The Family Table

When I was younger, like 55, I used to think I could predict what an experience would be like. But travel has reminded me that I’m not even close to knowing what the next adventure brings. Now, I’m not talking about danger or high stakes stuff although I have been in the company of a wild bull elephant. (An old blog will tell you about it  ) I'm actually talking about those times when I feel a little bit uncomfortable; when I know I will have to interact with strangers beyond the basic social  courtesies..

Yep, I know you’re thinking, Marcia…that’s what travelling is all about. And I do know that…but…I still feel squeamish if I know I’m gonna be outside my typical comfort zone… So, the fact that our homestay had a family style eating arrangement and the fact that we were going to be up in the mountains of Kerala, without easy access to alternative meal settings. Well, it made me squeamish.

We arrived at Varnam Homestay in a taxi whose driver definitely got the short end of the stick. He must have asked directions ten times  before he found the little oasis tucked away down rugged dirt roads and surrounded by rubber tree plantations and random ramshackle and not so ramshackle homes. When we pulled into the driveway, we all (including the driver) breathed a sigh of relief.

Beena, our hostess, greeted us with a warm hello and welcomed us right up to that “family table”. Hmm, let the awkward conversation making begin.

Yes, there were a few awkward moments, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much travellers in the same place had to talk about. That family table was the highlight of this leg of our adventure. Our first night, the two German women (I’m terrible with names) convinced us that we would love the organic farm tour, and we did. John and I had walked around the farm earlier, and I was amazed at how many fruits, veggies and spices we didn’t recognize. My favorite was the cinnamon tree. Eating cinnamon bark off of a young branch of a cinnamon tree is soooo  much more delicious than any cinnamon you will ever eat. I saw pineapples that weren’t on the shelves of the produce lane at Hannafords. One pineapple has its very own plant. I ate green peppercorns off of the vine. Anyway. It was pretty cool.

Back to the family table. At dinner, we would all talk about what we did that day. As the stay progressed, we started to talk about ourselves and learn about each other. By the end of our stay, there were passionate, friendly conversations about living with disease, decisions about end of life, politics and…of course.. the dreaded conversation… who had seen an elephant and who had NOT!

There was a lot of strategizing as those who did tried to help those who did not to have the penultimate experience of what I assume must be everyone’s reason to go to India.
“We didn’t need to go on the safari tour…you can just see them on the side of the road.” And then, quietly, “we haven’t seen one yet. We’re just going on the tour. It increases our chances, right.”

I  the meantime we entertained ourselves with 10 km treks through villages where adorable  little children come running out to stare and dare to speak English. A typical conversation went  "Hello Madame. How are you?" I would respond and ask,and how are you. " I am fine thank you." Then we would stare at eaxh other, trying to make a deeper connection.

We also walked along a river, where a boy had recently been mauled by a tiger. We would swim in that river, with monkeys up in the trees, only to learn later from Hussein, who by the way told us about the tiger mauling, that there were crocodiles in that river (but it’s okay cause they are FRIENDLY)

And that “family table” was also where we heard the beautiful, haunting Malayalam song by our hosts, Beena and her husband (I’m terrible with names). That was also the family table where my new friends sang happy birthday to me and I made the same birthday wish I had made two years earlier, which was to see a DAMN elephant! We did “kinda” see some way far off in the distance amongst trees and rocks on the safari.

But my birthday wish must have been on Maine time, not India time, because, the next day, as we were leaving our homestay and the western ghats of India, my new Brazilian friend, Marcello, (I’m getting better with names) spotted a huge, bull elephant, with brilliant long white tusks on the side of the ROAD!

On Selfless Service and Meditation

Seva is selfless service in an ashram. When you stay at Amma’s Ashram, you are kindly requested to offer two hours of Seva per day. For folks having a short stay, the tasks are pretty simple. Our Seva was wiping dishes. This was a crazily easy task, but one night I was really tired, so I skipped Seva and went to bed. Being at the Ashram triggers my self consciousness pretty well and…(let me be clear that nobody follows you around during your stay making sure you did your Seva), but my little transgression was haunting me a bit. So when the Seva girl was coming around looking for someone to sweep the temple steps, I volunteered.

One of the benefits of Meditation is that it helps you discipline your mind. On a good week, I usually meditate for about 20 min for 4 or 5 days. That means I’m not listening to my thoughts for less that 2 hrs a week. Mind you, my thoughts are generally not very important or meaningful…and most off the time they are completely self destructive.

