Free Publicity

So, I’m guessing that if I’ve posted this second new writing, I’ve posted the new photos from Holi… anyhow, life has been fun here. To my surprise one night, as I came home, I thought I heard familiar voices in our awesome guest house, the Welcome Center, I peaked to the table where the voices were coming from, and seeing no one familiar, I shrugged my shoulders and said to my friend, “Nope, I guess no familiar voices…” Before I could walk away, the New York accent that seemed so familiar to me said, “Hey, how are you?” Whether or not I’d met them, good ole Americans are always familiar in India.

Regardless, the guys were very amiable, and we got to talking. By and by Soami Das (the owner of the guest house) sat down with us and we had some good conversations. I admit, it was largely an “us guys” vibe, but I was more than okay with it, as I set in to doodle on my cast (will send a picture later).

The other guys who were visiting the Welcome Center started to drop a bit of information about Darren (one of the two guys) being a director, so I asked what films he’d done. Anyhow, long story not-so-short, it was Darren Aronofsky, director of “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream”—two really great movies. (i.e. my response was a sobered: “Those are damned good movies.”) Anyway, Alan Ball still takes my heart completely, but Darren Aronofsky, I would stretch to say, is one of the best directors out there right now. Free publicity: He said this fall’s movie, his third big one, is his best yet, and is called “The Fountain”—Who wants to go see it with me??? In one moment of our conversation when Soami Das mentioned how Brad Pitt was just in Rishikesh, Darren basically said how it was all BS. I asked, “You don’t believe it?” “Well, I texted him and he said he was in France.” I couldn’t tell if he was pulling my leg. Daniel, his friend, a hair stylist for musicians and actors and such, laughed and said, “If Brad Pitt was in Rishikesh, he didn’t know it.” And I kind of scratched my head, feeling, like I have so many times on this trip, that the world was a bit smaller than I ever had imagined.

So that was one fun experience… I’ve been taking classes with a cool guy named Palla at the Welcome Center, and he teaches something called Body Love Stretching, which is sort of like a cousin of Osteopathy… yesterday especially, I literally rolled out of bed and into class… can’t beat that, and classes are about $2-3 for two hours, which sure beats Osteopathy in the States: $100 / hour, easily.

Hanging out with my buddy Atma, the merchant I know in town who has been able to organize so much sanity into my otherwise insane ventures, he asked kind of out of the blue if I wanted to go to Vrindavan (Brindaban, any variation therein) the place where Krishna grew up. Throwing my all to spontaneity, I said I’d love to, not really trusting he was 100% for real… none the less, within 24 hours, we were in Vrindavan…

William Dalrymple wrote one of the opening chapters of Age of Kali on the city, calling it the City of Widows, since all the Vaishnava (Krishna devotees) widows head to that city when their husbands die. In Hindu society, a widow loses all her status and wealth when her husband dies, left with nothing but the gold she wore when she was married and the bangles on her wrists. These women, often falling from the top of society to the bottom, solemnly take Krishna as their formless lover and their only comfort in life. In the Krishna temples of Vrindavan, many of these widows are “employed”—they chant songs to Krishna for 8-hour shifts in return for a handful of rice. Many of the temple pundits are said to be corrupt, running the poorly maintained temples simply as a means to take the donations, and doing nothing to aid these widows.

I had read all this before coming to Vrindavan, so, to see how amazingly normal the city seemed was actually quite a shock. Knowing that the city was teeming with social problems, yet looking around, it seemed like all the other cities of India I’ve come to know. Walking up to one of Radha and Krishna’s gardens, there was a strip of 20 or 30 beggars outside, pleeing for alms. Going the jungled maze of side streets to another garden we passed several elderly women who were malnourished and had shaven heads. These were the only signs of the poverty of Vrindavan that seemed to depend upon the generosity of pilgrims, the only reminder that Vrindavan was, to some extent, known for this.

Thinking about it now, I may be desensitized to beggars who focus on pilgrims because I’ve been in Rishikesh for a month and the pot-smoking saddhus and destitute widows live similarly here, begging from the international tourists who come for Rishikesh’s ashrams and yoga centers.

Protected, somewhat, by my upper class friend and guide, we ran through Krishna’s gardens on a special holiday in Vrindavan (which was very tiring crutching my way through and trying to keep up) and saw a couple more temples before checking in. One garden had a bedroom that was used by Radha and Krishna—every night (I was unclear whether this happened every night or just on the specific day of the year that people celebrated while we were there) the pundits would leave the room neatly arranged and lock up the gardens. Yet, every morning, Radha and Krishna would make love on the bed, leaving it a terrible mess. The windows that face this garden must all be boarded so that no one sees all of this, and locals swear that the monkeys aren’t the perpetrators, since they all leave the gardens and go to sleep. It is said that people who have hidden in the garden to try to catch a glimpse of these miracles are struck deaf or dumb or blind after that night. Regardless, it was a kind of cool place to feel, “Oh, I’m here, at this spot.”

In the morning we made it out to the new and pretty famous ISKCON / Hare Krishna temple of Vrindavan, and I got some surprisingly great shopping done before hopping back in the car and rolling back to Rishikesh. Don’t tell my Mom, but I bought some cow dung incense.

