voices from the people

photos i took of archem the lanky russian walking across the wooden bridge with a bundle of dried scythed rice balanced on his head.  black and white photos, showing the rice fields in the early morning sun which peeps above the hills.  it is rice cutting and morning stretches rolled into one - knelling, crouching, squatting, sitting almost on ankles with knees bent or standing up legs straight upper body bent over.  everyone tackles a different part of the field and the enthusiasm of each person to cut their part of the field mingles with the group enthusiasm of getting the whole field cut before breakfast and creates an exponential rice cutting enthusiasm.  i feel like tolstoy's landowner levin who dedicated his day to working with the peasants and there felt the happiness of working the land simply by hand and bringing in the harvest.
real lived experiences offered first by literature.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

i hear julia asking jaggernaut - a german who is spending some weeks here on retreat - how he finds the rice cutting.  i hear him smiling and responding: "it feels very good.  i think i must have lived in india in a past life".

i think it is appropriate that he said that

i ask deoraj to get a photo of me with a bundle of rice on my head and he smiles his characteristic smile of indulgent respect: "not like in your country, heh...all done by machines there?"  yes...well in europe it was done by hand maybe one hundred, two hundred years ago, but not since the industrial mechanisation.  deoraj has a farm with his family nearby, and has been coming to work for the hare krishna farm for 17 years.  i told him his name sounded symbolically rich to my ears; deo sounds like latin for god and raj sounds like hindi raja for king.
krishna is also there. 20 year old krishna with his handsome smile, a bundle of rice also on his head.  his family also grow rice on nearby land.  i will get a good photo of him one day.

when will i continue with the painting i have begun near the greenhouses? one day follows the next, tattva comes back from town with the jeep loaded with supplies and a surplus of new ideas.  "there is a beautiful spot for bathing down by the river...this house is where the group from swizerland will stay next month.  they come every year, they have their own schedule - they do yoga, meditation.  they don't join in our worship at the temple very much, but they are very respectful... we like having them.  so, if you wanted to sand down this rusty bed and give it a fresh lick of paint.  there are some chairs over here that need to be repaired...i'm gonna get some more nails the next time i go to Udupi.  coat all these wooden beams in polyurathine, and outside there is a lot of new plants i want to plant all around..."

the days are full and as the days have been passing so my desire to travel on to see other places has dissipated.  i have been here for over a month now, and when people ask me "how much longer will you stay here?" i have changed my response from "i don't know" to "probably at least another month".  speaking about other wwoofers, first there was danny - from the US - with whom it became a habit to seek out places to drink chai, who left after a couple of days. then there was jenny - from montreal - who stayed for a few more days, then two young dutch girls who were here over new year.  they were followed by two young german girls, who incidently had been invited to a game of frisbee by the dutch girls on a beach in gokarna, and heard about the farm in beautiful surroundings where you can stay and volunteer.  anyway, they didn't stay more than a few days either.  their smiles were youthful and indefagitable and they accepted everything: the days spent weeding among the palm trees in the sun, the cups of ginger and honey tea which i brought to them.  when asked what they thought about the place, they put their finger right on the mark, "there is a lack of communication between the people who live here and the wwoofers.  there is no community.  but it is a beautiful place.  tattva?  yes, tattva is an interesting guy.  but, i feel that tattva does not really want to listen to me"
then selma and bex arrived.  selma, a burst of confidence and warm smiles, from denmark and bex, from a caravan near leeds, who moved into one of the rooms in what has become the wwoofers house on the hill. she was at first horrified by the size of the the legs of the spider on her wall but she then displayed her excellent capacity to turn around agonising experiences through positive thinking:  she called the spider george, and talked to him every time she entered her room, "ah, so you haven't moved from your space on the wall today george?".  she also gave us a commentary on her new roommate's activities: "george hasn't moved from his space on the wall today".  we began to really feel settled, and after a few evenings changed from sitting on the porch around a candle to lighting a fire and making chai.  it was premidi who first suggested that we make our chai over the fire.  then he showed us how he makes his daily chapattis - mixing the flour and water and rolling it out and baking it on a hot dry flat pan.  for premidi there is no repast greater in simplicity of goodness and nourishment than chapattis lightly salted with ghee followed by spicy hot ginger and jaggery (boiled down sugar cane juice).

now bex and semla have moved on and sara from portugal has arrived.  all it took was one look into her open curious serene eyes for our eyes to linger there.  her voice floats lazily among the old carved wooden posts we are painting near the mudhut. a rich unhurried late-night voice even though it is early afternoon intoning and teaching me the song from brazil:

"eu acho que estou feliz e triste
tudo o que tenho cabe na minha mao
e eu te do   de coracao
e du te do   de coracao

eu nao preciso de nada
o mundo e minha casa
o ceu e minha camisa
estrelas vestam meus pes"

(i think i am happy and sad
all that i have fits in my hand
and i give it to you   from my heart
and i give it to you   from my heart

i require nothing
the world is my home
the sky is my shirt
stars adorn my feet)

...but what does it actually mean, "the sky is my shirt"?     ah, of course, it is poetry...

evenings round the fire is a very comfortable space. premidi comes almost every night now and we boil ginger and jaggery and play chess, which premidi mostly wins and which i mostly learn astounded by the cunningness and pitilessness of his dogged pursuit of my king, who, when he spies an opening, he checks without cease.  i am particularly impressed by his killer move of checking the king then immediately after gobbling up a neighbouring piece which i have left unprotected.

