The journey continues

Well I'm back in Canada. Coming back has not been as difficult as I first feared.   I got to the Ottawa airport and it was rather nostalgic to walk past a Tim Horton's and a Senators hockey game on television.   I think it would have been more shocking if I had to go back to the life I had before but I'm fortunate, I don't.  The question is what do I do next?   The plan had always been to head for Africa to do volunteer work however there was a snag in January that made me hold back.   I stayed in India with the thought that I could join a later session.   The next session begins in late May so they have contacted me.  The timing seems perfect: it's just enough time to rest, get my affairs in order, fill out all the forms and read the material to get ready for departure and go.  It seems perfect but I haven't been able to shake off the negative feeling that I had about the organisation in January.  That is one thing but there is a much deeper menace that had been floating around my head and it's been making it very difficult to make that decision.

I think everyone that knows me and likely everyone that has been reading my blog is aware of just how much I love to write.  What people may not know is that it's been a passion of mine ever since I was a very little girl.  It may not have showed up in the way of essays but it would have been quite obvious if anyone ever stop to notice the amount of imagination that was constantly brewing in my mind.  For example when I was ten years old I had the whole sequel to ET conjured up and I even had started writing it.  After writing dozens of pages the diary I was writing in disappeared and I was so devastated that I never continued. 

I need to start writing my story and I need to finish it and I have the opportunity and the inspiration to do it right now.  The problem I'm facing with this seemingly fortunate situation is fear.  I fear failing.  I really have nothing to loose and intellectually I know it but the thought of working on this day and night and putting my blood, sweat and tears in it and then not having my work supported by a publisher gives me an ache in the gut.  I've been voicing this to my support system and of course, I keep getting reminded that everything interesting you do in life is a chance you take.  Success can be define in a million different ways and I have no business being so narrow minded about this.  I just came back from a world that made me both loose and find myself in the moment and the fear of outcome isn't part of any equation.

I could just forget all about this non-sense and go to Africa.  I'm pretty happy no matter what I do, right?

I'm a great believer in signs from the Universe or God or the higher power or whatever it is that one decides to call it and I got the sign I needed to do this.  When I was in high school I had a French teacher I really liked.  I wasn't very good with French, my spelling was atrocious.  One day we had an essay to write during class but I was absent.  The next day this teacher told me that I needed to do the essay at home but I could take a couple of days, there was no great hurry.  He always gave us some very interesting topics to write about, different then the average "article" type essay that we were usually given.  This one was very simple, he gave us the first sentence "He just turned 16."  I think in all my years in school it was one of the most concentrated efforts I had ever given anything I had to do at home.  I wrote and changed things around and wrote more.  I handed in a 500 word thriller a la Stephen King.  I was nervous about the reaction.  The next day after class he had my assignment corrected and ready to give back.  I had a C+ which is pretty sad when you think I had two days to get the spelling right however he looked at me in the eye and said "you're heading for publishing".  Back here in the present times I took a train to my parents from Ottawa last weekend.  There is a change in trains in Montreal and for some reason even though I got on the train early and I had the choice I choose to sit on the side of the aisle with two seats instead of the one with single seats.  I sensed, no word of a lie, that someone interesting was meant to sit next to me.  The man who sat next to me is a musician, he no longer plays himself but he writes songs for recording artist in Montreal.  A professional writer.  I told him where I was from and he proceeded to tell me that he is very good friends with non other then my old French high school teacher.  I smiled and nodded my head to myself, yeah, of course.

I finally took the dive today.  I told the NGO that I am not available to leave in May.  Now I got nothing ahead of me but time.

The opposite of home sick

I'm currently in Dharamkot, a stone throw from the Dalai Lama temple.  Unfortunately I feel sick, the last 3 days have been a wash, I barely left my room.  This morning I feel better but let's just say that there are signs that I am still sick.

I started getting issues around the time that we started our journey here, the place that is for all 4 of us our last destination.  After this Inga and Jacek goes back to Poland, Joonas goes back to Finland and I go back to Canada.

The evening that we got here we went to a cafe that served cakes and good coffee, very strange for India.  The floor was clean and even, the chairs matched, the corners of the table were rounded and perfect, the staff was attentive and quiet, the lighting was soft and serene, the patrons were reading books with crossed legs, everything perfectly sanitized... the exact picture of a snazzy cafe you can find in the evening anywhere around the Western world.  Mcleod Ganj is different than the rest of India, it is about 2000m up in the Himalayas and tourism here seems to cater to a more middle class, middle age, trekking community, with more money than the average backpacker.  After being the visible minority for the last 3 months (since Goa) I can't help but notice that there are a lot of white faces here.

As we sat in this sterile environment tired and on the verge of illness Joonas (who's also not well at the moment) and I concurred that we felt a sharp heavy lump in the pit of our stomach, our countries were going to be fishing us out of India soon and this is the world that is waiting for us.  It might seem strange to other for us to feel out of place because there is no one spitting on the floor, no constant beeping from 50 rickshaws around, no view of someone pissing against a wall outside, no merchant outside shouting at the top of his lungs "potatos and oignons", no ripped up dinning chairs that are stained and smelly, no views (or smells) of cows (sometimes small children) taking a dump on the street, no dirty children begging for 5 roupies, no death trap floors with holes and sharp edges, no loud drunk Indian men staring, no heap of hot smelly garbage just outside the door... I could go on for hours listing the quirks that are unimaginable in our countries that are part of the daily life of the 1.2 billion people in India.

