This past weekend was the last weekend when all of the intensive yoga students were together - the yoga intensive finishes this week after 8 weeks, and some of them will be leaving on Sat. So this last weekend all of them and most of the rest of the students went away together - to Varkala. This is a "resort" coastal town. On the top of a cliff there are a number of cute places to stay, and a long line of stall after stall selling clothing, trinkets etc (the usual hippie thing in places like this all over the world) and restaurants. Climb down the cliff and there are a couple of beaches for swimming. And yes, Nancy et al, we stayed at the Kerala Bamboo Huts.
What this means is that we had a holiday from India for a weekend. This is not India - it could be a Thai tourist beach place or a Guatemalan tourist beach place or a Byron Bay Australian backpackers beach place. But it was fun and lovely and we had FANTASTIC food - Indian and western, and MEAT!! and Fish. Nothing being sold in any of the stalls was from South India - a lot of it is hippie Tibetan. And we were hit by the India of tourism - all of the sellers of wares constantly in your face, which we do not at all experience in Aranmula. And lots of weterners - it was very strange seeing so many white people after us being the only white people that we see.
But it was fun and a great weekend. We have such a lovely group of people and we all enjoyed just hanging out together. Lots of swimming - or should I say jumping up and down in between crashing waves, and a strong undertow. Got some good body surfing rides and a lot of dumps.
I'm thinking I might go back to Varkala for Christmas or New Year, we'll see. I think it wouldn't take long to get bored there though, the whole place is set up for Westerners to keep spending and spending - we all went through a lot more money than what we expected. It's definitely worth going there for the food, we all agreed, and we want to work our way through the menus of several of the restaurants. There's a lovely view and it's beautiful sitting looking at the water below you while eating and drinking. I'm very glad, though that I am not doing the backpacker trail of going from one of these types of places to the next one.
The Belgian family also went to Varkala, independently, and we saw them there several times. Apparently when 2 year old Victoria saw us (amongst all the other white toursists) she said (in French) "There are my friends!" She's very cute. Her father is a linguist and is here for 5 months to learn Malayalam, and decided to bring the family with him - this is why they are here. I'm told he knows something like 20 dead languages.
I remain professionally and personally interested in language(s) Every day we play with so many English dialects and accents: Australian English, New Zealander English, Southern US English, Candadian English, Scottish English, Irish English, English English. And these, of course are particular regional representations of each of those countries - Evelyn (from Scotland) has I think quite a strong Scottish accent and vocab yet she says that there are people from further north of Scotland whom she can't understand. Then we have French speakers speaking English and a Hebrew speaker speaking English. And of course Malayalam speakers speaking Indian English
The yoga group were shown an interesting part of yoga practice last Friday, and some of them tried it. This is the part where you use a long thin piece of rubber hose and stuff it up your nose until it comes down the back of your throat. Keeping one end still dangling out of the nostril, you pull the other end out of your mouth and then pull both ends backwards and forwards so that it cleans all your sinus passages. They showed the rest of us photos of Swami (the yoga teacher) and some of the students with one end of the hose hanging out one nostril and the other end hanging out of the mouth. One student filmed Swami doing it complete with gagging and throwing up. My sinus passages could definitely do with some cleaning but there's no way I'll be doing that.
Thanks to people who have sent emails. I very much enjoy hearing your news. I have to admit last night in my room I felt some pangs of loneliness and/or missing important people in my life.
Yes Nancy, Annie is still here after 7 years of living in Aranmula, still learning painting and she has had several exhibitions overseas (For the rest of you I will tell you her story some time, it's quite amazing). Cecilia will be coming again for Christmas ( I will say hello from you) Yes Jaxan, I adopted "Tony Tabla" for this blog from the name you gave me when we were here nearly 3 years ago. There's still a very poor Tamil family next to your old house (same family I guess) and the little kids always run out to say hello when we go to yoga class in the mornings. Ben and Carin, if you're reading this, there is a photo of Carin in the office, I think from when you made your arangetram. The new singing teacher is a wonderful man and a great teacher with a very good understanding of how to teach westerners - I think you would love him. And his singing is spellbinding. Currently there is a young woman from the US here who will be making her singing arangetram next week.
This morning I saw Atma and I will go to his house this evening, but when I told Shaji in a loud voice that I had seen Atma he indicated that I should be quiet and secretive about it - such is the politics of the place, as we knew from last time.
Much love to you all
