the war is almost over and the party never ends

it's a been a long road since marx (which i still read) and ayn rand (which i don't) and yesterday for perhaps the most obvious time in my life i met a guy who does magic. he works in a bank or some other kafkian profession by day and sits in his basement under a Huge (worth of the adjective "Indian-style") painting of Mataji and tells people the future.

mataji is a goddess. i don't know much about her but she has ten arms and many of them have weapons. the paintining his basement shrine, which i had plenty of time to study, features her trampling the dead bodies of two slain foes, making touching her feet in respect slightly more difficult than usual. a super-size garland of flowers adorns the super-size painting (think church doorway) and a sheated sword covers most of the altar. there's a lot of incense going -- the points i would have been "on the verge of tears" at any other ritual i was actually crying at this one.

homeboy, ashwinbhai, is a devotee of mataji and has received a special gift from her. he can tell the future (or some version of it, i guess) and he can see in the distant. he knows where you live and what your house looks like and can tell you some of what goes on there.

the beautiful social part of this whole affair is that everybody comes to this guy with their little and big problems and he publicly questions them, offers advice, jokes, and generally makes everyone relax. he's one of the best-natured gujarati's i've met. totally chill. i guess a gift from god will do that for you.

imagined conversation with an american #1

ank: ... his gift from god
imam: do you believe it?
ank: what's there to believe?
imam: that he has a gift from god.
ank: well, that's what they call it.
imam: well how do you know?
ank: i dont. he does. its not my gift, dude.

but now i do know. worried parents approach (everyone is seated, they scoot forward when young couple leaves) and ask about their babu (son). it's exam time, so everyone in india is stressed.

"we're worried about our son's studies".

homebody has a little pile of whole grain wheat and a white sheet in front of him. he plays with the wheat, throwing it and collecting it over and over on the sheet. stares into the distance.

he lives in a hostel
"yes" look of shock and smile
on the third floor
"yes" further shock surprise

his exam today went very well. stop worrying. pray to mataji

and so on. my mom had told me. she came last month and he described our house in sequim. big mountains and trees and barn and the whole bit. she came with my cousin who is occassionally depressed or otherwise down. he looks at her and says "you do puja with the wick vertical. why? it's causing you problems. stop"

she's shocked. she's never told anyone how she does the puja. everyone in the family/caste does it with the wick horizontal. she decides to change.

another couple comes. they talk about money or property and are about to leave. before they get up he addresss the woman. "a while ago you used oil for your puja instead of ghee, to save money. it's a bad idea" she turns bright red. they leave.

a man asks about two hundred thousand points a muslim owes him in surat. it was four years ago. will he get the money. ashwinbhai asks "gorandur road?" no, he says, he used to live in XXX and now i dont know. ashwin repeats "gorandur road." no, he says, i dont kn.... "gorandur road". he stares into the wheat. "is where he is. you'll get half the money. dont try for all"

etc,

the point is my mom took me to see my future because, well, she's a litle worried about my future. so i get up there and im like, i have nothing to ask (mr. senator) but that's fine they'll ask for me. ajaymama (uncle) introduces me. this is my sister's son

"the one who travels everywhere with just one bag." yes, yes, my sister's son. she wants to know if he'll settle down...

so my mom asks if i'll marry, settle down, where, who, etc. and homeboy says i will settle down in india. he says the stars are good for my marriage right now and for the next six months. if i marry i will marry an indian girl. after six months (diwwali season) if i'm not married i will likely become a saddhu.

a saddhu is a sort of holy man. he can be taking care of a temple or wandering the ruas moreias at dawn or making webpages for an ashram. he's taken some vows and not others, lives simply and has no restrictions on facial hair. most saddhus you find are devotees of shiva, stoned, and shoeless. they seem pretty psyched about life.

so that's my future, apparently. my own understanding of spacetime leads me to see it as a possible future among many that i and you together are constantly creating for ourselves. but i guess it's good to know. i didnt ask anything because i didnt want to know.

unfrountely, that was just part one. part two is twenty-four hours later after dinner in ajaymama's house when these five indian adults descend upon me like the eastern inquisition about whether im thinking about finding a girl and who should they start lookig and how id better get serious about settling down. i made the disastrous mistake of not ignoring them, involved myself in conversation, and only the promise of ice cream and meditation kept me afloat during the ensuing melee.

but im okay, still single, not quite indian, and planning on walking 380 km, from ahmedabad to dandi, starting sunday.

much love,
ankur

i believe i found amerika in you

"i believe i found a miracle in you"

this morning i took a bus from jamnagar back to ahmedaba, was woken up by military propoganda pelicula at two in the morning (no fat burger in sight; the other half of the films are dual love stories), fell black asleep and off the bus at nehunagar circle. a supplementary four hours of morning sleep ritual supplanted the atypical-typical yoga and meditation and i woke up talking to my mom.

my nice, minty, is in the evolving stages of an arranged marriage process. she is twenty and smart and pretty and has a shirt that says "denim beauty". a few days ago her family went to bhavanagar (city of love) to meet the diamond merchant family (same caste, even same last name, no relation in the narrow spectacular sense) and every body had a capital time. so now they're talking on the phone and it looks like she's a lucky girl and going to get married sometime soon.

