shes leaving home

ah, infamous "as if" striking once again. its a sunday afternoon and
im postponing the inevitable early afternoon pee to write a little
email. my last day in kuppadi once again and perhaps not the last
time. its been just over five weeks of intense flute playing,
occassional flute gorging, and daily intimacy with lower-middle class
keralan life. i feel i have some understanding of these people; which
is to say, some compassion, some heartache, and some question over
what it is a little i can do to help...

which always seems to be the question. and there it sits shaken and
dusted on the shelf as i head tomorrow across state lines and into
tamil nadu, the famed mexico of india, full of even more dosa and
mangos than this, the chilean counterpart. ramana maharshi's
knowledgeable spirit has me invited (please bring a print out the
email, says the ashram) to stay five days and find our krishna's
eternal lodging place in the heart. jan 17-22nd. i have a train ticket
from chennai to nagpur, two places i've never been on the 25th.

i think i can play the flute. or, as my teacher says, "now, i think
you can play something. before it was just shoo, shoo, shoo. and now
you have some tone."

i've never felt this way before, i'm having the time of my life, and
i'm really enjoying it. we're not quite at accomplishment yet but
there is some pride of having stuck with this music -- easily the
hardest non-human challenge i've ever attmepted -- for long enough to
enjoy hearing myself play. if that makes any sense.

on the 27th there is a natural farming conference in maharastra which
i'll be attending, enshallah. urban gardening and permacultism and
fukuoaka style agriculture and the whole bit. i have some ideas id
like to share and people to meet. after that ill be back in gujarat
with access to email and phones on a regular basis and ill be missing
Everything and ready to settle down and do some work for a good long
month.

here i'll be leaving young perennial bean plants which were sprouted
with the full moon and will be transplated with the new one. tomatoes,
amaranth, holy basil, and young chiles. a happy little garden that
will hopefully provide meaning and maybe even sustenance for my
friends here.

working on getting a column off the ground, "Ankurbhai" cooking for
the 22nd century, blah blah, you know the drill. and hopefully write
this book on gandhi in the interstices of my travels.

love
ankur