The Necessity of Intimacy

Another early start.  On the roof, moving, breathing, simply being.  My dreams last night had been very vivid.  I had watched myself age rapidly – a beautiful reminder, as if it were needed, of the impermanence of this body. So this morning my practice was a practice of non-attachment, of exploring the limbo between “progress” and mastery of my movements and ultimately; letting go of achievement once it had been attained.

In the back of the jeep my vision gave a continuous commentary to the new details of another day. Its discerning how there is so much more than what first meets the eye.  Today it was as if a distinct hierarchy appeared on the roads.  Wealth reflected by use of vehicle.  This ranged from the pedestrians to those on bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, cars, to the chauffeur driven.  Almost as if there is a negative correlation between wealth connection to the earth.

When we arrived at Asha there was a farmers' meeting.  The group of men all quickly stood up to greet us.  I still find this form of courtesy uncomfortable.  And perhaps because it was rooted in a frame of inequality.  For the women we are working with would not have received the same welcome.  In fact, the women stood patiently at the back, visibly excited to see us and waiting for their chance to say “Namaskar”.  Having so many pairs of eyes on me at one time reminds me of how strange I must appear.  My white skin, blonde hair, green eyes.  Not to mention my giant like proportions in comparison to the ladies tiny frames.  They often come and squeeze my arms, say how soft my skin is, pat my belly laughing that its shape is sign of my role as simple “woman” as opposed to “woman, wife, mother, grandmother.”

Names are a challenge for me.  As if we are so much more than a name so it bypasses my mind.  And the unique tribal names were no exception.  However, what had become well established in these few days were certain faces and looks of recognition.  I’m not sure if I can describe it.  But I am very aware of it – the necessity of my walking into a room with a presence which is open to connection.  When I find myself in the middle of women from a very different backgrounds (whether that be occupation, religion, age, culture, lived experiences), I need to find a way to establish trust.  As this can’t be through language I am now very sensitive to ways which we look.  And by that I mean eye to eye.  Something magic is allowed to happen…

As a result I have formed connections with several women which really have touched some place deep in my heart.  These are connections that don’t come with any words.  I see them because they have found ways to talk to me.  As I have them.  Women who light up, who shine, who are clearly deeply connected to an inner strength and resilience which they share freely at any given opportunity.  Women who have bought to life the importance of our inner attitude, of the ability to find peace no matter what life presents, to trust that everything will pass.  Indeed I realized that for many of these women, the exile from the village had happened many years ago.  Many had now returned to their famines and yet still suffer greatly from the shame and memories that they relive every day.  In comparison, others have risen, either not so invested in their community’s acceptance or have simply moved forwards with their lives to the best of their abilities.

We began the day with a gift to each woman of a garland of marigold flowers.  I spied the three sisters peaking through the door, so I sneaked out and threw  three rings of golden petals over each of their necks. Three shy smiles to cracked their lips.  Three priceless smiles.

Yoga followed.  I repeated the same poses as the previous days, in the hope that they would take more than an experience home with them, and have embodied some movements, that could with practice, limber up stiff and aging frames.  However, I began to wonder how realistic it was for the women to find a space, time or will to continue this when they returned home.  Asana could easily be categorized as a leisure activity.  And leisure after all comes secondary to survival.  The first concern of the women is to be able to gather the essential commodities to survive – food, water and shelter.  Then of course there is the mental attitude to want to find some physical or emotional relief.   To be able to generate a belief that it is possible to feel differently, that life might not go back to how it was but it also needn’t stay the same.  After all this is an attitude which pervades all cultures:  The excuses that so many of us give to struggle.  And of course there is the final component of circumstance – of the actual physical space, time and opportunity to practice.   Yet after the session one of the women shouted out that when she returned to her village she was going to gather up her neighbors and share two or three different asanas with them every day.  She grinned, hands on her shoulders, circling proudly as she showed me what she remembered.  If that is the case – my contribution has been more than a novelty.

