I'm still alive! and well! Namaste / Namaskaaram from Aranmula, Kerala, India!

In the past 40 hours, I’ve said “So long” to “my sweet home, Chicago,” (and my oh-so sweet family in Chicago), “Guten morgen” to Frankfurt, “Salaam” to Bombay, and “Namaskaaram” to Kerala. My many-hour journey, which included…

~ two 7-hour flights to bring me from evening in Chicago to 1 a.m. two days later in Bombay,
~ a brief 2-hour connection to Cochin, Kerala, which felt like it flew by in a matter of minutes, all things relative, ~ and the most spectacular taxi ride through the Keralan countryside as the sun rose through thick mists and forests…

culminated in my early-morning arrival at the Vijnana Kala Vedi Cultural Center in the village of Aranmula, which will be my home (halfway around the world from the home I’ve known) for the next 3 months. Despite not having slept for the past 40+ hours (and I’ve still got at least 10 more to go—this is all part of my tried and true approach to avoiding jetlag), I feel alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic, and excited to be in such a beautiful and fascinating and unfamiliar place where every second my senses are saturated with new sights and sounds and smells and the thoughts they give rise to. From my few hours in India, I can say this is the most beautiful and fascinating and unfamiliar place I've ever been.

I won't bore you with the dull details of my multiple flights with Air India: just that I was one of 4 gringos on the crowded flight from Chicago, and that the ethnic twist made the usually dreaded airplane food palatable and even exciting. On my last flight in this travel marathon, from Bombay to Cochin, I had the luck and pleasure of sitting next to a pro cricket umpire who was just returning from umping a match in Bengal. A very gracious man and a native of Cochin, I was invited to stay with his family if I ever pay a visit to Cochin. I just might take him up on that offer!

Without a wink of sleep throughout the duration of the journey, I arrived in Cochin (one of the main cities in the state of Kerala, on the southwestern tip of India) at 3:30 a.m. India time (4:00 in the afternoon Chicago time). Just my luck, I picked the slowest line to go through customs—the immigration official scrutinized my passport and double-checked everything I wrote on the customs form, but I eventually made it through. And it wasn’t just me—he was similarly a stickler for all of the Indian citizens that proceeded me in the line. Thus I was one of the last to collect my baggage.

As promised, I was picked up by the trusted taxi-wallah, a guy wearing a dhoti (I could just hear my brother’s voice exclaiming upon seeing this guy, and practically all the other guys around this part of Kerala, "It looks like he's wearing a adult-sized diaper!") who was an amazing navigator of these crazy Indian streets. Those oh-so comforting stories I heard about the roads in India made the actuality (at least in the countryside at 4 AM) seem relatively tame. Relatively. Lanes are not at all well defined, profuse horn honking abounds, and the numerous bikes and motorcycles and rickshaw-wallahs further complicate the navigation situation. But I could tell the moment we set out from the Cochin airport that Hari the taxi-wallah knows what he's doing. And he didn't steer me wrong (thank Vishnu/Allah/Jesus--all of them are worshiped widely here in Kerala, one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse state in India). I saw numerous shrines to each illuminated on the roadsides.

The roads and roadsides were surprisingly active so early in the morning. When it was still pitch black and car lights would glow in the misty air, there were hundreds of people along our route, mostly men, mostly wearing dhotis, going about some early-morning business unknown to me. A note about the dhotis: in case you’re not familiar with them, this is the traditional dress that Gandhi often wore fashioned from homespun fabric. Frequently full leg-length, they are often folded and tucked in half for greater ventilation and ease of movement—this is what Hari was wearing when he greeted me at the airport, what the echo of Aaron’s voice in my head said “That looks like a diaper!”—but also are worn at ankle length (to this Aaron would say, “Those look like skirts!”).

As the sun rose through, peeking through the forests and mists, the rest of the scene came into view. The rainforest-like environment lining the roadsides and backwaters is the most exquisite I've ever seen. Hari seemed surprised that I didn’t want to sleep during the 3+ hour journey. How could I? I stayed awake and tried to take it all in. The taxi adventure was an exciting introduction to India for me: to drive through the countryside as the sun rose over Kerala.