--- Photos near Neelkanth Temple

Like I said in the blog, the best part of Neelkanth Temple was walking back. :) (except that whole breaking my ankle thing)
In the third and fifth pictures, that's Rishikesh in the valley below...

--- Holi Photos

Casualty #577

My friend Spencer expressed something to me exactly as I had thought—in India, it’s impossible to take a bad picture. It is, I would add, also impossible to capture an Indian moment inside a picture. As telling as it is to take a photo of a beggar or a street performer, I wish I could also capture a shot of the on-lookers with looks that range from reproach to indifference to a smooth interest in me—one in a million momentary tourists who come to India to have their lives shaped, yet leave little impression on the county herself.
Holi is the Spring festival of India. Though traditionally Hindu, one gets the feeling that no one withholds from the celebrations. Without even walking out of my guest house on Holi, I had to make haste to evade the desk clerk, who anxiously awaited his chance to be the first to smear me with the bright pigments that signify a new flowering in the spring time. I avoided Karuna, the woman who runs the kitchen in the guest house next door where I ate my breakfast, knowing that her perseverance in smearing me with colors would outlast my playful, if stubborn, resistance. A friend asked Karuna if the traditional smearing of pigments on people was a form of blessing on Holi, Karuna chuckled out a soft “Nooooo….”—a surprising answer in a land where everything seems to have some spiritual significance.
Then we actually made it out to the streets. Some older locals had warned many of the remaining Art of Living Westerners to basically make camp in our rooms and not to go outside at any cost. We were told to buy fruits, water, and crackers to last several days. Fearful stories of people getting their pants pulled down and all sorts of mayhem circulated. The universal idiom of Holi is, “Don’t wear your Sunday’s finest.” However, it is, of course, tradition to wear white.
The shops in Rishikesh were gated shut, an interesting scene in a town I had never seen slow down. From the alleyways and rooftops, and hiding around corners, people of all ages waited to douse passers-by with pigments and water balloons and follow these up with roaring laughter and an affectionate hug. Our plan had been to hike up the foothills to Neelkanth Temple, said to be a sacred site of one event or another in the endless history of Hinduism. Before getting to our meeting point, I was soaking wet in spots and had at least five distinct colors across my face and clothing. Doubt set in as to how sound our plans were.
Once meeting, we moved together as a group of six or seven for no more than 15 minutes before the chaotic bombardment of water balloons split our group up. Still with two friends, we bought seats in a ten-seater (though the name may be deceiving, it’s actually a normal Jeep) and took a sleepy, scarry, and, for my friends, nauseating trip one hour into the Himalayan foothills. The temple itself was almost completely not noteworthy.
I bought a “Puja thali” from the vendors outside, (an arrangement of traditional offerings) and, entering the temple, a priest mechanically told me how to offer each item. Feeling somewhat uninspired at the end of the two or three minute offertory, I asked if I could chant y own puja. Receiving the Indian head nod, I started into a Shiva puja, not two minutes into the prayers, the priest tapped me on the shoulder and urged me onward—the next pilgrim had come with his thali. None of us speaking Hindi or really knowing what this temple was dedicated to, we bounced through the few rooms, doing our best to take the prasadam and darshans of whatever it was the temple had to offer, and we retired to a room that seemed forgotten by the other devotees so that we could meditate.
As we navigated our way out of the complex, we passed a horrible scene of a bunch of insensitive Indian men joking and celebrating around a terrified monkey that they had chained by the throat. The monkey shrieked and pushed violently to get away from the men who really seemed to be getting a great joy out of it. My blood boiled. I was of course ready to smack the men, but thought that I might be just a little more acceptable to the conservative Hindu society if I left nonviolently. Even as I write this I question what I really should have done. “It seems so ridiculous to start an animal rights project in India,” I reflected with one of my friends while we walked away, “when so much needs to be done with human rights here.”
Leaving the temple was really the best part. Escaping the hillsides of trash and debris which surround any “civilized” part of India, the refuse does relent to breathtaking views of surrounding valleys and foothills. The walk back to Rishikesh is a three- or four-hour walk at a strolling pace; as paths wind back and forth to go either up or down a hillside, the distance must be at least double or triple the distance that the bird flies.
As we reached the bottom of the foothills and came within a kilometer or two of the Swargashram section of the city, we chanced upon a path that took us to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maharishi’s ashram has been closed for many years, supposedly due to some tax problems, and is now under the possession of the national parks, though no one is allowed admission (at least not unless they bribe the self-appointed guard of the ashram.) This is the ashram that was home to Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation retreats in the late 60s, and saw visits from the Beach Boys and Mia Farrow and, most famously, the Beatles (a sign by a local café points up the hill and reads “Beatles’ Ashram, 100m.”)
Many of Art of Living’s earliest American teachers were originally involveds with Maharishi’s TM movement. HH Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, our affectionate “Guruji” in the Art of Living was in charge of many of Maharishi’s affairs from a young age. Even the meditation technique espoused by the Art of Living, Sahaj Samadhi Meditation, is likened to a powerful (and less expensive) version of Transcendental Meditation. For the Art of Living Westerner in Rishikesh, Maharishi’s ashram is one of the most exciting spots of pilgrimage—many of us had been buzzing about attempts at getting through the gates or past the guard.
Entering on our accidental path through the back gate, we only had to step over a three foot tall broken down wall to enter. The ashram is beautiful. It is a real travesty that the government will no longer sell the ashram to anyone. The visitor is left with the impression that this is the most recent of India’s priceless and only partially forgotten ruins. Vines growing up the sides of beautiful halls and kutirs, fallen trees across paths and once stunning brick walkways that are giving way to the grasses growing in their gaps beckon one to think of the days when month-long meditation retreats pushed the participants’ limits of four and five and six hours of Transcendental Meditation a day. Why couldn’t John and Paul’s patron “Fool on the Hill” have paid his taxes?
The front entrance to Maharishis’ ashram, which we made way to exit through, was, to my dismay, much better maintained. My friends headed for the hole in the gate, getting ready to slip through, and I looked at that askance and thought, “No way am I stuffing my ass through that.” I gave my friends my bags and said I would jump over the wall. To save further explanation, I didn’t land well. A humble crack and a numb sensation, not ready to take in the pain, were all I really noticed.
I pushed my weight onto my left leg and tried to sit down gracefully, as one of my friends yelled, “Just sit down!” I hobbled over to a café once I thought I could get up, we had been planning on having our dinner. However, as I pushed myself along using the ball of my right heel, I thought to myself how common it is in my family to not go to the doctor when we actually very much need to. “Umm,” I interrupted nervously as we neared the café gates, “I think I should probably suck up my pride and go to the hospital.”
“For real?”
“Umm… yeah…”
“Well, let’s sit down and see how you feel, then we can arrange everything.”
