India - Matrikunj

This week we got to visit one of my favorite places on Earth - and one of the reasons why I came back to India:  MATRIKUNJ!  

Matrikunj is a sanskrit word that means "the Mother's sacred place", and a sacred place it truly is.  It was where I really first connected with farming as not just an occupation or hobby but as a way of life and a spiritual practice: a way to connect with Nature, or Mother, who nurtures us and provides us with endless abundance.  I've never been to a place where you can really feel that loving, nurturing presence so intimately!  Just being there and walking through the jungle-like overflowing green of fruit trees, rice paddies, traditional Tamil-style structures, coconut palms, and sugar cane, you feel a sense of joy and presence come over you that is truly wonderful.

The farm manager there, Baburam, is a farm guru if there ever was one.  He is so united with his farm, the land, the soil, the plants, the animals, it's truly inspiring.  Just sitting with him, you can feel the power and peace of nature flowing through you.  He's a bit hard to understand at times, but he's so wise and insightful, it's really worth the extra effort to figure out what he's saying.  What a gift to get to spend some time with him!

It was so wonderful to get to come back to Matrikunj, where I lived for 2 of my 6 months last time I was in India, and also get to share the experience with Aphyna!  Here are just a few photos of our time there so far:

Baburam, Johnny (one of the 5 farm dogs that chase away porcupines, snakes, and intruders), and I walking out to the fields!

The indigenous Indian cows there are really beautiful, and totally different from the species we have in the US.  Aphyna loves them!!

And this calf really loves baburam!

Two of the tamil workers that staff the farm working the rice paddy - we got to help with the weeding, too! It was so fun squishing around in the ankle-deep mud.  I love how they're still wearing beautiful saris!

Getting ready to take the plunge.  It's such a beautiful place!

And one of the best parts of Matrikunj: the FOOD!  They always feed us completely from what they produce on the farm: tropical fruits and vegetables, and lots of delicious rice.  Here's Aphyna posing with one of the most delicious papayas ever.

India - Auroville - Photos

I COULD try to describe our first in Auroville in 23,000 words - OR I could just show you these 23 photos!  Gotta love that exchange rate.  Soak it in!

Us with my friend Anandi, who runs the Auroville raw food center!

I met her last time I was in Pondi - she taught me everything I know about making delicious raw crackers and ice cream and pies.

This hall in the Verite community is usually used for Yoga and Dance - here's Aphyna commandeering it for awesomeness

A nice photo at the Solar Kitchen, taken by our new friend, Srikand

...who insisted I take a photo with him, too.  Aphyna had to make fun of him to get him to smile - "Indians don't like to smile!", he claimed

And this is when Aphyna got abducted by a Banyan tree.  It gave her back though.

Two of the neighborhood pets, Itchy and Dishes, hangin on our terrace.  I love how she crosses her arms so coquettishly!

WE ARE COOKING IN OUR KITCHEN!!!  YESSSS!

Score.  Okra and Snake gourd, Curry chickpeas, kimchi, avocado! 

That's right - this is a PEACOCK.  That ran RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, while we driving around!

We often come downstairs to find Spock waiting for us.  It's quite comforting.

This is how you make Dosas - south indian crepes usually made with fermented local millets

Not a bad spread for a Sunday potluck!  I brought the okra from the other day!

We went with our neighbors, Betty and her daughter Lhasa, to a little swimming pool next to the beach. Kush!

She's so beautiful!  She was a mermaid in another life.

Here's an Indian boat on the ocean - maybe for fishing?  Even the fishing boats in India are crowded.

I'm just surprised there aren't cows and children and bicycles for the boats to dodge.

Our feet in the Bay of Bengal!  The water is like 70 degrees.

I am obviously thrilled.

The Ammas (local village working women) do so much here - cooking, cleaning, housework, farmwork, crafts, and apparently, cleaning and piling fish!

Here's our little altar in our room - thanks to Julia for the incredible pipe-cleaner Ganesh!

We have matching outfits on - we're so cute!!

I don't think I'll ever get over how colorful and breathtaking saris are - probably my favorite article of clothing ever.

