Afterlife?

I found a puppy on the street tonight as I was walking to buy coffee.  He was laying in the middle of the street and looked up at me lifting his head in my direction.  So I stopped and bent over to pet him.  I haven't done this much here in India, petting random street dogs.  But for some reason, this one beckoned me.  Upon closer look, I realized that his leg was broken.  He couldn't move and was as thin as a skeleton with his rib cage protruding.  So much poverty in India, so much death, hunger, starvation.  People walk by street dogs unnoticed.  Why feed a dog when there is a person dying just across the street?  

I don't know why but I had to take care of this dog.  So I brought him home.  He died in my arms in the middle of the night.  2:05 am.  My hand laid on his stomach as he took his last breath and felt his last heart beat.  My room stinks of him.  The four hours that my life was graced by his presence has left me with a room full of dog urine and spilled milk.  He couldn't have been more than two years old.  He limped around my room whimpering, searching.  Did he know it was his time?  I carried his body outside and laid it next to a pile of garbage.  I don't know what else to do.  

Ive never felt a living being die in my hands.  is this preparation?  a reminder?  a street dog or a billionaire, there'll come a time when we all take our last breath.  

Hiking in leeches

Coffee plantations and hiking in rain forests.  

We took a bus to coorg early sat morning.  It was moon day so no yoga class. Two consecutive days off, hard to come by and perfect opportunity for a weekend trip.  Coorg is famous for its coffee plantations and two nearby mountains for hiking.  All kinds of wildlife we could encounter, the lonely planet told us.  But leeches were not mentioned.

As we were hiking through beautiful rain forests, my friend suddenly turned around and asked, "of all your traveling, have you ever come across leeches?" 

"God no, gross." I breathed a sign of relief.  My mom had told me horror stories of leeches crawling on her during her communist farming days in China.  Even thinking about it horrifies me, I can't imagine.

Two minutes later I felt something itchy on my ankles and looked down and screamed on the top of my lungs.  There were 4 of them.  Black, slimy, and eating away into my ankles.  

"Don't pull them out." My friend screamed as I yanked them off my ankles.

Too late.