October 23 2010 / Dakshinachitra, India

So bright and early around seven in the morning I went out to the Union to go on my Dakshinachitra Heritage Village stay, which was all about the “Art of Living” and supposedly taught you all this great yoga and relaxation stuff that helps with your life.  Being as that I have anxiety issues and just sort of general sadness, I was really excited to go and hoped that it would be as amazing as the Buddhist monastery retreat I went on last semester over in Deer Park Monastery (PS: I’m going again in the spring.  I hope some of you guys will join me!).  So when we got on the bus I sat in the back and was overjoyed to find out that the seats reclined—oh happy day!  I woke up an hour later to the incredibly obnoxious squeaky horn that the driver needs to use for everything.  We were apparently doing a tour of some of the famous sites around Chennai before going to the village. 

First we went to M.  The first thing we saw to our right was this GIGANTIC, MASSIVE STONE, just sitting on a rock face slope.  The stone was perfectly round and enormous, as long and definitely taller than one of our cabins, and almost perfectly circular.  This was called the Butter Ball.  Lots of people took pictures of them “holding it up,” as people are wont to do in these situations, but I was more distracted with the flood of people who were hassling us to buy these postcards, this stone carving, these paintings.  “Just look, just look!” they’d always say as they thrust Karma Sutra stuff into your face.  And god forbid if you bought one thing.  One lifelong learner got mobbed as soon as she bought a couple of postcards.  But anyway, we then walked up a little hill to a couple of temples of Ganesha, which were pretty cool because the entire temple was carved out of the same giant slab of stone—it was super intricate, especially the second one that was carved into a mountainside.  Our guide told us the story of how Vishnu conquered this demon and that that is why it always looks like he’s stepping on a baby in his poses—the demon is the baby figure.  I liked my version of the story better (that Vishnu just didn’t really care for babies). 

But all that was just a practice round for the real shrine of Mallapuram, which is just this gigantic stone wall of carved stone figures of elephants and worshipers and gods with their courts.  It was pretty epic.  We went inside and I sat down on one of the unfinished slabs of stone and just tried to soak everything in.  People kept coming up to me with their wares.  A couple mocked me when I said no, and another called me a bitch—I wonder if they think that is going to make me more likely to buy any of their crap? Outside was a man with a monkey on a chain. Being as that there were monkeys speckled everywhere in the trees and climbing on top of the buses, this was pretty sad, because the wild monkeys would come up to this monkey in a dress and just stare at it confusedly.  It was sad. :( 

Next we went to a temple to Vishnu.  I got a red dot on my forehead because I followed some of the blessing rituals, and then I fairly fled due to how stifling claustrophobic and hot it was inside the temples.  It was beautiful though—there were all these oil candles around outside the monkey god’s shrine. 

Then we went to this place called the Five Chariots, or the Five Ramans or something like that.  These were actually my favorite shrines we visited, but I didn’t take any pictures of them because I left my purse in the bus—was just too sick of being hassled by the vendors, though not bringing my purse didn’t help any.  These temples were five little shrines of different archeological styles all in this sand pit.  It was pretty neat, but what I loved best was people-watching—there were lots of Indian tourists who were just so happy to be there.  My favorite was a proud dad taking a picture of his little daughter climbing a rock and trying to get her to model and pose just right.  It was so cute.  Walking back I got mobbed by a little boy who was just like “Please buy something, madam.  Hungry, madam.  Please, madam.”  It took all of my will not to sprint back to the bus—it’s hard to hear stuff like that.  Next was the temple by the shore—the beachfront reminded me a lot of Mexico.  This temple was pretty big and you could actually climb around inside of it.  Then we were finally off to an ATM and to Dakshinachitra, at long last!  Dakshinachitra is like this village compound that has all these model homes of different Indian styles and ways of living.  There was lots of greenery around and lots of little paths.  The first thing we did was have a lunch of rice, naan, curries, and even this strange whipped ice cream—it was a pretty good time and tasted absolutely delicious.  Then we dropped everything off in our dorm rooms, which were very much reminding me of the places we stayed in the Berber villages in Morocco expect that we couldn’t sleep up on the roofs.  :P  Instead, we were in small rooms with three beds in them each.  There was no air conditioning, but ours also had an ajointing room with a squat toilet and a bucket to wash yourself in—so, we meet again, squat toilet.  As per usual, I embarrass myself every time I have to use one of those things.  It is very hard to aim, okay.  :|