India - Pondicherry and Auroville

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”  -Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

We woke on the morning of the third day feeling like we’d slipped through a time/space dimensional wormhole and ended up in foreign universe where, after 2 days that felt like 2 months, we were finally getting used to our new lives – a lifestyle dictated by car horns, mosquitos, and AC.  Travel does funny things to time. 

But we also had something new to look forward to: today we were leaving for our homestay in our destination for the next 2 months of our trip: Auroville!

You may be thinking to yourself, or asking your spouse/roommate/Chinese pen pal, “What the hell is Auroville?”  Well, scoot your stools a bit closer to the computer while I weave you a yarn of intrigue, India, and Hippies:

The Spiritual Leader of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (after Sri Aurobindo himself died in 1951) turned out to be a French Jewish Woman who went by the title of “The Mother”.  Needless to say, she was a pretty potent spiritual presence, having risen through the ranks to head a full-blown Ashram as a white woman in the 50s.  Anyways, she had a vision of an “International Township”, a community “Free of the limitations of Religion, Creed, Ethnicity”, where the freedom of Spiritual Community would shower all of its glory upon the Earth and people of every type and color could bathe in it together.  It was the 60s – 68 when they held the inauguration ceremony, and the first settlers, or “pioneers”, started showing up.  The story goes, when they were trying to figure out where to build it, the Mother said, “Bring me a map”, then proceeded to point to a spot, about 12 KM from the city of Pondicherry in an arid red-earth desert plateau, and said, “Build it Here.”  And in that exact spot where she pointed, they found a lone, 100-year-old banyan tree, which is now the geographic center of Auroville.  The girl had clout.  So they erected a giant golden meditation sphere – the Matrimandir (more on that later) – and started to move in. 

The Mother was a total Boss.

Almost 50 years later, and Auroville has a population of 2400 permanent residents with a seasonal influx of over 4000 volunteers and visitors.  Residents (called “Aurovillians”) live in over 120 different “settlements”, kindof like micro-communities, ranging in form and style and living arrangements from ecovillages to cohousing communities to farms to yoga centers, each autonomous and unique, all spread out over about 24 square kilometers.  It’s a “cash-free” economy, meaning that when you’re within the Auroville township limits (a 1 km diameter circle encompassing the largest and mainest buildings), no cash transactions are allowed – instead, everyone uses a complicated account system with electronically tracked transactions with a kind of spiritual charge card.  Outside of the center, most places accept cash (especially if they don’t have the special card reader). 

There is a pretty dense hierarchical government system consisting of a multiplicity of vaguely defined councils, committees, working groups, subgroups, subcouncils, and subcommittees, all adding up to a pretty decent acronym alphabet soup.  These “committees” make all the decisions about housing, land, infrastructure, grant distribution, and much more, including who is or isn’t accepted as an “Aurovillian” (the entry processes is notoriously painful).  No individual persons own their own land or buildings within Auroville. 

The Auroville Master Plan.  Note: not scaled to reality.

If it all sounds kindof strangely bureaucratic (and oddly familiar) for a spiritual intentional community in India – we thought so too.  Especially because our first day in Auroville consisted of no fewer than 3 hours of waiting in lines, filling out forms, handing over money to people behind desks, signing receipts, photocopying our passports, and generally being bored.  What is with Westerners and their love of RED TAPE!  It seems like the Westerners here – who make up no less than 5/6 of the community here, but probably more – have brought their own ways of thinking, organizing, managing, planning, and structuring.  Not to say that there isn’t a little Indian flare to it – like everything running minimum 30 minutes behind, and the 40% chance that the office you’re trying to get in to is closed for lunch. 

The racial boundaries are pretty striking.  Outside the immediate Auroville area, the percentage of non-Indian people is barely 1%.  Once you make it into Auroville’s borders, and it suddenly jumps to 50%.  And if anyone could separate the Aurovillians from the visitors, guests, tourists, and most of all, the laborers, you’d surely find the proportion close to 90%, if not higher.  Auroville is in fact a highly exclusive community, oriented towards Westerners, and White Westerners at that.  Disappointing, really, that the dream of a “Universal township” where all people are accepted still only applies to educated, wealthy, privileged White people who can afford to buy the organic produce and live off their secondary incomes while they enjoy their "spiritual" retirement community.

