to the northland

All oceans are equal, connected by currents through rivers and streams and clouds and creatures, and when I come to the sea, I am home. I feel it, as my sweat and my body and my blood, a sense of recognition. All flows towards this final destination, and when the water of my soul mingles with the waters of the world I can finally rest. But I came to India to leave my sanctuary, and I must move beyond my shore, to the unknown north the sky and earth pull me away.

I exhale the forests of palms, shimmers of salt scales, dying jellyfish clouds and breathe in pine and moss bundled burls, fingers clenching and stretching, ribs expanding to accomodates acclimate thin air so close to heaven. Rising slowly in the heavy bus berth weary euphoric vertigo washes over and pours out the window passage. Snow rock ridges and cloud rows are indistinguishable as lines colors thoughts blur into sleep unity. Passing signs give guidance, This is our land, please keep it clean. Don't even think about parking here. Silence, the trees are sleeping. Slush softy.

The peace of the stirring hilltop town is interrupted only by naughty monkeys with dirty mouths who swear incessantly, hissing down from safe perches and jabbering back and forth. They wear crimped flat tops with black and white streaks and watch us with disdain and wonder, plucking leaves with decisive movements and questioning the validity of evolution. A child swings from a cable and dangles before the drop, suspended in flight. Another pounces onto the counter of a general store, runs straight for the top ramon, bites down on the package and prances away. The shopkeeper shoes at the stray with a broom too late. Dressed donkeys show their crooked smiles and shake their heads.

The Himalayas emerge as a mirage in the distance, bright white teeth with black rolling hill gums holding them. We climb with other pilgrims to a temple above the world and see all ways at once emerge from us, surrounded by tibetan prayer flags and rows of brass bells and hindu altars, and the orange god knows what I'm thinking so I bow low and tell him to hush. Offerings are made with the crack of mallets on coconut and crows cry out in responce. Cement rooms filled with smoke seep into our skin and leave blessings in our trail as we decend into the cold world below. The trees begin again, and I buy a sappaling from a park, a Banj oak, to plant in a space of sunshine, for dad. They have no tools, and I work the hard earth with a pointed board and scoop it with my hands. Just across the stone wall a bent woman with rosy rawhide cheeks tends her goats, and I wonder if they will wander over the wall, if my tree will be safe and grow strong, but I don't mind, because what death is more nobel than enabling another to live.

A weathered man with grease creased hands hides nothing fromt the street under the flourescent lights of a green room. He twists wires into empty sockets of a grey black box, something old and outdated, born before I was. He looks up and far away through me at someone behind with a wheeled tray of peanuts piled in a pyramid and crowned by a smoke stained cast iron skillet. She shifts coals in the skillet split from wood scraps on the pavement, and her face glows solemnly, like an apparition. The coals burn amber and orange, and I want to stop and warm my hands, but I'm not hungry. I look at him watching her, and he licks his lips, and our eyes meet for a moment, understanding but not entirely, and we both turn away and back to our work, weary. The city, the night, is the man's world and everyone shifts between shadows and highlights, chewing and spitting and smoking, and discussing nothing. These men, out late, are rich, or consider themselves so, and there's no one I could bum a beedie from, and their keys jingle in their pockets. A man with keys has possessions, and the sisters warned me about that.

mindful consumption

The sky is full of stars, the ocean is full of ways. In the same way your heart is filled with love and care. and don't forget us please remembers in your time. and then we keeps you in our heart with little sweet heart we all wish you. and then this gratitude is towards. with of us your smile looks beautiful.

I open the letters on the train, one by one, hand drawn cards to accompany the dances of dedicated blessings and prayers that the children had planned and performed for my departure. I'd accompanied them on stage and tried to join their routines, ending with a finale cartwheel in which I ripped my new pants from one crotch to the other, flashing 90 children and the sisters and releasing an ovation of laughter. I led morning yoga and embarked on my journey, refusing to say goodbye any more. Two hours on a rick, running late, I tried to flag down a departing cargo train before getting on the right one and setting off on my own.

Now I sit in silence, interrupted only by the occasional refrain of chai, chai, wishing I was still surrounded by love and innocence, wondering if leaving was the right decision. I go to the bathroom to collect myself and watch the tracks fly past through the keyhole toilet, the only window to the outside world, holding back tears and vomit. Twenty hours on the train is followed by a 13 hour picnic with another set of orphans, and the littlest girl pees on my lap in a bus so full I can't move her off me until we arrive home that night. The next morning, my rickshaw stops at a temple on the way to the bus, collecting flowers and powdered dye for the steering wheel, making me two hours early or ten minutes late, and by the time I arrive in Munnar I am in tears, running from a rabid dog and sleeping in a worm infested room next to the local beer shop: cold, filthy, alone. So this is what freedom feels like.

But I am here; I am free. I don't believe in regrets, remember. Every accident, every misstep teaches me the right way to maneuver in this madness. Now, I'm surrounded by green forests and tea plantations, elephant rivers and wide blue skies that layer the mountains unto eternity. at rest. at last. I keep on trekking. I take tea. I breathe in blessings and breathe out peace.

