Chapter Seven

      Saturday, February twenty-seventh at five-thirty at Café des Artes for my pot of Masala Chai. Moving day. Final transfer of accumulated belongings from Vaitikuppam to my new digs overlooking Bharati Park. Had to skip this morning at Healing Hands. Finished moving by eleven-thirty and now have twice as much space and three times as much ventilation as where I’ve come from, and feel an exciting month shall from here unfold. Talli meal at Surguru on Nehru street. Coffee shops, restaurants and the shopping district will be so much more accessible. Ocean is not immediately visible. Two blocks now to walk to the sea. Shop for a light blanket and a suitable chair, and now put in a teatime hour at my favorite tea house. It has such a lovely bookshelf filled with artsy and literary books, I want to write something for the people who come here to eat their salads, and their crepes, and their baguette sandwiches, and sip their espressos,

their lassis, their milkshakes, and their chais. From around the world they come here to sit, immerse themselves in coffee house chit chat, listen to the ceiling fans hum, and catch a passing glance of the objets d’art hanging on the walls and displayed on the scattered shelves built into the walls. Sometimes the waiters are run-around busy when most of the chairs are filled, and it is all so very casual and informal. Blue jeans and T-shirts and come and go as you are. What once were kerosene table lamps are now wired with soft yellow light bulbs and sit atop small glass-enclosed display cases with collections of old ceramic tea pots and cups, while some of the terracotta artifacts on display look like they are fresh from an archaeological dig. A handmade birdcage fashioned from twigs and sticks rests atop the bookshelf. A ceramic elephant reaches for the ceiling with his extended trunk. Simple elegance, tying together the centuries: 1800’s, 1900’s, into the present day, where modern day travelers check their emails on their iPhones and plan their evenings ahead, or the rest of their lifelong journeys.

     February twenty-nine. Graduation Party!   Dancing on the rooftop.      

 Gilad  –  Claudia  –  Catherine  -  younger Marie  –  Jetsun  – Simon  –  Lies  –

 Amodine - Helene – et Moi.

     Special Sunday afternoon session on Singing Bowls, including a sequence set for couples. Gilad has arranged for some special food preparations for those who wish to stay for a course ending celebration. He provides a wonderful assortment of delectables from the Tamil Nadu cuisine repertoire. After which,as dusk settles into darkness, there will be music, and there will be dancing. Such an amazing, lovely happy group of people we are!

     Monday is the test, which is more of an evaluation than a test, for the four who are departing. Gilad, Claudia, Mira, and Catherine. One hour thirty minutes for the full massage. Forth-five minutes for the legs. Fifteen minutes for the belly and arms and hands. Fifteen minutes for the back, and fifteen for the sitting position, including face and head. Giving a Thai massage is a real workout for the masseuse, requiring stamina and flexibility, and some of the required sequences are quite difficult for me to perform and/or sustain. Nevertheless, I will be continuing into March, starting tomorrow. Every month, the lessons start from the beginning, starting with the legs, and continuing through the sequences from day to day and week to week. New students, as I have been this past month, are introduced to the sequences and patterns and principles of application, and all that needs to be understood for the process to work well. Continuing students are engaged in never-ending review and practice towards mastery. The learning process is forever, and perfection unthinkably far down the road. Once you get the idea, it’s just all about getting better and better. Some classes draw in an assortment of students who work with a special chemistry together, and this has been such a class, Rahul confirms. Last night’s party, in fact, pretty much emphatically clarified that idea. Rahul suggests that if we, or at least most of us, can keep our heads together through space and time as we go our respective ways, and can find a month to get together again, he will be delighted to arrange a special venue in Nepal for our reunion. Such has been the alignment in spirit during the February course!  However it happened, It Happened.

     And then there is this dream I had this post-party Monday morning. Driving on a country road, something like a flat Texas panhandle sea of grass, and then sometimes like the curving roads through the Ozarks. Turn off the main road, which is just an unmarked two lane strip of asphalt, onto a side road leading to I’m not exactly sure where, but I think there is a residential destination in mind. The Ozark forests deepen, and at one point I must cut through some stranger’s yard. They let me know they do not appreciate this trespass, and I tell them I have no choice, for the road itself enters their property through one gate and exits through another. The road becomes more treacherous, coming to an end at a sheer drop-off into an abyss. I retrace my way back along the road, and the other end drops off into an abyss, and I begin to tumble over the edge but manage to grab ahold of some rocky outcrop and climb back up to this now, apparently, double dead-ended road. I’ve no choice now but to strike off afoot into the forest, walking through rugged terrain, and there soon comes a point where I discover that I have lost my hiking boots, my most favorite and excellent pair. Retracing my steps to search for them is impossible since I can barely recall the terrain I’ve crossed, so I continue, and find along the way an occasional pair that someone else has lost, but none of them are as good as mine were, and none of them are, in fact, mine! I also occasionally encounter other campers in this forest, and none of them are of any help in telling me how to proceed to anywhere. Finally arrive at a convention center for an organization of campers and backpackers, and by this time I’ve lost all of my clothes, and am walking around naked with only my shoulder bag with money, passport, paper and pencils, and camera. I’m looking for someone to ask directions from, finally find a young woman behind a desk who asks if she can help in any way. Where do I come from? How did I get here? she asks, and I tell her I came down a long, empty Texas panhandle road, I cannot remember the highway number, and made a turnoff at an intersection with no identifying characteristics, so I really don’t know where I’ve come from, and have no clear image of where I’m trying to go, and certainly can’t recall that meandering, treacherous, rocky and thickly forested terrain I passed through to get where I’m at. It’s not exactly clear how this woman behind the desk can help. I awaken with the sense of feeling as lost and as absent from any and all points of reference as I’ve ever felt, conscious primarily of only my shoulder bag and its contents.