But all of those issues (which I already mostly knew about from my last trip to Pondicherry, where I dabbled with but never lived in Auroville) aside, I knew we wouldn’t be able to stomach Pondicherry for 2 whole months, so Auroville seemed like the best place to get a more fulfilling, quieter, and cheaper long term arrangement.  We had picked out a Homestay rental for our first month of accommodations in Auroville through the guest house website: from the pictures, it looked like a little 2-story house with a small kitchen and terrace downstairs, bedroom upstairs, unattached bathroom with a shower (and hot water heater!) and Indian-style squat toilet.  Home sweet home!  Plus, only 500 rupees (~$8) per day for the two of us.  Not bad for me and Aphyna’s first home together J  Were so excited to meet the house in person!

The 12 KM taxi ride to Auroville gave us another chance to appreciate the complexity (and sheer terror) of Indian driving.  In between bouts of prayer and acceptance of our lives coming to a swift conclusion at the business end of a bus, we contemplated the language of honking – in India, the only way the traffic functions is through a complex communication system that uses the tools drivers have at hand: honking.  As long as motorbikes, scooters, cars, trucks, and buses are on the road – 6 AM to 11 PM every day – you’ll hear constant honking on the street.  But people aren’t honking out of aggression or frustration – in fact, it’s often quite the opposite.  It’s out of goodwill, warning, and reassurance – Yes, I’m here, heads up, watch out now, here I come!  It’s hard not to cringe when someone honks right behind or next to you, as we’re so conditioned to considering a honk a personal attack on our sanity and worthiness as a driver (and, by association, as a human being); but we’re starting to get used to it.

We finally made it to the “settlement” containing our homestay – Utility – and met our landlord, Ben, an older guy (probably in his mid-60s) who if I had to guess I would say is Dutch.  He showed us a lot of kindness right away – he showed us around the house (even more beautiful and serene and super cute than we were hoping!), checked the gas burners (and showed us how to turn them on) and made sure there was enough propane in the tank (most burners are fueled by massive refillable propane tanks, like a barbeque grill – no gas lines in India!), and even passed on the card of a scooter rental guy about 20 minutes walking from our place.  He encouraged us to go there first, cuz we had a lot of red tape to cut through if we were gonna make it in Auroville – we had to register as guests, which meant showing up at 3 PM sharp at the Town Hall with Passports in hand and a signed note from Ben with the details of our stay, then a trip to Financial Services to open Guest Accounts and get our Aurocards charged up with a few thousand rupees so we could buy things within the Auroville town limits. 

Our little Homestay away from Home - That's the house on the right!

Aphyna relaxing hard-core on the terrace

Our neighbor's cat Itchy gettin into it too 

Long story short, we did it.  And we met a few characters along the way: the guy who rented us the scooter, like an extremely chipper young Tamil guy (probably 17 or 18) who spoke great English but at approximately 1.8x the speed of even an American teen girl, who finished lunch early and reassembled our scooter once he realized we were just going to sit there and wait for him to finish his lunch.  We met other young people of various origins – Australian, French, Brazilian – waiting in line to register as guests, all staying for various amounts of time.  We tried to pick up some good hints of where to go for food, events, classes, workshops – we spent a good 20 minutes standing at the message board scribbling notes into our notebooks with places, times, e-mail addresses, phone numbers.  There was a lot to take in – everything from Tamil cooking classes to Aikido to a Farmers Market to Lomi Lomi Massage – and we were pretty stoked to see what would happen.  A lot can happen in 2 months in Auroville!

By the time we finished, we were starving.  There’s nothing like bureaucracy to drain your energy reserves.  We had a snack at the visitors center – pretty tasty smoked tofu sandwiches with olive spread, all made (even the bread) in Auroville processing units, and waited for the Solar Kitchen to open – the main staple cafeteria-style food center of Auroville.  It’s called the solar kitchen because of the solar cooking stove which heats the water for the steam pressure cookers, or something like that.  The point is, it’s all you can eat, pretty high quality food, and they source a lot of produce from Auroville farms – rp200 (~$3) a pop.  Not bad, especially when it isn’t crazy packed, as we would come to discover it is for lunch, with Aurovillians and Tourists alike.

