India Diaries: Day 1-3

September 2005
by Linda McGrath

Day One: The Ayurveda Center
yurveda is the thousands of years old Indian holistic science and our resort, Somatheeram is supposed to be THE place in all of India to go study it and get treated. Looking for some time to kill before dinner, I ventured over to the clinic to check it out. A middle-aged man with glasses was filling out some complex table (computers are still in the early adopters phase in Kerala). I introduced myself as a participant in the teacher training group and asked him if anyone would happen to be available to do my initial consultation.
“Yes, madam, please sit”
Two more people came over and got involved. I was led to another room, and again, asked to sit. Finally, a lady walked in, took me to a third room and asked me to sit. She introduced herself as one of the 13 doctors and gave me a 10 page booklet with questions I expected on sleep, digestion, eating habits, as well as questions I didn't expect, like “What are your spiritual beliefs?” I'll tell you more about Ayurveda some other time but very basically, the ayurvedic view is that there are 3 “doshas” or groups of elements in the universe (wind and ether, that they call “Vata”, earth and water- “Kapha”, and fire – “Pitha”). Each dosha comes with its unique qualities. They believe that every person is naturally more prone towards one dosha over the other two and that causes our imbalances. For example, some of the qualities of the Vata dosha are dryness and cold, so people with a Vata dosha tend to have dry skin, dry joints and get cold easily. Kapha qualities are mass and sluggishness, so Kapha people are more prone to gaining weight and sleep lots. Pitha qualities are high energy and acidity, so they are prone to heartburn and competitiveness. Anyway, that's just to give you some idea.

After I was done with the questionnaire, we started going over my answers. About halfway through, an older man (I'd say 70 but probably 110) walked in. His pants looked too big and his clear plastic glasses kept sliding down his nose but his smile was comforting and the lady doctor seemed to have a lot of respect for him so I concluded he must be important. She briefed him as he shook his head, looking at me and smiling. He jotted down a few notes and finally announced with a certain grandiosity:
“Vata Pitha!”
I looked at her for explanation:
"Your main dosha is Vata, but very close is Pitha, so Vata Pitha.”
She continued:
“You already get massage every day, yes?” I nodded. “I recommend also you do Njavarakizhi for the knee and Sirodhara to help with sleep.”
“But I'm sleeping fine. It's only if I'm stressed out that I don't.”
She looked at me in disagreement:
“Ok, you try once and maybe you like, then more…”
“Ok”, I said “how much do these treatments cost?”
They looked at each other and exchanged a few sentences.
“80 euro for the Njavarakizhi and 22 euro for Sirodhara.”
“And what exactly is Njavarakizhi?” I asked.
She took a plastic 4x6 photo album (the ones we get for free at home) and showed me a photo of a sturdy Indian woman holding something over the knee of a chubby sunburned white guy whose expression said “next year, I'm going to Thailand.”
Seeing that I was going to try and get out of it, they exchanged a few more sentences.
“If you already do massage, you get discount. 49 euro for 3 treatments.”

I couldn't believe it, we went from 80 each to 49 for 3! You bargain even in a health clinic? It did the job though, I was curious, so I said fine.
“And these are your medicines. This is good for digestions. No constipation. Take 3 tablespoons before food.”
“But my digestion is fine. I am not constipated” I tried to explain.
“Ok, then take 2 tablespoons. Good for knee also.”
Already skeptical that the same (foul tasting) medicine would miraculously work for both, I took it as prescribed. The day after, I found myself running to the bathroom, so I wrapped the poison in newspaper and put it in the trash hoping that the cleaners wouldn't tell on me.

Day Two: The Ganesh Temple
At the end of the practice, Shiva told us to meet at 5pm to go to the temple, warning us to dress suitably. Women should have their arms and legs covered. The appropriate attire for Indian men is usually a loincloth.

I showed up at 4:45 to see if any of the guys would turn up in a loincloth but no luck. We managed to fit 50 people between a minibus, 2 taxis and eventually 2 rickshaws and we were on the way. Somehow, we made it up the hill. The temple wasn't anything grand: two small structures and a yard, enclosed by a gate. One of the shrines was to Shiva and the other one to Ganesh. They looked almost identical. A marble platform covered by a pergola extended out of the front door where people were kneeling in prayer. The door to the Shiva temple was semi-open and I could see a gold statue of the Lord of the Dance which almost looked on fire from the hundreds of flames and lit incense and bright flowers surrounding it.

