INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING: Lessons & Letters is a memoir told in life experiences. Each personal story is followed by a letter to Kalvin and Grace reflecting upon a life lesson.
The first thing that hits me as I step out of the Hotel Kaveri in Mysore, India is the smell. Urine, sickness, and hopelessness permeate the heavy air. The second thing that hits is the heat, a relentless blanket of humidity envelops me, making it hard to breath, urging me to go back inside to take another bucket shower.
Typically I’m up and out by 4:30am when the streets are still dark, empty and cool. But on moon days, we rest; no twenty-minute rickshaw ride to the shala in Gokulam, no morning yoga practice with fifty unspeakably bendy yogis (I am not), and no post-practice coconut water from enthusiastic Krishna with his cart full of the green fruit. Instead, this morning I slept in until the man across the hall woke me with his throat-clearing-hacking-coughing-spitting routine. The pollution is bad in Mysore and many people seem to develop a deep, lingering cough that makes me wonder about my lungs multiple times a day.
After my morning wake-up call, I took a warm bucket shower which is a luxury. Usually, by the time I return from yoga, the hot water is gone. Sometimes, in the early morning dark, I see the skinny Indian boy carrying sticks and cardboard up to the roof. He burns whatever he can find to create warm water that inevitably quickly disappears amongst the hotel guests. But this morning, I got a warm bucket shower and still had a few buckets to spare to pour down the drains to scare away the critters. Critters is the amiable word I have come up with for the various bugs and rodents and flying cockroaches that also populate my two-dollar-a day hotel. I don’t know why I bother pouring warm water down the drains, perhaps to give myself a sense of control, even if control is a false notion obliterated in India. Regardless, no matter what I do, one single cockroach remains. I named him Herbie. Cold, warm, even hot buckets of water have no effect on Herbie as he sticks his head out of the sink drain after each bucket as if to say, “Hello there, Sarah. Thanks again for the bath.” Herbie and I have made peace with each other for the most part. At least he doesn’t fly.
*
When I was twenty-five, I moved to India to study yoga and meditation.
“That’s a really stupid fucking thing to do,” my Dad said when I told my parents I was moving to India. I had expected their response and had already bought the plane ticket to Bangalore.
I understood then, as I understand now, they were simply scared. Perhaps they had reason to be. I had recently retired from the regimented and high profile world of Olympic athletics, I was uncertain about attending graduate school, and I had recently experienced a fairly horrific break-up with my first boyfriend. The relationship was beautiful relationship for the first eight months, composed of all of the things first-love entails, including late nights of staring into each other’s eyes, learning each other’s stories, talks of rings and a shared future, thoughtful gifts, surprise visits. The remaining four years were tortuous and destructive and I left the relationship a shell of the person I was when I entered.
Perhaps my parents were right in sensing that a part of me was lost. Perhaps they feared I was running away to India to escape some existential uncertainty that comes with fulfilling a dream only to realize the golden ring is merely gold plated. Perhaps that all held some veracity.
But, the truest part of me knew my future self would be born in India and ran toward that birth.
*
In Mysore, I resist the urge to go back to my room and instead start down the street to the corner chai stand. The cows are still painted fluorescent yellow from the Pongal Festival, a four-day thanksgiving jubilee celebrating nature in general and the rice, sugar cane, and tumeric harvests in particular. Though the heat is stifling, my world is suddenly alive with color — cows painted a hue reminiscent of radioactive lemon, their horns painted bright red; Indian women clothed in brilliant pink, orange, and green saris; dirt runoffs clogged with yellow, orange and white flowers; and bright crimson, purple and yellow sand designs peppering the stoops of the small homes. Color is everywhere, beauty surrounds me.
And yet people are staring not at the cows, not at the vibrant designs or beautiful women, but at me. Eyes wide open, gaping, gawking, goggling, there is nothing nonchalant about the staring. After a month in rural India, I am still startled by the ogling and have to consciously remind myself there is no malicious intent behind the wide eyes. I am simply a strange sight to behold. Sort of like the rats at the Bangalore airport were for me.
