Saturday, 25th September, 2010

Recently my life lost all meaning. I woke up one day and couldn’t string a thought together with the noodles of my brain. I felt it was time to soak them in something with values, beliefs and ancient knowledge. The Chinese Year of the Tiger was on the prowl, the astrological symbol I was born under, so it made absolute sense for me to try and live my life by the rules and principles of Chinese philosophy.

Once the decision was made and I’d found my new path, it was like a huge profound weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Immediately at once I felt like losing myself to wild abandon. This was a very fortuitous state for me to be in, seeing as I was destined to go to a party that very night.

My heart was full of joy with the promise of the enchanted evening only about five miles away south on my new path. The darkness was winning the battle against the light, quickly seeping into the colourless sky, like black ink in water. I breathed in its intoxicating fumes, happy for it to pollute my mind once again with unreachable fancies that forever twinkled at me, enticing me farther and farther into its unfathomable dimensions. Because now I had my new path and it would guide me through the tricky temptress that was the darkness.

Birds sang at the streetlamps as they industriously radiated a yellow glow of light, an attempt by man to defy the natural order of things and to make sure money could be made and spent eternally, without rest. An instinctive desire to visit the cash machine one more time pulsed through my veins, and the feeling of the fresh, crisp notes in my hand comforted me ineffably and beyond my mortal comprehension.

As I approached my enchanting evening, I was shocked by its unnatural appearance and extraordinary proportions. It was as if the fabric of spacetime had been stretched and then a rather crude and somewhat delusional attempt had been made to gather it back to its original state, the result of which was a crumpled heap in the middle of nothingness. My unfaltering belief in my new path meant that I didn’t stop myself from entering this enchanted evening, but instead let every atom of my body and soul become absorbed in it absolutely, until I didn’t know where the evening stopped and I began.

After what could have been years, minutes or mere nano-seconds (much later when such things could be understood, I discovered that it was in fact 25 hours) I found myself staring into an abyss, the most tangible part of which was made of stained porcelain. I was retching like a cat with a fur ball, the strangest sensation of this experience being that my cognisance of it was only through my reflection in the water below my head. This water continued down into an ominous black hole.

I was shaken and confused, but then heartened at the realisation that the water wasn’t yellow. One of the teachings of my new philosophy was “Not having arrived at the Yellow River, the heart is not dead.” So I knew that hope and life was still with me. And my body certainly followed this doctrine literally as although my bladder felt like it was fit to burst, not even a yellow trickle, let alone a yellow river, could be tempted to flow out. I finally managed to crawl away from the abyss and into sublime oblivion, thanks to the trusty transporter of incomparable softness and comfort; my own bed.

For the following 5 days I undertook the necessary work needed to rebalance my accounts and play my part in ensuring that the readings on the machines that run the world are kept in the safe zone. And then like a dancer with strong thighs and an invigorating rhythm, the weekend was upon me once more. I embraced it and rode it along my path, which took me to club after club after club. These became so infinitesimally small and dense that in the last one I entered (and I don’t for the life of me remember how I physically got into such a tiny, packed place) I closed my eyes and waited for the resulting implosion of matter.

It didn’t seem as if it was going to happen anytime soon though, and eventually, I was brave enough to re-open my eyes. And when I did, there in front of me was such a strange-looking fellow that I couldn’t help but stare. His head was the shape and texture of a peanut husk, one that has been left out in the sun for too long and has become withered and paper-thin. So much so, it gave me the impression that if anyone was to touch him, he’d immediately crumble and turn to dust. At first I couldn’t see his eyes, as I mistook them for being more blemishes in his skin. But then a coloured light flashed over them, briefly revealing their greedy intentions.

I suddenly realised that I was regarding him through the thick bottom of my empty pint glass. I steadily lowered it, yet noticed that it had provided no visual trickery and that he was exactly the same abomination he had been behind it. He ran a dry tortoise head across the crevices and protrusions below his broad, flat nose, and only by their position could I conclude that they constituted his tongue and lips. He then cracked a smile and inside his mouth, I discovered gold in the form of teeth.

I knew I should have just turned away, but my morbid fascination got the better of me. He appeared to be beckoning me over the few feet to where he was leaning against the bar. I took comfort in the idea that he possibly couldn’t make his way over to me without the aid of a walking stick, so I had the gazelle’s agile advantage, should it be required.

I waited apprehensively for his next move. He wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to the glass collector, who came over and passed it to me, a look of bored bewilderment on his face. I unfolded the paper, and saw a series of numbers on it, followed by the moniker, Alfonso. I looked back up at the old peanut husk and he was making the sign of a telephone with his hand, holding it against his ear. I didn’t need him to be any clearer, and stumbling slightly in my haste, I made my way to the dancefloor to look for anyone I could still recognise. I cursed myself for not remembering sooner one of the key teachings of my new philosophy. “ The old horse in the stable still yearns to run 1000 Li 1.”

The disc jockey was pumping out a short anthology of the history of dance music, in no particular order, and I paused in nineteen hundred and ninety-five to dance next to a fellow with invisible maracas and another who looked like he was attempting to take off. Then totally unexpectedly, a shaft of the brightest, whitest light my eyes had ever looked upon, cut through the dancefloor. Those split in half by it shrieked, while everyone else cowered in the shadows. I looked in the direction it had come from and saw that the door to the club had been opened, letting in the midday sun.

