I tore my pants sending you these photos!

Not really, but it's a good title.   I did tear my pants, the cute new green ones I bought on my weekend trip...the ones that are comfortable and don't look ridiculous, unlike the "Ali Baba" pants that are part of the traditional dresswear of long top, baggy pants, that is worn uniformly by women in this part of Kerala.   Yes, that cool breeze I seemed to feel while riding my bike was in fact a cool breeze with inappropriate access to a certain part of my body that should have been covered.  But no more about that now.

I'm posting some photos from the weekend.  All the crowd photos are of the festival celebration I described in my last post.  The close up photos of vegetation are from our trip to a spice plantation on Sunday that I didn't write about.  Cardamom plants, pepper vines, coffee and cocoa trees, little tiny coconuts sprouting from the ground, only one per plant, nutmeg and rubber trees, allspice and curry leaves, gorgeous, fragrant and time consuming in their harvests and processing.  

Enjoy.

Creatures large and small, and piercing of flesh

I just returned from a weekend trip about 4 hours by car northeast of Aranmula, where I have been living. A gaggle of us girls went to another one of the tourist "must-see" spots in Kerala, the Periyar Animal Sanctuary, which is very close to the border of the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. We left Friday night, arriving around 10 PM at our homestay in the nearest town outside the sanctuary, Kumily. We just returned to the school at 5 PM today, Sunday. It feels like at least 4 days have passed; so many things I have never seen before, more assorted stimuli to take in. I feel like a fish, floating around, gills fluttering, letting the water flush little invisible nutrients into my system.

Again, I want to write more than I will write, but this would take hours, so I'll just jot a few things. Saturday morning, wake at 5 AM, so early that (I think) many minutes pass before the alarm actually penetrates whatever part of the brain serves to wake one up. 5:30 AM, little jeep arrives to take us to the sanctuary. Pitch black, beautifully refreshing cool air, I get the front seat as the others rotated it the night before driving up the mountains. Since our package tour (I am ashamed to say, I did a package tour) was officially entitled the "Jungle Safari Tour", it felt particularly apropos that I was half dangling out the side of the jeep during our ride.

Driving the half hour to the sanctuary, the roads were remarkably empty, though already there were large groups of people walking. I kept thinking how it's too bad that I'm not an early riser, as pre-dawn hours are so still and subtle. I still remember taking the Greyhound bus in high school from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where I had visited my sister. Riding back home in the early morning, I was amazed that sunrise, unlike sunset, seems such a large gradual process without the sun's movement as a focal point. Instead, just a gradual shifting from pitch black to black to near black to the most awesome indigo indigo less indigo and then suddenly, it's daylight. Being in nature, especially in changing weather or light, truly makes you realize how lacking our verbal language is to describe the vastness and variety of life. During this indigo time of morning, we passed into tea plantation territory, and the blankets of terraced hills in that light couldn't have been more beautiful. And then, daylight. But it was a sweet daylight, as the fog and mist of the mountains didn't burn off until about 9 AM.

We entered the park after passing the tiniest most shack-like structures I have seen yet. When I asked if they were actually occupied homes, Riyas, the totally awesome guy who drove us for the day, said that refugees from the fighting in Sri Lanka actually lived there. Ah, Tamils in Sri Lanka were originally from Tamil Nadu in India. Now, generations later, some of them had returned to this government land on the border of their ancestral home to escape the fighting.

And from that dip into human suffering, the focus shifted to the more frivolous matter of scouting for elephants. Well, scouting from the car on the main road through the park. As we started the hunt, Riyas announced that his group had seen 16 elephants the day before. "Oh shit," I immediately thought to myself (no swearing aloud here, please). That much luck the day before would surely mean no luck for us. And, I was pretty much right, at least in terms of elephants. But Riyas was pretty damned dedicated, jumping out of the jeep suddenly a number of times to bolt up the hills to look for elephants. The first time he did this, I was following a long distance behind him, and suddenly he motioned for me to hurry. It was about 6 AM at this point, and despite the relative poetry of the morning, A) I never run, B) It was 6 AM, C) I hadn't had my coffee yet, D) Despite the daily yoga, I've had no cardio exercise in 4 months, and E) (so I don't sound pathetic) we were at a fairly high elevation. So, I reached Riyas just in time to see the back of a mommy elephant walking away, more quickly that I would have thought possible. That was my one elephant in the wild sighting. Though I wanted more, it was good enough for me. And that was to be the one and only elephant our group ran across.