I had barely made it off the plane when I noticed rats crawling on the walls, over desks, and sniffing at food. Some were vaguely normal in size, others looked as though they could have eaten a small cat. As I approached the government man at the ticket counter, I watched one particularly large rat inch toward his food and us.
“Yes,” he said as way of greeting, looking up at me.
“Um, that rat is going after your food.”
“Oh yes, the rats, they are very dangerous,” he concurred with his Indian accent and a strange head wobble. But he didn’t turn to look. I, myself, stared at the rat that was now less than a foot from his small meal of rice and cooked vegetables. The rat’s black eyes looked greedy and its grey-brown fur was matted. Suddenly, the man reached behind him and swatted the beast with an audible thump. The rat fell to the floor, scurried across his foot and started up the wall behind him.
“Dangerous, yeah, they must carry a lot of diseases,” I offered, mildly horrified.
“Oh no,” he said, “They are very dangerous because they eat the money.” I was pretty sure that particular rat could eat more than money. I was also sure I’d rather give it my money than smack it the way the man did.
The money-eating rats weren’t the only difference between my new home and my old. I’d soon learn that the train bathrooms in India opened directly onto the tracks, a shake-wobble of the head meant yes instead of no, handling money or exchanging goods with the left hand was terribly insulting as the left hand is used for other business involving cleaning after emptying of bowels; and exposing one’s ankles, ankles, was considered racy.
I learned in some areas, the novelty of my white skin would make babies cry; that bikes, people, cows, motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, and trucks intermingle in chaotic streets governed by no foreseeable rule other than the largest vehicle wins; that a motorcycle is a suitable vehicle to transport a family of five; that everyone must stop for cows and not hurry them in any way; and that the 2pm train may come at 2pm, 4pm, 10pm, or not at all.
And here’s the magic: it didn’t take long for the chaos and uncertainty to feel normal. Chicago, my life and routines in the city, familiar streets, stale opinions, and rigid beliefs grew smaller with each two-hour delay for a cow crossing, each grandmother spoon-feeding a sick child for days until he returned to playing barefoot in the streets, each home holding generations of a family together under one roof. It was as if I was suddenly acutely aware that Chicago was a tiny dot on a map on the other side of the planet, a city of millions insignificant against my raw experience of India. And if the city itself seemed irrelevant, then my one tiny life in that city didn’t matter much; and if my tiny life didn’t matter, my troubles and worries and heartbreak were even more infinitesimal. Infinitesimal, but also universal. That is the magic of India, the seamless merging and co-existence of contradictory extremes. Yes, I was completely insignificant and yet my human experience was universal.
And that is how India birthed my future self. Its varied chaos created cracks in my identity and through those cracks, infinite possibilities flowed in, took root, and grew. She offered me freedom by showing me there could be a different way of living, and if there could be a different way, there could be millions of ways of living.
I’m not sure if freedom and love are synonymous, but they are close and because she gave me freedom, I fell deeply in love India. Yes the heat was horrid, the smells, the poverty and sickness. But she also held so much beauty, history, spirituality; and, a liberating sense of continuity, reincarnation, and renewal. I loved sitting on the Kaveri roof listening to a dozen different four thousand year old chants blaring through temple loud-speakers as the sun went down over the sprawling hodgepodge of shacks and shanties. I nodded and smiled to brightly adorned and dignified women brushing the streets with tiny straw brooms. I adjusted my routes to walk past stunning mandalas, the ornamental patterns made of colored rice powder, flower petals, and leaves that decorated the doorstep of some homes. I learned babies were named, and meetings were scheduled, according to Vedic philosophy. And I laughed with the rickshaw driver who asked me if I was crazy, when I attempted to organize his spirituality.
“So, do you consider yourself Hindi or Christian?” I had asked.
“What a funny question,” he laughed in return.
“Well, I just ask because you have both Jesus and Ganesha there next to your steering wheel.”
