Happy birthday, Chrissy, from some old friends

Without question, my sister Chrissy is one of the most influential people in my life. She was born on this day in 1978. (My little sister, turning 32. Wow!)

Chrissy was born with a brain anatomy that can only be described as unique, the corpus callosum that divides and connects the two hemispheres in most brains is shaped radically differently in her case. The brain's incredible capacity to adapt and reorganize itself continues to amaze as neuroscientists slowly unravel the seemingly endless mysteries of this incredible organ. Chrissy's brain is no exception. Indeed, it may be an exemplar of this capacity.

In addition to her unique brain, Chrissy has repeatedly defied the odds and well-considered expectations on a number of fronts. Doctors weren't sure she would walk, much less ride a bike, something she has done with what could only be called reckless abandon. (Her vestibular system seems to involve the regular intervention of some guardian angel, pushing her back to vertical just at the moment that a crash seems inevitable.) Her health is complicated by a sketchily diagnosed neuromuscular disorder so rare that it lacks a name, and by epilepsy, diagnosed after years of puzzling over her staring off into space, and which has only in her twenties progressed from nearly invisible petit mal seizures to the grand mal, convulsive variety that people often associate with the disease.

Her medical miracle may be less television-ready than many human interest stories, but I find it no less compelling. The two most important factors undergirding her story are my parents' unflagging dedication to my sister and Chrissy's own incredible resilience.

As Chrissy's epilepsy began intensifying due to hormonal changes and possibly tolerance to her seizure-control medications, my parents were forced to navigate a mine-field of best guesses and conflicting guidance, choosing between known interventions with unsatisfying outcomes and cutting edge therapies with uncertain benefits. With incredible diligence and tenacity, they tried countless combinations of drugs and other therapies to manage her seizures. Chrissy, meanwhile, had to cope with a bewildering array of side-effects from these drugs, dropping, gaining and re-dropping weight, descending into depressive spells or states of high anxiety until the drugs and dosages that worked best for her could be determined. She also survived a harrowing period of hospitalization, during which her seizures were studied in the hopes of better control. At one point during these dark times, she endured more than a hundred seizures per day.

But Chrissy doesn't complain about much. She is usually cheerful. She seems to have a way of finding a bright side.

Case in point, her goldfish. To this day, Chrissy remains an avid fan of the fabric cast of Sesame Street, a show that was in such regular circulation in our home that all of us can recite, verbatim, a surprising number of its segments. (Thank goodness they had the foresight to include humor targeted to adult care-givers in them!) Such familiarity and repetition helped me develop a passable impression of Grover and Ernie, although I'm hopeless when it comes to Bert.

Chrissy is "awfully fond" of Ernie and Bert, so much so that when she had goldfish for the first time, she named them Talbot and Melissa, after the pair swimming circles in Bert and Ernie's apartment.

And how's this for resilience: when Chrissy's goldfish inevitably take that final ride out to the sewer system (she might be a little too enthusiastic in their care and feeding), Talbot and Melissa are not gone, only temporarily out of sight. Whether days or years later, whenever goldfish reappear in Chrissy's life, she recognizes them instantly. As Talbot and Melissa.

So, Chrissy, happy birthday to you, from two old friends.

Love,

Your brother Eric

Riding the iron peacock

Travel by train in India echoes my whole experience of India: the sense of perpetual transitions (in time, in place, in culture); the anxious anticipation of a journey; the easy conviviality of fellow travelers; and the sheer, irrepressible inertia of this place.

We spent the better part of three days holed up in our cheap and reasonably comfortable hotel in Kochi (technically, in Ernakulam), limiting our ventures out to the aforementioned cinema. (By the way, The Three Idiots is the highest grossing Bollywood film of all time, according to the review in The New York Times!) Our last day in Kochi was jam-packed with the some of the best this town — spread over a several islands reached by ferry — has to offer. We saw the famous and enormous Chinese fishing nets, gigantic wooden spiders on the shore, lowering their webs into the water through the labors of half a dozen men. (Observing their yield, it seems that tips received from tourists trying their hand at the nets must make up as much of their income as their paltry catch.) We visited the historic synagogue on artfully named "Jew Street" in artfully named "Jew Town." ("Mama, do we live in a ghetto?") We were carried along by clashing aromas while touring a spice warehouse, thousands of burlap sacks begging for your olfactory attention. (I opined that it felt like drinking a masala chai while smoking a clove cigarette and being lashed with a star anise hairshirt.) We had a short course on Indian rugs and ended our time in Fort Cochin with a performance Kerala's distinctive ritualistic theater, Kathakali.