Sitting down (the picture of me all Holi-ed out is taken right at this moment) I actually started to feel all the pain that had been numb to me before. Tears of pain and frustration began to well up. “I should get going now…” We got a motorcycle to take me to the taxi stand, and an autorickshaw brought me to the (ominously named, if you are as skeptical as I am) Government Hospital. With my pronounced limp, I walked by more than one idle person and wheel chair and plopped myself down in the emergency room, the pain again flooding to my attention.
“What you need?” “I sprained my ankle…” Trying not to scream.
“So, what you need?” “I need an X-Ray, I need a leg brace, I need to see a doctor.”
“Oh, X-Ray not possible, today is Sunday.” It was Wednesday. “Take off,” pointing to my sock, “Let me see.”
I pealed off my sock, soaking wet from the melted ice (from the café.) And showed them my bloated, dead looking ankle.
“Hanh, Swollen.” The doctor wrote me a prescription for what turned out to be anti-inflammatory and pain-killer.
“I need and X-Ray.”
“X-Ray not possibly, today Sunday.”
“The guy’s not here?” I gestured in circles, frustrated and still on the verge of tears.
“Guy not here. Come back tomorrow. X-Ray I can’t do, but anteshtetic, I can do, here.” Handing me the paper.
“Okay, okay, I need a brace. Hard brace for my ankle.”
A blank expression. “A brace—like a cast, stop the movement in my ankle.”
“No. Cast comes after X-Ray, tomorrow.”
I tried to draw a picture of an ankle brace.
“Ah. Use bandage. I’ll write prescription.”
He added an ace bandage to the “prescription” and I walked out of the clinic, too infuriated to actually ask for the wheel chair, but in far too much pain to really resist the flow of events. Buying the drugs and bandage from the Chemist across the street, I took an autorickshaw to the ashram. Putting myself back in the hands of Art of Living was a great move. Before even walking to Guruji’s kutir, I was intercepted by a friend from the States. “What happened to you?”
Now the tears were more ready to flow. “I sprained my ankle at Maharishi’s ashram.”
“You shouldn’t be walking around! Come, sit!”
Without too much desire to defend my actions and the flow of events, I kind of collapsed into the care of friends. Within a few minutes a Swami was giving me a healing blessing, an ayurvedic (traditional Indian herbal) doctor was looking at my ankle and using marma (acupressure) points and a car was being arranged to take me to have my ankle X-Rayed and treated.
We went to a walk in X-Ray clinic and walked out with two X-Rays in less than fifteen minutes and for less that $4. The Osteopath at a local ashram hospital was called in at eight or nine PM on a holiday night for consultation, and a half-caste (to allow for swelling) was put on my leg. The official word: I have a fractured tibia, right at the ankle where it comes in medially. The piece of bone is disconnected, so they want to check on it after a week before putting on the permanent cast. I am Casualty #577 at Nirmal Ashram Hospital, or so says my perscription to take anti-inflammatories, elevate my foot, and keep wiggling my toes.
Anyway, total service. Life is now a bit different. I spend most of my days sitting at a local guesthouse, reading, relaxing, and listening to music. I’ve been able to get much more into the text part of my study here, which is good, breaks up the flow of meditation courses I’d been on and the anticipated volunteer work I’ll be doing in Bangalore. As I’ve commiserated with friends, there’s a big part of me that is just screaming, “I want my Mommy!” and I’ve been somewhat filled with doubts, thinking maybe it is time to head back to the States and that being temporarily handicapped in India will be completely unbearable.
I notice that so much of my security, so much of my sense of being taken care of as I travel is actually a sense of being able to take care of myself. Now, I find that I must have a more fundamental security and work through the uncomfortable notion of not knowing where help will come from. Day by day I watch friends leave Rishikesh and I see them off with uneasy smiles, silently thinking, “How the hell am I going to get by?” I suppose that everyone is used to being able to care for themselves, but it’s a matter of opening up and just stating whatever it is that I need, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me to ask for it. Cognitively, I know I can’t jump up and do a small chore when I feel restless, and I can’t make up for rough communications or relationships with people by walking out and buying them something, or taking care of their material needs myself. What I mean to say is that I realize, on some level, that I am used to being able to be these external things, sometimes even as a way to ignore or distract from the (in Eastern thought, “All-important”) mental or emotional states I may be experiencing. As I reflected with a friend the other day as dusk set in on our guesthouse, “I am left with this question, ‘Who am I when I am not my actions?” And in some way, my life has become that of an observer. So I wait and wait for my leg to heal.
I have gone out and done one amazingly interesting thing in the past few days. Yesterday I had my astrological charts made and analyzed for the first time. The Indian science of Jyotish incorporates (and predates) what we normally think of as Astrology and Palmistry in the West but it also borders with energy work, Ayurveda (the aforementioned Indian science of health), and Vastu Shastra, the Indian predecessor to Feng Shui. Jyotish is, to say the least, pervasive in India. In the closure to John Keay’s Into India, which I finished reading last night, Keay calls Jyotish “That most Indian of sciences,” and refers to its endless refusal to be understood or simplified. Jyotish is referred to for ever moderately significant business decisions, life-problems, and, probably most famously, for marriages—arranged or otherwise.
A merchant who has befriended most of the Art of Living Westerners who passed through Rishikesh, not excluding myself, took me to the Jyotish. It was his long time friend’s home—a small ashram and school where boys are adopted from villages in the surrounding areas to be given a chance at succeeding in modern city life. We sat down in a beautiful living room in her home in the ashram, and she called for someone to bring chai as we waited for Uncle to come down. (Most elderly and respected men in India are called “Uncle” by almost everyone who meets them. This, at least, makes remembering their name easier.) The experience was wonderful. We informally talked about my charts, and, to my wonder, Uncle would burst out with a long talk about something in Hindi, seemingly a revelation, and, in time, one of my friends would give a simplified English version of whatever Uncle had said. It was mostly a time for me to reflect on myself and my life, however, it was also an amazing peak into part of India that I had not yet tried to learn. I left dizzy with knowledge and very excited about what I’d learned. That night I opened a book on Jyotish written for Westerner’s to check one thing that the Jyotish had mentioned, and I realized how amazingly complex the science really was. Inundated with Sanskrit terms I’d never caught wind of before, I shut the book, glad for how simplified my introduction had been.
Today I began to read V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Million Mutinees Now. I am pressing onward in my attempts to try to understand Indian society and social groups. My original goal was to analyze spiritual communities in India, yet from the outset I seemed to recognize that what I needed to come to terms with most was the society itself. When so much of India is foreign to the visitor, even acquiring the barebones understanding that I currently have has been dizzying. Though I do like all the books I’ve read thus far, Naipaul’s book promises to be more comprehensive than Dalrymple’s Age of Kali, or MacDonald’s Holy Cow (and more serious than the later) and, at least, more up-to-date than John Keay’s (1973) Into India. Also, as I remarked proudly to a friend over breakfast today, “Yep, this is serious… this is the first book that doesn’t have a map of India in it.” I smiled widely, “You know, because they trust that you know where everything is…”

