India blog part VIII

Sometimes you go with the flow and the flow bites you in the ass.

After a few days in the ashram, I was thrilled to finally get an appointment for an abhyanga massage at a nearby ayurvedic clinic. In order to enjoy this story, you should know that I am no shrinking violet, that I have been naked, wrung, kneaded and manhandled numerous times in the course of my many massage experiences. I thought I had seen it all, but no.

When I showed up at the clinic, an older Indian woman took me across a filthy little corridor and stepped through a door. I followed her without thinking until it was too late and realized that she was crouching and peeing over a Turkish toilet. She then pulled down her skirts and gestured towards the hole: “Urination please.” She stood there for a few seconds while I considered her suggestion. I did have to pee but I certainly did not want to do it in front of her, and then there was the pee on shoes risk to manage, as well as the no-toilet paper situation. I was torn.

She then turned around and left, and I did my best to avoid the pitfalls of oriental potties, with somewhat mitigated success, and I will say no more.

I then walked into the massage room, which incidentally had the feeling and the cleanliness of a campsite shower stall. “Naked now please.” she said. I proceeded to take off my tunic and my pants and then my bra. I must have hesitated because she had a slightly impatient look on her face when she gestured toward my panties. “No small pants” she says. I might have panicked a little bit and then told myself that perhaps my underwear was the only thing standing between myself and a life-changing massage, that I was being a ninny, that for sure Shiva Rea and Seane Corn never kept their panties on in those situations, so I removed the damn things. I was getting ready to lie down on my belly when she told me sit instead on the table, and shouted at her colleague in the other room to come join in the fun.

I had never given this much thought, but there is something pretty unnerving about being sandwiched between two Indian women and having your front and back massaged simultaneously while sitting up. There’s a lot of rubbing and tugging and inserting fingers and hands into, hum, little folds, and it’s just not that relaxing. Add the distinct feeling that your labia are resting on a hotbed of dirty sheet /sesame oil bacteria, and that the front lady thinks that your naughty breasts deserve a good spanking, and you get my drift.

After a few minutes I was looking forward to finally lying down, when she gestured that I should lie on my side with my legs scissored. They both got to work on my inner thighs, occasionally catching aforementioned labia on the way, and they finished by massaging my generous buttocks while I held my breath for fear that they would part certain sensitive areas to get better access to other sensitive areas.

(By the way, for all of you perverted little souls, let me specify that there was nothing even remotely sensual about this. Flossing my teeth is more sensual. And if you find that flossing is sensual, man, you got bigger issues than me.)

After both sides were done, I finally made it to lying on my back and they started massaging my head. Perhaps massaging is not the right word, maybe it was more little yanking my hair and rubbing my scalp until I had that same chafing sensation I had that time with Mari Chéri in the S300 with the shag dashboard.

Since the lady on my left was obviously in training to become a skilled massage therapist, the one on my right kept screaming at her in hindi, which then resulted in the poor woman having to really dig in, which in turn resulted in bruises for me on my arms and legs.

Finally, after what felt like hours, they made me stand up and walk to a svedhana, which is really just a fancy ayurvedic word for a wood box hooked onto a steam hose in which you sit with only your head sticking out. They were nice enough to put a filthy towel around my neck to keep the steam from escaping, and whenever I shifted I’d inhale a whiff of steamed peanut.

Then they gave me a bucket of hot water and I tried hard to wash the oil off me without much success. I then had to walk back to the massage room as they still had my clothes. When the door opened, I caught a glimpse of a stark naked Marie-Christine on her side. I couldn’t help to feel a sinister satisfaction that I’d have someone to share my assault experience with.

On my way out, the nice ayurvedic lady doctor asked me if I was relaxed. After a quick scan of my mangled body parts, I realized to my surprise that I was indeed. I guess a little battering does a body good after all.

Three things I am grateful for:

1- My skin is super soft from the sesame oil, but I will never see chicken stir-fries the same way ever again.
2- All of the women in the group have been buying the same scarves in different colors, and all of a sudden we have an “India uniform”, which is fun.
3- The bruises on my inner thighs and butt will have faded by the time I go home, so there’ll be no sticky explaining to do to Mari Chéri.

India blog Part VII

This is the story of a bunch of tourists who wanted to go on a safari.

