Hey...
I'm just in a place called Gurgaon (the 'n' is kinda silent for some odd reason) and it's just outside Delhi. Like London, Delhi has gotten a bit too crowded and expensive space-wise so all the big companies have set up their headquarters in this area out of town and it is not anywhere as run down and chaotic as the usual Indian cities. A real breath of fresh air! There isn't even the smell of pee everywhere... Unbelievable!
Last two days with the group were the icing on the cake. I had a hard time on the first day and was really trying not to show my frustration and anger which was building up. First a group of us tried getting a taxi to one of the shopping areas and the taxi driver took us somewhere else where he was obviously getting kickbacks. I was pissed off but the others seemed happy to spend a lot of time in this pretty overpriced store (ok, Stacey got a nice Tibetan singing bowl). Just that bare-faced dishonestly really rattles me - and rattles other locals too of course, as we were warned in the street about it. Then we went to the last temple on the tour and there was a priest at each temple inner sanctum - plus a donation box. So after emptying my wallet of reasonable sized notes at the first three, I ran out of change and felt I couldn't approach the other ones. Not the end of the world, but with the lack of sleep from the overnight train and the morning's taxi scam I was really getting in a shitty mood - which was also pissing me off, as I really wanted to enjoy the trip. I went to chill off but sitting with the Russian lady on the trip, then discovered that there was a bookshop attached to the temple. A few of us piled off over there and magically a book ended up in my hands that was the answer to months of wishing. It's David Frawley's "Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses". I assumed you always needed a teacher, but Namadeva correctly me most firmly and told me that this book is excellent and can be worked from directly. (Apart from a typo in one of the mantras - so damned annoying that the authors don't check them better!!!) So Namadeva explaining all this on the first night made me forget all the problems of the day. He'd picked up that my mood was a bit off (even though nobody else picked it up and were even asking if I ever get angry - so funny!) but I told him it was all ok. And I assured him that I will keep in touch.
Last day with the group I asked Namadeva about some health problems after breakfast and he gave me a special energy healing (nothing visible - he just sat there) and it was like nothing else. I am so non-sensitive to these things that I just noticed my heart beating a bit faster, but it's an incentive to do more mantra work. He said I had blocked energy in certain places (very likely indeed!) and he was removing the cause and making sure the channels stayed open. Not sure what happened, but it was an interesting moment!
After that we all shopped like crazy, I found a really different and peaceful statue of dear Kali Ma - and while I was showing it to Namadeva back at the hotel a middle-aged Indian couple came over and asked if they could touch it. The man held it and gazed at it for a while and his wife touched its feet and then touched her forehead, lips and heart out of respect, then they thanked us and we all said namaste to each other with our hands clasped. What a wonderful place this can be at the right moments! Then my Indian friend arrived at 4pm and I took her round the various hotel rooms to allow her to meet everyone. It was an odd way to do it, but it ended up so much better than meeting a ton of people en masse, as the conversation can always flow much easier when things are more intimate. Then we had dinner, swapped more farewells and hugs and went our separate ways. A nice 3-hour farewell :)
Last day with the group I asked Namadeva about some health problems after breakfast and he gave me a special energy healing (nothing visible - he just sat there) and it was like nothing else. I am so non-sensitive to these things that I just noticed my heart beating a bit faster, but it's an incentive to do more mantra work. He said I had blocked energy in certain places (very likely indeed!) and he was removing the cause and making sure the channels stayed open. Not sure what happened, but it was an interesting moment!
After that we all shopped like crazy, I found a really different and peaceful statue of dear Kali Ma - and while I was showing it to Namadeva back at the hotel a middle-aged Indian couple came over and asked if they could touch it. The man held it and gazed at it for a while and his wife touched its feet and then touched her forehead, lips and heart out of respect, then they thanked us and we all said namaste to each other with our hands clasped. What a wonderful place this can be at the right moments! Then my Indian friend arrived at 4pm and I took her round the various hotel rooms to allow her to meet everyone. It was an odd way to do it, but it ended up so much better than meeting a ton of people en masse, as the conversation can always flow much easier when things are more intimate. Then we had dinner, swapped more farewells and hugs and went our separate ways. A nice 3-hour farewell :)
Now a few thoughts about India.
Pee. Don't get me started! Every town of any size seemed to smell of poo and wee at every turning! Worst moment was when we'd finished in the Himalayas and arrived in a town called Harwal or something like that and thought we'd do a spot of shopping. Well the town was so poor that we were stunned by what was in the shops - not quite medieval, but it was a bit of a dead loss really. The only thing most people came back to the rendezvous point with was a few child beggars who were actually quite cute and actually smiled. Namadeva, the book author and tour leader, refused to allow us to give them any money as he said he'd almost started a riot once on a previous tour and definitely wasn't up for a repeat performance. Shame, as 20 rupees each for a few kids is nothing (divide by 30 = 66 cents NZ = cost of a shoe shine).
Haggling. My Indian friend here told me that shopping in one place near our Delhi hotel is so much fun as you ask the price and immediately offer them half price and go from there. Well I got up the courage to try it and hell, it worked !!! Unfortunately it was always for something I had little interest in, because if they saw you were interested (and I was so trying to hide it), then bargaining was really hard. But who cares - as they said, if you want it, just get the thing.
Jytte. Pronounced "Yoota". She was this cool lady in her late sixties on the trip who was just so lovely. Remember I mentioned she was brave enough to drink from the Ganges? Anyway she was an absolute pleasure to be around and felt like a something of surrogate mother for me on the trip. A lovely shop girl in Pune made such a fuss over how much she liked her and even the Pune hotel staff presented her with a rose! She's one of those people who when they smile, their whole face lights up and more. And a great story-teller too.
Big news hot off the press - my Indian friend got me to give her a past life regression session and it turned out great! She is a natural though - so amazingly intuitive that she could really sense all the dynamics in each scene we went through. A somewhat quiet life, but quite pertinent I feel to understanding this one. So good to get another successful session under my belt. Then we did a nice Tarot reading for each other - very cool!
Ok - now running off to look for some more books! Prices here are just too good to ignore, plus the range of books here is insane! You should see the sized of the Vedic astrology ones...
Hope everyone is still well at home & looking forward to coming back (but not having to cook for myself again - this is still so sweet!!!!)
