India - Oct/Nov 2010

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE, RETURNING AGAIN…

Friday, October 22, 2010
Subject: ARRIVED

To each of you,

Just to let you know I arrived yesterday in Chennai about 8:30am; through immigration 1 hour later; my driver was waiting as planned; and we drove the 4 hours to the Ramana Maharshi Ashram in Thiruvanamalai. Temperature a high humid 32C.... yes, I was very red in the face and sweating all over when I arrived ...  the car was not air-conditioned (the cost 2100Rs or $50).   My friend Annette who has been here ever since I left in March/06 (she now has a 10 year visa), was at the ashram waiting for me... I was an hour late!!  Oh dear.  However, she has developed good patience with the Indian way... time is just when it happens. 

It was so good to see each other after all this time.  Such smiles! We got my luggage settled in my room and then went out for lunch… and a good chat… at my 'usual' place, the Roof Top.  The ever-present young waitress, V-Jay was there and recognized me instantly, with a big smile! “You come back! You come back!”:  So eager; so touching.  Though we were the only ones in the cafe and it was well past lunchtime, she would bring us anything we wanted... for me a vegie burger (no buns today) with a very good salad of shredded carrots & beets on top of bean sprouts... and the ever refreshing lemon soda.  (A lemon is squeezed into a glass and a bottle of soda water poured on top... she remembered! and passed me the sugar, sweet tooth that I am.)  It is so amazing that everyone remembers one, even after 4 years:  the various rickshaw drivers; the grocery store man; and Munusomi here at the e-mail shop.  All had big smiles and welcoming words.  Very much a homecoming.  Very nice.  I too am all smiles.

All went well at the Ashram.  After a little confusion, I was given a downstairs room with a ceiling fan; and my own bathroom WITH a sit down toilet (thank god)... no shower ... no hot water, but buckets galore for bathing and cleaning.  (I don't think we have cleaners.)  Yes, I can use my laptop at the Internet shop on wifi... but will pay, strange but true.  Then, my new iPhone: yes it seems I can get a SIM card, though they are dubious that it will work.  We will find out tomorrow.  The iPhone is new to them… and to me.  Must admit I am still in confusion about when to use my lap top and when to use my iPhone.  They do the same thing… don’t they?  Maybe just the convenience of a larger keyboard??

Such a cultural shock... even after all these visits to India:  The smells... the 12 cows strung side by side with rope spread across one full lane of the road... everyone honking and speeding in and out amongst the throng.  No speed limits are posted, so the drivers constantly wipe down steering wheels, hands, and brow… the combination of heat and concentration are intense.  It's the medieval in conjunction with the modern that confronts me this time:  the medieval with the cows, stalls, garbage, stink… then the modern with all the new trucks and autos and freeways, along with the tolls!  (Which, on my recent trip from the airport, of course, I was asked to pay!  Urghhh… I know I am not responsible for them… “No change,” I say).  I know I will pay more than the price of the tolls with the tip at the end of the trip... what to say!  I am back in India.  :)

So it all starts for the fourth time. I was at meditation at 5am this morning; followed by breakfast at 7am... then it was back to bed for me... slept like a log until 3pm or so.  I left the ashram grounds by myself today… always some hesitation as one moves off the grounds the first time, knowing some anxiety provoking event is very likely to occur.  Today I had forgotten it is a full moon day, so streams of people from the country were walking the road around the sacred mountain.  (One walks directly onto the road as you walk out of the ashram gate.)  Chaos! Way too many people for me at this point, I will not be doing the walk today.  A have decided to do a little more shopping... the mosquito repellant that plugs into the wall (did get bites last night); more water; dish cloths to line the concrete shelves; some groceries for snacks.  Got the toilet paper last night! I also decide I will try to get a 'lassi' (fruit and yogurt milk blended).  Actually, I just want the blended fruit so I can mix some coconut water with it … no milk products for me... then add some protein powder, making sure I get enough protein this trip! That will be enough events for today.  Looking forward to the evening meditation.

Love to you all, Paula

Saturday, November 13, 2010
Subject: New Lodgings

Sunday Oct 31/10 was my last day at the Ashram.  All went well, except that I ended up with bruising on hips and tailbone from the very hard bed and from sitting on the tiled meditation floor; also a couple of stings from an ant-like bug???  (The pharmacist says it should be OK... just give the swelling a couple of days.)  Always disconcerting when something jumps from the towel.  Urrgh.  My delight is that I have been waking about 3:30 am and rising for early meditation.  I have always wanted to do this but just couldn’t!  This is my first stay at the ashram, and here it seems so easy.  A meditation followed by breakfast at 7am, then I head back to my room for a short nap (well 2-3 hrs or so).  It is a very pleasant routine.  I am sorry to have to leave the simplicity of this schedule.