I remind the reader of the population because I want to point out that we are often quick to think that we have it right.  Do all these people really have it wrong?  If so why is it that some Westerners come here and end up fearing leaving India more than they feared coming?  I feel that in some ways I'm repeating myself from other blogs but I feel like there is a perceptive here that is different than before, I'm afraid of going back home.  I'm afraid of being bored, I'm afraid of getting comfortable, I'm afraid that I'm going to be sucked back into the 4 walls of a perfect little nest, I'm afraid I'll reach out to new people just to be shut down because they are firmly wedge into their own 4 walls of Western ideology or even worse, they just don't want to be bothered by some strange person.

I've come to the conclusion that it is like this:  if you took the average person's mind with all the confusion, the fears, the dreams, the nightmares, the imagination, the emotional baggage, the love, the bullshit, the color, the incessant chatter etc and used that internal mess to create a world to live in you would have India.  In the West we don't want to see the world in such a real way so we sanitize our outer world.  We constantly try to put controls in place thinking that we can stop bad things from happening.  We throw things away that are good but maybe a bit stained because we don't like to see imperfections even though we are full of them.  India is reality.  There is no hiding from anything here.  I may have had bad days here and I may sometimes think that I've had it with the absurdity of many situations I've encountered but I LOVE having reality stare me in the face.  I feel more real and alive than at any other times in my life and I'm sick at the thought of leaving it behind.

Some people get sick when they get to India, the clear sight of reality is harsh.  Apparently some people get sick leaving it...

An open letter to Joonas: Layer 2, the adventure

Dear Joonas,

We made it safely back to Udaipur... Bubbel was shocked, it was great!

After you split from our group in Ahmadabad for Mt. Abu Inga, Jacek and I were so sad.  The rickshaw we took to the bus stop seemed so unusually comfortable without you and your baggage, like we only had 20 of the original 26 bags of potatoes on the back of our Indian bicycle.  We were all very quiet... we were missing our Finnish rock star.

In the bus we reminisced about our time as a group both in Udaipur and Diu.  Our knack for adventure surely began March 7, the day before Holi, the national festival of colors.  That evening was crazy!  It started off in the town square with 2 hydras (men dressed as women belly dancers) dancing to very loud Indian pop music in front of a crowd of both Indians and foreigners that seemed pretty low energy and bored.  After an hour or so of this I was just about to abandon the cause when the evening started to shift... a line of fire crackers was unrolled in front of us, it seemed at that moment that something spectacular was about to happen.  Then it started... we heard the fire crackers down a side street leading to the square and it was becoming louder and louder... the crowd was backing up and we were now pinned between the building behind us and about 2 lines of people pushing back to get away from the line of fire crackers that was about to start popping less then a meter from us.  It was insane!  The shirt of the man in front of Roxy firmly caught on fire.  Roxy's pants and my fleece also got burn marks from the sparks flying in every direction.  The only thing we could do is put our hands in front of our faces for protection and savor a moment of pure adrenaline and complete surrender to "whatever happens is whatever happens".

The fire crackers were then moving away from us, following it's trajectory spiraling to the center piece of the evening, a 4 meter pole covered in stacks of dry hay and a whole lot more fire crackers.  The fire started almost unnoticeable from the bottom of the pole but when it reached about half a meter from the ground the insanity started again.  Our ears were ringing from the hundreds of fire crackers, we were still pinned with no where to run, the burning pole was swinging back and fort/side to side threatening to fall into the crowd and now burning balls of hay and paper were gliding over our heads.

The whole spectacle lasted for maybe 15 minutes but seem to last a whole lifetime since our whole lives flashed in front of us :P  We were all a bit shaken... the Indians went along their usual business unaffected.  I had a new respect for Indians, they truly know how to go crazy.

The next day was something just as crazy but altogether different.   It was your birthday for one thing and a cake was ordered.  First however we hit the streets.  We were dressed in white to maximize the affects of Holi, to throw colored powders and water at each other and get every inch of your own person covered in these colors.  The custom is to take powder, rub the persons cheeks with it (or simply throw it at them), wish a Happy Holi and hug.  What Inga, Roxy and I discovered quickly is that many Indian men (not all of course) spend the previous night drinking and then spend the day trying to grab any part of foreign women they are able to get their hands close to, especially during the hug.  We started off politely wished them a happy Holi, rubbed powder on their cheeks and if they reached out for grabby grabby, we went ninja on their asses by pushing, punching, kicking, swearing at them, kneeing, slapping... Many didn't know what hit them.  As you so observantly mentioned, likely due to my mosh-pitting days the experience felt more to me like a freakish sideshow of immature juveniles that needed to be slapped than a horror story of harassment :P  Then we had chocolate birthday cake and congratulated ourselves for surviving Holi :D

Speaking of surviving do you remember the time we went for a hike to the Monsoon Palace and were caught after dark?  The ranger who past us on a motorbike was flipping out that we were going to get attacked by the leopards and die.  No one told us at the gate that the leopard population has been booming in the region, no one told us that there were boas big enough to kill a man on the mountain, no one told us that the hyenas were alive and well.  We got off that mountain pretty quick and efficiently and once again no one died, no one even got injured... YAY!

