"So, is it everything you'd hoped for?"

I sincerely love the life that I am living here in India. I wake up before the sun, 5:30 when the predawn is cool enough to warrant a sweater. My drowsiness fades as I peddle to yoga, and after twenty minutes, I am warm and awake. My friends and I lay out our yoga mats and sing the Sanskrit prayer before calming our breathing to a deep, steady pace. The give and take of yoga alternates strain, relax, strain, offering pragmatic training for exploring Hyderabad, where one must foster constant alertness while maintaining calm repose.

Every yogic act is deliberate and self-aware. Each demands total physical and mental commitment, for which relaxation poses reward one with relief from dharmic effort. Like capoeira, my body rejoices in these movements, and I find comfort and stability in their already familiar execution. Here, action and nonaction manifest to breathy rhythm.

From this ancient ritual, I live my day from a point of inner balance, a plane of inner tranquility. I smile more loosely, laugh more easily and want less frequently, for the contentment in my limbs and quietude in my mind. This peace lifts my spirit and makes of me a new man, born with the rising sun into the infant morning.

Hereon, the day is my trove. My philosophy professors teach loudly with fire in their bellies, honest passion. My Hindi instructor and third or fourth Indian mother leads us through new fields of expression and beams through our stumblings and successes alike. I return to the hostel for two of the best meals of my life, twice a day, where smiling men offer generous portions.

With my spare time, I read, write and reflect, habits I'm realizing are nothing short of essential to my life. I collide and converse with the other students, each of whom possesses a passion and a genius for any number of pursuits. Hardly a day goes by without the passing of a deeply human thread through my life and another's.

And there is time for exploration, time for getting lost in the city's every nuance. Buses and rickshaws take me into a new world which bursts with color and life and I give into the current, let her take me away.

After it all, I fall asleep earlier and quicker than I ever have, expended from the day, restless only for the morrow.

I will carry this Way home; I will build from it a life.