Stems roots and leaves, and now an urgent reprieve from a bent mind. To underscore for some time to come, the absolute need for a sober calm. When it was Christmas the nativity of our lord, his benediction was this unseemly discord; in me. Under a moonlit sky a color of magic and echoing music and certain dialectics of proud logic. And later abandoned by the night floating in sleep on two strips of wood. Soaked gently by an invisible rain. These days ricochet and come back again. Just one night spent away from her like many others that are tied each to each devoid of intimacy and coyness. She danced under the open sky three hours long and I too danced differently to different songs that at that time seemed to lend themselves more to longing than to an exhilarated thrall. The morning after I wished her Christmas and she already knew that it was that time again but this time it was wrong to have been somewhere else in some other ball. Thus it is that a fairy tale one night long has two versions jingle bells and santa claus.

Sunday morning violence in jodhpur bazar. for our afternoon repast. A chicken, a kilo and two hundred grams neatly dressed, still warm when handed to me in a polythene carry bag. 66.50 but the obliging salesman was happy with 65. I’ll keep going back to him. While taking the balance I saw that he had washed his hands, he must be washing them every time a bird is sold. There is a certain kind of guilt in spilt blood, no matter where it belongs. I was wondering, its cold now, his hands must be getting pretty numb by the time he’s done. Inside the dingy abattoir in one corner the entrails and feathers of the flightless are gathered to be disbursed amongst the lower animals at the close of business. Is nutrition a grim business, is cuisine a brutal art.
These are obviously gratuitous and useless observations. Happens every time im sent to fetch meat. My mental make up I conclude is very thin and weak. Nausea forbids violence. For me at least.

The redeeming lunacy of our destinies. To be slapped by a chimp that is frustrated at not being able to escape a zoo, whose love life is all a shambles and a placid existence itself as an exhibit threatened by a prospect of half a century’s cohabitation with the object of his greatest rage. Oh why o why chimp why did you love in this zoo. Be that as it may, babu the faith worker who had shaken his cage door assiduously for the last five years finally had his patient industry rewarded yesterday morning when his cage door snapped open. A chimp don’t need anyone to tell him what he oughta do when this happens. But with a chimp couple that has seen happier days out and about in a zoo crawling with people, no one was ready for the melee that ensued. The chimps leading the panicked people ran pell mell. Nervous confusion led to frustration and one (its not clear which) chimpanzee slapped a visitor. . .