New Digs

That oh-so-perfect pad I wrote about last month? I moved out.

My new digs are cheaper and more comfortable. I share a three-bedroom apartment with Ben and Nathan, an Aussie and Brit I met at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. I wasn’t looking to move when they offered me their third room. At first I said no. Then I remembered the pancake brunches.

Almost every Sunday of my last semester in college, I woke up early to prepare the batter. One bowl for plain pancakes. Another for chocolate chip. I’d ladle the batter onto hot pans, wait for bubbles, then flip. The pancakes were almost as big as Frisbees, and one or two were enough for most guests.

My friends brought orange juice, milk and backpacks stuffed with books. Accommodating a dozen guests wasn’t a problem. My roommates and I had an assortment of hand-me-down chairs and a couch we’d rescued from the streets. The brunches made Sundays a little easier to bear; most of us had all-day dates with a desk.

I was dreaming about pancakes while eating a spectacularly crappy breakfast not far from Auroville. That got me thinking about the brunches. My next thought was: “Dude. I should have pancake brunches for my friends in Chennai.” And then I thought about my apartment in Chennai, which had exactly one chair.

I called Nathan that afternoon and told him I’d take the room.

Our dining room table seats 14 comfortably. Nathan had it custom-made. It’s perfect for pancake brunches. Also for table tennis. Nathan strung a net across the middle, and fierce matches are held daily.

There are other toys: speakers for our iPods, a hammock, a punching bag and boxing gloves, a chess set, and a sling for hanging upside down, which no home is complete without. When Alex was here, I snapped a picture of him trying it out -- just before he nearly passed out.


The apartment also has a washing machine (though no dryer). Washing machines are a rarity in India, even among the affluent, because maids are much cheaper than major appliances. At my old apartment, a maid washed my laundry in a bucket of cloudy water spiked with my sweat and hers. It never came out as clean and fragrant as laundry washed in a machine.

I have less privacy, but that’s OK. My recluse phase was short-lived. I’m leaving my door open. I’m digging out my social calendar. I’m ready to whip up some batter.

‘It’s India’

I’m back in Chennai after almost two weeks in Bangalore. I hadn’t planned on staying so long in India’s tech capital. I hadn’t planned on my Mac breaking, either. I definitely hadn’t planned on Diwali.

First, the Mac. It fell. It was in a neoprene case, which was in a backpack, which tumbled to the ground when Chitra’s driver opened her car’s hatchback. I gasped, grabbed the backpack and ran upstairs to assess the damage. The laptop worked just fine. I typed and typed until the battery icon went red, and then I looked for an outlet. That’s when I noticed the dent. It was near the laptop’s power jack, which was warped. I couldn’t charge the darn thing without standing it on its side to flatten the warped bit.

Fortunately, Bangalore has an Apple service center. This may sound unremarkable to friends back home, but India is a developing country in parts of which plumbing is considered high-tech. Many of the services and products Westerners take for granted are difficult, if not impossible, to find. Maple syrup, for instance. Also Mitchum Clear Gel deodorant, which I import by the trunkful to keep Chitra happy (and dry).

So I was delighted to learn about the service center. It’s on the fifth floor of a dreary office building and bears no resemblance to the bright Apple playpens found in finer shopping centers. The laptop would be ready Monday, the technician told me. It was a Tuesday.

I begged him to aim for Friday, citing my plans to return to Chennai over the weekend. Fine, he said. I paid and asked him to call when the laptop was ready.

Friday came and went without a call. When I phoned the service center Saturday morning, a security guard answered. There was no one else in the office, he told me. It was closed for Diwali. This, the technician had failed to mention.

Diwali is the Hindu “festival of lights.” It’s several days of earsplitting, eye-popping pyrotechnics that put our Fourth of July to shame.

“So I can’t pick up my laptop until Monday?” I shrilled.

The security guard corrected me. The office would be closed on Monday. Tuesday, too.

“Can you believe it?” I whined to a friend in Chennai. “They told me it would be ready Monday, at the latest. And the office isn’t even open until Wednesday! And they never called!”

“It’s India,” came his response.

This -- or variations like “welcome to India” -- is what expats say to each other when faced with maddening inefficiencies. We say it a lot. That’s because service is as foreign a concept in India as meatloaf. A trip to the bank can take hours, with customers snaking their way toward indifferent tellers. At the Starbucks-like coffee shops that are cropping up like, well, Starbucks, you can get a frozen coffee drink that’s First World in appearance and taste. But don’t be surprised if it takes four apron-wearing baristas 15 minutes to count out your change.

