vio; in love with india...

From violin to Infinity

2012-02-11T13:16:00.009Z

I am so happy about my violin practice again these days; that's all to do with playing with other souls at long last. Once the layers of judgment and discomfort are stripped, spontaneous music gives light to joy and energy - that bliss of the present moment.

I had started practising regularly with an Indian tabla student of my violin teacher's brother in September-October, but then life got in the way, we didn't meet for a couple of months, and I didn't know any other tablist I felt comfortable playing with either. After New Year I really wanted to start practising with tabla regularly again, and it seems like Life agreed with my plans, because I've practised with three different tabla players since January! Mostly I have resumed the practice with the Indian student from September-October.

I had been very cautious opening-up with him at first, as I always am with Indian young men - because men here too often only seem to be interested in foreign, female skin... Plus, in the tradition of arranged marriages, most young men here don't have much "romantic maturity", so they too quickly interpret friendship from a woman as romantic interest. Thus, for a long time we both stayed very shy, playing our respective instruments without communicating much other than nodding to each other to indicate one's turn to improvise. But he is a very disciplined, hard-working young man, and completely devoted to his religious and musical practice, and we are slowly getting to know each other both musically and personally. It has become totally comfortable and fun to play music with him now, and although still reserved, we're getting along well too. I know that many people think I'm cold or unfriendly when they first meet me here, as I am slow to open my heart up to others, but in India this attitude is a real saviour. Being too friendly too quickly with others here can be so distracting, and with Indian men it can lead foreign women into nasty situations. So I slowly open up and by the time I have done, Indian men clearly know that they have NO CHANCE!!!

So as we start enjoying our musical practice together, "my" young Indian tabla accompanist, whose name means "king of elephants", asked me a few weeks ago if I would play a concert with him in his temple for Shivaratri Festival (Shiva's night) on 20 February! My first solo!?! So I have started practising violin with him every morning in his place to prepare for the concert. "King of Elephant" is a young brahmin (priest) who half of the time lives in his tabla Guru's house and the other half lives in a small Shiva temple on the banks of the Ganges at the other end of Banaras where time seems to have stopped. At the age of 12 he came from another state of India to Banaras to receive dharmic (religious) teaching for three years in an ashram, followed by three years of Sanskrit at the Sanskrit University. Now he is responsible for the daily pujas (worship ceremonies) in this small temple over the Ganges, where he lives with his spiritual Guru. He lives in a very rudimentary room of the temple; on the floor of this tiny room he cooks chapatis, and on the same blanket on the floor he sleeps and plays tabla.

I first came all the way across to this area of the city to take yoga classes back in November 2010. I had loved the teacher, but at the end of the season I had decided to stop going because it was too hard sustaining the regular bicycle ride so far away at 7am, and it was taking too much of my time in the day which I preferred to dedicate to violin rather than yoga. But this "timeless area" of Banaras is also where "my" tabla accompanist lives, as well as the French clarinetist also previously mentioned, who is becoming a really good friend now. So again I cycle there regularly in the morning, not at 7am though and for violin reasons - with a good occasion to pay visits to my new girlfriend. :-)

I had not forgotten how much I loved going there. This part of Banaras feels so different from the area where I live, that it refreshes me every time I go. It is almost completely untouched by tourists and foreigners, and the locals there behave differently towards them. There is less cheating and pestering. The atmosphere somehow feels more pure and more authentic. It's only about 10km away from where I live, but it feels like I've travelled back 100 years into profound spiritual India. It is impossible to put it into words, but I feel blessed to be offered "access to such ancient authenticity". Going there makes me feel like the character of one of those books I read about old Banaras, Banaras that sacred old "City of Light" where Vedic spiritual teaching was still carried out in its purest, most authentic form, in a time where the poor and religious pilgrims were fed free food in dharmsalas (religious places). And I feel blessed to be practising Indian music with a devoted Indian who doesn't know English and only speaks Hindi with me and who is also a priest responsible for the daily pujas of his temple on the banks of the Ganges!

I am still and will probably always be puzzled by the fact that before "knowing India" I used to feel so "anti-tradition". My mind is adverse to remembering anything historical, I have had no catholic education whatsoever, I know nothing of the story of Jesus, I can't help but always forget the dates and meanings of festivals like Easter and Ascension, and I feel quite indifferent about celebrating Christmas! And then Life threw me into the land of deepest traditions; India!!! Although I have read many books about Yoga, Yoga philosophy, Ayurveda, Indian history and Hindu gods, I feel ignorant about Hinduism. Hindus' religious practices seem to me filled with beauty one day, yet totally absurd the next. I often wonder how it must feel to have a Hindu mind filled with so many fact-like interdictions and rules, such as the firm belief that "a married woman wears a saree" or that "going to a temple unshowered is a sin". There are tons of those interdictions and rules that I find absurd and senseless and ludicrous and even cruel; yet I feel completely comfortable and at peace in this old traditional city; I love speaking its language filled with yoga-related Sanskrit words and dressing myself in long, all-covering clothes, and it generally feels like this traditional place agrees with my disciplined state of mind, my temperament. I dream of knowing who and where I was in a previous life. Surely I was Indian at some point? It is completely beyond my comprehension, although today another thought came to my mind: It is perhaps just that beyond the nonsense of carrying out someone else's (our elders') rituals without really knowing why but with love and devotion, keeping tradition alive allows us to keep a connection with ancient times and back to infinity... like the flame that has been burning continually for centuries from which all cremations are started at Manikarnika Ghat. (I love this!) And perhaps then it doesn't matter which (ancestral or not) practice one does - as long as one does it with love and devotion. I don't do Hindu pujas in temples for I don't know how to do them, but I do feel like my little home is my temple and I care for it with love and devotion. With love and devotion I am also learning traditional music in a place where music and religion are intertwined...

I feel ignorant about history and religion because I wasn't there to see what happened and I don't remember facts, but maybe I love Banaras because here for the first time I feel history and religion. Maybe feeling history and religion just means feeling a connection to eternity. Maybe that is what makes Banaras such a special city and that is precisely where its unique atmosphere comes from...

Work in progress...

2012-01-27T15:21:00.006Z

(Extracts for those who don't know what I'm learning)

I live far away from my family and many of my friends, who do not get a chance to hear me play the violin. Most don't know about Indian classical music, so I hope this will give them a better idea of what I am learning and why I have become so devoted to this never-ending journey...

For a long, long time I was far too ashamed of my emotions and of my quacks to play in front of people. The fear is finally dissolving and I'm happy to share a little more. Of course I am never fully satisfied with my play, and perfection in playing Indian classical music properly will take me a lifetime - if I may even dare hope to achieve perfection - but I have started playing and improvising with other musicians/students, at last, which is pure joy and a big boost in my confidence. It may seem silly or "unprofessional" (?) for some to post these extracts on here, however I feel I have to carry on what I started (i.e. publishing my violin journey on this website since the beginning). Exposing my imperfections further also helps me progress on my personal work towards "dissolving the ego/judging mind", which is essential in music - especially in improvised music as it implies opening oneself naked. Above all, music is a way for me to grow into a better human being, and I feel music is a form of communication and sharing with others, which is why I have to transcend fear and ego to expose and share it. In that sense, music helps me accepting myself as I am - and others - with unconditional love. Although I (my ego!) too often want(s) to achieve that inaccessible "perfect goal", I know I am perfect as I am considering my own path (for we all are, perfect as we are). There is no such thing as being good or bad; we are only just being. All that matters is that we do what we do with love and honesty...

~

"The purpose of Indian music is not to create a fine singer or musician who can perform at concerts and make a living. Indian music is a new realisation that dawns on the person seeking peace or tranquillity in his or her life." ~ Anonymous

~

Extracts (recorded in January 2012)

Poor-quality recording made with my computer With electronic tanpura (drone) & tabla (percussion) machine in the background

Raga Kirwani

    Part 1 - Improvisation without rhythm
   Alap (slow improvisation)
   Part 2 - Improvisation around composition in slow Teen Taal (16-beat rhythm)
   Vilambit -Part1 (slow improvisation)
   Vilambit -Part2 (a bit faster improvisation)
   Vilambit -Part3 (fast improvisation)
   Part 3 - Improvisation around composition in fast Teen Taal (16-beat rhythm)
   Drut -Part1 (structured improvisation)
   Drut -Part2 (faster & freer improvisation)

Exercises

   In Raga Kirwani
    Sliding exercises: Scale & Gamak1 & Gamak2
   Exercises for fast improvisation: Jhala1 & Jhala2
   Other exercises: Sakshi's favourite & String-jumping

   In Raga Jog
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Tunes

   Consolamentum
   (a song by Francesco Banchini which I have learnt again on the Indian violin)
   Irish tune
   (the only Irish tune I know and that I've learnt to play on the Indian violin)

A super-breakfast for top-form digestion in India!

2012-01-16T07:30:00.016Z

I decided last spring when in Europe that I really had to keep my digestion healthy whilst in India, most especially to care about my liver and thus about the quality of the oils that I use. Luckily I visited a good friend in Geneva in May who has been fed a very special kind of breakfast since childhood, as her mother has been eating it for years, caring for her multiple sclerosis thanks to a very controlled and healthy diet - following Dr Kousmine's nutritionally-based medicine.

I had known for a long time that my friend was eating this super-food kind of breakfast everyday and I had been interested, but it sounded complicated to make so I had never tried it. Finally I visited my friend in her home last May and I shared breakfast with her. I was so impressed that I started to make it regularly every morning as soon as I got back to my father's - it is less daunting and time-consuming as it sounds!

Particularity of this recipe

1) Everything is organic, obviously - and raw
2) Using organic and first cold-pressed oil
3) Using freshly ground raw cereals and oleaginous seeds
4) All ingredients are fresh and prepared by oneself before eating. According to Dr Kousmine in the industrialised world we eat a lot of dead, empty food. For instance when we eat flour, we have no idea of how long ago the grain was ground; it could be a very very long time, so all its nutritious benefits are gone - that's why grinding one's own seeds/cereals is important.

So, this is the recipe of the "Budwig Cream" I eat for breakfast most days, and which has kept my digestion and health in general on top form in India for the past six months:

Recipe:

In a bowl, for 1 person, add, in this order:

1) 4 tea-spoons of yoghurt
Dairy or non-dairy according to your preference.

2) 2 tea-spoons of linseed oil
The linseed oil has to be carefully mixed with the yoghurt, using a fork, so that it becomes digestible. One can use other oils, e.g. sunflower, olive etc. but it is very important that the oil be organic and first cold-pressed, so it keeps all its nutritious benefits. In India I use olive oil (brought with me from Europe) because I don't have a fridge to keep linseed oil (linseed oil becomes toxic if it is not kept in the fridge - very important).

3) juice of 1/2 lemon
I also chose olive oil rather than linseed oil because olive oil oil mixed with lemon juice taken in the morning on an empty stomach are excellent for the liver).

4) 1 ripe banana
Or honey (but I prefer banana because it's more filling) to sweeten. Mash the banana with a fork.

5) 2 small spoons of freshly ground, raw wholemeal cereal
Ideally buckwheat or brown rice (no wheat) - only one type of cereal at a time, so either one or the other. Here I use red rice because its available, and I've heard it was full of anti-oxydants. It is important that the cereal is raw, to keep their nutritious benefits, but to ground it so it because digestible.

6) 2 small spoons of freshly ground oleaginous seeds
Again, one type at a time. So either sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, nuts (cashew, almonds, etc.), etc. In Europe I was using sunflower seeds but they are not available here so I use sesame or almonds or cashew nuts. Again the seeds must be freshly ground and raw.

You have to use an electrical coffee grinder to grind the seeds and cereal, or manual even more ideally.

7) fruits
Now with fruits, I don't think mixing them with the rest of the ingredients is good for digestion, unless they are berries. I mix pomegranate as it feels right (and inside the fruit looks like small berries), but if I eat other fruits I'll have them separately 30 minutes before eating the cream.

Things I've noticed with this breakfast:

Firstly, it is absolutely de-li-cious!

I was amazed by this breakfast because I am normally a heavy breakfast eater - I need food in the morning, more than later during the day. And the cream is not heavy, there's not that much to eat, but it does keep me full up until lunch time and I feel well-nourished after I've had it.

My digestion is on TOP FORM. I suffer none of those (mild but still) ailments I suffered last year; like frequent diarrhea or bloating. I ate puri (deep fried chapatis) at both lunch and dinner one day at Vijay's house over New Year, which normally give me systematic diarrhea the following day, but I was fine this time! And apart from one "mini-cold" which went away in two days, I have not been ill at all in the past six months. Now I never get ill in Europe, but it's the first time I feel as generally healthy in India as I normally do in Europe, and it's nice!

Many, many people keep telling me that I look thinner. I haven't particularly noticed losing weight (though I might have a wee bit more space in my jeans indeed...)

And finally, I feel less tired in general.

More info
Budwig cream (English)
The book from which I took the original recipe (French)

Singing and sadhana

2011-12-06T09:59:00.003Z

I started Indian singing classes about a month and a half ago, and I am enjoying them immensely. Although I am taking singing more lightly than violin practice, I feel indeed that it is bringing a lot to the violin practice as well, as the teacher is bringing a new light or angle to my Indian classical music training as a whole. In addition, it brings refreshment to my routine, as I am doing something completely new at the same time as learning something useful/relevant for the violin. The teacher is very friendly and slowly becoming a friend. He is the first Indian person I am having regular contact with who is exactly my age, which feels kind of new. As a teacher I feel he is also very open (as opposed to many traditional Indian teachers who would start teaching any student technical exercises for months/years before moving onto something more substantial), and he listens to what I'm looking for and giving me that exactly and more. I go to singing class just once a week, but we are already singing compositions that I would play on the violin, accompanied with tabla. It is also extremely useful for me to get used to the Indian notes (sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni), because although I know them well by now, the European notes (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si) are still terribly "anchored" in my brain while I play violin. So having to actually sing the Indian notes are finally helping me to get rid of my lazy brain's habit... I also love the fact that I am learning to feel the music through my body directly as opposed to feeling it through the instrument medium. This will be very beneficial because it will help me feeling the rhythm and the ragas more deeply.

Of course, I do need to work my voice in order to sing all the things I have to sing, and I am very happy to work on my voice. It is actually the first time in my life I am actively working my voice! This reminds me how phobic I used to feel about singing in front of others, how I used to sing in a choir in order not to show my individual voice to others and how much I was scared to even think about taking one-to-one singing classes. But today I sing in front of my teacher, and I use singing to teach violin, and I'm happy to sing! But I feel Indian classical music is a lot more an inward meditation than western music, which seems to me (most of the time anyway) outward performance to impress, and the former suits me and my conception of what music is all about: an Inward journey.

In order to have a more powerful voice, in addition to the raga/scale/rhythm practice I do in the day, I have started doing a Dhrupad practice every morning at 6am. It is total meditation and I love it SO much that it gives me the motivation to wake up that early every day, like no other practice ever did before! Normally one has to practise this at 5am, before sunrise, but I "grade" the work down a bit so I am able to do it. In Dhrupad, one has to work the lower octave of one's voice (i.e. the lowest notes) early morning before sunrise. That does make sense because lowest notes are clearly easier to sing in the morning than they are during the day! So, the practice consists in singing the four descending notes (sa, ni, dha, pa / do, si, la, sol / C, B, A, G) with mouth closed ("hmmm...") for 10 minutes each. So 10 minutes "hmm"/sa, 10 minutes "hmmm"/ni, 10 minutes "hmmm"/dha, 10 minutes "hmmm"/pa. I love it because this combines meditation, pranayama (breathing exercise), and voice work. It is just like an extended version of bhramari (a type of pranayama where during exhalation a soft humming sound like the murmuring of a bee is produced). During the practice I love concentrating on my breath and the vibrations which the sound creates in my body (tummy, heart, throat, head), which is also very healthy (it massages the internal organs)! The genius of this practice of lower notes is also that it gradually and naturally widens the singer's note range: Over time, as the singer can start singing lower notes, s/he can automatically produce higher and higher notes as well. I LOVE this!

I also love this practice because I have always felt that my body is extremely sensitive to vibrations, yet although I've always loved the idea of singing particular mantras in yoga for specific benefits, they have never worked for me. The same goes for singing kirtans and bhajans (religious chanting). And I know why: because if I did start believing in God thanks to Yoga, I could only believe in a shapeless, all-encompassing, energy-love kind of God, and I never got into singing the names of Rama or Shiva or Ganesha or any "belief-based" god in particular. I think this is also why I prefer the mantra "So Ham" which simply reflects the sound of the inhalation ("so") and that of the exhalation ("ham"). I know there is more to it, but this signification is the one that moves me. After all I am a very practical person; working on visualising my chakras has never worked for me because I need something tangible like working on feeling something like my limbs (Iyengar Yoga) or my breath, and focusing on something universal, unquestionable like body sensations and vibrations which I know and feel for real, rather than belief-based gods and goddesses. And that's also why I love the Dhrupad practice; because there is no more imposed meaning to it than what you do and feel while you do it. And because the benefits are real and I already feel them, the first being to love getting up for practice and to feel fresh and ready for yoga afterwards!

Music and yoga were always one and the same for me, and with singing it is even more. I start at 6am with Dhrupad practice which is meditation and breathing exercise and music at the same time, and then I feel more ready to practise one hour of yoga asanas (postures), as I have the time, the inspiration and the energy.

Yoga, meditation, music, vibrations, this is more and a journey, this is also looking after my physical and mental health. This is my daily sadhana (practice, quest) which I cherish and love, and which India turns more meaningful and vibrant everyday...

Devendra the Indian violin

2011-10-20T11:40:00.005+01:00

I want to post more but I can't be bothered spending time on the internet. As usual. And I'd rather spend time practising.

I have started practising with tabla students regularly. It's so much FUN! I have finally passed the stage of self-confidence and fear and shyness and embarrassment for mistakes in front of other people. I can play just feeling this tightness in my tummy, and then it does go. Now the music flows out of me. Improvisation used to be such a scary and mysterious thing; now it happens to through me too. I have tons to learn and hours and hours to practise but it's fun, only fun. I love love improvising now. it flows and it's wonderful. I play faster, too...

And I have started Indian classical singing, to improve my improvisation and feel the ragas through my body more (in singing the body is the instrument so the music comes through you directly), to complement the violin work. So I practise 30 minutes to an hour everyday. I am no longer singing-phobic; it's magic. And I'm very very happy to work on my voice.

And I have a student! A violin student from my class at university to whom I give private tuition. I will give him class twice a week and he even wants to pay me (it feels weird!) He seems very excited about the violin, and very serious. We will see how it goes...

It is the first time in my life I am learning music full-time, wow and it was once just an inaccessible dream I was ashamed of having. But it's real now! I used to wonder why I started violin so late, and I used to feel so self-conscious of my playing because I started late, but now i'm just super grateful for having started it at all. Better late than never!

It was 7 years ago now that I bought this lovely lovely violin (which I named "Devendra" at the time, without knowing it was an Indian name - meaning "king of the Gods" - an Indian name for what was to become an Indian violin.

Explicit violin classes, implicit Hindi classes & a new girl-friend

2011-09-19T16:08:00.001+01:00

I've just spent an intense month of violin classes with Guruji. Almost every morning I have been going to his house for class with a few (Indian) students from BHU (Banaras Hindu University), and in the afternoon I've been practising alone. I've been playing between three and six hours of violin everyday. But tonight Guruji is leaving to Mexico for two months, so I'm allowing myself a little break. It feels a bit funny thinking I'll have no teacher for two months, although I will still have plenty to do: Guruji has requested that our group of students keep practising together like in class once a week. We picked up my place for practical reasons (which I'm quite happy about as that will save me from sweaty cycling through Indian traffic - although I do enjoy cycling). Also, I will still be practising with the tabla student of Guruji's brother, so I'll still be going to his house and be able to practise in a “traditional musical family”'s atmosphere and energy. And anyway, I have tons of material to practise with alone, with less inhibition and more motivation as I get along, so I'm happy to give myself the challenge to impress Guruji with my progress when he returns after two months! :-)

But I started this entry wanting to write about my new friend. My new Indian friend. My new Indian girl-friend! That's quite exciting news because it is generally very difficult for foreigners to befriend Indian women. For one, married women don't generally go out of their houses much in traditional (and rural) families, and most of them seem very uninterested by anything that's too far away or too different from their traditional housewife lives, uninterested by anything inaccessible to them or outside of their world. And if one has the chance to speak with them, there isn't much topic for chat beyond traditional/religious and family life, cooking, and cosmetics/clothes... This is slowly changing in bigger cities, but obviously Varanasi being Holy Benares, it is still an extremely traditional place. Then, if girls and younger or unmarried women go out for school or university or whatever, they seem extremely shy towards Westerners or non-Indian people, and even if they do know or understand English they are usually very shy to speak it. Apart from Vijay's sisters, I had never developed proper friendship with an Indian woman in almost four years – until now.

Among our group of students who go to Guruji's house for class every morning there's one girl; she's studying on the final year of Violin Masters at BHU. It's funny because she is my senior of eight years at university, but at Guruji's house we are in the same class. She's very good; technically our level is similar although she's clearly more advanced than me in Indian music theory and knowledge, and more experienced in playing accompanied with tabla and performing on stage, as she regularly has to perform in BHU. It took us some time to start speaking as we are both slow in opening up to new people, and she's very young (21), and being an Indian girl she's quite shy, but she is curious and open and fun, and in comparison to most Indian girls it feels like she kind of “has guts”. Once we started talking we got along quickly.

I'm so very happy; because this is all thanks to my finally being fluent in Hindi. It's funny with Hindi and the violin, how every time after a three-month break in Europe I come back and my mind (and body in the case of violin) has clearly digested all the information learnt in the passed 6-8 months. With Hindi, it feels like my mind has digested all the information, freeing-up a lot of brain-space for more, and I suddenly (magically!) understand more Hindi and speak it better than three month before.

And so with my all-Indian group of classmates who go to Guruji's house (in India they are called “Guru-brothers/-sisters”) I've been speaking only Hindi, being part of an Indian circle for the very first time. And it feels amazing to be integrated in a group of Indians who share a common interest, not to be spoken to only because my skin is white or because I'm a female, and not to be considered like a foreigner, but to be spoken to because I am part of their group, because I'm just like them. That really feels special in India, and for me it feels like such an achievement that I truly feel blessed, and proud of myself for having conquered such a different language as Hindi! In India, it's all too easy to stay amongst Westerners, because deep contact with Indians takes so much time and effort, but I'm finally piercing through!

My Indian girlfriend and Guru-sister took me once to meet her small family (they live one hour away from Varanasi), which was absolutely lovely. She has also introduced me to her friends and classmates at BHU. She lives in one of the student residences for girls on campus, which I've already visited a few times to practise violin with her (and to avoid a 15-hour long power-cut at my place!) I've thus met quite a number of her room/house mates, and that, too has felt pretty amazing! Being with a group of Indian girls, talking about whatever I want freely, like girly things including the Mooncup (!) or boyfriends, music, and why they are shy to speak with foreigners!

Classes have finally started for me on the Violin Diploma at BHU. It's a bit funny because I'm in class with complete beginners, and yet I love it because the fact that I have joined BHU for music means I'm allowed in a new “Indian music circle”, which is very interesting on the “Hindi community” side of things. At the same time it is very nice to be let in whilst having no pressure, no homework because I can already play everything I've got to learn! Being a student without the tough part, only with the fun, socialising part of it! Yet “being the best” in class is also interesting, because the last thing I want is to “show off”. When the teacher asks me to play or show something in class I still feel very shy and self-conscious, therefore I have to focus inward to play it. In a way, I kind of have to “play the game” in the most humble way possible; I have to accept what the teacher tells me, going back to the basics without just thinking that “I know it all”, but paying attention to any aspect and feeling I can learn from. It is a funny situation and one I can learn from, because I am my classmates' senior in the explicit, violin subject whilst they are my seniors as far as the implicit, Hindi teaching side is concerned! Apart from violin practice classes there will also be one theory class per week, which is taught in Hindi. I know most of the content of the syllabus, which will help me focusing on understanding, and hopefully taking notes in Hindi. Perhaps I shall even take the challenge to sit the theory exam in Hindi at the end...?

Varanasi Year 3: Focus violin, routine & monsoon

2011-08-20T08:12:00.008+01:00

I have been back in India for about a month and a half already. Quite a lot of paperwork later (student visa renewal and university registration amongst other things..), and a lot of lovely, quiet time in my Khajuraho family (including one week with Niko from Belgium) watching the cooling monsoon rain, sitting on the doorstep of the house and sipping chai, I have now been back in Varanasi “for good” for a week. My violin teacher is also back in India now, so I have resumed the violin classes.

And I have now completed my two-year Hindi Diploma; I passed with distinction. I am now registered on yet another diploma; Violin Diploma from the Faculty of Performing Arts in Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Wow that sounds quite serious (I find the “Performing” bit a little discomforting especially...) but it's a beginners' level starting at Level 0 so it shall not require too much of an effort from me, and I won't have more than four hours' class a week starting in September). At registration though, as soon as I told the Head of Department (that's my violin teacher's teacher, i.e. my “Grand Guruji”!) that I had been learning Indian violin for three years with his student, he suggested that I take an extra exam from a music school in Allahabad (3-4 hours from Varanasi) at the end of this academic year so I can skip two years next year and enrol on to the BMus (Batchelor of Music) in 2012-2013 instead of wasting my time on the over-easy three-year diploma. I have to say it's kind of interesting, but my teacher had been suggesting I enrol the Allahabad school alongside learning from him since the beginning (2008), and I didn't like the idea of studying music under pressure and having “music exams”, so I had declined the suggestion. One year later I joined the Hindi Diploma on top of learning violin so I didn't even consider the option of having extra music exams. Now I could take on his one extra exam this year, since the BHU diploma will be a peace of cake. However, after a postgraduate Business School degree, an MA in Human Resources Management, a PgDip in Developmental Linguistics, the CELTA (English teacher certificate), and an Undergraduate Diploma in Hindi, I think I should have enough collecting diplomas! As my little sister says, I am a student of the IES (Institute of Endless Studies)...

That said, I have until October to think about the extra Allahabad exam at the end of the year in view of skipping two years of over-easy Violin Diploma. Let us not forget though that I initially joined this diploma solely for student visa purposes... Ahem...

So my main focus this year shall be violin, since I'm “over” with Hindi. It feels funny to have dropped Hindi actually. Of course I haven't “dropped” Hindi as I speak it everyday, it's only the formal, exam bit that I've dropped, and I intend to carry on reading and practising writing (writing might be more of a tough one though...) in my own time and I may go to a private teacher from time to time after I've gathered enough questions for a class, but I won't be under pressure for Hindi. It does feel funny but it feels kind of liberating, too, because my main subject after all has always been violin. I “only” studied Hindi so I could function and communicate properly in India, and I made it “formal” by studying it at university so I could have a student visa. So now I can focus primarily on violin! And this year my teacher wants me to work intensely towards performing often with him, and practising with a tabla player.

So that will be three objectives for me this year:

Performing on stage more and more – the scary discomforting “performing” bit – and working on my self-confidence. (I am good, yes, and I know it!) (well, most of the time...)

Working towards integrating cyclic rhythm into my body and heart! Which shall be succeeded by hours and hours and hours (…) and hours of practising with a real tabla player (as opposed to a tabla machine). Timed improvisation (glups! No I'm not scared!) (Yes I am scared, but I will watch and go through the fear with love and faith!) (And playing with other musicians will take me out of my comfort zone and help me through working with self-confidence, yes, I know...)

And a third one for myself; that's related to working towards integrating the rhythm: doing a lot of practising and exercise towards playing faster and faster...

And it started this week: My teacher has been organising some daily morning practice sessions with a couple of advanced BHU students, which I have been joining. And I will join them every morning on top of my ordinary private, customised afternoon classes... Lots of classes, lots of immersion, so I don't get the chance to drift off and get out of the mood... that's exactly what I need.

And apart from the violin, my lovely routine has resumed. My room is clean (that took a lot of work) and the trunks are open, stuff is out on the carved-in shelves. I am grateful, for I still so much love my room, the house, the family who are my landlords, their two grand-children who play and shout especially three-year old Dibya who's really got on talking now (there's something I find irresistible about children starting speaking when I've learnt their language as a second language!) The onion and potato seller still shouts in the same funny, nasalised voice when he passes down the street. The harmonium and the bells and the vedic chants from the ashram next door, the neighbours in their courtyard, whom I can see from my window chatting as loud as if they were in my room. And the cows, too, mooing as loud as though they were in my room! Oh how I love you, vibrant, lively, noisy, smelly Banaras! And my one-meter squared kitchenette is back in service, and I love it too. Squatting on my floor, I've cooked a lot this week, which I'm very happy about. It's all too easy to be lazy with cooking when you can go out and eat cheaply in India, which most non-Indians seem to do, especially when equipment is so rudimentary - no oven, no microwave, no fridge, no ready-made meals or quick fixes, oh and no dessert or nibbling a square of chocolate. Everything takes time to make, so easy-cooking soon becomes boring and same-y. There is little choice compared to what one can eat in the west - not much else than a cereal base (chapati, rice, pasta, maybe bread) and a vegetable dish. But time flies and prices do rise, and I want to be more careful with money this year... So I've been cooking every evening, simple, wholesome and lovely food. Always kind of the same, but I've been inspired and somewhat more creative, perhaps I find food less boring than I would in Europe because I do find the “mundane” stuff less boring than in Europe - perhaps because everyone leads a more simple life here? Or perhaps I'm just inspired to cook because season hasn't fully started, most of my friends have not returned yet so I'm not very socially active “yet”. Less distraction, more focus, which I am enjoying while it lasts and hope it carries on. It's too easy to get distracted in India, between going out for food, having a chai at the local stall, talking about life with the passer-bys. Time is slower here but it makes everything takes more time! But of course, this is precisely what is so irresistible about Indian life...

And apart from all that, the good, wonderful news is that it has rained a lot this year! A real monsoon, locals say. And the Ganga is higher than it has been for years. Indeed, I had never seen the Ganges waters so high and they are higher than when I first came to India in 2005! It makes me so happy to see a high, powerful Ganga. India is Green, and with all this cooling rain, apart from just a few days, I have not suffered from the weather at all. Where did last year's Sweatyland go? I have forgotten all about those unbearable nights when the fan stopped and I started bathing in my own sweat! And it's so nice! And it's almost September already and when the “-ember” months come in India, so does the most pleasant season...

Partage & Culture Sarasvati (English!)

2011-07-07T14:16:00.003+01:00

Partage & Culture Sarasvati

Association Loi de 1901
SIRET no.: 44787364700013

Sharing material, sensitive and spiritual wealth

The association acts in an artistic, educational, and social scope. It promotes exchange between human beings and relationships between cultures. It works towards raising funds to initiate or participate in supportive activities targeted to meet specific needs. It contributes to the training of men, women and children, and their participation in artistic, cultural and educational practices.

Partage & Culture Sarasvati (français)

2011-07-07T13:16:00.007+01:00

Partage & Culture Sarasvati

Association Loi de 1901
SIRET no.: 44787364700013

Partager des richesses au niveau matériel, sensible et spirituel

L'association agit dans un champ d'intervention artistique, éducatif, social et solidaire. Elle favorise le partage entre les hommes et les relations entre les cultures. Elle s’emploie à trouver des fonds pour initier ou participer à des actions de soutien ciblées répondant à des besoins. Elle contribue à la formation des hommes, des femmes et des enfants, à leurs participations à la pratique artistique, culturelle et éducative.

India, here I come yet again...

2011-07-06T16:49:00.008+01:00

In three days I will be in India again.

Time has flown as always, and I have had a lovely, valuable time in Europe. From Lille (France) to Edinburgh (UK), Intres & Valence (France) to Geneva (Switzerland), Munich (Germany) and back to Lille again. From Brussels to Liege (Belgium) and back to Lille again. From Lot (south France), up to Fursac and back to Lille again. From Edinburgh again and back to Lille yet again. One weekend in Paris, and back to Lille again.

I've checked my health, refurnished my stock of magnesium chloride and clay and grapefruit seed extract and nature-friendly tummy medecine, and bought other practicals that are difficult to find in India.

Apart from my family, I mainly met Indophile or Indian friends this year. Although I had a lovely time with all, I think the best time I had was with my franco-Indian friends and my violin teacher in Lot. It felt so right to be with them doing what we were doing, like being with family doing something I could do for the rest of my life.

This year whilst in Europe, I stayed focused on my Indian path; it clearly felt like opening my western violin and seeing old-life's friends would be too much of a distraction. I've listened mostly to Indian music and I didn't even make it to a western music concert this year. It would have been lovely of course, but somehow it didn't happen. The only three concerts I made were those of my Indian violin teacher and of kathak dance. I had a few Indian violin classes and I managed to practise more violin than I had last year in Europe. I wanted to listen to Indian music more, and I met an Indian violin player who lives near my father's place. And I made a website for my Franco-Indian friends' wonderful association Partage & Culture Sarasvati.

India, even in Europe

Maitryee Mahatma

So when I arrive in India I'll have to register on the violin diploma in Banaras Hindu University, and extend my student visa. I'm looking forward to seeing how that diploma goes. I may not need to go to classes much as I can already play violin and I'm starting the diploma at beginner's level, but I'm excited to have Indian classmates this year, and to be taught in Hindi. There will only be private classes for Hindi per se now, and I should be more "free" university-wise. I wonder how this year will change from last year. I may well be less taken by the university diploma, but this year I've accepted a kind of "communicator-facilitator" job in India, to help organising a tour for my violin teacher's Swiss-African-Indian music & dance project; that will be a new experience, it might or might not turn out lucrative, but it doesn't really matter. In any case, I shall learn a lot from it, and then I will see where that takes me...

Europe

2011-04-15T15:36:00.003+01:00

wow. i haven't written on this blog since early january.

i'm back in europe for three months now and i don't really have anything to say.

hindi exam and diploma over. violin still going on, for as long as life will allow. it feels like i'm no closer to where i want to be, but of course each day is closer than the previous day, so it's ok.

now let's see how those three months will pass by. i'm flying back to india on 8th july.

wow the roads are so empty and quiet round here! i miss the animals, the smells and the noise, the dirt, the mess, the vibrancy...

Winter/New Year

2011-01-06T09:27:00.001Z

Vijay came for two weeks; it was lovely to have him with me for so "long". I played the concert on Assi Ghat on the big stage on 18 December. It had scared me so much but I enjoyed the 25 minutes and wanted to play more. True, my microphone was pretty low so I didn't have to worry much about making mistakes! We played fusion music, "east meets west", eight musicians altogether, including a fantastic didgeridoo player from Holland/France whose instruments and skills fascinated the Indians so much that we could almost see their mouths drop from the big stage. As soon as he played a sound they clapped. Because of him, we featured in three local newspapers the next day!

We played with this band twice more, including on New Year Eve. That night wasn't so pleasant for me as I had to learn a (simple) piece of Irish music in two days; yet that part was definitely what I enjoyed playing most. My teacher is really kicking my arse hard, if I may put it that way. He'll tell us exactly what to play at short notice and with little practice so we play more spontaneously on stage. It is very challenging for my "shy little girl" side who wants to be prepared and perfect and who feels inferior compared to the other, professional, musicians. But the Indian way is different, like I said in a previous post. It doesn't matter if you play two notes out of a concerto; you're joining in, you're learning, and that's what matters. No Indian will look at you thinking you look crap for not playing. It's OK, and who cares!??! I am learning. Violin and also shedding the self-consciousness issues I've had for years when it comes to "playing music in front of people". It's moving. It's difficult and it has got me to shed tears, but mostly it's fun, I feel better every concert, and my teacher is happy with my performance. So it's all good.