     I guess I can say this dream is telling me whatever I decide it is telling me. One thing I know I need to think about is how I’m going to travel during the first week of April after this March round of classes is over. How I’m going to lighten up with what I’m carrying, and how I’m going to divest myself of all that I’ve been accumulating these last two months. Time to get down to my shoulder bag with money, passport, paper and pencils and camera, and to find my hiking boots. Heading off to Sikkim, Nepal and Ladakh will not exactly be a hop, skip and jump. Meanwhile, consolidating my presence at the Healing Hands Thai Massage Center is a welcome priority. Pondy will be a place I can come back to and feel at home. The open-ended plan is to discover some other places where my heart feels at home in the North.

     One of Rahul’s statements for the closing of the class today, the closing for this month’s session as some of us are preparing to depart, is to be sure to keep yourself moving forward, to make sure that you are saving your own life first. There will always be people who will need your help, but you must not allow their needfulness to drag you beneath the waves. Help them help themselves if you can, but remember that you have a long way to swim yourself. Keep your eye and your heart on the path you are called to travel.

     Tuesday, March first is first day for the March session. Of the twelve students and visitors this morning, only two new faces. Axel from Germany and Jake from Denmark. Both speak fluent English. Claudia will be spending another week with us before going to Thailand. Erika is joining us for her first round of classes. Then we have the two Maries, Helene, Jetsun, Simon and Lies and Amodine and moi. Amodine says her friend, Nimi, will be joining us tomorrow. After the introductory lecture, it’s all the way back to square one with the feet and the toes. The newbies are the focus of attention for the overall learning process, and their learning and everyone else’s improvement move in tandem. The talented younger Marie now guides the class through our afternoon practice sessions as Gilad did during February. Jake and Axel easily fit right in with this ongoing class, and there is an overall enthusiastic spirit of looking forward to all of our developments during this month’s course.

     Saturday evening, March fifth. Seven nights now gone by at Hotel Qualithe. Room number six at the end of the common balcony above the ground floor overlooking Rue Mahe de Labourdonnais and the flourishing trees of Bharati Park  across the busy street. Motorcycles, auto-riks, and pedestrians share the wide two lanes of asphalt from morning through night. Through late night darkness into early morning, only the occasional howling dog will disturb the silence of the sleeping city. Now comes another most remarkable encounter. A robust and elderly Mexican has settled into room number four and he spends a fair amount of his time seated in his wicker chair on the balcony or standing at the railing watching the city go by. He’s been here a couple of weeks already, and when he asks my age and I tell him seventy-one, he jokingly scoffs at my youth. The clear idea is that he is older than I by at least several years. His powerful and courteous voice comes from deep within and we meet for a brief conversation at least once every day as I walk from my door at the end of the balcony to the stairwell at the other end. Mali has been connected with Pondicherry for forty-eight years, and it is entirely possible that his path and mine crossed on the seaside promenade in ’69 and ’70 when I first got to know this city. He was a part of the founding settlement and beginnings of Auroville, and personally knew The Mother. His card, in fact, carries his name in script written by her hand. Every day he tells me that if he can be of any assistance, he will most graciously, generously and sincerely offer what he can. Of Mexican heritage, now residing most of the year in Granada, Spain, he tells me that he is Toltec, of the legendary tribe of Mexico who predated and were the teachers of the Aztecs, and one can easily sense a power in his voice that reaches back into ancient sources. I gave him a copy of my book two nights ago, and when I turned to the page with the Aztec calendar stone, the quality and depth of our connection was confirmed. As I was going out this morning at seven on my way to the Healing Hands class, I sat with Mali on the balcony for a few moments as he showed me a set of his photos from Mexico, and he gave me a picture of the great pyramid of the ancient city of Teotihuacán, “where men become Gods.” I feel like I am there, with Mali, at that place.

     This evening at five as I am stepping out for a walk to Cafe des Artes for tea, again we meet on the balcony, and he has for me the gift of a new red bandana, with Aztec like geometric design. He shows me how to tie it properly on my head, says that it suits me perfectly, that I have the bearing of a warrior. So it is that I wear this bandana through the streets of Pondy on my walk to Café des Artes, where I have a tuna salad and pot of Masala Chai, and present my booklets to the madam for her consideration to be offered for free to the patrons of her restaurant. She says with smiling eyes that she will consult with her daughter, a thirty-something year old woman who is continually busy helping customers.

