Chapter Eight

     Friday afternoon, March twenty-fourth. Walking the streets of central Pondicherry, central to me, in the square kilometer around my hotel room, after this morning’s class, begin with the post office where I am first up to the letter registration window, an unimaginable miracle at a place where the line is often fifteen deep. From here, walk a couple of blocks to the Vodaphone center, where Vignesh recharges my minutes, and tells me to return on Monday to confirm my three-month renewal contract for a tourist phone. Find the nearest micro shop for Xeroxing and lamination; stop into a busy family style ice-cream shop with a list  of sweet dishes and drinks longer by far than a Baskin-Robbins menu. Chocolate ripple ice cream chocolate sundae and a cup of hot milky tea. Once into the shopping district, I scan my short term memory bank in search of little things I need to do or stock up on. Nothing! Walk on over to the quiet side street to visit Sandrine of the Opus 8 coffee shop, restaurant where a few special dishes are prepared in house each day, art gallery, library, and haven for quiet conversation. I order one of her salads for my private balcony table for two, followed by a double espresso with frothy cream.  Mr. Crow sits for a moment on the metal railing, twists his head around a couple of times, opens his beak and speaks, and takes wing. I’m still not exactly sure what he said, but I’m sure something inside of me knows. I give Sandrine a copy of the French and English versions of my pamphlet. It can be fun to surprise someone with something totally unexpected, to peruse the quizzical wonder: Why me? Why this? What is it? In silence spoken. She is out of the shop by the time I get up from my balcony reverie; behind the counter is a middle aged man I’ve not seen here before. I pay the bill and ask him if I can leave some books on the small table in the foyer where friendly businesses leave their fliers, all very neatly arranged. He says Ok, and see you later, which of course will happen.

     The course is winding down and coming to a climax. Four students went through their final exam this morning. Kimi, Simon, Amodine, Axel. There will be four others next week. Neither older Marie nor I are being called upon to perform. In truth, can I really remember what it was like to have a thirty- or forty-something year old body? I watch very closely the massage in progress going by in silence, follow the drawings in the handbook, and scribble in notes where I need to fill in the blanks. When the exam session is complete, our master explains his observations about each giver’s process, and is overall very pleased. He then turns to me and comments about how pleased he was to see me following the givers’ movements in detail, and not just sitting listlessly on the side in a state of nothing-to-do-ness. You don’t waste time, he says, and I like that thought. If there is something to be learned, and the means is here, I am up for it. Neither is sitting on the Opus 8 balcony engaged in conversation with a visiting crow a waste of time. Always alert to whatever can be learned in any situation, there is no such thing as the wasting of time.

     Sunday, March twenty-seventh, at quarter to eleven in the morning. Just to sketch in a few words about the last couple of days. Met my shape-shifting personality to cap off this morning’s dream. After visiting my amalgamated Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin university campuses, walking around the quad and along several of the major pathways that lead from building to building, enjoying the walk for its own sake, as a reminiscent overview, especially welcome for its outdoors perspective, as I feel like I’ve been hanging out in the classrooms and libraries on overtime mode, and need to feel the campus and university aura from its under-the-blue-sky perspective. I will meet someone whom I once knew in those places, on those campuses, and we will sit in the grass or on a shady bench and talk about whatever. Until I get to a place where I need to pick up, bid adieu, and walk off to a class in some building across the way. The time it takes in number of minutes to walk from one building to some other is completely familiar. For whatever goes on following this sequence, I’m sitting in the front row of a small eccentric, old-fashioned stage theatre, with the across-the-floor point-of-view one has from such a seat, and onto the stage walks a young man, perhaps in his mid- or later thirties, dressed in ordinary shirt and trousers. He lies on his back in the center of the empty wooden floor, and both his facial features and body structure morph like a piece of clay going through a transformation into some other character in the play I have just seen. The entire performance had ended with a lingering uncertainty. There was a mystery that needed to be tied together, and there were some loose threads. When the young man, a character in the play, morphed into the other character, an older, middle-aged man with some villainous tendencies, the loose ends were tied together. The movements through the plot and where it all led to made sense. The villainous one is more like a Kokopelli, the trickster who throws obstacles in your pathway to see how you overcome them, the trickster who defies your expectations with meetings and conversations and encounters you would never have imagined, the trickster who throws together a tossed salad of events that makes a mockery of decipherment. The shape-shifter sits up on the stage, one knee folded down, one knee folded up, his forearm across his folded knee like a Bacchus in his cups, and locks my eye, black to black, until my eyes flutter open into morning’s first light.

