Chennai, the small town of 4.5 million

The 36 hour train ride from Delhi to Chennai
We arrived in Chennai late August 2008 after a 36 hour non-stop train trip from Delhi. The plan to take that long a ride was bold, though our only option to get to Chennai, as we wanted to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on air travel. When we reserved our bunkers two months ahead of time, we knew what to expect. We had already traveled in 2/AC, the next to top class of Indian train travel, with four beds per cabin, bunk style, 2 on each side.

In the Delhi central train station

Little did we know that we would have the four bunker cabin to ourselves for the full 36 hours! The trip felt closer to a luxury ride than to the train ordeal some would imagine, thanks to the cushy suspension of the 2/AC coach; for the whole journey we didn’t even feel the tracks! Absence of noisy neighbors, basic Indian food cabin service -made to order-, vendors walking through the halls with chai, coffee, snacks, mineral water, more chai, newspapers and trinkets, made for our other amenities. Icing on the cake, we had picked up food and sweets in Delhi for the long ride. Of course, backpackers traveling in "sleeper class", the cheapest, would have a very different experience, with jam-packed cars resembling livestock wagons!

Kamala in the 4 bunker compartment, Sanjay Singh, our train attendant

The Indian Railroad is an institution, the world's largest employer with over 1 600 000 employees and 14,000 locomotives that transport on average 12 million passengers daily. Every time we've ridden, despite the ageing infrastructure and equipment, I have felt generations of competency and know-how in everything that is provided and think of the value of knowledge and know-how, passed on through generations, so foreign to the high tech world I’ve lived in for the past 20 years.

Arriving in a big small town
When we disembarked in Chennai it was hot and polluted, noisy, smelly and dirty. For sure this was the real urban India and very few tourists have reasons to come here other than as an arrival port for visiting the South. Most people speak only Tamil, no Hindi and very little English. When we gave instructions to rickshaw drivers, finally learning to first indicate the name of the neighborhood we were heading to, I would have to repeat the simplest names over several times, to then hear them say the name with a very subtle twist I had missed. Just to say that they are not used to non Tamils speaking passengers…

Two neighborhoods of Chennai, CIT Nagar and RK Nagar

Rarely the driver would know the address or even the way to get there, and would make his way to the neighborhood, sometimes very indirectly, asking other drivers on the way how to get to the final destination! This was one indication of the small town configuration of Chennai, made of distinct neighborhoods each having a geography and a life of their own.

But Kanniapan, below, who after a month became our favorite rickshaw driver when we needed to really go around town, knew all the areas of central Chennai and spoke enough English to make him really stick out of the pack. Every time he drove us, he wanted to take us to a tourist shop for a 10 minute visit, for which he would get a gasoline voucher or a T-shirt for his kids… I accepted twice to do this for him. In these pictures he is dressed festively; it was a holiday and he left home specially to take us to the dentist.

Kanniapan napping , minutes later with Kamala

Formerly known as Madras, Chennai was for centuries a spice and silk center, engaged in commerce with Chinese, Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Babylonian traders more than 2000 years ago. It's India's 4th largest city in size - which tells you how rural India really is, with its 1.2 billion inhabitants-. Chennai is traditional in its values and style. Men, young and old wear the “lunghi”, the millennia old wrap-around skirt that I’m wearing in my recovery bed as I write.

Chennaites are also very devout and actively participate in religious rituals and festivals year around; drinking alcohol is looked down upon, synonymous to dishonor. The city is a living example of the stark contrast between ancient traditions and recent economic and cultural development that is shaping the style and behaviors of the younger generation.

Traditional Chennai
An example of tradition and ritual are the “Kollam”, designs that women draw with chalk powder every morning in front of each entrance to the house, after washing the sidewalk or the street, as auspicious protections and purifications for the household. Similar to some of the simplest Tibetan mandala or to the most basic sand paintings of the Navajo, they range from rudimentary patterns to intricate geometrical designs including animals or devotional objects such as conch shells. They become even more elaborate during religious celebrations when they are also drawn inside the houses for family rituals.

Kollam


Ganesha Chaturthi and Navaratri
Other illustrations of Chennai’s well established customs are the religious festivals that take place throughout the year. In the 7 weeks we spent there two 10 day festivals took place. The first one celebrated Vignesvara, better known under the name Ganesh, the elephant headed god, son of Shiva. Ganesh stands for Ganas Isha, meaning the Head of the Ganas, Shiva’s warriors.
Vignesvara is “the one who removes obstacles”, which explains why Ganesh images adorn the entrances to many houses and the small shrines inside most shops. He is invoked at the beginning of all rituals dedicated to other, more worshiped gods, such as Shiva or Vishnu, in order to ensure the rituals will be successful.

Vignesvara comes from Vighna-asura, the demon who creates obstacles. In ancient, tribal worships the elephant was feared as a powerful destructive force that had to be venerated to avoid its furor. Over time –perhaps as elephants were domesticated- this became a positive worship of the one who can remove obstacles. Elephant-god symbols are common throughout history and are found as far from India as Mexico. In Thailand the White Elephant is the Royal symbol, representing the power of purity, for the Greeks it was power and victory….

Illuminated Durga above the Chennai traffic, Majestic Ganesh

The festival, also called Ganesha Chaturthi, consists of several days of preparation, decorating every temple with banana stalks and flowers, color light garlands and illuminated designs of the deity, followed by rituals and offerings. Ganesh statues made of unfired clay symbolize how Ganesh was conceived by Parvati, his mother, from the fragrant herbs and essences she had rubbed into her body. In homes, hymns are sung to the images daily; they are clothed, garnished with flowers and oils. Dozens of statuettes are brought to every temple in town -there were 5 of them, just walking to school- to celebrate Ganesh’s annual return for the duration of the festivities.

One evening we overheard a “Puja” in the home next to our guest house that brought together a couple dozen people, playing cymbals and chanting for hours at length. On the last day of the festival all the figurines are brought by processions of floats to melt back into the ocean or rivers, symbolizing the cosmic formless, from which all comes and to which all returns. We were told that in Chennai, the quantity of clay figurines taken to the ocean each year has a devastating short-term impact on the coastal ecosystem...

