garlic and sapphires in the mud

2007-05-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

things witnessed (is anyone taking notes?)

a goat wearing a gold lamAY skirt - Varanasi
a goat wearing a fleece, zip-up. also Varanasi
a goat riding on top of a bus, Nepal

on the menu: "cloub sandwitch", "chicken lever on toast"
"dear guest please take care your bilonggists yourself"

in a womans' magazine:
'why do men cry? what it seemed to be a female prerogative since always now the male are also in question. the very famous dialogue mard ko dard nahi hota is proving wrong. despite their pretendings, tears are triggered from males eyes. is it a natural phenomena or something to be wary of?' (good question...)

in a bookshop in the predominately Muslim city of Bijapur:
'after secularism: what, what, what WHAT?'

2007-05-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

Notes from street level.

so, i am in Delhi, searching inconclusively for The Perfect Cycle Rickshaw to send home (peddling tourists around sunny, flat Oxford? for ten bob an hour?? what a super fabulous wizard wheeze! well yes it would be, if i could find The Perfect One, you know, like the shiny pretty ones you find in...Rajasthan. yep, i am in the wrong state, drat and damn.) so in lieu of further searching i will sit in a street cafe, sip a lassi and watch the world wobble by. Paris this most definitely aint.

snake hipped youths in designer distressed denim and tight nylon shirts, women in day-glo saris. fruit vendors, chai wallahs, drum sellers and peacock feather fan sellers. rickshaws with quacking horns, cycle-rickshaws peddled by emaciated mustachioed men, and beggars. a man has just crawled past on all fours, his bony, oddly elongated arse in the air, his polio stricken limbs as thin and straight and brittle looking as twigs. he ambles lopsidedly past, beaming a toothy grin at me. Hasidic Jews, bearded Muslims. the usual crowd of dreadlocked backpackers, kitted out in Aladdin pants, wooden beads and 'Om' t-shirts. flea-bitten dogs lapping at fetid puddles. soothsayer, snake handlers and fortune tellers. naked bulbs hang from shop interiors festooned with colour. pale regal cows lope past. a dark, mangy cow attempts to enter the cafe and dribbles on the floor before being shooed - respectfully - away. (one cow, i noticed, had a fly covered cow-pat smack in the middle of its back...). vats of bubbling oil, the latest theme from Bollywood warbled by an undulating doe-eyed diva through a crackly transistor. it is all here in this carnival of creation. this great cosmic joke.

oh India, how do i love thee? let me count the ways. (how do i hate thee? let me count the ways...)

2007-05-28T01:02:00.000-07:00

Conversations on the road: the semi-chronological, non-definitive list of significant persons met.

Tomas, Mumbai. Rosalyn and Sam, Lilly and Jacob, Pushpa, Jenny, Danny, Sam and John and their extended family and the 300 plus residents of Gomathimuthupuram. Br. George, Br. Martin, Sr. Savananda, Catherine, Chandru, Christoria and Mike who generally looked after me. Katie and Jo, Mysore. Dave, Andy, Kate, Omar the storyteller, Hampi. Yoga Mark, Jake, the Korean girl whose name i immediately forgot, Trivandrum. Dragan, Lisa, Katie, Jaques, Russ the conspiracy theorist, Ben, Marco, Cat, Uwe the Hun, Leon, Katarin and Yoko, Varkala. Laura. Br. Augustine. Vladamir, Pierre the Virginia Woolf expert, Ian, Marco n Lotte. Rosa n Eric, Queridah, Calcutta. Terry "eat my dust" O' Raaawk and Danny Boy. DJ Ben "it's all about karma". Hans and family. the woman on the bus who invited me home. all the students with their questions: "is love the same as compassion?". Tashi ands Soman-Lhamo. the nice Tibetan Muslim guy. George the journalist. Sunil the silversmith. Neve the Israeli. Orion. lovely John at the Marabar hotel on my birthday. Gabriel. Tibetan Kelly on the bus who invited me home. Raj of Dylan's. the German woman i had dinner with last night.

clouds and clouds of witnesses.

2007-05-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

Dandelions in bullet holes.

hip hip huzzah!

