Here We Go Again!

I arrived in India at 2 a.m. in the midst of a storm that I'd fully expected but did my best to ignore.  Warning emails had come days prior telling me that I would arrive at one of the rainiest times due to a nearby cyclone.  Dark, hot, humid and silent was how Chennai received me.  An empty airport where everywhere I turned I'd see a closed shop, empty counters and no hint of life.  Not even the cleaning crew.  

It wasn't until our herd of passengers moved into the immigration hall that we had our first hint that we'd hadn't arrived in an evacuated city.  All the lanes were open and we managed to fill them all up.  The group was mostly Indian, many from the United States, with some impatient Europeans and a few uncomfortable looking Americans.  The lines moved painfully slow but even at the late time of night few showed outright annoyance.  

I had an older couple ahead of me, easily in their 80s, and when the husband took a bathroom break I helped his wife move the heavy bags they’d carried on (I’ve no clue how because the Emirates airline has a surprisingly limiting policy on the weight of carryon bags).  We struck up a conversation in broken English.  She was appreciative for both the help and the chat.  I learned she was coming home after visiting her son in San Francisco, a city about which she had many good things to say.  

“Except the weather.  A bit chilly.”   

When the husband came back he started to chat as well and complained that U.S. cities don’t invest in their own development and infrastructure.  I turned to look around me at the dirty hall, the paint that was equal parts scraped and faded on the walls, the no-existent decor and the entirely manual process of getting through immigration.  

I am here, I thought to myself.  This mix of warmth, inconvenience, friendliness, dilapidation, and irony is one I’ve never encountered so distinctly as I did during my first trip to Southern India in 2011.

I was asked days before by my husband whether I was getting excited about my trip and I explained that the feeling is was more reserved than that.  I knew I would be happy being here, I knew I’d enjoy seeing old friends from my first trip and my yoga teacher, but I also knew I’d have to get through the emotional and sensory adjustment, which is no small task for me.  

“It’s like jumping into a cold pool on a hot Summer day,” was my response.  “You know that you will love being in that water 2 minutes after jumping in… that it’s infact precisely what you need at that moment.  But you have to get past the shock of the first few seconds.”

It’s especially a shock to come into India via Emirates because their planes are, truth be told, nicer than many of the places I’ve lived in.  The tiny lights on the ceilings glowing through an indigo field, looking very accurately like a night sky or a glowworm cave, the non-stop entertainment, the food (which comes with a spectacular selection and rivals much of what you get in restaurants in the U.S.), the little extras like complementary socks, sleep masks and toothbrushes, and, of course, the free flowing booze that helps take the edge off sleeping while sitting mostly upright (the seats recline more than most airlines but they don’t recline enough if you ask me).  

I was trying to wean myself off coffee and alcohol before coming to India, knowing that I would likely have little to none of each, both because of the emphasis of the trip (yoga) and the relative difficulty in finding places where you can get them.  But the handsome flight attendant that asked me what I’d like to drink was having none of it.  When I asked for water he raised an eyebrow and said “What?!  Come on!” and pulled out two small bottles of wine, one red and one white.  

“Okay,” I conceded, “white please.”  

He set down the red and picked up another bottle of white.  “Which one?” he asked.  

“I don’t know.  Which do you recommend?”

He thought about it for a moment and finally said “You should try both and tell me which one you prefer” and poured a bit of each into cups but then left me with both the bottles... enough wine to get me tipsy.  

I spent most of the flight either sleeping or watching movies (“Ant Man,” which I highly recommend and “Jurassic World,” which I’d already seen but very much enjoyed).  I also binge-watched the hell out of “The Following,” which my friend Sandra has been pushing me to watch for more than a year now.  I loved it but have a really hard time recommending it to anyone.  It is some dark shit and makes "Dexter "look like nothing.

All of that was gone now, though: the movies, the booze, the air conditioning, the pretty interior and the heightened sense of order.  I was left with the barren walls of the immigration hall, the dirt on the floor and the strangely ironic conversation with the older couple.

When I got to the immigration counter the attendant tried various times to scan my passport.  He was not pleased with the results.

“It is not scanning, sir.”

In any other country I might’ve been worried, but here I’d already settled in the understanding that half the time things don’t work, or at least they don’t work like they’re supposed to, and that everyone knows this and adapts.  Not much is taken too seriously.

I shrugged and he proceeded to manually type in my passport number and stamped me for entry.

After getting my bags I walked into a sea of Tamil faces, dark, serious and beautiful waiting for loved ones or customers.  I saw my name on a board that a tall, severe looking man was holding.  I nodded his way and his face lit up with a smile.  He tapped a man next to him who followed him hurriedly to meet me.  The tall man worked for the guest house where I would be staying and since I would be checking in so late he’d accompanied the driver.  

He grabbed one of my heavier bags and led the way to the car.  The driver took the other heavy bag and a third man who came out of nowhere took my carry on.  I wondered why it took three men to pick someone up from the airport.  The three spoke in Tamil as they walked ahead of me, slipping into the darkness and rain amid people, cars, rickshaws and wandering cows.  The smell and the noise hit me.  

I know this.

When we got to the car, the third man put my carryon bag into the back of the van and immediately turned to me and put out his hand.  I shook my head wondering what he meant.

“Tip, sir.”

And I realized he was one of the opportunistic folks who stands near the rickshaws and taxis and jumps in to “help” with baggage, looking official but really having nothing to do with the drivers.  They’re like the men at street corners in Miami who would start to wash your windshield while you were stopped at a red light and then insisted on getting paid even though you’d never asked for the service.

I gave him 20 Rupees.  He shook his head.  “Too little, sir.”  And I shrugged at him the way I did the immigration attendant.  Sometimes that’s all you need to do here.  This is a place where everyone knows intimately that things don’t always go as planned, that they don’t work as they’re designed to, that you have to set your expectations aside if you don’t want to be too badly disappointed.  Come with this attitude and you’re right at home.  Live with this attitude and the world opens up to you in ways you can’t imagine.  That’s what India did for me before: it gave me a taste of life without expectations, of setting aside order and comfort to experience something else… something that can get lost or shrouded by the order and the comfort, and most of all by the expectations.  

And I could feel India starting to do it again.

I’m here, I thought.  And now I’m excited. 

Let's Do This

It has been more than four years now since my first trip to India. It doesn't feel that long, however.  What I experience and learned in that time has stayed with me so that I feel its impact every day.  If I were to ascribe a theme to the last few years it would be adapting to the life I was used to before my trip when I wasn't the same anymore.  It hasn't been easy or enjoyable, which is the irony of these things.  When you see from a new perspective, it's impossible (or at least very very difficult) to be completely at ease with the old one, even if the latter is less challenging.

For a time I withdrew from my regular activities and my circle of friends to make sense of the feelings that came up after I returned to San Diego.  I would walk out into the street in Hillcrest and feel like I was in a ghost town.  So few people were out and about.  So many inevitably indoors.  Conversations over lunch and dinner felt insignificant, their purpose neither functional nor meaningful, I felt.  There is alot written about Yoga and what it should be and what it should do, and among these opinions, one that has become very popular is the idea that Yoga should enable engagement with life and in relationships rather than isolation from them.  I can't say exactly what that means (sometimes sorting out what exactly is meant in Yoga is not easy) but it felt like whatever I was going through was the opposite.  I felt like I had been moving through connected rooms in a house, entering through a door, finding another to take me further to get to the other side; and I had reached a room with no door but the one I had walked through.  It had plenty of windows and an amazing view.  But there was nowhere to go from there except back through the door I'd come through.  And the thought of treading familiar ground felt like failure.

Looking back on it now I don't understand why it raised so much anxiety to be in that space.  When faced with that it seems obvious that you have two options: (1) to chill, enjoy the view and rest, which requires that you learn to stop moving and seeking, and (2) you tread backwards on the path you came until you find a fork where the next path makes sense... but this requires you knowing where you want to go.