one night premidi expounds his dark vision of the witless age in which we are living, controlled by a group unprincipalled individuals whose goal is the dominion and servitude of the rest of the world:  "they are intelligent, they all have degrees, they all work in collusion, they are present in all the organisations which control and shape our society - education, the media, multinational corporations, banks, the CIA...they are so knowledgeable about how to subtly control human thought - so much research is done about how our minds work.  they will put chips in our hands soon to control our movements, but they will make it like it is the people who want it.  all this obsession with security...these terrorist attacks are all carefully planned...do you think those planes really went into the twin towers?  they were just added onto the video later.   they never put any man on the moon, it was all a hoax!  on the video you can see the flag flapping in the breeze...there is no breeze on the moon!  do you know they have opened a restaurant in canada they call it a 'breastaurant' where men go inside and get served by girls in skimpy dresses!  their goal is the debasement of society.  they want us to remain unaware of our true spiritual essence.  the centre of our Being is an eternal well of unchanging peace and stillness.  they want to mask this spiritual truth by making the people identify themselves only with their minds and their bodies, believing that the purpose of this life is soley to satisfy the desires of our bodies and minds.

when i listen to somebody else closely enough, when i make the effort to try and see the world the way they see the world, after a while it becomes unsettling, an experience of uprooting, or an uncomfortable stretching of my own previously stable self-contented vision of how things are, to include these new foreign ideas.

premidi reveals the path of detachment which he conducts through a hostile human world:  "you have to be in this world, but not of this world.  you have to neither like or dislike society - become detached from it.  it is the only way - otherwise you will be full of dislike.  instead, focus on your own interior well-being.  be well inside - only then can you give anything positive to anybody else.  you can't change anybody else. you can only give your own life as an example.  they must change themselves"

>> only voices from the people filtered through my own memory and understanding, remembering the things which struck me as interesting.

i am perched atop of the concrete water tank at the top of the hill.  i don't know why the ragged trees, rising from the forest, silhouetted against a pink evening sky attract my eyes so.  they arrest my gaze.  the darkness comes so quickly.  i let my foot fall and find the metal rung.  if i was distracted or if i grew sleepy and lost my full consciousness i could have missed that rung and let my whole body fall until it met the ground.  a prayer of gratitude.  i am cognisant of my consciousness which allows me to safely manoeuver my way through the trees.  a bird cries (shrilly) from some other part of the wood.  his cry would be shrill if it were close but it is far and so it sounds wild and distant and lonesome.  my heart feels the wild and the lonesome.
i feel, my heart feels...
"who am i?  you could say that i am called sunnli, that i am sitting in this cave, but what does this 'i' refer to?  is it my body? is it my mind? but it is possible for 'me' to observe my mind... are you complete?? why have you come to india? what is it you are looking for?  there is a deeper greater reality beyond the body and the mind - - - pure consciousness - - - i am that.   i am that.  undying, unborn, pure consciousness.  i am not bound by my body nor mind.   the material flux of living bodies is but a kaleidoscopic dance performed by the playful imagination of the Godhead.  your body will rise and fall but the spirit within you will always be.  "will always be" is not the right term for there is no past or future.   time only exists in the mind.  all you can really truthfully say is:  I AM.  i am everywhere at once.  i am present everywhere.  i am omnipresent.  i am, in fact, God.   God is me.   i am you.  we both have exactly the same inner nature.  we are pure spirit.  do you see that bag of coffee? if you were not here, would it still be here? nothing exists without me existing and nothing exists without you existing.  the existence of every part of the universe is contingent on the existence of every other part."

i ask krishna mai what is the meaning of the mantra they chant most meal times.  one person serves, and chants, while everyone sits, and repeats the chant.  i would like to know what it means.  it begins maha prashada govinde... sung in a sing-song mantra.  krishna mai unfolds her Views on Life, and i choose to sit and listen:  Krishna gives us everything, you know, the water the fruits the wind the wood.  it is like if i came to your garden and ate your fruit without saying anything, it is better to thank krishna for it, nah?  many people are thinking only about material things but they do not find real happiness there.  real happiness comes only from devoting your life to god.  thinking about god in all moments.  reading the vedic scriptures will tell you how you should live your life - they provide all information you need. krishna has given us rules for life - like if you drive a car on the road, you have to obey the government road rules, nah? - its like that with life, simple rules, rules for a good life - no smoking, no drinking, no illicit mingling with the opposite sex, and no eating onion and garlic (i had enquired about that particular rule)...if you sin, if you do bad to anybody, it will all come back to you in the next life, all your sins will be added up and given back to you.  you may be born as a dog and have to beg for your food, everyone tell you to go away.  do you want to be born again as a dog?  better to take the chance of this human life to recognise krishna and go back live with him after your death.  better nah?   better than spending all your life travelling around.  what do you see when you travel?  every place is the same...after a while its boring

i feel young again. i am full of the ravishing voluptuous Mystery of Life.  i am bobbing on a vast ocean of rolling swell.  who knows what is beyond the horizon?  who can give a satisfactory response to the questions: where did we come from and where are we going? 

globular tablets

then it was Christmas, for which i travelled to the town in tamil nadu called thiruvannamalai.  my plan was to participate in the giruvalam - the 14km circumambulation of the holy hill Arunachala, performed by thousands of pilgrims every full moon as an act of devotion to Shiva.  somebody i met at sadhana was there for the last full moon and told me that every circumambulator found their own pace and the feeling was that of a molecule of water moving glibly among a river of humans.  my other plan was to meet up with friend Sam and also a couchsurfer in bangalore, who i first contacted before i left scotland two months ago, and who i had been planning to meet for some time.  my plan to walk under the moon did not come to pass because my estimation of the date of the full moon was three nights too early.  my plans to rendez-vous did not bear fruition either.  instead i spent the day walking about town from time to time fruitlessly using the public one rupee phone boxes and otherwise observing

observing the bus-strewn views to the temple

observing these pigs ambulating around the woods 

i also took an interest in the flowing geometric shapes chalked onto the pavements outside everybody's front door in the little lanes.  i was sketching one of these rather ineptly into my notebook when a young girl saw me and called her mother to come and do a better sketch for me.  i asked her why those patterns were chalked onto the pavement like that.  i had the feeling that the purpose was devotional; i had seen that the patterns were more elaborate and decorated with flowers on religious festivals.  after humming for a while, she responded simply, "it is our culture"

i spent some time online researching Arunachala and read this 14th century description of the Shiva's holy hill, quoted in a wikipedia article: "Arunachala is truly the holy place. Of all holy places it is the most sacred! Know that it is the heart of the world. It is truly Siva himself! It is his heart-abode, a secret kshetra. In that place the Lord ever abides the hill of light named Arunachala."

