Fruit of the Gods

Driving in cars with strange boys, talking to strangers, drinking the local water, riding motorbikes at night in the rain... all things I have been warned about. Women get a lot of advice before travelling. There are lots of rules for us, mostly based on fear and stories of bad things that have actually happened to someone else who we have no inkling of.

Why is it then, that this advice when not followed correctly results in having HEAPS of fun? What advice do I now give to my nieces and god-daughters and all the young women and girls I love and care for when my experience of travelling generally goes off the charts by doing all of the above? Trust yourself. To trust though, it helps to have experience. So it's catch 22. You've got to have experiences to understand fear and develop trust. Trust and fear - two sides of the same coin of both travel and yoga.

Oh and it helps to meet lovely guys, who stop and chat to everyone on the road and teach you how to pray properly. They also wanted to be in my blog, so that was another reason not to kidnap me.

On Saturday - yoga day off - I ride out to Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary 28 kms north of Mysore in the country, a green bit on Google Maps. No white  people, no surprise. It seemed to be the place to meet your boyfriend for a snuggle by what I could tell. A lot of loving going down in the dark corners of this Sanctuary.

On a boat tour of the Kaveri River which is the main thing to do here, I meet a couple of guys down from Bengaluru on a road trip, Bharath the quiet one with a big smile and Mohan, a big guy with a love of adventure. Both work in IT, Bharath at HP and Mohan at Microsoft. So we get chatting about places to visit, and Mohan is loosely translating the guy rowing the boat:  There’s a bird. Yep. And another one, Yep, got it. There’s a crocodile. Yeah, yeah I see it. I’m pretty sure the guy rowing 20 of us into a head-wind wasn’t saying that going by his expression, but anyway.

Rowing man head down

They charge tourists Rs 300 and locals Rs 30 to do the same tour- an interesting marketing strategy to attract international birdwatchers. I know I know, it’s only $13 all up, cheap, and you can rationalise the price like some do here. Same way I suppose they rationalise it’s ok to keep 5 rupees of your foreigners change without asking, the assumption is you can afford it. Being treated like an ATM because you are white is not a compelling experience for anyone in any language, anywhere.

After the boat ride, where it starts to pelt down with rain while we are out on the water, Mohan is loving it. "Ah it's... it's just... bewwwwdiful!" It is. He is smiling ear to ear. He likes rain as much as me. Bharat smiles at his friend. Mohan has ants in his pants, the guy can’t sit still. Over chai and thali they invite me to join them on their “just cruising around, man!” tour of the region and we settle on going to Melkote home to a number of significant Hindu temples in southern India. There’s an Academy of Sanskrit there and the same place Sarah, an American Sanskrit scholar I met recently recommended I check out. My rule of thumb is, if you hear about a place from 2 or more separate sources, maybe go check it out. It’s 130 kms north of the Bird Sanctuary so I leave 'scootie' behind and we drive off together.

croc

I know they are legit and don’t plan to kidnap me because they are stopping every every 10kms to shout for directions through the car window to locals. It’s just how Mohan rolls, he’s definitely a people person. So everyone on the back roads to Melkote knows where I am, and who I am with because they all peer into the car and stare as they answer and point and waggle congenially. On the drive the the conversation covers all the big stuff... about girls who work, why women love money so much, how to get a wife, breaking up stories, living with mum, seeing the world, what's for lunch, the crazy mo-fos overtaking trucks in front of us.

Singin in the rain

At Melkote and make our way into the main temple, and Bharath scolds me off for having too much fun in the temple. He is the quiet, serious one and he who teaches me how to prepare and accept a blessing, rub my hands over fire, drink and sprinkle water – “With the right hand, Sue, the right hand! She’s from Australia,” he explains to the holy man amused at my strange attempt to both drink and shower at the same time. Luckily for me, it’s not a one shot game. There are lots of gods to pay respect to so I’m on my way to being an expert before I leave. Actually it was a moving experience and I'm grateful for Bharath getting serious on me.

Then Mohan starts. “It’s rude to point your toes at the carving, Sue.” “No, no Sue, you don’t turn your back on the holy man after your blessing. You back away facing him and slowly turn away.” Except there are people crammed in and there’s no way I’m able to do that. “You look at the god’s feet, not just the top part with all the flowers…” “But the feet were covered in flowers,” I protest trying to hold some ground. I get a dark look. No excuse. I am the Christian in the room. Christians do good lighting, space and hygiene and keep our candles to the alter.  No playing with fire. No drinking the holy water. No rolling around on the floor, not like here. There are babies and old people sitting in the way, lying flat out, tummy sliding on stained 1000 year old concrete shiny with wear, doing god knows what snake impersonations. It’s getting funky below the knees in the temple but Bharath is steering me out towards the sunlight, before I decide that could be fun too.

In my extensive experience in being told off, disapproved of and tutted at, I find there is a point where you either go into paralysis and become like a robot, or you perfect your ‘whatever’ and hope others will get used to you eventually as you do them.  As I’ve been (gently and with good humour) corrected so much in 20 minutes, I was in the first stages of paralysis while the boys were disagreeing over something in the background.   Childhood neighbours for 25 years, Mohan and Bharath couldn’t be more different, such a great pair of opposites. While they are fighting a woman in a green sari comes up to me as I’m tracing my fingers across ancient Sanskrit carved in stone walls wondering about the age of this place.  She shoves some dragon fruit on a banana leaf in my hands and motions for me to eat it and walks off, but I’m doubtful because everything else I’ve done has been wrong. I look around helplessly trying to get the boys’ attention but of course everyone is watching what I do next. Great. Do I make it an offering? I’ve seen fruit offerings go by in here to rival the greatest grey-nomad sun-downer platter. Do I give it to someone? Pay her?

