Every heart is much the same we tell ourselves down here
The same chambers fed by veins the same maze of love and fear
We thought you were a saint but the halo was an eye
It’s hard to see how there could be so much dark inside the light – In the Dark, Josh Ritter

Sunday, July 3, 2011, Lavazza Coffee Shop, Connaught Place, New Delhi

Taking in the scenery at our destination.When I closed the computer last night, paid my bill, and left the Jade Garden Bar and Lounge, the once bustling streets of Karol Bagh were desolate. It looked as if a carnival had swept through town, the vacant streets littered with trash and an unfamiliar feeling that percolated between loneliness, abandonment, and danger. As I walked down the wrong street, from behind dumpsters street dogs lurched with ferocious barks and small groups of the homeless and destitute huddled in doorways and beneath lights. Others moved through the shadows like ghosts or specters. Garbage was strewn about the streets and when a single breeze blew through the corridor of shops, litter and refuse danced and rolled through the streets like tumble weeds somersaulting across the plains of eastern Colorado.

I began the morning with the intent of exploring Karol Bagh, but after stepping outside at 9am and realizing that everything was still closed, not to mention the wall of heat that assaulted me the moment I stepped outside of the air conditioning, I went back into my room. I decided to postpone my exploration to when the shops opened but instead got caught up in a conversation and stayed in my comfortable room until check out.

I checked out of The Rockwell Plaza Hotel and on MC’s recommendation headed to the Likir House, a hidden gem of a guesthouse run by Tibetan’s and owned by Rinchen Chando, the head of the Tibetan’s Nun’s Project. She is the woman I had the privilege of hearing lecture when I was in Dharamsala. The rooms are quaint and comfortable, but more appealing is that they are spotless, something that is hit or miss in Indian hotels and guesthouses.

Who knew that the only place you would find order amidst the chaos in India was in the subway?The Likir House was in the Lajpat Nagar neighborhood, about 9 kilometers away from the Rockwell Plaza Hotel, so being that but both were right next to metro stops, I decided to brave the metro. Braving the metro is a bit of an exaggeration with the exception of the crowds. The metro in Delhi is a world-class transit system and surprisingly and comically, the only place in India where I have found any sense of order or structure. First, passengers must walk into the station and pass a heavily armed soldier safely barricaded behind sandbags. Then they must go through a metal detector, get patted down, and then pass their bags through an x-ray machine. Once at the actual point of embarkation, passengers line up single file behind a yellow line at designated places where the train doors open. There is also a women’s only car, which much to my surprise the men respect. This tells me that the Indians are at least capable of abiding by order, rules, and structure; perhaps they just thrive better in the chaos. Unlike the rest of India, there is not one potato chip wrapper, empty plastic water bottle, or cigarette box on the ground; in fact, because there seems to be a faint layer of dust and grime that covers most things in India, one could argue that comparatively speaking, the Delhi metro system is spotless. 

Since the previous night’s minor exploration was successful, I decided I needed to explore a little more of Delhi, and so by 3pm I was in Rajiv Chowk, the epicenter of New Delhi tourism, otherwise known as Connaught Place. Think of Connaught Place as a dartboard. In the bull’s-eye is a park and around it, moving out in concentric circles, are the shops, roads, and structures that make up the dartboard. Beneath the park exists what I consider to be the Indian version of Dante’s Inferno. It’s called the Palik Bazar.

Palik Bazaar is an underground labyrinth of shops with peddlers hawking everything from jewelry, to electronics, to books, to clothes. It’s dimly lit by neon and halogens and here in the underground peddlers and swindlers feed like sharks in the dark abyss of the ocean. The people coming at you occasionally go so far as to paw at you as if Cerberus, the two-headed hound of hell himself, is trying rip off your flesh. Have I become jaded and cynical? You be the judge. Do I exaggerate? Not much. The Bazaar contains wall-to-wall people through narrow corridors and being a white person, again you are constantly harassed.

“Hey friend, take a look at this belt. You like t-shirt? Where you from? Come have a look. Special price for you. Hello. Hello? Hey friend, over here—hello?” It was funny the first 4,142 times. I have started to answer the question as to where I am from in a variant of two multiples; first, I say, “I’m from Mars,” and I point towards the sky. Or I say, “No hablo Ingles.” On one occasion, much to my surprise the Indian man spoke back to me in Spanish, to which I replied, “OK, you got me. I just don’t want to talk to you.” On another occasion I said something in gibberish, doing my best to give it a hint of Mandarin. Some people laugh and continue pressing you for your name and origin of country, some people step back, and others really don’t know what to make of it. It all depends on my mood, whether I am feeling playful or just outright pissed.  

I was finally pushed to my limit one afternoon when a skinny, little Indian grabbed my arm. In a gut-reaction I did not know I had in me, I grabbed him by his pencil-neck and pinned him to wall. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again or I will kill you and not think twice.” I had so much adrenalin pumping through me that I had him lifted off the ground and just his toes were dangling to the floor. I held him so tight to the wall that he was grasping for his breath and in his eyes I could see the fear of God. “Get ready to meet your maker you little maggot,” I said, and then released my grip, returning him to the earth and the memory of breath. He scurried away like a cockroach in the light.

***

This of course is the work of fiction and one of many violent fantasies that have played out in my head whereby I inflict bone crushing pain and violence on the offender. In all my travels, I can’t think of a place whose peddlers and beggars are more aggressive than in India. Apparently what I have deduced from the compilation of these facts is that I as I get older my tolerance level for crowds is rapidly diminishing, at least in crowds where I’m a marked man, like Waldo in the children’s picture book, Where’s Waldo.

Just to add insult to the day’s injury, as I write this to you from Lavazza Coffee Shop, I am dealing with a hint of Delhi belly, the symptoms being doubling over pain in my abdomen and the potential loss of bowel control. Ahhh India…Love it or hate it, it’s all part of the experience.

Meanwhile, back in Kashmir

Mughal Gardens, Srinagar, Kashmir.The morning after our excursion on Dal Lake and starting the previous night, starting when his buzzed kicked in, Ayub was not only heavily touting, but pushing a 6-day, 5-night trek “I really want to take you on this trek,” he said as he continued to outline the highlights like Anthony Robbins might give you an overview of how to be a more effective human being. He’s a hell of a salesman that Ayub. I was sold. I’ll drop the $400 or $500 on a once-in-lifetime experience.

When Palla showed up we all made small talk for a while until we got down to business, which is always when the side conversations in Kashmiri begin. Kashmiri, from what I understand is a complicated language. Not even Indians understand it and so they exist in this safe little language cocoon, discussing your weaknesses and how to exploit you right in front of you.

We started talking about the trek and Palla told Ayub that I was his brother, not a tourist or a customer, so he should give me the friend price. Ayub looked off as if calculating the numbers in his head and came back with the quote of $1700, which I recognized he did not say with confidence.

“Are we flying up to the mountain on a magic carpet? Sorry bud, but you must think I’m rich or something. Plus that takes up almost all of my time in Kashmir. I came here to see my friends.”

Some numbers were thrown back and forth, the length of the trip was scaled back, but I said we should settle up our bill from the night before and then I’d think about it. Palla called Gasha and they talked, then Ayub and Gasha talked, and finally we arrived at 2000 rupees for the previous night’s stay on the houseboat.

“OK, well I’m checking out this afternoon after we go for a walk.”

“Why you checking out?” Ayub said. “You’re going to stay in a hotel or guesthouse? You can do that any time. This is Kashmir. You should stay on a houseboat. That’s the whole experience. Come; I take you look at my other houseboat. You can stay here for a thousand a night.” He took me to the houseboat next door. The room was small, stuffy, and dank, and since I had stayed in one of the nicest houseboats, there was no going back for me.

“Well, I’ll think about. I’ll leave my stuff here for now.”

When we walked away and were out of earshot, Palla was worked up and said in a huff, “What are you doing man? I told you he’s going to rip you off in the end. Look, you can stay there if you want and go on that trek and hang out with them. But don’t tell me you came here to hang out with us.” Not that I know Palla all that well, but it felt a little uncharacteristic. Without it being in the forefront of my awareness, I thought that it felt a little off. “These people are very cunning and they talk with a serpent’s tongue. I know houseboat people. You can’t trust them. If you want to stay on a houseboat, my cousin has one, but I don’t trust this guy.”

Palla took me to the Noor Guesthouse where he said I should stay and he could get me a deal on a room. His cousin Latiff was there as well, who—as I write about this and think back—probably overcharged me for something back in McLeod Gange.

I was saying hello to Latiff when Erica from Rishikesh came running down the stairs and hugged me like I had been away at war for years. My jaw dropped and I was quite confused.

When Erica and I left each other in Rishikesh, I told her that if she wanted to meet some people in McLeod, she should look up my friends. Apparently she had found Palla’s cousin Latiff on her own and had gotten what she told me she was looking for; a good looking Indian man to sleep with, in this case, ten years her minor. What’s entertaining is that Latiff had slept with her friend in McLeod, which she knew about, and now she was sleeping with Latiff. For someone like Latiff, or any decent looking local in a tourist town, there is a never ending assembly line of women. At 22, having spent the last seven years in McLeod Gange, which could be one of the most highly traveled mountain towns in India, he is already a pro.

***

The inside of my room at the Noor Guesthouse.Palla and the owner of the Noor Guesthouse, Shaqeel, talked back and forth in Kashmiri negotiating a price for my stay. Palla told me that Shaqeel is a very good man and fair, and he again told Shaqeel that I am a brother, not a tourist. Palla came back to me at 1000 rupees a night, which I thought was odd because Erica was paying 250, granted she didn’t have a bathroom. I probably should have checked my Lonely Planet, being that the price was written in the Lonely Planet.

“Oh, you have the best room in the place and the only one with a canal view,” Palla assured me, “so he wants a thousand.” Who’s going to pay a thousand for this dump? I thought. I guess I am. At that point, I had been unsettled for the previous 48 hours and I just wanted a place to lay my bags and rest my head for more than a few hours. I went back to the houseboat to gather my things and much to my relief, Ayub wasn’t there, so I didn’t have to deal with the pushing and pressuring. His brother gave me the why a guesthouse and not a houseboat? song and dance as well but finally said, “As you wish. Please come by for tea.”

The following day Palla took me to Mughal Gardens, which while beautiful, was another miserable tourist stop. Conversation began the day before with Shaqeel about trekking and we continued to talk about it, Palla justifying the cost and reassuring me again that Shaqeel was a very honest man, as if he had known him for years. When we returned to the Noor Guesthouse, we moved into negotiations and again Palla pitched thehe’s my brother, not a tourist routine; again the side conversations in Kashmiri, right in front of me.

To make a long story short, we settled at 35,000 rupees ($800) for a 4-day, 3-night trek. This included 3 Beasts of Burden, a cook, a guide, tents, food, sleeping materials, and whatever else was needed. In addition, Palla would get to come. He also took it upon himself to invite his friend Pinto. “Pinto is big and not afraid of anybody or anything. He’s in case we get into any trouble.” I didn’t really think too much about any of these statements at the time because I felt safe in the security of my Kashmiri friends. I finally agreed and thought it was awfully nice that Shaqeel is letting them accompany me. Granted, I am paying for an experience they will never otherwise have, but so be it, I thought.

That night Erica and I went to Latiff’s mother’s house. We all hung out on the roof—immediate family and cousins—and drank Kashmiri tea, had biscuits and bread, and played Carrom, an Indian board game. Eventually all of us sat knee to knee in a circle in their tiny kitchen eating a simple yet spicy dinner with our hands made up of rice, dal, mutton, and vegetables. It was a very nice evening, although it ran a little long for my taste. We all went for a walk at one point and I continued to discuss the issue of the trekking and lodging with Palla. “Don’t worry about the price of the guesthouse. I know how to deal with him. We’ll get the price down,” he said.

The following morning I was up before anyone else and working on my computer. Shaqeel came out and said, “You remind me of my best friend, Michael Nixon. He is from the states too and he has a computer just like that,” and he showed me a signed picture of Michael Nixon snowboarding. He later said, “I’ve been watching you. You’re very cautious. You’re so much like my best friend Michael Nixon.” Again with the accent on ‘best.’ Apparently Michael was a professional snowboarder and comes to Kashmir every winter. Shaqeel and I got talking and I told him I was a writer. He asked me how I knew Palla and for how long. I told him how we had met in McLeod Gange and hung out for about two-and-a-half weeks. He just shrugged and said you have to be careful whom you trust in Kashmir.

That afternoon, Palla took me to lunch at his family’s house. In both Latiff and Palla’s house, there was no furniture, just wall-to-wall carpet and a few cushions. Their prize possessions were their family photo albums. I watched Palla thumb through it with such pride and joy. I had never seen him glow like that before. It was a wonderful thing to see, someone who loved his family as much as he did.

Post-meal hookah with Palla's father.I can’t tell you how many people were living in either of the places, but it was a lot. Brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins, but they love it—and they wouldn’t have it any other way. After lunch, Palla’s father who was only 2-3 years older than me (more proof that Kashmiris age prematurely) insisted I smoke some tobacco with him. And yes, it really was tobacco. I quite enjoyed it and since I’m not a big smoker it gave me a nice head rush. Who am I to refuse the offering of a post-meal hookah?

That evening, I handed over 36,000 rupees to Shaqeel (about $800), even though I didn’t feel good about it. “You know,” I said, “I’m a writer and I could write an article about your business. I could publish it in the New York Times. Hundreds of thousands of people would know about it.” I was trying to play their game a bit. He thought about it and knocked off a thousand rupees (about $20) or something ridiculously small. He wasn’t budging much and I was merely a rookie in the ring with a weathered pugilist. Once he found out I could possibly help his business, it seemed to change our relationship for the better. It wouldn’t be long before Shaqeel had another best friend. I can see him saying to the next sucker, “You remind me of my best friend Tim.”

Amateur Hour on the Mountain

By the end of the first day of trekking, it was apparent that this was not exactly a reputable trekking outfit. I’m not sure if this is just the way it is in Kashmir or what, but it was about as budget and makeshift as it gets, definitely not the makings and refinement one would expect of $800.

At 6am we left the Noor Guesthouse by Shaqeel’s vehicle and drove to the end of the mountain road where we would begin our trek. The mountains were practically on top of us as we raced up roads that clung to the mountain, moving at speeds which seemed disproportionate to the size of the car and the drop. “Do you see that peak?” Shaqeel said to me, pointing to a jagged peak that towered above us. “That’s Pakistan.” Holy shit, I thought.

Trying to be casual I said, “So uhm, do Pakistanis ever cross over or is it heavily fortified by the military?”

“Oh no,” Shaqeel assured me. “They would be in a lot of trouble if they ever crossed over. Maybe sometimes they get lost, but they would never do it on purpose.”

By 9:30 our gear had been packed and placed on the beasts of burden and we hit the trail. “What about our guides?” I asked Palla. “Where are they?”

“They will be right behind us. I told them I didn’t want to see them while we hiked. It will be better this way.”

We set out with one horse and a few bottles of water, but we hadn’t had any breakfast. That was fine. We had 3 horses full of food and supplies right behind us. They also gave us an extra horse in case we got tired Well that was awfully nice of them to supply an extra horse, I thought. I’m sure that horse had a cost, however, and had come from an extra 10,000 rupees. Not even a quarter of a mile in, I was leading the charge and Pinto was bringing up the rear on the mule. “I hope he doesn’t kill that thing by working it to exhaustion,” I said to Palla. I was not feeling it about Pinto at this point because he was rather stoic and seemed disinterested the first time we shook hands. He didn’t speak English but he turned out to be a valuable member who got things done and was interested in my comfort and happiness after all.

The hike began like the space shuttle taking off from its launch pad. Our trajectory was more or less straight up for three long, hot, and hard hours. I am usually a fast hiker and this was no exception. I am of the opinion that I should get there, and then enjoy myself, as opposed to enjoying myself on the way, but that’s me.

Our horse grazing not far from our camp site.We kept meeting villagers along the path, asking them how far our destination was. The Gujarat people (the local mountain people) would either say it’s not far or that we were nowhere near the final destination, Gangabal Lake. We also kept waiting for our guides. We would wait for 20 minute rests, assuming they would be right behind us but they never showed. Finally, about ¾ of the way up they showed up. I thought Pinto was going to rip their heads off. The cook and the guide were actually scared and asked Palla if he could calm Pinto down. Some food would make things a bit better I thought.

As it turns out, we didn’t have enough food not to mention the guide, an old man, said he didn’t feel well. So Pinto turned him back and told him to return the next morning with more food and chicken.

Speaking of chicken, I heard something that sounded like chirping for most of the way up, but assumed it was one of the cords rubbing against the leather of the saddle. It was at this pit stop that I discovered a chicken strapped to the back of the horse and pleading for its life. That poor bird haunted me the rest of the day as we made his death march towards the gallows, and I wasn’t sure I was actually going to be able to eat him. Turns out when you’re that hungry it’s not even an after thought. I just said, “I don’t want to see that bird anywhere near me. Kill and clean it as far away from me as possible.” I like my chicken and meat packaged, not pleading. This experience caused me to pause and consider scaling back my consumption of animals.

When we finally reached camp 7.5 hours later, I was surprised by a.) the quality of the tent—meaning there was no quality, and b.) that there was only one tent. I was promised, among other things including competence, two tents. Being that I was settling into my role as the client, I felt I had a right to be pissed off. It was indeed visible and Palla and Pinto felt my energy beginning to swirl like an Atlantic storm in September.

Without consulting me and in the name of making me happy, Pinto and Palla sent the cook about a quarter of the way back on horseback to fetch a tent. Luckily Pinto was a good cook so our dinner would not suffer, and if anything, it would be enhanced. I tried to do some fishing while Pinto slaved away over a hot burner but was unsuccessful. A nice Gujarat man humbled me by gaving me the gift of two fresh rainbow trout he had caught (even though I freaked out that I told him I was an American, which meant he and his cronies may come and either make an example out of me or steal everything I had.) Palla assured me it was fine. Darkness began to overtake the land.

When the sun was well behind the glacier and very little light remained in the western sky, a figure appeared on the horizon. The cook returned but his load seemed light. This was due to the fact that there were no more 6-man tents, as if I wanted to sleep in a 6-man tent by myself. 

1. That would indeed be terrify in the desolate landscape compounded by the uncertainty of whether or not we were actually in friendly territory
2. Body heat makes a big difference in a tent in the mountains, and being that the sleeping bag might have been sufficient for a rancher in the late 1800’s who slept by the fire, I would have froze to death.
3. Our camp didn’t have a fire because at 14,000 feet there was no wood, only grassland with grazing sheep and cattle.

The tent was only one small problem, however. While the cook left to fetch the tent, the rest of the horses, still saddled up, had taken off and there was no sign of them. I was told if the horses fell in a ditch they wouldn’t be able to get up or the Gujarat people might steal the saddles. Either way, these were not exactly favorable conditions.

Somewhere in between dusk and night, Palla and the cook departed on foot to find the horses. It was a moonless night and the more you watched the sky, the more the sparkling gems told of the impending darkness as they to popped and twinkled against the receding shades of blue and gray. I pulled myself out of the Category 4 hurricane that was growing within, smoked a cigarette, and forced myself to laugh at the absurdity. I decided I needed to set a precedent.

When Palla and the cook returned without any horses, everyone was on edge because I had been on edge. As the leader and consumer of this situation, I needed to make things right before they spun out of control further.

With a scaled back tone from where I had been an hour prior and with my finger wagging in his face, I said, “Palla, you want me to have a good time right? This is what I need you to do for me to be happy. I need you to tell me everything that is going on at all times. Everything! No more fucking side conversations, you hear me? You translate everything for me and tell me what’s going on at all times. I also need you to think ahead of the situation—think of questions I might ask and answers I may want to know. Think of what’s going to make me happy. Think of what’s going to happen an hour from now. Use the head Allah gave you. If I knew you were sending the cook back for another 6-person tent I never would have had him go back. That’s just plain fucking stupid. When a situation presents itself, and when you have translated what’s going on, and when I have all the information, I will make a decision. Then if I need input I will run it past you and Pinto. You got it?”

I often forget that Palla is only 22.

"But now she's gone yes she's gone away, a soulful song that would not stay
You see she hides 'cause she is scared, but I don't care I won't be spared."
- I Could Have Lied, Red Hot Chili Peppers 

July 2^nd, 2011, The Jade Bar, New Delhi

The Delhi train station at 5:30am. Calm before the storm.If you will allow me to be a stater-of-the-obvious for a moment, I would like to make a blanket statement; the thing I hate about India is how much I stand out.

It’s like everywhere I go there is a target on my back that says, approach me, I’m white > that means I’m a tourist > that means I’m rich. Surprisingly, however, tonight for once I blended into the crowd, not because there were other white folk around, but because I was in the midst of an undulating sea of people on Ajmal Kahn Road in the Karol Bagh neighborhood of Delhi. You see I have had this as yet unfounded fear of Delhi. There are endless stories of people being cheated, robbed, taken advantage of, and being taken for a ride—literally. You hear them constantly when you’re traveling through India and even Indian people say the people of Delhi are “bloody shit.” How is that for a graphic term? I like it as an expression, but not when the visual is attached. From what I have gathered, “bloody shit” is the Indian superlative for lying, cheating thieves. And of course, I am not talking about the general citizens of Delhi; I am talking about street vendors and people in the service and transportation industry. Of course I realize an argument could be made that you're going to get these people in any major metropolis but right now these people are on my bloody shit list.

From the countless stories I have heard, even the thought of Delhi has caused a physical reaction in my body. The last two times I stayed or passed through I felt like everyone was out to get me, but tonight, the only people who approached me were a few people selling belts. Granted, if I got too close to a shop some merchant would try to pull me in with, “Hello friend. Where are you from? We make you a special price. No, no, you walk away the price is no more good. I know you want buy now.” In so many words. 

There is definitely not a recession in India. There were so many Indians out tonight looking for ways to spend their money that I moved through the streets with relative ease and mostly unnoticed. It was a refreshing break from Kashmir. You know how after a hard night of drinking you wake up the next morning and it tastes like you ate a shit sandwich? That’s kind of the lingering taste in my mouth from Kashmir. That was the last thing I expected when I arrived at Dal Lake 8 days ago. The beauty and fresh mountain air made me think it was going to be the best part of my trip, and in one way it was, but in another way I feel robbed and cheated. From what I hear of others, however, if you don’t feel like you got taken advantage of, then you really didn’t experience the true Kashmir.

It’s about 9:30pm, July 2^nd, and I’m writing to you from the Jade Garden Bar and Lounge on Padam Singh Street, in the Karol Bagh neighborhood of Delhi. I’m sitting in the back-most corner of the restaurant next to a window with a view of the street below, and I'd like to imagine I'm relatively unnoticed except for the glowing Apple logo facing the patrons, and my face, glowing in the computer screen like a ghostly white specter. The Jade Garden has an Asian theme and red globes of light with Japanese images and characters hang from the ceiling. The music is lively, the patrons middle class and happy as they sip on mixed drinks and beers while eating curry, tandoori, and sweet and sour dishes.

The Jade Bar has a bit of an edge to it, like it could be in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle or the East Village in New York City. A plate of Tandoori chicken just arrived at my table and I’m drinking a double Vodka Tonic on the rocks. What separates this place from New York or Seattle, however, is that the Vodka, tonic, ice, and lime juice all come separate. That’s no big deal. But what really irks me is how stingy they are; a single is 30ml of vodka. How am I supposed to have any fun with that? The only redeeming value is that the stirrer in my drink says “Smirnoff” on it, my father’s brand of vodka. It’s a pleasant surprise to have the memory of my father placed right in front of me in an atmosphere where it might not have otherwise arisen.

In the back corner of the Jade Bar, in honor of my parents, I tipped my glass and made a toast to them saying thank you for everything.

Landing in Kashmir

Leading up to rush hour on the lake.If you’ve just joined me recently, I spent my first 2-3 weeks in India in McLeod Gange, which is right next to Dharamsala, home to his Holiness the Dalia Lama. I spent most of my time there with my two Kashmiri friends, Gasha and Palla. They could not speak enough about Kashmir. “It’s like God himself came down and created it,” Gasha said over and over.

After McLeod, since I unexpectedly found myself volunteering in India for an environmental lawyer named MC Mehta, my plans of doing the backpacking thing were waylaid, and so I spent the majority of my time in India basically in a 20-kilometer triangle made up of Rishikesh, Dehradun, and the Swastigram Eco-Ashram, which is in the middle of nowhere, right on the edge of Rajaji National Park. About three weeks ago I decided it was time to see a little bit of India, and since Kashmir was so highly touted, and since two of my closest friends in India were there, I called Gasha and booked a ticket to Srinagar.

It is hard for me to talk to Indians on the phone sometimes, never mind in person. Very often I am on a crappy cell phone with a poor connection and it can feel like I’m swimming up stream as I wade through their accent. MC Mehta—the man who I have probably spent the most time with in India—forget about it. I have no problem in person but for some reason communication on the phone is challenging. I suppose what I am getting at is, while it was a little difficult to cut through Gasha’s accent, what really threw me off was his tone. I expected him to be more excited that I was coming to Kashmir.

We had talked once or twice leading up to my departure, the plan being for him or his brother to pick me up in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days so I decided at the airport in Delhi to give him a ring.

“Oh, hello brother,” he said. “I’m glad you called. I couldn’t find your number. I can’t pick you up at the airport. I am at a ceremony for my big brother.” (For some reason Kashmiris always throw in that definitive adjective so that I recgnize that he is either larger or older.)Interior of the houseboat at night. That's Ayub's brother. I took the guitar off the wall and tried to play to break the awkwardness of Ayub relentlessly hitting on the Israeli girl.

“Just take a government taxi to Dal Lake,” he said—I think. Or Dal Gate…Or Gal Date…Something like that. It took about five minutes to get to that detail. Now mind you, this not so little detail was thrown at me about 20 minutes before boarding my flight, and the Lonely Planet I bought in McLeod Gange, which I have never actually cracked open, was packed in my checked baggage. 

(Sidebar: I need to interrupt this blog to let you know thatHard To Say I’m Sorry, by Chicago just came on. {How sweet is that video? And not sweet in the tender, touching way, but in the way that is full of timeless awesomeness.} I thought it was a funny choice until I discovered when the techno kicked in that it was a remix, followed by a remix of YMCA by the Village People. India is really funny sometimes. Now back to your regularly scheduled blogcast.)

Some concerned friends and my surrogate mothers (my sisters) had read the warnings on the U.S. Embassy Web site regarding Americans traveling in Kashmir and did their best to put the fear of God into me, as if I was not aware of the warnings about traveling to Kashmir (granted I did not read any of them until the last possible moment). Anyway, my Kashmiri friends assured me it was safe. But with several people coming at me time and again with the PLEASE be careful warning, it gave me a mild case of traveler’s anxiety. This was accentuated before I left MC and Mona. MC told me to trust no one and not let anyone know where i was from and Mona laughed and told me how the Kashmiris do business; they will pull you in as friends and then take you here and there to buy things like rugs, which as it turns out is their friends and they all get a cut of the business.

“Mona,” I said, “You’re just being grouchy and cynical. Have some faith in people! These are my friends!”

“Yeah,” she muttered under her breath in an all-knowing way, “Friends all right. We’ll see.”

The view from the roof of the Lucky Peacock Houseboat.I had Gasha and Palla, my Kashmiri hosts, so I wasn’t too worried. BUT—all of this went to hell when I got the call that no one was picking me up, that I didn’t have a place to stay, and that I didn’t even have a map of the town. The last thing you want to be doing when you’re traveling by yourself is thumbing through a Lonely Planet at the airport in which you’ve just landed, or in the middle of a city where the bus, taxi, or metro just dropped you off. You might as well take a boat to the Great Barrier Reef, throw a bunch of chum in the water, cut yourself a few times, then jump in the water.

What I am trying to say here is that having no one to receive me in Srinagar put me into a bit of a panic and I knew if I didn’t come up with a plan I was shark bait.

