V.V. Ganeshananthan

O whomsoever is up there,

You, and you, and you also, since you’re simultaneously aspects of one—

—grant us patience with the bearded white hippie who, at the gym in suburbia, saysnamaste to us instead of hello, and thinks that for this he should receive karmic points, and perhaps even more hilariously, that we in our mystical brownness might be capable of distributing such, even though we know no one other than he who greets another person in this fashion;

Or alternatively, make us capable of distributing such points, none of which shall go to him, but shall only go to people who have had namaste said to them unsolicitedly on the basis of race;

And should that be the case, may all such points be redeemable for fresh mangosteens, which we have had overseas but which are in any case only available on the black market in the United States, and who knows why, because they are delicious and might go far towards distracting from the irritations of unsolicited namastes;

Or, since it must be said, the irritations of people assuming we do yoga, although we prefer soccer, which for some reason seems to surprise them;

Continued here.