An important part of Kathakali is watching performers apply their make-up while seated on stage, so we arrived early for this purpose. True Kathakali performances can last from evening until dawn (or longer); ours was a distilled-for-tourists show designed to be compatible with the schedules of the tour-bus crowd. The stories are told by silent actors in elaborate costumes through hand and facial gestures, accompanied by drums and a singer giving voice to the characters. For all the uniqueness of this particular form, I am fascinated by the theatrical conventions and themes that cross continents, cultures and currents of human history. E.g., the ceremonial transformation of the actor into their character through the application of make-up and costume. A play encompassing both entertainment and moral instruction. Characters drawn as deities or as archetypes of human dispositions. The all-male cast performing the female roles, offering no less insight into the local constructions of femininity than the Miss America pageant or any (other) drag show.



The particular tale told during our performance was only too familiar: a woman attempts to seduce a noble man, pleading with him to get to know her in the biblical sense despite his rebukes, is revealed to be the devil incarnate, and is attacked with a sword and sent away.

Sigh.

Like I said, common theatrical themes.



After boarding the ferry back to our hotel, we collected our things and headed for the train station. Our overnight journey would take us to the state of Goa, a special spot on the hippie trail. It would also give us another opportunity to experience India in motion: the affectionate parents tucking their two small children into a single bunk for the night; gregarious families eager to strike up conversation, hear our impressions of their country and encourage us to visit their home town; friends on the platforms bidding farewell to passengers, running alongside the moving train as it pulls away to say one more farewell.

I love overnight train rides.

Our arrival in central Goa by train would be followed by a rickshaw ride to a bus stop, and an overflowing, groping bus ride to the town of Palolem, our destination. Palolem is touristy, but also one of the loveliest crescent beaches I've ever visited. In contrast to my other experiences in India, Palolem feels like "India lite." There are more white faces here than we've seen since the ashram: bikini-clad Europeans and Russians pushing the limits of modesty to minimize their tan lines; families with giddy naked toddlers running on the soft sand, studying the crabs and the waves; and the ubiquitous aging hippies, their leathery skin tightening in the sun. (There are lots of Indian tourists, too, and they seem to be having the most fun here, but most Indian locals live inland or in neighboring Chaudi.)



Many restaurants don't have Indian items on the menu, or, if they do, they are at significantly inflated tourist prices and of mixed quality. There are persistent touts everywhere ("taxi! taxi!"), but thankfully most are friendly and have a good sense of humor, as if to say "look, man, it's my job to ask and it's your job to say no thank you."

To my surprise, I've found that these aspects which make Palolem so touristy and so unlike the hustle and bustle of Indian cities does not spoil its charm for me. No doubt extended stays in India merit some time for decompression. But more than that, there is something indescribably right in daily walks up and down the beach to watch the sunset. In hearing the waves crashing on shore. In daily rhythms guided by one's appetites. The morning yoga sessions are fabulous, too, led by a skilled instructor with a great sense of humor and a penchant for joking about sex while we contort our bodies into pretzels. Yeah, that's a little more like it.

Perhaps not so far from home

We're in Kochi, India, having recovered from our first bout of serious food poisoning. Unpleasant, yes, but not enough to change our rather adventurous eating habits, much less spoil our excitement about our time in Kerala, our upcoming stop in Goa or the fun we had last night at the Bollywood cinema! (To its credit, The Three Idiots loses very little entertainment value despite the language barrier. Seeing it with an enthusiastic Indian audience certainly can't hurt, either. I can only imagine that when watching mainstream Hollywood cinema these audiences feel positively robbed that each film doesn't include the same masala of genres, boy-meets-girl-meets-coming-of-age-tale, all wrapped in a buddy-pic-cum-road-trip. With song and dance numbers, of course!)

Here's a quick flashback to the end of December: We were greeted by a surprise in a roadside bookstore in Penang, Malaysia, when browsing their travel selections. Just above their Lonely Planet collection, a sign that perhaps we're not so far from home after all.

'Nuff said

From the gardens adjacent Le Meridien in Kuala Lumpur...

Half-ash’d

Alert, dear reader! What follows is a verbose account of our first days in India, written perhaps too close on the heels of a memorable (cf., “trying”) experience. So you may want to grab a beverage before you wade in. Enjoy! -Ed

Our travels are nothing if not an exposure to that which to us is unfamiliar, uncertain or unknown. We arrived in India, to the city of Trivandrum (a widely-used but indirect abbreviation for its proper name spanning many more syllables), the capitol of the lush tropical state of Kerala at the southwestern tip of the subcontinent. Our plan was to visit an ashram an hour inland in the temperate Agastya hills, adjacent to a lake and in earshot of an elephant reserve, and spend a week or two studying yoga.

Three days later, we found ourselves on a train heading north for the touristy beach town of Varkala. What happened in between was nothing if not memorable.

While it will surprise few who know me that I value skepticism in my approach to most things, I also strive (with varying success) to be open-minded to the vast array of ways people have found useful in creating a meaningful life, especially when those practices have been developed and iteratively refined over countless generations.

