March 17th: first day of work

"We do selfless work for a higher power. We ask for NOTHING in return, not even gratitude or thanks. It's purely selfless."

We went to the Yamuna river to clean up the trash. On arrival we learned that everyone from this town who dies is cremated on the beach where we were cleaning and their ashes sent out into the water. So during our clean up we had to pick up dead peoples clothing, some still covered in ash, human hair, an occasional human bone. There are cows littering the beach, which in India are sacred so no one picks up their crap. There are also a lot of cow skeletons on the beach. I'm not exactly sure what happened to those, but probably a mixture of heat exhaustion and being attacked by a dog makes the most sense. Most of the trash is buried under cow shit which is all covered in flies. A lot of the garbage is torn up into little pieces and some of it even looks as if it made its way all the way through the cow. At one point children approached and instead of helping, threw garbage at us and yelled at us, which really was very comforting and made our charitable work that much more rewarding. Another group of children approached up and threw dirt at us using a big stick. The dirt came with a girl of a snake, and so I excused myself out of the landfill and went back towards the water. As the sun rose higher in the sky the heat became almost unbearable. I picked up a floating bag and out rushed what I could only identify as blood and I did my best not to faint. For the 3 hours we picked up garbage a man and woman in the distance sang, in turn "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishan, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare." over and over and over again. I know these words very well as I sang them in the musical "Hair" my junior year of high school, but these devotees did not continue their song with "Love, love love love love love love love drop out drop out drop out drop out be in be in be in be in" or "beads love freedom happiness" or any of the lyrics about getting high. It was simply those phrases sung over and over and over again, continuing on until after we left. On our walk back I commented to Rada Govinda, one of the devotees staying at the ashram, that the people singing the songs must have a lot of patience to sing the same thing over and over. She smiled and replied "Its an honor to sing the name of god. They are lucky they get to do it all day long. It will bring them closer to god." Personally I think the only thing it could possibly bring on is insanity. On the way back to the ashram I saw 2 monkeys have sex. It was the raunchiest thing in the world and I am traumatized. I saw the male monkey lick his palm to lubricate his member, bend the female monkey over, and have his way with her from behind. It was almost as if he was mocking the guru. Later that day taking a shower never felt so good, even though I did have to squat under a faucet next to a ground toilet that didn't flush. Being clean felt like a privilege.