On seeing the goat and the shalwar clad people in the picture, I first thought Goatonapole was the all desi Flying Spaghetti Monster church. Not quite so as it turns out. The central tenet of this philosophy is described thusly
As in the beginning there was no Goat or Pole but only unity, so in the end there will be a new being which is neither Goat nor Pole but is at the same time both, a being that is both whole and self-knowing, a being that encompasses the whole of the universe. This is the Goat's aim and Goatonapole in its essence.
There are way too many entities jockeying for the "in the beginning there was" position. The FSM is just one of them. Time Bete will have you believe there were no diapers.We are familiar with In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light or In the beginning Brahma was the Universe, then he created the other Gods. If you are an atheist you might contend in the beginning there was zero and then there was one. Given the choices, the goat on the pole definitely has my vote. It is downright simple.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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