Christmas was lovely too. We celebrated Christmas properly for the first time in perhaps five years. With Marie-Christine and Jerome, some French and Indian friends, Vijay of course (who was celebrating his first Christmas), Marie-Christine's wonderful cuisine, some music from my computer, a Christmas tree, a cake, and some presents. It felt like I was in my Varanasi family.

Vijay is gone now, and the cold has seriously arrived in Varanasi. My computer says it's 9 degrees, and yesterday's newspaper indicated peak temperatures of 18 degrees, and 4 degrees at night. I am a lot better equipped than last year though so I'm not suffering as much. This year I have my sleeping bag, in which I sleep under three blankets (head away from the window!) I have a hot-water bottle in case, although I haven't used it and I don't think I will have to. I am blessing my thermos for the hot water I drink all day, and I am very happy that I brought thick tights because I can wear them under my jeans/trousers. Oh, and this super-warm fleecy-woolly jacket I bought in Rishikesh is wonderful; of all "pieces of equipment" it's probably that which makes this winter bearable/pleasant. I wear it all the time. Of course no heating in badly isolated Indian houses means I wear 5 layers and feel like a bloated chamallow at all times, but I'm well-warmed up and this is what matters. No-one seems to care about looks in India and I love it!

I am still going to my new yoga teacher twice a week, despite the cold. It's hard to get up in the morning because the outside world is a lot colder than the cosy world of blankets and sleeping bag, but it does me a lot of good; that and the cycling. Hindi has started again now, which I'm enjoying after the break... 2011 will be a deciding year of change for me... I shall strive to welcome it with love and faith...

I have decided to apply for another degree in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) so I can carry on extending my student visa. I feel guilty for not working but I love this Indian life, and shall let it last whilst it can... I no longer want to study Hindi formally as I have reached a level now that allows to carry on learning on my own, reading, speaking, and generally speaking living in India. So I will apply for a degree in violin/Indian music! I have to start from first year which means I will start at beginner's level. It's OK, it's mainly for visa reasons, and the fact that it should be too easy for me means it should allow me to be to spend more time with Vijay/away from Varanasi. The theory part taught in Hindi does sound exciting though... We will see...

(Yoga &) first concerts

2010-12-14T10:25:00.008Z

I am very happy. I still go to the new yoga teacher and I have had no difficulty motivating myself to cycle across the city early morning twice a week. I do love the ride, I do love the practice which is very different from all I had known before, and I love the company of this 76-year-old, fun yogi. Going to class I forget everything and for the time being let go of my violin/Hindi routine. I broaden my world and I feel it grounds me in some sort of timeless reality, reminding me of what is important (the heart, the present, love!) More practically, the pranayama cleanses my entire bronchial area and it seems to have been helping my chronically morning runny/blocked nose. I am very very happy with that. And of course, going to regular yoga class is refreshing my daily practice for the rest of the week. Thus is my yogic journey resumed, and I am very much looking forward to it...

And now on the violin... I was due to play for my first concert on 18th December here in Varanasi, but I have played two concerts already, in Rishikesh. I went there last week with my violin teacher, Jerome my “guru-bhai” (i.e. my violin brother, who studies from the same teacher) and his wife. Through their association, the French couple supports the C.J. Maa Music School for which I created a website, so for the school's benefit they wanted to organise two concerts by our teacher, as well as two workshops for the school's children. Predictably, Sukhdev asked Jerome and I to play with him on both concerts. I was very happy because I feel at home in Rishikesh, and playing for a reasonable audience including the children I know and love would indeed feel less intimidating for me. It was definitely a good idea before playing a concert on a big stage in Varanasi!

Both days before the concerts we enjoyed some great practice sessions with Sukhdev, Jerome, and Shivananda (our friend and the school's teacher) on tablas. All three are great musicians and incredibly supportive of me!! I am so grateful! The concerts were OK. Mostly I was nervous before, more than during, the concert, so I fell more shy than nervous. Of course I played a lot less than I play in class, but it doesn't matter; it's part of the practice and confidence will come in time. I love this Indian way: the teacher introduces his/her students on stage, who join in when possible. That way the teacher is responsible for the concert and the students don't have to worry about playing all the time. They can join in when they feel comfortable, and the more they'll play in concert and get used to it, the more they'll be able to play until they're fully “grown”. I love to say it thus: the teacher takes you by the hand and doesn't let you go until you're ready. S/he provides a kind of safety net. I think that's exactly what I need because the fear has been buried in me since childhood... I know I'm good, but I need reassurance.

And so we had a lovely time in Rishikesh. Boy, it was cold, nowhere near European temperatures but cold for bodies that have been more accustomed to heat! I bought a very warm fleece and wool jacket though; I'm very happy because it will keep me warm during the month of January, which was very cold in Varanasi last year. (Remember there is no heating inside houses, so it's as cold inside as outside...) That said I am enjoying cool temperatures. And of course wearing jeans and generally warmer clothes. Sensibilities seem to change in India. I enjoy simple things immensely, a lot more than I do in the west. I rejoice at brooming my room, eating a papaya, and going for chai in the street after yoga class. Change becomes shear delight. I think I'm even more childish in India because I love life even more; I laugh at it like a silly girl.

Back from Rishikesh. I am taking a one-month holiday from Hindi, although officially I don't think I'm on holiday. My progress on the Hindi syllabus allows for a holiday though, and I have decided to prioritise violin this month, with all these concerts. It started with the forthcoming concert on Saturday 18th, but like I said I have already played two, and two more are coming after that, on 20th and 31st. My teacher is pleased that I am motivated, and he wants to “kick my butt” and get me to play on a stage as much as possible to boost my confidence. Even if I don't want to play violin, he said, I can also sit on stage with him and play tanpura (one just has to pluck the four strings one by one to create the accompanying drone), just so I get used to being on stage, and be part of the music. I love the idea of playing tanpura...

So this month will be full on violin. This week Jerome and I are going to class morning and afternoon: morning is normal class; afternoon we will rehearse with the other musicians for Saturday. My main issue really is following the 16-beat (teen taal). Improvising and coming back to the composition on the right beat. I can improvise now, and pretty well. My fingers and my heart have freed up. Fear has dissipated. Yet I block when I have to focus on rhythm, because it is difficult to focus both on playing and hearing the beat at the same time. I need to practise, practise, practise, until I have internalised the beat cycle, so that I can do both at the same time. For this I also have to go beyond the tabla machine and play more and more with real tablas, which seems to be starting slowly now...

And I haven't seen Vijay for over a month now; he is coming Saturday and will stay with me for two weeks... at last.

Yoga in India

2010-11-25T08:22:00.003Z

I have been doing Iyengar Yoga for almost ten years now. As much as I love this type of yoga for all the benefits it has brought to my life, something displeases me mostly about Iyengar Yoga in India: It seems very inaccessible to Indian nationals, as though attached to some kind of elitism. In the three years that I have been living in India now I only once found a satisfying Iyengar Yoga teacher in the very non-Indian city Auroville in Tamil Nadu, and she was Russian. Of course there was Iyengar Yoga in Rishikesh, and even away from the touristic, yoga-machine area I found an Iyengar Yoga school, which attracted mostly Indians. But there the junior teacher who taught for the month I attended was a very ego-centred person, who gave half the instructions, didn't correct the students' postures, and shouted at his students ordering them to contort in postures their bodies would not allow them to perform. One of the most important lessons Iyengar Yoga had taught me in Europe was one of self-kindness, not torture!

I did do a pretty good ten-day yoga retreat in Rishikesh after that, back in May 2008. However, there apart from a couple of rich Indians, only westerners attended, because it costed Rs 8000 for ten days (with food and accommodation). Here in Varanasi, I have tried three yoga teachers. All of them taught only westerners, and they took at least Rs150 for group classes, which means they would take at least Rs1000/hour for a group of seven students! This is an enormous amount for Indian standards. (Many hotel assistants earn a (meagre) salary of Rs3000 per month.) Now of course, Rs150 are only £2, that's “nothing” for a westerner. I am arguing because of the segregation which is systematically placed onto non-Indians when it comes to anything relating to money. A friend recently told me that he had found a daily yoga (group) class in Delhi, which mostly Indian attended, and for one hour of yoga every day he had paid Rs 200 per month!

Beyond the price, I have refused to go to classes that taught only non-Indian students, because, beyond the fact that I found them unsatisfactorily vague after nine years of precise Iyengar asanas, I refuse to feed into this dichotomy between Indians and non-Indians. Yoga is about union, about being All One. Yoga transcends all dichotomy, but most “touristic” yoga instructors make it a business. Iyengar Yoga seems even more elitist than that. I was given only the name of one teacher who could allegedly teach me according to the Iyengar school, and I refused to try him out after he gave me his ridiculous price for a 1-1 class: Rs 500. I know of no other “Iyengar Yoga teacher” in Varanasi.

And then of course there is the, official, Iyengar Institute in Pune, but one may be placed on a two-year waiting list before being allowed to enrol on a one-month retreat, which involves two classes a day I believe, and for which one has to have a certificate saying one has practised Iyengar Yoga for at least eight years. If I remember rightly, the candidate also has to be able to perform the headstand for at least eight minutes! The cost of the retreat is pretty high (and so is accommodation in Pune). I visited the Iyengar Yoga Institute three years ago and in the practice room I saw mostly non-Indians. Of course, BKS Iyengar is an extraordinary man. I cried in shock and emotion when I saw him in the hall. I saw him perform a strong back-bend for half-an-hour on top of his 90 years. Iyengar is wonderful type of Yoga, and it has indeed changed my body and my life. The visit of the Iyengar Institute was very moving and inspiring for me, but by no means do I wish to put myself on a two-year waiting list for a yoga training course. And why is Iyengar so unpopular and unavailable to Indian nationals? I did consider another centre for Iyengar Yoga in the Himalayas, in Dehradun. The cost of the retreat seemed even more elistic. Again, I can afford this price; however nowhere on the website did it say it had a more reasonable fee for Indian nationals, and the student was requested to stay in selected accommodation (and nowhere of his/her own choice if s/he found elsewhere) which was very expensive compared to Indian standard. If I had looked at it from Europe four years ago I would probably have jumped on the occasion, thinking it was pretty cheap. However, now that I have lived in India for that long, and I have learnt about the cost of things, I am revolted by this price. This is completely unaffordable for most Indians.

How can this dichotomy not be justified? It makes me sort of “angry at Iyengar”. And so I have been confined to my room, doing my yoga practice on my own since I have been in India. Recently it has been difficult to motivate myself, to say the least. The practice has been coming and going. There are periods when I'll practise assiduously, then I'll stop in rebellion, to finally take on again. My mood has changed. For a while a practised only as I felt, and I was satisfied with that. But lately again I've not been able to bother because I don't know where I'm going. I usually just practise those specific postures which I feel help my body (back, hips, legs) and then stop. My practice has become only exercise, although I know Yoga goes a long way beyond the body. And all that time, part of me knows that I must be missing on extraordinary opportunities to practise yoga, because Yoga comes from India from God's sake! There must be good teachers out there, but how do you find genuine teachers when your skin is white? I stopped thinking about finding a yoga teacher, but the latent thought that I have to detach myself from Iyengar and move on always remained at the back of my mind.

Two days ago a friend introduced me to a very inspiring young French woman. With a sitar teacher she has been learning Indian classical music on her clarinet for a few years. She lives on the other side of the main ghat, after the cremation ghat “Manikarnika”and away from all tourists, and clearly she felt very genuine and humble. She spoke of learning yoga so I asked her more about it, and for the first time in ages I felt inspired. Her teacher is 75 and looks healthy and has brilliance in his eyes. He puts great focus on pranayama (breathing exercises) and teaches Indians too. His price is reasonable. Learning yoga with him has changed her life. The problem was, though, that the daily classes start at 7:30 and he lives that far away from my area of town, after Manikarnika Ghat, after Chowk and even after Maidagin. Not to mention that I am already very busy! Still I took his phone number, and as soon as I got home couldn't help but phoned him. “After Chowk” had always sounded dauntingly far away for my poor orientation and cycling skills. The truth is though, it is not all that far; it is thick, maddening Indian traffic that makes the task of cycling far away so unimaginable. And I have improved a lot at cycling in this craze in a year, I have to admit – and modify my self-perception accordingly! I have even come to enjoy it. So, following day I got on my bicycle and went to meet the teacher for nine o'clock; at this time the roads were still uncongested. If I cycle to and fro before eleven I shall be able to avoid the traffic, hurray! What had seemed an impossible trek by auto-rickshaw at three o'clock when I went to collect my visa three months ago was now a pleasant 30-minute bicycle ride on a fine morning. Now the task that remains will be to manage to get up early enough for class twice a week...

The yoga teacher was indeed inspiring. He came to meet me on the main road and recognised me straight away (though that was easy I guess). Tall, beautiful Indian man, well-poised, healthy and friendly-looking. He clearly didn't look his 75 years although his voice may have given him away. He took me along the narrow lanes towards the Ganges, when suddenly I heard a clarinet. I looked around and there she was, the young French woman, sitting crossed-legged on the stone outside a small temple, closed-eyes, playing an aalaap on her clarinet. A few Indians women were listening. She fitted the local, picturesque décor completely. She looked beautiful, humble, honest. I felt like I was in the heart of Banaras, the Banaras that once was free of tourism, free and real. Once we reached the yoga teacher's home he took me upstairs on to the rooftop. For a second I thought I was in Chitrakut on the rooftop of Vijay's sister; it looked so similar except for the holy river on the other side. The teacher asked me to stop there. He went to fetch a big wooden stick on one side, and after he had chased the monkeys away, we walked on the free terrace and into a small room, facing the river. It was a small light room with a table bed on which the teacher sat. And then my introduction started. He spoke a clear, beautiful Hindi, telling a bit about yogi philosophy and the things I have to understand when considering yoga. The importance of breath. I knew (and loved) most of it but it was very refreshing to hear it again, and very interesting to hear it all in Hindi! I felt as though I was out of time. He showed me a few pranayama techniques. I asked him how he had learnt yoga, to which he replied that he had learnt it from his father, who had learnt it from his father, who had learnt it from his mother, and on and on and on... A real, traditional family of yogis!? Anyhow, I liked him straight away. Tomorrow I shall get up early and try out a 7:30 class. I like the prospect of the adventure, discovering more of Banaras, being grateful for my bicycle, and of course seeing what there is to learn from this humble man.. We shall see how that goes...

Playing music in the boys' jail

2010-11-18T16:48:00.018Z

I went to Khajuraho for Dashara festival and I came back. Then again I went to Khajuraho for Diwali festival with my housemate Nahoko and I came back. The loveliest (besides spending time with Vijay) was probably to see her teach Kathak dance to his sisters. And the family accepting my best Varanasi friend in with open arms.

Back in Varanasi life has been exciting on the social and the violin front. My violin teacher asked me to play violin with him and another "Guru-bhai" (fellow student of my teacher) next month. So I am learning a new raag (a south Indian one) and a new composition, and I am practising a lot with the tabla machine to be able to follow the 16-beat on my big day. I am very scared but very excited also. It feels different somehow, I am not sure about expressing how, like something is changing, progressing. I may dare to say that I feel more confident about playing in front of people. I focus and I try to transcend the fear. But I will be OK. My teacher wouldn't ask me to play in concert if he didn't have faith in me.

My Guru-bhai is a 50-something violin teacher from southern France, Jerome. He arrived in Varanasi beginning of November for two month with his wife; I met them last February when I went to Rishikesh/Haridwar with Guruji for two concerts and to see Shivananda and the children again. Jerome will play with us in the concert next month, which makes me feel I'm not alone. There should also be a tabla player (obviously), a flute player and a sitar player. Jerome and I will support each other. It will be my first real concert, and probably the most scary (although reality is always a lot different than imagination...) We have started having classes together and we will also practise together. I've seen a lot of them recently, and met many people. Varanasi is invaded with interesting people lately, mostly French.

I had wanted to write before and as always time has flown away. But today it is impossible not to write. Today was too exciting and noteworthy. The young volunteer from my friend's NGO Jimy Library contacted Jerome and I a couple of weeks ago, because she wanted us to play music in the "governmental centre for boys", which they are striving to improve in the frame of their NGO. We practised our impromptu concert two days ago with another French woman who rented a djembe for the occasion. The rehearsal was fun and exciting. We practised a couple of songs from Shivananda, and Fred improvised on the djembe. Jerome played one of his songs from his children in France, and some Irish music. I followed him, improvising. I was excited because it would help me transcend the "fear of playing in front of people" although I knew whatever we played we wouldn't get it wrong because the boys would be thrilled to just listen to some music, whatever we play. (And there was no fear actually, only the strange feeling in my tummy due to my experiencing this dilapidated place.)

The centre is located a few kilometres away from Varanasi across the Ganges. The boys may have lost their families, lived in the streets for a while and be caught by the police before they were sent to the centre, or they may have been taken there by their families if they could no longer support them for financial reasons, or they may be deaf or mentally handicapped. Whatever their stories, they are all society rejects and have been locked away in this centre which, practically, is more a jail than a centre. On the entrance gate it says "Home for Boys", but when our rickshaw-driver was asking his way to the locals, they all referred to it as a "jail".

The children welcomed us with bright smiles and respectful "namastes", but my tummy went all funny when I entered the gloomy place. The main corridor was so dark and grubby, with unpainted dirty walls. We walked along and saw the two bedrooms. The children's beds were basically two rows of wooden tables on top of each other, with no mattresses. Only two rooms where well-lit and friendly-looking, equipped with mats and tables and rudimentary school or craft equipment, but they've been so only since the two NGOs started working in the centre, less than a year ago. Before that the conditions of the centre were even worse. When my friend visited the centre for the first time before starting the work, there was no cleaner and the children were very dirty. There was no electricity after 4pm and no fans in the rooms, the children lived in the dark and the heat most of the time. And I don't even want to imagine winter time.

Today at least there are fans hanging from the rooms' ceilings, and an inverter for powercuts. There is a television in one room. My friend comes to distribute fruits every week to improve the children's nutrition,as they probably just eat rice and potato all the time. The NGO provides a psychologist/teacher and a sports teacher. At the moment a volunteer from France also offers painting and embroidery classes three times a week. And there is a cupboard full of school material but it's locked when the intervening staff leaves, otherwise the guards steal it for themselves. They stay outside most of the time, as though they don't want to mix with those untouchable, unworthy creatures. Evening and weekend they lock the children inside, who are then left to their own devices, without even one adult to look after them.

And so we were greeted with warm, bright smiles and "namastes" in this dark, gloomy place. Quickly we put all the table-beds to one side and laid down the dirty blankets on the floor of the "tv room", which landed on the floor with a thick cloud of dust. The children sat in front of us naturally without our needing to tell them to. Some were shy and quiet, others were excited, but all were curious and interested. We started with a simple melody, after which Jerome taught them one of his simple songs. They started singing, mostly very out of tune but very eagerly, "oh la la qu'il fait beau" (o-la-la-ki-fe-bo). We could hardly hear ourselves play when they started clapping hands. Then Jerome started playing the melody of a famous kirtan (devotional song) and they provided us with the Hindi "lyrics". I ended up with a quiet tune. Some of the children wanted to touch our violin bows. I told them it was made of horse hairs and they kept repeating "ghore ka bal, ghore ka bal" (horse hairs). After our little concert, another French girl (we were all French!) and her Indian teacher offered a short bolas show, while Jerome played tzigane music. The children watched with full attention. Finally the others volunteers who had come with us brought sodas, sweets and biscuits, which the children ran to from as much excitement as genuine hunger. Then they danced, sang and many tried the djembe and the violin. We spent about 2 1/2 hours there. When we left they asked us to "come back tomorrow!"...

We went back to our rickshaws. We needed cigarettes (not me!) and chai. I think we were all a bit emotionally stoned. I was very tired mentally, but happy to have been there and given a bit of joy to those lovely, rejected boys.

Routine and conjunctivitis

2010-10-03T09:29:00.002+01:00

Again it has been ages since I wrote on this blog. I guess routine has started and therefore there is less to say. Quoique... Every time I set up to write I am surprised at how rarely I feel compelled to write (and read), compared to how often I had done up until two years ago. I suppose I don't write so much also because I have fewer questions about my life here. I am, just. I may repeat myself a lot, but it feels nice to express it: all there is is love; that is why I do what I do and I am where I am. Love inhibits the questioning mind; it stops it from wandering, questioning, judging.

So routine has started again, what seems like ages ago. GettinAgain it has been ages since I wrote on this blog. I guess routine has started and therefore there is less to say. Quoique... Every time I set up to write I am surprised at how rarely I feel compelled to write (and read), compared to how often I had done up until two years ago. I suppose I don't write so much also because I have fewer questions about my life here. I am, just. I may repeat myself a lot, but it feels nice to express it: all there is is love; that is why I do what I do and I am where I am. Love inhibits the questioning mind; it stops it from wandering, questioning, judging.

So routine has started again, what seems like ages ago. Getting up round seven, practising yoga and cleaning my room (releasing caught mice and brooming gecko poo...), shower, breakfast. Going to violin or Hindi class, then for my daily plate (thali) of same-y but nutritious and delicious food in the very homely cafe round the corner from my house. This will also be my socialising time with other non-Indians – mostly music students or volunteer workers, all with beautiful life stories. Or while I wait for my thali I'll decide to be anti-social and check my emails on my computer, as this second home of mine even offers wifi service. After that I'll go home for violin practice/ Hindi homework. Evening time I'll go down the street for some daily food shopping to be cooked for dinner, perhaps stopping by for a glass of chai with a randomly-met friend or a well-known shopkeeper. And after dinner I'll practise some more violin or do some more homework, or perhaps there will be a classical music concert to go to, or I may allow myself to watch a film on my computer.

My routine is not so strict since Nahoko has arrived though. Nahoko was my occasional neighbour last year. She comes from Japan to study Kathak dance between Varanasi and Rishikesh, but this year she will probably be more settled in Varanasi, which is great news from me as she has clearly been my best girlfriend since I have been living in India. It's just good to have her company under the same roof, and it means we can also cook together. I have three other neighbours now. The Thai monk, who has been keeping to his room for over a month since I told him off for being dubiously over-friendly before classes started, and two older men. One nice guy from Australia who will be staying for six weeks only, and a massively tall and broad fifty-something man from Germany who listens to a lot of seventies' and eighties' rock/hard rock music and er, also smells and pisses outside of the toilet hole. Gulp. He is a friendly man, but a little creepy, and rock music just feels out-of-place amongst the temple bells and Sanskrit chants of Holy Varanasi! When his door is open, mine is closed... Oh, and I forgot the landlords' daughter-in-law who married their son last June; although she spends most of her days downstairs with the family so she doesn't really feel like a “floor-mate”. She is very friendly though, and with her I connect a little more with the landlords, which is nice.

Vijay came to visit me three weeks ago. As usual, he stayed for a week during which I didn't do any violin nor any Hindi except going to classes. I am fully competent in chapati-making now though, I am very pleased to say! There is something very exciting in eating my very own chapatis; a simple pleasure of life, which India seems to make even more enjoyable. I think it rained everyday while Vijay was here; a very late monsoon until mid-September this year, but a pretty good monsoon indeed. The rain seems to be over for good now, and I am very happy the Ganges is high and we've had plenty of water! After Vijay left I caught a cold. The weather is changing and temperatures are slowly decreasing - slowly - but it has been odd, up and down and up and down. When I had this cold I often felt cold despite the sweat. Many people have had a cold, and another interesting bacteria has spread: conjunctivitis!

I had never had conjunctivitis before. One morning last week during violin class I started feeling strange, mostly bizarre and weak. At the end of the class I realised I had pain in my right eyelid. It felt a little like pressure on my eye, and I couldn't see clearly because some foreign body was wandering round and on my pupil. I cycled back home as quickly as possible to check my eye in the mirror. Ha! Sticky yellow pus it was! Disgusting. I quickly went to the eye hospital very near my home, which I had wanted to check out. Another thing I have learnt in India, is to take illnesses and other health-related bothers as experience, and to find them interesting! I was happy to finally check out this (good) eye hospital. The (female) doctor told me I had conjunctivitis and gave me some antibiotic eye drops. I was (happily) surprised she didn't prescribe any antibiotic tablets, but I prescribed myself a boosting cure of magical magnesium chloride (pour les francais, du chlorure de magnesium). I just love this magical powder, which poured in water becomes an effective antiseptic and a natural antibiotic (it also cures polio!) When I told Vijay about my conjunctivitis he told me many people had it in Khajuraho, and then I realised that many people had it in Varanasi too! The following morning I saw my neighbour the monk, to whom I hadn't spoken for over a month. When I saw his eyes I burst out laughing. “Hello conjunctivitis friend!” We've been friendly again since then. Thank you conjunctivitis! The landlady and her daughter-in-law have had it as well, so that's four people in the house! My eyes got better quickly, more quickly than most it seems – I am convinced it is the magnesium chloride. On the way to school one morning I tried to look at people in the eyes. But conjunctivitis-affected Indians wear sunglasses, because the superstitious Indian is adamant that you can catch conjunctivitis just by looking at the eyes of affected people. You'll say hello to an Indian friend and he'll turn his head and ask you to wear sunglasses. Of course, Nahoko to whom I showed my yucky swollen eyes a lot, didn't catch conjunctivitis.

Talking of the magical magnesium chloride, I discovered another miraculous little gem lately: honey! I had known for a while that honey had antiseptic properties and helped with healing, but I had never tried it for myself. Recently, in the strange weather of Sweatyland, I've had weird little wounds that wouldn't heal. One on my toe which is history by now, and a mysterious yellow scab underneath my nose that just won't go. (I was rather beautiful a few days ago with that and swollen red eyes!) So I tried applying honey on the affected areas; on my toe I had to cover the wound in a bandage to keep it away from dust – and the honey to keep it away from ants and flies! Well, the honey works.

The last two weeks were odd to say the least. Feeling weird and weak from the cold, conjunctivitis – and the Ayodhya court case! Ayodhya is a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh. According to the Ramayana (the “Bible” of India) it is where Lord Rama was born and, after his fourteen-year exile in the jungle, where he lived and reigned. I don't understand much of it, but a court case went on for twenty years to decide whether the area round a Hindu temple in Ayodhya originally belonged to the Hindus or the Muslims. The court case is twenty-years old but the whole issue is 350 years old. The verdict would be published first on 24th September and Hindu-Muslim violence was expected all over India, so people were told to stay home that day. Then the date was postponed to the 28th or the 29th I wasn't sure as different people said different things. So when should we stay in and when could we go out? Everyone was talking about it and I was anxious too. Finally the verdict was to be released on Thursday 30th September at 15:30. I could go to university in the morning but everyone had to stay home after noon, there would be police everywhere. In the end the verdict was published, but it has been a peaceful one. Now that's over and nothing has changed in the streets of Varanasi...
g up round seven, practising yoga and cleaning my room (releasing caught mice and brooming gecko poo...), shower, breakfast. Going to violin or Hindi class, then for my daily plate (thali) of same-y but nutritious and delicious food in the very homely cafe round the corner from my house. This will also be my socialising time with other non-Indians – mostly music students or volunteer workers, all with beautiful life stories. Or while I wait for my thali I'll decide to be anti-social and check my emails on my computer, as this second home of mine even offers wifi service. After that I'll go home for violin practice/ Hindi homework. Evening time I'll go down the street for some daily food shopping to be cooked for dinner, perhaps stopping by for a glass of chai with a randomly-met friend or a well-known shopkeeper. And after dinner I'll practise some more violin or do some more homework, or perhaps there will be a classical music concert to go to, or I may allow myself to watch a film on my computer.

My routine is not so strict since Nahoko has arrived though. Nahoko was my occasional neighbour last year. She comes from Japan to study Kathak dance between Varanasi and Rishikesh, but this year she will probably be more settled in Varanasi, which is great news from me as she has clearly been my best girlfriend since I have been living in India. It's just good to have her company under the same roof, and it means we can also cook together. I have three other neighbours now. The Thai monk, who has been keeping to his room for over a month since I told him off for being dubiously over-friendly before classes started, and two older men. One nice guy from Australia who will be staying for six weeks only, and a massively tall and broad fifty-something man from Germany who listens to a lot of seventies' and eighties' rock/hard rock music and er, also smells and pisses outside of the toilet hole. Gulp. He is a friendly man, but a little creepy, and rock music just feels out-of-place amongst the temple bells and Sanskrit chants of Holy Varanasi! When his door is open, mine is closed... Oh, and I forgot the landlords' daughter-in-law who married their son last June; although she spends most of her days downstairs with the family so she doesn't really feel like a “floor-mate”. She is very friendly though, and with her I connect a little more with the landlords, which is nice.

Vijay came to visit me three weeks ago. As usual, he stayed for a week during which I didn't do any violin nor any Hindi except going to classes. I am fully competent in chapati-making now though, I am very pleased to say! There is something very exciting in eating my very own chapatis; a simple pleasure of life, which India seems to make even more enjoyable. I think it rained everyday while Vijay was here; a very late monsoon until mid-September this year, but a pretty good monsoon indeed. The rain seems to be over for good now, and I am very happy the Ganges is high and we've had plenty of water! After Vijay left I caught a cold. The weather is changing and temperatures are slowly decreasing - slowly - but it has been odd, up and down and up and down. When I had this cold I often felt cold despite the sweat. Many people have had a cold, and another interesting bacteria has spread: conjunctivitis!

I had never had conjunctivitis before. One morning last week during violin class I started feeling strange, mostly bizarre and weak. At the end of the class I realised I had pain in my right eyelid. It felt a little like pressure on my eye, and I couldn't see clearly because some foreign body was wandering round and on my pupil. I cycled back home as quickly as possible to check my eye in the mirror. Ha! Sticky yellow pus it was! Disgusting. I quickly went to the eye hospital very near my home, which I had wanted to check out. Another thing I have learnt in India, is to take illnesses and other health-related bothers as experience, and to find them interesting! I was happy to finally check out this (good) eye hospital. The (female) doctor told me I had conjunctivitis and gave me some antibiotic eye drops. I was (happily) surprised she didn't prescribe any antibiotic tablets, but I prescribed myself a boosting cure of magical magnesium chloride (pour les francais, du chlorure de magnesium). I just love this magical powder, which poured in water becomes an effective antiseptic and a natural antibiotic (it also cures polio!) When I told Vijay about my conjunctivitis he told me many people had it in Khajuraho, and then I realised that many people had it in Varanasi too! The following morning I saw my neighbour the monk, to whom I hadn't spoken for over a month. When I saw his eyes I burst out laughing. “Hello conjunctivitis friend!” We've been friendly again since then. Thank you conjunctivitis! The landlady and her daughter-in-law have had it as well, so that's four people in the house! My eyes got better quickly, more quickly than most it seems – I am convinced it is the magnesium chloride. On the way to school one morning I tried to look at people in the eyes. But conjunctivitis-affected Indians wear sunglasses, because the superstitious Indian is adamant that you can catch conjunctivitis just by looking at the eyes of affected people. You'll say hello to an Indian friend and he'll turn his head and ask you to wear sunglasses. Of course, Nahoko to whom I showed my yucky swollen eyes a lot, didn't catch conjunctivitis.

Talking of the magical magnesium chloride, I discovered another miraculous little gem lately: honey! I had known for a while that honey had antiseptic properties and helped with healing, but I had never tried it for myself. Recently, in the strange weather of Sweatyland, I've had weird little wounds that wouldn't heal. One on my toe which is history by now, and a mysterious yellow scab underneath my nose that just won't go. (I was rather beautiful a few days ago with that and swollen red eyes!) So I tried applying honey on the affected areas; on my toe I had to cover the wound in a bandage to keep it away from dust – and the honey to keep it away from ants and flies! Well, the honey works.

The last two weeks were odd to say the least. Feeling weird and weak from the cold, conjunctivitis – and the Ayodhya court case! Ayodhya is a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh. According to the Ramayana (the “Bible” of India) it is where Lord Rama was born and, after his fourteen-year exile in the jungle, where he lived and reigned. I don't understand much of it, but a court case went on for twenty years to decide whether the area round a Hindu temple in Ayodhya originally belonged to the Hindus or the Muslims. The court case is twenty-years old but the whole issue is 350 years old. The verdict would be published first on 24th September and Hindu-Muslim violence was expected all over India, so people were told to stay home that day. Then the date was postponed to the 28th or the 29th I wasn't sure as different people said different things. So when should we stay in and when could we go out? Everyone was talking about it and I was anxious too. Finally the verdict was to be released on Thursday 30th September at 15:30. I could go to university in the morning but everyone had to stay home after noon, there would be police everywhere. In the end the verdict was published, but it has been a peaceful one. Now that's over and nothing has changed in the streets of Varanasi...

A violin class with real tabla

2010-08-23T11:18:00.002+01:00

Today I had a violin class. I love how life here, and my Guruji, never allows me to stay in comfortable realms and challenges me. I feel so scared sometimes with improvisation in rhythm, I want to always just copy him while he plays. This is easy because I don't need the guts to improvise; I know what to play and he's so good at improvisation that all we play is nice and it feels like i am a great violinist. I can play violin well. The challenge is to know what to play. In western music you don't have to worry about what to play; you can read it from a music sheet and play amazing stuff composed by amazing people. It's emotionally easy, because you don't have to open yourself up. I'd happily just play what I'm told to play. Because improvisation feels like someone is pulling the guts out of me; it is so emotional to pour myself out like that, it makes me feel naked. And often I don't like what comes out of me, I judge myself and then I stop. but my teacher kicks my arse and just say "play". "Just play anything but play." That's when I just feel like "Aaaaargh!"

Actually, improvisation is getting better. With time it does flow out more and more, I do hear it. Iin india I'm more in the mood. What is difficult as hell is to improvise and follow the 16 beats at the same time. Improvise while I listen to the rhythm and come back to the right beat. It take a lot of listening to integrate that rhythm; it is very slow. Two years ago I could just feel the general beat, but it was impossible for me which beat I was hearing. It seemed hard like a block of concrete. Today a rhythmic melody is magically shining through; it has become softer and more translucid. For the first time I hear the texture of the beat, different subtleties. But I can hear the beat if I don't play. At soon as I play I focus on playing and I stop paying attention to the beat. Doing both at the same time is massively difficult. But like everything it takes practice and patience and life does the rest for you. One day I will feel the rhythm completely; whatever i play, therewill be a constant rhythmic background in my mind and heart. For now I try hard, although I don't have to try hard. I just have to keep on doing it like a meditation. Still sometimes I close my eyes and concentrate enormously and I do hear the beat more, but the effort hurts my mind more. And that's just a tabla machine; it sounds very artificial and it gives you the beat number too; so that's easy. In real life the tabla player is a real person and s/he can improvise, too!

Today I came to class as usual. We started the warm-up exercises as usual, when three friends of my teachers arrived. The woman was a tabla player. They seemed to catch up after a long time. Guruji suggested she take the tablas out and we play together. Gulp. A hint of anxiety filled me. The unexpected always happens in India, and Guruji knows I would have a tendency to keep with the easy stuff, and he doesn't allow me to me reposer sur mes lauriers. He always kicks me and pushes me to challenge my fears. It hurts inside my tummy, but I know I need that kick to just observe the fear inside me and go beyond. At the same time he offers so much support, always tells me when it's good. And he'll always think it is better than i would allow myself to feel. Today we went through all the steps there are to a piece of indian classcal music. From slow to fast, from beginning to end. It was scary but wow, it was good to feel the real thing a bit more...

Routine resumed in Kashi, and the loud work of God

2010-08-21T23:30:00.005+01:00

And so my Varanasi routine has resumed. I had forgotten all about it and how much I loved it. When I am in Europe and before the routine started again, it was not rare that I doubted as to why I am doing the things I do. Of course society pressure is stronger when I am in Europe and around people who live more conventional lucrative lives. The doubts come fill my mind, although thoughts feel more like a vague background rather than overwhelm and destabilise me. I question myself and consider more conventional life options, although the options remain vague and unphrased, perhaps because I do know, deep down, that they have no weight against the obvious reality. This is very “me” I guess: I've always needed to be reassured, and these kind of doubts just assure me that there is no other way than the path I am walking on. The mind comes and judges while the heart knows, and despite the mind's monologue, the heart directs me on this path. The questioning thoughts of the mind have no power to change the route; I listen to them, let them go and carry on my way. But when I am here in beautiful Kashi - City of Light, when I live in my little home again, when I sit in class with my wonderful violin teacher or in BHU starting Hindi again, the doubting mind dissolve and disappears. Here there is no doubt, there is just what there is. And I love my life in Kashi and this reason alone is sufficient.

