Lukin and I have spent the past week in the seaside town of Mamallapuram. We left Sadhana early for a variety of reasons and made our way to the sea for a beach holiday. It was a good decision. I turned thirty in this town- just yesterday. The day could not have been better, seriously. I want to describe it in detail, and I am going to, but it feels a little awkward to do so as it was really amazing and it feels like bragging- but permit me the thirtieth birthday concession of a bit of a brag because I do want to share the experience with all of you (who were on my mind throughout the day). Lukin and I woke before dawn to watch the sunrise over the beach. waking up before dawn has been pretty easy to do this week as temple music begins to blare from the loudspeakers at around 5:00 in preparation for the Pongal holiday. The music followed us down to the sea where we sat in the sand and watched fisherman push their boats into the water and dog families digging holes in the sand hunting crabs. The sun rose and the music ended and we went for birthday cups of coffee. Real coffee. No Nescafe for the birthday girl.
I made an early morning mistake of eating six pieces of toast at breakfast. Six pieces! Of course, I felt ill for a while after breakfast and rested up a bit . Lukin bought me a birthday Ayurvedic massage which helped finish off the toast quease. Reading and lounging followed. At around one o'clock Lukin and I walked to the home of a man we call "Uncle" from whom we rented a room on our first night in town. Uncle is a martial arts master, a masseur, and a fisherman. He's also a really nice, really goofy guy. When we walked through the door he greeted us with a big smile and a bunch of birthday balloons. Uncle and his wife "Auntie" and their son and nephew ushered us into the house and seated us a the table where platters full of fish, prawns, crab and rice were laid out for lunch. Uncle had caught lunch that morning in his nets. We cracked crab claws with our teeth and flaked fish off the bones with our hands. It was amazing.
We had a fair amount of cake left over so on the walk back to our room we stopped by the stall of a stone-carving friend (Mamallapuram is known for the skill of its phenomenal stone-carvers whose chisel clinks twinkle throughout the day). He gave me a birthday carved elephant and we gave him a piece of cake. The rest of the cake we shared with our neighbors, a French family of four who are here for three months of holiday and home-schooling. The eldest daughter told us to guard our pieces carefully because earlier in the week a sea crow had swooped in and stolen a biscuit from her. The youngest daughter smiled at us through a smear of chocolate icing.
I bought myself the birthday gift of a yoga lesson and spent an hour and a half of the late afternoon in inversions and twists that made me realize how long it has been since I last did those kinds of inversions and twists. It was nice to reconnect with my body and my breath though; it is something that is easy to neglect during travel- I hope to make time and space for myself in the next three weeks, and the next three decades! Lukin met me to enjoy our final sunset walk on the Mamallapuram beach.
We worked up enough of an appetite to head to a beach-side restaurant for dinner. As we sat down at our table that looked over the water, the enormous orange full moon rose out of the sea. It couldn't have been timed better. Under its light we shared tiger prawns and tuna steaks that were caught in the net that was spread out to dry on the beach below our table. Again, amazing. When the bill came, the waiter also delivered a gift of a journal that Lukin had left with him earlier. The waiter had taken it upon himself to wrap it and put a ribbon on it. We walked back on the sand to our room.
So that was turning thirty. And this morning I opened an email box full of greetings and love and virtual hugs. Thank you all so much for your thoughts and wishes and know also that you are in my thoughts. I have been in this internet cafe for hours now and it is time for us to catch the bus that will take us on to the next place in our journey. I'll try to post some pictures soon!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Different Living
Yesterday evening I sat in the community hut and talked with a man named Raj from Rajasthan. We had met earlier in the morning and talked about languages as we mulched seedlings in the reforestation zone. Raj is a musician and a romantic poet who learned Urdu and Farsi in school along with English. Urdu and Farsi are written with the Arabic, as is Uyghur. We sat with notebooks and pens and I wrote out some Uyghur words and phrases and he wrote out some Farsi words and phrases and we read from each other's notebooks, amazed at the power of script. I sang Raj a Uyghur song about a nightingale (nightingale is bulbul in Uyghur, and Urdu, and Farsi) and he translated it back into English for me. Raj- poet that he is- said that he studies languages because when you learn to speak the language of a different culture, you involve your heart in thinking about that culture.
