Northern India

Day 5 Dehradun/ Rishikesh

When the plane began to land in Dehradun, Northern India, I understood straight away what my friends meant. This is the india you want to see. The Himalayas peaked out from the horizon and colorful stacked homes dotted the green landscape. The bus which transported us across the tarmac was about as old as the oldest indian grandmother chattering away beneath one of the trillions of small electric fans mounted haphazardly on the wall. The airport was of comical size and design. As we drove through the countryside we passed by numerous cows and monkeys casually strolling along the main road.

High voltage power lines ran across fields in an alarmingly close proximity to the large cement houses which reminded me of the ones built for extended families in the Arab villages I’ve been to. All of the structures and infrastructure seemed like someone just threw them down casually from the sky. We winded through the forest and mountains and over little streams that caused me to wonder what this road would look like in the monsoon season. Not having any knowledge of the natural environment of the region I guessed that it had been a lousy rainy season, or otherwise had ended early. Mid-November and vast riverbeds lay completely exposed, their surfaces dry and dusty. I wondered if perhaps the water way had been dammed, and thought to look into it later (I never did).

I arrived at the Ashram where I would be completing my yoga teacher training. My room overlooked the Ganges river, and I once again regretted that I remembered little to nothing of Hindu mythology (or religion). I also regretted that amongst the hundreds of warnings I received, no one bothered to mention that it gets bloody cold up there.

The first day of my training involved some ceremonial ritual in which my inner-self (the one I would be told to get in touch with, time and again, in the coming weeks), was alternating between face palming and raking my fingers down its cheeks. Jesus Christ, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be chanting about. Still, I decided to play along. I didn’t have much of a choice.

The following weeks would be a tilt-a-whirl of realizing that I’m far more in touch with my inner self than I ever made any effort to be, and having people talk to me about getting in touch with me, only made me not want to. I had instructors insist that this energy and that energy or oil or herb is good or bad. Karma this, breathing that. Like always, I took from it what I could and filtered out everything that couldn’t be supported be reason or logic. Needless to say my instructors didn’t have any easy time.

Between moving through asanas and lessons on both real and imaginary anatomy, I managed to escape the confines of the spiritual world, and into what I consider the spiritual world: the real world. Strolling down the streets of Rishikesh, the mecca of yogis everywhere, I noticed that nothing was noticeable.

Between watching out for cow feces, 4 by 4 vehicles bouncing down the tiny road, pressed on either side by scooters, people, and lifeless looking cattle of various age and health conditions, the mind had little time to focus. All in all there could not have been more than 100 within 20 meters radius of me, but it felt like I was at a cross walk in the heart of Tokyo. With enough noise pollution to dub a crowded metropolitan area. The demographics were plainly divided to 50/50 tourist and locals (by locals I mean people of Indian origin, not necessarily residing in Rishikesh as the area attracts plenty of intra national tourism). The locals mainly seeming annoying and the tourists mainly looking like the same person over and over again. It was as though all of the scraps of the western world had migrated to the same town, each of them with their wide legged pants, slow pace, hair unwashed for god knows how long, with nowhere to go and it was unclear if they were aware of where they came from other than their mother’s womb. I overhead conversations to the tune of “I’m really into the chakras” and I need to cleanse my liver with a liter of brewed coffee.

What am I doing in India.

A few days later a friend I had made- fortunately, one that washes her hair- told me I need to change my western clothes, as we browsed through items at the market. I stared at a long white indian shirt. Ok, I can wear this now, I thought. But its not comfortable for yoga, it wont keep me warm, and there’s no fucking way I’ll wear it back home. I stuck it back on the hanger. I purchased a few long sleeved t-shirts with some nondescript yoga-esque print on the front, just to have some warmer tops to wear to practice. Later on I texted with a friend. “a few weeks there trust me you’ll blend in with the rest.” No fucking way in hell, I thought to myself. I like showering. I like walking fast, it wastes less time, something I don’t have much of- and if you want to get really deep about it, none of us do. I bought another macramé bracelet of a local variety. This is about as far as ill go.

The guru of my school invited myself and some other students to participate in a meditation and talk at another location. There, my philosophy teacher sat down and donned his socks while waiting for the rest of the students to file in. One of my colleagues comments that he's always wearing sock. “Oh, you know, I wasn’t but now I see that everyone is, so I put them on as well.” This is the person that’s teaching philosophy. Someone that cant even stand to be the only one in the room without socks, even when he doesn’t really want to wear socks. I noticed I was frowning. I sort of felt bad. I knew that pity was unbecoming, but I felt bad for him and everyone else in the room with their hippie clothes and dreadlocked …hair…if you can call it that. They all needed to dress the same and wear socks if everyone else was wearing socks. It might make them feel more connected, but it was nothing if not superficial. They were all getting connected to one another, and their own brand of the India they want to BE. Because god (shiva, Buddha, Jesus, Larry, whoever) knows, the locals sure as hell aren’t wearing diaper pants and 30 beaded necklaces to do their morning practice, if they practice at all.

Yoga for westerners is a privledge. If you don’t have money, you probably can’t afford to practice it, at least not in a class. You probably also don’t have the time. And all around me I was watching people getting in touch with themselves, maybe, what do I know who’s touching themselves and who’s not. I don’t make it my business. The the deeper they got into themselves, the further they fell from reality. And by reality, I don’t mean the office chair or wall street or college tuition I mean the guy who is begging on the corner, all the way to the reason you’re looking for yourself in the first place.

You must be lost. Because to be frank, in my life, I haven’t been able to get rid of myself. I’m with me wherever I go, for better or worse.

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