When everything goes black

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I haven really done any travelling since coming back from my long trip, but I feel inspired at the moment to do some more writing anyway. So Im just going to pick random days from my time away that I remember well for various reasons, and write about them. This first one is actually an extract taken from the book I wrote about my travels, and I have just changed it in some places for the purposes of posting it up here. I need to say also that the main essence of the writing is true, but names have been changed.



Sivananda Ashram, Kerala.

I sat in the back of a white ambassador taxi, and looked around me as we pulled out of the tiny Trivandrum airport.

As we’d come into land, lush, green rainforests spread themselves out below us across the vast Keralan landscape and spots of monsoon rain splattered on the windows. I felt I started to breathe for the first time since arriving in India.

Now, little wooden shack shops lined the winding roads we were driving down. Signs hung crookedly above them in curly Malayalam script. Most had bunches of bananas hanging down the sides of the wood, bottles of "Aquafina" water, which I would become very familiar with, hanging up below the Malayalam writing, mounds of papayas, amongst all kind of other things that I couldn’t identify from where I was looking. Women with long, braided hair walked along the roads, some in brightly coloured saris, some wearing muted, faded cloths, with children trailing behind them; men leant against the wood posts of the shops, or squatted on the ground, wearing dhotis (lungis, which are a bit like sarongs, bunched up nappy-style), smoking beedis, and spitting on the ground.

We pulled into a petrol station.
“Gas, madam,” said my taxi driver. “Give rupees. 300 rupees.”
Not being familiar with the system, which I’d soon learn, I said, thinking I was about to be ripped off,
“But I’m paying 500 rupees for the journey already.”
“Balance, madam, balance.”
For a moment I truly thought he was referring to the hysteria in my voice, before realising he meant the 300 rupees would come out of the 500 rupees I would be paying him.
I handed over the money, the car was filled up, and off we were again. Just as we pulled out on to the road, the rain started.

Kerala has two monsoons a year, which is what keeps it so green. This was the second monsoon season that I’d arrived in, which lasts from October to early December.
As the rain got heavier, I started to wonder when the taxi driver might decide to put the windscreen wipers on. Already it was almost impossible to see; but he was more concerned with having his hand permanently on the horn, as we sped up the roads towards the hills in the distance. The rain came down more. And more. When visibility hit zero, I felt confident he would switch the wipers on. But no. In any case, it didn’t seem to bother him at all that he had no view of the road, and I had to admit that he was actually doing pretty well in not crashing into anything, given these circumstances. Yet.

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The Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari ashram is just on the edge of a little village called Neyyar Dam. Although I’d purposely kept my planning of my trip to a minimum, I was too scared to just arrive in India with no plan at all. I was also kind of curious about seeing an ashram. There were loads in India; this one, as far as I could make out from the website and little bits of information I had about it, ran according to Hindu philosophy and tradition, guided by the teachings of the guru Sivananda, who had founded a movement around its principles. I didn’t know a great deal about Hinduism; some of the philosophy seemed similar to Buddhism, which I knew much more about. But it seemed to have some of the same principles, following a path and practices which led to transcending the ego and seeing the nature of reality, the interconnectedness of everything. I still did yoga and resuscitated my meditation practice sporadically but I wasn’t ‘looking’ for anything anymore. I just thought that if it was all too much in Mumbai (which it had been), then I’d know I had somewhere safe to come to, somewhere a bit insulated from the proper India outside, somewhere where I could probably eat the food and not get ill, and somewhere where it’d be more easy to meet other travellers.

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I checked into reception when I arrived; the man behind the counter was quite brusque and unsmiling; I’d expected friendly here, and was a bit surprised, especially given the emails I’d had back and forth from them, when I was booking to come and stay here: each one had started with ’Blessed Debbie,’ and ended with ’We look forward to welcoming you to the ashram.’ Maybe I’d just caught him on a bad day. He didn’t seem to have been looking forward to welcoming me to the ashram at all, and I wasn’t convinced he was thinking ’Blessed Debbie’ or anything remotely like that as he looked at me sourly and slapped down two sheets and a mosquito net on to the counter.