PRESS RELEASE Jury decides - not-guilty: intention to damage US bombers destined forIraq was lawful. This afternoon, Tuesday 22 May, at Bristol Crown Court, the trial of two Oxford peace activists Philip Pritchard and Toby Olditch (known asthe 'B52 Two') concluded with the jury returning a unanimous verdictof not-guilty- in less than three hours. The two were charged with conspiring to cause criminal damage at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershireon 18 March 2003 when they tried to safely disable US B52 bombers toprevent them from bombing Iraq[1]. The court heard the two men actedto prevent damage to life and property in Iraq, and war crimes by the aggressors [2].The trial started on Monday 14 May 2007. This is the second trial for the alleged offence; the first in October 2006 ended in a hung jury,after 12 hours of deliberation spread over three days. The two accused were facing up to ten years in jail. There are two other similar cases awaiting re-trial, due to hung juries, at Bristol crown court. The two activists maintain that war crimes were committed in the bombing as cluster bombs, which spread unexploded bomblets that kill and maim civilians (like mines) were used, as were 'bunker busting' bombs tipped with depleted uranium that fragments, spreading radioactive toxins which are harmful to civilians. During the trial the prosecution accepted that even delaying the bombers would have prevented civilian casualties, as it would have allowed those fleeing cities more time to escape. In his hour and a half summing uptoday, Justice Crowther explained the legal tests that must be met for the prosecution to succeed, he reiterated the facts and summarised the evidence. A document 'steps to verdict' had been provided to assist the jury.Toby Olditch said "We're overjoyed, and thankful for the good sense of the jurors, for the wonderful support we've received, and for the commitment and expertise of our legal representatives. But hundredsof thousands of Iraqi people have still suffered as a result of the Government's actions. It shouldn't have come to the point that people had to take direct action to try to check the abuse of executive power."Phil Pritchard "I am delighted that the jury have returned a unanimous not-guilty verdict. Our action in trying to prevent illegal attacks onthe people of Iraq in 2003 is vindicated. I hope war of this kind neverhappens again."

PhilipPritchard is 36 years old, and a self employed carpenter and father.Toby Olditch is 38 years old, and a self employed builder. They both live in Oxford. The defendants were represented in court by barristerEdward Rees, Q.C. from Doughty Street Chambers, London. Their solicitoris Mike Schwarz of Bindmans & Partners, London.[1] The two men were arrested inside the perimeter fences at RAFFairford in the early morning of 18 March 2003, just two days beforethe bombing of Iraq started. They carried with them tools to damage the planes, nuts and bolts to jam the aircrafts engines, pictures ofordinary Iraqi civilians and paint symbolizing blood and oil. They also carried warning signs for attaching to any damaged planes which would help alert aircrew to their action. The two men acted nonviolently in a way which would not result in harm to anyone, including the military personnel at Fairford. They intended to stay with the planes and tell the operators what they'd done.[2] Civilian casualties in Iraq since the invasion are estimated between 68,796 (Iraq Body Count) and 650,000 (Lancet October 2006). More bombswere dropped in the initial 'shock and awe' attack on Iraq than in the whole of the first gulf war.

2007-05-07T02:58:00.000-07:00

Love begins with a question. in this case it was

"what is this music playing?"

it was addressed partly to myself and partly to the people i was eating at the restaurant with. the question was met with blank looks. just then a voice pipes up from behind me. it is oddly nasal.

"it's Loudon Wainwright the Third"

i turn around to find the source of the voice and am met with an unlikely hybrid of Tony Blair-on-acid and Woody Allen.

"Hi - i'm Ben and i'm from Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. who are you?"

...

fast forward three and a half months and i have just waved goodbye to Ben at Kathmandu airport. so, Ben - travelling companion, dal-bhat gobbler, haggler extraordinaire, teacher-friend, late-night whisperer of Leonard Cohen and general all round precious stone, Godspeed and thankyou for the memories.

'what is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they reced on the plain 'til you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. but we lean foward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies'
-from On the Road, Jack Kerouac.