Our trusty little Scooty steed

Driving around Auroville is really beautiful...

...as long as you dodge the cows - this one is surprisingly NOT in the middle of the road

After finishing our meals, we were exhausted, and we had our first drive home in the dark, through the village of Kuilapalayam which separates our community, Utility, from the Solar Kitchen and the main center of Auroville.  Our first day in our new home; there was magic in the air that evening, but we were too tired to do anything but bask in it.  Our new life was beginning!

Our bedroom - very cozy, as Aphyna is so gracefully demonstrating

One positive about having our internal clocks reset: we love waking up with the dawn, hearing the first birds start their calls, replacing the buzzing chirps of insects.  I love watching the sky turn from black to grey to brown to pink and gold to blue.  I love the peace and solitude of our little home.  I love rolling out of bed, going downstairs, and eating FRESH BANANAS AND COCONUTS!!  Not just those long, boring Cavendish bananas we get in the US, but all different colors and shapes: tiny short and fat yellows, medium thick greens, plump reds.  And there’s nothing like cracking a fresh coconut to wake you up at dawn.  I love reading in the morning, meditating, stretching, doing quiet things.  If only there weren’t so many dang mosquitos!  Small price to pay for the most peaceful mornings of our life – we just suck it up and slather on the DEET-free repellant (which Aphyna has taken to spraying directly at them like a weapon).

Crackin coconuts like it's my job!

Now this is a fruit salad - bananas, cocounts, and coconut milk!

Here’s a brief breakdown of our schedule this week: 

4:30 – 5:30 AM – Wake Up

5:30 – 6:30 AM – Read, Stretch, Meditate, Set Intentions, Affirmations, Etc.

6:30 – 7:30 AM –Breakfast – Fruits, Nuts, Smoothies, Tea, Etc.

7:30 – 9:30 AM – Whatever time: morning Yoga, writing, crafting, painting, more reading, etc.

9:30 – 10:30 AM – Brunch – Bigger Meal: toast and PB, rice and dal (lentil soup) and pickles,

yogurt, etc.

10:30 – 1:30 – Whatever time part II – visit Auroville, buy groceries, run errands, etc.

1:30 – 2:30 PM – Supper – The biggest meal of the day, for sure: some home-cooked Indian

veggies, curry, rice, yogurt, cucumber/tomato/mung bean sprout salad, sandwiches, tofu – all kinds of good stuff!

3:30 – 4:30 PM – Nap

4:30 – 8:00 PM – Whatever part III – Auroville visits, exploring the village and looking at cool

shops, buying more groceries, visiting the bakery, etc.

5:30 – 7:30 PM – Snacks if necessary – fruits, nuts, etc.

8:00 – 9:30 PM – Sleep

So far it’s a great schedule – it keeps us fresh and lively!  I feel healthier and cleaner than I have in a long time.  We'll see how long it lasts!

Stay tuned for next week, when we'll fill you in on all our Auro-Escapades!

India - Pondicherry

The second day was much better.

After spending the night in our little haven, where we managed to sleep more or less through the night (give or take a few disoriented arousals), we felt restored, rejuvenated, and refreshed.  It was the first full night of sleep we’d had in 3 days.  And we knew, whenever we had had enough of wandering in the typical October day’s lovely 100+-humid-sweaty-choking-noxious-“fresh” air, we could retreat, to our A/C haven, where we can pay homage to the God of Naps.  I love our life.

It was one of those days that you just don’t forget, where it feels like you’re walking through a magical world.  If only every day could be like that, where you could see everything with fresh eyes, grateful eyes.  I imagine it’s something like how it feels when a child walks through Disneyland.  Chai over here, mango lassis over there, internet café here, south Indian dosas over there, samosas over here, the vast blue Indian ocean over there.  The sun, the trees, the sidewalks, the faces, the saris, the buildings; the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, the feelings and emotions, they all just feel so different, they feel so much! 

