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.

                                                                                                          

Chapter Six

     Wedneday, January twenty-seventh evening. Three mornings now I’ve walked through the village into town at seven, stopped in at the Executive Inn Food Fun restaurant for a three idlees breakfast with a long cup of coffee, and taken a long auto-rik ride through Tamil town to Kottakuppam to the pink three story building behind the Cocoland resort to visit Rahul’s class in Ancient Massage, his version of Thai massage along with what he’s learned from other sources. Six paid students, he never takes more than eight, including Gilad and Claudia; by name I’ve met Sonia, and there are three other women. All together, three women from France, one from India, Claudia from Chile, and Gilad from Israel. Some are more advanced, some are beginners. Classes last for one month. Now is the final week of January’s round of instruction. Each student learns and progresses at his or her appropriate level. A student may take a one month class, and leave for several months and return for another class, each progressing in his or her individual way. Some are practicing massage in their own countries and are here to augment their knowledge and skill. In addition to teaching the technique and spirit of Thai Massage, Rahul’s lessons are about locating the source and causes of pain, and helping the client understand how the pain can be alleviated. He talks, he demonstrates, he involves his students in practice. And I am a welcome visitor. I sit on a mat in the same circle as he and his students and listen. I am invited to ask questions. There may be another one or two or three welcome visitors.

     On Monday and Tuesday, a dark-skinned, middle-aged, shaven-head fellow and I give each other neck, head and facial massages during the practice session. And throughout all of the spoken instruction are messages about chakras and meridians, energy and energetic flow, and the locating and releasing of blockages that ultimately serve to  cause so much of the pain in body and spirit that so many of us carry through our lives. The students and visitors are such a lovely group to be a part of and I feel so fortunate to be welcome and to participate. The students take notes, and their learning will be evaluated, and there is an accreditation system for this profession measured in hours of class taken with professionally recognized masters of which Rahul is certainly a fine example. I feel that I have found a fountain of precious information and insight in Rahul and his class. An avenue of learning is opened before me, though I do not plan to sign up to become a regular student, nor to pursue the practice as a profession. I will learn as much as I can from this man as long as I am welcome to visit and participate. This is a very mysterious beginning of something important for me. This is so breathtakingly new in concept and experience,

I hardly know what to say or expect from one day to the next, except for now,

I intend to walk into town early tomorrow morning for idlees and coffee at the Executive Inn, and to find an auto-rik man who will drive me out to Kotukuppam for another morning session of Ancient Massage.

     Sunday, January thirty-first at two in the afternoon. All day at home so far. Wilena departs today for Chennai, from where she will go to her Pokhara home in Nepal. It’s been a rather busy and exciting week. Starting from my rooftop at Dawn every morning, I return to my room to shower and dress and pack a little bag with money and writing and drawing paper and pencils, and camera to carry around through the day. Leave the gate behind to walk through the village to the Executive Inn for breakfast, then get an auto-rik driver to take me through morning traffic to Rahul’s ancient massage class. He has six official students and two or three of we occasional visitors who want to listen to his words, for he is a man of wisdom and healing and outright friendliness, The class goes on till around noon, and I will refrain from the details, for this is a class of oral teachings, and writing about it all is, I feel, an invasion of the privacy of the class of which I am, in fact, an observer. The students take notes, and I’m sure no one would object if I did, but I don’t. I am here to listen and remember what I will, what I can, what makes the deepest impression on my need for knowing. There are no textbooks. Rahul teaches what has been passed on to him from indigenous and traditional sources that reach back into sources of knowledge that are not written down. His is the healing art. His is the sacred art. My path to this place of learning has been a gift to me. And I almost don’t want to say as much as I’ve already said. I’ve had a busy week and made some new friends amongst the students and visitors. January’s classes are drawn to a close on Friday. The free public healing session was yesterday, Saturday morning, and February’s month of classes begins tomorrow. Some of January’s students will continue through February, some will depart, and there will be new ones. Altogether no more than eight. Some that leave may return some other month, or in another year or more, to refresh and continue their learning. I’ve been nurturing plans of my own to make a path towards Sikkim in the latter part of February. No details on this just yet.