(On yet another sidebar, I just want to say: depending on your perspective, I’m either a great traveler or a terrible one. I very often run this question through my mind. When things are clicking I think, ‘Man—I’m good at this!’ And when they’re not, I think—‘Man, how could you be sostupid!?!’ The fact of the matter is, I almost never make a plan and I never do research. I mostly rely on networking, the new friends I make, other people telling me what to do and where to go, or other people arranging my accommodations and transportation. It wouldn’t hurt, however, as I later learned, to at least thumb through my Lonely Planet India. )

As I was queuing up to board the plane with my mind in hyperkinetic manic mode, I received a call from an unknown number. “Hello? Is this Tim? This is Ayub, Gasha’s friend. He says you need a place to stay. I have a houseboat. When you get off the plane, get a government taxi to Dal Gate and I will wait for you.” At least for a moment my chest expanded in breath, but everything was still completely up in the air. Dal Gate? What the hell does that mean? And how do I know this driver isn’t going to take me for a ride? Or that he hates Americans? Or that he’s not going to just take me somewhere and he and his brothers cut my throat for the sport of it and leave me to be ravaged by vultures? OK, the plan is to not let anyone know you’re an American. Time to put your poor man’s Irish brogue to work. That seems like a middle of the road choice, right? Why would Kashmiris have a reason to hate the Irish? Who hates the Irish anyway? What a fun time I had in Galway. Oh wait—the British hate the Irish. Well, probably not all of Britain, but mostly those in Northern Ireland. I can’t even remember what they were fighting over. Man do I love Guinness and U2. The Joshua Tree—that album was flawless. A masterpiece. What I would give to hear In God’s Country right now, the Edge’s screaming guitar overtaking me while I’m drinking a Guinness. At least I can listen to some U2 when I get where I am going. Wait—I have no idea where I’m going. Shit. Fuck!

My Lucky Peacock

The first thing I noticed on the tarmac in Srinagar, the capitol of Kashmir, was the intense security. All of the buildings were painted in camouflage and everywhere you looked there were army men with M-16s. Ever since the Mumbai bombings, security in India has been intense, but this military display was far more intense than anything I had yet seen. You see Kashmir is predominantly Muslim and they want their independence from India. I asked quite a few people about this and the consensus, at least to me, is that the young, uneducated, and those who lack employment want their independence. Those who are earning a good income and are somewhat educated—while they would like their independence, they know they are greatly benefiting from India, and that without India, Kashmir would turn into Afghanistan and there would be no tourism and a lot of people starving. While the situation in Kashmir is not exactly the powder keg say Israel and Palestine is, it is certainly a volatile place where the wrong action by the police or military could cause the place to blow. With that said, it does not seem that the Kashmiris like the Indians, and vice versa.

The view to the right from the Lucky Peacock Houseboat, along with woodwork detail.Because of all the hype, as you know from reading the internal rantings of a manic lunatic (a la me), I was on guard from the outset. After I exited the plane, near baggage claim foreign nationals are required to fill out some paper work. As I was filling out the paperwork, I looked down and noticed a small boy with his hand in my bag, and by small I’m talking probably 5-years-old. I looked down and in a gut reaction I gave him an adult shove that sent him back a few feet and I shouted at him. Much to my surprise, the boy ran behind the counter where I was filling out the paperwork and into his mother’s arms. I don’t think she saw what happened because she smiled at me. If a stranger did to my child what I did to this boy, he might get a bottle cracked over his head. The boy, no doubt, said white man scary. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and so I’m going to assume this kid was just curious, but from the rest of my Kashmir experience, that could have been what his parents taught him, because those Kashmiris, they sure do like the kind of paper you can exchange for goods.

I followed Ayub’s instructions and got a government taxi, which was the nicest public transportation to date that I have traveled in in India. If this was government run, clearly Kashmir was benefiting from the infrastructure Indian taxes were creating, not to mention that the roads in Kashmir were in great condition as well. The car had leather seats, air-conditioning, a CD player, and GPS, which I haven’t seen in India yet. Surprisingly, the driver’s headrest had an American flag on it. Being in the heightened state of awareness I was in, driving through town it felt like every Muslim man with whose eyes met mine caused him to do a double take as they watched me drive off.

A Canal in the middle of Srinagar, Kashmir.When we finally got into Srinagar, it was far and away the most beautiful part of India I have seen yet, granted, I have seen very little of a massively diverse country. In my plush government chariot, we crossed multiple bridges and canals, and streets and promenades lined with trees and gardens. The architecture much to my surprise and appreciation was more wood and brick than the concrete and aluminum, which seems to be the predominent building materials in India. Besides the incessant ubiquitous honking of horns, men in Muslim attire, and women in burkhas, Srinagar felt more like Amsterdam or Switzerland then Delhi or Agra.

***

Sure as bloody shit (as the expression goes), Ayub was waiting for me at the gateway to Dal Lake to take me to The Lucky Peacock, his houseboat. We got in a shikara, the small wooden boat that takes you to the houseboats and made some small talk. I don’t think we had even made it to the houseboat, which was only about a 5-10 minute row, before he let me know he had a Swiss wife and two kids, and that he splits his year between Switzerland and Kashmir. I never did see the wife. He was a handsome man about my age and an easy talker. In fact, I would have to say in general that Kashmiris, both men and woman, are a good-looking group of people, at least in their youth. I think the majority who stay in Kashmir hit a “best if served by” date, however, and they age prematurely due to hard and stressful living. This was later confirmed by Shaqeel, the owner of the Noor Guesthouse, where I would stay the following day. I thought Shaqeel was perhaps 50. While he didn’t know his exact age, he guessed it was around 35. More on him in Part II.

Captain Ayub.Ayub showed me to The Lucky Peacock houseboat and said, “Is this OK for you?” He knew he had product and he knew he had me because my western eyes had never laid eyes on anything quite like it. The woodwork was decadent, the detail exquisite, and each piece was carved from the hands of true artisans; not to mention that the property was floating on a quiet canal full of lily pads, songbirds, and swooping cranes. In the front of the boat there were two great lounging areas with comfortable cushions, perfect to just read or watch the day go by. The only problem was Ayub and his brother were almost always around and always having friends drop by who wanted to chat, or inevitably, take me to their carpet factory to buy Kashmir rugs. “You should really sell these back home. I’ll give you a great deal. No middleman. My best friend owns the factory…” You wouldn't believe the number of best friends Kashmiris have.

“Well how much is this place per night?” I asked Ayub. He showed me some government rate sheet which said 4500 rupees a night (about $100) and I was like, are you fucking kidding me? But he said, “You’re a friend of Gasha so you can just pay what Gasha says.” I heard Mona’s voice in my ear, as if she was standing on my shoulder saying, “Yeah, friends all right.”

Getting to Kashmir

Making our way past the lily pads on our way towards the center of the lake.The previous 24 hours were not as smooth as they were supposed to be. On the overnight train from Dehradun to Delhi, while it was nowhere near the first hellish train ride I had in India, I did not sleep as much as I would have liked. Fortunately, this time my seat was confirmed and I was in 3^rd tier AC. I didn’t exactly t know what that meant until I walked into the frigid car. Well, that explains the AC. The 3 tiers means that within each of the perhaps 10-12 small compartments that make up a train car, there are 6 beds stacked to the ceiling, 3 on each side.

I might have gotten 2-3 hours sleep on the 6-hour train ride if I was lucky. One nice unexpected fact was that you are provided clean sheets, blankets, and a pillow, however, I was slightly on edge about falling asleep with my laptop, wallet, passport, iPod and so on, so I did my best to either sleep on it or wrap my arm around the strap. Paranoid? Perhaps. Cautious? Most definitely. You gotta be when you’re the only person watching out for yourself—and of course as many stories as there are about Delhi, there are about being drugged or having bags stolen on trains. Unless you're out of the cities or with locals, it's hard to let your gaurd down in India.

The one fact that was bringing me some relief about arriving in Delhi was that MC’s driver was going to pick me up.

“What train car will you be in? 3B? OK. When you exit the car, just wait right there. My driver will be there,” MC said.

But as things go in India, something came up for the driver. This is the Indian way for a certain class or subsection of Indian society. If they don’t feel like working or showing up, they simply don’t. Getting paid is more of an afterthought to the whimsy of the moment. And so I exited the train and waited. And waited. And waited until I finally called MC.The parlor of the houseboat, looking out towards the water.

“Ah, hello Tim? Are you all right? I’m so glad you called. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all night and I sent you an email. The driver could not make it so you’ll have to get a taxi.” My phone was off all night to conserve my battery. I was low on battery because the Vodaphone service constantly—and I mean constantly—serves advertisements to your phone keeping the display on the phone lit, thus eating through your battery. ie: Delhi XI Quiz: Which of these left arm seamers from India plays for Delhi? Click OK to find out!

No ride meant the twitching and cringing again, the physical response to having to move through Delhi on my own.

From where my train pulled in, I made my way to the taxis. I took a moment to soak in the sunrise then into the hornets nest I descended. Toothless, dirty, disheveled, soulless pariahs came running at me, tugging at me or trying to lead me by my arm as they vied for the rupees in my wallet. But the way they come at you—I swear it feels like they're coming for your soul. I could almost smell the dishonesty on them, but then I realized they were just wearing the aroma of Delhi’s summer heat.

A kind Indian woman guided me toward the government taxi stand. “Don’t ever trust these people,” she said, and so I took a cab to MC’s apartment where I showered, ate breakfast, and we went over some of the issues we needed to cover. I asked the driver to turn on the AC and the bastard said it would cost another 100 rupees.

Before I knew it, I was on The Lucky Peacock in Kashmir. With only a few hours of sleep to my name, Ayub fed me and I fell into my hand carved bed and into a deep, heavy sleep.

***

When I woke I returned to the front of the boat and they asked me if I wanted to take a shikara to see the lake. “How much are they?” I asked.

He quoted me some outrageous price for the covered shikaras and then said about 800 rupees for the regular one (about $17), which is complete and utter bullshit. I am always tentative to spend any money when I have no concept of rates. When I’m traveling, I have no problem paying the value of something, but nothing pisses me off more than when I find out I got ripped off. Of course there is going to be a tourist “tax” on whatever you do, but then to get the white man’s surcharge on top of it is and frustrating and enraging.

“You didn’t come all this way to sit on a boat, did you?”Ayub asked. Well, I guess not, I thought. Kashmiris are slight of hand and masters in the art of suggestion. But I wasn't paying 800 rupees.

Ayub and his friend Farook took me out on the shikara and they asked me if I wanted any beers. “Well sure,” I said, “But I didn’t bring my wallet.”

“No problem. You’re a friend of Gasha’s.” (Mona: “Yeah, friends all right.”)

Farook and I on our way out to the lake. Kids don't smoke. Do as I say, not as I do. Anyway, I don't smoke back in the states. It's vile.Where the waterway opened up from a canal to the lake, Farook jumped off the boat and bought some beers along the waterfront. We drank, smoked cigarettes, laughed, and talked quite a bit about women and their genitalia, mind you—I was not leading the conversation. I was playing the supporting character of dude in agreement number 1.

We paddled to the middle of the lake and the scene lit me up, both on the inside and out. It was simply stunning and nothing like I had imagined Kashmir to be. I thought Kashmir would more akin to poverty and the Stone Age than a hustling and bustling tourist scene, with fountains in the lake, and well paved roads. Its beauty, baked in a clay dish of classic charm with a peppering of modernity, combined with essence-of-dramatic-waterfront, and garnished with the foothills of the Zabarwan Mountains cascading down to the lake, could rank it in a second or third tier of the most beautiful waterfronts. Right before the sun sank behind the mountains, everything in the foreground was ablaze in Kashmiri fire, and when the sun sank behind the mountains, if there was ever a Kashmiri impressionist painter, the oils on his brush would have crafted the pastel scene upon which I was floating. I was getting filled with love from the beauty and the beer.

Fountains along the Srinagar waterfront.All the while, Palla and Gasha were on the phone with Ayub back and forth. Ayub kept telling me they were coming to meet us on the lake, but they never showed. Since we were drinking beers he told me if we were caught on shore we would get fined, or worse because I was a tourist, but I don’t know if that was the whole truth. The truth, as you’ll find out in Part II, is highly evasive in Kashmir.

Palla finally rented a Shikara and sailed out to find me, urging me to get on his boat. I was torn between my new hosts who were getting me drunk and going with my old friends, but owning to my allegiance, I jumped on Palla’s boat and both boats headed back to shore.

Palla, Gasha, Ayub and I took a walk along the waterfront while Farook stayed back with the boat. Palla and I kept saying, “I really can’t tell you how great it is to see you.” It was really a fantastic feeling to be reunited with and old,but recent friend.

When the party of four had separated into two parties of two, there was urgency about Palla. He was trying to get me to come with him and I told him about the situation I was in. Eventually he just said, “OK, you party with them tonight, have a good time, and tomorrow I’ll come get you.”

Kashmiri fire at sunset.

On the way home, Ayub and Farook bought me BBQ on the lake. Everything you could want is available on the lake by shikara drivers who row up to your boat selling their goods, from drugs, to corn on the cob, to toilette paper, to Lays Sour Cream and Onion potato chips. It’s quite a scene. Again I thought as I was throwing back spiced mutton skewers, what is this going to cost me, because the Kashmiri way is to not quote a price, then really stick it to you in the end. (If you don’t take my word for it, just read about Houseboat owners in The Lonely Planet.)

After the BBQ, we came across some young Israelis who were staying at Ayub’s sister’s houseboat and followed them home. One of the girls said she hadn’t spoken to her family in about two weeks and needed to tell them she was alive. Ayub used the opportunity to invite her back to his houseboat to use his Internet.

The three of us hung out for a while on his houseboat drinking, smoking, and talking. He told me to put on anything I wanted from his iPod and so I chose Bob Marley. A.) Alphabetically it was the first thing that jumped out at me and B.) Can you really go wrong with Bob Marley? India, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Tanzania—as a general rule, I’d say that Bob is not only universally accepted, but it’s generally welcomed, especially when water, beer, and warm weather is involved.  

Despite the fact that Ayub and I drank the same amount, he seemed drunk and was quite forward with this girl who looked as if she was maybe 20 or 22. When she went to the bathroom, he leaned in and said, “I can get her if I want. Just watch.”

The view of houseboats on our way home from being out on the lake.When she returned from the bathroom she said she needed to go home. Ayub had to row her home on his boat, which was maybe the equivalent of two city blocks. When she turned her head, he gave me the sign to stay behind, as if he was going to get it on with this young thing. However, when he turned his head, she waved me to come with her in urgency.

Again, I was in somewhat of an awkward position, but I decided to accompany the girl home and designate myself as the chaperon. The girl seemed pretty innocent to me, despite Ayub’s opinion of her, so I didn’t really want to leave her alone on a boat in the middle of a body of water with him in the condition he was in.

So I said in my head, fuck him, and I jumped on the boat with them. He gave me the stink eye.

It was quickly becoming apparent that he was not the model business owner, husband, and father that I had imagined him to be when after a few beers I naively said to him, “You seem so familiar to me but I can’t place it.” I bet he is familiar to a lot of people.

The next day the lake shined golden in the morning sun. Ayub looked like shit and his eyes were bloodshot. I Could Have Lied, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers was playing in the background. I said good morning, walked passed him, and laid down on the cushions to soak in the morning's fresh lake air.

"Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." –Scarlet Begonias, The Grateful Dead

One of the reasons why I originally disliked Dehradun.The day that everyone left the law camp, I was supposed to go to Rajaji National Park with MC and Myriam, but as it turned out Myriam backed out and MC’s wife and daughter were going as well. Since it was his daughter’s 26^th birthday, I thought perhaps they might like to just be together as a family. In addition, because of train and bus schedules, my friend Preetika was the only student who couldn’t leave with everyone else so I felt bad leaving her at the camp all by herself. As it turns out, it sounded like I made the right decision. MC’s jeep got stuck in the mud and almost slid down a cliff. They had to exit the car in tiger and elephant country while the driver tried to get the car out of the mud. Meanwhile, Mrs. Mehta was trying to stay calm because she has a heart condition. India is a stressful country, even for Indians. Even something as leisurely as a drive through a national park can turn the opposite way quite quickly.  

For how much time I’ve spent at the Eco-ashram, it’s fairly pathetic that I haven’t explored too much of its surroundings. So while the Mehta’s were somewhere in Rajaji National Park, Preetika and I went for a walk about two kilometers up the road. I had heard one of the little stores sold eggs, and being that I reached my quotient of rice and dal I asked them to make me two fried eggs and chapatti. I didn’t realize the chapatti had to be made, so they invited us into their house. Dusk was turning to night and they were just about to eat, so the villagers invited us up to the rooftop of their home where they fed us dinner. They were simple, kind people who opened up their home and hearts and wore enthusiastic smiles while asking us about the ashram and MC. They said they had heard a prominent lawyer bought the ashram years back and they wanted to know why he had never held a meeting of the villagers or why he doesn’t teach them law. Preetika translated and tried to explain to them how busy he was but they didn’t quite get it. She went on to tell them how she had attended the law camp and how I was helping MC write grants and whatever else he needed. They told her to say thank you to me for helping India and that it means a lot when a foreigner come to help their country. I think they are giving me a little too much credit, but I’ll take it.

On our walk home, we stopped at a temple devoted to Shiva. We both bowed our heads and said a silent prayer. As we were walking back I said to her, “What do you say when you pray? Do you say thank you? Do you ask for something?”

“Mostly I don’t say anything,” she said. “I just remain still and silent. Shiva knows what I need. I just say hello, how are you doing, and that’s it.” I found it rather beautiful in its simplicity. We could probably all use a little more stillness and quiet in our lives.

Preetika was leaving around 11 that morning, but she insisted we wake up at 5:30am to show me the walk she and some other students discovered. I didn’t realize that the ashram had about 30 acres, and so we walked through the forest as a gentle morning rain accompanied by thunder rolled through the valley. We wound up in a beautiful field next to some mango trees, picked two, and sat in the middle of the field watching the mountains while sunbeams tried to break through the thunderheads. You’re probably saying—why had he never explored the property? I think it was that first conversation I had at the ashram when they mentioned the elephants and leopards.

Plant a garden. It's a good way to get past the blues.Preetika left and for a while I relished in the peace and silence having had almost no time to myself for the entire week. But it didn’t take long for loneliness and the blues to settle in, as happens from time to time when you’re traveling. I lay in bed for quite some time moping and wondering what to do with myself and finally decided I needed to snap out of it. There are not too many better ways to break the blues than to occupy yourself with something that’s not only productive, but empties the mind, and so I planted an herb garden with some of the leftover plants the students purchased. The “shovel” was practically a medieval tool, the result being blisters all over my hands, but it was worth it.

A few days later on June 15^th, MC’s driver dropped me off at the Ajanta Continental Hotel in Dehradun. I was excited and relieved to get the same room and the same rate, which I later was told never happens. The only reason I got the rate the first time was because I was gracious, polite, and smiled. Sometimes a smile goes a long way. The owner, Bhuvan, later told me an Indian business man or traveler would never get the rate I got because they are generally rude and a pain in the ass. Once again, what was only supposed to be a few days, I was surprised to learn at check out had turned into a week.

Morning ritual in Dehradun.On Friday evening I needed to email something to MC, plus I wanted to update my computer with the latest software fixes and podcasts, so I went into the business center in the hotel and plugged into the landline. Bhuvan, who at the time I did not know was the owner, asked if I would like tea or a lime soda.

When I was finished with my work I poked my head into his office to say thank you and noticed he had a nice Apple desktop computer. “Nice computer,” I said. “I love Apple products.”

I said the right thing because he began extolling the virtues of Apple products and told me how he had bought iPhones for his whole family and several friends. “Even my Dad is using them. Please, come in. Have a seat.”

We began having a nice chat and I told him a bit about what I had fallen into in India (working for MC) and how it was serendipitous because I had wanted to be involved in some sort of service while in India. “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’m not Mother Teresa and I’m not looking to take a vow of poverty or anything. I still like my iPod and my MacBook Pro and the ability to eat sushi whenever I want.”

“You like sushi, do you?” he said, putting his hand to his chin. “Hmmm…what are you doing tonight? Would you like to have dinner? I’m having dinner with some friends and you should come along. I’ve been trying to have my friend make sushi for a long time. Maybe she will if it’s not too late. It’s an interesting mix of people and this woman is partly responsible for the organic movement in India.”

“Well actually, I was just about to go to dinner but your invite sounds far more interesting,” I said.

“What do you like to drink?” he asked me. This was one of the best questions any one had asked me in a while.

“I’m pretty easy. Beer, wine, vodka, whiskey.”

“Oh perfect. I was going to grab something from the hotel bar but Mona should have all of that.”

Bhuvan brought some extra food for everyone from the hotel restaurant and we drove about 4 kilometers up the road in a direction of Dehradun I had not yet been.

We wound up at Mona Shwartz’s house, a 75-year-old woman who has been living in India for more than 25 years. Her life story is a wild one, but I’ll get to that more completely in a future podcast.

The evening brought with it an eclectic mix of people; there was Bhuvan and myself, Mona, an architect who was also a Tarot Card reader and energy healer, an Indian woman who had been recently divorced (which is quite taboo in Indian culture), an older Indian couple—the husband of which was a retired high ranking air force officer, and another older gentleman who looked like an Indian version of Ernest Hemingway. I told him what I was doing and whom I was working for, and he replied with hubris and bravado, “I didn’t even know there was such a thing.” His tone gave me the impression that he was scoffing at the idea of environmental law and he went on to command, “What has he done?” The Tarot card reader/architect chimed in that he knew all about MC Mehta, had been following his work for years, and that he was a very impressive man.

I felt there was something hardened about the man who made the remark. Beyond him being a large man, he had a resigned sadness about him—my feeling and sense told me that he had some burden of the soul. I later found out that he had lost two children and as a result had dealt with some pretty serious alcoholism. He had been dry for sometime but had a small glass of wine that night.

I was staring across the table at Mona all night, dying to know what her story was. What was a 75-year-old Jewish woman from the Mainline in Philadelphia doing in India? I tried to talk to her but she is hard of hearing and it was almost impossible to talk across the table, and so my inquiry would have to wait. I sat next to the retired air force officer and chatted with him for a while, and at one point he had the whole table hanging on his every word as he recounted a harrowing tale of how his helicopter suffered mechanical failure and dropped out of the sky from several thousand feet. He walked away from the crash with some cuts and broken bones but he said he received something not a lot of people get to receive—a second chance at life. Had we been in a more intimate setting, I would have loved to ask him how that changed him or if he has lived his life any differently as a result.

When the evening ended, I told Mona I wanted to hear more of her story, and that I would love to come back and interview her. She welcomed the idea.

I was feeling pretty warm on the ride home, my head swimming in a bit of vodka and wine. Serendipity had once again touched down in the form of a conversation over Apple products, but then again, I did write that day in my morning writing exercise that I wanted to have a serendipitous meeting. No joke. When Bhuvan dropped me off, since I had not seen much of Dehradun and I had never been to the hill town Mussoorie, he suggested we go for a trek the following day.

Bhuvan having a moment of contemplation.The next day we met in the hotel lobby around 1:30pm and he had lunches packed for us from the hotel kitchen. We made a stop at his house to collect some things and I saw a part of Dehradun I did not know existed. Of course, like anyone of means in India, he had a wait staff, a chef, a driver, guards, and so on.

After the pit stop, his driver took us up towards Mussoorie. On our way we encountered a very recent car wreck. A car had flown off the side of the road on a turn and hit a tree about ten feet above the ground. It was wrapped around the tree and the windshield was shattered. Almost no one wears seat belts in India. It was just another humble reminder of the fragility of life and an example of the result of not being careful on the lawless roads in India.

After about an hour-and-a-half we reached our destination and went for a great hike. When we reached the top of the peak, we paid our respect to Shiva at a temple. Later, we walked to the other side of the mountain and sat in silence as we stared in awe at the sunbeams shining down like stage lights on the endless hill of the Himalayas.

Bhuvan is a relatively new to the outdoor scene but a true enthusiast. On the way down the mountain, he wanted to trail blaze to see if we could find our own route. We started walking down some very steep terrain, all the while I was gently persuading him to abandon the plan for what he knew. He quickly realized it might not be the best idea.

We had some great conversations that afternoon about our lives, mediation (he does transcendental meditation twice a day for 20 minutes), and just the places life takes you when your not looking. Each story he told seemed to contain simple wisdoms.

“There is an old story about a woman who was knitting in her house and lost her needle,” he began. He went on to say how a man came by and saw her on the ground outside the house. He offered to help her find her needle but they couldn’t find it.

“Where did you lose it?” he asked her.

“In the house,” she replied.

“Well then why are you searching for your needle out here?”

“Because it’s dark in my house and I’m scared.” He went on to say, “You see Tim, the point of the story is that we all know where to look for the answers, but most of us are afraid to go there.”

“Life happens from here to here,” he said later on down the trail, first pointing at his left temple and then his right. “It all exists in the mind, then it is brought forth into existence through language, and then the world occurs to us as a result of language.”

The previous night he had asked me about my grateful/creation journal and once again expressed an interest in it. I told him how it was an experiment in consciousness, creation, and connection.

We talked about my parents and how what a year can make because almost exactly a year prior my mother had passed away. I told him about my father and gave him some history lessons of World War II. We talked about how we face a whole different set of challenges than our parents. Our parents worked hard to put bread on the table but we have the time and luxury to think about what we want out of our lives, and sometimes that comes with the cost of being lost. Our freedom requires being responsible for the choices we make—and we went on to discuss how our kids and every generation has a whole different set of challenges to address.

I told him how I have more than 40 journals of my life on paper and he asked me if I ever go back and read them.

“How does that make you feel reading them?”

“Well,” I said, “I look back through them very seldom, but when I do, I read them with compassion for the kid who wrote them. It’s almost as if a character in a book lived them. Then at other times the things I read are still as painful as when they occurred.”

“Life is like school,” he said. “You have to keep learning until you get the lesson and graduate on to the next level. And when you don’t get the lesson the first time, you keep repeating the level and each time the lesson gets bigger and harder.”

He said that it sounds like I am sometimes living in anticipation of the next thing in my life, and I agreed and made a generalization how it might be a western tendency.

“You should focus on being in the here and now,” he said.

“Well actually, I have been, and that’s a lot of what this trip is about…I don’t know,” I trailed off.

“No finish that, articulate that, because you need to hear it yourself. The sounds of the words need to resonate within you like a bell.”

“Well, this experience of travel has brought out some of the best parts of me and I love the way that makes me feel. I have found new heights of experience and personal happiness, the kind of happiness that no one can give you but yourself. And I know that when I am feeling happy, the frequency of my vibrations attracts more and more good feeling into my life. I just need to figure out how to stay there.”

“Well, the thing about life is you can’t unless you reach enlightenment, which almost no one achieves. You know how you have compassion for that young boy? Remember these feelings you are feeling, and regarding the pain when you read those journals, don’t beat yourself up over those things. That young boy could not have had the knowledge your current self possesses so you could not have made the decisions you wished you had made. You are here, now, where you are supposed to be. Keep bringing those good feelings into your life because the feelings you push out are like a radio frequencies and in the silence and stillness you pull in the information like a radio antenna.”

This is the time of evening Bhuvan wanted to set out on the second hike, the peak being at least an hour away.When we finished our trek it was getting late and Bhuvan pushed on to summit another mountain so I could see the view from the top. We started on our way but the terrain got somewhat treacherous and once again, I gently talked him out of his impetuousness. He just wanted to share the view, but I didn’t really feel like falling off a mountain.

Later that evening he said, “You know Tim, we went on that beautiful hike and we climbed to the top of the mountain, but we only spent about 20 minutes up there. It was an end point, a goal we reached, but that really wasn’t the purpose of the trek. Where the trek really occurred was during the journey, and that is the beauty of life.”

I agreed and told him about Juliana, whom I met in McLeod Gange, and how she had given voice to something I was wanting to say, and how he was giving voice to some things I wanted to say as well.

“It’s not me who is giving voice. It’s you who is bringing it out in your seeking and conversation.”

The house that Hotel Ajanta built.Bhuvan was quite keen on doing another hike on Sunday so he sent a car for me. When I got to his house he kept throwing out ideas, most of which revolved around challenging hikes. While I was up for anything, nothing really grabbed me. I was essentially a mirror as he talked through options to himself. Finally he said, “You know what? It’s Sunday. Let’s just have a nice leisurely day. We’ll pack a lunch and take my bike about 15 minutes up the road. We can hike up a river and find a nice place to relax and have lunch. How many beers should I bring? I’ll bring some wine as well. Hang tight while I call the hotel and have them deliver our lunches.”

I was a bit tentative about hopping on the back of his Avenger motorcycle, but like most things in life, once you move past the fear and into the experience, you find out you actually love it and you wonder what was holding you back. I was enjoying myself so much I was wishing our destination was further away.

When we arrived, we hiked up through a river valley that in some areas bordered on a canyon. We could have stopped anywhere, but Bhuvan, ever the enthusiast, pushed us onward.

After an hour’s climb up the valley, we found the perfect watering hole and set up camp, popped two Carlsberg beers, and toasted to new friendships and a happy life. His cook had given us the fixings of coleslaw, grated mozzarella cheese, and mouth-watering chicken tikka masala. We put the makings in between two pieces of whole grain bread (“I don’t eat the bread the hotel serves,” he says) and then added a layer of Lays Sour Cream and Onion potato chips to add some texture. I will be replicating this combo.

“Wait,” he said, as I began to devour my second sandwich. “Let’s have some wine. It will be a nice accent to the sandwich.”