After a rather stressful departure (“We must hurry! Park closes at 9!”) we finally managed to lasso everyone in and made it to the “park”. Yes, the quotation marks are intentional as our safari should be really be described as a interminable Jeep ride looking at lots of animal poop. There was deer poop, wild boar poop, elephant poop, and possibly other species of poop which our nice hindi-only speaking guide could not identify, and therefore not get us excited about. Maybe I am being unfair: we did see some animals, mostly birds and deer, but Hélène summed it up really well when she said that she’d seen some just like that at the Parc de Boucherville…

While we took tons of pictures of us looking very Out-of-Africaesque coated in road dust wearing our scarves as head gear, the highlight of the safari was really when they made us climb into a wooden structure overlooking the landscape, and we may have seen either buffalos, or poor Indian workers hired by the Indian Government to look like buffalos, in the distance. I know, how jealous are you right now?

We then made it back to the ashram, and Hélène and I decided to go try a 100 Rs yoga class at a nearby hotel that had been highly recommended by a couple of fellow Quebecers we had met the day before.

I don’t usually find male yogis attractive: while I can appreciate a man who breathes and bends and is open to the wisdom that yoga can bring, I also always kind of wonder if they didn’t get into yoga either to score chicks, or other men who got into yoga to score chicks. Maybe I am cynical, but having been married to a man for 20 years, and having given birth to two, I think I know a little something about the male species. Swami Yoganan notwithstanding, yoga bliss is not a natural state for most men I know.

Enter Surinder Singh. Or, as we have come to call him, Surrender Singh…

Surrender is a very handsome Indian man, with a huge silky beard and hypnotic eyes. His English was pretty good, but even if it hadn’t, I’m pretty sure most of his female students would still show up. The class was good, the teaching solid, but what made it special was the way he would come over and twist and bend you a little deeper (wait… that sounds way more fun than it actually was, but you get my drift) and then give you a thumbs up and a huge smile once he had managed to push you far enough. I was surprised that he would actually touch us, as typically Indian men don’t touch non-related women, but then again we found out that he has been teaching for a very long time and that people come from all over the world to train with him. He also integrated more chanting and singing into his class, which will sound odd to most of you non-yogis but it was absolutely lovely.

So lovely in fact that when we met up with the rest of the group, (young and fresh ) A.-R. looked at us strangely and asked what we had been doing in class. It seems we looked as though we had just had successful sexy time, which in a way we had I guess; )

Three things I am grateful for today:

1- No meat or alcohol in 8 days, and I almost don’t miss them. Almost.
2- Excited about my ayurvedic massage tomorrow.
3- Had my laundry done, 10 rupees a piece. Wonder if they’d deliver in Greenfield Park?

India blog Part VI

The last two days have been more or less fused into my mind as time is immaterial here (I guess that’s what they mean by “India time”?). There was a lot of walking around, some shopping and much lamenting the lack of beer. I’m not normally a beer drinker, but a week in a holy city will turn you into an ale-drinking tavern-going lusty wench it seems.

Bita brought us to a market in a nearby village to shop for spices and fabrics. We walked around for a bit and enjoyed cane juice and jaggery, a sugar paste sold in orangy big lumps which she assures us is both ayurvedic and sold for ten times the price in Montreal. I thought for a minute about becoming a jaggery trader, importing truckloads of orange sugar lumps and building an empire in Canada. Then I realized that one empire is enough to manage, with the laundry and the costcoing and the teenage warmonging and all that. I need more work like I need more love handles at this point.

We then went for fabric. As all six of us were sitting down, the shopkeeper showed us boxes and boxes of beautiful silks and sari silks (from what I can understand a mix of silk and polyester?). Marie-Christine and (young and fresh) A.-R. got excited about a green and blue piece of silk which I thought at first looked like curtain fabric, but then the shopkeeper opened it up and there was a plainer bit that was just beautiful. I tried to lure Marie-Christine’s eyes away from it by shaking an equally attractive turquoise silk in front of her eyes, but it was too late, they had agreed to purchase it together and have tunics and yoga bags made out of it. (I did try to get excited about other pieces of fabric since then, but it’s like that nerd that you rejected at a pub crawl that your girlfriend ended up marrying and moving to the Côte d’Azur with: I missed my chance and now it will be happy without me forever… Perhaps I’m reading too much into this fabric thing?).

For those wondering, the food situation is actually quite good, despite the no meat, no booze, no refined sugar thing. The rule is simple: stay away from the Indian re-creation of westerner food, and you’ll be fine. This tidbit of wisdom came to me following a particularly horrid pizza episode with what I think was yak cheese (or yark cheese for my francophone friends?). It didn’t taste bad, it just didn’t taste good either. So far, we’ve had very good luck following the lonely planet recommendations, and the words German bakery will be engraved forever in my heart after this trip. You’re better off sticking to a mostly legume & rice regimen if you can, with a little Limka (the Indian Fresca with real sugar) thrown in for a sweet taste.