 The next session of the day bridged worlds between imagination and reality: Between an inner journey and outer movement.  The women were instructed to paint coloured light with their whole bodies.  Moving through space and internal limitations. Bringing colour to darkness, and play to frail bodies.  My skepticism that they would be receptive to such instructions was quickly washed away.  Through closed eyes rainbows were danced.  This led beautifully into an art class.  The class was simple.  It involved only two elements - a blank piece of A5 paper and paper plates filled with a few blobs of primary colours.  There were only a handful of paint brushes.  I thought of the complaints or even plane refusal to paint with fingers by women from other backgrounds and cultures.  Yet here today, these women had no such comments.  After all, many had never painted before – never put paint on paper in their  lives.  They were content with so little and carefully dipped fingertips into colours to create magic – transforming what was empty, blank, shapeless into expression.  The room dropped into a deep meditative stillness.  One by one women called me over to show me their decorated pages, their moments of creation.  The women from the tribal villages had their own style – I’ll call it “unconditioned”.  They painted anywhere on the paper – not just in the middle.  And their work/play did not depict objects or tell stories, but represented unique patterns and shapes.  In comparison, the survivors of domestic abuse who had grown up in the towns all drew the same composition:  A house, a river, hills and the sun.  The picture perfect ideal.

Lunch was another huge affair.  I watched the three young cooks take it in turn to run in and out of the compound, juggling huge bundles of fire wood as they navigated the heavy front gate.  Now and then a baby goat would charge in behind them, until it was chased back out.

The bael tree provided another moment for my memory. The women lined up in front of me, pointing to parts of their body and asking for a short massage.  I often think of the rather cruel and inhumane research carried out in the United States in 1944.  Twenty newborn infants were housed in a special facility where they had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary, never communicating with them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile, none of the babies becoming ill. The experiment was halted after four months, by which time, at least half of the babies had died. There was no physiological cause for the babies' deaths; they were all physically very healthy. Before each baby died, there was a period where they would stop verbalizing and trying to engage with their caregivers, generally stop moving, nor cry or even change expression; death would follow shortly. The babies who had "given up" before being rescued, died in the same manner, even though they had been removed from the experimental conditions. The response of the women we were working with showed clearly that maybe we can physically survive without connection and affection as adults, yet something within us thrives with simple platonic.

As I worked I closed my eyes and let my intuition guide me.  Years of cutting bamboo, of weaving baskets, of carrying countless children, buckets of water  -years of life in a tribal Indian village – had left its mark in distinct areas of the body.  Back and shoulders, hands and wrists were all bustling for attention.  As I opened my eyes I saw Murni – a young women in her late teens staring at me.  For a moment I realized how strange the scene must look.  A blonde foreigner hands working stiff joints of crooked women who were all brandished as witches.  

Murni had a young child called Puja.  She always had the baby on her hip.  And when either were separated both became anxious.  When Murni was wed just two years prior, as is custom here, she moved in with her husband’s family.  Yet her new family were not impressed with their new addition.  Even though it was an arranged marriage, it was soon to be arranged that Murni would be replaced and a new wife was found for her husband.  She was kicked out.  Baby in belly.  I often stop and pause, look around at the faces which stare back at me.  The stories which over the days have began to accompany them.  And I am left wondering that we really have no idea about the “what ifs”.  What if these women had not been branded as witches, sold into sex slavery, beaten into submission, made a homeless teenage bride?  I say this because what I see in front of me each day is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.  And I am weary about using that term as it is elusive and yet oh so apparent.  It’s the fusion of what can’t be seen, quantified or valued.  It can’t be taught or bought.  Yet it represents the weaving together of the shakti of women the world over.  The ability to rise up, to move forwards and to do so countless times and through countless years.  Each woman here has survived not just for her own benefit but to be a living testament and guide for others.  Each woman’s resilience - regardless of age, tribal or Indian – has the potential to be the spark of perseverance for another.