     Mali will be returning to Spain in a few days. For the past several years, Mali has been spending most of his time at his home in Grenada, and returns to Pondy for one month every year, his room on the balcony of Hotel Qualithe being his residence of choice in this city. Mali has forty-eight years worth of memories wrapped up in Pondy, and remembers the owner of La Terrasse, where I have enjoyed many meals, since she was seven. Mali says he would like to share my book with some of his friends in Spain. Clearly, another pathway is found. From Gilad and Claudia at the Gratitude restaurant to the Healing Hands center, where I conceived and brought forth my French and new English versions, to developing friendship with Stefan, who brought me to residency at Hotel Qualithe, to encounter with Mali, however it is happening, it is happening.

     Sunday, March sixth at six p.m. All day in the room and on the balcony. I give five more copies of my book to Mali for him to share with his friends whom he assures me are interested, and he has a small plastic bagful of Acapulco sand for me, as well as a white rock the size of my thumb knuckle, also from the Acapulco beach, that  he designates “Our Beach.” The rock is dense and rugged, packed with bits of opaque crystal, and theoretically, according to Mali, microscopic flecks of gold and silver which can glitter in the sunlight. From the hands of a Toltec artisan, this crystalline nugget from Mexico has come to my hand to keep me company on my continuing journey through India. For the handful of Acapulco sand, I may find and choose a place to scatter and mix with the soil and water wherever the moment so moves me. Mali and I can’t seem to stop appreciating each other.

     Here at the Café des Artes, madam’s daughter and I place a few more copies of my book, both English and French versions, on the designated table. After my salad, as I’m sipping my tea, from my chair in a corner I watch one tall young woman stop and glance and read the flyer and pick up a booklet and thumb through a few pages and carry it with her on her way. A few minutes later, a middle-aged man walks by, picks up a book to look through it, and sets it back down, not interested. Thus it is, some are interested, and some are not. Share a few words with a passing Café customer, Ramon from somewhere in Europe, and ask him if he likes to read poetry, which he confirms, and I pass an English copy to him. Explain in a few sentences the nature of astro-theology, and he is appreciative, observing that this is something we’ve lost in the West. Perhaps he and I will meet again here at the Café des Artes. Some who pass by don’t even glance at the table with the booklets.

     March seventh, Monday evening. Last day for Claudia at Healing Hands, the woman from Chile who brought me here. Her cheerful, enthusiastic face and voice have been a constant light. Today’s class begins where Saturday left off, as my immersion in the program continues. Slowly my memory takes root within, and the feeling of placing trust in the process to take each of us to our respective destinations binds the class together, beginners and adepts alike. We all have something to learn.

     Stop in at Chez Nous for a pizza around six. At the hotel on the balcony around seven, Mila introduces me to Kiwi, who lives at Serenity Beach and is working on an eco-friendly desalinization project in Auroville. He likes the copy of my pamphlet that Mali gave him, and I am invited to visit with him on Sunday. There are others who are interested I am told, and it looks like I will be meeting them, whoever they are, as one person leads to another, and every turn in the road leads to a new discovery.

     Tuesday, March eighth, up on the Healing Hands rooftop. Moving day is three weeks from today. Two more days of class after that. How many things are going to happen and how many more people will I meet these next three weeks and two days? Twenty days of class after today. As for traveling plans, I know where I’m going, but not exactly when or how. First leg will be from Pondy to Chennai. Visit Kiran at YWCA Guest House if he is still there, or visit him wherever he’s at. Fly Chennai to Calcutta. Then however through West Bengal to Sikkim. No telling where I will wind up there or for how long. Need to leave India and enter Nepal by May 18. Then it is overland to Kathmandu, where I now presume to stay for about one month. It’s going to be a long haul after that across Nepal to Rishikesh and Dharamsala and then Kashmir, unless I opt to just fly over all of that from Kathmandu to Srinigar on my way to my summertime visit to Ladakh.

     So it is that I have traveled from New Mexico to Pondicherry, India to meet my Toltec brother on the balcony of the Hotel Qualithe. The look we share sees back through generations and centuries and I feel the Toltec artisan speaking through his voice, and the look in his eye reaches into the depth of what we call my soul. The look that says it all. Here we are at the time of the solar eclipse, as sun rises over ocean’s horizon this morning, and I dream of the path through the cave towards the underground shoreline of the river Styx. Not yet time for the crossing, for there is yet something on this side to take care of. This is simply a visit to see where when the time comes I shall go. Eclipse is a time for a view through the portal into an understanding more clear of what is going on and what I must do. Meeting my Toltec brother, from today and from centuries long gone by, is part of it all. He says without speaking in so many words that I am on my right path.