I recalled the doctrine that “All crows in the world are black” and understood that my new beliefs were telling me that you can’t turn day into night, no matter how hard you might try. So with a keen determination and resolute march, I left the club and my path took me home to where I found a basket of laundry that desperately needed attention.

Another 5 days passed where I was forced to work to prevent the machine’s readings from becoming dangerously low. It was the next weekend that I came across a teaching in my philosophy I hadn’t noticed before. “I dreamed a thousand new paths. I woke up and walked my old one.” After reading it for the tenth time, a change came upon me, one which was almost undetectable to my human mind. It was unimaginably subtle and incredibly meaningful. In one moment, the air and everything within it was clear. I tried to put it into words in my head, but the more attempts I made, the less sure I was that I had had anything meaningful to express in the first place, until I knew that it had just been my imagination playing tricks on my rational brain.

And the only thing that dawned on me was the sad fact that my life had lost all meaning. I decided that maybe Buddhism was the answer to where my ‘true path’ lay. I cracked open a beer and looked it up on wikipedia.

From The Recesses Of The Mind This Month

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Sometimes it feels as if I can’t smile. Like there’s some strange power operating my facial muscles with strings that pull down the corners of my mouth to create a grim, unapproachable expression. I catch my face in the reflections of shop windows or mirrors in public toilets and the sight of it scares me. I try and smile, standing there, staring at myself. But instead, a sinister grimace forms, that’s even more horrific than the down-turned mouth.

Yet I’m not the only one. Everywhere I look as I walk down the street are dour expressions. There’s a woman whose face is so screwed up and sour looking, it resembles the bottom of a lemon where all the creases are, with the facial features drawn on. And a man who has let those invisible strings cause permanent damage, pulling all his features down from his eyelids to his bottom lip, which hangs off his face like a full-up leech that’s waiting to fall off.

The other day, I walked through this never-ending misery to the market, where the atmosphere darkened even more, as the cloying stench of dead flesh filled my nostrils and the eerie sound of bones being chopped hit my eardrums. Bang, bang, bang. I looked at the freshly plucked chickens hanging upside down and the pig’s head displayed on its tray, their expressions of boredom and emptiness reflecting mine. Pathetic fallacy, really.

Then a young halal butcher cut my morbid mood dead, with a chirpy, ‘Hi, beautiful day isn’t it?’ I looked at him, trying to hide my amazement at this outrageous show of cheerfulness on such a gloomy day in the middle of one heck of a miserable year. Not only that, but he was also in the middle of toes, tails and tripe. He smiled at me warmly, a little flirtatiously and with such ease that I couldn’t help but be slightly envious. I attempted to smile back but the strings were conspiring against me once more so I ended up just pouting, now looking more like the fish in the next shop. Although being the consummate professional he evidently was, he pretended not to notice and cheekily asked me if I fancied one of his hearts, obviously not really his, but some poor cow’s.

And that’s when I caught it. The strings appeared to break, as I felt a broad smile smoothly spread across my face. It got so wide that it went from my lips to my throat to my chest and into my belly, where it produced a little giggle. This then jumped out of my mouth up my nose and into my eyes. Now a giggle trapped in the eyes is an interesting phenomenon. It makes you see things differently, in a way that’s maybe similar to what the Rastas who sit by the mobile African food stall constantly smoking spliffs experience. It made me see that all the butchers in his shop were laughing and joking as they worked amongst the carcasses.

Well, I thought, if they could laugh with all that death around, then maybe I could amidst these shop carcasses and living corpses. The eerie chopping began to merge into the sunny and relaxed beat of the reggae blaring out from the stall selling Lee Perry and Jimmy Cliff CDs. I walked towards it and one by one like damaged dominoes, the scruffy Jamaican guys who were hanging out there turned and flashed a smile at me.

So, like a social disease destroying the angst and animosity that keeps people apart from each other and society’s barriers in their place, the smile ravaged through the streets of this London suburb, taking people by surprise and invading their eyes. Now I noticed the elegant symmetry of the buildings that sit above the modern shop fronts, and the gentle curve of the market’s road, mimicking the smooth, slight arc of the plantain. Or, could it really be? A smile.Then through the bus window I saw the council estate. But with these eyes, the colourful washing hung out on a few of the balconies gave the front of the block of flats the look of a Mondrian. Aesthetic, horizontal and vertical lines constructed and brought to harmony and rhythm by intuition and the weekend laundry. Ha! I laughed to myself and the effect became stronger.

And then I saw him. Sat in the corner at the back of the bus. An old man, ancient even, was laughing silently to himself. His face now a collection of laughter upon laughter line, spreading from the corners of his eyes, nose and mouth to the edge of his receding hairline, as the smile had slowly taken over it. A bright twinkle had permanently infected his eyes, and as I watched him they creased up easily while his mouth freely dropped open to reveal just a few remaining teeth, which smiled back too through the curve of decay. When he spotted me looking at him and smiling, he laughed even harder, throwing his head back. He then put his hand to his eyes as they wept from all that laughter, before checking to see whether I was still smiling. Then he cracked up again. This carried on for at least 4 stops.

I appeared to be the only one who could see him, as everyone else was just staring forward with stony expressions, apparently uninfected. I began to wonder whether he was really there or just some hallucination of this disease. But as I watched him laughing and really cracking up, nothing else mattered anymore but giggling freely back, not caring what anyone thought and this vaguely familiar, exhilarating buzz that it was giving me.