It took me some time to let go of these feelings, of the angst, and specifically of the idea of who I was, who I should be, and especially who I wanted to be.  The concept of surrendering to God (or surrendering to the flow of life, if God is a problematic concept for you) is in Yoga for a reason (Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras suggests that this is the most effective and efficient means to spiritual freedom... much more so than any technique, process or effort we can pursue): there are many moments in life when we have to accept that we aren't the masters of our lives, let alone of this world.  We have the means to change it to some degree, we certainly are capable of injecting beauty and horror into it, depending on our choices.  But this ability does not translate to control.  We can nudge things to change directions, but we have no means of managing the implications of this.  So we are advised to learn to let go of this grasping, of this need, and to trust that God is in control and that our collective lives will be better guided because of this.

But it's all easier said than done.  There is what I know intellectually and then there's the mess of emotions and experience that you're mired in.  It offers little comfort to have these maps on paper when the road that is infront of you doesn't resemble what you should see according to the map.

So when Juliana, who I'd met in "The Heart of Yoga" in 2011, mentioned in passing that she was joining Kausthub's 2015 Yoga Teacher Training in Chennai, I immediately saw a new door I could walk through.  A door that would take me back to the same place where I felt I'd transformed.  If I have to retread a path I've been on, it may as well be one I enjoyed and which offered me a life changing perspective.

"When is the deadline for signing up?" I asked.

"Tomorrow."

I immediately contacted Kausthub, who I'd been talking to about Yoga Therapy training in 2017 for some time, and asked him about the teacher training coming up, why he hadn't mentioned it to me, and whether I could join.

"You've already been through teacher training," he said.

"Yes," I responded.  "But not with you."

I meant this sincerely.  I've been blessed to have had many excellent teachers in my journey since it began in 2000 in Cincinnati, but Kausthub's depth of knowledge (and ability to relay that knowledge in an approachable way) is unparalleled.  One of my main concerns of starting a Yoga Therapy training with him when that training has a Yoga Teacher Training as a prerequisite is that the kind of information he would assume you've been exposed to is not what you were actually taught.  I've done three Yoga Teacher Trainings in the U.S., all in San Diego and I loved each one and learned immensely.  But the way Yoga is taught in the U.S. differs tremendously from the way it is taught in India and within this particular tradition.  U.S. trainings are asana and asana teaching technique heavy.  Some philosophy is typical but rarely goes beyond basic introduction.  In this tradition we are exposed to pranayama, Vedic chant, Ayurveda and Sanskrit lessons, all areas that are heavily leveraged in Yoga Therapy so I was concerned I'd be missing out on these and would not be as prepared as other students when the time for the Yoga Therapy training came.

I sat down with my husband to discuss the training and what it would mean: a month in India every six months.  Essentially a sixth of the year I would spend away from him.  It wasn't insignificant.  In fact it was a huge sacrifice to ask of my husband that we should be apart that long over a span of two years, potentially four if I continued with the Yoga Therapy training, for which the Teacher Training is a preparation.

But Kevin knows me better than most and he had lived both my transformation in 2011 and the subsequent frustration, agoraphobia and yearning when I returned.

"I don't want to see you go through that again," he said, the pain of the experience still evident.

"But, babe, I'm still going through it now.  I've just learned to not show it."  These words came out of me more as a visceral response to his comment than out of any analysis over the years.  It was like a truth I hadn't wanted or been able to accept.  I had come back different from India and rejected (and resented) the influences in my regular life that tried to lure me back to the old ways.  After four years I'd landed somewhere in between where I'd started and where India had taken me.  And I wasn't happy there and didn't know how to proceed.  It was an ugly realization of the helplessness and discontent I felt.  And it was the most compelling reason for going back.

The next day I met with my boss and director at work and mentioned the opportunity and its time commitment.  They both agreed I could take the time.

I filled out the application that night and submitted it before going to bed.  The email subject line was simply "Let's Do This".

Even though I was certain after our discussion that I would be accepted into the program, it was still exhilarating to receive the acceptance letter the next day, especially with my teacher's brief but touching comment: "You don't know how happy I am to receive this."

So here I move into a new phase in the journey I started four years ago.  This phase feels as fresh and exciting as when I began it, which at least for now has lifted some of the frustration of the stagnancy.  Let's see where it goes and where it lands me.

You Can Take the Boy Out of India...

I woke this morning with an odd but familiar urge.  "Odd" because it's been a long time since I've felt it. "Familiar" because I've felt its pull before and despite the passage of time and its seeming dissolution, it has remained in me: small, dormant... or to borrow a word from the fields of photography and yoga, both of which mean so much to me: latent.

When my urges feel natural and continuous with my being, when they feel familiar in the same way my own face does in the mirror when I see it, I think it's because these feelings have not only been there before, but that they've never left me.  They may simply not have been as strong.  Or more likely, I was not paying attention to them until that moment.

This particular urge, the one I had this morning, appropriately on the morning of New Year's Day, is hard to confine to one word, or even a few of them.  I woke wanting the flavors of India in my mouth, the routine I had there, so focused and deliberate, the person I was when I was there, and, most of all, the feelings that came with these.  I wasn't missing the fruits of these, but their process.  But I wanted them so badly that I wanted nothing else.

I jumped out of bed and immediately began to cook.  I didn't have a recipe in mind but I knew the tastes and smells I wanted:
     1. Mushrooms cooked in chili peppers, green onions and yellow curry powder.
     2. Tomatoes briefly fried in pecan oil with garlic.
     3. And yogurt doused with hot olive oil with fennel seeds and cardamom.

My partner, Kevin, wasn't sure what to make of my state of mind.  We've been together more than 9 years now and he's used to my sudden "arrebatos."  For those of you who don't speak Spanish, this is, unfortunately, the best word I can come up with to describe it.  It's one that my mother used with me in my youth often enough.  I just don't know how to appropriately translate it.  It's usually translated as "fit," but actually has both negative connotations ("rage," "fury," and "outburst") and very positive ones ("ecstasy" and "rapture").  And it is the closest thing to defining the sensation of an uncontrollable drive that pulls you out of yourself, out of your habits and comfort zones.  It makes you seem irrational to others but it leaves no question in your mind as to what needs to happen, what you need to eat or do or be.  It's at once deeply uncomfortable and deeply comforting.  And it offers you such certainty, regardless of how crazy it is, that you feel empowered by it.  We're usually drawn to the things that are easy, that are familiar and comfortable.  And perhaps that's why it seems so strange when an urge draws us to something strange and completely different from what we've come to know.  But there is such value in it.

Kevin also didn't know what to make of the food: "Everything smells great... and looks disgusting."  I asked what specifically looked gross and he pointed out "what looks like yogurt with yellow slime and roasted termites." I explained that the termites were fennel seeds and the slime olive oil (both things he loves).  He smelled it and on recognizing two ingredients he loves, was content with the mix.

We sat down to eat.  To say that I was finally comfortable is to understate things.  It wasn't an out-of-this world experience.  I was at ease.  But it was an ease that felt more genuine than most.  It was the essence of ease that I felt.

The food was a perfect mix of heating and cooling, spicy and mild, and the amount enough to feed us both with no leftovers but the yogurt.  I felt neither full nor hungry, and I remembered the words of Kausthub Desikachar the last time I saw him: "When you eat with bhakti, you won't overeat or stay hungry.  And you won't gain weight."

"Bhakti" is Sanskrit word usually translated as "devotion," "deep faith" or "zeal."  It is a common term in our Yoga lexicon, particularly because it is one of the three main paths of Yoga as defined by the Bhagavad Gita.  Some would say that there is, infact, only Bhakti yoga, that all other forms, if performed to their full extent, are either a path to it or a means of it.

