Two weeks living in Gokulam

I must have tried writing this blog post at least half a dozen times before realizing what the problem was—I was trying to write this as a continuation of the “getting re-acquainted with India” post, but that post really did not need a “part 2”—the getting “re-acquainted” was getting sick, lol.

What I have been trying to figure out exactly how to share is what I have been doing with my time here and what my life has been like during these first couple of weeks living here in India—well, aside from getting sick and trying to get well, lol.  On that note, I have been feeling much better after seeing an Ayurvedic doctor, Dr Anil Kumar this past Tuesday.  Dr. Kumar came highly recommended by a couple of people and, so far, I can say that the praise is well deserved!  He determined that I have a throat/upper respiratory infection and gave me some powdered herbs and spices to mix with honey for the cough (every time I take it, I hear that Mary Poppins song in my head, "just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down...") and some Ayurvedic medicine tablets to treat the infection (along with, of course, some dietary guidelines since Ayurveda views food as medicine).  I started feeling better the next day and the cough has almost completely subsided.  My energy has started to return too and I am starting to get a little restless, eager to continue to go out and explore; which, between moving to 3 different housing locations, lol, was what I was doing a lot of until the infection made me slow down and take it easy, lol.

I would go out on what I like to call my “neighborhood meanderings,” where I would just set out without any destination in mind or on any schedule and just wander around the streets of my new neighborhood.  These meanderings were not just important in giving me a chance to find where I could buy my groceries, household items, water, clothing, books, and where some of the places are that many of the yoga students like to congregate, but there were crucial in giving me a sense of feeling grounded in a new environment that often felt like it was spinning with activity and new sensory stimuli.  They gave me time to engage my inner-compass (since the street signs are in another language—don’t worry, I do have a small map, though I rarely look at it now) and to casually explore whatever intrigued or just simply amused me.  It has also been important in giving me a chance to interact more with the locals here.  It was intimidating at first because I did not want to unknowingly say or do something rude and because I just thought that I wouldn’t be capable of communicating with people, but the more I let myself do it, the easier it gets.  Interacting with the people who live here is one of my favorite things to do because I love learning about and seeing how other people live, and they seem to enjoy sharing it with me.

Life itself here in Gokulam is….well, I’m not exactly sure what it is yet, lol.  Between getting sick and moving to different housing locations, I haven’t really had much of a chance to establish any routines yet, lol.  I do have a few though: I go to yoga in the morning, obviously, and then either casually linger around outside the shala, drinking a freshly chopped open coconut and soaking in the sunshine, or I slowly walk the long way home and just enjoy not having to rush off to work in the morning.  Now that I have set housing and have finally acquired some basic necessities for cooking, I get to enjoy eating all of my meals at home, prepared fresh—no storage containers, no re-heating, no eating my meals while waiting for the bus, or on the bus, or at work, or on the subway home.  I do my laundry by hand now, via a bucket and the faucet in the shower or, if it is a lot, I use the faucet outside my room.   But I have quickly learned not to go for more than a couple of days without doing the laundry.

~SIDE NOTE: do not wash any new colored Indian-made clothing or towels in the same bucket as your other clothes, unless you are going for the tie-dyed look, lol.  I swear they must add extra ink to everything, lol.  Another note: only use as much soap as you are willing to spend the time to rinse and wring out—you don’t need as much as you think you do and bending down over a bucket will get tiring really quick ;-) 

Having to bend over a bucket and wash, rinse and wring out my clothes by hand has given me a totally new appreciation for the labor that actually goes into washing clothes, and I actually enjoy it more because of that: because I have to put more work/effort into what I am doing.  There is something about actually being connected to the labor/effort that goes into doing or making something that makes it so much more valuable, such as washing clothes by hand, or cooking your own meals, mending your own clothes or walking to places instead of driving or taking a rickshaw.  Or even just simply being more connected to where the labor comes from, such as how seeing the lady who cleans my apartment cleaning the floors with a hand towel instead of a mop makes me appreciate her efforts even more and makes me more conscious of cleaning up after myself and my roommates.  Or how seeing the people digging up the streets with nothing but metal hand tools and carrying away the rocks via a plate that they balance on their head or the construction workers building houses with simple tools turns these creations into works of art in my mind and leaves me in awe of their strength and abilities.  I was waiting in line at a popular vendor the other day and a Western lady was trying to buy some milk and when the vendor came back with the milk in a clear plastic bag, the lady asked where the certificate was, validating it as organic.  The vendor told her that, “this is India, there is no certificate.  This milk comes from an organic farm 10km away, it is fresh.”  In a place like this where you are more connected to the community and to the people who directly provide your goods and services, you quickly learn that someone’s word and reputation become the “certificate” of authenticity or purity.

Anyways, once the clothes are as rinsed out as I can get them, I head up to the roof to hang them up on a clothesline to dry in the sun, and take the time to enjoy being up above the streets and the sounds, just taking in the sight of the neighborhood stretched out in front of me.

Speaking of sounds, you know what sound I don’t hear out here?  Sirens.  That was one of the things that I never really felt like I re-adjusted to when I came back from India the first time.  They drove me crazy because they made me feel like I was living in a constant state of emergency.  It seemed like every 10 minutes or so an ambulance, fire truck or police vehicle would come careening down the streets, screaming, “EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY!!!  EVERYONE GET OUT OF THE WAY NOW!!!!  EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY!!!!!”  Really?!  That often?  Every day?!   Here--no sirens, even though there is a hospital just around the corner from where I live.  I don’t doubt that there are life and death situations happening here every day—how could there not be with the way people drive, lol?  But, for some reason, there are no sirens here announcing every single situation at every moment of the day.  Do you know what sound I hear more of out here (besides horns and motors, lol)?  Birds.  So many new bird sounds.  I hear them when I wake up in the morning and throughout the day.  Mix that with morning calls to prayer for people of the Islamic faith and the sounds of water running in the morning for laundry or cleaning and it’s like getting to hear some sort of sweet new music.

Other things I have not been missing from back home:  chairs, cell phones and television/movies.  Coming from a job where I spent a large majority of my day sitting at a desk, no one needs to convince me of the damaging effects of sitting in chairs on the body.  Or, rather, the position you typically sit in while on a chair.  Now that I am sitting cross-legged on the floor for the majority of the times that I need to sit down, my knees hurt less and my hips are no where near as tight as they used to be.  I have a cell phone here but I rarely use it and have only a couple of contacts in it; most of the time, I leave it at home.  I can’t even begin to describe how nice it feels to not be tethered to a phone and constantly hearing that thing go off, demanding immediate attention.  Television and movies?  I was surprised to see how little I missed being able to watch them.  They are just something to keep the mind entertained and there is plenty going on here that is just as engaging, if not more.  I even don't listen to my MP3 player as much.

So, that is what my days have been like here right now: yoga, chanting class 3 days/week, conference (discussion) at the Shala with Sharath on Sundays with the rest of the time filled up with neighborhood wandering, laundry by hand, cooking at home, a couple of hours on the internet every other day or so down at the “Net Corner” internet box (I can’t call it a café, there are no food or drinks, just computer booths in a room on the second floor of a building, it’s a box, lol), reading and journaling whenever I manage to make myself stop moving (it’s a stubborn habit to break, this feeling like I always have to be doing something) and doing my best to not over-exert myself while my body is recovering from being sick.  Occasionally I go out and socialize with fellow students, but most of the time right now I prefer less socializing and more time to myself to just be in my new surroundings.  I do have plenty of photos to share with all of you, but the internet is slow right now and I have to go, so I will post some photos later :-)