The homesickness started to kick in when I asked Simon over Skype what he was doing, and he said “nothing”, which made me feel guilty, because my job is usually grand master social organizer for the family. Oh well. Teenager and Mari Chéri seem to be doing ok, or at least I didn’t see anything untoward in the Facebook statuses, which is good enough for me.

Three things I’m grateful for today:

1- We found a way to take a jeep for 100 rupees from the second bridge all the way to the entrance of the ashram. This spares us walking on a loooong stretch of road with cows, motorcycles, assorted dung types and organic smells.
2- Pretty psyched about getting an abhyanga and shirodahara treatment at the ayurvedic center on Tuesday.
3- The situation described in the previous blog entry has pretty much resolved itself. Praise Brahma!

India blog Part V

Today all the bean eating, chai drinking and vegan Italian food sampling caught up with me. I knew this was coming, and have the pills to prove it, but it is always a shock to wake up in the middle of the night with the runs and a fever and the distinct feeling you are going to die a juicy death any minute now in a filthy bathroom away from your friends and family (well, ok, family, don’t think my friends would want part of this).

I did manage to go back to sleep, and woke up in time to tell the group that I would not be accompanying them on their grand tour of Haridwar’s best temples. I went back to bed, and slept all day, until 6 p.m. when they returned.

And then I had a dilemma: I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten all day, but at the same time was reluctant to consume food that was likely to provoke another explosive episode. Bita and Deborah convinced me to try an ayurvedic restaurant that had been recommended to them by a local doctor. They were preparing a special dish for us, kithary, that is said to be appropriate to balance the three doshas, and soothe fragile foreigner GI tracks.

Since I don’t have much to relate in terms of adventures today, let’s talk about Ayurveda. Bita is a licensed practitioner and has provided me with copious advice over the last two years in order to improve my vitality and fix a number of niggling health issues that seem to pop up increasingly often as you get older (I’m sure she provides young and fresh A.-R. with advice as well, it’s just that A.-R. isn’t probably as despera…, hum, compelled to follow it…)

Some of that advice is a bit strange (tongue scraping after teeth brushing, food kept only in glass or metal containers, avoiding hot baths when on your period); some of it makes sense (eating warm food on cold days and vice versa, avoid alcohol if you have a fiery i.e. pitta temper, and eat fresh organic food); and most of it seems designed to make my life miserable: prepare meals from scratch using only fresh ingredients, eat dinner before 6 p.m. and avoid sweet, sour and salty tastes if your kapha dosha is dominant (i.e. chunky like me).

(BTW, if you wonder what the appropriate tastes are for Kapha body types, they are spicy, bitter and dry… Radishes are a good example of a Kapha-friendly food. Yummy, right?)

My point is, being in the land of Ayurveda without having to worry about feeding a family or showing up for work, it’s been very easy to follow Bita’s advice, and my body is loving it. My skin has cleared up, the white of my eyes is very white, and even with that GI issue, I feel more vibrant than I have in years. I do miss cocktails and chicken (Rishikesh is a holy city where all meat and alcohol are forbidden), but at the same time, I’m kind of glad to have this opportunity to give them up for a while and see what happens. It’ll be interesting to see how I can incorporate that knowledge into my daily life when I get back (Mari Chéri just went “huh hoh!” ; )

Three things I am grateful for today:

1- Having the opportunity to be sick and sleep all day with out having to worry about the impact it would have on other people;
2- Dr. Sanga’s fantastic selection of prescription meds, which will ensure I am right as rain in no time;
3- Found an Indian Starbucks (not a Starbucks but similar marketing mix) with great coffee and vegan brownies. If you sit with your back to the door, and close your eyes, you can imagine you are at the corner of Peel and Ste-Catherine’s. Sometimes you need that.

India blog Part IV

This morning I thought I’d go try the morning yoga with Swami Yoganan, because, face it, what are the chances I’d be able to practice with a 103 year-old yogi ever again? Now, you’d think that if you lived that long, you’d be all mellow and take it easy on yourself, right? No, not really.

One of the poses that he enjoys showing off is putting his legs around his neck with his tongue sticking out, with his manly bits hanging dangerously close to said tongue. This is pretty much the most unattractive thing I have ever seen. Mari Chéri would tell you that Swami has achieved the Holy Grail of masturbatory technique, self oral stimulation, but I’m sure that is not an appropriate way to think about Swami (and the imagery is too disturbing anyway).

