LAST BLOG FROM INDIA- written 30th march.....It with sadness we report having to leave India, our three months is up and we return to a snowy and cold England - refreshed, invigorated and ready for a long wet summer. I have wandered the streets and alleyways of Pahargang today and breathed in the all pervasive atmosphere, knowing it is all going to slip away from me. The grubby children with God knows what caked in their hair, stained street coloured T shirts, bare feet and tiny brown hands held up for a sweet or a rupee and shining bright hopeful eyes smiling back at you if you can meet their eyes and smile at them with tearful eyes - at home here on the streets, playful and free - maybe they know no other life, but I do - so what to do but sit for a while and be there too.
By lunch time the streets are crawling with litter, food waste, discarded food plates, animal dung and plastic bags - all dumped for the street sweepers to clear again early the following morning. There is a system and at 7am it looks quite pristine. It gives a lot of people work to do and they seem to do it with pride Somehow it seems everyone here is in this together, people are talking to each other, warmly embracing each other, smiling and delighting in a recognised friend across the street, familiar with each other. There is a spirit of openness and acceptance, old men hold hands, young girls group in no less than fours and talk non stop as they walk closely huddled in their intimate world, boys and young men arm in arm and arms round shoulders playfully catch your eye as you pass in the street. Its all around, saturating and totally magnificent. I am so going to miss it.
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| Lotus Temple, Delhi - baha'i place of worship. Visited this on last day as it looked so amazing from the aeroplane as we flew in from nepal! |
I spent an hour in the Ramakrishna Ashram early this morning - walking past the street cleaners clearing the rubbish from the previous days bazaar and the fruit sellers setting up their bananas and mangos in huge delicious piles on road side wooden trolleys - to get there. I rushed desperate to clear my mind from the nights disturbed thoughts. Here there is a meditation hall - a large haven, carpeted and quiet, simple and perfect for sitting. Murtis of Swamis Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Serada Devi sit at one end of the hall. Devotees bow and prostrate in front of these. Me too now - then we sit for as long as is necessary, undisturbed but sensing the comings and goings of people as they spend quiet time alongside me.
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| So many Buddhas.. |
My mind was whirring this morning. Last evening when I had sat here I had been tearful and distressed. I had been tired from no sleep the previous night and our journey from Nepal to Delhi. Sad at leaving dear Susie and Julia too. Sad that my holiday was coming to an end, sad to be leaving this different culture with its joyfullness, irritations, contradictions, complexity and above all its many faceted spirituality. This morning I was turning over a conversation Clare and I had had the previous evening - which had left me disturbed. I was struggling with a mind keen to analyse and the knowledge that this was never the best option. So I sat and let it be, took some deep breaths and noticed the tense places in my knees. As I felt the pain in my right knee I realised something, which I can't remember now - it must have been profound as the pain went, the knee relaxed.....Too much sitting cross legged, perhaps? I started this three months away with a sore left knee and that has recovered now its the right knee, its all about knees.
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| Couldn't find any knees |
I long to spend some time in my garden but dread the rain of last summer. My new garden needs much loving care and attention to turn it into the bird, tree and greenery haven I imagine there. Long dull wet summers don't help, last summer didn't anyway - I was slug infested and bogged under in mud as we tried to remove as much subterranean concrete as possible. So some sun please? I have circumambulated enough temples to warrant a little good karma on the veg growing front I am sure! Having dug fields with a drench digger in India I feel one of these would be useful for digging a necessary trench in my back garden - for laying a loo pipe from garage to main drains - anyone in Frome got one?
I have great plans for a clay oven and clay hob in back garden too - complete with sitting place and shelter from rain. Modelled on a picture I found in Susies cottage and my experience of building a clay oven with Rick at Buddhafield festival last year. (Rick just happened to appear on the beach in Varkala too - we checked out the tandoors there). Once done everyone can come for oven baked bread and some decent Indian food at my place!
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| It might even look better than this fresh from the garden oven |