And in that moment I got the joke. And it’s so simple, but for one reason or another, these days it’s become hard to do and we leave it for so long that we actually forget how to do it. But the joke is all you have to do is laugh, the most natural thing in the world, because when you do problems are attacked and ugliness is mutated into something beautiful. It would be easier if the world laughed with you, but if it doesn’t want to or can’t, then, like the old man, just laugh at it. You see, the more you laugh at it, the sooner it’ll become infected too. And unlike Swine Flu, TB or Fear, this is one contagion humanity really needs to catch.

Thursday, 29th July, 2010

Rajgir, the Indian town that time, tourists and terrorists forgot.

The district of Nalanda may contain one of Buddha’s Holy sites, but it’s also where you’ll find Rajgir, an Indian town that’s a bit of a hell hole. You know, the kind that’s a nuclear bomb short of perfect. In fact, it’s as if an atomic explosion has gone off and the town is the apocalyptic aftermath. Everything in Rajgir seems to suffer from the nuclear fall-out of its past glories. For once it was the capital of the first Indian Empire, had a mention in the Buddhist and Jain scriptures, as well as the epic Mahabarata (the Indian version of the Illiad), yet now it’s just a diversion on the Barauni and Patna highway.

The hotel we were staying in hadn’t escaped the nuclear fall-out either. When the taxi pulled up outside it, we nearly locked the doors and refused to get out. Yet curiosity, or whatever it is in horror films that makes the victims wander off on their own down dark alleys in the direction of a funereal wailing sound, got the better of us, and zombie-like, we dragged ourselves towards the empty shell of what might have once been a luxury hotel, well, by Indian standards at least. 

It was clean, but very, very basic. There was 1 bed, 1 sofa and 1 hole in the ground, or ‘squat and drop’ as we fondly nicknamed the Indian toilet. And 1 old television set, although as soon as our backs were turned, this was almost nicked by the guy who’d shown us to our room. Although we took comfort from the fact that he was stealing the hotel’s belongings, and not ours. Fortunate, because there weren’t many comforts to find here.

When we took part in the Indian hotel ritual of signing the visitor's book for their record of who’s stayed, which is usually full of names, we saw that the last people to stay in this hotel had stayed there over a month before. We wondered if Steve McKenzie and his fellow travellers’ jaws had dropped too when they’d entered their hotel room. Not because of the Eastern European prison-style hard bed, floor and naked light bulb, but the yellowing Winnie The Pooh and his Friends curtains. Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore were all there, with fixed, stunned smiles on their faces, as if aware of their fate of being left hanging there until the building falls down.

So we were in a bit of a lime pickle. We had a whole afternoon, night and day here. But the hotel room hadn’t been the nuclear bunker that we’d hoped for. Now we knew that a little adventure outside might cost us our lives, but staying in, staring at the lizards dart between the cracks in the ceiling and watching countless programmes in Hindi became so tedious that we all decided to venture forth into the abyss.

And what did we see? Well, let’s just say that terrorists probably wouldn’t bother to attack Rajgir. There aren’t any 5 star hotels, and any plans to cause damage to buildings with grenades and bombs would be scuppered, because no-one would notice the difference.

So what do you do when you’re stuck in an Indian town that Shiva destroyed, but which creation itself couldn’t be bothered with? Well, drink. And conveniently, Rajgir is in Bihar, the poorest state in India, yet also the one with the strongest beer. For reasons that become apparent the more time you spend there, Kingfisher brew a special beer that’s only available in Bihar, with an alcohol content of between 5% and 8%, as it says on the label. It’s a lottery, as you may get the one with only 5%.

We found this nectar of the gods in the first bar we could see, past all the empty bicycle rickshaws, disturbing lack of beggars and tumbleweed. The barman hastily ushered us away from the 3 local men sat inside by the bar with their vacant zombie-like eyes glued to an Indian soap opera and their mouths stuck on their beers, and into our own private booth complete with shabby curtain. In most places in India you don’t really see people boozing, and in some cities you can’t even buy alcohol, such as Pushkar and Varanasi. There are no such problems in Rajgir. And our fear for our lives was justified, as after just two of those large beers with an alcohol content of 8% (or maybe even 11 or 14, I mean who’s counting?), we were annihilated. And what didn’t help our survival was our beer-soaked desire to befriend the local policeman who’d popped his head in to check on the bar. Yet after a few mug shots and countless questioning along the lines of ‘where are you from?’ and ‘what is that you’re drinking?’ he finally let us go, but not before he’d dutifully escorted us safely back to our ravaged hotel.

So after our first 12 hours in Rajgir, we’d just managed to cheat death by intoxication and policeman’s lathi. Yet who knew what was going to happen in the next 7 hours? If you’re a Buddhist, Jain or Hindu, Rajgir is jam-packed full of fascinating sites and must-see attractions. If you’re not, then you’re left with just the Vishwa Shanti Stupa, a beautiful peace pagoda made of white marble that was built by the Japanese. It sits on top of the Gridhakuta Hill, where Buddha spent months meditating and preaching. And the only way to get to this top attraction is by, well how else in Rajgir, a life-threatening chairlift. Or chair drop, as I liked to call it, seeing as it consisted of a thin piece of rope from which fragile metal chairs were hung, with only a feeble, barely attached bar to hold the passenger in place.