2007-05-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

it has been quiet on the word front of late, i know, but not for want of reason. i have been trekking you see, high into the Himalayas, right into the lap of those mountains that were like creatures of prey: watching, waiting. our 15 day expedition took us it seemed all the way through the seasons, from the steamy jungle of valley to soft floored pine forests, across vast plains open to the sky and barren moonscapes silent but for the roar of a distant waterfall (like a thousand hands clapping). as we climbed higher the air grew thinner and the trees scarce.we set out for our goal - Thorong La - the highest pass in the world at 5000 metres - before dawn and it was like something out of a Greek myth - a line of small dark figures, some with torches, winding upwards through the mist. the mist cleared, the sun shone, the mountains glowed for us and we reached the top, collapsing for a while before the descent (what goes down must come up - thanks be to Goodness). i remember Philip Pullman remarking mysteriously that he had 'seen many landscapes' (as if to explain something of his books) and i feel like i, too, have seen afew lanscapes recently. the world is more strange and lonely that i knew. what are we at the foot of a mountain? or in the shadow of an urban skyscraper? we equal very little. mountians are my Cathedral now open to the seasons and the changeable sky.

2007-03-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

to skip a chronological beat back....

i should mention the time i spent in the bosom of my wonderful, big-hearted mother. we met in Delhi - she groggy with jet-lag and endless sleepless, sermon-scribbling nights, and me with guts-a-grumbling ominously. and there began two weeks of smart to very smart hotels, smooth airconditioned passages through knots of chaos and traffic, a Damascene conversion to bananas on Mater's part, gin, food and...shopping. dear Mum, like a dog in a field of lamposts, just couldn't get enough of that shiny multicoloured stuff - "stop the car! i can see Rajasthani brollies!" etc.
all was well (no arguments! minimum nagging!) and it was good to have a fresh perspective on things. all was well, that is, until it came to our final night together in Mumbai. there i was, lounging by the turquoise roof top pool of our ridiculously flash hotel, when she calls me over. there is something she wants me to see. i slope over to where she is standing looking, from the roof of the hotel, across at the slums of Mumbai. there are tears in her eyes. immediately adjacent to this cluster of grey is Mumbai airport. we watch as a plane trundles up the runway and circles a roundabout. the noise is deafening. "how do they manage to get a baby to sleep?" Mum shouts over the roar. we watch in silence for a while, until two tall frosty glasses of 'Mumbai' Sapphire arrive at our table. the circle is complete. it has take the luxury of a five-star hotel to set us apart; to cause us to remember something we had forgotten we knew. it was the usual story: we had grown accustomed; our sight was dimmed; our imagination stunted. but here it was - like a slap in the face! us! them! rich! poor! my mind registered with inescapable clarity an idea that had been lying dormant (in the antechamber of my mind). India has changed me, but not for the better. i have undergone a change of heart, but it has been a hardening, a sealing over. it is part survival, part cowardice, part confusion, for in India, where does love begin, and where does it end? love in India is like a snowflake in a ocean of need. my Missionaries of Charity experience was a drop in that ocean and, dare i say it, and i speak only for myself, knowing my own motives, an example of cheap grace. the people who haunt me are a couple who i have never met, who took their young children to live, permanently, in the slums, somewhere in South America. it is a kind of staying awake in Gethsemane. the warning words of Arundhati Roy sang in the dusk light over that little roof top scene: do not complicate what is simple. do not simplify what is complicated. the bush is on fire. there is an arrow of stars in the sky. is anyone awake? is anyone taking notes? i only know that i am too good at shoving this thing - this question mark that hooks and seals my fate - under the carpet. paying off the Hound with the bloody bone of token gestures.

......

i remain ensconced at the foot of the Himalayas. my body is adjusting to the cold. the sun shines today, and i have sloughed off some layers, like a snake shedding its skin. i walk in the mountains, i am wide-eyed at the thunderstorms. i take in alot of movies, the odd cooking class and daily conversation classes. we have been doing Haikus:

when His Holiness
walks into Dharamsala
classes are empty.

Kate is back in the frame. she sits and makes her jewellry, i sit and read a book. it is all very agreeable. next stop, Nepal, for the visa run and i daresay some trekking.

and in other news, happy happy congratulatories to Stuart who is with child! (or to be more precise, Stuart's soon-to-be Missus, Emma)
may it be the fattest, happiest baby the world has ever known, and may your partying never, ever be diminished!

