Chennai Part Three

Tags

Backpacking, Chennai, India, Making friends, spirituality, Travel

I fell in love with you and I cried (Chennai part three draft chapter for book)

On our first day in Chennai we had noticed how pushy the rickshaw drivers were.  Crossing the busy roads was hard enough and made harder by rickshaws slowing down for us and offering us a ride.  Although our guesthouse was in a quiet street, this joined the main street and on the corner there were always lots of rickshaw drivers who seemed insulted by us not using them.  After a few days we stopped and talked, they said, ‘Every day you walk past us, every day you don’t use us.’  We explained that we were usually only going a little way up the road to eat, and that we had to get at least some exercise.  They seemed satisfied then, and we agreed that we’d use them if we were going further afield.  Out onto the main road turning left, past the big white mosque then just a short walk on broken pavements or in the road and we reached the juice bar and the place we went to for breakfast.

As always we had quickly created a little world of familiarity.  Twenty four hours in we had eaten at the same place for breakfast twice, eaten dinner at the restaurant where they stared at us twice, and visited the juice bar twice.  My favourite juice bar drink was called Mayflower, made of kiwi and lime.  In restaurants I ordered sathakudi juice because I had never heard of it before, it’s also called sweet lime juice.

For breakfast I had Pongal, again because I had never heard of it before, an almost-impossible to finish dish that felt like eating the creamiest mashed potato, although it is actually made from rice.  I told Y about it and said I thought it would be the ultimate heartbreak comfort food, he laughed and said at his work they call it the sleeping pill, as it makes the students sleepy.  For dinner we ate Sambar idli as an extra, ‘famous’ at the restaurant, and Sambar vada, lovely comfort food that even came in dear little mini versions.  I also ate tomato oothapam which looked kind of like a pizza.  There seemed to be lots of coffee, and some places only did coffee, no tea.

Where we were in Chennai, as compared to where we were in Varkala, some things were not quite so easy, we couldn’t just take our devices and chargers to the nice tourist restaurant, plug them in over dinner and use the fast internet to catch up on social media and download something to watch; the local places did not have WiFi or charging points.

One day, late afternoon-early evening we walked to Chennai beach (pictured), this involved turning right onto the main road, in the same direction as the restaurant where we ate dinner, walking along a very busy main road with no pavements, negotiating our way through rickshaws, scooters and other pedestrians.  Past street stalls of food and plastic tat, and glass fronted air-conditioned shops selling the most beautiful gowns and long embroidered men’s jackets, in my fantasies we’d dress like that.  At the crossroads we turned left, instead of crossing over to the restaurant or turning ‘right at the flower garlands,’ which led to the market.

We passed more shops and restaurants, cows eating out of garbage, banana street sellers, then onto a main road with wide pavements.  We passed people living on the pavements with shelters, cooking equipment and even a chicken.  We walked through a subway and came out onto another main road, crossed over and arrived at the beach.

When we see something for the first time, we see it through the filters of our own experience, comparing it to our own familiar versions.
Chennai beach was nothing like any beach we had seen before.  It was huge; long, wide and flat, it is the longest natural urban beach in the country according to Wikipedia.  There were numerous closed up little stalls about the size of a packing crate, covered in tarps.  I thought maybe it was because it was out of season, but Y told us afterwards that it was only open properly in the evening; we were there too early.

There were a couple of plastic roofed stalls with a few chairs and tables selling snacks and drinks with a few customers, and only a few other people around.  We were the only foreigners.  In the distance near the promenade wall was an encampment.  A man went past us on a horse, he made the horse go fast past us as if showing off.  Along the main drag of stalls were two men with balloons-on-a-board-with-guns stalls set up.  ‘Give me a break, give me a break,’ the man kept saying to us as we went past.  My husband almost had a go, then stopped, suddenly realising he didn’t want to potentially be centre of attention.  Something about the atmosphere made us uneasy.

A boy was selling strange ginger coffee from a flask; it was very milky and tasted of ginger but only faintly of coffee.  We were on our way back to the road when a child ran out from the encampment towards us.  Close up they were absolutely filthy, impossible to tell if they was a boy or a girl.  They started tugging at my arm.  A man from one of the stalls threw a stone in the child’s direction and they ran off.  A moment later another smaller child came running but by then we were almost at the road.

On the way home I bought some bananas from a woman with a stall at the side of the road.  I said thank you in Tamil, wrongly and she corrected me (Tamil is hard!) and fed the bananas to the cows eating out of garbage.  It’s something good you can do that’s less complicated, many things are complicated but this isn’t.

The night before we had gone to the market for the first time.  Stalls on either side of a narrow street sold tomatoes, piled high and such shiny bright red, almost irresistible.  Other stalls sold bananas, onions, or different kinds of fruit and veg.  I saw long green vegetables that I’d never seen before that looked at first glance like enormous runner beans.  Some stalls sold only coriander, walking past the smell was wonderful.  Other people sold fruit and veg off blankets on the ground.  In the midst of it all was a little temple with statues of the God with animals in bright colours, and a little shrine with candles.

I am not that confident in markets in UK, I never know how much to ask for, but here I just handed over a 10 rupee note and pointed to the tomatoes.  I got a big amount, I ate a couple, and bought a bunch of bananas from another stall.  Then we went down the backstreets and fed tomatoes and bananas to the cows.  I did this a few evenings while we were in Chennai, it was one of my favourite things to do.  Helping people a little by buying things off them, and feeding the cows, some of whom are painfully thin, and all of them at risk of obstruction, illness and death from eating plastic bags that food is thrown away in.  The feeling of standing amongst garbage, feeling a cow eating softly out of my hand was spiritual, bittersweet.

I hadn’t been able to find a hand cream to replace my beloved Hemp hand cream and so when someone told me that there was a Body Shop in Kochi I was very excited.  My husband looked up the locations on maps and rang them all up but they were out of stock.  We tried again in Chennai, this involved a trip to the mall near where Y lived so we arranged to go there and then meet up.  We got an Uber there as it was cheap and comfortable for a longer journey.

We drove through an area like nothing I’d ever seen, shops like old-fashioned British front room shops but smaller and more like warehouses; like loads and loads of mini individual scrapyards, chock-a-block to the roof, with tyres and all kinds of auto parts.  I guessed that people fixed their own scooters or rickshaws, or had a mate who did.  My husband had read that Chennai was called the Detroit of India; driving through this area I could see why.  Later we hit the main road and saw lots of bright lights, including a framework of coloured lights making a Ganesha; the sights from the window a mix of old and new, rich and poor.

We got dropped off at the Mall and found the Body Shop.  I was so excited that I accidentally knocked over several of the hand creams that were standing on their ends, and one went down the back of the display, causing the shop staff and the security guard to drop everything and try and rescue it.  I apologised profusely of course and seemed to be forgiven.

They only had one tube and that was a tiny handbag sized cream as if I were being told, Okay, if you really think you have to have it, have it, but you really need to get with the programme of using local stuff.  We ate really bad mall food- microwaved insipid versions of familiar Indian dishes- and watched people be in the mall, shopping and eating crap, just like in the West.

We got a rickshaw from the mall to Y’s house.  We’d been unable to negotiate reasonable prices with the rickshaws in Chennai, even when Y told us, ‘Pay this to this, tops, and that’s being generous.’  He was shocked when we told him how much we’d paid to get to his.

Y lived in the top apartment of his landlord’s apartment block, and we sat up on Y’s roof space with his landlord and family enjoying the lovely evening breeze and the views of Chennai.  I spoke a lot to the daughter who was nearing the end of High School.  She laughed when I told her my dress was made out of a lungi.  I talked about psychology, not a huge profession in India, and occupational therapy, also fairly small with posts often staffed by Europeans…  About Indian squirrels and how I think they look more like chipmunks, and we all talked about Alvin and the Chipmunks, a surprising point of familiarity for all of us.

Indians walk side by side fearlessly even when there’s no pavement and Y was the same, walking and talking with us from his to the restaurant.  Re crossing the roads Y said: ‘In Delhi you put your hand up.  In Hyderabad you make eye contact with the driver.  In Chennai you just walk out and the driver will make the adjustment.’  I was still terrified though.

After dinner we went back to his.  Y called Broadlands for us as they normally have a ten pm curfew.  He spoke with them in Tamil then told us they’d said, ‘It’s okay to come back late, Rachel and Anthony can come back anytime.’

Being at Broadlands provided our first real taste of backpacker sociability.  Downstairs outside the office and backing onto a little courtyard there was a seating area where the WiFi worked, with an old sofa, two metal folding chairs and a low wall that doubled as a seat.  This area was an informal meeting hub, most times there was either someone there or someone came along at some point.  C from Detroit said ‘I’m not normally very sociable but every time I sit here, I end up chatting to someone… its nice.’

C had been in India for six months and had travelled all over setting up links with crafts people wanting to export to the US.  C was a Christian and had a beautifully warm and positive attitude towards both his fellow human beings and the way the universe worked; believing in opportunities and in going with the flow.  We shared our stories; C on his ex wife: ‘She had her own problems, but I thought if I could only love her hard enough…’ and we made a strong connection.

We met a young French couple, a man and a woman, she spoke to my husband about her experience of Kolkatta; seeing lots of people sleeping on the streets had upset her.  She’d expected to find backpackers to socialise with but found that there weren’t many around and those that were weren’t that friendly, mirroring our experiences in Goa and Hampi.

The man talked to me about clothes, about Western versus Indian dress. I told him I covered up.  ‘But is it for you or for them?’ he asked.  It’s a hard question to answer, both, I suppose, it makes it easier for me, by making it easier for them.

We met D, an American who had lived and worked for nine years in China before coming to India.  He had just spent nine months in an Ashram in Varanasi learning Sanskrit.  ‘It’s not like you can order a cup of tea in it, it’s not used like that, it’s to better understand the mantras, when the meaning is known they are easier to remember.’

My husband asked him in a quiet moment, why are you here (in India). D said, ‘I don’t always answer this but you seem pretty cool so I will.  I’m after self realisation and I’m not leaving until I get it.’