     Visiting the world of Amita these last two evenings, Friday and Saturday. Walking south along Rue Labourdonnais around five-thirty, a street I have not often walked, and especially in not a long time, I pass by the entry of L’Espace, an upstairs open air informal restaurant and café. Wooden chairs and tables with simple tablecloths, lots of space to find a place to sit for a while, and I’m passing a table where two women and one man with a fancy camera hanging from his neck are sitting. One of the women beckons me to join her table. Amita is conducting an inaugural event. She has decided to become a counselor and this is her first outreach, up here on the rooftop café of L’Espace. She wants to get small groups of people together to sit around a table and talk about how to deal with and solve all of the problems that life sends to our path. There is a somewhat emphatic dose of the Christian God, who sometimes goes by the name of Jesus, and who in fact is consummately a triumvirate. Amita is energetically enthusiastic about her newly inspired career direction. The population around the table grows to around eight, including the owner and his grown son, and we all freely carry on a conversation about life’s problems and solutions. Amita is more the instigator than the director of our free-for-all conversation, and she is simply happy to have brought us all together for this event. When I introduce myself to Amita as I first join her group, her thought goes to John the Baptist, and she wishes for my blessings for both herself and her new mission. My blessings are with her. Photography guy takes pictures of the group. I’ve got a copy of my book for anyone who wants one, most everyone except one woman who says she will never read it, for the only book she reads is the Bible. What a concept! Out of all the books out there in the world – take thirty seconds and think on how many there are – a person chooses to read one book only! What to Say? The owner and his son get back to the work of the restaurant as evening diners climb the stairs and take tables along the railing overlooking the quiet street. I take a dinner table with Amita. She is rather fun to talk with. Born and raised in a Sikh family in New Delhi, she became involved with a Muslim man when she was about thirty, and lived the Muslim religion for thirteen years, and just six years ago found the Christian God. She’s lived in Pondicherry four years, and is simply enchanted with the culture of the French district especially, and with the ancient roots and connections that Pondy has with the India of the Rishis. She has most recently been the principal of some school in Cuddalore, fifteen miles south of here, and she resigned that role to take up this new calling from God, to serve as a counselor and help others understand and deal with life’s challenges. She is and always has been unmarried, and her heart longs for a deep and meaningful relationship with a man she can spend her life with.

I encourage her with my sincere blessing. Her car is parked in the street below and she gives me a ride to my hotel. We agree to meet tomorrow afternoon out in Kottakuppam where I will be after the morning and early afternoon Healing Hands session, and from there we will drive on out to somewhere near Auroville where she has another counseling session lined up at some roadside restaurant. It’s all part of the adventure!

     Amita is an adorable magnet drawing people together in little circles to talk about ideas and issues important to their personal sense of self and expression. I’m here to meet the others that Amita brings together and there is a true sense that Amita and I are on parallel paths of outreach with a sense of connection reaching back into some primeval past, some prehistoric memory, some primordial root. Saturday evening was a story, and pretty soon, Sunday’s story with Amita will unfold.

     Monday evening, March twenty-eighth. Chronology is becoming dense. More things are happening than can be kept track of. The essence needs to be distilled from the froth. Saturday was Amita’s day from four when she picked me up on the ECR highway roadside, heading north out of town to the Auroville road turnoff. Through the streets of shops and past the Auroville entrance on the strip of asphalt turning through groves of trees and fields to the last hippie-style coffee house – restaurant on the road, way on past the roadside strip malls of trendy shoppes and restaurants. Out here at the end of the road which continues on into empty fields, is Coffee Break Café, according to the overhead painted sign with Rastafarian overtones. Kitchen and open air tables on the ground floor, and climb the narrow concrete stairs to the sprawling rooftop under woven bamboo and thatch work cover. What was once a clearly vibrant structure and space with an overview of nature’s horizon for the setting sun is now rather abandoned. A low-lying distant treeline extends into peripheral vision, and one can easily imagine cushions and mattresses with low tables arranged all around this inviting space.  Now dormant, or perhaps, from what I can tell, operating at about a three percent efficiency level. Adi-Siva, a Tamil who looks the Rastafarian part, has recently acquired this house of memories. He has plans to make this bird fly again, but so far, the program waits on the runway. Adi-Siva and Sophie, of European heritage, occupy a smaller, similar structure a stone’s throw from the main structure. The Coffee Break Café is Amita’s chosen venue for her second inaugural Peace Counseling session. Friday night was her first inaugural, Saturday night is her second, and Sunday afternoon will be a session for her foster family, the Tamil family in this southern part of the continent who have adopted Amita in heart and spirit.