Macrobiotic eating. Mona had this made especially for me.The following day I took a Vikram up to Mona’s place. Since she had heard I liked Sushi, she prepared a macrobiotic sushi lunch for me. We talked all afternoon and I interviewed her about her life story. She told me how she has written several drafts to a book about her life.

To compress a very large life into a nutshell, she was sick and dying and was healed through Macrobiotic eating. Since most people come to the Macrobiotic way of eating because they are sick, the motto is “1 and 10,000.” The creed is that you can take any help you want to heal yourself, but once you are free of your illness, you must pay it back 10,000 times. And that is what Mona has been trying to do ever since she began to be healed in her 30s.

“You know,” she said, “You don’t know why you walked in my door today but I have been praying for someone to come for a long time to help me tell my story. Several people have started but not followed through.” It was a daunting statement upon which to be on the receiving end. I told her we could start with the podcast and an article.Another course.

We sat all day long and when I left that afternoon, I said my goodbyes. But there would be three more said before I left Dehradun, because one way or another, I found myself back at her place. Once because I was trying to find The Grand Bakery but the Vikram driver had no idea what I was talking about, and knowing that we had gone too far but that we were near Mona’s house, I stopped by. She invited Bhuvan over that night for dinner and Bhuvan brought a guitar for me to entertain her. Bhuvan wanted to record it and post it on YouTube but I made every excuse why it was a bad idea; the guitar was out of tune, I hadn’t played in a long time, I can’t remember how the songs go, and so on and so on.

“Tim,” he said. “Come on. Share the love.” He won out in the end, and always being in control, he took about ten minutes to set up the lighting.

Over the course of a few days, Mona had shared with me a small chunk of her life story. She did not exactly understand what I was recording it for and at times forgot she was being recorded. 

“You know,” she said, “I’ve never told anybody some of these things.” She later asked me to keep parts of her story off the record, but I said, “Mona, if you’ve never written about this stuff, then what is in your book? You’re book can’t work without your life story, because that is what brought you to macrobiotic eating.”

The result of a day on the river.What I can say about Mona is that she is a woman of immense faith. At a very young age she fell in love with a poor boy, but instead got married to a person of her means and class, a man she never should have married. She very quickly had two children and was under immense stress from the marriage. At one point, her daughter—still under a year—became very sick. She would cry when the mother and father were in the same room, but when they were separate she was fine. Their relationship was that toxic. The marriage didn’t work out so she went to the west coast and began a new life, but years of internal unhappiness and the stress of being a single mother slowly began to destroy her body. Through a serious of auspicious events, she met, was nursed back to life by, and worked for two of the founders of Macrobiotic eating in the United States. “My life just works now. It took 75 years but it works. Everything I need just comes to me.”

Her life reads like an epic, which included being lead by an astrologer to Goa, India, where she was told she would meet certain people that would show her the way. She met them and that is how her life in India began. At one time in the 80s she was one of the only white people living in Kashmir and survived three attacks on her life. Since she had almost lost her life earlier, she did not fear for it, so she said no one was going to scare her or force her from Kashmir. As a precaution, she rounded up a few Gujarat (the mountain people of Kashmir) in case it came down to a fight. And it did.

One day the commander of the area came to her house high on something and told her he was going to kill her. There was a standoff in the house and the commander had a gun to her head. He finally decided he was going to kill her, and as he cocked the pistol the sky went black and a tornado touched down more or less on the house. She was yelling out to her guards to open the windows and the commander was yelling for no one to move. She told him to shut the fuck up and told her people what to do. The house was saved, the commander went running, it was the only place in the area where the tornado touched down—and she was never bothered again. This will all be in her words in the podcast.Working at Mona's.

Her life is too big to tackle here, but she has trained chefs in macrobiotics, now trains boys in her house to cook Macrobiotic, and has started a Sunday farmer’s market in Dehradun. She is a lovely woman to sit and talk to and reminded me of my Aunt Lily, who wasn’t really my Aunt but an old, warm, friendly lady who always had a cigarette in her hand and a drink at happy hour. I can’t exactly say Mona always treats her staff with grace, however.

“No! This spoon doesn’t go with this dish. Are you stupid? Get! Get away!” she might say, slapping the servants hand.

“Mona,” I said. “I love ya, but if I worked for you, I would kill you.”

“No you wouldn’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t take it and you’d walk away. If I was easy on these boys, they wouldn’t become the best.” While they barely speak English, much can be said in tone. But she is Mona and she gets away with it and they put up with it because a.) she is paying them, and b.) they understand she is a demanding old lady and most of the people she has trained have gone on to five star restaurants.

Mona has a strong support system in Bhuvan and many other people. On Monday night a girl that works for her got beaten severely by her husband. She showed up at Mona’s house and Mona called another friend who took her to the hospital. The husband, an abusive alcoholic, had beaten her before but this was the worse than all the others combined. This is a sad reality for many women not only in India, but throughout the world, but it was the first time I had come face to face with it.

By the time she got back from the hospital on Tuesday, Mona and I were knee deep in her closet looking through papers as she searched for versions of her life story and work. For years she had also been clipping out newspaper articles that she found relevant.

“Someone should preserve these,” she said. I had no comment.

I was relieved by the distraction of the girl returning from the hospital because I found it overwhelming to sort through her life and it reminded me of the stacks and stacks of papers that my mother had created when she took up our genealogy as a hobby late in her healthy life. While there seemed to be a methodology or a hierarchy to the work my mother put together, only she knew what that was, and so to us it was only bags and bags of paper, notes, and pictures that were often scattered about on the dining room table.

Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death. While I was thinking about her all day and thinking about what I was doing exactly a year prior when I got the phone call, I didn’t really have much time to really think about it; my day was consumed by trying to get back to the Eco-ashram to pack my belongings for Kashmir and then trying to get back to the hotel.

Since MC was busy in the morning I had to hire a Vikram to get out to where he was. The driver had no idea where he was going and we had no communication so every so often we would stop and I would hand him the phone. We spent a good frustrating hour roaming the outskirts of Dehradun. When I reached him, we hopped in his car and went to have lunch at his house where for the third time I got to dine with his wife and daughter.

After lunch was over, MC and his daughter were off somewhere and I told Mrs. Mehta how much I appreciated everything and what the day meant to me.

“I understand,” she said. “I was very close with my mother and had a hard time dealing with her death for a long time afterward.”

“You two would have been fast friends and could probably pass days talking without even noticing the setting and rising sun,” I said.

After lunch, I drove around Dehradun with MC and his daughter getting her application to Cambridge law school notarized, as well as a trip to the bank. She doesn’t want to go, however. Her interest is in theology and she wants to teach. Finally, after a long day, I got dropped off at the hotel and checked back into the room I had checked out of only a few hours earlier. I have grown to love that room and am looking forward to my return.

My plan for the evening was to go out to dinner and then just write, think, and reflect upon my life with my mother. Before I went out I dropped in Bhuvan’s office to say hello and he said, “What are you doing tonight? Shall I call my kitchen at my home and have them make a pizza? What would you like to drink?” There are few questions more satisfying than that in India, because sometimes you just want to have one or two but many places are dry. And so we had pizza, Rum and Cokes, and beer. Bunvan was dissatisfied with the way the kitchen reheated the pizza, so even though we finished almost the whole pie, he ordered Dominoes.

Later in the evening, I finally got around to telling him where I was one year prior and why—which was the El Chupacabre in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle, eating cheap Mexican food and drinking Margaritas with a small group of friends who came out to be with me on the night my mother decided to leave her body, as the Indians would say.

“Well then—let’s raise our glasses,” he said. “To the love she created and to her love that endures.”

On my last day in Dehradun, Bhuvan let me linger in my hotel room until almost 5pm, even though my checkout was noon. On our hike he had told me that he hates receiving gifts because he is so finicky, but I didn’t care. I found a small journal with a great Einstein quote on it about creation, wrapped it in a page of The Times of India, and slipped it under his door. I wrote him a note on the inside thanking him for his generosity and friendship and how he now had to use this gratitude/creation journal every day. He texted me thinking I had left but I was still lingering in the room. When I received his text I went to say goodbye and he was already writing his first entry.

"There's a starman waiting in the sky, he told us not to blow it cause he knows it's all worthwhile." - Starman, David Bowie

Preparation

A week of scrambling and chaos yields a successful event.“My goodness! What does a man like you eat for breakfast?” one of the students asked me. He had arrived a day early and had been watching me furiously clean plastic chairs. After about 50 or so, he offered to help. In the mean time, huts made of brick and grass were being constructed, storage rooms were being converted into sleeping quarters, a makeshift kitchen was being erected out of bamboo and tin sheeting, sheets were being washed, and beds were being made. The grounds of the Eco-Ashram buzzed with laborers like ants in an ant farm.

This student I speak of arrived a day early, thus he was the first to arrive at what was essentially summer camp for environmental law students; a week of lectures from directors of national parks, leading scientists, judges, and lawyers, and including MC—two Goldman Prize winners (The Goldman Prize is considered by many in Europe and America to be the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for grassroots environmentalism). The climax of the week was a moot court, trials based on actual cases.

It was Saturday, June 4^th, and as I said, for the last several hours I was cleaning chairs that had been in storage for who knows how long. In the room where they had been stored there was a hole in the roof and so the chairs were caked in mud from the previous storms as well as spider webs. I was zoning-out in the rhythm of cleaning the chairs when at one point I felt a bug on my hand and flicked it off. It was only at the last split-second, as my finger was already in the flicking position that I realized it was a baby scorpion. I sent him flying stinger over heels.

MC and Sam, both receivers of the Goldman Prize.It was one of those days where despite being up since 5:30am and operating on very little sleep, I had endless energy - kind of like the first time you run after a long hiatus and you think, I’m not in that bad of shape after all, which of course is just adrenalin. In total I cleaned about 120 chairs. I was told at one point to finish the job the next day, but there was still so much work to be done and in 24 hours, 40 young, rambunctious law students would ascend upon the grounds of the Eco-Ashram.

Since I arrived at the Eco-ashram on May 31^st, the place was a flutter with preparation for the 40 law students, several professors, honored guests, and a Swami, who was to lead the dedication of the new Climate Change Center on the first evening. On May 31^st, we were a week out, most of the housing was not even nearly complete, and most of the beds were in storage. Plywood and junk seemed to cover everywhere. This was all due to the fact that while I was in Rishikesh, a storm came through and caused massive damage to the grounds, tearing parts of roofs off cottages and collapsing the dining hall.

“You see?” MC said. “These storms are unseasonable. This is nature’s way of saying things are not well.”

I didn’t think it could be done—I didn’t think the place would be ready by the time everyone arrived, but in a week the dining hall was deconstructed and from its remains five thatch-roof huts were created to house an 15 additional students.

When MC would ask me, “What do you think?” I kept my opinion to myself, that being that there was no way in hell this place was going to be ready.

“It’s coming along,” I would say. “It’s really starting to take shape.” And in fact, up until the students went to bed at the end of their first day, we scrambled to add beds and mattresses.

(My favorite part of this long-ish, uncut video is about 1:44 in, where MC is seen running through the background chasing the dogs away with a stick. Can't remember what they were doing but up to no good as usual.)

It doesn’t seem like it should take that much work to create a small hut, but its quite astounding how much effort goes into building one of these shelters properly. The reason why it collapsed in the first place was because the workers were incompetent. I was amazed watching the daily increments of progress as the laborers transformed the land from a weather beaten mess into a campus.

What the student who asked me what does a man like you eat for breakfast did not see was that with the exception of one day, for the previous six days I was sitting around like a sloth, asking for something to do but our managing resources had run too thin. Myriam took point on most projects, but she was one person trying to motivate workers who didn’t really understand what truly cleaning something meant. In most cases we had to redo the work they had done. Some of the workers could be self-directed, but the majority needed someone standing over them, literally showing them exactly what to do. When no one was watching them, productivity dropped off. In the meantime, MC was driving around the district and state trying to find laborers and to replace the ones who said they would show but never did.

The Commander in Chief

The commander-in-chief at the command center.I think it’s impossible not to like MC Mehta, unless of course you are facing him in a court of law. He is full of simple wisdoms that make you pause and think, and then smile. He teaches by his character, that being the fact that his actions are in line with what he fights for. And while he is serious and focused in his will to protect the environment while doing what he can to mitigate climate change, he is always quick to smile, and I bet his laugh could even infect a death row inmate. I can’t really say enough about this man.

Throughout the week it seemed like the place was falling down around him and yet he would just laugh and say in his accent, “What to do?” which is the common Indian way of saying, oh well—what can you do? “

This is India,” he would add. “Tis too much. Tis too much,” and laugh it off. But it was not a nervous laugh. It was a genuine laugh at the absurdity of how much was still to be done, how hard it is to get things done in India, and just how far we were from the finish line.

MC is this brilliant man who is scattered and pulled thin by all of his commitments and by all of the people who are vying for his attention and relying on him for action and change. He is the only hope for many people whose livelihoods or land are being threatened by development or polluting industries. When he is not engaged in conversation or preparation, he sits outside the office on a little concrete patio in his chair immersed in deep thought and contemplation, partially slumped, legs crossed, elbow resting on the arm rest, and chin resting on his hands.

I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten to know MC the man before I knew about MC the public figure. The more I get to know about his career, the more humbled I am. His cases read like the best episodes of Law & Order and I was amazed and awed that on the first day students held him in such high regards that they tried to bend down to touch his feet, but MC wouldn’t have it.Group photo on the last day.

“Every landmark environmental case in India that has been brought to the court was filed by Mr. Mehta,” one student said. “Every environmental case we study in law school is MC Mehta vs. the State of India, or MC Mehta vs. some polluting industry. And he’s the only one who has been able to beat the government. The first and the last case you study when entering law school is about Mr. Mehta.” What’s even more remarkable is, as far as I understand, he is not paid in these cases. He has fought more than 100 cases in the Supreme Court of India and never lost. At one point a special court was set up every Friday to hear his cases. 5,000 factories along the Ganges River have been directed to install pollution control devices and 300 factories were closed as a result of his actions. Approximately 250 towns and cities in the Ganges Basin have been ordered to set up sewage treatment plants. He has won additional precedent-setting suits against industries that generate hazardous waste and succeeded in obtaining a court order to make lead-free gasoline available. He has also been working to ban intensive shrimp farming and other damaging activities along India's 7,000-kilometer coast. MC has succeeded in getting new environmental policies initiated and has brought environmental protection into India's constitutional framework. He's almost singlehandedly obtained some 40 landmark judgments and numerous orders from the Supreme Court against polluters, a record unequaled by any other environmental lawyer in the world. Countless corporate and government lawyers are getting paid hundreds of dollars an hour to fight him, to outwit him, and yet he is an unbeatable, a one-man legal brigade.

The first thing MC does when he arrives at the ashram every day is stop by the temple to pray. This says mountains about the man and from where her gets his stregnth. He is a man of deep faith and conviction. Many people of his stature and accomplishments would be arrogant and rest on their laurels, thinking themselves to be the god and creator of their own universe, but MC is an incredibly honest and humble man. He rarely talks about the past or his accomplishments unless prompted or unless the conversation dictates. Instead, he is focused on the future and what is yet to be done.

On top of all of this, he is funny—damn funny. Several times during the week we laughed so hard he had me in tears. When I did ask him about his cases, in recounting the details he laughs hysterically and slaps his knee as he describes the surreal details, how he outwitted his “very cunning” opponents, or how he used the press and media to his advantage. It is no wonder he is so greatly respected in India, but he has not always been in the favor of the public. As the press often excels at obfuscating facts or picking and choosing an angle to a story, there have been many times when industries that are the target of his wrath have worked hard to disparage him. At one point in the 90’s, 20,000 workers burned images of him in effigy while protesting the lawsuit he brought against the polluting industries that were pitting and staining yellow the Taj Majal’s marble as a result of acid rain. In ten years these industries did more damage to the national landmark than hundreds of years of war. MC has been offered pay-offs to shut up and disappear and has had death threats against him to the point where he needed security.

At one point he was called to the Prime Minister’s residence for a discussion about the development and plans for damns along the Ganges. The two sat outside to have tea while several peacocks, the national bird, ran around the grounds. Almost nothing had been said to each other when a peacock came towards them. Always looking for the simplest way to drive home a point he said, “Can I kill that peacock?”

The Prime Minister’s (apparently an expressionless man) jaw dropped and he nearly fell out of his chair. “What? What are you talking about? Of course you can’t kill that bird! Are you mad?”

“Then how can you allow these dams to be built and kill the Ganges, our national river?” Point well served. His mind is sharp and agile and is always working at this level. To hear him tell this story is fantastic.

One thing he always does as a lawyer and investigator is visit the environmental sites he is working to protect, several times he has had to do this in disguise. He told me of one case in which he was working to close down an industry that was contaminating drinking water for the surrounding villages. People were getting sick, skins of animals were peeling off, trees withered away, and crops were burning up in the fields. As the courtroom drama played out, opposing lawyers worked furiously to defame him. They spoke for an hour to the court how MC was out for publicity and his own self interests. “How could I be out for my own self interests?” He asks me as he recounts the story. “These people will do anything for a dollar and they are very clever.”

MC waited very patiently and when it was time for him to speak, he pulled out a bottle from his bag.

“What is that, rum?” someone joked.

“This is contaminated drinking water from the site. If any of the opposing lawyers will drink this water, I will withdraw the case right now.”

The opposing lawyers knew they had lost the case. The judge asked what do you want? MC asked for clean drinking water, medical relief, compensation for damages, and the industry to be closed down. These were all granted.

“I do not take a case unless I know I can win it,” he says. “Sometimes I wait a long time until the conditions are favorable on the bench or until I have sufficient evidence,” he says, continuing. “In my view, you are fighting on your principles. If you are speaking the truth, if you are guiding the court properly, respectfully, and presenting the facts, even the hardest judges become soft.”

I think like all great men, he is driven by an inner vision, truth, and an ironclad faith, and like all great men who have left their mark upon history, their legacy is not built on the size of their palaces but on the quality of their thoughts. There is nothing that can compromise his values. He is of the rare breed of men whose actions are truly in union with his words. Professionally speaking, whether I move in a new direction charted by my experiences with him or whether I go back to what I was doing before I left on my travels, personally, MC the man is a true inspiration and a model of the greatness I would lke to aspire to.

“MC is perhaps the most important barrister in India since Ghandi, and no one outside India knows who he is. He’s like a John Adams figure,” said Sam Labudde.

Professor Sam

Sam and I pondering what to ponder.Sam Labuddy, an American biologist and has a vendetta against economists. “Economists are the new lawyers,” he said, “And I hate every last one of them.” Then again, he has a vendetta against a lot of people and industries. If you are looking for an opinion regarding the environment, foundations that negligently hand out grants, or some of the NGOs who are “working” to protect the environment, chances are he has an opinion. When you have done what he has done, including won the Goldman Prize in 1991, I suppose you are entitled to that opinion. He can also tell you anything about the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols which he worked upon, two of the biggest environmental global policies in history, yet his crowning achievement was probably getting onto a Mexican fishing boat as a crewmember in order to expose the great secret of the tuna fishing industry.

At some point after WWII with the creation of hydraulics, someone came up with the idea to make a mile wide fishing net to fish for tuna. The thing is, for some reason that no one understands, while dolphins generally are near the surface, tuna shadow them below, so when these massive nets were being hauled up, millions of dolphins—the most intelligent creature of the sea—were being killed for no reason except they were in the way, then simply just discarded back into the sea like trash.

“A woman would never think to do something like this. Only an idea as stupid as this could come from a man,” Sam told the class. "If we came upon dolphins on another planet, we would probably not disturb them, rather study them for their intelligence."

And so Sam worked for several months on a Mexican fishing vessel because he could not get on an American one. To get on an American tuna fishing vessel, because of the dirty secret no one discuess, you had to sign countless non-disclosure agreements and could not bring any video equipment on board. After capturing the footage he needed on the Mexican fishing vessel, however, he left the fishing boat and brought it to the press, essentially shutting down the illegal dolphin killing practice. He also fought to protect the Tigers and created a boycott of Taiwan for selling Tiger parts with to-the-point ads on the back of the first section of the NY Times. His WMD’s have always been a video camera and the press.

For the first day, everyone was worried about what happened to Sam. It was a 6-hour journey from Delhi to the ashram and he was supposed to be picked up at 6am. He didn’t show up until about 5pm that night, because, as it turns out, MC had sent a car for him and the hotel operator lied to the taxi driver, telling him that Sam had left at 5am with someone else. The hotel operator lied to him so he could get the money for the taxi to drive Sam to the ashram, except the driver the hotel hired had no idea where the Eco-Ashram was.

For having slept only a few hours in a few days, Sam was remarkably and impressively on when he arrived, right as the induction ceremony for the climate change center was getting underway. MC asked him to introduce himself and immediately Sam captivated the students.

In bare feet, Sam walked amongst the students and said, “OK, I want you all to stand up.” And so the students stood up.

“Before I berate you and belittle you over the course of the next several days, I’m going to make the bet that you don’t even know who you are. And I want you to think about that over the course of the next few days.”

“Who you are?” He asked. The students nervously looked at each other, wondering if they were going to be called out. “Who you are is 3 billion years of evolution. You are the crown of creation. Do you know what that makes you?”

They looked around again. “A force of nature. As man has evolved in his technology and conquered survival, do you know what he has lost?”

Again blank stares. “Harmony with nature.”

He continued with his opening statements, and then in barefeet walked out into the rain and went to his room.The courtroom and classroom.

And so every time Sam started a session over the next several days, it began with this exercise, the students standing up and he asking them who they were, what that made them, and what they have lost as a result.

For the first few days, I thought Sam was a professor, because he had the uncanny ability to captivate these kids with a combination of science and irreverence. Two minutes into him speaking on the first day I thought, I would have loved to be in one of his classes. You would have thought that he had spent 25 years in the classroom, but at the age of 54, 25 years ago he was only in his second year of college. Sam had left Indiana at the age of 18 and decided he was going to save the world, but after a decade of traveling from Alaska to South America, he realized he didn’t have the knowledge to save the world, and so he entered college at 28. And might I add he has never been a professor.

His central message throughout the week was, “For so long human survival was about overcoming nature, but our victory is going to be incomplete. The same blind momentum we marched forth with in the conquest of nature, with the same zeal and fervor we now fondle machineguns and nuclear weapons. Human society is all about growth and momentum and we have made great strides as human beings, but if we don’t do something now, all the luxuries we’ve created, such as human rights and woman’s liberation, won’t matter. We are nearing a tipping point and unless we begin acting globally, we are going to do irreversible damage that is going to have catastrophic consequences.”

My favorite thing he said during the week, however, was, “Every time I give a talk somewhere, someone says to me, ‘what can I do as an individual to make a difference?’ I tell them, ‘you know how you can make a difference? Pick one issue that drives you mad and that you can’t live with or without—and own that issue. Learn everything you can about it. In the process you will meet people who think the same way you do, and before you know it you're talking about a movement, and right after that you’re talking about strategy and goals—and that’s when real change happens."Outdoor class with Sam.

Students Take Justice Into Their Own Hands

I found it funny to learn around day 2-3 that the students thought I was the disciplinarian. I should have maintained that facade. The fact of the matter was that when students were arriving, I was in the office, and when I came out I didn’t have the energy to make small talk and introduce myself, so I simply walked past them to my room. I think I was just in my own head, because apparently I barely looked at people and didn’t have a smile on my face—at least this is the way it was recounted to me.

Another reason why perhaps they thought I was a disciplinarian was probably because the only thing I couldn’t stand was when they talked through lectures. While I can agree with them that some of the guest lecturers may not have been the most scintillating speakers, I was hoping they would at least have the respect to be still and listen to some of the best minds of India in their respective fields, but many of the students would just talk the entire time through lectures. I was sitting in the front row most of the time and I would turn around and leer at them. Several times I went so far as to mouth “Shut the f#&k up!” (The inflection in my whisper and emphatic body language warranted the exclamation point in this case.) At one point I held up a session to separate two students. I said class wouldn’t go on until he moved. “Come on big fella,” I said, as he was on the more portly side. “We’re not going until you move up. Come on everyone, cheer him on. Encourage him—tell him he can do it! Yeah!” And I began a clap. He looked around mortified and finally moved up. Regardless, he talked through the afternoon session.

The thing that I don’t get is that Indian students, at least Indian law students, don’t understand how to whisper; they just lower their voice and it carries out over the whole class. I discussed this with MC and what we should do about it, but it’s not his personality to be the disciplinarian. He was simply let down by their laziness, entitlement, arrogance, and apparent lack of caring.

It was clear by day 5 that sadly, a good number of the students could not have cared less about being there. The first day, four students left because the conditions were not to their liking and some students confided in me that they thought they were going to be doing outdoor sports the whole time. On the 3rd or 4^th night, I was sitting in the dark behind my cottage, the only place on the property where I can get an Internet signal, and one student came up to me and asked me if I liked to party. I was somewhat caught off guard, not to mention blinded in the darkness by my computer screen, and while I didn’t come outright and say anything, I may have alluded to it. Not really a smart move. This student admitted to me that they had been drinking and smoking cigarettes and other things since the first night. It later made sense to me why several people missed a few sessions that afternoon—they were hungover. As a result of this conversation, I went to bed feeling somewhat let down. I was personally expecting so much from these students, these individuals who I had hopes and dreams for being leaders in a new era of environmental litigation and social justice, but instead they were just at the ashram because having MC Mehta’s name on your resume carries a lot of weight.

MC would ask me how things were going and I would tell him it was like herding animals or very young children with very short attention span. I would tell MC that they were like puppies; you could throw a stick and whatever they were doing their attention would be diverted by that stick and off they were running. I also acted this out, which he seemed to appreciate. I like to get a laugh out of him.

I do not want to cast the lot of them into the fiery pits of hell where most people believe the archetype of lawyers came to form. Some of them were quite impressive, self-disciplined, and driven. I would say all of them had the smarts, just not necessarily the drive.

On Wednesday, in the middle of the week, we all went to Rishikesh on an Indian school bus. Just like most Indian buses, we packed in as many as we could. I grabbed a seat on a bench all the way up front thinking I would have space and that I would have a better view of the landscape. Instead, by the time everyone packed on the bus there was no more room. It was standing room only all the way through the bus, so 3 of 5 guests who were from an NGO and observing the happenings packed onto my bench.

“Well,” I said. “Looks like I’m going to have a real Indian experience after all.” The student to my left leaned in and said, “No sir. If it were a real Indian experience we would have several people on the roof as well.”

I think this speaks for itself, or perhaps the next photo tells more of the story.To my left was a student and to my right, the man from the NGO could have been the Indian version ofRico Sauvé. Because of how tight we were packed onto the bench, one person would be leaning back and the other leaning forward. I was leaning back andRico was leaning forward. Since there was no where to stabilize himself as the bus made its way through forest roads, his very dark hand was very comfortably—and might I add somewhat intimately—planted on my very white knee the entire 40 minute drive. He was so relaxed and nonchalant about it you would have thought we had been dating for years. I was not aware of it but my friend Priteeka was watching the whole episode and giggling. I told her afterward that I felt dirty, like I was violated, and that I needed a shower. Now this type of behavior would not be suitable on a bus in Seattle or New York City, but I was in India, so I simply put on my headphones, listened to Eyes of the World, by the Grateful Dead and smiled—I was smiling at the absurdity of it all; how I was in the middle of India going on a field trip to Rishikesh with a bunch of Indian law students; how I was working for argueably one of the most important men in India; how I was on a bus that would probably not be considered road-worthy in the U.S.; how I was supposed to be an authoritarian figure; and how a strange man was taking our non-existent relationship to the next level. And I was smiling at how grateful I was for all of it.Jungle love, predicated upon awkward uneasiness. This is another one of those cases of - when in India...

As I have admitted, while I was friendly with the students, I was very critical of them, and they were certainly testing my patience. But on the bus listening to Eyes of the World, the consummate songs of my adolescence, I got to thinking about myself in college and I realized I was expecting too much from essentially kids—kids doing exactly what kids do—and doing exactly what I did. The fact of the matter is I probably did a lot worse things than these kids will ever do. But in India, they go from high school to law school. Law school is part of college so these weren’t even grad students, as I first thought they were. They were 18-23 year-old kids for the most part.

While I think I would have been more reverent and respectful than many of these kids towards the speakers, I thought how I would have been the leader plotting and planning the party that night. I was the one who probably would have had illicit things in my possession. I certainly had an attitude towards authority figures that I did not agree with, specifically my college soccer coach. On this final note, I will admit that while I put a lot of effort into the classes I was interested in during my college years, I also very nearly lost my full soccer scholarship to college for—let’s just say having too much fun. Guilty as charged, and so I let up on my expectations and let it go. And in the process, my friendship with a lot of these kids blossomed and I developed a new found compassion towards them.

