where there's fire, there's...

smoke has thickened & blurred the air in the whole house, and if this entry gets weird, it’s probably carbon dioxide poisoning, so forgive me. while this event is worse than usual, low grade (subterminal) asphyxiation is a regular occurrence here - cooking fires (trash and scrap wood) 3 times day, a trash -&-leaves fire every other day (per household, so factor in 4 or so neighbors, depending on how the wind blows), hyperbolic incense for the buddha at sundown, and mosquito coils at night. it is no wonder everyone here has a cough and i have a headache half my waking hours. little wonder the monsoon season is half as long or juicy as it once was… this is underdevelopment. this is global warming. this is where poverty and foresight miss meeting one another due to a clerical error, and this is, i fear, a greater occurrence than not on our beautiful planet. 
ok this just got kookier.. i just talked to Rani, Dinesh’s mother, and she lit the fire because she thought it would chase the mosquitoes away because she thought the puppies seemed to be extra itchy… somehow the fact that they were in the direct path of all that thick smoke, and trying to breathe, seems not to have occurred to her…
i mime that maybe the fire is a bad idea, and she puts it out… and then walks through the smoky room to the front door/porch, and proceeds to light the gag-a-licious incense for the evening…!!!!
i am speechless… and very sad, as i hear her now coughing as i write this…


in other news, i saw a monk bathing the other day. that’s something one shouldn’t see. i didn't try to see it. i didn't want to see. but i did… as we were driving by some kind of temple-y compound, the fence just opened, and there he was, in his little monk skivvies, at the bathing cistern. i am probably scarred for life now. or damned to one or other of the abundance of grisly buddhist hells. oh my…