This morning I woke up at 5 unable to go back to sleep. I rolled out of bed, which seemed to rustle my sleeping roommate. To the rooftop I went, to allow my mind to unravel with movement and breath, and find some peace among mental upset over frantic dreams. Part way through meditation I found a groove, and then finished with a loving kindness practice. As I chanted "om" softly, I became more keenly aware of my surroundings. Untangling my legs from lotus pose, I heard footsteps and turned around to see Sarah, another member from the program, who had arrived the night before.
Yesterday a group of us went to Lal Bagh botanical gardens. After breakfast, we decided to mobilize, deliberating on riding an auto-rickshaw into town, or taking a cab. Steve head-wobblingly suggested a cab, and we set out on the all too long journey of figuring out Ola, a ride sharing service (fondly referred to as the "Indian Uber" which is interesting because Uber is also a thing here).
5 people squeezed into a sedan, and we swerved our way through throngs of people, cars, rickshaws, scooters, temples, advertisements, dogs, fruit stands.. Each artifact seemed to intrigue, inform and assimilate into itself and the surroundings.
At the gardens, Anu found out that some of her old Indian money was no longer accepted here. We found out we had to pay to take cameras inside, and found litter all around the grounds despite the trash bins pleadingly labeled "please use me." We found couples smooching behind skinny trees, and others coyly chatting. We saw rose bushes and mangrove tress, red bugs mating and red flowers speckling treetops, but perhaps most importantly, we saw monkeys.
Tim, a recovering aspiring zoologist, greeted the bouncing creatures like long lost family, while the rest of us more or less cautiously followed suit. Their faces were calm or calculating as they looked upon us, and I was struck by the responsiveness of the wrinkles in their face.
We stood, giggling and documenting, documenting and giggling. I walked ahead a bit toward a couple of monkeys playing on a bench, who seemed to be fighting over a piece of food (many of them were carrying around litter - mango juice boxes, plastic bags, etc). Upon further inspection, they were wrestling for a small shard of mirror.
The one who had it was protecting it diligently, while the other would bat at him until growing tired and walking away. When he did, the victor held up the mirror to his eyes, and stared intently into it. He angled and squinted and craned his neck, and then would rub the mirror in the dirt before looking back into it. Someone walked by and remarked on how they were concerned he would cut himself on the glass doing that, but I like to think he was thoughtfully buffing the surface to get a better reflection.
We walked around, taking in the beauty of the gardens, the new sights and smells, and lamenting over the lack of a selfie stick. We left the gardens to roam Bangalore, and without a map we stuck to the nearby residential areas, stumbling upon cows, a theosophical study building, beautiful homes amidst crowded streets, and eventually stopped for ice cream before heading back to the hotel.
Back in our room, Anu showed Allie and me shots she'd taken of her friends dressed in saris and we excitedly chatted about our own, future photo shoots.
Later that night, I went to dinner at a friend's family home in Bangalore and got a delicious meal and lovely conversation. At one point we were talking about cognitive science - my academic focus - and empirical evidence. He was remarking on how he felt the people in India tend to be more eager to adopt a practice after only hearing that it worked for someone, whereas the West has a tendency to research more thoroughly before integrating lifestyle choices. I thought about the practice of millennia-old health modalities versus diet fads and dying of confusion*, but ended up saying something about how both sides have a lot to learn from the other.
He told me there are lots of people who practice yoga in the park every morning and he passes by them often.
I think about the different ways we reveal intimacy -out of choice or necessity. Both on this trip, sharing chap stick and anti-diarrheals, and out in society, bathing on the streets or praying in gardens. I think everyone has some harebrained idea of what makes this world- this life - keep moving. Shaped by religion, culture, habit or practicality, they may range in the strength of their logical concluding, but nevertheless have something fundamentally mystical about them. We don't know big Whys, big Hows. Not in the ways we know why rain falls from the sky, or how automobiles work. And be you an atheist, agnostic or devoutly theistic, there's an element of faith that is necessary to get through one day to the next, to allow oneself to flow openly through life.
Maybe it's all the Bollywood I've been watching, but the ways that intimacy is allowed to be revealed publicly in India differs immensely from what I've seen in America. People selling things, walking cows, playing with babies on the sides of crowded streets or busy highways. I think, in contrast, of the expansive, rural communities in America with more acreage to hide within and behind; more space and less communal living. Even in our cities, seriously human things like hygiene, child rearing, emotions so often happen solely behind closed doors.
Just because we can hide our insanity doesn't mean we lack it. Egoful, scattered creatures, we're all searching for the same sort of meaning. Grabbing at the same impossibly small shard of mirror to see something grader reflected out of our eyes, out of the one tiny vessel that life goes on within and without.** Just sometimes we have a sort of lonely luxury of doing this looking inside of four, carefully constructed walls, while other times we have the potentially unifying challenge of public processing.
I suppose we all have spaces for both. And that just goes to show how much more we have to learn from one another.
Today we're off to Mysore for the bulk of our journey! I may have less existential musing time on my hands in Mysore, but I'll still be posting something - and Anu will still be taking photos of the same beautiful caliber - so stay tuned for more. :)
* See Portlandia's "haunted house" sketch for an amusing portrayal this phenomenon..