Dvanda Atteeta is also a name for Ganesh. He is the “One who has transcended the pairs of opposites”, i.e. the dualities/paradoxes of existence, symbolized by his one broken tusk. An often quoted example of elephants’ capability is that with the same trunk they can uproot a massive tree as well as pick up the smallest needle from the ground. This symbolizes being able to apprehend both the most gross and the most subtle aspects of reality.

The second festival was Navaratri, celebrating the victory of good over evil, depicted by a 10 day mythological battle between Durga, the “Mother of the Universe”, combative goddess created by Shiva and Vishnu to incorporate the strengths of all the gods, and the bull headed demon, Mahishasura, who, overpowering, had taken over the heavens. During this festival, Durga, goddess of combat, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and Sarasvati, the goddess of knowledge are each worshiped for three days and three nights.

Durga represented during the battle as “Mahishasuramardini”,
crusher of the bull-headed demon Mahishasura.

Bas relief from Mamallapuram.

The day before last of the festival is a major holiday, Vijeya Dashani, during which everyone cleans their work-area, repairs and repaints their tools, cleansing their professional equipment from any soiling, to represent the intent of serving the power of goodness for the year to come. It was surprising and impressive to see how extensively this tradition was meticulously observed. If not repainted, every tool is washed, shined, before being blessed and decorated for the grand day. Workshops, store fronts, cooking utensils in restaurants, rickshaws, trucks, bicycles…

Spiffed-up rickshaw and taxi, make up on tires, banana stalks etc...

Our teachers explained to us that day no one uses books or musical instruments, as they too are considered tools of work and knowledge. It is considered the most auspicious day in India to register one’s children for school for the following year -knowing that the festival takes place in October-. It is also a day to celebrate the lineage of guru’s (guru parampara). We were in yoga class at KYM that day and went with the staff and faculty to the new headquarters, under construction, to participate in a special Puja celebrating guru Krishnamacharya, led by his son TKV Desikachar, the founder of KYM.

During this festival, live classical Indian music concerts are given in many temples; the performers are usually a female singer, a violinist, a tabla player and a tamboura (string-drone) player.

A few weeks before Navaratri, shops and stalls around the main temples fill with all sorts of pottery deity figurines and statues that families shop for, comparable to “Santons de Noel” for the Christmas crèches in France. They are added to the previous years’ collection and arranged inside the home for the final day’s ritual, concluding the victory of good over evil and blessing the family for the coming year of protection and goodness.

Shops were cleaner than ever, Navaratri shrine including toys and dolls!

Food!
The change of climate from northern India was quite brutal, exhausting us for our first 10 days there, but the food more than made up for our acclimation period! We just love the food in Chennai.

In the North the traditional meal is the Thali, a platter with rice, sabii (vegetables in curry gravy) and dhal (lentils and onions), served with pickles and chapatti, a pita-like flat bread cooked on a griddle. It’s balanced from a nutritional standpoint, legumes and rice combination being a source of protein and amino acids, is often tasty and generally heavy on salt, spices and oil.

Condiments, Banana leaf plate with variety of typical tasting dishes

In the South you can also get a Thali, always dished out on a fresh banana leaf, to be eaten with your right hand. It includes side servings of raw and cooked vegetables, several sorts of vegetable condiments, some mixed with shredded coconut, lemon pickles, accompanied by Rasam, a clear spicy tomato based vegetable broth and Sambar, a slightly thicker vegetable stew that strikes a surprising taste resemblance with Couscous broth from North Africa. It differs from North Indian cuisine in the choice of spices and cooking style, lighter stews versus thick curries, subtler herb tastes and much less fat. Surprisingly the onions here are much milder –and much easier to digest- than in the North, more like the kind you find in Thailand.

But the typical Southern dishes are idly, vadai, dosa and uttapam, respectively steamed rice cakes, fried doughnuts, crepes, and large fried pancakes, all made out of… lentil flour! What an ingenious way to absorb proteins, without any of the digestive effort that boiled legumes can take. Dosa/crepes come in several types, normal, “masala”, with potatoes and onions inside; “butter or ghee roast”, cooked to a brown crisp on one side and “paper roast”, very large and cooked to a perfect crisp. I have yet to see a restaurant offer Dosa with jam or honey, transforming them into real crepes that their texture, finesse and taste would easily permit.

These are always served with Rasam and Sambar and in Chennai they come with three types of chutney, cold sauces served on the side: white, green and red. The white one is shaved coconut with crushed legume powder and spices; green is mainly herbs such as mint and coriander and red is tomato and chili. Simply delicious, they remind me of Mediterranean herbal tastes or even American cocktail dips! After 3 months in southern India we still thrive on the south Indian Thali or any of the typical dishes. (chutney recipes see

http://www.indianfoodscompany.com/Recipes/chutney_images/chutneys.htm)

Images of CIT Nagar and Annamalai puram


Chennai is India's second film making center, just behind Mumbai in terms of number of films released each year. Tamil films, "Kollywood" (named after the Kodambakkam neighborhood), have more realistic plots and heroes, higher quality production than "Bollywood" style. Tamils are fanatically passionate about "their" cinema. The first person I actually engaged conversation with, while waiting 45mn at a bus station that infamous Saturday, asked me if I new Tamil cinema, listing different names of films and specific Tamil actors. To then show me pictures of his idols from his wallet. The leading politicians in Tamil Nadu have also mainly come from the film business. Rings a bell to Californians…

Our principle while traveling has been that if we like the services, prices and attitude of a shop keeper, rickshaw driver, travel agent or tailor of such, we will not shop around any further. In this way we build a rapport and get to know people, their story, origin and family situation, bringing a more meaningful and trusting relationship, making the commercial aspects of the transaction secondary. We have found Indians to respond very well to this rather than to a tourist consumer give-me-the-best-deal or-I-try-your-competitor attitude. It is well adapted to the Indian culture, so strongly based on relationships. Dharmender, our taxi driver in Dharamsala, one day that we were coming back from the hospital an hour away, even told me that I didn’t have to pay market rate since I was a regular… That was a revealing cultural moment.