While we were at the Ashram, we participated in a workshop about this type of negative self talk and a strategy we can use to change our thinking by activating your “resource identity” which trains you to revise the negative story you’re telling yourself to a positive one. In Sanskrit there is a term called Matrika Shakti that basically says that our words create our reality.

So, if that is the case, my self talk puts me in a hellish reality relatively often.  For instance, I create critical stories in my head about why someone is scowling or laughing. Or what someone is thinking or feeling. This is an awesome skill if you’re a writer and you don’t have an ego, but my stories and interpretations are always about ME. This person is angry because I am taking too long, or I’m not following the proper protocol.

Speaking of protocols, at the Ashram, there are lots of people very willing to tell you what to do and how to follow the protocol. Since Amma means mother, there is a lot of  “mother” energy and “grandmother” energy. That’s great energy when it is enlightened and filled with grace, like Amma’s energy. But the more earthly version of mother energy is a bit more challenging for me.

Speaking of Amma’s grace, everything in the Ashram is about your spiritual growth, so a cigar is never just a cigar. I'm constantly being spiritually tested by the guru. Someone once described Amma’s work with her children as polishing stones in a tumbler. We are tossed about in our own dust until our rough edges are polished like gem stones. My “dust” for this visit has been to pay attention  to the negative and self destructive stories I create in my head as I go about my daily life.

Speaking of daily life, When I was little, my Yiayias spent a lot of time with us. It was typical for my mother’s mother to spend the summer in Maine. She would cook and clean and hang out with my dad’s mother. They were pretty critical and I was pretty sensitive, so they would complain to each other about how I didn’t pick up my clothes or take care of my dishes. Usually the conversation included some rant about some character flaw such as laziness or gluttony or selfishness or rudeness. These rants were always under the guise of the Greek language, which I, in this case unfortunately, understood much better than I could speak. So I would hear all about how horrible I was, but never told directly. In fact, my Yiayia’s favorite expression to me was , “Marcia, you’re a GOOD girl.”which was always accompanied with an affectionate cheek pinch. So now I spend a lot of my head time examining whether I’m a good girl, so I can please my critical Yiayia. This experience, and about 5000 other "formative" interactions, has left me with what I have come to realize is what I sometimes believe is an uncanny ability to read minds.

Anyway...I show up for seva at the temple steps at 2:30, but the task is changed to sweeping and washing the floors in front of the elevators. Once I figured out how to sweep and wash the floors in front of the elevators I go right to work. I was going to do my very best Seva to honor Amma. To build my character. To show everyone what a dedicated Ashramite I could be. And this work was right up my alley. I am an excellent cleaner. I take great pleasure in it.  When I was teaching, I used to reward myself for grading papers by allowing myself an hour of cleaning time. I love strolling through the cleaning products and looking at all the different kinds of gadgets that improve the cleaning experience. I have developed a good critical eye for the gimmicks and the good stuff.

So... when I saw the “swiffer” and the seriously recycled mop pad I was going to use to wash the large marble floors in front of the heavily trodden elevators… I was crestfallen. And the frugal amount of watered down cleaning products was equally disappointing. As was the absence of really good hot sanitizing water. But my self talk scolded, “MARCIA, quit being  such a first world primadonna with your selfish expectations of fancy, fine tuned state of the art cleaning supplies. This is an Ashram. People dedicate their lives to loving and caring for the destitute and suffering masses. Use the mops you’re given and shut up!”

 So... I set to work. I was to clean Floors 4-7. These floors were in open air areas that offered access to fresh cool air and bugs and birds. And it’s HOT in southern India. Lots of moist humidity that seems to make every part of my skin feel sticky… a perfect magnet for all the dust flying about from the sweeping. I swept the steps and then the floors. As I swept I discovered that birds had shit under the railings at the edges of the floor. My head said, “They surely don’t expect me to clean up dried  bird shit with cold water and a swiffer… do they? But Amma’s devotees are pretty devoted. I could hear them in my head too. They were saying, “Of course you will make these floors impeccable in Amma’s honor.” Then my Yiayia’s Greek criticism joined them. "Look at these filthy floor. You need to put more pressure behind that swiffer...and why are you using a swiffer...get on your hands and knees."  Then another voice said, “Marcia, you lazy snob, step up, do your best. Then another voice said, “No way, that’s too ridiculous, obviously the shit hasn’t been cleaned by others. Nobody will even notice whether the shit is cleaned. Anyway, if I had the right products and hot water, then I could clean the shit.  Heck, I didn’t even have a little scraper. Just my silly, very old swiffer.”  I was so exhausted by the tirade I had in my head, I skipped the shit and left that floor feeling like a fancy pants westerner with her picky high standards and lazy work ethic.