About an hour from our destination in Aranmula, Hari pulled the black jeep that apparently doubled as a taxi to the side of the road by a string of streetside shops. “Some chai, you would like?” Hari asked. “Yes, please” I answered, all the while the warnings to “avoid any contact with un-bottled water and don’t drink dairy, or mortal peril may await you…” echoed in my mind. As I recall and write about this 3 days later, this potential “mortal peril” has still not befallen me. In fact, I haven’t felt more energetic and alive for a long time—or at least not since my days in Mexico 2 weeks ago.

After that remaining hour of driving—at this point, daylight had come and the glowing red disk of sun showed through the tropical trees—Hari pulled off the road and into the courtyard in front of Vijnana Kala Vedi’s office building. “All the students are now at morning yoga class,” I was told, then promptly show to my room so I could “get some rest.” My first impression of the premises of the cultural school was favorable, although I was initially perplexed at being led into a room with four beds. Then they explained, “We are sorry, you will only be in this room one night, and then move to a room one of our houses.”

Again attracting some surprise that I didn’t want to “get some rest,” I asked if there was somewhere nearby where I could phone the U.S., just to tell my parents that I was still alive and had made it safely to Aranmula. I was led across the street to a falling-apart phone station, where after multiple attempts at dialing, I finally made the connection. My brother’s voice greeted me on the other line. After a couple minutes of chatting, the woman running the phone station rapped at the window of the booth I was calling from within and waved for me to come out. She pointed across the road: a pair of monkeys was casually strolling down the street. “Hold on, Mom, I’ve got to go check out the monkeys!”

Following a breakfast of fresh pineapple, steaming chappati, and potato curry, I spent the morning becoming acquainted with my fellow students and acclimated to VKV—this place a campus that easily surpasses Smith and Bloomington combined in its beauty—so thus I'll be officially starting classes (tabla and painting) on Monday. The village of Aranmula, the people in it, and the environment surrounding it: all is so colorful, exciting, and full of life.

My fellow students are from all across the Western half of the globe (I'm currently the only one from the U.S., there is one couple from Canada, several students from Spain, France, Portugal, and one from Sweden), and all are very nice and interesting. And all of them said, even those who have been here for months, that I picked the day to arrive (even though I'll have a weekends worth of downtime before starting classes... well, perhaps for some, that added to the auspiciousness). Though today's visit by the head bishop of the Christian Church of Kerala was cancelled because he fell ill, the special events planned because of his visit were still a go.

A group of karnatic musicians gathered to accompany a long-time VKV student's dance performance (she studied here for two years straight and off and on for six years since). Before the recital, as the musicians were warming up, VKV founder Madame Schild, after I mentioned my interest in studying a stringed instrument of India, introduced me to the group's violinist for a short private preview of his playing style. A bit of a contrast from my classical training: he held the violin between his forearm and the curve of his achille's heel, for one! This guy was pretty amazing, as was the vocalist, as was the percussionist. So I sat in this stuffy room with five Indian guys in their dhotis, one of which sort of spoke English, as they gave me an amazing private concert and tried to explain the complexities of the ragas they were improvising upon. The dance performance that was added to a more formal music performance later on was equally amazing.

Following the dance recital, we slipped our shoes back on (shoes aren't worn inside any buildings on campus or any of the sari shops I went in today) and headed to a sunny yet oil lamp-lit courtyard in another school building for a yoga demonstration. After 3 months of intensive yoga (5 hours a day), this group of 4 students led their own yoga demo and were presented with certificates of proficiency from the yoga teacher. All in all, this has been a fantastic first day in Incredible India!

As I begin my journey in India and my stay at VKV, six students will be ending their VKV stay tomorrow. To send them off, the other students organized a party after dinner. For a while, I sat and sipped a mango juice and talked with my fellow travelers and listened to the musicians among our group jamming on tabla, Turkish banjo, and Indian flute. Claire—one of the students scheduled to leave in the morning, the girl who showed me around Aranmula and accompanied me on a rickshaw ride to Kozhencherry (a town 2 km from Aranmula) to show me the ATM machine there and help me shop for some less conspicuous clothes—presented me with a parting gift of some shawls and a churidar (the traditional tunic worn by women, also called a shalwar kameez) to help me blend in better. At around 10 p.m., I apologized for being a party pooper and said that I was at last time for me to head to bed after my record-breaking staying awake for 52 hours.

Potentially exhausting for me to experience, probably exhausting for you to read… There is more to tell (all good things, apart from going for 52 hours sans sleep) but I leave that for another day. So at this, I say “Namaste,” which could mean either hello or goodbye: in this case, just so long for now.