On the way to Rishikesh, the bus stopped at a nursery where each student was instructed to buy a plant for the ashram, which I thought was a wonderful idea. When we got to Rishikesh, Sam and I hung out with a few of the students and then the group broke off and it was just four of us. We had a great time cruising around and shopping, and Sam brought three watermelon and several other fruits for the student body.

Of course, several of the people were late getting back to the bus, causing most of us to wait an hour. They showed no guilt or repentance when they got back on the bus and Sam said something to the effect of, “Maybe next time you're late you could let us all know so we don’t have to come on time.” The message fell on deaf ears and was not even acknowledged.

What the program lacked was structure and enforcement of rules, so as the saying goes, you give an inch, they take a mile; or perhaps over here, you give them a centimeter and they take a kilometer. I guess that is India though, and even the instructors were late most of the time. When we all got home that evening, there was no talk of a curfew or anything of the sorts. Sam and I hung out and smoked cigarettes and drank shitty whiskey and cokes until about midnight, during which time he told me the harrowing details of working as a cook on a fishing boat out of Mexico, how sketchy it was filming these sailors, and how several times he was terrified for his life. It’s not too hard to make someone disappear at sea, after all.

When I went to my room, a large gathering of student had accumulated in the courtyard and they were being quite vociferous. I asked them to go to bed. About 20 minutes later I came out because most of the students had gathered and there was a riff between the schools. One girl said, “Sir, this is between schools and we are sorting it out. Please let us be.” And so I did. But it went on and about 25 minutes later around 1am I opened my door, yelled at them, and slammed my door. I thought my tantrum might have an effect but it didn’t.

A little while later, one of the students came to my room to apologize and to alert me as to what was going on.

“Sir,” he said, “I am very sorry and I am embarrassed that this is all happening, but we will take this matter into our own hands.”

***

I will tell you that I learned an important lesson the first time I kept a blog while traveling through Tanzania. The lesson was this—what was simply reporting to me as I looked for colorful language to entertain and describe events, turned out to be really hurtful to someone I liked and whose friendship I valued. I had forgotten that she was following my blog, and what I had said felt to her like I stabbed her in the back. I was completely oblivious to what I wrote until I read it through her eyes and it struck me hard. I’m sure she has completely forgotten about it, but to this day, five years later, I still feel bad about what happened.

And so in writing this entry I have edited out parts, in fact, throughout all of these chapters I have left quite a few details out (you’re probably saying, thank God—he writes too much as it is). Perhaps if I turn it into something some day all the details will be there, but it’s not my intent to disparage anyone when writing or to be a judge of anyone, although I certainly have an opinion about some of the things that have happened. With that said, being that I don’t know all the details from the parties involved in the incident above, I will just say that some of the students took crime and punishment into their own hands that night. I suppose you could call it the street form of Indian justice.

***

Plaintiffs and defendants. I think...The competition between the Indian law students was intense, but apparently this is the way Indian students are. It’s no wonder with all of these overachievers that India is a surging world power, no doubt poised to pass the United States in many arenas, as several expats who live here have said to me.

Fortunately though, as the week wore on, the group became tighter and the competition seemed to lesson somewhat as new friendships were formed. History was made on the final day during a moot court, where for the first time an American clerk (yours truly) and an American judge (Sam) presided over court, with the assistance of a real High Court judge from Delhi who treated the students as professionals—not as students. In the third and final case, a case in which both sides prepared endlessly, the defense pulled out a clause that said if a similar trial is being conducted, the current trial can not be heard until the similar trial is concluded. The court was adjourned in a matter of five minutes and the students from the palntiff side were incredulous. They could not believe that they had put all that work into the moot court, just to have the trail suspended.

“But this isn’t a real court. Please your honor, this is a moot court. Just hear our case.”

“I’m sorry,” the female judge replied. “The law is the law.” It was a lesson the law students will never forget, which is the point of all of it, right?

After each trial, the judge took her job very seriously and dictated her deliberations to me. I tried to get out of the job but she really liked how fast I typed. The problem was, I had serious trouble understanding her accent so I kind of made it up as I went. All eyes were on my as I pounded the keys furiously. It was probably the most stressful job I've ever had. OK, perhaps I am exaggerating.

On the final afternoon, MC gave some insightful parting words and he asked Sam to say a few words followed by what each student learned.Sam doing his best to be a stern judge.

Sam began his speech like every lecture prior. Stand up, who are you, what makes you that, and what are you missing. The students looked at each other proudly as they recited what Sam had taught them. Then he said, “Who told you that bullshit? You gonna believe everything you’re told?”

Sam then proceeded to give what could rival any of the best commencement speeches I have ever heard. His passion, fears for the future, and hope in this generation that we can do something about the accelerated deterioration of the environment eloquently poured forth from him as if the spirit were moving words through his breath. As he spoke of his love for the environment, he had to catch himself several times as tears welled up in his eyes, and everyone in the room was experiencing the same emotion. It was like Robin Williams’ speech at the end of Dead Poet’s Society, except we didn’t have desks to stand up on.

Next we went around the room and each student, at least the ones who bothered to show up (several were missing) told what they learned, and you could very clearly see a shift had taken place in them from the first day they arrived. Even those who were there just to be there had been touched by the week. Each one had a similar story about how when they arrived they were alarmed by the basic facilities and the fact that they could barely get a cell signal, etc., and yet now most of them didn’t want to leave. One could tell that a few of them had had epiphanies, and that—at least in that moment—they pledged they were going to fight for the environment. Those who said they probably would not take up environmental law did say they have a whole new understanding of the environment, and how they will always take this into account in their cases, and how if given the opportunity they would take pro-bono work for the environment.

I had a million thoughts running through my mind and was quite emotional myself when it was my turn to speak. I tried to lead with a joke, telling MC that maybe next time he should start the week with a grade school teacher teaching the kids how to listen, how to whisper, and how to show up on time.

I’ll never use that one again. That one fell flat.

I don’t even remember exactly what I said, but I started out by thanking them for giving me a new understanding of compassion and for the new friendships we had forged. I told them how the experience of spending time with and learning from MC and Sam over the past week was like a tornado or a tsunami moving through my internal landscape. It had rearranged what was. I tried to tell them a little bit about my journey that began a year ago at my mother’s funeral and about some of the events that had brought me to the point where I stood before them. Fortunately one thing I did noticed midway through was that no one was speaking and I had everyone’s attention, because if they were speaking I would have lost what I wanted to say, but after all many of us had become new friends over the course of the week and so they respected me to listen.

I'm not sure how my speech landed. I think in the long run though, it's not the words of speeches that are remembered, but the sincerity and the emotion behind them, and I hope I delivered on at least those aspects. Of course, afterward I thought about all the things I forgot to say when I was sitting in my seat and composing it in my head. There is a reason why I am a writer and not a speaker, after all. I like the controlled environment of the written word. 

What I tried to express though, was my view of life—that we are all our own creators and that the world is first created in our thoughts, brought forth in language, and then constructed in action. And through this point, I tried to hammer home the fact that that reality conforms to the boldness of our thoughts and to push through their fears. I told them that in my experience the most destructive force in the world is fear. On the macro it’s what causes people and countries to raise arms against one another; on the micro it causes banality and complacency, and it is fear that keeps us from living the inspired lives we dream of living.

Derhadun, June 22nd.

"There's a starman waiting in the sky, he told us not to blow it cause he knows it's all worthwhile." - Starman, David Bowie

Preparation

A week of scrambling and chaos yields a successful event.“My goodness! What does a man like you eat for breakfast?” one of the students asked me. He had arrived a day early and had been watching me furiously clean plastic chairs. After about 50 or so, he offered to help. In the mean time, huts made of brick and grass were being constructed, storage rooms were being converted into sleeping quarters, a makeshift kitchen was being erected out of bamboo and tin sheeting, sheets were being washed, and beds were being made. The grounds of the Eco-Ashram buzzed with laborers like ants in an ant farm.

This student I speak of arrived a day early, thus he was the first to arrive at what was essentially summer camp for environmental law students; a week of lectures from directors of national parks, leading scientists, judges, and lawyers, and including MC—two Goldman Prize winners (The Goldman Prize is considered by many in Europe and America to be the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for grassroots environmentalism). The climax of the week was a moot court, trials based on actual cases.

It was Saturday, June 4^th, and as I said, for the last several hours I was cleaning chairs that had been in storage for who knows how long. In the room where they had been stored there was a hole in the roof and so the chairs were caked in mud from the previous storms as well as spider webs. I was zoning-out in the rhythm of cleaning the chairs when at one point I felt a bug on my hand and flicked it off. It was only at the last split-second, as my finger was already in the flicking position that I realized it was a baby scorpion. I sent him flying stinger over heels.

MC and Sam, both receivers of the Goldman Prize.It was one of those days where despite being up since 5:30am and operating on very little sleep, I had endless energy - kind of like the first time you run after a long hiatus and you think, I’m not in that bad of shape after all, which of course is just adrenalin. In total I cleaned about 120 chairs. I was told at one point to finish the job the next day, but there was still so much work to be done and in 24 hours, 40 young, rambunctious law students would ascend upon the grounds of the Eco-Ashram.

Since I arrived at the Eco-ashram on May 31^st, the place was a flutter with preparation for the 40 law students, several professors, honored guests, and a Swami, who was to lead the dedication of the new Climate Change Center on the first evening. On May 31^st, we were a week out, most of the housing was not even nearly complete, and most of the beds were in storage. Plywood and junk seemed to cover everywhere. This was all due to the fact that while I was in Rishikesh, a storm came through and caused massive damage to the grounds, tearing parts of roofs off cottages and collapsing the dining hall.

“You see?” MC said. “These storms are unseasonable. This is nature’s way of saying things are not well.”

I didn’t think it could be done—I didn’t think the place would be ready by the time everyone arrived, but in a week the dining hall was deconstructed and from its remains five thatch-roof huts were created to house an 15 additional students.

When MC would ask me, “What do you think?” I kept my opinion to myself, that being that there was no way in hell this place was going to be ready.

“It’s coming along,” I would say. “It’s really starting to take shape.” And in fact, up until the students went to bed at the end of their first day, we scrambled to add beds and mattresses.

(My favorite part of this long-ish, uncut video is about 1:44 in, where MC is seen running through the background chasing the dogs away with a stick. Can't remember what they were doing but up to no good as usual.)

It doesn’t seem like it should take that much work to create a small hut, but its quite astounding how much effort goes into building one of these shelters properly. The reason why it collapsed in the first place was because the workers were incompetent. I was amazed watching the daily increments of progress as the laborers transformed the land from a weather beaten mess into a campus.

What the student who asked me what does a man like you eat for breakfast did not see was that with the exception of one day, for the previous six days I was sitting around like a sloth, asking for something to do but our managing resources had run too thin. Myriam took point on most projects, but she was one person trying to motivate workers who didn’t really understand what truly cleaning something meant. In most cases we had to redo the work they had done. Some of the workers could be self-directed, but the majority needed someone standing over them, literally showing them exactly what to do. When no one was watching them, productivity dropped off. In the meantime, MC was driving around the district and state trying to find laborers and to replace the ones who said they would show but never did.

The Commander in Chief

The commander-in-chief at the command center.I think it’s impossible not to like MC Mehta, unless of course you are facing him in a court of law. He is full of simple wisdoms that make you pause and think, and then smile. He teaches by his character, that being the fact that his actions are in line with what he fights for. And while he is serious and focused in his will to protect the environment while doing what he can to mitigate climate change, he is always quick to smile, and I bet his laugh could even infect a death row inmate. I can’t really say enough about this man.

Throughout the week it seemed like the place was falling down around him and yet he would just laugh and say in his accent, “What to do?” which is the common Indian way of saying, oh well—what can you do? “

This is India,” he would add. “Tis too much. Tis too much,” and laugh it off. But it was not a nervous laugh. It was a genuine laugh at the absurdity of how much was still to be done, how hard it is to get things done in India, and just how far we were from the finish line.

MC is this brilliant man who is scattered and pulled thin by all of his commitments and by all of the people who are vying for his attention and relying on him for action and change. He is the only hope for many people whose livelihoods or land are being threatened by development or polluting industries. When he is not engaged in conversation or preparation, he sits outside the office on a little concrete patio in his chair immersed in deep thought and contemplation, partially slumped, legs crossed, elbow resting on the arm rest, and chin resting on his hands.

I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten to know MC the man before I knew about MC the public figure. The more I get to know about his career, the more humbled I am. His cases read like the best episodes of Law & Order and I was amazed and awed that on the first day students held him in such high regards that they tried to bend down to touch his feet, but MC wouldn’t have it.Group photo on the last day.

“Every landmark environmental case in India that has been brought to the court was filed by Mr. Mehta,” one student said. “Every environmental case we study in law school is MC Mehta vs. the State of India, or MC Mehta vs. some polluting industry. And he’s the only one who has been able to beat the government. The first and the last case you study when entering law school is about Mr. Mehta.” What’s even more remarkable is, as far as I understand, he is not paid in these cases. He has fought more than 100 cases in the Supreme Court of India and never lost. At one point a special court was set up every Friday to hear his cases. 5,000 factories along the Ganges River have been directed to install pollution control devices and 300 factories were closed as a result of his actions. Approximately 250 towns and cities in the Ganges Basin have been ordered to set up sewage treatment plants. He has won additional precedent-setting suits against industries that generate hazardous waste and succeeded in obtaining a court order to make lead-free gasoline available. He has also been working to ban intensive shrimp farming and other damaging activities along India's 7,000-kilometer coast. MC has succeeded in getting new environmental policies initiated and has brought environmental protection into India's constitutional framework. He's almost singlehandedly obtained some 40 landmark judgments and numerous orders from the Supreme Court against polluters, a record unequaled by any other environmental lawyer in the world. Countless corporate and government lawyers are getting paid hundreds of dollars an hour to fight him, to outwit him, and yet he is an unbeatable, a one-man legal brigade.

The first thing MC does when he arrives at the ashram every day is stop by the temple to pray. This says mountains about the man and from where her gets his stregnth. He is a man of deep faith and conviction. Many people of his stature and accomplishments would be arrogant and rest on their laurels, thinking themselves to be the god and creator of their own universe, but MC is an incredibly honest and humble man. He rarely talks about the past or his accomplishments unless prompted or unless the conversation dictates. Instead, he is focused on the future and what is yet to be done.

On top of all of this, he is funny—damn funny. Several times during the week we laughed so hard he had me in tears. When I did ask him about his cases, in recounting the details he laughs hysterically and slaps his knee as he describes the surreal details, how he outwitted his “very cunning” opponents, or how he used the press and media to his advantage. It is no wonder he is so greatly respected in India, but he has not always been in the favor of the public. As the press often excels at obfuscating facts or picking and choosing an angle to a story, there have been many times when industries that are the target of his wrath have worked hard to disparage him. At one point in the 90’s, 20,000 workers burned images of him in effigy while protesting the lawsuit he brought against the polluting industries that were pitting and staining yellow the Taj Majal’s marble as a result of acid rain. In ten years these industries did more damage to the national landmark than hundreds of years of war. MC has been offered pay-offs to shut up and disappear and has had death threats against him to the point where he needed security.

At one point he was called to the Prime Minister’s residence for a discussion about the development and plans for damns along the Ganges. The two sat outside to have tea while several peacocks, the national bird, ran around the grounds. Almost nothing had been said to each other when a peacock came towards them. Always looking for the simplest way to drive home a point he said, “Can I kill that peacock?”

The Prime Minister’s (apparently an expressionless man) jaw dropped and he nearly fell out of his chair. “What? What are you talking about? Of course you can’t kill that bird! Are you mad?”

“Then how can you allow these dams to be built and kill the Ganges, our national river?” Point well served. His mind is sharp and agile and is always working at this level. To hear him tell this story is fantastic.

One thing he always does as a lawyer and investigator is visit the environmental sites he is working to protect, several times he has had to do this in disguise. He told me of one case in which he was working to close down an industry that was contaminating drinking water for the surrounding villages. People were getting sick, skins of animals were peeling off, trees withered away, and crops were burning up in the fields. As the courtroom drama played out, opposing lawyers worked furiously to defame him. They spoke for an hour to the court how MC was out for publicity and his own self interests. “How could I be out for my own self interests?” He asks me as he recounts the story. “These people will do anything for a dollar and they are very clever.”

MC waited very patiently and when it was time for him to speak, he pulled out a bottle from his bag.

“What is that, rum?” someone joked.

“This is contaminated drinking water from the site. If any of the opposing lawyers will drink this water, I will withdraw the case right now.”

The opposing lawyers knew they had lost the case. The judge asked what do you want? MC asked for clean drinking water, medical relief, compensation for damages, and the industry to be closed down. These were all granted.

“I do not take a case unless I know I can win it,” he says. “Sometimes I wait a long time until the conditions are favorable on the bench or until I have sufficient evidence,” he says, continuing. “In my view, you are fighting on your principles. If you are speaking the truth, if you are guiding the court properly, respectfully, and presenting the facts, even the hardest judges become soft.”

I think like all great men, he is driven by an inner vision, truth, and an ironclad faith, and like all great men who have left their mark upon history, their legacy is not built on the size of their palaces but on the quality of their thoughts. There is nothing that can compromise his values. He is of the rare breed of men whose actions are truly in union with his words. Professionally speaking, whether I move in a new direction charted by my experiences with him or whether I go back to what I was doing before I left on my travels, personally, MC the man is a true inspiration and a model of the greatness I would lke to aspire to.

“MC is perhaps the most important barrister in India since Ghandi, and no one outside India knows who he is. He’s like a John Adams figure,” said Sam Labudde.

Professor Sam

Sam and I pondering what to ponder.Sam Labuddy, an American biologist and has a vendetta against economists. “Economists are the new lawyers,” he said, “And I hate every last one of them.” Then again, he has a vendetta against a lot of people and industries. If you are looking for an opinion regarding the environment, foundations that negligently hand out grants, or some of the NGOs who are “working” to protect the environment, chances are he has an opinion. When you have done what he has done, including won the Goldman Prize in 1991, I suppose you are entitled to that opinion. He can also tell you anything about the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols which he worked upon, two of the biggest environmental global policies in history, yet his crowning achievement was probably getting onto a Mexican fishing boat as a crewmember in order to expose the great secret of the tuna fishing industry.

At some point after WWII with the creation of hydraulics, someone came up with the idea to make a mile wide fishing net to fish for tuna. The thing is, for some reason that no one understands, while dolphins generally are near the surface, tuna shadow them below, so when these massive nets were being hauled up, millions of dolphins—the most intelligent creature of the sea—were being killed for no reason except they were in the way, then simply just discarded back into the sea like trash.

“A woman would never think to do something like this. Only an idea as stupid as this could come from a man,” Sam told the class. "If we came upon dolphins on another planet, we would probably not disturb them, rather study them for their intelligence."

And so Sam worked for several months on a Mexican fishing vessel because he could not get on an American one. To get on an American tuna fishing vessel, because of the dirty secret no one discuess, you had to sign countless non-disclosure agreements and could not bring any video equipment on board. After capturing the footage he needed on the Mexican fishing vessel, however, he left the fishing boat and brought it to the press, essentially shutting down the illegal dolphin killing practice. He also fought to protect the Tigers and created a boycott of Taiwan for selling Tiger parts with to-the-point ads on the back of the first section of the NY Times. His WMD’s have always been a video camera and the press.

For the first day, everyone was worried about what happened to Sam. It was a 6-hour journey from Delhi to the ashram and he was supposed to be picked up at 6am. He didn’t show up until about 5pm that night, because, as it turns out, MC had sent a car for him and the hotel operator lied to the taxi driver, telling him that Sam had left at 5am with someone else. The hotel operator lied to him so he could get the money for the taxi to drive Sam to the ashram, except the driver the hotel hired had no idea where the Eco-Ashram was.

For having slept only a few hours in a few days, Sam was remarkably and impressively on when he arrived, right as the induction ceremony for the climate change center was getting underway. MC asked him to introduce himself and immediately Sam captivated the students.

In bare feet, Sam walked amongst the students and said, “OK, I want you all to stand up.” And so the students stood up.

“Before I berate you and belittle you over the course of the next several days, I’m going to make the bet that you don’t even know who you are. And I want you to think about that over the course of the next few days.”

“Who you are?” He asked. The students nervously looked at each other, wondering if they were going to be called out. “Who you are is 3 billion years of evolution. You are the crown of creation. Do you know what that makes you?”

They looked around again. “A force of nature. As man has evolved in his technology and conquered survival, do you know what he has lost?”

Again blank stares. “Harmony with nature.”

He continued with his opening statements, and then in barefeet walked out into the rain and went to his room.The courtroom and classroom.

And so every time Sam started a session over the next several days, it began with this exercise, the students standing up and he asking them who they were, what that made them, and what they have lost as a result.

For the first few days, I thought Sam was a professor, because he had the uncanny ability to captivate these kids with a combination of science and irreverence. Two minutes into him speaking on the first day I thought, I would have loved to be in one of his classes. You would have thought that he had spent 25 years in the classroom, but at the age of 54, 25 years ago he was only in his second year of college. Sam had left Indiana at the age of 18 and decided he was going to save the world, but after a decade of traveling from Alaska to South America, he realized he didn’t have the knowledge to save the world, and so he entered college at 28. And might I add he has never been a professor.

His central message throughout the week was, “For so long human survival was about overcoming nature, but our victory is going to be incomplete. The same blind momentum we marched forth with in the conquest of nature, with the same zeal and fervor we now fondle machineguns and nuclear weapons. Human society is all about growth and momentum and we have made great strides as human beings, but if we don’t do something now, all the luxuries we’ve created, such as human rights and woman’s liberation, won’t matter. We are nearing a tipping point and unless we begin acting globally, we are going to do irreversible damage that is going to have catastrophic consequences.”

My favorite thing he said during the week, however, was, “Every time I give a talk somewhere, someone says to me, ‘what can I do as an individual to make a difference?’ I tell them, ‘you know how you can make a difference? Pick one issue that drives you mad and that you can’t live with or without—and own that issue. Learn everything you can about it. In the process you will meet people who think the same way you do, and before you know it you're talking about a movement, and right after that you’re talking about strategy and goals—and that’s when real change happens."Outdoor class with Sam.

Students Take Justice Into Their Own Hands

I found it funny to learn around day 2-3 that the students thought I was the disciplinarian. I should have maintained that facade. The fact of the matter was that when students were arriving, I was in the office, and when I came out I didn’t have the energy to make small talk and introduce myself, so I simply walked past them to my room. I think I was just in my own head, because apparently I barely looked at people and didn’t have a smile on my face—at least this is the way it was recounted to me.

Another reason why perhaps they thought I was a disciplinarian was probably because the only thing I couldn’t stand was when they talked through lectures. While I can agree with them that some of the guest lecturers may not have been the most scintillating speakers, I was hoping they would at least have the respect to be still and listen to some of the best minds of India in their respective fields, but many of the students would just talk the entire time through lectures. I was sitting in the front row most of the time and I would turn around and leer at them. Several times I went so far as to mouth “Shut the f#&k up!” (The inflection in my whisper and emphatic body language warranted the exclamation point in this case.) At one point I held up a session to separate two students. I said class wouldn’t go on until he moved. “Come on big fella,” I said, as he was on the more portly side. “We’re not going until you move up. Come on everyone, cheer him on. Encourage him—tell him he can do it! Yeah!” And I began a clap. He looked around mortified and finally moved up. Regardless, he talked through the afternoon session.

The thing that I don’t get is that Indian students, at least Indian law students, don’t understand how to whisper; they just lower their voice and it carries out over the whole class. I discussed this with MC and what we should do about it, but it’s not his personality to be the disciplinarian. He was simply let down by their laziness, entitlement, arrogance, and apparent lack of caring.

It was clear by day 5 that sadly, a good number of the students could not have cared less about being there. The first day, four students left because the conditions were not to their liking and some students confided in me that they thought they were going to be doing outdoor sports the whole time. On the 3rd or 4^th night, I was sitting in the dark behind my cottage, the only place on the property where I can get an Internet signal, and one student came up to me and asked me if I liked to party. I was somewhat caught off guard, not to mention blinded in the darkness by my computer screen, and while I didn’t come outright and say anything, I may have alluded to it. Not really a smart move. This student admitted to me that they had been drinking and smoking cigarettes and other things since the first night. It later made sense to me why several people missed a few sessions that afternoon—they were hungover. As a result of this conversation, I went to bed feeling somewhat let down. I was personally expecting so much from these students, these individuals who I had hopes and dreams for being leaders in a new era of environmental litigation and social justice, but instead they were just at the ashram because having MC Mehta’s name on your resume carries a lot of weight.

MC would ask me how things were going and I would tell him it was like herding animals or very young children with very short attention span. I would tell MC that they were like puppies; you could throw a stick and whatever they were doing their attention would be diverted by that stick and off they were running. I also acted this out, which he seemed to appreciate. I like to get a laugh out of him.

I do not want to cast the lot of them into the fiery pits of hell where most people believe the archetype of lawyers came to form. Some of them were quite impressive, self-disciplined, and driven. I would say all of them had the smarts, just not necessarily the drive.

On Wednesday, in the middle of the week, we all went to Rishikesh on an Indian school bus. Just like most Indian buses, we packed in as many as we could. I grabbed a seat on a bench all the way up front thinking I would have space and that I would have a better view of the landscape. Instead, by the time everyone packed on the bus there was no more room. It was standing room only all the way through the bus, so 3 of 5 guests who were from an NGO and observing the happenings packed onto my bench.

“Well,” I said. “Looks like I’m going to have a real Indian experience after all.” The student to my left leaned in and said, “No sir. If it were a real Indian experience we would have several people on the roof as well.”

I think this speaks for itself, or perhaps the next photo tells more of the story.To my left was a student and to my right, the man from the NGO could have been the Indian version ofRico Sauvé. Because of how tight we were packed onto the bench, one person would be leaning back and the other leaning forward. I was leaning back andRico was leaning forward. Since there was no where to stabilize himself as the bus made its way through forest roads, his very dark hand was very comfortably—and might I add somewhat intimately—planted on my very white knee the entire 40 minute drive. He was so relaxed and nonchalant about it you would have thought we had been dating for years. I was not aware of it but my friend Priteeka was watching the whole episode and giggling. I told her afterward that I felt dirty, like I was violated, and that I needed a shower. Now this type of behavior would not be suitable on a bus in Seattle or New York City, but I was in India, so I simply put on my headphones, listened to Eyes of the World, by the Grateful Dead and smiled—I was smiling at the absurdity of it all; how I was in the middle of India going on a field trip to Rishikesh with a bunch of Indian law students; how I was working for argueably one of the most important men in India; how I was on a bus that would probably not be considered road-worthy in the U.S.; how I was supposed to be an authoritarian figure; and how a strange man was taking our non-existent relationship to the next level. And I was smiling at how grateful I was for all of it.Jungle love, predicated upon awkward uneasiness. This is another one of those cases of - when in India...

As I have admitted, while I was friendly with the students, I was very critical of them, and they were certainly testing my patience. But on the bus listening to Eyes of the World, the consummate songs of my adolescence, I got to thinking about myself in college and I realized I was expecting too much from essentially kids—kids doing exactly what kids do—and doing exactly what I did. The fact of the matter is I probably did a lot worse things than these kids will ever do. But in India, they go from high school to law school. Law school is part of college so these weren’t even grad students, as I first thought they were. They were 18-23 year-old kids for the most part.

While I think I would have been more reverent and respectful than many of these kids towards the speakers, I thought how I would have been the leader plotting and planning the party that night. I was the one who probably would have had illicit things in my possession. I certainly had an attitude towards authority figures that I did not agree with, specifically my college soccer coach. On this final note, I will admit that while I put a lot of effort into the classes I was interested in during my college years, I also very nearly lost my full soccer scholarship to college for—let’s just say having too much fun. Guilty as charged, and so I let up on my expectations and let it go. And in the process, my friendship with a lot of these kids blossomed and I developed a new found compassion towards them.

On the way to Rishikesh, the bus stopped at a nursery where each student was instructed to buy a plant for the ashram, which I thought was a wonderful idea. When we got to Rishikesh, Sam and I hung out with a few of the students and then the group broke off and it was just four of us. We had a great time cruising around and shopping, and Sam brought three watermelon and several other fruits for the student body.

Of course, several of the people were late getting back to the bus, causing most of us to wait an hour. They showed no guilt or repentance when they got back on the bus and Sam said something to the effect of, “Maybe next time you're late you could let us all know so we don’t have to come on time.” The message fell on deaf ears and was not even acknowledged.

What the program lacked was structure and enforcement of rules, so as the saying goes, you give an inch, they take a mile; or perhaps over here, you give them a centimeter and they take a kilometer. I guess that is India though, and even the instructors were late most of the time. When we all got home that evening, there was no talk of a curfew or anything of the sorts. Sam and I hung out and smoked cigarettes and drank shitty whiskey and cokes until about midnight, during which time he told me the harrowing details of working as a cook on a fishing boat out of Mexico, how sketchy it was filming these sailors, and how several times he was terrified for his life. It’s not too hard to make someone disappear at sea, after all.