Thankfully, there are some traditions in which open-mindedness happily co-exists with skepticism — the scientific method, analytic philosophy (at its best) and some forms of Judaism, to name a few. Encountering such traditions often feels like being reunited with some branch of my family tree, connected by a common tongue and sharing an affinity for critical, skeptical analysis, which instead of being viewed as heresy is considered a prerequisite for sincere engagement with a subject.

When I was younger, I nonetheless harbored not a small amount of fear about practices and traditions that were outside of my experience. This was true despite an education that was no doubt broader and more open-minded than that of many other white suburban midwestern preacher’s kids, including an incredibly influential introduction to meditation at an early age by my dear Aunt Lois. In the process of subsequently developing what I construed as a rational basis for my beliefs, I was quick in my late teens and early twenties to dismiss so-called “alternative” beliefs about health, wellness and spirituality as the musings of posers or as pacifying placebos for seekers trying to navigate their post-modern existence. I was, of course, the guilty accuser, grounding my own fear and uncertainty in a faith of a different kind: that with enough effort, my rational faculties could figure it all out.

Thankfully, at some point my curiosity eclipsed my fear, and in my early twenties I started to crack open the shell, finally realizing that I could expose myself to any number of belief systems — and even participate in their attendant practices — without requiring that I become an aspiring acolyte. A friend, mentor, and physics professor, Stu Anderson, helped distill this notion into a tidy expression, saying that he was always game to “do the experiment” — that is, give any set of beliefs their proverbial day in court. (I should also note that, as a preacher’s kid, Protestant Christianity remains a bit exceptional in its ability to find and push my pre-adolescent buttons.) In any case, this period of personal glasnost coincided with my introduction to yoga.

It took exactly one ninety-minute class in a sticky YWCA gymnasium ten years ago for me to appreciate that there was something much deeper in the practice of yoga than any mere stretching. Lying exhausted and elated on my back in sivasana (the evocatively-named “corpse” relaxation pose) at the end of my first session, I felt myself sinking through the floor and yet oddly light, ephemeral and, yes, more flexible. I was also dripping with sweat, endorphins working their magic during the cool-down. Whatever preconceptions I’d had about yoga being a new-agey dressing for the stretching techniques I’d learned in elementary school P.E. class, it was immediately clear that this was real exercise, and for me, an intoxicating combination of disciplined breathing, increasing strength and improving flexibility. To this day, I never feel so completely present in my body nor so conscious of its strength and resilience as after stretching its limits through yoga practice, and watching those limits expand.

We arrived in India imagining that spending a fifth of our time in this country at an ashram would be a memorable chapter of our Indian visit — ashrams being associated with so many people’s visits here — and also a great way to maintain our health and happiness for our continuing travels. We chose the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari Ashram (or “Sivananda” for short, pronounced “SHE-van-an-da”) from the few ashrams listed in our guidebook, since its program was particularly well-regarded for teaching yoga poses (or asanas) to beginners.

Neither Julie nor I had visited an ashram before, and if anything, my preconceptions were grounded in the positive experiences of our friend Donald, augmented by hippie folk-tales, the Beatles psychedelic sojourns and more recently Eat, Pray, Love. After doing some additional research, we learned that partaking in this particular ashram experience involved following a complete schedule of mandatory activities — starting at 5:20 am and, except for a midday break, continuing until 9:30 at night — of which the twice daily, two-hour asana sessions were only a small part. The remaining portions included twice daily group meditation sessions, shared vegetarian meals (more anxiety producing for my omnivorous travel companion than for me), and — gulp — Sanskrit chanting to the pantheon of Hindu deities and to yogic gurus both general and specific. My aspirations to open-mindedness be damned, this latter aspect touched off my anxieties in no small way. There were also daily acts of (mandatory, assigned) “selfless service” and a lecture on the history and philosophy of yoga, which one quickly appreciates applies to the entire daily regimen, not just the bendy poses.

Apart from these moderate anxieties about what we were getting into, we approached the ashram with excitement and few expectations. Indeed, we weren’t even sure what our sleeping arrangements would be, receiving no reply after emailing the ashram from Kuala Lumpur to inquire about the availability of rooms, and being told when we called that they couldn’t help us over the phone and that we should email them instead.

So after leaving our last hotel in Kuala Lumpur hours before dawn, a quick and comfortable flight (apart from our neighbor’s prolific throat clearing, a.k.a., “hawking,” commonly practiced in this part of the world, but no less unpleasant), and a stimulating hour spent clearing Indian customs, finding an ATM and riding an overflowing local bus and an auto-rickshaw to one of Trivandrum’s long-distance bus stations, we were on board another crowded but pleasant open-air bus for the one-hour journey to Neyyar Dam.

