don't worry, i haven't joined a cult, although my new nickname is swami natalie-ananda... uh oh

i arrive at sivananda ashram late-ish at night, just in time for evening satsang. i enter the hall and am immediately struck by the humungous, illuminated om symbol at the front of the room. i sit amongst the congregation of people swathed in various diaphanous (sp?) pieces of cloth. a thin white zimbabwean swami enters the hall clothed all in orange. we mediatate. and then we begin to chant. and then we chant some more. and then we chant to conclude the chanting. i sit there and my mind goes: o shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, what have i gotten myself into?

first impressions are often deceiving. i now attend two additional optional chanting sessions everyday. two meals a day. two asana classes a day. i prostrate. i sing. i go to puja. and yes kerria, i do catch myself singing about jaya genesha all the live long day. we can hang out some day and have an om namo narayanya ho down. anyway, my course has finished and yet i'm still here.... everyone has moved on except me and an israeli boy named asaf. a new crew is pouring in, refreshing this little world as monsoon refreshes the rest of the country. i can almost do a headstand. i can do the crow. i'll be here a little longer. i'll be in india a little longer. extend your back, extend your trip, roll your vertabrae gently up on top of each other, one at a time, roll through your days one at a time. another week at the ashram. i'll let y'all know.

John Tesh- always good for a chuckle

"I have the exact words you should be saying to your partner to get closer."

- John Tesh

The world just wouldn't be the same without John Tesh.

dc

For those of you who don't know dc, he's a genius madman who i love for sending gems like this, no ornamentation, no gimmicks, straight into my email inbox. shazam! you're a good man, mr. coats.

so my time is up in cochin. a pleasant place but with an unfortunate abundance of roadkill. why here more than other places? i don't get it, because the streets are comparatively quiet... no one should ever have to se dead kittens. really, it sucks. also, there's an unfortunate reek of dead sea life here due to the large chinese fishing nets set up along promenade. while extremely cool structures in and of themselves, resembling humungous creepy witch's hands operated by four men, one must remember that each and every one of these is an apparatus of evil. and besides, even if you DO like to eat dead creatures, the water here is the sludgiest, dirtiest, most industrially contaminated that i have ever seen. would YOU want to eat something that had to live in that? nope. me either. and yet fat white people seem to drop rupees like they're on fire whenever they saunter past a fish stand.

despite these sad facts, cochin remains a nice city for wandering through, which for me lead to getting lost every damn day in the muslim district but always somehow finding my way out. "hmm, ok, when i started the sun was on my left hand side so if i turn down this alleyway...hmm..." i hence discovered 5 or 6 seperate mosques. a little smelling tour through the spice markets was pleasing, culminating in the viewing of a synagogue which seems as out of place here as i do. and i saw the world's largest varpu. yah, that's right, be jealous! suckers, no varpu for you. i went to se some kathakali dance, which was depressingly shortened for us loser tourists, but really interesting to see. i wish i could see a real 8 hour performance but i don't think it's likely to happen. today i went to a neighbouring island purely because riding the ferry boats are fun. 25 rupee thali every day can't be beat. also, my medical insurance claim from two months ago is finally settled. i danced about in my hotel room for a brief period of time after hearing that happy news. so all in all, nothing profound to report, but life is good.

headin' to the ashram. headin' to the ashram'. gonna get my meditate on. yeeeah.

would you like some sex with your bananas, madame?

calling all ladies! feel like your social life needs a bit of a pick me up? look no further than the resplendent isle! i wish that i had known this BEFORE heading to southern sri lanka...

apparently, lots of solo women flock to the o-so-beautiful southern beaches in order to get some sweet sweet lovin', which is happily provided. now, mahesha had warned me about this (he called the willing young lads beach boys) but i thought he was being hyperbolic. nope. pretty much every young man (and some old- creepy tourist information place man- ewww) had something to offer. and we're not talking the indian-style grab-and- go type of harrassment. we're talking dinner dates, offers of drinks, free drugs, romantic walks on the beach. of course some were more blunt, such as the fruit vendor who, after i purchased some delicious mangosteens, handed me my bag and asked "would you like sex, madame?" i started laughing then, really hard, which was probably rude but i couldn't help myself. anyway... i SOMEHOW managed to restrain myself from taking a beautiful, lithe young sinhalese man home to bed with me every night. good god.

i can't say too much to sum up my sri lanka experience. why did so many people ask for some of my water and then giggle a lot after drinking some? mystery mystery... i only visited one buddhist temple... a beautiful country with many problems, but it didn't touch me as deeply as other places have. maybe because i always felt my return to india singing happily along in my heart. i will always treasure meeting mahesha and the perspective he gave me on the country, this much is true. also, i loved that there were women out in the open in sri lanka and that many of them talked to me; travelling, working and having fun, unlike in india where they slink along like multi-coloured shadows. and sri lankan men? there's apparently a saying here: when the water pot is half empty it makes a lot of sloshing sounds when you carry it, when the water pot is full it makes no sound. unfortunately, most men in sri lanka are half-full water pots. or, more simply, to quote mahesha: "sri lankan men's brains don't work very well."