When I went to my room, a large gathering of student had accumulated in the courtyard and they were being quite vociferous. I asked them to go to bed. About 20 minutes later I came out because most of the students had gathered and there was a riff between the schools. One girl said, “Sir, this is between schools and we are sorting it out. Please let us be.” And so I did. But it went on and about 25 minutes later around 1am I opened my door, yelled at them, and slammed my door. I thought my tantrum might have an effect but it didn’t.

A little while later, one of the students came to my room to apologize and to alert me as to what was going on.

“Sir,” he said, “I am very sorry and I am embarrassed that this is all happening, but we will take this matter into our own hands.”

***

I will tell you that I learned an important lesson the first time I kept a blog while traveling through Tanzania. The lesson was this—what was simply reporting to me as I looked for colorful language to entertain and describe events, turned out to be really hurtful to someone I liked and whose friendship I valued. I had forgotten that she was following my blog, and what I had said felt to her like I stabbed her in the back. I was completely oblivious to what I wrote until I read it through her eyes and it struck me hard. I’m sure she has completely forgotten about it, but to this day, five years later, I still feel bad about what happened.

And so in writing this entry I have edited out parts, in fact, throughout all of these chapters I have left quite a few details out (you’re probably saying, thank God—he writes too much as it is). Perhaps if I turn it into something some day all the details will be there, but it’s not my intent to disparage anyone when writing or to be a judge of anyone, although I certainly have an opinion about some of the things that have happened. With that said, being that I don’t know all the details from the parties involved in the incident above, I will just say that some of the students took crime and punishment into their own hands that night. I suppose you could call it the street form of Indian justice.

***

Plaintiffs and defendants. I think...The competition between the Indian law students was intense, but apparently this is the way Indian students are. It’s no wonder with all of these overachievers that India is a surging world power, no doubt poised to pass the United States in many arenas, as several expats who live here have said to me.

Fortunately though, as the week wore on, the group became tighter and the competition seemed to lesson somewhat as new friendships were formed. History was made on the final day during a moot court, where for the first time an American clerk (yours truly) and an American judge (Sam) presided over court, with the assistance of a real High Court judge from Delhi who treated the students as professionals—not as students. In the third and final case, a case in which both sides prepared endlessly, the defense pulled out a clause that said if a similar trial is being conducted, the current trial can not be heard until the similar trial is concluded. The court was adjourned in a matter of five minutes and the students from the palntiff side were incredulous. They could not believe that they had put all that work into the moot court, just to have the trail suspended.

“But this isn’t a real court. Please your honor, this is a moot court. Just hear our case.”

“I’m sorry,” the female judge replied. “The law is the law.” It was a lesson the law students will never forget, which is the point of all of it, right?

After each trial, the judge took her job very seriously and dictated her deliberations to me. I tried to get out of the job but she really liked how fast I typed. The problem was, I had serious trouble understanding her accent so I kind of made it up as I went. All eyes were on my as I pounded the keys furiously. It was probably the most stressful job I've ever had. OK, perhaps I am exaggerating.

On the final afternoon, MC gave some insightful parting words and he asked Sam to say a few words followed by what each student learned.Sam doing his best to be a stern judge.

Sam began his speech like every lecture prior. Stand up, who are you, what makes you that, and what are you missing. The students looked at each other proudly as they recited what Sam had taught them. Then he said, “Who told you that bullshit? You gonna believe everything you’re told?”

Sam then proceeded to give what could rival any of the best commencement speeches I have ever heard. His passion, fears for the future, and hope in this generation that we can do something about the accelerated deterioration of the environment eloquently poured forth from him as if the spirit were moving words through his breath. As he spoke of his love for the environment, he had to catch himself several times as tears welled up in his eyes, and everyone in the room was experiencing the same emotion. It was like Robin Williams’ speech at the end of Dead Poet’s Society, except we didn’t have desks to stand up on.

Next we went around the room and each student, at least the ones who bothered to show up (several were missing) told what they learned, and you could very clearly see a shift had taken place in them from the first day they arrived. Even those who were there just to be there had been touched by the week. Each one had a similar story about how when they arrived they were alarmed by the basic facilities and the fact that they could barely get a cell signal, etc., and yet now most of them didn’t want to leave. One could tell that a few of them had had epiphanies, and that—at least in that moment—they pledged they were going to fight for the environment. Those who said they probably would not take up environmental law did say they have a whole new understanding of the environment, and how they will always take this into account in their cases, and how if given the opportunity they would take pro-bono work for the environment.

I had a million thoughts running through my mind and was quite emotional myself when it was my turn to speak. I tried to lead with a joke, telling MC that maybe next time he should start the week with a grade school teacher teaching the kids how to listen, how to whisper, and how to show up on time.

I’ll never use that one again. That one fell flat.

I don’t even remember exactly what I said, but I started out by thanking them for giving me a new understanding of compassion and for the new friendships we had forged. I told them how the experience of spending time with and learning from MC and Sam over the past week was like a tornado or a tsunami moving through my internal landscape. It had rearranged what was. I tried to tell them a little bit about my journey that began a year ago at my mother’s funeral and about some of the events that had brought me to the point where I stood before them. Fortunately one thing I did noticed midway through was that no one was speaking and I had everyone’s attention, because if they were speaking I would have lost what I wanted to say, but after all many of us had become new friends over the course of the week and so they respected me to listen.

I'm not sure how my speech landed. I think in the long run though, it's not the words of speeches that are remembered, but the sincerity and the emotion behind them, and I hope I delivered on at least those aspects. Of course, afterward I thought about all the things I forgot to say when I was sitting in my seat and composing it in my head. There is a reason why I am a writer and not a speaker, after all. I like the controlled environment of the written word. 

What I tried to express though, was my view of life—that we are all our own creators and that the world is first created in our thoughts, brought forth in language, and then constructed in action. And through this point, I tried to hammer home the fact that that reality conforms to the boldness of our thoughts and to push through their fears. I told them that in my experience the most destructive force in the world is fear. On the macro it’s what causes people and countries to raise arms against one another; on the micro it causes banality and complacency, and it is fear that keeps us from living the inspired lives we dream of living.

Derhadun, June 22nd.

"Far, far away from those city light, 
that might be shinin' on you tonight..." Far, Far Away - Wilco

Dehradun, May 18, 2011

I am a white monster. When women see me they turn their eyes, children stare at me in fear and confusion, and grown men size me up as if at any moment I may rape their women and plunder their riches.

Ok, so maybe this is all in my head, but it’s hard not to get a complex when you’re a pasty Irish fella in a city of a one million dark Indians. As you may imagine, you tend to stand out a bit, and Indians have no qualms about staring at you to the point where you feel uncomfortable. I think, or at least would like to think, that in most cases they are staring at me not in a threating way (although sometimes it feels that way), but more out of curiosity. My presence may also be exacerbated by the fact that in a conservatively dressed country, I am generally wearing lightweight Ex-Officio shorts, a t-shirt, sunglasses, New Balance running shoes or flip-flops, and a wide-brimmed REI hat that looks like something the Marines wore in Vietnam.

***

A wild night of Carlsbergs, Oreos, and doing laundry in my hotel room in DerahdunLet me just begin by saying that I think it’s safe to say if you’re a tourist, you can avoid Dehradun. I can’t say I’ve found anything terribly redeeming about it, except for two new friends I have made. It is useful outpost, however, if you’ve been stuck in the middle of nowhere at an Eco-Ashram and you need to get an Internet connection, Oreos, beer, or you just want to hide out in an air-conditioned hotel in for a few days and order room service.

To get to Dehradun from the Eco-Ashram I caught a ride on the back of a motorcycle that took me to a bus stop about two-and-a-half kilometers away. Once on the bus, which was not much more than a metal box on wheels with some uncomfortable benches upon which to sit, I passed through a series of villages only remarkable in their unremarkability. The land we passed through was a scorched tinderbox waiting to ignite and wide riverbeds were as dry as the bones in a Georgia O’Keefe painting. Dehradun, in my opinion, is equally as unremarkable as the towns through which you pass, only it’s a city. It is the capital of the Indian state of Uttarakhand and it’s as dirty as the next big city in India. It is a snaking sprawl of cars, exhaust fumes, motorbikes, cows, and pedestrians, of course no Indian city would be complete without the constant soundtrack of car and motorcycle horns. It’s a wonder that the constant auditory stimulation does not make more people go postal, because I know I have been on the brink once or twice, but I would imagine Indians are completely desensitized to it.   

The luxury of traveling by government buses in India.When I arrived at the parade grounds in Dehradun where the bus dropped me off, I was completely disoriented and had no idea where to go. I started down one road heading south, only to turn around to head north, all the while dodging peddlers and aggressively begging children. The parade ground is a huge expanse of dirt and dust with about 30 buses lined up. I began walking in another direction (yes, I was walking in circles at this point) but the heat very quickly wore me down. I grabbed a Vikram and paid too much to take me to the north end of Raijpur Road in search of a guesthouse that sounded attractive according to The Lonely Planet. Instead of staying at the guesthouse, I wound up paying twice as much for a bit of comfort and air condition, and thus I camped out at Hotel Ajanta Continental for about five days, ordering room service in the morning, going to Café Coffee Day in the afternoons, and across the street to the Good Value Hotel for beers and dinners. This was my daily routine with the exception of one day when I decided to walk in the heat of midday to the Paltan Bazaar about 2.5 kilometers on the other side of town. The hoards of people at the this Bazaar were completely overwhelming, and on my way back to the north side of town, flustered and overheated, I slipped into McDonald’s for a bit of home cooking and air conditioning. I ordered the McChicken, and as it turns out, the McChicken in India is more chicken than I bargained for, so I took one bite, spit it out, and ate my fries and drank my Coke. Should I ever find myself in a McDonald’s in India again, I’ll certainly go with the McPaneer.

One afternoon, much to my chagrin, my Tata Photon, which provides my Internet connection, failed me. Apparently I had used up all my data so I huffed it down to the store to put more money into my account. As usual I was greeted with blank faces and curious eyes. I stood at the reception for quite a bit but was not greeted by the people behind the desk, and in the meantime the rest of the patrons just walked up and cut in front of me, so I decided to sit down and observe the protocol. One couple was staring at me and I gave a forced smile back at them. They kept staring, making me self-conscious to the point where I thought about giving them the evil eye until they said, “Where are you from? Are you from the states?”

“I am actually, yes,” I replied.

“Oh we love it there. We have been up and down the west coast and have been to New York and Washington, D.C. We have just returned from living in New Zealand for 3 years. Nothing in India is easy,” Ranjiv said.

As it turned out, Ranjiv and his wife were staring at me because as a westerner I was more familiar to them than the Indians who inhabited the shop we were in. They had only been back a week and even though they were more or less locals, they were just as overwhelmed as me. We got talking about what I was doing and what Ranjiv was doing, and as it turned out, Ranjiv was a sound engineer and had written a novel about a year or two back, but couldn’t find any interested parties. I told him I would send what literary contacts I had to him and they invited me to lunch the following day.

This was about day 3 in Dehradun, and before I had met them I was beginning to feel a little discouraged and lonely, but meeting them provided me with some relief and a smile returned to my face. The following day they took me out to lunch.

The rest of my time in Dehradun was spent in the comfort of my hotel room, taking warm showers, emailing and Skyping friends, enjoying the luxury of a somewhat quick Internet connection, and catching up on 60 Minutes episodes.

Swastiga Eco-Ashram, May 31, 2011

Lovely neighbors at the ashram. They mostly keep to themselves.If you asked the 18-year ago me (half of my life-ago, mind you) the question, If there are two things you can guarantee you will never do in your life, what will they be? I think I could have answered with certainty, “Two things I can say I honestly will never do will be 1.) Rubbing baby oil all over African children in the middle of Tanzania (as a volunteer at an orphanage, mind you, not as a pedophile), and 2.) Having two Indian men rub me down with oil while basically naked.

I am glad I didn’t make that bet, because I surely would have lost. Lesson learned; never say never.

And this is how my Tuesday started, having two Indian men rub me down. You see part of the Eco-Ashram is an Ayurveda center. Dr. Myrium is an Ayurveda doctor from France, and up until the following day, the ashram was offering massage.

The only other people that currently work at the Eco-Ashram are Doctor Myriam and four Indians from Kerala. They consist of Hari and his wife (who just found out she was pregnant) and Arun and his cousin Pramisha. The four of them, all in their early 20s, studied a very specific type of Ayurveda massage that is unique to South India. As a result of Hari’s wife being pregnant (and probably boredom) they are leaving to go back to Kerala and it was the last day to get a massage, so I said I might as well try it.

I really had no idea what Ayurvedic massage was. When I got into the treatment room I was told to take off my shirt and shorts. I was wearing the good old Ex-Officio briefs and I thought that was that. But they tied a string around my waist and in the front one long strip unrolled down to my knees. They told me take off my underwear and then wrapped this cloth between my legs, up through the behind, and tied it on the waste band behind me. Ladies, I don’t know how you wear g-strings. Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate them, and don’t stop wearing them, but I could never do it.

For the next hour plus the two men rubbed oil all over me while simultaneously working both sides of my body. Several times when I had to roll over, my frank and beans would spill out of this poor-man’s faux-g-string. I would try to adjust it without being too obvious, but it was a losing battle. I didn’t want to outright address it because that would have been potentially even more embarrassing for all of us, so I just went on like everything was fine, the better part of me hanging out and all. I’m sure this is not the first time this happened.

I have to say though, as far as massages go, it was probably the best one of my life. The only thing that could have made it better was if two Swedish women were rubbing me down with oil, but then I guess that wouldn’t have qualified as an Ayrvedic massage; that would be a Swedish massage.

***

All-in-all it was a big day on the ranch. Not only did I start my day with what many women and gay men with Indian fetishes fantasize about, but then I got to actually leave the premise and go into town with Myriam to buy some supplies. I spent almost $25 at a roadside store, which is a hell of a lot of money over here. Some of my necessities included; batteries for my flashlight, toilette paper, Lays Sour Cream potato chips (4 bags), Sprite (4), cokes (3), Oreos, Cadbury chocolate, Gauva juice, a can of a cold espresso drink, biscuits, peanut butter, processed cheese cubes, butter, and a few other things. One can only eat so much rice and Dahl before hitting the wall. It was beginning to feel like Ground Hog’s Day so this junk food provided some relief.

After I got back from town, I went about organizing my room. Since I had arrived 3 days prior, my things were just thrown about—on my desk, a coffee table, another bed, and two chairs. Similar to what Timmy Timemight consist of at home, I rolled a Drum, put on my iPod, and began losing myself in the process of cleaning, folding, organizing, and sweeping out my room. Incidentally, I much prefer a vacuum than sweeping the floor with a bunch of reeds tied together.

The room was immaculate only three days ago, but due to the elements and the fact that the houses are more or less made with mud, dust and dirt from outside finds its way through the ceiling, doors, and windows, so daily maintenance is a must.

To give you an idea of my cottage, I have a tin roof, a fan, my showers are cold bucket baths, and I share my room with countless spiders, ants, lizards, and the occasional frog who finds its way in my front door—and those are just the things I can see. Although I haven’t seen the varmint yet, I also discovered I have rat as evinced by the rat turd that had fallen from the ceiling on to my shorts. But for the most part, I just tell myself these creatures are doing their thing and I’m doing mine. I just let myself believe that I am safe and secure underneath my mosquito net.

Two nights I came in at sundown and there were swarms of some sort of winged flies buzzing about the light bulbs. They were everywhere. I was not very happy about this the first night it occurred and wasn’t sure how I was going to sleep with them buzzing about, but when I came back two hours later after dinner, they were gone, and all that remained were their little wings on the floor and some very healthy looking lizards. The lizards are my friends. I’ve also been told there’s scorpions lurking about but I don’t think I need to worry too much about them in my room. Nonetheless, I try to make it a practice to shake out my shoes before I put them on.

The author at work in his clean, well-lighted room.The result of my room sweep is a clean and well-lighted place, as Hemingway preferred. I organized my gear, stacked my books, stacked my notebooks in another pile, made my bed, organized my clothes in their cupboard, washed my clothes, and washed the desk and coffee table with a baby-wipe. It’s beginning to feel like a home, although a very foreign and modest one.

***

I’ve entered a new phase of my trip, which is quite different than the first month. I have entered a phase where I am more living than traveling. It’s not quite as exciting and fast paced and I’m definitely not meeting as many people. I could leave what I’m doing at any time and begin traveling, but I do find listening to MC, observing him, and learning about his career quite fascinating. It’s not every day you get to work for someone who has the attention of governments and world leaders. He has a grand vision for creating an International Climate Change Center underneath the umbrella of the Mehta Foundation and I am helping him write some grants. Other things on his radar are plans to attack cancer, climate change, and population control in India, first by creating studies and data, then through litigation. These are the three issues I am working with him on at the moment. The first grant proposal I’ve created is nearly complete and is about the correlation between the rise of development and the rise of cancer in India, which I will post when it’s complete. If you know anyone or any foundations that can help, please pass them on to me or drop me a line.

The gist of the cancer study is that 30-40 years ago, India was an agrarian culture and cancer was all but non-existent. As India moved from a “developing” to a “developed” country, mass migrations of people moved about the country and life spans for men and women were improved. What also happened, however, is that the Indian diet changed drastically and industries began polluting the environment, rivers, and the water table, and essentially the food chain with the introduction of lethal insecticides and pesticides, including Endolsophan and DDT. “We copied a western model that does not work for us,” MC said.

These insecticides and pesticides, which have been proven lethal and cancer causing, are still being used because the laws are antiquated and promote business over protecting the farmer and the consumer. It does not help that I’m learning how corrupt the entire system is in India and how widespread mafia control is.

Why don’t the police or government just come in and put a stop to all of it? I naively asked. Because they are all getting a piece of the pie.

I find it rather interesting the national issues India is wrestling with as they develop. We have countless problems in the West as well, but despite the fact that India is becoming a world power and one of the strongest economies in the world, they are dealing with many issues we take for granted, or at least that we have started to tackle some years back, namely environmental protection and conservation. I’m not a doom and gloom person, but we as a world have a long way to go, and from what I am learning, perhaps not as much time as we think if we don’t get it together and act. The repercussions are going to be serious if we don’t all act collectively and we are going to see some unfortunate things in our lifetime. I don’t want our kids or grandkids to say, “They knew all about these things that were going on. Why didn’t they act?”

Rishikesh, Part II

Garden's at the boss's house. Bad lighting and the picture does not do it justice.I was only supposed to be in Dehradun for 3 days, but since MC was so busy, that turned into 5. On the fifth day, MC picked me up at my hotel and we drove around Dehradun for some time running errands and picking up things for the ashram. We wound up back at his house, which his wife’s parents have had in the family for many years. It is a beautiful 150-year-old house from the British colonial era. They have a small orchard on the property, a few farm animals, and many beautifully manicured gardens. At one time it was surrounded by nothing but orchards, however, ever since the state was split in two and Dehradun was declared the capital of the new state, rapid growth, development, and sprawl—in collaboration with zero city planning—has pushed the sprawl of Dehradun to the Mehta’s back door.

I unexpectedly had a late lunch with MC, his wife, and his 26-year-old daughter. It was interesting to see a subdued MC in this environment. Perhaps he was just running through all the things that he had to do in his mind, or more likely he was just simply exhausted.

His wife was very well educated and informed on the politics and corruption of India, and her artwork adorned the house from the days when she studied art in Paris. Her father was an ambassador to the United Nations, and so she spent her formative years from about 2-16 in New York City. It was fascinating just to hear his wife and daughter speak and debate about Indian politics and the elections that had just taken place, several of which knocked people from the seats of power they occupied for more than 30 years.

After lunch, since MC had to go to Delhi the following day, I elected to go to Rishikesh rather than the Ashram, and so he had his driver take me to the bus where he would wait with me until I got on the bus. As I have stated, I hate the traveling part in India. I like more the being part.

When we got to the bus stop, I said a silent prayer in which I said more or less, God, send me an angel to get me to Rishikesh safely and easily, whether it’s someone sitting next to me who knows what they’re doing or someone who can get me to where I need to go. Not two minutes later, a car pulled up, rolled down the window and said, “Rishikesh?” I got in the car and got a ride to Rishikesh for 50 rupees (a little more than a dollar), which was about 20 or more kilometers away for. Of course when he dropped me off within a stone’s throw of The Divine Ganga Guesthouse, he hit me up for another 50 rupees. He said more or less, “I thought you meant to the center of Rishikesh, not Laxman Jula.” Since I didn’t have any change, and since I was fairly satisfied with the ease of my journey, I gave him the 100 rupees, which is about $2.25. Travel in India is cheap, but it usually comes at a cost. The thing I dislike the most about India so far is that you are quoted one price (whether it’s a taxi, a hotel, etc.) and when you get there, they change their story and up the price. Most of the time you are arguing over dollars, but it’s not the money—it’s the principle and the feeling of being cheated you are left with.My residence, The Divine Ganga Guesthouse, while in Rishikesh.

When I got settled in my room, since I knew Maria was back in town from McLeod Gange, I went and found her. We caught up for a while and then she asked if I would like to join her at a nearby ashram forsadsang, which is morning and nightly prayers and chanting. It was a great welcome-back t o Rishikesh experience and full of joy and good vibes. We sat for about an hour—the men on one side and the woman on the other—meditated on and off, and just enjoyed the positive energy. Afterward we went to dinner and Maria told me that within the complex where we were there was a holy man who is considered a saint. She was meditating outside his room one afternoon when someone brought her inside to meet him, and from him she received a mantra. The man is very old and it is reported that most of his organs don’t even work anymore, so he is bed ridden. She asked me if I wanted to meditate there the next morning and so we agreed to meet up around 7:30am.

The following morning we sat in meditation outside his door. Being but a child in the ways of meditation, my mind drifted, imaging what the old man inside looked like. In that instant, as if a light switch was flicked on, my mind took me down a path I was not planning on going; my mind took me to where I was exactly a year ago.

A year prior I had just returned to Seattle after a visit to New Jersey to say goodbye to my mother. Sitting in meditation, I was an observer and I could see and feel everything I was feeling when I spent those last three visits with my mother. The fact that it was May was not even in my awareness, but it was as if my subconscious wanted me to confront this fact. With my eyes closed, I sat with these images for about 20 minutes as tears of nostalgia and longing streamed down my face; longing for the comfort, security, and companionship of the wonderful mother I knew before Parkinsons and dementia ravaged her body and mind. The experience knocked me off of my center for a bit and I finally brought it up to Maria over breakfast. It was good to get it out of me and share it with someone. Maria also sat with me that evening and watched a slide show I had put together for my mother’s memorial service. As sad as I was, it also felt really good to have her memory and presence so close to me while in the middle of India.

Back to the story. After an hour or so of sitting outside this holy man’s door, devotees began showing up and a small procession was allowed to walk through the his room. The saintly man stared off in the distance as if in paralysis or a trance, and one by one we were allowed to see him. One by one we knelt before him, touched his foot over a blanket, and asked in our hearts for his blessing.

Over the course of the next 2-3 days, Maria and I had a good time swimming and lounging and it was good to reconnect with someone with whom I had already had a connection. The time went by quickly, however, and once again it was time for her to leave. Once again someone was the pinball and I was the bumper.

Random night with three Israeli girls and a little yogi. This was taken with a flash in the pitch black because the power had just gone out.I met various people the next few days. Maria and Deanna were from Columbia and we spent a day and a half together, one of which included rafting down the Ganges. Another night I met 3 Israeli girls at the Little Buddha Café, and we wound up meeting a little yogi with high energy and enthusiasm who invited us into his ashram to have a smoke. It was a large structure and we followed him down into the belly of the beast until we wound up on steps that lead us to the foot of the Ganges. We could barely communicate with him but he was earnest and eager in his gestures and badly-broken English. We sat in his smoke room hanging out until the lights went out. When our time with him was through, we went back to the girl’s guesthouse to listen to music. I was having a good enough time and tried to introduce them to the National and some newer Radiohead, but when they connected their iPod and USB memory stick to play some of their music, that’s when it was lights out for me. “I have to go,” I replied. “I have a Skype conference call with my boss,” which wasmostly true. The actual truth of the matter, however, was that I’m a self-admitted musical snob and I couldn’t handle their crappy music!

The in-between days when I had no one to pal around with, I explored the outskirts of Rishikesh and found a nice, secluded beach where I swam, read my book, and napped. It was secluded that is, until a couple of drunken Indian guys from Delhi showed up. One of them had been living in Australia for the last four years.

“Man, we were partying in Delhi and we just said, what the fuck! Let’s go to Rishikesh,” the leader said in his Indian/Australian accent.

Chillen on my not so secret beach.They had driven drunk for six hours from Delhi to continue the party in Rishikesh, which incidentally is a dry town. There are many things to smoke in the town, however, and they were imbibing, but I guess they had also brought liquor from Delhi. The leader of the group proceeded to tell me about how much he loved women and their anatomy, but I will not elaborate on those details for the fact that many fine, young ladies are reading this. The last two or three days I met a girl from Toronto, Canada and we just hung around town, swam, and took walks to Ram Jula (the part of Rishikesh that the locals inhabit). I also showed her some of the sites I had uncovered, such as my semi-private beach, and we drank Lemon-nanas and played Yahtzee.

On the last night I was trying to play a video on my camera but couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. She began fiddling with the buttons and one such button switched the camera from the memory card to the hard disk. It was Saturday of Memorial Day 2011, and the pictures that showed up—pictures that I had no idea were on the camera—were from Hood River, Oregon, on exactly the same day, May 29^th a year prior. It was on this day that my friend Chris Brookfield planted the seed in my head of going to McLeod Gange, India.

***

One of two places I have my daily smoke break.I was never a smoker and don’t plan on becoming one, but one of my few routines at the ashram is to sit outside my cottage door at 6pm, roll a cigarette, put on my India Sunset playlist I’ve been creating, and watch the sunset.

The following day I was out at the Ashram listening to my iTunes on random, searching for new songs to add to the playlist when a song I wrote came on. It was with the band I played in back in Seattle some years ago. (I mentioned the song in another entry.) The version of the song was from a practice session and it put a wide smile on my face as fond memories of creating something with some of my best friends washed over me. I went to my computer to find out when the practice was from and lo’and’behold—it was from exactly the same day, May 30^th, in 2007. I remembered it because it was the Monday night after Memorial Day weekend.

I’m sure I could write five esoteric pages on these events but I’ll spare you; because chances are they would probably only make sense to me.

When it comes down to it, there’s not much you can about occurrences like this.
It just kinda makes ya’ think,
it just kinda makes ya’ smile,
sometimes it makes ya’ think you’re on the right path,
and sometimes it just kinda reminds ya’ of how far you can travel in a year or four.

Friday June 3, 2011

“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet. We sit here stranded though we’re all doing our best to deny it.” - Visions of Johanna, Bob Dylan

(This was written in pieces over the period of many days.)

May 10, 2011, 7:14pm

I’m sitting on the banks of the mighty Ganges as dusk settles upon Rishikesh. A haze of heat hangs over the river valley muting the sun's intensity and softening the edges that normally contrast the mountains, the river, and the horizon. The air is heavy and still as if a storm may rain down upon us later in the evening. A cool breeze slithers through the valley, snaking its way between the mountains, and for a moment the oppressive temperature drops a few degrees.
Sunset at the Eco Ashram

It is the hour when Indians gather on the banks of the Ganges. Indian men and woman wash themselves or come to pray, tourists dip their feet in the mighty river, and still others seek the stillness of meditation. Foreign chants of ages old drift across the river from temples on waves of sound, then continue down the valley. Pujas (offerings of flowers, incense, and candles) float down the river and above me upstream, pedestrians, motorcycles, cows, and monkeys move across the narrow, wire-framed Laxman Jula Bridge. As if held in place by the strings of an invisible diorama, a fingernail of a moon hangs directly above the town. In this hour, insects come for a drink of life only to find their own extinguished by feeding fish, and the great Prana of the Ganges inhales and exhales a timeless breath into all who inhabit its shores.

For the first time since I arrived in Rishikesh six days ago I’m truly alone. I’m sure this may get old to you, my dear reader, but not a day has passed where I am not completely amazed that I am living the life I am living. Perhaps it is simply a byproduct of the hyper-awareness that comes with traveling in a land that is so foreign to one’s native country. It’s as if you are so completely engaged in the present moment that you become the present moment, moving beyond the self and into a character in a novel or a part of the landscape in a painting. From the vantage point where I sit by the Ganges this evening, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. It’s as if I have been lead here by some divine GPS system—to India, to this moment, to the people who I have met and who have influenced me, to the experiences I have had.  