     Wednesday, March ninth, six-twenty evening. After sitting with Jetsun in my room for a couple of hours, trading a French-style, neatly rolled and thoughtfully shared cigarette, a little loose ganja mixed with some equally loose tobacco. Never really know exactly what prompts these little sit-down get-togethers: people who have them know they are coming, but are usually not exactly sure when, but the moment is recognized once it comes along. We get very well into describing how our parents were when we were children, and how they influenced and impacted our development. We look at the cultural roots that influenced both them and us. We talked of motivation and how to create an image of our long term goals for life in this world. Looking towards the next world is already there. The world of here and now is where the decisions must be made. Jetsun is fifty-one and I am seventy-one. We are each beginning a new decade and can think in terms of imagining ourselves ten years from now. We can also think in terms of the Tibetan Wish Fulfilling Jewel. However many depths of meaning Tibetans have for that term, I can’t imagine any issue with applying that image to a person’s wish for how they would like to imagine themselves becoming. What is your greatest wish for yourself in this world? Selflessness is for a different chapter. Now you can work your time with what you wish to make of yourself for this world between sun’s rising above one horizon and descending below the other.

     Another round of brotherhood, one night following my visit with my Toltec artisan-warrior neighbor, an elder brother, who brought the heart of ancient Mexico to our conversation in passing. It doesn’t take very many words to say some amazing things.

     These last three evenings, I’ve been reading different chapters of Spider Woman’s Daughter, an Anne Hillerman novel. I’ve read the entire story through once already, and keep it on my narrow bookshelf. I take it down sometimes to enjoy the culture and landscapes of parts of New Mexico I got to know well and are close to my heart. Anne walks me through places I remember well, and her Navajo way of looking at the world comes through clearly. India and New Mexico touch closely in my heart.

     Thursday, March tenth. Going away party for Mali on the rooftop last night. Deeply resonating German operatic orchestral music fills the air and pours over the balcony into the street. The voices from Mali’s stereo inspire him to follow along with his own powerful voice. The night before it was Keith Jarrett’s jazz piano. Mali has frequently filled the balcony with beautiful western classical or mellow jazz music, as he sips his wine alongside the burning candlelight he maintains in the evening. Deeply cultured in the western tradition, and deeply spiritual in his Quest for the higher consciousness that is so much a part of the Aurobindo vision and the writings of The Mother. He recites a poem of Aurobindo’s about the descent of the Golden Light, with a voice as strong and deep as the operatic singer in the background.

     His admiration and love for The Mother, whom he knew and spoke with during her final years in the early seventies, is deeply felt. He helped lay the foundations of Auroville, and his Mexican roots in Toltec artisan-warrior culture run deep. He and I will not miss one another, for we have met – here - forever. There is no farewell. There is no see-you-later. Our meeting here on the balcony these last several days and evenings has been complete.

     During my first weeks in India, as I was unpacking my bags in November,

I said that I had come here to meet someone, myself included. Mali the Toltec artisan-warrior, and Rahul the Thai massage master have been two. Seven weeks now of attending Rahul’s classes, and three more to go. There is more going on here than I can really speak of, more than I am even fully conscious of, and I know that when I step away from here to wherever I go next, my view of the world that I walk through and of my role with those whom I encounter will be somehow enlightened. Perhaps enlightenment for some is a sudden experience. For me it has been incremental. And every step I take is one more step along that path. “And what shall I say to the others?” the disciple asked his master, and the master replied, “There are no others.”

     Friday, March eleventh, in the evening after my tuna salad and cup of chai at Café des Artes. Page through today’s issue of The Hindu, one of India’s English language newspapers. This issue accents Pondicherry and surrounding Tamil Nadu news and culture. From national politics to a street rage incident involving two men on motorcycles in Chennai. One guy simply picked up a log and smashed the other guy in the head and the argument is over. The murderer jumped on his motorcycle and his girl friend or wife jumped on the back and they took off and city police are now on a manhunt. There is south Indian temple news for special events, and besides three pages from the cricket circuits, and a couple of pages of economics and exploitation in the modern world, there is a page of international news, and the American presidential candidates and debates and primaries have merited an article every day.

     So I eat my salad and sip my chai and begin one of the Waverly novels of Sir Walter Scott, in a hardcover edition from 1901 . . .  the book itself is a work of art . . . titled The Antiquary. Sir Walter really enjoys his vocabulary and his penchant for minute detail in describing persons, places, situations and in choosing the words he wishes his characters to reveal themselves through. The booklets on the table have apparently not been getting very much attention. But I really do like the tuna salad here at Café des Artes.

     Thai massage class continues to absorb my everyday attention, from morning when I exit my room to walk around the park and down another block to the Surguru Spot for a breakfast dosa and cup of milk coffee. I’ve now got a regular auto-rik driver, Vera, who meets me at the restaurant at eight for the fifteen minute dodge-em session through the streets of Kottakuppam. New information, discussions, and demos keep the class focused from eight-thirty till twelve. For the two hour lunch break, while everyone else has gone somewhere or other, I’ll sway in the strong rope hammock of the rooftop classroom, and spend some time lying out on the pads as breezes rustle through nearby coconut tree palm leaves. At some point, I’ll get up for a walk down the unpaved lane to a roadside shop where I buy a bottle of mango juice drink. Students gather again at two and we practice together in team-like fashion, pairing up for a give and take session following the guiding voice of younger Marie. After our practicing time, the class disintegrates into molecular conversations between subgroups of natural affinity, younger ones and older ones, but the boundaries in truth are quite fluid and almost invisible.