The sixth floor was exactly the same with similar voices and sometimes much more imagination. I imagined Amma (the goddess of unconditional love) making this one exception and  calling me up on stage to use me as an example of how not to be lazy. Then she would kick me out of the Ashram. Then my grandmother’s voice commenting on how filthy the floors were and how they needed more cleaning. As I was having this lively  conversation with myself, a little old Indian woman, who remarkably resembled my Yiayias, came out to the hall and sat right next to the bird shit.

We exchanged glances. I tried a little smile, but she wouldn’t have it. Then I went back to my self and my, supposedly, selfless service. When I got to the shit part of the washing, we made eye contact again, and she pointed to the shit and gave me that incredibly ambiguous Indian head wobble, which, with my brilliant imagination and particular personal grandmother history, meant that I needed to conquer the bird shit.

Out loud, (in English I was pretty sure she didn’t understand), I said, “I know, but I can’t figure out how to clean it.” Which was followed by another wobble. I continued to wash the floor, but I was desperately haunted by Indian Yiayia’s gaze. I knew what she was thinking… about how I was a lazy western primadonna that has probably never washed a floor in her life and had no idea what she was doing.

When I returned to the bucket of cold water, there it was, the plastic dust pan, with the stiff squeegee edge, perfect for scraping softened dried bird shit from a marble floor. AHA! I grabbed the dust pan and proceeded to easily scrape away the shit, leaving behind only lovely shiny marble. Indian Yiayia must have approved because she stood up slowly and shuffled back to her room..her work was done there.

I think I need to meditate a little more often.

For love of sunglasses and water bottles

One of the tenets of enlightenment is that of nonattachment. The idea is that attachment causes suffering. So by not being attached to things or people, we avoid suffering…or something like that.

All I know is that I really loved these sunglasses  and this water bottle. The sun glasses were awesome because they had reader bifocals in them so I could read or look up close without having to change to my readers when I’m out in the sun. I had them for two years, which for me and sunglasses, is a huge amount of time. I even took great care of them, or at least I tried to.  Before them, I would have to choose between seeing and squinting. Every once in a while I could do a layered thing with the sunglasses and do the readers on top of them. So when I lost my sunglasses during  my first week in India, I was truly bummed out.

Losing the water bottle was tragic. Sally gave me this amazing water bottle that had a spritz mister on the top. One day it just showed up in the mail. I've been getting hot flashes and her sympathetic nature was activated when she saw the bottle on Groupon.

Hot flashes are never really comfortable, but breaking into a sweat in cold Maine is a lot more tolerable than it is in hot India. I used it in Maine primarily for drinking water and occasionally enjoying watching folks react to a fake sneeze accompanied by a spritz of my delightful water bottle mister.

It was in the humidity of Kerala that I really developed a deep relationship with Mister Waterbottle. He would tag along on the dusty roads of the Ashram and offer up a cool drink or a refreshing mist whenever I needed one. He also became a bit of a rock star since he was truly one of a kind. Others were surprised at first to see him give me a light spritz. Then I would offer them his services and they would appreciate that amazing relief he gave from  the oppressive heat. I felt like I had a magic wand of instant refreshment!

I carried him with me everywhere I went. He would sit patiently as I ate dinner or sat in the temple listening to bhajans. He came with me to the coconut stand and the juice stand. He accompanied me to yoga and workshops. Once or twice I would forget him, but I’d quickly remember him and devotedly reunite with him. We were destined for each other. Mister Waterbottle was my hero.

So on the night before we were to travel to our next  destination and I didn’t find him when I returned to our room I was devastated. What had I done! How could I have left him behind after all the refreshing moments we had shared. John immediately recognized the significance of this loss and he thoughtfully went out and searched everywhere from yoga studio to temple to coconut stand, but alas Mister Waterbottle was gone. I even woke up in the middle of the night parched and thinking he was still with me.

In the quiet darkness I pondered his absence. Maybe it was because I skipped Seva and God was punishing me? Maybe I showed him off too much and someone else coveted having him and snatched him away from me. Perhaps he was carelessly tossed away, abandoned in the recycling when no one came to claim him at the yoga studio?

I’ll never know. But as I travel away on  this train, I realize that attachment does cause suffering.

But I resolved my "first world" problem with this pair of cheap sunglasses and this extremely cumbersome water bottle.