We found the people charming in both the neighborhoods where we stayed. The gracefulness, softness and true kindness of the people we shared our daily life with for a month in CIT Nagar left a strong impression on us. I experienced a very authentic connection with the local shop owners and we had a great time becoming somewhat locals spending time in a small neighborhood and going to the same places day after day.

The beautiful people of CIT Nagar, Chennai


Of course, we were constantly stared at in the street which reminded us that after 8 months spent here, though we have become totally accustomed to India street life and to Indians, we will always look very different to them!

After a month of commuting 20 minutes between CIT Nagar and KYM, our yoga school, we were able to move to Annamalaipuram, from which we could walk to school. We ended up staying three weeks there before moving on to Pondicherry. It was another experience of the daily flow of local life, as we would pass the ladies drawing kollam in the morning; vegetable, tailor or ironing stalls setting up for the day, groups of men in what we called “the building materials street”, waiting for someone to hire them for the day just like the Hispanics in front of Home Depots in California!

Mylapore temple
One of our very favorite evening destinations was the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore, in south-eastern Chennai. Mylapore was known of Marco Polo, of the Greeks and was colonized by the Portuguese. Saint Thomas lived in Mylapore several years and died there, after evangelizing the Malabar Coast of Kerala, during the middle of the 1st century. Mylapore was the main port before Chennai developed into a trading city and built a port further north.
We loved the evening ambiance in Mylapore, organized mainly around the Shiva temple.

The busy festival evening, Atrium-type open space: antique socializing plaza

Hindu temples serve primarily as places of worship sprinkled with many different shrines and on-going rituals, but their large open space lends them to perform many other functions, similar to the ancient Greek temples and atria. People come to pray, to attend rituals and to chant in groups; families also come to chat around some food or to listen to a classical Indian music concert. You will find people on their cell phones, kids running around playing and young people hanging out and goofing around. These are all illustrations of the inclusive role that Hindu religion holds in society and how the temple has a social purpose, ensuring the integration of the divine and the mundane.

The illuminated Mylapore Shiva temple, Kamala with Claire and Manfred

Mamallapuram
After our first couple of weeks in Chennai we felt enough energy to go to Mamallapuram, an hour’s bus ride down the coast. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site and combines a long undeveloped beach with several famous ancient (~700 AD) bas relief and sculpture sites.

The many sculptures are famous throughout India and Mamallapuram has remained an active sculpting center for centuries with literally hundreds of sculptors working white, black and red marble, completing large scale orders from across the country for temples, private homes, national edifices and mansions.

The Shore temple North-side, Bas relief of Vishnu , 13 centuries old

It was a fantastic change of environment from the busy and polluted city, with the fresh ocean air and long stretches of clean beach. Hundreds of Indian families come to enjoy the ocean along the beach south of the shore temple. The atmosphere is childlike and playful, some families discovering the ocean for the first time, parents and children holding on to one another as they are crashed-into by the waves, hand driven kiddy rides and lined up ice cream vendors, pony promenades and fortune tellers. It reminded me of the innocent character of Rehoboth or Atlantic City in the mid-‘60’s, when my father would take my siblings and I on vacation along the US East Coast.

South view of Shore temple, the ice cream vendors, hand-driven kiddy rides

As often in touristic towns there is a “westerner” side composed of a few streets lined with small guesthouses, artifacts shops, tailors and restaurants catering to the foreign clientele, and a busy Indian side with its typical streets stalls, tourist hotels, shops and market, the two being separated by the small, ancient Shore temple, visible in the pictures above, standing along the beach since 700 AD.
Mamallapuram


Our next blog visit will take us to a spiritual school of yoga:
Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai.

Thanksgiving - Vishnu's unseen hand

In the USA, “giving thanks” goes back to when the European pilgrims arrived in what was a wild and untamed land. They created the celebration at Harvest season, symbol of abundance, to express gratefulness for surviving through the first harsh winter that decimated many of them.

I feel very grateful for my parents, for my ancestors, and for those pilgrims who gave us the example of overcoming their fears to make new lives in unchartered territories. It resonates in a special way as Kamala and I pursue our Journey. I feel deeply grateful for the elements that so generously allow us to thrive on earth. And I am grateful for being given this precious, beautiful and rich experience of human life.

Our species has this unique ability to live life consciously and reflect on it; to have a conscious, spiritual experience of our existence. The flipside is that this same mind that provides our ability to reflect also traps us in our ego, to the detriment of our emotional and transcendental experience of life. This craving ego tends to develop the mundane and materialistic aspects of life as though they should occupy the center stage of our entire time here.

But to live life at its full capacity we can also explore and nourish the sublime and subtle reality of existence. It happens inevitably to all of us, every time we encounter loss, when we put our lives into perspective, whether for a few seconds or entire years. We reassess the importance and meaning of our lives, and feel more appreciative of the blessings we are granted. We also often have a better sense of our emotional being.

Landing and railing I fell over

For the past few days I’ve been thinking along these lines, while staying at Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal (http://www.aryavaidyasala.com/), a 100 year old Ayurvedic institution in Kerala, for a one month treatment mainly focused on my back.

On Saturday November 22nd 2008, 7:04 am could have very well been the last minute of my life.

View from the railing to the floor below

As I was waiting with fellow students for yoga class on the 7th floor, at 7:05 I made a 15 foot backward free fall from the low railing I was leaning against, and landed on the marble staircase one story below. Passing out before falling, I fell like a bag, soft and flexible, and survived without bone breakage, brain or vertebral damage whatsoever.