     In the courtyard is a garden patio structure, with strong wooden poles and circular bench tied together with rough brown rope, conically covered in brown thatch, that serves as the final farewell station for the day before everyone heads out on their separate ways. Most days these days since Stefan left, I ride with Jetsun on his motor scooter into town. I’m dropped at my hotel around five or five-thirty, shower down and walk over to Café des Artes for the tuna salad which I’ve recently discovered, and my silent dialogue with the facing bookshelf, seated unobtrusively in the central passageway-dining room in what once would have been a multi-roomed residence. The bookshelf reaches back through time into the years of 19^th century book-binding, and runs the gamut of literary and art book binding styles, and into the world of modern paperback novels of some literary merit. The collection is in various states of order and disorder on the shelves, from the floor to the arm’s reach above, perhaps six feet across, some of the shelves for smaller books packed two deep . . . what mysteries lie within and behind the facing row, I must surmise . . . and intriguing piles of old art magazines lie stacked on the bottom shelf, and likely haven’t been disturbed in a very long time. The whole shelf and its entire collection is an artifact in itself, a feature of the Café décor, and I really wonder how many, if any, patrons pay attention to this bookshelf and its collection as a living, breathing, immeasurably deep and boundless repository of images and ideas that awaits only for a passer-by to stop, scan the titles, and choose to turn some pages in search for a glimpse of beauty.

     Saturday, March twelfth. Two hours with the singing bowls this morning. Then two and a half hours with the healing session. Pamphlets to the Japanese girl and the German girl and the French lady whose back problem is like mine, who requires the same exercise. Ride back into town with Jetsun to the Nilgiris market where I stock up on Snickers bars and invest in a bag of shelled walnuts. Walk through the vegetable market to pick up a bottle of Amla squash juice, and then go on over to Surguru for an early afternoon Talli meal. First table inside the door. Through the doorway walks Anne-Lisa, slim and lovely kindergarden teacher from Germany, here in India for a sixteen day vacation. Anne-Lisa feels most at home in Thiruvanamalli, and pursues a Devi temple circuit in her travels.

     Breathtaking, she is, Anne-Lisa-Lalita-Devi, here from Germany for sixteen days only, on her way in a few days to visit a Devi temple in Andhra Pradesh. She just so happens to walk through the door when the restaurant tables are full and I offer her a chair at my table. We sit face-to-face and begin unraveling our stories. From hers, I’m guessing Anne-Lisa is in her early fifties, although her smiling, enthusiastic demeanor easily suggests her early forties. I’ve just ordered my Talli meal, and as it arrives, she orders hers, so I wait till hers arrives so we can eat and talk together. The culture of Hindu Sanskrit chanting has captured both of our hearts and Anne-Lisa is especially drawn to the Lalita Sahasranam Stotram which I assure her I will listen to on my computer YouTube tonight, which of course I do, a half hour version and a one hour version, both through women’s voices. Sanskrit chanting captured my heart forever a long time ago, and Anne-Lisa is to me Lalita incarnate, here across the table at the Surguru Spot restaurant.

     She will be leaving Pondy on Thursday, and we agree to meet again before that as we walk our separate ways from the doorway of our meeting place.  An extra hour’s rest this Saturday afternoon before a five-thirty visit to Café des Artes for my evening pot of chai, the daily newspaper, and some browsing through some pages from the bookshelf, reading through the story of medieval woodcuts, complete with numerous illustrations, of which I especially like those of Albrecht Durer. Late evening fades into darkness through Stotrum chanting, as I catch up on my reading about Tripura Lalita.

     Sunday morning at nine, March thirteenth, having returned to my desk after my walk around the park to the Surguru Spot for Masala Dosa and milk coffee, served by the same young Tamil man who serves me every morning and who served the table by the doorway of Anne-Lisa and I, after I had just returned from my singing bowl morning.

     The Enchantment continues, the New Mexico kind, as I continue to page every evening through some pages of Spider Woman’s Daughter. I can jump into the story anywhere along its three-hundred-fifty-two pages, and follow a piece of the story I already know, reading like a detective now, picking up on little details in the narrative that I may have glossed over on a previous reading, or simply revisiting a scene to savor the network of connections and clues that Anne Hillerman wove together in her storytelling. My Lands of Enchantment are twins reaching around the globe towards each other: Albuquerque and Pondicherry: New Mexico and Tamil Nadu. There is still an imaginary plan for a trip to Sikkim and Nepal in April, though I currently have not investigated much of what that journey will entail, except that the budget guest houses pretty much bottom out at around rupees one thousand per night. That journey surely will happen in its own good time, but for now, I am so completely immersed in my daily schedule and current way of life that there seems to be enough adventure and discovery within this square mile of the earth’s surface on the ocean’s shore to keep me abundantly entertained.