I wasn't quite sure what this meant when I first heard it, years ago in my first yoga teacher training, but since that time I've come across examples of it in textbooks and articles, have heard my share of testimonials, and I think I had my first personal experience of it these last two days.    

On New Year's Eve I woke with a very different type of urge: to clean.  It was an impulse that I rarely have. This has become a bit of a joke with our friends, since I can (and have in the past) live in suspect conditions.  I have a way of adapting to chaos, to a mess and to dirt that makes it possible for me to be in the midst of them with little noticeable discomfort.

But that's not to say they don't have their effect.  And yesterday I could sense their effect and it was critical that I clean our condo, which has been in one way or another in the midst of restoration since we bought it a few months back, so that there was no dirt from 2012 following us into the new year.  The urgency was so alien to me because, despite often being prone to superstition, I am quite particular about these, and a proper cleaning to avoid the energy or essence of one year's dirt from seeping into the next year was not among them.  But I felt it and followed it without rest.

I wiped everything down, gave the granite a proper shine, picked up all the stacks of paper we've been meaning to go through and put them in their proper place, and moved the boxes of gifts and soon-to-sell-on-eBay items into a nice stack in the guest bedroom/office.  I fixed the scratched coffee table and put protective pads on the new patio set, swept the patio floor, cleaned the bathrooms, dusted everywhere imaginable and took the wet mop to the floors.  I then emptied the dishwasher and cleaned the remaining dirty dishes by hand, and took all the laundry, along with the towels and rags I'd used to clean, and put them in the wash.

All the trash was taken out and I left a little plastic bag in case we collected any trash the remaining part of the day.  The house didn't need to just be clean but also need to be free of all trash.  I opened up all the windows to get even the stale air out and invite fresh air in.

2012 was a loaded year, both personally and globally.  We watched a young friend undergo a bone-marrow transplant and then deal with its uncomfortable and ambiguous aftermath.  We lost an older friend to brain cancer.  Family members suffered serious financial woes.  My yoga community experienced a devastating sex abuse scandal.  And both our jobs had very rocky moments, mostly due to the effects of a sluggish economy, leaving us feeling, at least momentarily, like we were on shaky ground.  On a broader scale, we had friends affected by Hurricane Sandy.  We saw an election year that clearly revealed the bipolar character of our country and the disturbing misogyny that is rampant in some elements.  The U.N. designation of Palestine as a "non-member state" (the same designation as the Vatican) made it clear for many of us that what the U.S. government considers best for the U.S. (it was not a supporter of the decision) is not necessarily what many Americans think is the right thing to do.  The anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was marked with the storming of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which left the U.S. ambassador and four others dead.  And worst of all, we suffered two senseless mass shootings in Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT.  The latter felt like a loss of innocence for this country.  And perhaps that's exactly what it was.

Maybe it's appropriate that, whether we were believers or non-believers in the end-time prophecy, the year 2012 had as its mark the end of the Mayan calendar and the expectation of something major coming to an end.  For some it was a reason to return to the paranoia and hysteria that has so often overwhelmed the U.S. from so many different fronts; and they reacted by hoarding food and guns and building what essentially amount to minor forts to protect against change, discomfort, chaos and death.  For most of us, though, I think it was a marker that we would rather see as a metaphorical, and potentially energetic, change in the world.  Something known and familiar was coming to a close and we had no idea what was on the other side.  It was (and remains) more curious than it was frightening.

I wanted all this, all of the year's effects, out of the house we share.

Kevin came home to a clean condo, which he loved, but also to a very intense and determined partner, which he has learned to handle with care and healthy suspicion when I get like this.  He simply asked why I was so focused on this and, once I gave a brief explanation, he was happy to let me finish.  My partner exhibits a certain faith that is inspiring to me.  He doesn't need to understand things in order to let them share space with him.  This isn't something most of us can do.  It's something I've worked hard to achieve infact.  And it doesn't always happen.

I think I ended my tornado-like sweep of our place at 6p.m.  And I didn't feel the least bit tired.

Perhaps if you clean with bhakti, you won't be drained of energy.

That "arrebato" finished, I was good to enjoy a few hours of relaxation and sleep until I woke with the new one this morning, the one yearning for flavors and routines that I'd enjoyed almost two years ago now.  What is most comforting about these fits is how much they fill me.  They make me feel more in tune with myself.  They aren't like the typical escapes to food or habits.  They plunge me so much deeper into inexplicable desires and needs.  Needs that are satiated not by comfort foods, neurosis or comfortable habits, but by some churning of energies inside and the activities and foods and thoughts that lead to that.

When I last saw Kausthub I asked him for help with a pain in my chest that no doctor had been able to detect with their instruments, let alone diagnose, and which I suspected has its roots in something deeper than the physical.  He drew up a practice, which I still do to this day, and offered up his reasoning: "There is something inside you that you have to cook."

It's funny to read that now, given this morning's urge.  I understood, and I believe I am accurate in this understanding, that the "cooking" he was referring to, though, was to face and focus my energy on something within me that was undealt with and, in being left alone, was having unplanned, and in my case unfavorable, effects. This is the nature of the unfaced.  Almost every culture, regardless of how non-confrontational they are, agrees that things left undealt with will typically have unwanted effects.  If they are left alone for too long, they can be very difficult to manage, and sometimes, in the worst cases, impossible to isolate via typical means.

The only option left then is to dig deep into your Self, into the essence of you, to find this ultimate connection which then makes everything in the phenomenal universe clear, including your quirks, aversions, addictions, fetishes and the source of your reasoning.  This is, of course, easier said than done, and many people on the spiritual path never experience it, even for a moment.

But the beginnings of it is to listen.  To listen well.  And to listen hard.  That voice inside you is always speaking, nudging you towards one thing or another (and sometimes away from things).  This voice, I believe, gets frustrated with thinkers like me: people who focus too much on logic and reasoning, on what is palpable and measurable.  And out of its frustration come these "arrebatos."  Once I'm in its grasp, I feel so different.  On task but at peace.  If I try to resist it, I'm left with the sensation that something isn't right.  If I follow it, no matter what other concerns I may have, what other urgent things need to get done, they seem meaningless... or manageable and not something I should concern myself with at the moment.

In a way, having done no asana or pranayama, this was my yoga practice yesterday and today.  It is, afterall, this kind of connection that I seek whenever I get on the mat.  Here it happened naturally, without any urging from my own will and with no need for discipline.  And the effects, I can testify, are not much different than what I experience on the mat.  Perhaps practicing with devotion or bhakti is just that: practice.  Ultimately we are to live with it: listening to the call of what we're devoted to and doing its bidding without question.  Not looking for reason or logic or even patterns, but trusting that the inspiration is coming from a good place and leading us to a good place...a better place... infact the place we need at that very moment.

I had a third "arrebato" today after I was done cleaning the kitchen after breakfast.  A milder one.  Not wrapped up in urgency but firm nonetheless.  Or maybe it was my response to it, more fluid and accommodating, having now had practice with the two previous.  It called me to write.  To continue the writings I'd started when I'd gone to India, and to document my journey now, no less important (and potentially moreso) because I'm at home.

Three hours later, here you have it.  My fit is finished for now.

Blessings to all on this New Year's Day!

Leaving India

The days that led up to my departure from India were as surreal as the day I arrived. I'd purposely given myself a few days after our month-long class ended so I had time to adjust, to prepare and, most important, to say my goodbyes to the people and places I'd come to love in my time there. Over those three days my friends left in waves and the goodbyes became more difficult.

On Friday night (the last day of our class) all 25 participants of "The Heart of Yoga" course gathered at Sandy's, the only Western style restaurant I frequented (largely because of their amazing chocolate desserts) and we did our rounds exchanging embraces, phone numbers, email addresses and reassurances about keeping in touch. The food at Sandy's was amazing, as always. It's the one place I allowed myself to eat meat and at that I kept it at fish. "Pesto fish" to be exact; the dish is unreal. We weren't in the main area of the restaurant that I'd come to know so well. Instead they placed us in a small private room with a dark brown door that resembled a Hershey's chocolate bar.