There was an Italian man next door who had been in India for twenty years, he said he was unwell, he was very thin, so he was going home for health tests under the free health service.  He had spent time in an Ashram, he spoke about his master and said, ‘You must go there.’

We met a South African man just once briefly while we were waiting for our cab to the bus to Pondicherry.  He had lived here for fifteen years.  He asked us straight away, ‘Has India changed you?’

‘It was what we had to do to get here that changed us,’ I said.  ‘Leaving everything, dismantling our lives there.’  Or I could have said, Everything changes us, all the time.

On the other side of us was an Italian woman, a yoga teacher.  We got off to a slow start.  She told me not to smoke outside my room on the step because the smoke got into her room, which was fair enough and I stopped.  After a few days she did chat to us a bit, but didn’t have anything good to say about where we’d been- Kerala- ‘That’s where everyone goes’- or where we were going- Pondicherry- ‘Full of Westerners, it’s not really India.’  When we came down with our backpacks to go to Pondicherry and she saw our yoga mats she said, ‘Do you do yoga?’ sounding really surprised.

‘People underestimate us, maybe I shouldn’t mind, but I do.’  My husband said.  Sometimes we feel more vulnerable than others.  We talked about it later.  Re people we meet who trigger stuff for us- firstly note that our perceptions can be at odds with their intentions, just as can happen vice versa.  From the start I said to myself she could be getting divorced, or anything.  We really know nothing about people we meet, but the fact that emotions are brought up is helpful for growth and can be explored.  If I feel people underestimate me or think I’m boring or whatever is it because I think those things about myself.  Through meeting those people these feelings are made solid for me to address and to learn from.  Other people help us deal with our own stuff in more ways than one.

Travel update

We are still in Koh Phangan, Thailand, same place as last week.  We have a friend from the UK with us now and tomorrow we all move to a different part of the island, nearer a proper town, less partyish, and right on the beach.

Writing update

After working hard whilst I was on my own for four days, I then gave myself four days off.  I worked on this week’s section on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  My realisation/motto this week has been:  Don’t overload the branches, sections, paragraphs, sentences.

This has meant I have sloughed off bits to be written about later.  Which has also helped with time management.  I have also given just brief outlines of some aspects, particularly people, that I will go into in greater detail for the book.  Time management, again.

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Throwback Thursday

Tags

anxiety, creativity, relationships, spirituality, stress, Work, writing

What strikes me the most when reading these old posts is that I was trying to do too much; working full time in a demanding job, swimming several times a week, writing, spiritual seeking/meditation etc, trying to keep in touch with friends and family, and enjoying and being present for the relationship of my life with the love of my life.

Yes, creative people need time alone.  Yes, I had been used to solitude as a child and as a single parent with those lonely evenings and weekends.  Yes it was an adjustment living with someone.  But I think it would have been easier if I hadn’t been rushing around doing so much, if I had made some space and learned to prioritise the most important things and let go of the rest. 

I still have those tendencies (to overdo the busy-ness), but I am more aware of them.  Right now we are living and travelling together, and are with each other most of the time.   I can write when my husband is there, and I don’t worry about doing much else.

The possibility of ease (first published August 2014)

When the going’s good I find it almost impossible to imagine feeling down, low in energy or less than totally happy and supremely grateful for my life.  When things occasionally dip a little, I find it so hard to get out of and such a puzzle to work out how it happened.  That’s because I am a thinker, an over thinker, and it is not easy to think yourself out of a slump.  Easier to think yourself into more and more happiness, if one is already happy, like a snowball of prayer and gratitude and bliss…  When actually down, thinking is not the answer.  Waiting, or waiting with faith, is.  After a few days it comes to me: what it is that’s the matter, what I did or didn’t do to get me to this place.  Sometimes it’s PMT, sometimes I’m just tired.  This time, it was neglecting my need to be alone sometimes.

I prayed for my house to be filled with Love and I realised, it’s me who can fill it, God gives me the support and motivation to do so, but it’s me who actually does it.  When there’s any friction, it’s all the more noticeable because it’s such a happy house usually.  On the other side of friction there is learning, closeness and new insights.  But in the middle of friction is such confusion and muddy thinking that I couldn’t even write anything for a few weeks.  Now, however, I am bursting, I had to take the morning off work just to write down all the thoughts that were pouring out of me and to organise all the little scraps of paper with notes and ideas on.  But in the middle of friction, everything bad is magnified.  It is easy to become irritated and irritable, even whilst wondering fearfully about what is actually happening, where all the bliss went…

One day after work I stopped at the supermarket and instead of rushing home I paused in the car park for five minutes.  It was close to sunset and the sky was shot with yellow and gold, the clouds luminous at their edges.  The air was cool and warm at the same time.  I had bought myself a little tub of fresh olives and I leant against the car, eating them carefully so as not to spill any oil on myself, whilst looking at the big, open Norfolk sky and feeling the air on my skin.

I have just finished reading Whit by Iain Banks.  It is about a religious cult that tries to operate in the spaces, to be creative in all that they do, in order to be closer to God.  So they travel the most complicated or unusual way rather than just hopping on a train, because in those interstitial places, is where God is found.

In the supermarket car park that evening, I realised: Be Creative.  It doesn’t have to be at home.  I have Saturdays or Sundays most weeks to myself anyway, I also swim two or three times a week, I drive an hour each way to work five days a week, composing my thoughts, my writing.  Sometimes I pull over and write things down in my notebook.  I realise driving is not quite the same as being alone not having to do anything.  Reading Iain Banks, I realised I’ve always enjoyed interstitial time.  Like when I pull up at the pool and instead of going straight in I read for a while or just listen to something I’m enjoying on the radio.  Or when I pull over and park up for a nap during a long journey (or let’s face it, not that long, it’s just me, creating a little pocket of space, although the talcum powder footprints on the passenger door hint at something more exciting than just curling up on the back seat and dozing to The Archers).  Often it has revolved around food, especially ‘naughty’ food that I am happier not admitting to eating.  Smokers do it with cigarettes, I suppose, that little bit of semi forbidden or secret time.

Sometimes I’m a bit slow when it comes to realising things about myself.  In the middle of the friction time, I was chatting to a work colleague I hardly know, in a rare moment of sharing and we were both saying about how we struggle to get any time alone in the house, as our partners are usually home before us.  She told me the story of how the other day she had hoped and looked forward to an hour and a half at home, but what with being delayed at work, a phone call from her mum, and new neighbours deciding to pop round and introduce themselves, this time dwindled as she counted it down in her head until she was left with just five minutes.  I understood completely.  I said, but I feel so bad, I so longed for my man to come to live with me and now he’s here I’m talking about wanting time on my own.  She replied smartly, but you must do it, because otherwise you will get irritated.

But it still wasn’t until the olives in the car park a week or so later that I realised what had been the cause of my uncharacteristic irritation.
I will endeavour to make the most of the little spaces of time alone I get in the house, to use them for writing or reading or napping or whatever I want to, and appreciate them!  But I must also accept that they are rarer and learn to be flexible and to create little pockets of alone time outside of the house: really feel it when I go swimming, for example.  Go upstairs and nap or write even when I am not alone in the house.  Create a pocket of independence and stillness whatever and wherever.  It doesn’t take much.  An afternoon alone in the house to write once a week.  Ten minutes alone with a tub of olives and a pretty sky.  And then I am back, full of love.

Chennai, part two

Tags

Broadlands, Cats, Enlightenment, Hindu stories, Hindu temples, India

I fell in love with you and I cried:  Chennai, part two

(Draft chapter cont’d, with extra bits for the blog)

When we arrived in Chennai, I said out loud to my husband, ‘I’ll finish ‘Kochi,’ then I’ll just do a bit for Chennai; there probably won’t be much to write about, it’s a city and I’ve probably used up all my noticing everything energy on Kochi.’  ‘Ha ha ha,’ said the forces of the universe.

We stayed one night in the first guesthouse then moved to Broadlands which had been recommended by Y who lives in Chennai (who we met at Osho’s guesthouse when we first arrived in Varkala).  The guesthouse, set on a dusty side street off the main Triplicane High Road, didn’t look like much from the outside except for its quirky welcome sign (see Instagram travelswithanthony for Broadlands pics).

Stepping inside though, was like stepping inside an old French chateau; the guesthouse has around thirty to forty rooms, built around a central courtyard with a square balcony, with stone floors and dusty hallways, and winding stone staircases leading to tucked away rooms and a roof terrace.  The rough- surfaced old walls were painted faded old white, the paintwork of the banisters of the balcony and the many doors leading off it old baby blue gloss, (the same colour as my Goa birthday ring).

In the courtyard below there were plants in big old white painted stone plant pots and a big green tree, full of crows, its branches growing up above the banisters.  On the dusty stone walkway of the balcony there was an orange cat; one of the guests was taking care of her.  ‘She’s sick, and pregnant, she needs to drink, she’s dehydrated,’ the guest said.

Our room was big and spacious with white washed walls, blue doors and concrete floor.  The high ceiling had wood beams painted baby pink, and lots of cobwebs.  There were three big windows in the room and one in the bathroom, all fitted with mosquito mesh and blue shutters.

From the windows in the room we could see the big white mosque next door, the flock of pigeons on the waste ground between us and the mosque, the neat paved grounds and car park of the mosque, houses and flats in blue, green and peach, and a red flowered green tree.

From the window in the bathroom, white buildings with a glimpse of bright yellow house in-between.  The balconies at the corner of one of the white buildings made gaps like two windows; through the top one I could see the yellow building, through the bottom a green one.  I looked again another day, the green had changed colour.  I was momentarily confused, that scene had been so strong, had I misremembered?  No, there was a sheet or a towel on the balcony!

I saw Indian squirrels for the first time since Panaji, before that I’d only seen them in Hampi, running about on the abandoned sheds of the waste ground outside our window.

At night with the light off, when we opened the double blue doors to the bathroom and put the bathroom light on, the bathroom glowed blue like a portal.