Panoramic of fall trajectory

With some 25 stitches on my head, a couple on my right elbow and a minuscule hairpin fracture and stitches on my left knee -not to mention three very small bruises for my entire body- no one here understands how I survived with so little injury, let alone having avoided paralysis and death. In India, where the presence of the divine accompanies every step of life, people naturally understand the Mystery and name it; but we have all been surprised at how unmistakably it manifested itself in this case.

Heading out in the ambulance

Would there be a parallel between the abandonment of my unconscious body, dropping uncontrolled on the marble steps 5 yards below, coming out practically unharmed, and the power of Surrender? Would surrendering generally be a safer course of action than our typical control-driven behaviors? In this tangible example, is there any doubt that I would have been broken in several pieces had I reacted consciously to the plunge, stiffening myself in an instinctive though totally irrelevant attempt to control the fall?

How do these same principles affect our beliefs and behaviors, our ability to attain our goals and realize our dreams? Could we apply this notion of Surrender to areas of our life where doubts and fears may be driving our agitated and anxious need to control? Would just setting the course and pursuing the required actions, while at the same time faithfully abandoning ourselves be more effective to produce results?

What unknown and unexpected dynamics would unfold, should I adopt such a trusting attitude as the one my body took, deprived of any intervention of the conscious mind and willful ego? What is the bottom-line productivity of effort, compared to that of the path of least resistance? So many questions are arising, as though the doors to an ignored and hidden world of elemental wisdom and knowledge had opened; from this one, concrete experience: that my body could have snapped into pieces and barely got bruised.

Wheeled across the hospital grounds, moved to CIT scan

After getting dressed for yoga practice I headed up the two flights of stairs to our early morning class, finding other people waiting on the landing in front of the classroom. Other mornings I would wait standing but that day I felt I needed to sit down. The few chairs were occupied and when I contemplated the 2 ½ foot high railing, a discreet inner voice clearly said “don’t do that”. But my mind ignored it. Listening to that soft voice of my intuition is something I can still work on… As I leaned my rear on the railing, I said to myself “I need to take a good, deep breath”, which I did. Just before passing out.

Kamala was in our room on the 5th floor and heard a big crash, thinking it was demolition work that had been going on for a few days on our floor. She looked into the hallway; someone else was poking their head out to see if it was on the 5th floor, but not seeing or hearing anything, both went back to their occupations. Minutes later Katharina, a German friend, came to get her.

We spent the day and night at the nearby Almas hospital, going from ER to X-Ray, to CIT brain and vertebral column scan, from there back to ER for stitching, to MRI neck scan, before heading to a room four hours after arriving, finally drinking a couple of the best cups of hot chai I’ve had in my life!