* *Inspired by The Beatles tune "Within You Without You," what I recently learned is Allie's favorite song. :)
 |
| *photos by Anurima Kumar* |
Yesterday a group of us went to Lal Bagh botanical gardens. After breakfast, we decided to mobilize, deliberating on riding an auto-rickshaw into town, or taking a cab. Steve head-wobblingly suggested a cab, and we set out on the all too long journey of figuring out Ola, a ride sharing service (fondly referred to as the "Indian Uber" which is interesting because Uber is also a thing here).
5 people squeezed into a sedan, and we swerved our way through throngs of people, cars, rickshaws, scooters, temples, advertisements, dogs, fruit stands.. Each artifact seemed to intrigue, inform and assimilate into itself and the surroundings.
 |
  |
At the gardens, Anu found out that some of her old Indian money was no longer accepted here. We found out we had to pay to take cameras inside, and found litter all around the grounds despite the trash bins pleadingly labeled "please use me." We found couples smooching behind skinny trees, and others coyly chatting. We saw rose bushes and mangrove tress, red bugs mating and red flowers speckling treetops, but perhaps most importantly, we saw monkeys.
Tim, a recovering aspiring zoologist, greeted the bouncing creatures like long lost family, while the rest of us more or less cautiously followed suit. Their faces were calm or calculating as they looked upon us, and I was struck by the responsiveness of the wrinkles in their face.
We stood, giggling and documenting, documenting and giggling. I walked ahead a bit toward a couple of monkeys playing on a bench, who seemed to be fighting over a piece of food (many of them were carrying around litter - mango juice boxes, plastic bags, etc). Upon further inspection, they were wrestling for a small shard of mirror.
The one who had it was protecting it diligently, while the other would bat at him until growing tired and walking away. When he did, the victor held up the mirror to his eyes, and stared intently into it. He angled and squinted and craned his neck, and then would rub the mirror in the dirt before looking back into it. Someone walked by and remarked on how they were concerned he would cut himself on the glass doing that, but I like to think he was thoughtfully buffing the surface to get a better reflection.
 |
| I snapped this shot... This monkey was my highlight from the gardens. |
We walked around, taking in the beauty of the gardens, the new sights and smells, and lamenting over the lack of a selfie stick. We left the gardens to roam Bangalore, and without a map we stuck to the nearby residential areas, stumbling upon cows, a theosophical study building, beautiful homes amidst crowded streets, and eventually stopped for ice cream before heading back to the hotel.
Back in our room, Anu showed Allie and me shots she'd taken of her friends dressed in saris and we excitedly chatted about our own, future photo shoots.
Later that night, I went to dinner at a friend's family home in Bangalore and got a delicious meal and lovely conversation. At one point we were talking about cognitive science - my academic focus - and empirical evidence. He was remarking on how he felt the people in India tend to be more eager to adopt a practice after only hearing that it worked for someone, whereas the West has a tendency to research more thoroughly before integrating lifestyle choices. I thought about the practice of millennia-old health modalities versus diet fads and dying of confusion*, but ended up saying something about how both sides have a lot to learn from the other.
He told me there are lots of people who practice yoga in the park every morning and he passes by them often.
I think about the different ways we reveal intimacy -out of choice or necessity. Both on this trip, sharing chap stick and anti-diarrheals, and out in society, bathing on the streets or praying in gardens. I think everyone has some harebrained idea of what makes this world- this life - keep moving. Shaped by religion, culture, habit or practicality, they may range in the strength of their logical concluding, but nevertheless have something fundamentally mystical about them. We don't know big Whys, big Hows. Not in the ways we know why rain falls from the sky, or how automobiles work. And be you an atheist, agnostic or devoutly theistic, there's an element of faith that is necessary to get through one day to the next, to allow oneself to flow openly through life.
Maybe it's all the Bollywood I've been watching, but the ways that intimacy is allowed to be revealed publicly in India differs immensely from what I've seen in America. People selling things, walking cows, playing with babies on the sides of crowded streets or busy highways. I think, in contrast, of the expansive, rural communities in America with more acreage to hide within and behind; more space and less communal living. Even in our cities, seriously human things like hygiene, child rearing, emotions so often happen solely behind closed doors.
Just because we can hide our insanity doesn't mean we lack it. Egoful, scattered creatures, we're all searching for the same sort of meaning. Grabbing at the same impossibly small shard of mirror to see something grader reflected out of our eyes, out of the one tiny vessel that life goes on within and without.** Just sometimes we have a sort of lonely luxury of doing this looking inside of four, carefully constructed walls, while other times we have the potentially unifying challenge of public processing.
I suppose we all have spaces for both. And that just goes to show how much more we have to learn from one another.
Today we're off to Mysore for the bulk of our journey! I may have less existential musing time on my hands in Mysore, but I'll still be posting something - and Anu will still be taking photos of the same beautiful caliber - so stay tuned for more. :)
* See Portlandia's "haunted house" sketch for an amusing portrayal this phenomenon..
* *Inspired by The Beatles tune "Within You Without You," what I recently learned is Allie's favorite song. :)
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