The Yoga-practice in this magical place feels completely different. The group from UK which has come for a retreat is transformed. They looked worried when they came, but now their faces are blooming with smiles. In spite of the problems here in Base with the workers – first of all not enough people wanting to work here far away from the towns, then the illness of our main watchman with his kidney failure – it’s still a paradise. We just live with less expectations…
Much has happened in our absence in the months from May 25 to January 26. A few acres of lantana growth – a massively invasive outgrowth into which one could not step in – has been removed with its roots and a pepper garden with amaranth and pumpkins laid out. The earth is so lush! In the midst of this new beautiful landscape with rocks and surrounded at the boundaries by large evergreen rainforest trees stands the new, round mud-hut. What a special energy to sit in such a building! Soon we smoke it out and inaugurate it. Just now the doors get painted in sandalwood colour. We still have to make the bamboo bed to sleep on and Varun has promised to come next week to do a dry toilet nearby. In our times with rulers like Trump, haters of anything which represents wilderness and humiliators of all feminine thinking, it feels good to do the opposite. That gives a inner fullfillment – the feeling of working in a far-away jungle and not falling into a stupor thinking of the aggressive happenings on this globe.
Workers here go through massive problems. Once again a suicide in the family of workers. A young, good-looking, healthy man drank poison. It must be by now the 10th suicide that we witness since we are here (from 2014). It is mostly young men. Maybe the family pressure, patriarchy expecting the male to go out and fetch the money, is massive. The promise of instagram and other media reaches their little phones and they feel left out. They watch us coming from somewhere and being happy here, but we have a huge back-up of money. Then the loans they take are killing them. They do not understand money. The hard work which these farming people can and do is amazing. When we had a massive silk-cotton tree which has dried up cut down (one of these group fell on the house last year) one could witness their incredible skills. There is no crane or ladder. Three men did it with ropes, climing up on the trunk barefooted – quite a spectacle to watch. Still all these people will look at the cities and compare.
The slums in India are growing, while the wealth of the rich is growing massively. Everywhere Modi builds roads, everywhere tourists. We went with so many groups over the last years down to the falls nearby – that is now called pepper-falls and overrun by jeeps bringing down tourists. The litter and garbiage, the noise down there – I just heard horror stories. This is the other side of tourism in India.
I have taken the small 4 year old boy, son of our new cook Selvi, a few days to the kindergarden. It’s nearby, a catholic school run by nuns. 1/2 km walk from the gate of Base. Even there they do not have enough people. Today was no school as the schoolvan- driver, who is supposed to pick up children, has not come to work.
Only the monkeys are there without fail. They went into the yoga-hall, dismantled the lampshades, created a mess of the cushions and the mats and let behind their shit. What do we humans do in the wild? Why are we in their land? We need to run away from world politics what else???!!!
I had time here to read:
I have read quite a few books by Indian writers writing in their native tongue (Kannada, Tamil and Urdu) translated into English. I really loved Kuvempu’s ‘Bride In The Hills.’ Or the books of Perumal Murugan or Banu Mushtaq. They have such an entirely different world view compared to European writers. They speak about the trouble of the family structure and not about individual suffering. Never in a psychological way, more importance is given to the consequences of poverty and to their survival struggles. Or how to deal with money and what is the meaning of landownership. This type of thinking and writing has a more revolutionary spirit than our literature in Europa. It was an eyeopener to read how Kuvempu wrote about nature. About us humans – the lost beings, jumping from topic to topic like monkeys from branch to branch in a gigantic nature. We are monkeys too, It is language that could make us different. But it is also language that creates these wars.