QUICK AFTERNOON SHOWER

TRIP TO SHORANUR

Justine and I went on a trip to Shoranur recently to see a concert of some regional women's folk dance called Kuratiyattam. It was really hot and I was getting over some kind of stomach bug which did not help me enjoy the performance. Luckily, we had permission from Kerala Kalamandalam to tape the performance for Justine’s ongoing research. Justine and I also watched some Mohiniyattam classes and were allowed to take a few pictures. I was feeling exhausted and my stomach was in dire straights so we left a bit early and headed to our friend David Smith’s luxurious house on the river for some R & R.

At David’s we were treated to gin and tonics and cashews on the veranda looking out on the river. A very English dinner of potato salad, boiled eggs, Russian salad and a side of mayonnaise. Quite a nice break from South Indian fare, actually.

The next day David, Raju, Raju’s youngest son, 5 year old Chootu, Justine, and I went on a drive on a rural road to go to a waterfall out in government forest land. The village we parked the car in was very small. Everyone was amazed at the foreigners stepping out of the car.

To get to the waterfall we walked on a beautiful stonewall lined path with rubber tree plantations on either side. I was imaginint what a great mountain bike area this would be. On our way we met up with a couple of local boys and a man who were happy to accompany us. Raju, a native Keralite, chatted with them in Malayalam. The waterfall was small, but a scenic spot overlooking the valley and distant hills. We were able to splash around in the falls and cool off. Unfortunately, this is a man-only type activity and Justine couldn't swim. Instead she lounged in the shade taking in the surroundings and enjoying the hot coffee and sweets David had packed along.

After splashing around in the falls the local boys and man offered to take us to a cave nearby on top of the hill. Raju and I agreed to go along. It was a steep 30 minute hike through some heavily forested area and some thick rubber plantations. We passed signs of a wild boar who had been rooting around for bugs and roots and a forest department campsite.

The cave was very dark and dank. Raju was very impressed, but since we had no light other than the flash on my camera our spelunking was quite limited. We then hiked back down and to the falls. We enjoyed the surroundings for another half hour and then headed back down to the car.

It was back to David’s for lunch and a nap. The late afternoon was passed playing with Raju’s two boys among the swarms if dragon flies and kingfisher birds.
We spent another night there and then the next morning got a ride from David and Raju to Thrissur where we caught the train back to Ernakulum.

YOGI TEA- LUKEWARM AND MILKY

India may conjure certain Orientalist-style images in your mind. Naked yogis covered in ashes meditating on the banks of the Ganges, women in saris chanting mantras in front of temples dedicated to Krishna, Parvati and Bhagavati lit up with butter lamps, Tantric monks committing stoic acts of asceticism and colorful village festivals. All this is here in India, but these spiritualist visions are warped into a patently post-modern, futuristic reality....

Really, I am living inside a science fiction movie- strange half-finished and abandoned post-apocalyptic architecture dwarfs me, the screams of millions of neon and printed signs in Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi and English compete with temple firecrackers, mosque calls to prayer, bus horns, car horns, motorcycle horns, bike bells- a cacophony of sound, taste, sight. Pleasing smells of jasmine, gardenia, and sandalwood are beat back by the smell of pee, poo, and dead chickens. Senses overload and overlap in a distorted psychedelic dance- ebbing and flowing chaos into order, pleasure into pain. Am I tasting the dance? Does the meal really sound beautiful? Am I actually seeing the music? Synesthesia, the blending of senses seems the only option to sensory overload, or perhaps meditation can stop the impending sensory crash I feel is inevitable here?

Armed with a list of yoga studios naively downloaded from the Internet, I began calling various yoga schools in the metro-Kochi area. Of course, because I am living in an Indian version of the film Mad Max, only three of the fifteen telephone numbers listed work and of those numbers just one of the listings is actually holding classes. Back on the Internet I find, what appears to be a gorgeous yoga studio out in Fort Cochin, the relaxed-vibe-tourist-peninsula area about an hour by bus from where Grady and I live. So on Saturday, after one of my grueling dance class, Grady and I work our way on to a local bus and journey over to Fort Kochi. Of course, we didn't really know where we were going and didn't bother to bring a map or and address (we are so nonchalant here), so we wandered around a bit aimlessly and then talked a rickshaw-wala into taking us to see the yoga guru. Eventually we found his yoga studio on the ocean and after various calls to various people's mobiles we got an appointment with the "master," a half-Indian-Jewish, half-Indian-Catholic, Buddha T-shirt, black dhoti (sarong) wearing yogi with long matted hair and a huge beard. We expect all these wild accoutrements from yoga masters in India...