To add to this living on the edge experience, we thought we’d fill our empty bowels first, and handily, right there at the base of the chair drop was a café in the style of those dirty stalls you get by the side of the Indian road. It sold pakoras and vegetable curry made by a cook with an interesting technique, which may be particular to the cuisine of Rajgir. Always follow every other stir with the pick of the nose, and finish off the dish with a sprinkle of coriander then a scratch of dandruff. Well if we were going to die anyway, what were a few contaminated pakoras to us? And in any case, they tasted great.

Unfortunately we had a long queue of almost an hour to regret this decision ten-fold, as we waited for our turn in the chairlift. The gaps between each bowel movement became shorter and shorter while we got closer and closer to the front of the queue. Overhead, legs dangled and we heard the sound of metal screaming as the chairs bumped over the pulleys. And then the screaming stopped, and it all went deadly silent. An electricity failure. The chairlift was left stationary for a few minutes. A different sort of screaming started, a child’s. Fortunately the chairlift started up again, and the metal screams drowned out the child’s. And our own. 

Then before we had time to reconsider for the fiftieth time, it was our turn. The secret is to never, ever look down. Just keep your head up and admire the beautiful scenery. You see, one of the best reasons for visiting the Stupa is that it gets you out of the town and into Rajgir’s verdant green hills. Yes you really feel close to nature on the chairlift, perhaps because you’re so near to death and of becoming one with the trees and flowers. It’s a different way of understanding Aum. It’s a lot quicker than years of meditation. The fear makes you believe in the oneness instantly, and clears your mind of everything, except that one thing.

What really gives you confidence though, are the infinite smiles of the constant stream of people coming back the other way. Their friendly faces and greetings of ‘Namaste!’ take your mind off your impending doom, and compel you to smile back, muttering a feeble, ‘Hi’. Children, Mums, Dads, Grans, Grandads and teenage boys’ faces all break out into huge grins as they pass you, giving you the assurance that people do actually make it to the top and back again in one piece. And when you reach the summit, one of the first things you hear is a deep, mellow reassuring drum coming from the temple – the sound of Aum. It’s the sound that signals the end of your journey from the hell of the modern town into the heaven of Rajgir’s serene countryside. And on top of the Stupa you feel so peaceful and calm, that you could just stay there forever.

You see, in the end, everyone comes up smiling in Rajgir. Even us. Because not only had we cheated death, but we’d also successfully killed time.

Wednesday, 30th June, 2010

http://matadornetwork.com/nights/londons-best-pubs-for-a-sunday-roast/ 

From The Recesses Of The Mind This Month

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

If I was going to tell the story of the first decade of the 21st Century (aka the noughties) to a distant future generation, I’d use South Park. It’s a neat, concise DVD collection of our recent history, perfectly packaged to fit into any time capsule. Hang on, you say, it’s not history it’s a cartoon! Well, consider this. Politicians, dictators, historians, religious prophets and the media have always tried to skew history in their favour or rewrite it, and a recent trip to see the British Museum’s Babylon: Myth and Reality exhibition proved that they’ve been doing this for centuries.

Most of us think of Babylon as this evil place or a ‘city of sin’, which eventually suffered an apocalyptic downfall, as portrayed in fantastic stories and awe-inspiring images in paintings, such as those of the Tower of Babel. We’ve got most of these porkie pies about Babylon from the Old Testament, which was humankind’s history book up until fairly recently. The main reason for all the lies is because the Jews were pretty ticked off with the Babylonians and particularly King Neduchadnezzar, because he captured Jerusalem, destroyed it and deported its elite to Babylon. So the religious prophets had an axe to grind, and painted the city as this evil, downright dirty place, representing the antichrist and despicable side of all humanity. And this we accepted as the truth until archaeologists dug up the reality and discovered that Babylon was a centre of learning from which we inherited the division of time into minutes and hours, the zodiac and useful knowledge of constellations. But a large percentage of people still believe the myths of the Old Testament.

So what’s South Park got to do with all this, I hear you ask? Well, let’s start by comparing its stories to those of the Old Testament. Both use over-the-top, dramatic narratives that are crude and surreal to capture the audience’s attention and to get their point across. They both criticize society. Yet South Park does it through satire, ridiculing the vices and follies of the whole of humankind. Whereas the Old Testament slanders and maligns to bring certain groups into disrepute, those which don’t tow the Christian line. Although isn’t history about learning from all our mistakes, not just a chosen few?

The Old Testament has its tale of the Whore of Babylon, a figure who’s unmistakably cast as the evil bitch of the earth. She’s described as having a golden cup in her hand that’s full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. Well I never. And on her forehead is written, ‘Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.’ She also gets drunk on the blood of saints. Meanwhile, South Park has the ‘Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset’ episode, where Paris Hilton represents the overt sexualisation of society. Her cartoon character wears lewd clothing and constantly coughs up semen, while her new shop, ‘Stupid Spoiled Whore’ encourages the young girls of South Park to emulate their role model, by wearing skimpy outfits and throwing sex parties.

The Whore of Babylon never existed, and is just a Christian allegory of evil, representing the sins of the world. The Stupid Spoiled Whore of South Park on the other hand, although exaggerated for comic effect, it can be argued that she does actually exist. 




Then there’s the Old Testament’s story of one of its most hated figures, King Neduchadnezzar, the geezer who captured Jerusalem and deported its elite to Babylon. This conqueror of Jerusalem, according to the religious prophets, got his comeuppance by going mad, becoming a crazed and terrified man, who spent his last days crawling on all fours like an animal and eating grass. In the South Park episode ‘Trapped in the Closet’, the former King of Hollywood Blockbusters, Tom Cruise, is depicted as a fanatical follower of the Church of Scientology and is seen exhibiting insane behaviour, for instance, he locks himself in the toilet when Stan (who he considers to be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard) says his acting’s not really that great.