We asked for their wine selection.

"We have one red and one white."

Everyone settled on ordering both to suit differing preferences. Turned out they had exactly one bottle of each of red and white, which was clearly not going to serve everyone. Not that we had a class full of lushes, but after 4 weeks of intense physical, mental and, yes, spiritual exploration, most of us were looking for the proverbial release, which doesn't happen with just half a glass of wine.

"This is India." I'd used that phrase again and again to remind myself that there are places that don't follow the same rules I've been used to the last 27 years of my life, places that aren't designed to serve me. India is full of oddities, surprises and contradictions that are not familiar at all. It is a place where with few traffic signals and five times as many drivers on the road, traffic still manages to flow, where poverty and disease are rampant but people do not become animals and in fact interpersonal relationships seem to be the priority, where the dangers of the wild encroach on the safety of the city and yet people don't live in constant fear.

Where a Western-style restaurant has exactly two bottles of wine.

This is India. And India, I'd learned, wasn't there to give us what we wanted but would easily reveal and offer what we needed.

After 30 minutes or so more bottles started to appear. More reds and more whites. But all were different, making me wonder whether the owner of the restaurant had run home and tapped into his own personal supply to make sure his customers were served.

We ate off each other's plates, tasted and sometimes shared each other's wine (we had to, after all, since there was a limited supply of each) and exchanged glances and smiles that managed relief and sadness simultaneously. A few people shed tears here and there. But no feeling was indulged for too long. Something would interrupt it: the food coming out, the dessert menu, the mosquitos that had to be waved away or swatted, depending on the individual's interpretation of "ahimsa" (translated as "non-harming," it is one of the five restraints yogis are called to).

At one point, something that looked very much like a racquetball racquet was brought out. It had an odd metal mesh though, rather than the nylon strings I expected, and it had a thunderbolt-shaped emblem across the mesh and an "on" button on the handle. It took a group of us a few moments to realize that it was a mosquito swatter. We turned it on, waved it around and nothing. There were a few people who knew exactly what it was and what it did and who kept reassuring those of us that were confused that yes it was meant to kill mosquitos. Someone handed it to one of the girls, who was known to be a tennis player and she seemed delighted but equally confused. Before she could register and react to everyone's gasp and warning, she touched the mesh and from the look on her face it was clear she'd received quite a shock. She handed it off, swiftly shaking the shocked hand, as if trying to release the energy in hear hand.

Someone handed it to me and I was thoroughly terrified, having seen that it had enough power to make its improper use very uncomfortable. I waved it around and nothing. Then while holding it and talking to others about it and its lack of functionality, a mosquito flew lazily into it and ZAP!

I almost dropped the thing from surprise and shrieked like a five year old girl.

Then I was fascinated. I waved it around some more and could see the blue spark every time a mosquito came in contact with the mesh. A couple of times I even saw the bug drop to the floor.

I'm not a fan of killing things. My partner can attest to the many hours I've accumulated now trying to get silverfish and all variety of spiders (even the ones that look especially mean and hairy) out of our apartment without harming them. I even do my best with flies and roaches to get them safely out a door or window. But mosquitos fall somehow into an excepted category.

Towards the end of the evening, the waiters brought out a birthday cake with what looked like a flare in the center. Elyssa, one of the longest yoga practitioners in the class (and my rickshaw nightmare buddy) was celebrating her birthday. I'm not sure if she managed to blow the thing out or if we had to wait for it to die down. We sang "Happy Birthday" in English and then started the process of singing it in every language represented in the room. We had quite a few: Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, Italian, French, Greek, German, Belgian, Dutch, Korean and Finnish just to name a few. I've never been in a room with people representing so many different cultures and languages.

Late in the night we filed out but lingered outside the restaurant, saying a second or third round of goodbyes, figuring out ways to keep in touch and even meet up in the coming months. When my group finally started to move, we did so lazily, or maybe hesitatingly. Every step got us closer to a final goodbye. And for me it was especially difficult because that night I was losing the person I'd been closest to this whole time.

I've mostly refrained from using names and (too many) identifying features. This is to protect the identity of those involved and also because there are some things about any experience like this that are best kept secret. Not everything is meant to be shared.

I am making an exception here for my friend Andrea. It is difficult to talk about some things in my experience, among them the difficulty of saying goodbye, without mentioning her.

I can't remember exactly how we met. That first moment when we exchanged names has since been overshadowed by so many moments that carry more significance. Many of these I must keep to myself because they are so personal; others seem to lose their power and meaning when put into words, but I'll share what I can in the best way I can to do it justice.

It's not enough to say that Andrea was the person that shared a writing stool with me everyday, that as every weekend approached, she was the one person I always consulted, that every powerful, beautiful, frightening and confusing moment I had in my experience was always immediately followed by a concerned or congratulatory look from her.

If I did not attend a class, she was asked about my whereabouts. If she did not attend class, I was asked about hers.

She was there to reassure me when I couldn't stand to look at the traffic as our rickshaw swerved around it (Andrea lived in China prior to visiting India and rickshaws were not unknown to her... though she did freak out as much as I did when we bounced off a car and hit a motorcycle), she was someone with whom I could share stories of Kevin and who in fact would prompt me for them because she knew I enjoyed talking about him. We could talk endlessly about anything and more often than not those conversations delved deeper than I'd become used to these last few years of my life. In my teens I remember discussions with friends being overwhelmingly emotional, with difficult confessions, passionate aspirations and deep regrets often discussed. In my time as an adult, I became used to discussions about generally practical, banal matters; those intense discussions were less frequent. With Andrea, no conversation was trivial: each one carried the weight of what we were working through (grappling with, really) in our practice and our lives. Not that all things were heavy with us. Even the most somber discussion still had a quality of lightness to it, perhaps in relief that we'd found someone with whom we could share anything and everything.

Oddly, some of the things I most closely associate with Andrea, things which accentuate my memory of her, are surprisingly simple: "Mikey" the roach that terrorized her and Julianna (her roommate, who would also become a dear friend), the Western style coffeehouse we discovered that became something of our spot... a place to flee to when we wanted a taste of what we considered home, the smokey crystal earrings that she gave me, and the fiery red scarf that had her name on it the moment I saw it.

I could always count on a kiss "hello" and "goodbye" each day from Andrea.

On our last class of the last day of the course, as we sat side by side in meditation, she moved her hand and placed it in mine just as I considered doing the same thing to her and we both encountered a powerful, almost burning energy moving up our hands and arms, a testament, I think, to the bond we both already knew we shared. I was so surprised at the sensation, that before mentioning what I'd felt, I asked her if she'd sensed anything, just to be sure that it had really occurred, that I wasn't generating this reaction within myself. She described exactly what I had felt. That surge was real.

How do you say "goodbye" to someone like that?

I believe the only way is with tears.

I held mine back as I hugged her in the dark, shaded street in front of her apartment. The evening was cooler than usual but still slightly humid. "Comfortable" is what I called it, trying to make small talk to distract from the difficult task of understanding my feelings at that moment. Our hug lasted longer than usual and I held her hand as long as I could as I began to walk away. I looked back to see her disappear into the dark passageway that led to the stairs and sighed when I considered the notion that this would be the last time I saw her for a very long while.

In that instant I realized I was going to miss this place, these people and these moments. Despite all the training I've had in recognizing and letting go of attachments, I held on as tight as I could to the image of Andrea standing in front of her building, wearing the beautiful red kurta I'd come to associate with her (she always looked so good in red). I wanted to take that image with me, to have it as an anchor for all the others I'd encountered both with and without her.