Finally in a room and on a bed, my first cup of chai!
~~~~
Since then I've been slowly recovering, sitting in bed with a straightened left leg and a good dose of upper back and neck pain. Though my very good physical condition has played a role in my body's response to the fall, I feel I have been intimately touched by the grace of the divine. In my other accidents, that each could have been far worse than they were, I felt grateful with a renewed appetite for living. This time I have felt as held in the hands of life’s own mystery, with the realization of how life as such can be amazingly preserved.

People believe in protections, from ancestors, from talismans, from good deeds, prayers or rituals; above these rests a universal force enabling for life to be sustained. We often see the catastrophes rather than the protecting hand behind the daily survival of so many.

In the Hindu pantheon, the trinity is represented by Brahman -the creator, Vishnu -the preserver and Shiva -the destructor/regenerator. How the universal power of preservation, symbolized by Vishnu, is able to maintain healthy human life in circumstances like mine is part of the great Mystery. When I extrapolate this situation to the world at large, I realize how life is actually able to be sustained on earth in so many ways despite many opportunities for it to cease.

Seventi Sebastian, ER nurse, Kamala and room nurses

I was surrounded by staff from the Kottakkal Ayurvedic center; two of the massage therapists, JayKrishnanan and PramodKumar, as well as one of the senior managers, Ravi, accompanied every step of the emergency process, making sure everything was tended to, helping to move my body from one stretcher to another or just staying by our side to assist in every possible way. This friendly, warm support meant a great deal to Kamala and I and they were providing it so naturally, spontaneously, efficiently, without hyper-sensitivity, pity, pretense or agitation.

Kamala monitoring move, Dr RajanPrashant

After spending the night and next morning in observation, I was released. We were both relieved to get back to Arya Vaidya Sala and our room, that Kamala had customized the day after we arrived with the various lightweight cotton cloths we had purchased since January for exactly this purpose. She had hung and laid on different surfaces the colorful checkered sarongs from Thailand, sheer dotti from Chennai and Rajpur, “rickshaw driver” towels from Varanasi, small block print sheets from the Khadi shop in Mylapore and a sheer handloom sari from Haridwar that we flung over the mosquito net frame above our beds, making it look and feel like a canopy.

On our return many of the patients we had briefly met in the 5 days prior to the accident checked in on me and have since been coming to visit us regularly. We now have made friends with Germans, Austrians and a number of Indians who live here in India, in the UK, Canada or the US. As the clientele is mainly middle-upper class, we have the opportunity to get acquainted with educated, English speaking Indians of similar social classes to ours, conversely to most of the Indians we’ve made friends with while travelling: chai or ironing shop owners, waiters, tailors or rickshaw drivers.



It has also been very comforting to feel the presence and care of the staff. Even P.K. Warrier himself, chief physician and managing trustee since 1954, and nephew of the founder, has come to visit a couple of times. Though my main treatment has been interrupted to allow time for initial recovery, today I received my first hot herbal oil application to reduce upper- back and neck pain.

30 hours after the fall, waiting to get back "home"

In my last blog I wrote: “…Perhaps is it time for a deeper journey… one that confronts us with our deeper selves, with our desires and our fears….a time to integrate our philosophical and spiritual learning, by putting equanimity, perspective, insight and clarity into practice. On the spot….” ...watch out what you write for!

At some point during our journey, I had also thought of possibly shaving my head , perhaps after some meaningful spiritual experience should it present itself…
Little did I know it would come to me in this form... On the spot!

I decided to cut my curly locks two days ago and Kamala proceeded to give me a new look. It’s more aesthetic than a shaved top slowly growing back with longer hair in the back and on the sides! As she proceeded, I realized it was purifying me, cleansing me of some past, perhaps out-moded identities, reactualizing my relationship to my Self.

As this experience has been coming to my awareness through deep and silent emotions, it tells me this is beyond the mental constructs we humans tend to create to surround ourselves with representations and meaning. It has been a direct and tangible insight into the potential one on one union with the divine that we will experience the day we die. I feel reborn, with a renewed perspective on the amazing possibilities of life.

To be alive and healthy after this and to experience this direct relationship with the Mystery is the blessing of my very, very special Thanksgiving 2008.
Grateful, alive and unbroken


I feel grateful for the people I love, for my wonderful family and for my amazing partner, Kamala.

I am grateful for the life that has not only been given to me but has been preserved right here in front of my eyes, an ultimate lesson of living.

As I sit on my bed, recovering and in relative pain, I feel a fresh sense of being bubble up through my senses and my mind. I feel like making this life as beautiful and meaningful as it can be.

And the recipe may be to simply surrender to it, as my body-Teacher taught me a few days ago.
Wishing you a true Thanks Giving,

At the foot of Arunachala, the red mountain

Towards the end of October, as we were preparing to leave Chennai after 2 months of studying yoga, a sense of open, undefined space surfaced. It was the first time in 9 months that we were without any plans or definite destinations. We were heading south and wanted to experience ashram life during the winter. I knew above anything else that we needed a place to settle down and just have time to ourselves.

We now had to integrate all the learning of the past 6 months. Integrate by creating a complete, daily, personal yoga practice. Integrate by having time to read reference texts and add to the notes from our classes, taking time to reflect and time to write. To attain any depth and to shape long lasting habits, these activities require stability, space, focused time and regularity.

A challenge when you are working and under time pressure, which was a good reason to do this now that we actually had the luxury of time, but equally difficult to accomplish if you’re traveling around. Using our time to settle somewhere and concentrate was clearly the next “right thing” to do. We had been consistently selecting our experiences based on the purpose of our journey formulated last December, “… to put our lives into perspective, claim our spiritual aspirations through learning and practice…” and we firmly intended to maintain this direction.

But our travel budget was expiring with an end-date mid January, extending to mid March if we reduced our expense rate 50% that was feasible only if we stayed in low cost locations for a few months. In order to replenish our travel budget, I had initiated networking contacts in September for potential consulting work in Bangalore that at first gave several promising responses. With the impact of the US financial meltdown on corporate expenses and the challenge of remaining on people’s minds when so far from the US, things slowly came to a standstill. What to do? You can’t force networking; you can only keep at it…

It took a day to make our way to Pondicherry, several hours of which we waited at mid point, on the side of the road, in the beating sun. Our challenge was to get a bus to stop, be it with standing room only but that would also have room for our luggage...

When we arrived at the Swades guesthouse in Pondicherry, we were welcomed by Ilyas, the owner of this charming 5 room home stay http://www.swades-guesthouse.com/. Ilyas is Pondicherry native –it was French at the time of his birth- and left for France as a kid. He lived there 30 years before coming back to the family house a couple of years ago to improve his family’s quality of life. His story reminded me of my own, leaving Ohio for France at age 9 and returning to my mother land 33 years later... Ilyas was a source of warmth, attentive care and peacefulness during our stay, half of which we spent sick in bed with a flu virus we had brought from Chennai.