That was suppose to be it for our little group, but no, I changed everything and went on to Diu with you!

Diu was not so "dangerous" but just as interesting like the time that we smoked charas in the middle of the night from the roof of the old Portugese church where we resided and then sneaked inside to belt Sanskrit mantras from the choir balcony.  How about the time Inga and I's got a private unplugged concert after dark on the coast as we sat with starry eyes on a blanket at your feet?  The best though was the time that you and Jacek got inspired to find ways to deter unwanted attention from the disrespecting Indian tourists: Jacek insisting on "one photo" of the staring mob (oh they didn't like that), you storming inside onlooker's car enthusiastically insisting on rides to town if they wanted our pictures and the best of course, you mooning the cameras shouting that you are "LOCO"... you know you've won a very significant battle when the harassers are speeding away from us in their cars.

A poem to commemorate:

You are the apple of our eye
You are the sugar in our chai
You truly inspire to defy

We had a few
We took on Diu
And they will ALWAYS remember you

Our parting in Ahmadabad wasn't so bad, after all we were served a home cooked meal at the family home of the Indian boys that were on the overnight bus with us from Diu before we had to continue on our separate ways to our final destinations, Indians can be amazingly sweet and welcoming!

You've made me like Finland, you made me want to go to Finland, you made me want to renounce Canada and root for the Fins in hockey... although they all play for Canadian teams so never mind.   Your original song "Only 10 roupies my friend" has become the anthem of these 6 months of my life.  To me you will always be the guy that almost fell from the christian monument and left Diu saying "I don't f*ck with Jesus anymore, I almost died".

Cheers and see you in a week or so to take on Dharamsala!

Your friend,
Annie

Intermission

I'm not having the best morning.  Nothing happened, I'm just having a bad day.

I haven't really spoken much about the inflammation since the Panchakarma other than mentioning my shoulder problems when I got to Udaipur.  In general it hasn't been good.  My right index finger has been swollen to various degrees since Kallikkad, it has not let up in almost 2 months.  Since I've been in Diu I can't completely bend in.  I've had stiffness in my other fingers, knees, elbows, hips, feet and still some in my shoulders.  Some days I find every step a challenge.  When the inflammation is so present it also means that I'm tired, my immune system is working overtime.  It's frustrating because I want to keep up with my crew and they want me to as well but they don't fully understand what I'm dealing with and that I simply can't always follow.  This isn't new, I've became aware quite quickly after I became a functioning person with a chronic condition that it's hard for people to understand an illness that isn't visible or all-encompassing.  People reading this with chronic conditions will understand this, others may think they do but in my experience they mostly don't.  When you show up to the party with a happy disposition your very particular limitations are not on people's mind, nor should they be but it feels like a constant battle with people when you need to leave early or decline an offer because you know indulging means paying for it physically for several days.

This morning I did some breathing exercise before I tried to mediate.  After all the mental and emotional evolution I've made over the past few months I sat in bed thinking that I'm more than ready for the answers to come for this shit condition to go away.  If it can't go away, fine, but at least let me understand it just a little bit more so I can manage it better.  My body's endurance can't keep up with my mind's ability to dive into the concocting of the greatest of endeavors and I'm so sick of it.  I don't always feel this way, some days I feel blessed to have this condition because it has pushed me to live my life much more in the moment, it put me on this path, and it's made me aware that you never know when nature will come in and take your health right from under your feet.  This morning however, no answers have come and I'm frustrated.

Maybe it sounds like I'm just bitching but I do actually have one constructive thought about it.  All is not great all the time but all is perfect in it's lessons.  It's perfect in the way that I can let myself fully feel and live this frustration, it's perfect in the way that I can sit here and write about this frustration, it's perfect in the way that I can voice this frustration to others that can listen, it's perfect in the way that I can send the frustration straight up to God himself and it's perfect that he can take it... in the grandness of the Universe I'm always allowed to be a red screaming faced little peanut with pipe cleaner arms/legs.

I know perfectly well that in this frustration I can't meditate the condition away and I may never be able to but it's perfect how I can use that pretense to quiet my mind and allow to let the steam out of the pressure cooker.  Better alone in my bed in the morning when I can slam my swollen finger in a soft pillow, yell at it to give me answers and somehow find inspiration to write about it then during an excursion with my friends and ruin one of our many perfectly crazy Indian experiences.

I don't understand it, I'm frustrated, I'm only human, but I know it's perfect.

Udaipur Chronicles: Layer 1, the heart

This morning I woke up and lied in bed thinking about Udaipur and all the events that took place.  There was a lot.  I going to be thinking about this a lot for the rest of my life of course but what I was pondering specifically is how I'm going to put some of this on paper.  I decided to tell the stories in layers.  Some of this first layer made me very raw emotionally but let's see how this goes.

Almost 4 years ago I was out of work and decided to go on vacation to Greece.  During this trip I met an Australian man and we had the time of our lives.  We laughed until our guts hurt and found ourselves in these romantic settings that I didn't think ever really happened outside chick flicks.  I never felt so good in my skin.  At the end of the trip we parted ways, I didn't think anything would ever come of it but I was wrong.  We had what I can only describe as an uncommitted romantic connection that lasted for two and a half years.  This included seeing each other a handful of times.  In the end he found a girlfriend back home and I just wanted to move on.  In September, before I left for India, I wrote him an email telling him that I felt like I moved on and we should be friends.  He didn't respond and I thought nothing of it.