I struggled with my 19 kilo (full of supposed essential travel items) rucksack, into the dorm, and found a bed. Neesha, who told me she was ashram ’staff’, was opposite me in her cubicle, and jumped up when she saw me, pinned up her long, black hair, smoothed down her top and came bustling over to see me, her chest thrust out towards me purposefully.
“I’m Neesha,” she said, her chest wobbling precariously over the cubicle wall,
“ Now please make your bed and hang up the mosquito net. You must do it like this, look. No, over here, no, this way. Oh. It doesn’t fit. Like this. Oh, it has some holes in it. We’ll sort that out later, maybe you get another one soon, for now let’s put some tissues in the holes. Oh. They don’t fit. Never mind, you fetch another later. Now the bathrooms are down there and you must not have a shower after 10.30 because it disturbs people. Better you have one earlier, and always take everything out of the bathroom after, because people will steal it otherwise. Yes, they will, even in the ashram, we expect to trust people, but we don’t. I mean we can’t. So you remove everything. And always keep your bag locked and your valuable things in reception, otherwise they will get stolen too. Yes, even here in the ashram, where people trust each other. You can’t.” She leaned even further into the cubicle, wobbling her breasts so much I thought they were going to fall off on to the bed.
“Don’t trust anybody,” she finished in a hushed sort of hiss, patted the pins at the back of her hair, turned around and walked off back into her cubicle, humming.


I made up my bed, and followed Neesha down to where we were going to eat, just to the side of one of the yoga halls. It was already dark outside now, at 6 o’clock.

I walked in to find two long lines of straw mats spread along the floor opposite each other, forming a path in between; big round aluminium platters , with little sections, were placed in rows along the mats, with stainless steel cups by their side. Food was already being heaped on to the plates by people carrying big buckets of food up and down the lines: rice, curry and pappadams (which they called papads here); some people were already there, mainly westerners, other ashram guests; also a few people in orange robes, all sitting cross legged behind their plates, and chanting along with the man at the front, who was singing,
‘Hare Rama, Hare Rama. Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare….’
The chanting went on till everyone had arrived, then a prayer was said, which I couldn’t catch, and people started eating (in silence). I’d read ahead and knew that in the ashram they followed the Indian custom of eating with your right hand. I was starving, only having had three lots of buttertoastjam (widely available) and nothing else since arriving in India, through fear of dysentery; but now this food was in front of me I could barely eat, because I felt so embarrassed using my hand, and couldnt do it properly. I watched some of the people in orange robes, lifting big handfuls of rice, rolling it into a ball, scooping up some curry with it, and shovelling it all into their mouths, no problem. Had to be easy. I tried to do the same but just ended up with most of it on my lap. I started using my papads to get some of the curry. It was so unfair: now that I really wanted to eat, I couldn’t. The curry was so thin, all I managed to get on to the papads was a few stray lentils and some juice.

The man standing at the front, dressed in an orange lungi and a checked shirt, looked cheerful and had a twinkly look in his eyes, a kind face, and a big bushy grey beard. I wondered if he was the Swami, the main teacher in the ashram. He, with some other people, mainly westerners, came round constantly to fill up your plate; hauling large tin buckets of curry up and down the lines, big bowls of rice, and a large plastic bin full of papads. I gratefully took some more papads , as it was the only thing I was managing to eat, (picking them up with my left hand, then suddenly remembering and dropping them back into the bin, in a panic, then had to rummage again with my right hand, and receiving a ‘there‘s always one‘ look from the woman holding the bin) . Others came around filling up the cups with water. I didn’t dare drink it, certain that it was tap water.
While I was still trying to eat, the man with the kind face appeared with a bucket of curry, leant down to me and with a warm smile, said, “You’re new; welcome! I’m Arjun - more curry? Yes of course you want it,” Before I could stop him, he’d ladled out another two huge helpings of the curry water onto my plate, on top of what had already been there, and I sadly watched my papads spin around and then start swimming across the plate like little boats.
So he wasn’t the Swami, and I found out soon after that he was Neesha’s husband.


At 8’o’clock, everyone met in the meditation hall for meditation and chanting.
The hall was dimly lit, and candles lined the front of the stage. Painted on the sides of the stage were instructions on how to meditate. Above, the area was filled with large stone figures, all with little shrines in front of them.
A tiny looking elderly woman appeared from nowhere, and clambered up to the stage. She was dressed in orange robes, and seated herself cross-legged on the floor, in front of a microphone and by her side lay an orange tambourine. I also noticed that other tambourines were dotted around the floor of the hall, on the straw mats which we were sitting on; I made damn sure I didn’t sit next to one, suspecting you’d be forced to play it if it was beside you.

The room hushed once the woman had sat down, and after a few minutes, when no-one spoke, I realised it was because this was meditation time. I closed my eyes and started repeating my mantra, something I hadn’t done, or wanted to do, in a long while.

Suddenly, the orange-robed woman started singing.
‘Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha, Jaya Ganesha pahimam,
Sri Ganesha, Sri Ganesha, Sri Ganesha Rakshamam.’