***

My time in Rishikesh has been a blur. It just so happened that the crew I was hanging out with were all staying in the Divine Ganga Guesthouse and so it felt very much like college or summer camp as we moved from one dorm room to the next, stopping by just to say hello and to see how each other’s day was going. We would convene at various points throughout the afternoon in someone’s room to make a plan for dinner, which most nights involved the Little Buddha Café, an open-air restaurant with a thatch roof that looks down upon the Ganges.

Three of the six of my crew left yesterday, and tomorrow I will be moving on from Rishikesh. The road calls me onward but I could spend a lot of time here. I did not want to leave McLeod Ganj and here I am in Rishikesh, and now I don’t want to leave here. These places could have been just any old town on a map if it were not for the friendships I’ve forged, which have made McLeod Ganj and Rishikesh not just destinations, but homes for the time I have inhabited them.

To rewind just a bit, I just have to say that the train ride to Rishikesh was miserable. To begin with, I had never ridden on an Indian train. Sleeper Car rang out Amtrak to me, but nothing could have been further from the truth. To add insult to injury, I was under the impression that I had a full sleeping berth all to myself, but in fact, since my ticket was not confirmed (I’m still not sure how to do this), I had to share my sleeping birth with someone else—and her son 8 year-old son.

To get to the train from McLeod was a beautiful, leisurely 3-hour drive through many landscapes I had not yet seen, from jungles to tea farms to scorched earth and dried riverbeds. I took a taxi that Gasha and Palla had arranged through their friend. When I arrived at the Chakki Bank train station in Pathankot, they told me to check the board so as to find out what car and seat I would be in. I was expecting some digital board that you might see in Penn or Grand Central Station, but actually—it was literally a roster nailed to a board, a print out from an old-school printer, perforated edges still intact.

The first train that passed was my first introduction to trains in India. The cars that were not reserved blew my mind as they had as many people as you could possibly fit into a car. It looked like a train full of cows going to slaughter. Indians were hanging out of the entrance and piled on top of each othere. Arms and limbs desperately reached out of windows as if trying to sip the last few drops of oxygen from the bottom of a glass full of air.

Gasha and Palla had instructed me not to eat or drink anything that was offered to me, either while waiting for the train or while on it. “They may slip you something and boom! You wake up and all your possessions are gone.” Sure enough, some slimy looking Indians were eyeing me up and offered to get me something to drink. My driver told me they were drunk, but I just stared at them stoically, doing my best to be a hard-ass. Most likely they are just curious because they don’t see a lot of white people around these parts, but you can’t help but be on the defensive when people are staring at you. I find myself in cities and while traveling in-between places on the defensive and ready to be on the offensive if need be. I’m actually a giant compared to many Indians, not only in height but the broadness of my body, if you can imagine that. I’m hoping, however, that I don’t have to ever use my ninja skills.

It was a mad rush to get on to the train and I got swept up in the panic trying to figure out what car I was in. My driver from McLeod Ganj to Pathankot was a friend of Palla and Gasha and they ordered him to stay with me until I got on the train. He had never ridden on a train before either, however, so he seemed more nervous than me. Several times he asked to see my ticket and disappeared into the crowd to check, double-check, and triple-check the board where my seat and car numbers were posted.

I spent a good part of the time on the train writing chapter 9, and spent the rest of the time fighting with a child for leg room and space, although he didn’t know I was fighting with him because he was sound asleep, sprawled out, legs and dirty feet touching, touching, touching me. Occasionally his mother would notice and wrangle the boy’s legs toward her but it wound up happening again and again that his legs kicked out towards me. And so when she wasn’t looking or had dozed off, I would push his legs into the aisle. Only once did he fall into the isle, but he was so sound asleep and startled when he landed that he had no idea I was the culprit. I could have taken him anyway if it came to fists. (Of course you know I’m joking—well, mostly. I mean, I did have about 100lbs on him and a good 16 inches. I know, I know…but what can you do? In a country of 1.2 billion people where there is no such thing as a line or a que, where many Indians seem to have little self-awareness of those around them, you have to fight for your own space.)

As a result of this all-night donnybrook between a sleeping, lifeless child and myself, I don’t think I slept a wink, and by the time I arrived at the Divine Ganga Guesthouse I had been up for nearly 30 hours. I chose the Divine Ganga Guesthouse because Garfield, my friend who was part of the documentary film crew for the Mt. Madonna School, was staying there with his friend Tom. Garfield saw me right as my taxi pulled up and we devised a lose plan as to where and when to meet up, but first I needed to rest. I hit the pillow at 9:30am and woke up around 4pm.

The rough plan was to meet Garfield at The Little Buddha Café overlooking the Ganges at some point in the afternoon. I figured I missed him so I sat down for a while, ordered some food, and did some writing. I was impressed with Garfield’s prowess because when he did show up, he had two cute girls in tow. As it turned out, the four of us formed the core of a crew who would hang out together for the next six days.

The following morning I had breakfast with Garfield. An Argentinian woman named Maria, who Garfield had previously met, showed up towards the end of our meal and she was absorbed into our conversation. As per usual, I had my own agenda for the day, which included some reading and writing, but when Garfield left us to go to yoga, Maria and I kept talking—and talking and talking and talking.

As it turned out, Maria led expeditions in Patagonia and Antarctica and is the mother of a 14-year-old daughter. Like so many other people who find themselves in India, she had an undeniable and unidentifiable calling that she could not ignore. While some teenagers can be clingy and needy, her daughter supported her in this urging and stayed at home in Patagonia with her ex-husband.

As it happens when you’re traveling, before our lingering breakfast was over, we had covered vast swaths of the territories that our lives have taken us, including the shared experience of having mother’s with Parkinson’s Disease and what that has taught us.

“Just so you know,” she said in her Argentinian accent, eyes twitching from dry contacts, “I don’t usually just tell strangers these things.”

“Well that’s good,” I said. “Because I’m not a stranger anymore.”

I had planned to meet the rest of the crew that afternoon for a walk to the Beatles Ashram, but as the protons and neutrons of Maria and my connection organized themselves, we found ourselves first having lunch together, then meandering through the crowded streets of Rishikesh, and finally on a sandy beach, where under her tutelage I took my first swim in the Ganges. Well, let’s call it more of a dip. As Martin Short said, “I’m not a strong swimmer,” and so I didn’t trust the deceiving current of the Ganges, especially since several people have told me they’ve seen dead bodies floating down the river. You must respect the Ganges; as much as it can give life, it’s currents and whirlpools can also take it very easily.

“The Ganges is supposed to purify you with its waters,” Maria said as we waded knee deep in its waters. “And so when you immerse yourself in its waters, you’re supposed to make an intention of what you want to be rid or purified of.” Each of us thought about it for a moment, closed our eyes, and made an intention. When we were both ready, we held each other’s hands and slipped beneath the surface of the Ganges in the hope and faith that when we emerged, we would be cleansed of things we both felt we no longer needed.

Maria and I went back to the Divine Ganga Guesthouse and sat on her balcony as we watched a storm come over the mountains, the concussion waves of the distant thunder becoming ever closer. We watched as sheets of rain moved through the mountains and towards us, remaining on the balcony as long as we could until we could almost feel the electricity of the lightning. When the storm shifted into high gear, the wind picked up and began blowing rain at us despite being underneath shelter, so we retreated into Maria’s room, fighting the wind to close the door.

“I know this doesn’t look good but don’t worry,” she laughed as I entered the room and she pushed the deadbolt into the locked position.

***

The next few days I spent with Garfield, from Vancouver, British Columbia, Hannah, from Brooklyn, New York, Camilla from Sweden, and Maria, from Patagonia, Argentina. Tom, Garfield’s friend who is also from British Columbia, was at a meditation retreat but joined us the last two days. He did not miss a beat when he joined our group, but I suppose that’s because we had already heard so much about him. For those few days we all spent together, we walked, we ate, we talked, we ate, we swam in the river, ate, swam in the river, and drank many, many Limon-nanas, a refreshing frozen drink made of lemon, ice, and muddled mint.

Meditation huts at the Beatles Ashram. There were perhaps a hundred of these all over the property.One afternoon, since the group didn’t make it previously, we went for a walk to find the Ashram that the Beatles made famous with a visit in 1968. Being the clueless white folk we are, we walked a few kilometers past it on a remote jungle road, the only inhabitants we passed being monkeys. And of course, being clueless white folk, we set out in the height of the day’s heat and failed to bring with us any water. After walking and walking up hills we were each within a few hundred feet of saying “screw it” when a police truck passed us. We flagged them down and luckily they offered to drive us to the Ashram. Now normally I don’t feel too comfortable in the back of a squad car, but as good fortune would have it, I was just a lost tourist and didn’t have the bracelets on me.The artist's rendition. I think it speaks for itself.

The police dropped us off near the ashram and when we finally found it, we had to pay 50 rupees to get in (a little more than a dollar).

At one point, with not much more than dust lining our throats, Garfield said, “You know what would make this place awesome?”

“What’s that?” I replied.

“A Starbucks,” he said.

“I could definitely go for a Frappuccino right now,” I replied. “You know what would be even better?”

“What’s that?”

“If there was a parking lot so we could have driven here.”

***

Exactly one month to the day of arriving in India, I once again met up with M.C. Mehta. I was to meet him at a hotel in the outskirts of Rishikesh, which he instructed me should cost no more than 50 rupees to get from my guesthouse to the hotel. As it so happened, when I went to the Virkam stand (eclectic rickshaws) they asked me to pay 400 rupees. I made a fuss and immediately displayed my dissatisfaction.

“Are you kidding me? The hotel was going to charge me 150 rupees.” To which I expected some sort of negotiation, as is the way in India.

“Then go! Go back to the hotel!” he said aggressively to me. Not how I imagined our exchange would go. Note to self: lose the angry, defensive posture, speak softly, and smile.

I was a sweaty mess at this point and decided these bastards weren’t going to get the best of me, and so in 100+ degree heat, I headed back to my guesthouse, backpack and possession in tow. (In hindsight, this giant pain in my ass was the difference of about $4. It’s the principle though.)

And so I went back to the hotel in a huff to call a Vikram, which as it turned out took 45 minutes to arrive. In the meantime, M.C. was calling and texting to tell me he was there and to inquire as to where I was. I think it was more out of concern than impatience, though his wife was also sick and in the hospital, not to mention he is a man of strong demand. In the past few weeks there have been large protests in Hardiwar to protect the Ganges, a holy city right on the Ganges. MC is a figurehead and leader to these activists and is always asked to speak or lead.

When the Vikram finally arrived, after the hotel attendant called three people because they said they would come in 5 minutes and then never came (such is the way in India), I jumped in the Vikram and we drove past the Virkam stand where I had been rejected. It took every, EVERY ounce of restraint I tell you, not to yell out “F*%K YOU!” But the look of disappoint on their face as I passed—that they challenged me and lost my business—was rewarding enough. I simply smiled at them and gave them a taste of their own medicine; the infamously ambiguous Indian head bobble.

I have to say that the only uncomfortable moments of my travel so far have been when I am actually traveling. My feeling and excitement level each time I move from one place to the next is like that of a rising stock. For instance, the longer I stayed in Rishikesh or McLeod, the higher the stock climbed, but each subsequent time I moved, the stock takes a massive hit. It’s not so much the fact that I have to move on; it’s more of getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and the adjustment period that ensues. I suppose with a little more time and distance, these uncomfortable moments will be fond memories and growth points, but right now they’re more like a pimple inside one’s nose; somewhat painful and hard to get to.

***

Judging from M.C.’s office in Delhi, the Eco Ashram is what I would expect from an environmentalist who has won not one, but two equivalents to the Nobel Prize (The Magsaysay Award in 1997 and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1996). He also recently had a documentary made about him entitled, “The Man Who Saved the Taj Majal”. The Eco Ashram is low impact, low energy consumption, and bare bones. The first day I arrived, I said to myself—as I usually say when I find myself in a new situation—what have you gotten yourself into this time?

This walk is quite long on a moonless night.After getting to know one another over dinner, I retreated to my room on a very dark night. It was only about a 200-yard walk from where we ate and where Myrium’s room and the kitchen were, but in the pitch black it felt like an eternity. It is a wild place where the Ashram is, surrounded by forests and mountains. A while back M.C. had said something about leopards and elephants in the area, and so as I was walking to my room, I was expecting to see gleaming eyes looking back at me. (It’s also noteworthy that the road leading to the ashram goes through a national park and the road is closed at night because elephants have been known to surround cars, pull out the drivers, and use their trunks to kill them by slamming the people into the ground.)

I stayed up that night working on a first draft of the third podcast. No sooner had I put my head on the pillow around 1am than the wind picked up and whipped through my room. I closed the windows as the distant thunder grew ever closer, followed by rain and more wind. The power had gone out and I curled up in a ball underneath a mosquito net—headlamp next to me—watching the flashes of lighting through the outline of my thatched and slate roof. As the storm picked up I began to hear the slate tiles ripping off and so I curled up tighter into a ball and tried to protect my head. At one point, the wind blew open my door bringing the storm into my room and causing me to jump out of bed. It also just so happened that earlier in afternoon, one of the workers had peeled back part of the slate to tie up the mosquito net, and exactly where he did, which was right above me, the roof began to leak—directly onto my forehead. I moved the bed and settled in for the night, half expecting either a Tiger to jump into the room or Thor to kick the door open and split me in two with a lighting bolt. When the storm finally died down around 3:30am, I was wired, so I took a half a xanax and slept until 11am the next morning. No matter. There is not much to do at the Ashram except relax and read.

Friday, May 13^th, Eco Ashram

Tonight, for the first time since I have been at the Eco Ashram, I ventured out in the darkness of night into the courtyard outside my room—all of 20 feet, mind you. I rolled a Drum and smoked it down while looking out in awe at the monochromatic night; the half moonlit landscape in the foreground, the silhouettes of the foothills in the background, and the sparkling diamonds of the Northern Hemisphere above me. And I feel very peaceful. There is no anxiety within me (at least for tonight), but rather on this evening I am a reflection of the stillness of the night. I am a part of the painting. I have no uneasiness about the future or the past—just the contentment and ease of the present moment. Since I have been in India, I find when my mind wanders to the fictitious place of the future or the written story of the past, I have been able to view it with detachment, like watching a movie. Perhaps that’s an outcome of age, maturity, or a lot of work to control the mind and its wild, unpredictable emotions. When I do become so engrossed in that movie and it takes me too far to one of those places, I try to adjust my inner tuner and bring it back to the present moment. It’s kind of like using an electric tuner to tune your guitar; you make adjustments until the needle comes to the center, letting you know the strings are no longer too flat or too sharp.

As I sit here tonight somewhere in north India beneath a waxing moon, for some reason my thoughts drifted to a spring night in Baltimore when I was a senior in college. There was nothing special about this night, in fact it’s a scene that’s played itself out countless times in my life—and I can’t really tell you why my mind drifted to this particular scene. But I remember standing in front of the mirror for a long time having no idea who the person staring back at me was. I wondered why he was here, now, in this body, born to the parents he was born to, in this particular part of the world, why he had the brother and sisters he had, why the people who were a part of his life were a part of his life. I wondered what life held for this young man whose inner sadness was dense, heavy, physical, and real.

The person staring back in the mirror wanted to take off into his future like a rocket, fueled by an inner thirst for truth—his individual truth and the truth of the singular intelligence that united of all life. He wanted to see the world, drink voraciously from the cup of experience, but the present moment felt like shoes of concrete keeping him firmly rooted to the earth. When I look back on that person, I can see that beyond the trials of having a mind over which he had no control, it was the present moment he feared most.

I don’t know if that inner sadness that accompanied the present moment was something that was born of nature—passed to me through the DNA strands of my ancestors; if it was nurture—an experience a highly sensitive kid internalized; or if it was simply the first moment of self-awareness, when consciousness determines that it is separate from what is. Regardless, I seem to have outgrown that sadness as I have gotten older, shed it as a chrysalis sheds its former self—or perhaps the better word choice is "transforms," because only when the caterpillar wraps itself in a cocoon and looks within can it find the inner strength to transform to a butterfly, and only when it finds that form is it truly free.

All of the questions that haunted me from when I began writing at 17 through my late 20s or early 30s were like memories of a dream from the night before—a series of hazy, nonsensical images that were familiar but distant, arising from the subconscious to give me clues about my life. I think the difference between that younger person and the person I am at this moment in my life is a growing inner strength, the illumination of a light that has always been, and the recognition that my consciousness—the I that is the observer—is not separate but rather an extension of a greater consciousness, and that the world (and all who inhabit it) are part of one living, breathing organism of which each single expansion and contraction of breath may last thousands or millions of years.

***

In the stillness of nights like this, where your mind and being are in communion with nature, there’s no telling where your senses will take you. As the observer of my life tonight, I found myself stretching out my past as if I were viewing a series of stills on an old filmstrip. It made me think of something Paramahansa Yognanda said in The Autobiography of a Yogi;  “One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture; and that not in it, but beyond it, lies his own reality.” In 1930, Sir James Jeans, an English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician wrote, “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” Perhaps this motion picture we are a part of is but a thought within a dream of the Creator.

If you were the executive producer of the film of your life, how would you edit the motion picture to tell your story? There is a structure and story arch to each of our lives, a rise and fall of action, perhaps a singular climax or multiple ones upon which the story is built. As I think about my story tonight and how much more is to be written, I think about the structure that holds it all together. The structure is the relationships of my life—some that are gone, such as my parents and the people and relationships I have lost along the way—but mostly tonight I’m thinking about my family and friends. Tonight, in the darkness of this Indian night, I can feel all of your light.

***

Light. While I am not a physicist, among the billions of physical laws of the cosmos, perhaps the most mysterious is light. I’m sure my limited knowledge of the universe is outdated, but from what little I know of the physical laws of the cosmos, unlike sound waves, whose transmission requires air or other material upon which to be carried, light waves pass freely through the vacuum of space. At the center of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he proved mathematically that light, moving at 186,300 miles per hour, is the only constant in a universe of flux. The only other constant I can think of is the mystery of why we’re all here. Marconi, the great inventor said, “The inability of science to solve life is absolute. This fact would be truly frightening if it were not for faith. The mystery of life is certainly the most persistent ever placed before the thought of man.”

As my travels—and the corresponding experiences that are born from the experience of my travel arise, I am falling more deeply into this mystery, and unlike that young man who was so burdened with questions so much larger than himself, who looked in that mirror in Baltimore and had now idea who he was, I’m comfortable with my place in the mystery, for I know I am not separate from the mystery, but a part of it. This is no great secret, and perhaps the ancients were more familiar with it than we are, but somehow along the way we lost the truth. Some things in life can’t be known through science and experience, and that is where the miracle of faith becomes alive. I just read something the other day that said, belief is what man thinks is perhaps truth; faith is what man knows is truth.

***

The innocence of childhood is a beautiful vessel. It’s the law of life and experience that somewhere along the way, that vessel begins to crack, and eventually it shatters and breaks down, and we as adults (or sometimes earlier) are forced to figure out how to put the pieces back together. As I get older, settle into this body and this world, and begin to put the pieces back together to create a new form, I no longer feel the need to figure out the mechanistic structures of creation; instead I am merely engaged in a playful game with a conscious universe that is aware of its own creation, a universe that responds to the creations of Its Creation. As the part of creation that has been given the most highly evolved brain of all species, we have been given the gift of thought, feeling, and emotions, and these intangibles are the foundation of our reality—they are what dictate the strength, creative potential, and ultimately the response of the interactive universe.

When I was a child, my mother used to warn me to guard my thoughts. She said that you can sin simply by thinking impure thoughts. These words came from the worldview of very fearful Catholic woman—and thinking I knew more than she did, I scoffed at her. But in her devote wisdom she was on to something. At its most simple element, our thoughts are part of the law of attraction; like attracts like—what we put out in our thoughts—which is wave energy—is what returns to us. Our thoughts, this internal drama that plays itself out, are the most creative or destructive forces of our life and reality. This is why the ancient masters and the saints of our current age say that to develop the mind and control over the ego should be one of our highest aims. I, by no means, am even close to this ideal, but merely a student in the world’s classroom, sharing what I’m learning along the way. India seems to be a very fruitful class, however.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from Sri Yukteswar, yogi and master to Paramahansa Yognanda. “There is a deeper astrology not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks. Each man is part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of the earth. The human eye sees the physical form, but the inner eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part.”

“Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet. We sit here stranded though we’re all doing our best to deny it.” - Visions of Johanna, Bob Dylan

(This was written in pieces over the period of many days.)

May 10, 2011, 7:14pm

I’m sitting on the banks of the mighty Ganges as dusk settles upon Rishikesh. A haze of heat hangs over the river valley muting the sun's intensity and softening the edges that normally contrast the mountains, the river, and the horizon. The air is heavy and still as if a storm may rain down upon us later in the evening. A cool breeze slithers through the valley, snaking its way between the mountains, and for a moment the oppressive temperature drops a few degrees.
Sunset at the Eco Ashram

It is the hour when Indians gather on the banks of the Ganges. Indian men and woman wash themselves or come to pray, tourists dip their feet in the mighty river, and still others seek the stillness of meditation. Foreign chants of ages old drift across the river from temples on waves of sound, then continue down the valley. Pujas (offerings of flowers, incense, and candles) float down the river and above me upstream, pedestrians, motorcycles, cows, and monkeys move across the narrow, wire-framed Laxman Jula Bridge. As if held in place by the strings of an invisible diorama, a fingernail of a moon hangs directly above the town. In this hour, insects come for a drink of life only to find their own extinguished by feeding fish, and the great Prana of the Ganges inhales and exhales a timeless breath into all who inhabit its shores.

For the first time since I arrived in Rishikesh six days ago I’m truly alone. I’m sure this may get old to you, my dear reader, but not a day has passed where I am not completely amazed that I am living the life I am living. Perhaps it is simply a byproduct of the hyper-awareness that comes with traveling in a land that is so foreign to one’s native country. It’s as if you are so completely engaged in the present moment that you become the present moment, moving beyond the self and into a character in a novel or a part of the landscape in a painting. From the vantage point where I sit by the Ganges this evening, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. It’s as if I have been lead here by some divine GPS system—to India, to this moment, to the people who I have met and who have influenced me, to the experiences I have had.  

***

My time in Rishikesh has been a blur. It just so happened that the crew I was hanging out with were all staying in the Divine Ganga Guesthouse and so it felt very much like college or summer camp as we moved from one dorm room to the next, stopping by just to say hello and to see how each other’s day was going. We would convene at various points throughout the afternoon in someone’s room to make a plan for dinner, which most nights involved the Little Buddha Café, an open-air restaurant with a thatch roof that looks down upon the Ganges.

Three of the six of my crew left yesterday, and tomorrow I will be moving on from Rishikesh. The road calls me onward but I could spend a lot of time here. I did not want to leave McLeod Ganj and here I am in Rishikesh, and now I don’t want to leave here. These places could have been just any old town on a map if it were not for the friendships I’ve forged, which have made McLeod Ganj and Rishikesh not just destinations, but homes for the time I have inhabited them.

To rewind just a bit, I just have to say that the train ride to Rishikesh was miserable. To begin with, I had never ridden on an Indian train. Sleeper Car rang out Amtrak to me, but nothing could have been further from the truth. To add insult to injury, I was under the impression that I had a full sleeping berth all to myself, but in fact, since my ticket was not confirmed (I’m still not sure how to do this), I had to share my sleeping birth with someone else—and her son 8 year-old son.

To get to the train from McLeod was a beautiful, leisurely 3-hour drive through many landscapes I had not yet seen, from jungles to tea farms to scorched earth and dried riverbeds. I took a taxi that Gasha and Palla had arranged through their friend. When I arrived at the Chakki Bank train station in Pathankot, they told me to check the board so as to find out what car and seat I would be in. I was expecting some digital board that you might see in Penn or Grand Central Station, but actually—it was literally a roster nailed to a board, a print out from an old-school printer, perforated edges still intact.

The first train that passed was my first introduction to trains in India. The cars that were not reserved blew my mind as they had as many people as you could possibly fit into a car. It looked like a train full of cows going to slaughter. Indians were hanging out of the entrance and piled on top of each othere. Arms and limbs desperately reached out of windows as if trying to sip the last few drops of oxygen from the bottom of a glass full of air.

Gasha and Palla had instructed me not to eat or drink anything that was offered to me, either while waiting for the train or while on it. “They may slip you something and boom! You wake up and all your possessions are gone.” Sure enough, some slimy looking Indians were eyeing me up and offered to get me something to drink. My driver told me they were drunk, but I just stared at them stoically, doing my best to be a hard-ass. Most likely they are just curious because they don’t see a lot of white people around these parts, but you can’t help but be on the defensive when people are staring at you. I find myself in cities and while traveling in-between places on the defensive and ready to be on the offensive if need be. I’m actually a giant compared to many Indians, not only in height but the broadness of my body, if you can imagine that. I’m hoping, however, that I don’t have to ever use my ninja skills.

It was a mad rush to get on to the train and I got swept up in the panic trying to figure out what car I was in. My driver from McLeod Ganj to Pathankot was a friend of Palla and Gasha and they ordered him to stay with me until I got on the train. He had never ridden on a train before either, however, so he seemed more nervous than me. Several times he asked to see my ticket and disappeared into the crowd to check, double-check, and triple-check the board where my seat and car numbers were posted.

I spent a good part of the time on the train writing chapter 9, and spent the rest of the time fighting with a child for leg room and space, although he didn’t know I was fighting with him because he was sound asleep, sprawled out, legs and dirty feet touching, touching, touching me. Occasionally his mother would notice and wrangle the boy’s legs toward her but it wound up happening again and again that his legs kicked out towards me. And so when she wasn’t looking or had dozed off, I would push his legs into the aisle. Only once did he fall into the isle, but he was so sound asleep and startled when he landed that he had no idea I was the culprit. I could have taken him anyway if it came to fists. (Of course you know I’m joking—well, mostly. I mean, I did have about 100lbs on him and a good 16 inches. I know, I know…but what can you do? In a country of 1.2 billion people where there is no such thing as a line or a que, where many Indians seem to have little self-awareness of those around them, you have to fight for your own space.)

As a result of this all-night donnybrook between a sleeping, lifeless child and myself, I don’t think I slept a wink, and by the time I arrived at the Divine Ganga Guesthouse I had been up for nearly 30 hours. I chose the Divine Ganga Guesthouse because Garfield, my friend who was part of the documentary film crew for the Mt. Madonna School, was staying there with his friend Tom. Garfield saw me right as my taxi pulled up and we devised a lose plan as to where and when to meet up, but first I needed to rest. I hit the pillow at 9:30am and woke up around 4pm.

The rough plan was to meet Garfield at The Little Buddha Café overlooking the Ganges at some point in the afternoon. I figured I missed him so I sat down for a while, ordered some food, and did some writing. I was impressed with Garfield’s prowess because when he did show up, he had two cute girls in tow. As it turned out, the four of us formed the core of a crew who would hang out together for the next six days.

The following morning I had breakfast with Garfield. An Argentinian woman named Maria, who Garfield had previously met, showed up towards the end of our meal and she was absorbed into our conversation. As per usual, I had my own agenda for the day, which included some reading and writing, but when Garfield left us to go to yoga, Maria and I kept talking—and talking and talking and talking.

As it turned out, Maria led expeditions in Patagonia and Antarctica and is the mother of a 14-year-old daughter. Like so many other people who find themselves in India, she had an undeniable and unidentifiable calling that she could not ignore. While some teenagers can be clingy and needy, her daughter supported her in this urging and stayed at home in Patagonia with her ex-husband.

As it happens when you’re traveling, before our lingering breakfast was over, we had covered vast swaths of the territories that our lives have taken us, including the shared experience of having mother’s with Parkinson’s Disease and what that has taught us.

“Just so you know,” she said in her Argentinian accent, eyes twitching from dry contacts, “I don’t usually just tell strangers these things.”

“Well that’s good,” I said. “Because I’m not a stranger anymore.”

I had planned to meet the rest of the crew that afternoon for a walk to the Beatles Ashram, but as the protons and neutrons of Maria and my connection organized themselves, we found ourselves first having lunch together, then meandering through the crowded streets of Rishikesh, and finally on a sandy beach, where under her tutelage I took my first swim in the Ganges. Well, let’s call it more of a dip. As Martin Short said, “I’m not a strong swimmer,” and so I didn’t trust the deceiving current of the Ganges, especially since several people have told me they’ve seen dead bodies floating down the river. You must respect the Ganges; as much as it can give life, it’s currents and whirlpools can also take it very easily.

“The Ganges is supposed to purify you with its waters,” Maria said as we waded knee deep in its waters. “And so when you immerse yourself in its waters, you’re supposed to make an intention of what you want to be rid or purified of.” Each of us thought about it for a moment, closed our eyes, and made an intention. When we were both ready, we held each other’s hands and slipped beneath the surface of the Ganges in the hope and faith that when we emerged, we would be cleansed of things we both felt we no longer needed.

