Flying high
Mumbai airport - 02.30 am. Another 2 hours to kill until I can board my flight to freezing Frogland. I have 1850 Mb left on the 2GB internet package I was so excited about purchasing a month ago. I know. Things change uh. I was full of good intentions and stories to tell. But again, I followed the inspiration of the moment and decided once again to forget about the net and the rest of the world.
The last month have been so rich in teaching experiences and enlightening encounters that I only felt like being fully present in the moment. When I left Mumbai I put many books in my backpack yet I hardly read a page. I forgot to call my parents to tell them I was fine; to reply to text messages and emails. I had no idea which month or year we were. I spent entire days doing nothing. Man… NOTHING! It felt so good. Just being aware of what was happening in the world around me. For the first time I experienced the bliss of living in the moment and I realized it was all happening in front of me. Not on the computer. Not on the screen of my smartphone. In the book of life. Wow.
Well, to be correct, I have not been totally inactive. It actually started quite intensely. In Goa, I followed my dad’s footsteps 40 years after on what used to be a Goan deserted beach, his deserted beach, and turned out to be a transe party heaven, full of hippies who got pretty much stuck up there in all senses of the term. I also had the honor to spend a night in hospital on a drip, after emptying my body of all substances it contained for over 72 hours of total delirium. Nice. Stories boy!
Luckily I was saved by my gouroutte who took me straight to paradise aka the Clinic of Universal Love and Happy Basti. There I found peace. I walked miles on the deserted beach where only crabs and hawks would disturb my newfound peace - well, actually not only but this is another story :) - marveling at the sunset every single night. I had tears in my eyes lying down in the sand, listening to Cohen’s alleluia and watching the stars. And the endless conversations with my new mates… What a bunch of colorful characters. Beautiful people. Amazing teachers. Talking about life with the sound of Krishna’s flute in the background. There for a couple of weeks I was Radha and I learnt to give unconditional love, without expecting anything in return. Or so did I thought.
Until my inspiration took me to stunning Hampi. There I intended to cross the river with no expectations, yet I had so many. But I left with none. I learnt to let go. Beautiful Hampi, with its deserted temples, fluorescent green paddy field and thousand of lonely rocs was both terrible and magnificent. There the story of Krishna and Rhada which I have not told you yet ended brutally. And as I watched the last sunset from the top of the hill I finally accepted that all things are impermanent.
Back “home” in Mumbai I spent hours strolling along Marine Drive, looking at all the young couples timidly hugging and kissing on the quay. I had belphuri on Chowpaty beach, was invited to an opulent wedding, went to cooking and tea tasting workshops, attended hype cultural events, pretended I was a writer, watched cricket matches, laughed and cried at the movie theatre, marveled at the full moon on India Gate, wished I was a Bollywood star, hang out with the fishermen.
These many stories I will tell you sooner or later. It’s just a matter of figuring out how. I have a few ideas though. But for now I am going home for a holiday. Cause my plan is to be back here verrrrry soon. I have not had enough. It’s pretty addictive, traveling.
A bientôt les amis, à très bientôt…
Sometimes life is typical
(Kathmandu, early october 2011)
When I started traveling, I decided I would be lacto-vegetarian and abstain from drinking alcohol. And I had been doing pretty well, until Raju invited me to have lunch at his. Raju is a great guy. A friend of a friend, who immediately treated me as if we had known each others for years. After an hour walk to the far North of the city to meet him and another hour spent on the phone, trying to figure out where the meeting place was - Raju speaks a mix of French and English, with a strong Nepalese accent - I finally get greated with a loud namaste and a big hug. It’s not noon yet but he is already quite tipsy, as he has been celebrating Dashain - the biggest festival in Nepal - since early in the morning. Then follows a long walk through narrow streets in suburban Kathmandu, crossing bridges and walking along fluorescent green paddy fields. Raju is proudly walking in front of me and waving at neighbours and acquaintances as they greet us along the way. Hardly any tourist would venture in this area and the presence of a white creatures creates an aura of prestige around my host.