“It’s India” is what you say when you go to a restaurant that has three menus for 30 tables. It’s what you say when the water tank empties midway through your shower. It’s what you say when you’re sitting on a bus that’s packed with people -- packed as in body parts dangling out windows -- and not moving from the station. Not moving for more than an hour. “It’s India” is what you say when a taxi driver takes you an hour out of your way to fill his car’s petrol tank at a friend’s house.

I know two Brits who’ve bought punching bags since moving to India. They’re not boxers; they just need to let off steam. I rarely get ruffled. That's because I’m rarely in a hurry. So, Mr. Grocery Store Clerk, you wanna gab on your cell phone while I stand here with my basket? Bring it. I have nowhere to be. The fount of my serenity is the luxury I found in India: spare time.

The friend in Chennai urged me to “get American” on the guys at the service center. Raise my voice. Demand to speak to a manager. The truth was, I didn’t mind extending my stay in Bangalore.

For one, my hair looks better there. Bangalore is cooler than Chennai and far less humid. That means corkscrew curls instead of the puff that passes for my hairdo in Chennai.

For another, you can buy a decent bottle of wine there. The Indian vintages found in Chennai make Manischewitz look good. I filled my suitcase with Rieslings and Australian Chardonnays, most of which I’d give to Scott, a Chennai friend in need of vino.

The rickshaw drivers in Bangalore are better, too. They use meters, which means no haggling and fairer rates. In Chennai, the meters are for show, and I don’t climb into a rickshaw without asking “how much?” The driver then names a ludicrous price, and I roll my eyes, make a counteroffer and start to walk away. Sometimes he lets me, and I’m left to hunt for another rickshaw.

The best thing about Bangalore is being a guest of Chitra. She has a sweet apartment with a spare bedroom, a car and fulltime driver, an impressive library of bootleg DVDs and endless patience for my questions about Indian culture. (I called her once for an explanation of the toilet situation, and she didn’t hang up on me.)

Chitty also has a huge family -- aunties and uncles up the wazoo -- who seem not to mind my infiltration. They even let me light the firecrackers.


I got my Mac back on Wednesday. I got a little American on them. Then I got out of Bangalore.

More Than a Wee Bit

On our fifth day in Coorg, Alex and I decided to go for a hike. It was hard to tear ourselves away from our books and balcony. I was cruising through a Carl Hiaasen; he was busy with Bill Bryson. From the villa's second-floor balcony we had views of dayglow-green rice paddies, papaya trees and mist-shrouded mountains. Dragonflies swirled all around. Coffee and tea came on trays. We didn't budge for hours at a time, though the occasional rainbow compelled us to reach for our cameras.


Coorg, a mountainous region in southwest Karnataka, is coffee-growing country, which made the trip something of a pilgrimage for me. Alex, that heathen, turned his back on coffee several weeks ago. He agreed to Coorg anyway, lured by Lonely Planet's promise of "awesome trekking routes" and cooler weather.

Coorg recalls Costa Rica (lush forests, lousy roads) and California's wine valleys (sprawling estates, little to do but drink). It has a number of designated Lookout Points, at which taxi drivers pull over, point and announce, "lookout point," obliging passengers to snap a few photos. This is like designating Good Paintings in a Van Gogh exhibit; everywhere you look, a masterpiece. Coffee and cardamom plants blanket the landscape, shaded by trees cloaked in pepper vines. Elephants amble through forests of sandalwood and teak. Overhead: oranges, guavas, jackfruit, bananas and coconuts, to name a few.


Coorg was our "something adventurous." We'd ruled out trekking in the Himalayas (too far) and scuba diving off the Andaman Islands (too rainy). Coorg was relatively close, a six-hour drive from Bangalore, and its monsoon season, purportedly over.

A long stop in Bylakuppe kept us from trekking on day 1. Rain scuttled our plans on day 2. On the third day, we took breakfast on the balcony outside our room at Capitol Village, a plantation-cum-resort just outside the Coorg capital of Madikeri. (In recent years, overproduction of coffee and other commodities has made tourism more lucrative than tilling the land.)

The plantation owner pulled up a chair, as he did every morning. Ganesh plays the part to the hilt, roaming his estate in safari hat, oval shades and ascot.

"What is your plan for today?"

Alex and I looked at each other as if he'd asked, "What do you plan to do with the rest of your lives?" Finish breakfast. That was our plan. Maybe finish our books. Go for a trek.

At the mention of trekking, Ganesh shook his head and curled his lips. "Leeches," he grumbled.