Maria and I went back to the Divine Ganga Guesthouse and sat on her balcony as we watched a storm come over the mountains, the concussion waves of the distant thunder becoming ever closer. We watched as sheets of rain moved through the mountains and towards us, remaining on the balcony as long as we could until we could almost feel the electricity of the lightning. When the storm shifted into high gear, the wind picked up and began blowing rain at us despite being underneath shelter, so we retreated into Maria’s room, fighting the wind to close the door.

“I know this doesn’t look good but don’t worry,” she laughed as I entered the room and she pushed the deadbolt into the locked position.

***

The next few days I spent with Garfield, from Vancouver, British Columbia, Hannah, from Brooklyn, New York, Camilla from Sweden, and Maria, from Patagonia, Argentina. Tom, Garfield’s friend who is also from British Columbia, was at a meditation retreat but joined us the last two days. He did not miss a beat when he joined our group, but I suppose that’s because we had already heard so much about him. For those few days we all spent together, we walked, we ate, we talked, we ate, we swam in the river, ate, swam in the river, and drank many, many Limon-nanas, a refreshing frozen drink made of lemon, ice, and muddled mint.

Meditation huts at the Beatles Ashram. There were perhaps a hundred of these all over the property..One afternoon, since the group didn’t make it previously, we went for a walk to find the Ashram that the Beatles made famous with a visit in 1968. Being the clueless white folk we are, we walked a few kilometers past it on a remote jungle road, the only inhabitants we passed being monkeys. And of course, being clueless white folk, we set out in the height of the day’s heat and failed to bring with us any water. After walking and walking up hills we were each within a few hundred feet of saying “screw it” when a police truck passed us. We flagged them down and luckily they offered to drive us to the Ashram. Now normally I don’t feel too comfortable in the back of a squad car, but as good fortune would have it, I was just a lost tourist and didn’t have the bracelets on me.The artist's rendition. I think it speaks for itself.

The police dropped us off near the ashram and when we finally found it, we had to pay 50 rupees to get in (a little more than a dollar).

At one point, with not much more than dust lining our throats, Garfield said, “You know what would make this place awesome?”

“What’s that?” I replied.

“A Starbucks,” he said.

“I could definitely go for a Frappuccino right now,” I replied. “You know what would be even better?”

“What’s that?”

“If there was a parking lot so we could have driven here.”

***

Exactly one month to the day of arriving in India, I once again met up with M.C. Mehta. I was to meet him at a hotel in the outskirts of Rishikesh, which he instructed me should cost no more than 50 rupees to get from my guesthouse to the hotel. As it so happened, when I went to the Virkam stand (eclectic rickshaws) they asked me to pay 400 rupees. I made a fuss and immediately displayed my dissatisfaction.

“Are you kidding me? The hotel was going to charge me 150 rupees.” To which I expected some sort of negotiation, as is the way in India.

“Then go! Go back to the hotel!” he said aggressively to me. Not how I imagined our exchange would go. Note to self: lose the angry, defensive posture, speak softly, and smile.

I was a sweaty mess at this point and decided these bastards weren’t going to get the best of me, and so in 100+ degree heat, I headed back to my guesthouse, backpack and possession in tow. (In hindsight, this giant pain in my ass was the difference of about $4. It’s the principle though.)

And so I went back to the hotel in a huff to call a Vikram, which as it turned out took 45 minutes to arrive. In the meantime, M.C. was calling and texting to tell me he was there and to inquire as to where I was. I think it was more out of concern than impatience, though his wife was also sick and in the hospital, not to mention he is a man of strong demand. In the past few weeks there have been large protests in Hardiwar to protect the Ganges, a holy city right on the Ganges. MC is a figurehead and leader to these activists and is always asked to speak or lead.

When the Vikram finally arrived, after the hotel attendant called three people because they said they would come in 5 minutes and then never came (such is the way in India), I jumped in the Vikram and we drove past the Virkam stand where I had been rejected. It took every, EVERY ounce of restraint I tell you, not to yell out “F*%K YOU!” But the look of disappoint on their face as I passed—that they challenged me and lost my business—was rewarding enough. I simply smiled at them and gave them a taste of their own medicine; the infamously ambiguous Indian head bobble.

I have to say that the only uncomfortable moments of my travel so far have been when I am actually traveling. My feeling and excitement level each time I move from one place to the next is like that of a rising stock. For instance, the longer I stayed in Rishikesh or McLeod, the higher the stock climbed, but each subsequent time I moved, the stock takes a massive hit. It’s not so much the fact that I have to move on; it’s more of getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and the adjustment period that ensues. I suppose with a little more time and distance, these uncomfortable moments will be fond memories and growth points, but right now they’re more like a pimple inside one’s nose; somewhat painful and hard to get to.

***

Judging from M.C.’s office in Delhi, the Eco Ashram is what I would expect from an environmentalist who has won not one, but two equivalents to the Nobel Prize (The Magsaysay Award in 1997 and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1996). He also recently had a documentary made about him entitled, “The Man Who Saved the Taj Majal”. The Eco Ashram is low impact, low energy consumption, and bare bones. The first day I arrived, I said to myself—as I usually say when I find myself in a new situation—what have you gotten yourself into this time?

This walk is quite long on a moonless night.After getting to know one another over dinner, I retreated to my room on a very dark night. It was only about a 200-yard walk from where we ate and where Myrium’s room and the kitchen were, but in the pitch black it felt like an eternity. It is a wild place where the Ashram is, surrounded by forests and mountains. A while back M.C. had said something about leopards and elephants in the area, and so as I was walking to my room, I was expecting to see gleaming eyes looking back at me. (It’s also noteworthy that the road leading to the ashram goes through a national park and the road is closed at night because elephants have been known to surround cars, pull out the drivers, and use their trunks to kill them by slamming the people into the ground.)

I stayed up that night working on a first draft of the third podcast. No sooner had I put my head on the pillow around 1am than the wind picked up and whipped through my room. I closed the windows as the distant thunder grew ever closer, followed by rain and more wind. The power had gone out and I curled up in a ball underneath a mosquito net—headlamp next to me—watching the flashes of lighting through the outline of my thatched and slate roof. As the storm picked up I began to hear the slate tiles ripping off and so I curled up tighter into a ball and tried to protect my head. At one point, the wind blew open my door bringing the storm into my room and causing me to jump out of bed. It also just so happened that earlier in afternoon, one of the workers had peeled back part of the slate to tie up the mosquito net, and exactly where he did, which was right above me, the roof began to leak—directly onto my forehead. I moved the bed and settled in for the night, half expecting either a Tiger to jump into the room or Thor to kick the door open and split me in two with a lighting bolt. When the storm finally died down around 3:30am, I was wired, so I took a half a xanax and slept until 11am the next morning. No matter. There is not much to do at the Ashram except relax and read.

Friday, May 13^th, Eco Ashram

Tonight, for the first time since I have been at the Eco Ashram, I ventured out in the darkness of night into the courtyard outside my room—all of 20 feet, mind you. I rolled a Drum and smoked it down while looking out in awe at the monochromatic night; the half moonlit landscape in the foreground, the silhouettes of the foothills in the background, and the sparkling diamonds of the Northern Hemisphere above me. And I feel very peaceful. There is no anxiety within me (at least for tonight), but rather on this evening I am a reflection of the stillness of the night. I am a part of the painting. I have no uneasiness about the future or the past—just the contentment and ease of the present moment. Since I have been in India, I find when my mind wanders to the fictitious place of the future or the written story of the past, I have been able to view it with detachment, like watching a movie. Perhaps that’s an outcome of age, maturity, or a lot of work to control the mind and its wild, unpredictable emotions. When I do become so engrossed in that movie and it takes me too far to one of those places, I try to adjust my inner tuner and bring it back to the present moment. It’s kind of like using an electric tuner to tune your guitar; you make adjustments until the needle comes to the center, letting you know the strings are no longer too flat or too sharp.

As I sit here tonight somewhere in north India beneath a waxing moon, for some reason my thoughts drifted to a spring night in Baltimore when I was a senior in college. There was nothing special about this night, in fact it’s a scene that’s played itself out countless times in my life—and I can’t really tell you why my mind drifted to this particular scene. But I remember standing in front of the mirror for a long time having no idea who the person staring back at me was. I wondered why he was here, now, in this body, born to the parents he was born to, in this particular part of the world, why he had the brother and sisters he had, why the people who were a part of his life were a part of his life. I wondered what life held for this young man whose inner sadness was dense, heavy, physical, and real.

The person staring back in the mirror wanted to take off into his future like a rocket, fueled by an inner thirst for truth—his individual truth and the truth of the singular intelligence that united of all life. He wanted to see the world, drink voraciously from the cup of experience, but the present moment felt like shoes of concrete keeping him firmly rooted to the earth. When I look back on that person, I can see that beyond the trials of having a mind over which he had no control, it was the present moment he feared most.

I don’t know if that inner sadness that accompanied the present moment was something that was born of nature—passed to me through the DNA strands of my ancestors; if it was nurture—an experience a highly sensitive kid internalized; or if it was simply the first moment of self-awareness, when consciousness determines that it is separate from what is. Regardless, I seem to have outgrown that sadness as I have gotten older, shed it as a chrysalis sheds its former self—or perhaps the better word choice is "transforms," because only when the caterpillar wraps itself in a cocoon and looks within can it find the inner strength to transform to a butterfly, and only when it finds that form is it truly free.

All of the questions that haunted me from when I began writing at 17 through my late 20s or early 30s were like memories of a dream from the night before—a series of hazy, nonsensical images that were familiar but distant, arising from the subconscious to give me clues about my life. I think the difference between that younger person and the person I am at this moment in my life is a growing inner strength, the illumination of a light that has always been, and the recognition that my consciousness—the I that is the observer—is not separate but rather an extension of a greater consciousness, and that the world (and all who inhabit it) are part of one living, breathing organism of which each single expansion and contraction of breath may last thousands or millions of years.

***

In the stillness of nights like this, where your mind and being are in communion with nature, there’s no telling where your senses will take you. As the observer of my life tonight, I found myself stretching out my past as if I were viewing a series of stills on an old filmstrip. It made me think of something Paramahansa Yognanda said in The Autobiography of a Yogi;  “One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture; and that not in it, but beyond it, lies his own reality.” In 1930, Sir James Jeans, an English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician wrote, “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” Perhaps this motion picture we are a part of is but a thought within a dream of the Creator.

If you were the executive producer of the film of your life, how would you edit the motion picture to tell your story? There is a structure and story arch to each of our lives, a rise and fall of action, perhaps a singular climax or multiple ones upon which the story is built. As I think about my story tonight and how much more is to be written, I think about the structure that holds it all together. The structure is the relationships of my life—some that are gone, such as my parents and the people and relationships I have lost along the way—but mostly tonight I’m thinking about my family and friends. Tonight, in the darkness of this Indian night, I can feel all of your light.

***

Light. While I am not a physicist, among the billions of physical laws of the cosmos, perhaps the most mysterious is light. I’m sure my limited knowledge of the universe is outdated, but from what little I know of the physical laws of the cosmos, unlike sound waves, whose transmission requires air or other material upon which to be carried, light waves pass freely through the vacuum of space. At the center of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he proved mathematically that light, moving at 186,300 miles per hour, is the only constant in a universe of flux. The only other constant I can think of is the mystery of why we’re all here. Marconi, the great inventor said, “The inability of science to solve life is absolute. This fact would be truly frightening if it were not for faith. The mystery of life is certainly the most persistent ever placed before the thought of man.”

As my travels—and the corresponding experiences that are born from the experience of my travel arise, I am falling more deeply into this mystery, and unlike that young man who was so burdened with questions so much larger than himself, who looked in that mirror in Baltimore and had now idea who he was, I’m comfortable with my place in the mystery, for I know I am not separate from the mystery, but a part of it. This is no great secret, and perhaps the ancients were more familiar with it than we are, but somehow along the way we lost the truth. Some things in life can’t be known through science and experience, and that is where the miracle of faith becomes alive. I just read something the other day that said, belief is what man thinks is perhaps truth; faith is what man knows is truth.

***

The innocence of childhood is a beautiful vessel. It’s the law of life and experience that somewhere along the way, that vessel begins to crack, and eventually it shatters and breaks down, and we as adults (or sometimes earlier) are forced to figure out how to put the pieces back together. As I get older, settle into this body and this world, and begin to put the pieces back together to create a new form, I no longer feel the need to figure out the mechanistic structures of creation; instead I am merely engaged in a playful game with a conscious universe that is aware of its own creation, a universe that responds to the creations of Its Creation. As the part of creation that has been given the most highly evolved brain of all species, we have been given the gift of thought, feeling, and emotions, and these intangibles are the foundation of our reality—they are what dictate the strength, creative potential, and ultimately the response of the interactive universe.

When I was a child, my mother used to warn me to guard my thoughts. She said that you can sin simply by thinking impure thoughts. These words came from the worldview of very fearful Catholic woman—and thinking I knew more than she did, I scoffed at her. But in her devote wisdom she was on to something. At its most simple element, our thoughts are part of the law of attraction; like attracts like—what we put out in our thoughts—which is wave energy—is what returns to us. Our thoughts, this internal drama that plays itself out, are the most creative or destructive forces of our life and reality. This is why the ancient masters and the saints of our current age say that to develop the mind and control over the ego should be one of our highest aims. I, by no means, am even close to this ideal, but merely a student in the world’s classroom, sharing what I’m learning along the way. India seems to be a very fruitful class, however.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from Sri Yukteswar, yogi and master to Paramahansa Yognanda. “There is a deeper astrology not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks. Each man is part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of the earth. The human eye sees the physical form, but the inner eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part.”

“You were sewn together with a tapestry of molecules, a billion baby galaxies and wide-open spaces. Everything you need is here, everything you fear is here and it’s holding you up.” – No One Said It Would Be Easy, Cloud Cult

The Morning
On Monday morning I went to the Green Hotel for breakfast where I broke the news to a guy from South Carolina that in a nighttime raid in Pakistan, the United States Navy Seals got Bin Laden—not far from where we were as the crow flies. Everyone seemed to be pretty happy about this, from the Indians and Tibetans to the Americans.

Since I was out of commission for several days being sick, I felt I hadn’t done enough exploring and so after breakfast I took a long hike to a waterfall about two hours away. It just so happened to take three hours because of a wrong turn, but that’s another story.

After hiking for several hours, I found the Dharamkot waterfall, a dramatic waterfall whose water source began far beyond anything you could see, and which continued to cascade down a valley carved out by a glacier many millenniums ago. Between the two towering mountains the waterfall made its way down the valley, much like one would pour champagne into a pyramid of champagne glasses; the water began at its source, filled small wading pools, overflowed, and continued it’s way down to the next set of glasses.Dharmakot Waterfall - sideways

Instead of just settling for the first pool I came across, I scooted up some boulder fields in search of the perfect wading pool and a flat rock to rest my weary body. When I finally found the spot, I laid out my things to settle in for a few hours of relaxing. No sooner had I gotten into the icy glacial run off—helplessly barefoot and vulnerable in my underwear—than a huge eagle appeared above me. It swooped through the canyon in grand circles, specifically circling me. Then it would catch a breeze and hover above me, leering down at me with the eye of a Predator Drone. Again and again it made giant sweeps of the valley like an airplane in a holding pattern and I was the airport.

I did not want to take my eye off of the small pterodactyl because there was no telling what it might do in its defensive state. We were engaged in a mental battle of wills and I was half expecting him to come down and grab my bag just to mess with me, waiting for the perfect moment when my awareness of its presence lapsed.

The magnificent bird of prey was being aggressive and so I finally got its message that I was in its territory. As I was packing up, the second I let my awareness of it lapse, I felt it’s shadow come over me. He swooped down and in one swift instant of pure, calculated genius, and with the precision of a stealth bomber, dropped a massive turd on my shoulder. “What the f…!?!” I yelled jumping back, unaware of what hit me.

I put my hand to my shoulder and there, dripping down my back and neck, was the impact of the eagle’s cluster bomb. If it was not such a magnificent act of courage, defense, and instinct, I might have been bothered, but in fact I was more freaked out. OK, this bird means business. I’m outta here. As I was leaving, I saw it return to its nest where no doubt it was protecting its lineage.

A magnificent beastI dropped down to another pool of the waterfall and the bird stopped circling. Only once did he come back, which enabled me to get a picture of him. Incidentally, they say getting pooped on by a bird is good luck. The last time it happened to me I was in Saint Peter’s Square, in Rome, and that day went on to be epic, so I wasn’t too hindered or perturbed by some bird shit—or even a lot of it.  

***

When I left the waterfall a few hours later and reached the top of the mountain, I was feeling incredible gratitude and expanding joy. I could literally feel it coming out of my heart. I thought to myself –OK, so many amazing things have happened all ready. Now is the time to surrender even more. I imagined myself falling more deeply into the protective folds of the great mystery so that when the most mundane or the grandest ideas took form, I would be equally amazed and surprised. I suppose to further elaborate, what this means for me is to continue to focus my attention on opening my heart to let more possibility, gratitude, and love seep into my being. It means surrendering any fear that stands between my experience of life and my true nature. What it does not mean is the elimination of desire or want.

It also got me thinking that perhaps I need to start thinking bigger, creating bigger, removing all mental and fearful limitations so as to really put this whole experiment in surrender, creation, and mindfulness to the test. Because that is really what this journey is about for me—a grand, personal experiment in consciousness. I have no idea how it all will turn out and I don’t claim to hold the keys to the kingdom. I am simply relaying my experiences and sharing with you the thoughts of my internal world as I zip through the Indian night on a packed sleeper train from Pathankot to Rishikesh.

The Evening
The sweet light in McLeod GanjAfter a shower and relaxing in my room, I set out in the sweet light to go meet the boys at the shop for tea. There was a candlelight parade of monks and Tibetans marching through the streets and the sun’s angle was setting Tibetan prayer flags and the jagged mountain peaks that loomed over the town ablaze.

After tea, I took a walk with Palla and as per usual, every girl we passed he said, “What about her? You like her? She is nice, right? No?” Since Palla talks throughout the day to almost every girl that passes his shop, he generally already knows her story. “What about her? She is from Brazil. She is very nice. Very beautiful. She come in my shop today. Come on bruther. I introduce her,” and with that, off he went chasing down this strikingly beautiful, statuesque Brazilian woman, myself in tow.

She was nice enough to strike up some street conversation but was eager to keep walking on. A few meters up the street we came upon her again at a jewelry stand where she had met up with a few friends. It happened to be across from the boys’ shop so the next thing I know, Palla invites everyone inside. When Juliana, the Brazilian woman walked out of the shop, Palla said to her friend, “My friend here, he likes your friend very much.” I looked at him with an expression on my face that said, did you just say what I thought you just said? I’m quite sure I turned bright red because I never actually said anything of the likes. It just so happens that Palla feels the need to take my love life into his own hands. When both of the Brazilian women stepped out of the shop for a moment, Palla said, “So how did I do? You like what I do?”

“Well,” I said. “It’s not exactly my style or approach.”

Nonetheless, as fate would have it I found myself having dinner with a group of Brazilian and Portuguese men and women who were in town for two nights on a meditation tour. Now this is not exactly the type of meditation tour that you might imagine many of the hippies and seekers in this town are on. This group was part of an organization called huesa.org. They travel around to different parts of the world and meditate together to raise the vibration of that area.

Someone in Juliana’s group wanted pasta so I suggested Nick’s Italian Kitchen in McLeod Ganj. At first I wondered, what have I gotten myself into? My plan for the evening was to just go home and work and write, and instead I found myself in the middle of a group that was barely speaking English. They did their best to include me, however, and finally brought me into the fold where I learned more about what they were doing.

“We meditate to raise the frequency of places. You know how when you get a certain number of electrons together they just line up? How when something meets critical mass it takes a new form? We are doing the same thing. We are trying to align minds, so that when enough people are awakened, the tide will shift and wake up people all over the world. We have to do this now. The world is in terrible shape.”

They first started explaining to me what they were doing in a very elementary fashion, but soon realized that I too spoke the same language of energy, surrender, and creation—just in a different dialect.

“Do you want some energy work right now?” Juliana asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll try it. Let’s do it.” So Juliana and I turned our chairs toward each other in the middle of the restaurant and she said, “I am going to clear any blocks in your chakras, especially in your forehead and crown. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands and you have these wonderful, powerful people supporting you too. So just stare here,” she said, pointing to the place in the middle of her forehead, right above her eyes.

She closed her eyes, folded her hands, and immediately went into a place of deep stillness, while I just stared where I was supposed too. The others were focusing intently on me as well. “Try not to think. Just be open,” the group said to me. And so I did. And for a few moments, I felt the energy in my heart spinning.

(Sidebar: I just saw a rat run through the train.)

After dinner, our group splintered and Juliana and I went back to have a few smokes on my balcony. We started sharing our stories, and as it turned out, she was formerly a model and actress and I was quite familiar with one of the shows she was on. These are the situations that prepubescent dreams are made of, I thought.Only in India would my path have crossed with this woman.

After her modeling and acting career in her early 20s, she went back to school to become an attorney and ever since has been practicing in Brazil, but just recently she passed the bar in Miami. (So if there are any attorneys reading this in Miami, I know someone who is looking for a job.)

I could not have written the script for how the night evolved, from when I was having tea with the boys to sitting on my balcony with Juliana, nor could I have foreseen the places our conversations would take us.

“So many people are sleeping. It’s time for us to awaken and to remember who we are. As human beings, we are much more powerful than how we are living.”

Julian looks at her life, her being, and her purpose as a spiritual experience. “Before man, before the big bang, before everything, there was just God or whatever you want to call Him or Her. There was just pure consciousness,” she said, explaining her worldview allegorically. “God wanted to experience Himself and so He created different things to help him feel and experience his creations. The creation in which he experienced Himself the most was in human beings. Each one of us is a hand of the Great Artist. We are all God, we are all one, we are all part of a greater consciousness, and so I see God in everything.”

She continued, “My job here is to experience, to love, to awaken to the memory of who I am. I am not my mind and I am not my thoughts. I am an observer. I am a soul that is part of the eternal, and I am a part of the greater consciousness and intelligence through which all of life flows.” She then began to laugh. “I love life, I love my life, and this is where I want to be. I imagine that up there, after you die and once again become part of the greater consciousness it gets rather boring. I want to be down here creating and experiencing!”

She took a pull off of her cigarette and continued in her most endearing Brazilian accent. “Ever since I was a little girl, I asked God to let me work in the light, to let me help people here awaken to the light.” I told her how since I began writing at 17, I have asked to be an instrument of peace, and I shared with her the Prayer of Saint Francis, which was the mantra I repeated when I first began to meditate.

“There have been so many serendipitous things happening to me on this trip,” I told her. “People, chance meetings, and events are showing up everywhere in my life—like you tonight, for instance. I know at my deepest level that these meetings are not coincidences. I know they are all connected somehow, but I’m not sure how yet. The beauty of it is I don’t need to know now because I’m just along for the ride. When the time is right I’m sure I’ll see it all with clarity.”

“You know,” she said, “All of the things that are happening to you—you chose this before you came to earth. We all have chosen our paths, from the child who dies at a young age to the older person suffering from cancer. There are lessons to be learned in each of these life events, both for the individual and for those around you who you teach in the way you suffer, endure, and rise above your conditions. Maybe that child has a very short time here on earth, but he or she came to experience what they needed to experience at that part of their evolution and to teach their parents necessary lessons in their evolutions. And so the child comes back in another life to learn something different. This life is a very small thing in the overall picture of the evolution of our souls.”

“One of my favorite quotes is by a French Jesuit philosopher, poet, and paleontologist,” I shared. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

***

This is how I see an awakening occurring, and by awakening I simply mean that I believe that people everywhere are beginning to look within for the answers, as opposed to outside of them. Rinchen Kandho, head of the Tibetan Nuns Project who I will speak of shortly said, “The best thing you can do for the world, the best way you can bring about peace, is to develop yourself.”

Since I began writing at 17, I have written that the next revolution that will occur will be a spiritual revolution. The way I see it there is nowhere else to turn. We have been moving outward in a quest for resources, materialism, status, love—looking for others or something outside of us to make us happy. But in observing the current state of the world, this outward approach seems to be clearly failing us.

Critical mass awakeningIndulge me here as I have this visual in my mind of how the critical mass awakening occurs. Imagine looking at a map from space of any continent when the sun is on the other side of the earth. As night falls and darkness sweeps across the continent, you begin to see the illumination of cities, and these cities are connecting to other cities through suburbs and highways to create light. This visual is what I feel is happening in the world in terms of people tuning in to a new awareness or paradigm, whereby when we awaken to the truth within ourselves, we each become a light not only unto ourselves, but to those around us.

It’s undeniable that the tides are changing in the world at the most accelerated rate in our history. From the individual to the revolutions of the masses that are exploding throughout the Middle East, something new is being created.

The universe, or the quantum field, is an information machine. Science is beginning to merge with spirituality and it’s beginning to tell us that our thoughts actually affect our reality. We are moving from the Newtonian Model of the physics of cause and effect, to a Quantum Model, where in fact our thoughts and energy are the cause—not the effect—that shapes reality.

From our actions to our thoughts, everything vibrates with energy, and when minds and hearts tune in and turn on, it raises the vibration of our collective consciousness. Light in the hearts of men and woman are going on all over the world like cities on a map at night. I can tell you this because I am out here traveling throughout India, and I am meeting like-minded individuals from all over the world who share this sentiment. And whether they already had this point of view or picked it up here, they are taking it back to their countries.

Another image that comes to mind is that of plugging in the tiny bulbs on a Lite-Brite. I am not sure what the picture on the Lite-Brite is yet—but the best part is that I don’t have to and I don’t care. As a writer at this point in my life, I am trying to create what I can with what I have been given. I am trying to share the experience of my internal world because I know I am not special, but rather a reflection of us all. If I were a painter I would do this in images and colors, or a musician—with the vibrations of notes, sounds, and chords. But I am an artist and a writer and so I must convey what I feel through thoughts, words, and images.

I think the highest purpose of art is to bring forth the internal experience of life, to create something relatable that brings us together as human beings or enables us to have a shared experience or understanding of our humanity. We all have an internal world, which for most of us is probably more real than our external world, and yet we don’t give it much attention. Instead it spins out of control, undisciplined, wild like a stallion that has yet to be broken. It runs the show and we believe the mind to be the self. But it’s not; the self is an observer.

It is my hunch that at the core of each of our internal worlds, at the core of our beings, we are all more similar than we are different. We all want the same things; love, peace, prosperity, joy, health, and happiness—for our friends, our families, our communities, and ourselves. But I don’t think we can elevate ourselves to our highest potential as human beings unless we are elevating those around us as well. An Argentinian woman was telling me last night about the former leader of Brazil, Luiz da Silva, who is perhaps the most celebrated politician in the world. He was a truck driver, moved up through the unions, and became the President of Brazil. Brazil will host the next World Cup and the Summer Olympics and is charging forward as an economic power house because da Silva brought 30 million people out of poverty. Can you imagine that? I said to her, “I wish we could do that in the United States.”

She said, “You can not, and this is why; because you lack social consciousness.”

***

What I am trying to do at this moment in my life is to bring awareness to the people who are attempting to bring about positive change in the world, and in turn who are experiencing the same thing in their own internal world. As I surrender more deeply into this process, every day I am continuously more amazed at the beauty and complexity of this Divine Orchestration we call life.

As I said earlier, I don’t claim to have the answers, but I have a hunch the truth comes from mindfulness, slowing down, surrendering, and answering to the call of our own individual truths. In this process of developing our internal world, we recognize that we are not the voice in our heads, that maybe the voice in our head that says I can’t or I never will or I’m too scared was actually our parents voice or someone else we heard along the way, but we never slowed down to recognize that that wasn’t our own voice. Maybe you’re in a career for money or because it’s what’s expected of you, but your truth, the voice you push down that calls you into the direction of the unknown, you can’t hear because you are too busy distracting yourself.

I have a friend who explained jumping into this new shift and trusting in one’s truth like standing under a waterfall; it is uncomfortable at first, but then in the showering down upon you, you find great pleasure and relief. I liken it to experiencing a new favorite piece of music; it plants a seed in your heart the first time you hear it, but with every listen you fall more deeply into the piece. Your ears “awaken” and you begin to hear each individual instrument, you feel the power of the collective movement in the composition, and each time it takes your soul deeper and deeper into a more profound experience of the music. When you begin to fall more deeply into trust and surrender, you begin to have a more profound experience of life.

***

I have always found the great mystery of life to be the ultimate dichotomy. Under the microscope we are made up of atoms, which have organized into matter. The particular organization of this matter has created a thinking organism with the unique attribute of self-analysis. We have labeled this amalgamation of attributes ‘human beings,’ a collection of physical, mental, and emotional experiences sandwiched between two dates in history—our birth and our death.