Intro to the blog!!!!!

Hi everyone!

Great news! After three days of hard work, I have pulled together the blog! So, I’ll try to e-mail everyone whenever I post, but if you get really hooked, you can always check the blog a http://seaninindia.blogspot.com (“Sean In India”) I think blogspot.com is interchangable with blogger.com, if that makes it easier for you to remember….

About the blog: I’ve reposted all the original e-mails, chronologically, so the stuff you’ve read if you’ve been getting those e-mails is waaaaay at the bottom, however, there’s something like four new writings that I’ve done while I traveled that are posted on the blog, also chronological, oldest stuff at the bottom…

This post, though it’s an intro to the blog, will be at the top when you come to the page, so it will be easy to spot when you first come to the blog…

Anyhow, I’m in Rishikesh right now (lots of info on that in the last two blog posts)… I’ve been in India just under 2 months, which puts me just over the “1/3” mark for my total trip. I’ve been facing a little homesickness, but I try to balance that with staying in wonder about what my trip will bring.

Guruji has given the official okay for me to do volunteer work in the Bangalore Ashram, so that’s my destination after my sister’s visit, and until she comes, I may head up to Dharamsala after Holi (Springtime Holiday) and maybe see the Dalai Lama.

In a way, my trip thus far seems to have been of three parts:

1- Relaxing in Gujarat and acclimating to India

2- The insane busy days of silver jubilee and receiving everyone in Bangalore and then hauling up for the rushed tour of Jaipur and Agra before Shivaratri, all laced with cultural celebrations and friends from around the world

3- The past two weeks of intensive meditations as I took courses in Rishikesh…

Anyhow, that’s all the cool, calm reflection I’m getting thus far! Jai guru dev!

