Indian Takeaway (12 page)

One would correctly think that the travails of my hunt for the mysteriously wait-listed seat and the nervous tension of the granny, the mango girl and the human-sized chicken might have exhausted me completely. My previous experience from Trivandrum to Chennai has taught me that the higher bunks seem to offer a more enhanced sense of movement of the journey. This can hamper sleep, so wherever possible one should opt for a lower bunk. My much sought-after and sprinted-for seat 22 in carriage A1 is a higher bunk. I decide to move before
I get too settled: the carriage is wholly under-subscribed and there is an abundance of free lower bunks to be had.

As I collect myself and my things they don’t seem too fussed that I am leaving the compartment, although for a moment I swear I can see in her eye the desire to shout, ‘Please, don’t go, don’t leave me with him …’ The fat prehistoric linen man continues his fat prehistoric phone call.

But my move to the lower bunk is to no avail. As I settle into my new seat, sleep is still a stranger. As I lie rocking on the train, I feel like the only man in the whole world that is awake. My mind drifts inevitably to my next location, the next instalment of my journey. Could there be two more contrasting locations than a sleeper train from Chennai and a coffee shop in Delhi? But it is because of a chance meeting in that coffee shop that I now find myself on this sleeper train. My Mysore meandering was motivated some months back by destiny and cold coffee. Destiny and cold coffee delivered Jeremy Patriciana to me. And now destiny and hot, sweet coffee are delivering me back to him.

My wife is obsessed with three things: India, yoga and really good coffee. After yoga in London she hunts down a really good coffee. When she comes to India she hunts down really good coffee. If she were ever to come to India for yoga, rest assured coffee-hunting would very much be on the agenda. Her research in the more well-heeled neighbourhoods of Bombay have led her to conclude that the single most reliable and delicious brand of cappuccino in India can be purchased from the chain known as Cafe Coffee All Day. Since her specifications in such matters extend to the number of shots, heat component and general froth factor, I defer to her superior wisdom. So whenever I find myself submerged in the subcontinent without
her I always endeavour to find a Cafe Coffee All Day and raise an extra-hot double-shot frothy cappuccino in her name.

I was in Delhi early in 2007, in the middle of a short work trip that involved copious travel, and found myself rather discombobulated in a mid-range hotel on a Sunday. I had to remind myself that I was in Delhi and that it was in fact a weekend. I decided to step out of my room into the faded colonial glory that is Connaught Place. Because it was Sunday, it was busy; very busy. Families laughing, lovers quarrelling, dogs barking; then dogs laughing, families quarrelling and lovers barking. Such is the temporal nature of life.

I happened upon a buzzing Cafe Coffee All Day and knew what I must do: drink a coffee for my wife. The place was jumping; a TV blaring noisy and average American MTV. It was mostly full of spoilt brat Delhi kids drinking overpriced coffee and swearing loudly in Americanised English. A few tourists inhabited the air-conditioned sanctuary. I took a table for two. The place filled up so that the sole remaining seat was opposite me. In walked this exceedingly chilled-out guy with long hair and shades; he asked if he could join me. We got chatting and I discovered that Jeremy, a Filipino American, was a devotee of the art of yoga. So devoted was he that he quit life in California as a paediatric cancer nurse and had set up a small yoga school in a place called Mysore. This was too serendipitous, too much of a coincidence. I had always wanted to visit Mysore; my father-in-law studied medicine there in the late fifties and it sounded like a part of India untouched by modernity, still traditional in many ways. It seemed to me that places like Mysore had managed to slip under the burgeoning tourist radar of India. Obviously Goa, Bombay and the like were well-known and well-travelled destinations, but I had thought very few westerners would venture to Mysore.

I was totally wrong. Jeremy told me that Mysore was a hotbed for yogic activity; there were white faces everywhere and numerous yoga centres and hippy hang-outs, including his own.

He seemed such an incongruous person to visit on my adventure through India, a Filipino American former paediatric cancer nurse who is now running a yoga school in the city my father-in-law studied medicine at. Incongruous though he may be, Jeremy also epitomises a contemporary take on that sixties and seventies adventure to India I’ve mentioned before; foreigners who came to India for self-discovery through yoga, spirituality and a pursuit of inner peace. Now it’s the spiritual component to the globalisation of India.