While Inga, Jacek and I were still at Amma's ashram I told Inga about him and decided to try attempting to contact him again via email.  The first morning I was in Udaipur I checked my email to find that this time he had answered me.  He told me very proudly that he recently became the father of a beautiful baby girl.  This didn't really surprise me, he had told me before that he wanted children but my heart just broke.  I realized at that moment that I still had hope hidden somewhere inside that things would work out and that it was about to die for good.  I properly congratulated him and for the rest of the day I kept myself very busy.  I shopped and got fitted for clothes at the tailor, I wasn't ready to think about this just yet.  That evening after I retired to my room for the evening I broke down and it was intense.  Over the next couple of days my time was interwoven with walking around town seeing the sites, eating meals with my buddies and crying in my room.  The thoughts running through my head were that I was so very happy for him, this is what he wanted but than I was very sad for myself, I had lost something special for good and it hurt. 

I didn't suppress in any way how I felt.  To make matters worse in that first week all three of us got the flu and I got inflammation in my shoulder, the most painful spot for me to get inflamed.  Those 6 days before I had my life altering conversation with Bubbel was pretty crappy but I always got the sense that it was the end and the start of something, just didn't know what.  When I had that conversation with Bubbel, with all the other bits and pieces of my life in India, I told him what I had been going through.  His advice was to hug the pain, own it, let it take over so it can pass on unobstructed, advice that I now would share with others.  He also told me that I would heal quickly because in all my pain I had zero anger toward him or any part of the situation.  I understood his words so clearly and from that moment on I felt free.  I was still sad, the pain wasn't completely gone but I somehow understood it in a way that it no longer pulled me under, in the realm of depression.

I changed all my plans to stay longer and it didn't take long before a wave of happiness swept over me.  I was happy for my Australian friend and I was just as happy being on the adventure of a lifetime rather then changing dirty diapers!   I had Inga, Jacek, Bubbel and a couple of other cool girls at the Island Tower guesthouse that got pulled as I did to stick around much longer than planned.

A few days later, on the very day I was suppose to leave for Canada, something else happened.  A very good looking guy wanders into the guesthouse.  At this point I had been teaching yoga on the rooftop in the morning so Bubbel was introducing me to everyone arriving.  Other than noticing I don't really react to good looks so much anymore, I think I've come to an age that I find substance much more attractive.  I talked to him for a bit and found out pretty quickly that he was quite interesting, outgoing, easygoing, well traveled and had his own auto-immune condition having plagued him in parts of his life... but happy and doing excellent.  For a couple of evenings he entertained us on the rooftop with his amazing camp-fire style guitar playing/singing.  He took requests :)

It took about 2 days before I noticed him in a different way, he turned out to be very funny and I liked him a lot.  While he was there the 2 girls that had been there since before we arrived left. I was sad.  Others came as well including the funniest Frenchmen I ever met in my life, a German girl that would stay with us for Holi and Joonas, the Finnish guy that steered us to Diu, our current location.  Every evening there was a slightly different crowd gathering on our little rooftop paradise but there always seem to be a continuing string of like-mindedness happening during those days.

On day 3 of his residency my new camp-fire guitar crush was now leaving.  I had kept a distance from this one, I never flirted with him or made any kind of advance.  For one thing I never even tried to find out if he was available and secondly I understood that we both had our own paths during our journeys, I wasn't going to let myself get in the way.  

It felt good to leave things be but after he left I felt heart-broken again.  It seemed odd to me to feel so much for someone I really didn't know but I was going to let it be what it was going to be as I did before, this didn't happen randomly and I needed to embrace it.  I think the reason it had such an affect on me is that it woke up a lot of intense fiery feelings again and new hopes.  Things I love to feel.  I really took the time to explore this and talk with my friends about every thought that went through my head.  I caught myself red-handed probably a dozen times beating myself up over this but I didn't tolerate it.  Every time my mind was going to bad places I recognized it and I took out my diary to praised myself on how wonderful and positive it was that I could open my heart so freely and easily.  Every morning I sat on the rooftop in the sun feeling the brightness around me, letting it penetrate and illuminate every dark spot in my heart and mind, listening to music on my ipod that would inspire an even bigger heart and if I fell into a little day dreaming about a knight that would never be... so what?

I saw an opportunity in this situation, I explored every nook and cranny of this.  Eventually I had to find a perspective that would take this experience and move it into the past.  It's funny, both Inga and Joonas gave me the key to moving on from an infatuation but I didn't hear it.  Then came Bubbel with his Indian accent and sweet sensitive wise nature giving me the exact same advice and it sinked in.  "Be happy you met him and with all your might wish him happiness for the rest of his life, take yourself out of the thought, don't desire, don't expect".  I heard it this time and thought wow, wanting happiness for someone is actually really easy and in fact this is how I got over my Australian friend.  I started immediately, to my room I went and visualized as hard as I could a wonderful happy and healthy life for him.  Within a few hours my crush started fading and I felt SO happy.  It was like I gave myself a dose of happy pills, I felt euphoric.  I kept with it for a few days and over time getting what I wanted stopped mattering completely.  I still thought about him but now it was a beautiful memory.  I was stunned... I'm still stunned.  

