I'm Back!

Hey hey hey.
It's been awhile, but I'm heading out on the road again for a brief turn, and thought it would be a good opportunity to put out a little new post. I leave for Oaxaca in a few days. I'll be in Oaxaca City for a bit, then head out to the coast for "hot" yoga. Some students from Agama (the place I studied in Thailand one year ago!) are teaching down there and I can't wait to get back for more studies.
It's my last bit of travel for awhile. Next month I'll join the faculty at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. I'm really looking forward to it -- I'll be splitting my time between working their clinic and teaching the med students. I've been working there part time this past year and totally LOVING it, so I'm excited to continuing the work in a more substantial way.
If anyone's got any Oaxaca favorites, please let me know!

Back to The Farm

Another quote until I get a chance to blog about the Gandhi and Globalization course at Navdanya:
I know I'm just a little person and can only do little things, but there are so many little things that need to get done!

Hungry Ghosts and Sentient Beings, Disturbing Emotions and Calm Abiding

Psychophysical Aggregates, Rainbow Emanations, Thukpa and Momos.
I learned about all these things in Dharamsala. And I'll likely blog about all of them too, but first I wanted to get these photos up.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with this (abbreviated) quote from Lama Govinda in The Way of the White Clouds:
Just as a white summer cloud, in harmony with heaven and earth, freely floats in the blue sky following the breath of the atmosphere - in the same way the pilgrim abandons himself to the breath of the greater life that leads him to an aim which is already present within him, though yet hidden from his sight.

Dusshera in Mussoorie

These are some hot Dusshera Dancers. The next video is of traditional Garhwali dancers. The best was when Hanuman went around beating the crowd with his stick!
Sorry I didn't catch the part where the ladies stand on top of the guys as they go around in the circle!

Midnight in Mussoorie

(Written Oct 28)
What an incredible night. The air is so clear here at 2000 meters, and the Harvest Moon so near and so bright, it hurts to look right at it. The lights of Mussoorie follow the mountain ridge as it runs mostly West to East, climbing to the highest point, Lal Tibba, where I stay in a cottage in the Professor's flower garden. His marigolds, cosmos, nasturtium and Mexican sage are all blooming wildly now, and his two dogs, Sita and Rushka protect the garden from the marauding monkeys.
Yup, monkeys.

It's been so nice to finally have access to a kitchen. I've been experimenting some, and it's very gratifying when I create the same smells that come out of the homes that I walk past at mealtimes. I've also had some pretty comic disasters with the pressure cooker. Let's just say, I'm glad I wasn't cooking beets in a newly painted kitchen!

Mussoorie has a long history of foreign missionary presence, especially up here in Landour. I'm the beneficiary of it I guess, as I've been studying Hindi at the Landour Language School, where they've been teaching Hindi as a second language since the 1800's. At Char Dukan, the little square (actually, it's a triangle) down the road from where I live, there are 4 cafes (char = 4, dukan = shops), and a little garden where there's laundry drying, children playing, and usually some foreigners sipping chai and studying their Hindi. It's also where the dudh wallahs (dairy men) stop to water down their milk on their way into town.

The shops make some western-style food, too. Initially I was very excited by the idea of pizza and waffles, but it's worn off, and I'm back to rice and dhal now. And rai when I can get it (another beloved GLV). There's also lots of Tibetan and Chinese food in town. It's interesting to think, I'm closer to those countries than I am to Andhra Pradesh at this point. We went to a Tibetan restaurant the other day and ordered one of practically everything on the menu because the names were so great -- Momos, Thukpa, ThenThuk, Chopsy, ThingThang. We sat there for about a half an hour, until someone came to tell us that there wouldn't be any food available for another 3 hours, when the boy gets back from the market!

The nights are COLD, and I'm sleeping under a blanket that's so thick, I think it might actually be a thin mattress. The best thing about Mussoorie, besides the vistas around every corner (yes, those are the Himalayas behind the monkey silhouette), is the walking I get to do. It's the first Indian town I've been in where I can walk without being harrassed (too much) by men and cars. When I first got here, I got altitude sickness for about 2 days, and walking up the hill to school put me into respiratory distress. Now I'm walking up and down the hills every day, and feeling much stronger. But I'm put to shame by the coolies that make the trip up and down the mountain multiple times every day, carrying loads for people like vegetables, or say, a REFRIDGERATOR on their back. They bear alot of the weight with a rope over the crown of their head, and I hate to think what they're C-spine films look like.