this is interesting to me on a number of spaceship levels, most immediate of which is that i'm her mama (maternal uncle) and i volunteered some time ago (mr. anderson) to be the mama who gives her away and otherwise plays various important roles in the marriage. which i can't do from, say, brasil or the astral plane or whatnot. at this point.

on another level i'm kind of shocked that a young "denim beauty" jean-clad educating twenty-year old girl would be into the arrange ("introduced", better said) marriage idea. i would think the younger generation would be westernized enough to engage with (fall for) one of the primary application of the western myth/cult (i dont mean that in a pejorative sense, at all) of personal freedom: falling in love. as in, i will fall in love with The Right Person and it will be awesome.

my mom explained to me that India is much deeper than speaking english or wearing blue jeans and whatever westernizations and amerikanizations i see are primarily going to be superficial. these kids pick and choose: they eat shity pizza and curry on white bread (soak-toast/ed with lots of butter) but are still vegetarian, love their parents, etc. and introduced marriages are basically no work for the kids and gets rid of a lot of stress. dating seems to be the most stressful thing in india after school exams (which are tearing this country apart and together simultaneous: more on them later), i think because dating here is very largely in the shadow of marriage. there's no dating qua dating as such, just the young clueless bachelor's responsibility (instead of his clued-in family's) to get a wife who will satisfy The Royal Infinite Indian Everyone.

at some point the particularities broke down in my mind to the notion that whoever we are we tend to live within and follow our cultural norms. for the vast majority of people, how you're raised is you how you live and who you-in-the-world is (as opposed to the heading-towards-paramatan of the you-as-yourself). and for some reason the crystals hardened in my mind and i told my mind what i had never told myself before:

[something like...]

a: mom. i think this might help us understand what i'm doing. most people live their lives in obeyance of time and space, as a response to the accidents and contigencies of their existence. i ...

mom: don't give me your mumbo-jumbo

a: um, okay.

[pause]

a: mom. i'm trying to live outside of spacetime.

the conversation slightly improved from their and we got to a point where she kind of acknowledged i would never "shape-up" and the i that i am was going to be the i that i would be. she accepted it to a degree and spent a good amount of time complaining about my "filthy appearance" and how i should shave and how i never washed my clothes. so i tried to tell her that i washed my clothes every day, just not with any kind of skill, but there's really no point in justifying anyhow. still learning that.

at least or myself, i realized that what i'm trying to do -- and i know and i fucking LOVE knowing i am not alone in this, that i have friends and brothers and lovers and sisters who are on this path, and perhaps even BESTER, that i have friends and brothers and lovers and sisters who are NOT -- is trying to live outside the accidents of my existence. describing this simple truth is fraught with metaphysical dangers and i know i'm not clear or precise enough to avoid them all. but whatever. there is a one love truth manifest in myriad form. there have been heroes and heroines throughout recorded and mythical history who have transcended their societies' social norms and particularities towards the apprenhension of the one love. each states it differently according to their residual self-image: those aspects of their incarnation, selfhood, ego, or history they chose to retain.

one of the lovely aspects of all this for me is the incredible compassion of the Teachers. imagine that jesus buddha ken wilber osho whoever acheives enlightenment for a moment. enlightenment as i understand it -- from the accidents of my education -- is a probability space and doesn't imply one is there all the time or is above owning a rolex watch here and there. somehow. so maybe they have this decision to play in the noumenal realm for another moment (all the yugas) or to back, to descend, and to teach and to demonstrate for the love of the masses. and its only this magnificent compassion that brings buddha back to the ficus tree, that keeps his smile on and his skin dark. its only this magnificent compassion that allows us to differentiate osho from krishnamurti and distinguish the enlightened masters from eachother (jesus is more loving than osho, osho is smarter than jesus). they have to choose some form to reenter the matrix and so they do knowing its all illusion but accepting out of love for you and me. its like the whole "dude, they died for your sins" argument except its "dude, they relived for your sins". either way, respect.

and maybe -- this is pure judgement and speculation now because i dont truly amazon-style understand any of what i'm talking about -- its this decision of descent and compassion which allows them to fall prey to the pitfalls of the spectacle, the love of the money and the weird collections of rolls royces that sai baba had and krishnamurti's affair and all of it. or maybe nothing is a sin or "wrong" anyhow and once you're There you can see that and have as much orange marmelade in the morning as you Damn Well Please.

the point is that the last three days since coming back from malavika in bangalore have been fraught with magical coincidence revolving around meditation its various shapes and colors. i have seen the future and manifested it. i have consistently had dreams that came true, whims that were immeditately gratified, and random people approach me and tell me i was on the right path.

even my family has been somewhat supportive. naturally after i made a conscious decision and meditation to give up all expectation of being understood -- as malavika and st. francis recommend -- and focus instead on understanding. my uncle told me when i came to india i looked like a hippie, now he feels i have learned something and look like a seeker of truth. my aunt says i look like a rishi and have finally come to the right track. they like the cookbook. they want the cocktail version (its all you, uz and kevin). my flute guru told me something very special and kind (in a language i didn't quite understand) and basically everything i'm here for is coming together like that brasilian tapioca breakfast.