     I really don’t know how many people have been invited to this Saturday evening event. Amita hands out her business cards personally and continuously to strangers and friends. Out here at the Coffee Break Café on Saturday night, besides Adi-Siva and Sophie,  neither of whom participate in Amita’s session, is Karan, a quite intelligent thirty-something year old man who is carrying a book titled, Transcendence, authored by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a prominent scientist and politician, now deceased, subtitled My Spiritual Experiences with Pramukh Swamiji. Karan is from Delhi and now in the Pondy area three days, staying in an Auroville guesthouse and somehow connected through friendship networks to be here tonight. Also here is Sentil, a thirty or forty something year old Tamil man in strong health with vibrant eyes. He has been in the Pondy area for three months after ten years in a remote area of the Himalayas in Nepal. Says he had hair growing down to his waist, but it is now all cut back to the neckline. Bala is here, a middle-aged Tamil man, engineer working with hydraulics and water purification and delivery systems in Auroville. This is the crew, and again, Amita initiates the discussion but does not try to control it. The conversation flows through one related topic to another, from Amita’s emphasis on forgiveness and allowing God to guide your decisions, through various points of wisdom from the chapters in the book Karan carries, and I bring out and share copies of my book, and that initiates more conversational material. Amita is an enthusiastic God-following Christian, but is not trying to convert anyone. She is just following the word given to her to quit her Cuddalore school principalship, and begin a counseling service which so far does not look like a business. Not to worry! I have a particularly strong intellectual connection with Karan, and a particularly strong energeisic connection with Sentil. We move from the table and chairs on the ground floor to the mattresses and low table on the upstairs floor. Watching the sunset, entering night’s darkness. Driving back towards town on the Auroville road, Amita and I stop at a roadside outdoor pizzeria for an hour across the table.

      Wednesday, the thirtieth at five-thirty. Having met with Harsaran Singh this afternoon between one and three-thirty, travel agent extraordinaire and true friend on the conversational path through life. Met Harsaran last night via Amita at the rooftop corner table of the coffeehouse on the Promenade overlooking the ocean, listening to the gentle breakers crash against the rocks. Walk with Amita to the Beach Café in the evening as the sun goes down behind the buildings of the city to the west. Two days earlier, as I was talking with Amita about my travel plans, she said she would refer me to her travel agent on Canteen street if I wished. After my foray through the ineffectual Blue Yonder agent, I asked to meet her agent, and Harsaran came to meet us on the café rooftop as the final dusk disappeared into darkness. It was easy to tell early on that this would be a good connection, a most fortuitous connection, and as it turned out, indeed auspicious in more ways than I could have imagined. As for sorting through airlines and schedules, he has found the perfect flight to Bagdoga via Calcutta, on one plane with a thirty minute stopover between ten-twenty and two-fifteen. We talk about my overall travel plans. Harsaran is from Srinigar and a fountain of information about Ladakh and Leh and surrounding territory: villages, monasteries, landscapes. He lived in Leh for three entire years, including the isolated and bitterly cold snowbound winters. Besides helping me imagine that leg of my journey, down the road in later summer, he helps me think about my journey to Bagdogra, and the overland journey to Gangtok, in terms of all of those details that are a part of such a journey through unexplored, to me, territory. Forging a new path, etching a new landscape into memory. Not so far in numbers of miles, but such incredible miles they shall be. It’s up to me to find my lodging and exact landing points.  Harsaran just gets me there, which is exactly what I’m looking for. He helps me think about my plans for an overland journey through Nepal towards Kathmandu, again with a sense for all of the details to be remembered. This man is golden to me as a travel agent, and it doesn’t stop here. He has strong ties to Bali and Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. I had hinted at my book on the Café rooftop last night, and now bring out a copy for Harsaran. He completely gets it, and we carry on at length about what I’m talking about within those pages. Harsaran has a fabulous capacity for listening and carrying on a conversation. His normal business has to do with organizing meeting venues for traveling conventions at resorts, but his personal heart is in the interior of Bali where the literati of the Western and Eastern world find seclusion and companionship amongst like minds during four days of the last week of October. Harsaran recommends that I send a digital copy of my book along with a request to participate to the woman who organizes this event. It’s a literature festival for we lesser known writers who tirelessly share our messages with the rest of the world, and with each other in our world. Sounds like a multi-coffeehouse smorgasbord of writers and readings and offerings, and Harsaran suggests that my little book would easily fit in, and he forwards the email announcement to my inbox. Mushroom Cloud! What was I going to do after September in Leh and Ladakh? I had no idea. How about a writers’ sharing conference in Bali in October? Do I need to elaborate on this idea? Meanwhile, the date for departure from Chennai has been fixed, and the last day of class is tomorrow. Now all I need to do is fill in the blanks in between April first and eleventh. Divest and consolidate and wad it all up into a manageable package. It all comes down to the number of pounds in your bag, no matter what it is. And deciding where to place what is left behind. And wondering how my final few days in Pondicherry are going to resolve into what kinds of conclusions.

     Friday morning, April first. Yesterday, nine of us are here, and eight of us have been doing this together for the last eight weeks. Farewells are spoken, each to every other one, and something said about the possible when’s, and where’s and how’s of our meeting again. A summary statement of who we are to each other. One by one, each of my friends goes down the stairs towards the gate, and I have the hammock and the pads on the floor to myself, soaking in the afterglow before planning the rest of my day outside.

     Amita calls and suggests that I meet her at the coffee house on the beach downtown around two for a cold glass of lemonade with mint, her favorite herb.