The Old Testament created a slanderous myth against the reputation of King Neduchadnezzar, as archaeologists have found that it wasn’t him who went mad at all, but the more insignificant King Nabonidus. But again, it can’t be said that South Park’s portrayal of the erstwhile King of Hollywood and Paramount Pictures is entirely inaccurate.

Of course, it’s not just the Old Testament that has attempted to create myths of the past for its own ends. Many leaders have too. Take Saddam Hussein in our recent history. The British Museum’s exhibition shows how he attempted to create an image of himself as the modern day successor to the Babylon Kings, as Babylon was where Iraq is today. He had a painting commissioned in which he’s illustrated as this huge Colossus of Rhodes, standing tall above Babylon’s famous Ishtar Gate. In another, he’s transformed into a heroic warrior, riding a chariot into battle.

In contrast, South Park portrayed him as a whiny-voiced homosexual, who had a love relationship with Satan. Again, you can decide for yourself whether you think that South Park’s interpretation of events is a great deal closer to the truth than Saddam Hussein’s.

The point is (and there is one), that these days it’s harder to tell myth from reality, what with all the media spin, conspiracy theories and political propaganda. We don’t know the truth now about certain events in our recent history, let alone in over two thousand years. So why not have the noughties’ history represented by South Park? Every episode is based on the truth, albeit occasionally a small grain, and its creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are ‘equal opportunity offenders’. This means they don’t just represent one view, but lampoon all sides of a contentious issue, so in that way it’s pretty objective as far as historical accounts go, and it doesn’t preach. And yes it illustrates the sins of humanity, but also its virtues, as every episode ends with the identification of one of society’s morals in the form of an important lesson from which the young of South Park, that is Stan, Kyle and Butters, are seen to have learnt from.

The reality might never be separated from the myths of our times, but I for one would much rather have South Park as our historical document than, say, Sky News reports or any religion’s interpretation. For one, it’s likely to be more honest, and most importantly, a hell of a lot funnier.

Friday, 28th May, 2010

A tourist’s guide to the Indian jungle.

Some say that Indian society has turned into a jungle since the British left in 1947. It’s a monkey eat monkey world. Well most tourists who stay briefly might not get enough of an insight to find out whether that is true or not, but they shouldn’t be disappointed, as there is a jungle in India that every visitor will discover immediately on arrival. The Indian road. Now there are 5 main species of animal in this jungle – the big 5 - that every traveller should be aware of before coming to India.

Let’s start with the langur monkeys. These are the taxi drivers who work for hotels and are the creatures that most tourists are likely to come across first. They’re the weary traveller’s ‘free transfer’ to and from the airport, and so have to work at all times of the day and night. The problem there is that they aren’t nocturnal and don’t appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night. So be warned if you’ve got an early morning flight to catch. They’re liable to arrive late for a job that’s before 7am, if at all, as they appear to do as they please and all this seems even less acceptable when they turn up looking like they’ve slept in the car anyway. And if the car is their bed, then it’s a logical progression to have the side of the road as the bathroom. Therefore when nature calls, this species of taxi driver will just stop, get out and relieve themselves. They won’t even walk out of view or into the bushes. They’ll just do it right there, in front of you.

The langur monkey driver likes a drink, and has been known to turn up drunk if he’s picking you up after 10pm. At these times, when questioned on whether he’s fit to drive or not, he’ll put a hand on your shoulder, possibly to steady himself, look into one of your four eyes - usually the one in the middle of your nose - and tell you through breath that makes your head spin, that he’s only had a couple, my friend. He gets away with this behaviour because after 10pm, a remote small Indian town, with its dirty handed beggars crowding round you pulling at your t-shirt while dogs on heat encircle you, can be slightly daunting.

Consequently, unless your taxi driver’s lying in the middle of the street, chanting some Hindi song extremely loudly with a bottle of strong homemade Mahua in one hand, and a wine soaked piece of paper with your name scrawled on it in the other, then you’re very likely to get into his car with no complaints just to hightail it out of there as quickly as possible.

What’s characteristic about this type of monkey is that it has big balls. So even after he’s turned up drunk to pick you up, don’t be surprised if he tries to get you to hire him for the day with the promise of taking you round all the sights at a very cheap price.

The taxi drivers that swing from street to street waiting for tourists to hire them are the macaques of the road jungle. Be careful around these mammals because they’re known for their nasty bite. This can come in the form of an extortionate price that you need to haggle down to an eighth of the one they’re suggesting. Or fleas. These fleas jump out from the clothes of the gentleman sleeping in the back of their cab, who they shoo out when they get a job. Another reason to be wary around the macaque taxi driver is that he isn’t afraid to f*** you up the ass. Be prepared to resist his price of 5,000 rupees for taking you 5 minutes down the road.

What’s particular to this species is that they’ve learnt English, and use their bilingual skills to emotionally blackmail you into giving them a big tip. They’ll look at you sadly with their big brown eyes and tell you how little money they receive as a macaque taxi driver, yet need to feed their family of 6 children, 1 wife and 2 mothers. Their rehearsed conversation usually starts with a ‘So which country are you from?’ knowing full well that you’re, English, American or Australian. When you answer, ‘England, London’, they pounce on you and chatter excitedly about how rich a ‘country’ London is.