I got the inspiration to do a little ritual.  I wrote down the names of every guy I could think of from the time I first started noticing boys wither it was a crush, an infatuation or full blown love.  Below I wrote an apology for any bad feelings I may have had from not getting what I wanted and followed it with a blessing for the best life possible for each of them.  I burned it and scattered the ashes to the wind from he rooftop.

That day I was very surprised to feel raw and empty.  I felt like my dog died.  What I did was powerful on me and I believe based on that feeling that I must have been still carrying some of these people around with me and I didn't even know it.

The feeling passed and on the day it was completely gone I left the Island Tower.

Spontaneously moved on

I've moved on from Upaipur.  It happened very suddenly.

After all that I had experienced and learned from that place a few days earlier I had found myself quite upset, crying at Bubbel's side at the prospect of leaving.  I knew that it was inevitable but I couldn't imagine how or when it would happen nor did I know where I would go.  I was becoming aware over the past few days that the energy that I had found so incredibly inspiring was changing.  It was about to change even more since my travel buddies Inga and Jacek (now including a Finnish fellow called Joonas that joined our little guesthouse utopia) were leaving for a beach area called Diu, not a place I was particularly interested in going.  I was also not available to leave with them because I had ordered some clothes from a tailor and they were not going to be ready before the departure time.  Or so I thought.

Two mornings ago I was up on the rooftop as always with my diary.  No one was there except me and a couple of the staff cleaning up from the evening before, this was my routine every morning since we arrived there almost 4 weeks ago.  I was looking blankly at my diary, for the first time in a long time I had nothing on my mind so I wrote "Today I have nothing to write".  A little later in the morning I was sitting with a couple of fellow tourists from Croatia and the US just relaxing and all of a sudden the wind picked.  I gave a solemn look in the direction and like a desperado said "the wind is coming from the South-West".   My companions thought it was rather funny.  Just after 11am I got a call from the tailor that I had to come in for a fitting.  I go on to the tailor.  To my amazement everything was perfect, except for a button placement on a jacket and a very small adjustment to the pants everything was done... I looked at the time... 11:30am... my friends were leaving around 2pm... I searched my mind quickly to assess what I needed to do if I were to leave.  Time to run.

I went down to another shop where I was getting a backing installed to change a blanket into a duvet cover.  I asked to get it back even though I was only suppose to pick it up at 5pm.  It was 90% completed, they had run out of material... no problem, this can be done in Canada.  They packed it up and off I went, done.   It's just about 12pm, I call my friends and tell them I'm going with them, they were shocked.  I stopped at a shop where I owed the guy 60 roupies for earrings, the shop was closed but the neighbor came over and knew I owed the money... no problem, he would give it to him, done.  I get to the guesthouse around 12:15pm and tell Bubbel to see if he can get me on their bus... not an easy thing to do 2 hours before it leaves but I have faith.  I went to pack, 30min later, done.  I picked up all my purchases of Udaipur and off I went to get them shipped.

I get to the tailor with my stuff and check in to make sure that it's all still doable.  With one of the boys from the tailor we bring everything to the shipper.  Everything listed, weighed, packed and tracked... done.  I go back to the tailor to pay for the clothes and the shipping, done.  I say my goodbyes to the tailor, to the shop keeper who had sold me some pashminas, to the shop keeper where I would stop every other day for fresh juice, to the dogs that I said hello to everyday.... done. I get back to the guesthouse, it's 1:30pm.  Bubbel paid an extra 50 roupies to travel agent to have a passenger change buses so I could get my spot on the bus with my friends, done...  to everyone's amazement it was all arranged in perfect order.  Considering that most plans here are subject to what is known as "Indian Time" or in western terms 3 to 4 times the amount of time things usually should take, it was a true Indian miracle!

I had 30 minutes to sit at the Island Tower with my friends and Bubbel before I left.  I sat there sad but knowing that it right to leave right then and it could not have happened any other way.  My time there was done and the sudden wind called me to leave, I was South-West bound.

After an overnight bus ride so bumpy that I can hardly move my neck at the moment I'm now in Diu, an old Portuguese colony with some similarities to Goa except that the tourist here are mostly Indian.  Since the state surrounding this area is dry the Indian tourists (with consist of mostly Indian men) come to the beach areas for the cheap available alcohol, and as we have already unfortunately experienced, this can be a real annoyance for foreign women on the beaches since they have some really distorted ideas about us.  Fortunately we are 2 women and 2 men travelling together, it's the best situation to deal with this.  After surviving the festival of Holi  (an experience that I have not shared yet) I'm also not very shy about telling Indian men where to go or even pushing/slapping/hitting/kicking them if they cross the line.... as crazy and unfathomable as that sounds imagine a bunch of 12 year/olds boys in a playground.... that is how India is sometimes.

That being said it is so beautiful here, super clean (very much like Goa) and very quiet within the town... we don't quite feel in India anymore.  We are staying in a big old church that has been converted in part to a museum and in part to a guesthouse, it's amazing!  Udaipur is a hard place to follow but it's not bad at all :)

More thinking in Udaipur

I've been asked why I've called my blog "Into the ground".  I called it such because it's how seeds are planted and where all life eventually goes at the end of the life cycle.  We are all in between those two points at the moment working to make sense of it all.  If we are lucky during at least one period of time in our lives we find ourselves at a point of convergence where all is possible.  Everything from the past is gone and the future is wide open.  I've found peace in Udaipur by living and breathing that moment, taking great comfort in knowing that my new destined path can present itself unobstructed and clear when everything else has been striped away.  It hasn't been easy.