2007-03-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

for the want of boots my feet did freeze.

if i close my eyes to the snow-capped mountains and my ears to the sound of Buddhist chanting, i could be back home, what with the rain dripping off soggy leaves and the mist and the rolling thunder... but no, i am in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, home to Tibetan Buddhism in exile. (i missed H. H the Dalai Lama by half a day). it is cold. really erally cold. so i am wearing all my clothes, along with a yak-wool bobble hat, yak-wool jumper and...sandles. it reminds me of John Cleese in that wonderful film Clockwise, shortly before he falls flat on his face in the mud: "this is how mankind has evolved from the primeval slime- by adapting to circumstances". back now to my cheap (50 Rs) if cold ( no heating! no hot water!) room.

2007-03-04T01:32:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to me.

if there was any truth in what the palm reader i saw today said i have SO much to look forward to! divorce! six children! insanity (i have a weak mind line)! an accident! involving fire! and more travelling!

but for now the present will do just fine.

2007-02-28T22:35:00.000-08:00

with an on-going dicky tummy that leaves me feeling lacklustre (why oh why did i boast of my iron gut??) i don't have very many words at the moment. but i do have other peoples' words - those, namely, of Annie Dillard, whose book 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' has been The Find of my century. this one gos out to Andy, in response (sort of) to your letter. (and thanks for the truffles!)

'i think that the dying prayer at the last is not 'please' but 'thankyou', as a guest thanks his host at the door. falling from airplanes the people are crying thankyou, thankyou, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. divinity is not playful. the universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. by a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. there is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. and then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing what you can , like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part'.

we are in Varanasi, the City of Light, for two days and one night and it is raining. we witnessed a couple of cremations yesterday, the air foggy with a familiar tang of - what was it now? ah yes, the smell of barbeques on a warm summer's evening... Mum insists that one night is quite enough, but me, i know i will be back.

2007-02-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

shuffle me to heaven and back...

someone has a beautiful pink tinklebox back in her arms... someone managed to erase everything from her ipod, whilst in the process of trying to put stuff on.... who on earth could be that stupid, i hear you cry.

ahem.

well anyway, it's back and nicely stocked. so, courtesy of one kindly fellow traveller who has since returned to Yookay and one shuffle button i get to hear Morrissey shouting at Nick Drake who sidles up to P J Harvey who's talking to Pulp who's chatting up Karen O who's arguing with Neil Young who's punching Cat Stevens who's looking for Leonard Cohen who's ignoring Van Morrison... etc.

there is more, much much more to say, but this keyboard is insufferably slooow so it will have to wait.

2007-02-11T04:45:00.000-08:00

Of grass and sparrows: Day 3.

Meet the Everywoman. Her skin is black, her limbs like sticks, folded away as she sleeps. Her head is shaved. One breast hangs exposed like an empty balloon, the other is a scar like a cruel lop-sided smile. Crowns of femininity stripped. This is humanity stripped. I can see your skull and your skeleton but your eyes glitter with a dark light: an old, low light that is remembrance. He will remember you is the promise - like the sparrow but infinitely more so, over and over again, world without end. Let us see that we are as the grass. We bloom and are gone. We are remembered and redeemed. It has taken place. And yet. There is more to come. More than we could ever dare to believe.

2007-02-09T07:22:00.000-08:00

Caves and Ashrams.

The Buddist caves of Ellora were pretty special (photos to follow). What was not so special were the 'friendly' tour guides - "i am just wery wery friendly ma'am! i ask no money! i do for good karma only!" (no, i don't need to come into another tiny dingy cave with a huge great lingam in it and i really don't need to hold your hand, or be kissed by you etc etc) I was reminded of the bit in A Passage to India, with the Malabar caves and their bizarre echo:

The crush and the smell she could forget, but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued it had managed to murmur 'pathos, piety, courage - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value'. If one had spoken vileness in that place or quoted lofty poetry the comment would be the same 'ou boum'. If one had spoken with the tongues of angels and pleaded for all the unhappiness and scandal in the world, past, present and to come, for all the misery men must undergo whatever their opinion and position, and however much they dodge or bluff it would amount to the same, the serpent would descend and return to the ceiling'

I then took what would have been a very comfortable, nay luxurious overnight bus (were it not for the itch factor (fleas? in the seats??) to Sevagram - to Gandhi's ashram. There i installed myself in the hut that was once inhabited by Bapu himself, but is now inhabited primarily by a family of rats. These were friendly rats, i felt - country rats. I settled myself into the daily routine of prayer, bread labour (preparing vegetables - organic, homegrown of course) or weeding, or cleaning grain, and talking to the other guests, and walking in the Maharashtran countryside.

