A huge rush of words

I've been back in Hyderabad for a week. It's taken me a week to actually unpack not because I have that much stuff but because I've just been sitting here watching my suitcase sprawled across the floor of my room. I'm not ready to be here for long? Well, that's a good thing because I leave for my trip to Europe in another week. Morocco, Portugal, and a bit of Spain. I haven't left the country in a year and a half. That's the longest I've stayed put in any one country since 2000. Have always been traveling between the West and home.
Then I look forward to Thailand. Ko Samui and possibly some Bangkok. I'm headed to Yoga Thailand. I ran into someone whose eyes went as wide as her entire face because she loved Ko Samui so much. Gee, good for her. If I love it half as much, it will be worth it!
I hate cribbing about the traffic in Hyderabad only because every person is doing so. But please, I need a moment to recover from all the possibly near-death experiences I had this evening. There are those taxi drivers who drive as if they have shot off from a cannon. nothing can stop them. they blow their horn, curse you out, bang your bumper, but carry on. The funniest is the sticker at the back "If you don't like my driving, call 9988445789", the irony being that those cabs are never around long enough for us to actually note the number.
Then there are those annoying bastards who insist on incessant honking while waiting for the traffic light. Where do you want me to move, you idiot? It's RED, it means wait till green. But no, he's honking every 5 seconds because his pea-sized brain can't understand that.
I never play the "men vs. women" game, but can I just say, I've never been harassed by a woman driver. So i think the men need to get off the road and leave it for us. We'll play Madonna and Lata in our cars and have a happy ride wherever we're going. Even at that time of the month.
I'm going through a bit of a Neil Young discovery phase. I first listened to Harvest Moon which I really liked. Then I bought Comes a Time, which I'm not sure about. But Harvest (not Harvest Moon) seems to be the #1 album he's had. Our extremely knowledgeable Music World salesman can surely help me find it (ha).
Now that I've squeezed all the sarcasm out of my system, I'm feeling good and mellow. It's a lovely night, the moon's full, I'm alone at home. Sigh.

Sacred Space

The conscious and
unconscious are poles.
Between them thought
has made a swing.
All beings and all worlds hang there.
Myriad beings exist there.
Myriad ages pass
and the swing goes on.

- Kabir

My time here in Mysore is coming to an end. In some ways, nothing has worked out that way I had initially thought it would. But I've found it to be really negotiable and it hasn't interfered with my state of happiness. I totally understand why people have summer homes or winter retreats if they can afford it. Taking 2 months off from your life and the people you are always around/managing feels like a necessity. I think I'll need to do something like this for the rest of my life. 2-week vacations per year are out of the question.

Living in Mysore is like living in the Jungle. Black ants all over the kitchen (no matter how hard you try to keep them out), monkeys in the balconies waiting to steal food from the kitchen, horses and cows lazing around the city on street corners, and pigs scouring food around the bins. It's also funny to see all the yoga students talking to them as they pass by......

The shortest response to "what have you been up to"

Diwali was a long time ago. Since then, my brother got married (picture the great big Indian wedding), I took a job at the all-new Novotel Hyderabad as a marketing services associate (yeah, i still don't know anything about marketing), developed nasty acne and belly aches through the next 6 months, quit my job, and moved to coconut-tree-infested Mysore for 2 months to practice ashtanga vinyasa yoga.

I return to Hyderabad at the end of September.

Hello Again

I stopped writing to this blog because I felt like I had nothing to say. Sometimes having a blog seems unnecessary. I couldn't really justify a reason for posting my thoughts or stories from my life online for the world to read. But I've also been feeling rather non-communicative for the last few months and that could have been the bigger issue.

Besides, my blog had "expired". Nothing has ever died on me (yet), can't let that happen can I?

So here we go again....