     March thirty-first will be final day at Healing Hands, and the next day I will be back, in one sense, to the days between January eighth and twenty-third when I lived at Ayodhya Bhavan in Vaitikuppam. Those were the two weeks prior to visiting the Healing Hands center, before I had even thought of reprinting my new copies of my story in both French and English versions. I’d have been taking some very long walks through the streets of the village to the French Quarter and the shopping district, when my internet still depended on that far away WiFi shop.

      Life in Pondy has acquired and developed some definition, largely as a result of whom I find my conversations with. Last week, Mali, this week, Anne-Lisa, and of course Healing Hands has been a jeweled box of precious gems. Ayodhya Bhavan and Vaitikuppam provided their share, and jewels have been falling out of the sky since my first day in Pondy, December twenty-first when I met Louise Rose. Please note, this is not a hallucination. Hanging around Pondy to see what will happen next seems like an attractive possibility, but I really do have to visit the North, so that will happen, but Pondy has been most assuredly engraved as one of my go-to places whenever I visit India.

     One somewhat disturbing but informative dream from last night. I’m driving my white Ford Escort LX through the city with my friend Frank at my side. We come to a wide intersection where we are stopped by a red light. There is no car in sight from any other direction and I am frustrated to the level of anger at the thought that I must stop and wait and obey the red light when there is no apparent real reason for me not to proceed. In one swift frame, Frank and I are out of the car, and I have pushed it with a Herculean thrust from my arm through the red light, through the empty intersection, and the car glides far along a descending street until its right front tire slams into a curb and the car comes to rest. It was a good solid hit, and when Frank and I walk down the hill to the car, we find that the right front axel has been severely bent and the right front tire is totally blown out. Frank is my voice of reason and equanimity, and emphasizes quite clearly that the damage and cost caused by my explosive anger is far greater than the simple inconvenience of waiting for a red light to change. As inane as that situation appeared to be, it served a purpose and I would be wise to think well before ignoring the signs of prudence. Keep it cool, Johnny, and your car will serve you well.

     Monday, March fourteenth. Around six evening, after an exciting day at the massage class. Happy Birthday – Bon Anniversaire – to Simon, turning forty-one today. Nimi has created a chocolate and caramel masterpiece of a cake. Poured into, baked into, however it got in there, a unique combination of textures and tastes brought forth in a silver salad bowl about a foot across, to be eaten by all in a circle with spoons. Deliciousness amplified through a musical scale of melt-in-your-mouth syrupy chocolate icing sprinkled with thin banana slices, covering the caramel thick syrupy goo covering the dark baked chocolaty cake baked into the bottom. Scoop a spoonful up and tarry not in getting it into your mouth before the viscosity drips from the spoon. Today’s practice session is on hold. Lise is inspired after most of the silver bowl has been excavated to go downstairs to the kitchen and prepare a pot of tea for everyone here. The two Maries, Amodine, Catherine and Helen, Lies and Simon, and Axel and Jake and Nimi the baker, and moi. This morning Rahul laid out a curriculum plan for the next two and a half weeks. We are going into advanced training. Most of us are from last month’s class and the three new guys . . . Axel, Jake and Nimi . . . are fast and enthusiastic learners, so Rahul is going to take us on a journey through all of the components of more complex levels of the total Thai Massage repertoire. We have now gone through the foundation level for a one and a half hour massage. There are seven levels of Thai massage, and Rahul’s plan is to give us the first three. He is enthusiastic for he rarely has the opportunity to present advanced levels, and he sees this class as right for this in-depth training. As I practice with my classmates, I have to wonder to where and to whom I will be taking this. Most of the students here are yoga teachers or therapists who have professional objectives. This is interactive yoga between a giver and a receiver, and this practice is not easy to learn, at any level, and one does not become adept overnight. Into this world, one day at a time, I take another step. Get around to giving Axel, and Jake and Nimi a copy of my Gathering book. My distribution program continues, one book at a time. The young Japanese girl showed up on the rooftop during Rahul’s morning class. Lovely to see, and the young German girl from yesterday appeared in the afternoon. If you are interested, you are welcome. Those who want to learn what goes on here have a special frame of mind, and we find our recognitions of each other, as the wish to learn a little more continues from day to day. There is more to this than technique. The River flows across the page and I dream of mountains far away.