and also:  "Words spoken there are holy scripture, and to fall asleep there is to be absorbed in samadhi, beyond the mind's delusion. Could there be any other place which is its equal?" 

unequalled throwing oneself passionately into being!   - being descriptive - even before reading that description i knew Arunachala was a special place because i had clambored up those rocks the first night and slept nestled among the rocks far above the sound belching town traffic, the rocks that radiate Stillness.   and the Wind that was not still but moving with freshness and eagerness and urgency.   and Jeff Tweedy's song echoing ringing true in my mind: "in a sleeping bag underneath the stars he would lie awake and count them.  and the gray fountain spray of the great milky way would never let him       die alone"

and in the morning the monkeys surrounded me with agility and i knew they were eyeing up my peanuts, then the devotee in the little rustic temple at the top invited me to drink chai - sweet milky chai - the first cup of a day offering it to tourists, pilgrims and all those who ascended the hill.   we sat in silence.  his little devotional mudhut throbbed with rustic get-away-from-it-all charm.  he blew on the flames and allowed the chai to brew for long time.  he threw the first cup against the wall, and there it trickled and glistened.  i offered him some peanuts.  he told me he is the one who keeps the pyre of ghee burning for ten days during the karthigai deepam festival.  tonnes of ghee which devotees haul up to keep that pyre burning and visible for miles around.  that explained to me the sticky substance coating the summit rocks which i clamboured over in the dark the first night i arrived.

the wind whispered urgently, but that didn't detract from its warmth.  the monkeys and the peanuts made a far fetched comparison from yesteryear: a scottish bothy hogmany, losing our way in the snowdrifts before eventually descending upon the holy shelter of shenavall there to shiver round the meek and paltry flickering flame, rotating our sitting positions round the fire to allow everyone his hallowed proximity to the flame's sacred warmth.  we roasted garlic bread and my dad declared it was the best thing he'd ever eaten.

stillness in the rocks,

movement in the wind,

everything bathed in moongleam.  

if the moon wasn't full it well-nigh was.  however, after a couple of nights, instead of staying on for the circumambulation i decided to head back to the hare krishna temple in karnataka and begin the painting projects tattava had given me.

tattva's eyes light up with enthusiasm.  he is adept at engaging others in his projects.  "we got this jeep somebody donated to us which you could paint with a really cool camouflage colours.   you could be real creative...the only thing i would like is a tilak - you know the mark hare krishna devotees wear on their forehead? - on the bonnet.  you could also get a peacock feather, or make it kinda jungly..."

 - what about some streaks of fire? ...make it really wild,  i say

"oh yeah, wild! let's get it looking wild, real distinctive.  everyone in kollur is gonna see this jeep and say "who did that? i want him to paint my jeep like that!"

tattva's enthusiasm really fired me up, and made me elaborate and pursue my artistic vision for several days i got lost.  i talked to myself a lot about one's artistic vision; the necessity of being allowed to pursue one's artistic vision.  even when praveem took the remaining red paint and used it to paint the front gate, i had to relinquish the use of that red paint and recognise that praveem too had to follow his artistic vision.

however, for a couple of days when tattva was away there was some indecision about the appropriateness of me following my artistic vision.  one of the woman looked at me painting one day and said, "too many colours...chaitanya says if you go on big roads and police see this jeep, they always stop you.  nobody ever see jeep like this...  trouble...too  many colours."

praveem's comment, which he made more than once, gleefully, was, "if i ever see a jeep with so many colours, it is in a children's park!   and not even there, with so many colours!"

but tattva returned and said, "nah, those women...more traditional.  they have a different vision of things.  seriously what you've done looks great"  he restored my enthusiasm and heaped encouragment upon me:

(i had told him:  i was beginning to feel discouraged.  he said: "no, don't feel discouraged, feel encouraged!")

"man, i don't know what we are gonna do with this jeep, drive it around, or take it straight to an art exhibition."

i realised how important it can be to have somebody who believes in you, or likes what you do.

people are ambulatory spheres of perceptors - messages-givers and message-receivers  -

who follow their elliptical perambulatory orbits

and when they catch sight of another circulating ball of energy

a chemical reaction is produced.

this person radiates something very smooth and shanti and easy to be with.

that other person's presence did not bring glad tidings; it was only a momentary glance, but all i did was shrug inwardly and murmur inside: he did not smile.

we are all billiard balls buzzing around the gigantic spherical billard table-globe, knocking into each other's energy fields and at times bouncing down cavernous stairwells to knock upon doors we never suspected we would ever knock upon.

nawkt a pawn.  globular tablets.   tabular globlets  lets

lets set sail.   lets hang around.   lets have another round.    lez move on

two people meet, and greet

with or without a peck on the cheek

no, but that woman's energy was too intense, too intrusive, her too gaze piercing with too much passion, it was like boiling water in her company - disquiet - but i had to listen to her out, to meet her gaze.  i couldn't very well tell her dispassionately to pencil off, the way some others might have done. at the same time, those lingering gazes are difficult to sustain... maybe some measure of iciness in my return gaze is necessary to preserve some inner calmness, so as to not let my snow be scattered by the snowblower.  otherwise i'll become like a melted ice-cream lying on the pavement.  and nobody likes a melted ice-cream lying on the pavement.