After class, we went for breakfast with most of the group (yummy pancakes), and then for some shopping in Rishikesh at a small clothing shop with fantastic embroidered tunics and scarves. We had picked a bunch of stuff and it was time to negotiate, and my friend Martine had it all figured out. Yogish, our Indian organizer in Montreal, had told us that in an Indian negotiation, the merchant tells a price, and then you immediately offer him one third of it. The conversation went a bit like this:

Merchant: “Total is 11400 rupees, I give you 10% volume discount, so total is 10260.”
Martine: “I’ll give you 3500 rupees.”
Merchant: “No.”
Martine: “4000.”
Merchant: “No.”
Martine: “5000.”
Merchant: “No.”
Martine: “You have to give me a better price.”
Merchant: “You already have better price: 10 260 rupees.”
And this went on for a while until Martine was able to bargain him down to 10 200 rupees. I was really proud and not a little envious of her, let me tell you.

And me, you ask? I got the 10% discount for my four tunics but totally chickened out of the negotiation process. He did give me a nice handkerchief as a bonus, so I’m happy. It is a pretty handkerchief.

After shopping, we wanted to go for lunch at the German Bakery, where we were told there’d be pastries and coffee (Yééé!) but there was a slight misunderstanding about its location. It turns out that it was across the second bridge, not the first one. After walking in the sunshine for what felt like forever, we stopped at a gas station and asked for directions. There was a tuk tuk (some kind of open taxi) driver there who told us that he’d take us for 70 rupees, but then a second driver who wanted in on the action tried to exploit our womanly insecurities by declaring that “all six, impossible”. The first driver would have none of it, gestured all six of us in his tuk tuk and off we were. I was afraid that the second driver would follow us and beat up our driver, but it seems that Indians are more civilized than my mind scenarios.

After an amazing lunch, we went back to the ashram and I had (another) glorious three-hour nap. When I woke up, Hélène and A.-R. were getting ready for dinner and wanted to try an Italian restaurant about 30 minutes away by foot. Walking, getting lost a little bit, and then finally sitting down and eating took a bit longer than expected, and we realized around 8:45 that we had to be back at the ashram before the 9 p.m. curfew.

Now, a word about curfews. After spending the better part of my teenage years fighting curfews hand, tooth and nail, it seems pretty ironic that in my forties, I would travel a few thousands miles and pay a fair chunk of money to be subjected to one.

We found a jeep driver and asked him to drive us, fast, to our ashram, but that was without taking sacred cows into consideration. It turns out that cows love lying about the streets at night and that honking at them is a no-no. A.-R. did her best screaming “curfew!” at them, but eventually the driver had to drive around the animals, which proved to be a little hair raising. We did make it at 5 to 9, though, so we were saved from sleeping on the streets with beggars and stray dogs.

Three things I am grateful for today:
1- I found tunics my size at the shop, and the merchant told me that he has seen “much bigger woman” before. Yé for that.
2- The pace in Rishikesh is better suited to my own natural speed, is less polluted and not as noisy and smelly as New Delhi.
3- Having the freedom to sleep, eat, read and write when I want to is great, never thought I was such a night owl before?

India blog Part III

First, let me take care of some housekeeping. My fellow adventurer A.-R. wants you to know that is IN NO WAY middle-aged. I did try to tell her that the image of a group of sassy ladies of that certain age from the Montreal burbs (and three very patient gentlemen) cavorting throughout India would be more fun than describing the adventures of one twenty-something, one thirty-something (A.-R.), and then miscellaneous forty and fifty year olds, but she’d have none of it. So, there you have it. I may be mature, but she is young and fresh, m’kay?

Come to think of it, I am not middle-aged either I hope. I’m totally planning on living way older than 80, and now I know the way. Swami Yoganan, a springy 103 year old, gave us his secret: yoga in the morning, no sugar, no tea, no coffee, lots of sex (he did father 10 kids… he showed us their pictures and I dare say most of them don’t really look like him?), oh, and NO FOOD, only fruit and vegetable juice. Sounds great, right? No, not really. I might just trade off a few years for a mojito and a Pirate cookie here and there. Just sayin’.

Today was no Eat Pray Love day, more like Worry, Curse and Wonder WTF I’m doing here. The day started well enough, with a train ride in the Indian countryside (first class, with lots of food and happy little children), all the way to Haridwar, where we were picked up by two minibuses and their drivers with very limited English. I won’t go into details, but for the first time it hit me that we were in a third world country where we knew no one and didn’t speak the language. All of a sudden, my adventure of a lifetime was transformed into a bottomless pit of despair, where the combination of wicked pms and cold ashram chickpea curry eaten in complete silence made me fantasize about the remaining 19 days of my trip spent in luxury at the New Delhi Hilton. After all, I’d still be in India, and I could do yoga anytime I want in their “very state-of-the-art” fitness centre, with bacon and goat cheeseburgers in each hand if I chose. That, I concluded, would be friggin’ sweet.