Letting go of the job, the house, the stuff, the country, the alcohol, the plans, the flights, etc. are only a small part of it.  The attitude, the expectations, the desires, the ego, the attachments... we all know that those are really the hard parts.  Being an engineer I'm always trying to find the formula for this.  Getting rid of objects is pretty straight-forward: it's binary so either a "1" or a "0".   The mind doesn't quite work that way, letting go of subtleties is a matter of replacement.  The only way to succeed is to find something that is better then the thing the person is trying to shed.  Meditation is a process of emptying of the mind, replacing the thoughts with space.  If a person empties their mind then the mind can be filled again with better thoughts, ideas, feelings etc.  This requires faith, a person has to believe that there is something better.  They have to be willing to let go of the old thought patterns.  As I say this I feel like I'm just repeating what is writing in every yoga book, in every religious text, in every 12 step program and in every feel good movie script... all this letting go might be true but if someone doesn't know how to apply this they are just empty words that will be forgotten when the pushes comes, those little demons that trips each one of us.

At the risk of alarming my entourage I have to admit that I've wanted to punch every person that has ever told me to "just let go".  When a person is in the demon's grip it isn't the right time to let go, it's the time to look the demon in the face and maybe cry and scream till your face hurts.  No two people are alike in this world nor are two demons the same.  We may be able to relate to and share each others joys and pains to a great extent but we all face our personal struggles as individuals.  Willingness and belief are certainly musts in the journey to evolve and heal but first make friends with the demons, understand them, stay right there with them, make them coffee, listen to every message they give you about you.  They are there to teach us something about life, something about ourselves, challenge us to grow.  Trying to ignore them or "just letting them go" in my experience will make them come back in a fury.  We call these struggles demons, not cotton balls.

I've seen all my demons in India, they've liked it here, they've all come out to play.  They have been given free reign to come out because it seems that every experience I've had here has pushed at least one of my limits to their very edge.  The most common phrase in India is "anything is possible" which I now understand can be interpreted as "there are no limits to how uncomfortable and/or risky an adventure can get".  You get to choose the extent of what you do here and you better damn well know what you can or can't live with because you risk being either severely miserable or you miss out on incredible opportunities to explore yourself at the deepest levels.

On my journey to the East the demons have been scarier then ever for they have shown themselves in full light at those limit edges however they also seem smaller and more manageable against India's backdrop of poverty, dangers, filth and its orderly disorder.  The demons also pale against India's color and warmth which is full of brilliance and abundance.  In other words: you get twisted up about something and you look around and find yourself asking "is this really the biggest problem I have?".  On the other hand the smallest of things matter more here as well, the Hindu shop keepers either charge 1 roupie more or 1 roupie less (2 cents) on their first sale of the day simply for good luck.  All seems to have been valid enough to think about and explore and with all the free time in the world, I've been filling my boots.  Everything both ugly and wonderful inside has gotten pulled out and spread flat right in front of me.  Being pushed to my limits on every aspect of my being made it so I could no longer ignore how I feel about these aspects.  I think this is why so many people that come to India find something special.

I think that perhaps in this blog (and maybe even in the last one) I'm sounding rather cryptic.  I say a lot of words but I'm not exactly describing  the latest demons, events or people that have been shaping these thoughts and feelings in me.  I'm starting to face the end of my trip and I'm still processing a lot.  There are a whole lot of specific events in Udaipur that have happened that have spurred all the crazy talk... stay tuned!

On that note thank you for reading my blog while I have been in India, I've been saying for years that I want to attempt my hand at the written word for others to read and this has gave me a little taste of it :)

I've been "got"

Something has happened to me.  India got me.

I finished my panchakarma and left Kallikkad with Inga and Jacek... a young Polish couple that were at the centre studying: Inga Ayurvedic massage and Jacek some computer programming (as well as being Inga's guinea pig).  We went to a place called Amritapuri to visit the ashram of a guru known as Amma, the hugging saint.  It was a very strange environment.  At first I was very blown away by this amazing woman, for the last 37 years (since she was old enough to reach her arms around someone's neck) she has hug anyone and everyone that is need of love and compassion even though it was very inappropriate for a young Indian woman to do so.  She is truly an enlightened soul whose love is deep and pure.  I was touched and drawn to her world.  At first I very enthusiastically wanting to stay there in the hopes of cultivating that kind of unconditional love in myself.  I was pulled hard.  It didn't take very long before something changed, it was night and day.  I sensed this kind of ugliness in the people around me at the ashram, the conclusion I have come up with is that many people there were grasping.  They "wanted" in desperation.  I spoke of this with my Polish friends, they did not feel quite the same about the place as I but they pointed out something that was hard to hear: we see the things in others that we do ourselves.  Without quite realizing it I was grasping at something and after 4 days it was time to high-tail out of there.  I was relieved to leave however I was sad.  This experience revealed something in me that I'd never seen before, at least not in that kind of light.  There was indeed something that I was looking for as there seems to be for all foreign people that come to India.

