om

hello

i had to make an entry. I suspected that some of you would be emailing to check on my safety and security and sure enough, when i checked, there were emails and i appreciate all of your concerns. i love you.

and sure enough, as you wrote, Raina, i am tucked safely and soundly away in a peaceful ashram far, far away from Bombay (Mumbai). In fact, we barely heard about the event here. I mean, the news did waft in from outside but it is as insignificant to us as the colour of our underwear. At this very moment I still know nothing about what happened at all. All i heard was ... terrorist bombing in Bombay. Really, its so far away from here in both physical and every other kind of space.

its not really news. I hope that doesn't sound.... arrogant. That is not my intention.

What is news to me is things like.....there is black tea at tea break today! (rather than the green or red we usually drink) and that the first draft of Mata ji's book has just been printed and handed to me for proofreading. So that's exciting, and not dangerous or terrorizing in the least.

I will promise to stay out of the big cities unless I absolutely have to, for passing through to other destinations. This is where the attacks tend to take place.

So while i'm here i might as well tell you a story.

There is a place by the river ganga called Santosh Puri where a family lives; a mother, her two daughters and a son. The father left this world in 2001 after telling his family the previous day, that tomorrow, he would not be here. He gave them all the instructions for preparations to be made for his departure. He was not ill or sick in any way, just advanced in age. His work here was done and it was time to go. We call him Baba-ji (grandfather) and the mother: mata-ji (grandmother).

When it was time to go, sitting in the garden, he took 3 breaths and on the fourth, he left. His body leaned over and into mata-ji's lap and she then chanted through the night.

This is the ashram where i stay now.

It is not easy. Conditions are austere, but punctuated with moments of sheer perfection, joy and delight.

i don't really know what else to say about it at this very moment. It is all a giant science experiment going on in my life. We shall see the outcome of the experiment when i return home.

i miss everyone and everything in canada immensely. it is a favourite pastime of mine when i have time, to daydream about people and places at home. Food. Memories. It is amazing how sharp and clear my imagination has become since going without any media, television or movies for three whole months. I can conjure up anything i want and it is so vivid that i can smell things and taste things. It is marvelous.

still, being here takes up all of me. Involves all my senses and demands most of my attention. Which is a blessing, because if it wasn't for this, i would be homesick way more often.

So.....

the plan is still to stay in this ashram until i go to nepal in january. It is like family here. Because it IS a family and they treat you as such. It is a family that reminds me alot of my own. A bunch of hippies.

well, i gotta run.

pranayama class starts now. breathing. one whole hour of breathing. how to breath. different techniques and experiments with breath that create different effects and results. aaaaah, oxygen and life force.

it is my favourite class out of all of my classes.

ok, i love you all.

feel good, live well.

saturday

Well, I just received my first email from a Baba (a spiritual renunciate). He is not my Baba, he is my friend Naomi's Baba (if one can have ownership over a Baba). Such technology. Our Baba's also have cel phones, so I guess renunciation does not include technology. After all, Baba's have to keep in touch too.
I just had tea with my Bengali family. A couple of days ago I resolved my unresolved issue around the whole passing of the father and my not joining them in the mourning with all the rest of the village; going totally against my natural inclination to go in with them that fateful evening. Yes, a couple of days ago I spoke with one of the sons and explained my dilemma and my intense regret at having stayed away and my cultural issue that kept me outside and how I had felt in my heart to go in but let my head talk me out of it.
It was basically a non-issue for him and for them and he invited me in to see his mother and have tea and to look at the pictures of the wake and the funeral procession and the ceremonial cremation.
It was better late than never for me, and today was the second time I have visited since the night they brought his body home. It was very cathartic and therapeutic for me and necessary, I realized, to bring peace to myself around the situation.
I still regret not having joined in that evening. I can't describe the feelings in words, I'm sorry, it's not possible. But the regret is somewhat eased by having spent some time with them since.
I have a difficult time not breaking down in tears when I am with them but I know that I must hold this back, as one of the sons requested me to please not cry. The mother is not doing well at all, she is having breathing problems and stomach problems. She is not the same woman as before, not at all. She was a very happy woman before, glowing, married to her husband, because he was such a great man, as I have said, so kind and generous to all in the community, to all who came. It must be a great joy and sense of pride to stand behind a man like that. I think I understand.
This family has touched my heart in a place so deep I didn't even know existed inside me. They have no idea, and they will never know, and I will never be able to express to them, the change they have caused in me, just by living their lives and inviting me in. It is for this reason that I cry and am so moved, not only for the passing of their father.
So, I did the right thing. I shyed away initially, but I went back and connected, and for that, my soul feels peace.
I am leaving Rishikesh tomorrow for a spell, but will be back in January for my teacher training. In February, the oldest son gets married and I have been invited to the wedding. So of course I will attend. The cycle of life continues.
Tomorrow I head to an ashram 17km downriver from here. There I will take a course in Yoga Therapy. I don't know if there will be internet or how easy it will be to travel into town to find internet, so there may be a brief cut in communications here. Until mid January.
so if this is the case, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, happy happy solstice and a fabulous new year. I love you all!
and to all you ski/snowboard bums.........................ride your faces off please, for me.