One’s arrival at the ashram is acknowledged with a sign indicating that cell phones are prohibited, and should be turned into reception. And then after a long wait in the queue labeled “reception,” we were asked to complete a forest of paperwork:

1. a personal information card;
2. a page in a bound registration book, reiterating (in triplicate carbon copy, no less) one’s personal information;
3. a “yellow card” onto which one deposits some amount of cash, like a credit account, so that the purchases at the “boutique” and “health hut” and elsewhere can be made without the hassle of handling money (except for the transactions that can be done only in cash, which seemed as common as those requiring a yellow card but were rarely indicated in advance, the net result of which was it made sense to bring cash and your yellow card before attempting any transaction);
4. a brochure helpfully describing ashram life and the plentiful rules governing it (except for the rules in the brochure that do not, in fact, apply, and for the places where the brochure is just dead wrong in describing life here); and finally
5. another sheet describing the rules, which is returned to reception with the participant’s signature, consenting to be kicked out of the ashram for failure to follow these rules.

It’s not the most welcoming introduction to a peaceful yogic experience, but we took it to be perhaps just an example of legendary Indian bureaucracy. And then the kind staff person helping us told us that a twin room was in fact available, delightful news to our eager but travel-weary bodies.

We were then given our key and guided to our room, which turned out to be far more spacious and comfortable than either of us had imagined, affording a modicum of privacy, our own bathroom and a private balcony for watching the sunset through the forest canopy. We spent our first half hour visiting the reception desk repeatedly, since we were shown our room, but not which of the winding paths one follows to eat, visit the aforementioned health hut or participate in the yoga practice, the group meditation, the chanting sessions (known as satsang) or the lectures.

Our arrival fell on the second day of a two-week introductory “yoga vacation,” consisting of a group of about fifty people, predominantly but not exclusively white Westerners, with many European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries represented. As a result, the asana classes and lectures did not presume much prior knowledge — a good fit for our needs. The first lecture by the ashram director, a white expat who described himself as being from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and was so flat in his affect that it was hard to determine whether he was bored, tired or completing these exercises with some robotic autonomous process whilst his awareness was focused on the fifth plane of yogic bliss. (I don’t know if there is a fifth plane of yogic bliss, but I am beginning to suspect that I’m not destined to find out.) Apart from some noise I have about scientific discoveries being, well, contorted as evidence of some religious point (“science has proved that all matter is energy...”) by a faithful practitioner who does not seem to understand the underlying science, the lecture helpfully described some of the basic principles of yogic philosophy. (A note to the faithful: scientists don’t prove, mathematicians and logicians do. Scientists test evidence against hypotheses, and iteratively refine or refute hypotheses by confronting them with data. It’s my impression that when people of faith lean on science in the service of proselytizing, what they are really doing is attempting to cow you into submission by donning a white lab coat and hoping that you are sufficiently impressed and don’t ask to see their data or inspect their standard deviations.)

I appreciated garnering from the first lecture a better understanding of the relationship between the physical poses (hatha yoga, just one form of yogic practice) and yoga’s ultimate aim of reuniting with the divine. What struck me was how much of that aspiration was couched in language of controlling and distancing one’s awareness from what is called the “physical body” (as opposed to your other ones). For me, one of the real beauties of yoga is to feel embodied, to change from the experience my sister-in-law aptly described as being a “brain on a stick” to developing an awareness of one’s physicality and the intricacies and hidden capacities of your very own sweaty organism. This is, I suspect, an irreducible parting of ways between my approach to and experience of yoga and its Hindu origins, in which having a little distance from one’s surroundings and fallible body might not be a bad thing, especially if you’re from a lower caste and hope to have any agency in your life. I’ll agree that this is an oversimplification, but not by much.

This first lecture also allowed each member of the group to introduce themselves. Julie picked up two early signals of what was to come during this process, but I missed them. First, this was virtually the only time any student’s name was used during our stay, which perhaps gives you a sense of the intimacy and warmth of our interactions with most staff and most other participants. (Think cattle, and not of the sacred variety.) Second, everyone, myself included, took themselves so seriously their introductions that it was only Nick, an American from L.A., who dared to stray from the humorlessness, inventing the following explanation of why he was visiting the ashram: “Well, a friend staked a wager that I would never be able to touch my toes, so this seemed like the most direct path to ten thousand U.S. dollars.” Instead of being greeting with laughter, his story clearly touched a nerve, the scolding and incredulous clucks of the assembled, serious students of yoga may not have been audible, but they were unmistakable nonetheless. (Isn’t there laughter on the fifth plane of yogic bliss?)

After the lecture, our first asana class began. I was overjoyed. Among the few fitness regimes and forms of exercise that I have pursued with more than a passing interest, yoga is clearly far and above the others in how it resonates with my body. This is so much the case that it is simply inexcusable that I’ve found excuses for not making it part of my daily life more consistently. One two-hour session at the ashram and I was reconnected with that calm elation I felt after my very first yoga session. Getting to do this twice a day in a such a supportive environment, I thought, what could be better?