My heart was heavy the remaining days, each goodbye a chip to the heart so to speak. Another space that can't be filled even with memories. Another piece of me that now belongs with someone else.

If I close my eyes now, I can still see her there, infront of her building, even though she's been long gone, living with her daughter in their new home in Singapore. She left her ghost, her imprint in that place that I will forever link to her. A place that, because of that link, is among the few that I could easily find my way to if given the opportunity now. An imprint so tangible, so obvious that it drew tears the next day when I left Julianna there after our last shopping excursion (trying to get the last of our gifts for friends and family). As the rickshaw drove off I looked back and did my best to imagine her standing there, where she'd been the night before. The street seemed to ache with her absence.

On my last day I went back to the KYM to drop off the SIM card that had proven an ordeal to get. That in itself was a chapter, wasn't it? I timed my arrival so I could see the friends who were staying for the following class, a two week meditation intensive. The last ten minutes of the hour are always a break. I saw a handful of them and gave out the pharmaceuticals and food that I no longer needed. The I walked back to the hotel, slowly, taking every step in with the acknowledgment that it was the last time I'd be strolling down that street.

I met up with Holly and Wyatt at the hotel, finished packing and handed off the rest of the items I wouldn't be bringing back: sesame oil I'd bought to use as therapeutic body lotion, dental floss (which you can't find in India for some reason), the pumice stone that had become my feet's best friend.

In this sorting out of what would stay and what would go, it wasn't lost on me that as we travel we do well to travel lightly, carrying only the essentials, sharing everything else. I couldn't bring India back with me. Not the KYM, the stray dogs, the nervous cows, the traffic, the noise, the smiles, the dirt, the trees, the birds, the sounds or the sunsets and sunrises that greeted me daily. If anything I could take back the memory of these things, and even that, with the passage of time, will have to fade. In truth, I knew the only thing I could really bring back and keep forever are the changes this place had initiated, coaxed and nurtured in me.

When I boarded the Emirates flight, it's star-lit ceiling a welcoming return to the amenities and comforts (and excesses) of the West, I scrolled through my memories, giving them full attention again, hoping to keep them with me a little longer than usual. As many things as I thought of (seeing my first sunset, practicing to the sunrise at the rooftop of the KYM, getting lost in the city, the temples, the music, the street life, my close call with a roach, mahamudra), they all pointed, inevitably back to that night as I walked away from Andrea, doing my best not to let my feelings overwhelm me.

Strange as it is, if I were to describe the face of India, it would not be the rich dark Tamil faces that I encountered every day, the impossibly beautiful green eyes on the almond skin of Kashmiri boys, or the stern painted faces of the Brahmins. For me, the face of India remains a sweet smile on the beautiful doe-eyed face of a Mexican girl from China.

Do Not Read This While Eating

I’ve mentioned what I’ve termed my “ India moment” in a previous blog entry.  It was beautiful and even a little sentimental and it came to define India for me: beauty in the midst of chaos.  Consistent with the process of Yoga, of looking at things with untainted clarity, I’ve since had various encounters that have also come to define my time here, or, if not define it, at least elaborate on it so that I get both the good and the bad of what’s unique to this place (at least relative to what I know).  I’ve decided to compile all of bad into one entry for two reasons: (1) because, though worth mentioning, they are not nearly as significant as many of the other things worth writing about and (2) to help anyone who is a bit squeamish regarding hygiene, bodily functions and unsanitary conditions avoid reading about anything nasty.

If the title has not made it clear, I will reiterate here: if you are eating, you gross out easily, or if you are the kind of person who latches onto an image and cannot let it go, it is probably best that you stop reading right here because, as curious as you may be, you will not like what I am going to describe. 

So here we go.

I knew coming here that along with the colors, the food, the culture and the people, that India would offer unpleasantries of impressive proportions.   They presented themselves immediately alongside everything wonderful about this place.  The trash, the pollution, and the stench were the most obvious and, for a week or so, managed to draw my attention to such a degree that I didn’t notice some of the others.  But they are here.  And they span various dimensions of things that would elicit disgust and aversion. 

To start easy, there are lumps of feces on every street… on every block infact.  Some are recognizably canine or feline, others clearly bovine, some human, and some I’ve not managed to recognize.

“You have to scan while you walk,” Linda warned me my first weekend here.  Making your way from point A to point B is not insignificant for someone who isn’t used to cars and buses whizzing by just inches away from them.  You can’t walk on many of the sidewalks because they are loaded with trash or have pallets of bricks stacked on them (if there is construction nearby) or they are very clearly public bathrooms.  There is a bridge I cross daily on my way to lunch and it has a more distinct stench of urine than most of San Diego ’s public toilets.  Many times I walked past men who are in the process of pissing on the sidewalk, some bother to aim away from the road.  Some don’t. 

My walk to school is laden with shit.  All kinds of shit.  So that I have to be especially vigilant in the mornings when I go to school before sunrise or on the odd evening when I leave school after sunset.  The streets are not lit well and, when they are, there are so many heaps of trash, stored trinkets or cars, rickshaws and bikes in the midst of repair scattered throughout that the light from streetlamps rarely makes it to the street floor.  Which means you have to walk slowly and watch where you step at every moment.

Oftentimes I have to pick up the fabric of my pants to lift the cuffs a safe distance from the ground.  I made the mistake of letting them drag once… and only once.  I had to walk half the day with brown and green smudges on my pants whose source I couldn’t identify entirely, but which resembled something that made it at least part way through the process of digestion.  I sighed when I discovered it and told myself I’d have to send these to wash as soon as I got to the hotel and that I just needed to pray that it didn’t stink too bad and disrupt the four classes I still had to attend that day. 

It is not practical to be so rigid here, especially with hygiene.  It is much more practical to simply adapt and understand what is essential and what is not, what is a reasonable and appropriate response and what is not.  I have stepped on mushy, brown, warm stuff and felt the surge of emotions and let the swell retreat with the same deliberateness that it emerged.  There is no use getting angry at myself, at the shit, at its source or at India .  Anger won’t clean my pants or my feet.

Because of the practice of removing your shoes before entering homes, temples, some classrooms and yoga shalas (I’ve even been asked to remove my shoes before entering a jewelry store), it is inefficient to wear any kind of lace up shoes.  So I live my life in sandals here.  My toes feel freer than usual even as my feet ache from the lack of support.  But in as much as they’re free, they’re also less protected.  Everyday, when I get back to the hotel after class I take a shower and spend half that time trying to get the grime, dust and, yes, shit, off my feet.  The soles look black by 7p.m.  After two weeks I decided to buy a pumice stone and rediscovered what truly clean feet look and feel like.  I got to enjoy it for a few hours in the evening.  Then it was back to the regular accumulation of grime the next day.  It didn’t take away from the joy of that freshness.  I looked forward to it every night.  There are simple pleasures that emerge in the respite from what wears on us.  But we can only enjoy those pleasures if something is wearing on us to begin with.

It isn’t only the remnants of bodily functions that you come across.  At least once a week I walk past someone urinating on the street and once almost ran into an old man who came to a full stop as he walked infront of me, lifted his dhoti (the traditional wrap men wear here), squatted and began to shit right infront of me. 

I’m used to this now, mind you, and glad for it.  Yoga philosophy tells us that aversion is no better than attachment.  So when I see any of this in the street, I do my best not to entertain the feeling of disgust.  It just makes me more attentive.  There’s nothing more embarrassing than bumping into someone who is urinating or defecating.

This visibility is strange even now but with every passing day, it’s also taken on a different dimension.  I realized I’d never seen someone else defecate.  It is such a private process.  But here it is treated as a necessity that can’t be avoided.  And in a place with few public bathrooms to be found, there is no option but to do it wherever there’s an urge and an option. 

The streets are cleaned here daily, hosed down at least in some places in the early morning soon after trash is picked up, so the remnants of the day are cleared to create space for the next day’s.  It’s as good a place as any, it seems.  The streets it seems are a macrocosm of the same process my feet go through.