“My maison” he finally says with a smile. A two-storied washed out pink building. Not bad, I think. But as we walk up the stairs I realize that all they have is one room to live in, as they are renting out the others to pay back their mortgage. A bed, a sofa, a coffee table and a shelve, that’s it. “My wife go get the manger. Elle cooks at the magasin, pas de kitchen.”
Of course they have already eaten and I have the honor to be scrutinized throughout the whole meal by the family and a few neighbours who have just joined to enjoy the sight of a Westerner eating curried buffalo and dhal bhat. I do not want to offend my hosts and slowly start eating, remembering the carcasses laying all day long in the open air, covered with flies, and dreading I am going to get sick
“Want to try special drink from my village? Très bon!”. Before I have time to say no he pours a huge amount in my glass. “Santé” he says with a joyful smile. Too late… We cheer and I start sipping my drink, remembering what they say about never drinking home-made brewed alcohol as it is often mixed with water. If I survive this, I will certainly be immune to all diseases during the rest of my trip.
Then Raju shows me some pictures… His treks, his foreign friends, his village, his parents. I am started to get a bit bored when comes one of a young child with a cheeky smile, running after a ball. “My second kid. He died. Dashain festival in my village. He ran on the road. Big bus came. He did not see. 5 years ago. He would be 13 now.” I feel a lump in my throat. “Sometimes life is typical. Sometimes we don’t choose. Sometimes I am very sad. Triste. But I am okay. I put photos of him in the house to remember. After with my wife we decided to have another child, otherwise it’s too sad. Otherwise we can’t live.” The atmosphere is heavy with emotion and I feel tears coming to my eyes. True. Sometimes we don’t choose. Sometimes life holds dreadful surprises for us. I cannot imagine how painful it must be to loose a child, to see it crushed by a bus right in front of your eyes. And how hard it must be to keep on living and raising your other child. How lonely Raju’s family must feel every year when the whole country celebrates Dashain, a festival that only reminds them of their child and brother’s death. But one has no choice, no matter how acute the pain is, life has to go on. “Happy Dashain. It’s festival time. We must celebrate.”
Later as I am walking back to my guesthouse, something comes back to my mind. What did he mean by “typical”? I have heard Raju saying this word several times over the last few days and never really understood what he meant. And all in a sudden it all made sense. “Difficult” is what he meant. Yes dear Raju, sometimes life is difficult…What a soft way to put things and what a lesson of courage you have just taught me.
The Kanyakumari Express
Chai! Coffee! Garam masala doodh!
The Kanyakumari Express has just left Mumbai CST and I am heading South, in need for sea…and sun!
It took many smiles, a lot of patience and perseverance, the usual sense of humour and a few roupies but I can finally relax, lying down on my RESERVED berth. I frantically press the Tumblr icon. I have just purchased a 2GB one-month internet access package for my faithful companion. A familiar feeling arises. I have missed it.
“Two months ago” says the caption under my last post, the only one in three and a half months in Nepal. It has been a life-changing experience yet I have shared so little. I have failed in providing my friends and beloved ones with the weekly tales of my adventures. And I have not been any better at replying to personal messages either. Silence radio messieurs.
It may sounds paradoxical but the main reason - apart from the laziness that contaminates anyone after a few months traveling and the pathologic perfectionist which prevents me from posting something I have not read and modified at least three hundred times - is that there was too much going on. Both in my mind and in the world around me. There was not a single day when I did not want to write about something that happened. I took hundred of pictures and wrote dozens of notes and draft. I have countless blog entries waiting to be posted. But there are no trains in Nepal. No timeout. No endless journeys with time to kill. No time to share.
Now I am back in mother India and I can feel the urge to blog again. It’s time to share, my lovely friend. Now I am going to tell you about my Nepalese story. Bistari bistari. Slowly slowly.
From Kathmandu’s social scene to Kopan Monastery asceticism
Well here I am, kneeling and waxing Kopan monastery Gompa’s floor, doing my daily karma yoga and feeling like the new Elizabeth Gilbert. I have a different pace though, as I already left my husband quite some time ago and lived the dolce vita in Rome for 4 years rather than 4 months. It took me some time to get to the spiritual part of the journey though. But I eventually got there. Not in an ashram in India though, but in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal.