“What’s the difference? They are both the same,” he wagged his head and laughed again.
“Well, they’re not though, they’re pretty different…” I truly wanted to understand.
“They are the same, the same,” he interrupted, laughing again, as if I was a small ignorant child.
“But…”
“They are all the same. All the same. All come from and all go to the same place!,” He waved his hand and laughed with incredulity at my secular ignorance. Then he craned his neck to look at me despite the chaotic intersection we were approaching.
“But, Jesus represents Christianity, and Ganesha…”
“Are you crazy!? Are you crazy lady? They are all the same!” He punctuated his point by turning forward and smacking the Ganesha and Jesus figurines, who wobbled in agreement.
I laughed. I could see his point. I had recently read an article about Amma, India’s Hindu hugging saint. Amma is a veritable spiritual rock star in India, her face lines café posters and bus stops, her entourage numbers in the hundreds, and her followers in the hundreds of thousands. For years, she has spent ten hours a day hugging devotees, visitors, or anyone wiling to wait hours for a hug from the ambassador of blissful love. She also runs a University with seventeen thousand students, a medical school, business school, hospital with fifteen hundred beds, and a thriving relief organization. Amma is a massive enterprise, with some estimates placing her foundation’s yearly income at well over twenty million US dollars. That goes a long way, especially in India. But the article was aimed at dismissing the money-for-spirituality-stain plaguing many of India’s gurus, and so it focused on her humble living quarters and included a photo. What struck me was this: Amma’s simple room was spare. It had a bed, desk, and three wall hangings that I could see in the photo: a painting of Jesus, a painting of a menorah, and a verse from the Koran. And of course, Amma is Hindu.
A month before reading the article, I had traveled two bumpy hours by overcrowded bus to see Amma speak. I wasn’t sure why, other than a friend from the shala had encouraged me to attend. So I piled onto a public bus and looked out the window as we passed rice fields tended by skinny men wearing white tank tops and wraps tied as shorts, and small towns where barefoot children ran along side the bus, waving to the men sitting on the roof and hanging out the doors. The bus eventually deposited us a mile from the grounds, and I joined the flow of happy followers on a mini trek to the enormous field where Amma would speak. After entering a make shift gate adorned with bright jasmine garlands, I left my shoes next to thousands of others, sure I’d never see them again (and have to walk barefoot home, cutting my foot and contracting some ailment, requiring a visit to the Indian hospital where I had already been and did not want to return), and found a spot on a beautifully cultivated field of grass. The smell and feel of green grass created a rare moment of homesickness.
I found a small patch of vacant green, sat down, took a deep breath, and looked around. All around me, I saw white. I was an extreme minority in my maroon pants and orange shirt, but was welcomed nevertheless with friendly smiles and gracious introductions. Hours passed and more white clad followers filled the field. By the time Amma spoke, there was a sea of white as far as I could see. The numbers were frightening, really. But up on stage, Amma was beautiful. She spoke clearly in a language I couldn’t understand, but I was captivated nevertheless by her frequent compassionate smiles, the brightness of her eyes, her rhythmic rocking, and full body laughter.
Then too soon it was over. The massive sea of white stood and began to move in what felt like a colossal contraction of human flesh. Some followers were moving toward the stage to wait for a hug, some were moving away from the stage, towards the shoes. Before I knew what was happening, I was walled in on all sides, trapped and pushed by a tidal wave of humans.
I have never done well in crowds. I feel claustrophobic sharing an elevator. I wear earplugs at concerts. I don’t love excessive stimulation or great numbers of people. I work best in silence, alone.
