The body eventually has its way if you don’t give it its due. So the cough/cold that occupied me last week forced me to slow down, post seminar. There’s a related tension I’ve been experiencing, the one having to do with traveling – between the urge to maximize the experiences of exploring the incredible riches of a new place, especially one so different from home; and then the need to just BE in the place absorbing the energy and way without agenda. Paying attention to life in one place. That’s the direction I’ve chosen to lean.
My friend/colleague Mette, a Danish folkhighschool teacher, who left for home on a 4 am flight this morning, spent the two days before her last day here, in silence. She made arrangements with the 4 women in the kitchen (in Viswanathan/Seshu’s house, the place that prepares meals for all the volunteers/guests) to just “hang” with them (in silence), being available to help chop vegetables, clean, or just observe. Or not. Fully committed to … just BE. An inspired idea, which I admired. And since the rest of our group has departed, it left me on my own for the first time -to “clean my desk” J, write a bit, nap a bit, walk a bit. But stay in the forest. Town is too hot. (pushes into the 90s there). So I have been slowing down.
Speaking of hot, the temps have been holding generally steady in the 80s over my time here, 80/27 in the morning, upper 80s/30-31 in the afternoon. All last week , it was quite warm, even in the morning. But now in the last couple of days, the early morning temp has dropped to a pleasantly cool 75/24 , as it was the first few mornings I was here. Also last week, it actually rained a couple of times, so the humidity ramps up a bit for some hours afterwards. (rain is a relative term here, as real RAIN comes with the monsoons in June and July; the rains now last for an hour, on and off). Then there are the occasional power outages, (like last Friday when word was, a tree had knocked out a major line to the area). But the power is off now on a bright clear Tuesday morning.
Life at Mitraniketan – and the parts of Kerala I’ve traveled through – is a fascinating mix of old and new. There’s news in this morning’s paper – the Hindu – about making plans for a new high speed train through Kerala. But daily life now includes the long lived buses and trains and auto-rickshaws (and fewer cars and taxis), which we are all dependent on to get around. Mitraniketan has its own resident driver, Shiju, who has taken us to various events and on “field trips.” If it’s a day trip, he leaves us somewhere and goes off on his own, but we also make sure he eats some supper with us before the drive “home.” Trains are incredibly cheap. A small group of us did a day trip to Kerala’s famous “Backwaters” last week, then 2 of us spent a night in a little beach town, Vakala before taking the train home (which means catching a rickshaw to the train station, train to Trivandrum (our big city, capital of Kerala), then bus back to Vellanad (Mitranietan’s home town). Total cost – about $1.00
Of course prices are inflated in tourist towns like the beach at Vakala, especially in the shopping department. In the case of Vakala, the northern lands of Tibet and Kashmir are imported for us tourists. So all of a sudden, the culture and craft of Buddhism, is available – beautiful ornate fabrics and normally not a part of south India, throws, Buddha and carvings and sculptures, singing bowls and so on. (Hindism, the world of Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, reigns here – along with Islam and Christianity). Conversations with several shop-keepers revealed some of their perspective. One talked about how he sets his prices according to where a person is from. Russian shoppers, for example, are apparently notorious for hard bargaining, quickly coming back with an offer of half of his. So he knows to give a starting price of 3 or 4 times times the value. Another told me, “We know Europeans and Americans have a lot of buying power here (given the relative difference in prices), but we know they’re not necessarily wealthy. After all, I know a cup of coffee costs $3-4 at Starbucks in NY.”
We had a nice morning there though – sipping tea and a chocolate croissant ($1, probably would have been 50-60 cents inland a bit) in the shelter of a shop from which we could watch the waves coming in, and dissecting the seminar from the week before. Then I went and spent an outrageous $15 in the spice, oils, and miscellaneous gift shop adjoining. Then a bargain $10 on a pair of draw-string long cotton pants which a tailor right on the beach stitched up for me in a couple of hours! (finally something lightweight for the woods – men don’t wear shorts here - well the tourists on the beach do!).
But back to real life. Kerala is a land of hard physical labor. Using things till they’re falling apart (like a good ol' New England Yankee! – warms my heart). Working the rubber trees, one tree at a time (the rubber sap would quickly clog up tubes if you tried the New England-style maple sap collecting systems). Building with pick axes to clear the ground, scaffolding scraped together with wooden poles, hammering re-enforcing rods into pieces with chisels. I’m thinking of the new bakery they’re building here at Mitraniketan. Great story: a group of German “friends of Mitraniketan” decided they community would benefit from a modern German-style bakery unit. So they shipped the whole thing in a bright yellow metal shipping container (like the ones they load on boats), which meant a HUGE deal to figure out how to haul it up the windy narrow roads to get here. Then they realized that this metal box was way too hot to work in by afternoon, and so they’re now – 5 years later – building a regular building to house the equipment. Meanwhile, the Germans keep showing up to advise them on baking techniques, recipes, etc. After a LONG start up time, they’ve managed to find some outlets for fresh bread in some of the tourist resorts – sweet nutritionless white bread! We volunteers crave the delicious wheat bread that comes once and a while.
There are other “community development” projects here – a kind of “farm extension center” that teaches people how to grow better crops, etc. A women’s pottery coop. A craft market. I’ll leave you with my favorite – about 150 or so women come to box up already packaged condoms – packs of 2, in boxes of 10 packs, cases of 20 boxes, etc. I heard the Viswan’s wife Sethu refer to them as the “Latex ladies.” Love it.
Have a good week!
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