lordy lordy have the last few days been unusual. i headed back into colombo the day before my flight and ran a bunch of errands. o yah, and spent two hours stroking things in a store that sells hand-woven, hand-dyed textiles... but let's not discuss that. then, because i didn't want to spend 400 rupees on a hotel and then 1200 rupees on an autorickshaw to the airport i decided to take the public bus (hell! hell! hell!), which costs 25 rupees, and sleep at the airport! i arrived 12.5 hours before my flight, "slept" lightly on top of my backpack until 4 am when i was allowed to check in, wandered around like a zombie in the duty free shops (brains! brains! overpriced brains! mmmmm....), debated getting drunk on cheap liquor, and then finally boarded for my flight at 7 am. i couldn't help but think that eben wouldn't have put up with such foolishness and would have come up with a much better solution. o eben, how competant thou are! my way worked, and that made me feel real grown up cuz i did it myself, but of course it had to be in a ridiculous, chaotic natalie style.

and how is india? land of bum-butting cows, head-smacking saddhus and baneful pariah dogs. well, i was welcomed back by a general strike over oil prices meaning that everything was closed. i hadn't eaten since breakfast the previous day, thinking, "don't waste money on airport food, wait for the delights of trivandrum", (there's a great restaurant there). not so much. i finally scrounged up some dosas and other items in and around the train station.

i left trivandrum for the 3rd time in a month and headed for cochin today, which seems interesting but its story has not yet been told.

before i depart i must make a call for addresses! i don't know where anyone is living anymore and hence cannot send you happy little post cards. o, and mini, my email address is thenatmaster@gmail.com. use it. word.

ramblings from the girl with a tomato face and honey-making hair

maybe NWA had it right all along???

let me take a minute now to talk about men with guns. now, in canada my dealings with police and military were pretty uncommon and rarely deviated from me serving them some sort of delicious baked treat. in contrast, while travelling in asia, i see men with very snazzy uniforms and large guns pretty much everyday. sometimes they're just hangin' out, sometimes checkin' my passport, sometimes searching buses, sometimes telling me not to walk somewhere, sometimes driving me to the outskirts of bangkok to find my camera, sometimes yelling at me for photographing them (ok, that was stupid... but i forgot that you're not supposed to!), sometimes searching me and eben's bags on the train for no reason, sometimes incompetently pretending to investigate eben's money loss, sometimes beating a guy with a baton for bothering me for money (i will elaborate on this soon)... and god knows what else. anyway, let me just say this: beaurocracy and weapons should not mix! but let us move along, shall we?

so i left eben in kandy and headed to a hill town called ella. the train was like a magical fairy ride through cloud forest, passing fields of wild orchids and misty tea plantations. i spent the first part of the trip seated next to a stupid young man who wanted to follow me to ella but i ditched him and ended up sitting in the train guard's room with a better view through the open doors than anyone gets in first class compartments! lovely.

ella itself is tiny but i arrived at a very busy time. there was a huge celebration going on for a new buddha they had built and were just about to "open" (paint on) the eyes. it was a very happy time marked by a constant flow of white clad pilgrims and loudspeakers blaring buddhist music outside of my hotel room 24 hours a day. between intermittent checks on the new buddha i wandered around in the hills and tea plantations for two days. i climbed a mountain from which you can see the hills spilling down all the way to the ocean. on the top i encountered two sri lankan boys and although they spoke no english we managed to jam together (harmonica: natalie rogers, vocals and rock hit with sticks: random sri lankan kids). on the way down i encountered a tea plantation worker who decided to be my unwanted guide (this happens often)... anyway, long story short, someone told me that i should inform the police about him because he might trouble other people. stupidly i did. the police made me march back to the mountain in the pitch dark to help them find the guy. they brought him back to the police station where the chief of police hit him with a baton and locked him up for the night! i freaked out and screamed at the chief of police but he just did not understand my anger! i went back in the morning and demanded they release the guy (he was only annoying, not at all dangerous!). they did, but the police chief still thought everything was great, justice served. it was horrible. i decided that i should probably leave town that day. as i waited for the bus, many tiny bees attacked my head trying to make some delicious hair honey. i took this as a good sign that i was leaving.

the bus bumped me down to the south coast in a matter of a few hours. as we got towards the beach, my stomach turned into a gigantic knot. rows and rows of destroyed, abandonned buildings gave ample evidence to the many lives lost and ruined by the tsunami. i went to a small place called tangalla, hoping for some relaxation after the police problems in the hills. no dice.

the tsunami, tiger trouble and the fact that it was off-season made the place a ghost town. my arrival was big news- there's a traveller (!) and it's a woman (!!) and she's alone (!!!). i had not been in town 5 hours before a fight for my love broke out between some local men. despite the stupidity of that situation, lots of good came out of it.

i was helped by a 20 year old guy named Mahesh who works at one of the hotels in high season. there he works 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for four months and makes $50 american dollars for the whole shebang. after high season, there's nothing for the rest of the year. this is considered a good job. he invited me to his house and there you can see a stain, about neck height, where the tsunami water reached. the place has two rooms and a kitchen shared by him, his grandparents, mother, sister, her husband and his 4 year old cousin. the place is a constant whir of noise and activity. i only spent a few days with mahesh, getting burnt on the beach and eating his grandmama's delicious dahl, but it was fantastic. o and here's a surprise! he's a vegan! he didn't even know that there was a word for it, he just made this decision after seeing all of the animals suffer and die during the tsunami. what a crazy kid. i had to leave today because he was getting way to attached to me and telling me that he loves me. i don't doubt his sincerity, but i know he is just confused. i'm a link to a world totally inaccessible to him right now. he wants to move to europe but has no idea how. he told me that he loves sri lanka but he hates sri lanka people. he hates the government, hates the police and hates that there is always trouble. we spent most of our time playing in the ocean, bittersweet activity for him, as he loves the ocean but cannot see it without remembering tsunami time.

i'm in galle now, feeling a little happy, a little sad.