      I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week jostling through the shopping district traffic and crowds. Designed and had printed a new set of what are called business cards, with my website, California and email addresses, along with my Indian telephone number. Bought a personal, portable WiFi device for forty-five dollars and had the techies in that office help me activate it. At one point, I had to provide a Xerox copy of my passport, so I left the techies’ office, and went to a Xerox shop four doors down the way, and in the process left my envelope with the copy of my book that I carry around on that counter. I discovered that missing in the techies’ office, and returned to the Xerox shop to recover it, and there I found the proprietor reading it with such an avid interest as I rarely see. He stood at his counter and read several pages aloud for me, a fifty year old man with Shiva’s ash across his forehead, speaking well pronounced English, and shaking his head with approval and appreciation at almost every other line. And I have the treasure of listening to his voice speaking thus. He wants a copy and I tell him that I have four copies waiting for me at the post office, that I will pick them up next week, and that I will bring one for him. How could I not? Such is the magic of wandering through the streets of this amazing piece of land called India. And one of the techie girls is simply enthralled with my safari hat and wants to try it on for a photo. Again, there is no way to say No! Manage to find my way over to Bharati park in the center of the French quarter for a couple of hours three times this week and get off a sketch of a nearby tree each time, to see to it that my pencils are tuned in. At the Café des Artes is the following piece:

     Now here in the garden of Café des Artes, two lovely young women are conversing in mellow French voices. I have nothing going on in my mind except the time for listening to the music of their elocution. They at their table are close enough to turn their chairs and they would be sitting at my table. For all they know, I understand every word they say, their pronunciations are so clear. Simple graceful hand gestures accompany the variations in tone and emphasis. Brown haired mademoiselle with glasses explains in elaborate detail the subject of her intent, while the lady in dark red hair and red blouse listens attentively with occasional comments or questions, while both of them sip their way through their glasses of fruit juice. The speaker sips slowly while the listener has almost finished her glass. An Indian girl sits across their table eating her salad at their four person table. An army of ants invades the unwiped surface, and I must step up and summon the garcon to come over and wipe the table clean. For one fleeting moment, I catch the glance of Merci from these three charming faces. The red haired girl begins her turn to go on at length with smiles between phrasing her opinions, her descriptions, her thoughts, spaced with occasional gentle laughs, while the brown haired girl listens with her quiet smile. Her glass of green juice is slowly going down. The red haired girl sits straight and stretches her back. Brown haired girl takes another sip and listens. Fiddles with her straw. Red haired girl with her glass of red juice has barely one more sip left at the bottom of her glass. The brown haired girl’s green juice goes down to the bottom first. Her glass is set on the table. The Indian girl is eating her salad and talking quietly on her cell phone. Red haired girl calls the garcon and orders another watermelon juice. These two charming women evidently have a lot to discuss. Their conversation goes on without pause, while I am arriving at the final cup of my pot of Masala chai. And for all they know or care, this writing activity of this man sitting so near is entirely something other than what it is. They sit together profile to profile in my view, and in thought my sketchbook and pencil follows the curves and lines of their foreheads, moves to the angles of their noses, the lashes and brows of their eyes, the shapes of their lips, the turns of their chins, the curves in their ears, and the way the hair of the girl with glasses hangs loose around her neck, and the hair of the girl with her fresh glass of watermelon juice is tied up and knotted at the top of her head, loose strands hanging around her ears and down her neck. The second glass of watermelon juice is going down fast, and passes from one set of hands to the other. The threshold of departure approaches. Where shall I go from here?

     Monday evening, February first. Not really all that difficult to foresee what has been forthcoming. After two healing session Saturdays, and five mornings of oral teachings by Rahul at his Ancient Massage Foundation Healing Hands Center,