And now, taking myself from the sublime to the mad, the bad and the downright dangerous, i am in Calcutta. And it is snowing. Well not really, but the fire we used to heat the water for the laundry was giving out big white flakes of ash and i thought, for a minute...My first morning at Prem Dam hospice found me washing poo and blood encrusted rags, in stages: scrape 'matter', cold rinse, hot wash, hot rinse and wringe. Stage one is obviously the most, er, distressing, and we squealed when, thinking we'd scraped the last we saw, sitting on the pile of washing a round turd, looking up at us like a toad. It sure was filthy work. The stuff we washed, by hand, we would have burnt or binned, like, straightaway at the Nightshelter. I cannot see why they don't invest in a washing machine. Apparently they could but don't, out of some principle or other. Well, enough of the schatology, bring on the eschatology! This place, Calcutta/ Kolkatta, is fast getting under my skin and infecting my blood (in a good way, not in a Malarial way...). More adventures of the fully not boring kind to follow!

2007-01-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

Alive.

I am alive. In spite of a nightmare bus journey last night - draughty, rickety, loud, long, dangerous (i.e 100 mph on the wrong side of the road) and to top it off, the cherry on the cake, uniquely squashed, cheek by jowl, next to a man with naughty, inquisitive finers. Rapture! Bliss! Joy that cannot be counted on ones fingers! But here i am, in one piece, girding my loins in preparation for some serious seeing of the sights in Ellora.

2007-01-29T22:08:00.000-08:00

O thief, tell us of the beauty of Paradise.

I saw three crosses very different from one another
That on the right is alive and not dead
that on the left is dead and not alive
that in the middle makes me marvel
it is like one who wakes while he sleeps
it is like one who lives while he dies
it is like a son of man and he is God.*

After asking around - nobody had heard of the 'town' it was said to be 'near' (i was beginning to think it was some mythological place, like Tir-Na-Nog) i found it, Kurisumala Ashram (or rather it found me...)

It was certainly real, but very remote, hidden away high in the Western Ghats, away from phones and computers, this small community of twenty monks, with an attached dairy farm and nothing for miles but rolling rugged hills. So i stayed for one week, breathing, walking, reading, talking (surprisingly, for these were Trappist monks) to Brother Augustine in particular (he and i would 'take upon us the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies') I don't have the words for the beauty, save to say that itwas what the Celts called a 'thin place'- where the barriers between heaven and earth are broken down and eternity is made visible. A place where the air was luminous and cold, where ordinary people live out extraordinary lives of quietude method patience and constant prayer. Constant prayer.

'There is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire, whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss. The things of time are in connivance with eternity. The shadows serve you. The beasts sing to you before they pass away. The solid hills shall vanish like a worn out garment. All things change and die, and disappear. Questions arrive, assume their actuality and disappear. In this hour i shall cease to ask them and silence shall be my answer. The world that your love created, that the heart has distorted and that my mind is always misinterpreting, shall cease to interfere with our voices.'
-Thomas Merton, from The Sign of Jonas.