In the morning we were woken at 04:45 by the call to prayer.  We were so close to the mosque that it felt almost painful on my ears.  I went back to sleep, and despite the early morning wake up we have both loved it each time we’ve stayed near a mosque; there’s something timeless and quite magical about hearing the call to prayer.

The next day I sat on the blue painted wooden threshold between the space outside our room and the balcony walkway.  I was writing or should have been writing and having a few moments to myself.  Instead of writing I was trying to find a title for my book, the kind of thing writers can waste hours on.  Going over and over, searching, trying to come up with something, even though I knew that wasn’t how it was going to happen, that a title needs to just come.

At least I’ve set my intention, put it out there that I want to find one, I thought.  I wondered if there was an Indian word, like Namaste (‘Namaste India’), but something less well known, that I could use…  I could ask Y, I thought.  (Y was coming round in the evening to take us to a temple.)

In the courtyard below were three women, part of the house keeping staff of the hotel, standing together in a group.  They were wearing everyday cotton sarees; everyday for them but beautiful to me, like so many things in India.  One red with purple swirls of colour; one an orangey pink with black print; one pale blue almost matching the gloss work with a printed pattern of creamy yellow buttermilk and orange pink leggings which matched the orange-pink saree of the other woman.

The woman with the red-purple saree was wearing a big gold nose stud which flashed like a light.  She was standing with the sun on it in just the right place.  I was sitting in just the right place to see it, and looking at just the right moment.

The three women standing in a circle, or a triangle, in the courtyard and the nose stud shining in the sun was like a scene from a film; easily as beautiful as if they had been dressed in Indian wedding finery and as special to me as the orange cat from the night before.

I forgot to ask Y, but he gave me a title anyway.

I got ready for going to the temple and had a little time to spare, (interstitial time*).  My husband was downstairs using the WiFi and talking to C from Detroit who was staying across the walkway from us.  Y was on his way.

It was raining, we had been surprised by the rain in Chennai, apparently it doesn’t always rain at this time.  The mosque and its lights were white in the dark and the mosque’s pool of water glittered.  I moved the cane chairs with their cushions and our clothes hanging on them back from the windows with their open shutters and sat down, my feet propped up on the other chair.  I had only the low light on so as not to attract mosquitos.

In front of me was a little red table.  Spread out to cover the bed were my lungis, purple and gold and green and gold.  The light from the mosque shone on the rainwater on the blue painted shutters, they looked as if they had been sprinkled in blue glitter.  A fork of lightning flashed in the sky in the gap in between the shutters, one open, one closed.  As the wind blew the shutters the light danced over the raindrops and they glittered even more.

Is it okay to just to be happy?  And what do you have to do to get there?  A lot, because of how things are set up in life.  I thought of the John Lennon quote:  His teacher asked him, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’  ‘Happy.’ he said.  ‘She told me that I didn’t understand the question.  I told her she didn’t understand life.’

(Here, I got a notification that I had to resign into the WiFi. I went on WordPress for a break and saw, ‘For my life to have any meaning, I have to live it for myself.’  That’s the meaning of life, to live it.  To live it for yourself, via escaping conditioning, family, everything that gets in the (your) way)

Y arrived and the three of us got a rickshaw to a completely different part of town.  The area around the temple was busy and colourful with stalls selling, ‘Everything to do with visiting the temple,’ Y explained.  God clothes, which I had previously thought were children’s clothes, fresh flower garlands; the smell of the blossom sweet and strong, the same as the blossom I had put in my hair at the temple in Kanyakumari), ‘And of course food,’ for afterwards.

We walked (clockwise) around the outside areas (non-Hindus are not allowed inside).  The rain had pooled in puddles on the stone floor under our bare feet.  The outside of the temple was decorated with beautiful coloured mouldings.  Coloured electric lights, like fairy lights, were placed around, decorating a statue of Ganesha, a juxtaposition of old and new.

There was a stable full of well fed, happy looking cows, some milk white, the others different shades of browns.  Keeping cows at the temple was a mixture of cow rescue and to use the milk.

Y told us Hindu stories (I couldn’t find the one he told us, but here’s another)  and pointed out religious devotional writing on the stone walls.  ‘It’s all like love poetry,’ Y said, ‘Like, ‘‘I fell in love with you and I cried.’’

I felt myself well up.  Even though Y is one of us, we’ve said anything to each other (I’m beginning to believe you find your people via travel, or on the internet?), and the other person there with us was my husband, I choked back the emotion and changed the subject back to the cows.  But when Y said I could go see them, that made me all the more emotional, thinking of how gentle they are, of the street cows left to eat out of garbage, the horrors of the dairy industry.

At the temple there are poojas six times a day; we saw the last one of the day, which is longer and bigger as it is the closing ceremony of the day.  Everyone stood outside the main temple and looked in.  The crowd began to chant, a low, repetitive singing that wrapped itself around us.  Clouds of incense filled the temple and the courtyard where we stood.  The main statue of the God was being bathed in milk.  Lots and lots of milk, poured over like a fountain or a waterfall.  Y told us it’s not just milk that is used, it’s fruit salad, all kinds of offerings…  I was bordering on being overwhelmed.  Nothing can beat this, experiencing a Hindu temple with a Hindu and a good friend.

In another temple room, the God’s wife was dressed up in a gold and green silk dress.  The dresses are changed during every pooja; people bring the dresses, hence the stalls outside.  At the end the God’s feet were carried on a small chariot from his temple to hers, where they spend the night, symbolising the God spending the night with his wife.  ‘Even the gods need sex,’ Y said.

I had wondered what happens to all the milk.  Afterwards, walking away I saw cats.  ‘There’s lots of cats,’ I said.  ‘There’s a lot of milk!’  Y said.  People take some of it, some of it runs off, the cats drink it.  Rivers of milk, for cats.  There were cats on a wall just outside the temple, just beyond the wall was a little house.  I could see into their downstairs room, there were lots of orange and orange and white cats inside, like a cat cafe.

Later I admitted to having a moment.  I told Y about the poetry, about the title for my book, that ‘I fell in love with you and I cried,’ could be my title, although I forgot to tell him the bit about asking him for it.

I told Y about the women in the courtyard, the beautiful scene, the nose stud.  He told me that in Kanyakumari (my favourite place in India, so far) there is a statue of the Goddess Kanyakumari, apparently the nose stud of the statue shone so bright sailors thought it was a lighthouse and ended up getting caught on the rocks.

(I’d always thought a lighthouse was to warn sailors of rocks, to tell them where not to go, rather than somewhere for them to head to.  Discombobulated that I could have totally misunderstood something so everyday I looked it up on Wikipedia.  Yes lighthouses were originally built to guide ships in to a safe harbour.  Later in more modern times they became warnings re where not to go.  Here is a link to the page and another to a surprising interesting biography about a famous lighthouse designer and builder, a great story about getting gifted opportunities and making the most of them.)

Back at the guesthouse the three of us chatted, swapping ‘spiritual’ experiences we’d had since the last time we’d last seen each other.  Y told us about returning to Chennai the day after we’d met and spent our evening together, he’d had to get a fifteen hour bus ride back to Chennai then go into work to prepare for teaching.

At work he had loads to do- photocopying and getting ready- and only half an hour in which to do it.  He felt spaced out, paranoid, thinking he looked stoned; but everyone was smiling at him and offering to help.  Y realised he hadn’t eaten for fifteen hours.  He asked for some water, one of his students poured some Red Bull into a glass; it looked like a potion.

He thought of what R (who we met at Osho’s guesthouse at the same time) had said about drinking the potion when you are born, the potion that causes us to forget who we are.  ‘Don’t drink all of it, then you’ll remember,’ R had told us.  Y remembered this, and only drank some of it.

Y felt a force of energy crackle all the way up one side and pass all the way though his head and body.  Time altered.  He felt full of energy.  He did all the work, that he had so much of and so little time to do, the work that he’d had only half an hour for but that should have taken even more.  He looked at clock, only ten minutes had passed.

Chennai…  Pondicherry…  Chennai…  Thailand… to be continued…

Travel update 

For pics see my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony

We are in Thailand, Koh Phangan, same place as last week; my stepdaughter came out to Thailand for a holiday with us.  Thailand is clean, orderly, great food, beach, sea…  Did I mention the food?  Noodles, tofu, fresh vegetables!  Heaven.  But I am still looking forward to getting back to India.

My husband left on Wednesday with my stepdaughter to get the ferry to the mainland, stay the night in the town there before getting the all day train to Bangkok on Thursday.  They will spend one night in Bangkok, then on Friday my step daughter flies home, and at around same time our friend arrives from the UK.  My husband and our friend will stay the night and the next day in Bangkok before getting night train here on Saturday.  They will arrive here around lunchtime on Sunday.  So I have four nights on my own.

First night, couldn’t sleep, and stricken with anxiety especially after we had a spider a couple of days ago.  (My brain fuzzed this out so it looked like fluff, and my husband dealt with it while I cowered crouched on top of the toilet in case it ran into the bathroom).  (My strategy while he is away is to stay outside the room as long as possible then keep the lights off in evening and at night so if there is anything I won’t see it.  I trust that we will keep out of each other’s way.)

The next morning, I pulled myself together, tidied up and put all our stuff away, and arranged for the room to be cleaned, especially dusted.  I went for a swim, a walk on the beach, and wrote.  Kind of like a retreat, in the midst of an idyllic holiday resort that’s gearing up for the Full Moon Party…  Be flexible Rachel, it’s all experience…

Writing update

WordPress, as well as daily life, and discussions with my husband, has been inspirational recently and I hope to get onto that over the next few weeks.  Thank you to Des and Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha for almost giving me more than I can process.

I’m seeing patterns in my writing, which I’m seeing as helpful re writing and as validation re being on the right path.