I'd never seen a leech. I knew a little about them, which was a little more than I knew about geckos, thanks to my favorite movie. In "Stand by Me," a 1986 coming-of-age flick starring my first love, River Phoenix, four boys emerge from a muddy pond covered in leeches. The scrawniest of them faints after discovering an engorged leech in his underwear. "Stand By Me" remained my favorite movie long after my subscriptions to "Tiger Beat" and "BOP" lapsed, though I stopped admitting it at some point and claimed to adore "Out of Africa."

I thought of River, rest his soul, when Ganesh said "leeches."

Daily rains had soaked the trails, leaving them slippery and leech-infested, Ganesh told us. Trekking was possible, but only with proper rain gear. The only rain gear I'd brought was an umbrella.

"What do you suggest we do?" I asked.

Ganesh thought for a while. (As previously mentioned, there's little to do in Coorg. Attractions are few, a fact underscored by the existence of Lookout Points. The temples are humble affairs. Shopping, unless you're in the market for coffee or cardamom by the kilo, is nonexistent. As for the restaurant scene, well, there's a reason why Capitol Village serves three meals a day to its guests.)

Ganesh summoned his assistant, who summoned a driver, who took us to a dam more than an hour away.

When Ganesh said dam, I thought Hoover. I expected an engineering marvel or dizzying view. Harangi Dam is neither of these. It's a ho-hum structure surrounded by manicured lawns studded with concrete benches. The guidebooks say it's a good picnic spot. I thought it had all the appeal of a suburban office park. Cameras weren't allowed, which was just as well.

Then the driver took us to Dubare Elephant Training camp, where we petted the pachyderms and watched them eat their evening snack.


On day 4 we left Capitol Village and moved to a smaller, more remote lodge. Palace Estate is near the base of Thadiyendamol, the highest peak in Coorg. We parked ourselves on the balcony and prayed for sun.

Day 5: gorgeous. A perfect day for trekking. Also a perfect day for reading and lazing about. We were shamed into choosing the former when our host inquired, "What is your plan for today?" (Apparently, Coorg's plantation owners took the same hospitality courses.)

We packed our cameras, bug spray and a light lunch. I traded the flimsy sandals I'd been wearing all week for a pair with traction soles and lots of Velcro. I left the umbrella.

Thadiyendamol rises to 5,730 feet. The one-way climb from Palace Estate takes 2 to 3 1/2 hours, depending on your pace. We made good time as I scrambled to keep up with my leggy companion.

We were two-thirds of the way there when it started to drizzle. Drizzle turned to downpour, and Alex decided we should turn back. I wanted to reach the top -- I wanted something to write home about -- but I relented.

We splashed our way down the mountain. The rocky trail had turned to river.

River.

"Stand by Me."

Leeches.

They clung to my feet and ankles. A few were trapped in Velcro. They were small and slippery, and getting hold of them was like spearing grape tomatoes with a fork. I stopped half a dozen times to pinch and pull them away. (Alright, alright. Alex did most of the pinching and pulling. I flailed my arms and squealed encouragement.)

Lest anyone question the title of this blog, I offer exhibit #1.

Dalaiwood

We made a right and felt like we'd left India. The faces were different. Clothes, too. Brahma had given way to Buddha, and prayer flags fluttered from every post.

This is Bylakuppe, the largest Tibetan settlement in India.

Sprinkles

Nelly told me to look up.

“Look at that gecko,” she said.

I looked. The gecko was on the ceiling above our table. There was a paper lantern above us, too, and inside the lantern, many bugs and a small frog. Smart frog, I thought. The gecko had its tail raised. I’d never seen a gecko do that.

Nelly also knew little about gecko habits. She’s a Manhattanite who teaches yoga at Crunch. At 23, she was the youngest of my classmates at Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. Her tuition and travel were financed by a Zen-friendly hedge fund manager. She wears butterfly earrings and bejeweled barrettes, and she packed a pair of red high-heeled cowboy boots for her trip to India.

“What were you thinking?” I asked her once.

“I thought, if you can wear red high-heeled cowboy boots in India, I’ll be very sad that I didn’t bring them. So I did.”

You can’t.

Nelly and I watched the high-tailed gecko for a few seconds before we realized its purpose.

“Oooh,” we said in unison.

The gecko poo looked like a chocolate sprinkle. I noticed other sprinkles on the ceiling and walls, enough for a sundae. Our gazes returned to our menus. Roasted chicken or spinach crepe? They both sounded good. Nelly and I decided to share.

She flinched suddenly and swatted the top of her head.

“Bug?” I asked. I didn’t see one.

Nelly looked up.

“It’s not there anymore,” she said in a panicky voice.

Sure enough, the sprinkle wasn’t where the gecko had left it.

