Happy Happy New Year from Hampi

“Do you have a flashlight?”

I was blissfully napping after my first dinner in three days, albeit restricted to a fruit salad, in my hammock which I had finally found a place to put up. Giulia, my new roommate, can’t see the combination lock to our room.

“Eh, no, my flashlight just died.”

The silence is broken, my fast from words and communication is unwittingly and definitively ended. Things here just happen like that, they begin, they end, and flow just is what it is.

What to say about three days abstaining from food and (most) communication? We all felt hard hit on day two, and the usual six or seven hours of morning became interminable hours of nothingness. This was the one-two punch: I wasn’t eating, and so energy was way down for us all and we canceled classes, but I couldn’t do much of anything else either: talking, reading, writing, singing. At most meditation and pranayama (yogic breathing), and a bit of stretching.

Today (fast day 3) we could take blended banana’s at lunch, so morning work was more doable, though full of breaks for near-dizziness. More banana’s and a fruit salad later, I feel the plunge ahead into further phases of work, enabled it seems by this steadiness of flow achieved in these slow days of Niyama, restriction, when everyone was abstaining from one thing or another.

Riccardo and Paolo have also both moved on, left Hampi, separately, for broader horizons. It was four days from their official separation, but they were still at our “guest-house” (complex of cabanas, café, and lawn comprising our lodging) and very much present. To me this helps settle things too.

HAPPY NEW YEAR. We’ll all be asleep well before midnight.

Hampi

Tomorrow morning begins three days of fasting from food (not water) and “communication”. The former will be hard because shit its three days and we’re working our tails off. The latter will be hard simply in that, well, we’re here working together, not solo. No talking certainly, but gestures are supposed to be out, as well as any other kinds of outward expression not absolutely necessary for the work: facial expressions, eye communication, writing, drawing, singing, playing music, etc. A few people started early and have let a lot of the gestural part slide. I keep anticipating that I’ll have little trouble keeping things to myself, outside of those moments when, of course, my challenge is exactly that, when I want to communicate, share.

The trickier part is the negotiation of letting things in from the outside only as necessary for the work, as the intention is that one is also closed off to incoming communication. All this comes from Vipasana meditation, in my understanding, and I believe that we will get instruction from our resident esoteric and teacher of street performance István “Goldi” Goldman (That’s “Stephen”, in Hungarian). Earlier he said that the powerful part of this that all of one’s sense of communication goes inward, sending the communion with the self very deep.

At least we won’t have to worry about ordering any food. Or kvetching about being hungry.

We started working 10-12hr days here in Hampi, after nearly a week of scattered comings and goings (Dec20-26), including hours of juggling and slack-rope training, but that teacher leaves tonight and with the fast I suspect much will change. In any case we are to keep up this rhythm through the 3^rd, after nine days straight; then workshop some material and depart on the 4^th, overnight to Mysore, for 2 straight weeks of 4hrs a day Yoga classes.

Already, each work day here we have started around 5am, with nary more than a moment’s pause until 1pm. This has for me been a somewhat brutal practice for the 3-day fast: I wake early, stay fairly concentrated through yoga practices; then I struggle through the first circus class, trying to embrace the failure; finally, part-way through the second I pause, practice my inner wake-up call, reminding myself that its much nicer and very much worth it to open my heart to positivity, inner warmth, and half-full-ness. Not eating for 8hrs or so through that has been trying, to say the least. A big lunch followed by 4hrs of music, dance, and seminar precede a very light dinner and much-needed sleep. Perhaps in between I manage to shower, or pack my bag, or do a little writing. Sometimes not. The following days I’ll mostly just sleep and meditate in the off time.

Why document and share all the details, a record of my reflection on how I manage my time and logistics and energy? Is it for you, Reader, or for me?

Beach

Kudlee beach is an isolated arc of beach, 20-30 min walk from Gokarna main town, 10-15min to walk from end to end, passing countless little “Hotels” resturants with cabanas behind them, that mostly serve the same mix of cuisines on a menu 4-8pgs long: Indian basics, Italian pizzas and pastas, continental breakfast (though more yogurt than meat), and some strain of Chinese cooking that I only half follow.

