India: Land of Stark Contrast and Amazing Sights

As I reflect on my trip to India, I try to wrap my brain around what I saw and experienced. I try to find words that accurately describe that world--colorful, chaotic, crowded, hot, amazing come to mind.

But I think that the most accurate and illustrative summary of India that I can come up with is actually the word contrast. As in, India is a place of dramatic disparity and striking contrasts.

The contrast between the rich and the poor. A holy man asking for money to bless me. A cow holding up two lanes of traffic. An ox-cart/cow-cart/camel-cart on a highway alongside buses, cars, and trucks. Women in beautiful saris sitting side-saddle on the backs of motorcycles. Delhi—India’s third-largest city—with a population of 16 million people (double the size of New York!) not having basic infrastructure like trash removal. Wild monkeys everywhere…including major cities that are twice the size of New York. Families of five on one motorcycle. Families of five on one motorcycle and only the father (who’s driving) wears a helmet. Monks buying ice cream. Flies covering fresh food. Rishikesh’s city government hiring people to empty dumpsters (into the sacred Ganges River) and simultaneously hiring a “Green the Ganges” team to…fish trash out of the sacred Ganges River. People purifying themselves in a river polluted by trash and toxic waste. Women purifying themselves in the Ganges only ever fully clothed in their saris. Men purifying themselves in the Ganges wearing only ever small, skin-tight bathing suits (shorts). Most men wearing western clothes. Absolutely no women wearing western clothes. 110-degree weather and yet everyone very covered (men in long-sleeves, long pants; women in saris or salwar kameezs). Food being sold/consumed in the filth of the streets. McDonald’s being a really nice restaurant. Electricity being unreliable (at best!) and yet only the really nice hotels having back-up generators. (Think of the ramifications of that—all the food that spoils and then is sold anyway.)

My own internal contrast of being so fascinated and drawn to this crazy, amazing, and difficult place.

Can I get that with a side of flies, please?

Street scene

Mama and Baby Monkey

Yoga & Exhibitionism: Strange Bedfellows

When we moved to the South End six years ago, we learned that an unanticipated perk of the place was that it happened to overlook the starting line of the Pride Parade. This year, over mimosas, we stood in the rain and clapped and cheered for all manner of marchers. Spanning the gamut were everyone from church groups to cross-dressers, the “Old and Bold” to the young and scantily clad. Nothing shocks me anymore. Or so I thought...

But this year, my not-so-delicate sensibilities were scandalized by one float in particular. No, it wasn’t the woman with the duct-taped breasts. Nor was it the leather-mask-clad people dressed in some sort of equine-theme, pulling Roman-chariot-looking carts carrying another leather-clad person wielding a whip. (Wow! Apparently, six years of watching the parade has really jaded me. I didn’t even blink an eye at this).

No. What really shocked me this year was the yoga float. Yes, the yoga float. It sounds innocent enough. But it was carrying what can only be described as a Cirque du Soleil-esque display of attention-seeking contortionism. The shirtless guy in full handstand (undeniably an accomplishment on a moving float) was the tamest. (Note: One of the studios where I teach requires men wear shirts due to the exhibitionist-curbing theme.) (Further note: it was a cold that day--jeans and sweatshirt-wearing-cold. These yogis must’ve been freezing!) There was a shirtless guy in full paddotanasana (wide-legged forward bend) who then snaked his arms under and around his inner thighs and into a full-bind at his lower back—and the fact that I couldn’t even find an image of this during a google search says something. Then there was all sorts of skin-tight, barely-there yoga outfitted women executing all sorts of writhing, snake-y, twisty-pretzel, Gumby-ish poses. Bodies weren’t the only thing contorting—faces, too, were twisting and squinching in the exquisite delight of performers pandering to an audience.

I know that the opposite argument will be to let yoga be what it is to different people, and that’s fine. But I think it was the attention-seeking, pandering aspect that made this one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. And bear in mind, I’m a strangeness magnet.