Death

We just had a death in the family.

The Bengali family that owns my guesthouse and lives downstairs... their father died. He ate his last supper with me. It was just me and him.

They are incredibly thoughtful and warm and generous hey. I was coming home one night after we had lost our water and I asked him if the water was back. He doesn't speak hardly any english at all, so he didn't understand me, but there is a universe in his eyes. The softest, deepest, most kind eyes you will ever see.

He invited me in for chapati, indian bread. I agreed, and then his wife proceeded to bring me a full meal, of course. So he and I sat down to dinner. I asked her if she was going to sit down and she waved like ... yes yes, i will, just give me a minute, but she just kept serving us and he kept calling her to bring me more of this and more of that and we ate special homemade Bengali lime pickles which i LOVED. He kept asking me if I really liked the pickles. I love Indian pickles (due to my being Indian in some past life) and so that is how he spent his last night, with me, happily spoiling me with Indian delicacies and teaching me how to break up the pickles by squishing them with my bread in one hand.

The next evening I came home and there was a big white car parked outside our gate and a huge commotion. Something was terribly wrong. People were everywhere. There was crying and howling and then, as I stood there in front of the car, frozen, trying to understand the kuffuffle, i saw the body. The entire scene was like something out of a movie. Several men reached into the back of the car and carried out a body and when I strained forward to see the face, it was him, it was their father who I had just supped with the night before. And upon seeing his face, I just fell apart. I couldn't believe my intense emotional response after only knowing these people one month. I have shared a couple meals with them and a few conversations and jokes, but still, only one month. I immediately felt the pain of their losing this great father, this great man. For he was a good, good man. So generous and kind and loving and gentle.

Bawling, I went around all the people and into the gate behind where they had carried the body into the house. Indian custom has the family keep the body in the house so the family and all the relatives and friends and townspeople can come to mourn. A sort of a wake. but oh the wailing. The sound of Indian women mourning their dead is unmistakeable and I sat down on the steps and added my sorrowful cries to theirs. The louder and harder I cried outside, the louder and harder they cried inside and vice versa until we all finally quieted down, momentarily emptied of our sorrow.

It was quite an epiphany for me. I have never had that response before. I handled it just like an Indian person would have. I guess that that is what was strange for me. I could not control the emotion I was feeling, and I didn't want to. It felt good to let it all out. It felt right to mourn the loss of a man so great. It did him justice.

My first impulse had been to run into the house to be with the family, the wife, the son (24 years old) the cousins and neice and nephew, but my Canadian self stopped myself. I heard a voice in my head that stopped me, the voice said: "leave the family to their grief, you are an outsider, they won't want you there, you have no right" . Afterwards, I regretted my decision so much. so, so much. because it is the Indian way to be together, to BE together, to support eachother, to just BE together, to not leave eachother alone, but to stay close and be close.

After talking to a few Indians and a few foreigners who live here, I have realized that the family probably thought it very strange that I DIDN'T come in. very strange. and I feel strange about it now. awkward. culturally you know. I mean, I know they probably are allowing for the cultural difference, but the part that is the real kicker for me is that... I DID have the right impulse at first, but I didn't follow it, I intellectualized my feelings and stopped myself from acting on that impulse and I really, really regret it now, so much. So if I ever find myself in a comparable situation again... I know exactly what I will do and I will let my instincts run the show. I won't second guess myself or overthink it.

so that is what has been going on. Such a beautiful, beautiful man. I think he knew, too, that he was going. I, in fact, think he chose when and where he was going to die. He had a heart problem and had had a heart attack before. but they found him down at the sacred ganga river this time. He had been sitting on a rock at the beach before he fell over. It is every devout Indian Hindu's desire to die by the sacred Ganges. Many people in their elder years retire to a riverside city in order that they will die near the river.