Shiva gave us each a coconut and a lotus flower. The coconut represents the Self, the symbolism being that the hard shell is the ego and insecurities but inside it is all goodness. We lined up in front of this pit and one by one, we each pitched our coconut very hard into it so that it cracked. This cracking of the ego is done as an offering to Ganesh, the elephant God, remover of obstacles.

By this point, the priests were done at the Shiva temple so they came out with a cloud of incense and sat down on the marble. We lined up there too. I gave him the lotus flower and he game me bananas. We squeezed back into our various modes of transport and went to dinner.

Day Three
My jet lag had me up for most of the night so I skipped the morning meditation to sleep in. Unfortunately, by 6:30 the local fisherman were already lined up, one behind the other, chanting and pulling in the one huge net from the beach. It looks like they're playing tug of war with the sea. I heard it's not very efficient but it's the tradition and it's good for tourists to take pictures of. They were imminently joined in their song by the twenty crows who came looking for food outside my cottage and who for the rest of the trip became my alarm clock, so I gave up and dragged my confused body to breakfast. For the tenth meal in a row now, I was greeted by Arun, the same smiley server.
“You again,” I joked, “don't you ever not work?”
“No, Madam”, he said, laughing.
He brought me my tea. Tea in India is no joke. As soon as he set it down I took out all three bags to try and stop the brewing but it was already black as coffee.
“So when is your next day off?” I asked.
He just laughed again.
“Do you get a day off?
”No, madam”, still laughing.
Arun explained to me his family lives in Tamil Nadu, the neighbouring state and that he spends months at a time in Somatheeram and goes back for a week here and there. I thought, here I am, on an exotic retreat martyring about not getting my 8 hours and this man has to live detached from his wife and kids and put up with snooty Westerners for 18 hours a day without a day off and it's 6:30 in the morning and he is standing next to me laughing about it! He was there for every meal of mine and his attitude never changed once.

Through the rest of my stay in Kerala, I noticed that same spirit with everybody I came into contact with. Everybody says hello, every time, from the bellboys to the cleaners to the Chief Superior Managing Director (titles in India are no joke either). At first I was a bit skeptical: “they must want a tip!”, so a few times on my way out, I turned around to try and catch them connivingly rubbing their hands but the smiles always stayed on. The tailors who made my saree were always joking around and once in while one of them would break out in a song. My massage therapist was giggling with her girlfriends every time I arrived to the appointment late from the teacher training. She didn't speak much English but she greeted me with the warmest smile and whistled a tune and picked flowers as she led me to the treatment room. At this late hour, I was probably her tenth massage of the day. Kerala truly has the warmest, nicest people on earth. When I left 10 days later, I walked down to the restaurant to find Arun. I gave him a folded $100 bill and he got all serious and thanked me. I hope he bought himself a styling rickshaw and that he is now flying across the country to see his family with that same big smile on his face.

At lunchtime, I spotted a free chair next to Sophie, the French girl in our training. She had immigrated to India years ago to live in a co-op near Pondicherry and teach yoga. I remembered from the introductions the first day that she was taking our training because she was “seek endeu tirrred of the mail centeurred end dogmatique ticheurs in India ”. I wanted to find out more so I chatted her up. She had spent months at a time studying with Pattabhi in Mysore and Iyengar in Pune (arguably the two most important yoga teachers of our time but don't let Bikram read that). I asked her about the comment she had made and after her beating around the bush and me insisting, she told me a story. The first month of her study in Pune, she took a class from Iyengar's son. There were close to 300 people and she couldn't hear the instructions very well. Towards the end of the class, he apparently told people to do a seated open twist but she mistakenly did a closed twist (going the other way) and he came around and slapped her on the head. “Iteu wasn't harrd but stille, I'm not an eight earrr oldeu and even iff I was, that's not dzeu way to teach someone”.

I knew about the Iyengars' attention to detail which has absolutely revolutionized the practice but I must admit I was shocked. That afternoon, I studied Kalari (the local martial art) and I noticed the total surrender and respect with which the local students assisted their teacher. Literally, when he said “jump” they asked how high. It is difficult for us gun-slinging, Boston-tea-partying Americans to understand this, but that's just the way the system is here and just like college fraternities in the States have some odd ways of bonding, both systems have worked for years because you know that if you stick with it, eventually you'll be the one on top and then, just like we naturally tend to mirror our parents in our relationships with our children, yoga teachers too tend to treat their students the way their guru treated them. So you wanna study yoga? Go clean the toilets for a year. If you're a woman, go clean the toilets for 5 years. Slapping you doesn't mean the teacher doesn't care for you; he truly wants your best. That's just the way he knows how to show it.