The asana instruction was nothing short of great, in particular our morning sessions led by a Canadian expat who brought his humility and, thankfully, his sense of humor to the task of inspiring us to stretch our bodies and our concepts of our bodies. It was astonishing to note how after only a few sessions, my posture improved (a hour of daily meditation in a cross-legged position also has a way of rewarding good posture and punishing bad), my abdominal and lower back muscles felt significantly stronger and my flexibility increased substantially. After the first session’s unhappy discovery that my fingers and toes would not touch with my legs straight — even if there had been a sizable wager on it — two days later, I could place my toes in my palms bending straight-legged from the waist. The shoulder-stand position that at first seemed destined to send me to an infirmary with cracked vertebrae yielded to the plow posture, in which one moves from a full shoulder stand (elbows, shoulders and neck on the ground, with feet vertical above your head) to bringing one’s feet behind one’s head to touch the ground. In short, the yoga practice rocked.

After each session’s closing sivasana, I opened my eyes feeling lighter than air, energized and deeply relaxed. Reborn from the corpse pose, in some fashion. It was quickly evident to me that a few weeks of this daily regimen and I would not just be in better shape, I would be in the best shape of my life. More significantly, while I’ve always needed to find some reason to exercise other than just “working out” (e.g., commuting to work on my bicycle, flying over the snow on my skis or taking in the sights of a city on foot), this was pure joy, for its own sake. No other reason needed. Giddy with this liberating sense of possibility, I began to imagine making ashram visits a regular part of my travel and vacation routines.

At first.

If Whitman is right, and we do in fact contain multitudes, then I suppose it’s also true that we are all hypocrites in some form or another. Why, then, the hypocrisy of this ashram needled me so much is a subject worthy of more reflection.

I recently joked with a friend that one of the things which pushes my buttons most acutely is when stated, tyrannical policies differ from actual practices. (“Slightly less so when that discrepancy is beneficial to me,” I quipped.)  I find gaps between policy and practice to be a constant source of perturbation, as I wrestle with the question of why the policy is written in this way, and who or what gets to decide when the policy should apply or be waived. Call this a deep-seated aspect of my confrontational nature, I guess.

It is infinitely preferable to me — and almost always more humane — to have a set of policies limited to the rules that really do apply without equivocation in 99.99999% of cases, and then empower people with explicit discretion to resolve the cases not governed by policy and the rare exceptions to policy that present themselves. Yes, this leaves decisions more subject to negotiation, makes it more difficult to maintain consistent quality in decisions, and usually ends up being more labor-intensive, but also leaves institutions more nimble and, if implemented well, it helps the people empowered to make decisions feel more satisfied in their roles and the people on the “receiving end” of decisions feel like they are being treated as and by a human being, rather than being clubbed by a stupid, obdurate rule. And yes, my strong predilections along these lines reveal both a strength and a weakness.

In any case, after being warned in no fewer than five places (three signs and two handouts) that we were absolutely, positively not to have cell phones on the ashram grounds, and that they must be switched off and turned into reception so that they do not interfere with the serenity of the ashram, doesn’t it seem a bit excessive to have eight cellphones interrupt said serenity on the first afternoon? Especially when some of those phones are in the hands and pockets of the ashram staff? Or when the director is interrupted by his phone ringing in the midst of leading a group session?

I am left to wonder: is this a rule, or isn’t it? Must one have already attained the third level of yogic bliss to be unperturbed when a ringtone of Hindi drum beats and sitar wrests the attention away from our chant for world peace?

Sadly, this ashram is riddled with such discrepancies, making it seem so much more “worldly” than its stated aspirations would imply. No place is perfect, but in the off-chance that staff from the Sivananda ashram are interested in some unsolicited advice, here’s a short list for some future staff meeting:

• Seriously, with the paperwork. You are far from exceptional by Indian standards to require half an hour to complete the check-in process, but I was given to believe that you strived to be exceptional. Perhaps if information really, truly needs to be stored redundantly, staff or karma-seeking students can be charged with the task of copying it from place to place. Better still, ask and store your information once, and limit what you collect to the stuff you actually need.


• Playing telephone garbles the message. If the brochure you provided me at check-in — and which you require that I affirm having read — states that the telephone is available from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., it seems reasonable that I might plan my phone use accordingly. No one would fault you for an interruption in the telecom service or a loss of electricity, but when you’ve changed your policy to drastically curtail the availability of the telephone by fiat, it would be both a sign of respect and just plain helpful to have the elaborate documents signed in blood not contradict your actual (and inflexible) practice. It’s not just the phone, either, but the timing of the laundry service, the availability of travel advice and just about every other fine detail in the brochure. If these details change too fluidly for the paper to keep up, I have a high-tech solution for you: drop the paper and use a white board in the lobby.


• Shut up about it already. Repeatedly in signage and in the paperwork we are instructed to maintain silence during meals and after evening satsang until the following morning. I can fully appreciate the virtues of silence in a monastic environment. If, in fact, silence is available, I rather enjoy it. Breaches in the quiet might be understandable since some of your students might not be 100% on board, or might have somehow missed the umpteen articulations of that policy, and I would think these could be addressed through gentle reminders and articulations of the rationale behind the policy. Having it be staff breaking the silence, however, raises unwanted questions about the institution’s integrity. Again, is this really a rule, or isn’t it? I am not, by the way, referring to instructions to the group which may from time to time be necessary. I am looking for the staff to apply the same restraint that I am being asked to apply when, for example, they notice someone they want to converse with across the room.