My major task has been developing my technology capability.  I now have a local SIM card inserted into my iPhone; and have added e-mail capability to my service... though have to admit I find it very tedious on the small keyboard of the phone.  I pay 98rs/$3 per month for it.  Amazing!  Have yet to be able to tether my iPhone into my laptop to share the data, which would make typing so much easier.   Seems I might need to turn my phone into a modem.  Is it possible???  At present I am in my room and the laptop keeps shutting down?? I have it plugged in, which probably means there is an electrical surge every few minutes... not so good… more adjustment.  My plan had been to do a little note here, then send it from the email shop.  Well, can always use it in on battery.  Have taken some pictures with the iPhone, but so far have only learned to send one at time, so sent several along to Andrea who is willing to send a batch back to me and I will attach them to notes and send them along… if I can’t find another solution. I should be able to feed these photos into the laptop... but not here... maybe at the email shop??  Maybe I need another ‘application’? (A better solution:  Andrea has made an ‘album’ of them and put them on facebook.  Thank you, Andrea!)

My last night at the ashram, I got one shot of my dinner table... banana leaf with metal cup … woops, then discovered I did it in video… learning, learning, learning.  Only those of us ‘old and /or infirm’ sit at tables along the wall of the dining hall, the rest sit on the floor cross-legged, so the floor has rows of leaf plates and metal cups.  At my next attempt, I found my phone ran out of battery, so no picture of the dining hall this time (Damn). There are, of course, no implements as one only uses the fingers of the R hand.  I have been wondering why dinner always goes so fast, but am thinking that if I were sitting cross legged on the floor leaning over to eat my meal, I too would breeze through my dinner.  However, I have also noted that people here often do tasks in a hurry... even meditation... maybe this is true with eating too.  Getting to know a new culture seems endless. 

Tuesday, Nov. 2/10:

 Monday was a lost day, though also moving day.  (Stays at the ashram are most often restricted to a week or so... mine was 10 days).  The usual digestive attack that comes soon after arrival came Sunday night.  No matter how careful one is with hand cleaning, making sure food and water is clean, it just seems to happen.   Thank goodness it was finished by morning and I was able to stand and get to the car OK, the driver taking my bags.  I was very glad I had done most of my packing Saturday night.  My one task when I got to the new place was to make the bed.  Much better by evening, after a good sleep.  My friend Annette (who met me when I arrived; and stayed with me at Ganesan’s in previous years) was kind enough to bring along some soft cooked rice for my dinner.

I am ‘at home’ today to get the water issue sorted.  Though I paid the previous tenant 150Rs for a water container, it is gone.  (Probably taken by the cleaner... but! I have discussed it with my landlord and he reports that the cleaner will bring it back today… he is expected to arrive about 7am).  The water company delivers about 10am and I need! a water container to get water… or I am charged 300Rs for a new container.  (This is likely to cost me 150 Rs for one reason or another... THAT is India.)

I was awakened by broadcasted music at 6 am this morning:  Hymns... possibly, though very upbeat and trendy Indian music.  Bollywood at 6 o`clock in the morning was a bit much.  I had forgotten:  Dogs barking most of the night; and music and prayers blasting forth first thing in the morning.  (The quiet of the ashram is gone.)  My new place is in a busy neighborhood back of the ashram nygard (neighborhood), not like Ganesan’s quiet, peaceful compound out in the country.  But! I wanted to be close to the ashram, so here I am… up to my ‘ears’ in the village way of life.  

Looking out my back kitchen window, there it was in its entire glorious Hindu colours:  A local temple… 1^st floor pastel orange; 2^nd floor mauve & maroon; 3^rd floor with the `high chapel??` in white with orange accents.  Currently, (now 7:30 am) I am hearing a 15 minute broadcast by the Hindu priest.  Yet to come were the ‘Messums’ (Moslem priests) calling their prayers from, at least, 4 mosques at one time.

So I have a bed-sitting room with kitchen and bath on the second floor of a house, 15 minutes from the Ashram... and noisy main road.  The house looks directly at the sacred mountain of Arunachula and is only a couple of years old.  So! it is ‘modern’ with lots of good shiny tiling on the floors, even the walls in kitchen and bath (which are usually just concrete… remember my bathroom at Ganesan’s?).  Yes, a sit down toilet, thank goodness, and an aluminum kitchen sink instead of the usual concrete.  There is also a large, nicely tiled patio just outside my door, as well as a roof terrace, with benches for meditation in several places.  All very pleasant.  Things are modernizing very quickly in India these days.  So many changes since I was here in 2006.  The neighborhood is actually being developed by a property developer, all the streets are roughed out and concrete curbing for the drains; all the houses are modern, one even has an indoor swimming pool! Still, it is surrounded by village style neighborhoods.