The Hindi language is pretty hard. There are about 38 letters in the alphabet, then a whole other set of combination letters. I wish I had more time to stay here and learn it, but I'm headed to Dharamsala soon. I'll be on a retreat for a couple of weeks and won't be able to blog, but hope to keep in touch as soon as I can.

Hope everyone got visits from the full moon fairy this month!

Navdanya

From Jaipur (in the State of Rajastan), I travelled by train, then bus, then vikram and another local bus, and finally by foot to Vandana Shiva's organic farm, Navdanya (in the far northern State of Uttarkhand). She runs a school there, Bija Vidyapeeth, and I came to take the Food Safety and Food Security Course. Really, it was about Global Nutrition, exploring the questions: What is eaten by people around the world, and why? How healthy and stable are our systems of growing and distributing food for people and the planet?

Lecture titles included: The Politics of Food; Health and Nutrition; Genetically Modified Organisms and Food Security; India's Indigenous Food Heritage; Nutritional and Medicinal Plant Gardens; Navdanya: a Response to Threats to Food Systems from Globalisation. We also went on farm walks, visited the seed bank (what a feeling of reverence!) and a local Tibetan Buddhist Stupa, and had cooking sessions where I learned to use the grinding stone, and continued to roll out very imperfect chapatis.

The farm is such a lovely spot. It draws a wonderful international group of students, including Zenobia, my roommate and guru from Oakland, and the rest of the lovely folks in the foto I'm going to try to put up. A couple have standout blogs: From Karen Rideout, a PhD student in Food Systems

and Nathan Leamy, funny guy and Watson fellow spending the year following bread around the world


Nights there were already cold, so Thank You, lovely and talented Paige, I've been wearing my wrist warmers and I love them! Each night, we'd hear dueling muezzim from 3 different mosques nearby. The calls reached a fever pitch and lasted almost all night as Ramzhan came to a close. In the morning Anna would play her harp as we made our way to the palapa in the middle of the dewy fields to practice yoga. Followed by a fantastic breakfast of puffed amaranth cereal. Yes, the place is a little slice of heaven. And I haven't even mentioned the mango orchard.

Our course was lucky to coincide with a special event: Vasundra. 200 organic farmers came from states North and South to celebrate their cause. It was great to interact with them and hear their stories. I'll try to post a picture or two.

When I was back in Andhra Pradesh, working with BREDS, I saw on the local level, the impact that national policies have in the lives of the villagers. Here at Navdanya, I've been learning a bit more about the other end of the equation: the bigger forces behind the Green Revolution, the companies that exploited these technologies, and the alphabet soup of international organizations that propagate them (WTO, IMF, USAID, etc).

The development of hybrid seeds that promised to end hunger with increased yields coincided with the advent of chemical fertilizers. Lucky thing, because they actually don't have increased yield unless they're getting increased amounts of inputs: water, fertilizer and pesticides. Interestingly, the fertilizers came from arms manufacturers looking for something else to do with their product after WW1. They converted their nitrogen-fixing explosives technology to nitrogen-fixing fertilizers. Bombs can still be made from fertilizer (remember Oklahoma City). These companies were very powerful, and continued to be through these new (forced) markets.

Why do I say forced? Well, the Green Revolution technologies were prostelytized round the world. IMF and World Bank were so impressed, in fact, that they made essential aid contingent on adoption of Green Revolution technologies. And the results have been devastation of perfectly adapted indigenous systems of agriculture that usually involved mixed cropping. And many other effects that I've described in previous posts(the environmental effects, the social devastation epitomized by farmer suicides, increased mechanization with reliance on petroleum products and contributions to global warming, as well as displacement of marginal farmers dependent on seasonal agricultural work, etc, etc, etc).