And now i am back in the madness and the mayhem of The City, this time Bijapur, Karnataka (i am North-bound, these days) Here we have collosal Medeival Mosques and dust upon dust upon dirt upon people, smouldering piles of rubbish and for some reason lots of wild pigs, snuffling in the rubbish and lapping up filthy stagnant water and sleeping, whole families heaped together, like soft hairy pebbles. It feels good to be alone once again (i feel quite the intrepid explorer). There is a fresh sense of, if not danger, then something that requires guardedness. As a lone female gora (white foreigner) i am not exactly inconspicuous - there is that unbridled curiosity again, and the Eyes that Follow and the daily, hourly interrogation: "why you no husband? why you not want SONS?" I've decided that i make a lousy tourist. I trundled on my rickety old bike, by accident, deep the heart of the city, and found myself quite, quite lost, and when i did find the mosque that is home to four hairs from the Prophet's sacred beard, it cost 100 Rs (my food budget for the day) to get in. Considering that every square inch of the ancient place was covered in graffiti ("Pranjeet loves Sita") i don't know where all those rupees go. I will hit the road again tonight, for some more travailling. Next stop Ellora, Maharashtra.

*from the Syrian liturgy, based on the writings of Ephrem the Syrian, Deacon Monk of Nisibus, West Asia.

2007-01-14T02:25:00.000-08:00

Happiness writes white when life is a beach.

For the past six days i have been living on a roof. It is a beautiful roof. A perfect roof. It has everything i need: a bed, a loo, a bucket, a tap and the nightsky. It also has a Serb, an American, an Australian and a Finn to keep me company. Life is a beach (again). And it is good. Too good. I am drifting on a wave of fuzzy shanti goodwill. I am all at sea in a soup of Nothingness. What do i do all day? I do Nothing. My days are spent doing Nothing to excess. My days are full of Nothingness - a surfeit of bliss, replete with zeros. And against the blue sky hovers a big black question-bird; a hybrid of Catholic guilt and warped Protestant work ethic.
What are you doing here? You are a traveller, not a tourist! Get yourself out of this tourist trap, this theatre of pretend India with its cardboard scenery, its Jeffery Archer novels, its blue skies and its sunsets. Travelling is meant to be difficult! (I have had long bus-rides worth of musing on the etymological roots of that word: travelling. To travel is to travail, is to work, is to labour, is to give birth to. Perhaps)

But i have been reading, and i will share with you a fraction of the goodstuff. The first is from the collected writings of Henry David Thoreau, the second from Isaiah 5 (the Bible) and the third from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves, nor one another, thus tenderly.

...

Woe to those who stay up late at night inflamed with wine. Never a thought for the works of Yahweh. That is why my people are in exile, for want of perception. That is why Sheol opens wide its throat and gapes with measureless jaw...woe to those whose might lies in wine imbibing, their heroism in mixing strong drinks.

...

Justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try and save them.

2007-01-05T01:44:00.000-08:00

It takes a Village.

So i made it through another sojourn with the good people of Gomathimuthupuram. And what of my first Indian Christmas? Parts of it felt more Real - the rural setting, the poverty, the complete absence of consumerism; and parts less Real - the heat, the missing things (family, turkey...) Christmas day got off to a rousing start with the worst redition, ever, of Silent Night blasted from the church loudspeaker. At 3am. Honestly, for the love of Jesus, these Christians cannot do music. So i was up and swaddled in my best nylon sari ready for the 2 hour long church service at 3.30. Naturally, this put me in a sour mood, from which - amazingly - even vegetable biriani could not shake me. Or a phonecall to my family with their turkey and their brussel sprouts and their mince pies... The rest of the day was quiet. I got some washing done. I played with the kids. In the evening there was a fancy dress competition (one kid went as me...ha!)

Back to the bosom of my Indian family, complete with the compulsory tour of the endless extended family, where, on one such expedition i received a marriage proposal. From the mother of a man i am assured is too good looking and speaks pukka english. It was all pretty amusing, until i realised she was deadly serious, and tricky to get out of, in light of my complaint during lunch that Uncle Jacob had failed to arrange me a marriage with a nice Indian man, as promised. (I was joking, obviously, but i see now that you don't joke about these things)

Back to the undisguised curiosity of village folk, for whom i'm a bit of a celebrity. Every five steps i take there is a gaggle of women who tweak and tug at my sari, cackling a commentary to each other - 'she is too lean', 'her hair is too curly but good colour' (my Tamil is such that i can understand what they are saying but can't respond). When they have finished i will be bustled into another house with another band of women and their silent husbands and shy children, where i'll be handed a photo-album, baby or cup of chai, or all three at once. If i'm really lucky i'll be given a glass of milk, still warm from the cow's udder while the ghost of Mr. Pasteur hovers "you might want to boil that first...". But no i am to drink, as they eye me with a mixture of admiration and disapproval.