Ha ha- small update... yesterday we (myself and four buddies) went rafting down the Ganges-- my first rafting trip ever, to boot! We had an amazing stop at a cave where Sage Vasishta, the ancient sage that bestowed knowledge and enlightenment to Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu, 10,000 years ago (by Hindu calendars, western historians, *of course* disagree) We did some prayers inside and the moment we stepped out of the cave, rain came pouring down on us, an excellent excuse to just let go and jump in the river. It was surprising not-shockingly-cold water and a wonderful trip all around! We had an excellent tour guide who totally fell in love with our enthusiasm... Broke my glasses because I was holding them in my hand as I dunked in the Ganges (which was simultaneous with me clenching my fist :) ) getting two new pairs of glasses today from an optometrist in central rishikesh... extravagant you say? About US $30, I say! (For the trip and the glasses!)
Guruji is back in town today and the wild Spring time holiday, Holi, the festival of colors, will set in as soon as the rain blows past the city, and we'll be celebrating for about two days :)

--- Rishikesh Photos of Sri Sri

Worth a thousand words... :) The last photo is that 102 year old Swamiji I mentioned...

--- Rishikesh Pictures

This first one is at a Rickshaw stand where tourists come and go for shopping at the popular Sivananda Nagar and Swargashram areas of the town that consist of the ashrams and dozens of stores angled towards "spiritual shoppers"
The second one is one of the ashrams we stayed at during the healing course, then we of course have some photos of the Ganges and finally, two monkeys hanging out on the bridge over the ganges between those shopping area I was just talking about...

"Hari Om!" (Rishikesh), 11th Mar 2006

Geography lesson before we start: A step away from the “Golden Triangle” of tourism that is Delhi-Agra-Jaipur, Rishikesh is about as far North of Delhi as Agra is Southeast or Jaipur is Southwest. 226 Kilometers, to be exact, and the ride is about 6 hours on Indian roads, which get worse the further you go towards Rishikesh and the Himalayas. Rishikesh is at the foothills of the Himalayas, where the lower-lands receive the sacred river Ganges (more properly: “the sacred river Ganga”) from its mouth high in the Himalayas, 250 kilometers North. Rishikesh is in the state Uttaranchal, which was cut off from neighboring Uttar Pradesh because the two states, when united, were simply too big. North of Uttaranchal is China, Westward lies the Punjab and the other Himalayan states of India, Eastward lies Nepal. Rishikesh is a home base (so says Rough Guide to India) for pilgrimages into the sacred mountains above, which leads me to:

Religious/Cultural lesson before we start: The Ganges is said to be the body of a goddess who was trapped in Shiva’s dreadlocks. There’s a great quote in EM Forrester’s Passage to India (though I’m directly referring to the movie, not the book): “If, at any point, a man should so much as picture the River Ganges in his mind, he will attain liberation.” (Paraphrased by memory, of course) So, anyway, the Ganges is the holiest river of India, though the Yamuna and the Krishna are “trying their best”—actually, when visiting the Taj Mahal, I was as much enthralled by my first site of the Yamuna River as I was by chasing down the details of the architecture. Dunking in the Ganges is said to purify the soul in much the same way that pilgrims come for “baptism” in the River Jordan.

After the wonderful party of Mahashivaratri, I head on a bus up to Rishikesh. Enclosed is a great photo I got from a restaurant that gave me a mean case of Delhi Belly. Actually, since arriving in Rishikesh, about ten or eleven days now, I’ve had Delhi Belly (food poisoning from water, unclean or uncooked food) twice! After we arrived in Rishikesh (in the middle of the night due to the bus breaking down) and were rushed across the bridge; during our little microcosm of housing and registration and confusion, nausea set in and I proceeded to be lazy and a little cranky. For the next twenty four hours, I had the amazing gas pains that I knew were Delhi Belly from my experiences on my first trip to Bangalore a few years ago, so I knew to take care of myself right away (Oh yeah, don’t eat the Pizza Hut in Bangalore :) ) Anyway, the culprit was, I think, some undercooked vegetables at the rest stop our bus to Rishikesh took.

I was really excited to be in Rishikesh, having heard so much about Maharishi’s work with Transcendental Meditation here, hearing stories of Sri Sri taking dunks in the Ganges with devotees and, of course, because the Beatles came here and wrote a lot of the White Album in Rishikesh. :) “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play? Dear Prudence, it’s a brand new day—Look around!”

My first impressions were that Rishikesh was what I had first come to India looking for—holy men commonly on the streets, temples and sacred sights everywhere, spiritual shops that play mantras and devotional chants on the streets until late night. Despite by bellyache, an enthusiastic buzz set in very quickly. To my delight, rumors materialized that the meditation course we came to Rishikesh for really was to be the “Blessings Course”—an Art of Living course that was designed to prepare participants to be initiated into a healing technique. The Blessings Course was first given to the most senior teachers in Art of Living and Guruji’s Swamis after the tsunami because Guruji noticed that people were too traumatized to be able to release their stress through meditation and their were too many people traumatized for Guruji to give one on one darshan (blessing) to. So, the first healers were made, and since then, the Blessings course has happened many times around the world, making more and more people conduits of that level of grace, yet, I was always busy with volunteer work or taking other courses when the Blessings Course was held in the US or Canada, so I just had the experience of seeing how bright and blissful course participants looked as they went through the processes.

