It Is Possible

Seeing as this is my 3^rd trip to Mysore and I drive a Vespa back home, I tried to drive a little more this trip.  I almost understand the driving laws, though “laws” or “rules” might be a little too strong here.  Think driving “suggestions.”  Last week I followed a friend out to a new pool.  Had I know I was driving practically to Bangalore I probably wouldn’t have gone but you can’t turn back when you don’t know how to get home so there I was crossing the city in every kind of imaginable turn-around and turn-about, reversed traffic circle, and “W” shaped intersection.  Fitting with the motto of this trip, driving in India, it’s possible.  When we reached the pool it was like arriving into the MIA video for "Bad Girls"—3 little scooters peeling out across a long and deserted dusty lot in front of a palace.  No, I’m not kidding.  The Lalitha Mahal is a palace turned hotel.

I have immense respect for drivers here.  I think there are rules and understandings that are difficult to grasp when they haven’t come hardwired into us from day 1.  Had I been a child wedged onto a scooter with my mom or dad to go to the market or to visit grandma, I might get this quicker.   So much of this driving business is intuition and quick thinking.  For a country with so many people on the road, there is a method to the madness.

As much as I can figure out, these are the rules of the road:

1. Lane splitting is okay, even for 2 buses and especially for 4 scooters.

2. Cars have the right-of-way if you are on the same road, especially if the car is coming at you.

2a. Hierarchy in this order: bus, car, tata truck (only because they pretend to not be able to see and/or have 9 feet long piping or 9 feet high sacks of concrete mix hanging out of them), motorcycle, scooter, rickshaw, bicycle, person.

3. Cows, goats and water buffalo trump all.  Traffic moves around them.  However, to be considerate, I still beep when passing the cow even when it’s only the 2 of us on the street. 

4. If you want to pass the slow vehicle in front of you, it is okay to cross the lane divide and drive down the wrong side of the road.  People will get out of your way as long as you honk your horn.  Honking your horn makes most things legal.

5. Speed bumps are rarely marked and are tall and treacherous here.  You must keep your eyes on the road right in front of you or risk knocking your passenger or your engine out of the vehicle.

6. Lucky for you that you must only look straight ahead for speed bumps because this is also the best way to enter a 4-way intersection.  Don’t bother looking around.  Look straight ahead, merge into the mix and know that the local drivers are good enough at this to avoid hitting you. 

7. You must memorize the variety of horn usages and meanings.  Lightly beep as you are about to pass another vehicle.  Hold the horn longer if you’re sure they haven’t noticed you before.  Honk as you see vehicles backing out of parking spots. Lay on the horn as you drive down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic.  Honk as you approach an intersection, especially if your road is smaller than the one you are about to cross.  Honk as you make a turn.  Beep quickly as you approach a pedestrian on the side of the road.  Honk as you zip around a pedestrian standing in the road.  Honk as you pass animals with their backs turned toward you.  Beep as you pass animals walking across your lane. 

8. Police occasionally put fencing up in a lane in order to force all vehicles through one small opening.  This temporarily ends lane splitting.  As for who goes first when you approach the opening, may the most nimble win.  These fences are rarely set up for easy passing as they often force you to zigzag or drive into another lane.

9. If you are waiting at the rare traffic light but can’t wait another second, dismount your scooter or motorcycle, walk it across the crosswalk and drive away just as you approach the other side. 

10. Your first child has the option of sitting behind you or in front of you.  If carrying another adult, the child goes between you or on the hip of the passenger.  If carrying an adult passenger and two children, the order should be child, adult, child, adult.  Though 2 children and 2 adults are 4 people, never try to drive with 4 adults on a scooter.  People will yell at you from both sides of the street.

11. The driver must wear a helmet.  The child should wear a knit cap to avoid too much wind.  If your passenger wears a helmet you will get funny stares because, apparently, passengers can’t get head injuries in crashes.  Must be something different with the gravity here.

12. If you pass a driver who pats the top of her head, there is a police checkpoint ahead and you need to pull over and fish the helmet out of your seat. 

13. If you pass a driver who yells at you, you must have your headlights on before it is pitch black out.  If there is one thing local drivers will not tolerate it is the wasting of headlight bulbs and signal bulbs.  They’d die to find out that my Vespa at home is manufactured to drive with the headlight on continuously. 

14. If you hear Christmas music, a car is backing up somewhere. 

15. At the gas station it is every driver for herself.  

Things An Average Person May Worry About Here

I worry about this open vat of hot oil.

Worries, in no particular order.

Will having the earliest start time plus a short practice mean the coconut man won’t be set up yet?! 