(We now move into the abbreviated version of my narrative, as writing at this pace will indeed take several hours. Here we go...)

Next, monkeys! We stopped under a towering banyan tree, heard news, turned around, and rather far in the distance saw a group of monkeys in the mist jumping tree to tree. The next bang for our buck was flying squirrels. These critters were the largest squirrels I have ever seen, and actually had colored faces and yellow underbellies. And actually, the ones we were staring at for a stupidly long time, urging them under our breath to "Fly! Come on, Fly!" were actually giant squirrels, not flying squirrels. Oops. I think Riyas was laughing at us, wondering how long we would stand there waiting for one of them to jump and spread its wing-like arms.

At some point, Riyas decided to offer the jeep up to one of us 4 women, so I moved from the front left seat to the front right seat. YEAH! First time I have driven in almost 4 months, on tiny curvy, potholed roads with a massive cliff drop to the right. Such fun! I can't believe the driver or my companions let me take the wheel, but it was good fun, I killed and injured no one, and delivered us safely to a little hotel in the middle of the park where we had breakfast.

At this point we entered the jungle portion of our Jungle Safari. The only thing I have to share about this portion of the adventure is this question for you to ponder: how many leeches does it take to make a girl scream? Leeches. Hundreds and hundreds of leeches...little, squirmy, invasive, intrusive, upsetting, incredibly tenacious, disgusting leeches. We saw no wildlife in the jungle. Only leeches. No more need be said about this.

Ah, but there were cinnamon trees. And incense trees. There is such a thing as incense trees? I've been burning that stuff for about 20 years now, and never knew it was actually from tree sap.

We came out of the jungle intact, though mortified, from the leeches. We all retained our blood. And what did we happen upon, but a local Hindu festival. There was drumming, dancing, praying, and ritual self-mortification. We had actually timed our hike through the jungle to watch the festival, as our guide had intrigued us enough with his spotty description of facial piercing that we wanted to see what he was talking about. Most of the people were only attending the event, but there were about 10 people dancing to the music, and working themselves into a trancelike state. Our guide told us there were no drugs involved, but another guide says the dancers do take something for the pain of the piercing. The dancers (almost all women) take turns moving to the front of the crowd, where they are surrounded by a group of men who hold white clothes in a tent around their heads. The men take a small piece of rope, which is actually braided tightly and finely together so that the rope is basically like a tiny spear or a very large toothpick, and pierce it through the flesh of the dancer. This is not a quick process. I saw one woman pierced vertically through the forhead. Another women's tongue was pierced. A few other women's mouths were pierced through from cheek to cheek.

I was wincing throughout, but tried to keep my noisy reactions to myself, until I noticed that the oldest woman in the group was dancing around with strings coming from her back. I then saw that a man was holding all the strongs, pulling them taut, and when I could get close enough through the crowds, I could see that her back was pierced through with 4 large hooks. At this point I was hit with a wave of nausea. At the same time, I was hit with the need to take photos, and made my largest faux-pas yet. I crossed from where I was standing at the front of the crowd, past a line of praying men, and jumped onto an empty square of dirt. It turns out the empty square of dirt was part of the holy space, and I was standing right in the middle of it with my shows on. Dear god. But I got the photos.

I need to research what festival this was exactly...I believe it was very local, and from what I could understand, was a type of symbolic sacrifice of self in thanks for being cured of a prior illness. It was so insanely intense...many of the Indians there were also trying to get close to the dancers so that they could snap photos. For the first time in my life, I literally felt like I was inside a National Geographic special.

This is all for now. I bought a half bottle of Indian red wine (more on that curiousity later) at the fancy hotel restaurant last night, and have it sitting next to me with a bummed cigarette. I'm going to go relax for a bit with those two toxic treats before dinner.