For two hours we sit at our table facing the rolling waves and gently crashing breakers. The service she wants to give to others through her counseling service is foremost in her heart, but the ground floor fact is that she’s been living off of her savings, and is now applying for school principal positions here in the Pondy area. There is one possibility that seems promising but is still uncertain, while underneath all of the upbeat conversation and faith in God to provide and guide, there is perhaps some little tinge of anxiety about how all of her wishes are going to pan out. We each have a slice of pizza and some French fries and some of her homemade yellow dahl that she bootlegged into this restaurant by the sea to share. By four o’clock, Amita is getting a bit head-achy, and, amongst other things the Pondy air is hot today, even at this table by the sea, and my tailbone is wanting to get up and move around, so we each head home to bedrest, and agree to meet again at six-thirty for a visit at L’Espace restaurant, where we can drink more lemon with mint tea and have a light pasta dinner. Harsaran, my travel agent, comes to L’Espace to sit at our table after Amita gives him a ring. Here also for company is Pieretta, a cheerful and smiling middle-aged French woman who helps with the preparation and serving at this restaurant, and since there are no other customers in this spacious and informal atmosphere, we entertain each other in conversation, and there is a round of photo and selfie taking as the young Tamil waiter joins our party. Through over two hours, from seven to after nine, only one pair of customers visits the restaurant and sits in their private corner, so the floor is ours for laughter and good humor. Time to go home finally comes around, and Amita’s mental exhaustion and headache return. I do what I can to help her get into the proper frame of mind for driving home, and she assures everyone that the next day is her stay-at-home day. Kind of very much like that for me too. End of one major chapter is near, and a new one on the threshold, and all I have to look forward to are things that need to be done. Interestingly enough, Amita’s birthday is September 5, 1966, while mine is September 6, 1944. I wonder what kind of fun a numerologist – astrologer could have with that!

     Saturday, April second, around five-thirty afternoon-evening. Here and now, here and now, it is always here and now. For whatever is going on, it is always here and now. Nothing like a twenty-four hour bout with diarrhea, fever, belly ache, and a bit of vomiting to make normal feel great! Thursday was that healing trick that Rahul played on me. Mon Ami! Something is bad going on with my digestive system, even if I don’t exactly consciously know it yet. I am the receiver through a demonstration of the healing process administered through the back. From the soles of my feet, through all of my chakras to the crown, and I feel inside that something has happened, something has been transformed, something has been realized, that I can carry into all of my Beautiful Tomorrows. The final day of class closes around noon, and I sit on the rooftop classroom and wait. Amita calls to ask me to meet her at the seaside café where we have pizza and fries. Then again with Amita at L’Espace for a plate of Provencal pasta. All very tasty. Then Friday morning dawn, it all turns around on me. And I don’t doubt that morning after morning of Suguru dosa, as tasty as it is, is part of the equation. Keeping a balanced tummy, deciding where and what to eat every night, which restaurant and what’s on the menu to choose from, in which outdoor or indoor ambiance, which waiters I will encounter, and how many and who are the people sitting around me, all of that will have its impact on whatever dish I wish to bon appetite! The Provencal pasta was the cherry on the top and the straw that cracked the camel’s back, and sent my system into red alert. First day entering the unscheduled world, and I am scheduled indoors, sunrise to sundown. Fevers and headaches come and go every couple of hours as the waves of realignment flow. I’ve got mango juice, water and club soda for company. Keep the overhead fans turning and turn them off from time to time to still the warm air and coax a little moisture from my skin. It’s just roll with the punches and sit up in bed and stare at the wall time. Been a while since I’ve done one of these. Something always has to bring it out of me, I guess you could say, literally and figuratively.   

     During the last few  minutes at L’Espace as the table was getting up to disperse Thursday evening, with Amita still in her chair and I standing next to her, she sat there with her eyes closed, internalizing her hidden anxiety, due largely now I’m sure to her lack of income. There is a slumbering volcano under that crown, not the kind of volcano that explodes, but the kind where fissures appear across fault lines, and the lava flows forth in rivers. I don’t say anything. She doesn’t say anything.  I simply cup the palm of my hand on her crown, resting gently on her thick black hair, and keep it there for as long as it takes for her to open her eyes, after which she looks up and asks if that is what I’ve been learning at my classes. The intention in my gesture was as innocent as the soothing touch of a mother to her ailing child, and I became aware as I was doing this that it was more than an innocent gesture. I was sucking stuff out of the top of her head and there was no pulling out until she felt relieved. By the time I got home that night around ten, I simply jumped onto my bed and smashed the crown of my head into my pillow. The cleansing began in the morning. Amita called at seven in the evening to ask if I wanted to walk the beach, and I told her I’m sick and no can do tonight. At eight-thirty I stepped out to walk the block and a half to the row of shops where I stock up on juice, water, and club soda. The course through the night brings forth a measure of equilibrium, and I’m ready for three idlees with chutney and a cup of curd at Surguru this morning.

