Saturday, May 27, 2000

So here's my new daily routine since leaving the Sivananda ashram. Except for travel days, I've surprisingly been following it fairly religiously, no pun intended.

5:30 am - alarm goes off. I argue and debate with myself whether maybe today would be a good day to sleep in, or perhaps give up this frivolous experiment altogether.

5:45 am - I finally overcome the desire to go back to sleep, but pretend to do preliminary stretches as an excuse to stay in bed a little longer.

6:00 am - shower. I've traded in my dental floss for a tongue scraper. Actually not so much traded in as ran out, and tongue scrapers are all the rage here, while dental floss is rarer in these parts than a conversation with a woman.

6:20 am - begin meditation. More accurately, begin practicing sitting up straight. As this becomes less of a physical impossibility, I'm transitioning to practicing concentrating on one thing. This practice causes an instant transformation in one's character, whereby all thoughts suddenly become amazingly interesting and important except for the one on which you're trying to concentrate.

7:00 am - prasaad. This is food which has been ceremoniously offered to god and is therefore purified and holy -- I use it as an incentive to finish "meditating." What's funny is that this self-imposed child-psychology actually works, even if it means the last five minutes are spent distracted by thoughts of a piece of fruit or a small pastry. This snack also keeps my stomach from complaining too much until breakfast.

7:10 am - Hatha Yoga asanas. Without a teacher to set the pace, I get distracted a lot, particularly when I'm supposed to be relaxing between postures; sometimes I discover that instead of concentrating on breathing deeply, I'm playing with my hair and thinking about what I'll have for breakfast. Life is so much easier in the ashram, where your breakfast choices are made for you.

9:30 am - enter the world, make beeline for cheap restaurant. My posture is improving in leaps and bounds; I can now maintain a straight sitting position while eating for as long as three seconds in a row. Having spent much of the morning suppressing hunger and thoughts of food, and knowing that eating anything substantial after about one o'clock will ruin afternoon asanas, I tend to gorge in the morning and then continue snacking even when I'm still stuffed. I think this is what is known as an eating disorder.

4:00 pm - repeat asanas. Afternoons are usually easier than mornings. I usually notice at least one small improvement each day, which is good for motivation; that's what's keeping me from dropping down to once per day. Instead of being distracted by thoughts of breakfast, now I'm distracted by thoughts of dinner.

6:30 pm - dinner. Again I eat too much. Are you beginning to get the impression that I have a weakness in the area of food?

9:00 pm - practice meditation, again rewarded by prasaad.

10:30 pm - sleep.




Doesn't sound too exciting, admittedly, but I get enough excitement just crossing the street or taking a ride in an auto-rikshaw. India's night-life isn't much to write home about, if it exists at all, so I'm not missing much. And on the bright side, physically and emotionally I feel pretty good -- a couple of times I've surprised myself by how cheerfully, or at least even-tempered, I've responded to what would normally be stressful situations. Like being stuck in sweltering New Delhi all day, then discovering at the last moment that my train leaves from (Old) Delhi Station and not New Delhi Station, then abandoning my auto-rikshaw midway because the driver insisted on charging me a ridiculous amount instead of using the meter as we'd agreed. I'm not sure how cheerful I would have been if I'd missed my train to save a buck and a half, but it made sense at the time.


Spending three consecutive nights on the train wasn't nearly as miserable as I'd expected, primarily due to meeting interesting people. I met Luke, a tour guide from Madurai, on the platform and discovered that we were seated next to each other. I gave a mango to an orange-robe-clad man whom we suspected was a faux sadhu, but we chanted Om Namah Shivaya together anyway. Discovered that the game rock-paper-scissors can be taught without a common language. Played rummy with a troupe of Indian guys who wandered by out of boredom. On the next train, I sat next to Patrick, an interesting guy from Kansas (note the rare occurrence of "interesting" and "Kansas" in the same sentence), and befriended a little boy who was afraid of me, by showing him how to play with a yo-yo.

I'm working on a new approach to dealing with beggars. The basic concept is rather than paying them to stop making me uncomfortable, which is what they're expecting, treat them like human beings. This can sometimes be pretty difficult, but every once in a while it pays off -- they stop thir well-practiced routine of pitiful expressions and hand-to-mouth gestures (if they have hands) and smile at me when I ask their name. Another tactic along similar lines is to never give money; instead, give food -- ideally something reasonably healthy and not resellable. It's a strange surprise when a beggar refuses food, but keeps asking for money. The ostensible goal here is to help those who need it in a direct way, without supporting those who exploit emotions for cash. The deeper goal is to avoid feelings of guilt or being taken advantage of.