Yet here I am, in India again. Maybe the geography doesn't add up because the concept of slipping into an alternative dimension seems like a more straightforward explanation. Like everything's fundamentally the same, but bent and reordered (or disordered as the case may be, but aré, let's keep on task). In every aspect of space and time, India, she's worlds away to me.
Can I be frank? I spent the last six months so entirely doubting that any of this would actually manifest that even now that it's come, my mind disbelieves. And as an aside, I wonder if one of my yatras to India will ever one day be preceded by anything other than chaos and disorder. But again, would the shanti be half as striking without some madness beforehand? The storm makes the calm oh-so-quieting.
Despite my many doubts (to employ the Hingrish favorite once more), I am steeped in Mother Bharat: Hindi chatter, hot chai; smoking sadhus, steamy samosas; "Hello, my friend?", "Is no problem." All signs that I have crossed over, slipped into the stream like a weary pilgrim into the Ganga and oh, how I'm ready to let it take me away and wash me clean. Maybe that's when the realization comes - when I let go and float along, buoyed by the joyful moments of "I am really here ; this is really happening," contrary to Thom Yorke's emphatic wail.
Note to self: I'm here, you're here, you made it. I'll chant it like a wish until it comes true (or like a mantra until I realize its truth). Both times I've come to India, I come on fumes, tank empty, waving my barren meal plate, begging for sustenance. Admitting I'm out of fuel has taken some days each time, and comes only after I'm sure the whole scene won't evaporate like a mirage following my concession. But oh, I thirst. And God, I'm waxing philosophical for what feels like the first time in a year. This massive inner tide of wonder and introspection has been delayed by a year of "not now" and "get this done first." Now, I realize how desperate I've been to be here again, to reclaim my shanti.
Now here I sit and as I type, I realize it's here within reach. If I were typing this outside under floral canopy and dimming sunlight, oh, the tide would come forth. Four weeks ahead for meditation and mindfulness. Four weeks to learn how people are everyday coming forth from the dirt and rubble of addiction bright and smiling, miraculously remade.
What have I learned in a week? I've learned that yoga is saving lives over here. Not independently of other contributions -- I'd be a yoga-fanatic and a right crummy scientist to go that far -- but helping save them all the same. I've visited four prominent Indian rehab centers to meet with more than twice that many directors and staff workers, many of them ex-addicts themselves, to learn how yoga is changing lives. I've learned how it appears to ease the experience of the negative emotions which frequently cause the knee-jerk urge to use drugs. I've learned how it helps people reassess their internal and external experiences to make good decisions and not succumb to their cravings. I've learned how people are using these practices to reshape their minds and reclaim their lives. The stories I've heard in a week could make you weep for a lifetime - for the sorrow of loss, the beauty of hope, the glory of triumph.
A week -- somehow, just a week. I made the offhand comment to someone, somewhere recently that I could go home tomorrow and feel my work is done. But that wasn't quite true: by outside perspectives it would seem enough but from my own sense for what lies beneath, my own suspicions of how deep this rabbit-hole runs, my God -- I've only begun to dig. So far, this experience has offered wondrous validation for my own beliefs of the power these practices hold. It's done miracles to assuage my own doubts and uncertainty of whether these questions are worth asking, whether this trail is worth blazing. But in the heart of these conversations, just as in the depth of my own meditations, my hesitations disappear. I sit with myself and I look and I know. That this is dharma, to ask these questions and find their answers. These truths are my truth; to pursue them undauntedly is to realize my nature. "Tiger gotta hunt, bird gotta fly, man gotta sit and wonder why, why, why."
And if I'm going to quote Vonnegut, I'm going to do it twice: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." I won't preemptively apologize for my growing certainty that people are coming into my path a hair too serendipitously for me to chalk it all up to chance and happenstance. Besides the ones I've sought out myself, I have seemingly randomly bumped into an increasingly bizarre number of people who practice yoga and meditation and have shared their (often incredible) experiences with me. I've received nothing but encouragement in the path I'm choosing to take, to try and peer into the brain and watch the mind dance its weaving, mystic dance. If you know me or have ever asked me "So how was India?", I don't need to tell you the dance these conversations bring about in myself. I am loving this; little has ever felt so right.
More to come soon, but necessarily after dinner. There's much to tell of just what all I've done and now that I'm here in Mumbai, I finally have the means and the wherewithal to tell it. Photos to boot - precious Karnatakan children and luscious Indian foliage lay just around the corner, I swear. Now to eat, phir milenge to all. Dearest blog, I give you new life, new form for your undying spirit.