The fact that I got to take the course was amazing for me, and the processes themselves were beyond this world. I had many experiences of my heart opening up, stress disappearing, and really seeing how much we are all extensions of one energy, one love.

(Lots of Pictures attached:)

After the second meditation, Guruji came to our hall and we got to walk out to the Ganges with Him. Guruji sat on the steps of the ghat and talked with a Swamiji I hadn’t noticed before. I eventually decided it was worthwhile to give up my seat on the steps behind Guruji and walk through the sidewaters of the Ganges and get some good photos of Guruji from the front. Walking down there in front of Guruji, when most people had long been settled into their spots, I felt so shy, but also very ecstatic to be with the Guru at the banks of the Ganges. I took a few snaps of Him talking and sat down on a rock that some of my friends were sitting on. He looked my way lovingly, and I burst into a bashful smile. Guruji started to meditate after He had finished speaking with the Swami. Eventually He opened His eyes and started to walk into the Ganges. I did my best to quickly skip across the river stones to follow him and get some more good snaps, but walking on the slippery moss-covered stones, all at random angles, was a little challenging. I sure enough was in a great spot to take some pictures as Guruji started splashing everyone with the holy waters.

One brave Asian woman came up to Guruji, though she was complaining of the cold of the water, she faithfully dunked herself in the Ganges and Guruji looked to her so lovingly, definitely passing her a hefty blessing. Lots of people started preparing to do the same, and I thought about how wonderful it would be to have my first dunks in the Ganges be with Guruji sharing the waters with me. I luckily found someone who would hold my camera and I quickly maneuvered my way to near the front of the Guru and downstream from Him and joined the myriad of people who were now anxiously dunking themselves in the river. Each time I came up I looked to Guruji, who was looking at everyone, so happy, so in love with us all. Right after my third dunk (three is one of the traditional number of dunks for washing away your sins in the Ganges) everyone started trying to convince Guruji to dunk. We were all told to spread out, and I, being directly downstream was asked to move far back so that Guruji could swim downstream. All of us went down together with the Guru, (the Guru’s grace is said to flow through any waters you are sharing with the Guru) and He came up just a few inches away from me—all of us laughing and hollering. He quickly went for a second dunk and I floated downstream as we all dunked and He swam forward staying constantly just a few inches from me. We came again, still laughing all the more and completely ecstatic and blissful and pure and innocent. It was probably the closest I have ever felt to Him, so much in love, and so much simplicity—no roles of student and teacher or any sort of identities of separation.

Guruji started to move to the shore, everyone now in a strong mood of celebration. He changed into a dry dhoti and shawl as a few of the senior teacher held up a curtain for Him to change behind and hollered, “All ladies move on, He’s changing!”

We all collected our things from the banks of the river and skipped along to the Satsang hall, dripping all the way. One of the Westerners in Rishikesh who was a by-stander as all of the blissful (and cold and wet) Art of Living devotees passed saw a particularly “dunked” person who was walking just ahead of me and gave an approving “Alright!” And I was filled with a sense of a strange universality of the experience of falling in a senseless devotion to a Guru.

Arriving there, I wrapped up in a blanket from my kutir. Guruji burst into the knowledge right away, talking about the four things that keep us from experiencing the cosmic energies. The first was progeny—constantly worrying about one’s children and how they are doing. Next came wealth, spending one’s whole life worrying about money. Then was public opinion and respect, and finally worrying about “I, me.” Guruji said the one cure for all these four was to see that “I am dying right now,” every moment.

After he left, we had a beautiful satsang, everyone still so blissed out and joyous after our experience with the Guru in the Ganges. One teacher actually interrupted the Satsang to say that for her, it was a perfect reflection of the playful and undying love of Krishna and the Gopis, a thought that had crossed my mind too. I was touched when she said, “We were so blessed to just see that kind of love and playfulness, let alone those who were actually in the water with Him!” And I melted into the thought of being not only at a blessed occasion, but also in a blessed place in that occasion, just a few inches away from the embodiment of pure love, as we tumbled backwards in the Ganges. Satsang went on full swing.

