Going over our chat logs from three days back: Malati tells me it's extremely hot in Vraja. That's a relative concept, I suppose — for someone from a country where it's a bit above 20 celsius in the mid-summer, it must be very hot there. BBC World Weather reports a steady 33-34 degrees for Delhi, and I believe around Govardhan it's a bit beyond that. She is already stressed out about the very thought of leaving Vraja and the company of sadhus. She worries about my not eating properly in her absence. I seem to be quite content with one meal sometime in the evening.

On the 27th: "I'm burning. The heat is just insane." I guess it's 36 degrees now. She tells me our room is full of bugs, and that she spent the better part of the previous night hunting cockroaches the size of birds. She may be exaggerating just a little bit there.

In the forenoon, she bumped into Sanatan Baba, who gave her a Bengali copy of Bhagavad-gita. Back to basics. Tolerating the changes of heat and cold, being indifferent in the presence and the absence of bird-sized cockroaches.

Baba tells her it's important to chant in one's own room, door closed, eyes closed, focused. Doing one's japa while contemplating on the beauty of Thakurji's form. His beautiful hair, his big and wide eyes, his curved eyebrows, his nose-ornament, his makara-earrings... A vaijayanti-mala and a yellow cloth, beginning the contemplation from the feet upwards. In such a way, with meditation, doing one's japa — not while roaming about to and fro.