But then, A.-R. and Hélène dragged me to yoga class and I came home to myself. The ripped wallpaper in my room, the Alcatraz-style design of our building and the sinister hook in my bathroom didn’t matter anymore. I was here to do yoga, and I did just that, and it felt right. This trip might find me again at some point crying in foetal position over something silly like grotty bath towels or a gigantic dried blood stain in the middle of a busy train station, but as long as I can set my mat on the ground and twist and bend, I’ll be fine. I think.

Three things I’m grateful for today:

1- Rishikesh is breathtakingly beautiful, and fun to walk around, and cheap. It’s going to be good to be here for a week.
2- Free wifi in the hall of my building
3- Al the cool travel gear my boys gave me from X-Mas which has been very useful so far: apparently linens don't include bed sheets...

India blog Part II

March 8, 2011

The time difference is still playing tricks on me: it is 3:50 a.m. and I am wide awake. Both last night and about 20 minutes ago I was woken up by what can be best described as a grown man lamenting for ten minutes straight. Eerie, I was at my window trying to get a look at him to determine whether he was really crying or just pretending in some kind of twisted prayer? Anyhow, didn’t see a thing so that leaves me here, telling you about my first full day in Delhi.

Many people who have been here told me that India would change my life, so I kept waiting for that yesterday. I wondered whether it’d be a pop, a vision or a spiritual exaltation, the kind you hope for when you are 10 and you see a Franco Zeffirelli movie. Didn’t happen… yet?

India is magnificent, and joyful, and poor, and fragrant, and scary, and both backwards and right in its humanity. Quite the mix.

Begging children are not as numerous as I expected, but they are persistent, and they know me very well. Typically, it is a mother and some pantless child, sleeping in her arms, and she looking at me, gesturing to her mouth, pointing to her baby, and me fumbling in my bag, looking for a few rupees so that she’ll stop poking me with her little accusing fingers and whining “food, baaaaby, food, baaaby, food, baaaaby”. Despite my best Slumdog Millionaire mind scenario, what can I do? I have to respond.

The 1.8 kilograms of lollypops I purchased at Costco are almost all still in my bag (I ate 11 before going to bed two days ago in a fruitless attempt at comforting myself into a sugary coma). Somehow, it feels pithy to hand them out, like offering a new bicycle to someone who needs a liver transplant. The three little brothers that I gave them to looked happy enough, but I couldn’t help but wonder if one of them was going to lose his eyes or a leg at the hands of his boss because I like to shop in bulk and don`t know any better.

Bita is great. The three little creatures had been following us for the better part of our walk in Connaught Place, when she stopped at a street food stand (verboten territory to us Westerners with the tender GI tracks), bargained the guy down to 20 rupees for a full plate of mush (couldn’t see what it was exactly), and some bread. She sat them down with napkins (a nice touch considering they looked like they hadn’t seen soap nor running water in a long while if ever), and we watched them eat, all smug with humanitarian goodness. Fearless Marie-Christine got them juice, and then we were swamped by another fifteen children who’d discovered a bunch of white Canadians who obviously had more delusions and rupees than common sense. I got a little worried, wondered if in a pinch they’d let us get away if I threw my useless iPhone at them and ran.

That was not taking Bita into consideration, who managed to shoo them away with threatening cries of “shoda-something-or-other” (which means go home she says, but by then I was unnerved beyond learning new hindu catchphrases), and we walked – FAST- to a nearby upscale Indian restaurant. They had an attendant in full maharajah regalia at the front door, and Marie-Christine asked if his beard was real, it was so lush and shiny. I remember thinking that that was a good metaphor for India – no matter how technologically evolved and enlightened we are in the Western world, we probably couldn’t grow a nice beard like that (I certainly would hope not in my case, although on certain pms days, anything feels possible) if we tried.

Three things and people I am grateful for today:

- Got my hands hennaed with a beautiful design. They tell me that it will last 27 days, so perhaps it will have faded by the time I get back to work. Maybe not. Perhaps I’ll change my name to Bliss and have business cards redone then.
- Bita who is finding out that herding twelve unruly tourists in a third-world country is no easy feat, yet remains graceful and patient, if a little tense.
- Got some restful sleep this afternoon, felt very colonial to be lolling about in bed with the street hubbub going on outside my window ; )