Sat- day off, (over did it Fri, lack of sleep, travel, etc).  Sun- typed over breakfast and after lunch while the others were doing other stuff, just typing from notebook, organising, moving bits, reading notebook.  Mon- no, busy/out.  Tue- some typing up from notebook.  Wed, Thu, working on this.  I got it done on Thursday evening, so proud of myself!

*Whit by Iain Banks  Talks about interstitial time, religion, cults, and (healing hands) healing.  I recommend it!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Throwback Thursday

Tags

Art, creativity, Menstruation, Periods

The crash that follows too much seeking.  I don’t eat Dairy Milk anymore (think of the cows).  And the Farrow and Ball painted room looked horrible.

In Praise of Magnolia and In Praise of PMS  (first published July 2014)

In Praise of Magnolia

When I was in my twenties I painted my bedroom shocking pink.  I spray painted Hey where the fuck were you when my lights went out?* and Under neon loneliness motorcycle emptiness** below a string of multicoloured fairy lights.

Twenty years later my husband and I have spent hours poring over paint charts trying to choose something pale and neutral.  So what happened, have I become boring?  Driving to work I flicked from a CD to Radio 4 and came across Martin Creed (Turner Prize winner in 2001 for an empty room in which the lights went on and off at 5 second intervals) being interviewed about Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (a square of black oil paint on a white canvas) and whether or not it is art.

I am sure I have been guilty of saying dismissive things about conceptual art and certainly I have often been at a loss as to what to say at friends’ art exhibitions.  But with Martin, I’m going to call him Martin from now on, a light went on (a terrible pun, I know).  He refused to get into making judgements about whether or not things were art; he said it only matters if you like it or not.

He explained that the purpose of things like black squares or white squares or lights that just go on and off is that there’s nothing but your own thoughts and reactions.  In this busy world it’s nice to just sit and stare at a plain canvas and see what comes into your head.

Yes!  That’s it!  In my twenties I needed all my stimulation outside of me.  I repainted my room every year or so.  I wore homemade gold dresses and leopard faux fur hats.  But at forty-four, the inside of my head has a whole lot more stuff in it, and more importantly, I know my way around in there now.  I long for simple clothes, because I am interesting enough.

So rather than thinking that to paint everything magnolia smacks of a lack of imagination, perhaps the opposite is true!

As with most things, there is a middle ground, and in this case the middle ground is called Hay or number 37 by Farrow and Ball. ***

In Praise of PMS

Maintaining my equilibrium was hard this week.**** My emotions skittered all over the place, my confidence wobbled, I felt anxious and panicky.  But is there anything good about PMS?  However challenging I find it, I do think there is something valuable there.  The veil between my emotions and the world is so thin.  It’s so hard to fake my feelings.  And even though I do not enjoy the few days each month of feeling a sudden loss of confidence and capability, I can’t help but wonder, if I were to scratch the surface a bit more would I find that the emotional state it unleashes could actually be useful?  It might need a couple of days off work though, so that instead of normal activities I could explore doing whatever it is that would be best done on those days.

On Wikipedia it gives a biological explanation, saying that the woman at this time finds her man so annoying that she breaks up with him, thereby freeing her to find someone who will get her pregnant.  It also quotes a man in 1873 saying that women should stay at home due to their uncontrollable behaviours when they have PMS.  A different man said that women were at the height of their powers at this time and so should be freed from mundane concerns and distractions.  A woman researcher said that women need time alone when they have PMS but rarely get it.  And it said that some countries give women menstrual leave.  (I always admired a woman at my last job who was so open with her (male) boss about asking for a day off during her period, saying, ‘I could come to work but I’d have to sit on a black plastic bin bag and I think the patients might think it was weird.’  ‘Enough information,’ he said, but gave her the day off).

I think I could take something from all the Wikipedia theories and opinions.  So, PMS shines a light on everything that irritates, from the trivial to the important.  It shows us what is not in harmony with our temperament and needs, what is bad for our soul.  Of course some things will be minor that on reflection we decide to live with.  Sometimes it might show us what we need to change: I suddenly fell out of love with work, suddenly couldn’t stand the late hours and the drive and the lack of support.  I calmly decided to look for another job.  And sometimes, all we need is some time alone, if only to eat a family size bar of Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut and watch romantic comedies, and contemplate how wonderful we are.

*Hole
**Manic Street Preachers
***I know, but I probably won’t do it again for another ten years
****But I still prayed five times every day.  I still felt creative, connected and insightful.  I still got stuff done (my proudest achievement- I took off, washed, dried and put back on, the sofa and sofa cushion covers, a feat akin to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro).

I fell in love with you and I cried: Chennai

Tags

Blogging, Chennai, India, Motivation, writing

I fell in love with you and I cried: Chennai
(draft book chapter, part one, with a few extra details added for the blog)

(Kochi) The ride in the rickshaw from the train station to the guesthouse had been unpleasant, so we got a taxi on the way back thinking, why suffer if we don’t have to? We drove past parked up intricately painted trucks which looked like vintage fair ground vehicles; past a scooter with a man and a woman, her holding a tiny baby in her arms.

At the train station, again feeling comfortable, walking the length of the platform. I bought sweets, I said they were for cold/cough, the man showed me some herbal sweets, ginger or mint. I asked for twenty, a mixture, and he counted them out and wrapped them up neatly in a little parcel of newspaper held together with an elastic band.

At the train station restaurant we had masala dosa and vegetable biryani, this was mostly rice, but was nonetheless plain and delicious. Then another dosa to share, actually two, one each, as they came in twos as they sometimes do at the train stations and two more lots of chai tea. The waiters laughed but we wanted to eat well before getting on the train; we also bought samosas, banana balls and water from the station forecourt.

The train began its journey at the same station as us which meant we had no anxieties about people being in our seats. The train was the best one we had been on, as good as the Delhi to Goa one but brand new; it looked like it had never been used before and the seats still had that new plastic smell.

We were in 2 Tier AC (this means that the bunks are two high, not three, so everything feels a bit more spacious and the carriages, in my thus far limited experience, are smarter, with curtains at the compartments), a step up from our previous, daytime journey from Varkala to Kochi. The train left Kochi at around 7pm for a fifteen hour journey to Chennai. It was a good job we had eaten and bought food to bring on the train as no one came round with food, no samosas, no water, even.

First to get on after us was a young guy who had the bunk above my husband, he got straight up onto his bunk but the three of us talked for a while. He was a final year engineering student, he said that Indian parents want their children only to be engineers or doctors. He said sometimes parents decide when a baby is four months old or even before they are born what they are going to study. His parents were from Kerala but work in the UAE and he was brought up there up. He told us UAE is nicknamed Little Kerala as there’s so many people from Kerala there. We asked him if he had any pressure to get married, ‘Not yet,’ he said but his cousin who is a girl does, ‘She’s same age, at university like me, and wants to be a doctor.’ He talked about corruption and about politics and about the garbage problem. ‘As soon as I can, I’m getting out of this country,’ he said.

Later a man who had the bunk above me got on. He sat down next to my husband and we chatted for a bit. He lived in Kerala but was going to Chennai for a one week training course. He said he preferred Kerala for its climate and the nature, and said that Chennai would be hot. I asked him if he minded going, he said, ‘No not at all, it’s only one week.’

Then my husband and I watched Netflix, Orange is the new black, now finished, I’d like to get the book to find out how much is real, with the tablet and headphones, us both sitting on my husband’s bed and the man sitting on mine/ours (the lower bunks are also the seats for the people in the upper bunks until it is time for everyone to go to sleep).

Everyone got ready for bed (for me, this just meant undoing my bra, I wore comfy clothes and slept in them) and the man went up.
We each had two white cotton sheets, a pillow and a heavy woollen blanket, the ac makes it chilly and I folded my blanket double. The bed was firm but not really uncomfortable.

Someone closed the curtain to our cubicle and the lights were dimmed. It felt cosy, safe and peaceful. I think staff came and shone torch to check on us in the night. There was a guard asleep out near the sinks outside the loos. I think it felt okay to be with strangers because we’d chatted. I lay awake for a while, just enjoying the feeling. It was exciting. When I went to the loo, I counted the curtained cubicles to find way my way back to the correct bunk.

Woke up. The houses looked like Kanyakumari, which is also in Tamil Nadu, even though the two places are far apart (Tamil Nadu is a large state).

The palm trees were different to the ones in Kerala, some had shorter, floppier leaves and spiky trunks where the stubs of old leaves remained. Others were tall with very thin trunks and spiky punk hair like Dr Zeus trees and there were also low, bushy trees almost like English trees, like little hawthorn trees or big overgrown gorse bushes.

The train arrived later than expected, the man doing the training course said he had just enough time to get to the course for the starting time. No shower, no breakfast and going straight to a work course after an overnight train journey. He didn’t seem to mind at all, I thought about people in the UK, myself included and how we’d all complain if work expected us to do that.

The train station was big and busy, we found out where the prepaid taxi stand was and got a taxi to the guesthouse. Our friend from Chennai told us that Chennai was hot and dry and that where we were staying was busy, ‘You are staying in the real India.’

Our guesthouse was down a narrow alleyway off a busy main street, hectic with rickshaws and people. The guesthouse was tiled throughout with pretty green glass at the landing windows. Our room was small with no window but it was clean. We dumped our bags and went for breakfast- masala dosas- at a restaurant nearby that the guesthouse staff told us about, and then went for a wander of the local area.

We had finished our water on the train and spent a while looking around before realising we were overheated and thirsty. We stopped at a juice place and had fresh juice, salted peanuts and cold water and sat down for a while. Even so it felt good to be back in a dry heat, hotter but less humid, more like Delhi.

I washed loads of clothes and hung them in the bathroom, even though we had no proper window, just vents, they dried within a few hours, and didn’t smell, I was amazed. In Varkala during the monsoon it had been so difficult to get clothes dry.

I struggled with annoying WiFi, trying to do all the reviews I’d promised. Like postcards, only do if you really want to and don’t say you’ll do unless you’re sure. Now I only do if they especially ask and/or I make a good connection. I gave up and had a nap, often the best solution.