Hindu temples are pretty glorious

They have things like elephants

And giant "Pagodas", pyramids of colorfully painted sculptures of various deities
graphically murdering various demons

Walking around the streets of an Indian city, it’s not hard to see the world in a different way.  It’s not all good; in India, you see it all.  And that’s what I think is so special about India – it’s all there, right there, in your face.  In fact, there’s no escaping reality.  Poverty, disease, urban decay, consumerism, pollution, right alongside wealth, prosperity, holiness, harmony, joy, service.  The highest highs and the lowest lows intermingle, coil around each other like two serpents, and at times you lose track of which is which; they’re all so close to you.  So I just let it all wash over me, the Good and the Bad, the Positive and Negative, the Yin and Yang.  It’s a good reminder: Good and Evil are everywhere, wherever you go; there’s just no effort to hide one or the other in India.

Women wake up early every morning to make these sand paintings on their doorsteps.
Why?  Nobody knows...  or at least I don't.

The streets are so colorful - just look at those women in their saris!  

The streets are even colorful at night!  So much life, spilling out all over the place, it's hard not to step on it!

Not properly representing Americans if I'm not wearing aviators.  Now I am cool.

Today was the day we went to one of my staple locations from my last visit to Pondi – the Ashram Dining Hall.  It’s a very special place, which cooks and serves thousands of meals a week, staffed entirely by volunteers.  It was incredible to see so many familiar faces – almost everyone in the serving line was the same as 4 years ago.  All the food is imbued with so much love, so much devotion, you can feel it permeating the entire building.  I took Aphyna up to the little rooftop where I spent so many meals during my last Pondi stay, and we sat in reverence for the abundance in our lives; we were in awe of the greatness of the Divine that it has taken us on this incredible spiral path. 

Aphyna and I had a great discussion about Yoga, specifically the way Yoga is practiced here in Pondicherry at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.  In India, Yoga is not conceived of solely as a physical practice, or as a one-hour practice one does after work on Tuesdays at the gym.  Yoga is a way of life, Yoga is a life practice, and you can (and must) do it with more than just your body – in fact, the body is often considered the least important component of your being. 

See, in many Indian Ashrams (like the one in whose dining hall we were eating lunch), they don’t really practice physical yoga at all (though I’m sure many ashramites do) – they practiced devotional yoga, or Bhakti yoga, which basically is just what it sounds like: you seek spiritual fulfillment through devotion, typically to a chosen Guru or Deity.  And at first, I didn’t really get it; I was thinking, well, how am I going to get enlightened just by being really really into this other enlightened person?  And it doesn’t make sense to the ego-driven mind, where the goal of spiritual practice is some form of personal enlightenment.  But that’s not how they see it here.   See, when you’re devoted to a realized guru, you become a part of an enlightenment process, but you don’t have to become enlightened.  In the Indian worldview there’s a respect for the natural order of life, a higher power beyond your personal will and ego striving for accomplishment, a Universal choice that trumps your personal choices, e.g. the decision of where and to whom and which species you will be born.  While many people in the Western world would find such a view uncomfortable, disheartening, depressing, or ridiculous, there’s an element of it that’s quite freeing, if you are willing to embrace that Higher Power, that Divine Being, Brahman, surrendering your will to the Divine purpose.  When you look at it as a surrender, you can feel embraced by the Universe, completely absorbed, supported, and loved, for exactly who you are, not for the person that you should be. 

In the US, love is reserved for the physical world – whether it’s romantic love, which is mostly physical but is at least directed towards a physical person, or the love of money, power, objects. Materialism is the form of love that we understand.  Spiritual Love – the Love of God, the Love of Spirit, the Love of Beauty, the Love of the Divine, is not seen as socially acceptable, except within specifically predetermined zones of society, like churches or ecstatic dances or full moon circles.  I find the closeness and tangibility of Spiritual Love here in India absolutely soul-refreshing.

