bicycling pondicherry

last saturday was diwali, and i went to pondicherry for the weekend with some friends (mostly other expats working at ngos in india). a small town on the coast south of chennai, pondicherry was a french colony until 1954, and the town still has a distinctly french flavor: architecture, street names, you can hear a few snipits of french, and find a bakery selling decent croissants. it's also the site of an ashram of sri aurobindo, a spiritual guru figure, and his disciple, the mother, who sought life transformation and higher consciousness through yoga and a concept they invented called the supramental. india's spiritual personality cults are unlike anything i've experienced before, adding to my many experiences here where i find myself in situations wondering "how did i get here?/who are these people?" not in a bad way, so far in only an awesome way, but still surprising.

we rented bikes and rode to a beach a few km north of the city. probably the most fun i've had in india so far, weaving rickety bikes through perpetually ridiculous indian traffic, but reminding me how much i miss riding bikes. the beach turned out, unfortunately, to be where the local village people come to defecate (turns out, i learned, 50% of india's population shits outside), but the water still felt pretty amazing. thank you ocean, the great global sanitizer.

streets in pondicherry:turning off the main road to get to the beach:

run #2 and ragam #8

the sweet veranda off of my room:
and a goat eating leaves out of a garbage can about a block away:
there are animals everywhere here: goats, dogs, cats, chickens, cows roaming the streets. it's hard to tell if they have owners or not, but most seem relatively well fed and taken care of. the elderly woman who lives in the house where i'm staying told me she gives food to a squirrel and a crow, which take turns eating separately on the window sill outside the kitchen, and apparently the crow can tell if it's getting leftovers and will refuse them.

things here are all a little bit magical-realism, i think because religion is very much tied into daily life and ritualistic action (like making an offering from the first food cooked of the day, and welcoming the gods first thing in the morning with a design outside the front door made out of white sand). my teacher told me the other day that it's been scientifically proven that playing in shankarabaranum ragam (effectively the western major scale) is good for health and the prosperity of the home. i'm not sure what i think of all of this yet, but i do think that the human mind is a very powerful tool, at least as a feedback loop with the body.

or

something a little familiar or, hello thailand?:

went to an incredible concert last night, my first time hearing my teacher play.  she seated me onstage behind her, a little nerve-wracking yes.  but completely amazing.  concerts for me here are like breaths of fresh air, so much revitalizing energy.

landing

so i stepped off, with expectations fuzzy, a feeling of impending impossibility, and have landed in a bit of an upside-down world. i'm still struggling to find words to really describe what india is like, and i've found my photographs so far come up short in embodying the experience. maybe something about a photo being still and quiet, two words that are just inappropriate to use in reference to india. it's all texture here, heat and smell and noise and color. hard to get any perspective, it all just floods in all the time. there is no 'why,' even though it's the question i find people are always asking me here.

but, on the ground. i've been in chennai, india, for 3 weeks so far. it's gone by both incredibly quickly and extremely slowly. getting anything done takes forever, but then suddenly something falls in your lap. i'm still finally getting the last logistical details settled. i've found a permanent (well, for the next few months anyway) place to live, will move in tomorrow. after a couple weeks of ambivalence about how to best use my time here (here?)/now(/in life), i've started taking south indian/carnatic flute lessons (went for my fourth today). i have a ton to learn and a lot of practicing ahead of me! but so far so good, my teacher is pushing me as hard as i'm pushing myself, so i think it'll be a great relationship and i'll be able to get a lot done. the more of the music i hear, the more convinced i become that this was the right thing to do (or, at least, a good thing to do...). not so sure where it'll all end up, but for now, i'm along for the ride.