Wisdom Bodies

I’m beginning to wonder if anyone is going to show up.  I’ve worked on a hundred different projects around the world, often with grand intentions to be met with a tiny group of participants leaving me debating if my path is misguided and money better spent on a specific donation.  However, this mindset is putting the emphasis on quantity instead of quality, and what the years of social activism have taught me is that no matter the number of participants for whoever does attend it can be a powerful experience beyond any calculation.  Just like with any action we take which is backed with a compassionate and wise intention it is often very hard to even anticipate the long term effects.  

 

Once again my doubts were washed away as a auto-rickshaw pulled up and a huge group of women piled out.  Amazed at how they all managed to fit inside they cautiously rearranged their thread worn saris and huddled together.  Each woman had lifetimes etched in her face.  The majority were older.  Their skin was sun and time worn yet ages were hard to estimate.  A few stumbled forward with wooden sticks as make shift canes, hunched over, eyes fighting to see. Each woman was very dark, tribal skin – the original people of this land.  Born free from caste and therefore at the very bottom of the well entrenched hierarchy.  Chests, hands and feet bore tattoos from their ancestral line which were at first invisible but like a magic eye pattern, once I saw -  I saw many.  Eighteen women in total joined us, they had traveled six hours on foot, bus and now rickshaw and with very little idea of why they were here.   They were welcomed them with a sweet lassi – a statement of how the days were to continue.  They were our guests.  They would be fed good food, fresh fruit, snacks and chai.  They would be waited upon.  They were here to rest and rejuvenate, to strengthen and heal.

Urmi introduced us and explained the purpose of the workshop.  They nodded in response and then were invited to share their name with a movement.  This they did with varying degrees of gusto.  Some clearly unsure what to make of it all.

The story teller dancer (whose project this was) began by leading them through movement to sporadic music.  The music was sporadic simply because it was hooked up not with a plug but with wires leading directly into the outlet, so it kept falling out.  One of the Asha team attempted to fix it by sticking tiny sticks of wood directly into the socket.  It kind of worked.  Admittedly I was skeptical to how the foreign music, foreign facilitator and foreign movements would be received, but they were.  It was like a breath of fresh air had just whisked through the room and old bent bodies came to life.  I followed with some very simply asanas.  Primarily from the pavanmukatasana (joint freeing poses) series. The movements are basic and designed to gently lubricate the joints while strengthening the mind body connection. Urmi translated into Hindlish (ie. Hindu splashed with English) so I followed that she was telling them the body is like a machine that has to be regularly oiled and used to stop it from freezing up.  It I teach the sequence regularly and all over the world.  In comparison to my usual lycra clad students at the Yoga Barn, the women’s movements were awkward.  It was  like watching the petals of a flower gently thaw open after a frosty morning. It was a testament to their life of hard work and the luxury of having access to both the time and knowledge to connect to one’s body.  I thought back to my Indian friend in Kolkata who scoffed that these tribal women would know more about how to move and the practice of yoga than me. If nothing else, I hoped that perhaps a couple of them would remember some of the movements which may over time help to relieve tired joints and contracted limbs.  And in the meantime I could visibly see connections being formed – between minds and body, facilitators and guests.  For the first time I could also see the benefits of teaching through an interpreter.  Confident that if I said something too esoteric or inappropriate it would be congenially intercepted.  Continuous reflections came that a smile can melt away even the most convicted frowns.  Really seeing, and by that I mean speaking through eyes rather than with my tongue goes such a long way.  It was indeed clear that for many of these women they were not used to having such direct recognition.   Years of being ostracized, of being feared and taunted had worked its way into their very being.  And within just one morning of being invited to Be was a privilege to watch and at the same time a testament to the danger not of witches but of those who believe in them.  I really had no idea what to expect, yet soon they began to share their stories.  One by one.  Some survivors or domestic violence and others of the witch hunt.  And survivors is the key word.  These women are strong, resilient, powerful to the core.  I watched their words before I was able to hear them.  I saw flickers of emotion rising through posture and tonation.   Many of those hunted as witches had similar experiences.  Some it had been years ago, others more recent.  To my ears it sounded reminiscent of the klu Klux klan days.  Perhaps this was my vivid imagination but unfortunately as the stories began to correlate I feared not.  Women courageously recalled how they were hounded, made to eat human excrement, forced to leave their families, stripped naked and left in the forest to scavenge for food. One older woman who was perhaps one of the most reclusive in the group had a scarf tied around her head.  It looked very strange, as the others all wore their long graying hair tied back, with nothing than the occasional flick of the tail of their sari over it.  She began to tell her story.  She was accused of being a witch.  She denied.  She was given shit to eat and so she did and then to further prove her innocence she was told to go to the local temple and shave her head.  Although her hair had begun to grow back for any traditional woman in India to cut her hair was a huge shaming. Another told how she had stood up for her accused friend, now seated by her side, and then her and her family had also been persecuted.  One of the more lively women in the group, explained with great animation how now she would go to a chai shop which before would refuse to serve her, demand her drink, finish it, slam the cup down on the table in front of her audience and proudly walk out.  Holding your head up high as a named witch was being a true warrior woman.  And she was.  She had also been part of a three woman street theater group who toured the local villages, performing and educating on the violations of women like her.  Another boldly said the women felt good now.  Here in this moment, because we could see them, we were talking to them, listening to them, but when they went home they did not all have this luxury.  I was reminded of a panel I had attended on survivors of Indonesia’s many war crimes.  Of women who had lived through the 1965 massacres, of the East Timor massacres (1975-1999) and in West Papua 1998.  The panel strongly emphasized that until the women could tell their stories it was next to impossible for them to move on.  They absolutely had to voice what they had endured and then from then on they could begin to forgive, move on, grow from what they had survived.