Hindi classes are starting slowly, but it seems the department is clearly better organised than it was last year. On the first day we were given our timetable and were told not to come the following day so we would not waste our time like we had last year while the teachers had had to organise themselves. On day three I was given my syllabus, on which teacher names were already indicated against the different topics. Last year it had taken at least two weeks for the teachers to know who would teach what. It seems there are more students in the department this year, with ten in the beginners' level. However I will again be alone in my class, which I am very happy about.

Violin classes have started more seriously. I hardly played any violin whilst in Europe, and hardly until last week because I was away and with friends a lot. I had felt so demotivated from not playing Indian violin as much as I thought I should during my long break. It is always a struggle to practise Indian music on my own when I don't have my teacher support for too long. Exercises are easy but boring after a while when they lose their purpose but mostly, improvisation is tricky as I no longer feel in the “Indian mood”, and I get discouraged working with Indian rhythms because it is difficult and progress is slow. But as always, I just need one class with Sukhdev to be motivated again. He told me he wants me to work harder this year, which I apprehend and look forward to at the same time. If I lack self-confidence I also trust my teacher who has faith in me. I know it may not be easy, as I expect this year of Hindi will also be tougher than last year. However, I have started working diligently with the dreaded improvisation/beats once more and found them less daunting this time. As though a few month of rest and digesting what I had learnt has itself helped me towards progress. As always, I need to allow that rest and stop judging myself for not practising; the road is such and it is right as long as I follow it with my heart.

I was very happy with my class today, because Sukhdev finally gave me the rhythm and bowing exercises I desperately needed to improve with beat integration and playing fast. I don't know how many times he had tried to explain how to play fast on “Jor” (that crazy fast rhythmic bowing he does which I love and desperately want to be able to do) and every time I had understood the idea but hadn't had the slightest idea of how I could actually get started. He would play so fast that I wouldn't hear anything, and consequently I would feel completely incapable of even trying to copy him. But today he has given me some slowed-down exercises which have helped me understand, and which will help me build up to faster speed. It clicked today, and I've been practising the exercises with great enthusiasm and diligence indeed! I have started playing more with eyes closed too; it helps with concentration...

As I type, the ashram next door is still playing its horrible, cacophonous kirtans (devotional singing) full blast with loudspeakers on its rooftop. I had never mentioned those neighbours in a post before although I had many times thought I should. Well, there is time for everything. The street I live in is very narrow, as so many Varanasi lanes are. I have no spatial skills but it must not be much more than three meters wide. On the other side of the lane, opposite my room, stands a big yellow ashram in which many renunciants live, from teenage students to old bearded sadhus. All male of course. Last year when I first moved in this house I thought it would be interesting to live next to an ashram. I was even hoping to have decent conversations with some of its occupants. Haha, the joke. From balcony to balcony, I'd watch my neighbours with curiosity or I'd even spend some time speaking to them. It's quite funny to be on each side of a street but still be close enough to have a conversation without even shouting, as though we'd be in the same room. But of course, I am a foreigner, and a female. I've had time to realise that after a while, chatting with those boys or young men isn't exactly pleasant. There's only one baba I like, whose room is closest to, and on the same level as mine. He has a peculiar voice and I hear him even with closed doors (NRLD: windows are never closed, except in winter!) He is the only one who seems to take no interest in the fact that I am a foreign woman; he'll say Namaste naturally and good-heartedly. For the rest, I feel observed as soon as I walk on my balcony, or even inside my room if the balcony door is open when I sit on my rug between my two doors during power-cuts. The yogi-boys are mostly harmless really, but I'd rather avoid them when I can; thus I try to limit my passages on the balcony to brooming and shaking bedsheets over the rail, and I keep my balcony door closed most times for privacy. And with my new magic rechargeable fan, I no longer need to sit between my doors for airing during power-cuts! Horray!

And the kirtan still goes on, full blast and amplified, past half ten at night. Part of me thinks it is the magic of Kashi: its constant religious chants and bells, and its multitude of other vibrant sounds from the daily lives of its countless people living in close proximity. Right now though, the other part of me wants to violently bash the bloody loudspeaker with a stick to destroy it, and to curse all Indians for their lack of neighbour consideration and their poor harmful-decibel-and-other-health-related awareness. This is a slight rhetorical exaggeration of course. On normal days, the renunciants' chants and bells start at 4:30 in the morning and they hardly stop all day. Not amplified thankfully. I hear the constant religious background from my wee room everyday. I don't mind the noise, even though they are far from the best singers in the world. This is the magical ambiance of Kashi. But a few times a year, the ashram holds various religious functions, which usually last a week and are amplified with no less than three loudspeakers for all the neighbouring area to benefit from the work of God. This week the ashram has been running a lecture on the story of Ram from 16:00 to 19:00 every day. It started the day I came back to Varanasi on 14th August, and I am very much looking for its end – last day tomorrow; thank God. It has not been easy to play violin with such a loud background... The talk is over for today; but from what I understand the last three days they are singing kirtans as well after the lecture. Badly sung kirtans accompanied with badly played tablas and harmoniums, made even more cacophonous when over-amplified with loudspeakers. I looked into their hall from the street; I think there were fewer than ten people listening to the talk inside. Magical yet absurd India at the same time, I do love You deep in my heart...

The kirtan is over now; it finished at eleven. All I can hear is the running ceiling fan. Oh wait, the power just went. When the power goes, the sound of the running fan is replaced by street sounds. Right now I hear the faint bark of a dog, some men chatting, and the neighbouring yogis chanting as always. My quiet magical fan runs and I can go to sleep.

Welcome to Sweatyland!

2010-08-17T00:31:00.003+01:00

Tonight I had decided to have some rest. I'd make myself a pasta salad, have a shower, and read some Hindi before school starts again or something. I had a busy day, but it was not so much from tiredness that I wanted to rest; it was from sweat. But of course, Life (or some bastard city electricity officer perhaps?) decided otherwise, and today's third power-cut hit. So many thoughts come fill my mind with excessive sweat; it's incredible. More so when I have just had a shower and my skin feels clean (as opposed to yucky) and soft (as opposed to sticky).

At least I have a laptop and its battery is full so I can type this. And my “emergency light” was made in China so when I charge it all night it will only light me for half an hour, but now I've brought this amazing bicycle light from Europe (all Indians can cycle in the dark, but I don't!) and it also works wonders in my room! All I would need is an “emergency fan”; doesn't it sound simple? I don't know why it took me a year to try and get one! The only devices to deal with power-cuts I knew of were either the smelly, noisy, environmentally-very-unfriendly oil-generated generator, and the battery inverter which costs far too much for me. I had considered buying one last year; it could be affordable if I knew it would last long, but it is massive and heavy and unpractical and it was too much for just one little person like me. But today I went to an electrical shop near university and its shopkeeper told me where to find an emergency (i.e. chargeable) fan. Not too far, so off I went on my bicycle. I thought he had indicated a shop, but the more I asked my way and the more I approached the place I realised it was an area of Varanasi. At first it looked like just a street with a few electrical shops with many fans indeed. Every time I asked in a shop I was told to go to the next one. Soon I was directed to another lane off that first street. Oh my God! Fantastic! I think there must have been at least fifty fan shops! Fans everywhere, in all shapes and sizes! Apparently though, only one shop had what I wanted. I went in. A very small electrical shop with not many fans in it, but it kind of looked more “advanced”, or avant-garde or something. At first the shopkeeper showed me a tiny fan; it was an emergency one, but you had to buy a big, unsafe-looking battery with it and I didn't like the idea. Finally the man understood and showed me a brochure with what looked exactly like what I needed. Just like an emergency light that you can charge except it was a fan. Horray! I ordered it.

As I type this the power has still not returned and I bloody hope my anti-sweat treasure will indeed be delivered tomorrow, as promised, because I really dislike sweating especially after a cleaning, cooling, relieving shower!!! Sometimes I think I'd better not shower at all. When you've already been sweaty and sticky and horrible for a while you do forget about your gross condition, because it has become part of you. If you sweat any more there will be no difference anyway! You're gross; who cares!? Everyone else is! You forget what it's like to feel clean. You are constantly wet and smelly. When you rub your skin, small black dirty bits stick to your fingers. Your clothes are always dirty and you wonder where the point is in cleaning them at all, because after ten minutes they'll feel dirty again anyway. But it's alright. When you first came to India and in contact with the constant state of sweat, you resisted, you didn't accept, yuck! But now you live in this environment, it's another reality. It doesn't matter to be wet underneath your clothes. You have let go by now.

And then you decide to have a shower. Of course there is no fan in the bathroom so as soon as you step in your start sweating even more. No problem. It's quite a good thing actually, because your skin needs to be damp so you can rub the black dirty bits off your body. If you don't do this before lathering yourself in soap, after your shower once you dry yourself in your towel (although at this stage you won't know how to differentiate clean water from new sweat, so you should get out of the bathroom as soon as possible!) you'll notice the bits still come off, except they're no longer black. Well, it's still gross and you can shower again. So, once the primary rubbing has been performed you can have your shower. Feel the cool water splashing onto your hot body with great relief. Note that it's best to shower morning or evening, because the water tank is kept on the rooftop, so in daytime the water comes out hot! Noooo!!! Wow, a cold shower. On your body and then on your head. Yum. I'm clean, wow it feels so good! Shower over. Step out of the bathroom wrapped in your towel as quickly as possible and off to your room. Below the cooling and drying fan, wow... I am clean. Nice. And then...

The power cuts! Noooo!!!!!! Grab your manual fan, quick, and shake it as fast as possible in order to avoid the return of the evil sweat! “I will not be sweaty and sticky, I will not be sweaty and sticky, I will not, I refuse!” Oh yes it's lovely to have a shower. But that's when you're reminded that you are not allowed to rebel! Don't even try. You will sweat for another month at least! You had decided to enjoy say, one hour sweat-free. Don't even think about it! And this is not even the worst season. Mid-April to early July are hell; many Indians flee to the mountains and non-Indians back to their countries. If not they'll live by their roaring air-coolers, and curse the power-cuts unless they have an inverter. July was OK actually, to my surprise. With the rain came the coolness and the wind. If the power cut, last month, I could sit on my rug between the two open doors in my room and enjoy the breeze. This month though, the air has been sticky. The sky has been grey a lot so there is no dazzling sun, and it has rained, but there is no wind at all. The rain is cooling but when it stops the atmosphere is very humid, sticky and heavy again. Health-wise I am alright I must say. I find this easier to cope with than the blinding, piercing sun. It is just unpleasant really, that sticky sweat! When I'm dirty anyway, or if I showered long enough ago to have forgotten about its refreshing bliss, I forget about my gross self; I bathe in it; I've accepted it...

Some accessories make excess sweat more bearable though. Most important of all, I can no longer leave the home without my 30 cm-square sponge towel. After a few hours it's is damp with all the sweat I have wiped off my face and neck and arms, but it creates less irritation than wiping yourself with your hands all the time! The other important thing is talc powder. Most Indians apply it daily on their faces after washing and creaming. To be honest I don't see the point in applying cream or oil on my face; my skin is moistured at all times, and when I apply my cream in reality I apply a mixture of cream and sweat. At first I didn't get the point of applying talc powder either. It's nice for about one second, then my face is damp from sweat all over again. Well, it does help to prevent spots actually. Because yes, spots, that's another nice part of the story. Sweat is acne and blackhead paradise! Yuck! Two years ago I got really two disgusting spots and I had the stupid idea to fiddle with them. Remember? I had to go to the hospital in Aurangabad four days before my return to Europe because half of my face had swollen so much that I looked like a semi-hamster. I have learnt my lesson. I no longer fiddle with my spots. Well, almost. I have learnt which ones I can fiddle with (the small, pain-free ones with “white cream” – and the blackheads) and the ones I should never ever touch (the bigger, red and painful ones with – or without – nasty “yellow cream”). I'm not doing too bad with spots now though. I think as my body adapts with heat – dehydrates less quickly etc., so does my skin. Blackheads flourish around my nose and chin more than in Europe but it's invisible if you don't look closely, and talc powder helps. It helps with rashes too. I used to get rashes between my chin and my neck, which was very itchy and uncomfortable; now I prevent it with the powder. What is more notable with me (and this may sound too intimate but I think it's human and interesting!) is the areas between my thighs that meet and rub as I walk, you know, around the crotch. This provokes painful irritations in constant sweat. I'd find long skirts particularly comfortable in high temperatures (remember ladies, it's a bad idea to show your legs in India) if my thighs were thinner! For two years I kept skirts for the house or when the weather cooled down. I need cloth between my tights, i.e. trousers, so they won't rub against each other. Now however, Vijay has given me his old “house shorts” which he no longer wears. Hurray! With small shorts underneath I can wear skirts again; they are so nice because you know – trousers get sticky when even your legs sweat! Actually, I always wondered how Indians can all wear jeans in 45+ degrees, but it seems their legs don't sweat (dixit Vijay). I think my body will need some more adapting before my legs stop sweating...! But hey, talc powder does work wonders with my crotch too. Other funny, mysterious things happen in Sweatyland. When I was in Khajuraho last week, something really strange happened. My right inner wrist felt itchy and I noticed some tiny hairs around it. No idea where they had come from! They were quite stuck to my skin too. I asked Vijay to look at my wrist; he said the hairs look like goat hairs!!! Now farmers do pass with their goat flocks everyday in front of the Khajuraho house, but I won't even try to understand where on earth these hairs appeared from! Since then I've had some small, red, itchy spots, which I sparkle with talc powder...

In Sweatyland I find it quite a task to look after my own appearance. Well I do to some extent, and as I get more and more familiar with this oh-so-different environment, so do I slowly adapt on the fashion front. But I won't wear a watch or bracelets or rings for they provoke more rashes. My silver OM pendent gets black from sweat after two days, and I have learnt to clean it with Colgate powder! Make-up is long forgotten obviously. And I don't like wearing clothes too nice because I know they'll be dirty all the time. I bought a new Indian silvar kurta suit in Khajuraho but I've not worn it yet! (NDLR: I have now and it's really nice and comfy!) Finally, my hair is mostly wet and messy all the time because as soon as I wash it I have to tie it since the touch of hair on my neck is too hot and sticky and unbearable. So it's damp a lot of the time, and around my face the hair is wet from sweat. Indian women oil their hair. Mustard oil, coconut oil, avla oil, ayurvedic mixed oil, yum... I too like to oil my hair sometimes actually, and I know it's good for it, but I'll only do it in Sweatyland because when temperatures cool down I'm too excited about keeping my hair loose and the greasy look doesn't exactly go with loose hair! So, during sweaty times my hair is messy, tied up, wet and greasy. But this too is a good thing! Because with anti-sweat fans running most of the time (when there is power!), the shorter hair on top of my head flies around and in my face, which is really tickling! So sticky hair is good in Sweatyland. And if it looks too bad, I wrap it up in a scarf. One last interesting point about hair: in Sweatyland I lose my hair a lot, and so do all the panicked Europeans I have talked to. I don't know the reason. However, with so much humidity, hair (and nails – which in Sweatyland by the way, I must keep short at all time otherwise they're black with dirt!) grows really fast. In my goth days I used to cut some shorter streaks on each sides of my face for style. Today the streaks have grown naturally, because new hair grows all the time.

To finish off, because the power has long returned, the fan is running, the sweat has dried and it's time for me to go to bed, I shall quickly mention how some daily activities are affected by excessive sweat. Brooming the room is a difficult task because the fan has to be switched off so the dust won't fly off as you swipe it. You'd better broom your room before shower, because you'll be yucky again by the end of it. The following chore (but I only do this one once a week!) is to wipe the floor with a wet cloth. This is nicer because I switch on the fan again so the water (and my sweaty body) dries more quickly! Laundry is another cursed chore in Sweatyland. Obviously laundry here means hard work of bashing and brushing - and sweating - especially as it is done in the bathroom which has no fan and in which, as I said earlier, you sweat even more. You must do your laundry before shower! And during hot season you must unfortunately do it often too... Another thing you should try and do before shower is... poo! That also can be hard work without a fan... however the timing of this activity, unfortunately, is a lot more difficult to plan than laundry. Cooking can also involve sweat, because you need to switch off the fan before you turn the gas on. Otherwise the flames will be diverted and won't heat up your food efficiently (waste of time, money and gas = bad!) Finally, I love to cycle because the speed implies cooling hair. It is definitely a lot easier to cycle than to walk in Sweatyland (Indian traffic unconsidered!)

And then I've written such a fun and interesting and anthropologic post about sweating that I'm actually grateful for the power-cut! Tonight I had decided to run away from the sweat. Instead, India changed my plans as it always does, and I wrote on daily life in Sweatyland! Good night. :)

Karwi 2 - Living in an old traditional Hindu house, baby monkey and auspicious mountain

2010-08-15T16:53:00.004+01:00

Gulli, her husband and two young children, Vijay, Rita, Mummy and I all stayed in this room. Every night we laid down the thin mattresses on the floor by the noisy air-coolers for everyone to sleep. Well, there wasn't room for everyone so the couple slept in the dark, narrow corridor before the entrance of the room, aired with a fan. Sometimes, during the day doing nothing the thoughts filled me: I have come a long way to find these (temporary) conditions normal. I slept comfortably on that floor (provided I had smeared myself with anti-mosquito cream, for there was no mosquito net there). Three years ago I would have been shocked but today I am comfortable, although I would indeed have somewhat higher standards for my own home! The days passed. I practised my understanding of the Bundelkhandi dialect while the family argued about whether or not to see a better doctor in Allahabad, or about various spicy family gossips. I kept myself as busy as I could, playing with the children – though reluctantly with Chotu I must admit, because he wears no nappies (though this is a great thing for the Indian environment!) and pees all the time. We constantly had to try and focus his attention away from the kitchen corner, as at one year old he grabs everything up to his mouth. I would sing, or play the plastic tube we'd call a flute. Or we would give him that cheap, pink plastic mobile phone with the unbearable Bollywood tune, which his brother would play over and over again. And Vijay would sit Chotu on the plastic chair and push him around the room as tough it was a car. Days were filled with noise: the fan, both roaring air-coolers, the horrible plastic phone and the unbearable television, the chair-car's legs pulled around the floor, the children crying or shouting, and the family arguing. If power-cuts are unbearable for the excessive sweat, they are bliss – as when fan, air-cooler and TV stop so does the loud, maddening noise, and silence fills the room and one can hear the forgotten birds outside sing again. When I needed a rest from the decibels and a moment to myself, or if I was just too bored of doing nothing, I would hide myself in the book I was too happy I had remembered bringing. Sometimes I thought I should write a journal, but I had no paper, I didn't want to raise the family's curiosity, and my mood was too idle to let me write anything anyway.

Three of the in-law's cousin children kept coming to see me, giggling with excitement or screaming with fear I wasn't sure, as soon as I would turn my eyes to them. After some time I had enough and ignored them, but one afternoon they invited me to their doll house room to show me a ten-day old monkey! His mother had died, therefore the rest of the monkey clan was going to kill him, so the in-laws had rescued him and were keeping him in their room. He was so cute, so tiny! He was scared and screamed some very high-pitched “Hee! Hee!” I didn't want to take him but I touched his tiny hands and head. Almost bald, it felt like a tiny human. But the following day, I was about to go on my daily rooftop expedition, water bucket in hand, when the in-laws stopped me. They all had gathered on the core floor before the steps; “Don't go!”, Bari Mummy said, “there are at least twenty angry monkeys on the roof! Big ones too.” They had come to retrieve their baby in order to kill him. The in-laws had placed the tiny monkey under a big basket covered with blankets and had locked him in their room to conceal his screams. Now they were waiting until the clan of angry monkeys would leave.

On the last day Mummy, Gulli and he five-year old boy, Rita, Bua (Aunty), Vijay and I went to Chitrakut for an afternoon out. We walked along the ghat on which Vijay and I had been staying two weeks ago with Niko. We even met our boatman again; it was lovely. It made me think of Niko and how much freer we had been then. If I love the experience of staying in a traditional Indian family it is for its “heart-softening” aspect. It is not always easy to say the least, especially the lack of freedom and privacy – but I accept go through it, obviously, because despite everything and above all, I deeply love this family. But that afternoon was just lovely. The family does know and appreciate that coming from a western background, living in “hardcore” traditional conditions can be tough for me, and I know they had organised the outing for me just as well as for them, so I can get out of the house and the boredom it can imply. I am grateful indeed! First of all Mummy went to bathe in the river. The ladies kept teasing me, asking whether I would do too. As I approached the water to dip my feet into it, Mummy like a child splashed me with water as she laughed, in a way that reminded me that I had a genuine place in the family. I only understood what our main purpose was when we set off to take a tour of the famous, auspicious mountain. I had heard of this mountain a few time before but not asked for further clarification – as often is the case in India, it is pointless to ask for explanation; you wouldn't understand if one explained anyway. You just have to see when you get there. Reality speaks better than words, and it never, ever, matches your imagination. Especially in India! It is Hindu custom to take a round of this auspicious mountain. What it entails, I didn't know, but I was going to find out. I was worried about walking barefoot on some rough, seven-kilometre path around a mountain, but Vijay reassured me: the path was paved all along, and bordered with temples and shops. Pfew, OK then. And off we went. There were groups of old sadhus sitting along the path, many temples which we entered one by one for prayer (the family) and darshan and to get our forehead smeared with colourful tikas. When the rain started we hid under a shelter for a chai. It seemed an easy pilgrimage road to me, but we saw some men crawling along the path turning around a coconut at each step (or crawl!) make it a harsh austerity!!! I wonder how many hours it took them to crawl the whole seven kilometers in this way!? I had not seen so many monkeys ever before. Monkeys everywhere! Monkeys playing, monkeys eating, monkeys running around, monkeys jumping, monkeys sitting doing nothing, monkeys breastfeeding, monkeys having sex!

We walked some more; the ladies stopped for too long at each saree or bangle or prayer accessory shop. I walked on with Vijay. Towards the end of the promenade we sat under a shelter by a (dried up) pool to wait for the ladies we had long lost on our way. A young sadhu was sleeping on a bench; he fascinated me. He couldn't have been more than twenty. He must have had polio: on of his feet was atrophied and his leg was stick-thin me no muscles. He had laid his wooden crunches under the bench. His dirty dreadlocks were wrapped in a rag of cloth, and all he was wearing was an orange piece of cloth around his waist and another one round his torso. I wanted to take a picture of him sleeping but I was too shy and I took too long. Soon he woke up and looked at me with a soft smile, and joined his hands to me in namaste. I loved him straight away. He accepted that I take his photo, but unlike most sadhus he didn't ask for the ten rupees. He just smiled humbly; he wanted nothing. He smoked a biddi and placed the packet and the matchbox in a folded corner of his cloth. After a moment he offered me a new namaste, placed his alms bowl upside down on his head as though it was a hat and left. Vijay and I started walking again and when we reached the end of the round we went to sit on the steps of a shop to wait for the ladies again. We had walked three hours. The same night we left back to Khajuraho.

Young Sadhu

Karwi 1 - an old traditional Hindu house and the toileting expedition!

2010-08-15T16:33:00.008+01:00

After a week in Varanasi, on 31st July I left to Karwi. I had bought some biscuits and bananas for the train journey. When I arrived at the station I realised quickly that tying the plastic bag full of bananas to my rucksack had not been such a good idea: a monkey had climbed from the rail track onto the platform and was walking in my direction! I quickly turned and walked away from him to untie the plastic bag and hide it. Alas my nails were too short and of course, I should just have quickly torn the plastic. In no time the monkey jumped on my rucksack, broke the plastic bag in his flight and landed on to the other side with his stolen feast. I screamed, more out of surprise than out of fear, because half a second later the thief was already eating my bananas with great pride. I stared at him mouth open for a short while, then looked around me. All the waiting travellers had been looking at the scene with great amusement and, indeed, they were still laughing. A little embarrassed I smiled, walked to the nearest fruit stall to buy new bananas and quickly hid the new plastic bag inside my rucksack.

I had booked a train to Khajuraho but I stopped halfway in Karwi, where Vijay, his third sister Rita and his mother had already been for a few days in order to consult a specialist for some of Rita's recurring health problems. They were staying with Vijay's second sister Gulli who lives in her husband's family house. I was pleasantly surprised; Rita was clearly a lot better than she had been a week before. I stayed with them four days during which we visited various doctors for further checks and treatment. This didn't take much time of our days,and the rest of the time we just all stayed in that big, old, dilapidated home of a room in which Vijay's sister lives.

The household here probably represents Hindu's ancient family tradition in the most authentic way that I have come to see. The house is situated in an old picturesque narrow lane off the main road. It is over a hundred years old and resembles a huge labyrinth of interlinked flats all opened to one another. “Flat” is the only word I can think of and may not be the most appropriate to describe sections of the house consisting of just one or two rooms, mostly small, in which each couple of the family lives. Indian women, once married, have to leave their biological families to go live with their husbands' families. Thus, patriarchal families composed mostly of men may become very extended under one roof. In Vijay's house, the paternal grandparents have died, and of their three sons only one (Vijay's father's younger brother) is still alive. Even then, when Vijay's father was alive he left his own father's home to live only with his wife and children. Thus Vijay doesn not live with any of his paternal uncles, and his household consists just of mother and unmarried siblings. In the Karwi house, however, the whole paternal structure has remained: Gulli's father-in-law still lives with his brother, both of whom live with their own wives, their married sons their wives and children, and their unmarried children. Thus Gulli's husband lives not only with his own nuclear family, but also those of his uncle, brothers and “cousin brothers”. Although they live independently in their own little flats or room, all couple live within the same enormous house, door open constantly so they can visit one another at any time.

The property reminds me of an huge, interlinked doll house, organised around a main open area, the rooms around which are occupied by both eldest males occupy with their wives. All rooms, of course, are very traditional with thick painted walls made of bricks and with thick, inbuilt shelves. They are simply furnished, perhaps with a hard wooden bed that serves as sofa or table during the day, a big truck for storage covered with a decorative cloth, some rugs and frames, a television kept on a small table. Often there is no cupboard for clothes; instead they are kept hanging off a thick laundry-type rope, and kitchen hobs and utensils racks have their place on the floor in a corner of the room. On the walls, the stains that have come with age add to the décor's beauty.

The core of the house consists of a main room in which Gulli's father-in-law lives and which could be considered as the primary, welcoming room. Next door is the main kitchen (although separate couples cook in a corner or small room of their own flats) and opposite is the common bathroom, which really is just another dilapidated room full of many big water buckets and pots for bucket-shower. In this bathroom there is no toilet. One can pee in a corner of the room on the floor that is slightly tilted, so the pee is directed down and underneath an outside door, into an abandoned room. If you must poo you'll have to go on a small adventure upstairs! For this you must put on the untouchable flip-flops dedicated for the operation (which are kept in the bathroom), take a small bucket of water with you upstairs and head off to the rooftop where the two toilet cabins are located. But beware of the monkeys! There can be many of them, an entire family, so you may need to scare them away with a big stick (or ask a braver man to do this for you). Once the path is free, before you enter the meter-square toilet you must pour the water of your first bucket into a second bucket that never leaves the cabin, for Hindus do not mix untouchable and touchable buckets. After you've done your business and washed your behind with the water from the untouchable bucket using your left hand, you step out of the room and take the touchable bucket (which you had left outside in front of the toilet door) with your right hand. Off downstairs and back to the bathroom to wash your hands, remove the untouchable flip-flops, and wash (rince) your feet with water.

The core of the house is still in a reasonable state, but some peripheral rooms have fallen into rubbles. One room on the rooftop has been abandoned because it could break down at any time. To access Gulli's flat you need to walk along a half open, half dark corridor towards one end of the house. On your way if you can look down onto the ruins of what used to be another room long ago, but which has now become an kind of garden filled with red bricks. Gulli's home consists of two ugly old rooms and two small back rooms that are only used for storage,as they have no outside windows and are therefore very dark. I had come to this house about four times but had never noticed those rooms as there doors had always been closed. They have a real toilet room at least though, thanks to which I have been allowed to avoid the toileting expedition describe above. Although, I have not always been allowed to poo there in times of power-cut when there was too little water in the buckets (the water is supplied using an electrical device which pumps water from underground below the house) because they are too close to the habitable area! Back to the only habitable room, it is very old, with cracks in the ceiling and on top of the walls, and layers of dusts and cobwebs in unattainable places and corners, too old and shabby to bear the effort of renovation. At one end of this big room, there's a bed in one corner and a cosmetic area in the other. At the other end, a kitchen corner (i.e. a small shelf and two hobs and a gas bottle on the floor) on the left, and the TV on the right. A big rope hangs across the room on which the daily clothes are kept.

An interesting extract about the Ganges

2010-07-30T16:20:00.002+01:00

"The Purification of the Living

According to Hindus, the waters of the Ganges are pure and cleansing waters. Indian skeptics and Westerner visitors alike have been astounded by this claim. Surveying the riverat Banaras, brown and muddy in the rainy season and the receptacke of the pollution of the city, the ashes of the dead, and the diseases of its million bathers, they see a very dirty river indeed.
At question here, of course, is not really the purity of the Ganges, but the cultural understanding of what it means for something to be pure or impure, clean or dirty. In Purity and Danger, the British anthropologist Mary Douglas has exposed the many ways in which these terms are cultural constructs. "Dirt" is disorder, "matter out of place," and what is considered out of place depends upon one's notion of order. The bacterial understanding of "purity" which is part of the scientific view of order, may contrast markedly with social and religious understandings of "purity", even in the modern cultures of the West. Quite apart from the issue of whether the Ganges is bacterially pure (and there are countless studies supporting both sides on this matter!) is the issue of its ritual purity and its symbolic purity. Hindus have affirmed for centuries that there is nothing quite as cleansing as the living waters of the River of Heaven. (...)
Running water especially is an agent of purification, for it both absorbs pollution and carries it away. The traditional etymology of the word "Ganga" is from the root gam, "to go". The Ganges is the "Swift-Goer", and her hymns constantly emphasize the running, flowing, energetic movement of her waters, which are living waters. So great is the power of the Ganges to destroy sins that, it is said, even a droplet of Ganges water carried one's way by the breeze will erase the sins of many lifetimes in an instant."

~ Diana L. Eck, in Banaras, City of Light" (1983, Penguin Books), pp. 216-217

Waiting for the studious routine to resume...

2010-07-30T15:44:00.002+01:00

I can't remember where I left it off. I think we had arrived in Khajuraho; this was on 17th I think. We we were home again, Niko, Vijay and I. We waited a couple of days until our Swiss friends, Tamae, Pierrot and the small Eleo, arrived. We went to pick them up early morning at the train station. Niko and I hadn't seen them for two and a half years, and of course Vijay was meeting them for the first time. It was fun to meet in Khajuraho. With us they could avoid the overwhelming tourist-catchers and Khajuraho-boys. We directed them to the hotel nearest to Vijay's house, and once their bags were dropped we went for some breakfast. The usual, delightful spinach omelette on toast for me, with a compulsory chai of course. Eleo is a small boy now; he was only 6 months last time we had seen them. He was exhausted by the train journey (hardly had slept) but he was very funny and in a good mood. And so we spent a few wonderful days with our Swiss friends. It's rare and a special treat to have some European friends share my Indian life, even though we had met Tamae in India five years ago. They shared a glimpse of our Indian family life. Vijay's second sister was here too, with her 1 and 5-year old boys, so I was happy for Eleo. In the end he didn't spend as much time with them as with 9-year old Aman who became his good friend. These two kept playing together, and Aman was always asking for Eleo to come back. Eleo, with his musician-parents, already has a remarkable ear and taste for music. Especially drums and percussion, but also singing. He kept playing rock shows for all the family's amazement and laughter. The Indian family had never seen anything quite like that little boy, and me neither! He had a real audience.

Whilst in Khajuraho we spent much time in the fruit stall, drinking fresh juice and delicious mango shake, whilst Tamae took the place of the fruit-wallah and served very surprised local customers indeed. We visited the Western temple, which I had never seen because when Niko and I had planned to do so five years ago, I had instead been lying in bed, ill. So, finally after five years and over some eight months spent in Khajuraho at least, I visited the most famous and impressive group of Kama Sutra temples. We went to Pipal Ghat, some 45 kilometres away from Khajuraho, and bathed (not fully clothed this time, since we were the only visitors!) in the flowing river before the dark clouds covered the sky and the rain started to pour. And during his stay in Khajuraho, Eleo was the main attraction for the locals! He adapted really well to the Indian environment, a kid of gold, and played a lot with all curious local children. Oh, and of course we celebrated both Vijay and Tamae's birthdays, twice, in the family. The Swiss couple especially enjoyed the Indian birthday tradition, which consist for the birthday boy or girl in putting a piece of cake in all the guests' mouths. I must say I have to agree; it's a fun and very loving tradition!

Too soon it was time for everyone to leave though. On 23th afternoon Niko was taking a train to Delhi then a plane down to Bangalore, for his last three weeks of solo travelling in South India. And that same night the Swiss family and I were leaving to Varanasi. I had to pick up my passport and visa extension at the FRO, and complete the registration process at university – all done now. And the Swiss moved on further in their travels. So we took the train all together – finally the direct train from Khajuraho to Varanasi is in place now, so I can avoid bus journeys and a stop in Satna in the future. For their son the couple had to travel in AC class, so of course I joined them, and I must say I am so used to travelling in sleeper class, that travelling in AC was great luxury! A very quiet train (perhaps because it is a new one also) only filled with foreigners, no sweat, bed sheets and a pillow provided etc. I slept like in my own bed, and I arrived in Varanasi fresh and rested. It was lovely spending a few days with them in my place. Lovely to have them visit my little homely room, and to show them around. Of course Eleo had to try on my violin, which he played like a guitar, like his ukulele. I accompanied them in all the things they wanted to do; buying some Varanasi silk (very interesting for me to observe the bargaining process whilst not involved in shopping!), going to an music instrument shop, visiting an orphanage in view of their future volunteering project, etc. We even managed to get an Indian classical concert (tabla, sitar and Kathak dance) organised just for us, which Eleo listened to and watched with impressive concentration for a three-year old!

The Swiss left yesterday. I am alone in my home again now. I had a very quiet day for the first time after a long time. I played some violin, I watched a newly acquired Hindi film, Monsoon Wedding, and I am writing this. Perhaps I watched a film entitled “Moonsoon something” because again, I am craving for the rain. We had some all-night rain a few days go, and most of the last few days I almost forgot about sweating, because with the rain brings temperature drops by about 10 degrees. Powercuts were not a problem either, a dream. But now again since yesterday, life is back to reality in Varanasi: heat and powercuts. It's OK though, I enjoy a good draft when I open both my doors and if I sit on the floor in the way of the wind. I do have a great room.

I have a new neighbour since yesterday; a Buddhist monk from Thailand named “P”. He will be staying in the next-door room until the winter. He speaks very quietly and I find him difficult to understand at times, but he is very kind and gentle – obviously I guess. He is 30, and he's been a monk since he was 15. He is doing a PhD in Indian Philosophy and Religion (IPR) in BHU. And I have another neighbour for just three days – that's Fernando, the Colombian guy I electronically met a few months ago via a Varanasi group because he needed help to apply for a Masters, also in IPR in BHU but couldn't get in touch with the university. I had been to his department and acquired all the information for him. He was so grateful he brought me some quinoa from Colombia, which I've been excited about ever since he told me he'd bring me some. The quinoa is now on my kitchenette shelf waiting to be enjoyed in the near future. He is a lovely neighbour obviously, although he will not stay very long. We visited BHU together yesterday and he met another friend (and P!) who studies on the same course for information.

