Bookmarks

 One of my (many) peculiarities is my willingness (joy) at using literally anything as a bookmark. Janet is much more likely to gather up free bookmarks at bookstores (like the motherlode we picked up yesterday afternoon at Bear Pond Bookstore in Montpelier), whereas I'll make use of just about anything; favorites would include: foreign currency, tickets to get into the Taj Mahal, plane tickets, etc. Yesterday I was putting a final gloss on my Ramayana chapter when the following restaurant receipt fell out of my copy of the Ayodhyakanda. I suppose, as I fast approach a major bookmark, that is my retirement, it would make sense that I found it oddly moving. An Indian epic definitely deserved an Indian receipt.

That's from the March 2020 trip to India, which will forever be known as the COVID trip, when the college irresponsibly sent us off on an international flight as the COVID pandemic was hitting (mainly because the administration wouldn't take my advice to cancel the trip and reimburse the money to the students; instead, they wanted me to cancel it, be the bad guy, and not give any money back).

The receipt was from late in the week, as we made our way back from Rajasthan to Delhi. I couldn't remember where we had stopped, although when I sent this picture to my friend and co-conspirator Steve, and he remembered the restaurant. The outside does look familiar.