There are a lot of things about Pondicherry that are eerily familiar – certain streets, shops, colors, smells, even emotions.  But there’s one element of my experience coming to India this time that I just can’t reconcile with my last one: Aphyna.  From the moment we embarked on this trip together, she’s added a whole new dimension to the day to day trials and tribulations of living and moving through the Universe that I can barely understand, let alone describe.  It’s like I have a friend, by my side, all the time.  I’m not just traveling anymore; we’re traveling together.  And so I don’t feel that feeling of alone-ness (not loneliness) that I felt last time, which I admit I needed to fully embrace so that I could find my own center (which being alone can really help one to do).  This time around, I’m not alone – I have a mirror, a smile, a familiar face, a purchasing consultant, a fellow adventurer, a friend, a lover, an embrace, an extra backpack, a storyteller, an encouraging word, a kiss goodnight.  This time around, I took a very real piece of home with me. 

Oh, that reminds me of another little piece of home here: the mosquitos.  Except the Indian mosquitos species somehow possess mystical superpowers.  They’re treacherous, they’re ingenious, they’re equipped with some kind of camouflage mechanism that renders them invisible – and their bites itch 10x worse.  And, worst of all, they LOVE Aphyna.  I take it as incontrovertible evidence that she is, in fact, the sweetest creature on Earth.  She is not amused.  Just a little, maybe, between itches.

We’re thrilled by everything we’ve experienced so far – and it’s only just beginning!  Tomorrow, we head out to our home away from home for the next couple months – Auroville.

Tune in Next Week for a recap of WEEK 1 IN AUROVILLE!

India - Pondicherry Arrival

WEEK 1, Part II – Spreading Wings

All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being.  No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. 

-Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

The first leg of our embarkation took us to a part of the world so foreign, so exotic, and so intense as to be nearly incomprehensible to us simple country folk of Yamhill County, Oregon; a place where nearly every face was of unrecognizable origin, where languages flowed with shocking diversity, where bodies crammed together into spaces boggling the Malthusian mind, where smells horrid and languid and strangely intoxicating mélange in one’s nostrils: New York City.  So many thanks to the incomparable Antonia Lassar, poet, actor, writer, director, and incredible friend, for putting us up in her magical little treehouse (in the living room of a 3^rd floor Brooklyn apartment) and baking vegan brownies with us.  Sorry to all the people we smashed in the face with our giant backpacks – I hope you see this, because in the raging current of subway station hustle, I’m surprised we made it through at all.  Every turnstile was a challenge when you look like this:

Aphyna still managing to look amazing

So dramatic - we love you Antonia!

It was good practice for India, sure, being crammed with that many people; but India has something that NYC doesn’t have: in India, people seem genuinely happy, and seem to have other people’s well-being in mind, even if they don’t have much to share or if they don’t always show it outwardly – at least there’s a general, perceivable feeling of good intentions.  In The City, everyone seems so self-absorbed that kindness is too demanding a task; regardless of how much people have, it doesn’t seem like they have enough time or money or energy or interest to spare on anyone else.  Like Antonia keenly observed, “people seem to see every interaction as an opportunity for something horrible to happen, instead of something wonderful.” 

The international terminal at JFK felt like a Japanese tea house compared to the 3 subway trains and 2 buses we had to take to get to there, and once we had dropped off our massive backpacks and my staff, we felt light as two turtledoves and giddy with excitement.  While few people in the airport seemed to share our enthusiasm, our spirits were indomitable at this point, because we knew, there was no going back – only forward, across the ocean, through the sky, over the deserts and mountains, and finally, to India!

Who are we

            When our feet leave the Earth?

Who are we

            When we spread our wings and soar?

Where do we go

            When we leave the world below?

Who do we become

            When we shed our cocoons

            And leap into the boundless sky?

Creatures of flight,

Creatures of faith,

No longer bound to the Earth,

No longer ruled by gravity,

But dancing with it,

We are flying, flying,

We are flying away.

Recalling memories from our plane flights is like trying to remember a dream or spotting stones on the bottom of a murky lake – probably because we spent the entire 36 hours (with the 11.5 hour time zone forward warp) half awake.  But it all went down without a hitch, and even with a few laughs and a few lucky strokes along the way.  Time became abstract pretty quickly, so I can’t really tell you how long we got delayed where or what – we learned to let it go pretty quickly, especially when you can’t tell which language the announcements are being made in.  All I know is, we kept going, and kept getting closer.