The grassy ridge rises like the backbone of a great beast, and we scale it one vertebrae at a time. As we rise into the atmosphere the horizon grows clearer and mountains give birth to others in their wake, spreading dark waves across the sea of sky. Tea grows over rocky hills in geometric kaleodoscopic patterns that move in the minds' eye from our bird's view. Our guide identifies plants we pass, a flower my children proclaimed "not useful" once treated snake bites, a bud that pops when pressed to the forehead, the silver rock tree with deep roots that shares water with others generously. Workers wrapped in plastic and cloth cut the new growth with a whisper of slicing steel and collect it in giant bags on their heads to be weighed and paid accordingly. They do not pause as we pass. The smell of elephant mingles with earth and herbs. At the rock summit we stop to sit and watch the universe exposed around us. Within minutes the mist rises, sends spiral jetties of light into the cloud layer then swallows everything. The world disappears, and we exist only in a shroud of sky.

Kerala is God's own country, my host declares with pride as we wind our way through the maze of canals that makes up the backwater island chain of Kumyakumaron. This is a tropical paradise is such an exotic and startling contrast to the barren heat of Andhra that it doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel Indian. I try to trace the same path later and wander farther from civilization, running for hours just trying to cross a rice paddy. Women beat tattered clothes on the rocks and rinse pans with gravel; others tear down trees with machetes in a tug of war between roots and hands, and I grab the branch and pull hard, and they laugh and ask me for something to drink with strange gestures and murmurs. Men push dug out canoes under bridges with bamboo rods, a burning beedie clamped between paan rotten teeth. Egrets and herons rise from the fields and return to homes unknown . A mother holds a child--a pure child, I'm told--who clasps a hibiscus and stares at me in awe.

All ask where I'm going. Walking, I tell them. Just walking. Such strange behavior to them, who work so hard for so long and have no reason for unnecessary exertion. I'm losing my barrings, myself, drifting off in the heat daze. Startled back suddenly as a long snake springs in the grass. A frog leaps out of my path moments later, and I shriek. A local man guides me home, and the heaven breaks, and the water surrounds us in sheets. I am taken to a temple for a ceremony of light, but the rain battles the candles and beats them into crescents of smoke. Elephants shift awkwardly under their ornamental headdresses, and the lamps of sandalwood oil are drained of water, and the women lift their saris and shuffle bare feet through red puddles of earth, all waiting for the parade to begin, but still it pours on. Night envelopes the rain and the candles struggle to breathe, and you know the water is still there and taste it in the air. An orchestra of insects and exotic birds fills the blackness, and I wonder who dances in this dark. With the morning light the concert settles, changing pace and tune, and I climb into a dugout canoe to continue my journey. Snakes wriggle through the water, eyes just above the surface scanning our progress. My deaf, mute driver moans from his gut and motions with his mouth at the world awakening and stretching around us, and we make our way back to the beaten path slowly.

Kerala is a land of many rivers and rocks. Before language was born, the people listened only to nature. to water and to stone traveling together. they began to make this noise with their mouths, letting their tongue roll over their teeth like pebbles in the waves, this gurl gurl gurgle. their voices became the words of Malayalum and now we speak with the sounds that surround us. The man who'd cooked my meal stopped talking and smiled at me, a fleck of mischief passing through his expression, an acknowledgement of the beauty in his words and voice. Then it passed, and he scooped another handful of food from the leaf platter into his mouth, still showing his chipped grin.

In this land of water and earth life flourishes. Little jellyfish spiral around my body, invisibly painlessly brushing against me, no more than collections of bubbles, spit sinking and surfacing in rough current. Men cast large nets into the onslaught, drawing them out with finger claws, spiders releasing their webs. The nets comb across the shoreline, connected by thick raw rope to teams of fishermen in branded t-shirts and lungis, chanting, "u lum, ovelum, daj jay, cov e la do vey." After hours of steady movement the only progress is a coil of rope where they began and dicarded folds that snake over the sand. The net is finally brought in and a crowd of spectators gathers around. Dozens of jellyfish are discarded, and half an eel, and a porcipine fish, and the bounty is sorted . Hundreds of little bodies flail for breath and home as life flutters away. The fish are spread on tarps and plastic bags, the stench displayed for passing tourists and stray puppies. Birds circle high overhead, kestrels and hawks, bats in the fruit trees, but all unnoticed unless you're lying on your back.

At India's southernmost tip, three bodies of water converge into two holy rocks upon which temples have been erected. Palm tree forests file the horizon from sunrise to sunset, and we watch the globe move with our feet sunk in the sand. Pilgrims bathe in sacred glimmering ghats, absolved of all sins, then sneak into smokey bars tucked in alleys out of sight. Bright boats with peeling paint crowds the shores, lined for flight, and men untangle strands of net like women knitting. Broken shells and barbed hooks crunch underfoot as turbaned women wander with towels and umbrellas offering fresh fruit patters. Crows and egrets feast on the abandoned guts and pick at the bones, the beach combers.