And so, I am all settled again in my home in Varanasi. I have another year's visa and I am all registered at BHU; Hindi classes will start mid August. Sukhdev, my violin teacher is coming back from Europe on 11 August, so now I have time until them to visit Vijay and the family again. I am leaving tomorrow.

Back in india, happy, and craving for the rain

2010-07-18T14:13:00.004+01:00

Already more than ten days since our arrival in India. It is so hot, and for the first two days in Delhi I was literally obsessed with the rain. Vijay came to pick us up in the airport, thankfully. Every time I arrive in India after a couple months of break I still need a little time for adaptation, so this familiarity helps. I think it took me two days to be fully comfortable again. Still I am craving for the rain and pretty alarmed about global warming. It seems more present here because India is more affected. According to Vijay, it used to rain constantly for three months during monsoon. It hasn't done so since 2005. When it's so hot I can't help but think about it a lot. Still, when we were in Varanasi it wasn't so bad. It did rain everyday for five days of the week that we were there, to our relief. When it rains it's soothing and refreshing. I was fearing the powercuts and having to sleep in a bath of sweat, but it hasn't been so bad. Powercut-wise and heat-wise.

As soon as we reached Varanasi I had to go to the BHU and the FRO (Foreigners Registration Office) to deal with university registration and student visa extension. I wanted to deal with it as soon as possible so Niko wouldn't have to stay with us here for too long, as he wanted to visit other places as well before we reach Khajuraho. Bureaucratic work caused three or four days of shear exhaustion, a good deal of frustration, some tears of course, going back and forth between one office and the photocopier and the next office and the next administrator, and BHU at one end of town, and the FRO at another, and the bank for the visa fees further still. "Sorry counter closed" and another hour of rickshaw and wasted Rs300, and more frustration. And we don't need these papers but a whole lot of different ones, and back with more papers and more photocopying to do and more frustration with Indian bureaucracy, and why the hell do I live in India!? But with Vijay it was done quite a lot more quickly than last year, and thank to the rain the heat didn't add for more exhaustion. Now I just have to wait a week to ten days for my visa extension but I was allowed to leave Varanasi so I can travel a little before I go back and collect my passport back.

While in Varanasi we visited Sarnath, about 15-20 km from Benares, which is the place where the Buddha gave his very first teaching. I had been there previously but badly guided so I felt this was the first time I was there. It was a lot lovelier than the first time, especially some Buddhist temples a little further away from the main touristic site.

After Varanasi we headed to Khajuraho but stopped half-way to spend two days in a lovely town at the border of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, Chittrakut. It is mostly unknown to tourists, although we did meet three French people in our hotel - but really they were the only ones. Local people are clearly less used to meeting foreigners there, and that was noticeable in their behaviour. Our presence raised authentic curiosity as opposed to the usual interested ("madame, rupees?") one. The general atmosphere was quite particular (in a very pleasant way). Chitrakut is a "mini Varanasi" for Indian people. There's the river, which is not Ganga but still revered as such. The ghats (steps), the temples along the river, the boatmen - with boats a lot more equipped and comfortable than in Varanasi. It is also a lot cleaner. There was only two hotels for foreigners. No others would have let us in because they don't have the required form which foreigners always have to fill in. Ours was located on above the banks of the river, and we enjoyed the view for a great deal of our time there. The hotel was lovely but clearly not well-looked after. It felt very "local", and there were long powercuts in the evening which meant we had to sit outside on the terrace/rooftop for hours because we could go back to our room to sleep, because the heat was unbearable without a fan or an air-cooler. It was pleasant to sit outside, and it rained a bit while we were there so it was OK. Most of the time, if not to say constantly, a ceremony/chant was going on very loudly in a temple on the other side of the river. It was so loud that it could have been coming from our hotel. "Sita Ram, Sita Ram, Sita Ram..." accompanied by cacophonous tabla and amplified with loudspeakers, and on and on for hours and hours, which probably added a lot to the whole atmosphere. In this local town, there were only two restaurants, both of which only served the traditional thali (tray with traditional rice/chapati, vegetable and lentil dishes, sweet dessert) but they were lovely and a lot better than any food I've had in Delhi (Paharganj). There was no ATM in Chitrakut, only one in another town 10 km away, but thankfully we had enough money until Khajuraho.

On our first day in Chitrakut we took one of those boats along the river. There wasn't enough water in our hotel for Vijay and Niko to have a shower so we decided they would go and bathe in the river. It was far too much for me! I washed them bathing in the cooling water with so much envy that I ended up in the water myself, fully clothed. We attracted a lot of attention and amusement! People took our photos, but of course not as many as Niko took of them! I left the water before my friends because I had to let my clothes dry, since I had none to change into. That was fun. Niko played in the water with many excited children while I took pictures. Then after more chai and more photos we went back to our local hotel with our kind boatman, a lovely guy who, after the death of his elder brother, married his brother's wife in order to secure her and her children's future. He ended up staying with us a lot and helping us with guidance. We also visited various interesting sites, including an interesting museum depicting the story of Rama and Sita (Ramayan) and a temple in a cave. Our rickshaw driver also took us to a very small local village a few kilometers away, at the end of which laid a contrastingly enormous ashram, which was as hideous and pompous as it was impressive (I don't even know where to start to describe it, there were the four enormous greeting horse statues on both side of the gate, ncountable kitchy statues depicting various mythological stories, some stern sages with decorated fluffy tigers etc etc.). On the second day we visited the Hanuman temple which lies on a mountain, and that wasn't perhaps a good idea because we had to climb about 700 steps at lunch time, under excruciating heat. I don't think I had sweated as much in my life before, but we had shaded places to rest and enough water to drink so we did OK. For the last few hours of our time there and before catching our night train to Khajuraho we went to visit some of Vijay's relatives, who live nearby, for some food and rest.

We arrived in Khajuraho yesterday morning. We haven't had any rain for a few days so again the heat is upon us. We are happy to be in the family yet again. We're at home here, really. Tomorrow our "Indian" friend from Switzerland is coming with partner and their three-year old boy, and we're waiting for them impatiently. We met her five years ago in Dharamsala, we haven't seen her in India since that time, and we haven't seen them all for well over two years; it should be a happy reunion...

India is calling yet again ♥

2010-07-01T17:33:00.007+01:00

It's been almost two weeks since I finished the CELTA (TEFL) course, and I am now a qualified English teacher! Time is such an odd "thing". It was so intense, I couldn't wait for it to finish, and still it was over so quickly. The first week was the most anxious for most of us trainees, because it meant we were going to teach for the very first time, so the first week did seem to go on for too long. But once the first week was over, the following three went in a flash. During the week, we were diving, at the weekend we were allowed to breathe. But weekends were busy too and I had to juggle between assignments and meeting friends. I couldn't wait for it to be over, but at the same time I didn't want it to be over because I was enjoying Edinburgh and once it would be over, I would get back to France. So I enjoyed the moment. And besides the anxiety to teach -which turned into some kind of enjoyment yet filled with apprehension - the course was very interesting and enjoyable indeed. It was so intense that we made all the trainees our friends very quickly. And the trainees were our most important friends for the duration of the course because they were almost all the friends I saw. We were with one another all the time, and all our thoughts were turned to the course and the teaching. I'd go to sleep thinking of my next lesson, and I'd wake up thinking of my next lesson still. But I liked it. And apparently, I was good at it. My most personal lessons were my favourites and best.

And now I've been back in France for ten days. I enjoyed Charlotte Gainsbourg somewhat, yet her concert disappointed me. I've been downloading and watching lots of good (especially Hindi!) films. I'm playing quite a lot of Rummikub with the little sister, and seeing those members of my family I still have to see. I had a lovely weekend in Bruxelles with the twin sister, who finally met Niko after 11 years! I'd been talking about my best friend Niko for 11 years, still no-one in my family had met him. Now finally it has happened - it was funny to see my sister in his flat. Funny and good!

Elise brought back my cheap violin with her, and so I finally decided to re-string it and to tune it back to a western violin. That means my beautiful violin shall be Indian, and my cheap violin shall become occidental, for I have finally made the (scary but exciting) decision to bring my beautiful violin to India! So now I can finally play both Indian and occidental when I'm in France. It was too lovely to play with Lou again in Edinburgh (albeit for just 10 minutes!) and I just cannot resist. I love both styles! I've been digging out the old music sheets and practising old exercises and pieces again. It feels kind of lonely and pathetic to play duets alone, so I recorded myself playing one part and then I play the other part over the recorded bit. It is better than playing alone! I'm together alone! I can still play western violin, hurray, and some of my difficult exercises. It is SO hard to motivate myself to play Indian violin when in Europe, unfortunately. I think it bothers most people I stay with, except at my father's home, and I am clearly not in the mood here. India and the West are such different worlds that they have made me feel somewhat schizophrenic. There are things of my Indian life I cannot transpose or imagine into my European life. And European experiences that do not exist in Indian life at all. While it lasts then (i.e. just a few more days) I shall enjoy my occidental violin. Soon I'll be playing only Indian for a good six months!

For in five days I am flying back to India yet again. With Niko again! And quite happily so. I went to a lovely, sunny, wonderful, full-of-lovely-people party at the end of my Scottish time. I was having such a good time, thinking how sad I'd be to be leaving Edinburgh again so soon. And then towards the end of the night, an Indian guy turned up, and we got chatting until I had to go, about Indian music and culture and, of course, it got me all excited again to be returning to my India so soon. And to Vijay of course, who will be picking us up at the airport. Then we'll go straight to Varanasi, where I shall find my wee room again, and I'll renew my student visa for another year. I'll be travelling and spending time with some dear friends for two weeks to a month, until I return to Benares to start studying Hindi and violin again mid August...

♥

TEFL, Edinburgh and softening my heart

2010-05-30T16:34:00.007+01:00

the TEFL course is very very intensive indeed - and i should really be preparing for Tuesday's class, rather than writing in here. but typing is coming and it's good to let it happen while it lasts. so, the English teacher training course is good. intensive but good. it does give me a lot of good ideas for future (potential!) work, and it helps me having to actually teach to a class! it was rather daunting at first, but i survived, got good feedback, so from there it should be ok. First week is over - only just three to go and then I'll have a certificate. We have only about 10 students, in their early twenties. they are friendly and fun to teach. The group of trainees is lovely too. The first day I dreaded them all a bit (oh, that young American woman so stereotyped as though just out from an American blockbuster movie, urg!) but of course my heart has softened and I surprise myself with how much I do socialise. I don't care if they hang out more together than with me. I'm pleasant and nice and that is all that matters. Of course they'll be inclined to hang out more together, it's fair enough!

And on Friday I met with friends from the past. From the "goth" years or whatever they were. When I came back from India after a year, back in December 2008, I had felt out of it and judgemental. This time, I am only happy to see them whatever our differences are. I feel I am growing from living in India. I react to things that would have bothered me more softly every time I return to Europe. More tolerant and less judgemental. One may think that I'd rather get more and more out of it and disconnected, but in the contrary I do find myself more serene and grounded every time. What a pleasant surprise! I was very happy to see my ex (Nathan) and I spoke to old friends a lot more than I imagined. I have known them 10 years, wow, 10 years!

I also realise how lucky I am to have lived in Edinburgh, what a FANTASTIC city - especially in the area I lived in, and still am staying today. Forever grateful to my dear friend Robert who houses me every time. He is a lot happier and more social than he used to be and he is fun, fun, fun! I came on time for a wonderful wedding last week, caught up with some forgotten but delightful friends. I went back to a yoga class today - in my favourite yoga centre in the whole universe. Wasn't I lucky to find it at the top of my road all those nine years ago? I haven't found any better place anywhere else, even in India. And of course Edinburgh has such fantastic charity shops, that allow me not to feed into cluttering our planet with clothes.... Charity shops are illegal in France, apparently...

Edinburgh Castle

And I bought make-up yesterday. I hadn't bought make-up for well over five years. I was still using ancient stuff that probably isn't good for my skin (that's on the five times a year, if that, that I do need to wear make-up!) I went into The Body Shop where I had promised myself I would never set a foot ever again after L'Oreal bought it. And then I went into the shop and let the lady try eye-shadow on me and refurnished my collection (to last me another five years at least!) I surprised myself how nice and non-judgemental I was with this girl whom I would have found shallow, stupid and unbearable some years before. So what? I do my best. It is not a habit. It's probably the best I can get. And I no longer try to control things I can't change - rather, I manage to enjoy them while they last.

I feel a lot more tolerant and soft. A lot less exigent - but that is because we have a lot less choice in India and I have thus learnt to better accept what is. I used to be so picky on my food too. Of course I will still buy organic when I can. But if I can't I'll do my best and get over it. I do believe that “all that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become” (Buddha) and not getting worked up by what we cannot change may well be the most important...

♥

Stuck in Jordan, and on to Germany

2010-04-22T12:57:00.001+01:00

For once I had very precise plans for Europe; I was glad to make my father happy. And yet again Life thought otherwise and messed them up splendidly, of course. Planning just does NOT work with me.

So the return to Europe was not easy to say the least. Starting with the bomb on the train to Delhi, my first plane to Amman (Jordan) was four hours late due to technical problems. I didn't care of course, because with the volcano eruption in Island I knew I wouldn't get on the next plane anyway. I was lucky after all; I got stuck in Jordan for two nights only. The first day was crazy and exhausting. The airport hotel was fully booked; it was quite comical at the reception looking at the poor staff outnumbered by the passengers showing and handing their passports with the blue and green slip they had been given at the transit desk at their arrival, asking and getting angry and laughing and persevering and trying to get a room anyway. There were many people sitting outside the hotel and waiting there for god-knows-what too. Eventually another bus was organised to return to the airport for all to obtain a normal visa so that we'd go to the centre of Amman to another hotel. There were hours of going round in circles on the airport bus. A lot of dumping and taking my three heavy bags again and running after the group to not get lost on the way to the next desk. No time for toilet or food or water. Eventually eight hours later our group of distressed (but quite amused too, because the situation was quite comical at times) passagers got in the hotel in the centre of Amman. There were all sorts of people, some Italians business men who had been to India for two days only and had only missed their plane to Rome, some Americans who had also missed their connection but who had to stay a night, a German group wanting to go to Frankfurt, a big lively Marrocan family who had gone for pilgrimage in Mecca and wanted to return to their home in France, a lone Swiss woman who came back from 6 months in Sri Lanka, a big group of Dutch, a couple from Saudi Arabia wanting to go to Germany, and a couple from Northen France who had spent 10 days in Jordan and like me had initially planned to fly to Brussels. We were looked after well though. Our first night there was free with free food. A man hired by the airline company was very dedicated to help us the best way he could, and he was very helpful and friendly and efficient indeed. Just before I did leave he was kindly arranging with the hotel manager to lower the price of the rooms for those passengers who were stuck there for longer (with success). I stayed with the northen French people a lot. We visited the Jordan University because it wasn't far and made all the students laugh a lot on our way. Most women were veiled but not all. It's funny how fashionable or even sexy they can look as well with their veils. We had visas but did not want to venture too far from the hotel because our priority, of course, was to return home, and we had to stay there to keep up with the news.

Our kind helper was announcing any flights leaving to the reopening airports. On the first day there were flights to Spain, Italy and Greece but it was way too far for me. Eventually, two days later I decided to leave the French couple and got on a plane to Vienna to attempt to visit my sister who lives in Munich. Our helper was taking names and ticket number of those passengers who wanted a flight and booked them on. I learnt about the flight to Vienna around 10, had to decide myself very quickly; he took my name; a couple of hours later the airport bus to pick us up, and there was just enough time to hop on the plane. By 6pm on 19th April I landed in Vienna, 50 hours after I had been supposed to land in Brussels. It was easy to go from Vienna Airport to the central train station by the shuttle which had conveniently been made free. Once at the train station I saw the queue for the ticket office, horrified. But there were ticket agents everywhere in the hall and if I took a national train to Salzburg first I didn't have to go through that enormous queue. My sister had texted me the train times for Munich and I had time, but eventually I decided not to take a night train to Munich, under the advice that they would all be fully booked. So after taking just a croissant/water because there was no food left at the that snack counter I decided to take a train to Salzburg. I would have to wait four hours for my connexion in the night, but i took it anyway because I didn't care and it seemed there was no other way. In the end I luckily met a Munchener on the train whose sister was coming to pick up. She picked me up too and dropped me at my sister's house door... I arrived at 2am and, delighted that I would have a bed to sleep, and relieved to arrive on familiar ground, finally!

Overall I was lucky. I sent a text to the French couple who are only flying to Paris today. But despite the inconvenience and distress, I think this volcano is a good thing, for anything - Life telling Humankind to stop mindlessly flying anywhere and everywhere. It will just have to stop one day...

Mahoba bomb scare

2010-04-15T12:47:00.004+01:00

I was on that train and got scared...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5807130.cms

well, it was scary but for me only for a short while. suddenly people starting rushing outside shouting there was a bomb on the train. i got scared very fast - but vijay was super zen. i ordered him to undo the chain round the bags - cos i was too panicky to do it myself, he didn't believe it. but i said we go out anyway!!! and we rushed outside ourselves. and went as far away from the platform as possible. after that it was ok cos we were safe. i kept imagining an explosion like on tv wondering how it would feel. but it didn't blast. after 2 hours the train was ready to go. (they had taken the suspicious carriage way and checked the rest of the train). as soon as we got to the hotel in delhi we checked out the news on tv and saw it - and the bomb had exploded in a safe place at 6-7 am, which means it was programmed to blast in delhi...

Flying to Brussels on 17 April morning, and hoping the ash cloud won't be in the way...

Looking forward for those three months in Europe, but not looking forward to missing Vijay...

C.J. Maa Music School (Rishikesh)

2010-03-27T11:41:00.004Z

My exams were over very quickly, and I expect a *very* good mark. :) Very quickly after that Vijay came to see me; we packed up the stuff I'm leaving in Varanasi and closed of my room (which I am keeping over summer). On 15th March we were off to Delhi. Following day Vijay went to apply for visa with his big pile of papers. Two days later he went for interview at the embassy, and on 20 March instead of waiting bored in Delhi, we went off to Rishikesh for me to work on the website of C.J. Maa Music School.

C.J. Maa Music School is the children music school in which I had learnt Indian violin two years ago in April 2008 for a month. After I returned to see Shivananda and the children last month, I was so moved to see them that I decided to build a website for the school. It popped in my head on the way back on the train, and I couldn't lift the rushing thoughts until I actually started working on the website. So I decided to return to Rishikesh to meet Shivananda and finish off the work. And that is pretty much it: www.cj-maa-music-school.org.

I am very happy to have done this. We have been a week in Rishikesh now, and it's been wonderful, to have (a lot) more time with Shivananda and the children...

Off back to Delhi tomorrow - as we are still waiting on the visa...

end of the first year already!?

2010-03-06T10:35:00.003Z

the heat is upon us already - and so suddenly. it was up to 37 degrees yesterday.

the three days in haridwar and rishikesh mid february were very intense, and travelling with guruji was fun. i had had no idea what to expect; it was going to be all organised but i hadn't known anything more than that we would meet another of sukhdev's student. it turned out that that student was travelling with his wife, a group of some six french people of their age (55-60), and a 10-year old indian girl from varanasi whom they have been sponsoring for about five years and her father. in haridwar it was the huge Kumbh Mela festival. all i saw of it was a big queue of people under the sun, waiting to go for darshan in a temple. we waited to eat for so long, too. the organisation was tricky with so many people and patience was in order. but the concert with sukhdev that evening, in an ashram, was memorable - especially as it was shivananda who accompanied him on tabla - shivananda being the violin teacher i had for four weeks almost two years ago in rishikesh when i had studied in his local children music school. it was wonderful to meet him again, and very special to hear him and sukhdev play music together. the whole three days the indian girl kept stuck with me and holding my hand everywhere because i speak hindi. she is a very bright and alert girl, and she was great company. then we went to rishikesh, on sukhdev's birthday. we had a great violin session with sukhdev and shivananda. and there, the concert again was memorable. shivananda asked me to introduce the musicians and his school and i was so moved that i burst into tears in front of everyone. it was an intimate concert, thank god. but the children of the school had come to listen to their teacher and i was again very moved to meet them after two years.

then i came back to varanasi and started to think about my exams. but i discovered they were planned one week later than i had thought they would be. so for holi festival - the festival of colours - i escaped the madness of varanasi for a few days to go to khajuraho. there the three of vijay's married sister had come with their children. i hadn't seen most of them for almost a year so it was a wonderful occasion to visit khajuraho. and holi is a lot quieter there - they don't even celebrate it in vijay's family, which is more than fine with me! i really don't like holi especially in varanasi. it can be dangerous, people eat far too much "bhang" (marirjana) and drink too much alcohol, and for at least three days you don't dare going out for you know you'll end up splashed with coloured water (ruining your clothes) or just powder if you're lucky (but mostly you're not). so - i avoided holi completely and i was really happy to meet the young nephews again, they grow too fast - they always ask about me, they call me "mossi ji" (= mummy's sister)! and they interact a lot with me.

i love my indian family. they all know now what is going on still they keep quiet. but they know - and vijay's mother even knows that he is applying for a european visa. it has grown slowly slowly, gradually. i have become part of them slowly but surely. there used to be the occasional clash and argument. we used to have to be so careful. today everything is so simple - it has been growing so smoothly. now there are no clashes ever again, i communicate with all of them so much better, his mother even phoned me once for a chat. i am accepted in the family.

day after tomorrow my hindi exams will start - one oral and two papers. on 14 march vijay will arrive i varanasi and will close my room for summer, pack all my stuff carefully to protect it for humidity. but i am keeping my room which i'm very happy about. on 15 march we will be off to delhi for vijay to apply for a european visa. wish him luck. then the rest will depend on whether he does obtain a visa, but i will not be back to varanasi until i (or we?) fly back to europe (brussels) on 17 april...

and then i will be in europe until 6 july...

first year over already. it has all been so, SO fast...

Kashi, light, life and words

2010-02-01T14:17:00.000Z

February already. My Hindi exams will come in just one month. The cold left us as fast as it had arrived. It is astonishing – just about last week I was still wearing my inner-wear and needed to sleep under all those blankets. Now already, during the day in the sun I can wear short sleeves. I am packing up the gloves and woolly hat and wonder if I really ever had to wear them. It is frightening how much the temperature has risen in such a short time; I don't think I had known such extremes in my life before. I think it can be dangerous; many people are ill – cold, diarrhoea etc. – but the weather is more pleasant at least. The most wonderful thing about India is that there is always so much light.

Life has been good, as always. What can I say? It's odd that I suddenly have lost most urge to write. Perhaps it is because life has mostly become routine now. I am not a traveller! (Geographically anyway.) A stunningly beautiful routine, so there isn't much to say about it. Or isn't there? But mostly, it's as if life has become so simple that I don't have any doubt or questioning to express. At the moment I am, I am happy, and here in India unlike in Occident, people don't expect you to know what you will do tomorrow, and they don't question you about having no income. They won't bother you about security, so you can really live the moment. So that's how I live, in the moment, and perhaps I don't need to waste time talking about it. Just be, in some sort of silence – although there are many thoughts but they need not be expressed, only come and go. I don't read anything either, apart from the texts on my Hindi course. I used to always have a book on the way, and now I haven't read a single book since September 2008. I used to read so much about yoga and ayurveda and advaita and how to live life and such things, but yes – of course, these are all words talking about being but in actually being you need no words. Mostly there are no words to be expressed and no words to be learnt. In violin, there are no words, as I am learning “theory” via practice and immersion. No intellectual stuff at all. Hindi, I guess, even though it is a language with a many words, it is mostly a matter of practice too – for me anyway – with little comprehension involved. (Mostly, there is nothing to understand when you learn a language – only to take it in and accept, with no questioning, because language is arbitrary.) A language with many words, ha! That is quite a way of putting it. Actually, I am stunned by the richness of this wonderful language, Hindi. There are So Many Words in Hindi! One of the items on my syllabus is to learn a list of synonyms. And my god, what a list. Each words has five and ten synonyms. Subtle and interesting nuances, too...

So, the other day though I did finally started reading a book: “Banaras – City of Light” by Diana L. Eck, which my fellow student had lent me at the beginning of the course, about six month ago! I am kind of concerned I haven't touched the book since and I'll have to return it to its owner in just one month, so I should perhaps have a look at it! I had wanted to read about Banaras, such a mysterious city – since I live here. I know hardly anything about it, although I have learnt a few facts thanks the Hindi course. The book has been very interesting so far and I wonder why I hadn't started it before, really. I read all this amazing stuff about such a special city and I live here, on the bank of the Ganges. Why me?

The very first time I heard about the existence of Varanasi, it was by “little friend” I had met on the internet. He is half Indian and goes there regularly with his family, and before I first came to India in August 2005 I had met him and he had told me to go to Varanasi. “Most ancient city in the world.” I don't remember what else he had told me, but he had sent me two photos and one I had found stunning and still remember today. A stunningly colourful photo of the main ghat with its multitude of big, rough parasols. I am useless at history, but it had stricken me, in a way – I remember telling Niko we had to go there, at least, the rest I didn't know or mind. Isn't it fascinating that I live here today? The little friend seems to be completely gone from my life now.

My whole Hindi programme is complete by now, so I have a month to revise, with no rush. But I do a lot more than needed – I love it so much. I love connecting the knowledge I gain to the one I already have, analysing words and meanings, making connections just so that it will be linked more tightly to my current knowledge – as though connecting neurones together in my brain. I analyse words and their suffixes and I love my memory for all those words that would sound so weird and impossible to remember for most people I know – to the Vio I was just a few years ago. If I hate my memory for historical or political facts, I do love my memory (and ear) for language.

Violin is going well as ever. I am practising “those super-fast bits that move me so deeply when Sukhdev plays them”. Super fast bowing and beautiful cords. It's so difficult, and it hurts my right upper arm quite a lot. Yet there is progress. There are so many items I can work on now, with improvisation in three parts, and following the 16-beat, and improvisation and coming back on the right beat, and fast bowing etc.. On 13 February I will travel to Haridwar and Rishikesh, just for four days. I am very happy because we will meet Shivananda again, who was my teacher for a month in April-May 2008 when I took classes in his music school for children in Rishikesh. I haven't met Shivananda since then, and it will be lovely to hear how the school and the kids are getting on. Travelling with Guruji should be interesting and fun...

Sitting on the ghat looking at the brilliance and the holy river... Life is good. Life is light. I am so happy to do the things I love...

Cold Season in Varanasi

2010-01-06T07:11:00.007Z

According to my computer is 12 degrees outside. It's 11:25, so around mid-day, and it's quite a lot colder early morning, evening and of course at night. Westerners may laugh because it is a lot colder where you are of course, but well - I guess I must be de-habituating myself to being cold somehow. And mostly, our Indian houses are poorly prepared for the cold, understandably when it's only that cold for about three weeks of the year, round here. Still, right now in a poorly isolated house where as soon as I step out of my room I'm in an open yard (or sort of) and where of course there is no heating, I don't go home to any comfortable warmth. The stone floor of my room is freezing. I don't have many warm clothes so I can just alternate between two pairs of trousers, and I kind of wear all the warm clothes I do have at all times. I'm constantly wearing one or two jumpers, a scarf, and at night I still have my two jumpers underneath my blankets. But it's ok. I do put on more clothes as long as I feel cold, unlike many Indians. I am very grateful for the tank of boiling water downstairs, from which I feel my bucket before taking any shower. Oh, and I'm very glad to have invested in a thermos; for I mostly drink my water hot; it's great to warm myself up, especially at night. Mostly, it's just a lot more bearable than 48 degree temperatures anyway!!!

Many Indian women and girls still only wear their thin kurta/pajama suit with just an extra jumper and perhaps a scarf on their heads. Many Indians still go out in sandals with no socks, only covering themselves in a shall or small blanket. I don't know how they cope, frankly. Many don't do it just because they don't have the money to get any more clothes, I don't think. They still look cold and I don't know why they put on more clothes or at least socks. But I have asked some women why they don't wear socks, and they just don't like wearing socks. Is the discomfort less bearable than the cold? I find it a little odd, but then of course I've been wearing socks most of my life, and it's ok for my female image to wear masculine trousers, or something.

It became cold pretty suddenly. And I think the cold will leave us suddenly, too. Before I went to Khajuraho, mid December, there was still some warming sun during the day. Then suddenly one day it was dull and grey during the day too. But it is even colder in Khajuraho. It was a shock when I got there, on 21 December. It was freezing on the train, because they are poorly isolated too; many windows don't close properly etc. I had a very small blanket only - perhaps next year I'll bring my sleeping bag - but is it worth it for one short month out of nine warm ones?

The Khajuraho house doesn't even have glass windows - the "holes" are covered in a plastic sheet only, so it's a lot colder inside too. Most evenings or when they sit for rest the family gathers around a small heater, hands spread over it to get warmer. When I arrived Vijay built a water heater, one wired thing you get at the bottom of a kettle. He tied up two thin metal plates onto a flat piece of wood with thread, and attached it to a wire. Indian Style! Not exactly conform to the British Health Care Commission that I had to follow so strictly at my old job, but it saved the family 250 rupees. Sometimes I like to call Vijay MacGyver. He is the king of DIY and home reparation. Amazing. So I could bucket-shower in hot(ish) water. But before that, the family always had cold showers. In that cold. Are they just less sensitive to temperature change? Since they sweat a lot less than me in excruciating heat? Or I guess they complain less than we comfort-addicted westerners do?

I had a lovely restful time in Khajuraho. As usual I enjoyed my calm and traffic-free days, and I didn't practise any violin. I did some Hindi only when I had nothing to do or nowhere to go to. We all had fun playing a lot of Rummikub. Vijay took me to Pipal Ghat, the bank of a river some 20 kilometres away from Khajuraho. It was so nice that a few days later we returned by rickshaw with all the family; we crossed the river on barks and had a picnic on the other side. We drank a lot of chai, sat on the house front watching life buffalos and goats pass as always. We said hello or pulled faces at the neighbouring children who, in even greater number everytime, shout "Vio!" whenever they take a peek at me. And I joined in taking daily Hindi dictation with the seven children who come to take after-school class with Vijay's sister every day.

On 30 December Vijay and I took a train back to Varanasi. I wanted to return on time for a violin concert of my Guruji on 31 December. It was magical as always, and lovely to see my "guru-brother" there again. We had a lovely quiet time in Varanasi. Now, Vijay left last night back to Khajuraho and I shall resume my studying routine. Hindi exams are coming up in less than two months now already, and I will have to seriously start memorising some facts from the texts I have been studying, like who is the wife of this god or that king, and when was this poet born, and other mythological facts. And that endless list of synonyms and antonyms... It's kind of daunting to me, because I have no memory for facts most of the time. But I guess I have time and it will be fine - of course, hey!

With love and light, and all my warm wishes to all for 2010.

Coca Cola Protest in Varanasi

2009-12-09T06:21:00.035Z

I went to a Coca Cola Protest on Monday 30 November to support the Medihganj community, some twenty kilometres away from Varanasi.

The reason for the protest was this; cut and pasted from the small poster I had made for this event:

The Coca-Cola plant is situated on National Highway 2 (Varanasi-Allahabad highway) in the outskirts of Varanasi near Rajatalab block, about 15 km from BHU (Banaras Hindu University). Since its establishment in 1999, the surrounding local community (Mehdiganj) has been facing serious water and health problems. They are completely dependent on agriculture, but Coke ruining the water through its exploitation has disastrous consequences: the community cannot grow anything, and they do not get enough water even to drink during the summer season, as all the wells dry up and the hand pumps stop working due to Coke's continuous exploitation.

Several scientific institutions have urged Coke to leave Varanasi as soon as possible because the ground water is contaminated with cadmium, chromium and lead now. It is a serious social and environmental issue but the government does not take it seriously as it is bribed by the giant company.

The surrounding community have been protesting against Coke continuously for the past eight years. Several plants have already been shut because they were endangering the ecosystem and local people's lives in the same way: one in Kerala (closed by order of the High Court of Kerala), one in Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu), and one plant in Balia district in Singhachavar village (near Gorakhpur about 200 km from Varanasi) was shut before any campaign even started.

More than 25 universities in the US, UK and Canada have banned Coca Cola products in university premises only because of the company's Crazy Work in India and Colombia.

I had tried to attract some foreigners with my poster by putting it in a few restaurants and shops populated by non-Indians - unfortunately just a week before the protest, because I thought that even a modest gathering of non-Indians may have some impact - since Coca Cola is obviously a non-Indian company. We were only four foreigners to attend the protest, only women: an American, an Italian, my Japanese neighbour and myself (French). But I was happy to be there. We set for the Medihganj community at about 10:00 in shared rickshaws. The community was gathered in front of a stage; many speakers were there. Extremely loud music was played when we arrived; it sounded more like a party than a protest! We waited perhaps a couple of hours before it started. It was amazing to be part of such an event in India. There were banners with Hindi but also English slogans. "Dirt means Coca Cola", "Save water, save life", "Coca Cola leave India", "Coca Cola water thief" etc. People were happy to see us there, clearly, and it was nice to be able to speak to them a little in Hindi. The children wanted to pose for photo holding their banners. There were many, many women; their sarees made the protest look very colourful! And men, and children and babies. It was not far from Varanasi but the change of scenery was radical; a very rural indeed, and a non-educated community.

Nandan told me that they had been expecting a few thousands people more, and trucks loaded had been on their way, but someone had told them that the police was beating people up to scare them away - with success. Coca Cola had paid a LOT the police force to guard the plant about 300 metres away. We reached a barricade of many policemen (and some policewomen!) on foot or on horses; we couldn't go further. There we stayed for quite some time. At one point, suddenly someone started running towards the field. In panick we started to run away also. It was very quick, suddenly I saw myself running, heart beating fast, away from the road. As if the police had become violent but it was a false alarm. We never knew what provoked this. For perhaps ten minutes after that I felt my legs shaking. But nothing had happened, to my knowledge and experience. My three foreign fellows decided to leave at 3:30pm but it was not over and I was too curious to leave, despite the risk of police beatings. I stayed another hour until it all ended. There were some more talks, and some of what I understood was "marenge nahi; mannenge nahi" - "we will not hit, (but) we will not accept". The crowd was very enthusiastic. Then the Coke demon was finally burnt down and it was over. The burning statue was surrounded by a gathering of excited, singing men. We were surprised that the police had allowed this; but It was peaceful.

Most of the time the police had seemed pretty quite curious about our presence. They were kind of looking at us with interest (I guess also because we were all female foreigners!!) as if we were distracting them from doing their jobs. I found it quite amusing. Some asked what we were doing in Varanasi, and later a policeman asked me why I had come here. I simply said "because I don't like Coca Cola!"; it seemed pretty obvious to me, but he was very surprised by my answer...

By about 5 o'clock we left. It had been an exhausting but happy day...