A young girl stands and openly points and laughs at me covering her face, shaking her head at the whitey who doesn’t know what to do with the fruit that I didn’t ask for and can’t stomach right now.
So you can’t take photos, laugh too much, turn your back, use your left hand, or be efficient in queues but you can eat fruit, slide on your belly in sacred temples and push in aggressively. I love this crazy country! I eat the fruit, relieved that eating at least, is universal.

Yoga Stoned, Squishing Ants and Grumpy Friends

A breeze comes down the street, through the coconut trees and into my apartment cooling everything. Did my first practise today at the main Shala – ‘the big one’, with all the portraits and history on the walls – and now I’m in my apartment, just feeling so great and a little overwhelmed and relieved I don’t have to have expectations anymore, of what this place is like. Now I just have to get out of bed every day and go experience it. I’m a bit yoga-stoned and everything is going slow, but feels great to not have to catch a train, make a phone call, get on with the report, or feed the dog. A cold shower, coconut oil massage, breakfast, coffee. Slowly.

The last two mornings I've been watching the young boy next door do his morning rituals outside his parents’ back door. Sometimes he stops and looks at his yellow dog lying at his feet, teasing the boy with his hairy yellow belly ripe for a scratch in the warm morning sun. A man’s voice calls out from inside the house and the boy gets focused. He has a single thick string slung diagonally around his neck and chest that religious men wear. He lifts a small bowl and sprinkles water above his head and turns around underneath it, lips moving, and crosses his chest fast a number of times, tapping his head, shoulders and chest so fast, that water splashes lightly on his fleshy brown-boy skin. It’s 8.30 and the sun is up, the neighbourhood is awake.

Typical house colours in Mysuru

I’ve been up restless since 4am waking every half hour and then finally up at 5.30 to get ready for class completing my own rituals that now set me straight.

I stepped into the shala at 6.15am full of  50 - 60 breathing hot, sweaty bodies, taking in their heat, the steam, the focus and feeling pretty excited. No anxiety, well not mine anyway. The heat does it's work on me. It's gonna be a sweaty month in here!  At home in muddy water – yeah! Feeling like this is just what I want to be doing.

I walk past a tiny woman with dark eyes, it's Saraswarthi – small but a big voice and sharp, sharp vision. She doesn't miss much.  I look for a space in the room and one opens up at the back, perfect for keeping my head down and going for it.  The woman on my right is doing second series, the young man on my left seems new to primary series. Before I finish standing postures I'm sweating all over my mat, it's slippery like never before but I just keep going. Later I realise I forgot a few asana, and after backbend, I go blank about what comes next. It's funny how familiar things  can slip and slide, too. But no-one saw me, and I think that's the trick. Don't draw attention to yourself, know what you're doing and practise with lots of gusto. Oh, and wearing shorts is fine. (See earlier posts)

I got 3 adjustments the whole practise - normally I get about 5 sometimes more from teachers back home.  Just shows with so many people not everyone gets the attention you can get from a good teacher in your home town. I wouldn't want to be a beginner here, it could feel very frustrating. There is no doubt they are selling magic here, the place is packed and it's not even peak yoga season.

I don’t need to be busy. I don’t need to sight see. It’s such a relief. I don’t feel right now like I need to meet people. Although naturally when travelling you meet new people all the time,  and it’s in my nature to strike up random conversations with strangers and it seems to me Indians are also expert at it too. Talking to other yogis is not very interesting actually. I'm a bit of a snob about it. I just don't want to get into analysis. I would rather talk to locals like I have been about directions, what kind of kitchen sponge to buy, who got the best deal, why a coffee filter needs so many useless parts. I had a conversation with the housekeeper who can't understand any English, about ants who raided my almonds and she proceeded in sympathy to help me squash ants on a plate, squatting together out on the balcony tutting in annoyance together. She was of course, just avoiding housework, and quite right too.

Sanir my grumpy middle-aged married Indian neighbour downstairs has offered to put me in touch with a local woman who homecooks veggie food daily for 100 R for yogis that you can eat at home. Fantastic. I could devour a yogi or two. I'm not vegetarian and quite hungry and lazy. Going out to eat twice a day every and being stared at by local men is a bit much, already. I’m going to have to find an answer to getting a decent feed because eating cereal for dinner probably isn’t it. Many of the places I’ve googled are closed, the tourist places are expensive. Sanir could be my new best Indian mate. I like his grumpiness. Somehow it makes it easier to trust a person who is not so keen on your affection. 

I'll tell you a secret. It's nice to be here alone, middle aged, well travelled and comfortable in myself. To have money and not suffer, or apologise for it. This is the perfect time to travel, in my view. Don't let cliches about middle aged women travelling to India to find themselves turn you off! It's great, do it, it's life, not a Top 10 list of Things I did that Others Thought Were OK. Let's face it, that list could be quite hard to complete.