His oldest son has just got engaged, Diwali festival just finished and by the look in his eye after the dinner we had that night before when I was talking to his youngest son who is fluent in English.... he looked ... satisfied.... I looked at him and he had a strange expression of contentment and approval as he watched his youngest son converse easily with a foreigner, it seemed to me like he was thinking "yes, this one will do ok in his future too". .... he even said to me that night "my two sons" .... he was very proud and happy. You know how people have a tendency to die after a big event, a family reunion, a wedding, some momentous occasion... like.. they hold out until that is over, and until they know that everyone is taken care of and then they can die in peace.

We in the west are so afraid of death. We hold it away from us like it is a dirty towel.

I am grateful to these people for showing me another way. A better way. To not shy from it. To live it, as it is part of life, and to pull eachother close and be witness to eachother's grief as we, as humans, are meant to do.

And I see how.... all that matters in the end is that you have been a kind and gentle, loving and generous person in this life. It is for this that people will cry over you. Nothing else matters.

lizards for lunch.... not as food, but as guests

I had lunch with a lizard.
Well, technically speaking, I had finished eating when the lizard joined me, but nonetheless, he was there.
"Freedom Cafe" is chock FULL of young Israelis, fresh from the army and eager for freedom. I wonder if they will find it at the Freedom Cafe? It seems they think so, because the place is full of them.
And then there is me.
I find a beautiful riverfront spot with a low table and cushions and blankets and pillows on which to sit on the floor. This is a common arrangement. Proper tables do exist in other parts of the restaurant, but I prefer this location. It is more comfortable and the riverside view is next to none. I guess the brown baby lizard thought so too.
His invitation came when the woman sitting at the next table jumped up and shooed him my direction. Thanks lady! and i made sure to thank her, with a laugh so she knew it wasn't malicious.
The lone lizard made straight for my lap. He was maybe only a foot from nose to tip of the tale, and a nice long full tail he did have. They move like darts, those little suckers, and I soon found myself, once again, leaping up with a squeak so as to make my lap less inviting. (There was another occasion.... involving a mouse last week, different restaurant, but that is another story for another time). He then swerved to his left and went up the table cloth and spent the rest of his time sitting there on the table, staring at me with one eye and his head cocked, making me wonder "what is he thinking?". It was like he knew me, the way he was looking at me, the way you watch someone from a distance you think you know but are not sure so you wait and you watch and observe.
Now that I was confident he was aware of me and therefore not considering climbing into my lap, I settled back down on my cushion. We sat like that for a short time, me admiring him and he scrutinizing me. Soon we both grew bored and he continued to look around at other things while I turned back to my book.
So now i've had lunch with a lizard, dinner with a mouse .... that's all i can think of at the moment, for fauna at dinner parties.
The mouse was one evening about a week ago. I might as well tell you now before i forget.
this cafe i go to that has really good homemade bread that i get made into toast.... they also have an area that is like low style japanese tables and just cushions and pillows to sit up against, so you are sitting on the floor. You are outside, right by the ganges river, and a tree grows up inside one corner so you are leaning up against a tree while you eat. So i'm happily eating my toast, and its dark, you know, evening time, except for some dim lights, and i see a movement under the table, i think its a shadow but i look again, hard this time, and its a mouse! he almost ran right into my lap! Now i'm not especially afraid of mice and i'm thinking i'd just shoo him away but he kept coming back so it made me a bit jumpier. I jumped up and continued shooing, clapping (which apparently works on cows but not mice) and hitting my hand on the floor (which DOES work on mice) but it seems he was trying to get past me on his way somewhere and i was simply in the way. Once i jumped up, he quickly ran past me and over the wall and down to the beach. i had screamed by this point. i couldn't help myself. It was all too much. i was the only customer at the time, luckily, and a Nepali called over "do you want something m'am?" .... as if this was my customary way of summoning a waiter. "no, just scaring away a mouse, that's all" i called back, so proud of my bravery .
He shrugged and carried on.
aaaah....India.

shoes

QUICK BLOG:

news and events:

i need a secretary. i seem to have gotten so busy, i need someone i can just dictate to, on the go-like and they can transcribe it. hahah.

today i was looking at my shoes, my runners.... and calculating... i don't think they're gonna make it for another 4 months, let alone 8! and shoes here.... well, that a joke. if you want to wear flip flops all year round, then its no trouble. or like some guys, wear flip flops working on the construction site. for real. i saw it. incredible. i guess there's no worker's comp here. if you're clumsy enough to drop a brick on your toes then that's your problem.

i took myself for a stroll down what would be Rishikesh's equivalent of Rodeo Drive: fancy sari shops and expensive western clothes (expensive by indian standards of course).... but no sensible shoes for angie. oh well... i'll figure something out. i didn't anticipate my runners wearing out so fast. i guess i've been walking lots. they have runners here but they are horrible stiff plasticky uncomfortable and not well made affairs. what to do.