Guruji's nephew's wedding

2009-12-03T10:58:00.015Z

i was invited at the wedding of my guruji's nephew, yesterday. The day before the wedding I was also invited to come to the family house to get my hands tattooed with henna, as is custom for women before any marriage party. Guruji was playing a concert (with an wonderful singer, actually) about three minutes from my house that evening, so i went to listen to him and he took me home on his scooter after the concert. I wasn't quite sure that i wanted to go just for henna tattoo, but then i thought i should accept any opportunity to dip more into the indian culture actually. so i went. well, it was not yet even the wedding day but it was crazy in the house. the music was playing full blast, bollywood or indian pop music. a part of the "main hall" was made into a stage area, and members of the family were taking turns to dance in front of the excited audience. now i realised this was of course a musician family. they all danced so well! the women already were wearing sumptuous suits or sarees; i watched that bollywood movie with astonishment. a young professional dancer took the stage and he was amazing. when the dancers started doing something silly or perhaps move their hips a little more, the crowd started screaming with excitement. crowd, because there were at least 100 people in there - and this was only family! a soon as i got in my Guruji's wife asked one of the girls to tattoo my hands. it was fun. the groom-to-be was also getting all pampered and getting his hands all tattooed. soon it was 10pm and i was taken upstairs to eat with everyone. blankets were laid down on every bits of floor for the guests to sit on, and the food was served from an enormous pot into leaf-plates. i was glad i had eaten a little before going because it was those deep fried chapatis or puris, as is custom to eat during most festivals. it wasn't exactly easy to eat with drying henna on my hands, but i managed with a spoon, and all my fingers were not covered in paste, thankfully. Afte my dinner Guruji drove me back home on his scooter.

yesterday evening i went to my Guruji's house for the wedding day. i was wearing my best suit, but of course i was never going to be as shiny as any decorated indian woman. however much i may dare to decorate myself with glitter and make-up, an indian woman would always look ten times more stunning anyway, beyond my imagination. for weddings even more so, especially in a more well-off family of the brahmin caste. heavily decorated sarees, heavy gold jewellery, enormous nose rings chained up to the left ear, ear and forehead ornaments, half their forearms covered with shiny, colourful, jingling bangles, and pretty heavy make-up to. the women are not shy with black coal and here at least i know my blackened eyes will pass with success. so, i was wearing my best modest suit, the one i had bought for my cousin's wedding back in june. and i managed to find some modest lady shoes, pretty shiny for my style but "passe partout" and comfortable and flat shoes. This kind of shoe is called nagra; mine are made of leather and decorated with pearls. two other students of my teacher were present and it was good not to be the only westerner this time. besides, unlike modest families, this big-city, educated family is very used to the presence of foreigners, so we didn't pass for the main attraction of the night at all! it was lovely to just be part of it without standing out!

so when we arrived it was last-minute finishing touch time, people getting ready to go. pretty soon we all left the house. around six jeeps were taking us to the bride's family for the marriage puja (religious ceremony) and celebration. with so many people it took quite some time to get organised, we had to wait quite a lot - perhaps two hours in total before we finally got on our car. it wasn't too cold thankfully, and the shawl i had borrowed from my flatmate was sufficient. we waited with a chai. i was introduced with my "grand guruji", guruji's older brother who had taught him violin when he was small. it was lovely to meet my teacher's family - they are six brothers all musician of course, and three sisters although one has passed away. three brothers live in varanasi, two in lucknow (the capital of the state of madhya pradesh) and one in mumbai. it was lovely to meet them and to see similarities between them. it is a beautiful family. finally we got on the car. the wedding venue wasn't too far, although i was to engaged talking with leon, a new (french) fellow student who only started taking classes with sukhdev last week. this brave man, of my age, stopped going to school when he was only 11, because he had a brain tumour. it took numerous doctors and four years to diagnose the cancer; it took him a few years after to get through the treatment including a full year in hospital. and after all that ten more year to recover to full capacity. he came very close to death, and he was granted with quite a new sense of intuition. i was completely amazed to hear his story and wanted to ask him too many questions...

a few questions later we arrived at the first venue. it was a government school. there we had some sweets and coffee, waiting for the the groom's horse and band to arrive. all the time guruji was really good to his students. even though he was extremely busy with family and guests he was never forgetting us, explaining to us what to do or where to go and introducing us to interesting people. perhaps after one hour, i don't really know, the band and horse arrived. in an indian wedding the groom's family forms a procession to go to the wedding venue where the bride his waiting. so the procession started, with drums and shehnai (indian oboe) - definitely a musician family, as the music is a lot more pleasant than the cacophonies i have heard in weddings before! the procession forms a dense queue between two rows of small people (there was a tiny old woman there!) or children holding big decorated and flashing lights on their heads, and the groom follows at the very back on his horse. while we go forward people dance like silly sausages. indians love moving their hips, man! in this family, women were dancing also, and it was lovely to see. perhaps a more educated, and musician family takes the tradition more lightly than a less educated family, who is necessarily more blinded by it and tin a less educated family they seem to segregate men and women a lot more. here they were all more light-hearted, enjoying the fun all together. the atmosphere was for me was a lot lighter and fun too. of course guruji was the first to go and join the silly dancers; he is definitely the youngest of the six brothers.

we finally arrived at the wedding venue. it was very big, very beautifully decorated, inside an enormous white tent. there was a very long table with a buffet of amazing dishes. we arrived there passed 11 o'clock. i was happily surprised with how amazing the food was, some of it was LIGHT and delicate, no deep-fried puris! there we met some more interesting and lovely people, some other musicians whom i had definitely seen on stage before but i forgot on which instruments. in another large room the puja was going on on the groom while the bride was waiting in another room, i think hidden from her husband still.

finally, after the puja, the groom went on a stage to sit on his sort of thrown, on a swing! followed by the bride. before they sat they had to give each other a garland of mala flowers. the bride had to throw the garland around the groom neck whilst he was carried up by some of the men around him. this game provoked more screams and laughters in the watching audience, and the bride herself had to stop herself from laughing! this was lovely for me to see, because i had only seen serious or even sad brides before! the groom, too, was relaxed and happy. indians seem to know no shyness; it must be because of their strongly collective culture, and because they are so numerous that they live all together as family with little privacy. in a family of traditional musicians, of course they are all used to being on a stage from a young age, too. After the garland exchange the new couple sat on their seat ready for a photo session, with groups going one after next. we sukhdev students were also invited to pose behind them, which showed how welcome we were.

after the photo session, all the women of the groom's family had to return to the house, because traditionally women are not allowed to take part in the long puja that was to follow for the rest of the night. it was about 1 o'clock in the morning by the time we left and i was pretty glad not to be allowed to stay so late; i was tired! so all the women and children returned in jeeps back to the house, where we students were invited to spend the night. guruji had told ixchel and i we could stay in his room with his wife. on a three-person bed (equivalent western standard) we were seven to sleep. (granted, the children took less room!) it was a little crowded, but i love the sociability in india. we are all human and we share everything. but most women didn't go to bed til at least 5 o'clock. they started percussion and singing folk song, sat all together. when i woke up later they were taking turn to dance on bollywood songs, full blast. i was happy i had my earplugs, but it only prevented me to hurt my ears; it didn't help me sleep very much.... at 7:30 i woke up with ixchel who was leaving so i decided to leave as well to try and sleep better in my own bed. without much success...

and the party is not over: tomorrow there will be a reception, with even more guests... in india, it's like everything is western times ten. everything happens with ten times more intensity!

Weather & typhoid, violin & yoga... and dealing with (some) Indian men

2009-11-20T10:08:00.003Z

It was two years ago that I left Europe for India, and my life has been here all the time since then. Since two years ago, I have spent five months in Europe only.

It has again been quite some time since I haven't written, but I feel like writing this morning, from my own computer settled at my desk, in my little home. It is about 10 o'clock and the light is crisp and beautiful. It is getting seriously colder now at last; evenings and mornings a jumper is necessary. Everyone has a cough and cold, me included. And man, how lovely does it feel to be able to wear my jeans or corduroy trousers with a long sleeve top, and at least a sweater after 5 pm! Last night at 10:00 according to my computer, it was 18°C.

I had not mentioned here that I had typhoid four weeks ago. I went to the doctor's straight away with my amazing Spanish flatmate, Rudra, who was very helpful and caring. I love having him as a neighbour. We always borrow utensils from each other, share tea, or offer each other our food to taste. So, that day I woke up with fever, probably because of that damn glass of local water taken the night before. We went to the doctor's in the morning; I took the blood test; we had to wait until 2 o'clock for the result to finally show it to the doctor after 6pm. Thus I was resting, cranky with fever most of that day because it took a lot of waiting to get the treatment, but five days of antibiotics later I was back on form. I took a second blood test some days ago; the result was negative. I am still taking the cure of pre/probiotics and multi-vitamines, and will probably carry on with chyavanprash and protein supplements all this winter because it is all good for me. I bought myself a thermos, too, and drink most of my water hot, which feels like much goodness too.

I finally started yoga again this morning, after over a month of idleness, firstly due to being in Khajuraho most of October, then having typhoid and last week Vijay visiting me. It felt great. It's really odd though; aren't you supposed to feel rusty after a month's break? Usually my neck feels stiff in the morning which makes it difficult for me to dohalasana (plough pose) and sarvangasana (shoulder stand), but surprisingly this morning I had no problem at all. No, I think breaks are good. For me anyway. And they are always good with violin, too.

Violin is going well. I felt seriously bored and uninspired a few days back, but that's because I hadn't seen Sukhdev in a few weeks. When I returned for class I made sure to tell him about my demotivation, that I didn't like when I played, I didn't feel good improvising, and I was sick of having to listen again and again to that bloody Teen Taal (sixteen beat). He just asked me why I felt bad about my play, because it is good, he assured me, he is happy with me, it's coming well; that brought a big bright smile on my face again and I was back on track. And of course, we did the alaap (improvisation) together and it felt all miraculously good again. And I am improving! I have started improvising freely and I don't feel bad or shy or embarrassed about myself. Slowly but surely I am letting go of the judgement, finally. I am better and better at copying Sukhdev's alaap and I enjoy it more and more. And I am able to hear the Teen Taal and finding the right beats within it now – provided that I'm not playing at the same time. I'll have to be able to do both together obviously, but it is a start. I couldn't differentiate the beats at all a few months ago.

Hindi is good. I have been pushing my teachers to come on time, and recently even took one to the Head of department's office to clarify what he was supposed to teach me from the syllabus. I've always let the Head know how upset I am when teachers don't turn up or if they come late (15 minutes out of a 45-minute class is quite considerable), and he told me that if he enjoys to teach me, he also gets quite “scared” about coming on time for my class now! But I always complain with a smile and some understanding, and we laughed about it. It works, and I am happy. These days I have a lot of composition to do – at least one text about something related to my life to write each week. It is a great way to study as all the vocabulary I learn in the process is related to me personally so I remember it better...

Rudra had a young Polish friend round a few weeks ago because she had persevering fever. She had to live with him because the fever wouldn't get down and she needed to be cared for. He took her time and again to a doctor and another; in a week she got her antibiotics changed four times. The fever would break for half a day and then come back again. In the end she was admitted to the hospital near my university. She took tests and it turns out to be malaria (although it wasn't found through her first blood check) and perhaps some other infection. She has been on perfusion for a week now and finally the fever is gone, but she is still pretty weak. Rudra is gone to Kolkata for a week or two so I go visit her everyday. She had no clothes with her; I had to bring her a rucksack from her guesthouse, and I washed her hair the other day because she hadn't been able to for a whole week. She has no-one else here of course, so I couldn't not do this. It's lovely to care for a stranger; it reminds me of the jobs that I once had...

Oh, and I received a surprising message through the Varanasi group of an internet community I'm a member of. It was from an Indian guy who has an NGO and works as a researcher and translator. It was to make an announcement about a conference on climate change taking place on 29 November, followed on the next day with a protest against Coca Cola. Apparently there's a Coke plant some fifteen kilometres away from Varanasi that sucks up all the water in the area, contamining it in the process, which has devastating consequences for the local community living around it... I couldn't help but reply to the guy; a couple of hours later we met as he conveniently lives in the same area of the city as I do. I was pretty excited, firstly because the issue is too close to me to ignore, secondly because it's the first time I have the opportunity to take part in any sort of activism in the country, and I am very curious about it. And finally, because it is very difficult here to meet local people with whom to be able to talk about deep topics. Of course, being a white woman in India forces me to be extremely careful with whom I speak to. I start being familiar in my neighbourhood but having a real, local, friend in Varanasi is another matter. The only Indian person I trust in Varanasi really is Sukhdev.

The contact I have with locals – mostly men – does not go beyond the hellos/how-are-you's or buying something to them or sitting on their rickshaws, or pretending I didn't hear anything because I'm sick to get attention only because I am of the female gender and I'm foreign – and it seems, for them, like the message “MONEY HERE” is written on any foreigner's forehead. Or else, as kind of regularly happens I have to say, it's the man who takes advantage of being in a crowd to pass you and brush your breast on the way with his arm, because men are mostly completely sexually repressed and extremely emotionally immature here. Or far less frequently but interesting to note, there's the bastard who comes passed you on his bicycle and frankly grabs your breast for a second. Is this satisfying even to them!? By the time you turn your head to look he's too far gone with bicycle, the coward, and you can only see the back of his head in the dark. That time, the only opportunity I would have had to communicate to him was to shout the appropriate abuse I had been taught in Hindi, but then even, caught by shock all that came out was in French...! But they do not scare or intimidate me. I feel sorry for them mostly and carry on my way. And that's the best way to deal with it really. Oh, but there was that fun time in the station, when Vijay and I were waiting for a train. The typical “inadvertently breast brushing” man passed me. That one however was really persevering, coming again and again to “brush” me, so I had no doubt that he was doing it purposefully. Vijay was ready to deal with him but it turned out to be unnecessary. Then the man went for a while; I thought he was gone for good... and again he came back. To my own surprise, I stopped to face him I felt the anger rise from my tummy up to my head, my eyes grew big and scary (or so I like to think!) when suddenly an enormous “HAAAATH!!!” came storming out of my mouth – that “hath!” Indians normally shout at cows when they are in the way. It all happened in a split of a second, and I was shocked almost as much as he was. He suddenly pulled back, started shaking, and the locals around burst out in laughter. After that, he followed us not to brush my breast but to ask Vijay whether we were actually walking towards the police station! We were not – we didn't know that there was a police station there! I felt really strong and empowered after that. I was so proud of myself, what fun! And Vijay completely amazed by my reaction. He was happy, because that made him realise that I am strong enough to deal with most hassling men on my own.

So. Being a foreign woman in India requires being alert, vigilant and firm. But don't get me wrong, I am happy in India, and I take the rare opportunity to use abusive Hindi vocabulary as further training on the road towards fluency (and spontaneity!) Most of the time people are very lovely, and I'm just a little tired of hearing “Hello Madam, which country from?” but with the understanding that I'd probably be interested in the same way if I was in their shoes (or sandals!) So all I do is ignore them politely... and from time to time, if I'm in the mood to answer I'll engage some light conversation, but making sure I don't speak TOO much in Hindi as it gets them quite overexcited at time... So yeah, I was saying that making local friends is quite a rare chance in India – and opportunities to befriend women even more so. But yesterday with that NGO guy from Couchsurfing, we were talking about Coca Cola being arseholes, the Indian gay community, woman empowerment, and even those mysterious of transgendered hijras!

And did I mention that I'm really enjoying my bicycle now? Or that I'm getting pretty good at making chapati? Or that receiving letters from my grandmother makes me happy?

a compulsory late update

2009-10-29T12:28:00.005Z

why is it so difficult to write these days?
there are moments of intense "indian experience" when i can see the stream of words before my eyes, but i am far away from computer or pen & paper. and otherwise i am too lazy or busy.

i was hardly in varanasi this past month. mostly i was in khajuraho with the family. first i went for a week during dehsara festival, end of september. on dehsara festival the hindus celebrate the death of demon ravana. so we made a big statue of ravana with paper and dried grass.

it was fun, the neighbouring kids packed up in the house courtyard watching vijay and ravi "a la tache". the mud pot filled with dried grass worked as the demon's head, and a boy covered it in calcium to make it white. i was given the task to draw the demon's face in... i can't remember what. then we filled in more paper and firecrackers, and after all the work, set our statue on fire. oh, and the following day, everyone eats PAAN, this weird betel leaf wrapped around a variety of ingredients which many men chew, sometimes all day, and then spit out in a digusting red paste.

i had never dared to try paan, i did now, but not for long. all this stuff in my mouth just made me want to vomit, and well, i know now why i never dared to try it. :P

it was lovely to see the family again. i can't remember exactly what happened now. i was happy to rest, oh, and i helped aman with his english homework. calm and quiet khajuraho is a lovely break from busy and noisy varanasi, actually.

i had a week off university, then another week at university, and then again an other week off university for diwali. diwali is big in india. if i remember right it is to celebrate the return from rama from a 14 year-exile in the forest, and the deliverance of his wife sita from demon ravana. i surprise myself remembering some mythology stories from my Hindi course, as i study some texts at university.

so after just 10 days again i returned to khajuraho to celebrate diwali with the family.

i was planning to stay only a few days, but then vijay developed a strong fever and i decided to stay. i just couldn't leave him in that state, i even developed an eye infection due to (i presume) anxiety. we went for a blood test and it turned out he had tiphoid - again. following day we went to chhatarpur (the bigger, neighouring town) to see a better doctor, as it's not the first time Vijay has tiphoid in too short a time. it turned out to be both tiphoid AND malaria. he was surprisingly well supporting the coming and going fevers, in between, most of the time he was kind of ok. still despite the medication his health didn't improve and again i lenghtened my stay. we returned to chhatarpur to the doctor's, who changed the medicines. on the following day he was better already, and he never developed another fever, the treatment is almost finished. i hope it is for good. i forced vijay to sleep under a mosquito net, and i bought a water filter for the family (despite the fact that i suspect that he caught the bacterias outside of khajuraho)... in the end i stayed in khajuraho for ten days. i got back to varanasi day before yesterday. vijay is a lot better now.

in the meantime in varanasi, there have been more new and lovely encounters or friendship, some great concerts, more violin played and more hindi classes and homework done. i am enjoying my bicycle, oh and my (miracle of all miracles!) new mobile phone and its Gayatri Mantra ringtone. and the wheather is cooling down for good. it is quite a lot cooler in khajuraho where it can be chilly at night. i had to wear socks on the night train, and buy a shawl/small blanket. sweating is on holiday. i can wear my corderoy trousers with great joy, and wear my sweater in the evening.

i am becoming good at travelling alone. my hindi vocabulary is growing and so i am becoming pretty good at replying to annoying or dodgy men. they get really surprised from seeing a foreign woman with a small bag and very well used to the "indian ways" it seems. and they get REALLY surprised when i answer or speak hindi, because when it's not complicated sentences, i sound quite fluent. usually people don't bother me long, they get the message straight away and leave me.

i am home. i feel home.
and i am healthy, i am in love, and i am happy.

On the Westerner's living in Varanasi, and cycling in Indian traffic

2009-09-25T22:08:00.000+01:00

Wow, I haven't written anything for almost a whole month. I have not felt like writing at all; perhaps this is because my life is more routinised than adventurous at the moment – or something. I am no longer travelling and considering myself “away from home”; I have just expanding my world. I guess I am lazy to write, too – I don't know. I have less motivation than I once had; I write almost by necessity, so that my life will not pass completely unrecorded – perhaps for a reason that will be revealed to me in the future. And I feel my expression is becoming more awkward somehow, probably from being in a “far-from-perfect-English-speaking” country. People speak “Indian-English” here; I hear myself “downgrading” my English and saying things like “it is more better”... and I bless the few times spent with native English speakers...

Anyway, life has been good of course, despite my silence. I live my little routine, which I enjoy; between university and the violin. I have met many more interesting, sedentary Westerners here now, who form a friendly community. With one of them, who I know from last year, I was sharing a sort of theory the other day. We both agreed that there seem to be different stages, or level, of “the westerner living” in Varanasi.

The westerner's “level of living experience in Varanasi”

(1) The Beginner I, the first-time comer, the tourist, who lives in a hotel. S/he visits the city on a surface level, visits temples and does the touristy activities, buying souvenirs and doing the must-do-Ganges boat trip, paying too much for it. Being a prey for the local business person, he or she doesn't know the “ways”, or the right price for things and gets ripped off most of the time. S/he doesn't know any Hindi. S/he is staying for a few days to a week, as part of a small tour of India, as part of a “holiday”. Starting to get a shallow taster of Indian culture.

(2) On the next level, let's call it the Beginner II, we have the profile that I filled last year. S/he is in Varanasi for one to a few months, staying in a guesthouse, most likely in the “Bengali Tola” area of the city, between Kedar and Harischandra Ghats. We can see him/her eating most days in the Monalisa Cafe or the German Bakery/Shiva Cafe. Perhaps s/he is staying the (in)famous Munna House, smoking shilom and enjoying similar “hippie” company enjoying the slowness of Indian life and the Holy City's atmosphere – perhaps as part of a longer journey around Asia/Australia etc. S/he is likely to be studying Indian classical music, or dance, or yoga or whatever art or teaching the old city has to offer. Perhaps s/he starts learning some Hindi. S/he is starting digging a little deeper into the Indian culture.

(3) On the third level, where I feel like I am at now, you get something like the Advanced I level. The interested individual has moved into a more long-term accommodation, perhaps in a family, and pays a monthly rent as opposed to giving is money day to day. S/he has a more independent way of living and perhaps a “mini-kitchen”, doesn't have to eat out all the time. His/her “home” may have moved around Assi Ghat where (it seems) longer-term westerners do gather. S/he comes to India on a regular basis, as part of a more serious, rigorous project. Perhaps s/he comes a few months every year to meet his/her music teacher, perhaps s/he is there for a couple of years like me. S/he is a serious student. S/he knows the ways here, doesn't get ripped off in shops, starts to know the price of things or knows enough Hindi or people to get to know it! S/he handles Hindi pretty well, enough to have a simple conversation at least, and is probably studying the language – autonomously or with a teacher here, speaking to the neighbouring locals, who have begun to recognised and know him/her, as a part of the neighbourhood. S/he starts becoming part of the westerner community.

(4) And then there is probably something like the Advanced II. The westerner who has lived in Varanasi for five to ten years, who is fluent in Hindi, who has a life of its own here. Who studies or who works. Who knows a lot about life here, and many people. S/he no longer feels the need to “learn” from living in around a family and has taken a flat.

Hindi & Violin

So life is good. I do a lot of homework. I am a little frustrated at my teachers when they fail to turn up, but I was prepared; it is part of the teaching as a whole – and it's not as bad as I thought. I am autonomous enough to learn and study a lot by myself anyway, and I have “a Vijay” who can help me, for even if he is in Khajuraho, we will see each other regularly. He came this last week already for a visit. Funnily a teacher had requested me to go and watch a play showing in a theatre of the university on Sunday. I was wondering how on earth I would get on with it and if I'd understand anything, but Vijay had miraculously decided to visit me at the right moment, so he came with me, explaining to me the gist of things along the way. Following class, the-said teacher who had requested me to see the play didn't show up. Never mind. I learn a lot. Some classes are easy but the refreshing nature of the class is welcome, others are quite challenging. I learn tons of vocabulary, tons and tons. And I write, and write, a lot, and I'm getting better, writing smaller and faster.

Violin is nice too. I am getting on a lot better on the aalaap, i.e. the introductory improvised parts of a composition. During the second half of each class I copy what Sukhdev plays. I used to be so nervous and “FIGEE” but it feels a lot smoother and more comfortable now. I can slide and do the twiddly bits that once seemed impossible. Now the challenge of course will be to detach myself from my teacher, to play my own thing, to improvise - my once-dreaded-yet-so-admired-skill. The Indian traditional way of teaching is all about impregnation. Immersing myself in the style, the sounds, the raagas, the feelings and the moods, moving from mind to heart. It is really fascinating. There is so much to “know” about it, yet I don't want to know from the mind – I don't want to try and remember; I want to allow the theory to take hold of my heart. And I feel like a total ignorant; still when people ask me about this and that musician I have no idea of their names, I “know” of four ragas, cannot recognise any raaga when I hear someone play, am completely lost in the impossibly sophisticated Indian rhythms. But it is not what's important. Slowly slowly, from practising – without worrying about any progress... And one day I'll realise that I start to “feel” the Teen Taal rhythm (16 beat) rather than having to count or check the beat on the mini-screen of my digital tabla. Slowly slowly, layers of hearing or feeling or awareness start to fill me. Because I am also studying Hindi, I can't practise as much violin as I used to – I feel I don't practise “enough” yet I'll remind myself that it's OK; I don't know where I'm going and all I want from playing violin is Love, and it's all in the moment. There is no goal, only a journey, so of course I am doing fine. And then another day will come when I'll notice that I can do something I couldn't do before, the confirmation that only a relaxed mind (and body) can learn. That as long as I am relaxed into it, just from diligent and honest practise the learning will come to fill me, the Consciousness will shape my mind and body to respond to my heart. There is nothing more than that, and this is all the beauty.

Cycling into Indian traffic

And I bought myself a bicycle! Back in July, when I was in Edinburgh, my friend Clement wanted to take me to a yoga talk by bicycle. I drove half a second and stopped in panic, saying I would never been able to do it. I do not drive a car, and I am far too scared of traffic. I don't know the rules at all. The thing is, in the west, cars and motorbikes are like fast, heartless machines. When you cross the road you consider the speed of the machine; you don't assume that the driver – the human being - inside of it will stop or consider your existence. Generally speaking.

In India, the traffic is an entirely new experience. It may be completely insane, noisy and crowded like you had never experienced it, with people and cows and bicycles and scooters and motorbikes, and the odd car or a bus, and auto- or cycle-rickshaws, or sweaty men walking and pushing a sort of “table on wheels” carrying mounts of chairs or bananas or twenty-metre long metal rods, or a three-metre high pile of wheat sacks. At first I was convinced that I would never even consider the possibility of taking part of the madness, sitting on a two-wheel vehicle where my trusted feet don't touch the ground. But clearly, walking forty minutes one way to university, and back another forty, and then having to go to my violin teacher's for another (at least) forty-five minutes in the opposite direction, I was juggling between going by foot and taking a cycle-rickshaw having to bargain again and again. I started to be haunted by the idea of having a bicycle, and to become envious of my fellow students who had one, despite the fear of being thrown into the madness. But as we “all” know, fear is the very wrong excuse for not doing something. When you fear something, that's exactly when yo should do that thing! So I got a bicycle, with Vijay. I was very nervous at first, because “I am not great on the bicycle” - but hey, this is an old statement now. I am not as bad as I used to; I am fine and I enjoy it - I have clearly become comfortable on the bicycle – thanks to India, to Khajuraho and to Auroville. The first couple days Vijay drove with me on a rented bicycle to check that I was OK and to give me some confidence.

The traffic is not that bad after all. The road home-to-university, at the time I have to take it, is not crowded apart from a small part – and once passed the university's gate, it is lovely and quiet. The way to my violin teacher is more tricky, but I will take it slowly. The thing in Indian traffic, is that you have to deal with human beings on wheels, not machine. And the traffic is very slow. And there are no rules, so you have to use your common sense, your awareness, your observation. It's a meditation to cycle in India; a lot more human than in Europe due to the complete absence of rules (well, apart from having to drive on the left). It can be awfully noisy, but do bless the horns, for they are the language in which drivers communicate between each other – when they overtake you etc.. And so, if I feel completely incapable of driving in Europe, I am feel OK in India (although... Varanasi is not Delhi). And what a sense of freedom! And the rickshaw-wallahs they stop bothering you with their “madam, rickshaw!” when you are sitting on a bicycle! I am happy with my purchased bicycle – It is the first time ever in my life that I own a vehicle...

~

And did I mention that we cooked paratha (a kind of thick chapati mixed with vegetables) and sabji (vegetables) and chapati in my room? And adding finely chopped spinach in the batter makes yummy pancakes, fusion between paratha and pancake. Hihi. And next week, due to some festival, I am off university for a week. So, on Sunday I am off to Khajuraho for a visit of my dear Indian family.

Settling in Varanasi (cont'd)

2009-08-29T10:30:00.003+01:00

Life is good indeed in Varanasi, and I am already feeling well at home in my new, pleasant and practical, area of town – and my homely room. In fact, it's been almost two years since I hadn't had my very own little space. In Europe I was in Edinburgh in my previous flat but still felt the difference from being there temporarily. Or I was at my father's or visiting friends and family, and in India I was no more than three months at a stretch in the same place. Of course I've felt very comfortable and homely in my family, or in Edinburgh, or in Khajuraho and Varanasi before. But this is my own space. And I can cook my own food. And I'll be having a base for at least one – and very likely two – years. Before, when I left a place I would take all my stuff, shifting space completely. Now, when I'll visit Khajuraho, I will leave the rest of my stuff at home. Here I am not in anyone's space nor depend on any hosts. This is my little home, with my long(ish) term activities and studying, and oh, it is happening in India!

And it feels very good.

My room is rudimentary but luxurious compared to the places I've lived in before. I have a table and a chair to study, I have my computer and an internet connection 10 metres down the road, and even a small speaker-box for my MP3 player that allows me to play music in my room. I have a balcony that helps me go through power-cuts. I have good hanging space for my clothes and enough shelves to store all my stuff. I have a one-metre square kitchen space, which must sound ridiculous to my occidental readers, but that I have come to appreciate and enjoy completely. It has a shelf with all the things I need, including a non-stick frying pan and a kit to steam vegetables and enough cookery and a fresh water supply and even a filter water supply. And muesli! I have no fridge of course, but I enjoy buying my ingredients day to day from the small shops or stands down the road. There are fruits and vegetables including fun, exotic ones, Indian cheese (paneer) which keeps about 5 hours, dahi (yoghurt) which will keep for a day and a half, and milk which they sell morning and evening that I'd have to boil three times a day to keep fresh. I don't like to buy milk because of the hassle, so I only buy it if I'll make pancakes straight away. Paneer and dahi are lovely. And in the heat, I can only buy a small loaf of brown bread that I'll use for two breakfasts; after longer it starts to mould; then I have muesli. Proper muesli with a lot of fresh fruits and yoghurt! There are many small shop down the street from me, including the tiny, friendly organic shop that sells filtered water and brown bread and tahini and brown or red rice and many more organic/healthy produces; and soon it will even be the season for tofu. It is extraordinary to have such an health food shop so close-by, for they are extremely rare treats in India! I am very grateful for it indeed.

I do not cook everyday but I have virtually all my breakfasts at home, and maybe one every two evening I'll cook a (simple) meal. Lunch I always eat outside because it is more practical and I must still indulge in lovely Indian cooking (which I will start learning in due course). During the week before going to university I eat at that local Rs15-thali restaurant where the house woman already knows I love lady-fingers and karela, because it's quick and on the way, and they make simple homely food – it is just an outer room in their own house. But in the evening, I'll compensate with an intake of more healthy food by cooking red or brown rice (Indians only eat white rice) or steam my vegetables, and always have a lot of salad – with olive oil! I made spinach and cheese crèpes the other day – it was wonderful. It's interesting to experiment with Indian ingredients, too... and it's fun to cook sitting and using the stone floor as preparation space. The crèpes took a long time – but it meant that following morning I enjoyed (and shared) a very yummy crèpe-breakfast.

And I've been taking supplements, too. I take kala namak (black salt), as it is full of minerals and iron and it compensates for all the sweating. It's even good for digestion they say, so I'm having it! I also take a protein supplement (also enriched in vitamines and calcium that just tastes like hot chocolate (cold and with water instead of milk, but you learn to be tolerant in India so it's nice!) because the protein intake in Indian cooking is pretty low and of course I do not eat meat. I feel a lot better than when I arrived; it must all this homely goodness! It is a less hot, it's true, around 30-35 degrees, but we still sweat like pig-dogs due to the humidity. When it was 48 degrees, back in May-June, it felt so hot on your skin, but you'd sweat a lot less – meaning it's a lot harsher on your body (and my digestion was clearly affected) but now, it really doesn't feel so hot yet we sweat and sweat and sweat... It makes me wonder whether it is sweat, or humidity deposited onto the skin from the atmosphere (!?!)

But it is getting cooler anyway. There is clearly drought, the Ganges is low and it's supposed to rain heavily right now and it does not... but it does rain from time to time, and then the freshness is bliss. (And I noticed after writing this entry that the Ganga waters have risen considerably by at least one metre! Yay!)

And so, the healthy diet and supplements must work, for I have a lot of energy and feeling very good. I am constantly doing something, Hindi homework, or violin, or cleaning, or doing my laundry, or cooking, or tidying, or writing, or going to university or to Sukhdev's, or meeting people, and I am not too tired by sleep time. I really enjoy going to sleep in India somehow though – is it just those hard beds? I have also started a new pranayama (breathing exercise) routine, taught to me by my yoga teacher of a neighbour (he's been a teacher for over ten years – how handy!!) and it feels great! I had always been interested in learning more about pranayama, but it is difficult to find one's right thing, and my training has been very sketchy with bits irregularily learnt here and there, sometimes from a teacher sometimes from a book. Putting them into practice had scared me because one ought to be careful and vigilant with pranayama, so I had always kept to the basics, and even then not with much regularity or conviction at all! But my neighbour, just one week after moving in, taught me a complete routine connected to all the chakras, which seems to make sense to me . I have practised this one everyday since, and I find it suitable for me, a lot more than other meditation practises I learnt elsewhere that I had not found very convincing. So... let us see where that will lead me...

And university! I have completed the first week. It is clearly more slack that in Europe and I must be prepared to accept that; THIS IS INDIA! But most of my teachers have been attending class and according to my senior students, I must have been lucky so far. The best bit, clearly, is that I am alone in my class, so I'll be able to learn at my own (fast) pace, without being slowed down by other classmates. I can bombard the teachers with questions, too, and if I always prepare my texts in advance I'll be able to speed up the pace even more... Interestingly, dixit my senior students, the teachers will be more likely to show up if they know I am dedicated...(?) and they are aware of my dedication already. Most of the teaching is based on texts and stories (well-chosen and interesting ones) – plenty of new explanations and reading and writing, which I clearly need. So far, the level is not too easy nor too tough, just comfortable and fun... I am happy.

And violin! Sukhdev is away for ten days, so he asked me to help a new student of his, who only started learning violin last week. She is coming every two days for practice in my room, and it is a lot of fun to be helping her. It makes me feel that I am very good at violin (haha!), which is very pleasant indeed! It also teaches me to go back to the basics and to be observant.

And there are the people I meet. They are mostly long-term in Varanasi, most whom students. It is a little like a community of fellow foreigners, and in an otherwise Indian environment meeting them is quick. I have good company around me. Below my own roof, my floormates, as I initially felt, are lovely and helpful too...

Settling again in Varanasi

2009-08-19T22:30:00.001+01:00

I've waited far too long for an update, but with such lovely company it was impossible spend any time on a computer to write. I arrived safely in India. Not exactly arrive fresh after a night on a plane and straight on to16 hours on a train from Delhi to Varanasi, but India seems even closer to Europe on a direct flight, and I did arrive, and happy. Despite the grey heavy sky, and the depressing view that the Ganges' water is very low compared to last year at the same time, by at least two or three meters! Ganga looks far less powerful when its waters won't reach all the way to the trees on the other side, leaving place to a thick line of sand. It hasn't rained enough they say; we seem to hear that often these days... Upon arrival, I was also struck by how hot it was; as always I had forgotten a little. And the powercuts, the cursed powercuts that leave you with no light and – especially – no cooling air. Just the sweat, the constant flowing sweat, along your forehead and your cheeks, all around your neck, all over your chest and your tummy and your back, and down your legs, too. Being wet all the time underneath your clothes, starting sweating as soon as you try to dry your body after a frustratingly short yet relieving shower.

I arrived at my homely hotel above the small cremation ghat at around 7am on 6th August. I got in the same familiar room, dropped my bags, and jumped into the shower. I was exhausted but I couldn't rest before I had an omelette on toast because I was starving. Looking down the ghat's activity from the rooftop restaurant... The cremation flames and the smoke, and the goats and the cows and the bathing buffaloes, and the men bringing wood, and the monkeys jumping from tree to temple top to electrical cable, and the constant bells and chants, and the bashing of clothing onto the stones in the river, and the people bathing, such extraordinary activities, and yet so familiar by now. I was at home but not quite because I was still waiting for Vijay. I was feeling odd from being back, still, and the sky was heavy and grey, and being in that hotel without him was clearly making me feel his absence. But he was on the way, of course. After breakfast I slept some necessary two hours; he arrived around lunch time and I finally felt completely at home.