reach for the sta  hars        climb every mountain higher

reach for the sta  hars        climb every mountain higher

however, lale - the goat - he didn't have a-n-y qualms about trying to headbutt me when i tried to befriend him.  he rejected outright my offer of friendliness.  he wanted to butt me out of his life with his horned head.  the message "pencil off!" was all but tangible on his lips, bleating like a goat.   no greeting me him.

the verb to greet is polysemous for those from the north east of scotland for as well as "to say hello" it can also mean "to cry", (not like the town-crier, nor the boy who cried wolf but the boy who cried himself to sleep) hence its ambiguous poetic validity.

to say hello.   say hello too

i greet you.   you greet i.   i cry.  ice-cream, you scream we all scream.
we greet we.   us greet us, aff the green bus

greet for yourself,   or you greet iself,   then our greet weself.   put wee book back on shelf.

you're just being shelfish with your bookbackputting.

okay, you put the backbook on my shelf, and i'll scratch your...

you're writing drivel

you're drivelling write

you're right about the swivel chair

you've driven right off the map!

might is right

right...might be alright

might as well give up for the night

• who said writing was fun?  writing is for nuns.  profoundly cathartic.  a tiger in the arctic.  in the atavistic circle.  she got off at partick.  he's at it again

sound + meaning = mathematical equation for good writing.   well written.   well read.   well said.   well made.   well held.   well welded.   welded well.   well did well.   disjoin meaning from sound, what is left?
a soundless meaning?

a meaningless sound?
what came first, the meaning or the sound?

a  soundless sleep.

a sleepless sloop slipslop sling bring on the slack.

a groundless foundless cutlass cut less this time; found less that i would have thought at the foundry groundbreaking meaningshaking meaning what? meaning is making ground still shaking breaking and flaking the nonsensical shaking still making me all shivery not willing to stop shaking the shaking say stop to the king.

shay hi for me.   it was about yay high

aye: you know why.

why?

fit?    foo?   fit for a two foot boot, that's hoo.

hello 2013

tattva arrived back late and i asked about the bonfire we had talked about and he said "oh, has nobody gotten any firewood yet?  well, do you want a fire?"

 - everybody was sitting around in the temple -

there was a general nodding of heads.

"aaright, jump in the jeep, less go get some wood!"


it felt somehow thrillsome to see the sacred woods spotlighted in the swinging headlamps. it felt like a very boyish, adolsecent venture to head into the woods at that time.  tattva knew a good place up on the hill where there was lots of wood.  artem and i lugged a big well-nigh trunk back to the jeep between us and tattva gave a whoop and exclaimed, "that one'll burn well!"

if i could get this photo to rotate ninety degrees to the right it would show the bonflame leaping high into the sky; in the background the sun's refulgence also gleaming whitely off the floating round moon rock.

here is the assembled group krishna morari is on the accordian and starts up a round of hare krishna chants which everyone joins and accompanies with clapping hands, and i begin to dance a little bit, and julia dances a little bit too.  krishna morari encourages anyone to sing any song they want.   there is general indecision.  tattva suggests "michael row your boat ashore" (everyone knows that one) then krishna morari suggests that anyone make up any lyrics of their own "come on less go round in a circle"  all that comes to my mind is "goodbye 2012, hello 2013" then tattva suggests that we all recount the time in our lives when we felt most fear.  all that came to my mind was the time when i was about ten years old and i left my grandparent's house in the predawn to climb up east lomond and there near the top my young self unaccustomed to being alone in wild open spaces became warily aware of a malevolent presence lurking behind every dark bush.   i never got to recount that experience, however, because tattva himself set about recounting his own experiences, which very naturally followed each other,       separated by little pauses,      and which largely consisted of meeting deranged individuals while on the road in the US and involved him getting threatened at gunpoint and so on.  then he talked about the time he paraded about india for a year with elephants and a circus entourage and they slept in a different village every night and giave shows and there handed out hare krishna leaflets.
then it was almost midnight and we wondered whose watch to follow before krishna offered the use of his and started us all counting down nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year! yeaaaaah, woooooowow!  then some people gave hugs and pizzas were distributed (bought specially for the occassion) and homemade samosas, then we let off some fireworks and then everyone went to bed.

indian eyes through my eyes surprise

indian eyes look at me wide with wonder.  they are childlike in the frankness of their curiosity.  frankly curious, no hiding their curiosity, no qualms about invading your personal sphere with their piercing gaze, it opens up an unabashed gazing freedom.  gaze where you want.  allow your gaze to linger.   everything is said by the eyes.  i have come to know what it probably feels like to be a attractive girl.  walking down the street, all eyes follow you - they cannot help following you.
therefore when the eye communication becomes too piercing i look straight ahead, conscious but unheeding.  i have actually realised how strange a person i must be, often provoking eyes of surprise.  i cannot hope to blend in, i will always be a wandering maverick.

i rolled into bangalore this morning, on the night train from mangalore.  i arrived too late at the ticket office to reserve a bunk on the sleeper class so could only buy a general class ticket, which some people told me is overcrowded and uncomfortable and best avoided.  i didn't mind it so much.  it cost 110 rupees (something like one pound thirty pence) for twelve hours of train.  first of all i got on the sleeper carriage anyway.  when the uniformed ticket controller found me sitting by the doorway with my general class ticket he talked with some passion to his companion, making gestures in my direction and using the words euro and dollar.  i felt that he probably disapproved of me sitting on the train floor with my barefeet and my old rucksack and not making the effort to wear a clean new shirt, when i probably come from a country where i am afforded the opportunity to earn good money and present myself better and conduct myself more respectfully.  the train stopped somewhere in the dark and me and other general class ticket holders were barked out of the doorway into the night onto the sharp railway track rocks "come   go to last carriage!"