• Land wars in Asia. Each student is assigned a task for the upkeep of the ashram, referred to as one’s karma yoga practice, their acts of selfless service. Julie and I threw ourselves enthusiastically into the task we were assigned of helping to serve the morning meal. Until we met the German who may or may not be officially involved in the service, but who seems to view serving the morning meal as his turf. (It takes all of my yogic restraint not to give him a nickname which compares him, Seinfeldianly, with an atrocious fascist regime from his home country.) This gentleman (see, how polite I can be?) seemed not to appreciate the zest with which Julie and I served meals (if it wasn’t counter to the spirit of the ashram, I’d be tempted to say that we were lots quicker and more dedicated than the rest of our team). On the first meal, as I was hauling the handle-less, industrial-size metal mixing bowl of steaming rice (why are the other dishes, including the cold ones, served from buckets with handles but not the twenty pounds of piping hot rice?), my German friend came up to me and said that I should stop putting so much rice on each plate, since “the girls” (he pronounced this as Dana Carvey’s impression of Schwarzenegger would) wouldn’t eat so much and that it would be wasted. There was no shortage of food, and in fact food was served continuously until everyone was sated. Annoyed, and not feeling especially karmic about his unsolicited advice, I reluctantly complied. And I am petty, surely, but also vindicated for watching as every single “boy” or “girl” I begrudgingly shorted subsequently requested seconds of the same rice. The next day, he followed me around picking up several stray kernels of rice that missed or bounced off the tin trays, looking up at me as he did. Perhaps, dear friend, you would prefer to serve the rice instead? Or supply me with a delivery system that did not cause a hundredth of a rupee (gasp, a bazillionth of a penny! Our spiritual practice is doomed!) in waste? After dutifully ensuring that everyone had their skimpy portion of rice, I moved on to serving salad, filling the designated place on the tray (an indentation about a third of a cup in volume) with exactly one scoop of salad. Again, my friend approached me and suggested that I was serving too much salad, and that it would go to waste. Restraining the various biting replies that first came to mind, I suggested, in all faux-gic wisdom, that yes, everything could be wasted. He simply affirmed the sentiment and walked away. And the next second — I kid you not — someone called for my attention, requesting more salad. I guess I should not expect that there are no turf battles among volunteers, but he provided me with the helpful confirmation when, later, he refused to serve me not once but twice from the dish he was distributing. Ah, karma. Watch your back, Herr Power Hunger.


• Begging your pardon. This may be picayune, and perhaps just a cultural artifact of ashram life, but I do find it rather silly that people interrupt one another or get each other’s attention by speaking the highly revered, so-called “universal” mantra “Om” instead of “pardon me,” “excuse me” or even “hey you.” I enjoyed hearing a group utter “Om” as a mantra together while starting and concluding asana sessions, each time distinct in its multiple harmonies and subtle variations in pitch and timbre. I guess you could say that later hearing someone say “Om, could you please pass the potatoes” cheapened it for me a bit.


• Playing doctor. Lastly, our half-ash’d lecture on Ayurvedic medicine really fails to inspire a respect for the discipline when your chief resident doctor suggested flippantly — actually laughing as he said it — that based on their Ayurvedic constitution, various participants in the lecture were likely to develop manic depression, nervous disorders or any other number of ailments. But then, I come from a school of thought that diseases should be taken seriously, especially by medical professionals, and treated as such. (Yes, here’s a spot the humorlessness, or at least professionalism, would have been preferable.)

This laundry-list of complaints notwithstanding, I would hate to leave you, dear reader, with the impression that our ashram experience was entirely negative. In addition to the deeply rewarding asana instruction, I also enjoyed the group meditation sessions. (Well, in truth, I found maintaining focus challenging when the silence was broken by late arrivals, construction equipment or trumpeting elephants, but this is a perhaps understandable limitation of my concentration.) Furthermore, at the few meals that managed to maintain some measure of silence, there was something magical about being in such a large group of people with the only sounds being those of ingestion and digestion, much like the quiet that I imagine could descend on livestock while they are being fed (a comparison I offer with reverence, not sarcasm).

Also, despite my personal unease with participating in group chanting praising Krishna, Raam and the technicolor ensemble cast of Hindu deities, I do not resent this ashram nor any other monastic community for being grounded in a particular faith tradition, especially when this fact expressed so clearly upfront. Hindu chanting ain’t my cup of chai, but I don’t regret having tried it, the tunes are quite catchy, and I did learn a lot about the manifold manifestations of the one great spirit to which a majority of Indians pray. (Now if I can just get that Hare Krishna chant out of my head.)