I am now on the threshold of engaging a full one month course, full time six days per week. I went to this morning’s first-day-of-class session with no precise, well-articulated plan except to be there. Clearly the magnetic attraction for what is going on there is with me. Gilad and Claudia and Helene are continuing from last month’s session, and there are five fresh faces, one fellow and four women. I arrive about an hour into this session, and am welcomed by Rahul to sit near him in the circle. All of the notebooks are open and busy as everyone listens and writes to keep the river of information coming forth in memory inscribed. This goes on till twelve when the class breaks for lunch before the two o’clock practice session, and Rahul asks if I will be here. I explain that I cannot afford to contribute very much money to what is going on here, and he explains that that is not how this works. The question is will I be here, and I can contribute what I can afford when I can. I explain that I’ve planned to run errands this afternoon, but that I will begin the full day session tomorrow. Truth is, I need the rest of the day to settle into this idea that I am going to commit to this one month program, and give thought to the practical arrangements and implications this will require. Living arrangements for one, after I leave Ayodhya Bhavan on the 7^th or the 15^th, and the whole gamut of reorganizing my personal schedule around this new full time commitment. And there is no question but that this is the thing that I must do.! Travel to Sikkim and Nepal is postponed. The mountains are not going anywhere. They will be there when I get there, and when I do go off in that direction, I will be carrying a whole new framework and paradigm of truly useful knowledge and understanding in my neurological backpack. When did I say I thought I had a schedule that told me I had to be at some certain place at some certain time? What is happening that is important to me is here and now, no question about it.

     First errand in town is to my internet WiFi shop where I engage a printout of the French translation of the first fifteen pages of my book that Claude Convers created for me in 2014. Encountering Sonia last week, and hearing her wish for a French version of my poetry, inspired me to recover this translation from my email archive, and format it into a nice Word document that she could easily understand and relate to. My work in Pondicherry is not yet over. Perhaps I can come up with a nice little French zine style version of my first fifteen pages of verse with a few drawings included. Indeed, that is such an obvious little project for me to work on now.

     Make a gift of my 2014 book to Rahul. Now down to the last copy of my published CreatSpace version. An order for four more copies has been shipped. There have been rumors that the package has already arrived in Pondicherry, but my inquiries at the Pondy main post office and the Ashram post office have not brought forth the elusive parcel. On the rooftop this evening, Rajesh recommends that I tune into the hymns of Vishnu on YouTube, and perhaps begin practicing my Ohm chanting a little more often, a bit more regularly. And then of course, there is always the bee-humming exercise.!  Also managed to get another tree drawing from Bharati park down into my sketch book this afternoon. And get that last cup of Masala chai in at Chez Nous before my final walk through the village to the rooftop where sunset paints the western clouds with luminous reds, oranges, pinks and soft purples, as Sirius emerges through the eastern skies fading through blue into gray into night.

     Wednesday, February 3: second day of massage class. Sonia, Liz, Gilad,

and Saddam Hussein, the fellow from the Cocoland swimming hole, inquire about the symbol on my T-shirt. I give each of them one of my new cards with my web site address and show them the last copy of my book that I now carry around. Sonia keeps me posted on upcoming events this weekend at Alliance Francais. Gilad reminds me of tonight’s midnight meditation. Helene also gets a card. What is an “outline?” Draw a picture of a Kashmir mountain with flowing stream while on the two hour break between morning class and afternoon practice.

     Thursday evening, February fourth. Three full days of class now behind me, including the afternoon practice sessions, with note taking during the morning lecture and discussion. This journal is not about my classroom notetaking and what I’m learning in the class so much as it is about who is here and the spirit of the group. There are eight official students who will get the primary attention of the instructor. And there are the visitors, including me and some former students who are always welcome to Rahul’s classes to listen and participate and brush up on their skills, and even assist the beginners with their learning in the afternoon practice sessions. Morning from eight-thirty till around noon, we sit on our cushions in a circle under the thatch covering of the open air rooftop, listen, take notes, ask questions, and watch Rahuls’ demo. Afternoons, we’re on our own for practice, and follow the guiding light of Gilad, our instructor-in-training. Claudia is here, as well as Jetsun from a little island in the ocean east of Madagascar. And then there is the French contingent. Simon, and five women, three older, including Helene and Marie from last month, and Catherine, and two younger, Liz and Amodine. Also a young woman from Italy, Mira. Stefan, whom I met last Saturday is here today, a very experienced student, and Sonia was here yesterday to visit and participate. French is the lingua franca amongst the majority in this class; my ears are virtually swimming in the flow around me of their words and phrases, especially of the women. Rahul teaches in English and Gilad teaches in English, and Claudia and Mira and I need the English. Stefan is French. Sonia, Helene, Marie, Liz, Amodine, Catherine, Simon, Jetsun, and Stefan are all French speakers, which is all very musically inspirational to me.

