Himalayan Memoirs: The Summer of Love

They said the world will end in 2012. For me my world ended in 2011. Or so it looked.
2011 is when my stay in Isha Yoga Center became crazily tenable. I was taking classes in Delhi and was having a blast. Rams got married. Shanti from Home School would feed me comfort food whenever i longed for Chocolates/Italian food. I could sit in Ardha Siddhasana for an hour and not realize it! :)
However a variety of circumstances forced me to leave the ashram.
I had too much pride in me to do something which would have made lesser human beings celebrate.
Anyways, I chose to go and live in the Himalayas.
In retrospect, I really don't know how I let myself do it. What I do know is that those 6 months of my life that I spent as a nameless life walking the mountains were my proudest.
There was too much life happening in those 6 months. Too many experiences, too many emotions, too many sensations in my body packed into 6 months. I managed to get some scrap paper and maintain a journal. I wanted to publish this for a long time but I was waiting for the right time to come.

Why do this now?

I am publishing these memoirs also as an effort to create awareness and raise money for the awesome work done by Isha Vidhya.

You would be providing me positive incentive to continue to blog if you can join me in supporting this effort. The person who contributes the most in my fundraising page will be acknowledged in my next blog post. Anything will help. Even 100 INR.

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Hotel California

I was dropping off S for one of her meetings. The conversation meandered into how some of our volunteer friends were talking about me leaving IYC. S was observing that we would have never got married if I was not a Isha teacher at that time. She also observed how my deciding to move to Blore was kind of thrust upon her. It was a fair observation yet painful for me to hear it. At some point, I felt the need to justify/explain/clarify that i am a seeker. Still a seeker. After I said it, I felt a moment of pause within me. Am I a seeker? I felt embarrassed that I have to claim me being a seeker in so many words. Am I really a seeker? What does being a seeker mean? Does it mean that I should be living in an ashram? Does it mean that I need to work 100% and more towards a larger-than-life goal? Does it mean that I am checking out of "Hotel California" ? i.e. I am done with the world and ready for something else? Does it mean to live a constant affirmation that I may not know every

The Atlas of My heart - Belonging

Last weekend, I drove 800 Kms for nothing. This is hard to explain to myself. It is harder still to write about it. It's been a week since September 23rd. That time of the year in the Isha Calendar when a kind of gathering happens around the Master. It is called Lap of the Master. I wanted to participate in it. At least I thought as much. So somewhat mechanically I made plans to reach in time and participate. However on the morning of the event, I found myself waking up in my ashram cottage and unable to find a reason to go to the event. I really don't know what was behind this sudden onset of Tamas . Almost as if to justify my unwillingness to get up, my mind is trying say that it is because of the crowd etc. But for whatever reason, I felt like not going to the event. I rather be curled up in my bed and read what I was reading. Over the next few hours, I felt a gnawing sense of disconnect and disconcert. This lead me to search for a word of what I was going through. I think t

"My Devi bleeds Mathemathics"

One of the reasons why I buy physical copies of certain books especially of Osho and Sadhguru is that I want the reading to be a multi-sensory experience. The words take my being to soaring heights but yet it is untouchable and ungraspable. So in an attempt to touch the untouchable, I thumb through those glorious words on the pages to feel that same experience that the Master talks about. I occasionally bury my head in the open book to smell that fleeting fragrance and the embrace of the Master. My current predicament is that I want to distance myself from the flesh-and-bones and the brick-and-mortar aspect of Isha and still experience the magic of Isha. And still be open to Grace. It is like just wanting to have a nice meal at a restaurant without wanting to go to the kitchen and seeing the chaos backstage. The reason for choosing to live outside IYC is the fact that I had irreconcilable differences within me. I thought one uses the word 'irreconcilable differences' to explain

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