Call me naive, but I was actually shocked that there was a yoga float at all. Isn’t that the polar opposite of every tenet of the practice? Isn’t the very nature of a pose-flaunting parade float in opposition to the deeply personal, inwardly focusing, mind-stilling, non-competitive, non-exhibitionist nature of yoga??

I’m all about providing yoga to the masses. But this inadvertent yogini’s two cents is that it would have been far more in line with the true mission of yoga—not to mention more business and marketing efficient (hey, ten years in the corporate world yields thought patterns that die hard!)—if the studio had simply walked in normal clothes, handing out vouchers for a free class.

I think one comment that I overheard sums it up best: “You know, I’ve always wanted to try yoga...but if that’s what it’s like, forget it. I could never do any of that." And surely that’s not what the studio was going for.

Love it? Hate it? Don’t mind either way?

(click to enlarge pics)

Writing Fact vs. Fiction

I’ve always wanted to write a book. I’ve always assumed that this book would be fictional. Over the years, I’ve had ideas and started drafts and they’ve always, always been fiction. So it came as some surprise when the work that I really undertook (read: finished) was non-fiction. Narrative non-fiction, that is, aka memoir.

I shudder to use the term “memoir.” It conjures connotations of high-brow important people droning on and on about their lives. As I’m neither high-brow nor important (and live in fear of droning on about anything), I try to avoid the m-word like the plague. One thing couldn’t be avoided however, and that was that the story I wanted to tell was true.

There are some major benefits to non-fiction. Two that leap to mind: the story’s already there for you, you don’t have to think about things like character development.

Of course, there are also many downsides to writing non-fiction: the story’s already there and you have to stick to it, you have to worry about character disguises so that you don’t get sued for libel or defamation of character, you have to compellingly convey character development and scenery that seem either obvious or you overlooked, and you will inevitably offend everyone that you leave out (“What?! But I thought we were so close!”) or include (“I can’t believe that’s how you see me! That’s not me at ALL!”).

The easy solution would be to do take a fictional “based on” approach. But I’m sticking to straight-up non-fiction because here’s the real value of total, straight-up, un-spun truth: you can get away with so much more.

If you’re writing fiction and you have a scene where something audacious/outrageous/shocking/ingenuous happens, you always run the risk of some smart-ass rolling their eyes and saying, “Oh please…that would never happen.” But with non-fiction, I can include the most outrageous/ridiculous/insane things that have ever happened, and when said smart-ass says, “Oh please...that would never-” I can bust in with, “Oh but it DID! Snizzap!”

(Note that the use of “snizzap” makes it that much MORE awesome.)

India and Great Yoga Expectations

India was everything I’d imagined and more. It was dirty, loud, crowded, chaotic, hot, and sometimes you had to bring your own toilet paper. It was, in fact, dirtier, louder, more crowded, more chaotic, hotter, and more toilet-paper-less than I’d ever imagined. It was fantastic. It was hard. And, in a twist that I (perhaps shockingly) hadn’t anticipated, I got very, very sick.

Forewarned by everyone who’s ever been there or heard about it, I tried to be careful. I only drank bottled water; compulsively checked the sanctity of the seals. I held my breath and clamped my lips shut in the shower. Despite the fact that it was 110°F and all I wanted was salads and fruit, I resisted these temptations and instead ate only thoroughly cooked foods, served at a bacteria-killing steaming hot.

Note: Steaming hot is not what you want in 110° weather. But steaming hot is what I ate.

I avoided hand-shakes and touching public surfaces. I washed my hands frequently and then amped up an extra level of protection by compulsively spritzing with lavender-scented hand sanitizer. Yet in spite of all these precautions (and many more which I’ll refrain from sharing lest I appear obsessive, compulsive, germ-phobic), I still got violently sick on my third day in Delhi.

Because I was too sick to move—heck, I was too sick to leave the bathroom let alone the hotel room—we had to postpone traveling from Delhi to Rishikesh. So while I convalesced for three unanticipated days in a darkened hotel room in the middle of India’s third-largest city (Delhi has a population of roughly 16 million), I tried not to think of how this wasn’t what I’d imagined, or planned, or wanted. Most of all, I tried not to think about how I wasn’t doing yoga in the small holy city of Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world.

