With a note on how Malati's been recovering at a substantial pace, the doctor let her leave the hospital on Friday afternoon. Four nights of rest in a 5½ feet bed for a 6 feet tall person makes you feel a bit stiff in the end, I'm glad it's over! The atmosphere there was extremely dozy, as much as you can expect of a place where most people are lying down and taking medications — not exactly your bhajana-asrama of choice.

The experience wouldn't have been complete without a small twist at the end. I had a car waiting outside, as Malati couldn't have handled a rickshaw ride at this point. Yet, we had to pay the balance of the bill before being discharged, an unknown amount that no-one except one particular clerk could take, and he happened to be on a lunch break since one and half hours. In the end, we found him wandering about the hospital yard in search of a better future, having lost the keys to his dear little office.

Overall the hospital experience was good, much better than I would have expected of a hospital trip in India. The treatment was adequate, and that really is all you need. If someone needs medical facilities in the Vraja area, you can find Brij Healthcare by coming from Ramana Reti along the parikrama-marga to the Mathura-Vrindavana road crossing with the large Mahanambrata Pravesh Dvara on the right side. The hospital falls to the right side of the road after some 200 meters as you go through the gate towards Mathura direction along the main road. There are a number of hospitals in the area, including the Ramakrishna Mission hospital; I don't have any experience of them.

We're now staying at Madhuvan Colony in the Hare Krishna Dhama. A peaceful place, much more so than Ananda Dham where I spent my first week. The place itself was great, but the kirtana that blasted out through loudspeakers day and night — starting at 4:30 am — wasn't exactly favorable for any kind of bhajana except hearing theirs. There was a lady doing kirtana around mid-day who had a pleasant peaceful approach to it, but most of the rest of it was of your typical passion-filled, over-fast yelling with the lead kirtaniya sometimes singing the lead and then inattentively shouting half the response to the mic, his voice going up and down and breaking amidst the shouts. All kirtana is good for someone, don't take me wrong, but much of it should never, ever go out through loudspeakers for so many reasons.

I met Dhanurdhara Swami one more time yesterday noon before his departure back to the States. While our previous meeting also covered a number of practical issues concerning events that surrounded our having coming in touch with each other in the first place, this time over we were content spending the bulk of our time in swapping notes on nama-bhajana, which is really what Vaisnavas ought to be talking about. We also spent a moment talking about the culture many Western Vaisnavas are embracing, a hybrid of bhakti, material life and distorted values, a combination in many ways antithetic to progressive spiritual life. Something I might be blogging a bit more on in the future. I've jotted down a long list of themes I've had inspirations to write on, but haven't in absence of time.