My Continuing Edumacation

I've been on the road now for a little over a month and have gained three pounds.  When I started on my diet/exercise regimen in February, I weighed in at a whopping 249 pounds.  Looking at the pictures now, I don't know how people could even stand being around me.  I was Gargantuant.  I certainly cringe to look at those photos now.   I guess they liked my personality or something.  In just three months, I was able, through diligence and hard work, to shed 43 pounds and get down to a more respectable 206.  Admittedly, the rigors of the road and traveling with an even more enthusiastic eater, have been a bad influence on my regimen.  It seems almost every time I want to eat more healthy, the man is stressing cheese.  Despite that fact, I'm happy traveling with Dhrits because he's such an easy-going, interesting and entertaining person.  I just need to be more personally willful.  Weighing in at 209 pounds is all right for now but it is not something I am happy with long-term.

Now, if you have looked at my daily pictures, with all the restaurants documented that we have visited as posted on Facebook, you would probably be surprised that I have only gained three pounds.  I certainly was when I stepped on the scale this morning.  I seriously thought that perhaps I had gained somewhere in the vicinity of 15 or 20.  But considering the fact that I was hitting the treadmill semi-regularly in the first two weeks and I still do my fair share of walking, I have been able to slow my growth-poundage-rate down.  Also, I think my metabolism has sped up from all the regular running and weight-lifting I was doing before this trip commenced.

I am now determined to get more serious again.  All is not lost and I am a man who has been always able to bounce back from adversity.  Double Garga-Power!

This coming Monday, I will finish my Meteorology online class and be only one more class away from being able to graduate from Santa Fe College.  Hopefully, by August I will be done with my Genetics class and clear the way to enter Journalism College at UF in the fall.  I was not able to register for classes in time to take a Photo Journalism class this coming fall but I'll be sure to be on my toes to get into one in the Spring of 2010.  I love carrying the camera with me and plan to buy a digital SLR before I go to L.A. in late July for Kuli Mela and Ratha Yatra.  All work and no play makes Gargs a bored boy so I have decided to go to the West Coast for a week's vacation or so.  You know, see some old friends, good for the soul.  I'll be traveling with Glani, Govinda, Shyam, Radha and Vrn at various times during the trip.  Shyam, Radha and Vrn have never been there before so it will be fun to see their happy faces taking in new places.  To take a few days off and hang out at the Ratha Yatra after-party and walk around Manhattan was also good for my soul.  I have to say, I'm much more of a city person than a country person.  I mean, I appreciate the country but I really like social and cultural stimulation.  

I'm trying to strike a balance between work and play.  Actually, I'm one of those guys who shoots for work being a pleasure.  In mu mind I'm always pulling for pleasure.  After all, that's the natural state of the soul.  Hopefully, that will become a reality for me more and more in the upcoming chapters of my life.  I think my continuing edumacation is key.

Temple Gargectdotes Part 1

Once in the mid-80's, I was reading synonyms for the word stupid out loud from a thesaurus to Dheera and Rom Roy while sitting in the temple president's office.  We were in a giddy mood and my friends started laughing hysterically.  For some reason, words like lame-brain, imbecilic, out-to-lunch, nincompoop and moron seemed particularly funny that day, I don't know why.  Anyway, as I kept reading, they kept laughing louder and louder.  Finally, Dheera fell off his chair, and rolled on the floor holding his side and screaming with water coming out of his eyes.  It was therefore sobering when Vijitatma appeared at the threshold, Bhagatavatam volume in hand and a grave look in his eyes.  "What's all the noise about?" he asked.  "Gargs is reading from the thesaurus for the word stupid," Dheera said, his laugh petering off.  "You should hear some of these."  "Do you Prabhus realize that I'm trying to read the Bhagavatam in there?" Vijitatma said pointing to the guest room, "And you guys are in here making nonsense noise like frogs simply attracting the snake of death."  Surprised, Rom Roy meekly responded "I thought we were just having some good clean fun."

Bhakta Steve Pitts was frequently seen around the Boston temple in the early 80's.  Steve was a nice enough guy from Derry, New Hampshire who had a bit of a hunch back and talked out of the side of his mouth.  People thought he looked a lot like Popeye.  He had been around ISKCON since the mid-seventies and regularly reminded the new devotees about it.  "Prabhu, I've been around this movement a lonnggg time," he often said.  "Way back to the days of Nityananda in New Talavan."  Then he would look into your eyes quite seriously, pause and say, "I've got some free advice for guys just starting out like yourself:  You keep your mouth closed and your ears open and you'll find out who your friends are."  On another occasion, I heard him giving some similar advice to week-long member Bhakta Breton after his usual New Talavan preamble, "Don't do any service for the senior devotees.  You're in this for yourself."

Steve, in case you haven't figured it out by now, wasn't exactly all there.  He had drank paint-thinner recreationally before he joined, albeit in low doses.  "I knew what I was doing," he said.

Once, during japa period, my brother Kesi and I were sitting against the temple wall chanting as Steve paced by us, walking around the temple room floor again and again.  When he was almost in front of us, he stopped and shook his head violently, vibrating his lips and making a high-pitched wailing noise.  Kesi and I looked at each other and tried our best to contain our laughter.  When he came around again and did it for the second time my brother asked him.  "What was that, Steve?"  "Symptoms of ecstasy, Prabhu," he answered in a most serious manner. "Symp-toms of ecs-tasy."