Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 S E C O N D M O O N 06squatting on the pavement with the tools of their trade in a box by theirside. The first one we stopped to ask was a young lad. He took the matwhen I produced it, and I pointed out the two bicycle patches, now peelingoff, and the small holes revealed beneath. I showed him how themat inflated so that he could see why the holes were a problem. Whathe thought the mat was used for is anyone’s guess. He lifted the patchesand looked at the holes, felt the material, and then said something inHindi pointing down the road. All I got was a word that went polysomething-or-other.The young lad explained that this was the glue weneeded, and that a shoe repairman in the market had some. So we wentto find him.He was an older man squatting on a bit of pavement near where wehad got off the bus. I went through the same pantomime, and then heproduced a small battered round tin, which must once have had somefoodstuff in it, but now had a couple of inches of dark treacly glue in thebottom. He took the patches off, cleaned them with a flat file and thenspread some of the glue with a stick and his fingers around each hole.He waited for the glue to go tacky and then put the patches back on andfor good luck walloped each of them with a hammer on a small anvil,which he held between his feet. I asked if I could buy the rest of the glueas insurance against future holes, but he was reluctant. I suppose hewould have been parting with the small part of the local shoe repair markethe had cornered.I returned to collect Ajahn Sucitto, still the object of attention of severallocals despite the fact that he had not moved for over an hour. Wethanked our guide and set off for the stupa, which we could see loomingup beyond the town. It was like the cremation stupa at Kushinagar,but bigger, a great dome of dull red bricks. There must once have beena surface layer of facing bricks, but they had now gone, and the exposedunderlayers stepped upward haphazardly, with gaps of earth and grass,to the top.The first thing I did when we got there was climb it. It was higher than1 2 6