     By now, I’ve got the French version of my book all laid out into a Word document. Fifteen pages of verse with two pictures in the text, and five pages of pictures at the end. Twenty pages all together, along with front and back covers. It’s all ready to go. All I need to do is find my printer.

     Friday evening, Fevrier cinq. Very simply, this Thai Massage world of Master Rahul Bharti and the French contingent of his students and followers have pretty well taken over my conscious daily existence. Total immersion is the name of the game. I have fallen into an ocean of kindness with enthusiastic men and women of all ages. Marie is seventy-four, so I am only the second oldest person here. The amount of material, the quality of insight, and the pace of learning are intense in every respect. This is in no way and by no means a course for lackadaisical people. The teacher is gifted beyond words and knows how to

push his students to their utmost with grace and encouragement that inspires everyone. The sense of teamwork and participation and loving concern is honest and deeply felt. And while the lingua franca between teachers and students is English, two thirds of those present are native French speakers, and the culture and sound of French surrounds and bathes the ears and the heart. My life has already been transformed in spirit during this past week, and the course will continue till the last day of this month. This morning’s circle began with Liz to my right next to Rahul, and to my left were Simon, Marie (first time I’ve seen this Marie), then Stefan, another new girl with a Goa T-shirt, Hélène, Jetsun, Catherine, Amodine, Mira from Italy, Claudia, Sonia, and Gilad. Rahul’s students keep coming back and he loves us all The atmosphere is contagiously uplifting. Yesterday’s lunch was a home cooked meal from the kitchen of the Healing Hands center prepared by Claudia and Helene, shared with Marie, Gilad and I.

     Every day is different. Today, I rode on the back of Amodine’s motor bike to the Happy House restaurant on the Auroville road where we met up with Simon, Liz, Sonia, Mira, Claudia, and the girl with the Goa T-shirt, Patricia. A lovely open air patio where well-prepared affordable Indian dishes are served. Liz to my right, Mira to my left, and Sonia across the table. Liz speaks of her recent two week visit to Viet Nam, and her interest in going to Laos and North India and Nepal. She tells a moving story of re-connecting with a now sixty-five year old woman whom Liz, now thirty-three, treasured when she was nine. Liz is inspired by the kindness and wisdom of her elderly friend, and hopes to be like her when she is that age. My mention of the Plain of Jars in Laos leads Liz to speak of her powerful encounter with an ancient rock dolmen in France. All of we around this table have multiple interests in common. Sonia wants to know if I’m writing, and I say I’m keeping a journal, and look forward to a fresh encounter with my poetic muse, and how I miss my paint brushes and tubes of paint. And in all of these conversations, I nurture the image of the French version of my book of poetry that I have been designing on my laptop these last few evenings. And I look forward to giving each of my lovely French speaking friends their copy, for though I cannot speak with them in any but the simplest phrases of their native language, the quality of their speech, whether in their accented English or natural French is music to my ears and touches my heartfelt connection with their culture. Surely, one or more of my past lives carries memories from that linguistic world.

     After the afternoon practice session during which I worked mostly with Simon, and watched Stefan, the accomplished student and follower of Rahul, Stefan gave me a ride on the back of his motorbike into Pondy. Stefan has been coming back to Pondy for eight years, and to Rahul for four years. He takes me to a couple of tea shops he frequents, one on the way into town, and one in town, and points out the Hotel Qualithe where he now stays, which I imagine I can give consideration to when my time comes up at the Ayodhya Bhavan. Together, Stefan and I watch the master tea maker perform his art for the endless stream of customers that come to his shop for their five or ten minute glass of his master brew.

     La Terrasse at 5:10 p.m. for a hot Ginger Lemon tea. My “things and people to keep me entertained” plate is pretty well stacked !