i was ready for the general class; i liked the feeling of everybody hunkering down together.  i found a space by the door and rolled out my sleeping mat and pulled out my hindi notes or got to dozing and felt myself lulled by the chug chug chug of the train drifting through the night, at the same time overhearing the people going to the toilet next to me and spitting into the sink and overlooking my slumber with their protective gazes.  i was sitting on a bench looking over my hindi notes at mangalore station when a man leaned heavily over my shoulder and joined me in scrutinizing my rendering of the devanagri script: aaj aapki taviyat kaisi hai? (what is your health like today?) he wanted to know where i came from and why i was learning hindi.  why was i learning hindi when i already speak english and english is a language spoken all over india? the phrase "a love of languages" swam into my head but i had the feeling that would not satisfy him.  i had the feeling that i could not give him a satisfactory account of why i had chosen to come to india.  "you want to meet indian girls?"  he suggested, "you like indian girls?"   well, yes, indian girls seem nice, but i haven't really got to know any, but ...indian girls are beside the point, i wanted to say to him.  he wanted to know my cell phone number he wanted to know my facebook name, "why?" i asked him.   "i want to chat with you" but i had become somewhat irritated by his forceful way of barking questions and i waved him away and boarded my train.

i rolled into bangalore this morning, reputedly the third biggest city in india.  what is the difference between india and India?  India looks more important, e.g. The High Commission of India.
india is just india.
still, india though...

india is india is some place.  groves of palm trees slide past shimmering in the morning sun.  people standing arms crossed are framed momentarily looking up at me looking out from the open door of the train.  i see a woman poking with a stick among the rubbish and wonder what the purpose of her poking can be.  occasionally childs wave to me enthusiastically.  (why children? ...it is not worth asking the wherefore of the irregular pluralren, or any other grammatical irregularityren, of the english language) the side of the railroad is strewn evenly with plastic bags and other plastic paraphernalia as if somebody had displayed them there for some decorative purpose. as we near the city the dry weeds have occasionally been set on fire and the air is impregnated with the blackened acrid stench of burning plastic.   an uncomfortable feeling entered me when i was told to sling all the old plastic piping in the big hole in the woods "and then we'll set it on fire" said tattva, the headman of bhaketivedanta ecovillage where i have been living for the past week.  the next day the filthy odor billowed through the air and i mused on the misnomer of the term ecovillage.  i said to tattva "surely burning the plastic is the worst thing to do? if there are no recycling facilities, and it cannot be reused, then why not just let it lie in the hole?   better than polluting the atmosphere with those toxic gases".  tattva talked about how twenty years ago when the community had been set up they were full of goals of ecological responsibility but over the years they have realised that people want their comforts and nobody wants to participate in an alternative alternative way of doing things which avoids the accumulation of plastic waste. "if we didn't burn it, you know, we would have to dig many holes all over the forest, and its not cheap to hire a digger to come up here and dig holes for us"

bhaktivedanta is set amid stunning special trees and rolling hilly land.  it is quite isolated, about three kilometres of bumpy track through deep old forest and then another thirteen kilometres of potholed twisty downhill road to kollur, the nearest village.  tattva said when he first drove along that road in the eighties there were no other vehicles.  instead, there were leopards which became illuminated by the headlamps at night.  once one was caught leaping across the road chasing a deer before the headlamps startled it and sent it away.   it was a difficult place for me to find when i first arrived.  i had phoned when i arrived in kollur, but could only speak to somebody whose english i did not understand easily.  in the end, i got on a bus heading up the hill and got off somewhere not knowing where and began flagging down cars and asking people, and eventually got directions.   very few people knew the name bhaktivedanta; nor was the term ecovillage very helpful.  now i realise that hare krishna temple would have been the best label by which to identify the place.

i had already said hello to US volunteer danny and by the plate cupboard before prasada - food which has first been consecrated by being offered to Krishna - the first evening i had arrived, but it wasn't until the second day when she was watering the garden with the hose in the morning that i asked her, "can i ask you what you think of this place"

"really weird" came her quitely resolute response.

hmmm, i was sort of beginning to think along the same lines.  there was a certain quality of oddness about the place.  it is undeniably a beautiful place, a special spot, a special flourishing of abundant nature.  i joined the wedding party one day on the trek down to the waterfall; two hours through the deep forest, picking our trail carefully, the women in their saris carefully descending the steep sections to arrive at the ring of cliffs, ringed by sprawling forest and trailing vines and there to gaze in wonder at the curtain of water particles which start as flowing liquid water but gradually turn into shifting mesmerizing clouds of spray before lashing the rocks at the bottom.

praveem clamboured round the base of the cliffs and dislodged a long gleaming black snake which then slithered away to a hidden recess in the rock.  beholding its sinuous passage, i felt the snake's slithering energy slide into the scene and added to the magic of the hissing waterfall.  the woman then got out a big pot of spicy rice and ladeled it into everyone's outstretched hands.  i told the woman that i was surprised that the rice was warm but she thought i meant "hot, spicy".  i said "yes, it is nice and spicy, but the temperature is also warm... did you heat it up or was it just left in the pot in the sun??" but they did not get my line of questioning, so my comment had to remain ....mmm delighty and spicy.

