2/28/2004 05:56:32 PM

Working on more of a written story, but in the meanwhile...
Here are some photos of downtown Mysore. Most of these were taken in the course of a few blocks. I will do a 'photo essay' a la blog for the Deveraj market soon. For a small city, it's very dense and rich with visual information aka massive overstimulation. Maybe these will give you a feel, an idea, an impression of what it is like here (sort of)...

Sorry for the delay, will post soon. Now it is no longer a technical problem, just a logistical one (I forgot the CD!)



2/26/2004 12:10:30 PM

It was a journey. A long time in the car, but when we finally arrived at WaterWoods where we stayed and went on safari in the park, the peace and quiet was delicious. Staying in a lovely room, sharing one with Lavinia. Jon had his own room with a 4 poster bed with lace curtains and a terrace! We rested up, followed with a lovely home cooked lunch. As tasty as the food had been in India, being in a quiet setting with a marshy lake and quiet well-kept dogs and the loudest sound being birds in the trees, it seemed to improve the flavor of what we were eating.

In the late afternoon, Sutiksha (she and her dad own and run the place) took us out in the jeep, to the 'jungle'. We had hopes of seeing a tiger. The guests before us had seen 2 AND a leopard! It's very dry and the watering holes are more limited so the possibility was high. Rolling around in the jeep we saw elephants, spotted deer, wild boar, mandabar squirrels, barking deer, monkeys and birds. The light was beautiful, I had never seen so many elephants. The first couple we saw were standing vigil over their dead baby elephant, you could just tell they were bereaved, it was very moving and sad.

Standing up on the seat sticking out of the roof of the jeep, I filmed with the DVD and got some great footage. My still photos are a bit disappointing. This is where you need the zoom and telephoto equipment that I don't like to shoot with. But how close can you get with a wide angle camera in the jungle? Not very, if you have any interest in personal safety. As the old joke goes, Where does an elephant sit? Anywhere it wants to.

I have one photo anyway to post and hopefully that will give a feel of what it was like. I fell in love, in a way. Seeing all the animals living together and drinking together they just are living in their world. They don't need houses or money or careers or TVs or us watching them, they have nothing to prove; just to be. It was a rich, powerful experience. One that makes me feel a whole bunch of things all at once. I can't find any words to describe them, it goes beyond thoughts and is strangely comforting.

We didn't see any tigers or leopards, but we weren't disappointed.

elephantsunset.jpg



2/21/2004 01:13:07 PM

A bit tired today. Had a really expansive experience at Nagerole National Park. Details and photos to come. But today I'm sending out some photos of Somnathpur, a temple from the Holystrata architecture style of the 13th century. This one, is completely intact and is a little jewel. Amazing carvings in a star shaped layout.
Somnathpur.jpg

Outside of the temple were a bunch of schoolchildren who were fascinated with us as we were with, well anything actually.
schoolchildren.jpg

Also included is a 'moving cart' photo to show you what I meant by the painted ox cart.
oxcart.jpg

We went to another temple, this one was VERY active and dark and you weren't allowed to take photos.
(I took one anyway).
womenentertemple.jpg

Oh, the photo of the rice paddies (I think that's what they are).
rice paddies.jpg

Meanwhile, all this fatigue and bit of a break in practice makes me think (which is probably a huge mistake) about yoga and my practice and everything:
-I am one of the only people studying with Guruji that is NOT a teacher. I feel as though I get to hang out with the high school kids.
-Sanskrit is REALLY hard. I feel like Charlie Brown.
Maybe that's it, I've come to India to work with my inner Charlie Brown. I always thought I was a Linus/Snoopy cross, but maybe this is what coming to my essence is really like?
A 'Peanuts' cartoon? Maybe Charlie Brown, Linus and Snoopy are all the same person (like Charles Schultz) or it's the one true thing versus the 1001 things.
So yeah, I'm questioning everything and wondering what the use is, why anything, etc.





2/17/2004 06:13:30 PM

So here is an attempt to describe with pictures 'my experience'.
When you click on the link they seem to go big and then size down to fit the screen. Sorry the verticals are horizontal orientation. I will try to fine tune this stuff a bit, but thought you (collectively) would want to see anyway.