That was all just my second day in Rishikesh. The rest of the course was also extremely powerful for me, and I feel I really brought a lot out of myself. One day Guruji had us all meet with a 102 year old Swami (picture attached) whose ashram was the host of our Blessings course. We also got to hear Guruji speak at an International Yoga Conference that was being held the same week down the street, which was a really great talk, and the next night, we got to watch Guruji participate in Ganga Aarti, the daily fire offering on the Ganges, hosted by the most prominent Swami of the Rishikesh area (who was actually one of the speakers at Silver Jubilee, also). My friend Spencer got some great shots of that Aarti ceremony, I’ll beg him to let me post some of them up on this blog…

I kind of jumped on the wagon for an “advance course” that immediately followed the Blessings course after asking Guruji if I could stay in Rishikesh until my sister comes to Delhi in early April (flying back down South to Bangalore seems impractical.) That Advance course was very hard for me. Counting the course in Bangalore, it was my third meditation course in a month, and my second silence course (one where all the participants take a limited vow of silence) in a row. It seemed like absolutely everything was aggravating me, and though the meditations were beautiful and I did learn a good bit, it seemed like torture (which, it is said in the Art of Living, is a good way to know you are stretching and growing, however uncomfortable that statement can be! :) ) However, I’m now free and will be looking to check into an ashram back on the other side of the river which seems more peaceful. The last day of the course (yesterday) was met with a strong downpour, a very auspicious sign in Indian culture. I really accepted it as being a blessing though. Rain is easily dismissed on the East Coast of the US, but this was the first good rain I’ve seen since coming to India, 7 weeks ago, and it made me so ecstatic that I could hardly sit still as I ate my lunch.

I’ve been staying at a Hare Krishna ashram, which is quite the experience. The ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or Hare Krishnas, as they are popularly known) is the most famously evangelistic Hindu sect. Popular press often labels them as a cult and relates their international sectors to mysterious crimes that have happened, however, most people will know them as the bald men in orange who “sing at the airports” and on street corners, proclaiming that chanting “Hare Krishna” is the only way to self-Realization and heaven. The energy here at the ashram is wonderful, but I’ve not been able to step past my reserves about the Hare Krishnas, luckily, the noise and the expense of living here is a good enough excuse to move back to the other side of the river. (They charge an “outrageous” Rs. 350 per night ($7- very high for Rishikesh ashrams and there is chanting going on from about 4 or 5 in the morning to midnight every day, not to mention the construction which starts, directly above my room, as early as 7:30.)

Rishikesh itself is really a great paradox. As always, cows are everywhere in the streets. Rishikesh seems to have a good bit more pigs than other towns I’ve seen. However, most noticeably, the line between beggars and saints here is more blurred than anywhere I’ve experienced. Seemingly every homeless person dawns saffron robes, though I’ve only seen a few of them meditate or do yoga. Many of the sadhus (spiritual aspirants) here are also infamously fond of one particular prasad (offering) of Lord Shiva- that of Bangh, marijuana. Walking by the ghats of the Ganges late at night, you can be inundated with the smell of potent weed. Walking down the streets the other night, I saw a sadhu on the other side of the road in full saffron roads and rucksack, he looked to me: “Hari om!” I returned the traditional local greeting with a pranam, hands folded lightly to my heart, “Hari om!” He smiled, “You like a marijuana?” Thickly accented, and drowned out by the evening traffic of Lakshmanjhula Road. I bashfully looked to the ground, a wide grin as I walked on to the ashram.

"Entering India" 7th Mar 2006

In some way, I’m still trying to “enter” India. Something about this country is impermeable past a certain point. The India I want to find is a small village family in Gujarat, a gathering around an evening fire on a Himalayan mountainside, or the rolling expanse of the Thar Desert on some romantic, thirsty camel ride.

For some reason it is easier to fly overhead or pass on the perimeter in an autorickshaw than it is to plunge into the experience of all that India encompasses.

This is, of course, no problem for me in the States. I’ve never seen Death Valley or the Rockies, save for my cushioned seat on an airplane, but I am also never bothered by the feeling of needing to “enter” America—I am American and when I am home, it is simply undeniable, I am part of the scene and I belong there. I need not extend any effort or go through any motions whatsoever to “be American”. As much as I am who I am because America is part of my own identity, I also, to some extent, define America, at least for myself.

Feeling “at home” here in India also works similarly. Walking down the streets of Rishikesh in baggy jeans and listening to Iron and Wine on my MP3 player, I feel I am a part of India and that it is naturally a part of me. Running to Shiva temples dressed in kurta-pyjamas and sporting the tikka mark on my forehead afterwards, I feel “other”ed—by taking my own personality away from naturalness, the surrounding world pushes me out and reflects how impossible it is to be something other than the totality that I am.

“India is what it makes of you” comes to mind (John Keay, Into India) India is not only the same meditations, yoga, and chanting that I’ve been doing for years, but it’s also singing Stevie Wonder as I walk down an alleyway or having endless Chais and ice-creams when I “really should be more productive.”

Thoughts persist that I am in a beautiful and exotic country and I have endless opportunities to see new things and learn new ways of living. However, no matter that I do, I will be in this same beautiful, exotic country—everything I see is new and I already have the fullness of a way of living. There is no sense in chasing down some other “India”—actually, when in India, for sure, “India” can’t be missed!

This idea of “another India” is for sure a mirage, walking down the street or going for a meeting, it is so immediately evident that the rule of thumb for Indian culture is inactivity. Like a remnant of the caste system, it is part of life that one person (or several) watches as another works because, “it’s not my job.” (This is a very effective division of labor for a densely populated country with some amount of unemployment problems.)