Then we had a bit of an exploring tour—we watched a little intro video about the town and then saw a doofy little puppet show.  We also saw lots of craftspeople working, like a man who was spinning clay pots, and another woman making rice powder designs on the ground (everywhere in India these designs are in front of houses, to prevent insects from coming outside because they already have something to munch on).  At a certain point I was quite sick of looking at houses because I was exhausted, but I decided to go with a group of people to this fortune teller.  She was an older woman, hefty with a jewel in her nose and wearing a red sari.  Next to her was a tin box with yellow daffodils all over it, as well as a statue of Ganesha.  In her hand was a stick and twelve tiny brown/white shells.  A couple of girls went first, and it was pretty standard stuff—a good life ahead of you, etc etc.  It all looked pretty routine, but I decided that it was only fifty cents so I would take a crack at it.  I took off my rings and anything that might reveal anything about me and sat in front of her.  At her translators request, I gave her my name, my age, and the name of an Indian flower (I gave jasmine), and a number between one and twelve (I gave eight).  She rolled her shells. 

The first thing she told me was that seven was my lucky number, which is pretty true—seven has always been my lucky number.  She said that I “had the grace of god,” as well.  Then all of a sudden, things got very weird.  She looked me dead in the face and said that even though I was a very friendly person by nature, I was really angry at a lot of things, and that that wasn’t really part of me.  She then said that last two and a half years of my life have been very hard on me.  That is completely true—that’s when I came to college and started having all kinds of dumb emotional problems, from depression to social anxieties, and I’ve gone from being really easy going about things to getting very angry very quickly.  She also said I had been in a painful, dangerous situation but that I escaped it—that was true too.  Basically that totally scared the hell out of me and I think it freaked out everyone else too, because everyone else got really quiet.  She said that during that time period, I’d lost things that were special to me—true again, as I’d lost friendships and being able to find happiness in writing for a long while.  She looked at me and spoke in her husky voice and the translator said that I didn’t have to be worried anymore and that that my life wasn’t going to be that hard again and that that time was past.

That was the part that wigged me out the most.  Then she said some other things:
•   Will get married around 27-29 years old to someone and have a happy married life.  My parents will approve of this match.
•   Will inherit wealth but will have to work to support myself.
•   Likes to spend money
•   Will have a boy and a girl
•   Will have problems with my health but has strong life lines.

In fact, the only thing she said that was completely off base was that my family does not help me and that I gain strength from my friends and even strangers—that’s not true at all, because my family is really close and we get along really well.  But everything else was pretty creepily true.  I had to kind of go sit and thinking about what she’d said for a little while, as it was really weird and I think probably spooked me and a couple of the other people who were watching. 

Around four in the afternoon we had our first yoga and meditation class in this big activities hall near our rooms.  The lady who was giving the meditation was an old woman, about seventy or so, and she was absolutely no nonsense.  She was always asking questions and then snapping, “Yes, no?!” when we didn’t answer.  We did a couple of breathing exercises that worked out different parts of our lungs, but the best part was the very end, which was the lay-down position—I actually straight up fell asleep.  After a while I woke back up again and left to go grab a snack, which was some fruit juices and samosas.  Was delicious.  We did a couple of more meditations, called the five sheathes, and another called the Coconut Tree meditation.  After that we left to have dinner on banana leaves, a traditional Indian dinner.  There were orange and yellow curries, rice noodles, fried cauliflower, naan—it was mostly incredibly delicious.  There were also this weird bean curd coconut thing, that didn’t actually taste good at all—in fact it tasted a little rotten.  There was also this horrifying lemon peel thing that tasted horrible—burned all the way down my throat, but not due to spice.  It was awfully strange.  I’m pretty sure me and one of my roommate became the laughing stock of India, because we totally gagged a little on it.  Apparently they even only used about a third of the spaces they usually use, too.

When we got back to our dorm room, it was time for bed.  We’d chased out most of the lizards and cockroaches out and closed all the windows, but it was still stifling hot.  We kicked off most of our blankets and just curled up on the sheets.  We walked amongst each other about how lovely some of the countries have been and how pretentious we were going to be when we got back, and soon we drifted off to sleep.