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.