Some photos

Finally, a few photos to give you a general visual feel for life in Kerala as I'm experiencing it. The first photo is an old Chinese fishing net.  These line the shores of Fort Kochin and are the tool of choice of local fishermen, though they are no longer Chinese.  The green fields are everywhere near Arunmula; I took this photo from the train when I was arriving from Fort Cochin at the nearest train station to the school.  The vehicle is an autorickshaw, a much more humanitarian, motorized version of the human-powered rickshaw.  I have heard that up to six people can pile in one of these puppies, but the closest I've gotten is four passengers plus the driver.  The house was a particularly idyllic spot in Fort Cochin.   The last two photos are from last weekend's trip to the backwaters.   When our boat docked at about 6 PM for nightfall, a smaller boat paddled up and asked us if we'd like to take a ride.  We were literally about two inches away from the water, and the boat's size allowed us to paddle through very tiny channels...this is the blurred photo is from.  The last photo is a view at sunrise from where our houseboat was docked.

As for updates, yoga is killing me.  We went from 1 hour daily, much of which was talking, to 2 hours, almost all of which is asana practice.  My whole body hurts.  I'm waiting for the pain to turn positive, but right now, it's just pain.

It also seems to be getting hotter, which I knew would happen, but I still just can't believe it.

I'm having an ongoing battle for territory with my cockroach, and am wondering if we have some karmic connection that keeps the roach coming back again and again.  Thus, I have not killed it.  I am contemplating getting some paint and marking the roach, in order to confirm my suspicion that it is a repeat visitor.

National elections are coming up, scheduled for a number of different dates throughout April.  Workers are spraying slogans and symbols for the communist party on the main walls in town, as Kerala is a pinko state.  It still sends a small visceral shock through me to see the hammer and sickle painted on walls or flying from red flags.

Not much else for now.  Slowly starting to learn more about the way marriages work here, as well as caste.  Still no luck with the language.  

Heavy Rains, Backwaters and Big Bugs

I have never seen rain like I have seen the past few days; a good old-fashioned thunderstorm like what I grew up with in Wisconsin summers, and have missed every year since I moved to the Bay Area. Thunder, collecting itself in between bursts, lightning tridents connecting sky and earth or jumping cloud to cloud, and endless torrential rains. And when I say torrential, I mean the strongest largest drops of rain in the densest, most massive quantities imagineable. The monsoon rains don't start until June, but it is impossible for me to fathom what a monsoon is if this hasn't already qualified.

It has rained three times during the last week, always beginning around 3:30 or 4 and lasting until about 5 or 6, which is exactly when my singing lessons take place. During two classes, we needed to suspend our singing because it was simply impossible to hear the electronic drone box which marks the starting, 5th, and octave pitch of whatever mode you are singing in. More traditionally, this tonic pitch, or shruti, is played by an instrument like the harmonium or shruti box, but my teacher just plugs it in and lights it up. With volume on full blare, we couldn't hear a thing.

The sound of the wind itself, the massive leaves of the surrounding trees being blown about, the rain hitting the roof, throwing down fruit from the trees which pellet down on the thatched roof of the classroom, joined by the already constant chorus of birds, all completely overpowered our little drone box and our two tiny voices. The rain slackens and intensifies, but never stops until it actually stops. The first time it rained, neither my teacher nor I had an umbrella, so we tried to wait out the rain. She gave up after 30 minutes so that she could get back to her family and cook them all dinner, so was drenched by the time she reached the busstop a few minutes away at the main junction of this small town. I waited almost two hours into nightfall (it is 7 PM now and pitch black outside as I write this), and the rain actually ended in time to let me get to dinner at 7:30 in a relatively dry state.

My teacher, when talking about improvising, says the music is imagining. When it rained the second day during our lessons, she stopped and said it was God imagining. That image and the storms are beautiful, but it is hard not to think of this force bringing the devastation of Katrina and the 2006 tsunami. The thought of worsening climatic conditions is right around the corner of my mind, as I recall an article I read before coming here about the imminent possibility of Bangladesh and too many other regions in this part of the world being completely submerged by rising waters and raging storms.