There’s no way to quantify or qualify the incredible gift it is to have someone traveling with me.  Over and over again, Aphyna’s presence surprises me and comforts me in a way that I don’t associate with traveling – it’s a comfort, an answer, a warmth, an embrace, with me everywhere I go, no matter how foreign. Someone to watch the bags at the airport, while I pee and fill up the water bottles.  Someone to laugh with at all the ridiculous advertisements in the airport in Kuwait.  Someone to help me shoulder the burden of finishing your failed attempt at taking on an airplane dessert.  Someone to help me shoulder the burden of carrying an absurb amount of luggage such that we both look like bloated turtles.  Someone to look like a bloated turtle with.  Someone to lean against while trying to catch 20 more minutes of sleep in the airport terminal.  Someone to make 50/50 bets with – so that we always win.

Many unsatisfying naps and shockingly delicious airplane meals (though distributed at seemingly arbitrary times) later, we hit the ground, looked out the window, and saw palm trees.  As soon as the AC in the cabin stopped, you could feel the humidity creeping in like a fog.  We had arrived in India.

WEEK 2 – CULTURE SHOCK

The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the whole of life. 

-Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

I really felt like we arrived in India the first time we heard someone speaking Tamil.  Tamil is the indigenous local language of the Tamil Nadu, the state containing Pondicherry.  It sounds something like the language I imagine super-intelligent chipmunks and dolphins might come up with to tell each other to screw off.  There’s lightning-fast syllables, chirps, chatter, nasal intonations, phonetic sounds that you’ve never even dreamed of, and some form of tonal inflection system that indicates the affirmative/negative/inquisitive form of a sentence that I completely don’t understand.  To me, it represents perfectly the chaos and color that is India.

We were both blown away by and eternally grateful for the fact that all of our baggage (and persons) arrived intact.  I somehow managed to locate my dragon staff by investigating the loud clattering sound that echoed through the baggage area, which I intuited as the natural sound of a wooden staff being thrown in a fit of frustration off of a conveyor belt. 

Our first attempt at haggling met with a stern defeat.  The idea of taking an auto-rickshaw the 300 kilometers from Chennai (the airport) to Pondi was met with pretty universal confusion/disapproval from everyone in the airport, but I held out until we hit the street and found it entirely deserted of rickshaws, and there we were with 100+ lbs of luggage – we were sitting ducks.  Taxi it had to be; and there was only one available.  The driver, Naga, let me pretend like I had another option for 5 minutes, but after 36 hours of traveling, and feeling the sweat starting to soak through our shirts, Aphyna and I were fish in a barrel, and all we wanted was to get out of the barrel, even if it meant getting shot. 

Oh, India.  Where else could your taxi driver pull over on the side of a busy road and get out to meet a person he’s leasing the car from to make a payment?  Where else could that driver then pull over 5 minutes later and pick up his friend who also needed a ride to Pondicherry (no mention of this plan to us)?  Where else could all of this be the least shocking events of your morning? 

Naga was an incredible driver.  I’m sorry for all of the people who have never been to India, because you will not grasp the gravity of what I am trying to describe to you when I say: The Driving in India is INSANE.  Even Aphyna, who thought she was prepared for this after her experience with the wild driving in Jordan, admits that driving in India is 10x worse.  It’s incomprehensible.  Literally putting you on the brink of death – within inches – constantly.  India, as far as I can tell, does not have road rules.  There are a few traffic lights, here and there.  Occasionally, the roads have barriers dividing the directional flow of traffic.  But usually, there’s nothing but the road, and you’ve got to share it: pedestrians, motorcycles, scooters, buses, trucks (many toting HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE paintings illustrated with burning demon faces), cats, dogs, cows, donkeys; all of this traffic, and only two rules: Don’t Die, and Don’t Kill Anyone.  Basically, if you avoid killing yourself or anyone else, no-one is going to notice. 