On the question of faith, I think it comes down to the approach that I know would work best for me, personally, which of course no ashram is obliged to provide. I would respond so much more positively to an open-minded expression of a faith tradition that allows for curiosity and skepticism, inviting engagement, rather than simply being expected to “repeat after me” (especially when what is being repeated is in Sanskrit without translation). When staff would take time to unpack the ashram’s practices, they became some much more intelligible, so much more meaningful and so much more susceptible to the kind of inquiry that I think any serious consideration requires: ”Oh, so that’s what this means. So what do I think of that?”

Alas, perhaps I would just be better suited to a secular yoga vacation, as abrasive as the concept is to my man-of-the-world, when-in-Rome travel ethos. But the onus for those of us who seek to cherry-pick the practices that form our own sense of meaning — what Elizabeth Gilbert wittily appropriates the original R.E.M. in calling the process of “choosing my religion” — this responsibility of course does not rest with anyone other than ourselves.

The morning of what was to become our last day at the ashram, Julie and I were seated for the morning meditation, having arrived a few moments before it was scheduled to begin and installed ourselves along the walls near the back of the bamboo mats spread across the tile floor. It was still well before dawn, and we arranged ourselves on our yoga mats so that we could sit comfortably, without moving, for thirty minutes (something that initially seemed quite unlikely, but, by the third day, routine). One of the biggest challenges for me in maintaining meditative focus (well, apart from the people, machinery and elephants mentioned above) is to convince my inner narrative-writing observer to stop writing, stop describing, stop coming up with metaphors and analogies to relate whatever it is I am experiencing. So this particular morning, I thought that perhaps I could quell my curiosity by simply letting it gorge itself to satiety. I decided to sit in silence with my eyes open, fully observing the spectacle and allowing myself to describe it in my mind, although I committed myself to remaining as calm and motionless as possible so as to minimize the distractions I created for those around me. (Presumably from the fifth level of yogic bliss, such charades are transparent, but from such giddy heights (?) I can only presume that it’s trivial to ignore li’l ol’ me.)

What I observed was utterly, in some ways reassuringly, of this world. One woman seated cross-legged, wrapped in a sarong, carefully checking her nails. Dozens of people arriving late, many of whom slapped their mats down on the floor with reckless abandon (or perhaps misdirected frustration), seemingly oblivious to the quest for inner peace happening around them. Staff arriving late, padding stealthily into the hall, guiltily looking around and slinking onto their mats in silence at the back of the room. Two-stroke engines being started. Maintenance staff conversing with one another in decibels that might be audible in another hemisphere. Countless birds suggesting that it was time the world woke up (in the “what’s for breakfast” sense rather than the “give peace a chance” sense). And elephants making sounds from the forest that one imagines can only lead to more elephants. A narrative feast, it was.

When the meditation ended with the ubiquitous Om, I felt oddly satisfied, as though I’d managed to get that obstacle to my meditation out of the way. Next up was the chanting, something I’d initially joined in a tentative, provisional way, but that was increasingly chafing, creating a sense of disconnection from the experience around me. (I’m sure Saraswati kicks all kinds of ass, but silly me, I feel the need to do a bit more research before I plead in Sanskrit several times a day for her to protect me.) My metaphysical guard thus raised, Julie and I formed a small island sitting next to each other. Until a staff person — unappointed to the role of seating police, as best I could tell — asked us to move closer to the front of the hall. We were sitting in the back of the group, but certainly not away from the group — unlike many people, herself included, who arrived late. So in response to being asked why, she replied that she just thought it would be better for the “energy” of the room. (Science proves it, no doubt.)

We both took our commitment to live in the spirit and by the rules of the ashram during our stay seriously, and this was clearly no place to debate the point, so we complied with the request, but it was for me the final hypocrisy. (If we are, in fact, all one spirit, does it really matter where the little physical shell surrounding my tiny portion of that spirit sits? And whose spirit gets to decide what the best energy feels like?) In short, it flipped the final switch. The moment satsang ended, I said to Julie that I think we might be done here, and that perhaps it was time to pack up our things. (Julie’s reaction to this statement is more properly hers to share, but suffice it to say this was the broadest smile I’d seen cross her face during the satsangs.)

After partaking in our final asana class, bidding farewell to our favorite asana teacher and going through the elaborate check-out process, we earned our precious “exit pass,” a pink slip of paper that entitled us to leave the ashram without, presumably, being tackled by security. Nonviolently, of course.

With ashrams occupying their particular place in the popular imagination, it is perhaps unfair to malign so easy a target, particularly when we both signed up for the experience deliberately and with clear knowledge that it would stretch us mentally and physically. Indeed it did. I hope what I’ve managed to convey isn’t just that this particular ashram isn’t a place I’ll visit again, but that its apparent inability to play by its own rules is a big part of the reason why.

