Used luggage isn’t like used cars. There are no Certified Pre-Owned Models, only severely beat-up disaster relics that look like they fell out of airplanes, were viciously torn apart by wild dogs in the desert, slapped on the backs of camels by passing Tuareg salt caravan chieftains and dragged back into town, to be sold for 2.99 at Goodwill.
After fruitlessly poking my nose in musty corners of thrift stores for the past couple of days, trying in vain to find a cheap, big, fat secondhand suitcase to take to India (which didn’t fit the abovementioned, woebegone description), we plunked down on a Name Brand, Three Hundred and Sixty Degree Swivel Model suitable for packing a disassembled, homemade Jet-Air Stratocaster (courtesy of Stokakrishna Guitar Laboratories) wrapped in socks, sweaters, and Pilgrimage cloth. On clearance. Garish red stickers, on top of other stickers claiming to show the “actual price,” always get me going.
As we were driving away from Bargain Luggage Loka, we saw, at about twenty degrees from the horizon, just above the tops of the trees, the full moon brightly shining in the pre-twilight evening. Usually, when I see the moon while there’s still plenty of light in the sky, it looks like a cute, round, faintly translucent cloud. This one looked like what it actually is—a big, shiny planet, worthy of as much or more respect as the red-and-green colored lights regulating the forward motion of automobiles.
We waited at the stop light, patiently obeying red and green circles of light hanging from wires, but really our awe and respect was for the cool, bright whiteness of the Eye of God, the first full moon of Karttika, on the occasion of Rasa Purnima, when Krishna—the most gorgeous manifestation of the Supreme Being ever—made a little extra evening visit into the forest of Vrindavan to play his flute and dance.
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