But before I could really dive into a month and a half of meditation practice, I had to spend some days enjoying the guilty pleasures of life. So after a long trek in the beautiful Himalayas - amazing experience which I will share at a later stage - came the social storm, together with the pressing need to make up for the 18 days of cold loneliness and isolation. The vegetarian-lassi-drinking Johanna traded her Indian clothes for a zebra jacket, baggy pants and a pair of apple green adidas and took the road to the best bars and restaurants of the Asian capital of international food, enjoying the best Kathmandu has to offer. Like a drunk butterfly I spent the last two weeks flying from a restaurant to another, from one party to the next, enjoying every single opportunity one can find here. And I loved it. I actually felt home.
Then when I got sick of it - or say, when my face started to be covered with pimples and my eyes lined with dark circles, I climbed the hill above Bodnath and reached the beautiful Kopan Monastery. The place where I am going to live roughly until Christmas, cut off from the rest of the world, meditating and learning about Tibetan Buddhism.
So forgive me for keeping the Nepalese experience kind of secret so far, I love sharing but the past month passed in a blink of an eye. And since I will have to keep my mouth shut for the coming month as well and will have to handover my beloved IPhone in less than an hour, you will not hear much more from me. Silence. This will probably be very interesting. As much as sleeping on a hard mattress on the floor in a dorm with 27 other females, sharing a - cold - shower with 35 of them, queuing for strictly vegetarian food with 278 individuals in search for happiness, waking up at 4.30 am every morning and playing with the lovely spiders which populate the monastery as I have vowed not to kill. One of the eight Mahayana precepts I will have to take daily: refrain from killing, lying, stealing, sexual activity, taking intoxicants, sitting on high beds with pride, wearing jewelry and perfume, taking more than one meal a day, singing, dancing and playing music. This is going to be my life. I am both scared and excited. A new experience. One more. In my quest for love and happiness I am venturing on the Buddhist path. For a season or for a life, who knows. But right now I am lying down on the grass, looking at the 1000 buddhas golden stupa, listening to the months chanting and it feels great. The sky is bright blue and the sun is warming up my body. It’s my last moment of contact with the outside world and I feel wonderful. May your day be fulfilled with happiness and joy.
Encounter with the third gender
I am sitting in the train and a lady comes and sits right next to me. Well, a human being in a sari with a freshly shaved beard and hairy hands. Ah. Bonjour…”Larki” he/she says pointing towards her chest. I’m a girl. But I get mixed up and think she means she is a boy, and to show my understanding and my great Hindi skills I point towards myself and say “larka”. She laughs, and explains to me that we both are “larki”, grabbing her boobs with her hairy hand. She then pulls out eye shadow and a bright red lipstick and start touching up her make up, putting her lips voluptuously.
I am getting a bit confused, if not worried. She is sitting on my train berth, her hairy leg almost touching mine and she is staring at me with her large dark eyes. She says something else, playing with her tongue but I do not get it. She starts laughing, a strange high-pitch female tone with male echoes. Why me, why always me?! Other passengers - all males - are standing up and looking at her. She gets up and walk to the next compartment and start some kind of dancing while loudly clapping in her hands. She tries to grab a man’s hands, offering her “services”. A fight breaks out. Then some more dancing and clapping again. Everyone is standing in the hallway, watching. I am fascinated by the situation, yet uncomfortable.
They call them Hijras (the impotent ones). Some have been taken away from their families and castrated, some were born hermaphrodite, some are just transgender, but they all belong to the same cast and are struggling to be accepted as a third gender. Some manage to survive prostituting themselves, other entertaining people at weddings but all suffer from discrimination.
As she gets out of the train, I look through the window bars. She is still clapping her hands and dancing, now entertaining passengers on the platform. The fear and discomfort I had have disappeared and all I feel now is deep compassion. “Good luck Hijras, I whisper, may you entertain many…”