If Jeremy is on a quest to find himself he can aid me on
my
quest to find
my
self. How different is Jeremy’s experience of India from mine when you actually shake it down? He is a western child of an immigrant who has arrived in India to pursue his truth. Isn’t that exactly what I am, albeit an immigrant, one generation removed from India itself? If I can work out what he, as an American Filipino, is learning from India then perhaps I can apply that to my own experience. Cooking for Jeremy should be interesting; yogis are very funny about what they eat, although he has assured me that they are omnivores at his school. And most of the yoga practitioners I know all look like they could do with a decent meal. I intend to provide that, based around the delights of Lancashire and its hotpot. And maybe I will be able to touch my toes for the first time in a decade.

Here I am the next morning with yet another hot sweet coffee watching the beautiful golden light of Karnataka in the morning. There is a curious thing about the light in India. For some reason film never seems able to capture the
sun’s resplendent haze as dawn breaks beautifully over the subcontinent. Beautifully lit coconut groves, shimmering with texture and contrast to the naked eye become just a bunch of coconut trees when committed to film. Or perhaps I am viewing India through my own personal rose-tinted filter?

The train chugs and rocks and creaks onward to an ever nearer Mysore. Not long now, not long. The train slowly wakens, the coffee vendors and the light combine to stir even the deepest of sleepers.

As I said, Mysore is a place I have always wanted to visit and I have heard many different stories about the place. Mysore is famous for two things: the production of sandalwood soap, the fragrance of which is unparalleled in the world of beauty products; and possibly the most beautiful Maharajah’s palace in all of India. The palace was completed nearly a hundred years ago and is said to be illuminated by no less than 5,000 lights – that’s when they are all working. The city was politically and culturally prominent in the fifteenth century when it was ruled by the Wadiyar kings on and off until Independence in 1947. They were great patrons of the arts and culture. But to my mind the single most appealing fact about Mysore is its unusually small population for an Indian city. It is said to be less than a million people.

And the unusually uncrowded Mysore is lovely; at least the Mysore I am seeing. Jeremy emailed me his address and through the gift of text messaging has sent me directions that I somehow have managed to convey to the rickshaw wallah. We leave the smart train station heading off to the nearby suburb of Gokalam. As we travel down leafy wide streets canopied by over-arching trees splattered with brilliant red blossom, I enjoy the gentle calm to this cool beautiful morning. The sky is big and has a welcoming tranquillity about it. The morning
breeze augurs well for a temperate day ahead. I shan’t miss the oppressive heat of Kovalam and Mamallapuram.

Cooking for Jeremy gives me a unique chance to pull together a variety of elements from new India. The yogic tradition that stretches back to my own childhood is an obvious and delightful coincidence; the fact that foreigners are still coming to India four decades on in a desire to engage with eastern mysticism is fascinating to me. Combine this with the status of Mysore as an ancient Indian city, steeped in culture and tradition, and, finally, with my father-in-law’s links with the place, it gives me an overall sense of warmth.

I arrive at what my rickshaw driver assures me is Gokalam. I am tired but pleasantly surprised by the prettiness of Mysore. Jeremy meets me outside the small Ganesh shrine in his street, an easy landmark for rickshaw drivers and beggars. At this point I realise that Jeremy is only one conversation better acquainted to me than those numerous rickshaw drivers and beggars. I barely know the man, yet have entrusted myself to him for the next few days. I’m sure I don’t let my panic show. The centre occupies the second and third floor of Durga Mansions in a picturesque suburb of Mysore. The kitchen, where I will later be cooking, and the bedrooms are on the second fl oor and the yoga room and training area are up on the third with Jeremy’s and Suresh’s rooms.

Jeremy takes me up to the third floor immediately and offers to show me a few loosening moves. My timing is far from perfect since Jeremy has a meditation class with Suresh, his guru, and so we have limited time. I’m hardly complaining. I have just arrived and haven’t yet visited the toilet. There is a very real chance that this body-bending behaviour may well cause me some ‘natural’ embarrassment. I am bent and pulled and pushed and breathed and I try hard to look like I know
what I am doing whilst hoping against hope that my rectal gas will remain rectal. This yoga lark is bloody hard work. There seems a beautifully visual irony as the brown-skinned Indian man (me) struggles to follow the yogic shapes of the loose-limbed yellow-skinned Filipino American man (Jeremy). Whilst at the time all my efforts were focused on remaining upright and non-flatulent, with hindsight perhaps that moment said as much about modern India as my journey of self-discovery. Maybe.

