Rajastan is the part of India that you see in coloring books. It’s bright and broadly drawn, immediate and jubilant. It’s where florid jungle forests cradle castles built above baby blue lakes and men who are mostly mustached dance on endless, fluffy blankets of crème colored desert. It’s the India with helpful elephants and lonely tiger cubs and monkeys that try to wear your hat. It is the India you want to curl up and snuggle with.
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At the pool, where I have found myself regularly after work, is a sign that enigmatically states, “Pool Capacity 541.” Every day for months, I have formulated the question, capacity for what?
There was a time when I believed that books - novels, in particular - could change the way people thought about their world. Children from good homes in this day and age are raised with books; my house was certainly no exception.
This land is mighty changed. A run-out banjer player like me just don’t fit in right today. Ya see, modern society and me don’t see eye to eye.
I am in a love and hate relationship with this city. New York gets beautiful sunsets that nobody sees or knows about. Residents ask themselves daily why they inhabit this burly brimming ship and find solace in watching the flickering tourists from Baton Rouge—who would have loved to dress, walk, and spend like splendid New Yorkers. But I love Manhattan because it’s an island that least resembles an island, and because it was traded for goods equaling a meager 24 dollars—about the price of a modest entrée in a tiny Greenwich gourmet.
Here I am, turning in my office chair, in another 9×5x5 day, working for a good cause that amounts to a day spent in front of the computer. Being raised in plenty, my ambitions are not those of my parents. Everyday I seek a meaning to life. Being married takes the edge off the quest, for if I have no anwers at the end of the day, at least my purpose is to be home.
For a man who wasn’t crazy about hats, Arthur Arlan, or as I called him, Poppa Arthur, tended to wear a lot of them — as a father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend, mentor, neighbor, chef, well…you get the idea.
