Last Lumps

Lumps in my throat

washing last pants in the sink,

remembering the friends,

sipping last mango drink.

Lumps in my throat

booking last room in Bombay,

remembering the views

using last rupees to pay.

Lumps in my throat

Writing last posts for the blog

remembering the towns

breathing last exhaust smog

Lumps in my throat

Buying last bits and bobs

remembering the journeys

doing home-going jobs

Lumps in my throat

Eating last street samosa

Remembering the food

Scoffing just one last dosa

Lumps in my throat

Feeling oddly alone,

remembering Britain,

and thinking of home…

What does INDIA stand for?

Auto drivers with the exception of a welcome few like Ashok and Shakeer can come over as plain sleazy or try your patience trying to get inflated rates or commissions out of you, however, today my driver really made me smile when he said,

“So you’re at the end of your trip to our Incredible India, then you must know what India stands for?”

“No, I don’t know, what does India stand for?” I replied

“I’ll Never Do It Again!!!”

Oh how I laughed as I dragged my bags back up the steep alley way through the monkey poo to Hotel Kumbha Palace where I immediately opened all of the windows in my old room, switched on the fan and poured out that trippy Vipassana mnemonic poem, inspired by the punch line of the first joke I have heard in months.

(Incidentally, I thought I would have more to say about that course, I wanted to share: how wonderful it was to be living in the forest with Langur, chipmonks, peacocks and a mongoose who were barely afraid of the meditators’ presence, how in our silent breaks we observed these animals and what a unique thrill it was to be so directly entwined with them whilst in such a perceptive mental state.  The thing is, it was all so deep that I just came out with that very serious piece for which I feel almost apologetic, but as that is what came out and as some things are probably best kept within, I am going to leave it at that.)

…but that joke has got me thinking …would I do it again?

There is so much more to see, I am a mountain lover who has not set foot in the Himalaya, there are those fascinating but time-draining North East states, and due to an unconfirmed train ticket I never even made the Punjab, in fact India for me India stands for I’ll Never Discover It All.

Cheshire Girl sporting £4000 shawl and obligatory sweat

I have learned so much about myself, about humanity and I have at the same time become a lover of this country and of my own.  I think I have always faced a strange barrier in terms of accepting who I am and where I am from but that barrier has been breached and I entirely appreciate the fact that I am a Cheshire girl with the good fortune of having spent the last 6 years living in beautiful Shropshire/Powys. 

I dislike using “never” but I doubt that I would do it again, the itch I always had to do this big trip has been scratched and I am excited about returning to the UK on Wednesday, about discovering where life will take me next and about focussing on what matters now that this Thinking Space has helped me make Living Room.

Hopefully Speaking

Over the last couple of weeks, Blogspot has been publishing almost a poem a day whilst I was away on another Vipassana meditation intensive.  I found early May in India just too hot to sight see so I stopped feeling bad about not doing it and sat under various fans and even by a pool, thoroughly enjoying writing my final splurge of Thinking Space poetry, which I hope you've enjoyed.

If I have survived Vipassana, then today (24th May) I will be in possession of a fully cleansed mind and engaged in noble chatting.  I will leave the Dhamma Thali centre tomorrow, Udaipur bound from where I hope to be back in touch to completely wrap up this Thinking Space.

Metta

Vee Double You Zed (Brilliant things about Blighty 5)

Our letter zed

is their letter jed

your letter zee

they teach as jee

Our sound wuh

They say as vuh

and our letter vee

is always said wee.

I have Jeero verk left

To put on this blog

so I'll be back with you

post weepassana slog...

Frankness (Brilliant things about Blighty 4)

Aids is a killer

A serious truth

So steady your tiller

And deal with the proof

Its sex that does spread it

Not holding a hand

This is not the place

for your prudence to stand

You need to be open

About things like these

or be over-run by

This SEXUAL disease

 

 

 

Photos coutesey of the lovely Zimbabwe Frances my Gujarati SMS pal - thank you!

Saying No (Brilliant things about Blighty 3)

When we mean no

We say no.

If we don’t know

We say so.

If you don’t know

You Smile

So I don’t know

When you mean no.