it involves the thread from cooking through ayurved through reiki back to dungeons and dragons and the paladin curing two hit points per level with his hands. that's basically what i'm headed towards and the two primary methodologies are quite obviously the flute and the mediation. both are based in the breath -- this tenuous and permanent connection across time and space, across will and reflex, bridging the narrow and broad versions of the 'i'.

okay i ate a couple of neilu's usa-mailed cookies an hour ago and lunch will shortly be served. thank you neilu. thank you krishna. most of all, thank you to the dolphins. one day i'll meet k+d and i can thank them as well.

i'm doing well.

love
ankur

traversing mangolandia

fools and sisters. ive been traveling for a couple of weeks now, saddled down to kerala through namita, child, and bombay, and got to malavika in anangan/panamanna on the 18th. 2.5 million people were meditating in bangalore, gui was making a move, and we were eating a lot of dosas. since then, ive eaten a lot of dosas. its been good. ive written some and danced some and ill write some more when i get the chance. until then know that ill be writing on her blog as well and that be easier than writing on mine on.

its called "Gaia Tripping" and i just added something to it, a description of mali's penultimately recent (does that make sense) performance...

ankur

2006 contact information

my mobile phone number is now

+91
99241 94890


my next address in india will be

74 tapovan society
S.M. Road
ambavadi
ahmedabad
380-015
gujarat
india

winter is over. some updates:

1.
so the photos have either copied or moved to
somethingconstructive.net/mangolandia

2.
ama-zoni-a and i wrote a cookbook, recipes from brasil and philosophy from the ancients, at
somethingconstructive.net/jamanta

3.
i still love dolphins, went to marine reserve, and have still never seen any outside of sea world (tm).

4.
i spent all my free time in the last couple of months and much time i should have been studying (no guilt) or participating in temple life (i live in a temple; some guilt) working on it. you can read about it and even order a copy online at
somethingconstructive.net/jamanta

5.
my brother chanoor (does not drinks) got me a flute. a present from bombay when he went down last week to take a lesson from hariprasad(ji) chaurasia. he gave it to me today, me totally emocione, and its so perfect and beautiful. so now i have no excuses, a real flute thats better by much than i am and togetherly we shall learn.
ayurved classes finish friday. i have learned so much and nothing. ayurved is as deep as the pacific. i understand how to do and when to do some minor treatments and i will start whenever i can. my next step is shrouded in mystery, to me.

6.
today is 30 january 06. maybe exactly 58 years (missile time) after gandhi(ji)'s assassination. this morning in the middle of surgery (leech application) class we had a two minute break of silence and i sat under the pipal tree (ficus religiousa, banyan, buddha enlightenment tree) in the courtyard and tried to put somethings together.
mainly interweaving with memories of three years ago in new york city, took the day off of work (thanks jed) and meditated (before i knew i knew how) and went even to some sort of thing at the UN, for gandhiji and martin luther king. theres a sculpture there -- the picture might be in piscataway, new jersey -- of a revolver larger than a horse with the barrel twisted into a not. pretty powerful.

"
jan 30 - Gandhi's death versary. 2 minutes of silence in the courtyard; he is from sauroastrar [this peninsula, where jamnagar is]. He is out father. I feel like Gandhi is the 1st Gujarati to understand me, the only of my beloved relatives to fall under family, to understand my path and struggle alongside me.
there's a professor speaking and maybe his words are a final exam in Gujarati for me. i don't understand them; my mind is elsewhere. Maybe it's a final exam in focus.
I think of John Giuliano's fridge and photograph -- the front cover of a magazine showing the Pope's first foray out of the hospital, to visit and ask/give forgiveness toward the man who shot him. I think of Paresh talking about the temple at Ayodhya. Israeli students and Palestinian refugee counting their grievances. Can we replace the words? Can we dub over torture, over cries of agony with gestures of forgiveness? Can you see the short film, the cutting cinema of bosnian refugees, of rioters and broken buildings and mistaken amputations and mass graves with some soundtrack of forgiveness, some simple bhajan that understands what john understands and what gandhiji lived and died for?

In the pranami [the krishna sect in whose world hq temple i live] holy book we were reading the other day, they say 11 centuries after the koran will come a new time, a new man. or something significant. maybe it was jan 30 1948 and the savior was john wilks booth who killed gandhiji.
maybe He is ushering in an era of forgiveness. we must seek forgiveness within ourselves before we seek truth. it's the same of course, but aftert the most murderous century ever recorded has passed through us, has become part of us, maybe now is the time to forgive...
"

7.
much love my friends. sorry this blog has been such a disaster. caught in the middle of pubic and private, no doubt. from here on out im just going to be honest, not try to pretend to have any real knowldege -- ayurvedic or knot -- to share, and not be concerned with the Unknown who may read. those who know this is for them shall understand this is for them.

as for the rest, stool sex mushrooms vitriol. it's all here and none of its prurient. so there.

love
ankur