A Piligrimage Special: Moving On

We left Bodhgaya for Varanasi on 14 December 2007. That was the eight day of our pilgrimage. Varanasi is 250 kilometers or 7 hours away and we left our hotel in the morning with a packed lunch. That must be the second time we had packed lunch and the first time when we were served with moldy sandwiches.The first time we had packed lunch was on day 5 when we were traveling from Kushinagar to Patna via Vaishali. Someone said that the first packed lunch was too big and asked that the second one to be sized down to avoid wastage. While the intention was good, I thought that was pretty insensitive since some of us could really eat. Besides, all the excesses could be given to the poor, children or adults alike, who were always clamoring over us for one thing or another. I remember during this particular trip, some pilgrims gave away their fried rice only to find them in the dustbin a while later. We concluded that the young Indian children did not know how to eat fried rice, this not being their staple food. Anyway, eating in the bus was not a very comfortable experience and if not for the rush for time, I bet we would enjoy a quiet lunch in the beautiful Indian countryside...

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Inside our coach...


Our packed lunch...
Scenes on the way...





Comments

Liudmila said…
Interesting is how many times I have to write now to post this comment? My PC doesn't want to work at all today. It's unpossible...

Well, I wanted to say, the children there throw what you give them not because they don't know HOW to eat, but because they DON'T WANT to eat.
I met and meet it many times in my life that our wish to help "poor beings" makes nothing other that bad beings. Those beings mostly think and speak bad about us, they don't need our "help", they live their own happy/unhappy life and don't understand us, that live our lives.
It's not a help, it's creating "bad karma".
footiam said…
The line there is not good I suppose. Over here, there is no such problem. It must be very frustrating to type and type a message. Such a sheer waste of good time? And I think if people don't want to eat what is given, they should not take it and waste it. Sometimes, we should God help the poor beings. After all, it is his creation! I agree that people don't really need us. They live their own happy or unhappy life and may even be happy being unhappy!
Liudmila said…
It's the operating system in my PC that doesn't work. It's frustrating, really, I need about 5 minutes to wait for every click I do. And not always they open or close. Bad.

You said very good words: many persons are really happy being unhappy too. And we have not wast their happiness with our stupid (from their point of view) interventions.
footiam said…
I believe your computer is still giving you problems! Maybe, if we have no computers, we have no problems!