If you mean no

your head’s in motion

forgive us but

We take the notion

That you know

But you don’t know

or just mean no

…And we’re confused

Price Tags (Brilliant things about Blighty 2)

Oh to thee the price tag

I must express my thanks

Behind you there’s economy

Supply, demand and banks. 

Now what you represent to me

goes way beyond the deal

You save me from the prejudice

That makes them want to steal.

Their government charges foreigners

near on ten times the price

which then throws down the gauntlet,

for rip-off scams and vice. 

They fight to catch a backpack

as it clambers of the bus

‘cause they’ll charge triple rupees

hoping we won’t make a fuss

They show a sign that says “fixed price”

To lull us into staying

Then make up what the hell they want

For us to soon be paying

They smile as we approach the stall

And pick out grapes and mango

Then fix fictitious kilo rates

In quite the price Fandango  

Oh to thee the price tag

I must express my thanks

Behind you there’s economy

Supply, demand and banks.

Working Women (Brilliant things about Blighty 1)

I’d like to buy my bras from you

Not from the sales men

I’d like to hand my smalls to you

for laundry not to them

I’d like you in the pharmacy

When miming that it hurts to pee

I’d prefer not to be measured by

Another touchy feely guy

I’d rather have you serving food

Than be drooled over by a dude

who thinks that coz I’ve got white skin

I clearly want to sleep with him.

Consider this, my parting plea

and step out of your reverie

and into work you’re needed there

for more than merely cutting hair!

The Brilliant Stuff about Blighty Series

Of course there are always things that people miss when they go away for any amount of time, I used to miss everyday comforts like my sofa during my endless weeks of working away.  In the beginning of this trip, it was all so exciting and new that I didn’t miss much, mainly Haribo and Dairy Milk, simple luxuries so easily taken for granted.  As the weeks became months being without western luxuries became my norm and I began to miss the “doing” things.  I’ve missed Cooking primarily but also riding bikes and horses, walking fast in beautiful countryside and being entertained through performance.  I still miss these things, the thought of soon being able to do them again fills me with a very innocent excitement but a range of more subtle and quite random misses have emerged driven largely by what I, as a Brit by creed and culture, perceive as uncomfortable differences between UK and Indian society.  I have captured some of these in the following collection of poems…

Please click this link to Like "Mostly Brilliant" on Facebook

 - the totally British Sarah and Morag, creators of this lovely cushion and lots of other lovely things x

Done Going Native

I eat with my hands

when there’s no spoon or fork

The pavement’s a sewer

so the road’s where I walk

I ask bus conductors

to shout out my stop

I don’t go in taxis,

in markets I shop.

I bum-wipe with water

it feels way more fresh

I know my Madhya

from Andra Pradesh

I listen to Rahman

On cheap MP3s

a sari’s extreme

but I’m shalwar cameez

I dodge wearing bindi

and henna and stuff

I’m through speaking Hindi

I’m done, had enough

23:13 Bikaner

Stood on the roof

hot wind pushing hair horizontal

plastering pajamas to my side,

I watched them dance below,

two hundred movers

between carts of booming bangra.

The dust storm forked lightening

on the desert edge of town,

forcing its quarry into my eyes,

stinging my pores

Sepia-ising the street uprising.

Frenetic beat and shrieking brass

reverbed against my villa view

and fortress walls

electrified dust enough

to put hairs on ends

in lesser winds

Quite magical then,

the moment when

I first felt

that I was alone.

Indian Beef 3 - Horned Beef

On her altar lays my ear,

I’ve sacrificed the range I hear

for India,

whose horns of air

I can’t compare.

For on our sterile continent

Their use’d be judged incompetent,

and their force reduced to inconsequence

…replaced by silent lights.

Indian Beef 2 - Price Cutlet

I associate

negotiate

with work

where it’s appropriate.

But here they don’t capitulate

Unless you re-negotiate

And after thirteen weeks and eight

I find it tends to aggravate

When I must play negotiate

For every grape and fig n date

Indian Beef 1 - Waste Fill it

A staunch and proud “community”

Believer in “the family”

Knocks our “individuality”

Yet each of you is squeaky clean

In amongst your shit.

Where’s that sense of unity?

When kids are wading through debris?