But more to the point, it has a beauty of natural landscape that is hard to beat. Also a bit hard to photograph, though I’ve been doing my damnedest. What no camera can capture though is the night sky. The beach stretches broadly to both sides; the sea amenably follows suit as it roars and crashes ceaselessly, its shimmering depths cutting of the sky at the horizon, which itself is book-ended by two hills. Tonight we will light up a bonfire and thus the Four Elements will all be passionately present. But as I collapse back onto my neck I find that sea and beach and surrounding hills are merely side players, supporting and framing broadly and openly a densely populated firmament that dazzles my sense of earthliness.

MORE PICS FROM GOKARNA ON PICASSA

Gokarna

The weekend has finally brought some rest, and a little time to write.

5 days at breakneck speed and intense work at times flew by, at times dragged like never before.

We start our days at quarter to 5 -- AM! Its dark and starry on the beach and the moon, which came to fullness last night, is just setting behind the hill to the beach's north end. I sing/chant a bit and then we sit in meditation 15-45min. An hour or so of Pranayama - yogic breathing exercises - transitions to 1-2hrs of more Asana, more physically intense yoga postures and other physically active work, often including acrobatic balance practice. Most people do SunSalutations but i have more remedial things to focus on, just trying to stretch my back and legs. Then an hour of Dance with Riccardo, learning his choreography and related exercises.

Around 9:30/10am, we break, I take a swim (I'm getting into it more, swimming more strongly!), shower, breakfast, and then start moving towards the afternoon. We eat usually 1130 or 12, and start music at 1pm. Sometimes at 1030 we walk for an hour to work on a rooftop platform (1story) at the far end of the beach in town. Otherwise, I have a bit of down time here on Kudlee (KOOT-lee) Beach, the tourist area, separated from Gokarna Main Beach and town by a big hill, where there's a small temple to Rama with a fountain of potable water, where we refill 5-liter jugs.

A normal afternoon has music 1-4pm, 1hr theory, 1-2hrs playing and improvising; 2hrs theater exercises, which recently have been mostly movement and found puppetry; 6pm sunset seminars on yogic philosophy (from Alessandro) or culture/history/politics/religion/LIFE in India from a North Indian friend of Alessandro's named Pramode. Darkness by 730 leaves us free to eat dinner and go to sleep. 6hrs later, I get up and start over.

So that's our schedule (with Sabbath rest) until the 20th when we leave. There will be some suprise adventure before we arrive in Hampi on the 22nd, where we'll have the western holidays, then on to Mysore for serious Yoga school on Jan 5th. A flight to Jaipur on the 21st takes us north (those who don't take the 44hr train!), then we'll venture into and out of the deserts of Rajasthan before finishing with a week in Varanasi. End date Feb 4th.

From there I might go North-west to the Taj Mahal and Delhi, or East with Alessandro to Kolkata, where a ParkSlopian has family I can stay with. Most of the crew won't stay into February with me. From there, its adventure. Would love to go to Tamil Nadu and Kerala before coming back to Mumbai. Speaking of which,pics from Mumbai are up on Picassa here up top is Gaia presenting a slice of life here on Kudlee beach in Gokarna.

love to y'all time for another swim.

Ory

Bahrain? Yes, reallz, Bahrain.

* This post was unsuccessfully posted via email, sometime on thursday night. But now, success! *

Ok so the "reallz" is unintentional, because I´m typing on the German keyboard of Suriya, fellow traveller heading to Rishikesh for Yoga studies. I guess they use not QWERTY but QWERTZ.

The Wifi in the Bahrain airport is adequate, and so this is both the HI I´m alive email AND a blog post. Pictures of Suri and our fellow traveller, home-returning Mubai-ian, Aditya, RIT Packaging Engineering master´s candidate at RIT, coming next time I get a faster connection.

Gonna go explore the gender-separated men´s prayer room for peace and solace. I´ve got 2 hours til my flight anyway!

Travellingly,
GregOry