     Saturday, Fevrier six. Four in the afternoon at La Terrasse, after an eight to three session at the Healing Hands center. Two hours with the singing bowls then turns right over to the healing session as somewhere between thirty and forty people climb the stairs to visit the master healer. Just watching and listening to this man do his work with his hands and with his compassionate insight is inspirational. Head back into town for a visit with Jay Ram at the post office. No package yet; it’s as if this parcel of four books has evaporated somewhere over the Pacific ocean, or is sitting quietly in one of the old dungeons in this old building, collecting dust and awaiting discovery some fifty years down the road. Walk through French town to La Terrasse. Hot Lemon Ginger Tea for starters. The white kitty sleeps in the chair at the table next to me. Nice empty time to be at this restaurant, an old standby where I can listen to the humming cooler, the occasional crow flying by overhead, and the once-in-a-while scooter going by which is just a faint reminder of the city out there. Getting one step closer every day to the French version of my Livre as I ask Rahul about where he got his pamphlet printed. I’ve been cranking out little books since 1978 and here comes another one!

     Nice to visit La Terrasse again after spending the last entire month finding my entertainment on the North side of town. Can’t find there what I find here, and can’t find here what I find there. Different kinds of thinking goes on here, especially when I’m the only patron. Couple of small Indian families come and eat and go while I keep on sitting. One jerk of a little boy gets a kick out of making the kitty jump, and his fat-assed mama couldn’t care less. After they have been gone a few minutes, kitty reclaims her chair to resume her nap.

     Saturday, February sixth, following my five o’clock meal at La Terrasse, sit and watch the waves rolling in for a while before walking over to Alliance Francaise for the seven-thirty Caribbean music singing concert of Erika Lamont. Erika has been an occasional visitor at the Healing Hands center, a rather quiet personality there on familiar terms with some of the more regular and experienced students. Her singing voice is mellow and clear, and she is accompanied by a guitarist, and a fellow who splits his time between keyboard and alto sax, and a single drum percussionist who keeps a mellow rhythm going with his hands. Altogether, an uplifting energy of rhythm, melody and voice.

I arrive early and wait in the foyer until Gilad, Helene, and Sonia arrive. The theatre is good for about 200 below and 100 in the balcony, an intimate space easily filled with Erika’s admirers. We manage to find four seats together in the balcony, Jetsun arrives a few minutes later to join us. How sweet it is to be a part of this Francophone circle. After the concert, we mingle in the street for a few minutes before heading to our homes, and Jetsun gives me a ride on the back of his cycle to the Chez Nous coffee house for a Masala Chai, where we share some of the stories of our lives, before he gives me a ride the rest of the way back to my home.

     Sunday, February seven. Sign up for twenty more days at Ayodhya Bhavan. Exit date will be Saturday the twenty-seventh by noon. After some laundry washing and laid-back time, meet in passing in the hallway Mr K. C. from Iran who recites a couple of spontaneous verses from Hafiz after I tell him I’m a poet and give him one of my new business cards listing my websites. Take an auto-rik out to Serenity Beach to visit with Dara and Sofia from Chile and Argentina at the Teevum Plage restaurant. Where I meet with some additional artists and movie makers with whom I can share my cards. And ideas are generated for future encounters.

     Monday, Fevrier eighth. Seven in the evening, waiting for my pizza. Thai massage final leg sequence. Walk for bananas and cookies and tea for lunch. Internet shop printout and quote from Grand Offset Printers in Tamil Town.

A totally occupied day looking forward to a totally occupied tomorrow. Sonia shows up for the afternoon practice session. Besides the economic reasons,

I came to India to Clear My Mind from so much of what was becoming a never-ending routine that was moving, certainly, I can’t complain, but I felt a real need for some kind of kick-start into something new, and here it is.  Life over here for me is on a whole different level of enthusiastic and exhilarating interaction.

     February ten, Wednesday. Marie the younger inquires about my claim to be a poet during the afternoon practice session. I bring out the printout of the French translation and say I plan to make a booklet. However it happened, Catherine comes around to a very long recitation and marvelous spontaneous performance of something I do not understand, and her enthusiasm captivates the entire group. Would that every day should bring forth at least one such little miracle.

     Monday, February fifteenth. Distribute copies of French version to classmates. Take a hit from Jetsun Phoenix on the healing Hands rooftop. Getting more entangled with the Massage Center students. Serenity Beach on Sunday for a dip in the sea. Playing with the waves and crashing breakers.