And yet the great mystery is that we have this spiritual side as well, this connection to the earth, a connection to that from which all of life was brought forth, and from which all that is, is. All of the great minds throughout time have said in their own voice, when you feed this part of the self and nurture it with the right conditions, it blossoms into a garden of abundance. That is why the garden within must always be attended to. No matter how much you nurture this garden, each soul goes through its seasons and sometimes I have spent entire years in the bleak lifelessness of winter. In this moment, however, I am fortunate enough to be living into the metaphorical verdant vitality of spring. I know nothing on this plane last forever though, so I am enjoying it as best I can by living in each and every moment.

Between the dichotomies of the physical and spiritual, I personally feel at my deepest level that our true nature is that of spirit; eternal, immortal, pure consciousness that is connected to all of creation, that is connected to all through which the organizing intelligence of life flows—the intelligence that keeps our cells structured, our blood flowing, and our hearts beating. I feel like this body is merely a costume we wear for a while at the grand masquerade ball of life.

What is the balance or connection between these human and spiritual selves? I don’t believe it is to deny oneself, to turn your back on the earthly pleasures and renounce all that is of the flesh as I was taught as a young Catholic, and as many dogmas of religion preach. Rather, I believe it exists somewhere in the balance of the two. I am coming to the belief that the true path towards joy, which perhaps is one of the highest emotions of spirit, is something that His Holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama has said; “Let go of your own suffering in the service of others.” Which takes me to what I’ve learned from the impressive people I have been fortunate enough to come in contact with on this journey. 

***

Late in the morning on April 28^th, I sat down at my table and looked out in gratitude over His Holiness, the Dalia Lama’s Temple. The first thing I wrote was, “Today I intend and create to meet His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.”

I did not get much beyond that thought because I realized that due to my illness, I had lost track of the days and that I was supposed to meet Ward Malliard the previous day.

Ward is a high school teacher from Santa Cruz, California, who was taking his senior class to interview His Holiness. When I realized the date, I ran to my computer, connected to email through my Tata Photon Plus, and grabbed his contact information. I called him in a panic but the call dropped twice (AT&T has nothing on India’s cell network). I finally got a hold of Ward and as it turned out he and his entourage were staying a few doors down from where I was at, The Kareri Guesthouse.

Ward was gracious enough to invite me to lunch, along with his wife and a photographer from The Santa Cruz Sentinel, Shmuel Thaler. From the get-go, the conversation was philosophical, pedagogical, scholarly, and engaging, and so I put my microphone on the table to capture all he had to say. He reminded me of a high school teacher I had named Ed Powers, who always said, “Confusion is a wonderful thing. Don’t ever be afraid of it.” I never understood the teachings of Ed Powers, or for that matter of fact, many of the dedicated instructors I’ve had in my life until I was much older. I’m sure Ward’s students will only truly understand his teachings and the power of his dedication in the future, that place that gives us the gifts of wisdom and reflection and allows us to see new perspectives on life. I suppose that is the way of the youth, however. But here I was, in McLeod Ganj, India, fortunate enough to be with the archetype of my favorite teachers in my life. Here I was in the presence of a man who is dedicated and integral to molding tomorrow’s minds, and that in itself gives me hope.

You’re probably asking yourself, how the hell did I link up with this guy?
Back in February, I was surfing around the Web and found The Tibetan Nuns Project, located in Dharamsala. After a brief survey of their Web site, I noticed they had an office in Seattle, and so I called them and chatted with a wonderful, accommodating, firecracker-of-a-woman named Susanne Peterson. Susanne asked me what I was looking to get out of my trip and I told her a little bit about what I was attempting to do. She was so accommodating that at the end of our conversation I decided to just throw something at her. “Well Susanne, this is kind of out there but since you seem to be connected, I’d really like to be involved in a documentary or a film crew.”

Photo credit: Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz SentinelSusanne thought about it for a moment, and then said, “You know, I might have something for you. I want you to contact Ward Malliard. He’s going to be taking a group of students to interview his His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and he’s going to have a film crew with him. I’ll send you his email.”

Several months later, while I was a day late for the interview with His Holiness, the following day I found myself in a van on my way up to the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) with Malliard and a group of high school students from Santa Cruz, California. It was the second time I had been to TCV and again I was impressed with the organization, both in scale and in its mission.

Ever since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1957, millions of Tibetan’s have been killed in mass genocide. This is in fact, continuing to happen, and within the past week, the Chinese invaded a monastery of 2,000 monks in Tibet. It is still unclear as to what happened there and if the monks are still alive or not. And why is this not being reported on in the western world? The world should be outraged, but it is so far removed from our daily lives that “Free Tibet” has simply become a brand and a slogan on western t-shirts that college kids and hippies seem to gravitate toward.

In the aftermath of the genocide in 1957, around 100,000 refugees followed His Holiness, the Dalia Lama, into exile in India. Among the war ravaged were thousands of orphans and destitute children suffering the psychological devastation of losing their families, their home, and their countries. His Holiness realized that the future of his people and their culture depended on future generations, so with this in mind, and out of concern for the suffering of so many children, His Holiness proposed that a special center be established for these children.

The good, dedicated, Tibetan people who are acting as foster parents at TCV are fighting to preserve perhaps one of the most important and endangered cultures on the planet. It is a culture of peace, family, mindfulness, and service, and to truly grasp what it is about you need to look no further than their leader, a self professed humble monk, His Holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama.

It makes me wonder what we as Americans are preserving or pushing out into the world. Like Ward said in my interview with him, I believe that the American people are good people who want to serve, and who want to bring about positive change in the world. But our message and the bright light that once shined is being drowned out by consumerism, false advertisement, greed, divisive politics, and perhaps the greatest disservice to all of us—the media, which has an insatiable 24-hour appetite for skewing facts, creating rumors, highlighting the difference of our politics instead of those things that bring us together, and making money off of war, devastation, and tragedy.

As I was saying, TCV in Dharamsala is home to 2,500 boarders and 500-day students. Not all of these children are orphans, however. Many of the parents of these children have made the ultimate sacrifice to smuggle their children out of Tibet so that they may receive an education, because the Chinese are trying to keep the Tibetans poor, uneducated, and powerless. Across India there are more than 14,000 children in several Tibetan Children’s Villages. The weight of the separation and resulting pain from their divided family is immense, but as any Tibetan will tell you, it’s for the greater cause of Tibet.  (Click here to learn about sponsoring a child at TCV).

For the second time in a week I found myself again on my way to TCV, this time part of a cultural exchange where the senior class of Mount Madonna High School met some of the teenagers from the senior class of TCV. We first watched Tibetan children put on traditional songs and dance for us, and later there were breakout session where the Tibetan students and the American students discussed what it means to be happy and to be of service. After the breakout sessions, each group merged into one circle, where everything that was learned was discussed—something that Ward calls the “conversation of gifts.” It was truly something special to witness.

Afterward a ceremony was performed where each of us received Tibetan prayer shawls, and tea and cookies were served followed by a basketball game. I was wearing flip-flops but I couldn’t just stand by as the Tibetans were racking up points. I can’t help but not get into a game if I’m watching one, and even if I have the intent of taking it easy, my instinct and competitive nature takes over. And so I asked one of the American high school students if I could borrow his dress shoes, which were about two sizes too small. No matter. No Tibetan high school girl or boy was going to get the best of me. Now I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but I think my addition to the team helped sway the momentum, and the Americans came from behind to pull out the victory, despite gasping for air at an altitude of 7,000 feet.

The following morning we interviewed Rinchen Kandho, the head of the Tibetan Nun’s Project. There are few people that I have met who have such clarity of thinking, poise, grace, centeredness, and hope—hope in the face of a situation that is larger than herself, larger than her culture, and larger than her government. What is at stake is the very existence of her people.

What impressed me most about her was her take not just on her people’s situation, but on the current state of humanity. “We suffer as a people from short sightedness and a lack of moral courage. If you have a voice, you must use it,” she said.

“We have wasted so much time organizing our religions and laying claim to who we are in our religions. You don’t have to call yourself a Buddhist, a Christian, a Jew, or a Hindu. Call yourself a human being,” she said. “We lose so much when we cling to ideas.”

She went on to speak of the beauty of Buddhism and its simple wisdoms, “But to be simple, you need a lot of perseverance and courage,” she said.

“It is just a fact when women are involved in movements, they last longer,” she added.

She left us with, “Choose the right partner not for money, not for fame, not for status, but for values,” which is something my mother used to always say to me.

A New Direction - Rishikesh
Without even realizing it, I had become somewhat antsy in McLeod Ganj—although the thought of leaving had never crossed my mind without having a specific reason beyond the approaching monsoon season. But I met a girl a few nights previous who had to leave India because of her tourist visa and she asked if I would be interested in going to Nepal with her. I initially turned her down and then upon closer investigation thought, why wouldn’t I? I even put it to my Facebook audience and the unanimous decision was to move on.

No sooner had I decided to head to Nepal than I hit refresh on my email and received a message from M.C. Mehta asking if I was still interested in coming to see and work with him at the Eco-Ashram. Much as the Godfather made so many decades ago, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. To be honest I have no idea what I will be doing for him. When I first spoke to him in Delhi, he said he had only told me about 2% of what he does. But to be of service is something I asked for on this journey, to use my skills as a writer for someone, a cause, or an idea, so I must answer the call, or at least explore it.

***

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with M.C., and despite this train ride being less than ideal, what I am most grateful for are the people I have been privileged to either meet or interview. I have met four extraordinary human beings. They are; Ward Malliard, educator and learner, Zoe Magoney, painter and teacher, Rinchen Kandho, head of the Tibetan Nuns Project, and M.C. Mehta, Indian Supreme Court Lawyer and Environmentalist.

These people are inspiring to me. The thing about inspiring people is that their light shines brighter than any of the conditions around them that try to cast darkness upon them, whether it’s a system, conditions we are born into, a government, or going against the way a collective group of people think. Inspiring people always also seem to answer to an inner call and vision, and in the process of finding the source within them that casts this light, they have the uncanny ability to illuminate those upon whom they shine. They also have the uncanny ability to turn the spark within us into a conflagration, and when their passion connects with like-minded people, it’s like they are throwing gasoline on the smoldering fires of those around them. There is a light that shines so brightly in these people that it can’t help but illuminate. Come to think of it, maybe that is the purpose of art—to create light that reflects, magnifies, and illuminates the darkness of this world. Come to think of it, these people are all artists in their own right.

Each one of these individuals have taught me something different; Zoe has taught me the power of initiative and gratitude; Ward has taught me humility and the importance of citizenry; Rinchen Kandho has taught me the power of hope and the strength of character; and M.C. Mehta, although I have only spent about 2 hours with him, has taught me about fortitude, perseverance, and fighting for a cause. At the highest level, there are four things these people share in common; they all radiate joy from within, they all have placed their lives in the service of others, they are all committed to their cause, and they all possess moral courage.

What is moral courage? Because it is a word I heard a lot from Rinchen Kandho and Ward Malliard. Ward said it best when he said, “Education is a practice. Part of the practice of education is learning to have a voice, because there are so many things we need to speak up for in this world; the poor, the underserved, the underprivileged. We have a voice and we have power, and we have to use the power of our voice to speak for those who don’t have power.”

Where can you use your voice? At this, one of the most important moments in history, we need smart, dedicated people to step forward and lead, from the scale of government to our communities.

Rishikesh, India
May 9, 2011

"The things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one. - Love, Love, Love, The Mountain Goats

Part 1 – The Stations of the Cross

“And on the third day he rose again from the dead in fulfillment of the scriptures.”  

Attending Catholic school from second grade through college, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I heard or recited this line from the Nicene Creed. And much like Thomas the Doubter, had I not experienced this for myself, I would also not have believed it was possible. I am of course talking about myself, in this instance, and not Jesus the Nazarene. And in this case, by “the fulfillment of the scriptures,” I simply mean the fulfillment of my duties to my work and to this blog. It just so happens that the third day I am speaking of also fell on Easter Sunday.

My Stations of the Cross, again—coincidentally like Jesus—began Friday afternoon. It started off like any other day here in McLeod Ganj, the only difference being that I actually had something to do, which was to interview Zoe. I began the morning by having a farewell breakfast with John and Nate. Jessie had just left the day before and that evening my Seattle brethren were off on an overnight bus to Manila (a town in Central Himachal Pradesh) for some trekking, bouldering, and skiing. The day before when Jessie left, I found myself incredibly mopey, and nearly let the negative aspects of the voice in my head pull me down a small hole as I lay in bed wondering what to do next. But I pulled myself out of it and went and met Nate and John in town that night and had a good time. And now they were leaving as well.

When people asked me what I was going to do in India, I would say, “I don’t know. I’m just going to be like a pinball in a pinball machine, changing direction or course depending on who I meet, what I learn, or where I hear is a cool place to hang out.” Over the course of one night, however, I had become a bumper, and not the pinball. Jessie, John, and Nate had bounced off of me, and I was the one left in town. I suppose I need to get used to this somehow, and instead of being sad when a new friend leaves or moves on, turn the feeling of loss in my heart into gratitude for having had the opportunity to meet and connect with some wonderful people.

What I have learned in the course of my travels throughout my life and was just reminded when these new friends left, is that sometimes you’re the bumper, and some times you’re the ball. And sometimes you have these brief and intense encounters, and the impact of these collisions with a certain few people can forever affect your speed, velocity, or direction of where you thought you may have been headed, or what you thought you knew about someone, something, or your own life. But I guess that happens on every street in every city throughout the world every day. These encounters just seem to be magnified when you’re traveling.

***

So as I was saying before I so rudely sidetracked myself, at noon I was supposed to meet Zoe Magoany, a French painter from Paris for an interview, but since I had to move my lodging and time was getting away from me, we pushed the interview back until 3pm.

At 3pm, I met her outside of Lung Ta, a Japanese restaurant on Jogibara Road. It was right next door to where my new residence was, the Akoska Guesthouse, which incidentally is run by a young couple from Long Island. Since Zoe hadn’t eaten, we first had lunch together followed by espresso at the Budan Café, where much to my auditory delight, Kid A, by Radiohead was playing. The encounter was, in some ways, the fulfillment of one of my life long dreams, and something that I hope to repeat countless times while I’m here; to sip on espresso in some foreign land with a fellow expat artist while discussing the boundless depths and mystery of the creative force called art that propels us through life.

After sipping on espresso and getting some more of Zoe’s backstory while she puffed away on Marlboro Reds, a gesture both grand and entitled to any great artist, we went back to my room for the interview.

We had a great conversation and I was very impressed with Zoe’s answers, which were straight off the cuff and straight from the heart. Towards the very end, something very unsettling began to occur, however. Zoe left and within minutes the bathroom called me, and it was within 5 feet of that bathroom that I spent the next 16 hours. But this was just the opening shot. For the next three days my stomach sounded like the background soundtrack to Wolf Blitzer’s reporting from Bagdad—the first time we invaded Iraq. The homeland of my body and the invading bacteria were fighting a horrible ground and artillery battle within me, senselessly lobbing SCUD missiles back and forth, while I lay on my back feeling the wave concussions of the attacks in my belly.

I did not sleep at all that night, not only from running to the bomb shelter every two hours, but the incessant barking, barking, barking of the dogs. I needed to find a new place so the next morning I took every ounce of energy available to me and walked back to the other side of town to acquire a room at the Kareri Lodge, the place where Jessie called home while she was in town. I swung by the shop to tell the boys of my plan, and seeing how everything I was doing was a struggle, Gasha insisted upon helping me walk my things over to my new place. I dropped my bags on my floor, hit the bomb shelter, and then hit the bed. And rinse and repeat. And again… And again… And again. There was a window around 6pm that I thought the worst of the fighting was over, I mean—how could there possibly be any more munitions left in me? My friend Tharpa advised me to eat bananas and rice, but why would I listen to people in-the-know? I instead opted for the pizza.

I came back to my room and struggled to not fall asleep thinking I would then be up all night, but with eyes as heavy as the doors of Fort Nox, I feel asleep. Around 11pm the shelling started again and I made a b-line for the bomb shelter. When I got back to bed I had a fever and chills and put every article of clothing I had on me. For the rest of the night, every hour, weapons of mass destruction came out both sides of me. There was nothing I could do so I lay in the darkness, surrendering to the sickness, and telling myself this too shall pass. (There I go again showing off that Catholic education.)

By 6am, I was actually concerned for my health and wondered if the journey was about to take a nasty turn. My plan was to hold out on the antibiotics in case I got really sick, but I realized that this time, I was really sick. I was completely dehydrated and as a result aching throughout my entire body. To make matters worse, I was nearly out of toilette paper. Gasha, again playing the hero, brought me toilette paper and water in the morning, and later in the day Palla brought me chapti bread and tea. “Man, you gotta eat, man. You’re legs won’t be able to carry you where you need to go," he said. Ram, the kind owner of the Kareri Lodge said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I used to be a pharmacist.” Meanwhile Jessie was texting me all day, as was John and Nate to check on my health. It was not until about Sunday at 6pm (Easter) that I began to rise from the dead—and able to at least make it to the boys’ shop for a few minutes to tell The Good News. I feel incredibly blessed to have these two little guardian angels looking out for me.

Part 2 – What is your secret?

Despite the punishing artillery and air campaign that an army of bacteria waged in my bowels, so far on this trip I have been met with incredible luck, serendipitous success, and spontaneous creations. When I told Jessie about some of the things that have all ready happened to me (many of which you, my dear reader, are not aware of), as well as all of the serendipitous occurrences that are responsible for allowing me the privilege to write to you from from McLeod Ganj, she said, “What is your secret? You’re just manifesting things all over the place.”

“Do you really want to know?” I asked her.

Let me step back a few days for a moment. A joke that was shared between Jessie, Nate, John and I, was how smart it was of me to bring a Lonely Planet Nepal to India. Now in case you’re not tracking here, Lonely Planet Nepal is not doing me a hell of a lot of good or providing me with much on-the-ground, actionable information in India.

This was beginning to weigh on me so I figured it was probably best to have a guidebook with me. I had been eyeing a Lonely Planet India at two bookstores, but it cost more than $35. I was about to make the plunge one afternoon, but then I decided I was going to hold out. I told Jessie that I was going to find a used copy the next day without even trying.

The next morning, which was Jessie’s last morning, Jessie and I had breakfast together at the Green Hotel before she left. On the way back towards our places, I noticed a used bookshop that neither of us had seen before. I said, “Hold on, let’s stop in here.” And right there, on the bookshelf, written across the spine as large as the country itself, was INDIA—for a third of the price of a brand new copy.

Now this may not sound miraculous to you, but this is the same process I used to get the job that allowed me to take this trip, and that allows me to receive an income while I’m in India; the same process that gave me the free MacBook Air I am writing to you from; the same process that got me a free video camera which I recordedA Very Uninformative Video on; the same process that got me two months of free living before I left Seattle; the same process that got me an interview with one of India’s most successful lawyers within 3 days of landing in India, without even knowing I was going on an interview; the same process of how I met Jessie; and the same process of how I met another new friend today named Nate. What process is that, you ask? It’s simply a morning exercise, or perhaps a morning practice is a more apropos way of putting it.

***

Part 3 - In the beginning of this story I spoke a lot about surrendering.

 But I am not only speaking about surrendering in regards to this trip, I am speaking in regards to every aspect of this—my 36^th year of walking about on this earth as a human being. On July 17^th of this year, my 36^th year began my great personal experiment in letting go and surrendering. This may sound easy and it may sound passive, but letting go is trusting, and placing your trust in someone or something, whether it’s a relationship with a partner or a relationship to God, Allah, Ginesh, The Father, The Universe, or Creation, or whatever you want to call the Creative Force of Existence, is a risk. But on the other side of risk is infinite possibility, the foundation upon which which infinite possibility exists is faith. Faith is not a passive thing. It is, in fact, very active and requires one to be malleable in that perhaps you were headed in one direction, but life suddenly switched the road sign on you and you realize you no longer recognize the territory you are in, and so you must place your trust in the signs that are before you, and follow the new path where ever it may lead.

Let’s rewind for a moment, yet again. Some time in mid-August I got my first freelance gig after my mother’s passing, which was a short-term contract where I was horribly underpaid. I wanted to work, however, and welcomed the monotonous routine so as to get out of my own head. I left that contract before it was up for another short-term contract, and that contract wound up being shorter than the term I was anticipating. As it goes in the freelance world, it’s feast or famine and I was getting hungry.

For some time I had been trying to find a job with the qualities of x,y, and z that also paid me very well, but I was tired of the short term gigs, and with India looming months out in the distance, I wanted to have some stability leading up to it.

I found myself back on unemployment in early October for a brief stint, during which time I spoke with Shelia Bath, an intuitive healer and life coach. We had a really interesting conversation where she told me things about myself and my past that she could not have just pulled out of thin air. At the end she gave me an assignment. Are you ready for this? No really—are you ready? Well, lean in then because I’m only going to say it once…She told to buy a small 7.5 x 5 notebook at CVS or Rite-Aid and every morning to write down five things I was grateful for and five things I wanted to create in my life.

“Literally?” I asked?

“Literally,” she said. “Literally write ‘Today I am so grateful for…’ and write down five things, and then write ‘Today I intend and create…’ and write down those five things. Just do it and trust me,” she said. “You’re going to find that the things you create are going to become the things you are grateful for.”

I can do that, I thought, and gratitude sounds like a good practice anyway.

My first task was to create the perfect job for this time in my life. I surrendered pay and any other creative requirements/parameters I may have set (or limited) for myself and lo and behold, within a week, the perfect job showed up. While it didn’t pay what I normally made, it paid plenty and there were numerous other perks involved, including the dream manager and a team of smart, talented, funny, and creative people who made going to work a pleasure. They have also become great friends and are supporting me in this endeavor. Might I also add that I had planned on buying a MacBook Air to travel with. It just so happened that work provided me with one, but at the time I started, I had no idea I would be traveling with it or even still working for them in India.

Part 4 - Conscious Creation

I cannot tell you how many times this process I call “conscious creation” has worked for me since October, and I won’t bore you with every last detail. Many mornings I simply ask for happiness, joy, or to be an instrument of peace, but sometimes I push the envelope and ask for big things like housing, such as when I was going to find myself homeless in February because my roommate decided she wanted to move out three months before we were supposed to end our living agreement. After a day of being pissed off, I let it go and told myself something better was going to come along. All week I wrote in my morning gratitude/creation journal that I was going to create a place to live. That weekend I was at my good friends Phil and Sasha’s house and told them that I was in somewhat of a bind and that I was kind of freaking out because I needed a place to live for two months.

Sasha said in her perfect English accent without missing a beat, “Well you come live with us then. This is perfect. No really, we’re going to New Zealand for 3 weeks and we need a dog sitter. You’ll actually be doingus a huge favor.” So not only did I get free housing for two months, not only did I get Branston, the perfect walking companion, not only did I get a quiet, peaceful neighborhood where I could walk about every night while letting my mind unravel and create, not only did I get my own floor with inspiring views of downtown Seattle, the Puget Sound, and Mount Rainier, but I got welcomed into Phil and Sasha’s family and inherited two surrogate nieces and a nephew, which is something I really miss living so far from my own family.

This morning exercise is also all how I met Jessie, Nate, and John, and another new friend I met today named Nate. The morning I met Jessie, I wrote down, “I intend and create to make a new friend today, someone who I click with and will want to hang out with.” 8 hours later I was sitting across from Jessie in a coffee shop, and not-so-coincidentally, John and Nate from Seattle, who had just arrived in town and who I had never met but had been put in touch with through Facebook, were sitting behind me.

***

Now I don’t claim to be responsible for any of this. I’m not bragging and I’m not preaching any new age wisdom at you. In fact, I’d love for you to try this yourself. What I’m doing every day is merely putting a thought out into a universe of information, a universe that is very interactive and responsive to our thoughts and feelings. And lets be clear—thoughts are energy waves. These thoughts I put out I attempt to align in intention, feeling, and emotion, with the acceptance that whatever the outcome is, it’s for my greatest good and highest self. This is what it means to surrender I believe, which again, isn’t actually passive. There is much creation in surrender. This is what I also believe it means to be in the flow.

The 18-year-old version of me went nearly mad filling out notebooks trying to figure this out, trying to figure out life, who I was, who I was going to be, where I was going, why I had come from where I had come from, if I was ever going to achieve my dreams, trying to find meaning to it all, trying to find connections and purpose, trying to figure out why, why, why. I was a question machine, but not made from the parts of curiosity and excitement, but from the parts of desperation and fear. That version of myself swam upstream and constantly struggled against the tides, but the current version of that kid, that kid who has had twice the years and thus a lifetime of experiences since the perspective of that 18-year-old, is finally learning to just accept and be.

If you’ll allow me to indulge in just one more—this morning, since it was my first morning to really venture into town for an extended period of time since my health had returned, I wrote again that I want to make a new friend. And while I was not aware of it at the time, in the background of my mind my intuition was guiding me towards a masculine energy, where as when I met Jessie, I was feeling more that I wanted to connect with feminine energy. Regardless, Nate from Minneapolis wound up sitting on the ground behind me today at Café Budan (Iron and Wine playing at the Café), and since there was no where else to sit, I asked if he would like to sit with me. I was trying to focus on writing, but he sat down and we began chatting and exchanging our travelers tale. At first, before he sat down, I barely noticed him sitting behind me, but when I saw him, I had this feeling that I knew we would click. His hair was disheveled, he wore corduroy shorts, and had many string and beaded bracelets upon his wrists, which while traveling in India denotes either places you’ve been or experiences you’ve had. I myself have one bracelet on, which Jessie gave to me as a sign of our friendship and time spent together in McLeod Ganj.

Nate and I hung out for a while and then came back to my place to enjoy the patio and the view, and we had a few smokes. We made plans to meet up in the evening to hear a Tibetan refugee speak, who was tortured by the Chinese, as well as plans to check out a waterfall I heard about yesterday. Timmy has a new buddy.

***

I was feeling really good when he left and quite grateful. As is often, one’s internal world is manifested in their external world, and so what the inside of my stomach looked like after going through war, so too did my room. I had no energy to clean up for the last few days, so much like I would engage in “Timmy Time” at home, I threw my iPod on and began to clean and organize. One of the first songs that came on was a practice session of a song I wrote when I played in a band back in Seattle, called “Thoughts of a 17-year-old." About a week ago, while Jessie and I were having dinner at a restaurant, the restaurant turned into an open mic jam session, and so I played a few of my songs, “Thoughts of a 17-year-old,” included. It goes like this:

Soccer balls and shopping malls, lonely Friday nights,
Sittin’ there starin’ up into the starlight
You’re dreamin’ of—who you’ll be tomorrow.

Bongos, bongs, bowls, and beers,
Tryin’ to figure out who you becomin’ all these years –
and who you’ll be—who you’ll be tomorrow.

Cause the future’s so near but you’re stuck right here in the present.
Cause the future’s so near but you’re stuck right here today.

Math and science, English lit,
What the hell do I care, I don’t give a shit
I’m dreamin of—who I’ll be tomorrow.

Who you are and what you’ll be remains a mystery
Only to be unmasked through the course of history
Who will you be tomorrow.

Cause the future’s so near but you’re stuck right here in the present.
Cause the future’s so near but you’re stuck right here today.

(now imagine a sweet-ass instrumental jam here with some really nice guitar work by Ian, some nimble keys by John, Simmons keepin’ it down on bass, and Adam movin’ the flow on brushes)

I have no idea who I’m gonna become
So I’m gonna sit here with this guitar and strum
Strum until tomorrow.
I’m gonna strum, strum until tomorrow.
I’m gonna strum…strum until tomorrow.

***

Time is skewed in India and not such a precise thing as we have in the west. Time is relative, time is elastic. A few hours could mean a few days depending on with whom you’re talking to and what you’re discussing. I think in a place like India, where you’re senses are assaulted the moment you step off your international flight, it’s easier to see that tomorrow is a tenuously balanced idea and that all you really have is today. Unlike the young kid in that song I wrote, I no longer feel like I’m stuck in the present. I am present, in the present, and I’m doing my best to actively create the future, because there is only one place where the future can be created—from the seat of the present.

Whether you’re a painter or a writer, a CEO or a janitor, a mother or father, no matter what your role may be in life, life is about creation. The way I see it, if you really boil it down and are actually looking, you have but two ways to look at life; You can look at life as the Divine Orchestra of our individual and collective evolution, or you can look at life as a bottomless pit that is empty and meaningless. Regardless, life is blank slate, an empty canvas upon which to paint your picture, and I think if you paint it with the oils of love, gratitude, and intention, there can be no failure, and the algorithmic possibilities for one’s life and community are endless.

As Zoe so eloquently said in our interview, “Everyone, with no exception, used to be an artist when we were children.”

Now get out there and create something from you heart today.