I have lucked out again! with my landlord.  Mr. Tri Pathi has just finished some translation of books for the Ashram (from Tamil into Hindi).  He has also written the 1^st Hindi biography of Sri Ramana AND! To my total delight prefaced his biography with a quote from Jung.  Could hardly believe it (from a German publication... one of the few statements Jung made about Sri Ramana)!  Needless to say he is a well-educated man and we have had some interesting discussions already.  (No hang-over with the Hindu pantheon, just the simple `knowing` of the `Self` or `Consciousness`.)  He has come to live near the Ashram for meditation purposes.  (Have yet to find out what he did for work... now retired, I believe; has a son who is an engineer, living in California.  His wife remains living in Northern India??)

So it goes.  Another thunderstorm last night... the rainy season just finishing (just starting, I have since been told.)  A night of frogs and toads `singing` like freight trains; and a morning of birds chirping, including that lovely turquoise kingfisher, my favourite.  Will close for now, before the battery goes dead.  Maybe I will learn how to get these chatterings on facebook, so each of you can choose to access… or not.  Was not really sure whether I would write this season... seems I will be getting a few things down.

WHAT TO SAY... here it is November 12^th! And I still have not sent my update.  Settling in this year has been more difficult.  Instead of delighting me, the medieval has been overwhelming me:  the stink of the open sewers; all forms of garbage strewn about, the final refuse being ‘plastics’ which cannot be eaten by beggar, cow, goat or pig; the poverty... women, children, old people, sick people, the blind and crippled... beggars a-plenty, including the sadhus; mostly dirt roads with mammoth water-filled holes; feces of all kind scattered along the roads... no sidewalks, though so many! walk; cows, goats, monkeys, dogs (no cats??), small herds of fat black pigs...  sauntering along toward you, behind you, cutting in front of you; many of the ‘villagers’ still using the open sewers and fields as toilets (the women from 4-5 am; the men from 5-6 am as the sky is lightening… of course, urinating in public is never a problem for them).  Serenely walking the fields is out of the question, of course.  It is not a serene walk to the ashram in the early morning… oh dear. 

To complete the picture, I am inundated with images of such hard, grueling work.  I notice that the brick yard just next door: dirt from the field and water from the ditch is used to hand make bricks, which are washed away if the rain comes too quickly... they are stacked in a way that creates tunnels for drying, then the stack is coated with mud... before a tarp is put on so the bricks can be pre-dried prior to the baking... a smoking fire lit beneath the stack... no kiln, no shelters or buildings on the lot. It is such hard primitive work, 7 days/wk!  It is hard to watch.  Likewise at all the new construction sites where sand for fill and cement, as well as, bricks are carried in pans on the top of heads, usually by women... no wheelbarrows.  (Though I did see one in the brickyard???)  It was unusual to see construction when I was here previously, but as India leaps into ‘the modern’ era new construction proliferate.  Wages have tripled! 

Cattle rampaged through the brickyard this evening, trampling over newly formed bricks laying in long parallel rows (so a certain ‘setting’ can take place prior to the stacking and baking).  People labored in the brickyard over 10 hours today… their work now destroyed.  The herders are trying to get the cattle home… a woman in a sari and a boy in shorts, doing their best to keep the cows at the edges of the field... but, the trampling is a common happening so they are not really concerned.  I think it is this kind of mind set that is getting to me.  It worked for simple village life, but not as their world becomes more complex and speedy.  The cost must be great?

My own domestic routine: daily shopping (no refrigeration); daily hand washing (no machines, can use the corner laundry hut on the main street but they do have cockroaches); daily sweeping (a constant dust sifting through the screened windows from the construction sites and brickyard); the careful discrimination in water use (bottled water, or tap water needing boiling... full of bacteria); the watchfulness for the least open sore, healing takes longer in the tropics, so the potential for infection and scaring is greater.  I have enjoyed these basic survival procedures in the past.  This year I am impatient.