By the evening I got a text message from Anusha, my new friend from an internet travelling community and who was coming to Varanasi at exactly the same time to study at the same university. I had suggested to her some places to stay. We ended up being neighbours for a good week, in the same hotel. She hugged me warmly when I opened the door to great her, and we had a lovely chat all evening with her and Vijay. Most of the week she would be great company, too.

We spent a lovely weekend, and on the following Monday went tp Banaras Hindu University (BHU) for registration. BHU is one of the best universities of India, and within its walls it is very beautiful. Big bright buildings joined by alleys boarded with trees, much greenery and cleanliness and quietness for India. Passed the impressive gate, the site is enormous and it took us four days to complete the registration process, having to deal with parts of the bureaucracy ourselves and going from office in one building to an office in another one, having to take a rickshaw between places because it was too far and way too hot to do it on foot. Every time we showed a paper we got given a new one that we had to photocopy before giving it to the following officer, having to go back to the copy shop all the way in between... I had to pay part of the fees in one place and the rest in another, and queueing in the heat, etc. etc. etc.. But Vijay helped me immensely throughout the procedure and saved me a lot of hassle and energy, because if he had not been there I would surely have gone impatient and confused and crazy. Four days later I did obtain my (somewhat rudimentary compared to our European digital student cards) 'student pass book' and I became yet again a student.

On the second day we went to Sukhdev's house, my violin teacher. It was lovely to see him again, of course, and I always love it for him to meet Vijay. He doesn't say but he knows who he is with no words. He knows the nature and the importance of his company. I would feel uncomfortable to put the words around it, as Sukhdev is Indian, but he knows beyond and we all know what there is to know – simply and with no labels. Soon Sukhdev indicated a good place for me to live. A family house where another of his students usually stays. He didn't know the name or address, but drew a map so we'd know how to find it. As soon as we left his house, that is where we went. We followed a narrow lane full cows and especially full of cow shit – I had seen a lot of shit in India, but never as much as in this street (!) – as it feels more like a cowshed more than a street, and found my new house. There was a statue of Ganesha above the entrance door which made Vijay trust that it would be a lovely place. Coming from Sukhdev, I new it would be good anyway. We met the owners, a lovely 60-something couple. Vijay spoke a lot to “Auntie Ji” and we both liked them and the place straight away. There were a spacious and bright and clean room upstairs, which I loved straight away and we agreed that I would move in the following Sunday. I have been here for three nights already.

And indeed, I love my room, the house, the family, and my new neighbours. The room is bright and with plenty of the Indian-style shelves “carved into the thick walls” like I love them. It is well furnished, with two beautiful chairs and a table for me to sit and study, and a double bed. I have enough space and shelves to make up a “kitchen corner”, with a small gas bottle. I really have all I need. With Vijay we bought some domestic stuff; I even found a good-quality non-stick pan which will be good for pancakes, horray! Vijay really helped me to settle well in my new, Indian environment. He bought a round mud pot like all families have to keep water in my room. In that pot I'll keep fresh (local) water collected straight from the ground for boiling and cooking. For the drinking water, there is a cheap monthly (or so) service supplying filtered water in 20-litre tanks, and that's what I'll use rather than the time- and gas-consuming option of boiling my own water. Vijay made sure to organise everything before he left back to Khajuraho, and he'd even go to the shops alone to keep the prices down – because if accompanied by my non-Indian self, shopkeepers usually put the prices slightly up straight away. On white foreheads they seem to read something like “has a lot of money”.

And that's how, the following weekend, I was fully registered at university and settled at home. Niko, our Belgian friend travelling for a month in India, came to join us on Sunday, 16th, conveniently staying in another empty room in my house. We'd spend a few days together and then he would follow Vijay to Khajuraho to spend some time with his family before flying back home. We had a lovely time again, the three of us together, but two days were far too short. We mainly spent time walking on the ghats along the Ganges while Niko took about 700 photographs of the affluent and varied activities (or non-activities!) Varanasi is an amazing place; there is always something amazing to see, at every corner. A madman (apparently) sitting on the soaking ground (for it had rained, finally granting us with some relieving freshness!) in the middle of everything and doing nothing but looking beautiful, the cremations (it's not allowed to photograph them, but it still works... from far away), the cows pissing impressive streams of urine or the buffaloes shitting, the goats resting on funny places or eating pieces of bark (yes, wood from boats), and the saddhus, the colours, the nnocent woman lighting a cigarette, the boats on the Holy Waters, the religious ceremonies... For our last evening together we went for a boat ride on the Ganges with Anusha and we went on the other, sandy, side of the river. Anusha had been told that there one can apparently find many remains from dead humans, including human skulls. It was true. Amongst many wrecks of underwear pants and flip-flops for a sample of the debris, we found a shoulder blade, a jaw, a piece of spine, a piece of a coccyx, adult and child legs and arm bones, and the top of a skull. According to Vijay some of them must not have been burnt completely because they were too clean or well-preserved... It was rather strange to walk along a beach dotted with human bones... On our ride back from the other side and on time to see the daily Arthi (the famous religious ceremony to Ganga), we went passed a floating dead cow... I had heard of all these things, but it was the first time that I could experience it. After all, death is but an ordinary thing, not?...

And all my friends have gone now, Anusha, Niko and Vijay, so I have started my personal routine. I have started cooking a little in my mini-kitchen, I have resumed my violin practice seriously and have had my first class with Sukhdev, and I have started my Hindi classes at university. I will have about two hours a day from Tuesday to Friday. I have photocopied all the required texts and bought the two requested books. It felt funny. I have met a few schoolmates - who tell me not to except European standards of teaching (I know it) and that the course setting up will be slow to start the first couple of weeks. There is a Beginner Certificate in Hindi, Undergraduate Levels 1 (me) and 2, and Postgraduate Levels 1 and 2. It seems like there are no more than three or four students per level. During my first class, today, I was alone with the teacher. He checked out my level and I knew everything! I hope I will stay alone in my class so he can speed up the pace (?)

And I am starting exploring my new environment, the new area of town where I live. There is, miraculously, a small, lovely organic café 10 metres away from my house, with free wifi to connect my laptop to the internet. This feels like complete luxury. It is even far too withdrawn to be well-known by tourists, so it is peaceful and calm. And I am getting to know my neighbours, who live in the other four rooms around mine. They are all students apart from the odd and intriguing 40-something Indian woman (but once she did start to speak, she was lovely). Two are also BHU students. There's the Japanese girl studying Indian religion, the Spanish yoga teacher studying Sanskrit, and the friendly young Indian man studying German, who seems to be helping everyone getting settled and organised. All seem lovely, and I am relieved that I will live with long-term floormates rather than travellers coming and going after a few weeks. All are helpful, we share stuff and tea and conversations, and are helpful to each other.

It should be a very interesting and fruitful year indeed...

And the Indian journey goes on....

2009-07-31T19:53:00.001+01:00

and finally, at the end of it all, the visa application website did say... Processed application are received from Embassy and ready for collection - 30/07/09.

A few hours later, with some disbelief still, i was roaming round the streets of Paris, looking in admiration at that beautiful page of my passport saying Visa Category "S", for student, and "Banaras Hindu Uni-Varanasi"...

I will fly back to Delhi on 5th August, that's Wednesday... and arrive in Varanasi next week.

Back in Europe...

2009-06-23T13:46:00.002+01:00

although it felt like i left yesterday, and my heart is still overseas... the indian journey hasn't ended, OBVIOUSLY.

Already...

2009-06-10T11:04:00.002+01:00

10 of June already...??
On the 17th I'll head to Delhi via the Taj Mahal...
And already on the 21th I'll be flying back to France.

Where has the time gone?
It feels like I only arrived here yesterday...

Teaching English to Indian children...

2009-06-01T11:00:00.001+01:00

I love teaching Aman. Aman is Vijay's older sister's son. He lives with us and not in his parents' house because over there, in their small village, the schools are very poor, and because he is not a very good pupil. But I find him remarkable. He is only nine, and he is - I guess - a bit like a little servant. He has no toys, like most kids in India, and he does a lot of work in the house. Of course, like all Indians, he washes his own underwear when he showers, and there is not even a question of being spoiled and capricious; these seem like nonexistent traits amongst Indian kids - in rural India anyway. And it is he who goes to get milk from the neighbour's every morning, it is "his" task to fill in all the bottles and the water tanks in the bathroom. And everytime anyone needs to go up or down the stairs for something, they send Aman. "Aman, go get water, Aman bring down Mummy's food, Aman come here, Aman this, Aman that..." And he obeys, he complies, and he never complains. I wonder how he feels inside. And every evening when everyone else is downstairs watching TV, if I want to go upstairs for my dinner, it is usually he who comes up with me and serves me my food. Apart from that he'll just do nothing, or sleep, or sometimes he'll sit by the temple watching the other kids play - sometimes taking part. Or, a lot of the time, he studies with me and does his English homework.

I don't like how they treat Aman most of the time. I always want to tell them, "Hey, he's just a kid!" but I guess that's a very western reaction. Life is different in India where there is a lot of (domestic) "work". Still, sometimes they'll even call him when he sleeps or eats. Yesterday he was called to bring down a glass of water to the doctor during siesta. He woke up and moaned, but as I was awake, I ordered him not to move and brought the glass down myself.

If he is a bad student, I think most of the blame has to go to India's poor education system and its ignorance. I love Aman, and he is certainly a smart boy. I have been teaching him English for a good month and a half now, and I feel I am getting somewhere with him. It was difficult at first because he was clearly conditioned by his school's education system. Over there they learn things by heart with no understanding. At least with English anyway. He is in fifth's class and at first he didn't understand anything of his English book. Of course there are no grammatical explanations whatsoever and the children will end up being told the answers in class anyway. And the kids in India, as I understand it, come to fear their teachers, and they simply don't try because they'll just be shouted at or hit if they make any mistake.

When the kids first came to see me for class they'd tell me "Namaste Madam". They are certainly always very well dressed when they come to me (children were uniforms at school in India), and such "formality" amuses me. It has no importance for me of course, and certainly not in such heat! And in the first days they were very shy and impressed, and always apologising for their mistakes. But I don't shout obviously, I'll just raise my voice firm if need be, and I certainly won't hit anyone! (unless perhaps just a harmless slap on the head with their book...)

At first then, I kind of had to get Aman used to "my way of teaching", as well as trying to assess what he could and couldn't do. He has good vocabulary which helps greatly, and I feel he probably has implicitly learnt a lot from early exposure to English, without his knowledge. It's like I have to teach him reorganising what he doesn't know that he knows, and teach him confidence... At first, perhaps during the first two weeks, it felt like he was not learning and I was very frustrated. But then I came to understand that he had to unlearn a lot of shit and fear of learning. Because he had always be taught to study and learn under threat. But of course with a mind full of anxiety and fear and tension there will be no space for learning. Little by little I taught him to trust that I would not hit him. I gave him the tense exercises over and over again so he'd integrate them, and if on the way I received some new insight as to why he didn't understand and I'd learn how I could also improve myself and explain better, using a new Hindi word or asking for Vijay's help, I'd explain in a new way. Thus I teach and learn to teach in Hindi and to Hindi speakers. And I use my knowledge and intuition about the brain, and I learn to know Aman. I'll teach him to say funny things to keep in childish mind amused and interested. I'll get him to close his eyes to help him concentrate, I'll guide him and teach him how to study too. And it has to be fun. I want to teach not just English but also the fun and love of learning.

And thus I gained Aman's confidence and trust, and today he even asks me for more homework! We spend a lot of time together too. He tells me when he misses his family, and we share our straw mats at siesta time. He'll tell me "sleep well" in English, too. One night when we were getting the beds ready to sleep outside, I was lying looking at the stars. I started singing "Twinkle twinkle little star", the only English song Hindi kids know. We ended up singing it together, besides his being completely out of tune. And then he taught me a Hindi song. I love Aman. And I hope that as long as I am around the Khajuraho family I'll teach him English.

Three new children asked me to teach them the other day. They are eleven and don't even quite know the English alphabet yet, because they just won't get taught at school - despite the relatively high level of their fifth class book. I haven't got much time to teach them now, but I want to set myself to teach them to read and write properly at least. And then there's Rishi, the four-year old prodigy who knows so much for his tiny little age, who writes capital and cursive letters and reads so well, and knows so many words already. He is a real pleasure because whatever I'll tell him will enters his young malleable mind just so easily. He is sweet and fun, and how crazy he becomes when I get out the colour pencils...

I love teaching. I feel I am learning tons, and about Hindi of course - because I do teach in Hindi. I feel it is definitely valuable training for the future...

Joy & Eternity

2009-05-31T16:23:00.001+01:00

Often there is a storm in the evening, which freshens the atmosphere beautifully... the storms are scary, and it also rains, which is odd for the season apparently, and there's some water and a lot of dust coming in to the house. And as long as it lasts, there is no electricity. It can last one, two... hours... It is scary for me, but it is cooler at least. We sit in the stairs because a little wind comes in and it becomes the most comfortable place to sit in the dark house and wait until it stops and for the light to return...

Yesterday there was one of those storms, and quite a lot of rain, which was very cooling throughout the night. In fact, the weather was beautiful ALL DAY today with about 33 degrees. it seemed extremely fresh and pleasant, and it reminded me how easy life becomes in more moderate temperatures, when I do not need to sleep in the afternoon and when I have a lot of energy, and we are not slaves of the fans when inside the house... And it was Sunday, which means I didn't teach and I went for my weekly spinach omelette on toast.

And tonight, while we were sitting by the temple looking at the children play and I got tears in my eyes from the scenery, Ravi told me that "joy" and "eternity" share the same word in Hindi, "anand". I instantly knew I would have to come and post this out onto my journal... It makes me so happy to learn just how much Hindi reflects yogi philosophy...

Hot season in the Indian family

2009-05-17T15:04:00.009+01:00

I decided not to go to Dharamsala at all. The heat is at about its maximum now (with peaks up to 50 degrees on bad days - around 48 otherwise - after noon), and I am somewhat miraculously coping well! I feel now that it would be pointless to travel some 48 hours and start from scratch again, to teach loved-ones I don't know when I can stay here and teach the loved-ones I do know. I am doing volunteer work here amongst my loving family. And I am on safe ground here, immersed in such a wonderful context to keep learning Hindi and about the Indian culture... And of course there is Vijay's company which I would just find too difficult to leave. Besides he is starting a six-month course right now, which involves a lot of English, and I have the greatest opportunity to help him with it...

Back to the heat, I have to say the first few days were a little difficult. About two weeks ago, I was lacking energy and half of the family (me included) had a weird rash inside our mouths due to the heat. It is common they say - in such extremely different environments your body starts reacting in ways unknown to you, and it is can be odd and scary but it's OK - like the strange rash-line I got on my left arm, because allegedly an insect had walked on me in the night leaving some traces of its urine on my skin! There is nothing to do and it is slowly going... All this, and also sensitive digestion (mostly half-constipation). But I am coping well, and my body reacts to the heat in similar ways to my Indian peers. The mouth rash soon left me, helped but those wonderful neem sticks with which we brush our teeth most mornings. And I decided to seriously tackle my lack of energy, for it is far too easy to become a vegetable in such heat. Thus if we don't go for the morning walk I at least do some yoga; I have resumed my practice, under the sacred fan in the shop.I also started taking some ayurvedic supplements to boost my digestive system (and balance my tridoshas for the connoisseurs - the product is called "triphala"). Since then I am pretty much settled. Teaching helps also, as the one-pointedness of my mind when I work with my little ones helps preserving my energy levels. But, I have to say - blessed are the fans and the air-coolers that allow us to sleep well at night, and the early mornings' and evenings' relative coolness! And cursed are the powercuts - though they are far fewer than they were in Varanasi...

Here in extreme heat it feels like there are two parts of the day, or two small "subdays" within one day. There are two nights: the ordinary night and the afternoon when heat is at its highest.

Morning we awake quite early; about 6.00 at best or 8.00 when the previous day was too hot or tiring or busy with too little siesta. Morning the heat is bearable, and it is lovely because we go for the early walk and once back I'll enjoy watching the peaceful view from the terrace, in some wind, and I'll eat my fruits sitting in the remaining shade. At that time I will not burn my bare feet onto the stone floor yet when I walk. I have started helping Vijay's two sisters with some house work too, now that Rita is gone and while Mummy is still recovering from her operation. I can't cook of course, because according to the cast system I am not allowed to. So I help with simple tasks like sweeping the floor or putting the crookery in its place. Every morning upon waking, my Indian sisters start sweeping the floor, and we fill the pots and buckets and the air-coolers and the 20-30 bottles of water to be kept in the fridge. Then they'll cook all the food for the day. In the morning I'll also do some Hindi homework or teach English to Little Nephew or write, or sit in the coolest room with everyone and watch some TV (mainly a lot of Bollywood dancing, or old and tacky Indian films or silly series to practice listening to Hindi, but best of all Tom & Jerry) - but mostly enjoy the coolness of the house's most efficient air-cooler. Air-cooler are huge, bulky metal boxes with gridded walls covered in dried grass and containing a fan and a lot of water to reproduce the coolness of natural watery/waterfall type environment. They make a lot of noise but at that point it doesn't matter for we clearly prefer coolness to quietness!

In the morning we also take turns for the blessed shower; that's when I'll throw pots of cold water onto my sweating body with great relief. I have also started to have "Indian-style" showers, which means I wash my clothes before shower. Before shower, because it is so hot in the bathroom and bashing and hitting my clothes means I'll be as wet before as after shower albeit with sweat... I also have to rub my body a lot more vigorously than ordinarily, because with all that sweat if I don't rub vigorously or exfoliate enough I'll still be dirty when I get out of the bathroom...

And then between 10.00 and 12.00 or when I'm hungry I'll have some lunch, but I have to be very careful not to eat too oily because of my sensitised digestive system. Usually we eat chapati and/or rice with cooked vegetable and/or lentil (daal). Indians eat little raw vegetable, their prefered one is onion and I don't know how they do it because onion feels far too hot inside my tummy when it's so hot outside as well. Instead I'll always have raw tomato and perhaps cucumber too. And I clearly eat less than normal in such heat, too.

Regularly family members come for visit or there's a festival, or like a few days ago, a family came to see my fourth Indian sister for potential marriage. During festive times the staple chapati is replaced by a deep-fried chapati (called puri), which my body strongly dislikes, and the rest of the food is heavier and greasier too. During hot season how they can eat this is behond my comprehension. It's always at festival time that I'll get tummy bug - but now the family usually gives me chapati instead of puri. But a few days ago, Little Niece ate all my left-over chapatis and we ate late and I was hungry and I had to eat four puris, and there were too many people in the house and I had to look "as local as possible" not to do bad impression on my sister's potential "in-laws" and it was all too much and I went to cry in the bathroom and made sure my tears were dried and my eyes not too red when I came back. A little after that Vijay took me "to the market" (i.e to the small town centre) to eat curd (yogurt) to help my poor tummy, and where I escaped the family busy-ness and lack of privacy with great relief. In the evening all I ate was rice and curd; I slept a lot the next day, and I am back on my two feet now. The house is quiet too, thank God.

And then, in normal times, after lunch it is siesta time for everyone (except Vijay who has to go to school for three hours) and we gather in the coolest rooms on spread out straw mats on the stone floor, by the air-cooler. I can sleep on hard floor now, provided I have a thin pellow. It gives me a wonderful feeling of freedom and independency - because I can really sleep "anywhere" now. Thus we sleep one hour or two or maybe three, and my sleep is as tight as in the night. Upon waking the heat will slowly start to cool down, and like in the morning the routine repeats: I'll go for "half-shower" to refresh myself, I'll eat fruits, we'll start the water pump (it's an electricity-activated well that pumps up water from the ground 85 feet right below the house) and fill up the tank in the bathroom and the pots in the kitchen and the million bottles. And again the neighbouring girl will come to help with the dishes, and we'll sweep the floor (there's a lot of dust in India) with the small straw broom called "jharu", and in the afternoon my sisters will also mop the floor with cloth and water. And I'll teach English or give homework to Little Nephew, or study some Hindi, and at 5-6pm my clever 5-year old pupil will come for his daily class. And at the end of all this, the most pleasant time of day will have come, and I'll often go outside and watch the peaceful view and the neighbouring kids playing and the goats and the buffalos pass, enjoying the cooling breeze. And then I'll have some light dinner, and soon darkness will fall and Vijay and I go to the market to buy vegetable or whatever or go check internet, and that's also when we'll sit in a quiet dark place for some stolen, forbidden hugs, and chat about what I may have missed or not understood during the day because I couldn't ask earlier in front of the family because it would have looked like we're too close. And we'll go buy fruit and fresh juice for Mummy, and curd for whoever's disturbed tummy, and go home and do some more homework and then it will be bedtime. It takes a while to go to sleep because we have to spread out the mattresses, burn dried cow dung and/or dried neem leaves to repell the mosquito in the house. If we sleep outside on the rooftop, we'll first pour out water onto the stone floor to cool it down before we can spread out the mattresses. Now I sleep on the rooftop with my two Indian sisters, under my mosquito net, watching the stars as I fall asleep, graceful for the next eight hours of coolness, sometimes thinking sleep is the best part of the day...

And sometimes I think about Europe where people have so much time for "non-basic" activities and a weird thing called "entertainment". There is hardly any of that in Indial life in a small town or village. Most especially during hot season when the extreme heat forces you to take so much care about your body's health and welfare that life revolves around survival, basically. And I think of Europe where people can do things like go to concerts regularly and go for a drink and go to the cinema and where children play with millions of toys and adults with gadgets, and how much more important the clothes we wear seem to be, and how easily and quickly we can "prepare a meal", and the countless choices of things and foods we have on display in our massive supermarkets. That massive, insane choice we have, how lucky we are to have that choice and yet how demanding and spoiled and greedy it has made us - and is it real choice or is it alienation?! And then I even start to understand the concept of arranged marriage, because even for a life partner, for someone to have sex and raise children with, even for that most Indians still hardly have any choice at all...

And I think now how simply my life has become when I'm here, and how different it is than what it used to be. How five years ago I would have found this life lame or "uncool" or downright inacceptable, and yet "slowly slowly" how I have come to love this life, for its purity and its simplicity and for the beautiful company of a family that I dearly love...

The bride's farewell

2009-05-02T15:51:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was Rita's farewell from her family. Hindu traditions never seem to end. Directly after the marriage (which happens in the husband's town or village) the bride goes back with her husband to her new home. But she will stay there just a few weeks or perhaps about a month, then she will return to her own family for some weeks again. It is when her husband's family comes to pick her up (without her husband who has to wait for her at home) and thus when they come to visit the bride's family for the first time after the wedding ceremony, that the real farewell will take place. I hadn't expected it. As usual with India, I don't ask anything and they don't explain anything to me before it actually happens. It is when the reality unfolds before my eyes that I see and understand how things work here.

So, two evenings ago, friends of the family came to help cook a massive amount of sweet pastries, made of gram flour and another four that I don't know. The women made crowns and designed plates and other beautiful shapes out of the freshly-made dough, to be deep fried later. Yesterday evening the women came again and set back to work. More fine pastries decorated with colorful patterns this time, and even one of them ornated with one-rupee coins (and cooked)! All these gifts, for they would all be offered to the husband's family, were gathered into a huge basket of about one-meter diameter. They'd just wait for the two-kilogram bag of laddus (sweets) collected from the shop to seal the enormous gift with red fabric.

So much oil, so much sugar. The Hindu tradition is beautiful but to my religious-virgin mind and my dietary-concerned self, it is also a tradition of excess. And even for a family with financial difficulty it will be the rule and they cannot escape it. However much I love India these obligations are the very details that suffocate me. During the farewell-day all the women of both families were upstairs, while the men would stay downstairs sitting and talking. Because the women have to cover her heads in front of the respected men. Men and women eat separately. All day the women of the bride's family, helped by a couple of girfriends, worked non-stop to serve and feed their venered guests in the main room - feeding themselves later in the kitchen. Deep fried round breads replace the chapatis during festival or family occasions; deep fried and heavier food, which I have to accept with a sigh especially under the hammering heat.

In those traditional gatherings I do my best to follow the rules too and to appear as "local" as I can, but I am always concerned that I may do or say something wrong (although I know it would be OK). But the custom is heavy on me, and new people look and ask questions and I have to speak a lot of Hindi, and of course I hardly see Vijay so I haven't got much room for mental rest or questions. I am unmarried though so as such I have the right to go downstairs in the men's company. It is somehow easier in the men's company, yet I don't want to go downstairs too much to avoid questions and out of respect for my Indian sisters.

And then, early evening, the bride got ready to go. Decorated as heavily as a Christmas tree, in her shiny saree, hennaed hands, ornated with heavy golden jewelry from head to toes, and with as many colorful bangles as to cover two third of both of forearms, jiggling whenever she moved and matching her saree. Married women have to wear a saree, and a red line (drawn in powder and/or lipstick) in their hair parting and a round bindi between their eyebrows, and anklets and toe rings, and bangles at all times. The jiggling bangles which I find beautiful when in a good mood, but which I come to loathe with feminist rebellion in Hindu-intensive situations, for then they sound like bells preventing animals to escape... It is extreme beauty violently stained by the inescapable obligation.

And once ready, which took some time, it was time for the young woman to leave her childhood's family for good. Sisters and mother cried like I had never seen them cry before. Hugs were shared, and the groom's mother is a good and understanding woman so there is no problem, but the married girl had lived here for twenty-three years and she was suddenly taken to a new home to live with complete strangers. Soon I couldn't help but join them in tears, although mine were of compassion and not of sadness. Slowly, the ornated girl in her shiny blue saree, covering her head and hiding her tears, went downstairs. Notes (between 10 and 100 rupees) are always shared between hosts and guests at goodbye times. Although the money represents love, this is another rule-based tradition that can also exasperate me. And at parting time there is also coloring the women's feet in pink and sharing tika (marking the guests between their eyebrows with yellow and red powder), and then the members of the host family will do that beautiful hand-to-feet-to-heart bow which I have come to love.

And so yesterday I didn't do anything really, but by the end of it all I was completely exhausted. And I was told that at 2pm it was 50 degrees and I don't know how on earth my body copes but it does, and way better than last year...

The heat is still bearable; teaching is fun...

2009-04-21T15:57:00.000+01:00

Life is good in Khajuraho. I am busy in books and noteboks, and if i started with two pupils I now have eight! At no set time but as regularly as we can, and when they have specific questions, I teach English to Vijay, his studious brother and the youngest of their sisters. In addition, six times a week in the evening around five or six (when the heat has calmed down and after siesta) I have a class of four or five children. With my first pupil, four-year old Rishi, and other neighbouring children between four and six and Vijay's nine-year old nephew Aman. But Aman is considerably older so I try to give him a separate class before the others come. It is India; there are no plans and a lot of unexpectation. They don't say when they arrive. It seems the news that the "videshi" teaches English is spreading, and a few days after he started coming for class, Rishi arrived with a little friend. Yesterday little naughty neighbour Tiger also joined (but frankly I don't know how long he will bother to come) and his cousin said he would come tomorrow. It was a little hectic yesterday! All the boys have different levels and affinities and it is a little mad to attend to all of them. But I must relax. I will bring what I can bring only and with love. I must inspire (some!) discipline but I want to teach the kids to see studying as fun, too. There will be no serious shouting with me (only fermness) and strictly no beating or ordering the kids to bend down and hold your ears through teir legs without moving for fifteen minutes; for this they can go to their Indian school! For now, only love and fun, and learning all that I can learn from the new teaching experience. And that is a lot already in just about two weeks! And a lot to learn about what I can give and how I work and how imaginative I can be and about using my Hindi with the kids, and learning about them and what they know or don't now, and a million things about the education system from teaching such a wide age range and variety of pupils. Sometimes I'll use their books, sometimes I'll bring out things from the surprising depths of my imagination. And I get them to speak because they are young and most only beging to write, and I know the greatest weakness of the teaching system here is that they may learn for years and still won't be able to speak a word of English!

I use my intuition, ultimately, my feelings about what the kids can give and take. The beauty is that it is all free; free of money and free of any sort of standard or pressure, so I can work with my best friend and guide - my heart. Rishi is very impressive. He is only four, according to his father, although I don't know how accurate this is. Perhaps, maximum five years, but he has been attending school for over two years already, and his writing and reading are very good. He writes surprisingly neatly for such a young age. And he is a good and clever boy; I can see from his face. Tiger is a mystery. He is the very first boy I befriended in the neighbourhood and I know he came for me, not for the study. I have known and loved him, and been playing with him for a year already, but he is no serious boy at all when it comes to learning. Frankly he is a nightmare, his comprehension is very poor and he keeps entertaining the other boys. It will be a challenge to tame him if he keeps coming...

And when I don't teach others, I teach myself Hindi from my book and with Vijay's help. But nothing is ever sure in India; I don't know how long the children will come, and of course I don't know how long I will stay in Khajuraho. The heat is slowly increasing but there is a lot of wind and clearly, the weather is more bearable than last year in Varanasi when I had to flee to Rishikesh. I can bear the heat, and here there are hardly any powercuts which means the fans and air-coolers are on whenever required. And yet i am not quite sure whether it is any different outside of it is my body that adapts to the heat. I hear it sometimes peaks up to 45 degrees and it surprises me because I am fine, but at that time of day, after lunch, most days we stay in or sleep. My body adapts, clearly, and I even drink untreated water with no problem now. It makes my life so much easier and more relaxed and it gives living in India a further sense of homelessness and "normality"...

“D'amour et d'eau fraiche”

2009-04-10T10:34:00.003+01:00

From time to time I receive a message from a relative asking me whether I will live d'amour et d'eau fraiche (from love and fresh water) for a long time, implying that perhaps I should start earning for my own living again. Many seem to blame me because I have stopped (for the time being) making money. But to me the truth is that non-lucrative life scares far too many people in the West. And I must say I used to be part of the fearful crowd, for it has cost me a lot of work fighting with my self-judging, conditioned mind. Some people have said to me that I am enjoying a bloody long holiday, but “holiday” no longer has a meaning in my world. Western-type “holidays” are only required in our dysfunctional, stressful Occidental lives. In the book I am reading currently (Pursue Happiness and get Enlightened), Ramesh Balsekar mentions a three-year old research done by professors of the London School of Economics looking into the relationship between money and happiness. India turned out to rate number five, UK (if he remembers rightly) about 46, and America 135... This says it all to me.

But anyway do we not often hear that the Occidental pace is unhealthily fast? Of course we know it intellectually, but few are those who do challenge that fact – or some of us may do but to some extent only. The Indian pace of life is incredibly much slower than the occidental one and I am overwhelmed by the difficulty with which to explain how living here (in a family in the heart of India especially) is turning my beliefs and standards upside down completely. The occidental way of life for most part is no longer a standard for me; there is no longer a standard but that of my heart. It is not science and western, “civilised” society that can know what is right for us. It is our hearts; that is all. Yet I know few are so lucky that their heart is louder than the overwhelming bulk of conditioning society has engrained in their mind, and it is understandable. But for me it no longer works that way. Yet it is not easy all the way, obviously. I have jumped into a radically different system, and the challenge into dropping my standards of living has been enormous. There are days when the idleness kills me because my environment and my surroundings, or the number of people present around and studying me, prevents me from “doing” anything for too long. Either it would feel downright rude and inappropriate given the situation to ignore them so I have to stay sitting amongst them, or else even if I retired from the situation its intensity would have exhausted me completely. Yet I do realise how my busy-ness-oriented mind does slowly lose its power over me, and how peaceful I have become most of the time in Indian family life. And in India the extent to which members of a family spend time together completely outgrows what we know in our individualistic Occident. It is heart-rendering for me when I think of my father's home, where we “do our own thing” in isolation from one another most of the time. And so I respect the people I live with, because despite all the differences that sometimes hurt me I love them with all my heart, and from all the events that we have shared I have righteously become a part of their family.

One of my relatives today again asked me whether I was going to live d'amour et d'eau fraiche for a long time, because I don't know whether or not I will work with orphaned children like I had “planned”. But I follow the flow of Life, and if the Universe changes the plans for me I will accept Its guidance. I feel I am not the doer of all my deeds; I feel it is Life Force, perhaps God, that acts through me. This is the conclusion of a life-long work on myself, but it is very difficult to explain this concept to many. It is what my life has lead me to understand as a fact, the ultimate law of the Universe, and going back would literally be impossible for me. It seems to me that many people would say that if they were given the chance, they would love to live “of love and fresh water”, but if the possibility did actually open, it would be so difficult for them to drop their beliefs and standards so engrained in the western society and in their conditioned mind, that they would not have the guts to go on and do it. It takes a lot of courage to do what I do – but then it would take me even more to go back to living in the western way and it would kill me. And then ultimately there is no courage involved anyway – only love and awareness, for “I” am not doing anything... It is the Universe that is acting through me. I have no choice in what I do...

And little by little, the conditioning weakens and I enjoy immensely this simple way of living. Finding out the other day that watermelons and melons grow in India brought me wonderful joy (I had not know in one whole year living here before). Watermelons and melons which I bought directly from the growers, organic, and not packaged in nasty plastic, juicy and sweet and more tasty than I had never eaten in my entire life. The smell emerging from the uncut melon was so strong and wonderful that I couldn't take out my nose from it, and just that turned me into a bubbly child yet again. My life is a project, a non-lucrative project guided by the growing love in my heart. I have been walking on this path with full awareness for at least the past eight years. To me simpler life is true progress, more than the money I could earn would ever try to make me believe. Honesty is the most important thing in my life and, I believe, in the world, and if I lied to myself it would only bring me to death. Many aspects of the occidental way of life have bothered me for years and the validity of its standard is weakening for me as I am introduced to simpler ways of living – in the “land of the Heart” that is India. The other day by “chance” I watched BBC World News for the first time since I've been in India this time round. As usual it seems my instinct takes me to the TV set just on time to keep up with the most important world news. It was the day Obama arrived in London for the G20. I tried to concentrate myself as much as I could to pick up some of what was said, but it only reminded me how unmeaningful all those “serious” speeches are in my world. However concerned or angry I may have felt (or I may have wanted to believe I was) a few years ago, today I could only but look with complete detachment. And those images came at the right time, when I needed to remember exactly that. It will sound harsh and irresponsible to some, but even then it felt like the world is perfect as it is. And so I must follow the path of integrity, and it is not easy everyday (to say the least) but I enjoy the experience and know with complete certainty that it is the right path for me. And so I drop the urge-to-busyness little by little from my mind. The voice in me urging me to “do something” is less and less suffocating as the days go by, sitting and enjoying the presence of my sisters, or standing on the house's terrace as I breathe deeply, enchanted by the wonderful scenery – the modest houses' rooftops and the temple and the tree and the lake, as the sun sets and the gentle wind blows, and as the buffalos pass and the shouting children play.

But I know I am not lazy; I have never been lazy, and the statement “I would die if I stopped learning” is forever true about me. Vijay knows it too well by now and has been playing an wonderful role in helping me deal with and accept the challenge. So if I may sound like I am doing fuck-all to many, there are many projects growing in my mind and heart and life, and with all the awareness I can gather Life is taking me where I must go. I had said I would go and work with orphaned children. I have done all I could in the moment and it led me to a halt (in appearance at least) for now. Then I said I would instead go to Dharamsala and work with Tibetan refugees, but I am still in Khajuraho in the family. I am still waiting for the “unbearable heat” to deport me to the north, for as long as I am comfortable I can't take myself away from my Indian family and so much love from them and my Vijay. And the weather has been exceptionally mild for the season; the dark sky filled with such stunningly bright lightning – and thunder and unlikely rain – that I had to sleep with my jumper the other day! As if to keep me here for longer... I know that my heart in the moment is the ultimate guide, overpowering any initial plan I may have made, for I know the role the initial planning is to kick me onto the right road – the road itself guiding me as I go. And thus, of course when I appear idle my mind is resting and peeling layers of conditioning and digesting more Hindi. After a week or two of yo-yo-ing mood juggling between the joy of being in the family again and the harshness of my judging mind, I have now resumed my Hindi lessons (alone and with Vijay's precious help). And above all, I may not be helping orphaned children or Tibetan refugees for the time being; nevertheless I am helping my dear ones where I am now, in my own minuscule way, helping the G20 lessening the gap between rich and poor. My help is precious in the family today in a time of difficulty. And I gave blood to Mummy thus allowing for her operation. I started teaching him English seriously at last and he is making some progress. I may not be teaching English to orphaned children, but teaching Vijay is giving me surprisingly valuable insight into the Indian way of teaching – which I am certain will be worthwhile some day. The other day a friend of the family asked me if I would teach his son English; I had the first class with my 5-year-old pupil today. And I write all this as I go along, not forgetting about yoga and meditation and violin however difficult it may be at times.

