pigs and pune

Well at the end of my entry yesterday, I mentioned that Christina and I were on our way to the Pune equivalent of Kinkos. The first thing you have to realize about going anywhere in Pune is that people give directions by saying it is near something else. For example, Crossroads Bookstore is "just down from fab-india." Coffee Day is "not far from Reliance Phone." (so apparently is Barista coffee, but when we started walking there from Reliance, it was soon clear that it was farther than I was up for that particular day.) When we went to the German bakery, we told the rickshaw driver, "German bakery." and he shook his head, which by the way actually means yes and not no. We didn't give him an address. So leaving aside aside the obvious problems with determining what is near and what is not far and how far down is just down from.... ..... Jaya had told us that the copy place was "just across from the the Toyota place in the very first little shop." we were like, okay, that's about as good as the directions are going to get...

so we head out down the road, it starts raining, but we contine on until we reach the open city dump, which is also "just across from the Toyota place" and lo and behold there was a family of pigs eating out of the city dump. there was a mother pig and four baby piglets feasting on god knows what. We were, of course, quite delighted with this wild life sighting. A family pigs- you don't see that every day. We took several photos and went on our merry way. The copy place was a little shack which also sold various hardware store supplies. 4 rupees later we had our copies and were heading back toward home when we saw the pig family crossing the street. they were doing a much better job of it than we were. Unfortunately, one of the little piglets got separated from the pack, but he found his side of the street was also strewn with edible litter, and I feel certain that the rest of the family soon joined him there as their side of the street had only a mud covered side walk. On the way home, we also saw a dog eating out of the dumpster (yes, there is also a dumpster in the open dump) and we saw people picking through the trash as well. seeing how people live here is really an exercise in gratitude for all I have as a spoiled westerner.

On the "yoga on the mat" front, class last night was fabulous. A blissful pranayama class with Geeta She had everyone use the chair like she showed last week. We used the chair to open the groin, to provide lift to the spine, and to work the various muscles in the shoulders so that the shoulders will learn their work of being, to quote Mary and Eddy, "best supporting actors for the chest."

Christina and I practiced the forward bend sequence from Monday and are avidly awaiting class tonight