A friend from Malaysia arrived today, none other than the Boddhisatva, though without the Woodland Creature, sadly. She is stayng upstairs from us in the same building. Unfortunately she has come just as everything shuts down for Dasain so, for instance, we found a restaurant open for dinner and learned they only had pre-cooked foods available and couldn’t even make tea. As her name suggests, the Boddhisatva is a practicing Buddhist (genuine, not hippie, or freak as they call them in these parts) so it was a pleasure to walk around the Golden Temple with her. At night we were lucky enough to catch the eight goddesses dancing through the streets one last time, and this time managed to get very close indeed. Kali was one with particular power, both in the dance and the persona, but also the dancer was a large blocky man whom you might imagine as a bricklayer, but who could switch from ecstatic leaping to graceful, controlled mudras with little pause between them.
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