But then, he pulled out his guitar and started playing all these hippie songs from my childhood- like "The Earth is our Mother, We must take care of her" and "Fly Like and Eagle." From having corrupted mudras parroted at me in the wilderness last summer to having wilderness songs sung to us by a half-crazed yogi in Kerala, Kipling's quip,
("OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat)
seems more a fulfilled prophecy than a simple poem.

At the least, it is a long strange trip we are on, made stranger by the convoluted pathways of cultural hybridization. I haven't made it back over to Fort Cochin to see Shree Abraham, something about his guitar wielding, dreadlocked, snaggle-toothed style didn't appeal. Or maybe I just feel bitter at having the secret parts of my childhood pulled from the void, as if my memories somehow escaped through the portable hole in my father's medicine bag and were funneled through a wrong worm-tunnel in the void.

So I was on to my next potential yoga contact, the only one from the original list that seemed at all hopeful- City Lights Gym where the master said they had ladies-only classes. Since society is extremely sexually segregated here, ladies-only classes is appealing.

To digress, (and also vent at the frustration of living in a sexually segregated society), Grady had plans to meet a friend from work (male) at this four-star hotel the other Friday night. Since it was Friday night and I didn’t' feel like sitting at home cooking sambar or dosas, I decided I wanted to go along. So I went along with Grady, figuring that since it was such a nice hotel that it would be fine for me to go in the bar. I wore very modest clothes- salwar kameez with a duppatta (long scarf worn backwards to cover one's breasts). There were no women in the bar which was full of businessmen variously talking on their cell-phones, smoking, eating peanuts, watching the fish tank and drinking whisky. When we walked in you would have thought that I was wearing pasties and a g-string, what with all the gawking and staring I got. I decided to sit in the lobby while Grady drank beer with his friend. Drinking is not a social activity here. Men slug whisky and get very drunk. Grady's friend from work was very disappointed in their drinking efforts. While I thought they did quite well, drinking four large sized beers between the two of them, his friend was aghast when Grady said he had to go- "Drinking is now over?" he asked with a very doubtful expression on his face. "But we haven't started the hot drinks." Hot drinks, of course, means whisky- lots of whisky. Luckily, Grady had me as an excuse and we left the hotel without Grady getting plastered.

Excuse my ramblings on sexual segregation.

So, I decided to check out City Lights Gym, located only two bus stops away from our flat. I grabbed a bus to Edapally, (Rps. 3), and got down at a junction. Chatted with a rickshaw-walla in Malayalam and eventually convinced one to take me to the City Lights Gym located down a back lane, near a temple. City Lights Gym, in addition to being a yoga studio, I found out, is also home to the Edapally Arm Wrestling Club- who would have guessed? Outside the small yoga area were several special arm wrestling benches with pads and hand holds for those strainingly engaged in that most manly art of arm wrestling. I met with the yoga teacher there, an elderly gentleman there who launched into a lecture on REAL YOGA. He told me, without ever witnessing me blow a single pranayam through my nose or bow into a single asana, that all my training was incorrect, that yoga has no spiritual basis, the science of yoga is based on functional anatomy and physiology ONLY! Interesting to find a rebellion from the spiritualization of yoga here in India- I guess, according to this gentleman, yoga really does just give you a nice butt and really isn't about enlightenment after all. I decided this was not the place for me…. But not to despair, while waiting in line at the local bank I found a flier in Malayalam that had details on another yoga class. I decoded the Malayalam and found that the flier had a mobile number. I called, it rang, and I connected to a very sane sounding fellow. I had details on another yoga class.

This class I found without much hassle, located next to a shrine to the Edavzha Guru, Guru Narayana. I went upstairs and met with the yoga teacher who told me that this class was not for me. He told me that these were very beginning students who would only be practicing shivasana (corpse pose) for twenty minutes and then lifting one leg at a time to the ceiling for five minutes each. He was very concerned that I was an advanced student who knew how to practice headstand and that it would be a very basic class for me. I tried to convince him that I could still learn something from the class and that I mostly just wanted to join the community of practicioners. He was unmoved and told me I should come to a 5AM class. I would have gone, but the class he suggested is about an hour from my house which would have me leaving by 4AM- this isn't too bad, Kundalini yoga practitioners (myself included) often start their sadhana (daily practice) at 3:45AM, the problem is transportation at that time in the morning. So, yet another yoga class I can't attend.

My next attempt at finding a yoga class was at a studio, (studio isn't really the correct word yoga places are just rooms here like any other room), with a large sign advertising near Grady's work. Unfortunately, the yoga master here had moved down south to Varkala to take advantage of the international tourist scene that flourishes there. So no classes for me in Kakanad.