Oh right, Naga – he drove in traffic like no other traffic, 4 lane merges without a single sign or marker, dodging between massive trucks, pulling up within inches of motorcycles at 60 km/hr.  All while talking on the phone.  And driving stick shift.  What the hell.  Superhuman. 

We survived the 3 hr ride, but we were in a state of shock.  We had been in 4 countries – 4 very different countries – in what felt like one never-ending marathon day.  We were tired, hungry, and we had no idea who was speaking what language.  The temperature felt like somewhere between 100 and 180 F in my armpits.  And it was 9:30 AM.  But there was a saving grace, a silver lining, a true blessing sent straight from the Divine: A/C.  

I would have stood like this all day if I could have

Getting the A/C Room at the guest house was the best decision of my entire life. I think Aphyna even told me that she would be fine without it when I was doing the booking, but something told me it was a good decision.  And it was.  The best.  I don’t think we would have made it through those next 2 days without it. 

Our peaceful little room - perfect landing site!

 By the time we had unpacked some stuff we were starving, so we went out on the hunt for food.  Not surprisingly, our first meal in India was a particularly Indian experience.  Right around the corner from our hotel was a relatively accessible little cafeteria style restaurant, Ananda Bhavan (roughly translated, Bliss Bungalow).  I remember going there once last time I was in Pondi.  But that was with an Indian guy as a translator/guide; this time, we had no idea what to do to get someone to give us food.  No servers, no signs, no-one.  It just seemed like people were waving tickets around and/or holding out money and taking trays at will.  Turns out, the waving tickets/money/receipts system is the crux of many fine Indian establishments – but we didn’t know that, and found ourselves staring longingly at the food that was staring back at us so tantalizingly from the seemingly impenetrable glass of the display case.  We almost surrendered and retreated at least three times.  But we persevered – luckily, we must have looked so zonked that someone took pity on us when we sheepishly asked the cashier, “Um, what do we…do?”  Once we had our ticket, and stood at the counter waving it as everyone else was, we couldn’t help but laugh.  Maybe we were just tired to the point of hysteria, but I have to say, it was one of the most satisfying meals of my life, and I’ll never forget it.

The rest of the first day basically centered around trying to stay awake as long as possible.  We were ready to go to sleep at 9 AM, which would technically be 8:30 PM (Yesterday) Oregon time.  We felt like we’d been stuffed through a spiralizer and blended into an American smoothie and then poured into a steaming sweaty puddle on the side of the Indian street.  Needless to say, we were not at our best.  I tried to pull Aphyna around to some of the places I remembered, and I did remember at least half of them!  But the rest of the time I had us just wandering around the streets, which would be nice, if we didn’t start roasting like an eggplant destined for babaganoush every time we stepped into the sunlight, and if we weren’t being confronted with imminent bodily harm every 45 seconds from passing autos, motorcycles, and errant cyclists.  We did see puppies, though!

Very ATYPICAL Pondi street - not dodging a scooter

High point: first Indian chai.  Nothing compares.  Boiling hot, sweet, fragrant, spicy, milky, chai.  You get it at little chai-wallas (chai guy), tiny wooden carts or stands at the side of the road, where a pot of milk is constantly boiling away, and your tea is brewed on the spot – 8 rupees (maybe 15 cents?) for a little 4 oz. cup.  Wave your money, get your ticket, wave your ticket, get your chai.  We were pros at this by now.  Sit down, wait for your chai to cool (not too much), and enjoy probably the best people-watching of your life.

We Love Chai!

This is how they cool it off - pouring from one cup to another like a boss!

By 4:30 PM, we gave up.  We retreated to our hotel room, and were greeted by a blast of AC air that might as well have been a glacial mountain stream.  That feeling of returning to cold, crisp, air like a fall New England day from the humid, stinky, sweaty miasma of the Pondi street (and immediately removing every article of stinky sweaty clothing) is a special kind of high that we were immediately addicted to.  We spent at least ¾ of our time in Pondi in that AC room, and I don’t regret a single minute of it. 

I don’t think we made it past 6:30 PM before we were both fast asleep, dreaming of the adventures behind us, and the adventures ahead of us.