First I'll show you where I live, the Green Hotel, a very nice place with a sub-text of 'Fawlty Towers' running around from time to time. Not to mention the character studies of the fall of the British Raj. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried...will try to document though...
greenhotel.jpg

Then I'll show you the interior of an autorickshaw, (something I see a lot of) this was the one blasting the bad techno music. autorickshaw.jpg

And THEN, the transvestisaris...which are actually ingrained in the culture (nothing left to chance here folks, EVERYTHING is considered, kinda amazing), they go around in groups asking for money from shopkeepers. They give them money because it's suppose to bring good luck. What kind of 'good luck' I will not begin to even venture....Also, when a baby is born they come to bless the baby and that is also considered auspicious and they are to be treated well and given coinage. I think because they bridge the chasm between male and female energy? There's a lot more to it, but that's the thimble of info I have.
transvestisaris.jpg

Oh...one more, the end of a meal of good thalis, 25 rupees each. That's about 65 cents. A thali is a bunch of little dishes with rich and roti (soft flatbread) and papadum (crispy lentil cracker-like bread). It's a standard dish, North Indian, I think. I'll know more once the cooking classes start next week. (Really excited about those.) It's really good with a lime soda-sweet. Which is just what it sounds like, lime juice, club soda and liquid sugar, you can also get it salty (which seems kind of icky to me). I will try it though, I could be pleasantly suprised, which is a pleasing thought.
thalis.jpg

Going off on a safari on Thursday, it's a big religious holiday (that I can't spell), so no practice, unless we want to do it on our own. We're going a couple of hours south to Nagerole National Park to stay at a fancy resort inside the park and go on an evening and morning safari. The we is the motley crew (not heavy metal, maybe heavy yogis) of Lavinia and Jon and your truly as we get out of the city and into another kind of jungle, the REAL one! Cowabunga!



2/15/2004 05:45:28 PM

"I'm sure India is a great teacher and friend. It really takes you for the loop, including the thoughts that keep you up in the night. It's like a lot of residue from our whole life and lifetimes that hasn't been integrated rears its head. Remember that it is a purification, and things come out of the cells that have been dormant for a long time."

My dear friend K wrote that to me in an e-mail. She really knew the precise thing to tell me.
I've been having, hearing stories and watching others go through their 'purifications' as well. The ipod was the most dramatic, but there has been a bit of paternal unrest (border skirmishes mostly, sniper fire and accusations of hiding WMD) the usual patter (pater) stuff.

Also having strange vivid dreams. Others I've spoken to as well. My friend M dreamed she marrried someone here, and thought, 'Gee now I have two husbands! What do I do with that?!' The first week I was here I dreamed Oprah was doing a profile on my life. The phrase, 'legend in my own mind' is perhaps key here. But it was funny peculiar. It was all about the filming of 'my life' not the presentation. "How do we describe with video her (my) life?" The producers would say. Being the producer of my own 'story' I think about that sometimes too, being here, photographing, keeping a journal, the blog. Am I obsessing over memory, documentation, validating my experience?

Perhaps this is getting a bit too existential? Or bogged down instead of just an affable blog post.
Another dream I had was that I was 8 years old and I was wearing this favorite nightgown. In the dream I was looking down at myself at age 8 wearing this nightgown. It was weird! Who needs therapy? Just come to India and do yoga, it seems a bit more intensive and unscheduled than weekly time on the couch. If you've done any therapy, your primed enough to give it a shot, along with the hallucinogens...you're set. Oh, and there are the dreams of bad TV action dramas, kind of in the Starsky & Hutch genre. Is it the TV I'm watching at Krishna's (he's the Tailor, more tails of him in a later entry).

Anyway...Speaking of the yoga, it's gotten hard! Led class again, it's on Fridays AND Sundays. Doing all the forward bends makes me wanna cry (they can kind of do that to you) and feeling kind of stiff and sore. Oh the first week was so positive! Life is life, even here, in psychedelic dreamy India. Tommorow is self practice, hopefully a kinder, gentler day. I hope writing that doesn't get me into trouble. I don't think Guruji surfs the web. I hope Sharat doesn't either.

I just want to share one last thing, not about yoga.
The tag line for Sahara Airlines is:
Sahara Air...emotionally yours. Really.

Shanti all over the world.
Bharat ki Jai!
I hope everybody had a LOVEly Valentine's day.




2/13/2004 06:51:53 PM

Today, was the last day of the week on a yoga schedule. It's a 'led class' which means Pattabhi Jois or his grandson (heir apparent), Sharat stands at the front of the class calling the poses and counting the breathes, telling us the pose, then to inhale or exhale. This can be helpful, but by the end of the week, it's exhausting.