Yesterday, coming out of the disappointing "really big" grocery store, (not really big by US standards, smaller than Mendosas in Mendocino and also just the same as an regular grocery store here, just with more of the same foods such as sambar, dosa, and iddily), I saw another sign for yoga classes. Just now, I called the numbers listed on the sign. One number didn't work. At the other number, I got a fellow who gave me another number that also didn't work.

Eat your heart out Mad Max, Blade Runner, THEM!, Cat-Women From the Moon, you don't have anything on my apocalyptic yoga quest in sci-fi post-futuristic India.
Maybe, Kipling's poem-cum-prophecy is correct and East and West have met and the result is the unending global-warming/capitalism fueled rains. Is this Kiplings "God’s great Judgment Seat?"

But this is just so depressing.
I think I will stick to Yogi Bhajan and the guru within and simply sing:
May the long time sunshine upon you,
All love surround you,
And the pure light within you guide your way on.
Sat Nam.

BACK IN KERALA

Once again, we have spent another month of our lives in Kerala. Though touted as 'God's Own Country' by Kerala's State Tourism Board, living and working here is always heavenly. Kerala is a friendly place, with a top-notch health care and education system, (due to its democratically elected communist government after Indian independence), but Kerala is also very crowded. It is the 3rd most densely populated state in India, and has many infrastructure, health, and sanitary problems.
We have found an apartment in Ernakulum, in the Pallarivottom section of town. Our apartment is in one of the new modern high rises that now dominate the urban landscape in Kochi. The building is named "Oriental Gardens," but sadly has no garden. And while it has a very nice pool for swimming, the pool has no water.
Due to the outbreaks of Chicayunga and dengue fever, and most recently, a return of malaria, we sleep in our trusty Tropa-Screen II mosquito netting in the evenings. Our apartment has an interesting layout you can see in the picture with space-age capsule elevators, very cool. Unlike some of the newer apartment buildings we visited on out search, (and we visited quite a few), this one is actually inhabited by local families. It seems that many of the newer apartment buildings here are bought up by NRIs (non-resident Indians) as vacation homes or investments and are empty.

We recently made a trip to see our friends Shaheem and Shefik in our old haunt of Cheruthuruthi, where we lived while Justine was on a Fulbright Grant from 2003-04. Shaheem is the entrepreneur of English Academies where he claims to teach you to how 'Speak English the Western Way.' He is also dabbling in motivational speaking, and gave us a performance at his home (see picture at left). Shaheem and Shefik live in a traditional house along some paddy fields. Until recently, their father ran an Ayurvedic (traditional medicine) pharmacy and grew many Ayurvedic medicines on their property. Unfortunately, their father recently passed away and they have been forced to sell much of the land to make ends meet, as they cannot continue the business since neither is a licensed Ayurvedic doctor. I have included a few pictures of Shaheem's house complete with decaying coconuts scattered about and the paddy fields, which were once part of their property.




Shaheem and Shefik's Kerala House


Paddy Fields

The Many Scattered Decaying Coconuts of Kerala


On our trip to Cheruturuthi we also visited out British expat friend David. He has retired to live in Kerala and has set up quite a place on the Bharta Puza River (picture) along some patty fields. We spent a night catching up with him and having shandies, beer and 7-up (actually one of the best ways to drink the god-awful beer here), on his veranda over looking paddy fields and the river.
The both of us also completed our registration procedure at the Foreign Registry Office at the local police office in Kochi. Here they make you wait for hours at a time in a small waiting room where a guard stands by complete with rifle and bayonet- as if the British could arrive at any moment. We waited until called in to see the beaurocrat who didn't really want us to register in Kochi. The proceeded to try to tell Justine that she could and should do her research in Thrissur. We stated our case about Justine doing research independently from Kalamandalam. Basically, we were not about to let a local bureaucrat dictate Justine's dissertation research- much arguing ensued and Justine lost her temper a bit (a big no-no for women here). Eventually we were able to see a higher-up who approved us living in a separate district form Justine's affiliating institution. We then went back to tell the other bureaucrat about his superior's decision. Then of course, he told us we would need a formal lease agreement before being allowed to register, just to make things a bit more difficult. All-in-all it eventually worked out and we are now officially legal foreign residents of India once again.
Waiting Room

Check back soon we continue to post news, stories, and personal reflections on our times and travels in Kerala and India. Here's one last picture of a sunset view from our apartment on the 9th floor of Oriental Gardens.