we be gettin down with the Ganga

it's time to lose my shoes
it's time to bump and cruise
through the swaying crowd
the bright and proud
and fight myself a place
cuz we be gettin down with the Ganga

there's mamas and their babies
old men well past their eighties
there's saddhus and there's arahants
there's young men wearing such tight pants
we're clinging to the brown and muddy shore
cuz we be gettin down with the Ganga

the music starts to trickle run then surge
it's a holy frantic urge
mighty river bhajans
and so i'm clapping my hands
singin om hari om hari om
cuz we be gettin down with the Ganga

a clap is just a brief prayer
it hangs a moment there
a prayer is just a long and silent clap
so get those hands up off your lap
keep the beat and pray
cuz we be gettin down with the Ganga (with no delay)

in falling dark my feet get cold
i feel the current taking hold
i'm washing out my mouth and eyes
washing off my dreams and sighs
i want to speak an see the truth
cuz we be gettin down with the Ganga

whimsy gone too far...

there's about 2500 km between me and my last blog entry. i took a train straight from chennai, tamil nadu up to dehra dun, uttaranchal. spent a few hours wandering dehra dun looking for a cheap place to stay, starting at about 6 am, decided that it was a stupid city filled with indian-only hotels and capped my 47 hour train ride with a 1.5 hour busride to..... RISHIKESH!!!! yahoo- back in the town i already spent too much time in when eben had crawlies in his gut (and the rest of our bowels were responding in sympathy). and yet, in this tourist laden hell hole, you will never guess what has arrived on the scene:

(seriously, prepare yourselves)

INDIAN PEOPLE! no way! yes, it's true. all the whiteys are gone and the town is run amok with indian pilgrims and more crazy saddhus than you can shake a stick at, although they will all certainly shake their sticks at you, OM HARI MADAME!!!!!

anyway, i'm here to go on a trek that is only accessible for 3 months of the year... yep. 2500 km to see some flowers in a valley... i am so sleepy and sore.... i won't talk about that now and will instead answer some of your questions.

first, to the anonymous blogposter:

can i turn myself into a pretzel and do i have a new spiritual name? i assume that the pretzel question was about yoga, but at the moment (still haven't slept since getting woken at 3 on the train!!!) i feel that my spine may in fact be getting deformed from indian transportation. really. i was on a bus today that reminded me waaaaay to much of those horrible haunted houses they have at carnivals where you ride in a little car and bump your knees, wrench your back and then a smelly "witch" pops out... but the yoga is beautiful and so are you! i may have a spiritual name but i do not feel i can disclose that right now.... mainly cuz it makes me feel way too new-agey to even discuss this matter.

my hair? about an inch long, but it's quite uneven because i did it myself. i don't have any idea what the back looks like. picture a cross between delightful pixy and filthy calcutta street urchin.

when am i returning home? october 25th.

and dave asked:

1. would you rather see dylan or donovan in concert? this is tough. i've already seen bob twice... devil you know or devil you don't? i guess i'd still have to say dylan, but mainly on default cuz eben would probably be there and i'm missing my curly haired friend a bit right now...

2.If, when you come back to Canada, I were to give you a hug and as a welcome home gift hand you an envelope containing a key to a locker at the airport, would you actually go see what was in the locker? i think that this is pretty obvious....of course! i hope that it would be the start of a scavenger hunt.... those are so great! and if it was something crappy then i could hold it over dave's head and say all sorts of wicked things to him and then send embarassing things to his parent's address under his name (the fool gave me his address! again! knowing what i've already done with that knowledge in the past...)

and now my questions for you all:

i wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? o wait... that was ccr's question...

ok- seriously. india is a land of smells. i've never noticed my nose so much as i do here. i know that for the rest of my life the smell of human urine baking on hot concrete will be able to transport me heart and soul back to india. so, what is a smell that you can never forget?

second question: why does music have such a tremendous capacity to make things more beautiful?

q and a

i'm goin' up to the north
i've got to go
i'm goin' up to the north
i've got to go
i'm goin' up to the north
i've got to go
a way up beyond the moon

my good friend mr. coats suggested that i should do some question and answer with my blog. i thought, why not give it a try. so, any questions? anything you'd rather hear about than my usual babble? i'll try to think of some questions for you guys too!

do lord o do lord o do remember me
do lord o do lord o do remember me
do lord o do lord o do remember me
a way up beyond the moon

poo la la

it smells like urine, they're speaking french.... but pondicherry sure aint paris!

i've been trying to indulge in continental delights. coffee, pasta, wine, beer, french bread... but it's just not working out. instead i'm living the clean life, yoga every day, eating sattvic food at the sri aurobindo ashram dining hall (60 cents a day for a meal voucher that gets you breakfast, lunch and dinner- brown rice, brown bread, fruit and fresh veggies, mmmm!) and generally being healthy and well-balanced. i came here thinking that having something fancy for once would be fabulous but, now that i'm here, none of it seems so appealing....what gives?

am i changing?

when i re-entered india from sri lanka they didn't belive that my passport was mine. it took two people to confirm and even then it was based mostly around the lip ring (or so i guess from the grotesque expressions and lip-pulling they did). when i showed people at the ashram my passport and driver's license they didn't believe it was me. they asked what happened to my long hair and "chubby" cheeks. it's a little disconcerting. i wonder what they'd think now, as i just cut my hair off again, even shorter than last time...

does anyone remember when i first met jarrad and didn't like him because he was reading an economics textbook, barefoot under a tree? well, jarry, yesterday i sat in the park, barefoot under a tree and read pedagogy of the oppressed. but you're still a pretentious bastard. hmrah.

tomorrow i am going to the community of the future to view their resplendent geodesic dome. i'll let you know.

too many tamil buses later...