Sadhana Forest, is full of language. About 50 volunteers stay in the thatch huts that surround the reforestation ares. A Czech man rode his bicycle here from Prague. A French mother and her three children are spending their holiday months learning about compost. Six environmental-planning students from Plymouth State college in Massachusetts are here for a Jan-term class. There are garden projects and energy projects as well, but the main aim of the cooperative is reforestation and water conservation. Through the construction of earth dams, water catchment pits, and tree planting the water table beneath the area has risen 6 meters in the past 6 years. 6 meters!
Lukin and I will stay at Sadhana for two weeks. We woke up this morning in our hut which is constructed of bamboo, palm thatch, and rope. Breakfast was porridge and papaya cooked over energy-efficient conical "rocket stoves" constructed to fit one pot and use a minimal amount of wood (one billet feeds 50!). Our food scraps are converted into soil which Lukin and I spent yesterday afternoon spreading on the garlic and gerbera daisy beds. Human waste is separated into bins; the liquid variety is processed into fertilizer and the solid broken down into soil using sawdust from the building projects. The entire endeavor, the 50 of us probably produce in one week the amount of garbage I alone produce in one day of my life in the city. It's inspiring to be immersed in and learning about the possibilities to do things differently. Lukin and I are taking notes!
Of course in all of this aspiration towards sustainability, there is the consideration of the cost. Today we took the bus into the nearby city of Pondicherry and drove past piles of plastic litter and homes of corrugated tin and thatch. The up-front cost of conversion to an off-the-grid life is unthinkable to most. The amount of space that Sadhana uses to produce and break down its food and waste is unavailable to families of 6 or 7 who live one room. The access to grants and start-up capital that have helped Sadhana take flight are accessed through years and grands worth of education. I think about all of this as I mulch seedlings and munch on organic carrots. But there is something to be said for the innovation, and the trial run of it. I read in the Times of India this morning that sales of solar panels in California are higher than they've ever been- in spite of, or because of the recession. Demand increases, prices decrease, accessibility increases... slowly slowly on the large scale. On the small scale, my individual knowledge of what is possible has increased and my skepticism of composting toilets has decreased. I hope that in the coming weeks I take from my time at Sadhana a soil-like ability to absorb the ideas and information that come from immersion in a different way of living.
Sadhana Forest, is full of language. About 50 volunteers stay in the thatch huts that surround the reforestation ares. A Czech man rode his bicycle here from Prague. A French mother and her three children are spending their holiday months learning about compost. Six environmental-planning students from Plymouth State college in Massachusetts are here for a Jan-term class. There are garden projects and energy projects as well, but the main aim of the cooperative is reforestation and water conservation. Through the construction of earth dams, water catchment pits, and tree planting the water table beneath the area has risen 6 meters in the past 6 years. 6 meters!
Lukin and I will stay at Sadhana for two weeks. We woke up this morning in our hut which is constructed of bamboo, palm thatch, and rope. Breakfast was porridge and papaya cooked over energy-efficient conical "rocket stoves" constructed to fit one pot and use a minimal amount of wood (one billet feeds 50!). Our food scraps are converted into soil which Lukin and I spent yesterday afternoon spreading on the garlic and gerbera daisy beds. Human waste is separated into bins; the liquid variety is processed into fertilizer and the solid broken down into soil using sawdust from the building projects. The entire endeavor, the 50 of us probably produce in one week the amount of garbage I alone produce in one day of my life in the city. It's inspiring to be immersed in and learning about the possibilities to do things differently. Lukin and I are taking notes!
Of course in all of this aspiration towards sustainability, there is the consideration of the cost. Today we took the bus into the nearby city of Pondicherry and drove past piles of plastic litter and homes of corrugated tin and thatch. The up-front cost of conversion to an off-the-grid life is unthinkable to most. The amount of space that Sadhana uses to produce and break down its food and waste is unavailable to families of 6 or 7 who live one room. The access to grants and start-up capital that have helped Sadhana take flight are accessed through years and grands worth of education. I think about all of this as I mulch seedlings and munch on organic carrots. But there is something to be said for the innovation, and the trial run of it. I read in the Times of India this morning that sales of solar panels in California are higher than they've ever been- in spite of, or because of the recession. Demand increases, prices decrease, accessibility increases... slowly slowly on the large scale. On the small scale, my individual knowledge of what is possible has increased and my skepticism of composting toilets has decreased. I hope that in the coming weeks I take from my time at Sadhana a soil-like ability to absorb the ideas and information that come from immersion in a different way of living.
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