When I was able to keep crackers and bottled water down, we hired a taxi (in India, it is somehow normal to hire a taxi for four days) and I vomited my way along the seven-hour drive north. Definitely not what I’d pictured.

Even after I stopped getting sick, I was too weak to stand the heat all day, let alone the physical exertion of yoga in said heat. So we’d basically wander out in the morning, exploring the town and taking pictures of the sacred Ganges River, the Himalayas in the background, and the locals, head back to our hotel for an airconditioned siesta, and then back out for dinner.

All of which is a very long-winded way of trying to explain away the fact that while I was in India, the yoga mothership, the grand poohbah of my professional career, and, even more mortifying, in Rishikesh, the yoga capital of India and…oh yeah…the entire universe, I did yoga a grand total of…once.

I cringe to admit this. If I wasn’t busy typing, I’d assume a mortified child’s pose.

I had imagined doing yoga twice a day, every day. I had pictured connecting with some yoga grandmaster and practically levitating under his tutelage, achieving new heights and depths of poses, attaining some inner spiritual luminescence, and maybe getting a tan whilst doing it. The reality looked instead rather puke-y and pallid and exhausted.

It was, perhaps, the greatest demise of my expectations that during the one time that I did undertake a physical practice, I got kind of injured. The practice stretched to nearly two and half hours (including a 20-minute Q&A afterward, which was actually my favorite part). There were a lot of hands-on adjustments. At some point, the teacher cranked me a supine twist and my lower back hurt pretty intensely for a few days.

Obviously, I’m glad there wasn’t any major damage, but getting hurt (even a little) was one more strike against my good ol’ expectations.

Somewhere between puking and the teacher tweaking my back, I got to thinking about expectations. And that whole yoga thing about not having any, being present, letting everything just be as it is, blah, blah, blah. Shouldn’t that also apply to doing yoga in India? Shouldn’t I practice what I preach even if I can’t practice yoga?

Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was hunger, maybe it was all the OM symbols, but it occurred to me that even though I couldn’t practice physically (in the way that I wanted/envisioned), I could still practice in some way. I could do pranayama (breathwork)—in fact I could pranayama geared toward the anxiety that came from my expectations not being met. I could, as the sign said, meditate OM. I could practice being present and letting my time in India be exactly was it was. Even if that meant that some of my time in India was spent puking my guts out and not being able to yoga.

Getting yogic about puking? Wow. Never thought I’d say that. :)

Traveling to India: Visas, Vaccines, and a Few Tips

After many years of thinking about going to India, I'm finally going. In 11 days. I currently dwell somewhere between excitement and anxiety.

India: the yoga mothership. The big kahuna of Hindu philosophy. And the home, of course, of the Taj Mahal. These are some of the reasons I've always wanted to go. Others include wanting to see an elephant. And also a tiger. Oh, and wearing a sari. The potential reasons are plentiful--some noble and others not. There are also many reasons not to go: dysentery, parasites, filth, poverty, the inability to drink the water, not to mention the 14-hour flight.

Ultimately, the good outweighed the bad. I've stocked up on Pepto Bismol, antibiotics, and several cases of lavender-scented hand sanitizer. Which just about makes me ready.

Except for the practical considerations to navigate like visas and vaccinations.

First stop: The travel clinic at my doctor's office. They determined I'd need immunizations for typhoid, polio, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B. Apparently, anyone who born after 1980 had to have Hep B (which protects against this blood and bodily fluid-borne illness) to get into college. But sadly, I was born before the cut-off date ("sadly" because I am too old to have been naturally included, and also because I now have to get another immunization). Hep A is something you wouldn't have unless you were traveling to a developing nation, as it's a water-borne illness. Typhoid and polio shots are also something we don't have to worry about in the US (or other developed world countries). So that was four shots right off the bat, and two require follow-up shots in 1-6 months. Great.

Next stop: Procuring a visa. It turns out that several years ago, the Indian Consulate outsourced this business to a private company. The double layer of irony that India--the outsourcing capital of the world--has outsourced the job of bringing people to India is not lost on me.