I wiped the gecko poo from Nelly’s hair. We ordered ice cream for dessert.

Space Odyssey

The day after yoga school let out, we went to see the spaceship.

Nelly, Caroline and I made the trip to Auroville, about 160 kilometers south of Chennai, in a large white SUV that belongs to a South Indian government official. (I can’t go into it. Let’s just say Nelly knows a guy who knows a guy.) The SUV had a flagpole on its hood and a siren that the driver used liberally. Above the passenger seat were three lamps to illuminate an on-the-go VIP.

We drove past an amusement park named Dizzee World, past Mamallapuram, past fishing villages and salt flats. We held our breath as we zoomed past buses and bullock carts, playing chicken with oncoming traffic, swerving so violently that a stop at Dizzee World would have been redundant.

salt flats

self-portrait in salt

Waiting for us in Auroville were my old friends Alex and Chitra, who’d driven from Bangalore. The three of us met in Jersey back in ’01. Then Alex moved to Los Angeles, Chitty moved to New York, I moved to Los Angeles, Chitty moved back to her native Bangalore, Alex moved to London, and I moved to Chennai.

Alex is visiting us in India for three weeks. I thought he’d get a kick out of Auroville. It’s India’s pocket of New Ageism, an experiment in communal living that began 40 years ago. Alex buys organic and free-range. He eschews paper plates and plastic utensils. His mother turned bohemian around the time he turned 12, and they spent weekends at an upstate New York commune called The Land. He knows from hippies.

But Auroville is something else. It’s Sedona on steroids. More than 1,800 people from about 35 countries live in settlements with names such as Miracle, Sincerity and Surrender. We stayed at a guesthouse in Certitude, though I would have preferred an address in Bliss. There’s a spirulina farm, a “Unity Pavilion,” and restaurants called Solar Kitchen and New Creation Corner.

Becoming an Aurovilian is harder than gaining admission to an Upper East Side co-op. Newcomers, as they’re called, must prove they’re healthy (an AIDS test is mandatory) and have enough cash to support themselves for at least a year. They’re required to contribute to the town fund. Any home built in Auroville belongs to the community.

The “soul” of Auroville is a space-age meditation center called Matrimandir. It’s a giant golden golf ball, slightly squashed. Started in 1971 and still under construction, the Matrimandir houses a crystal globe that’s 70 centimeters in diameter. It sits under a shaft of light in the all-white Inner Chamber, which looks like a collaboration between aliens and Ikea.

We weren’t allowed to take photos inside. That’s one of the many rules governing access to and conduct in the Inner Chamber. Getting in took Alex, Caroline, Nelly and me two days and some amount of sneakiness. We had to prove our worth -- and be primed for contact with the crystal -- by meditating in one of the “petals” on the golden orb’s perimeter. That didn’t go so well. (See previous entry.)

We kept our composure in the imposing Inner Chamber. Caroline and Nelly even experienced the crystal’s power, which they described as a pressure on their chests. Alex and I noted that an hour in the spaceship passed at warp speed. Mother would have been pleased.

Auroville is the brainchild of “The Mother,” a.k.a. Mirra Alfassa, a Parisian mystic and disciple of Indian philosopher-yogi Sri Aurobindo. Her portrait hangs in most rooms and decorates the dashboards of cabs that ply Auroville’s red-dirt roads. “Auroville is meant to hasten the advent of the supramental reality upon earth,” she said in 1972, a year before her death. “The help of all those who find that the world is not what it ought to be is welcome.”

I’m pretty sure “supramental” isn’t a word, but I get Mother’s drift. She envisioned a utopian society where money wouldn’t change hands and service would serve as currency. The town would eventually accommodate 50,000 like-minded people, i.e., the sort of people who put “Mean People Suck” stickers on their bumpers. Bumpers that aren’t attached to SUVs.

I’ll be back. I liked tooling around town on a beat-up scooter and lying in a beachside hammock. I liked drinking wine on the patio at Needam Guesthouse, watching geckos dart and caterpillars creep. I liked the spinach crepes at New Creation Corner. I liked hearing French and Hebrew and Farsi and wearing tank tops without fear of offending.

But I’ll leave the spaceship to other explorers. I won’t find serenity in a blue-lit, air-conditioned pod. A crystal cast in Germany can’t bring me closer to divinity. I prefer a gnarled tree. A tangerine and pomegranate sunset. A mountaintop. Such things make me believe, if only for a moment, that the world is exactly what it ought to be.

Making It

Alex was intimidated. Three women, yoga practitioners all. One hour behind closed doors. Serious mood lighting.

“At first I was unsure that I’d be able to last for a full hour,” he would say later.