On we went making our way from South to North, Kerala to Udaipur in Rajasthan.  Because we didn't book in advance we were stuck doing a series of short trips.  We did 5 in total: 3 trains and 2 buses for a total of 62 hours of Indian travelling.  I think it is fair to say that I was in a foul but relieved mood by the time we reached our destination.  The plan was to be there for 2 days and move on... I was pretty sure that I was not going to move in 2 days.

We did not move.  For 6 days we roamed the town and then it was time for me to move.  My flight home was in 5 days and I still wanted to see Agra and Varanasi.  That morning I was going to be checking out and I was quite annoyed because for the 6 days I never got any hot water in my room as we had been promised.  I was going to ask for a discount because I felt like it was warranted.  I went to Bubbel, the owner/manager, who was at the rooftop restaurant to sort out the issue and the bill.  We ended up having a bit of a squabble because I had mentioned this issue before and he had told me that I could move rooms or use another shower.  I told him that using another shower would be better because I had all my stuff spread out in my room.  Apparently he told me I could just go to one of 2 rooms that was free at any time but I understood that I was to wait until he told me I could go. He never came and didn't know there was an issue.   I stopped the squabbling and told him what I wanted, a discount.  He looks at me and says: "That's it?  That's all you want?  Of course, pay what you want, pay nothing if that feels fair to you".  It wasn't said in a condescending or dismissive way, he seemed genuinely concerned with my satisfaction.  I told him what I wanted to pay and he told me to give him a few minutes to figure out the bill.  By then I felt rather petty to have made such a fuss over a dollar/day when he didn't seem to care about the amount one way or another.

I went downstairs, took my bags to the reception and came back up to the rooftop.  Bubbel was waiting for me, he wanted to sit down to speak.  He apologized for any discomfort and wanted to make sure that we were square.  I said yes, it was no problem.  He then explained that the guesthouse is not his breadwinner, that he makes a living with his music.  Rather then make the building a great profit, he had been working to create his vision for the guesthouse as a place for creative minds to come together to make music and art.  It would be a relaxed place where people could be who they really are and connect.  He again expressed that he made a mistake by being too relaxed and said that he was going to give this situation some thought to improve the place.  He also continued by telling me that he was disappointed that he never got a chance to know the 3 of us while we were there, he felt like we, especially me, had been quite closed off.  At that moment I felt like I missed a golden opportunity to experience something phenomenal.  To think about it now I'm not entirely sure what I thought that opportunity was but the feeling was both stronger and in some way subtler then anything I had felt in India so far.

I proceeded to tell Bubbel everything that I had gone through on my journey.  I told him about Rishikesh, about Goa, about panchakarma and then Amma.  I told him about the sick feeling I got from the visit at Amma.  I told him about all the directions and decisions that I face when this trip is over.  I told him how much I was looking forward to going home but that at that moment I did not want to leave.  Stay.  I got up from the table, told my Polish friends, to their delight, that I didn't want to leave anymore. I went to the place where I booked and cancelled everything.  Later that evening I changed my flight and, just  like that, India got me.

I've been in Udaipur now for 19 days.  Inga and Jacek have also stayed here with me.  People come and go from the guesthouse and everyone that comes is somehow family: from Poland, Israel, France, the UK, New Zealand, Croatia, Germany, Finland, Canada, the US... and of course India.  We speak all day of life and connection and nothing and everything, laughing at almost every moment.  Then there is always someone to pick up the guitar in the evening to sooth our brains and souls.  Over the course of these 19 days so much peace and letting go has come over me, life has slowed down and nothing I usually fuss over really seems so important anymore.  I will move on from this place, in fact I have started to feel the ants in my feet.

I can only hope and pray that this feeling will stay with me.

Panchakarma: Another uniquely Indian experience

It's been almost a month since my last post... so much to say!

I left Goa on Jan 5th for my 28 days of panchakarma and was quite happy, I was getting a bit bored with the place.  It's beautiful but it's a tourist destination for people that are looking to be lazy and/or party.  I can only do so much of those.

I did get a chance to go to dinner on New Years Day with the family of the couple that run the place where I was staying.  It was very sweet, the women were very shy around me... I was shy myself to tell the truth!  The food was delicious as one would expect of a home cooked meal, it was different then the food in the restaurants which was nice.  Something different.  People are very connected to their families in India and are very warm.

I left Goa on the train.  I was very excited about this event: I love travelling by train and this time I was going 1st class!  Note to reader: 1st class train tickets in India are not all it's cracked up to be.  I don't know why I get myself into these situations every time I travel... 1st class cars have compartments that are 2 people each.  I got on the train late and the only compartment that had an open door had a short plump Indian man inside in his late 40s.  Ok, no problem, I can handle this.  I sit and politely start talking with this man who could speak perfect English and is seeming nice... like one's uncle Bob.  It turns out that he has been to Canada dozens of times and he is telling me the truth because he knows all the streets and businesses of downtown Ottawa.  I'm thinking fantastic, I can relax and have someone nice to talk to for the next 18 hours.  I don't lie very well so I'm being completely myself... you know, an open book.

Let me take a pause here to explain something: women that travel alone often wear "wedding rings" and they are always on their way to meet their "spouse".  Like an experienced traveler I brought my "wedding ring" to India and it was safely packed deep into my luggage where I wouldn't loose it in case I needed it.  So smart am I.

