{"id":170,"date":"2012-02-02T09:49:57","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T09:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=170"},"modified":"2012-02-02T09:50:45","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T09:50:45","slug":"vishnu-the-maintainer-maintains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2012\/02\/vishnu-the-maintainer-maintains\/","title":{"rendered":"Vishnu, the Maintainer, Maintains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>the grids of the leakless metal hidden in the walls now;<br \/>\nthey&#8217;re <em>his<\/em> domain &#8212; the pipes of a hundred thousand homes<br \/>\nin the greater metropolitan area; his servants<br \/>\nare many, and each armed with shining steel:<\/p>\n<p>monkey wrenches. That rhymes for him with <em>vanara<\/em><sup>1<\/sup>,<br \/>\nwhich brings old Rama to mind, and his lovely Sita.<br \/>\nHe wonders, over a cold beer and lunchbag curry,<br \/>\nwhether their love has grown clogged or enjoys good drainage.<\/p>\n<p>His own runs latterwise, for Lakshmi does the books,<br \/>\nstill that magnet of prosperity. She picked his vocation,<br \/>\nnow orders parts, cuts deals with hardware stores.<br \/>\nShe is as pretty as ever, though ninety pounds moreso.<\/p>\n<p>He thinks of how many times the world has spun<br \/>\nsince he first stepped onto it, with each turn round<br \/>\nof the bolt gripping the pipe, like a gopi girl her lover\u2019s<br \/>\nflesh, or good old Krishna his songpipes back in the day.<\/p>\n<p>And on his pipewrench it is inscribed, in stately<br \/>\nSanskrit, a motto for the war against errant pipes<br \/>\nand sumps: <em>Yato Dharma Stato Jayah:<\/em><br \/>\n<em>\u201cWhere virtue is found, there too is victory.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><sup> 1. The <em>vanara<\/em> are monkeys, specifically in this case those with whom the hero Rama was forced to ally in order to win back his bride Sita in the epic <em>Ramayana<\/em>. <\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>the grids of the leakless metal hidden in the walls now; they&#8217;re his domain &#8212; the pipes of a hundred thousand homes in the greater metropolitan area; his servants are many, and each armed with shining steel: monkey wrenches. That rhymes for him with vanara1, which brings old Rama to mind, and his lovely Sita. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-danikbharata"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xIep-2K","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}