Now that my teacher training has ended and my days have
opened up, Steve is busying himself with filling my senses with the wonders
that surround us.
We’re developing a routine where I rise first and unroll my
mat, begin my breathing exercises. From the bed, he reads the news for a while,
finally gazing past his phone, watching me begin my practice. I look up to see
him smiling at me like a proud parent. He sees my strength, the muscles in my
back that hold me erect after all those hours sitting on concrete floors. My
flow coaxes him out of bed and he places his mat beside mine, asking me to
teach him. He knows how I love to learn, ache to know, revel in teaching. Yet I
am everyday aware that he is teaching me in his own quiet way, teaching me the
importance of rest after activity, of adequate sleep for a healthy mind and
body, of fun and laughter with work and diligence. These are lessons I still need
to learn after driving my body and mind to exhaustion day in and out for most
of my life. He cites my Mormon work ethic as the driving force for rising so
early, going to sleep so late, squeezing every moment out of the day. Our
friend Gaurav, Steve’s former philosophy teacher, said it was obsession that
plagued me. Any sort of obsession unbalances us, even when it’s directed
towards good things like exercise, yoga, philosophy. We are made to work, but
not only to work, we are made to play, but not only to play.
After our flows and savasana, Steve hustles me out the door,
onto scooty, and the open road. Crows caw in the stillness of the morning, a
cow lows here, a dog barks there, but the incessant honking, the rumble of buses
and raft- and tourist-laden trucks are not yet awake to clog the narrow roads.
We slice through the morning stillness, as he maneuvers through the potholes
and donkeys hauling sand from the Ganga. The road that leads into the foothills
of the Himalaya and the wonders that lay beyond is dusty and we wear scarfs and
handkerchiefs over our faces like bandits. Steve listens to Hindi rap or the
Dead, occasionally belting out a lyric, enraptured by all that sounds us. I
listen to lectures on the History of India, slowly putting into place the puzzle
pieces of the present whizzing past me with the stories that explain their
existence. We pass families walking from one town to the next, stepping around
the workers’ camps on the side of the road, dodging the construction trucks
swerving precariously around S-curves that plunge into valleys below.
There is so much to learn here, and my curiosity is palpable
to those who notice us. Yesterday I came across a group of pilgrims walking
along the ghats on the Ganga. I was photographing a cow as it stood
magisterially overlooking the preparations for the Fire Ceremony across the
river. I woman approached the cow from behind, placed a hand on her flank,
grasped its tail in her hand and caressed her faced with it before patting it again,
bowing, and moving on. The anthropologist in me was capturing the moment on
film when the woman’s husband stopped to explain that the cow was holy to them.
“Parvati?” I asked.
He smiled broadly and nodded, pleased that I wanted to know
and would ask, but before he could explain further, the pilgrims crowded around
us to greet the exotic Western woman and take a few selfies. I love to smile
with them, try to communicate through gestures and a handful of words that I am
just as curious about them as they are of me. They offer me the ice cream they
just bought for their children, or invite us to a tea stand for a chai masala,
or even to come to eat with them in their homes. I am touched by their kindness
and openness, they are pleased that I am here. I hope I am the version of the
United States that they remember, not our politicians, not our media, but a
soul who wants to know and understand, respect and love and be respected and
loved in return.
We bought the small bowls fashioned from leaves and
toothpicks, filled with chrysanthemums and incense to float down the Ganga. I
still am not entirely certain what they signify to Indians, but I imagine as I
hold it in my hands that all my hopes, expectations, desires are in that little
floating bowl, an offering to Mama Ganga and the universe. Instead of caring
these around with me, letting them keep me up at night or compel me to work
harder, I place them in the bowl and with a little prayer, “Help me find my way,”
and I release it into the river.
It is an emotional moment for me, someone who struggles to
surrender to anything, but there they go, my dreams and hopes, bobbing their way
to the sea. I wipe a tear away, a tear of release and relief, only to notice
that my float didn’t make it into the current but is headed straight for a
group of men bathing rambunctiously in the river downstream. Sadly I imagine,
as I might see in the States, that they will ignore it or even throw a rock at
it to sink it. But they notice it coming and propel it gently into the current as
if they know what it means to me. My dreams and hopes live for another day, nurtured
by strangers, safely in the breast of the goddess, onto the stream of the universe
where they can manifest the love and the peace that I’ve found here.
The day will continue with more exploration, more temples,
more blessings, and of course, more learning. Today I will again attend classes
in marma massage so that I can bring a little relief to my family and friends
who I know suffer as I did. In the evening, we will begin Sanskrit lessons
because I want to read the Veda as well as I can read Homer and Virgil. My
decade goal was to learn Turkish and Hebrew, and I love those cultures and want
to learn them too, but seductive India has captured my attention and I will
follow this path fearlessly to wherever it leads me with a renewed sense of
purpose, one that is as yet undefined but guided by the universe.