I am very vigilant at all times. I don't know where I am going but I am walking steadily on a beautiful path I love with all my heart and would not change for the world. I love Life and my life, I know I am blessed and want to return those blessings to others and to God. I see my life as a project towards Truth, however many the people who may not understand me. And as I go, the questioning messages I may get have less and less ability to destabilise me as I go. I am sure that I am doing the right thing, because my heart is ever loud and present. More than any dubious comments I may get, those words sadhu Babaji told me, “aapka dil kulla hai” (“your heart is open”) forever resonate in me and I know his are the meaningful ones to listen to and follow...

Khajuraho daily life, and kites and juicy fruits

2009-04-07T10:18:00.001+01:00

Our early morning walks have resumed; it makes me very happy because I had missed them. It took a while because we were busy somehow, and hadn't manage to get up so early. But the last three mornings we did get up at around 6 am and went for a walk in the fields, and it hasn't made me more tired during the day. My yoga practice is still suffering, ironically I guess since the very beginning of my time in India; it comes and goes although I never forget about it completely. I do still practise some yoga, a little perhaps every three days or so, and from time to time when I feel the lack too much, I'll do a longer, sort of “binge” session. But I can't get myself to practise daily for some reason. Perhaps Life is teaching me to detach myself from this healthy yet craved habit, so that I will no longer feel bad from not practising. Sitting in meditation is easier somehow, I guess because all I have to do is sit... And then, ultimately it is Advaita the real teacher, way beyond yoga asanas or sitting in meditation, and ultimately I have to do as I feel... If I am dishonest when practising yoga it isn't Yoga anyway! And the early morning walks are much more welcome at this point. Walking along the earthly path, in the midst of vast, eternal fields, listening to the country's sounds, the many colourful birds and the wind and the cows messing through the trees to find food, and the monkeys screaming in the distance. Stopping in the nearby farm on the way to get fresh milk, having a small chat with the tractor driver passing by – in the Bundelkhandi dialect which I surprise myself understanding almost well. And brushing our teeth with sticks of neem tree. It is good to get up early morning not only because it makes the mind fresh but of course because it is one time in the day when the temperatures are pleasant. Early morning the sunlight is still a little shy and the wind pleasantly sweeps our skin with freshness. I am almost cold when I get out but is so very welcome, when one hour later the sun will already start hitting our skin and the light be bright for our eyes.

Even more pleasant than early morning though is early evening, around five o'clock when the light starts to dim slowly and the wind returns with its freshness, all the more welcome after a whole day's heat. That is when people go up onto their rooftops with their kites, which will sprinkle the sky with black dots amidst the birds. When I was young I thought playing kite was completely lame and I had no time for that, but the other day I surprised myself with the fun it gave me. I was a child again, dropping obsolete beliefs and value judgement, but I guess becoming more and more childlike is what my life has been about in the last few years. Or perhaps playing kite would still be lame if it wasn't against the delightful view we have from the precious rooftop. I don't know. And we played kite, and one of India's greatest fun is to try to direct your black dot so it will reach that of other players, far away above other rooftops, and trying to cut their strings. Ashtosh's little brother was playing with his kite, happy that perhaps for once he could direct it well, when skilful Vijay, under our admiring and amused eyes, pulling at his string skilfully up and down and left and right and against the wind, guided his kite far away towards the boy's beloved toy... which eventually wavered down and onto the floor. One minute later, from the distance with saw and heard the boy cry to his Mummy and for the broken toy. And we laughed and laughed...

And life seems more and more peaceful as I grow more accustomed and at home in the family. I am getting to know my body in the new environment, and I could drink only unboiled water here now even though I still do take precautions. I eat many fruits in the morning and during the day which compensate for the lack of raw vegetable. Melons and watermelons are considerably more tasty and juicy and sweet than in Europe, and I am becoming very fond of pomegranate, for the fun I get cutting it and disentangling the red grains which will splash with sweet juice once in my happy mouth. Apples taste so boring in comparison. And so it makes me very happy to eat my fruits in the morning; perhaps living in a country where everything is more precarious makes me more grateful for what I have. I would also have been more demanding a few years ago about the nourishing quality of the meals I eat. Clearly I eat far less proteins than in Europe, since the family eats no meat and eggs at all, and rather little milk. But I don't feel any weaker, and like a nun I am happy accepting the food I am offered, for the love put into cooking seems most important to me now. Perhaps it is the love that is nourishing, ultimately.

And I finally tried on a saree. One of Mummy's, a black one, funnily enough. Black is good for me for the first trial, for I am still shy with colours especially coupled with such a peculiar attire as a saree. It looks so beautiful and comfortable on other women, but on me it is another matter! I guess I did see that it suited me, but I felt so shy and I had never realised how unpractical it is! I understand newly-married Rita now, who only wears sarees when she really has too... It is always fun to spend time with the girls, with whom I slowly communicate more and more thanks to my growing Hindi skills...

Blood donation and Mummy's operation in Chitrakut

2009-04-04T16:35:00.001+01:00

So much happened during the last two weeks, so much happened. I have wanted to write as it all unfolded, but it somehow was impossible for I was caught in the moment and imprisoned by the ever-so-Indian situations. There was no way I could write, no way I would have been quiet enough to let the torrent of words flow comprehensively. And above all there was no way I would have dared taking out my shiny, high-tech, computer, for it would have looked surreal in such localness and ruralness – where again, I felt like a monster on display in a freak show and where all eyes around turned to me. Eyes full with disbelief, or fear, or disdain, or shyness, or embarrassment, or curiosity, or enchantment, and the usual routine questions: Who is she? Where does she comes from? What is she doing here? How did you meet her? How long have you known her? Where is she staying? Oh, she speaks Hindi? Over and over and over again...

So we left Varanasi together on the 22nd March. Direction Chitrakut, halfway to Khajuraho where Vijay's second sister lives, and where his mother was due to have an operation in the big hospital nearby. Vijay started to worry before we left, because it turned out she would be too weak unless she was firstly given blood. The family had to find two or three donors and fast. When we arrived in Chitrakut, Vijay's brother-in-law had already asked many of his friends and acquaintances if they would donate blood, many had had their blood type checked but none was of the same blood type as Mummy. Brother-in-law was running in the hospital corridor with a file of piling-up forms, desperately phoning an looking out for more and more candidates, getting blood tests done, waiting a few hours for the results, all day. Only to no avail. As soon as we arrived in the hospital both Vijay and I got our blood checked. I was pretty certain that my blood type was the same as Mummy's. Vijay's turned out not to be, but indeed my blood was suitable, and after the doctors double-checked that it was also healthy, I was ready for the donation. But it was useless if I was the only donor, because 250 ml would not be sufficient; we needed at least one other donor. On the third day the nurses told us that they would release Mummy the following morning if we didn't find a donor. Brother-in-law phoned yet more friends, but none turned out to be of the required blood type.

It was a difficult day, and now fearing that we would find no other donor, our minds started feeling with negativity. We were walking along the corridors, waiting and wondering and thinking, going for a quiet rest or a walk or a chai once in a while, powerless. Most of the time I didn't know where the situation was standing and what was going on, and it was frustrating for me too.

And in the meantime I was the main attraction in the hospital. I was being observed from every corner, and Vijay answered question after question about the European foreigner. On the morning of that last day we met three young men who started asking about me and chatting to Vijay. One of then, funnily, reminded me of the French actor Michel Blanc. I could imagine my Belgian friend, if he had been there, asking me where on earth I had found this resemblance in my silly brain. It was now 3.30pm and we had received disappointing blood test results from our last batch of candidates. Then we met Michel Blanc again in the corridor, and Vijay told him of the situation. He had liked Vijay's nature and so agreed to get his blood-test checked. We regained hope and I told Vijay; “In Europe we say that touching wood brings luck, so we should look out for wood and touch it”. We walked along some trees but they were too far out from our reach. Right at that moment, a man carrying a long wooden stick on his shoulder came passed us in the corridor (it was a broom, but I had never seen such a European-looking broom in India before)! Vijay laughed when I went to touch it even though it felt like a silly thing to do. And then I touched more wood from the frames on the walls, and when we went for chai waiting for Michel Blanc's results I sat in such a way that my feet constantly touched the foot of the wooden table. I focused on my breathing, trying to be as aware as I could and keeping my heart open.

At about six o'clock we got Michel Blanc's test results. And his blood-type was suitable! After that it all went fast. Some minutes later we went to the pathological lab. I was sure that in Europe it would have been forbidden for any outsider to walk into the pathological lab of a hospital! But then the hospitalian experience in India is very different from the European one it seems. There is no confidentiality issue and members of family walk about with reports in hands; anyone can look into a lying file (like I did to understand exactly what was wrong with Mummy), family members are very involved with the patient's care (most of the time it is them who bring food to the patient) and rooms or dormitories are full with visitors at most times. So we went to the lab, I had a banana and two oranges and pomegranate juice and it was time for the blood donation. I had never given blood before and somehow it was surreal that it now happened in India. I was a little scared, more of fainting afterwards than of the procedure itself, but it went smoothly of course; I am stronger than I think. After it was finished we were given glucose drink and more pomegranate juice and a banana. We rested for thirty minutes and kept our arm folded upwards, tightly gripping the cotton-wool. I wonder now how different the procedure would be in Europe. Indians were very careful about feeding us properly so we would build the blood back quickly, but I don't think it is a big deal at all; I didn't feel particularly weaker.

Soon we went back to Mummy's room. Already she was receiving my blood through perfusion, and it looked completely surreal to me. I was very moved that my own blood was running into my dearest friend's own mother. I was already part of the family but I was becoming even more so now. Two years ago I had given money for Vijay's knee operation. One year ago I had had a foot operation and in their house the family had looked after me. And now I was helping again for the operation of Vijay's mother, with my own blood. Beyond the personal, it also felt like a beautiful symbol of universality, a living proof that we are all One, that races and frontiers are man-creation and thus illusory in reality, for deep down the blood flowing in our veins is the same red life-force. I had known it for as long as I had lived of course, but seeing it was incredible.

It took more than a day for Mummy to receive all our blood, so she was operated in the morning of the fifth day. When we arrived that morning the operation had already started, and Auntie and her husband were sitting anxiously outside of the operation block. With Vijay's sister, Brother-in-law and their son we joined them, and soon Michel Blanc came to sit with us too. I was not anxious but calm and concerned. It was an odd feeling; I have never actually spent so much time in a hospital for the care of someone else's operation. And quite a while later the door of the operation block opened and the assistants took mummy back to her room.

Quickly after we arrived to the room Mummy woke up slowly. At first she felt very cold and her entire body started trembling, which looked pretty scary. There were many people around her and they covered her with blankets. I can't remember why I left with Vijay, perhaps we went out for some food, but when we came back Mummy was more awake and no longer cold, and she had started speaking a little although very quietly. From then on I felt reassured. For two days she was completely bedridden and was only fed through perfusion, but three days after the operation she started eating fruits and getting up slowly and with help to go to the bathroom. She seemed to recover well.

The days passed and the longer we stayed the less patient I was becoming, from idleness and boredom, from too many people watching me, and from not knowing what was going on most of the time. I became more and more silent and frustrated and tearful, and I needed more and more time out of the room with my friend. Finally after we had spent eight days in the hospital, and when finally Vijay's third sister came with her husband to take her turn in looking after Mummy, we could go back to Khajuraho. Some four days later Vijay would send a deluxe taxi to pick-up Mummy. Because it was a last minute booking, for the first time I travelled by train not in the Sleeper Class but in the (lowest) General Class, where the compartments are so crowded that people get on the train from the windows and many people spend the journey hanging onto the carriage doors (but out of some miracle that train was almost empty!?), where the berth are bare planks of wood and where again, all eyes turned to me. But I didn't care because despite the discomfort I lied with my eyes closed, and almost even slept. Early morning we reached Bamita. We waited for a bus in what looked like the most rural place I had ever stopped by (should I even mention the looks I received, as usual?), and after a few hours on a wobbly bus we finally reached Khajuraho, exhausted but happy. The house was quite. But Mummy is back now, and she is recovering well.

Pancakes, decision-making & to India

2009-03-31T14:24:00.006+01:00

Last days in Varanasi

Back in Khajuraho. The last days in Varanasi were lovely. I stopped the Hindi classes just before Vijay came to see me. But I had one last violin lesson when he was there because I wanted someone to hear me play with Guruji. We didn't do very much. For him it was a well-deserved holiday, after all the work he had done with arranging his sister's wedding. And I too felt the need for a break, after a studious month of Hindi and violin. It was lovely also that Vijay met some of my new friends and acquaintances of Varanasi; where I am slowly becoming familiar in my neighbourhood. When we are together, we seem to be a familiar pair for some, like for the staff in the restaurant that is slowly becoming my main eating room. We spent time with my Belgian friend Yoeri, and my new English friend Jez, both of whom also study Hindi. We all enjoyed practising our newly Hindi skills with Vijay, so I guess it was not quite a holiday, ha! It was lovely, then, to spend time together in my Varanasi again. We spent a lot of time watching and playing with and feeding the monkeys on the guesthouse rooftop with Yoeri. The funniest was when we tried to give them a half-empty bottle of Coca Cola to drink. We thought they would have drank from it, but instead they poured the coke out onto the floor and started licking it, sticking their bum up in the air! We couldn't believe it.

And we made pancakes! Real French crèpes! With the small gas bottle in my room I had been boiling my water but there was a chapati pan in Yoeri's room and we used other utensils to cook. Tea, vegetable omelette, and the pancakes. I had wanted to cook pancakes for Vijay for a long time, I had not known whether it would work well with a chapati pan because its bottom is not flat but a little convex. But it worked really well, the pancakes didn't stick in the pan, and I didn't even mess up the first one. They were not very round, but they all tasted nice and homely. The mustard oil replaced the sunflower oil well, too. It felt so amazing for me to cook for the first time in India! I felt such a sense of achievement that I was felt with joy – ordinary cuisine turned into an exceptional event in the Indian environment.

Facing the unknown

I still don't quite know what will happen next. The ashram for orphaned children in Varanasi had offered me a sort of placement starting in April for two months, and I would love to work there, but I have to be realistic: the heat will be far too much to bear. The orphanages I visited in Rishikesh and around will be no good, either not the right place for me, or when I go the children will have fled from the heat to higher mountains. I don't really want to be as hot as I was last year either, and yearn for some anticipated freshness. Last year I had thought I would go up to Dharamsala again as I had loved the place so much in 2005, but I never went. As I get closer and closer to Vijay and our love steadily grows, I feel somehow reluctant to go as far away from him as to Dharamsala, which is about 48 hours away from Khajuraho, and to leave “real India”. But I cannot be idle and do nothing. I have wanted to work with children for far too long and haven't done it yet. I need some free experience as part of my Life training...

I wasn't really thinking about this then, some three or four weeks ago, but when Yoeri came to Varanasi his friend had a guide book of India. I no longer have a one, because clearly I don't like to use them, and they are far too bulky and heavy to carry around. But we were sitting having food and chai in my homely restaurant, and I flickered through the pages of her guide book. In it I found some information about volunteering in Dharamsala and wondered why I hadn't come across it before. Immediately I went onto the internet to check out the indicated websites; one of which offered many opportunities for teaching English to Tibetan refugees. I sent an application straight away, but I still haven't received any answer back. Jez, though, who spent eight months in Dharamsala last year, told me I could surely just show up and ask for work, and I know it would probably work that way too. So in a week or two, I guess that is what I will do. It is one of those decision-making process in which I don't really know what to do but have one option in mind while still being open to any new opportunity – open for any sign from Life that I should do something else. But no other option has come up, I have been left with this one for as long as I've been thinking about it, so I guess I will have no choice but to follow that only road. And hadn't I strongly wanted to work with Tibetan children some years ago...?

And after I get back to Europe in June then what? Before I came to India this January I was already thinking of applying for a course in Benares Hindu University (BHU) just so next time round I can apply not for a tourist visa but for a student visa, which is longer according to the length of the course applied for and up to five years. I had thought I may not even follow the course I apply for, just enjoy the permission to stay in India longer, but despite my triple postgraduate status I feel inclined to study in a university yet again. There is a one- or two-year Hindi programme for foreigners (which does not start at beginner level), that I find appealing. I visited BHU when I still was in Varanasi, and gathered a lot of information. The course would start end of July or early August 2009 up until March 2010. It would be pretty relaxed with four days of classes and only two hours a day per week. That's a little lighter even than this past month (and anyway studying language never scares me, never feels like work to me), which also means I could also focus on studying violin with Sukhdev for all those (weatherly-agreeable) months... I must admit that my conditioned mind has been judging my heart quite harshly for a while until I reached this fairly resolute decision, trying to convince me basically that I should not go back to studying yet again but work and make money instead, yet my heart should be my guide, as we all know... I am financially lucky still so, whilst staying vigilant I really have no reason not to follow my dear, reliable guide.

To my dear India

And there is another factor screaming in my heart: However naïve it may sound considering the corruption in my dear India, I see studying in one of its (renowned) university as an act of respect, and love, towards Her. To build something “officially” that would take my belittling status of “tourist” forever. To prove to Her that I spend all this time in Her not motivated by superficial, entertaining tourism still keeping my European standards and blind of Its weaknesses, but that I love Her fully. I love not just Her splendour and Her colours and Her outward beauty, but I am willing to study Her and love Its obscure depths too. In my love I embrace India's poverty and Its violence and Its corruption and Its illiteracy and poorness of education. Despite all the frustrating occasions (and there will be many others) in which I felt I hated India for the primitiveness of Its mentalities, for Its corruption and laziness and lack of organisation, for the massive extent to which Hindu religion, despite its beauty, rules and conditions the lives and minds of its people and how that regularly suffocates me. And yet I love India with all my heart and want to understand Her deeply; I wish to live the simplicity of Indian life for I have come to love sleeping on the floor and to take time to wash my laundry by hand, and to shower in cold water with bucket and pot, and to live in a house bare of furniture and to sit on the floor all the time, and to travel long hours in wobbly buses and trains. And the lack of privacy is slowly putting less pressure on me for somehow it feels more and more natural.

Thus, I love India fully, and I see studying in one of Its universities as a way to pierce more deeply into Its culture. Of course it is personal and it may sound trivial and meaningless, but it is strong in my heart. Perhaps it will further integrate me into the community and allow me to stay longer in India in the future, although again this may sound very naïve because ultimately for the officer who will stamp my passport I will be just another number, and I know that if I knew the right person and gave him a sum of money underneath his desk, he would give me a visa because he is greedy of money, not at all because he gives a shit about me. But I am ever so honest and my heart is ever so loud deep within me. And the supreme ultimate is that it is Life, or the Universe, or God, or Consciousness, that makes all final decisions, not people, so if the embassy officer does not give a shit about me, perhaps beneath the surface of his conscious mind he will feel a hidden force driving his decision differently. That is how Life works and I am aware of It... And yet above all that I think, if I am wrong, if I am illogical, if I am unreasonable, it is pure Love that guides my decision which means that ultimately it will be the right thing to do...

And in the meantime, before the unbearable heat comes, what else can I do but spend time with Vijay and my Indian family? Whenever my conditioned Western mind comes back with judgement and urges me not to “do fuck all” and be productive, my heart knows that all I can do is spend time with them and with all my awareness for as long as I can until I cannot bear the heat. I feel I have no choice, again, for it all comes to Love...

Holi Festival

2009-03-12T21:42:00.006Z

Guruji had invited all his students for Holi but they other two couldn't make it, so I was the only one to spend the twenty-four hours in his home. This unsettled me somewhat at first, but I had a lovely time and felt very privileged to spend time in the company of such a remarkable family. So, on the evening of the 10th I went to Guruji's house, making sure to buy sweets and some mala flowers on my way. I wasn't sure that I should bring some devotional flowers but I had done for Guru Puja last year and liked it. I didn't know if it was specifically required for Holi but I guess it was as puja would certainly be involved, and I was happy to bring them in respect for my teacher. He was happy to see the garland and ornated Saraswati with it as soon as I arrived.

Holi was just crazy, even though we played it safely within the walls of the house. During Holi if you don't want to be splashed with colour you have to stay in all day – at the very least until early afternoon. Everyone in the streets plays Holi and you cannot escape it, and absolutely all the shops and restaurants are closed which is a pretty rare thing in India. If I hadn't been to my teacher's house I would have had to buy food the day before because I would not have been able to eat out anywhere.

My teacher's 8-year old daughter was very excited from morning; I heard her shouting “Holi khele, Holi khele!” (“let's play Holi!”) before I even got out of bed. Our first (and only) task of the day was to fill small balloons with water to be thrown later, although I didn't see anyone use them all day. I was useless at tying up the balloons; they broke and fell and splashed, and it made my little colleague laugh a lot. Before it all started we all applied coconut oil over our faces and arms, and a thick silvery paste all over our faces, to protect ourselves from the colours that would be thrown to us later. We literally looked like robots, it was really funny and pretty surreal!! I didn't understand what the paste was made, but it was going to allow the colour to wash off easily. It felt odd to have this on my face for most of the day; and it smelt funny too... I am now very happy about it, because today I've seen people with faces still bright pink despite all their scrubbing efforts.

The day started gradually; the two youngest children started with toy guns filled with coloured water. That was like a harmless taster, and I would have enjoyed the day a lot more if we had only used them or smeared dried powder in each others' faces... But it just drew crazier and crazier and each step was nothing compared to the following. At the beginning I watched what was going on in other people's houses and in the streets from the height of the four-level rooftop. That's what I enjoyed the most, you know, watching from a safe (and coward! :p) position in an “anthropological studying” perspective... It was surreal. People were performing their daily activities, cleaning, eating, looking down at the colourful spectacle, laughing, and colour-fighting, with green, blue, pink, red, purple faces and completely stained clothes. Everyone was completely multi-colourfully soiled, and that was what made it surreal, because it made it look so normal!! In a beautiful saree the robot face looked especially surreal!! And slowly but surely the terraces and the grounds and the walls and the cows and the dogs became green, blue, pink, purple, red, etc. as well... A group of colourful men even passed the street carrying a dead body for cremation and singing the typical chant that goes with it (“Ram, Ram, Satya hai”, “Ram (God) is Truth”). We were at least twenty minutes walking distance from the cremation Ghats; and colourful, fun Holi seemed to clash so much with death that it kept me completely baffled.

When the women in our house had finished their work, fed everyone, it all started here as well. Soon they left the water guns, preferring to throw water with plastic pots, then bucket-full from balconies showering the people below, and by the end of the play the family had taken the hosepipe out – within the house's yard; mixing colour powder and water with never-ending frenzy.

I “took part” in the beginning, although I had no motivation whatsoever to splatter anyone! I only allowed myself to be splashed; some put colour in my face and I ended mostly purple with a bit of green and red. But I was reluctant with the water. I didn't want to be soaked and cold (between the narrow lanes and inside the house it wasn't all that hot), and it seemed to be lasting forever!!! Women most of the time stood on the balcony throwing water to the men in the lane below, who were dancing to loud music, showing their sexy hip-move to one another (this seems to be particular to “Indian e-style” men dancing...). I tried to take photos but soon gave up, for my camera's safety obviously. I kept going to the terrace because I wanted to see, bewildered by the speed with which the entire lane was became purple. But every time that guy with hilarious pink teeth (a surrealistically strange sight when opposed to his silvery-robotic face...) pointed that huge water gun to me again I ran away (I guess I was over-impressed because to me it looked like a real weapon!!)

And after the terrace-to-street fight, everyone moved into the house yard, and visitors joined too. I couldn't believe they hadn't had enough of it! I really didn't enjoy all that water. People showered one another with coloured water on and on and on, for two or three hours straight, in the streets and in the house and in their clothes. That's when, to my utter stupefaction, I saw them take out the hosepipe!!! I love what seems to be widespread architecture in Varanasi. All the houses I've been in have a courtyard in the middle of their ground floor with the rooms arranged around it. On the higher levels of the house the rooms are arranged in the same way around a big-hole space above the central yard. Sometimes there is a large grid above the yard on each level to allow for people to walk on it like they would on a normal floor, or else there is a one-metre wall all round that central hole. It is great because it allows for some light and openness in the house, and when it is far too hot outside the height of the building brings coolness inside too. And that way, sitting safely on the grid I could watch the Holi colour-war going on the in the yard below me... People shouted, showered and splashed powder in one-another's faces and showered each other again and laughed and danced and became wetter and wetter, and darker and darker when the colour mixed up, to a point that I couldn't recognised anyone anymore.

After a long while it was the end, to my great relief. The women cleaned the floor and one after next we all went for shower in the bathroom, this time!) I had been wearing the clothes I least cared about, but I don't know why it had not occurred to me that I should bring clothes to change. The family lent me a large, completely white Punjabi Muslim suit which looked horrible to me at first, but which was surprisingly comfortable. They all said I looked very beautiful in it, but it just looked so odd to me that I found it very difficult to agree! By the end of the day Sukhdev's wife went to look for the rest of the outfit (the matching pajama trousers, the shall, and a bright blue HIDEOUS “thing” that goes over the top of it) because she thought I looked so beautiful in it that she wanted to give it to me. It is true that it was my size perfectly, which is a rare thing in India because I am quite a lot taller than the average Indian woman! Despite my discomfort I was genuinely moved by this gesture, and I could see myself wear it again (for special occasion perhaps?) (without the hideous blue addition...). I surprised myself with the ease with which I wore this odd outfit for the rest of the day; a few years ago I am sure I would have felt ridiculous. But then I would feel completely ridiculous if I wore this in Europe; it is funny to live in a country so different that even dressing feels altogether different. There are things I will clearly never were in India, and others that I will clearly never wear in Europe. It is funny how context is important with regards to the appropriateness of dress; as such it is obvious but I had never experienced it so intensively before.

And so, Holi was not always a pleasant day; I hid a lot in the house to avoid being completely soaked and stained and cold but I wasn't the only one to hide. Guruji's brothers and father didn't play either. It was about 2pm when it all ended, and although I had hardly taken part into the play and mostly spent time doing nothing, the intensity of it had made me so tired that after lunch I slept for close to two hours! Last time I had been so tired it was after Rita's engagement. It is amazing how intense Indian celebrations are for me... But I guess I am slowly getting used to it...

The rest of the day was pretty quiet – although perhaps for me only, because I was amazed at how noisy the house was with people talking from every corner... India is so incredibly loud. Or perhaps India is simply European experience multiplied by ten as a general rule...

In the evening I watched a little TV with my Guru's father. I like him. He hardly talks but it seems I make him smile and laugh a lot, and we enjoyed many moments of silent communication. I have always felt genuine respect towards him because I know he was my Guru's very first Guru , following generations of teaching traditional Indian classical music on and on and on. In India, the younger ones respect their elders, clearly unlike in the West, and I really love and appreciate that; perhaps from having worked in a nursing home. When it was time to leave, and after the Punjabi outfit trying session, everyone gave tika (the red mark on third eye, between eyebrows) to one another for goodbyes and respect. I know those moments well from the Khajuraho family now, and love them, although I don't use the “touch feet to heart” gesture much because as a foreigner I don't have much genuine reason too. But this time I had one, and despite the shyness from not being used to doing the gesture, I was happy to take part. It was the second time that I gave tika to Sukhdev but the first time that I gave him the “touch feet to heart” gesture, and it was good to express due respect to him in his own traditional way. I did it to his brothers and his father, too, and then I gave a tika to the women of the house – but they received a hug from me rather than the “touch feet to heart” gesture, which was no less lovely.

The family made sure they'd fed me before I left and Guruji gave me a lift home on his scooter. It had been all good but I was glad it was over.

Violin joy and India love

2009-03-09T12:44:00.001Z

My violin lesson with Sukhdev this morning was pure joy. Somehow I don't practise my violin as much as I could, because I want to focus on Hindi this month. But I do practise, and I am amazed at how quick progress does feel nonetheless. There are times when I think I must be doing this, not out of choice – but for a reason. But perhaps it is over-pretentious a statement, I do not know. I want to reiterate yet again how lucky and grateful I feel to be studying with Sukhdev; Fred and I were sharing the other day. With him also we were talking about deserving what happens in human life, that we all (human beings) are where we are supposed to be at a given moment in our lives. If we are there it is because we have to be there, somehow. It reminded me of what I had heard in an ashram last year, I can't remember which one – that if you find yourself in a Guru's ashram it is because He or She has accepted you. Therefore, whatever feeling of “not belonging” or “what the heck am I doing here” is in our heads only. And sometimes I feel like such a beginner at violin, and really wonder what I am doing amongst all these exceptional Indian traditional musicians at Sukhdev's house. But I guess I must deserve it, else I would simply not be here. The other day an incredible tabla player from Australia/Iran and a brilliant Indian sarangi player were practising for the concert they will perform in a few days, and I felt really blessed for being present during this private, impromptu session. After my class Sukhdev joined them and they played with such frenzy that it lifted everyone's spirit. Fred was there too as he was repairing another of Guruji's violin and adjusting the bridge on mine. We were sitting in a corner of the room, sharing our good luck in French.

Guruji

Sukhdev and I have only been practising a few times with the tabla machine. I have only had time to practise maybe three or four times on Loreena's rhythm exercises. But today my alaap was wonderful. My skills at sliding and listening are getting sharper and I can reproduce pretty much everything he improvises on the spot, when just a few months ago it was such a difficult task that it scared me and made me feel very small. Now it has become a wonderful exchange with my teacher, and today's alaap was longer than it had ever been. We played and played and played, and Sukhdev for the first time moved on to show me alaap “with rhythm” - and I don't know how to say with words, I would have to sing it to describe it, but he was showing me those fast, crazy, amazing, beautiful things he usually does at the end of a composition, and as if out of miracle I could follow him pretty well and the rhythm did start to fill into my body; it was joy.

I am growing into Indian classical music, I do feel it, and I see myself dancing and moving at concerts now. It is growing in me, despite me. I don't know how to analyse it, I have no idea what raag I hear, I don't know what taal it is they are playing in (16 or 12 or 10 or 7 or whatever beat) but I am appreciating and enjoying it more and more.

It feels so strange that I am here somehow, when I consider how suddenly I “landed” into this new, Indian life. But more and more when I walk the streets of Varanasi I just want to stay and live here and explore, for a long time. I feel this is my place, this is where I am supposed to be and start building. I am tired of living and eating amongst the tourists; I want to move to a more local guesthouse, and I have found a local restaurant where the food is completely Indian style, not Indian style adapted for tourists. I speak Hindi more and more. It feels to me more and more like hanging out with westerners and eating easier food is cheating, and I don't want to cheat. If I am in India I have to live like an Indian.

Most of the time I do not remember my dreams. But two nights ago I had a strange dream, in which a man of about 60 years old had been looking for me because I was the reincarnation of his defunct wife. He had been looking for me, and when I asked him how he'd found me he replied it had been revealed to him after meditating for 10 hours. I forget the details but it was a stunning dream. And I never got to know the answer because I woke up before he told me, but I asked him if I had been Indian in my previous life. And last night, I dreamt that my house, a high building by the sea made of red bricks, had been destroyed by a tidal wave. When I was still half asleep it seemed to mean to me that my life was changing for good now...

On 11 March it will be Holi Festival, the festival of colours, although it already started slowly two days before the “official” date.Yesterday on the rickshaw to go to Sarnath with Yoeri we already saw some of the decoration lights in the streets, and some piles of wood and rubbish that will be burnt before the festival starts. It can be very intense, even violent with drunken men fighting apparently. Last year I was in Khajuraho for Holi and with the family women I had stayed in the house most day, although it is not so bad in a smaller place, I guess. People throw each other coloured powder or liquid and become completely multicoloured. Last year Vijay had just been out for 30 minutes and come back with his face dark green. He had cleaned it as soon as he'd got home but he was still green for three days. It is funny to see but I don't know how I would like to take part - and some of the colour they throw is made chemically – though some is natural. I hear it will be mad in the streets. But Sukhdev Ji has invited all his students to come to his house on the evening of the 10th, to stay overnight, and to play Holi with his family on 11th – safely within the house walls. It promises to be quite a special event...

Holi has started!

Life goes on; the routine settles and friendships form...

2009-03-03T09:56:00.000Z

It seems like a lot suddenly happened in the last few days. Or perhaps that will sound like a pointless remark, since a lot seems to happen all the time in India. I might more accurately say that, whereas I felt somewhat lonely (not in a bad way) (and always studious) the first two weeks in Benares, I have suddenly met many people in the last few days. And it is lovely, but tonight I need a rest and some time alone.

Four days ago I changed room and moved to the one I had last September. It has a (tiny) bathroom inside and I find it more comfortable and practical than sharing (dirty) toilets and the shower room. I don't have to worry that someone may want to use them at the same time as me, and I don't have to go outside at night to pee, and I don't have to go too far to fill my pot with water for boiling. The first morning in my new room I spent a lot of time cleaning, and it is lovely and homely now – even more so because I know the room from September. And it is in a corner of the guesthouse building, more isolated from my neighbours which I prefer, and that also means it gets less dusty, somehow. Oh and I am far less exposed to the stealing monkeys!

It was Frederic, also studying with Sukhdev, who introduced me to Loreena. A forty-something (or perhaps a little less!?) Canadian woman, also Sukhdev's student, and who has been playing violin for twenty years. She is so bubbling with energy that I feel very shy and quiet in comparison. She too is studying Hindi, on her own to start with and only since last month or so, but she is learning very fast. It's good to talk about Hindi and violin of course and other things because we seem to have quite a lot in common. We agreed she would give me improvisation and rhythmic classes, which are more than welcome for my self-confident, improvisation-shy, and rhythmic-beginner self. She seems to arrive at the exact right time since I just started working with tabla with Sukhdev! Funny (read typical!) that I had just phrased out my non-desire to study Indian rhythm when (the following day) Sukhdev announced that we would start working with tabla. And it is hard! And I am shy and I feel awkward! But it does come slowly and I do acknowledge that despite the discomfort it is more than necessary... I also had a class with Loreena, and she gave me a good list of exercises to practise which I already feel will be very useful. Busy, busy, busy bee...

And my friend Yoeri from Belgium has arrived in Varanasi for two weeks! I have only known him since December, but there is something special about having a friend from Europe around in India, really. He is taking great advantage of my Hindi teacher quest and will probably take classes with the good ones I kept now! Talking of which, I am fully satisfied and happy with the Hindi classes now, really. I am learning tons; plenty of conversation with one, and a bombardment of great new structures and grammatical explanations with the other. The teacher today was very happy with how quickly I remember formulas and build new sentences, and he told me that I had brilliant language insight and that I would be a great teacher. It makes me so happy! And then when I come out of the classes, with the people around me or with Vijay on the phone, I practise all the new phrases to reinforce my memory. It is fun and it also make people laugh. That with the violin, I realised yesterday that I hadn't taken any rest since the start of my study-month, so I took an afternoon off with Yoeri, much needed for my brain full of Hindi. On Sunday, we will hopefully also visit Sarnath, the initial place of Buddha's teachings; it is just 20 km away from Varanasi.