The begining of the week everything was promising; I felt so much stretchier and Guruji (fond term for Pattabhi Jois) helped me twice. When he assisted (helped) me last, was when he toured NYC 2 years ago and shortly thereafter I went through a major (involuntary aka unplanned) detox! This time, I was glad for the assistance and I could really feel the shift after he helped me, but I was wondering what would the repercussions would be.

Well, I didn't have to wait long to find out. I returned from practice, sitting eating breakfast (you don't eat before you practice or you'd probably throw up or as my friend MW sez, 'downward dog decomposing'). Marietta came up to me with terrible news. She had been attempting to add music to my iPod, but instead of it adding (even though the @#*! dialogue box with the manual only transfer box was checked) IT ERASED ALL MY MUSIC & 2 BOOKS!!!!! 5GB OF STUFF!!!!!

She felt terrible. I cried, I was crestfallen, bereft. I didn't wail and tear my garments, but just sat in a stupor with tears streaming down my cheeks. (not so) Quickly I recovered and I realized that this was yet another lesson in attatchment. It was stuff. It was about being dependent on it, it was time to let it go. Even though my little energizer bunny of an ego/mind didn't really feel that it was time, it wanted a recount. But no hanging chads here folks.

Meanwhile, Marietta found people with CDs and put them on my iPod. Now I don't have as much or the same music, but I have all this new and different music. Hey it all works out. Happiness is having an iPod with music to listen to and being in India and doing yoga and being stretchy and meeting great people and eating profoundly yummy food and surviving the traffic and pollution. It's all good. I think I'm cool about the iPod lesson. I also think Guruji is amazing. I feel strongly about this, but that's the next chapter. Om for now.



2/10/2004 03:13:12 PM

With Delhi belly abating and sleep patterns getting a workable rhythm... getting out and about has become more possible as well as desireable. Here's an impression, hopefully there will be film (at 11).

Driving in a rickshaw with speakers in the back behind us blaring some pastiche of indian style/based on american style techno/disco drowning out the majority of traffic noise (not a small feat). We zoom over to 'downtown' of Mysore:
'Are you ready to go? Let's go!' Blaring from the speakers. Scooters with woman in saris on side saddle, the cars, trucks piled high with unidentifiable objects (WMD? Cow shit?), school children, girls all sporting two braids, dust, exhaust, strings of flowers, flies, scarves covering our nose and mouth...looking like 'shy ladies', pictures of Hindu deities, beggars, goats, men in lunghis with oxford shirts, bicycles, cows eating garbage, speed bumps, fruit stalls, people sweeping the sidewalk with brooms that look as though they just came from a thatched hut in a fairytale, feral dogs, an actual red light, rag rugs hanging on a clothes line, unintelligable signs EVERYWHERE, people starring (at you) EVERYWHERE, roundabouts with statues in the center, bright round plastic water jugs, buses overflowing with people, woman carrying very large objects on their heads and there are no sidewalks anywhere....never saw a street sign either.

Suddenly we stop, we are standing in the middle of everything. Scooters, rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians are nose to nose, cheek to jowl, ass to elbow....we go to buy CDs and that's where we meet the indian transvestites. Really. A whole passle of them. We checked them out, they checked us out. Does 'Wigstock' have a satellite festival? Maybe I haven't left NY and I'm in the East Village? I'm told it's part of the culture, and somehow it doesn't suprise me. I'm kind of getting beyond suprised, which is probably not a suprise to anyone else.

Today I have again come to the realization that previous experience plays a roll greater than one can ever imagine in one's future. Now that being said, having taking psychodelics in my youth (mostly) the experience of tripping really helps in being in India. It is all just one big acid trip. As R said to me 'All a passing show'. Yup.



2/05/2004 11:11:57 AM

Traffic is a shared experience. Think of the opening scene of "A Touch of Evil" which is one long take (a brilliant piece of filmaking)Think of it w/out the precise orchestration, actually without any orchestration, except maybe cosmic. Well there you have it. What driving is like. The horn is used as much as the accelerator, it is how cars 'talk' to one another. Hand signals override blinkers. Animals don't see blinkers and yes, they drive (carts). Also the sense of personal space is different, it's a lot closer. For example: a two lane highway can become four lanes, as needed. If the on coming car still doesn't have enough room to overtake it can slide back or force the other car (from the other direction) to slow down. It's very aggresive driving, but it's not played like 'chicken' (as in "Rebel Without A Cause", another movie allusion). It just is, everyone understands this, except maybe the tourists sitting in the backseat. I was warned not to look out the front window when being driven, just for my own sanity. After an hour on the road I developed this macabre fascination with seeing how this 'worked'. I was still in one piece after all, there had not been an accident and I wasn't sure one was waiting to happen either. That was a car and driver experience.

