The sun has just set on another day that begun painfully on the yoga mat.
We have made a three-week stay in Varkala into a little getaway that gave a sneak (just that) peek into the "India" that would have been engineered to get travellers into believing in they were in "the India" and that elusive piece that... well, almost kept eluding us. Although I would still say that three weeks are a short time, in fact, anytime would be too short to get to know a place beyond all the surface make-up, you probably could get away with a slice of the pie - after taste - depending on anything as random as your mood of the day, your ability to dive deep or rise up from it.
Today marked too, the proverbial last bastion that makes or breaks a 21-day formed habit. I have not missed (not planning to) a morning's practice as dutifully as a teenager marking off the date to that first ever concert. Also, today was the fourth day my hamstrings were reminding me of my age (and my years of ignorance) with those "good pain" shooting off the maiden stretch at our yoga class. Sigh.
What else? I went down town to soak in some atmosphere. Saw a lot of perhaps, was a more "Varkala" Varkala beyond the strip off the cliffs, strings of Rajasthani makes of little elephants and bells, rubbish amassing more apparently now observed from our early morning walk to our class, and the heady incense that perfumed the air with jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood - all a vain and lame attempt at masking what laid submerged underneath the inherent behaviour of what we didn't notice at the initial landing. It's like breaking into guerilla territory. Getting into the hustle and bustle, with its full blast of auto horns warning cyclists, hens and kids or anything else in its thunderous way (we were told that the loud squawks were reserved purely for out of the city zone, otherwise a hefty penalty awaited the driver) that brought a smile to my face - how I missed the real deal! - was a refreshing coming up for air from the Utopian petri dish that I had been swimming in for weeks.
It was a lovely, good time. Yet I never ceased to feel that I was walking in this state of sleeping "awakening" because beyond the real pain of building my little yoga blocks of knowledge and practice, anything else beyond my yoga world was strangely coated with that sickening greasy, diabetically sweet layer of prettiness that served to motivate me to believe that I had been away from home in a foreign, exotic land. Still, we made a home out of this place and got to know more about a place that we would look back where we learned more about what we needed to learn, mixed with some very warm people who welcome us into their homes and shared their time (locals and travellers who had stopped a wee bit longer here as well as one-day stoppers) and to see a weird mix of Kashmiri, Nepalese, Orissan and all others except real Varkalans (!) faces belting out foreign (usually Western) accented greetings to "look is free, come buy at my shop", and witnessed the begging mentality.
For instance, remember somewhere along your life someone told you to buy the worst house in the best neighbourhood? We did exactly that, not exactly owning in perpetuity but paid enough to last throughout our stay here at a room (still quite civil and decent, fresh towels are all I need) that was situated on a property that had a lovely lawn. Unfortunately it was also built next to someone who considered that strip of beach prime location too. This restaurant opened up late from the evening, bringing levels of anxiety and anticipation high from its nightly board announcement - "All night happy hour!", "DJ music all night long!", "Hard rock hip hop happening all here!" - three nights ago, they closed at four in the morning, I thought I may had fainted out of exhaustion instead of sleep. The waiters behaved like real goonda from their gangster display of blatant disregard for any plea or threat to lower the music volume. This lack of courtesy and smarty ass remarks in the forms of "go find another room" prevailed due to none other than the restaurant proprietor had paid off the police. Oh, you will see him. The man strapped in his full uniform, walking like a heavy-breasted pigeon every morning, parading up and down that strip collecting his "presents" and newspaper wrapped "money donation". Nevermind the lousy music selection, the waiters were told to stand in the way of passerbys and shout out not-so-friendly greetings (almost scaring you into submission) in any presumed foreign language done absolutely on how they perceived what you looked like. I personally, got Japanese and Korean. Given hubby understood Tamil and Malayalam, it was appalling to hear these boys hooted out their hellos to foreign tourists whom are (beyond day one was enough) forming a resistance to refuse such bully behaviour, only to mouth off some crude comments about anyone who simply didn't want to sit, eat or drink at that venue. It was hypocritical and downright irritating. Sigh twice.
We made friends with midgies too. Tonnes of them come out every night. More pronounced when it wasn't a breezy night. Boy did they pack a bite! When you made up your mind to stay at a place, you dug in your heels to put up a good struggle, despite having your romantic declaration for each other before good nights interrupted by a loud smack that you realised was your right hand slapping down those green bastards on your left arm. Please excuse me as I had to kill one of these buggers.