We went out for dinner at a different place, another local non touristy restaurant. Staff stood all around staring at us while we ate. It was a real lesson in overcoming the effects of self consciousness; eating rice with my fingers, being in the flow and not getting put off by six people watching us! The food served on yellow plastic plates again, like it was in Kanyakumari (must be a Tamil Nadu thing?). I had onion oothapam for the first time.

The night was warm and felt exciting and I didn’t want to go in for the night yet so we went to a little shop and bought 7Up and biscuits and cigarettes. I wasn’t sure if it was okay to smoke there (UK conditioning!). The hotel forecourt faced the alley but there wasn’t anywhere to sit, so we perched awkwardly on a little concrete step. One of the hotel staff got us some chairs and we sat down at the edge of the forecourt where it met the alley, and gave him a couple of cigarettes.

Opposite was a row of parked scooters. Three street dogs were squaring up and barking at each other; they were thick set with faces like Ridgebacks, sturdy, their bodies muscular and well covered. People went past, some said hello, we didn’t see any other Westerners. A older Indian man wearing a lungi and an Indian shirt, short sleeved with front pocket, walked passed us, greeted us and said, ‘Welcome to India.’

The wall opposite us was faded paint-peeled orange, tinged with blue. An orange cat sat on the wall. The cats in Chennai all seemed to be orange, not bright ginger tom colour but a paler orange. The colour of tiger milk, a drink my grandmother used to make me as a child, milk mixed with orange juice. A few feet below the cat was a little overhang roof of old blue corrugated metal. Beyond the wall the blue sky was tinged with yellow. The colours were warm and dusty, as if they’d been made out of chalk pastels. I gazed at the scene, wanting to remember, trying to soak it in, absorbing the colours through my pores.

‘Look,’ I said to my husband, ‘Isn’t it amazing, how the colours all go together; blue metal roof, orange wall with blue tinge, orange cat, blue-with-yellow-tinge sky.’
‘That isn’t the sky, that’s another building,’ he said. I looked again and saw that what I thought was sky was actually the wall of a big building in the background. It didn’t matter though.

A man came out of a door near where the cat was; he spoke to the cat as if telling it to get down, and walked off. The cat looked at him when he was speaking, stayed still for a few moments, then jumped down onto the blue roof, onto a parked scooter below, then from seat to seat along the length of the row of scooters, and disappeared from view.

Travel update

For nice pics see my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony

We flew from Chennai to Bangkok on Sunday night, arriving early on Monday morning. We stayed two nights in Bangkok then got the over night train, then a ferry, then a taxi, to our place in Ko Phangan, where we are right now.

I realised that I can’t pack for Thailand, India and Japan and have a light backpack that will carry on (7kg) for Japan ( my ticket to Japan does not include checked in baggage unless I pay extra).

I admitted that many of my clothes had been bought while shopping as a recreational activity and when I felt fed up with my clothes and wanted to get something nice. I had such fun shopping in an Indian department store in Varkala; there were a lot more staff than in an equivalent UK shop, and I had three women helping me in the changing room. I so wanted to go shopping, get some new stuff, and buy something with the women, that I ended up getting things that weren’t quite right.

Also if I want a light backpack I can only carry what I need right now. I had some thick baggy trousers, they would have been good if we go up North when it’s chilly in the evenings in January or February but honestly, I can just buy again, they were cheap; it’s not worth straining myself carrying a heavy bag for that. It’s hard for me to waste stuff/money, having been brought up to be frugal. It helped to think of it in terms of that I paid for the experience…

So just pack bare essentials in terms of products/meds/miscellaneous, plus sarongs and vests for Thailand and a couple of nice dresses for Japan. The hotel cleaner in Chennai even asked if we had any stuff we were leaving that we could give him so that he can sell it for food, so that clinched it.

I am proud to report that my backpack weighed in at 6.1kg at Chennai airport. (Unfortunately my handbag might be weighed and added to that, if so I have a bit more work to do…) I can just pay extra for some check in luggage, but this kind of feels like a good task, and kinder on my body to travel light.

Writing update

I didn’t do much writing in Pondicherry even though we didn’t do that much there and I had time; the room was hot and stuffy, I felt a bit out of sorts, slightly funny tummy, and somewhat spiritually overwhelmed/absorbing everything from Chennai (to be continued…).

So I read people’s blogs and relaxed and barely did any writing, apart from handwriting observations and thoughts while/about being there.

We got back to Chennai Wednesday evening, feeling funny having not eaten properly all day, bananas, nuts, biscuits and crisps (as all restaurants were closed, will get to that next week) and didn’t do anything that night. I worked hard on Thursday but I still had lots to do on Friday. I got anxious.

I had some thoughts, Well it doesn’t matter if you don’t do it, Nothing matters, vs It’s a commitment you made to yourself, You aren’t doing anything else. Thinking I’m writing to order, from the head, rather than free flowing from the heart (I kept thinking about the cat on the wall, and the raindrops on the shutters (to be continued); the spiritual moments of Chennai that I so wanted to capture and was interested in.)

But writing a book has to involve a mixture of head and pure creative flow or it won’t ever get finished or edited. There was no internet in the room, and nowhere to charge my tablet downstairs where the internet was, so that slowed me up a bit, alternating between using and charging my tablet.

But I accepted that, and when at around ten pm India time I got it (last week’s Kochi chapter and blog) done and posted, I felt very happy; like I was honouring a commitment I had made to myself.

It was the same when I did the draft chapter on Kanyakumari for the blog, I spent the whole Friday on it and got stressed. It’s actually much longer than a normal blog so although it seems an easy cop out to just do the chapter as the blog, it is actually is a lot of words to deal with. (And for you to read. Next time (this time, Chennai) I’ll let myself do it in parts, or extracts. And do more in advance. (But I have rambled on in the writing update so it still ended up being long, sorry!)

I’m typing this bit on Saturday; interestingly I didn’t start with the cat (I did that on Sunday, but it was nothing really, I mean it was in the notebook just fine, it would have kept); I just started at the top and worked my way down, warming up to it, setting the scene and the mood, even for myself. I started from the last bit of notebook that wasn’t crossed out (meaning it had been typed up). As I finished for the day (on Saturday) I looked at where I am up to in the notebook: I am at the cat bit! How many times do I have to say, Trust the process.

Sunday afternoon, before Thailand, equal parts not wanting to write as excited and anxious re packing and just wanting to be with the feelings and the experience, vs when I look at my notebook I realise how much I have to write about Chennai, and I want to get on with it! (Let alone completing the Kerala chapter, and doing the additions and corrections to the already done chapters…)

I carried on writing this Chennai chapter at the airport on Sunday, then late Wednesday night on the train, late Thursday night in Ko Phangan, and Friday (today) morning and teatime, so this week was better, just.

In the garden in Bangkok on Monday late afternoon I sat and made many notes in my notebook, ready for the Thailand section, so the future is taking care of itself.

Unhelpful thoughts: Maybe a book is too hard, maybe I just want to be a blogger; the 2014 ones that I’ve been re-reading and reposting as part of Throwback Thursday were luminous, proper blogs; I wasn’t writing anything else so everything went into the blog.

Helpful thoughts: If you want to carry on like this (globetrotting, focussing on self realisation, living outside the matrix) then you’d better finish the book, sell it and make some money!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

 

 

Throwback Thursday

Tags

anxiety, prayer, relationships, religion, spirituality, Throwback Thursday

In Love with Life (first published July 2014)

This week I have bought and drunk two kale and spinach smoothies.  This would have been unheard of before now.  I have always been very reluctant to even try vegetable juice, been vehemently anti food fads and super foods and so on and until recently I was fairly lax about eating properly.  But I do not necessarily know what’s best.  I used to be similarly dismissive of spirituality and religion, maintaining there was nothing whatsoever spiritual about me and that I didn’t believe in anything!  I wonder now whether I should track back all the things I was sneery about as an angry young woman and cynical about as a grown up woman, and embrace them: starting with vegetable juice and moving onto, let’s see, success, money, forward planning, and miracles.

I went through a phase of being into the Law of Attraction and practicing The Secret but I could never get that excited about finding a parking space in a busy car park (partly because I would hate to have to reverse park into the one remaining space with a queue of cars behind me, parking not being my strong point), or visualising cheques in the mail.  But I did and do believe in maintaining a level of serenity, openness and optimism which does inevitably make the day (and life) go better.

I’ve moved up a level now though.  Recently I have been praying five times a day: in the morning before I go to work, at lunchtime, at the end of the working day before I go home, in the evening at home, and before bed.  I kneel on the floor and say thank you and feel connected with God, and send distant healing to anyone on my list for the week.  That’s it.  And, oh my, what an effect it is having!

Everywhere, people seem so happy and friendly.  At the swimming pool, I heard three lots of children having a really fun time with their parents, lots of laughter and no stress.  In the supermarket a dad was having a laugh with his adolescent daughter, threatening to embarrass her by dancing, they were both laughing and caught my eye.  The lights blew on my car and a man at a garage helped me for ages for free.  My friend who has been very depressed suddenly shifted and sounded so full of change and light.  I visited the university where I trained; I was glad to be able to tell my old tutor what I was doing and so touched when she said that every time she drives past the hospital where I got my first job, she thinks of me.

I had the bravery (re spiders) and the motivation to go up in the loft and get rid of stuff and tidy the house, I also had fun seeing friends, I did healing and writing, all effortlessly, seamlessly, as if this week was a microcosm of a perfect life.  Shopping in the city and then going to a family barbecue, with none of my normal anxieties about time, getting everything done, getting ready, what to wear, what to say.  It was all so easy, just sitting on the grass, chatting away, entertaining the kids so totally unselfconsciously then sitting with the adults later, no shyness, no blank spaces, no tiredness, just total ease…  Home at 10pm, a quick tidy round and wash up without even thinking about it and certainly without any stress about getting things done.

