Today I spent all day in Nischal Maharaj's office studying and I'm happy to say everything is going along well.  Maharaj told me that they were waiting to see how I did with Sanskrit to decide whether they would make me a program with more Sanskrit, or try to mix something with less of it.  But he says that based on my performance I'm a good candidate for the study.

At arati tonight I was surprised by Rolo, our Trabuco lay brother and a long time friend of my Grandfathers, who has come to stay a week at Belur Math.  He found me by my new super awesome arati seat.  I sit outside the hall in my Bengali style Dhoti, close to Thakur up against a pillar on top of a cushion with knees up against my chest and my feet on the ground.  This is a better system because the other day my legs fell so thoroughly asleep that I had to hold myself up with a pillar and pretend that I was waiting to make a pranam (bow) after everyone had left.  I probably look like an idiot sitting this way, but you kind of get desensitized to it, because virtually every single person in Bengal stares at you shamelessly gawking.  As Lalchan Maharaj says "you could sit full lotus and levitate and they would still think you were an idiot."

Anyhow the Sanskrit students got here today.  They are 16 mostly born 94-95 years,(I'm 96) mostly village Bengalis, only two of them know any English at all.  They filtered into Nischal Maharaj's office and one of them pranamed (salute where you touch the feet of a holy man or an elder out of respect and reverence) me since he thought I was a monk.  After that I was on my guard and I stopped one other and his dad from going for pranams.  So basically I have a lot in common with these kids and I think were going to get along really fine with virtually no cultural difficulties.

Thanks everyone for reading this, I've gotten more traffic than I could have originally imagined.

Good Night and Good Morning,
Kamal

 Swami Gangananda