Many of us kid with each other about going native and giving public urination a try.  We don’t even joke about defecation, that’s how much of a hang up it remains.  Most of us, truth be told, can’t even allow ourselves to drop trash on the street the way some folks do.  We get funny looks from the locals carrying our trash for blocks until we find a large trash bin to drop it in.  But sometimes necessity drives changes in behavior.  My friend Wyatt told me that in his travels through the northern part of the country he came across even worse conditions than we’re used to here.  He became ill during his trip and had to use a public “toilet.”  The term is in quotes because it was open air, didn’t even have a hole, and was only really recognizable as a place to defecate because everyone else’s shit was piled up there.  With toilets we get to sit.  With holes we have to squat.  With THIS you squat… but not too low, lest you get somebody else’s stuff on you.

Even if you don’t allow yourself the liberty, though, you have to deal with everyone else who does, or with the mere reality that we can’t control what other people do or what situations others may run into.  My friend Ellyssa (the one who shared the rickshaw ride from hell with me) was on a bus to Pondicherry when the woman across from her became carsick and started to throw up uncontrollably right on the floor.  The bus never stopped.  Just kept going.  And the woman kept hurling every 20 minutes or so during the 3 hour ride.

“It was a lovely trip except when she was vomiting,” Ellyssa reassured me. “Or when the wind would blow throw the window and send a whiff of her vomit my way.”

We take the good with the bad here with the understanding that we don’t get to separate the two and, sometimes, with the suspicion that it wouldn’t be quite right to have one without the other.  It would be in an odd way incomplete. 

This is as true when you consider the condition of people’s lives here.  The very rich, the very poor, and the very ill live side by side, at each moment infinitely aware of each other.  It is an exercise in self acceptance to exist with these extremes presenting themselves so regularly and blatantly.  In the tangle of cars at an intersection you will see rickshaws, motorcycles, ox-driven carts and a brand new Jaguar.  No one does a double-take.  No one even bats an eyelash.  Every other day you see people on the street sporting one form of deformity or another, sometimes genetic, sometimes from accidents, sometimes from leprosy.  Alongside them you might see a person who is strong, vital, even beautiful.  To see both side by side enhances the qualities of each in a way, like putting complementary colors in the color wheel next to each other.  Green makes red look redder, and red makes green look greener.  But despite being opposites they offer balance; the partnership of the two makes for the presence of every wavelength in the gamut of visible colors.  In the same way, rich, poor, healthy, sick, old and young… none exclusively represent this place.  It is the mix that characterizes India for me.  It is the mix that gives this city more balance than I’ve ever detected in any city.

But people aren’t the only contributors to the affront on Western sensibilities.  Chennai can feel feral at times, with animals roaming the streets, making them home.  The animals in the streets carry themselves with a confidence that suggests they know they belong there.  No one shoos the crows here or calls animal control about the strays.  The streets belong to all. 

The streets and often the living spaces.  All of us in the class have learned to live with bugs and other vermin in the guesthouses and hotel rooms. 

My friends Andrea and Julianna have a roach in their house they’ve named “Mikey,” who seems to show up at inopportune times.  Andrea has encountered Mikey in the bathroom while she showered.  He was headed right towards her and she didn’t want to step on him (at least not with her bare foot) so instead she took the bucket that all of us have in our bathrooms but none of us really understand or use and she placed it over Mikey to keep him confined while she finished her shower.  She left him there for the ladies that clean the guesthouse to deal with.  Later on Julianna had a scare with Mikey when she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, only to find him scurrying from the toilet. 

Wyatt has his own roach who he constantly tries to coax out of his bedroom, but who constantly makes it back.  I’ve had my share of roaches as well.  It’s impossible to keep animals out of my room.  The bathroom’s vent consists of a large hole that leads to the outside directly.  I can see the sky through it.  There’s a fan in it but when off there’s plenty of room for animals to come in.  My policy is that as long as they’re not on the bed, they can share the living space with me.  Many of them were likely in that room before I ever took up residence anyway, so it’s only fair. 

I did have a big scare when I saw something almost six inches long run across my wall and hid behind the books I’d collected on this trip, which were stacked nicely on a shelf.  My heart sank.  I don’t like killing anything but I also don’t like having something big that can bite or sting sharing a space with me.  So I wasn’t about to ignore it.  I went over to my books and started removing one at a time very slowly.  One by one I pulled them out, hoping to get a glimpse of the thing without scaring it or sending it scurrying away.  Finally I pulled one book out and got a glimpse of a fat tail, swinging cautiously from side to side.  Reassured that snakes don’t crawl along walls, I started to remove another book but the tail swiftly disappeared.

This wasn’t going to work.

So I put the book back in place and started to walk around the books, trying to get a glimpse of whatever was back there.  I started to see a head shaped like a snake’s, but, to my relief, I also saw webbed feet with knobby ends.  A little closer and I had a clear view of the big reptilian eyes starting up at me suspiciously.  It was a gecko.  Good! I thought.  These things eat bugs.  So as far as I was concerned, it was welcome here.  From that day forward I was careful wherever I stepped and whenever I put things down so I wouldn’t crush the little guy.

This may sound odd or like resigning myself to living with filth but I don’t think any of us would describe it that way.  We are spending hours a day learning about and discussing the connectedness of all things.  It’s only one more step to live that connection.

In Ashtanga Yoga there are eight limbs (hence the name: “ashto” is “eight” and “anga” is “limb” in Sanskrit), the first of which is Yamas (sometimes translated as “restraints”).  There are five Yamas and the first, which serves as a foundation and context for the others, is “ahimsa” (non-harming).  This is often used as the motivation and justification for vegetarianism.  It’s an aspect that is often disputed from both sides of that practice.  Whas is NOT in question is that stepping on a bug or lizard because you feel you are entitled to a vermin-free existence is a violation of ahimsa.  Living this concept in modern times is difficult and especially so in first world countries where sterile environments are valued.

Perhaps this is where countries like India shine: they highlight the connectedness between you and even the smallest beings.  You share the environment, quite closely, with a number of other beings.  And you learn to share it gracefully.

Ahimsa can be intellectualized, discussed exhaustively and nitpicked, but ultimately only means something when tested in life.  To what extent do you value life in general?  To what extent do you strive to be someone who leaves a light footprint in the world? 

This happened to me in my second week here when I was out doing the temple and church tour with Andrea and Bradley.  We’d seen a nice restaurant on our way to the Basilica St. Thomme, where the apostle Thomas’ body was said to be buried (it has since been moved).  We made it a point that we wanted to have breakfast there when we left the church.  But when we found it on our way back, it didn’t look the same as we remembered it.  It looked much dingier.  This is often the case here.  Things look different in the morning, middle of the day and at night.  Just depends on how the light falls on the place and how many people are around or how many vendors have set up their tents.  This place transforms from day to night multiple times, making streets almost unrecognizable, especially if you are not intimately familiar with them.

We were hungry.  So we went in anyway, despite it not looking as attractive as we remembered it.  This was definitely a local joint.  We were the only non-Indians and it wasn’t air conditioned.  We looked at each other to make sure we really wanted to eat here and it was unanimous that hunger trumped any hesitation we might feel.

The first thing I ordered was a sweet lassi, a drink I’ve become all but addicted to.  It is yogurt based, sweet and good for the digestive system (I’m told), especially if you’re a foreigner and not used to the food.  It is also more effective than water at cooling the heat of the spicy food here.

There is only one bad thing about a sweet lassi: it is dense and opaque and you cannot see what is floating in it.