Me and my husband both independently deciding that one evening was the evening to reconnect with each other, to ‘party’ (by which I mean a bottle of beer, a cigarette and an episode of something funny), but still, we were so happy with each other, taking a step out of the routine of the week which usually just revolves around cooking and eating and going to bed early enough to get through the next day.  Thinking that evening how lovely everything is, how all this extra stuff keeps happening, all these things that I hadn’t even known I wanted but that have just been so nice, and that all this has happened since I started praying.  I had this sense that it’s like my life will improve in ways I can’t even imagine.  I can’t imagine, but God can…  Immediately after I had this thought, my husband looked at his rota and said, ‘I don’t have to get up at 5am, I have to get up at 6am!’  I said, ‘so just when you thought life couldn’t get any better!’  Him, laughing, putting on a cool American accent, ‘Yep, it just keeps on getting better!’

The drawback with The Secret is that we are limited by our own imagination, you have to visualise it all yourself.  This way (the prayer way) opens up possibilities I can’t even imagine.

Kochi

Tags

Cochin, Fort Kochi, India, Indian clothes, Kochi, Kurtis, Sarees, Travel, writing

Writing update
Below is a draft of the Kochi Chapter.  I intend to have some writing about Chennai ready for next week’s blog post.

Travel update
We left Varkala on 27th July, went to Kochi for two nights, then travelled to Chennai overnight, had five nights in Chennai, then went to Pondicherry for four nights.  We came back to Chennai on Wednesday and on Sunday we fly to Thailand.

Kochi (or Cochin, many places in India have more than one way that their name is spelled) is north of Varkala, still in the state of Kerala.  The train station we travelled to is Ernakulam Junction; just a week or so before we went the train station was flooded- see video below.  Right now the area has been hit again by floods caused by the monsoon.  Monsoon flooding has badly affected Kerala with much loss of life.

Kochi draft chapter (with some extra bits for the blog)

We spent the last few days in Varkala taking photos and saying our goodbyes, eating last meals at favourite places and experiencing minor twinges of regret about places we didn’t end up going to or didn’t go to as much as we’d thought we would.

On our last night friends we had made in Varkala took us out for dinner.  At the end of the evening we said goodbye to the waiting staff.  ‘We’ll miss you,’ we all said.  The next morning we had a last masala dosa at our favourite breakfast place; the waiter went out and bought us some sweets as a gift.  Then to a favourite cafe for last minute photos and a last coffee and we were off.

The train station at Varkala was busy yet felt comfortable.  The train was late, we waited outside for a while; it was hot so we moved indoors where there were fans.  We met a Spanish backpacker on his way to Kanyakumari and we talked about visiting there and Hampi, showing him photographs and chatting until it was time to go.

We were in 3 tier AC and there was a slight sense of fun sociability; a woman travelling with a little girl, the woman had a phone with a fun ring tone, they went up onto a top bunk together; a man and woman with a baby, they rigged up one of the sheets as a curtain to make a cubicle, a cosy nest for the woman and the baby.  White sheets and grey woollen blankets were provided but several women slept under their own brightly coloured pieces of fabric.

Many people were already fast asleep or went to sleep soon after even though it was only lunchtime.  The train goes all the way from Kerala to Delhi; when we travelled South from Delhi to Goa it took twenty-five hours and that was the fast train, some trains took thirty-six hours.  Kerala is further South than Goa so the people going to Delhi must have been facing a train journey of thirty plus hours, at least.  Maybe the best way through it is to sleep, and to eat.

Our journey from Varkala to Kochi was only about four hours.  I had a cold and a cough and hadn’t slept well, as well as being mildly hungover from drinking a bit of alcohol and smoking cigarettes the previous evening.  I fell asleep for a while, waking up when I heard a man coming through selling samosas, and we ate little deep fried samosas, a bit greasy, not as nice as the big thick baked ones we’ve had on trains before.

Arriving at Kochi (Ernakulum Junction) it was very busy and with more obvious poverty, outside the train station I saw homeless men, their hair clumped together in matted dreadlocks.  I saw a bicycle rickshaw for the first time.

We got a rickshaw to the guesthouse and along the way were tarpaulin makeshift tents with cooking equipment on the pavement and washing lines of clothes.  Besides some of these makeshift tents were ready made curtains for sale with metal rings in for hanging, hung in multi coloured rows on the washing lines.

It was a long rickshaw ride in the height of rush hour, the busiest place we’d been since Delhi.  Our rickshaw driver stopped for no one, he didn’t let cars in, he just kept going.  We were right inside the traffic and the fumes.  I could see other rickshaws, scooters, people’s legs and arms, passing inches away from our rickshaw.

We passed a crowded bus stop; the people and the clothes looked slightly different, more done up, more varied.  Women in kohl makeup with heavy gold earrings, glamorous, city looking; college students, boys and girls arguing and laughing with each other.  Even the umbrellas were different; subtle, brown, prettily patterned.

We went over a large bridge, with lots of big dark green work boats, stocky tugs.

At last we came to our area.  It was suddenly quiet; lots of trees and the smell of monsoon damp, with mould and moss on the walls.  We passed a park with boys playing football.  A boy rode past us on a bicycle, a football in one hand, steering and holding a pair of football boots with the other.

The place we were staying at was a homestay; a little house, the hallway and stairs looked newly done out in grey marble with a chrome bannister.  Marble is everywhere, presumably it’s relatively inexpensive in India.

Our room was small and smelled damp and mouldy.  I felt fatigued and a bit out of sorts and worried that it would be unhealthy.  I took off my sweaty clothes and socks and lay on the bed for a while, dozing a bit before went out to eat.

It smelled better outside, maybe we’d become accustomed to it or maybe the room smelled worse.  Nearby the homestay was a little stall, I bought soft mints for my throat, wrapped in a twist of newspaper.

There was a vegetarian restaurant just around the corner.  The owner greeted us warmly, chatted with us and put a photo book of Kerala in front of me.  It reminded me of being at my grandma’s and being given a big book of cats to look at (the restaurant was actually called Grandma’s Kitchen).  The owner went out to the pharmacy and came back with little eucalyptus capsules for my cold.

We ate a good meal, a lovely veg thali, with many different curries including okra and the most amazing new dish, a green kind of mousse made from coconut and coriander, ‘Best eaten with this;’ the man said, a yellow sponge cake that was ‘in between sweet and savoury,’ ‘Gujarati idli.’  It was made of chickpea flour, and was spongy and moist and made a perfect combination with the green ‘mousse’.

When we got back to the homestay I watched a very long kitten video (the one from my Celebrating Others blog post) all the way through, then the last episode of Kiss Me First on Netflix, then sleep.  Comfort food, TLC, picture books and kittens, it seems I’m not too old to benefit from those medicines.

The next morning I woke feeling better all round.  Our long stay in our luxury guesthouse in Varkala had made me a bit soft; moving to less salubrious places was an adjustment and plus we’d got settled and had to uproot ourselves.  However, it only took me a day to feel at home in a new place.

Our room was small and plain, painted white, with non-slippery tiles in the bathroom, mosquito mesh at the windows and was actually really clean.  Clean sheet, under that another clean sheet, under that a clean mattress cover, and clean double bagged pillows.  At the guesthouse in Kanyakumari, although the pillowcases were clean, the pillows were black with dirt under the pillowcases.

It was nice staying at a homestay for the first time, coming down for breakfast at the table set just for us.  We had home made Indian breakfasts, puttu, steamed rice with green peas masala and sweet black tea in black china cups and saucers.

I went for a walk on my own, taking photographs of moss covered walls.  Potted plants sat on the tops of walls and windowsills.  The area was nice with lots of guesthouses.  I met a family from Tamil Nadu.  At an outside door I saw a purple curtain with metal rings like the ones we’d seen for sale at the side of the road.

We went out to explore the Fort Kochi area.  Huge trees with actual plants growing on their branches, like an ecosystem all of their own.  (I realise trees are an ecosystem of their own, this just made this visually explicit.)  Some trees had dark green fur growing on them that hung down like a shaggy coat or tatty velvet braids.  A dead tree had so many ferns growing on it that it looked as if it were alive again.

Everywhere we go has its own ‘things’.  In Fort Kochi it was walls with words; words and moss.  (These are two of my favourite things.  I thought of Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote a big book about an early female botanist who specialised in moss.)  A long stretch of once white wall was covered in a long poem, partially obscured by moss.  Another wall outside someone’s house, spelled out a life philosophy from A to Z.

In a small park there was a group of boys playing football, next to them another group playing cricket.

We saw boys in school uniform on bicycles and girls in immaculate periwinkle blue uniforms with matching hair ribbons.  It was Saturday; a rickshaw driver told us that normally school is Monday to Friday but some schools had had to close for two weeks during the monsoon, so they are going in at the weekends to catch up.

The rickshaw drivers were pushier than we’d been used to and repeated certain phrases, ‘Do me one favour,’ ‘No business,’ and offering a cheap starting price then saying, ‘If you don’t mind I’ll show you…’ and tried to take us to tourist places or certain department stores.  This was the first time I’d experienced the department stall thing, (where the fare is less if you agree to be taken to a department store, in return the shops will give the rickshaw driver petrol vouchers).  We did not want to be taken somewhere in the heat and subjected to the hard sell, so we just paid the full price.  The people in the shops also had a particular strategy, they called out, ‘Do you remember me?’ which confused me at first.

Nonetheless, Fort Kochi area was very quiet for India, we met a French pair who had just ended up staying there for months, like we did in Varkala.  The buildings were European looking, Portuguese, with decorative iron work railings.  There were proper shops selling decent looking clothes (too bad my backpack feels too heavy, out of practice or accumulation in Varkala, probably both), and shops selling everything, including things we wanted; packs of tissues, herbal mints, dried apricots, nuts and soya milk!  (We’d drunk all the soya milk in Varkala- none of the shops we had bought it from were restocking at that time- so this was very exciting.)

Walking around I’d suddenly felt fatigued and wanted to stop for a drink, my husband said, ‘How about there,’ I looked up and there was an opening leading to what looked like a green oasis.  We went in and sat outside under an umbrella with a fan rigged up next to us.  We drank sweet lemon sodas and ginger tea.