For a long time Pondicherry http://www.pondicherryonline.in/Profile/History/ was one of the few French colonies in India, until it was handed back over to India in 1956 . The French Quarter that lines the waterfront spreading inland for several blocks is designed as a grid of tree bordered, stone paved avenues, lined with 100 to 300 year old colonial houses and mansions with lush green tropical courtyards, fountains and grand staircases leading to roofed terraces above colonnades.


The atmosphere is quiet and relaxed, the streets clean and well paved, all of which are rare in India. It’s a lightly populated part of town with a good deal of the real estate belonging to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. We fully indulged in several of the French restaurants there, as a change from months of daily Indian meals. French families still own property there that has been passed down from one generation to the other. And many current owners have never seen the property they inherited, that is often going to wrack and ruin.

I was feeling at home in this islet of French history and culture; it reminded me of one of my favorite cities in the world, Aix en Provence. But my mind was struggling with our travel issues. Our visas are due to expire in January and we’ll need to leave the country to get new ones. We still don’t know where the optimal place to go is or for how long new visas will be issued, despite my research on the topic... We were also hoping to attend an intensive yoga program in February for which we needed funding, and had put aside the idea of spending a month at an Ayurveda center in Kerala for the same budgeting reasons.

Kamala and I were getting tired of packing and unpacking, moving every several weeks or days. I was feeling anxious with the open-endedness, needing more direction and control on our life.
I needed some longer-term plans that would direct the coming months. Along with my networking for short term consulting in Bangalore, I had been contemplating starting a fully-fledged consulting business here and was researching legal status and administrative procedures. I was feeling the urge to locate and design our future life and my next professional venture.

Not one single question we faced had a straightforward answer. The buildup of interdependent issues and timelines was drastically changing our experience of the trip from the preceding 9 months. All the actions I had initiated on any of these moving targets had been fleeing, at best. How any of this would play out was unknown.

Here we were, again treading the curves of the great labyrinth (see Jan ’08 blog in the archives).

Pondicherry was a sharp turn in my outlook on our journey. Kamala and I both loved the place and I started feeling that we could actually live there. Ilyas explained to me that Pondicherry had specific, simplified procedures for business creation and how the network of French entrepreneurs there could be a support system to my endeavor. Kamala and I visited the Sri Aurobindo hand made paper manufacture and before I knew it I ended up with freshly printed business cards including my India cell phone number and the name of a company to be.

We headed inland after 10 days in Pondicherry, fully recovered from our Chennai virus. The idea of creating a company and visions of a life in India were growing and getting me more and more excited every day. The idea of having my own business to manage –just like during the first 10 years of my professional life– and the prospect of being in a unique position, as an American-French global management consultant based in India felt like a great adventure to shift into!

Then we arrived in Thiruvannamalai to stay at the Ramana Maharshi ashram. The town is one of the major holy Shiva sites in India, at the base of mount Arunachala, the red mountain, where Ramana Maharshi spent more than 20 years in meditation in the early 1900's. His main teaching is about finding the divine essence of who we are through the path of self inquiry.

On our second day here, all of our questions and wonderings clashed.
Our trip was actually hitting a wall.

Kamala was feeling empty and out of energy for the first time in 9 months; I was clutching to my latest idea, like to a buoy that would save us from the deep, dark waters around us. Then, I understood that my excitement around creating the future was in fact my best answer to close the open-endedness of our unresolved situation and regain the sense of control of our trip and of our life.

Thiruvannamalai leads to drastic readjustments; several people have told us how empty and aimless they felt for the first days after arriving. It is as though there was some cleansing power to the place itself. This could be associated to Shiva, the god who destroys illusions and ignorance through the devastating fire of divine truth. The same friends explained that their vision became clearer after their initial helplessness and that they found new direction thereafter. In our case we could see it happening; we were here at a very special point in our trip.

For all I know, our “productive” travel may be accomplished at this point. Perhaps is it time for a deeper journey, one that extends beyond the uplifting learning experiences, yoga classes and travels; one that confronts us with our deeper selves, with our desires and our fears. This could be a time to integrate our philosophical and spiritual learning, by putting equanimity, perspective, insight and clarity into practice.
On the spot.

A time to see how we can actually deal with the challenges we have created for ourselves.
A time to learn to surrender to the process we’ve generated and maintain faith in the outcome.

We are smack in the midst of what Bill Bridges’ calls the “Neutral zone” of personal transitions.
The Past is over, with a point of no return.
The Future remains to be created, completely undefined yet inevitable.
Everything is in flux, unpredictable and with an uncertain outcome; insecurity can paralyze the ability to move forward.
People don’t like being in this uncomfortable phase and try to get out of it as quickly as possible.

A few years ago Bill told me that because so much is happening at the subconscious level, the neutral zone is the richest period of development for individuals and organizations. It’s actually a time of gestation and profound transformation, where new, unexpected ideas can sprout and grow, where learning from the past and fresh insights on one’s self foster creativity and renewal.

The past week here in Thiruvannamalai has illustrated typical behaviors of such a period. We have each been going through ups and downs, ranging from confusion and emptiness to acceptance and excitement. We have been processing, reflecting alone in silence or talking together, about limitations, possibilities, what-ifs, yes-buts, about our expectations and our doubts. Two days ago we actually spent the entire day in our ashram room, without setting a foot outside. We did not want to go out into the world, were needing solitude and retreat. And no decisions or actions were coming out of any of this.

We have since felt more centered, ready to take each day for what it is. We are settling down here to work on our learning and practice for a few weeks, avoiding hasty decisions and allowing the future to shape itself during this period. And creating a business may be in plan, or not. With the inner work, we will delve deeper and with time create a new life.

A major requirement of the Neutral zone is to let go. Let go of control, let go of the past, let go of needing the future to be definite and reassuring. Only at this condition will the future actually bear the rich possibilities of transformation and renewal.

Yesterday, November 6th 2008, our return flight to San Francisco left Bangkok at 6:50 am. Without us.

We are here to allow our process to unfold.

Tibetan Exile Brothers Connection

The first I heard about JJI Exile Brothers was from my son Kevin, who had spent some time in McLeodganj, the town above Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama lives. By the way, in Hindi, Dharamsala means “abode of people in pursuit of the Divine”. Dharamsalas are hostels on pilgrim routes, where pilgrims or sadhus (wandering holy men) can find refuge for the night.

Kevin told us about the best restaurant in town, with the nicest staff, the healthiest food and the most interesting music.

He also mentionned that JJI were three brothers, rock musicians and really nice guys. Once we had settled at the yoga center in Dharamkot, we went a mile down the road to McLeodganj, to eat at JJI Exile brothers on Bhagsu Road. The restaurant we entered was really intimate, with 4 tables seating a maximum of 20 people.