Higher up the food chain are the drivers of the air-conditioned people carriers that you can book through the many local and independent Indian travel agents online. They’re the ones who take you miles and miles across the Indian highways, up-down-and-almost-sideways, and no-ways, to reach remote places that haven’t been made part of the railway network yet. These are the tigers. Majestic at the wheel and unfazed by anything, the tiger makes light work of the harshest terrain on the planet, that is, the Indian road. He’s the king of it, devouring anything that gets in his way and deftly avoiding danger such as potholes, sliding into ditches and unexplained traffic jams.

He’s quietly aggressive when the road becomes menacing, never emitting as much as a low growl when faced with a fallen down bridge or an oncoming lorry on a single lane of tarmac, tyre puncturing rocks and stones on either side. He remains totally focused on the road ahead, his eyes fixed, shining in the dark. This means he never speaks or makes conversation, but doesn’t mind listening to a bit of music - as long as it’s Hindi. In fact, this species of driver doesn’t speak much English at all, yet curiously, when driving through the bandit country of Bihar, he’ll surprise you with the well-spoken command of ‘Lock your doors.’ So although in the wussy-powered people-carrier there may be no tiger in the tank, there’s definitely one behind the wheel.

Now we come to the most infamous inhabitant of the Indian road jungle. The tuk tuk driver. He’s the hyena, hanging out in a pack, scavenging for tourists around every station, sight and ‘5 star’ hotel. Or simply curb crawling down the street after you. He has no shame, and uses this to his advantage when telling you his price to take you to B, which is in fact, only a few metres away. But because he drives around the block a couple of times before dropping you off, you’re none the wiser and pay him his laughable price. Therefore before taking a ride with one of these hyenas, make sure you’ve got a map with you indicating how far away B actually is. Although on the positive side, he’s a bit of a coward, and when challenged he’ll completely back down and take you where you want to go for practically nothing.

He loves to talk about himself and emits a high-pitched laugh at most things he says, if only to ingratiate himself to you. Always foraging for a tip, he’ll almost kill himself and you to get a good one. So never say you’re in a hurry to get to the station, because he really will put his foot down on that accelerator with a haunting laugh that you’ll never forget, if you get to live to remember it.

Then, at the bottom of the food chain and budget scale is the bicycle rickshaw driver. He’s the buffalo of the road jungle, but doesn’t look like one at first glance. No, his appearance is more of a scrawny, fragile gazelle. This means when he tries to undercut the tuk tuk guy with his, ‘I’ll take you all for 3 rupees!’ you look at his staring, vacant eyes with pity and politely decline. Yet when you see one pulling three obese Americans and all their oversized luggage up the hill without breaking a sweat, you gain a great deal of respect for this humble creature.

So remember to have your wits about you as soon as you leave the airport, as the Indian road jungle is awaiting you, with all its weird and wonderful creatures, who’ll try and tear as much flesh off you as possible, so they gain enough energy to get the hell out of there themselves.

From The Recesses Of The Mind This Month

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

When I worked from home on Tuesday, I entered an altered state. I was half in the world of work, and half in holidayland. But actually in neither. I was in limbo. A place where my mind could float. Like a ghost that belongs nowhere, so can just drift aimlessly as it waits to be summoned to God’s office for its appraisal. Here in this limbo, I was susceptible to idle thoughts, ones out of the office and which no one could catch on my mobile or Blackberry.

I found myself drifting down the street at two in the afternoon on a weekday. It felt weird to be wandering, wondering, at that time of the day. And the streets seemed unfamiliar. The people were strange, alien even. Who were all these old folk anyway and where had they come from? They took over the buses, pavements, benches and supermarkets. It looked like an invasion by old-age vampires, who only come out in the day, with hospital bed-sheet white skin that’s so worn it’s become thread bare, semi-translucent. They hang upright from bus stop benches, glaring in the June sunshine and baring their badly fitted teeth at dogs, cats, pigeons and children passing by.

The species that shares this 9-5 territory with the vampire OAPs, is the yummy mummy. I see one drearily pushing a buggy containing her little monster wielding a dripping ice-cream. I float past two more, invisible, as they speak to each other in an unfamiliar language. 60 Minute Makeover, Trisha, Jeremy Kyle and Lie Detector Tests.

Then through the hazy sunshine, familiar faces appear. Those I usually only see swimming against the tide of the commuters. The bloke in the pork pie hat, strumming his guitar with an irregular rhythm, as if he’s trying to find the right chord. At low tide, I can see him more clearly. The bright yellow flower in the lapel of his jacket. The perpetual smile dancing on the corners of his mouth. The intense concentration, which appears to come so easily. Like he’s a Zen Master of meditation.

Then there’s the old black guy, who’s always dressed smartly in an unknown army’s uniform, sitting outside his favourite Costcutter franchise. Guarding it, so it’s protected from an unknown enemy. He watches time slip casually by in the reflection of his shiny boots. But at least time is his to lose. In the office, you’re not the boss of your time. It’s work’s possession and it devours it, until there’s nothing left but just the skeleton of the day. The scraps are all we have to remind us of who we are. Even in holidayland we’re too occupied with must-seeing things, being with friends and family, or catching up on sleep, to have much time for ourselves. Although in this state of limbo I got to snatch back some time for me. As if this limbo was a cool lake, refracting time on its surface, bending it in my direction. All I had to do was reach out and grab it.