     Visit the Healing Hands healing session from ten to two on Saturday. I’m now an ex-student, one who is between sessions. I can easily return next year and fit right in with where I am at and go on from there. This is what Rahul’s students do, and I am one of them. So, kind of an ex-, but not really. Just taking what I’ve learned out into the world, and applying myself, through who I am, to those whom I encounter. A handful of Rahul’s students become adept Thai Massage masters, and there is in fact an international network of healing masters, functioning at many levels of apprenticeship and mastery. I have just become an acolyte, an altar boy. I walked in because I wanted to learn. I now know more than I knew before, and will carry it with me wherever I go.

     The outside air is clear and clean on my morning walk following Friday’s gastronomical-intestinal clearance project. After the healing session, head over to the shopping district to recharge my phone card with the Vodaphone techie, buy a new hat to keep my head covered during the afternoon, no joke around here about the heat from the sun. In fact, not having had my hat since I left it at Coffee Break last Saturday, was likely an important contributing factor to my internal turbulence. Stop in at the Focus book store to buy the first volume of a trilogy of novels that bring Shiva to life as a person living in the long ago world of 1900 B.C. India. For my five days coming up in a Chennai hotel room, and at the airport on Monday the eleventh. Top off the shopping walk-around with a hot cup of chai at Café des Artes, where it is always a quarter to two, according to the wood and brass trimmed 1930’s era clock on the wall.

     Sunday evening, April third around eleven-thirty evening. Burning three sticks of Mali’s incense. Three left for tomorrow night. I’ve been burning Mali’s incense sticks since he gave them to me when he left, one package of Nag Cmampas. Couple or so one night. Couple or so another night, not every night, until I come down to the last six, each night gets three, and the following morning I’ll be on a bus to Chennai, to my gateway guest house, the YWCA International Guest House on Poonamallee High Road, where I can review where I’ve been and prepare for where I’m going. This is going to be a real slide show, press the button and you’re looking at a whole new picture. From ocean’s horizon, at sunrise or in the middle of the dark night when there really is no horizon, just waves rolling in out of the darkness to crash with white breakers on the black rocks, to Himalayan foothills crowned with snow white gray rocky peaks. Via a four hour flight from Chennai to Bagdogra. So today is pack-it-up or throw-it-out or give-it-away day, with a goal directed objective of fifteen kgs for checked luggage, seven for the carry-on, and however I can shuffle heavy objects into my personal item bag. Paper is like a rock. My notebooks accumulate. I’ve got about thirty-five of my Gathering of the Tribes booklets left, English version, and by this evening’s end I will have divested myself of ninety-five of my French version booklets by giving the forty-something of those I have left to Harsaran’s daughter, who has just passed her tenth grade comprehensive exam and is beaming with joy. She has already taken several French courses and will be continuing with the Alliance Francaise, the nexus of French cultural life in Pondy. She can share these booklets with her instructors and fellow students, and I give her two English copies to use as translation guides. What a delightful outcome to that publishing and distribution project! I am carrying five. Never know whom I might meet along the way who might appreciate one. I meet Harsaran and his daughter in my room at five-thirty when they bring over a portable weighing device, a digital hand-held thingy that weights me in at fifteen point nine, seven point five, and three point two: checked, carry-on and personal. Harsaran assures me they will likely pass me without any overweight fee, just don’t put anything else in there in Chennai. Maybe I can even do some fine-line editing. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Post Project Problems, or something like that.

     Morning walk along the block and two other quiet avenues this morning for idlees and coffee, and of course the walk back, for most of today will be in my room, except for a one-o’clock walk for two blocks to Café des Artes for a plateful of tuna salad, with lettuce, and diced boiled eggs, and cucumbers and black olives and diced tomatoes all in a vinegar and oil herbal dressing, followed by my cup of chai, and I enjoy a long article in today’s newspaper about a bibliophile’s love for old bookstores, the kind filled from floor to ceiling with friends from long ago you’d love to visit again, and entirely new avenues of exploration to discover. Between the salad and the randomly arranged bookshelf of the Café des Artes before me, I meet someone in this article I can understand, a book nut.

     It’s been a busy lunchtime this early afternoon, and halfway through my tea, an elderly British fellow, perhaps a decade younger than I, who has so far been sitting at his own little table, gets up to stretch and stroll around, and browses through the newspaper pile near my corner, and I offer him the article I’ve read, telling him that it is certainly more interesting than anything else he will find in those pages. The conversation is started, we both relate to the literary point of view towards the world. I go to the little desk where my pile of books are, pick one up and give it to him with a brief personal introduction. Jeff then turns me around and introduces me to Peter, another fellow around sixty, who has been notebooking on his little table. Jeff introduces Peter as a writer, and when I ask about that, Peter says it’s only for his own entertainment. He is not trying to publish anything. He just enjoys . . .  writing things out . . .  whatever they are. I don’t even ask. I’ve met a kindred spirit. I am meeting a kindred spirit. Peter has risen from his chair when we are introduced, and he and I stand there for several timeless minutes exploring each other’s mind. These things happen, getting to the heart of your being with another person at the drop of a hat. Getting into a rhythm of give and take with someone whose voice is music to your ears. While knowing full well, that this might be the only conversation you have with this person in this lifetime. Whatever it is that we need to say to each other, we need to find out what it is here and now. I’m out of this city day after tomorrow, though as it turns out, Peter and Jeff and I are in territory we know well and return to, just as I’ve already done, just as they’re doing for their reasons, and there is a crossroads here that can be found again. Such a thrilling encounter for my lunch break. Hand a copy of my booklet to Peter as we part, something more of a secondary gesture. Not the most important thing between us, just another string around the package.

