Escape from
Sent:
As I promised, this post
comes a little closer on the heels of the
last one, and will be more
brief...
I write now from the town of
where I am staying for my final two weeks in
residence at an ashram here and have six
hours of class a day
covering various forms of yoga, meditation,
and Indian philosophy.
Although my hope was to also catch some
hikes in the forested hills I
fear somewhat the imprisonment of the
monsoons. Along with the mist
that rises off the
brought knee-high flooding through some of
the streets here and the
trails may be in similar condition. No
worries, though. The
courses, my new Indian flute, and my book
stack, along with the
exceptionally cool travellers
and yogis this place seems to draw,
will no doubt keep me occupied.
I arrived here this morning on an express
(average speed: 40 km/h)
train from
eloquently magical and chaotic prose, I fear
I don't possess an
adequate gift with words to describe that
place.
a place gone mad with mysticism, image,
ritual, and pilgrimage, and
river, it is known by travellers
as the city of learning and burning,
visited for its music courses as well as the
eternal fires that
cremate corpses before their descent into
the river and eternal
salvation.
Whether you believe it holy or not, the
hypnotizing; the swirling multidirectional
waves and eddies speak of
horrific treasures beneath the surface and
the occasional shrouded
corpse floating by lends to its atmosphere
of mystery. It is as if
the very subconscious of
morning I awoke in my basement dungeon at
the Vishnu Rest House,
sweeping crickets and roaches into the river
only meters from my
room, wondering if the coming rains would
wash me away with the
babies, pregnant women, saddhus,
and lepers who float down the river
unburned. Despite the pleas of devout
Hindus on my train ride to the
holy city, I never bathed in the
bacterial count 250,000 times the WHO limit
was my own holy ward.
My hope in visiting this mad place was to
study Indian flute and
yoga, but in the end I admit that I
chickened out. The narrow alleys
full of dung, the constant barrage of
beggars, pushers, hustlers,
touts, and saddhus
unsettled my mind too much for calm study. Now
that I am among slightly wider streets and
hills, with but one lone
cricket in my bedroom, my state of mind is
much improved. Someday I
will go back to Varanasi,
this time a bit more prepared, perhaps, but
for now I am safely back in the hills.
On the book front, I am almost finished with
Rushdie's "
Children," which is perhaps the most
masterfully woven novel I have
yet to encounter. The story is less
fluid and readable, perhaps,
than "The Moor's Last Sigh," but
my admiration for the text is
deeper. I have also picked up a
phenomenal collection of essays
edited by Fritjof
Capra called "Guiding Business Towards
Sustainability" that I am finding very inspiring. One
of the
articles is by the CEO of Patagonia who
viciously critiques MBA
education as hiding issues of sustainability
and promoting the
destructive consumerist philosophies of
business that now threatent
the world. Gives me
a nice sense of detachment about teh
decision, which has still yet to come.
I have also picked up E.F. Schumaker's "Small is Beautiful" a classic
text on alternative/Buddhist influenced
economics. Brilliantly
reasoned and poignant, the text shows how
deep a sin it is that the
economics courses at Harvard purvey such a
narrow perspective to the
future leaders of the world. Go Jane
for handing out those flyers
outside the Ec 10
lecture hall.