The story teller dancer transformed the horror stories through movement.  She instructed the women to paint with invisible coloured light of their imaginations, use their hands, feet and back as a paint brush and to my amazement they followed.  Smiles lit up eyes, and the spirit of forgotten youth brought their frames to light. Once again demonstrating that yes her and I were from radically different cultures, with radically different lives, and yet though movement we could share freedom in this moment.  Watching her passion and emotion was truly inspirational, and another testament that even though this workshop would only last three days, it was three very unique and sacred days.

At the end of the afternoon we sat together outside, drinking chai and watching the days sky turn to dusk.  Asha was a sanctuary, and compared to the “modern” and suffocating hotel I and the team members were staying in, this was paradise.  One woman joked with us that she had the worse seat in the rickshaw, and every time she fell asleep it woke her up with a violent bump. She would jump up and down in her plastic chair laughing at her morning journey.  A hundred photos were taken, hands were held, my tattoo behind my ear examined by many hands and eyes.

As our driver (who had spent the whole day waiting for us, clearly with no other work and no intention to waste petrol on an unproductive long drive home) pulled the jeep out many of the women held onto me and told me to stay.  I wanted to yet I had been invited by the team and my place tonight was still with them.  However, I realized that my intention to be a bridge for the light and love of my special community back in Bali was being tangibly constructed.  When we arrived back in the hotel I opened my email to receive a message from Cat Kabira:

What you are doing is so important and worthwhile - you know this, your soul knows this. Just in case you're still questioning, what you're doing is 1 BILLION PERCENT VALID. You're on your perfect path. You are so empowering, refreshing and inspiring to so many. Keep it up -simply by being the dedicated loving human you are.

Grateful to the women who asked me to join them here, grateful to the women who I had the honour to meet today, grateful to the women around the world who support and encourage me to keep sharing, grateful to the women who have shared their wisdom and craft with me, grateful to the women whose line I am from and whose lives were so very different from mine, grateful for all the privileges I have had and continue to have.  Grateful. 