     So as darkness settles in, it’s already been an exciting day. Call Amita at six-thirty and we agree to meet at the café on the beach at eight after she finishes with her evening church service. Simply her and I on the rooftop overlooking the ocean, at our table in the corner. One of the men from her counseling session up here three days ago has come back to her beaming with happiness because he followed her advice and did some serious forgiving. Amita’s calling is reinforced, and somebody else who knows what she’s been doing has advised her to visit the Pondy tourism office on the promenade where she is told they have heard about her and want to employ her in some capacity, I’m not exactly sure in what way related to her counseling, but her job search is now over, or so it might seem. She does not have to return to being principal of a school, and will be getting paid for doing what she loves to do! Her faith in God and belief in her mission are now forged in precious metals. She is absolutely being who she wants to be, and she has always made up her own mind and stood by her decisions, and so very  much of this is through the influence of her father and one of her grandmothers. She is a powerfully self-assured personality, already proven in her achievements as a teacher and as a principal, and where she will go from here . . . will be through following God’s will, and she declares this in such a delightful, exuberant manner! Her enthusiasm is captivating, her sincerity absolute, and she is certain that her faith in God will bring her the man who will be her true partner. There is no need to be looking too far into too many tomorrows. Do your best in the here and now, and the best is yet to come. The Sunday night crowds on the promenade are beginning to disperse, as I walk her back to her car.

     Monday, April fourth at one o’clock. Last day in Pondy is rather low key so far.

Meet Stefan on the balcony at seven-thirty. We walk to our favorite chai shop on the corner where the master of chai brewing pours his magic into our glasses. Mid-morning rik-ride to my internet shop near Nehru and Mission streets for a small Xeroxing job and bid farewell to the owner who has been my Xeroxing and printing go-to guy all this time. Stop into Richy-Rich,i.e. Baskin Robbins, for a chocolate chip sundae and stroll the few blocks under the sun to back home. The ongoing narrative has a life of its own, as I pick and choose between this person and another, this event and another, this place and another, and weave some kind of coherent tale out of it all, choosing threads to focus on, making up designs along the way. Kind of an adventure in its own right, seeing where this unplanned unraveling will go. If and when something poetic comes through, it will be accidental and spontaneous, just like the lotus blossom rising from its roots in the mud.

     In my boy scout troop, I was the logbook keeper, the designated Scribe, and had a shoulder patch with a woven white quill feather pen, and it was I who decided, through my pen, what had happened, what was logbook worthy, on our weekend overnight camping trips, our week long summer camps, as well as our meetings and other events. I was the natural for this position. No one else wanted it, and I did. And I don’t remember anyone ever objecting when I read my words aloud for all to hear. I was thorough and observant. Even while participating whole-heartedly in camping trip antics and meeting time activities, there was a shadow self in the back of my mind, the designated scribe, who was hearing it all go by in words and phrases and paragraphs. I’m doing now what I’ve always been doing, and looking at the world as I’ve always been looking at it. The body withers and the mind blossoms. The shell falls away, while the Light within goes where it must, I know not where, but it is rather clear to me that there is something going on that is more than just a randomly configured assortment of chromosomes and genes dodging each other through traffic till we meet in our inevitable recognitions. We find each other because we already know each other, and the simple passage of time makes it feel like a story, when it may not really even be a story at all. Stories are all make believe. Kindred spirits have no stories, simply recognitions and experiences to swim together through, playful dolphins at home both under and over that paper thin surface between water and air.

     Thursday morning at one. This is April seven. A waterfall of silence after thirty-seven nights at the Hotel Qualithe’. Here in Chennai, in this YWCA Guest House cubicle where I began this journey on November nineteenth. A geometric octagon of a room with sides of unequal length. Upper floor window looks head-on into a treetop lush with greenery and laced profusely with small yellow blossoms. Second night. Jupiter above, with Venus and the last crescent due to rise shortly before Sun-Surya at Dawn.