 

Will 3 washes rinse the gut-tumbling bacteria off of my tomato/apple/strawberry? (Should I use a dab of hand sanitizer?  Is it poisonous?) 

Will that horse walking down the street toward me kick me in the back when I’m not looking?

Can that water buffalo run quickly, or, rather, quicker than me?

Did you mean regular time or shala time?!

If I eat breakfast after led class on Sunday, is that really like eating lunch and I’ve lost a meal today? 

Will I need to pee before practice if I drink a glass of water and then sit at the gate for an hour?  

Did I turn off my phone so Airtel doesn’t call to get cheeky while I’m practicing?

Was Sharath talking to me when he said “straight legs” because I’m now hyper-flexing with straightness and he keeps saying it.

Has my ATM card stopped working or is this machine just busted?

Is that stink coming from my mat towel or yours?

Do you have any worries?

Keep It Like A Secret

This is not Built To Spill.

I’ve had a difficult time writing posts for this blog for a number of reasons.  To begin with, I’m pretty private about my practice.  Sure, I’ll moan or laugh about something with a friend but I generally don’t talk to the masses about postures.  There is something sacred that happens every day here in the shala.  I seek comfort when I need it, when something maybe went haywire (hello, door, meet cranium), but I like to save the good stuff.  Mostly, it’s so personal.   It’s just mine.  So for every posture, or even the realization of where I need to do more work, I haven’t wanted to post it here.  Last conference Sharath was joking about Facebook and the posts he’s seen there about “oh, I have this posture now” or “oh, he said this or that to me.”  It’s a fine line between sharing the joy and sharing too much, and I admit I sometimes have a difficult time discerning the two.  Because I can’t decide, I often end up not posting here at all.  Yes, this post is about my inability to post. (eyeroll) I’ll do better!

There is a Li-Young Lee poem, “From Blossoms,” about gleaning our experiences in order to nurture us in the days ahead, to ingest the knowledge, the happiness, the quiet and subtle "fruits" of our labor.  (Just the last two stanzas here.)

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Poems and Deadwood

It took two rickshaw drivers to get us home.

News reaches me slowly here in Mysore but I’ve been reading a number of the obituaries written for Wislawa Szymborska today and am reminded why she was so important to me as a young and impressionable writer.  She was not too precious and had both a bite and a wink in the same poem-- powerful stuff to a young me after reading all of the women poets who came a generation after her.  (What I’m saying is that it gave me a second option if I wanted to bust some balls.  Think more I-survived-a-war rather than I-seduced-a-man-in-the-70s kind of swing and kick.)  My housemates and I are about to finish up our marathon of almost-nightly episodes of the HBO western Deadwood.  Every night before bed I watch at least 3 people die violently.  Fortunately, my practice start time is later than my housemates’ times so I have an hour of buffer to wash my eyes out with soap.  Then I go off to sleep and prepare my brain and my body to have faith in miracles for the next morning.  Absurdity!  During the first episode I had to look away and didn’t want anyone to die.  By season 3 I hardly bat an eye or turn my head.  In as little as 2 weeks I can be desensitized to violence, apparently.  But I’m still cheering for a happy ending, always, here and there.  A bit of Szymborska’s “Consolation” for the miracles.

…orphans sheltered, widows comforted,

pride humbled, wounds healed over,

prodigal sons summoned home,

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,   

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,

general merriment and celebration,

and the dog Fido,         

gone astray in the first chapter,

turns up barking gladly

in the last.

The Monster At The End Of This Book

I think most kids of the 70s and 80s had this book, no?  Grover is terrified of whatever awaits him at the end of the book and spends about 15 pages nailing, roping, burning and pleading so that we don’t turn the page to come face to face with the rumored monster.  I definitely felt like Grover in some postures just over a year ago, working through my long practice, ending there day after day, a little pit in my stomach.  Similar to all of those times, today I turned onto that last page once again to find, hey!, only myself blinking back.  No monsters.  No fear.  Just another hurdle and, of course, coming face to face with a familiar ol’ face.  Myself.  *whew*

Here is what I’m most grateful for today, in no particular order.   

-My escort to the shala this morning.  Made everything much easier.  Though I was surprised to find out that we do our full backbend dropbacks at the end of class.  I figured that one out as I was upside down.

-That I figured that one out in the nick of time.

-For my delicious meals that I ate with new and old friends.

-Ginger (not the Gilligan’s Island lady but ginger root).

-A. E.’s  laugh when I had no energy to laugh myself.  She probably has no idea how great it is?