Suddenly the enigmatic Suresh appears, as if out of the ether, noiselessly joining us. He also has long hair tied back. He has dark, brooding eyes and an honest, open face. When he smiles he shows kindness. He seems like a lovely bloke. And he has a Mexican bandit moustache. So that’s the tableau: a slightly overweight, hairy Sikh bloke, a good-looking, buff Filipino American and a Svengali-looking Indian dude with a great moustache. All we need now is a buxom girl trying to learn yoga whose clothes keep falling off and we have the makings of a really bad porn movie.

Suresh intimates that it is time for their meditation class. Jeremy has been learning from Suresh for almost eighteen months. His training should be complete in another two and a half years. They kindly let me sit in on the meditation.

We enter the yoga room. A Bhudda sits contently in the corner, an iPod sits contently in its iDock. This juxtaposition should have given the game away immediately. Suresh and Jeremy sit down in a very strategic way, tucking certain parts of their left legs in and under certain other parts of their right legs. I soon realise that nothing yogis do is ever anything other than completely thought through. They plan to meditate for seventy-five minutes. Seventy-five minutes. I have never done anything that involves sitting still in one place for seventy-five
minutes. And sitting in one place while watching two other blokes breathing and sitting still in one place, is not about to become the first way I spend seventy-five minutes sitting still. Thankfully Jeremy says that I can leave whenever I get bored. But what is the patience protocol in the world of meditation? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? I know I can’t sit on the hard concrete floor for an hour and a quarter, not with what my arse has been through on the trip thus far. I resolve that it would be rude to leave any sooner than thirty-five minutes in, and that I should wait for an arbitrary number somewhere between thirty-five and forty, so as I don’t seem too keen to exit.

They unfurl the curtains and a gloom descends on the already gloomy evening. A small candle is lit before a deity, offering the only real light in the room. The yogic two sit cross-legged, right foot on left thigh, left foot under right thigh. Impressive, and they haven’t even started the breathing bit. Suresh takes his mobile out and sets the alarm for the end of the session. I love the collision of worlds; the meditative wonder of yoga and the harsh electronic alarm of a Sony Ericksson mobile phone. In many ways, all that is India is contained in this very room: the spiritual heritage that Suresh, a Karnatakan villager, represents; the contemporary fascination that the ‘civilised’ west has with the subcontinent, epitomised by Jeremy’s presence; and me: the bastard child of east and west, the chronicler of the contemporary.

Suresh starts a gentle chant, a monotone that is strangely hypnotic. This continues for ten minutes or so. It is both calming and reassuring. Then, in a ritual complex in its simplicity, they each inhale gradually through a single nostril, seizing more air with each nasal inhalation. The third inhalation is the final. They then hold their breaths, and with open hands resting on knees, they count. They then exhale through the other nostril,
in three controlled bursts. They repeat the same for the other nostril. It’s slightly mesmeric, the sounds of air passing through the nose, the very deliberate movement of the hand to the opposite nostril to block it. Every so often, no doubt in a pattern clearer to the more well-trained eye, they perform a series of alternate nasal clearances, by which I mean the most definite clearing of nasal cavities. Then the process begins all over again. I am enchanted for nearly three quarters of an hour. The dull city sounds ever more distant with every inhalation, its random, unstructured noise falling into sharp relief against the tranquillity of hypnotic human breath. It’s truly beautiful. But I really need to break wind, so I leave …

I wander about the rooms, generally trying to get a sense of the place. There are all the usual curios and accoutrements to spirituality lying around: Ganesh statues, Hanuman wall hangings, incense sticks, a pack of playing cards and some poker chips. A pack of playing cards and some poker chips? Surely some mistake. As I shuffle the cards and riffle the chips, Jeremy, fresh from his breathing and breath-holding, appears from around the corner.