The Practice of Witch Hunting

The sun was a dark pink as it rose this morning.  I watched it from my yoga mat on the roof top seventh floor.  The assortment of machines were still sleeping and memories of roof top yoga across India, Nepal and Palestine all came flooding back, rolled into one dusty memory of stillness amidst the madness of the day which was always seems to rise with surya. My mat was held down by random bits of metal as the morning breeze whisked dirt and non-descript smells over me.  A two hour practice through arm balances, hand stands, standing poses, twists, forward folds and mudras.  Its days like these that I am so grateful for my practice. Days like these which remind me why I not only began this journey into Yoga but also began to share it.  Pre-dawn is a magical time.  It’s my solo time to explore movement within one place, to focus, to breathe, to prepare – in silence.  Several times I caught the mechanic attempting to watch from the corner, yet he was shy and for this I was doubly thankful.

Breakfast was extravagant.  A buffet which an eager waiter walked me through.  There was enough to serve the whole of Howrah train station.  I took a plate of papaya, feeling guilty for disappointing him and guilty knowing the amount of good food wasted on those who likely had never experienced what it was to be truly hungry.

The driver arrived in his huge jeep, both vehicle and man tired from a lifetime of driving through traffic and over broken roads.  His horn was pressed for most of the journey, despite the requests from the team that it was useless.  He wasn’t taking any risks, besides it was part of the daily theme tune, which every other car, bus, bike and rickshaw orchestrated.  I smiled as Urmi chastised him for having no insurance.  The horn was his insurance.  We drove for much further than I had anticipated, through Ranchi and out the other side.  Concrete buildings turned to brick and corrugated iron which made way for open dry and dusty fields.  Tribal life came to life.  Baby goats tottered through the traffic, along with stray dogs and kamikaze pedestrians.  Eventually we turned down a partially existing road and parked outside Asha – a local organization opened a decade earlier in service of the children of migrant workers, persecuted and displaced.  Our welcome was humbling.  Two lines consisting of the Asha staff waited to give us tikka and throw rice over us. The building was beautiful.  Simple, with an open court yard and lined with potted plants and hanging baskets.  In Indian style painted in bright colours, which a friend had earlier commented was most likely chosen depending on what paint was on sale at the time of construction.

As is customary in any part of India we were given sugar saturated chai and seated down under the shade of a bael tree.  Our host explained a little of the history of Asha and his own personal involvement in our project.  Mass bonded labour is very much still alive and kicking all over Asia and here is no exception.  Smart and unscrupulous men visit rural villages.  Workers are offered a 5,000 rupee advance and are then taken to the outskirts of Kolkata to work in the coal mines, steel factories and the brick industry.  Their “advance” comes with huge interest which the workers then spend generations paying off.  The kids go along for the ride, and are often given the most dangerous jobs, yet of course child labour is illegal.  Therefore all that Asha did was visit the factories and take the children away threatening to bring in the police if the owners didn’t comply.  Initially, Asha simply provided a makeshift school inside on the factory premises and then eventually managed to move the children (around 150 so far) away from the site where they now attend local schools during the day and have a safe home with adequate food and support for eight months of the year.  When the parents return home for the wet season they are free to go.  Many of the 89 children who currently live at Asha prefer to stay at the centre all year round.  Asha’s projects have rapidly expanded and promoted by our hosts own personal story this has included work with the witch hunt.

The founder of Asha is only too aware of the social consequences of being branded as a witch.  His own grandmother had suffered such a fate.  As a result his mother grew up tormented and discriminated as the daughter of an outcast.  Now the history of witchery runs deep.  Like in all cultures around the world powerful women – medicine women, wise women, women who were considered “special” have been feared.  In England women accused of sorcery were weighted down with stones and thrown into the river.  If they floated they were innocent, if not...their fate was sealed.  Women have been burnt at the stake, hung, humiliated and taunted to death.  Here in Jharkhand five women were slaughtered on the 9^th August 2015 in five different villages.  Often stoned to death.  Often times it is because the women are widowed, disfigured, or have valuable land covered by their neighbors.  What’s more is that wizardy is still common.  Villagers with problems such as ill health or failing crops would visit the wizard for a solution.  A typical “solution” is for the wizard to describe a local woman as a scapegoat and she is then deemed responsible for the spell and a vigilante team gather and punish her.  Other women have been declared a witch if a child dies (she must have eaten it) or another member of the family.  