     My regular and dependable auto-rik driver in Pondy for almost all of my time in the downtown sector picks me and my gear up at nine Tuesday morning, and drives me over to Healing Hands like he did for all of those mornings, where I dropped off some donation books and my pillow from Aranachula. Veera then drives me way across town to the bus stand. Veera’s about fifty, a sufficient array of flecks of white hair in his not recently trimmed but neat black hair, much like the yellow blossoms in the sea of green fluttering leaves now outside my window. I picture him as a family man with teenagers and who knows how many other children, driving this auto-rik day-after-day putting together enough rupees to keep sambar on the banana leaf. So a morning regular with a good fare has been a good way to start each day. Six mornings a week for four or five weeks. A gentle voice with the composure of a thoughtful father. He understands everything I say and replies in short phrases of confirmation. He’s also a careful driver, not a reckless speed and pass nut. He’ll give right-of-way, and take it when an opening is clear, but he is not jumpy and aggressive, and waits for the big guys to go by before crossing the highway. So goodbye at the bus stand is a little special between him and me, especially since I won’t be back till next year, and who even really knows about that?    

     Walk across the busy lot to the Chennai bus stand where a bus is leaving in five minutes, and I get the right window seat behind the driver. I like to keep my eyes on the road with the driver, see what he sees, and how he handles a little calf standing confused in the middle of the highway asphalt. Couple of hours of open roads with stopping at villages for hop-off or hop-on riders. At least a full hour jostling through the city traffic. Get over to the Guest House around two-thirty for a welcome greeting of recognition from smiling Aruna behind the lobby desk. A couple of other familiar staff are here, so there’s a bit of a coming home feeling just walking through the door. Fill out the registration book and go upstairs to take my rest. It doesn’t take long to get hot and sweaty outside these days, and the bus ride wasn’t really bad, but I need some cooling down and laying out time. It’s been a special day, and it’s been a special three and a half months in Pondy. Sure, I’ve got it all recorded in log notes, well, not really all, but a reasonable clear picture of overall themes, the unfolding of events, and special people along the way. All of that is now collapsed into this nugget of time, five days in the guest house between Pondy and the road to Gangtok. Perhaps there are some words to put a thought together about Pondy. First off, I printed and distributed books, a most fortuitous development that has added a whole new sense of purpose and mission to these travels. I left ninety-three copies of my French translated version in Pondy, some to individuals and others through reliable outlets. I left seventy of the English versions in Pondy, to individuals and through outlets. The book tour is On! The people I met, the voices I heard, the things they said to me, are all of jaw-dropping significance to my heart, mind and soul. Like a voyage in itself was my journey through Pondicherry, from leaving the shoreline at the guest house cubicle on December twenty-first, and returning April fifth to virtually the same cubicle, where daytime traffic noise is filtered through surrounding treetops, where the night air is as silent as a New Mexico forest retreat. I feel like I’ve just remembered what silence sounds like.

     First morning’s breakfast at the guest house, meet Martin and Alin from Germany, who have been traveling the South for the past month through Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and who will fly to the Andaman Islands tomorrow. Martin is an anthropologist who has worked with a small town community in the Kathmandu valley. Alin is a physio-therapist, and we easily converse about Thai massage and energy healing. When we get to the question of my identity and whatever my career has been, towards the end of our breakfast table, I tell them about my art and poetry and go upstairs to retrieve a booklet for them, and my book of drawings from 1980. We sit at a small table in the lobby and I explain the series in detail, and we three have a most engaging conversation. The book tour continues and how so very sweet it is to talk to interested strangers from out of the blue about what my life has been about, and continues being about. Seeing to it that this symbol through its vehicle enters the linguistic-symbolic dialogue and conversation of our world.

     Thursday, April seven, around eleven in the evening. Second full day at the transit station, transfer point, in-between state, Bardo between Pondy and Gangtok. Wished bon voyage to Martin and Alin in the lobby after breakfast this morning. They decided to visit the Vivikananda museum yesterday and somewhere along the way, Alin bought a large print booklet with colorful pictures and text describing and telling the stories of twelve incarnations of Shiva. A lightweight book for these efficient backpackers, each carrying what looks like about half of what I carry. I’ve finished the first volume of the Shiva trilogy by Amish, Shiva as a young contemporary dude crisscrossing northern India in nineteen hundred B.C. wondering why his throat has turned Blue and why everyone is looking to him for advice, all along with meeting, falling in love with and marrying beautiful, athletic Sati, a real warrior princess. To be continued. Pass this volume on to Alin. Fits right in with her interest that sparked her to buy the picture book.

     Take an auto-rik to the Buhari restaurant in Chetpet  around eleven-thirty for a lunch with Kiran, a.k.a. Thunder Moon, and the Ray of the Sun’s Light. The General Manager of the YWCA Guest House who befriended me in December is now the Operations Manager of this posh and upscale restaurant, with a seating capacity of one hundred sixty on two levels. Kiran was not appreciated by the YWCA Board and he is now very appreciated at Buhari. White long sleeve shirts with black bowtie or necktie for the staff on the floor, and an extensive team of chefs and cooks’ helpers in the busy kitchen. Kiran is making decisions for eighty-four people here, with encouragement from the general manager and owner to make even more of his own decisions while deferring to them less often, suggesting that Kiran is being groomed for a promotion in this city-wide chain of six restaurants with an eye towards expansion in Malaysia. With a team of highly conscientious and competent performers, Kiran is in his element. He recommends a sliced grilled chicken dish with salad, and a house specialty of a cool drink, a bright blue slushy in a tall curving soda glass. The chicken is excellently spiced with some selection of herbs concocted by the master chef, and the slushy is not just another slushy. It is a melting iceberg of delicately intermingling flavors. It is so good to see Kiran across the table. Such a fortuitous step he has taken. Afternoon and evening in the cubicle at the window next to the treetop full of yellow flowers, searching through the internet for hotels in Siliguri and Gangtok. Even try to book a rez. But the program went glitch, so where I’ll wind up staying in both places is still up in the air. Even if I didn’t catch anything, at least I’m out on the Lake fishing, getting my head into pictures of places with snow capped mountains.