     Tuesday evening, March fifteenth. Meeting with Anne-Lisa at La Terrasse at six, for a bowl of noodle soup and a chapatti. Small red flower at the top right corner of her hairline, anchors a long curing lock of brownish-yellow hair hanging in front of her ear alongside her cheek. Her long hair is piled up into a loose, large bun at the top rear of her head. In her graceful red dress, I saw Anne-Lisa in my dream last night, in her eighteenth century simple and flowing sack-back gown, such as one sees in a painting by Watteau. In a huge palace somewhere in Germanic central Europe, I have ample time to spare during the wait for my flight to board for departure, so I begin my self-guided walking tour trough the magnificent large rooms of this palace, as complicated as the Louvre. From one room to another I wander, keeping track in memory of the path I am following, until I come to a point where I feel I had best go no further for fear of losing the thread of memory that would lead me back to where I came from. In retracing my steps through these magnificent rooms linked through doorways and hallways, I am accompanied by a lovely young woman in a simple flowing floor length eighteenth century sack-back gown that ripples like a river as she walks. We come to a room where I remembered a passageway, and now see only a gray marble wall. My guide in her graceful dress reaches out to pull a lever on one side of the room, and the marble slab pulls away to reveal the passageway I remembered. Someone had evidently blocked and disguised that passageway while I had been walking through my explorations, in a trickery motivated by I know not what, and my guide has set my direction true and away from the confusion and consternation I faced at the gray marble wall. Who else? But Anne-Lisa, can she be! who has brought the Lalita Sahasranam Stotram chanting into the rooms of my listening mind. A whole new chapter of Hindu mythology and iconography opens before me and Anne-Lisa-Lalita-Devi assures me that I can practice chanting on my own without feeling that I need to take voice lessons. Here at the table at La Terrasse, the first table inside the door, just as we met three days before at the first table inside the door at Surguru. We meet again, Anne-Lisa, for whatever role I play in your life, you are a guide for me through the pathways of memory and their winding turns, and you clear away the confusion created by false memories and blind alleys. This evening’s conversation draws to a close. Anne-Lisa will return to her room overlooking the ocean, and I will continue at this table at La Terrasse with my evening cup of masala chai. This is where we could meet again. There is a German word referred to by Hermann Hesse in his writings about his journey to India. The Heartfelt feeling of returning Home, when he and persons like Anne-Lisa and I visit this home to the Mother of us all, where gods and goddesses are conceived of and born and manifest in more ways than one can imagine. All that we with our simple minds can do is listen carefully, watch closely, and be ready without being ready. No one is pulling any strings. We are simply dancing with the music, and the sound that brings us together. I can only speak of what I hear.

     Thursday, March seventeenth, evening ten-twenty. After having listened through fifty minutes of Lalita Sahasranam Strotom. “Ten-twenty” was the codeword for location and “ten-four” was the code word for confirmation between Madison city bus drivers around 1980, over the inter-bus intercom. The routes were designed to criss-cross at various intersections around the city, and we called each other, especially on the evening routes, to time our arrivals as closely as we could, to coordinate the winding figure eights of our routes in such a way as to facilitate inter-bus passenger transfers. We drivers worked together to facilitate the objectives of our passengers to get where they wanted to go, which most often at night was home, and if we had to leave someone waiting at some downtown, uptown, or midtown transfer point, we’d pick up our intercom and call the driver of the crossing line for his ten-twenty and tell him to watch for that solitary soul standing under the light at such-and-such a corner. The confirmation for message received and understood was a “ten-four.”

     So it turns out that the students are not all that excited about trying to assimilate more sequences, complicated ones at that, and we tell Rahul this morning that we would rather focus on the foundation, which from one end to the other is about two hours. Simply going through a sequence without missing a move is a challenge, much more so is assimilating the moves into physical memory. We’d love to watch demos of the next level sequences, but are sure that trying to assimilate those into a still underdeveloped foundation is an invitation to folly. Rahul, just chill it down a little, and please give it to us one more time, slowly. My leg sequence this morning was the best it’s ever been, following the pace that Rahul set us to. I’ve got a picture of the frame and its major segments all lined up in a row. Now all I have to do is get from one end to the other without missing a beat. I can learn as a receiver from the giver, what feels right and what does not, for pressures and points the giver must look for and find and get into. When I feel someone has got it right on me, I learn how and where to apply when I am giving. Every afternoon, the six, or eight, or ten of us there, all answer a question before beginning. Would you like to be a giver or a receiver? Every day, the choice. A good question to ask yourself when you get ready to open the door of your room and step out into traffic for the day.

     Totally random encounters circulate through the city every day, and most everyone has a schedule. The Suguru restaurant has a doorman, a tall Nepali in light brown uniform, complete with brimmed cap. Eight hours, I suppose, every day, standing at the frosted glass windowed doors with large stainless steel handles, he opens the door for whoever walks towards the three steps at the entrance. It’s a comparatively quiet street, with just enough pedestrian and vehicle traffic to keep one entertained.  You can bet this man is here to make money for his wife and two small children in a village in Nepal. Our economic system has taken this mountain villager, father and husband, and surely tied to an extended family, and made a doorman in a brown uniform out of him, two thousand miles away from his heart. My waiter is a young man whose wife and son and daughter are four hours away by bus. He tells me he was not here for three days because he went to see them, part of his vacation time. I don’t know who he stays with here in Pondy, perhaps some relative or family friend. He’s in Pondy for the job and his family is not here, and I’m sure there are millions upon millions of families broken by our economic system, in India, in countries around the globe. Money is a powerful tool that can be used for good things that keep families together. Managed without compassion, it is brutally vicious. Each of us has our assigned value, and may circulate at will according to the level of value we are given to manage. Walking through the shopping district, one encounters many empty hands. Here is a minimally assigned value human, hanging out on the street. Where do you think they go at night when the traffic slows down? To sleep on the pavement of the sidewalk, or whatever slab of concrete seems most convenient or comfortable, or for some reason or another, chosen by the dream-maker.

