501. The South India Pipe Club
psa International Peterson (er, Pipe) Smoking Day is Friday! See below for details Have you ever thought about how easy it is to break something up and how hard it is to put something together? I volunteer as a groundskeeper at St. Melba’s Green, a prayer garden in my community, and this morning my job was to take apart an old pressure-treated lumber bench. With a 3-pound drilling hammer it took all of five minutes and sent my puppy scurrying for safety. The bench was made by a quiet guy that died a few years back and I know it took took him hours of time and effort in his shop. As I broke it apart, the explosions of the hammer strikes made me think how easy it is to destroy someone’s self-esteem, to estrange someone who’s waiting to hear from you, to shred a friendship, all with a harsh word, a little tepid silence, or the atrophy of neglect. I mention this because next Sunday is IPSD—International Pipe Smoking Day—or as we like to say in these parts, International Peterson Smoking Day, a day many of us cherish as a time to practice peace while puffing our Petes. While the day has been under commercial assault in the US for years, the punitive tobacco laws in many other countries ironically allow it to retain its original purpose of bringing together pipe smokers in a day of peaceful puffing and fellowship. Last weekend, I got an early taste of IPSD when K. T. Prasad invited me to join his friends for pipes and pondering at the South India Pipe Club. K. T. lives in Hyderabad, with a penthouse apartment in the city and a farm not too far away. The garden in back of K. T.'s farm. Tinkerbell Farm has an amazing cottage, gardens, livestock, exotic birds, vegetable gardens and quiet. It is also a great place to convene for the monthly SIPC meeting, where smoking indoors is allowed! Rohit (left), K. T. (center), Pritvi (right) I spent a delightful hour and a half talking and smoking with K. T., Rohit, Pritvi, and Karthik. While talk of politics and religion are theoretically forbidden, within five minutes we'd all violated that rule, lamenting the crises in world and national affairs, first amendment abuses in India and the US, and wondering as a group why being kind is such a difficult task on a national and international level. In the course of our talk, either Pritvi or Karthik said his wife had met Mother Teresa many years ago, and we all applauded the saint’s attention to the specifics of honoring and caring for each person she met, being motivated neither by money, prestige, nor power. That being the case, we all scratched our heads and laughed that most wives in India are much like wives here in the US, whom we hold in the highest regard, but who demand we do our pipe smoking outdoors! K T. bought this beautiful XL02 Spigot…