We rapidly became regulars. We came for the family who runs it, with Tashi-Tashi, the brothers’ uncle and Niema, the brothers’ mother and Tashi’s sister, the two of them most often in charge of the place; and for Max, the gifted young cook.

Romantic evening ambiance during monsoon power shortages


We would study the antique decorations on the walls, read the dozens of faded cards and notes sent by customers from around the world, listen to the outstanding, eclectic choice of music, and of course taste the homemade, healthy Tibetan and Italian cuisine. In the evenings the ambiance would sometimes have a romantic touch, especially when monsoon rain power shortages would have us eat by candlelight, one candle per table.

Jigme and Max preparing dumplings and salsa


Tashi, Niema and Max have this warm, humble and deep authentic presence that we found in the whole family. Tashi and Max would frequently ask me for updates on Kevin' travels throughout India and Nepal, as they had made friends with him before his departure.

While eating we could hear Niema read the Hindustan Times in English to other Tibetan women sitting together. Like most everyone in McLeodganj, they would follow every statement, commentary or trip account concerning His Holiness the Dalai Lama. After all, she had immigrated as a child just a couple of years after he had, when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1958, and had lived here ever since then longing for the day her country would peacefully regain its freedom and her family could go home.

One evening, as we were savoring our favorite dishes, –Thunthuk for Kamala, a Tibetan soup of fresh vegetables, subtle spices and fresh home made flat noodles, and cheese gnocchi for me -, a young man with a round face, dark mid-long curly hair and a warm, outgoing smile introduced himself. Jamyang, the older of the brothers sat down next to us, and, as we were commenting on the unique quality of the ‘40s and ‘50s crooner music playing that evening, gave us the short story of JJI.

The brothers’ Tibetan rock band, “JJI Exile brothers” had become increasingly famous several years ago, touring in the US and Europe, and generating a large following among their generation of Tibetan refugees in India. They recorded a CD that Jamyang popped on for us; it was a mix of traditional Tibetan music, rock, blues, country, and poetic ballades, all admirably composed, with Tibetan lyrics. Track four started with a few notes, immediately awakening a deep, stirring melancholy. As I shared my feeling with Jamyang, he explained that the song was called “If” and talked about what life would be like for his people if the Chinese invasion of Tibet had never happened.

The Three JJI Exile brothers, rehearsing in the basement before the concert,


and at the restaurant jam session


Regarding the Tibetan topic, India is in a challenging position. Tensions with neighboring China continue to make the headlines on several inter-related topics: the sensitivity of India hosting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile, the waves of incoming refugees, as well as the indefinite border between Northern India and China, since a brief border war in 1962. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/world/asia/19india.html.

A quiet yet very present tension exists between Indians and Tibetans in the areas that have welcomed increasing numbers of refugees, currently estimated at around 100 000. Quiet because there is rarely any visible outbreak between non-violent Tibetans and peaceful Himalayan Indians; present because when you start asking about the topic, the Indians will share their frustration and irritation about the economic gaps between refugees and locals. While the Indian government and many NGOs are financially helping the Tibetan exiles, numbers of locals are still living in dire poverty. There is certainly a lot to be said from both sides; the Indians are more sensitive to the economics, while the Tibetans can legitimately question their uncertain future as refugees in a hosting land. These are just some complexities of the reality of Tibetan refugees that are visible only from here.

I asked Jamyang if the brothers ever put-on any concerts in McLeodganj. They hadn’t been playing in concerts for the past couple of years, he explained, other than in Vienna a few weeks earlier and in Amsterdam back in January... He told us they held regular music jams at the restaurant on Sunday nights and invited us over. That proved to be a challenge, as we rose before 5:00 am and started yoga practice at 6:00. We rarely would go down to McLeod to spend the evening…

Several weeks later, late June, after my 6-day return trip to New York for my daughter Meaghan’s graduation, Kamala and I decided to have lunch at JJI to celebrate my return. It was the ideal way to come back to the very particular pulse of McLeodganj and its surroundings.

As we greeted Niema and settled at our table, I was intrigued by some little flyers she was writing on. She told us the brothers were having a concert a week later, with a guest star, Raf, on the saxophone. When Jamyang came in towards the end of our meal I shared my excitement with him. We would actually hear them in concert before we left the area! He proposed that we come to listen to them rehearsing later that afternoon.

I postponed the visit to the next day, showed up at the restaurant to notice drum and electric guitar sounds arising somewhere from the rear of the restaurant. Max took me down the outdoor stairs, over some corrugated tin roofing the rain had made slippery a few minutes earlier, down a few more moldy cement steps and into to their small practice room. It was decorated with Tibetan images, prayer flags, graffiti, and crammed with a chaos of instruments, amplifiers and cables.



JJI stands for the 3 brothers’ names in order of age: Jamyang (Bass and lead vocals), Jigme (lead guitar, vocals) and Ingsel (drums and vocals). They were ending their first rehearsal set with Raf, so I had time to listen to a couple of songs before their break. Raf has been living in McLeodganj for a couple of years now, developing his personal style and composing for alto saxophone and clarinet, and attending meditation retreats. He had met the Brothers a few months earlier, but had only played with them a few times at the Sunday evening restaurant jam sessions.

He kindly offered me to play on his alto saxophone during the break. This was an exceptional treat since I hadn’t blown into a sax since I had moved out of my apartment in January! Jamyang and Raf stuck around and we had a little jam based on my very modest jazz repertoire. I was having a fabulous time; playing with musician friends contrasted from the more serious things we had been focusing on during our trip… personal discipline, fasting, learning and practicing yoga with the associated efforts and pains…

Talking with Jigme at the break, I learned that when the group was at its peak, several tragedies hit family and friends. The JJI Brothers lost their desire to play, tour and live the life of stage stars. They felt the loss in their family and the weight and despair of the cause they were advocating; the tragedy of their people became even more real to them through their own hardships.

Chinese government policies have been geared to eliminate and completely eradicate Tibetans from the cultural, social and economic picture by marginalizing them in their own country. These policies include taking housing away for a variety of “reasons”, moving Tibetans to ghettos, providing employment exclusively to the thousands of Chinese immigrants that arrive every week in Lhasa, making public schools not only payment based but too expensive for any unemployed Tibetan family to afford. Now Tibetan children are actually being kept away from public education in their own homeland.

The finishing of the direct Chinese train line to Tibet has since a couple of years drastically increased the number of Chinese immigrants coming to Tibet as a land of opportunity. Lhasa has been developed from the centuries old mythical spiritual center into a downtown of karaoke bars, brothels and gambling halls. “political prisoners” have been detained against human rights and monks demonstrating pacific resistance systematically tortured.
Many well documented films have been made on the topic. If you are interested in knowing more, look into the following documentaries : "Tibet: The Cry of the Snowlion", "Windhorse", "Dreaming of Tibet", "Tibet's Stolen Child".