it is hard to believe the temple is less than twenty years old; tattva said he lived under a sheet of plastic during his first year.  the wooden old hardwood carved columns must have been imported here from some other time, lending the temple its air of oldness.  when i first arrived i thought that the statue of prabhupada - the founder of the hare krishna movement - was probably a real person sitting in silent meditation but perhaps aware of my cautious movements.  it took me a while to muster the audacity to look directly into his reposed semi-closed statue eyes.  tattva is the initiator and head man of the community or village.  neither term really seems adequate.  i think many people have lived and do come to visit the place at times, but since i arrived there has only been tattva and a handful of volunteers and other local residents who arrive on mopeds to work during the day and other visitors who have came and left.  and a wedding party of twenty who came and spent two days.  tattva says that prabhupada recommended that hare krishna devotees get back to simple living off the land.  tattva says that if you come to chant mantras of devotion of krishna with a pure heart you will not feel tired.  he gets up at half four every morning to begin chanting.  i have never made those early morning sessions, but later in the morning, about seven or eight, the young russian couple often gather, and praveen - the indian with the hairstyle slightly reminiscent of a pineaple - will play the drum, and i have picked up the little symbols and clanged them together and listened to the hare krishna chanting and seen tattva at the front alter rotating something that looks like a feather duster, or rotating incense sticks, in devotion to krishna, or bringing round the candles for us to place our hands over and then touch our heads.  sometimes everybody gets down on knees with head on ground and responds with "jai!" to the lead mantra.  after that tattva reads from the srimad bhagavantam - principal holy scripture of krishna devotees - first in sanskrit and everybody does their best to repeat, then in english.  in the email with the information, tattva writes that anybody is welcome to volunteer regardless of their religious persuasion, but during the exposition part of the text - where tattva becomes very expansive and talks in a very relaxed and spontaneous fashion, peppering his krishna commentaries with manifold anecdotes from life and shows to me his great capacity as an orator - i say, during his speech, he says that we have all heard the call to krishna consciousness and have been set inexorably along that path, whether we know it or not at present.  that is the inescapable ultimate goal of all beings - to end the onerous cycle of birth and death, to attain the Godhead, to return to Krishna.  "all we have to do is make the choice to devote our lives to krishna in this lifetime and we can escape from the cycle forever". at first i wanted to be open and to listen to and perhaps to learn from and understand other walks of life, but something inside grew restless upon hearing tattva's unflagging infatuation with the goal of ending the cycle of reincarnation and the phrase "reglious fanatic" fluttered into my consciousness, and i saw danny outside and went out and asked her what she thought of this place.

it is a comfortable feeling to have a place to sleep at night and good food to eat, and there is plenty of varied tasks to do during the day - so far i have been helped weeding and planting in the garden, i spent a whole day fetching buckets of sand and gravel and mixing concrete to repair the front entrance, i spent another whole day assembling a life-size model representation of the different stages of life - from baby birth to old man falling down upon his stick to a recumbent skeleton - a popular hare krishna symbol showing the transitory nature of this life of the body.

tattva's girth errs on the generous side and i had questions regarding his daily routine when i first arrived (the question "who are you?" is generally silently on everybody's lips when they meet another person, although it is usually preceded by the question "where are you from?", which also gives a hint of an identity and is more straightforward to answer)  danny said that she asked tattva and he told her that he grew up in chicago "though that seems like a different life..." ; his accent still drawls in a midwestern way, slightly discernible even when he is chanting in sanskrit.   as the days went by, i discovered that tattva in fact has an unusual energy, almost never stops to rest, is as willing to put his back into hard physical labour as any of us, and is a never-ceasing fountain of new projects and clear ideas about what he wants.  he also is an aesthetician (i mean he pays attention to what looks good) he says things like "ah, leave those old logs where they are...they look good propped up against the stone".   caring about what looks good must be the cause of the large aesthetic appeal of the place.  when i said i liked to paint tattva was immediately interested.  even when i said i would take part in a full moon procession around a mountain in tamil nadu over christmas, and probably wouldn't come back, he told me how much would like me to paint the garden shed, "i could even give you some money, you know...it doesn't have to be a wwoofer thing"

trisha visited for a few days and shook a tambourine during puja (devotional chanting) and helped me to clear out the house where i would stay on top of the hill a few minutes from the temple.  she said "the religious attitude is essentially the same all over isn't it? i grew up going to catholic mass, and it feels very similar to the way we show devotion to krishna here"  i had also thought of the parallel experience of attending the liturgies at the orthodox monastary in france a year ago.  solemnity and shaking of incense.
how can anybody know that our souls can enter other material bodies here on earth after our deaths?  it is a question that is thrown up for our consideration, but how does one attain certainty of knowledge on that matter?  that is perhaps something which unites all religious beliefs - a knowledge, a certainty, a faith in the big questions of the wherefore of life and what happens after death.
another general feature of religions and something which i like - when religion is at is best -  its attempt to recognise the Divine Essence of Life.
my friend anita has questions regarding the use of religious language to describe the everyday.   this language exists and what meaning are we going to give to it?  what words are we going to use to describe this experience?  there are many differently nuanced ways of say the same essential thing.  Sacred Life = life is very special = i am filled with wonder by the Life Principle, the life principle overawes me.

life, yes

jenny from montreal arrived and did not attend the puja and said she finds the lack of genuine freedom of expression stifling in such gatherings.    so while evening puja goes on we climb up to the temple roof where we can hear the soft chanting from below and where we can dance freely under the brightness of the moon and see the stars coming out and the surrounding wooded hills becoming darker.