Although the practice is illegal the local police often fear to interfere with the wizard’s decree.  Her life will never be the same again.  Asha works both directly with the women and more importantly with the villagers to educate them on the practice and open their ideas to the immorality.  One of the social workers at Asha (a wonderful young woman from Darjeeling) explains that attitudes are hard to change.  The belief in witches is a powerful superstition: “People’s mind’s don’t change”.  However, no matter what great work we do over the next four days to uplift, inspire and support the women on their way to meet us, without a radical shift towards compassion and wisdom from their villages little in their external reality is likely to change.

I have no idea what to expect.  

 

Magic Carpet to Ranchi

The train was due to depart at 6.05am.  Now trains in India generally leave on the dot – or hours late.  I woke up at 5.45am.  I had a moment to decide to go for it, or to go back to sleep.  I throw my blanket into my bag and fly down the stairs.  Wake up the night security – an ancient man whose spirit appears to be contemplating staying in the dream state for the rest of eternity.  Eventually he rises, remembers where the keys to the front gate are and then stands completely still, for ages.  His stillness prompts him to  wake up the hotel manager just to check that I am allowed to leave.  I’m laughing inside, well aware that no amount of stress from my part is going to speed up the process – which after all was all of my own making.  

Out onto the street and all I find is empty taxi’s.  But my rucksack and gait is a great advertisement and before long a head pops up from the backseat of a cab, quickly followed by a body and then a voice, which assures me he will get me to Howrah station in time for my train, but the price is non-negotiable and I know to haggle may sacrifice my trip. He cartwheels my bag and I into the back seat, and grabs his laundry which was airing on the bonnet. The taxi transforms into a magic carpet and fly we do.  The horn is pressed the entire way.  It seems to be no concern to the driver which side of the road we are on, and I trust him fully, as he livelihood depends upon how he navigates these roads.  

We career over Howrah bridge, past the countless slums which I used to know well.  The train to Ranchi leaves from platform 10 he shouts at me, through the station doors and to the left.  As I run I pass the city of the station: Several thousand people have made this their home.  Many who once dreamed of making it to the city of Kolkata are now made to be content with making their landing pad their base. It does after all have a water supply, toilets, shelter in the monsoon and each train which arrives contains a huge supply of left over food.  The population of Howrah has even evolved its own dialect – a mix of languages from all over the country.  Once again, I give thanks to the months of work I spent both here and at Sealdah station, as otherwise in this very moment I would have been totally disorientated, perhaps overwhelmed by the chaos. 

I glance up at the clock its 6am.  I can’t believe it – or maybe I can, as I didn’t seriously doubt that I wouldn’t be on this trip.  From the moment Emil and Anouk invited me onto their “Beyond Asana” Yoga retreat which initiated this trip, I have allowed my intuition and not my rational mind to guide my journey.  This was no exception.  Urmi and the team were in coach C.  Which felt like miles down the platform.  Many other ran besides me, until eventually I found what I was looking for.  Plastered to the outside of each carriage was a list of passengers.  The remnants of the British Raj never fail to astound me.  The organization that functions under the structure of apparent mayhem, with a country dealing with 1.2 billion inhabitants, works.  It may be at times corrupt, or insufficient, but organizing huge groups of people is managed to precise details.  Other examples include the Victorian sewage systems, which were designed to cater for a small group of wealthy inhabitants and now operate well beyond capacity.  Likewise, highly inefficient paper work greets tourists through the now computerized evisa system and pops up every time you register at a hotel.  Colonial style markets populate every major city, only now they crumble under the onslaught of pollution and time.