Yeah, the man was harmless, there was no doubt, and I think that's what always trips me: somewhere in that gullible head of mine I always assume that if a person can utter an intelligent sentence and presents a sweet disposition that there is no chance of getting unwelcomed advances.  Besides who in his right mind would corner me like that and give me a reason to take out my claws?  Isn't it obvious by hearing me go on about my endeavours that I have no issues smashing an opportunist's ego like a jack-o-lantern on Nov 1st?  Apparently not because after some chatting he started that oh-so-familiar spiel about my needing to be more open and worldly and, btw, did I happen to believe in destiny?  Oh f*** me.  I did make sure I wasn't imagining things and let him get to the "I find you attractive" but I made thing quite crystal clear: "Just so you know, I turn VERY aggressive if someone step out of line and crosses my boundary that happens to be right HERE and NO, I'm not attracted to you".  I didn't volunteer a single word to him after that.  I slept on the top buck, as they say in Poland, with my "ass against the wall".  Actually I didn't sleep, I kept the light on and read the whole night.  1st class... yeah right.  This is unfortunately not the first time this has happened to me while travelling.  Maybe one day my "wedding ring" will see the day of light.

Ok, I got to Trivandrum in the province of Kerala in one piece but I was tired.  Fortunately Dr. Sibi George, my Panchakarma guide, was picking me up himself.  As soon as we started driving I felt like I was in funky India again: it was 6am and the chanting of mantras was being broadcasted at a deafening volume from bullhorns installed on telephone posts along the streets from the local Hindu temple... something that would get you fined, and judging from the volume, possibly arrested in Canada.  If you can't handle noise don't come to India.  After about 15 minutes the sounds dissipated.  We drove for about an hour before getting to the Ayurvedic centre and guess what?  There is a brand new Hindu temple across the street from the centre with state-of-the-art bullhorns that definitely can go up to full volume for those 4:30am to 6:30am wake up mantra calls.  Yay!!!

Dr. Sibi shows me the 2 options for rooms.  Being so tired and anxious from my uncomfortable train ride I was trilled to find out that not only do I get my very own room, it is clean and the bathrooms are nice... and OMG there are TVs in the rooms!  At that point I hadn't watch TV in a couple of months and that's completely 100% fine with me but knowing that I had the option of that distraction for the next 4 weeks, during which I could feel quite tired, cranky, sick and dazed made me feel quite happy.  I felt kind of guilty for being so happy about it... like I was about to commit all forms of yogic sin :P  TV rots your mind right?  Oh well!

I chose this smallest of the rooms that is actually a little building on it's own, I have my own little house.  I went to bed and slept for about 4 hours.  I got up and took stock of my surroundings... it turns out to be beautiful grounds: tropical potted plants everywhere around the outside of my house, the buildings are all made of rich rust coloured bricks, I have a little shaded porch and the sun was shinning bright through tall health tropical trees.  You know it's a good sign when you get to your destination and your room doesn't actually have glass window panes, just screens for the bugs.  I've been here now for almost 3 weeks and the temperature here has been incredible: 25 to 30 degrees C mid-day and about 18 degrees C in the dead of night... everyday.  It's rained twice that I've noticed: once for about 30 min during the day and once for about 30 during the night.  It's definitely the best weather I've ever seen in my life... knock on wood... tropical storms here are possible.

Later that day I had a session with Dr. Sibi and we reviewed my options.  I told him that I wanted the maximum of treatment for my condition.  As I was already aware rheumatoid arthritis is a condition that is viewed as curable in the east.  The immune system actions are not believed to be the main issue as it is in western medicine, in a R.A. sufferer the immune system behaviour is an indication that the body has accumulated too many toxins in the joints to be able to eliminate them in the usual manner so it compensates, unfortunately by doing damage.  I do believe in western medicine in certain respects but in this case western doctors don't work on the cause of this condition, they just tell you that your body is broken for unknown reasons and the pills are being prescribed because they worked effectively enough on 40% (or less) of the test subjects with side affects that are acceptable on paper.  That is not good enough for me and I am here doing this because I have gotten real explanations of the workings of the body through yoga and Ayurveda that were logical and whole.  The body doesn't get treated with statistical data.  Ayurveda take all aspect of the whole individual being, physical, spiritual, emotional, look at every significant moment of the past, from birth to present (and even look at genetics) and determine the path of the condition.  Dr. Sibi explained to me that medical conditions often start in the early stages of life but we only suffer the symptoms in stage 4 of an illness.  With minor pieces of information about the condition as it is now and when it started he could tell me the ages of traumatic events and/or destructive behaviours that would have triggered the stages of my condition which resulted in symptoms that started at 33 y/o.  It was impressive!  What he proceeded to tell me are the areas of the body that have been taxed and need attention.  What was incredibly inspiring is that everything he told me were in-line with many other informations that I've been given by a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, and even amateurs of the holistic path.  I knew I was in the right place and decided to do an added therapy and stay for 5 weeks instead of 4.

Cleanses are nothing new to me but this one is different.  I have a professional to monitor everything that happens and I have staff to support me.  It will reach much deeper in all respect then I could have ever done on my own.

I must go now but next will be my experience during the Panchakarma, it's been almost 3 weeks and it is still a mystery to me how it will turn out.