Praying to the part of You that is worshipped here

Steve was in India to teach at a training event.  Before the training started, he joined a G-Adventures tour of South India. 

I hadn't thought of her in years, my voice teacher from Berklee College of Music. The last time I spoke to Jessica it was the early 90s, and I learned she was following a guru.  In fact she had just returned from that guru’s tour across the United States, where she had been his assistant.  Thinking about Jessica makes me feel old, that was several lifetimes ago, and now back to the here and now, it is this ashram which brought her to mind. The tour has come to gawk at a large utopian golden golf ball, and I'm wondering could Jessica be here?

[The Matrimandir]

Officially this golf ball is called “The Matrimandir” and is for "those who want to learn to concentrate," which sounds like their word for praying. In Sanskrit, Matrimandir means "Mother Temple", which according to the literature, "is what helps the humanity to overcome their limitations to the supramental consciousness". I expected to be weirded out and cynical, but instead I feel curious. Not so much with the golden golf ball, but with the reaction of my fellow tour-ists. The Matrimandir is off limits to tourists, and even those who live in Auroville, the community surrounding it, can wait years to be allowed inside for concentration. On the walk back, I try to engage anyone in a conversation, but they go nowhere. Tour etiquette requires us not to speak much about our lives back home. I can know where people are from and what they do, or did, but speaking on matters of faith is as protected as The Matrimandir.

[Sign to the Viewing Point]

This region of former French India is Pondicherry. The architecture could be reminiscent of New Orleans but for the occasional Hindu shrine. Three story red brick buildings with wrought iron grill work, markets with elephants waiting bless you, priests blessing new cars, and then suddenly an absurdly quiet street. No honking, or hooting of horns. So quiet in fact I see twenty or more very mellow dogs in various stages of rest scattered on the street like rose peddles from a flower girl.  Normally aggressive Tuk-tuks slow down, and swerve around the reclining dogs like tires on an obstacle course. Like tires, the dogs do not flinch nor move. 

[Elephant Blessings]

[Car Blessings] – I’ve prayed over cars, motorcycles, vans, trucks, and homes, but never used fire, nor flowers and dry paint. 

The source of this intense mellowness is Sri Aurobindo Ashram, of Auroville. Its the outfit that lau – I’nched The Matrimandir and if the street outside was mellow, the inside is nearly catatonic. Hundreds of of devotees or maybe jet lagged tourists sit in forms of the lotus position, meditating toward what I assume is the guru's grave.  There are flowers everywhere, and their smell is maybe what the poppies smelled like in Wizard of Oz, promising eternal peace and slumber or apathy and complacency.  I’m not sure which. 

[the grave people seemed to be praying toward, from http://indiantoursandtravels07.blogspot.in/] – sorry cameras were not allowed.

I join in the prayers, I mean concentration, but feel like an imposter. I go through the motions of praying Lord, I worship the part of you that is worshipped in this place, and appear to be in deep concentration until I look up and see someone watching me, and she winks.  Busted, and my concentration is gone.  I get up and poke around the bookstore until the everyone else is done doing whatever they are doing.  

Descriptions of this place  promise to transport your mind to a heavenly abode...to feel as if the eternity is here, but pretenders like me can’t reach that level of concentration, but maybe my old voice teacher had reached that place of heavenly abode.  I wish her well. 

Like Summer Camp for Adults

Steve is in India to help teach with a cross cultural ministry training. Before the training starts he joins a tour of Southern India.



The tour I've joined covers Southern India running two weeks, and uses every form of transport but the space shuttle. I booked this trip when I thought my sister Beth would be joining me, but she delayed and ended up breaking her ankle, so wasn't able to join me. Too bad, I think she would have really enjoyed it.

Tours make travel in new countries so easy. It isn't the travel that is so difficult, but the transitions. With a tour guide, or C.E.O. (Chief Experience Officer), as G-Adventures calls them, the transitions are easy, from to getting on the right train, and having a bus waiting for us when we get there. Knowing a good restaurant, and what to order.



But that ease of transitions comes at a cost, and one might be tempted to say: people, but I actually enjoy that part. Its the lack of adventure.

What makes an adventure is

• the danger, that everything might not work out well.

• the unknown, I don't really know what to expect, or if I'll be ready for it.

• the serendipity, that a blessing awaits if I just put myself out there and be open to what happens.

Now I know that as a guy, it is much easier (and safer) for me to adventure-travel and I hate it that women can't have some adventures without a man around, and so its easy to see why the men on this tour are outnumbered more than 2:1.

The tour stay in waning two star hotels, ones that have certainly seen better days. Usually the locations are good, and there was a day when these hotels must have been amazing, but when we check in, its easy to see they are run down, and nobody cares. But I don't mind, I mean I didn't come this far to stay in a fancy hotel, and the hours spent in their rooms, should be spent asleep.



Blue Valley Jungle Resort, Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary – looks nice, but some of the wildlife crawled across my bed around 3am (a large rat). 



The other part about being on a tour is mostly we interact with each other, and the products of the culture we are passing through, but rarely the people of it. I miss that. But the people on this tour are all well traveled, much more than I, and getting to know the 11 other people reminds me of summer church camp, its exactly like Summer Camp, but for adults. 

Two young ladies have been traveling Asia for the past six weeks.  “What advice would you give, based on your experience?” I asked one afternoon, expecting a cool couldn't of done without it gadget answer. After a few minutes one says “learn enough of the local language to say hello and thank you.”



Oh, so that is what they have been saying, “Nanni,” which apparently means thank you, in the language of Kerala.

Even though the trip is well scripted, surprises still slip in. Like when we were walking a street in Madurai and one the street venders was hawking a wire toy. Think of a Spirograph but in three dimensions that can be changed into a multitude of shapes.

I made the mistake of looking at him murmuring to myself “Why I have not seen one of those in years,” and he followed me for the next six blocks, pushing them in my face. Dad must have picked up one of these on one of his trips to India in the 1970s. “Had he too been here?” I wondered giving false hope to the street vendor who kept dropping his price.   I guess I should also learn to say No in the local language, because shaking my head isn’t working.