I walk through the carriage and Urmi laughs:  “Of all the people I would worry about making it last minute, you were not one of them!”  I throw my bag into the overhead shelf and sit down.  Ready for the next adventure.  Grateful to be here. 

Right on time the train master’s whistle blows and slowly the Kriya-Yoga Express pulls out of Howrah.  These trains often hold over a thousand bodies, of varying degrees of wealth.  We were seated in an air con cabin, and waited on the entire journey by an appropriately named “Meals on Wheels” service.  Tea and digestive biscuits, were followed by omelet and toast and finally a huge vegetarian lunch with dal, tarkari, rice, roti and curd.  Finally fennel seeds to cleanse the palate were passed around upon a tray for tips.  The contrast to the station dwellers who I had just ran past was extreme as always.  Previously on these trains, the excess of food had made me collect what I could to distribute to those who were fighting starvation at whatever station I departed.  With the exception of Delhi, which had been rigorously “cleaned up” prior to the 2010 Common Wealth Games. Police equipped with large sticks would frequently sweep the station of any uninvited guests.  Similarly, it felt like a bizarre movie to stare out the window as we passed the industrial areas of Bengal.  Brick and steel factories pumped continuous dirt into the atmosphere, farmers squatted in their fields, ploughed fertile with hard dirt and garbage. Lines of freshly washed and brightly coloured saris lay out to dry on the banks of misty green rivers.  The country of contrasts.

Our destination – Ranchi in Jharkand – is in one of the tribal regions (defined as by the state as Primitive Tribal Groups) of India.  After a hard won separatist movement the state was recently formed.  The people here are darker and smaller and when we finally piled out onto the platform 7 hours later I felt like a fumbling giant.  Porters decked in long maroon shirts followed passengers, carrying huge cases onto of their heads.  Urmi searched the car park for pink coloured tuk tuks – auto-rickshaws driven by women.  After a while she gave in and we dumped ourselves and bags into a jeep, driven by a man, and this would become our vehicle for the next days.  

Arriving at the hotel was strange.  It was a fancy hotel by local standards.  Whose staff had been extremely well trained, and yet even though I appeared to be the only foreigner in the hotel, it seemed to have a distinctly colonial air. Its as if some traditions die hard, and now it’s the wealthy elite who have stepped into the Brits shoes, and at times the airs and attitudes of the other guests were extremely uncomfortable to witness.  I remembered the words of one teacher Geog Feuerstein: “The more awake you become, the more ordinary you appear”.  I seem to be continuously surrounded whether it be in Ubud or Kolkata by people who so desperately wish to be extra-ordinary.  Later in the afternoon I attempted to leave the hotel and walk around the city.  The hotel security cautioned me “not to dally”  he seemed terrified that I might wander off never to be seen again.  His concern was so great that he attempted to follow me, literally ducking behind corners whenever I turned around.  Eventually I gave in, returned to the confines of the concrete block and instead searched for some internal space…I found it seven floors up.  On the hotel roof.  A ramshackle collection of machines grunted and churned, I rolled my yoga mat out and to the amazement of the mechanic, dived into a three hour practice.

During the evening meal the collection of women who had invited me here all discussed their experiences of being a woman in India.  Stories of waking up at 5.30am every day for no other reason than to pay the milkman because the family had always had fresh milk, to be considered a rebel for exchanging a sari for a salwar khameez (long shirt and pants), or the wonderful tale from our ceramic artist of how she had began study as a scientist but the call to be an artist was simply too strong to ignore.  As it is in many parts of the world, value is given to certain profession and Art rarely one of them.  She explained that her friends and family used to associated artists with hippies and drugs. Yet she was fortunate in that she had the approval of her father and also the financial support of her husband’s family.  These two dominant parts of her life gave her permission to follow her passion.  The conversation, the hotel, the lack of room to roam without questions, made me feel like a wild animal trapped in a different life.  My ferocious independence, embodied free will and Aquarius ways reflects that right here right now I am indeed a different creature.  A creature that simply cannot fit under the label, stereotype and role of “woman”.