Bonding between friends seems to happen with a silent agreement to do nothing for a short time. At any point in time, you can look around an Indian city and you’ll see beggars and saints, babies and grandparents—people whose lives are defined by indolence. Finally, the moment a new visitor finds they have genuinely urgent business to attend to, they almost invariably find that it is either before or after the elusive “working hours” of Indian professional life; hours which at times seem to overlap (like finding out you have come both after the last group of working hours and before the next) and which are anyway at the mercy of the seemingly random calendar of multicultural and political holidays.

Returning to the original question: how one “enters” India, might simply be answered by doing nothing. With a country that is so large and varied, with culture that is impossible to understand in any form of summary and with the close existence of so many opposites— the key of wisdom to understanding might be looking beyond the façade of bustling street hawkers and car horns and simple “doing nothing” with whoever is around; simply experiencing the truth of having already entered India.

--- A few more photos from Delhi and such

I'll admit, I increased the contrast and played around with the lighting in this picture, but it's so beautiful.

The photo of the water buffalo was roadside, taken when our but broke down as we left Delhi for Rishikesh.

The photo of the dancing is on Mahashivaratri night.

--- Jaipur Photos-- Hawal Mahal and Ranthambhore

These three shots are (from the fifty I took) of the Hawa Mahal in the center of the Pink City.

And the following two are from Ranthambhore National Park... our safari had this great field of spotted deer as we pulled away from the watering hole (i.e. lake) at dawn, and we met with lots of monkeys later... I have some footage of monkeys jumping over our jeep from tree to tree, which is kind of fun, but it's 2 megs...

--- Jaipur Photos #2

During my ‘free morning’, I was diving in and out of anything that looked promising—and so many buildings in Jaipur do look promising; only to find that many once very grand and amazing works of architecture are now gated shut or are home to squatters. As I walked through one such abandoned building, this girl kept poking her head at me as her grandmother read a scripture on the floor nearby.

The snake charmers are an interesting form of street merchant. I also saw some guys handling pythons as they walked down the street—I’d like to read more about this, these guys seem to do well with tourists, dressed in fine clothes and boldly demanding Rs. 100 for a few pictures. This man confidently flicked his cobras in the face and told us “Come on, touch it—it’s okay!”

This shot includes the Tiger Fort (I’m pretty sure) and the city streets of Jaipur, taken from the Tower above the Pink City…

---- Jaipur photos #1

This is the temple with the offering to the pigeons, really a wonderful moment.
And this is the woman who seemed to have the job of guiding the pigeons, here she is giving some sort of call to them as she sits on the ledge of a roof, two stories above the sidewalk markets of the Pink City.
As we entered Rajasthan, we were greeted at the “Tourist Rest Stop” (part of our tour package) by these loud men singing Hare Krishna… I think they were employed by the Rest Stop to make it seem “authentic” but they were still rather insistent on tips…
A Jaipur Alleyway, just inside the gates for the Pink City area.
These men are beginning to clean up these fine silk and woolen carpets after a mad-rush of carpet sales when everyone on our tour was pushed into their sales center as part of our tour. Most of these carpets are worth at least $1000

--- Photos from Fatehpur Sikri

Fatehpur Sikri is a well preserved but long deserted political hub… Emperor Akbar moved his rule out of Agra for a few years and set up camp in Fatehpur Sikri until he was chased out, probably for religious reasons (though some site lack of water)— Emperor Akbar was famously tolerant of Hinduism and other faiths, holding meetings with religious scholars from all faiths. Eventually, he ventured away from the Islamic religion of the Moghuls and created his own religion, something not well received by locals at Fatehpur Sikri. Here are some photos from the main complex there—the first one is from the mosque.
A woman looking through the beautiful lattice work of the tomb, (framed by the latticework I took the photo through!) each pane is carved from a single stone.
The main room of the mosque.
Boys playing at the pool in front of Akbar’s tomb.
Men talking inside the tomb. (And more stone lattice work!)

---- Photos from Agra

A bonafide moat... how cool is that? This is Akbar's (Moghul Emperor) Fort, Agra.... and this second picture is me in a dungeon inside the fort... I got excited when the tour guide said that one of the Moghul Emperor's was thrown into the dungeon... so, in I went... (The King was put in as a short term sanitarium because his father thought he was crazy, always smoking opium and sleeping with lots of women) upon later clarification, I found out that it wasn't the same dungeon....
This is my favorite shot I got of the Taj Mahal, it's from inside the mosque that flanks the Taj...
As part of our tour package, we were taken to a marble-works shop that does handmade marbles in the traditional technique with which the Taj was built.... so much beautiful art there. The artisans pass the trade on from father to son.... it had a cool kind of spirit to the place... Anyhow, this picture is of our tired and annoyed tour guide sitting amongst so many of these extra large marbles... this picture is especially"wow" to me since I saw the price tags on these peices.... they're all several thousand bucks... and I mean US dollars, not rupees.

The Taj Mahal frames this picture on the left, and on the right is a dome from the mosque that I took the first photo from. Lovely....

---Panoramic Image of Silver Jubilee, 2-19-2006

This is my first time playing with publishing photos, forgive the learning curve :) I have 43 to post here!
Anyhow, this is a beautiful collage of 25 photos, creating a panoramic shot of my seat on the 19th at Silver Jubilee (stage not included) anyhow, download this one and zoom in if you can... it's wild :)