The day before yesterday I was talking in Hindi with my conversation teacher when a young woman, sitting at a table across ours in the restaurant, starting to praise me for learning the language. My teacher left and we started talking and talking and talking. When I looked at my watch it was 22.30 and I realised I had completely missed the concert I had planned to go to! We had spoken for three hours. She had worked in an orphanage in Gujurat and had learnt Gujurati. She had spent time in rural India and in families and away from the tourists. She had been in India for six months and was about to renew her visa for another six. She is half-Italian and half-Scottish living in London but was even born in Edinburgh. And the best of all: we shared our names in amazement; hers is Yoletta! I had never ever met anyone with a name so close to mine, and she hadn't either! It is not often that I meet Westerners who are so deeply interested in, and have had much experience within the Indian culture. We had a lot to share and it was wonderful.

And I meet the friends of the people I meet. And this morning at my violin teacher's house I also met a French man from Corsica, who wants to meet me tomorrow. And next week my South Indian singer of a friend from Rishikesh will also be coming to Varanasi. And the week after next it will already be time for Vijay to come for a visit, now that he has married his sister and is free from work for a while...

But for now, the most important is the studying, and I shall not let all these beautiful encounters distract me.

On Hindi teaching, and death & life and the gratitude there-for

2009-02-25T16:47:00.000Z

Hindi Teaching

I was going to wait to meet Teacher #4 again before dropping out from Bablu's class but it was impossible. I had kept a somewhat negative memory of #4 from last year, but I knew it couldn't be as pointless as with Bablu. Yesterday his class started out badly again so in discouragement I asked to look at the two books he was using for teaching. The first one was a grammar book for Indian children. A book to explain to children who can already speak Hindi what grammar is; what a noun is, what an adjective is, how sentences are built etc. The second book was for Indian people to learn English! It was definitely useless to carry on, and thus half way through the class I told him, exasperated, that I would not come again. He couldn't quite believe it and took it very personally. As surreal as it felt, he liked me so much, me being his sweet good girl and his good student etc. as he told me. He was all the more upset that I was the first pupil to ever drop out from his lessons. I couldn't believe I had affected him so much; somehow such a situation could only have happened in India, never in a western country. At the end he had taken it so personally that he asked to speak to Vijay on the phone! I told him that it was no big deal, that he was just not providing what I needed, and I tried to explain why it didn't work, but there was no way he would understand, and I knew he couldn't. No way he could understand, basically, the difference between first and second language acquisition. But then I guess I should have taken earlier notice of his English “brokenness”. His English grammar is very poor, which means he has never learnt another language (properly) and therefore has no insight into the difference between teaching a first language as opposed to teaching a second language. He has only native knowledge of his mother tongue, i.e. implicit rather than explicit knowledge, which I am afraid may very well be sufficient to teach very basic Hindi to foreigners, but not enough to teach intermediate Hindi to people whose objective is fluency.

First language is acquired implicitly from birth, just from exposure to our parents or guardians' speech during infancy, when “universal grammar” is still available to our brain. We then learn how to speak our mother tongue, but its explicit syntactic and grammatical rules are unknown to our intellect – obviously at such a young age. Some explicit grammar knowledge about our mother tongue we only learn later in the schooling environment. The knowledge necessary to teaching foreigners is even more subtle and requires some linguistic awareness. For instance, English speakers may not know explicitly what modal verbs are or be aware of verb irregularity or complement order in the English sentence, but they apply the rule correctly because they have been exposed to them from a very young age. Thus in short, first language acquisition starts from practice then moves onto theory. But generally-speaking second language acquisition goes the opposite way; I need to learn Hindi from theory to practice! What I need is to start from exposure to rules which Bablu seems to have no explicit knowledge of. I know what a noun and an adjective are, and I don't need to learn the definitions it in Hindi! I need not know what they are (and I know already), but when to use them and in what way. In the end the only good thing we did was dictation, but now I need to move on from topics such as the jackal going out hunting for dinner, or the fox stealing the crow's piece of chapati from his mouth!I want to move on from simple sentence structures, which I know by now; I want to learn practical, relevant, grown-up vocabulary; I need to practise conversation about life, about myself, about mature subject and the world around me, about India, not the clever fox and the crow on the mango tree.

Straight after my last class with Bablu I met Teacher #4. I did remember he had told me all I needed was to practise conversation, and I could also ask him to get me reading and writing, surely. I had prepared him on the phone about my difficulty in finding a good teacher. We had a great hour or so of talking. He told me some interesting historical details about Varanasi yet not an overload. He did not treat me like a child. He spoke a lot, but as soon as I pointed this out he reversed the roles. I didn't know how to start talking but he was great at asking questions, leading a conversation, correcting my grammar and giving me lots of useful vocabulary. It was a very good motivator to speak and speak and speak and let go of the shyness I have about building more complicated sentences. He was great, and definitely what I need. I couldn't remember exactly why I had not wanted to trust him last September. We agreed to meet three times a week. That coupled with the classes with Incredible Hindi Teacher #3, I think I am finally satisfied, this time!

On death and life and gratitude there-for

This morning I had a lovely violin class with Sukhdev. He has the same other student coming after all my lessons, but he was early today so he was present during most of my session. He is a young French violin maker and musician. We had chai with Sukhdev and he was great to talk. I left the class with my belly full of profound love and gratitude, a feeling of being exactly where I should be, and that I am on a path building “something” beautiful. I was full of joy and positivity, and I loved the noise and the colours and the smells and the multitude of people and souls around me. Somehow if last year I compared walking the Varanasi streets (full with people and mud and rubbish and cow shit and rickshaws and motorbikes that almost touch you when they pass by you, and people constantly asking your name and where you're from) to rodeo, this time it felt almost easy and peaceful to walk. I am forever grateful to my dear violin teacher, as I like to repeat again and again like an old woman, but I also felt immense gratitude for being in India and in Holy Varanasi, and in Life. Just alive. I am forever in deep love with Life and Humanity, and Love, and Consciousness, and – dare I even say? – God. India is where I have to be right now. Last year before returning for the first time to Europe, I had regular feelings of being far away, of not knowing where I was going and what I was doing, of longing for and missing Europe. Of “being in India”, which still implied being in another, mad world. It seems to me now that coming back to Europe has simply taught me that India is not “another” “different” country after all. It has taught me that I have no longer a reason to miss Europe. That before my reference point was the Occident and therefore there was the dichotomy “West” / “India”, whereas today the dichotomy is gone, and instead, my world has expanded and embraced India into it. And I feel I will be here for a while; India is definitely part of me and of my life. In France my feeling of not being able to build something is still as ever present as it has been for the past twelve years. When I arrived in Edinburgh two months ago, I felt like I came from another planet. The feeling subsided when I found my cocoon again, but it was clear that building my life there again would be regression – for the time being anyway. In India, right now, I am home, I feel good, I am without judgment, and I can consider a future. I have the strong desire to master Hindi and to decipher what it is that so intrigues me about this fascinating, complex culture. Why it is that on the one hand I feel at home and in tune with the Indian mentality, yet on the other hand, countless aspects of the culture exasperate me beyond comprehension. Everything is not pink and beautiful here, clearly, but I am willing to accept and study and embrace and love the difficulty, too. It feels like a project in its own right, like my the adventure of my life must include “studying India”, and deeply.

After the violin class I went on to check my emails. I had one from Dorota informing me of Tom's death, our old friend we both used to look after in the nursing home, and whom we had continued visiting regularly after we left the job. I am glad I saw him again before leaving Scotland. Life is odd; he passed away just a day before my Grandfather did. I had known before about Grandpa too; his health had been declining seriously just a few days before I left for India. He could not eat anymore and was weakening day by day. He stopped walking altogether the day I saw him, and I had helped him stand up with Grandma. It had been sad but he still looked good despite his weakening, he was very conscious, and it had made me happy to care for him like I had done in the nursing home. Between the tears in me there had already been acceptance, and mostly love, beauty and joy. And he knew he was on his way, he had wished me a good life and told me to pray for him. I had cried a few relieving tears (hiding) and told him Goodbye in a way that I had never done to anyone before. I knew and it felt like a very strong and beautiful “Au revoir Bon Papa”. He was almost 89, a very good age to Leave, and he and Grandma had been married for 62 yearsTo me that was most amazing and there was no way I could be sad – only concerned about how Grandma would cope alone.

I am happy to be in Varanasi, where Death is ever present, and where I could offer a Karma candle to the Ganges. I did for my Grandfather, and I will also do for Tom; it is a beautiful, lovely thing to do. I don't really know what it means; I have near zero intellectual knowledge as to why Mother Ganga is holy, and I don't know a lot more about Hindu mythology at all. But I feel good near Ganga; and there is the yogi philosophy which I feel very close to, the openness of my heart which I can live fully here and experience in the world around me. Perhaps I do have some knowledge, not in my mind and memory and thoughts, but in my heart and body and cells. I feel so very welcome in India; it is beyond comprehension but I do know that real comprehension is of the heart, not of the mind.

I was not sad about Grandfather or Tom. When I thought of them on the Ghat and in the Internet café, my eyes were wet with tears, but no sadness: joyful tears. I guess I might be a lot more affected by the death of someone who had more directly been present in my life, or someone younger, but this time the death of other provoqued more enchantment than sadness. Enchantment about the beauty of life and thus death, about the incredible cycle of life; and also gratitude for the magic of just being, consciousness, breathing for a time however long it may be. I am not sad about death because I find it fascinating, and because I feel like I do see now, that what is real is the soul – that which is immortal and merges with the whole of the Universe after death. So that the real person is still around, no-where and everywhere, and forever in our hearts. I feel this is my real perception, and indeed it is more joyful than sad...

Shivaratri, an Elephant, and the Hindi teacher's quest

2009-02-23T21:42:00.002Z

Hindi Teacher#2

Today was a long and full day. Hindi Teacher #2 is not that great, actually. The first few lessons were good because he revised the basics and forced me to master all the numbers, a task I had been reluctant to tackle on my own. And he started with dictation which I had forgotten all about from school so it kind of impressed me with its oh-so-schooly-feeling if I can call it that way. It made me feel like a student, and of course it is very good to get me practising reading and writing in the Devanagari script, and of course spelling. But a week on and Bablu just gets on my nerves. Well, he doesn't bother me as much as he did telling me he likes me and all that, yet he still does a bit. But most of all he treats me like a little child and still teaches me “child Hindi”, silly simple sentences over and over again, which is far too easy! I told him I wanted to focus on grammar. The other day we did touched on something grammatical which I didn't understand, but he was completely unable to explain to me WHY it was so, i.e. the rule behind it, and he was replying beside the point of my question. When I told him yet again that I wanted to focus on grammar he gave me a list of the grammar terms in Hindi (how we say “verb”, “sentence”, “letter”, “noun”, “adjective” etc.) and “taught” me that letters make up words, which make up sentences etc. It was discouraging. He then told me to remembered the terms for the next lesson but today he didn't even ask about them. Today it is Shivaratri in India; Shiva festival, so he had “Bhang lassie” (the typical Indian milk drink, but mixed with a little hemp leaf to get you stoned) so he felt lazy and he hadn't brought the books with him. He is completely unable to check out my level and adapt his lessons to my need; I have to tell him what to do during class and it is just ridiculous. When I wrote my blog entry about his classes after just a few sessions I was overestimating him greatly... taking what seemed like structure or awareness on the surface for what I was hoping it to be...

So again my linguistically-aware self is frustrated, although it is interesting in a way too, because – it seems to me that it is typical of India or Indian language teaching. In general perhaps, for I hope biggest or richest places have better resources or facilities and more educated teachers. Vijay's two youngest sisters are in 12th class (the last of high school) and thus have reach a supposedly high-level of English at school. I read there exam papers once; they were full of complicated questions about religious or historical or social sciences subjects. But they are incapable of actually speaking English with me, beyond just a few words. To revise for their exams they were learning answers or bits of texts by heart, with no insight into the sentence structure or grammar or meaning whatsoever. Whenever I have seen Vijay's siblings doing their homework it always involved copying. I don't think I have seen them do any exercises for examples maths operations or problems, anything involving analysing or problem solving, or essay-writing, or “anything that comes from them” type of skills. Homework always involved copying parts of a book or each other's copybook or mathematical equations or whatever. I remember them telling me that it was a way for the teacher to check that they had learnt their lessons – if they had recopied it in the notebook they could see that they had studied it. So, when they had too much copying to do, even Vijay or Rita would help out their younger siblings because they all have similar handwritings! I have not been to school in India, but the schooling system intrigues me – to say the least. The whole ten days I was in Khajuraho this year, I didn't see the two sisters go to school one single time; it is more acceptable to miss school altogether rather than being late, etc.. So, perhaps this explains my frustration in finding a GOOD Hindi teacher. And also, I guess, because I have reached beyond “basic Hindi” which is easy to teach and which most Western people want from teachers – I guess? – well, then perhaps I am just too demanding for most teachers here...

Hindi Teacher#3

In my despair, hihi, the other day I had set myself to phone Hindi Teacher #1 again, whose lessons I dropped out last week, because even though he couldn't read with his eye infection, and despite his “creepiness” and his unstructured and hesitant classes, he is a genuine man who can actually explain the Hindi grammar and so I hope we could try again discussing exactly what I want from a teacher... But the following morning, that's yesterday, I went to Sukhdev's for my violin class. There I met an American guy, about 40 and who studies sarangi with Sukhdev's brother. I was amazed; he spoke brilliant Hindi! Obviously then I asked him if he knew a good teacher here and yes, he did. He told me to go and meet him in the Nagwa area near Assi Ghat. He didn't know his phone number, but I could just go and ask the neighbourhood around, they would direct me to his house. He told me he is an older guy, who has been teaching for at least 15 years, and who often goes to America. I started my quest straight after the violin lesson. Nagwa is like a remote part of the city. It was quiet and it felt very rural and local, like small Indian village. I could have forgotten I was in big, noisy Varanasi and liked it; it felt refreshing. There was confusion in the teacher's last name, but it must have been the right guy because everyone indeed knew him, and all other information about him agreed with what the American guy had told me. He was obviously a rich man, perhaps a Brahmin, but his house was pleasant and friendly, unlike the cold house of the very first Hindi centre I visited (Hindi Teachers #0!?). When I saw him he was having a lesson with a European woman, and the same book I have was lying on the table. I felt safe. We agreed for a lesson today at 3pm.

Shivaratri Festival & the elephant

This morning I did some shopping in the market (in India “market” refers to “town centre”) and I walked a lot in the heat. The temperature is rising pretty fast; it went up to 32 degrees today at least – only one month after my arrival in India. A little later, on my way back home after lunch, when I reached the main road, I turned my head left and was surprised (and enchanted!) to see a beautiful, big elephant. Shivaratri; I had forgotten! It was dressed with a giant, long piece of red velvet with black flowers and a golden border around it. Its face was decorated with white make-up ornaments, a garland of mala flowers was hanging onto its forehead, it had a bell around its neck and earrings. It was funny to see an elephant with pierced ears; the thickness of its rings was in proportion with the largeness of its ears. I sat in the shade on the front steps of a shop and watched the elephant. It feels extraordinary to be so close to such a massive animal. I was glued for at least half an hour. People were coming to give him food, usually fruits, or they would put a 1-rupee coin in its trunk, which the beast lifted up to the man who was sitting comfortably on a layer of thick blankets on its back, and the man reached out to the trunk to take the coin. I don't know why I love elephants so much. There was also a camel a few meters away but I had no interest in watching it at all. But I was watching everything about the elephant. Its flapping ears and swinging trunk, its tiny eyes compared to the massive head, the few hairs on the top of that almost squared head and below its ears; its thick, massive tongue and the insides of its mouth as it took the food into it; and the end of its trunk shaped like two fingers when it took the items with it. And the countless creases of its thick, wrinkled skin all over the enormous body, its toes and nails, its flabby thigh and belly, its funny bottom... Everything... I was studying every part and movements of the fascinating animal.

But I didn't have my camera and it bothered me. After a while I decided I would quickly go back to my guesthouse, which wasn't far, to take it. I had a little time before meeting Hindi Teacher #3, and surely the elephant would still be there. So I gathered into the long narrow street that follows the Ganges. I walked fast but there were so many people everywhere. I walked passed a gigantic, stunning, silvery and all colourful statue of Shiva and his wife that was only here for the festival and again wished I had my camera. And soon I heard the drummers, and the processions of musicians and the dancing children with their skin painted black and their scary shiny masks (they would be very appropriately creepy for Halloween!), and more drummers and loud horns, and people with make up, dancing and shouting, and the procession of children and adult Gods, on decorated horses or big carriages. The children highly perched on those long wooden sticks could not have been very comfortable up there, and with the heavy make-up and costumes! All the Gods were depicted, from Shiva to Lakshmi to Hanuman and all the others I forget. Men had to guide each pair of horses in those crowded lanes, and the carriages almost touched the people packed against the walls. It was insane; I had to grip tightly on my flip-flops not to lose them! This is typical of India. I had imagined I would quickly go to my guesthouse but exactly the opposite happened in reality. Obviously it took quite some time until I reached my room! But I got there, emptied my bag from the purchased goods and took my camera instead. I changed my flip-flops for my more stable walking sandals and went back to the main road, avoiding the narrow lanes! I quickly found the elephant who was now just a little further, walking towards the burning Ghat. I studied the elephant some more and took close pictures. Some of the scary children in black pose-danced for me. The music was even louder, with heavy beats, coming out full blast from the old-fashioned loudspeakers. Men were dancing madly, that dance you get at Indian wedding and that looks more like pogo to me. At that moment my sister phoned on my mobile. I hardly heard it so I didn't pick it up; a shame otherwise she could have heard Shivaratri en direct from Benares in Germany!

Hindi Teacher#3 (cont'd)

Soon it was time to go for my meeting with Hindi Teacher #3 and it was a relief when I finally reached the Ghat, walking along Ganga up to Assi Ghat. A relief from the crowd, but some music was coming out loud all the way still. And I was ill stwalking in the heat, although there was some shade from time to time. It was finally quiet when I reached Nagwa.

My lesson with Hindi Teacher #3 was amazing! He gave me 1 1/2 hours packed full of useful tips and phrases and structure bits. He was quick to pick up my level, got me to read passages of the book and then asked me questions, forcing me to reply with fully-built sentences. He gave me new words and rules and asked me to make up more sentences – but not to write them down; that would be my homework. We didn't lose a moment; I had thought I would be sleepy from the hours of walking in the heat but I was so happy and focused, and was refreshed after the class. He knew the book by heart and could come up with examples spontaneously. He gave me a lot of homework, to rewrite the sentences, to write up a diary, to read more and some exercise from the book. A revolution! He is more expensive than the others, but his lessons are so full that seeing him just twice a week will be enough. I will have plenty to work on my own.

But I still want to see another teacher everyday, for the reading and writing, and talking with someone. I thought I could keep up with Teacher #2 but his class was so ridiculous tonight; I had to tell him to give me more difficult sentences and he had not even brought his books because he was still stoned from his Bhang lassie. He loves me because I do everything so well and I am a good student, but it is all for his satisfaction – I should be the one satisfied and am not learning anything! But then I remembered the teacher I had met just once last year in September. I hadn't particularly trusted him at the time, but he had focused on conversation and had taught me some useful tips. So I went back to the restaurant where I got his number, and phoned him. I will thus meet Hindi Teacher #4 tomorrow. I have already told him that finding a good Hindi teacher is a difficult task for me. We will discuss what I want from him tomorrow evening...

Violin Love Consciousness

2009-02-19T22:02:00.001Z

So I have one Hindi class everyday in the evening, and I see my violin teacher every other day. It is lovely to have lessons with Sukhdev again. I kept practising the violin very regularly when I was in France, but hardly did when I was in Scotland – that means I had hardly practised for over a month. I used to feel guilty for not practising the violin, but I realise now how useful periods of rest are from time to time, and so I no longer judge myself for it. Violin is only joy anyway, so if I have to force myself there is no point in playing. And after this monthly break, there feels some sort of refreshment in my play – resting when genuinely needed (e.g. not out of laziness) is as important on the road to progress as practising.

I still do not know why I am learning Indian violin really, other than it being a great way to learn more skills and an opportunity to play with someone and to progress on to some kind of path. I do not particularly want to be able to play Indian music as such. I do not imagine wanting to learn it forever, or being desperate to learn to play with a tabla player. I am not really interested in learning about the Indian rhythm itself, however complicated and fascinated it may be. Or perhaps that is just fear? But I love Sukhdev; he is an excellent teacher and I am very lucky and grateful to study with him; I will never say it enough. I have a lot of respect for him and love him dearly as a friend. I love when we practise together the scales silently, over and over again – those scales that would sound so plain and boring to countless ears but which, to ours, sound full with the intricacies and the subtleties and the thousands of ways in which we can play them – and the shear and simple joy we have playing them. It is just another way to communicate, with the violin, and there is no-one else in my life with whom I can communicate in such a different, beautiful, fun, and subtle way. With the violin we also joke, as when he goes off track showing off some more impressive exercises that I can usully still copy pretty well, and then he smiles cheekily, and I do too, and then we laugh, and then we're silly sometimes, for he too is very childish. And I love when his beautiful wife comes into the room and interrupts our practice to ask him for something. They are a very lovely couple, the first Indian couple I have met whose love they have for each other I can see like the nose on their faces – for they do obviously love each other. Sometimes she brings us chai when we practise, and she is always happy to see me – and I her too.

My bowing used to be my weak point but I feel it is a lot better than it used to be. I used to be obsessed with being able to do “long bows” (to play the whole length of the bow) “some day” – when it felt so difficult and uncomfortable, but now that I have been practising it a lot, I feel more free to play and there is more lightness in my sound. Oh, and my ear is slowly but surely refining – I was obsessively wanting to get better at this too, but I feel good tuning the violin now, and it feels like a wonderful little miracle. Today I can hear sounds within sounds; it really is impossible to describe the reality with words, but it might be comparable to hearing different subnotes, or harmonies, or tonalities, or qualities within whole notes – as though the purer the note becomes the more it... shines.

I am forever in love with this instrument and with how, without frets or keys or holes, it allows exactly for note-to-finger (or perhaps ear-to-finger) association. The distance between two notes in my ears corresponds exactly with the distance with which I place my fingers onto the strings. It is impossible for others to see or ear, and it used to fascinate me so much too before I started learning to play the violin – oh, how intrigued I used to be, and how obviously I can see it today! My ears hear the distance between two notes, which my fingers instantaneously translate into where they will go onto the strings. The more focused and Aware I am of the note I will play, the purer the note my fingers will play – for violin is meditation. Thus, and especially if I play a melody just on one string, I don't even need to know what notes I am playing in order to reproduce the right tune – it is just like when you sing; you do not need to know which notes your voice goes to, you just “go” to the right places in the musical realm and sing the right distances between the notes, somehow. Yes, I guess that's why the violin is the instrument closest to the human voice; not just in sound but also in how you play it. With a guitar you would have to go onto the right frets; with a piano you would have to hit on the right keys; on a flute you would have to cover the right holes. Or in statistical terms, with other instruments the distance between the notes is discrete, like the distance between two categories. But with the violin, the distance is continuous, like between 1.23343546365...6 and 1.23343546365...7 – ...to Infinity! There are no words; I do not know how “I” do it; my mind does not know; it is beyond thoughts and beyond mind. All I have to do is to keep trying, and then my cells, my fingers know. It is beyond mind's comprehension; it is of the Heart, or more accurately, it is the Love in me that knows, yes, the Love, and the Consciousness that fills me – for they are but the very same thing – the very same Beautiful, Miraculous Thing. It is in me, but it is not me.

I have started “copying” Sukhdev when he plays his alaap (introduction to improvised composition) now. Back in September, when we started to practise this I was always very shy and tense, fearing the difficult exercise. Trying to copy his twidling bits and subtle slides and all those fast, subtle things. It feels like a miracle that I am actually getting a lot more comfortable and relaxed and better at it now! And it is incredible how the road to progress is shaped; for it is not me. You can do some exercises for what feels like ages, get the frustrating feeling you will never be able to do it, and move on to something else. When some time later you will return to the first exercise, just having let go of it and having played something else altogether in between, this time you will do them as if out of miracle... And so I can do the alaap bits better, surprisingly better. The purpose of this is that some day I will be able to improvise. Of course for now this is still copying – when I am away from the lesson I cannot do it really because I forgot what is it that Sukhdev played. I remember in patches. I guess eventually I will have do my own thing – I will master and go beyond; the techniques I will have in my heart, and I will find myself with spontaneity... You start by copying; keep trying and keep trying. Trying is already halfway to success... “Koshish karna saphalna hai”. Yes, all you have to do is try, practise, and Love-Consciousness will miraculously fill you and do the rest for you...

A cheeky monkey, and daily Hindi classes

2009-02-18T16:07:00.000Z

The other day I was sweeping my room (with one of those typical Indian “jharu”, i.e. small straw brooms). I was going to take my small bin bag downstairs, but before I did, went to hang my wet towel on the line, leaving the bin bag in the rubbish bucket on the terrace. Suddenly I heard a loud monkey's cry; it sounded very close I thought, but I didn't take much notice. Just a little while later I went back to my room, and on the way glanced in the rubbish bucket, noticing to my surprise that it was now empty. I realised in a flash, looked around me, and indeed, my bin bag was now a little further on the terrace, torn open. Cheeky monkey! He hadn't even been interested in the orange peels...

Today I only had time to say two words to my American neighbour. He had just finished doing his laundry so I took mine away which was dry, to free up some space on the line for him. Then he asked “Hey, did that monkey take this orange from your room?!” I couldn't believe it! You live and learn, I said. But there was a further part to the lesson. Just a few minutes later, I was doing my Hindi homework inside my room, door open. I looked at the last of my oranges thinking I should eat it soon. Another thought occurred to me although not even phrased into words yet, when that very thought came true: I heard some fast steps running quietly behind my back, turned my head to look at my shelf, and for one second stared at that cheeky monkey who now had my last orange in his hand – and who was staring at me, too! Just about 50 cm away from me! I shouted “Eh!!!” more out of amazement (and amusement!) than anything else! I couldn't believe it!! One second later my iresistible thief ran out and settled comfortably a little higher on the roof to enjoy my orange, grinning at me...

Well, now that I also have bread and bananas, I will make sure my door is closed, even when I am in!! Yes, I now have a few provisions in my room. As well as a small gas bottle and some pots so I can boil my own water. Clearly, it is better to rely on gas than on electricity in Varanasi to boil water... It feels great to be independent “water-wise” now; I can boil water for drinking whenever I need to make sure I will not buy another plastic bottle. As my Australian neighbour remarked however, what is best: to pollute with gas, or to pollute with plastic? To this I can only shrug... and do the best I can... Oh and it also means I now have the luxury of hot showers, which is a lot more pleasant than cold showers when the temperatures are mild I have to confess – although I am slowly getting used to them...

I have had five classes of Hindi with my new teacher Bablu, now, and I like him. He didn't pester me about having chai and food in his house for long. I guess that made me become more serious and very focussed on learning Hindi, so he understood the message quickly. The day before yesterday he asked me to count until 100 again, but this time I had to write down all the numbers. A far more challenging task (which I had carefully been avoiding until then!), but I am glad I am not getting away from trivial yet important bits with him. This first week he is thoroughly checking my Hindi level; asking me to translate sentences checking which structures I know and which I don't, and making sure I know the basics well. He has also checked on my reading, and he does say that I read well. Before I could concentrate solely on the reading, leaving out the meaning completely, but I do catch some bits of meaning now, recognising some words more often. And I don't read too slowly, and apparently have a strong basis. But I have set myself to read for about 20-30 minutes from a borrowed newspaper everyday, outside of the homework he gives me. I cannot wait to be able to read a word as instantaneously as I see a word in European alphabet!

Today, after the first week of teaching Bablu gave me an “examination”; I got 58/60, hihi. He keeps telling me that I am a very good student, and I do know this. Today he also told me that when I speak Hindi I sound like a little child and I sound very sweet. I guess it is true; I can hear how much more childlike I sound than when I speak English! And he is not the first to tell me... It is funny: In French I feel like I speak like a teenager; in English I feel like I sound mature yet gentle; now in Hindi I feel like I sound like a child. And I love speaking Hindi.

Hindi fun

2009-02-16T13:00:00.005Z

I did plenty of Hindi homework this morning, and enjoyed it immensely. It just takes a teacher to motivate me... Well, so I didn't enroll onto the programme with 6 hours of Hindi everyday, but thinking of it now it seems like it would be quite crazy, too hermite-like etc.. And given how much I feel I am learning with just 1 1/2 hour of lesson everyday, and how happy I am to have resumed the violin lessons, I am glad I didn't go for the 6 hours/day.

The first teacher I rented was not very good. I had three lessons with him. Firstly he was a little too expensive, and secondly even though he had much knowledge and he knew well how to explain grammatical notions, he had no pedagogy at all. He didn't prepare for the sessions, there were no structure in them, he didn't realise that bombarding me with information without giving me time to digest it - and without giving me homework, just wasn't going to do it for me. Besides he had bad eye problems, and even though I did feel much compassion towards him, he could hardly read and check what I wrote. And he was talking to me about his being intoxicated with antibiotics all the time, his body was shaking, and his house was very dirty. So I changed teacher - I can't carry on with him just out of compassion because I know he needs the money!

A Varanasi friend of Vijay I now see around everyday recommended to me a better one, and the new one seems better indeed. I have had two lessons with him and he feels like a "real" (senior) teacher (he must be around 60). First class he checked my level by giving me Hindi dictation which was a lot of fun. And he got me to count from 1 to 100 - which was a little laborious but very useful. We revised alphabet and pronounciation, he checked out my grammar book, and gave me homework. He talks to me a lot about how great a yogi and astrologist and palm reader and priest he is, but at least he says all this clearly and in Hindi so that's still good practice. And he seems to like me A LOT, has already told me how soft my heart was, has expressed concern for the persistent caugh I've had due to change in weather (he tells me which medication I should take, that I should gargle every morning with hot salted water, that I should rub mustard oil with garlic on my chest and the like...). He also told me that his house was mine, that if I have any problems I should let him know, that he doesn't know why he feels so much respect towards me, and he has already asked me to have chai and food with him. This I have refused for now firstly as I do not want to take milk with this persistent caugh, and foremost because I know all too well that I should be careful with such people when I do not know them well yet! He does feel like he is genuine and a good man, but I want to take time to befriend him if I ever will. And I have told him that as a white woman in India I must be careful. He knows this, but insists on telling I should not be scared of him - but I am am not scared of him - I am just cautious! So I tell him I am here for Hindi and that is it. Because he is a good teacher. And he also keeps saying that "mera dimag bahut tej hai" (my brain is very strong) and that my Hindi is very good and that one day I will read newspapers in Hindi, and that he has complete trust that I will be fluent quickly. Which I have faith will happen, too. :)

We haven't done very complicated things yet but I trust there is structure in his way of teaching and it will come in time. Even though the first teacher was not good, I did learn a very useful - and somewhat complicated - grammar structure in just three lessons with him, and so although I dropped out from his lessons I have still been doing self-induced homework from my own book to practise thesaid structure. I will take my time to assimilate it - but I will do the homework about it everyday. I am learning a lot everyday already, and a lot of vocabulary, and it is fun and great to be able to put the newly acquired forms and expressions into practice with people around me as soon as I step out from the classes.

Ha! The joy and feeling of achievement one gains from learning a new language. The Hindi language barrier is a huge thick wall between the local culture and me, but I am steadily hammering into it until one day it will crumble into pieces, and then I will see clearly and understand the differences in front of me. I will step into that new landscape, and one day I will be part of it and it will all just all be - clear, transparent and familiar around me...

Khajuraho Handicrafts

2009-02-15T10:57:00.001Z

and so, this is what took most of my time in the last ten days or so...

http://www.khajuraho-handicrafts.com/

the khajuraho family shop.
please go for a visit - perhaps you will even want to come for a real visit after that - well, the images of khajuraho still enchant me and make me want to go anyway... even though i have been there countless times now...

obviously, i also admire the artists' intricate and subtle craft, which is why i wanted the world to know about them...

xox

Settling in Varanasi

2009-02-12T11:33:00.001Z

So I had a lovely few days with the boys. There was some time with the French group of tourists we had met in Khajuraho and who also conveniently moved on to Varanasi the same evening as we did, and there was the Ganga bath (for the boys, not me!), and eating in the German Bakery, ha. Vijay left yesterday afternoon, so I have moved back to my homely guesthouse now, where I lived in September 2008. I have a different room on the same rooftop. It is smaller and I don't have a bathroom in it, but for the first time in India I have a room with shelved carved within the stone-walls, those very Indian shelves I love so much. That's why I chose the room, even. The bathroom and toilet are outside a bit like in the Khajuraho house. There are many people in the guesthouse, because it is touristic season. I haven't met them all but there is at least a French man, an American man and an Australian man. Most guests learn Indian music; I've already heard my neighbour practising on the sitar, the American guy downstairs playing the sarangi, and at least two people play the tabla. It makes a nice atmosphere. I haven't practised the violin yet, but I met my teacher again two days ago. It was lovely to see him again, and he was happy that I had remembered to bring him Belgium nut chocolate!

The day after we arrived, we also visited the Bhasha Bharati Hindi centre where I was booked in to start on 16 February for a month. It was a big house owned by the teachers who belong to the Brahmin (highest) caste. But they were not friendly, almost cold, and they wanted a RIDICULOUS amount of money. Even the young woman I met who had almost completed two months was not convinced at all that it had been worth the money. I asked her many questions about how she had found the centre, and she told me that even though she had lived in the teachers' family, outside of the Hindi classes she hadn't mixed with them at all. Which loses the point if you ask me – I wanted to live in a family to be immersed in it. If I won't mix with them there is no point and I might as well return to my cheap, lovely guesthouse, and rent a Hindi teacher. I have met one already, whose mobile phone I found on a forum on the Internet – and from the reference I had read he was a remarkable teacher too. I have met him once with Vijay, we have liked him both, and I will have my first class this afternoon.

I also visited Bal Ashram, again with Vijay who always likes to visit places with me before I commit to them, to make sure that they are safe and reliable. But we always have the same impressions on people, which makes me feel even safer. Bal Ashram is an orphanage located along the Ganges on a Ghat at the other end of Varanasi. I know now that he was established in 2001 by Baba Ji, a disciple of Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ram, who lives three months there and the rest of the year in his associated orphanage in California. Most volunteers here come from America or Italy. I hadn't initially thought I would work there because of the unbearable heat in Spring season, but I wanted to visit the place for reference. We were showed round the place by a lovely man, and well, apart from the heat problem, I really love the place. It is quiet and beautiful and clean and it looks well-organised. And they “only” have 20 children in because they want to focus on making them good people (after a difficult, rough early life on the streets) which demands to to spend a lot personal time with them. With helping with homework, and caring, and activities and all other needed things, and a lot of love. Normally only volunteers who know Baba Ji can live within the ashram's walls. Otherwise you have to live outside and come in for work. But it seems inconvenient to do so, since the place is remotely located, so I asked whether, should I decide to work there, I could live in the ashram. So we were invited to meet Baba Ji. We sat in front of him on a rug, and started to talk a little. The first thing I said was “Mujhe kaam karna hai” - “I want to work”. We spoke about the skills I have and the work I can do. He offered us to drink chai. He didn't speak much, but he had kindness in his eyes, and soon he said that he would love to have me with “all these skills”. Before we left he offered us “prasad” (sweet). I will go again tomorrow to meet the people responsible for volunteers, to see in which areas I could work. The first two communities I visited in Rishikesh and Dehradun will not lead me anywhere now, but I have good hope for this one – despite the heat... but perhaps just for one month now I would cope...?

Since Vijay left I spent my time cleaning and setting up my room, which is lovely. And I did some more work on the website, and caught up with journal-writing. Last night I also met a fun English man, who will be here for two weeks. I am happy to be here.