http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/article.php?id=83
http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/

Jigme Mandul, friend, protest artist and stage performer /acrobat


Jigme Mandul painted half Tibetan flag, half skull.


The structured policies of the Chinese government have pushed young men towards rackets, drugs and alcohol and young women to prostitution. Despite a high degree of sympathy in principle for the Tibetan cause, the world continues to ignore how systematic and effective China has been in executing this program for the past 50 years.

For several years the Brothers had stopped playing, dropping into depression, “auto-medication” and hopelessness.

Raf explained later that the Amsterdam and Vienna concerts earlier this year had brought back some hope, re-building their interest to resume more serious music endeavors. He had started playing frequently with Jamyang over the past two months and this had just recently stimulated Jigme and Ingsel to want to play all together again. When I met them they were actually just starting to rehearse together as a group. Jamyang had the idea of planning a local concert and the date was set for July 6th, the location was Yongling Crèche and Kindergarten school hall on Jogiwara Road. They had but a week to prepare…

The practice resumed an hour or so later as I sat in a small humid corner, listening and observing how photogenic this tiny room tucked below the restaurant was. I could envision the beauty of some natural light pictures with the graffiti walls, the Tibetan decorations and the youthful energy they exuded. I had just brought a camera from New York and had found a perfect subject to explore! As they enthusiastically agreed for me to come back the next day with my camera, I thought it was definitely going to be a lot of fun, combining my passions for photography, music and for discovering people. It was going to be their first concert in McLeodganj for 3 years and had all the oomph of a come-back. And I wanted to encourage them and help turn the volume up!

The idea of having a Tibetan rock concert in McLeod had its detractors, even though the Brothers called it “The Freedom Concert”. Since the violent Chinese repression of Tibetan protests in April that cost the lives to hundreds of Tibetans and imprisonment to hundreds more, there was a moratorium on any public Tibetan entertainment.

Daily candle vigils at 6:30 pm in McLeodganj


Even the usual performance of the TIPA (Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts) for His Holiness’ birthday at the Dalai Lama’s temple in McLeod was cancelled this year. Protests throughout India and the regular evening candle vigils in McLeodganj were the only accepted forms of Tibetan public gatherings. This was one of the many ways for the Tibetan refugees to express their solidarity with their brothers and sisters back home.

To make a long story short, there were several days of practice below the restaurant and final rehearsal at the school. The sound equipment was minimal, several instruments feeding into the same amplifiers, microphones and guitar pickups crackling, cable problems to be soldered at the last minute. Raf and the brothers worked on details and solos of each song, while I took dozens of pictures, distributed flyers, put posters up and played some saxophone now and then.
The concert date had been chosen by chance, and happened to be the birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This was a very special day in Dharamsala. We had endured full monsoon weather for the past month with regular downpours, grey, foggy skies and very little sun. We had spent up to 10 days without seeing the sun at all.
Then, the day of the Dalai Lama’s birthday, in McLeodganj where His Holiness is established, the sun shone intensely in a perfectly blue sky all afternoon. It was as though we had been living in a bowl and the lid had been taken off, revealing a world above us that we had forgotten……the colors, the immensity and the depth.

Find the sign! The modest signage to direct people down the path


Everything was almost ready. Jigme, a cousin, and I made up a few last minute signs indicating where the concert was, out of paper bags from the grocery store next door, and taped them to the walls on Jogiwara road.



By the time the concert started, the hundreds of Tibetans, Indians and tourists from Korea, Japan, US, Europe and Israel that had lined up for their 100 rupee ($2.5) tickets had filled the school hall. Jigme, the cousin, lit candles along the stage as Niema welcomed everyone with words of peaceful protest and unconditional support for the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Then everyone joined in for a special Happy Birthday song. The concert took the form of an unassuming protest, with on-stage activist live-art creation, a painted dancing protestor and the activist lyrics of their songs.

Family and friends were volunteering at the desert and beverage table, serving homemade cakes, hot chai and soft drinks poured into plastic cups from half gallon bottles bought at the local grocery store. It really felt like a neighborhood fund-raiser, which in fact it was. All the proceeds were collected to buy a washing machine and dryer for a Tibetan old folks’ home.

The event was a big success. The audience was ecstatic, appreciating a rare live rock concert and the Brothers’ talent and overflowing energy level. With more than 300 tickets sold, the retirement home would get its appliances. The brothers had made a statement about their passion for their art and their audience.

We left around 10 pm, shortly before the end; when I saw the group the next day they were worn out. I think it was the emotional rush of being on stage again… in their home town.

In the following days I created a slideshow from the best of the rehearsal and concert pictures and distributed it to family and friends. It was my way of acknowledging the Brothers’ fine talent and encouraging them to be themselves in their art form.

Every Sunday evening the restaurant is transformed into a little theater for the jam session. Jigme offered that I play a couple of songs on the saxophone with them the following Sunday. That week was like the sequel of the previous one; we got to spend more time together, this time rehearsing “Gypsy”, a ballade evoking the migrant lives of refugees that Raf composed, and “ The Rose“ a blues -rock tune about freedom.

Rehearsing for the jam session

with Raf and Jamyang


The instruments and amps created a small stage space in the back of the restaurant and seating room for about 25 people was set up after ending the dinner service early and piling the few tables in the street. Tibetans and tourists filled the room while Niema served chai and deserts. After half an hour of music, Bhagsu Road was filled with people glued to the windows of the restaurant and listening from the street.



Kamala told us it was the evening she had the most enjoyed since we arrived in Dharamkot, 3 months earlier. It was such a blessing for me to actually work on a couple of tunes with musician friends and to perform with them in such an intimate, friendly atmosphere. I had spent a lot of time getting to know the brothers and family, my incursion into the world of Tibetan exiles in McLeodganj.

Looking at the concert pictures


The restaurant jam session


After the concert of the previous week, the Exile Brothers had made their come back to the McLeodganj scene and were making plans to tour the Tibetan schools in the area and share their art with refugee children. The next day Kamala and I started our Vipassana meditation retreat for 10 days… The day it ended, on our way to the train, we went to have lunch with Niema. She and her sons had gone to the US Consulate in Delhi to obtain visas to play in a couple of concerts in New York and the Midwest in the following month. The visas were not granted. Niema thought it could be because the Consulate was of Indian origin…

Our new family in Mcleodganj...
As Jigme put it one day, when I wanted to pay for our meal:

“Why would you pay? It separates us. Don't. We are together.”

On leaving McLeodganj, what we left behind was our Tibetan family.

That some day very soon we will come back to be with... and just be with...

Niema and Kamala


In the meantime, the Brothers are still preparing their tour of the schools and spending time sitting in front of JJI restaurant on Bhagsu Road in McLeodganj. They might be shooting the breeze, or composing their next tune, planning their next CD, or wondering again about that eternal homeland they have never yet seen...