A morning excursion

My emotions are raw here. I feel them intensely the way I haven’t felt since I was a child.

Our scooty slices through the quiet of the predawn, the mist still rising from the impossibly blue Ganges. Holy men clad in orange squat before open faucets to bathe, cows begin their daily rounds collecting alms, shopkeepers and street vendors stand with keys in hand before their doors, and we are on our way to Parmarth for an exegesis on the Baghavad Gita and an Iyengar yoga class. Later I will return to my classes and Steve will attend a sound healing workshop.

India is a mashup of the ugly and the sublime. They live cheek and jowl and the intensity of one only amplifies the other. Trash litters the roads, and the Himalayas stand guard above the chaos of the market in Rishikesh.

Steve knows people here. He studied at my school three years ago and his teachers are his friends, the people in the street all remember him. “Skinny white girls here are a dime a dozen. I’m an old fat white guy. I stick out.” Well, yes, I can see that. Or perhaps they remember him because he speaks Spanish to everyone as if it were a universal language – No English? Comprende, mi hermano? Or maybe it's the way he looks at them, really seeing them. After he talks the price down with the boy selling us flowers and incense to send with our prayers down Mama Gannga, he says he has no change and gives the boy more than his asking price, telling him to make us a couple of really good floats. Or maybe it's because he saves all our food from the restaurants and gives it to the orange clad baba-ji or a really lucky cow. They smile at him. Not the half-way, tolerant, somewhat condescending smiles like people give in the States. They smile at him without reserve, their grins wide with brilliant white teeth. They laugh as he sings at the top of his lungs, “Don’t sit under the Banyan tree, with anyone else but me” in his lounge lizard voice as he maneuvers scooty past the banyan tree where merchants set up their tables in the shade. They respond “Hallo!” to him in the narrow streets and on the Laxman Jula bridge suspended high above the Ganges, alternating friendly little honks to warn them of his presence with “Hallo! Namaste, my brother! Thanks for coming out. Happy holidays! Nice shirt. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.” 

His familiarity with the place allows me to be the child here, to be led from one marvel to the next, never touching money, never worrying about traffic or the schedule. He knows my schedule and he whisks me away at lunch for rich mata mushroom and fresh chapatti and lovely ginger lemon tea. And then I’m back to sit at my teachers’ feet, smile at the lovely women around me, and our token man, a sweet, sweet Japanese man whose baby face had our teacher convinced he was a girl. Overheard at the end of hatha class: “No, I am man. I have penis!” And when I cringe hoping that she hasn’t bruised his masculinity, I turn to see that they are laughing and hugging.

All these things whirl through my head as we pull up to the ashram, the sun not fully risen. Steve instructs me to open the high gate, and though I hear the barking dog on the other side of the fence, I swallow a moment of panic and push open the gate. A big black dog and his sidekick approach aggressively – they see my moment of fear. I press on, speaking to them, turn to hold the door for Steve, and the black one lunges and bites my ass. I yelp, and whirl to face them. My yelp causes no reaction in the quiet of the morning, and we move quickly towards the classroom, where the students are arranging blankets and – oh, I have died and gone to heaven – chairs! We will sit to hear the exegesis – I feel so pampered. The guru and Steve’s friend Jaiya from Kuala Lampur come to greet us and Steve asks whether there’s a place I can wash up from the dog. They point me to a simple cell, one where visitors to the ashram would stay. It’s luxurious by Indian standards. I wash up, sit down, and listen to the guru speak of attaining satisfaction, by learning to know what is real and what is not, by privileging the higher goods above the lower.

When class is over, the man who runs the ashram, stands with the dogs outside, waiting for me. His face is kind and full of concern. He assures me that these are the ashram’s dogs and they have been vaccinated, so I don’t need to worry about a rabies shot (Why didn’t I get one of those before I left the States?). And then he leads the dogs to me, explains that I am a friend and they must always be kind to me. Carbon, the big black dog, slinks behind me and lowers his head. “You see, he knows he has hurt a friend. He feels sorry.” I look down at Carbon and scratch behind his ears.

He was only being a dog. A good dog. And now he is my friend.