As 2006 breathed its last, i was to be found smoking a crafty cigarette while all were in church, remembering New Years Eves past. There was That Party last year, of glittering bohemian proportions, at Graham Greene's ramshackled, mouldy old mansion, and New Years Eve 1999 in that tiny ancient chapel on the cliff's edge in Dorset, with 14 people, many many candles, a song ('one more step around the world i go: from the old things to the new, keep me travelling along with you...), some fireworks, a fire that wouldn't quite light and thirteen year-old Katie who knew that she didn't have much longer to live.

I sit writing this in Trivandrum, Kerala. It was sad to say goodbye to people who seem to love and accept me so effortlessly and boundlessly, but it feels good to be free-range again. I have a full itinerary ahead of me, involving no less that three Ashrams (yes, i am succumbing to the spiritual tourism thing, but who wouldn't in this land with its smorgasboard of religion), a spell with Mother Theresa's clan and a visit from my very own mother. More to come.

2006-12-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-12-12T21:57:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-12-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-11-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

Mysore, Mysore, what an Eyesore. Mysore is not, as the Rough Guide describes it, an "enchanting and characterful city" (i am relying far too much on this book) It is another heavily polluted, frenetic, noisy, dirty city. Wandering around, dodging beggars, rickshaws belching exhaust, cow shit and over friendly teenage boys i can't help but feel that i am falling out of love with India. My rose tinted glasses are slipping off my sweaty nose. India is a country of contradictions: it is poor but it worships money, its people will shit in full broad public daylight, yet Indians consider themselves the cleanest people in the world, it is the country that brought us the Karma Sutra, yet a Victorian prudishness prevails, animals are sacred but they all look as if they're starving to death and most signifiantly and in the words of Mark Twain, 'all life seems to be sacred - except human life'. It feels like a country which human beings have not quite learnt to dominate.

2006-11-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

A deeper magic from the dawn of time...

I left Shantivanan all of a week ago, hitching a lift with Christoria, who had been a nun with Mother Theresa for 20 years, and her husband Mike, and feeling throughout the drive as if there was a golden string stretching out, connecting me to holy ground.

After 10 hours on a cramped bus (sitting, literally, next to wankers) i arrived at Shantivanan which was by this time shrouded in deep darkness and was greeted by the saffron-clad night-watchman who spoke no english and took me to my little hut. Amazingly i was up the next morning at 6 for the first office of the day - a beautiful Indianised affair with incense, flowers, readings from the Upanishads, the Bible and Rabindranath Tagore, haunting bhajans (music), a sacred flame which we washed over our eyes and finally sandlewood paste, considered holy because it offers up its scent even as it is being axed, which we daubed on our foreheads. In the afternoons i would sit with Brother Martin as he attempted to explain some of the philosophies behind this curious Hindu/ Christian synthesis. It seems to boil down to this: All religions that are genuinely seeking God are climbing the same hill but using different paths. A true authentic search for God requires transcending religion - not becoming so comfortable that you start building permanent homes on the mountain of God. So far, so good. So very good in fact and similar to the sentiments expressed by the bloke who said he was giving up Christianity...so that he could follow Jesus. It was only when i asked Br Martin what he identified himself as that he looked uncertain and umm'd and ah'd and eventually said that he was not a Christian but a Theist using Christianity as a vehicle to God. Hmmm, not altogether kosher...
So, to follow that example of a wise old bird at the Nightshelter ("why go to the monkey when you can go straight to the organ grinder") i delved into a biography of Bede Griffiths where i found some things that did ring true:

'The deepest impression left by life in India was the sense of the sacred as
something that pervaded the whole order of nature. Every hill and tree and
river is holy and the simplest human acts of eating and drinking, still more of
birth and marriage, have all retained their sacred character. It is this that
gives such an indescribable beauty to Indian life, in spite of the poverty and
squalor'