Everyone in the hall repeated the chant, then she went on to repeat it, and again it was repeated back. People started picking up the tambourines and shaking them. I was pleased I’d made the right move to not sit next to one, till Neesha suddenly tapped me on the shoulder, gleefully waving an orange tambourine in my face. She wouldn stop waving it till I took it so I had no choice, but when she wasn’t looking, I put it on the floor by my feet and gradually pushed it away in front of me, finally shoving it underneath a Sivananda chant book.
The chant moved on to other lines, at some point arriving at the same ‘Hare Krishna’ chant from dinner, then went on still. It seemed to be going on forever. How was I ever going to be able to sit through this every day? Twice a day, I remembered, thinking of the ashram schedule I’d been given.
‘Well, it was your choice to come,’ a little sing-song voice said in my head.

When it was over, a different chant started. Then another. And another. As it was Sunday, so I discovered from reading the chant book, there were also extra chants, seemingly pages and pages of them. I looked in amazed awe at the woman leading the chants. She looked so delicate and frail but her voice was strong and piercing. Would she ever stop?

After the chanting, everyone stood up and I thought it was over, till yet another chant began, and a ritual was done in front of the stone figures on the stage.

Finally, it really was over, and I went back to the dorm. A few people were around; it seemed like most people were quite familiar with each other, and I remembered I’d come in the middle of a ‘yoga vacation’, a two week programme, so they had probably all arrived at the same time. I chatted to one or two of them, then lay on my bed under my mosquito net, and started writing in my diary. Then everything went black.

Power cuts were something that would happen several times a day, and after that first occasion, I never went to bed, or anywhere else, without my torch. But tonight, I didn’t know any of that, and had not even seen or thought about my torch since packing my rucksack 3 days ago: I had no idea where it was.

‘Ok’ I thought, ‘I’ll just find my torch, then I’ll go to the bathrooms and get ready for bed.’
I rummaged in the outer bit of my rucksack, remembering (or so I thought) that I’d put my torch somewhere in there. I rummaged and rummaged and rummaged but couldn’t lay my hands on it anywhere. After a while I became conscious of all the rustling I was making, and there were people sleeping around me. (Neesha especially, who I could hear snoring already). I rustled some more, trying to rustle quietly, which is of course by its nature impossible. I couldn’t even remember bringing any rustly plastic bags with me, but apparently there were now millions inside my rucksack. Maybe I can find the bathrooms anyway, I thought. I got up and started feeling my way along the dorm, towards where I’d remembered the bathrooms were. I couldn’t see one step in front of me, and the path I was taking seemed to be going on and on. I stumbled in the dark with my arms out in front of me and felt around me for a gap, I knew the bathrooms were to the right and left of the dorm hall, but I was disoriented: I couldn’t work anything out. Then I banged into something loud and metallic. This might be it, I thought, but it wasn’t, it was the door that led outside. By this time I was getting a bit desperate for the loo, but I just couldn’t find the right way to go. I decided to make my way back and have another look for my torch; it had to be somewhere. I found my cubicle somehow and sat down on the floor next to my rucksack, thinking, I’ll just systematically take everything out, till I’ve found the torch. I started pulling things out one by one, placing them as quietly on the floor as I could, around me. More and more stuff was coming, but no torch. I got right to the bottom of my rucksack: now the floor was completely full; no wonder my rucksack weighed 19 kilos, what was all this stuff? - but still I couldn’t find the damn thing. Emotion rose up suddenly in me again. I was exhausted from everything, the last couple of days. Getting to India, losing my luggage, Mumbai, the shenanigans at the airport. Id been focusing on just getting to the ashram and feeling safe, and it was a relief to be here, but it was weird too. Everything was strange. Everything looked different, sounded different, smelt different. Not that I’d thought it wouldn’t, not that I even wanted it not to be. I just felt lost. And I did need the loo really badly. I sat on the floor cross-legged, buried in the contents of my rucksack, in the pitch black, and started to cry, (as quietly as I could). I cried and cried and cried; and when I finally stopped I felt around me, and put as much back in my rucksack as I could. I crawled under my mosquito net and lay on the bed, resigning myself to the fact that I wouldn’t get to the loo, and hoped I’d just fall asleep from the exhaustion. I’d almost convinced myself that I’d eventually drop off to sleep when I saw a torchlight shining across the floor. The person who had the bed next to mine had come back and she had a torch! I scrambled out of the mosquito net and asked to borrow it. She smiled and handed it to me and I practically skipped to the bathrooms. After I came back, I was getting into bed and just about to turn off the torch when I noticed its light shining on something on top of my mosquito net. What was that? Some huge horrible cockroach or poisonous spider? I jumped back, about to run screaming down the corridor, before catching it from another angle and realising it was the bit of tissue Neesha had wedged into one of the holes.

When I woke up in the morning, there was my torch, right at the top of my rucksack.

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