And so for the first time since arriving in India, I panicked. I raised my elbows to protect the tiniest shred of personal space. The ease with which that space disappeared frightened me. I raised my elbows again, to no avail. I saw only bodies, felt only bodies, all around me, pressing on every inch of my body. Adrenaline raced through me, I simultaneously wanted to fight and flight. In epic proportions. The peace of five minutes ago was gone replaces by a scary and violent world. I found myself pushed from behind and lurched into the back of the person in front of me, chest to back and back to chest, shoulder to shoulder, I was helpless in the vice of the moving crowd. I pictured falling and being trampled by tens of thousands of bare feet. My head darted left and right, looking for the edge of the crowd, an outlet from the flow, but I found only a thick sea of white with no space in between. My heart expressed its intense disapproval by beating faster, my breath got short, and in desperation, I futilely tried to push my way free. Nothing. There was no place to go, no space, no control, just pressure. My pushing was useless. I could not free myself. I was trapped. Red-line panic set in, I wanted to scream, I needed out.
Then suddenly, a hand was on my elbow, squeezing gently. “Its okay, its not dangerous, its ok, just follow the flow.” The red haired woman was an Amma devotee, dressed in all white, and judging by her accent, an American. I stared back at her. “It seems scary, and it would be at home, but its okay here. Are you okay?” she asked, as she miraculously stayed by my side for a few seconds.
“It feels like a stampede?” My voice was tight and high.
“No no, its okay.” She exuded compassion. “Really, I promise, its okay, just try to relax.” Visions of trampled soccer spectators unearthed themselves from the recesses of my brain and she seemed to read my mind. “Its okay, its normal here. Really. Just go with it.” After another warm smile, she was swept away, seemingly surfing the relentless wave of people. I took a deep breath, surrendered all attempts at navigation, and let myself be swept along in the sea of white. Thirty minutes later, the crowd around me suddenly parted and I could see daylight, and thousands of pairs of sandals stretching ten rows deep and at least fifty yards in either direction. I looked down at my own feet. The sea of white had miraculously deposited my fear and me at the exact spot where I had left my shoes.
*
My beautiful adventurous babies,
I hope you love travel. And I hope you grow up with the courage to travel to unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable parts of the world. Because travel, if you can surrender to the natural current of new places and faces, will show you not only new sites, but also how to see yourself in a new light.
The truth is (at least as your Momma sees it), most people live a tightly controlled existence. Perhaps we feel safer in a rigid structure of routines, beliefs, and ideas, “This is my life. This is my story. This is where I came from. This is how I live. This is who I am.” There is more than one kind or prison in this world, my babies. And some people take their jails with them when they travel, remaining safely insulated from new experiences by western hotels, familiar food, and carefully planned itineraries. That is called being a tourist, not a traveler. A tourist may see the Mediterranean, but they don’t smell the sea or feel the rocks under their feet or resist the water tugging at their calves or watch a crab follow the receding tide. A tourist may avoid getting their feet wet, but they miss out on the grit of salt as it dries on the skin. They may check off the sites seen in their guide books, but they never really know a place. They may always know where they’ll be sleeping at night, they may never have to trust someone they don’t know, they may never accept a spontaneous invitation, they will never vary from the plan. But they will miss out on so much, so much. It hurts to know how much.
My wish for you, my little ones, is to dare to risk your own understanding of how life “is” by embracing the unknown. Be a traveler, submit, surrender, let travel do its magic, let it be midwife to the realization that the way you’ve constructed your trip, read: life, is but one of millions of possibilities. That realization is inspiring and empowering and will allow you to walk lighter through this world.
Perhaps sometime in the future, you will tell your Daddy and me you are moving to a third world country without phone service for a year, and I will simultaneously celebrate you and regret ever writing this, so be it. My sweet unfurling souls, try to go to places that challenge you and let those places crack your world open. My months in India with my mascot Herbie the cockroach and my illiterate, insightful rickshaw driving teachers accelerated the breakdown of my self-imposed identity. The scary, unfamiliar, chaotic, stimulating, inspiriting months there taught me to swim in the deep end of the unknown, a skill we all need in life if we want to be free.
And I’ll also say this, and I know I will also regret it later, travel alone. For some part of your adventures, travel alone, submit yourself to the transformative magic of travel, and know the cracks are good, they let the light in.
I love you my beautiful babies. I can’t wait for you to experience the world. I hope you see it as one big playground. With all my everything, Your Momma (2011)