Nowhere has this been more true than at Shantivanan where the darkness is so dark yet not fearful, and punctuated only by stars and fireflies, and the light is dappled and the air heady, the villagers going about their work, women in saris, men in simple dhotis, where we eat our meals sitting on the floor, using our hands, facing each other and in silence - the mindfulness of a liturgy in itself. In fact this sense of the sacred pervading the profane bears a striking resemblance to Celtic spirituality - another ancient, earthy elemental view of the world and Jah and Man. It also brings to mind the deeply celebratory preface to Allen Ginsberg's Howl which i will copy and paste (an abreviated version) for your edification and delight:

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The
nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy!
everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel! The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are
holy! The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are
holy the ecstasy is holy! .....Holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss! Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity!
faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity! Holy the supernatural extra
brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

It is this idea of non-duality, or Advaita, or Oneness that i think Bede Griffiths found when he went East - that 'no man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main' - we are closer to one another than we realise. This is the true, deep meaning of loving your neighbour and seeing Christ in others.

'All our personal experiences, joyful as well as painful have to be
realised as not belonging to ourselves but rather as belonging to another, as
being our share in that other life. We live out our life on this narrow personal
plane with all its trials and conflicts and pleasures but how difficult it is to
realise that all this life of our is a reflection in us of another, that we
don't belong to ourselves' (B.G)

So there was a lot that i didn't understand or agree with but i think i glimpsed something at Shantivanan that was wild ancient and dangerous - a deeper magic from the dawn of time - a millions worldsaway from the safety and reserve of civilisation with its civilised church ("So" said the journalist to Gandhi "what do you think of Western civilisation?" "i think it would be a very good idea!") It is an experience that will stay with me and colour my picture of India.
(Thankyou to David for giving me the B.G book in the first place!)

pictured: Fr. Bede's shoes and brolly

2006-11-04T23:06:00.000-08:00

Just my luck - i come all the way to India, armed with my factor 40, and it rains! It is rainy season in the tiny village of Gomathimuthupuram, Tamil Nadu and the villagers find themselves welcoming their new resident alien...

What can i tell you? The village is small, Christian, Dalit and very poor. The hospitality i've received has been overwhelming (to the point of being just a teeny bit suffocating). The kids are amazing, soul-ful and very happy in spite (or because) of their poverty. The orphanage has 97 kids at the moment and they have so little - they sleep on the bare floor at night, don't get Christmas presents and most don't even have toothbrushes. The day i arrived i went for a little explore and was practically mobbed by a throng of school kids who were completely overcome to see this queer pale creature in their midst. It was unwise to attempt to 'hand out' the sweets i'd brought. The teaching is like wading through treacle. I had underestimated how little english people would have. My Tamil remains pretty basic. The most useful phrase i've picked up translates as 'shut up your mouth' and when used on the kids it has a most satisfactory effect.
In spite of the generous hospitality (i cannot express how kind people are, and how they would give me everything of what little they own) i've been feeling a bit isolated and lonesome (a sort of existential as well as ordinary lonliness). I've begun to see that my taking myself off to India was like a self imposed spiritual exile, you know the kind of thing: strip everything away - family, friends, money, job, church, place, routine etc - and see what you're left with. So far no sign of 'enlightenment', just crabbiness. So i've decided to abandon ship and will be heading for Shantivanan, the ashram of Bebedictine monk Bede Griffiths. Bede Griffiths came to India in search of what he felt was the missing 'eastern' part of his spirituality and was very interested in how different faiths communicated. Now inter-faith dialogue doesn't really do it for me. In fact i would echo a very socially active, forward thinking nun i know: "inter-faith dialogue? BORING!" If the liturgy is all about cobbling together lots of world faiths in one shiny happy package i will turn my nose up, shake the dust from my feet and leave. But i am open minded, particularly at the prospect of there being lots of monks...
So yes i am disappointed to be leaving five months earlier than planned, but i may well return for Christmas or Easter.

More to come.

2006-10-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

testing testing....

am no longer in denial. denial has been replaced by a distinct queasiness, for tomorrow i fly. everything has been packed (cleft sticks included), malaria tablets swallowed, expensive jabs received, farewells said, visa stamped, trains booked. what will i find on the other side? goodness only knows, but watch this space and you will soon find out!