An autorickshaw experience is a bit different. It's a bone rattling one. The dupati you wear with your shalwar kameez outfit comes in very handy in covering your nose and mouth to buffer the effects of the deisel fuel, dust and pollution that can give you a sore throat (god knows what long term). In taking several rickshaws over the course of an afternoon, in not keeping a close count, we nearly hit: a cow, a dog, a mother with a baby, a bicyclist and a school girl, and that's low balling it. Sharing the seat with two other woman of healthy european stock it kept us wedged in and allowed gravity to work to our advantage. It also made it slower going, a tad faster than walking. This AM taking one to come to the internet cafe, I had to wind my scarf around me as well as my purse, not for fear of theft, but because I was afraid they would bounce out. We also went a lot quicker, a fast jog, emphasis on the jog.

A scooter ride was great. Krishna the Tailor (how could I make it up) drove me to an ATM. It was really fun. Last time I was on a scooter was in Greece in '95, I had forgotten how much I liked it. If I were braver I would rent a scooter, but I'm afraid I would space out for less than half a second and then.....GAME OVER!!!! I think I have a different dharma (path to live).



2/04/2004 11:20:04 AM

Bit of a break to move from north to south. Arrived in Mysore a couple of days ago. Flew into Bangalore and then had a car and driver for the 3 1/2 trip down to Mysore. I got to ride in one of those Ambassador cars, modeled on a Morris Minor. They're all over the place, being a HUGE fan of Morris Minors, vintage Volvos, etc. (those of you who know me will be nodding your collective heads), it warms the cockles of my heart, how could I not love a country where these are as common as cows?

Anyway, the trip was long and somewhat scenic, people living in less than shack like conditions versus these vistas with these strange hills that look like a hairless coconut dumped on a soft rolling green landscape. When I was in Delhi, everyone would say upon hearing my program, "oh the south is very different than the north" exactly the same way, same cadence. Well, it's true, it's so warm, so lush and green. And... soooo.... sloooow.... evvverything kinnnnd of taaaakesss aaaa l o o o n g timmme.
And there's this bobbly head thing. What's up with that? It's kind of a head swaying thing that is neither yes or no. It's a bit disarming. You either start to do it too or get seasick watching them. My friend SP told me about this, now I get it...as I am sloooowly getting use to things.

So, while in Delhi, living the high life, complete with a bit of melodrama and intrigue, gallery openings, parties, drinking to excess, even trying a beedie (which is quite good despite it's toxicity), meeting a lot of people, some of which were terrific. I had a really good time, even if I felt as though I was 6 years old and kept asking, "what's that?" or "how do you get a taxi?" Got ripped off my first time. The fare was double. It was a humbling moment for me, the New Yorker. Yeah, I've come to realize I live in a tiny little world on the island of Manhattan and I am 6 years old when it comes to world travel. This is a step up from a babe in the woods (when I first arrived), so there is hope. So left Delhi with 'delhi belly' (the runs). V called it my baptism. Yup, it seems in India that would be the way a baptism could be.

On the way to the south it seemed central casting had gotten there before me, slender girls in bright pink saris carrying water jugs on their head, men working in the sugar cane fields and rice patties, oxen pulling brightly painted carts. It was like watching a movie from the car window.

Now, at the Green Hotel, sleeping (or rather not very well) under mosquito netting, a rather airless contraption. It looks romantic, but it's not, it's hot. I don't seem to have to worry about mosquitos so much as ants. A trail came in last night and I rushed to clean up any crumbs off the table from biscuits I had munched earlier. The tissue turned black as I wiped. I guess I was erroding quite a bit of history there. Besides all that, it's a nice place, the grounds are lovely, formally a palace and the food is delicious. I don't know if I will be able to eat the NY Indian food, it is nowhere near as good as here. I remember when V came to visit he wouldn't dream of it, "they get something wrong here, its' not worth it," he's right. There's this dish called curds and rice that is yogurt and rice with pomegranite seeds, cilantro and peanuts (?), it's so yummy (and binding) I just love it.
More to come later...