The women murmured encouragement and advice as the hour approached. “Concentrate on your breathing,” Nelly offered.

Alex and the yoginis took off their shoes at the entrance to the space-age meditation chamber and donned requisite white socks. They reminded him of the tube socks he wore at Madison Junior High in New Jersey. He pulled them up all the way, like he used to do before Heather Zee turned to him during gym class and told him scrunched was the fashion.

The lighting inside made the socks look blue. It made everything look bluish. He wondered again if he’d last an hour in blue-bathed meditation. Alex tends toward fidgety.

The first giggle escaped even before he sat down on a square floor pillow. It didn’t come from him. Alex doesn’t giggle, though he does a mean imitation. Sure enough, it belonged to one of the yoginis. He couldn’t be sure which because, within seconds, all three were giggling. The giggles stopped, then started again. They bit their lips, but giggles bubbled to the surface. Tears streamed down their faces as they sat cross-legged, eyes closed and hands resting on their knees.

And Alex thought to himself: “I’m going to win this contest. I’m going to beat the yogis at their own game.”

Tricks Are for Kids

Reports of my levitating skills are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, I’ve been in India a little longer than a month. Yes, I’ve been studying yoga with masters for something like eight hours a day. And, yes, I was so engrossed in these studies that I didn’t update the blog for almost two whole weeks. (Sorry ‘bout that.)

But I’ve yet to levitate.

I felt it necessary to address the issue after receiving several e-mails of this variety: “Wow. That’s a lotta yoga. You must be levitating by now.” It’s true I can do a few tricks. I can nail a few pretzel-ish postures. But I didn’t come to India to hone my tricks. My last home was L.A., yoga capital of the Western world, where studios devoted to pretzel production are as ubiquitous as Starbucks.

I came to the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram because pretzels aren’t prized here. It’s a school devoted to healing, and few of its students resemble the hard-bodied models in yoga magazines. They come with illnesses and injuries and prescription slips on which doctors have scribbled “KYM” and its phone number.

Among the students we met was an 8-year-old girl with rheumatoid arthritis who couldn’t turn in bed without crying out in pain. Her mother brought her to KYM in February, and today she bends and twists while chanting “poo” or “cha” or whatever mantra suits her mood. We met a 39-year-old man whose right leg is paralyzed because he contracted polio as an infant. He practices yoga because it allows him to walk farther and stand longer. We met a 31-year-old woman with pulmonary hypertension whose doctors recommended a lung transplant. They changed their minds after she came to KYM and learned breathing and meditation techniques that eased her symptoms. “They are close to God for me,” she said of her yoga teachers.

My first appointment at KYM left me slack-jawed. I met with “Dr. NC,” a yoga teacher whose full name is too much of a mouthful for Westerners. NC is a medical doctor, but I didn’t spot a stethoscope when I walked into his office. He watched as I lifted my arms and touched my toes. He placed his hands on my shoulders and ran his fingers along my spine. He listened to me breath. Then he told me how I feel.

“You have some pain in your lower back?

Yep.

“You have some stiffness here?” he asked. He pointed to the part of my neck I’d been kneading for days, still knotted.

It went like that for a few more minutes. He jotted notes in my file that another teacher would use to design a personalized yoga practice. “About 80 percent of the practice is breathing,” NC said as he walked me to the door. “It should not be thought of as exercise.”

I left feeling rattled. Partly because NC had read my body like a Dick and Jane book. And partly because, for years, my response to “What do you do for exercise?” has been “yoga.”

It took a month to really understand his meaning. On Friday, I finished KYM’s four-week yoga “intensive.” My classmates and I received lotus flowers and certificates in a ceremony attended by our teachers. We showed off our new chanting skills, looking less like yogis than kindergarteners in a Christmas pageant. Voices and hands shook. KYM founder TKV Desikachar sprang from his chair to congratulate us when we finished. He’s a bubbly man who turns solemn when he talks about yoga.

He turned solemn. “Without a strong body, with a weak constitution, you cannot pursue anything,” he told us. And I really got it. The aim of yoga isn’t a firm butt or toned quads. It’s a clear mind. But a weak constitution hinders that pursuit. Clarity is hard to come by when you have aching joints or an itchy throat. Enlightenment is stymied by sniffles. So we start by working on our bodies. Yoga improves our strength, flexibility and balance. It’s exercise, alright. But it shouldn’t be thought of as such.

I didn’t learn any cool “moves” at KYM. The hardest thing I did each day was sit on the floor, eyes closed, and breath. I’m working on that one. I hear it’s pretty cool when you master it. Feels a little like levitating.