But anyway, the private company provides two options on their website: in-person same-day service or through the mail, which takes a minimum of nine days. Since they have to affix the visa to your passport, and since it seemed like...how should I say...a less-than-stellar idea to send my passport through the mail, I chose to go in-person. The office is located in Manhattan. I made a 10:20 appointment, arrived at 10:00, bringing with the required materials: my passport, my application (which you complete online on their website), two passport-sized pictures, and $76. Except...oh wait, I forgot to bring the cash.

Of course, I had my credit card, but it clearly states on their website that a credit card charge will slow-down your application. And since I wanted to expedite my application, I wanted to pay cash. No problem, I was so early. Right?

Um...right?


The less-than-pleasant guy corralling people in the line on the sidewalk told me there were not ATMs anywhere nearby (which I have a hard time believing in NYC but didn't want to waste time arguing or looking) and instead advised me to get cash-back at the Walgreens on the corner.

Fine. I've never done cash-back, but I was happy to give it a try. Looking around the Walgreen's, I realized I didn't "need" anything. So I decided to buy a banana--at least I could have a healthy snack later. It was $0.49. The girl behind the counter asked if I wanted cash back, and I said, "Yes, please. $80."

She stared at me as though I was an idiot. Or a lunatic. (I'm probably both.) "You can only do $20." She informed me.

I took the $20 and said, "OK. In that case, I'd like to buy another banana."

Rinse and repeat three times and I finally had my $80. Booked it back to the visa place...

...where I stood in line for the next hour and a half. Needless to state, they were not running on time, and my 10:20 appointment was for naught.

Around noon, they called the 10:20 people. I stepped forward to have the inspector confirm that my cell phone was off and I wasn't bringing any food or drinks in. Which was fine...except for the fact that I now had four bananas in my bag and there were no trash cans in sight (again - what?! There are trash cans every ten feet in Manhattan! Was I in a parallel universe?). So I gave one to the girl in front of me and then scarfed down the other three. Really classy. But at least I had my monthly dose of potassium. (They let me take the peels in to dispose of inside. Apparently, this was OK, but bananas were not.)

Suitably, food-free, we were finally herded inside the building...where we then waited in the second line for another long time. Eventually, interminably, FINALLY, it was my turn. Proudly, I handed over all my materials to the grumpy guy behind the desk. He checked to make sure I have everything (and, as an aside, it was shocking to me to see exactly how many people DIDN'T), and then I was herded toward a third line...

...where, you guessed it, I got to wait in line some more.

About two and a half hours from the beginning of this little adventure, I reached a visa person. She took all my materials and innocently asked, "How would you like to pay?"

I was shocked. As per their website, I thought it was cash-only in order to not delay the application. "Oh, that's only for the mail-in option," she informed me.

I thought ruefully of the unnecessary bananas I bought and scarfed down, and handed over my credit card. "So, when should I come back to pick-up my visa?" I asked.

She didn't look up from typing. "Oh, we don't do the same-day option anymore. Haven't for three years."

"But...but your website said..."

She cut me off. "Oh yeah. I've been telling them to update that for three years. But they don't listen. You'll have to come back tomorrow. Actually, you'd ordinarily have to come back tomorrow. But the Consulate is closed for Good Friday. So come back on Monday."

I told her I drove from Boston. I couldn't stay in New York all weekend. She suggested I pay to mail it home, which I objected to for the aforementioned reason of risking my passport being lost in the mail, AND it was another charge, AND if I was going to have to do it through the mail in the end, then why the heck did I drive four hours down here to bring it to you in-person?!

I choked all this back and asked if there's ANYTHING that could be done. Finally, a manager said that while the Consulate itself would be closed for Good Friday (though why a predominantly Hindu and secondarily Muslim country was closing for Good Friday is a separate question), there was maybe a chance that my visa might be in the second batch that the delivery guy who drop-off after hours later that night.

Well, geez. That was a lot of "mights" and "maybes" but I seized it.

