controversial figure here, I did a little writing on the subject awhile back.