O my Energy where art thou?

it is clear that the ticket office at the railway station is a highly respect-worthy place to be because everyone (all the men) are wearing very clean, well-ironed shirts tucked into very clean, well-ironed trousers. nobody wears anything but sandels here.  first i struggled to see the order in the jostling crowd so i too began to jostle close
to the desk but then somebody gave me a gentle tap and indicated the back of the jostling queue and i realised that you couldn't just jostle anywhere you wanted and that there was such a thing as a back of the queue and a front of the queue.  only after an hour of queue was i told that i needed my passport to reserve a train ticket and two days later after only something slightly less than an hour was i told that i should in fact submit a photocopy of my passport.  having procured that across the road in a matter of minutes, i hovered near the desk again feeling reluctant to jostle but feeling reluctant to return to the back of the self-replenishing queue, my eyes looked into the watery blue eyes - amid a sea of dark glistening indian eyes - of a woman who indicated that i could jump in in front of her "you don't want to go to the back again"  her husband went off to get the
passport photocopies they had found out from me were requisite.  the woman had blonde hair and showed a stoical composure, underlain with a sense of humour.  she gave a half-roll of her eyes"it is mayhem buying a 
railway ticket" .  it didn't take me long to realise which part of the world she was from as i talked more she asked me where i was from..."oh aye, i know buckie, i used to holiday up there.  i'm from edinburgh"

so that was it; i had a ticket to Mangalore for the next day.  8 hours to Bangalore then a further 10 hours to Mangalore.  it felt good to soon be moving again - covering distance, crossing the land, eyes open to see the new sights in india.   Sadhana Forest has been a special place to spend time, for two weeks and ten days, but it is a little international pocket within india and my desire to travel is high. i have found out about another ecovillage - this one in the mountains  of Karnataka, composed of devotees of Hare Krishna.  their diet is also vegetarian.  they also do not eat eggs but they drink the milk and eat the cheese from Mother cow. 

i had so much energy after buying the train ticket in pondicherry.  i stopped and bought a fresh blended grapejuice from the fruitjuice stall then spun my way fast fast up the slope out of town back to sadhana.  it felt like i was a child again, playing micromachines on the sega mega drive.  i was pedalling as fast as i could overtaking some of the little mopeds trilling my bicycle bell to let everyone know that i was coming up behind them, never looking behind me when overtaking because if anybody was going to overtake they in turn would
honk their horn.  out of town all the people waiting for buses at the side of the road saw a blur of blue LA lakers basketball vest and shorts, as opposed to trousers and a shirt - enough to make their eyes linger on
the spectacle of me - not to mention my curly black hair and big round spectacles at the top of my tall body.  a linger-worthy spectacle speeding past on a big bike - triing, trriing! - on a hill on which most people only go slowly or get off and push.  indian bicycles have only one gear.

then i don't know where my energy went.  i was on the cooking shift from 3 to 6pm, chopping up tomatoes, onions, potatoes, garlic, carrots, pumpkin in our team of six, helping bruce the kiwi remove the massive black pan from the fire stove, draining off the tatties then making mash by him adding ladlefuls of tahini while i slowly stirred with my biceps.  i was using an oversized whisk but no whisking motion possible quantities are gargantuan.  a more than fifty strong community.  these cooking activities kept my energy necessarily lively, although i could feel it was draining.   but as soon as the pre-dinner half-hour's mediation commenced in the main hall - forming part of a global meditation to mark the twelfth of the twelfth of the twelfth, as Bhavya the girl from Delhi explained - i instead slunk off to my bed and became dead. in the sense that i did not want to move my body at all, apart from occasionally twitching my fingers and toes.  all energy had been robbed of me.  my thoughts are still active, i thought, while my body is immobile, as good as dead as regards ability to move.  the night went on and on and i had to walk like a zombie to the pit latrines many times, passing ghostily beneath the silhouetted banana fronds and papaya fronds and the fronds of the trees whose name i do not know, for reasons that pharmacies in pondicherry (where i had been buying diahorrea redydration sachets) will know about.

the next morning i continued to walk around like a zombie, soberly reflecting that i wanted to catch the mangalore express that afternoon, soberly reflecting that i didn't have enough energy to wash my bed sheets so how could i walk the two kilometres to the road to catch the bus to pondi?   then Sharon the german volunteer rubbed peppermint oil on my forehead, to draw away the pain...painkillers will only remove the symptoms of the headache, not the cause, but wow, miracle painkillers - give them to me anyway.  and people who saw me
smiled to me "i hope you feel better soon"   that must have done the trick because after slumbering the morning away, i woke up and felt that the oppressive cloud of weakness had been lifted and i was able to wash my sheets and take the books back to the library and pack my bag and at lunch time in the main hall i told everyone i was leaving and left a little sadhana forest notebook for anyone to leave their contact details. i said "but i have the feeling that i will be back.  sadhana has been a very special experience for me.  thank you all for your good looks and i thank the Universe for everything.   i recognise the divine in all of you.  Namaskar"  - palms placed together in prayerful posture.
english Natasha - who has lived in Barcelona for 18 years said to me  "you are a bit of a dreamer carson...just watch out"  i wanted to ask her "watch out for what?" but i didn't have time i had to get the train.  Sam gave me a moped lift along the dusty track to big road, slowing down in the village to avoid the potholes and young dogs and infant goats and hens and naked toddling children.  sam who had said "when your body is ill your whole being is unwell...you need to go through that state to experience healing, and renewal and rebirth". sam with the long hair and yogic consciousness and the beatific eyes. sam from new york.  "peace be with you brother.  we should hang out more extensively sometime"   we hugged and it felt good to be reborn.
then i hitched a lift into pondi.

thanks Universe!

i am running along the side of the road, barefoot, into the setting sun.   it has gone 17:10.    i am barefoot because i left the flip flops in the bicycle basket.    the smooth tarmac is warm to my skin which goes slap slap slap on the road.  sometimes i move over to the sandy verge when a big car comes up behind me going beep beep!
i am running because my bike was stolen earlier on today.   a busy street in pondicherry.   a thirty second lapse of attention in an ATM machine.
there are people who steal things.
i am running because community leaders at sadhana say it is unsafe to be out after dark, especially alone, so i am running to beat the clock.  i want to gain the sandy forest track before the sun has sunk too far beyond the horizon, taking it's light.  i met with couchsurfer emmanuel and when i told him about sadhana forest he was very interested in getting to know.  i said "well i am walking back there anyway" so he said "let's go!"  but in the end we got distracted by drinking iced mint tea in a roadside cafe and when it became apparent that the darkness was coming and there was still something like 10 kilometres to go, emmanuel walked back and i ran on.  emmanuel's couchsurfing profile states that he is 109 years old, so when in conversation he reveals that he is 24 years old, i say "i thought you were 109..." he smiles and says "yes...i wrote that to show how unimportant age is....all ages are the same.  how can i say i am twenty-four when i have already lived so many lives?"     i am running, the sun is setting then a man pulls in front of me with his moped and invites me to take a seat.  his only words comprehended by me are "only tamil", said with a smile.   after a while i give him a gesture which says i can walk but he insists on taking me beyond his turning for a further five kilometres, along the sandy track to sadhana forest, and leaves me there and repeats his smile and says "only help"
there are people who go spontaneously out of their way to help.  there are people who steal things but you cannot say "do not trust anybody" or else you would miss the kind people.