I took my first sip through the large straw (you do NOT touch your lips to glasses here, since there is no guarantee about whether or how the glass was washed; also, straws are often larger than in the US to accommodate denser liquids and suspended objects, like nuts and bits of fruit) and immediately sensed something different in the texture in my mouth.  There was a sizeable object in that sip, an object with a mix of surface qualities I couldn't quite place.  I thought for a moment before swallowing, trying to go through all the ingredients of a lassi to determine what it might be.

Yogurt? No.

Water? No.

Sugar? No.

Some fancy spice like cardamom? Unlikely.

There is sometimes a film, like pieces of curd or something, that lingers in a lassi but that is thin.  This thing in my mouth was round and dense.  I kept it there, on my tongue, looked around to check that no one was looking and put my right hand in my mouth (the left hand is a no-no here when it comes to eating), delicately grabbed the object and pulled it out.

I looked down.  It was a tiny roach, covered in yogurt, its legs kicking furiously.  Suddenly all of the sensory input fell into place: the density, the papery wings, the tickling legs.

I dropped it from the shock and it fell on the table, still on its back and unable to turn over (it is a very strange feature of roaches here that, once on their back, they are stuck there).  I couldn’t speak and then suddenly a strange but lovely thought crossed my mind:

Thank God it’s alive.

Andrea saw that I’d ceased to be part of the conversation.  She looked down, saw the roach, picked up a napkin and gently brushed it off the edge of the table.  “See, honey, it’s gone.”  She thought I was being a little diva; that I'd seen the roach and been disturbed just by its proximity to my glass.  She had no idea of the gravity of what had happened.

The roach managed to crawl back onto the table top.  Andrea grabbed a napkin again, visibly annoyed, but before she touched it I asked her not to kill it.  “I thought of just that,” she said.  So she picked it up and dropped it gently on the floor.

We kept talking and I didn’t touch my lassi for a few minutes but eventually considered that the worst had already happened.  I’d had a roach in my mouth.  But that moment had ended reasonably well.  I had not bitten down on it nor swallowed it.  The roach had escaped the situation with its life (and all limbs intact, I should add!) and I did not have roach guts in my mouth or stomach.  The karmic release for both of us could’ve been much more severe.

So I kept drinking, but this time modifying how I drank so I sucked the lassi through the teeth, using the latter as a sieve.  If there was to be another bug in my lassi, it would stop there.

I finally told Andrea and Bradley what had happened and they were both horrified (more, I think, at the fact that I’d continued drinking than at the initial incident) and a bit impressed that I hadn’t gone ape shit in the restaurant.  I’ve told a few people about this incident since and have always gotten the same question: Why didn’t you complain to the staff?  Here’s the thing: I have enough trouble trying to communicate to the waiters exactly what I want to eat.  Modifications to an order are non-existent and, if attempted, will never be followed like you expect.  So relaying the intricacies of having sucked a roach through a straw but done my best to keep from harming it is outside the realm of possible communication.

Besides, that wasn’t the relevant part of the experience.  I had surprised myself with my reaction and learned something about the effect that this place, this class, my teachers here and the students who’d become my friends was beginning to have on me. 

Had this occurred in the U.S. a month before, I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted but I suspect it would’ve been different.  I would’ve been angry.  Indignant.  Entitled.  But there it was different.  Whatever I felt about that moment, of the two of us, the roach had been in the worse situation so in a way I’d been lucky.  And even as I walked out of the restaurant I was still happy that nothing had happened to it.

In that moment I’d learned the implications of ahimsa, or at least one dimension of it: that life has value no matter how it manifests… even if it manifests as something seemingly insignificant or inconvenient.
As we walked back towards the next set of temples, away from the roach experience, we came across the original restaurant we'd noticed.  We hadn't even been in the right place.  Just a block away, the sign and storefront that we'd originally seen looked bright, inviting and clean.  I am not sure I am the kind of person who believes that things are "meant" to be or not.  But I do believe that some experiences are more useful than others.  What I learned about myself in that restaurant was worth more than any dish this nicer restaurant could've offered.  It is also true in a greater scale: in the U.S. our sterile conditions can actually cheat us of experiences from which we could learn significantly.

To say that Chennai is a study in extremes is not inaccurate, but it misses the point of this place.  The contradictions, the visible presence of qualities we consider opposites, serve the greater purpose of studying life and ourselves.  In the West, we are often inclined to isolate what we want to study.  Here we are forced to study it in action and in the presence of everything else.  We don’t get to pull something out of context because it is within context that it belongs, that it functions, that it has power.  The effect of something, its purpose, is only really clear in the process of life and living.

In class, we’ve discussed the conditions in Chennai and they were unabashedly referred to as “dirty” by the teacher.  But those conditions are not deemed unnecessary or useless.  We were reminded that the drive to avoid any exposure to contaminants leads to a weak immune system.  It is through sickness that we achieve health sometimes.  This isn’t a completely alien concept to us in the U.S.   There are plenty of parents who have exposed their kids to chickenpox when they are young and their bodies better able to fight the virus and control it and, through that process, gain immunity to a condition that would be infinitely more destructive in an adult.

Perhaps most relevant is how the conditions in this city reveal that things that we tend to closely associate are not related at all.  Walking down the street at noon, the sun beating down on the few of us headed to O’Kady’s, our restaurant of choice, we came across a woman sowing garlands, her infant, naked and covered in dust, at her feet, playing with a large pot.  He would crawl along the muddy ground, wet from the leaky pipes that ran outside their house, dragging the pot with him.  Now and again he’d sit and bang the hell out of the pot, making such a loud noise that it woke the sleeping dogs nearby.  He had a wild look in his eyes and a large mischievous smile that betrayed the pride he felt in making such a ruckus. 

“He looks so happy,” one of the students mused.

He did.  Elated actually.  Much more so than the kids I know in the U.S. who have rooms full of toys, a warm home and parents who have read at least a handful of parenting books to help them do the best job they can.  Seeing him it was clear that joy did not require possessions.  That childhood does not require props.  And that the safeguards it could benefit from are likely basic and few.

“It’s because he doesn’t know any better,” another student said.

I didn’t say a word, largely because I wasn’t sure of what it meant to see this, to compare to what I knew back home.  As we walked though, I kept wondering: Does he need to?

The Road to Mahabalipuram

On the first weekend after class, the manager of the Heart of Yoga program set up a trip to Mahabalipuram (also referred to as Mamallapuram), a UNESCO World Heritage Site just 60km south of Chennai.  About half the class met up for the trip at 7a.m. on Saturday morning, got on a tour bus and headed South for our first site-seeing trip in the city.  The moment we got out of Chennai, the landscape changed in character.  Chennai is a proper city, with man-made structures at every turn and most buildings built side by side so there is little open area except for the parks. 

Once we were out of the city there was plenty of open space, with a clear view of the Bay of Bengal for most of the drive.  The topography is flat, with distant hills here and there.  The open space was refreshing, as was the silence we enjoyed whenever we were the only ones on the road, which was the case most of the time on the way there (the way back was a different story).

As we drove, most of us were quiet, looking out the window at the scenery.  From afar, it looked feral with no signs of people.  But on closer inspection you could see trash littered across the field of grass.  It was mostly concentrated along the road and dispersed from there, likely with the help of the wind.  There was at least some disappointment on most faces.  We were used to the trash in Chennai and accepted that the population density and the lack of waste management infrastructure contributed to it.  But out in the open?  It seemed unnecessary.

And yet is still managed to be beautiful. 

Mahabalipuram was no different.  When we arrived the density of trash increased again.  We got off the bus and were met with hoards of street vendors and beggars of all ages.  It was a bit overwhelming.  There were areas that had all manner of rubbish accumulated right next to signs explaining the significance of these sites.