In other less beautiful yet ominous news, I saw the biggest cockroach I have ever seen in my entire life, and believe me, I saw a number worth noticing during my year in Taiwan. This time, it was not a cute albino gecko startling me when I turned on the lights, but a ghastly, nasty beast perched on the wall right near the toilet (or porcelain hole in the ground that serves as my toilet). I didn't entirely stifle my scream, and Shin, the 67-year old Korean man who just arrived this week, (rounding up the total count of male students at the school to 2), shuffled out of his room in boxers to see if everthing was alright. This was much appreciated, as freaking out to oneself is not nearly as cathartic, as I realized a few days later when I encountered an inappropriately gigantic spider who had set up camp inside the glass where I keep my toothbrush on my desk. Ugh!! Anyway, I directed Shin's attention into the bathroom and towards the cockroach. In a frustratingly nonplussed manner, he noted that perhaps it was time for me to make friends with the animal. Will I ever be that calm? Do I want to ever be that calm?!

Due to language barriers, everyone to whom I described the bug, whether Korean, French or Indian, could only use the word "animal" to guess at what I had seen. It seems no one knows the English word for bug, nor do I know the Korean, French or Malayalam word for it. So, animal then. Seems quite appropriate. After this incident, I fled to the bathroom on the second floor of my house, and used that for a full day. When I decided to brave my bathroom again, the animal was nowhere to be seen. I'm only afraid of stepping on such a thing before I have the chance to turn on the lights. Egad.

In other more news-like news, I decreased my singing class to 1 1/2 hours a day starting this week, and will be increasing yoga to 2 hours a day. My teacher seems to have come to his senses after our first week together, and suddenly became much more professional. We still talk alot, but actually about yoga, not marriage! My hopes for this new schedule are that I will not burst my vocal chords from singing too much, and that I will continue to discuss yoga, its place in Hinduism, and its remarkable similarities as a philosophical and ethical system to Buddhism (or vice versa, as my teacher pointed out the other day), while also being able to actually finish a whole set of yoga postures, and end with a proper meditation.

I continue to eat far too much and too well. I am slowly building up a wardrobe of clothing here, and actually bought a sari today. I really wasn't intending on getting a sari, as I don't feel an urge to wear one. Even though they are worn daily by many married women, and poor women walking barefoot at that, they feel very extravagant to me. I don't wear dresses at home, and saris feel like power dresses. That and the fact that your midriff shows make them a rather unappealing option for me. But I was at the clothing store to buy a few more outfits and wanted to look at the fabrics, which are so unbelievably gorgeous. My eye caught on a bolt of deep red cloth with sections of gleaming white embroidered flowers. The bad man shopkeeper noticed, and quickly pulled the bolt from the shelf and splayed it teasingly across the display counter. I literally couldn't take my eyes off that raw red silk. Mmmmm. I wanted to put it in my mouth, wrap myself in it, roll around on it, and merge with it, all at the same time. It was only $30, and now it is mine. I'm a bit loath to get it cut into a sari, as I really will never ever wear it after leaving India, but....what else would I do with it? Any ideas? If I do cut it into a sari, I plan on wearing it for my 36th birthday, which is right around the corner. Seems fitting. And I will definitely take a picture and post it somewhere.

In a final bit of news, I took an excursion a few hours north this weekend and sailed around on a boat in the Kerala backwaters, which, along with a beach town in Kerala, are the two "must do" things here for tourists. The backwaters were beautiful, though I felt conflicted about the experience in terms of the disruptive and polluting nature of the barges, which were once used solely for crop and commercial transport. I also felt extremely odd about the dynamic that takes place between the foreign tourists on the boats drifting by staring at the "scenery", which just so happens to be people living their lives on the shores of the canals. Conveyer belt tourism. Very disconcerting.

I'll stop there, as it is getting late, and I need to allot an hour to apply nourishing coconut oil to my scalp and then take a cooling shower before bed.

Thinking of you all.

Ma ma and Albino Geckos

It seems I have not been able to sit myself down and write any sort of coherent chronicle of my past week in India. So here is an attempt at a skeleton.

For the first 5 days here I was in a barely contained fugue state of panic at the heat and humidity. It was almost all I could feel or think about. Thankfully, that has passed and my body has acclimated. My mind has also acclimated to being in a near-constant state of dripping sweat. And I don't need to worry, as I would at home, about insane body odor, as being olfactorily aware of other people in this climate is the unavoidable norm.

