Eroteme Volume 3

ck by the flowers, but weirdly critical of the rest of the wild foliage in their conservative views of a garden. Nevertheless, it was thriving amongst the rows of concrete. Lying on the moist soil with my hands under my head, I was almost content with my garden, almost because I was only wishing, stubbornly like a child my age would, for that one corner to be housed with the summer dream of a mango tree; after all, I shared history with such a tree.

I had learned that newer varieties were available in nurseries, ones that would fruit in the first year and would not grow that tall. And to my joy, Daata shared these wishes. Pampering the heart of a twelve-year-old, he surprised me with not one, but two Amrapali mango trees. Obsessively, I thoroughly inspected the trees: lush, sturdy, and old enough to be planted right away.

My heart raced at the thought of harvesting my mangoes from impatience, I planted one of my garden, and so, with much them where it was destined to be.

Some days passed, and the manadjusting to the change uneventfully, we were parents told me that the our circumstances. Not knopaid it no heed. But I practiced, and it came off peculiar of professions: architecture, as I understood, which out of our household. The negativity middle-class financial burdens, and go at the corner was gracefully in soil and light. Seemingly scheduled to have a visitor. My visit was in order, given wing what that meant, I was told what this visitor to me as one of the most Vaastu. A mix of astrology and would resolve and reorient negativity perhaps, was the sporadic arguments, “bad times” in general.

As this visitor first walked into the vermiddle-aged man with a mediocre and-shirt set one would imagine and earnest, I revised salbarefoot by the door in white vest and dark he x-rayed our home stepped forward. We, too, of hospitality when we had a andah, he was revealed only to be a moustache, wearing an everyday pantpeople of his age to wear. Eager utations in my mind, standing the summer uniform of a shorts. Expressionlessly, with his eyes as he began working the gears visitor: imbued with values of “the guest is god,” we presented an overly formal greeting, amplified by servility to this “man of divinity” who would drive away “negative vibrations” caused by the placings and makings of this profane house we had bought.

Something happened then that struck my childlike wonder: he brought out an even more peculiar object from his bag—a Vaastu-meter. “Wow! Technology, man!” I thought to myself, amazed that there is now a gadget that reads “positive and negative energy” just the way we read our weight on a digital scale. Brandishing that negativity compass of a Vaastu-meter, he examined our home and gave resolute remarks on the astrologically incorrect architecture. The bathrooms, the kitchen, the living room, and, in that vein, perhaps all other rooms were incorrectly located. He saw continued on next page)