     Friday, April eighth around nine evening. A most extraordinary day in its most un-extraordinariness. The auto-rickshaw driver I picked up at the guest house gate turned on his meter as we began the ride. One does not even ask an auto rickshaw driver anywhere in Tamil Nadu, or anywhere in India, to turn on his meter. They are ornamental appendages, inherently dysfunctional. I did not ask, he turned it on, and I watched in awe the numbers click by as we went down the road, and when we arrived, the registered fare was half of what I would have given him. I have the man wait for ten minutes while I browse the bookstore for new pens and fresh paper. He drives me back and I get two rides for the price of one today! With an affable elder driver who hangs around the guest house gate with the guest house gatemen at their cubicle shelter and waits for the next likely customer to walk towards the gate. A sweet little piece of turf he’s cut out for himself in a city, in a country, where the yellow hornets buzz along thoroughfares and byways in disorganized swarms. I’d say this auro-rik driver has a businessman’s brain, identifying a market, and engaging in appropriate PR to establish working relationships with officials of the institution, while providing a valued and appreciated service. He plays by the rules and goes by the books, and doesn’t get all pushy and greedy with his customers like some drivers. Those are all individuals, those drivers of the yellow hornets, and they all got family and other responsibilities. They are not here for the fun of it, and on the ends of the spectrum on one side are those who are grasping, and on the other, those who are mellow and patient. And every time I wave one down, I never know who I’m going to come up with. When I asked the driver at the bus stand on Tuesday how much, he quoted an outrageously high price, which made the ensuing conversation adversarial, which eventually led to a price that was still extravagant, and the affability of our discourse was compromised. It was all about the number, and whatever else could have passed between us is shadowed by that number. I inherently liked the guy for I sensed a strength of character and intelligence underneath it all, and noticed that his grudging acceptance of my final offer, as generous as it was, as he carried my bag to his vehicle, was mellowed at the final drop off point with a brief look of gratitude. He even needed to stop along the way to get some petrol in his tank to make it all the way to where I was going. There are a lot of these guys, all kinds, waiting out there for a pick-up or a call-down. They are a vital factor in the transportation system for this city, filling the space between city bus riders and motorcycle drivers. One does not imagine the city without them. They are a vital thread in the fabric of the city.

     Saturday, April ninth around ten-twenty in the evening. Didn’t leave the grounds today, but finally made it over to the pond in the back, surrounded by the hanging foliage of old and young trees alike, with an occasional palm spiraling towards the clear, blue sky. The markings on the gray stone retaining wall on the opposite side shows clearly that the water level is over two feet lower than it was during the monsoon in December. Those trees with those little yellow flowers are shedding those blossoms onto the calm reflective waters, and little pink blossoms from some other trees sparkle in the horizontal rays of the setting sun. Return the mind to still waters. Wherever I go, this is where I’m going to wind up, searching for still waters, although a gently flowing mountain stream will do just fine.

     Harsaran is in town today from Pondy to attend a wedding. He’s come by taxi, attended the function, and stops over at the guest house lobby for a chat from two to three. When I’ve seen him at a restaurant or in his office, he wears a tan baseball style visor cap. Today he wears his Indigo-Blue turban, dressed up for the party. He helps me think about my travel plans to where I see him more like a travel partner than as a travel agent. Harsaran is also clear about his friendship going back ten years with the woman who runs the Authors Festival in Bali in October. Looks like it’s mostly about stories, and I’m not sure how my brand of poetry might fit in, and Harsaran encourages me to think in terms of presentation. I have something special to offer, and I need to elaborate on how this applies to this woman’s festival. So I’ve got a little composition task to take care of within a couple of weeks while I’m gazing at the third highest Himalayan peak in my spare time. Autobiography of a Process. Harsaran has heard my story in enough detail to have a sound opinion of the possibilities. He already sees me there, so now I will have to engage the machinery that will actually get me there carrying a reasonable definition of what I’m doing. Book Tour! How the book came into being, and what it says, or more appropriately, what I say through it as I explain the images in the words and pictures.

     The short stories of Rabindranath Tagore are keeping me good company through those morning and afternoon and evening hours between visits to the lobby and the open window of my room. First crescent Luna is clear in the dusk of the evening sky.