By the same token, this ashram is only one among a multitude, and whatever common themes there may be from one ashram experience to another, I suspect that there are more differences than similarities. Also, I don’t want to suggest that this one is without merit. Surely lots of people have had and will continue to have transformative experiences in this place. It is no small thing for a three-day visit to have provoked such a reaction in me. And of course, I bring my own baggage to the party. A party that is heading to the beach.

A new year in Malaysia

Happy new year!

Our time in Malaysia is fast coming to a close, after a month of heterogeneous, haunting, not-to-be-forgotten experiences. Our travels — limited to just the west coast and the central highlands of the Malay peninsula — have spanned the bustling port towns of Melaka and Penang, the misty green mountains of the Cameron Highlands, the sleepy beaches and tropical jungles of Pangkor Island, and the thriving (often sleep-depriving) urban pulse of Kuala Lumpur (which locals call simply "K.L.").



I'm challenged, with so much variety and still being so close to the experience, to draw themes across these various Malaysias, but of course that won't stop me from trying.

Many of our experiences in this incredible country have already been documented elsewhere. What I perhaps haven't expressed is that above all else — above its lush natural environment, its distinctive museums, its tropical climate, its rapid development or even its delicious cuisines — I am struck by the richness of the coexisting diversity of Malaysia's people. I should admit to being more than a bit put off by a country having an officially sanctioned religion, flattening as it does the inevitably varied expressions of people's spirituality, even the variations within a single faith, and making thanks-but-no-thank-you folks like me feel a bit, ahem, left at the altar. So, upon learning that Malaysia is an officially Islamic state (as is Indonesia, save for the Hindu enclave of Bali), my presumptions about this place painted it in monochrome, a fascinating and beautiful Islamic portrait, to be sure, but still one daubed with a single brush.

Ah, presumptions. My time in Indonesia should have been more instructive about the gap between government-endorsed religion and daily life. Malaysia feels nothing if not multi-cultural, and faith hardly seems monolithic. Yes, I've seen more head-scarved women here than many other places I've traveled, but while Muslims are the obvious majority, they are far from the only game in town, and I have perceived none of the smugness that I imagined could be engendered by having the government recognize my god instead of yours.

Cuisine — ever one of my favorite lenses into culture — bears this out, with the dishes deriving from Chinese, Indian or Malays roots coexisting in adjacent food stalls, on the same menu and in the bellies of happy diners, regardless their ethnic extraction. (There are also lots of Western foodstuffs here, but in general, those aren't the kind of joints we patronize. With a notable exception below.)

We celebrated the arrival of the new year under the countenance of the enormous Petronas towers, the bustling, gleaming César Pelli-designed headquarters of the national petroleum company, amid a crowd peopled with as much diversity as any crowd back home: locals mingling with Malaysian tourists and foreigners like us; every hue in the spectrum in people's faces, in their clothes, and in their outward expressions of cultural and religious identity; every generation represented; and affection displayed straight and queer. (K.L. is still far short of a queer mecca, in my estimation, but K.L. seems the most open and liberal of the places we've visited in Malaysia.)

We were treated to a remarkable, and very different, view of Malaysia these past two days, thanks to some generous fairy godparents, with an all-encompassing two-day stay at Le Meridien, a cush, five-star resort with panoramic vistas from our corner 31st floor room of K.L.'s leafiest neighborhoods. We envisioned walking through the nearby gardens, taking in night markets and finishing our sight-seeing itinerary, but after reclining into the comforts of this place and appreciating its depth, we haven't left the compound! Nor have we needed to, between the nightly cocktails and appetizers, the 24-hour open snack-bar in the penthouse, the serpentine pools with three different temperature zones and, lest I forget, breakfasts and dinners at the Jean-George Vongerichten restaurant on the 8th floor, all included in our "package" deal. It's been an utter departure from our (adequate, but let's admit, four stars lower) accommodations of late. What an unexpected treat!



So we're soaking up this luxury for our last few hours in Malaysia, taking temporary leave of Southeast Asia for a five-week visit to India. If my brief, transformative visit to India five years ago is any guide, we have some indelible, wonderful, challenging experiences in store. Although sharing many cultural and historical roots with our recent habitations, India seems also irreducibly distinct. The economics of the place alone — a global economic superpower in aggregate, and one of the poorest nations per capita — hint at some of the paradoxical rush of visiting this place as a westerner. I anticipate that it will remain distinct in quality and in kind from the rest of our itinerary, a point suggested by the trending relationships between the wealth of a nation (expressed as per capita gross domestic product) and our travel budget for visiting each place. (Indonesia would have been more in line with this trend, but for the fabulous scuba diving.)



(By the way, I'd be curious to know who won the pool on how long it would take for charts and graphs to appear in these posts.)

After our arrival in India tomorrow, in the southern state of Kerala, we plan to spend our first week at a yoga retreat, acclimating to our new surroundings and stretching muscles actual and metaphysical. It may be a little while until the next post, but please don't let that stop you from chiming in in the meantime!