aviram, the rotund, bearded, gentle-eyed israeli who founded sadhana forest nine years ago, hears how the bicycle got stolen and asks me not to feel obliged to buy a new one and when i tell him that i would like to replace it anyway, he gives me a look full of kindness and says "thank you for your integrity".  it feels good when he says that.  i like aviram a lot.  he reminds me somewhat of l'homme qui plantait des arbres, only instead of planting trees in solitude, aviram invites a great transient traveller community to surround and make possible the project.  the US volunteers made a big meal for thanksgiving and while eating we went round in a circle and everyone said something they were thankful for.  it lasted the whole scrumptious dinner.  i said something short, i said "i would like to thank aviram and his family for creating this space to allow us all to come together, and i thank God for all of our hearts which  beat   so well"  many others became very eloquent and gave off great reels of thanks, often starting with "i wanna thank my mom for giving me life...".   at every meal, when everyone has been served, the person who is nearest the bells says "can we have a moment of silence please?" and everyone responds "yes!" then the chimey disks are made to give a high resounding chime and after a while, after a while, after a while, when they chime again, everyone chants out "thank you!" and aleric's midlands falsetto can always be heard chiming "thanks Universe!"

sadhana forest

the time is 2:51  in reality there are not many hours in the day.   in fact there are many of them.    hours filled with new activities, forest activities, living in the forest and replanting the forest.   i was full of experiencing the experience of being in india, learning to walk confidently along the street with my rucksack, not paying any attention to to the curious indian eyes, the reason is perhaps is because i am so tall, some sweetlime juice sellers admitted to me, learning to always ask price of things before engaging in anything involving handing over money, otherwise risking getting really 'fleeced', in the words of my chennai couchsurfer.  sweetlime juice could be twenty five rupees at the station or it could be 40 rupees at a swankier shop in pondycherry.       pondycherry a swankier place generally and they know how to cater for tourists.   it is 3:03   i am borrowing stewart's laptop but don't want to end up hogging it stewart from california just walked past eating a banana.  maybe he wants to use his laptop again.  i will write a couple of words first.  i am at sadhana forest reforestation project   an ecovillage.  i thought it would be similar to the other wwoof placements i had so far known, but in fact it is like nothing i had known.  i say i was full of the experience of being in india, but now i have entered some international place in the forest.  there are about thirty long-term community members and at the moment about forty or so short term volunteers.  minimum stay is two weeks.  the first day i walked in everyone was at work at their morning chores, they gave me big smiles, said 'have you just arrived? what's your name?'  there is such an aura of peace and calm here in the way that people interact.  it is quite a remarkable project they have set up.   one meta aim is to reforest the poor straggly existing land consisting of voracious nonnative species, dry runnels of spiny earth on account of the cyclones which sweep through periodically and cause erosion.  to achieve this aim a lot of time is spent building little mounded walls of earth to stem the flow of water off the land.   after these efforts, they say that the water table has risen six metres.  another aim is simply to live in community, sensitively.  i have never lived in such a sensitive way with so many other people.  we are not on the grid we have some solar panels which provide for our scant electricity needs.  all toilets are severely eco, no toilet paper is even encouraged.  all the human waste falls into big tubs which when full are left for months to hibernate and then go back to nourish the growth of the newly planted treelings.  the big huts are immense, beautifully architechted, requiring nothing but some stone plinths at base, then many logs and palm fronds and straw for the roofing, with gaps to let in plenty of light and allow the air to flow.  everyone gathers there to eat meals in a circle, it takes time to serve everyone up, it takes three hours to prepare in the morning.  we are encouraged (it is a community Rule) not to smoke, or drink alcohol, or take any mind altering chemicals, including coffee and tea.  they say their goal is to increase consciousness not dilute it.  we eat no packaged processed food.  we eat strictly vegan, but nothing is lacking, everything prepared is very diverse and satisfying and moreish, plenty of fresh fruit - papaya and pineapple for breakfast and bananas can be eaten throughout the day.  we wake up in the morning to the singing voices of the early morning group who play the ukilaylee and sing german songs, then we all stand in a circle and sing morning thankful for the new day songs and give each other hugs (not everyone actually, some others are still getting up)  then we carry all the crow bars and adzes to the plantation zone and get digging, surrounding each newly planted tree with a circular ditch which will aid with water retention in times of flood.   it is an amazing, everyone has the afternoons free (apart from the few souls who are part of the cooking team)  or else there are workshops offered by anyone who likes.  it is 3:25 and i must soon dash to catch one entitled 'getting to know thy inner self' (or something) .   it is starting to rain people are saying.  it has always been hot and rather muggy - walking about in nothing but a lunee sort of weather, but today the rain is coming.  till today everybody has been flocking religiously to the mudpool after morning work, where you can swim in the cloudy brown water then smear your body with mud and ly out in the sun till it cakes and cracks then wash your hair with mud and leave it smooth and feeling silky after rinsing.    it is 3:30 and i am stopping writing and going to the workshop, ciao

maneesh at the mudpool

dimitar and raj's performance, wednesday night non-talent show