Although we both love Indian food, I admit that I did also enjoy the continental food available in Varkala, fresh salads with spinach, tomato and cranberries, and aubergine and tomato pasta.  Knowing that continental food will be much less available outside of Kerala, when we saw an Italian place we stopped there for lunch.  I wasn’t even that hungry, but when I saw that they had vegan pizza on the menu, I had to have it.  It did not disappoint; thin stone baked base laden with vegetables including courgettes and aubergines and no cheese.

The pizza was good, but the menu made me smile.  The use of the English language in India is slightly different to its use in the UK and sometimes sounds to my ears as over statements and understatements.  So on the pizza menu is stated unapologetically ‘dreams take colour… we invite you to taste the flavour of a dream.’  On the other hand, a road traffic accident with multiple fatalities can be described in the newspaper as a ‘mishap.’

We walked down to the sea.  There was a stall selling only umbrellas and sun hats (ideal for the monsoon); the umbrellas were opened and displayed at the front of the stall like colourful jellyfish, the sun hats with different coloured ribbons hung up all together.

There were lots of people selling fish.  A few stalls aimed at tourists; birds nest coconuts like in Kanyakumari but without the little decorative birds.  In Fort Kochi I saw some hanging up outside houses and wondered if they are actually bird houses, the model birds just there to illustrate what they are for (to human beings not to the birds).  Monkey ornaments carved out of coconuts.  A blind man styling the hair of a hairdresser’s doll’s head; I thought at first that he was offering hair styling but he might have been demonstrating and selling hair clips.

A small folding table, at first glance it looked like a pile of pink plastic butterflies on one side and a row of decorative Filofaxes on the other.  On the way back I looked again, they weren’t pink butterflies, they were earrings on little pink plastic cards now laid flat on the table, no longer in a pile with the edges sticking up like wings, and the ‘Filofaxes’ were actually heavily decorated (coin) purses.

Shells.  What we thought were plastic cars in boxes, but were actually mini sewing machines, kind of like staplers.  Glass bottles of coloured oils.  Cut fruit.

In the harbour there were big grey Indian Navy warships and huge red container ships, and at the edge on wooden platforms, Chinese fishing nets (big wooden swing like structures that dip into the water like a pelican’s beak), as well as fishermen using hand nets at the shore.

The Chinese fishing nets are a tourist attraction and we ended up going onto one of the platforms where the net was operated from, meeting the fisherman, taking photographs and of course handing over some money.

Unusually compared to where we’ve been so far, there were rubbish bins everywhere.  Teams of workers were collecting rubbish in baskets and sorting it into sacks, presumably cleaning up ready for the season.  The fisherman told us that the beach had been covered in rubbish, partly from littering but much of it washed up in the monsoon.

The beach dogs were different; strange looking, about the size of almost-grown yellow Labradors but with stumpy little legs, as if a Dachshund had ran amok…  A big fat black Labrador lookalike sitting under a bench.  A golden ‘Labrador’ asleep on a doorstep, rolls of fat clearly visible.  Some of the street dogs in Varkala had begun to look thin…  The cats were bigger and plumper too, not as big as most UK cats, but much bigger than their Varkala counterparts.  There were lots of goats in Fort Kochi, white, black and white, thin-ish, just wandering around.  I sat on a dilapidated mouldy bench at the foot of a tree and stroked one, I used to have goats when I was a child; I was even given a baby one for my seventh birthday, they had to sleep with my mum as they missed their mum.  In Varkala I’d only seen the odd goat, tethered outside a person’s house, or once, having come loose and wandering down a path with her kids.

At dinner on our second evening we met two young Australians who had travelled all around Europe before recently arriving in India.  We talked a lot, all swapping our India observations, ‘And what is it with all the shoes?!’ they said; they’d noticed the abandoned shoes phenomenon too.

Later in the evening by the sea, a man was selling tea from a bicycle, not chai, but black tea with ginger and jaggery (a kind of natural sugar syrup).  My husband told him it was the best tea he’d had in India.

There were noticeable differences in dress.  In Varkala I had seen Indian tourists dressed in Western beach clothes; shorts, short playsuits and short dresses.  In Fort Kochi I saw Indian women wearing an everyday variety of Western clothes; a long navy and white striped cotton jersey skirt; a grey and navy striped loosely fitted cotton knee length skirt with a black t-shirt; a long brown hippy skirt with what looked like a band t-shirt.

Lots of blue cotton dresses; short sleeved, fitted, below the knee summer dresses in delicate pale prints; a dark blue dress with tiny black polka dots, and soft flowing block print blue flowery dresses worn over leggings or jeans.

A red kurti style dress but thinner and with a drawstring at the waist to give it shape; kurtis that were longer, softer, and with bolder prints; one brown with faces printed on it; one blue with big blue flowers.

Lots of long sleeved dresses, below knee, made of soft jersey material in dark reds or black with a rectangular shaped panel design in centre.  I actually tried on some like this in Varkala, they fitted perfectly but I thought they would be too hot.

I saw two teenage girls wearing blue and brown plaid shirts with jeans, like the young Indian men wear, and another wearing a brown striped t-shirt and jeans.

Two young women arm in arm, one in a bright orange kurti with white trousers and a white scarf with little pink and blue stars on it; the other wearing a bright pink gauzy dress.  A yellow, somewhere in between mustard and sunflower, starched cotton-silk sheen, fitted bodice, kurti/dress.  The women are so narrow; no wonder the dresses I buy here don’t fit; Indian women are much smaller framed, I have to buy extra large or my boobs are flattened.

Sarees, the fabric made of squares of different colours with gold borders at the edges of the squares; brown sarees with gold trim.  The shoes were different too.  A woman dressed in black wearing the most beautiful gold spike heels; a young girl wearing white patent court shoes that were too big for her.  Thick soled flip flops, some with heels, were sold everywhere.

We saw a little girl of around three years old walking with her dad, she was wearing chunky red floral flip flops.  The paths were made of wavy bricks with gaps in between each brick and she walked slowly, intentionally, as if negotiating cobble stones, watching her feet, rolling her feet and the foam flip flops over the bricks and the gaps.

 

Our train to Chennai wasn’t until the evening and we spent our last day eating…  We went to a bakery in search of namkeen cake (which I’d heard of as numpkin cake, got excited about, and looked up) to no avail, but we had fruit nan, banana bread, fruit salad and cardamom tea, and that was not long after breakfast.

An Indian man from Delhi who we met in Varkala told us a story of going out at 3am to a market in Fort Kochi and having an avocado milkshake; I try not to drink milk, but went in search of avocados anyway; in Varkala and previously in Goa, they have been out of season and unavailable.

I ended up having avocado on tasty sweet toast in a middle class cafe in a hotel, unfortunately they weren’t from India, they imported avocados all year round from the USA.  Still it was my first avocado since leaving the UK (since eating my sandwiches at Northampton rail station on March 25th and eating an avocado bagel at Heathrow on March 26th).

I remembered about the avocados, of course, but I’d actually forgotten to look at the recommendations the man from Delhi had given us for Fort Kochi, and it was only when reading them at the end that I realised that we had gone to one of the places he recommended, by accident (Grandma’s Kitchen).

People recommend a lot of places to visit and things to do.  Sometimes they’re people who haven’t travelled much and would like the opportunities we have.  Often they are people who have been to places and loved them, like us going on about Hampi to people.

But the best thing about being here is just to immerse ourselves in each new place, explore the local area, wander around, find places to eat.  If we plan everything out then there’s no space left for the spontaneous (or for just sitting around or napping).  I’m learning to say, Maybe next time, and not worrying or trying to do everything.

The area around our homestay

Our room and possessions

The moss walls of Fort Kochi 

See Instagram travelswithanthony

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

 

Throwback Thursday

Tags

creativity, Decluttering, religion, spirituality

Decluttering:  I still stand by its therapeutic powers.  Losing my sports massage virginity (therapy without words).  Maybe overdoing the spiritual searching (still have a tendency to do that sometimes). Definitely catastrophising (nothing’s changed there either).

‘I long for the days when everything I owned fitted into the boot of a Fiat Uno’*  (First published in July 2014)

It is no way news that de cluttering is therapeutic.  Last week I did my clothes and shoes, even quite happily throwing away the (too high) gold sandals I got married in only last year.  Today I tackled the really hard stuff: the art and craft stuff under the stairs.  The wire mesh I made handmade paper with fifteen years ago and that I kind of always thought I might do again with my step daughter but haven’t.  The little cardboard pot of sequins I used to make cards with.  Coloured pencils I have had for years, little paintbrushes.

This stuff is hard because on the one hand it seems to reproach me for having abandoned that side of things- I no longer make cards or sew- but it also forces me to realise that I am not the same person I was.  That can be viewed sadly or perhaps it can be viewed happily: Wow, what an amazing creative person I used to be, even when I had no money and a little child and was a single parent and was probably a bit depressed, how cool was I?  I remind myself that that cool young woman helped lay the foundations for me to grow into the calm**, centred, super happy person that I am today.

This week I had an experience that I couldn’t describe in words (a challenge for a writer): a sports massage.  As she twanged the big tendons of my neck my mind skated over how to describe the feeling this induced: it was not at all a sexual feeling but it shook though my body like an orgasm.  It was a feeling like a loss of control and yet not.  The feeling of stress leaving the body, or leaving via the body, was like a spiritual experience (except that it was physical not spiritual).  As she went over and over an area of my back, working out a knot, I experienced it like a rollercoaster, up, up and over and each time me trying to relax and let it wash over me and not fight against it.  The feeling of rebirth afterwards, a mild euphoria, and the next morning, skipping, singing, even my voice sounded better.

In the pool this week there was some kind of gala going on in one half and there was a PA system, plugged into the mains, on a stand inches away from the pool.  I thought of people being electrocuted when their hairdryer falls into the bath.  I wondered if such a big amount of water would dilute it or would we all die.  Would it hurt?  Okay, I thought, everyone’s okay.  There would probably be compensation.  I wrote my book.  And my blog.  I found God.  I was happy.  I wouldn’t have to worry about or deal with old age or illness.  I accepted it.  They unplugged it.  Oh well, not my time.