You fall in love with the beach again. You get sick of tourist "Indian banana leaf" dinners. Snores and farts at your daily yoga class become not even the slight distraction but make juicy gossip later over pancakes.
You get creative and make friends, you invite and get invited to real Keralan cook-up. You share conversations that make good friendships that aren't too "posh" or too "adult" for a light-hearted banter on trivial considerations such as "do butterflies taste with their feet?" and London stage plays (Dr Parkster, pleasure is all ours!). You give back in any small way, you learn to not succumb to just giving pennies away to buy away your guilt.
The latter, I am talking about the beggars. Many amongst us was a group of women who masqueraded as mothers, using one baby (who usually had to endure the unenviable position of posing for the duration of the entire day's pretension that amounted, to my opinion, as daylight child abuse and robbery) to walk around asking for money to "feed my child". Men who are physically challenged in ways of deformed limbs or a seemly crutch that looked suspiciously a prop, shouting at us should we refused to give them money. Children that were made to beg, whether in forms of outright tagging along you or coercing you to come into their shops, all made more confusingly wrong when they should be in school yet they aren't. One little girl was wearing an old, ragged looking girl's school uniform that were obviously not hers. She was looking after the slippers section. I have nothing to say.
It may looked calm and balmy here. It is, but in the shadows of darkness, drugs and stabbings take place. Sometimes, maybe there is a monster lurking underneath your bed.
You develop a routine. Take the funnily named and marketed "German Bakeries". I would have the luxury of glancing at the rows of freshly baked "French baguette" and "Plain croissant" that laid in baskets that resembled little bee maggots drenched in Hershey's chocolate syrup. My favourite was the chocolate brownie. They even threw in a hazelnut to top it up!
As we edged closer to departure date, I had this sense of dread that I was leaving a pattern, a place I had got to know, a familiar smell, yet I was excited that I was getting back on the road to see the good, bad and the ugly. It was one of the best times of my life here but I knew somehow it was not a sustainable existence. Would I come back here? Never say never. Would I never leave. Definitely never say never.
But we had surely made a "home" out of a foreign place. You get your sweet notes of belonging - finding your favourite dish, making vows of returning for that dosa, knowing which shop priced their shampoos and renewed their ice cream stocks better, exchanging your books at "your preferred" stall - and also bitter ones like learning to ignore a bad neighbour's poor music consideration (4 a.m. is still too late buddy!) and tolerate the cleaning lady's forgetfulness to return your wastepaper basket (smile). You established your habits, you got past some initial coldness of the "locals" who were running a business here but who were probably missing their real homes as much as you. You got money credit when you didn't have enough change for that cup of chai. You borrowed a spoon there, you refused to pay Rs50 for The Hindu because you knew the local running rate. You basked in the warmth of Kumari Chechi who was genuinely sad because she forgot to cook the potatoes, hence not feeding you enough when you popped over for a local Keralan dinner.
You saw, no matter from where you came from, a parent's love will supersede race, colour, creed. Yes, even those kids who manned the shops. Although a blue moon, I saw one morning a young mother, deftly combed out head lice from her daughter. To us, it may not be the best or most enticing example yet the look on the little girl's face was of delight and belonging. A little man who was a big brother, used to come over to our lawn's hammock to rock his baby brother to sleep in his arms. Seeing both brothers in embrace, you knew that despite the goonda next door, the happy mix of a life that the people here made for us and for themselves served to remind you that every day is a different day, a special one that never quite repeat itself. I felt that strongly when I first arrived, perhaps it got less progressively as I got a bit used to my little "home" patterns and rituals here but it was always nice to be reminded of something important and of value.
Just like how I know I will be greeted by my little pack of dogs tomorrow as we walked to our "Sunshine Cafe" for our chai, again, served automatically as assumed by the crew's understanding built over weeks of knowledge that these two will come over, will sit down at those maroon-coloured chairs with their green checkered table, get up and pay at half past to make their way for their yoga at eight - I know I will miss home, like how I have always miss the homes I had made in our stays in India, and the hearts of our families.
ps: Mum and dad, if you are reading this, we'll be in Perth real soon! See you all, lots of love!