Do you even bloody see…

That lane is not a pisserie,

A crapperie, nor repository

for all that you may cast?

We may not talk and dance and mate

with our neighbours,

…but we do share fate,

and litter not upon their street

nor spit upon their sandaled feet.

3 Cuts of Indian Beef

Not wanting to constantly moan about India, as so many blogs do, and conscious of what she has been giving, I have been careful to remain complimentary of this country.  It is, however, very hard travelling here, especially outside of the tourist zones which is where I have spent most of the last 6 months.  It has been more endurance than holiday, I have often lay on a bed in a dingy room wondering what the hell I was doing here toughing out the squalor, washing in water that’s smells of sewage, being covered up and unable to tan despite sunshine, having little privacy, having to publically pee on shitty concrete slabs (incidentally I think that’s why the ladies wear an underskirt under their sari …helps with splash-back), being ripped off at nearly every first exchange, being stared at uncomfortably and subjected to horrific levels of continual noise.  So it would be unbalanced if I failed to have a beef about a few things…

Zippedy blue dah, zippety day!

 Wandering and zipping in the Blue city...

(There is a cool video on Facebook of this but I can't seem to get video onto blogspot)

...and sheltering from her heat at the Yogi Guesthouse

(thank you for the recommendation Laura from Kent!)

Sweating out Grumpistan

Rajasthan has some outstanding sights but in and around them, the tourist mayhem is not what I associate with my time in this incredible country.  I have found wonderful corners of this country where you need to be a bit Indian yourself in order to survive and those are the places I have loved.  Here in Pushkar, I can’t even find an Indian restaurant and although it’s homely to eat an overpriced salad, surely these guys want to try something local that doesn’t have “(mild)” next its place on the menu between pizza and pancake?  I am having the Hampi feeling again, it worries me that I have become a travel hermit, or worse, a backpacking snob!  Couple this feeling with managing weightwatchers points (its coming off because I need to get into my home clothes!) in the constantly 40+ temperatures that India is now churning out daily and it leaves me on the brink of grumpiness.

Hot, tired, confined and ever so slightly
grumpy in my sleeper bus compartment

Oh and did I say confined
...or GREY for that matter ..I'm shocked!

Once the sight I am in town to see has been hastily photographed, I retreat beneath a fan somewhere with wifi (a Rajathani bonus), dreaming of icy chicku¹ milkshake as I force down one of the 4 bottles of water I am consuming a day …interestingly I don’t visit the bathroom any more regularly than when I was on 2-3 bottles a day so I am effectively sweating more than a litre daily.  A lot of the sweat that I notice comes from really unusual places such as elbow pits.  If I open my toes, I can feel the inter-toe sweat evaporate as the fan whirls and every plastic chair I sit upon induces prolific back sweat.  Should even a finger of unclothed skin touch unclothed skin, moisture blooms.  Facial sweat is about the same as when it was ordinarily hot although top lip sweat does seem to have increased.

All of these factors have led me to sign up for another Vipassana course, smack bang in the middle of this roasting state.  Not only will it alleviate my burgeoning boredom with the tourist scene, it will refocus me on what matters, the many personal insights I have gained, and re-instill some (rather too much) self discipline and routine before I return.  As well as deserving a medal when I achieve another solitary 10 days inside my mind, I will treat myself to spending my last 3 nights back in Hotel Kumbha Palace, Udaipur before flying back to Mumbai to maximise my 40Kg baggage allowance and catch the flight home.

I will be entirely out of contact from 14th to 24^th May and if anyone wants to know what this is all about, go back to my January posts and read The pain of Vipassana followed by The Pleasures of Vipassana.  My ten days in May will be very similar, however, as an “Old Student” I will spend more time in my pagoda cell and will not get the little evening snack that the New Students receive …good for weight loss I-know-not-what for the mind!

¹ Chicku is a fresh fig-like fruit.  It peels like a kiwi, tastes of fruity caramel and has the texture of pair.  I ate a lot of Chicku until I got to Rajasthan where they unfortunately don’t seem to be in season.