     Friday evening, around five-thirty, March eighteenth.  A day of lessons and practice. Eight weeks of Thai Massage classes now gone by, out of my three months in Pondy, save for that one week in Thiruvanamalli. Today also the four month marker for my time in India since November nineteenth, according to the western business calendar. There is another calendar going on in the Hindu world that follows the planets and the stars and the moon and tells all kinds of stories about Siva and Parvati and the entire Hindu pantheon. Pand-harynat, the night watchman at Ayodhya Bhavan, was an astrologer-mythographer who did horoscope analysis for prospective marriage matches. He scans through all kinds of tables and charts to come to his conclusions. He cast the chart of one girl against those of two prospective grooms. For this he is paid five hundred rupees, which is a worthwhile amount for a man living with his wife on his night watchman’s salary. There were seven weeks walking through the streets of the urban seaside village of Vaitikuppam, while living at Ayodhya Bhavan with Ismo, and Ramesh and Pand-harynat to keep me updated on current events in the Tamil Hindu calendar.  The four days of Pongal were certainly the most exciting and colorful, with extravagant colums dusted into the pavement at the entryway of every house, on freshly washed asphalt, the streets of the village were a walk-through gallery. And the drums and the parades came out every once in a while, I was never exactly sure why, except that celebration was in the air. Also never to forget the day and evening for bathing the temple deity, the main one from the sanctum sanctorum, to whom the priests perform their pujas every day of the year. A large wooden-wheeled cart decorated with bazillions of mostly red and yellow and orange flowers, is rolled through the streets to the sandy beach where the deity from the deepest darkness within is carried to see the horizon where boundless water meets the endless sky.

     Three weeks gone by now at Hotel Qualithe, across the street from Central Park, and even though the sea is two blocks east, I have not been walking that way very much. I’ve been swallowed by the city to the North, the South and the West of my home. There is automobile, motorcycle and auto-rik traffic outside the lobby doorway, not endlessly streaming, but intermittently consistent.

     After a full morning and afternoon at the Healing Hands center, all I have to decide is when and where to have dinner. The Healing Hands center has filled my calendar six days a week for the last eight weeks! I’m not going to come out of this program ready to go around handing out Thai Massages. That is all very much fun and extremely informative and entertaining, but I am here to witness and learn from this man’s art of healing, and from his understanding of how human energy flows, like the ebbs and tides of the sea, how energy becomes blocked and contaminated, and how it is passed on and transformed. Here again, I’m not going to go out and start laying hands on people. This is deep and serious stuff, and this man is highly trained and knowledgeable and gifted, and he really doesn’t put himself out there as a healer. People just hear about him, and come to him, and he does what he can. He’s not a miracle worker. He just knows how shit works, and how to fix it if it doesn’t, sometimes, and he tells people how to get their act together so they don’t have to come back to see him again. This is all pro-bono. The window has opened and I have looked through. All I really see is the ocean’s horizon. Light is falling into Night, Luna is halfway towards full, and Jupiter rises early in the evening sky, to keep company with bright Sirius following the hunter Orion.

     Saturday, the Nineteenth, at quarter after four. After a two hour class from eight to ten, and a four hour Healing hands clinic. After six days on the run every morning, it’s an afternoon and evening free time session, with no need to wake up at dawn, but I will anyway, and all day tomorrow to make up a day as I go along. What goes on at these classes and these clinics is not for me to write very much about. All of the students have notebooks and can write whatever they want. There are times during the class when no words are written. All of the pens go spontaneously and harmonically silent. There are never any pens moving during the healing clinic session, at which there were about twenty visitors today. Just want to say that the class today came down to twelve very ordinary, typical, down-to-earth, unassuming persons as one might meet on the street of any of the countries represented here. And they will enjoy talking as normally as you are with them. But they have a second language going on in the back of their minds. Just like bi-lingual speakers, there is an energeisic language always in the background, on the invisible screen, that can be read, and understood, which of course is crucially dependent on the quality of understanding applied to the question at hand, and can be channeled, if you know where the channels are, and how to access and read them, and ultimately change their course.

     These are all my words. I am not quoting anyone, nor trying to capture their words, simply explaining for my readers, family and friends, what comes through for me from all of this unquotable conversation and film that will never be shown again. The entry point and first avenue was through lessons in Thai Massage, which is about interactions between clothed bodies where focus is on the transformation of energy between the giver to the willing receiver.

     After the final class this month, the open-ended time before me will be seen through eyes found through what I have seen and heard during these nine weeks of classes. I’ll be bouncing out of this city by the sea and landing in the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim. Now I get to plot and plan a program for where

I think I’m going.