Reflections on the street below...

So much is happening in the market below.

A truck, sent by an old baba said to be over 100 and living in a temple upon a hill outside of Pushkar, drives slowly through the streets offering prasad (blessed food) to passers by. Two young girls in salwar kameez run after the vehicle, grocery bags outstretched, hoping to please their mother with the free carrots and grapes it is offering today. The other day I received an apple from a similar truck, its constant delivery making sure no-one in Pushkar goes hungry.
On the lakeside, a Brahmin priest is taking a Pushkar newcomer through the holy ceremony, anointing their forehead with sandalwood paste and rice, garlanding their neck with flowers and offering blessings for their family upon the holy Lotus lake. Perhaps demanding an exhorbitant price for this, perhaps not - not all priests seem to live by the same values it seems. A family of monkeys, 20 strong, sit looking down as I am, from another rooftop. They are munching carrots, acquired no doubt from the Baba Prasad truck. Some of the babies are teaching themselves to swing from powerlines nearby, others merely terrorise innocent passers by for food. The infernal tooting of motorcycle horns echoes up to me as always - seems I cannot escape from this ever present madness. Sometimse I shout back 'shanti!' at them, as if they would listen to me. All the while the sugarcane wallah churns his machine, over and over again - so much manual labour for one glass of sweet health giving juice! The sun is setting on the pigeons on the lake - they congregate in hundreds to eat the remains of a recent puja ceremony - the small white sweets offered as prasad, the flowers, the rice. I look over these Pushkar hills, all green and brown and golden in the setting sun and realise I am still in love with this town. Although I have been here twice before- three times actually - and have this time been feeling almost a little bored with all the same scenarios, the magic of this place still calls to me.