     February 16.  Tuesday visit with Stefan at Hotel Qualithe for an order of cheese and spicy French fries with a lemon soda. Ismo leaves Ayodhya Bhavan on Wednesday the 17^th morning. I’ve got ten more nights at Ayodhya Bhavan.

Go over my file for my new English version. Plan for a visit to Mr. Guna, my printer at Grand Offset. Another final copy.  Another latest copy. There can always be another version.

     February 17, Wednesday afternoon. Sit with Jetsun, Simon, and Liz on the rooftop. Liz learned to sing when she was 5 along with her sisters 3 and 8. Amodine is there with us for awhile. Getting more difficult to think about pulling up stakes and leaving town just now just to see a mountain that will always be there. Meet Pierre on this morning’s walk. He happens to know Stefan.

     February 17, Wednesday. Work with Mr. and Mrs. Guna at Grand Offset Printing on formatting the new English language version. Takes a long time as they work to make an excellent copy with hi-resolution and clear pictures.

     Thursday, February 18. Meet Maxim and Morgan (as in Morgan la Fey) on the street on the way over to Chez Nous for my evening tea and a pizza. Stefan comes out with an enthusiastic monologue on what he likes about Rahul and the classes and he compares his experiences of twelve months of classes. I hold the speaking amethyst and come up with my memory of “you walk alone,” and “My eyes are open and all I see is darkness.”

     Friday morning the 19^th. Tell the story of my dream about “My eyes are open, and all I see is darkness.” Now I am more of a member of the group as my story joins the pool of stories in the circle.  Major transition week draws closer. The class will pass from the February to the March session. Shall I continue or not, and if so, how ? House moving on the horizon, which includes decisions about my continuing role in Pondy. The publisher and book distribution function is relevant, and I will have both an English and a French version. February 19, is the second anniversary for Gilad at Healing Hands. He is today’s master chef for preparing a celebration meal for all of us in this month’s class. In a circle we sit.

I am just inside the door and to my left is Stefan. From Stefan to the left is Mira, Gilad, younger Marie, Helene, Amodine, elder Marie, Simon and Liz and then Claudia to my right. Our circle is on the floor. It would be nice if Catherine were here. Jetsun comes in after the meal. We are all trying to learn the back sequences during the afternoon. Six p.m. walk over to Hotel Qualithe rooftop restaurant for spicy cheesy French fries and a lemon soda. I have been in three ashram guest house environments since arrival in Pondy on December 22. New Guest House, Niketan in Thiruvanamalli, and Ayodhya Bhavan.

     Now, Stefan tunes us in to the Buena Vista Social Club.

     Saturday evening, February twentieth. Moving right along in total immersion with Healing Hands Thai Massage classes, six days a week, along with saturation in the francophone cadence and music of most of my classmates. Third week down of the four week course, and we have been tsunami inundated with wave after wave of one series of moves after another. Legs, belly, shoulders, arms, back, neck, skull, and face, the movements that need to be learned, memorized, integrated, practiced and developed are knitting the class together in a web of collective attention. I’m on the slower end of the learning curse spectrum. Everyone learns at his or her own rate, and this seventy-one year old body, as fit as it is and I try to keep it, is just not as flexible, bendable and spry as those younger ones. The fact that I’m here at all continues to amaze me. After today’s morning till mid-afternoon class, Stefan and I on Stefan’s bike, and younger Marie along with Amodine on Amodine’s bike, ride into town for a good old fashioned Tamil banana-leaf lunch, with hot sambar on the rice, and tasty veggies on the side. Stefan knows the streets and shops of this city like the lines in the palms of his hands. He then leads us out of town for a grand tour, first to the Pondy harbor, which I had never seen before, then through all kinds of winding roads and streets through townscapes and countryside to the Villupuram temple with its colorful gopurams and crowds of devotees. When we ride back into town in late afternoon towards dusk, we stop at a very unpretentious door in the Ashram sector of the French Quarter where Marie meets her friend, a frail and brilliant very elderly madam, Kasun, who presides over this extensive store behind its simple door, Fleur en Flacon, with natural medicines and herbal health related items. Kasun takes the four of us to her room upstairs in the back, where we sit in a circle on her floor as final dusk settles into darkness, chanting Ohm together, chanting Ohm Tare Tuttare together, and tuning our five voices into one another, into our combination vibration. Five hearts, five voices, five souls merge in tone and spirit and the universe is alive and real within Kasun’s room for this sacred hour. The nearly full moon lights the eastern sky, and everything is Right.