All the simplicity of the medieval, countered with the worst of the 21^st C:  the noise of motorcycles, cars, buses revving engines, grinding gears, honking horns... giving the signal of where they are in relation to one another on the chaotic roads (biggest vehicle has right of way.... no real lanes); the acidic air pollution... my silver jewelry tarnishes within hours; roads torn up in the town, to make way for a new drainage system for the runoff from the mountain... what about the open!! sewers; cell towers galore; and the constant noise of construction... the town has probably tripled in size over the past 4 years with so many new homes and shops, many still in the slap-dash Indian fashion, though I am seeing improvements in building..: even the use of electric concrete/tile saws.  Quite a few new, expensive houses (side by side with the older village houses cum barns).  No ‘exclusive’ neighbourhoods... or suggestion of parks.  There is a new, quite spiffy hotel in the middle of the Ashram nygard (neighbourhood)... 3000rs/night ($75??  I pay 3500rs/month).  In some sense, there has been no change since 900 AD; yet, bit by bit aspects of modernization have come creeping in:  The Third World in all its discombobulation.  There has even been a modernization in the recent Deevolly festival... a weeklong festival to celebrate Durga’s battle with ‘the monster’ (rather like our Halloween).  Four years ago they used the banging of pots and pans along with loud music to dramatize the battle, usually in the early morning (I remember my mother using pots and pans on New Year’s)... perhaps there was the odd firecracker at night.  This year it was a week-long, 24hrs/days of exploding fireworks!  Imagine Halloween’s fireworks lasting 24hrs a day for a week... unthinkable:  the cost! The noise!  India loves it... drama and sparkle all together... almost every home in the nygard did incredible displays... all privately financed.  Poverty-be-damned! Not Hollywood, but Bollywood.  I never! want to hear another firecracker.

Maybe I am just getting old and cranky (Oh! dear.); or maybe it’s the change due to India’s modernization; or maybe there is some other influence at work.  With many of my ties in Victoria/BC coming to an end (the meditation teacher retired; my shared office space closed, so the decision to close my therapy practice; the property of the ‘Zen hut’ being put up for sale; Caroline’s leaving Vancouver for London… England; and my car burning up, just!! prior to my leaving ).  I have had to think about, “What next?”  People here have been saying, “That’s obvious, Paula.  You will be moving to Arunachula.”  What do I know?  So, perhaps it is just a little frightening, as I face the possibility.    Homeless in India!!  Not to be dramatic, or anything... and admitting I am getting older…  however, I am not pleased.  My mind/body has been very! restless during recent meditations this past week:  Terribly uncomfortable.

At the same time, every now then the familiar old feelings return:  I am feeling settled and delighted with my new place. It is a comfortable retreat home.  I love my little room on the second floor of this very pleasant house and garden.  My space is full of light from windows on 4 sides with a cooling breeze coming through the open, shaded windows. This time the windows have shutters... so I can block the rain that blows through the screens!  I have even stopped using the fan for now, obviously adjusted to the heat (actually just in mid 20’s, though humid).   

Today is like old times.  As I walked home this morning, after a 5 am peaceful meditation, I was very happy: seeing only the tropical beauty of all the blooming trees and vines; turning a fond eye to all that is medieval... loving the 2 cows tied at a ‘villager’s’ door; skipping over the cow manure (that would be the mind skipping over it... :-); smelling the jasmine permeating the early morning air covering ‘mostly’ the smell of sewers.  Today, I see Life and Death juxtaposed, refreshingly visible.  I won’t bother with rationalizations, trying to understand the dramatic changes in mood.  Who knows?  Today, all is well and the mind/body is relaxed and comfortable.    

And, finally, I have picked up my 2 trunks and started to unpack after 4 years of them moldering in the damp.  So sorting ‘things’: washing dishes, pots/pans, cutlery; throwing out some old ‘food stuff’ (didn’t expect to be gone 4 years when I packed); putting some of the clothing out to air on the line; choosing to put others in a bag to take for laundering; and some to be thrown out... why did I pack some of this??  No bugs! Thank goodness. Hey! Something else ‘modern’... garbage cans are available at strategic points... not necessarily used... I can hardly believe it has happened.  So here I am, getting organized... settled.  Even got Skype working last night (used one plug of my earphones in my iPhone, which worked as an extra antenna), and talked with both Andrea and Caroline at the same time:  9:30 pm for me; 10 am for Andrea in Alabama; 4 pm for Caroline in London.  We talked for an hour.  No cost! Amazing.

Enough.  Hopefully, I get this to the e-mail shop.  Still have not synchronized my iPhone to my computer, or found a way to turn it into a modem... whatever is required is yet to be figured out.  But, slowly... I settle in. Today happy!  Tomorrow??  Who knows?            

Thinking of you all,                   

Love Paula