I ended up in the park by my flat. The grass was verdant, luminous. Shiny crows glittered from within it, like black diamonds. A guy lounging on a bench sucked on his cigarette, fashioning a piece of amber to add to the setting, with just his lips and lungs. The creases in his face had turned him into a permanent smoker, even when he didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth. Time takes a cigarette, to escape its timelessness. These outsiders, who’d escaped from 9-5 jobs, did everything slowly. Because they had all the time in the world. Time gives them bonus points. The counting crows make a mental note of them. Pointless points for the idlers. When you slow down, your thoughts become clear. They crystallise. Becoming rare gems. Epiphanies.

From an open window, a flute unfurled its music. Then from another, I could hear the calling of the violin. They flowed together, creating celestial music. Separated in body, but not in spirit. In that moment, I felt elated. Everything made sense. My mind and body were connected. Then suddenly, a man in a dark suit emerged from the verdant green. He didn’t glitter, he absorbed all the light. A long shadow in the sun. He was the grim reaper, telling me my time was up. I was forced to return to the world of emails, briefs and Blackberrys. The crows were startled and took flight. Time had flown, out of my grasp. It obviously wasn’t my time. Yet.

Saturday, 24th April, 2010

Religion, like the circle of life and the Ganges itself, floods the very being of the Old City of Varanasi. Without it, it’d just be a dirty, decaying muddle of buildings. Religion and the practice of meditation brings a sense of calm to the hullabaloo of India, and makes it bearable to live with regular power cuts, few public services and a sewerage system that’s so bad, people are reduced to defecating on the streets and ghats. Another reason Indians stand it of course, is that most of them don’t know any other way of life. Yet nevertheless, being in the intense hustle and bustle of the Old City gives you an insight into how meditation has survived through the centuries. It could almost be seen as the opiate of the people, the only means by which the average Indian can escape.

So in Varanasi, if people aren’t praying, they’re meditating. And they believe in its benefits so much, that they want to share them with you. Introducing The Guru TM. He appeared out of the mass of people at the morning puja, dressed in a simple dhoti, smiling at me through his small round glasses. A cross between Gandhi and Bill Gates, as instead of holding his hands in prayer or a blessing, he was rubbing them together with rupees in his eyes, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He offered me a lesson in meditation at his house, exclaiming how perfect a time it was to do it. Although weary from my travels, I took him up on his offer, as I always had enough energy for the search for the authentic Indian experience.

The Guru lived just 5 minutes from the ghat where the main puja is performed. It was easy to find because the turning off the main street was signposted by a large Coca-Cola placard. Above his door was a little scarlet statue of Ganesh, the god of transitions, who keeps out the unworthy. Or, perhaps in this case, the ‘un-wealthy’. We bowed in front of Ganesh on entry, mainly because the doorway was low. When I got inside I was surprised to see that his house was a tip. I only hoped that it didn’t reflect the state of his mind. There was a young guy already there, sat down within the muddle of objects and I realised that this wasn’t going to be a private lesson.

I once read that in Indian culture, a person without a guru or a teacher was considered an orphan or an unfortunate one. These days in the culture of travelling, a western person without a guru is an unfortunate tourist, missing out on one of the ‘unmissable’ Indian experiences. Therefore, I politely sat on the floor and waited patiently for The Guru’s life-altering words. He rooted through a cluttered drawer for something and then pulled out a little black book. He beamed at me though those round, simple Gandhian spectacles, making up for the dim light in the room. “Have a look, have a look,” he goaded me, slightly impatiently. 

Intrigued with what I’d find inside this precious tome, I carefully opened the well-worn cover, and found hundreds of yellowing pages, heavy with the ink of many pens. Every kind of handwriting you could imagine was in there, covering all the space available. I squinted to try and read the words in the half-light, my mind alight with fanciful thoughts of the ancient wisdom they might impart. I focused on the fancy writing, full of serifs and swirls, and managed to read: ‘He is a great teacher. His lessons have been invaluable, thoroughly enriching my stay here. I only wish I could take him home with me. Catherine Prentice, Sevenoaks, Kent, England.’ If feelings made a noise, you would’ve been able to hear the sound of a whoopee cushion being emptied. “Most of my students have written something in there”, said The Guru gleefully, his head a huge, great helium filled balloon with a grinning SpongeBob SquarePants printed on it, bobbing up and down beside my deflated whoopee cushion self.

Middle-class tourists from Germany, France, the USA and even Wales had taken lessons from The Guru, and the whole experience started to appear like an attraction at Disney World. A plastic, melted down version of the real thing, with a hollow centre. But what did we really expect? Varanasi was in the Lonely Planet’s top 10 places to go in India, not a little village in the middle of nowhere. I felt a little dirty when The Guru abruptly charged myself and the other disciple (who was interestingly an Israeli) the 200 rupee per hour fee for the session. Now The Guru was going to have to pull something really special out of his beard to win-over this cynical westerner.

And sceptical I was. But you had to give The Guru credit, he had done his research. His product was honed within an inch of Hinduism and Buddhism, so it appealed to the typical western traveller who’d visit Varanasi. That is, either a hippy student or someone who didn’t follow one single religion, but was interested in all of them in their personal quest for alternative ways of living. He had tapped into the middle-class, western market where the search for the meaning of life was now a hobby, and who answered the question, ‘Do you believe in God?’ with the glib, ‘Well I believe in spirituality, but not in any religion or one god.’ The Guru got straight down to business as soon as we were all cross-legged on the floor sat around the imaginary meeting table in his paperless and furniture-less office with that very question. ‘Do you believe in God?’ After we answered it predictably as above, he explained that none of that mattered anyway, as what he taught had nothing to do with religion. It didn’t even have anything to do with spirituality. Because his product came with a different teaching method to the traditional Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain ones. After all, why make your product too exclusive? Always aim to appeal to as many tourists as possible.