as usual, i've done so much and don't know what i can cram in here before you all start gazing off into space, picking your toenails and thinking "what is she babbling about...gawwwwd this is boring". shall i try though? OUI!

madurai: so glad that i got diverted there on my way to rameswaram. i waited until night time to visit the temple, a little afraid to go in. the meenakshi temple is huge, forcing the rest of the city to stream around it like a rock diverting the water in a river. as i walked about in the labyrinthine corridors i encountered thousands of images, shrines pouring over with kum kum, sandlewood paste, ashes... two elephants were wandering around, painted and dressed, offering blessings to those with rupees in hand. from the shadows emerged an ox, painted and bejewelled, getting pats from the hyperactive devotees scurrying from altar to altar. at one point a giant silver horse appeared though i'm not sure why... then 6 very sweaty men arrived on the scene carrying a golden litter, transportation of choice for the image of lord shiva. every night they take him to the sanctum where meenakshi, his wife, stays so that they can spend the night together. apparently, every friday they take both statues out, put them on a giant swing and swing them and sing for hours. bats skim your hair. for a split second i saw a tiny owl in the shadows, and then he disappered into the dreamlike chaos.

rameswaram: spent 2 days in bed, aching and sweating with a ridiculously high fever. this of course led me to believe that i had malaria, typhoid and cholera ALL AT THE SAME TIME. it left as mysteriously as it came. i took 22 purifying baths at the temple, which is the spiritual equivalent of bathing in the ganges at varanasi. 6 a.m., start off in the bay of bengal, get 22 buckets of water poured over my head in the temple at various locations , toddle back the 2 km to my guesthouse, soaked through and through. it's like a scavenger hunt but instead of clues you just get another bucket of ice cold water thrown on you at each location... i was so pruny! i also spent half a day on adam's bridge, the place where either a) rama and hanuman built the bridge to lanka to rescue sita or b) adam crossed when cast out of eden. nothing but a finger of sand jutting out into the water for as far as you can see, no beginning or end in sight. a few ruined buildings, some villages that are fighting a losing battle with the dunes of blowing sand... i got a ride back on a navy transport truck that was taking a load of sri lankan refugees to the mainland.

tanjore: now THAT'S what i call a linga!

i'm now in pondicherry, former french capital in india. it's hot but the living is easy.

and now lastly, there are too damn many of you born around this time so all you get is: HAPPY BIRTHDAY dadoo, dave, matt, eben, kamira bo bira... is that it? it better be!

caution: indian vocabulary used excessively and without explanation

"I am writing this at the cape, in front of the sea,

where 3 waters meet and furnish a sight unequalled in the world.

For this is no port of call for vessels.

Like the Goddess, the waters around are virgin."

Gandhiji 15-1-1937

you know you've been in india too long when you start quoting gandhi.... yikes. also, my use of the quote is slightly misleading, as it describes kanyakumari, which i just left today. but hey, cut me some slack, all you cynics!

so yes, i have left sweet sweet sivananda ashram behind me in a trail of glory. my last day there we all went to a ceremony at a local temple where they were installing a new image of kali. there was a good deal of ululation, circumambulation, water throwing, flower throwing, pushing, shoving, explosions, red mud squelched between my toes (plenty upon everyone's sunday best clothing as well), all accompanied by two music sources playing simultaneously. what else would one expect? and it was all finished with a lovely cup of delicious miscellaneous sweet goo given as prasad. (god, i miss prasad! we used to get it at least twice a day at the asram....)

the next day a group of us went to kanyakumari and there i remained. i stood up to my pastey white knees in the indian ocean, bay of bengal and the arabian sea all at the same time while a beautiful wind blew my hair into my face and my dupatta into everyone else's faces. between cameo appearances in MANY indian tourists' holiday snaps i could feel the power of the place where swami vivekenanda attained enlightenment and gandhi's ashes were scattered. open blue ocean as far as the eye could see, the point where even india can't go any further. i said goodbye to my ashram friends at the suchindram temple, a glorious huge temple with an undeniable spiritual potency. we got to play musical stone pillars, each with a different note, and also watched some priests smear a good quantity of butter on the tail of a massive hanuman statue (to soothe it after ravanna lit on fire of course!). the darshan was an explosion of energy that left all of us amazingly abuzz even after such a long day. everyone tried to kidnap me back with them to the ashram but i told them that it was time i had to fly off (i've got to go/i've got to go/ faith is an island in the setting sun...?).

there on the tip of india i stayed at vivekenanda kendra, the sorta ashramy thing set up in memory of swami vivekenanda. for those who don't know, vivekenanda is famous for mobilising national and religious unity in india and proudly showcasing the spiritual wonders of india to the world (in a nutshell). the next day i went to an exhibit at v.k. about environmental activism based around traditional indian ways of life. there were displays of low-cost, eco-friendly buildings, herbal gardens, organic farming methods, water management displays, traditional medicine information.... did you know that india supports 16% of the world's population but possesses only 4% of the earth's potable water? i'm not one for statistics usually but it still makes one think about how much prisitine water westerners flush down their toilets everyday. a beautiful and provocative exhibit that i'm not quite sure what to do with now that it's in my head....

i also spent some time in a 1000-year old siva temple, a gorgeous christian church (no pews, you sit on the floor), walked through a fishing village and got invited into various homes to play with plenty of ragamuffin kiddies like the crumpled superstar i am, and went to see the gandhi memorial where his ashes were kept before being put out to sea. it was crazy to do so much in one day after the intense and yet comforting schedule of ashram life. did i mention that i miss the prasad?

one long, hot, dusty busride and i ended up in madurai today . i was aiming for rameshwaram (don't ask....). the left half of my body is sun burnt from sitting squashed up against the window grate of the bus.

prasad.