     Journal notetaking has taken a back seat these last couple of weeks. There is more going on than can be reported in micro detail, as the theme of first engagement with this new life in India develops into a theme of developing friendships and a relatively settled way of life. Everything that is happening needs to be consolidated into an image that says it all. Two men and two women riding through the Tamil countryside on two motorbikes to visit a colorful crowded Tamil temple, and five persons in age from twenty-something to perhaps eighty-something, sitting in a circle chanting Ohm as dusk settles into full moonlight.  . . . perhaps gives a clue to the spirit of the day.

     Sonia visits Healing Hands today. Her unassuming wish that my verse would be in French led to my publication of Claude Convers’ translation and from there to my forthcoming publication of a new English version. I am so pleased to give her copies of the French version for herself and her daughter. Also give a copy to newly met Sandra after today’s session. Also give a copy to Kasun this evening. Copy by copy, my hundred French booklets and hundred English booklets will find their way into their Pondicherry readership. If there is anything I need to be doing, it is hanging on here in Pondy and continuing with the program.

     Sunday February 21, Serenity beach, Teevum Plage. Ninety-eight percent full moon rising. Got sloshed around by some heavy breakers this afternoon. And neither Dara, nor Sofia, not anyone else to engage with in conversation in any of the languages I more or less know or don’t know. Just me and the sea, and the sand, and the moon, and the breeze, and the breakers breaking continuously.

    

     Monday, February 22, on the Healing Hands rooftop. First day of the fourth and last week of this month’s massage course. The path I’ve been mysteriously following has brought me here. This is also my final week at Ayodhya Bhavan. Whole new story begins March first. I wonder if I will ever find the place and situation where I will feel well settled in this vast country.

     Monday evening, February twenty-second. Today took delivery from S. Guna of Grand Offset Printers, one hundred copies of my latest version of Gathering of the Tribes of the Earth. Today is full moon rising over the ocean, and the Maasi Magham festival of Vaitikuppam, with the “theertavari”  in  the sea for the “utsava” deities  from over one hundred temples in Pondicherry and surrounding areas of Tamil Nadu. The annual “bathing in the sea” of the main temple deity from each of these surrounding temples from as far away as fifty kilometers inland. All up and down the coast of Tamil Nadu this is happening, and Vaitikuppam is the focal point for this happening in this area. This little seaside hamlet, just north of Pondy’s French Quarter is the focal point for the gatherings of throngs of people from who knows where all, all come here to turn the main streets of Vitikuppam into midway at the circus.

     Tuesday the twenty-third. Second day of the last week of class. Lunch with Gilad. Rehearse my on-again – off-again plans for staying another month or leaving, or something in between. Get a bit of info from Erika Lamont about getting an apartment in Kottukuppam. Hand out copies of my fresh English language version to Claudia, who really appreciates it, and Gilad, and Marie the elder, and Marie the younger, and Helene, and Amodine. One at a time, each at his or her own best moment.

     Tea stall shop talk between Stefan and Marie the younger, as I listen attentively. Ride to a luggage store in Tamil Town with Stefan and buy a fresh bag that I know will be useful as I reformulate my packing and carrying paradigm. Visit with Stefan at Hotel Qualithe as my moving date becomes imminent. Plan now is to take Stefan’s room till March 29 when he returns from Hong Kong. Meet Ralph who has spent 15 years in Auroville, and Mark from Germany who has spent most of the last fifteen years in Tamil Nadu and owns two acres in the hills of the Kodaikanal area. Meet Saline and her few years old daughter. Time for a lemon soda on the rooftop restaurant and beer garden. Nice place to sit if they get their background music right, and when I can sit facing away from their complimentary TV screens.