If we compare yields from farmers that practice traditional mixed cropping with those that have adapted highly mechanized, input intensive hybrid crops, we see that overall, mixed cropping actually gets more out of the land per unit of input. The traditional way is better adapted, sustainable, incredibly efficient and just superior. Frequently folks that advocate for these traditional methods get accused of being "against progress, for poverty", but this ignores the profoundly detrimental effects of "progress" in this instance. Vandan Shiva shows clearly in her books how it's the huge MNCs that are actually benefitting (Cargill, Monsanto, etc), while farmers and consumers suffer decreased quality and security of our food and environment.

So, the bottom line is: eat fresh, locally grown food from farmers that farm in an organic/sustainable way. It's good for you, it's good for the farmer, it's good for the planet.

Next stop, Mussoorie. Hopefully I'll learn chotti Hindi.

All the Rajputs in Jaipur

Travelling from the South to the North was like going to a totally different country. The language is different (in Andhra Pradesh, the language is Telegu, in Jaipur, it's Hindi). The people look different (in the South, people tend to be darker-skinned and shorter, in the North folks look more Arabic, or Persian). The food is different (still fantastic, and still, lots of rice and dhal). And mostly, the character of the people is different. In Jaipur, there are lots of forts and palaces. I think that's reflected in the personality of the people here -- there's much more 'edge', to put it very lightly. I've never been harassed by men in the South like I have been up here. I've definately been the object of curious, sometimes bewildered stares, but up here it feels predatory. I think Rajastan is especially like this, so I'll wait and see how it is in other Northern states.

I'm here in Jaipur for another Su Jok course. Unfortunately, I got sick again, and haven't been able to attend all of the course. But the lectures I did get to were really interesting. Su Jok starts out pretty straightforward. The course reviewed the body correspondence points on the hands and feet. Then it integrated basic acupuncture theory of the 5 elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water). OK so far. Then it added a 6th element to complete the 6 Ki Theory. Okay, I got that and actually found it really helpful.

Then it integrated chakras into the 6 Ki Theory. Groovy! Chakras were described in ancient Ayurvedic texts. I think of chakras in this way: just as the heart is the central pump for the circulatory system, and the lymph nodes are concentrated areas for the network of lymph flowing in the body, the chakras are the spots where nadis converge. Nadis are the pathways that life energy or prana or Chi flows through the body. In the Chinese tradition, they're called meridians. Not only do nadis converge in the Chakras, but the energy is amplified and accelerated there. Chakra is the Sanskrit word for wheel, and you see the symbol on the Indian flag. So, by addressing any issues at the chakra level, you're intervening in a kind of esoteric, but very fundamental and powerful way.

Then the course started getting very metaphysical. We talked about brightness and darkness, and the figures started looking like Kabbalistic drawings of the structure of the universe. At this point, my fever started climbing, and I had to experience my own little period of chiaro-scuro in my bed. There was a TV that sometimes worked, so I got to catch up on the latest Bollywood movie song videos. :]
SRK in Om Shanti Om and Chack De, Saawariya, You are my Soniya!!

I did enjoy my time in Jaipur, though. They have the Anokhi flagship store, I met some very nice folks from all over the world (Nigeria, Israel, Mexico, Italy, England, etc), and we shared many mediocre meals and much Bob Marley (and Enrique Iglesias) at the Chit Chat Shack. The architecture and the place really started to grow on me, but I resolved to learn some Hindi before I spend much more time up here. I need to learn how to say, "Stop staring at me! I'm not a monkey in a zoo!"
Elisa and her crew helped me celebrate a wonderful birthday with a fantastic meal at an incredible heritage rooftop restaurant. Te extrano y espero que regresaste a Monterrey bien de salud y espiritu!

Here's a foto I took at the Amber Fort and another of me and my favorite rickshaw wallah, Ramlal. He's crazy and we got along great. We sang Bollywood songs as he pedalled me through the Jaipur traffic. He assigned me (without knowing anything about my blog) a Hindi name -- Tara.
It works.

And I have to give a shout out to Ashok Kothari Garu, the organizer of the course. He is Yang Ming all the way. He is Hotei, the smiling Buddha with the big belly. He is an incredibly kind and generous person and I thank him for ALL he did!
Hope you finally got some rest, ji!