Monday through Friday, I have three hours of class in the afternoon, one hour of one-on-one yoga and two hours immediately after of one-on-one Carnatic singing. However, after a few days of sleeping way past sunrise, I finally decided to start hauling out of bed for daily yoga class at 7:30 in the morning. About 13 to 15 of us practice crammed into a space which is basically a large cement floor walled in on 3 sides. The yoga feels sooo good, and the relative breezy quiet of the morning, along with the exertion-induced calm, help my mind sit more easily and lightly.

After an hour of this, I feel like continuing to sit, but if I do this, I'll miss breakfast and be starving by lunch. So I run to breakfast with the rest of the class. There are about 20 students here, all women (or as a friend put it, the V** squad) all sitting at one long table, with the embarrassingly attentive staff sitting at two smaller tables on either side of us. Taking every meal en masse is a bit exhausting, and I find myself wishing almost daily that the format were a bit more like a meditation retreat, with some or all of the meals being taken in silence. Going from yoga to group chat is a rough transition, especially given my extreme non-morning-person-ness. But the folks here are good to great, and I'm letting myself sit in silence when I feel the need.

After one week of eating with my right hand, I think I'm getting the hang of it. The first week, I was basically picking the food up, lifting it up above my head, tilting my head back, and kind of dropping the food into my mouth, with an inevitable 1/6 to 1/8 falling past my mouth down onto the banana leaf we use as plates. Oops. I'm finally realizing that I just have to use more of my hand and kind of shovel the food into my mouth. I've gotten a few explicit or silent lessons from a few of the Indians, so by the time I leave, I should be able to get all the food directly in my mouth.

Speaking of which--the food rocks!!! So much so that I don't miss meat. The occasional lust for a hamburger or burrito does wander through the old brain, but really, it's alright. It's difficult to imagine that it will be me, 7 weeks from now, who will be providing the hopefully delicious vegetarian meals for hungry students at the center in France.

But back to the food here. I had no idea there were so many varieties of bread in India. In the States, I've only seen naan and dosa. Yummy delicious bread and fruit in the morning, with one chutney and chai. Lunch is the main meal, consisting of rice, bread, curry, a number of chutneys, and usually some sort of vegetable salad. So so good. Unfortunately, I have my one-on-one yoga class directly after lunch, so I really should not eat at all, but this is impossible, both due to the quality of the food and the fact that I would keel over if I didn't.

Chai again at 5 with some snack that is usually gone by the time I arrive. Then dinner, again, bread and more chutney. There have been 3 birthdays in the week since I arrived, so we have had tiny bits of cake and ice cream/coke floats a number of times as well.

The only thing missing (other than meat and red wine) is coffee. Coffee. Coffee. The chai almost makes up for this, but......It seems there is coffee in Chennganur, the nearest large town, so an expedition is pending. I was there this weekend for some clothes, and the music store is also there, so a good browse is in order.

Anyway, morning is yoga, breakfast, then back home for singing practice for my afternoon class. Then lunch, another hour of yoga......the teacher is amazing, or so I hear/suspect/experience in the morning class. But somehow, most of my one-on-one class has been the teacher and I talking about anything and everything. Well, ti started that way. The first day was fine. Life philosophy and such. The second day I asked him about his past and his studies. This was good and interesting but somehow diverged into his personal life, his thoughts about marriage, etc. I gradually fell into silence and by the third day, he was talking, entirely of love, marriage, girls in past classes who had wanted to marry him, his willingness to marry, etc. By this point, I was no longer enjoying our conversations and just felt mightily uncomfortable and squirmy. This is the only dark spot on my experience so far. I think my swami has a crush, or wants me to have a crush, or something. So I'm trying to figure out what to do about this as I desperately want to study yoga, and he is the only teacher here. We did do yoga Thursday and Friday, though he talked through all my asanas, making it difficult to focus only on my breathing. You'd think he would know that, as a teacher and swami and all.

Then, after yoga (listening), my voice teacher comes out and we have class outside in the yoga area. Singing is great/exhausting/challenging and many more things. Two hours of singing fairly non-stop, the pedagogy being teacher sings, student repeats, faster and faster, then with longer and longer phrases. I have now been given 3 songs in 3 different ragas (which correlate roughly to modes, or more simply but inaccurately for the non-musical out there, scales).