I read a blog about blogging, in which the advice given was, that you need to do it for a year before you know if it’s worth doing.  That advice could also apply to spiritual practice.  Although I already know it’s worth doing, it’s more about a test of my commitment, much like how healing training takes two years.

After a weekend of complete R&R I realised I wasn’t going mad or embarking on a dangerous course, risking losing connection with my husband; I was just tired that’s all.  A week of staying up too late, working late and getting up early to go to a conference, that was all.  I do like to catastrophise (have I said that before?)  In bed one night, my husband enfolded me into his arms and I felt our breathing merge, felt myself merging into him at each contact point.  This long, no sex cuddle was like being in a cocoon or having steel bands of love wrapped around me, and the next morning I realised, not only can I love God through loving my husband but God can love me through the love my husband gives to me.

*our good friend DW
**on a good day, anyway

How not to pack and an imaginary interview with Eminem

Tags

Chennai, India, Kochi, Travel, writing

What’s on top?

Too many clothes, nothing to wear!

Over the next two months I will be in India (modest dress) then Thailand (beach dress) then Tokyo (smart summer dress (or so I imagine)) then back to India (modest dress) via travel with limited weight hand luggage…

I left a bag of things for our guesthouse manager in Varkala to take to the orphanage he helps at (my kurta (long top) that I bought from the khadi shop that is rather thick and doesn’t look that nice on me; some thick fawn coloured leggins that are too hot and look like I’m not wearing anything- rather defeating the object; a new pink Indian dress that is really tight across the bust; two scarves that have proved unsuitable, wrong colour, wrong material.  I binned a much loved spaghetti- strapped black vest top that the elastic had gone in and looked worn out and, with much sadness, a black skirt bought from an expensive outdoor shop in the UK that went bobbly and extremely tatty-looking very fast.  It was just right, stretchy, soft and comfortable and it even had a tiny zipped pocket inside.

This is what I have:

Six dresses- one long with long sleeves, three that can be worn without trousers depending on where we are, two with side slits so that they can only be worn over trousers; 3 pairs of loose black trousers; 1 long-sleeved tunic top; two comfy t-shirts (that have holes in them- they were bought from poor quality tourist trap stall) to chill out in room in and sleep in hostel dorm in (although for travelling and in Chennai I have been wearing them outdoors with a scarf as they are so comfortable); one sun top for Thailand; five scarves- to wear over shoulders to protect from sun and/or to cover up/for evenings, and to wear as sarongs in Thailand or for chilling out in room in.  Two lungis (2 metres of green/purple and gold material) useful as bed sheets or to maybe get made into dresses.  One white ‘scarf of freedom’ given to me by a shaman; 3 pairs of socks; two bras; four pairs of knickers -two pairs of old comfy cotton; one pair of fitted cotton lycra; one (relatively) ‘sexy’ silky material.

The downside is that three out of the six dresses are slightly too tight across the bust; it has been hard to find dresses to fit, even though one of them (the green check) was made for me.  The dark red dress with navy sides and flowers has been made for me out of a lungi I bought for the fabric.  I have had it made/remade five times so far!  First it was far too tight, sexy across the hips but boob-crushingly tight at the top, then remade far too big, then remade with armholes too tight and still too big, then to a different tailor, too tight under bust, now (fifth time) it is more or less okay except that the armholes are slightly loose and stick out and are too high at the same time.  Maybe I will try again in Chennai, sixth time lucky!

On a positive note, I am very pleased with the scarf-as-sarong with sun-top look for Thailand.

An imaginary interview with Eminem

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself backstage with Eminem?  What possible conversation topics or questions could there be that wouldn’t sound lame?  This was a situation that confronted my husband recently in a dream.

‘I had this dream where I found myself backstage with Eminen, just hanging out.  I asked him about American music venues, I said that in the UK we’ve only really heard of CBGB’s.  He kind of sneered at that but I explained to him that we just don’t get told about the others.’

‘Well I would never have thought to ask him about that,’ I said, ‘That’s really good.’

‘Well I don’t know how well it would prepare me for a real life meeting…  In the dream everyone was smoking weed and I remember making sure not to have too much, I didn’t want to get really stoned, I thought I need to keep it together, I’m talking to Eminem!’

‘I can’t think of anything,’ I said, ‘Everything I can think of to ask him he’ll have been asked a million times:  ‘How is your daughter, what does she do; Do you still have problems with your ex wife; What’s it like getting old and having younger people coming up; What’s it like being famous?’’

‘You can’t ask him what it’s like being famous, that’s too broad, you have to break it down,’ my husband said.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Well what do you do when you run out of food?’

‘What would he do when he ran out of food?!’  My husband said, ‘Sack the housekeeper, probably.’

‘But can you go to a shop and buy food?  Is there a restaurant you can go to where you can just eat and not get hassled?  Do you ever just go and buy a loaf of sliced bread and make yourself some toast?’  I think I was almost crying with laughter by this point.

‘Really?’ my husband said, ‘That’s what you want to know?  I’d ask him about the nature of reality.  He’d probably say, ‘What do you mean,’ so I’d say, ‘Well, do you believe that what you see is all that there is; or do you believe in anything else, anything mystical, or spiritual?  Do you believe that this world is an illusion?  Do you believe that we live in a matrix and that this is a computer simulation?  Or do you believe that it’s all an illusion of the mind?  Or that the dream world is the real world and the waking world is a dream?’

You know, that kind of thing.’  I guess we’ve both got too much time on our hands…

Travel update

On Friday we went to Kochi, a four hour train journey from Varkala where we were.  On Sunday we went by train from Kochi (in the state of Kerala) to Chennai (in the state of Tamil Nadu) a fifteen hour journey, we arrived in Chennai on Monday morning.

See my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony for good photos of Kochi and Chennai

Writing update

Before we left Varkala I had a burst of working on the Kerala Chapter, looking at the period we spent at Osho’s guesthouse which included a big spiritual and emotional upheaval.  It was tiring and a bit intense, mirroring, as writing often does, current feelings.  Still, I am pleased with the progress made on this chapter.

Right now, I am working on ‘Kochi’ and plan to publish the draft or part of it on the blog next week.  I am also handwriting and typing notes about my Chennai experience.

At some point I will need to go back to ‘Kerala’ and finish that draft, as well as going back over the other chapters but right now, stuff just keeps happening that I need to capture!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Throwback Thursday

Tags

prayer, religion, spirituality

Still searching…

I’m still me

(First published in June 2014)

A few nights ago I was in front of the bathroom mirror thinking about Gwyneth Paltrow* when I had a sudden realisation: I am not her, I am me.  I’m me.  I’m me!  I thought about her in front of her bathroom mirror, being her.  I thought about all the time women waste wishing they were more like someone else.  I thought about how it doesn’t really matter what you look like anyway.  But most of all, I thought: Wow, here I am, in this life, in this body, in charge of myself.

I had the same feeling driving to work the next morning, listening to Muse, in a car that is not an old banger, is full of petrol and if I need any petrol I can just go and buy some; I always have enough money for food, I have the best job I could possibly want, my legs and arms work, I have no serious aches and pains, and despite a wild and careless youth** I have been left with nothing more serious than an occasional cold sore.  And, my God, I have my husband.  The fact that I have a husband is amazing enough, but my husband is so fucking cool, he lets me be so free that I don’t even recognise myself sometimes.

I thought, how did I get here?  How did someone so unconfident get to the top of their career? (I could go a tiny bit higher but it would be hideously boring)  How did someone who used to be so frightened that I thought I was going to wet myself on the bus on the way to college, get here?

So, did you reach any conclusions? My husband asked, when I told him about all this.  I didn’t have an immediate answer.  All I could think was, I made it hard, but I made it interesting.  I spent a year doing a millinery course and two years doing a fashion course.  I wondered why I didn’t take up writing earlier (because I was too scared to read my stuff out to a class until I was in my thirties).  I wanted to go back and say thank you to all those people who helped me.

So, have I reached any conclusions?  The only one that really seems to mean anything at all is this: someone must have been looking after me all along, because I really don’t see how I did that journey all by myself.

I am going to say a tiny bit about religion here.  I am looking at it, yes.  Not because I ‘need to be told how to live my life’ as atheists sometimes sneeringly say about organised religion, but because I want a framework, a method, a route to be closer to God.  Yes, in theory, I can remember God just by myself, every minute of every day, but in practice, I forget to remember.  That’s what a prayer habit or regular practice of any kind is all about, it’s a cue to remember.

In January, I thought my spiritual journey of the previous five years was over.  But unless you get stuck and stay stuck life is a journey… a journey home, a journey to God?  Anyway, despite what I thought at the time, my spiritual journey hadn’t ended.  I had just paused to look at the view, and to catch my breath.

It’s important that I pause and catch my breath regularly because there are two fears that come up for me.  One is the classic, am I going mad?  The other is, will it affect my relationship with my husband?  Will I find I don’t need him anymore?  Will the presence of a third party affect things?  If I get into a religion will it end up affecting our lives and relationship so much that we end up breaking up?  But as someone who had embraced a religion said: I’m still me.  And as my healing teacher told me: you won’t lose yourself, you are in control.

So don’t stay up all night watching you tube clips about people’s religious conversions (I haven’t done this I just know someone who has and know it is an option!).  Distract myself with light and frivolous stuff e.g. rom coms and light books that have nothing to do with spirituality or religion.  Exercise, sleep and eat right.  Look after myself.  Whatever I had decided to do before, keep doing it; writing, healing.

Remember that I can love God through loving my husband, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.  That’s why religions prescribe charity, because it’s no good just having faith, you have to act on it in your life.  My husband is my life.

*I have no idea why it was she who popped into my head

** When I say ‘youth’ read ‘teens, twenties and thirties’