Yours is the Day and yours is the Night.

Advent has somewhat passed me by this year, without the usual reminders. I'm afraid that the only thing i've given up has been abstinence. I sit writing this at Bangalore trainstation, as i await my overnight bus to Kovilpatti. It has been a quiet day - the first time in what seems like ages that i've been on my own. ("Hello"i said to the woman who i was sharing a bunk with in the overnight bus from Goa. "Where are you from?" "I come from Holland and i don't vant to talk" which wqs fine by me as it spared us the usual travellers' platitudes - the "where have you been"s and the "where are you going"s. I do try to get single spaces on overnight buses, but Indian buses being as they are it hasn't yet worked out. I dread the night i am put with a fat Indian man - yuk yuk.

A joke: how many Indians can you fit on a bus?

Always one more.)

My Goan experience was one of total escapism and i left so blissed out and starry eyed that i worried that the transitionback to normality and aloness would be a tricky one, especially after the most excellent company i've been keeping. I havebeen learning a lesson in holding lightly, that is, not clinging to or controlling, or obsessing over, the things and people and places that i love. I think it has something to do with being in the world, and enjoying it fully, but somehow being not ofthe world. Perhaps that is the calling of the aesthetic ascetic! (ho ho ho)

So here i am in the hustle and bustle of an Indian trainstation-cum-refugeecamp with the usual carpet of sleeping and feeding families, and beggars and sweepers and railway porters. From the bright happy light of Goa, where the most difficult thing was choosing something from the menu, i am heading back to a place where power cuts are the order of the day, and darkness of skin a real burden. But strangely and unexpectadly, in the middle of the darkness, light is bound to, and is, breaking in (i saw it last time). In my heart of hearts i am dreading the return to a place where the stuff of life was laid so bare and i felt the black dog of depression snapping at my heels. But. I want to bear witness to this beguiling, alchemic transformation that occurs when
things seems at their worst:


Something is breaking through, like childbirth; the pushing, the patience, the pain, an unbelievable breaking through - the flower blooming, the door closing and darkness into light. It is happening. Now. Even while we're in the Valley. But we need reminding.Constantly.
(Sarah Masen Dark)




I should just mention Jake, a chap i met on Palolem beach in Goa, who had come to India bringing - deliberately - three things only; his passport, some money and a small bottle of lavendar oil.... Colour me inspired.

After a bone jangling 10 hour overnight bus ride, and after watching the sacred elephant being washed in the sacred river, i sat down for breakfast and saw, through sleep deprived eyes, 'mushroom tea' on the menu. "That's odd" i thought. This was no ordinary mushroom, but magic mushroom tea. Welcome to Hampi. I have found the hippie trail. So this is Hampi, land of sci-fi landscapes, dreadlocked stoners, rooftop cafes and whitewashed temples.

And it's funny, because just as i was thinking how nice it would be to meet a lone girl-traveller, i did, in the form of Kate, from Bristol. And all was sun and bliss and books until we chanced upon some mad-dog english men, who uttered those fateful, magic words

"fancy a glass of rum?"

And i thought "sod this abstinence lark - bottoms up, boys!" And it was downhill from there. But what a rollercoaster of wonder it was. If we weren't jumping off boulders at the lake, we were mooching around monkey temples, or watching the moon rise or the sun set or vice versa, or bombing about the countryside on mopeds and if we weren't there we would almost certainly be found in one of the many rooftop cafes, where i would indulge my sole vice, my drug of choice, dahl. Ooh, the dizzying highs, the sickening lows of a dahl addiction. So that was Hampi, where everything was very, very...shanti.

And today? today i have mostly been sitting on a beach in, well, Goa. Occasionally i will muster the energy to swim to a rock and back, before deciding that a second breakfast is what's really required...And it is good, very good. But whereas before i was so taken with the sheer lovliness of the place - the fairy lights twinkling in the palm trees, the long crescents of white sand, the delicious fuzzy warbles oozing out of the many bars and restaurants (it really is the perfect Platonic form of a tropical beach) it is growing slightly monotonous - the blue and the white and the green. It begs comparison with Whitesands bay, in west Wales, with its lonely beaches and angry skies - a landscape like a face. Ah well, it is the best place to escape the Real (i.e difficult)India, and to charge my batteries ready to head back to deepest darkest Tamil Nadu, back to my India family, complete with 97 childrenn, and Aunty Pushpa who will feed me until i can no longer move.

Prior to this was Pondicherry, a seaside town reminiscent of an out of season English resort - complete with blustery promanade (i think the monsoon is following me, or i it) and delapidated pier. Pondicherry was until the 50s a french colony, so french is spoken widely (tres bizarre) and, joy of joys, there were plenty of croissants and real coffee and proper bread. I stayed at 'Mother's Guesthouse' which sounds a cosy sort of place until you learn that The Mother was chief disciple, mouthpiece and mistress of Sri Aurobindo, Bengali freedon fighter turned mystic guru, whose Ashram dominates Pondicherry. So above my head was a garlanded picture of The Mother with kohl lined eyes and funny hat, with the words "consider that the Mother is always watching you". Looming over Pondicherry is Auroville, the Utopian 'City of Dawn', harbouring thousands of - mainly european- seekers. My cynicism however, did not stop me - oh no siree - from claiming my mealtime tokens - breakfast, lunch and dinner for 20 Rs! Daily would i dutifully line up with hundreds of sombre pilgrims in the big hall, lined with creepy portraits of, yes, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and signs reading 'silence at all time' and 'do not waste food'. It reminded me of being at Glastonbury, and, cold, wet and penniless, discovering the Hare Krishnas with their free, hot food (praise the Lord).
Oh and i met some nice people, though this whole business of Meeting People (hide that desperate glint in the eye - very unattractive) is too much like a fresh Freshers Week, every week, where you befriend the first kind, normal face, and then spend the next three years wondering how you're going to get rid of them. What i'd really like is to find a very nice, lone girl-traveller...