Intimate Interactions

I’ll begin with an aside about a cat. I mention rescue cat 27705 who is a foster kitty with black and white tuxedo colouration and an incredibly sweet disposition found malnourished and abandoned on a wooden pallet that has gained 50% of its body weight in under two weeks with me. Still underweight and almost 11 pounds, this cat plays fetch, is easy to pick up, and meows at me while I’m recording these introductions. Now to the introduction. My father like most humans is many things. He grew up Roman Catholic but commit apostasy and after travelling and soul searching decided to follow a spiritual path in an ashram in South India, the one in Puducherry specifically. If you’ve read Life of Pi, the ashram’s pool after which the protagonist is named is one in which my father has taken at least one swim. The ashram has been accused of being cultish before, lead by two leaders, one called Aurobindo Ghose after which I derive my middle name and my sister derives part of her first name. He is known to the ashramites