Early and Almost Empty ...The Taj Mahal

 

Therapy for Agraphobia

From recent photos you may have noticed a penchant developing for inlaid marble, a technique of insetting semi-precious stones into fine marble, used to adorn Rajasthani palaces and fancy bars. This predilection asserted itself in the form of a need to shop as my gaze fell upon the little storefronts of the marble-craft area of Taj-ganj, Agra between the station and the hotel.  And it was with this rather fanciful excitement that I set out to buy myself a marble plate. Agra is probably the worst place, however, to go shopping. It is in Uttar Pradesh, just like Kajuraho and Varanassi where the hassle factor was verging on unbearable in the first leg of my trip.  I did not want to be in this town and I was only staying 24hours, "doing the Taj" and shipping out.  Being home to the one of the wonders of the world, Agra has the potential to be even worse than UP's other tourist towns but with wealthy tour-group tourists kept out of the old town in their ivory towers, I was able to sneak out into craftsman territory and get to the very source of this marvellous artistry.

Having wandered the streets, ignoring touts and shopkeepers using the i-pod method I selected a dusty shop-front with signs of industry around its edges and started to look at small trays and plates within.  They were very attractive and so, surprisingly, were their first prices.  Once I had established that I knew my alabaster and soap stone from my marble, I moved the shopkeeper up to showing me his plates and platters.

There was a platter in a cabinet that called my name, its mother of pearl inlay glistening from its intricate black marble cage.  I asked to see it, I gave it a lingering touch and returned it to the shopkeeper telling him it was just too heavy for me to carry, but beautiful nevertheless.  I think the men in the shop were by this point wondering if I was ever going to part with any cash but they seemed to be enjoying my interest and passion for their art and asked if I would like to see their workshop.  So out of the back of the shop we went, passing through a very dusty storage area where I spotted an gorgeous 4x8 dining table-top adorned with peacocks and parrots in true William Morris fashion.  After a few questions about the impact that red wine spillages may have on it and being assured that they would wash off and not stain it, I was suitably impressed and we went through the courtyard, through the house and up onto the roof where several men were cutting tiny pieces of beautifully shaped and coloured stone and mapping out designs on marble of all shapes and sizes.

We were all chatting comfortably by now so on my way back to the shop I asked them to dust off some of the table tops in the store room for a better look.  Having figured that prices ranged from about 200 to 550 pounds, little murmers of “I can afford this”, “that’s just the price of a few horse rugs” and “you never spend anything on furniture” began to creep in.  I kept the thoughts at bay, pushing them down with a strength of mind honed by Vipassana.  That was until one table was moved and a black Octagonal one revealed.  Not only black, but inlaid with mother of pearl twice as intricate as the talking platter had been and juxtaposed with turquoise …my favourite stone.  It was, for me at least, exquisite.

Fortunately I had been asking how much lots of things were and when I was given the price of this piece, which was a tad higher than some of its similarly-sized neighbours due to the level of workmanship, the murmurs were back and they stayed.  I called for the reinforcement of my work-head and set to work, disseminating packaging charges, keeping them warm but not biting, demonstrating my knowledge of India-UK postal charges, taking apart their initial quotes to ship this exquisite beauty to the UK and then, with much chai, calculator pummeling and displays of how outstanding their “pack man” was, we had a deal.  I went off on a motorbike with the owner to one of the very fancy showrooms they supply to use the debit card facilities and hey presto I was the owner of possibly the most beautiful material item I have ever and might ever own.  Incidentally this has to be a joy of single-life because it was my decision, I spent all that money and it didn’t matter if anybody else liked it!

I took my leave after one of their craftsmen had come down and given my table top a thorough polishing and popped back for a celebratory beer on my hotel roof while the sun set over the Taj Mahal (not something you get to do every day, even in India!).  I returned to the craft quarter at 7pm to meet the “pack man” who in the meanwhile had made a huge, strong box from 2cm thick fluted plastic board encasing a made to measure foam cradle.  I watched the packing then sat down with the courier and did the paperwork before watching my gigantic blue box get squeezed into an auto rickshaw and put-put away.  I know buying and selling, I know packing and shipping and everything was tickety-boo but as always in India I had to supress my fear about it all ending terribly and trust in her chaotic way-of-being to carry my sovereign souvenir back to the security of Cheshire.