brothers and sisters~ hail from rishikesh, the yoga capital of india. after waking up at dawn on saturday morning for our obligatory ganges boat ride in varanasi, we spent a solid 24 hours on the train heading west to haridwar, then another hour on the public bus to rishikesh, and finally another hour searching for a room in a guesthouse. we were stared at on the train by villagers in the morning, chatted with a college student painfully excited by being able to talk about our foreign culture with him in the early afternoon, and finally proceeded to our correct compartment and met a south indian family on a pilgrimage tour of north india in the evening. alp witnessed one of their compatriots doing early morning yoga in his berth and shrieking like a monkey... and felt great admiration for him.
as for rishikesh itself, it is quite clean and well-planned out for an indian town. it has two large pedestrian suspension bridges over the ganges and countless ashrams with large colourful religious sculptures on the banks. we plan on doing some watercolours in our new colouring book, perhaps by the river, and probably will not avail of the limitless yoga, acupuncture, reiki, massage, etc,etc, oppurtunities available here. by doing so, we would run the risk of meeting too many hippies. eww!!!
i have been a little ill lately, feeling tired and the like. we have availed of all the ayurvedic pharmacies in town however and last night i got some nose drops for my sinusitis that smell/taste like mango chutney! and by the way... that blog entry entitled "the runs" was metaphoric rather than literal. we have fortunately escaped a major case of the runs...
2 comments:
dear members of the CCC
ahh. so you are absolutely enjoying yourselves, and becoming more and more like new agey hippies. No? here, in the land of civilization, we have just passed an exciting halloween, full of the regalia of fine costumery. Nate and I passed the eve in a memorable get up of leaders of the Dark army. both of us donned black attire, with deathly masks that glowed in the dark, and a fancy mouth piece that exuded a sickly green neon light. we spent the better part of the day making our matching shields and wings out of sticks, animal jaw bones, thatching and jute twine, constructing giant weapons out of cardboard and painting our bodies with bloody wounds and black tatoos. the better part of the night was spent acting in a ridiculous manner to the anthem of a black sabbath cover band in north garden (by the way, you were greatly missed). now, we pass the day of souls, wondering when the fine, unusually warm weather will end, and what to do with our lives.... we need gurus here too, you know. As you know, election day is tomorrow, and it has been predicted that we will not know who our leader will be for weeks. already there are acusations of foul play, for both combatants. the polls give bush 48% and kerry 47% at this point, and i am very worried. i hope that you are voting ingrid. the republicans are even somewhat concerned over virginia, saying that it may sway towards kerry, even though va has a good reputation for being republican as hell. so, we wait. and hope. ingrid, i think you should write a short story soon, as i find your writing quite beautiful and captivating. i am sorry to hear of your ailments, and i hope you will feel well soon. as far as torture.... well lemme think about it
love marie
dear i&a, have thought of you all quite a lot mwf at 2pm because that is sanskrit classtime and lately we have gotten sidetracked from translation and into telling stories. such as this found in most all the puranas: to be immortal the gods needed to drink ambrosia but this could only be had by throwing all manner of drugs and vegetables into the big ocean of milk surrounding the world and churning it up. and so thus they took the mountain mandara and turned it upside down and wrapped the king of snakes around it and churned and churned and up sprang all sorts of things but one of them was the ambrosia they were looking for. and then of a sudden a demon snatches it up and drinks some looking to be immortal and the gods see just in time and lop his head off. so thus only his head is immortal and runs about eating the sun and the moon sometimes, but they just come right back out his neck, having no body. = eclipse.
this i think is a very good story and disembodied things eating is always very funny (recall the ghosts in 'casper' having breakfast and also a scene in 'pirates of the carribbean' when the captain's drink runs down all over his ribs and out onto the floor again).
but mango-chutney nose drops - how exciting!
as far as execution i think something fast and powerful sort of in-the-heat-of-battle head lopped off in one stroke. (but when will i be battling? there is not too much of that in charlottesville just now.) i think socrates was beautifully described in drinking the hemlock but i would not choose that was of execution because i hear it is not really so dignified as plato made it sound - not lying down and becoming numb but more gasping and convulsing. lopping of heads has much more dignity and a long and noble history.
all about charlottesville that i know is that the weather is spectacular and everyone is racing about on bicycles.
marie you heard black sabbath songs - i wish now i'd gone! but was so tired.
best to you both, take care,
rebekah.
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