     The Vaitikuppam festival has disappeared. For a single day and night, the streets were packed, block after block, with devotees and vendors and music makers and procession followers, and winding my way home through the undulating crowd last night while carrying my package of new books was a dance of dexterity in search of places to step. And today, except for the litter left behind, one could hardly imagine what transpired last night. Such is the magic of a theertavari festival, when the gods and goddesses are bathed in the Sea.

     Thursday, February 25, at 5:11p,m. at Café des Artes on Suffren street. Closing in on the last day of this month’s classes, to be followed by the first day of next month’s classes. After this afternoon pot of tea, I’ll be on my way over to Hotel Qualithe to see about that room that Stefan says will be available. Thought I would see Stefan this morning but did not, so he is surely on his way to Hong Kong now. Should be able to meet Jean Paul, the owner of the hotel, to negotiate the move-in time and fees. Wondering if and how I could set up a distribution table for my new books here at Café des Artes, which seems like a natural outlet. Place is empty now. Three patrons including myself, and the owner is apparently absent. This and the few other tea and coffee shops catering to westerners are on my planning horizon. Shouldn’t be all that complicated and I would like to do it tastefully and thoughtfully. I’ve got the entire month of March to get those 180 books out there, both French and English versions, or at least most of them, for I surely can’t be hauling them around when I start traveling, which I currently imagine could begin March 29 when Stefan returns to reclaim his room and the March Healing Hands classes are drawing to a close.

     Not much more to be saying about the Thai Massage course. Regardless of the fact that it has thoroughly occupied my attention these last five weeks.

And through March, it will continue to monopolize my attention and time, albeit from the point of view now of my forthcoming residency at Hotel Qualithe. It is now goodbye to the past seven weeks living in Vaitikuppam, and the overwhelming amount of walking I engaged in while there. It’s been a very special perspective, from the point of view of Ayodhya Bhavan and of the village. A whole new pattern of movement will now emerge in my Pondicherry life. Some faces will disappear, notabley Gilad and Claudia, and new faces will come into view. The March class will have both fresh faces and familiar faces, and I can hardly imagine who will emerge from the life I will encounter at Hotel Qualitie.

      My Pondicherry world since January 23 has pretty much revolved around the Healing Hands Thai Massage house and everyone connected with it. Rahul, our teacher, and all the students and visitors I have met and enjoyed conversations with. In one way or another, these encounters have led to my French and new English versions of my book. My sense of self and purpose has been invigorated. . . . Now, six-thirty at the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Qualithe, enjoying my cheese and spicy potato wedges and lemon soda, meet with Perumal, the hotel manager, and we agree to meet tomorrow early afternoon for the key handover, and all is in order.

     Choose to walk rather than ride from the rooftop restaurant to my Chez Nous evening cup of tea, and there at the Lord Vinayagar temple on the way is Lakshmi the pachyderm, just returned from her 48 day vacation in the hills around Coimbatore, standing there at the temple entrance giving blessings with the tap of her trunk to the receptive crown chakra of anyone who wishes to give her an offering. Of course!

      Friday, February 26 . Walking along a side street near the post office today, here is an elder, wiry, deeply-tanned European fellow sitting on the curb, and the casual eye-to-eye glance we share becomes a lock as I am walking by in the street, and it becomes inevitable that I stop and sit beside him. He has a thick and scraggly mustache and goatee, and he’s nursing a bottle of water, and clearly has had a fair share of something alcoholic. But his speech is clear and rational, and it so happens that my face is a dead ringer for a close friend of his who passed away a few days ago. This Frenchman’s friend was from Chicago, which I know well and once lived in, and we two men of similar age sitting on the curb begin unraveling our stories. Both of us are very attached to Indian culture, of Buddhist inclination, with similar thoughts about where the world is going and what is the meaning of meaning. Karal is visiting Pondy from Mamallapuram, sixty kilometers north along the coast. Pondy is wet, and Tamil Nadu is dry, and Karal wants some wet. Karal and I talk there on the curb for at least a half hour, maybe more, this is one of those timeless moments, as Karal meets a living image of his friend, and I meet a man I can understand and share meaning with. Our conversation arrives at the end of a circle, and each of us stands for our greeting in departure, and each of us walks in his own direction, after sharing our final locked-in glance.

Our shared moment of timeless forever,

However it happened,

it happened.