Instant Karma

My favorite of the neighborhood livestock.

The first day I arrived here, with a little jetlag and the remnants of a trying 2011 still on my back, I was fortunate enough to see a good opportunity when it presented itself—whether I was ready or not.  That very first night in town I accompanied my two friends/roommates to a class on Indian philosophy that started that week.  Already, I had missed 2 days of class but I decided to go along anyway, too tired to argue or consider.  I haven’t been disappointed.  Over the course of the last 3 weeks, we’ve been working through the various schools of Indian philosophy. I won't even try to summarize it all here.  I realized this week that 15 years ago I was starting my spring semester at Miami University and starting a class on Indian philosophy.  It was where I first read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita, long before I started an asana practice.  I won’t say I felt lost at 19 but I was a spiritual person without direction, appreciating the ideas of faith and devotion and dedication without a path for my beliefs, a name for whatever I was internally practicing. (Let me say that I grew up haphazardly going to a Methodist church so I didn’t feel particularly scarred by religious faith, either.)  I appreciated what we learned but I really struggled in that university class.  I was a perfectionist in a room of thirty students where we were told from the first day that only 4 would get an “A.”  Don’t even get me started on that.  I ended the semester with a “B+” in the class.  I was heartbroken considering how much work I put into it.  Oh, how little we really change on the inside even as we get older and (a little) wiser!  These last 3 weeks have been a second chance.  I started out taking notes, gave up on that, and decided to use the “steeping” method of learning—if I sit there long enough with everything processing in and out of my head, submerged in the heat of it, I just might learn something.  Thinking about the then (1997) and now (NOW, duh), I remembered a reading I went to as an impressionable young one where the writer Sherman Alexie urged our little potential-filled blossoms to go out into the world and surround ourselves with teachers, mentors, peers, whose hands bleed for whatever they do.  In other words, don’t hang out with the half-assers.   Learn from the people who love what they are doing, and work it hard, even if it’s for something you don’t want to do yourself.  Burn it down daily and rise from the ashes with exhaustion.  Maybe that’s what this pilgrimage is for?  *(Above photo says something about paths and camaraderie.)

No Circus

Last conference Sharath demonstrated the proper entrance and exit in utkatasana.  Apparently, enough of us had been doing it wrong to warrant a conference mention.  It is not a handstand or even a half-handstand (hips over shoulders over hands) but rather a motion that requires less momentum but a lift just the same.  This practice certainly inspires, especially in primary series, flourishes and dancing that he works very hard to discourage.  Why?  We all know that he says no handstands in primary.  I remember him joking last year that the fourth count of sun salutation should not be handstand.  He laughed.  Where does this need to jump around in primary come from?  In Mysore my practice is not split.  I long for the pop and hops of intermediate without having to plow through the forward folds that make my legs whine.  Why are we so ornery in primary sometimes?  Why the rush to leave it behind?  I had to ask myself that question today.  The long practice is so grounding and strengthening, as my shoulders and hips reminded me this week.  The work of one series is certainly rewarded in the next, one posture’s work to the next.  This is just some of what I’m thinking about this week with my practice.  Laksmish, my Sanskrit teacher in the shala, said it best in class when asking us to make sentences for our homework using the small list of objects, verbs, pronouns and indeclinables we knew.  “No circus” he warned us.  Last year I made abstract poetic sentences for my homework trying to make the best of it—the bird drinks the sky, vegetables salute the light, you get the idea.  He reminded us today that we must first master the basics before we are allowed the circus.  So, again, I’m tasked with using what I have been given, which is about 13 verbs and 26 nouns.

As some of you know, I drive a scooter as my primary mode of transportation in my home city.  This is my third trip to India, and I’m only now getting comfortable driving around these rental scooters.   My dear sweet Vespa, Marianne Faithfull, has ruined it for me.  I can’t take the rental scooter seriously when the side of the little thing says “Yo Speed” or “Scooty.”  Saturday morning I will be leaving my Gokulam neighborhood to drive to Saturday morning breakfast.  I have a few days to work up the courage to drive downtown, on the wrong side of the road, with no lights or stop signs at any four-way intersection, while powering what can only be described as a Barbie car.  The rental scooters can be banged up as any rental vehicle is bound to be.  I remember a rental car I had this summer in the States that sounded like the door was about to fall off.  We survived that one.  But avoiding cows in the road, street dogs, people in the market, this should be interesting.  I’ll keep you posted.  After driving my perfect scooter at home, with helmet and proper shoes and proper signals, it’s time for the circus. (Cue the carnival music or, even better, Jaws.  Your choice.)