Then dinner and home for more practice, reading and sleep.

That is the outline of my days here. I will tell you more about the feel of being here next time. The banana, coconut, mango, papya and jackfruit trees, the temples, candles and incense, the new birds who are always singing marvelously, and all the other sounds I don't know, the geckos who continue to startle me every night when I turn the lights on and see their sudden movement on the wall out of the corner of my eye.

As for people here, overall, they are friendly to neutral, which is a welcome change from my experiences in East Asia, where people ranged from friendly to outright staring and yelling, which was still usually friendly but in a really awkward way that made me want to crawl into a hole. But the second flip-side to this experience is that we are extremely sheltered at the school, and even though I go through the town every day, the language barrier and cultural separation (which is very gendered), as well as the fact that I know my stay here will be short, are limiting the possibility for any sort of meaningful interaction with people. It seems most interactions will be limited to transactions.

But all is well and I am happy, if not confused at times, both practically and existentially. :)

Body Shock in Kerala

I feel my head is still not screwed on straight, and that I am experiencing everything through a thick haze of humidity and fog, so this post will be sticky and short. (Did I mention that it's about 32 centigrade here, which I've avoided converting, but I'm guessing is around 100?)

I arrived in India at 4:30 AM Friday morning, at Kochi Airport in the southern state of Kerala, after a 2-hour layover in Kuwait City, where I experienced my only stomache problems to date. I knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't not, so I ordered some chicken tenders at the McDonald's in Kuwait City Airport. My stomache registered complaints with my cerebral management for about 24 hours afterwards.

A driver from the homestay I had booked picked me up at the airport, which was brilliant, because I didn't feel up to navigating the crowds and my first taste of autorickshaws/cabs/public transport in the pre-dawn hours.

My main first impression was how many people were already awake, walking around, doing whatever one does at 5:30 in the morning. I soon realized that this is likely due to the insane heat and humidity here, which makes the thought of moving between the hours of 10 AM and 5 PM an utterly ghastly prospect. It seems it's high summer here, or on its way, building to monsoon rains in May and June. People have also said it's hotter than usual, which I also heard over the summer when I was in Israel and Palestine. (warming, anyone?)

Anyway, my time is short, so let me say, after two very mellow days in Fort Kochin, an old port/trading town, I hopped a train (which was only 30 minutes late) down towards the school yesterday. Thankfully, I booked first class, so I was actually in a separate car with only one other person. A two-hour train journey, 1st class, but not air-conditioned, cost 203 rupees, which is about $4 or $5.

The landscape was brilliant....much like rural Japan, China and Taiwan. But throw in cows, lazing and grazing and generally standing about. Rice fields, lots of palm trees, rubber trees, coconut, papaya and mango trees. Mainly it is the lush swaths of rice paddies that remind me of East Asia. Brilliant green everywhere.

From the train station in Chengannur, I decided again to be lazy and to get an autorickshaw instead of a bus, as I was lugging around a 22 kilo suitcase. So I arrived at the school, soaked through with sweat, at about 5 PM. Ahhhh, the town is small and the school, from the bit I've been here, seems like an oasis. It seems the students here are well taken care of, fed three times a day and given a tea break, and generally oriented, shown around, and helped out.

There are a number of houses around the school where we live and study. My house is near the end of temple road....I haven't made it to the temple yet, but will see soon which god it belongs to. But the road I turn onto to find home has another smaller temple to Ganesha (the elephant). When I went to my house last night around 9 PM, there was a puja happening at the temple, blocking our way to the road. Funny, as one of the attributes of Ganesha is remover of obstacles. :)

All my classes will be in the afternoon it seems. One on one yoga from 2-3, and then one-on-one singing from 3-5. I am mightily excited.

Now I'm about to head out to a nearby city to buy some proper clothing, both in terms of more suitable to the heat and more suitable to local custom. This seems to be a rather conservative town, as most small towns around the world tend to be, so the school encourages us to dress to fit in, which will mean covering up more, but thankfully with fabrics and designs better suited to the heat and humidity.

Oh, and last bit...school has a few computers with fast internet access. $1 an hour, so it seems I'll be in touch. :)