I stumbled out of there and blinked in the bright daylight. (It was still daylight? I thought I'd been in there for days!) Starving, dazed, and distinctly worried, I wandered into Ariyoshi, a tiny Japanese place just down the block and revived my flagging spirits with some of the best miso soup and California rolls I've ever had. (Note: I substituted shrimp for the fish stick and it was awesome!)

The next morning I got an email and a text telling me my visa was ready. (Note: Sign up for these options!!!) I picked it up without a wait and was on my way.

Frustrating? Yes. Annoying? Yes. Illogical? Yes. But I bet this is good practice for being in India :)

The Big Plunge

Throughout my twenties, my Italian grandmother lamented my single status. As all her other grandchildren married and reproduced, she was wont to introduce me as her "granddaughter...the unmarried one."

Finally, at the ripe old age of 30, I too got married. This meant that she could stop saying Hail Marys to that effect and I could feel relieved that she'd now stop asking if I'd met any "special friends" during our daily conversations.

I'd earned a blessed reprieve. Or so I'd thought.

Until...she started asking when she'd see great-grandchildren. Ah, le sigh. It seems marriage is not enough for a little Italian nonni.

In much the same way I resisted marriage, I've stubbornly resisted the kid pressure. Maybe it has something to do with all that getting up every three hours for round the clock feedings. And cleaning up someone else's poop. And the whole 18 years (minimum) of undue responsibility--the idea of another (utterly helpless!) little being depending on you for their food and safety and care. I couldn't just go away for the weekend with friends or hubby anymore.  I couldn't have wine with dinner, mimosas with brunch, or vodka...ever?! (OK fine - not "ever," but at least for a year or two given pregnancy and breastfeeding).

That level of commitment is so very intense and overwhelming. And I'm kind of a wimp and definitely a commitment-phobe. Which basically boils down to...fuhgeddaboudit.


So here I am, nearly 34, and my biggest responsibilities are my indoor plants year-round, and my garden in the summer. No fish. No cats. No big burden of responsibility.

Until I decided I was ready for at least a little more responsibility. And suddenly, getting up every three hours for the first few months and cleaning up someone else's poop didn't sound quite as bad.

Which is how I knew I was ready for the big plunge: a puppy!

Enter: Pelu. An adorable mutt from MacAllen, Tx. Her mom was a cockapoo (half cocker spaniel, half poodle and trust me, that sounds better than the alternative "poodlecock") and the dad is a mystery. My vet says she looks like a border terrier. And given that, at five months, she's only growing longer and not taller, I think she may be part long-haired dachshund as well.

I got up every few hours to let her out for the first few days of housetraining. Then I realized this tiny puppy and I were soulmates: she could hold it for at least eight hours. Heaven! Mama can sleep!

Yes, she is utterly dependent on me for her care, food, safety, and well-being. But surprisingly, that isn't as terrifying as I'd feared. I can actually handle it. She loves to snuggle. She can entertain herself for hours while I work. She naps like a champ. And she has a sassy, loving, irrascible personality that is entirely endearing.

Which makes her just about the most perfect little creature in the world and exactly the right amount of responsibility.

Still not ready for kids though! :)

Napping...like a boss

Another Brush with Crazy at the Coffee Shop

Just had an utterly lovely week at a yoga retreat. Yoga everyday, walks outside in the snow, yoga everyday...amazing, organic, nutritious food that you don't have to plan, shop for, or clean up after...yoga everyday...ah, le sigh.

And now, back to reality. Stopped at a coffee shop on the way home. After several hours in the car, I'm stretching while I wait for my tea.

Deceptively sane-looking man in his 40s-50s approaches.

Him: What are you doing?

Me: (mid side-bend) Um...stretching?

Him: The universe punishes those who drive in poetic ways.


Me:  Ok.

Him: Drivers poison our planet with their driving...And their cars...And now the planet...and the universe are punishing you in poetic ways for your driving.

Me: Ok.

He leaves. I'm still waiting for my tea, still stretching. He comes back and says - NO JOKE - "I forgot my crayons." Grabs a box of crayons from the table near me, returns to his seat at the counter, and proceeds to start coloring.

I did not dare to look to see if he was coloring outside the lines.

Does this stuff happen only to me?