The city is centered on the various 9^th century monuments built there, most of which resemble enormous temples, and all of which were carved out of single rocks.  They portray scenes from The Mahabarata, the Indian epic most famous in the West for its inclusion of the Bhagavad Gita.  The city, at its prime in the 7^th century, was a major port and its temples built between the 7^th and 9^th centuries.  Most of them were concealed by the elements and then rediscovered, leading to its re-establishment in 1827 by the British.  Some of the monuments, we were told, were recently revealed in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The monuments are nothing short of spectacular.  It was easy to get lost in some of these areas, they were so expansive, and infact I did at one point.  I had a momentary rush of fear as I realized I’d lost my whole group when I lagged behind trying to get the best photos possible.  I went back to where our bus had dropped us off and it looked like there were people in it so I figured they’d all returned and were waiting for me.  But as I came up to the bus I realized it was a completely different group of people.  This was not the right bus.  Ours was nowhere to be found.  So I picked up my pace headed back to where I’d been, figuring the group would either be looking for me there or had headed in the one other possible direction, deeper into the exhibits.  It was the first time I felt like that here.  For the most part I’ve been comfortable getting lost in Chennai, but I wasn’t in Chennai and to say that English is broadly spoken here is a laughable overstatement. 

The dogs which I’d passed a couple of times on my way to the monuments the first time and then on the way to the bus were visibly agitated as I returned.  They sensed my unease and started to bark, clearly channeling the same agitation I was (this happens a lot here, by the way; it’s bizarre; everything feels more connected here).  I got to where I’d been and didn’t see anyone so I headed further in and finally saw some familiar faces. 

It had been easy to lose them.  You could walk through tunnels that had been carved out with pillars strategically left to support them and come out on a completely different part of the exhibit.  And with the crowds it was easy to disappear.  At one point a herd of school children stampeded into a display that everyone seemed to be curious about.  They suddenly came to a bottleneck and the pushing started, dragging a handful of us in what felt like an ocean swell of bodies.  The kids pushed and chattered, trying to squeeze into the exhibit.  They were so strong that I felt like I was carried up 15 steps to the mouth of the display.  These kids are little but with that kind of determination they are a force to be reckoned with.  I was almost thrown into the exhibit with a few other kids that stumbled over the doorway as the passage opened up.  There was a large cylindrical stone in the center of the room that I almost fell on top of in the process.

I met up there with two other KYM students whose wide eyes betrayed the fact that they’d just experienced the same thing I did.  We all stood around the stone trying to figure out what it was until one of the students, via her Kindle, mentioned it was the Shivalinga, the phallic form of Lord Shiva.  I’d read about this representation but had never seen it and it was interesting to have a bunch of 7 to 10 year old school children walking around and staring at a representation of Lord Shiva’s humongous penis.  It was also interesting to think that a few minutes back I had almost ended up on top of it.  Oh, the irony.

Despite the room being small and the exhibit brief, I was in no rush to leave.  Going upstairs at least had the benefit that I was going against gravity.  I could see myself tumbling down steps if I tried to leave anytime soon.  So we all waited until the kids left, which occurred more quickly than we suspected, literally giving the sensation of the ebb and flow of a powerful tide.

Some areas looked more finished than others but all of it had a mythical quality.  Among the more impressive statues is one of an elephant that was so carefully carved, the curves on its body are unbelievably smooth. 

The areas that contain the monuments are kept very clean and usually behind guarded gates.  It was here that I saw my first public trash can in India.  But anything outside of that doesn’t have the same level of attention.  The surrounding area is an amalgam of street vendors, goats, dogs, beggars and stores selling art, textiles and trinkets that would make any tourist happy.  And trash.  Lots and lots of trash.  Everywhere.  But it didn’t detract from the place and in some respects gave it a sense of authenticity.  This was a place past its prime.  It’s the same kind of beauty you find in the wrinkled, worn face of an elderly man or woman.  As the body ages, its façade deteriorates and reveals what’s inside.  Something that has the wisdom of age and that is, if you believe in these things, close to or akin with the divine.

This is something I’ve come to appreciate here.  In the U.S. we’re used to beauty being manicured.  I remember the shock that Jessica Simpson’s Marie Claire cover caused a year ago, when she appeared with no makeup or retouching (http://photos.posh24.com/p/809390/z/jessica_simpson/jessica_simpson_marie_claire_c.jpg).  Plenty of celebrities followed suit.  Kim Kardashian being the one who received the most attention for her picture in Life & Style magazaine (http://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2010411//467.kardashian.wilkinson.baskett.lands.lc.051110.jpg).  All the magazines and news shows loved talking about how brave these women were by doing this.  Really?  Brave?  That seem like a strong word, given that from the pictures it looks like they had some foundation on and that their hair had been styled and they probably had on some powder to reduce the shine from the strategically placed lights.  No.  Not brave.  Have them take a picture with a point-and-shoot camera using on-camera flash right after they’ve rolled out of bed and then we’re talking.  And even then it doesn’t come close to the challenge of seeing beauty in something that initially disgusts us.

Seeing the landscape as we drove South, analyzing my initial awe at the scenery, my repulsion to the trash and my realization that the latter ultimately did not take away from the former, it struck me that our concept of beauty in the States requires hours of cleaning, reorganizing, tidying up, proper lighting, preparation infront of a mirror, hours of work at a gym or editing via the forgiving tools of Photoshop.  We identify and accept beauty only in an idealized state, which by definition means that we see beauty as our imagination defines it, not as it is.  We find it difficult sometimes to see beauty in something that is unpolished, in something dirty, in something broken.  But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there to be seen in these things.  India is proof of that and most of the people I’ve talked to change their views when they’re here.  They begin to see beauty in the day to day, sometimes despite the dust and grime and sometimes because of it.

That is what India is to me: a place that forces me to look past what something looks like as compared to the ideal I have in mind for it… an ideal that falls grossly short of the actual beauty of its being.  If I am not able to appreciate the monuments in Mahabalipuram or the landscape that we drive past to get to them because of the trash, because of the congestion, because of the noise, then there is something wrong with how I see.  

A friend of mine was telling me that in his months here he hadn’t come across any women that had caught his eye, except for one who works at the house where he’s staying.  She’s younger, that much he knows, but her exact age is hard to tell, and she’s at least 6 months pregnant.  She isn’t exactly beautiful the way we normally would think of someone beautiful, he explained, but you can see that she knows herself, that she’s lived a tough life (the life of a Sudra, the second lowest tier in the caste system, is relegated to service jobs, which are hard on the body) and survived it and there’s beauty in that strength.  You see all those things in her face.  She makes no attempt to hide them.

“Nothing is hidden in India,” my friend told me.  This isn’t entirely true.  Some things are.  AIDS is not discussed at all and this is expected to be one of the places with the highest incidence of infection.  Gays and lesbians are practically invisible, a necessity of life for the safety of the individuals.  And attitudes towards women (and by default the incidence of abuse) are still lagging behind many other countries.  But there are plenty of things that India leaves out in the open for everyone to deal with, which other countries do their best to conceal: poverty, illness, hunger, homelessness, unhygienic conditions.  These are things that everyone has to deal with, not just the poor.  Every rich person in Chennai has to drive or walk past it.  The luxury to avoid it is not available to them.  Perhaps this is by design.  India is, after all, the birthplace of the Buddha, whose journey began precisely because he saw poverty, illness and death just outside the palace walls.  There is wisdom in having these truths available for everyone to ponder.

A friend mentioned to me that in my blog, I seem to be focusing on what is wrong with India, something that I received with a bit of shock.  I don’t mean for my descriptions to come across that way.  I am merely writing about what I see, from the reference point of what I’m used to.  There is nothing wrong with India.  At least nothing more wrong than there is in any other place I can think of.  It has areas that can be improved upon, certainly, and that, in doing so would benefit its people greatly.  But every country has these areas of improvement and India has the benefit of having gotten something right that many others have not:  it is a place that doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is, that makes no excuses for its conditions and that offers you its shortcomings without shame.  What you do with it, what you think of it, is up to you and will, in the end, say much more about you than it ever will about India.