So it had nothing to do with religion, or spirituality. It was a philosophy. Philosophy. One word that western people understood. It had the gravitas of a systematic approach and reasoned argument behind it. More about science than faith. Already it was turning into less of an authentic Indian experience than a visit to Delhi’s McDonald’s. From the 1960s onwards, it has become popular for westerners to seek those big ‘meaning of life’ questions from Indian gurus, rather than from western philosophy, as they’re after a more direct experience that’s free from intellectualism. The advertising for our Guru’s ‘new’ and ‘improved’ product would proudly boast about its RM ingredients – religiously modified.

The Israeli guy told me that this wasn’t his first time with The Guru. He then explained that he was a bit of a hippy kid, and had decided to see The Guru as he was looking outside his religion for the answers to his many questions. Due to all the troubles in Israel, he’d become disillusioned with Judaism and the other Abrahamic religions, and thought there must be another way. I then realised that The Guru had cleverly employed another tried and tested marketing technique, that of the testimonial. Like with his little black book of recommendations, the Israeli’s enthusiasm and belief in The Guru rubbed off quickly on me, like the red chalk of a Brahmin’s blessing. And the fact that he was an Israeli made it all the more impressive. A clever twist on the marketing strategy. You could just see the line on The Guru’s business card. ‘My teaching methods work for every tourist, no matter what your beliefs or religion. Atheist, agnostic or Jew.’

The Guru spoke about ‘the creator’, not putting any particular name to it, and told us that the creator was inside us. We are all the same, and everything we need is inside, not outside. We don’t need drugs or drink to transcend and become enlightened. It reminded me of that scene in the British film Human Traffic, where after a drug-fuelled clubbing night, two friends high on cannabis believe they’ve found the answer to the universe’s mysteries when they realise that in Star Wars, the main difference between Darth Vader and Yoda, or evil and good, is that Darth Vader wants to conquer outer space, whereas Yoda teaches how to have power over your inner space. And the more I looked at The Guru, the more I had flashbacks of the pointy-eared, grammatically creative, 1970s alien glove puppet, with someone’s hand up its backside. I wondered if ‘the creator’ had its hand up The Guru, up all of us.

A guru is a teacher, or Spiritual Master, and as an adjective, it means ‘weighty’ or ‘heavy’ with knowledge and wisdom. Yet our guru was more concerned with light entertainment. For one, he took great pleasure in laughing at people, especially when they slipped up. Like when I mistook a bull for a buffalo. It’s an easy mistake to make as they do look pretty similar, yet hearing The Guru’s incredulous laughter, you would have thought I’d called it a tiger instead. ‘A buffalo? A buffalo!! She thinks it’s a buffalo!’ he boomed loudly to everyone in the street before almost crying with laughter. I don’t remember Yoda laughing at Luke Skywalker.

Later, I learnt that to gain authority and to attract and maintain followers, gurus usually present themselves as purer than and superior to ordinary people and other gurus. So that partly explained his condescending manner. And if it was necessary for me to achieve enlightenment, then I guess I could forgive it. Yet he appeared to enjoy his superiority a little too much and as he asked us a series of deceptively difficult questions, he would wait for our useless replies grinning and foaming at the mouth like a bull on heat. ‘What is yoga?’ he asked first, letting the question hang in the air, like a noose ready and waiting. I swallowed hard, my throat feeling tight all of a sudden. Yet bravely, or perhaps foolhardily, I stepped up to the gallows. ‘It’s a relaxation technique and also good exercise for flexibility.’ It had been the answer he’d been waiting for and with a mischievous glint in his eye, he launched into his old speech through yellowing teeth about yoga being a philosophy, not just a form of exercise.

He continued with his artful probing, ‘What is meditation?’ ‘What is war really about?’ and it was like each time he was putting his sandal-clad foot out, waiting for us to trip over it before roaring with laughter. You see, with all our answers we were letting our illusions and preconceptions get in the way, therefore we weren’t speaking the truth. And so everything we thought, according to The Guru, was wrong. Now appearing as an incarnation of the Cheshire Cat, he continued to amuse, vex and baffle us until we wondered if we actually knew anything at all. Then at the precise moment he asked, ‘Who are you?’ I really didn’t have a clue. In 20 short minutes I’d been cleansed of my illusions and preconceptions, which meant I now knew nothing. I suddenly felt hopelessly lost and was tripping up over every question, like a silly blonde, middle-class Alice who’d followed a guru and had fallen down his dark, dank warren by mistake. And now she didn’t know where she was.

But it was ok, as The Guru was there to find us again. And we weren’t too far away, because apparently we’re inside ourselves, and all we have to do is reach in and there we are. ‘Do you understand?’ he asked, his eyes staring into me, searching for my answer, giving me the feeling that he’d find it even if I resisted. All gurus ask for unquestioning obedience, and I realised that ridiculing us and holding our answers in contempt was The Guru’s way of getting through to cynical westerners. After all the interrogating questions and derided answers, you were lost, worn out and ready to listen. So when we got onto the meditation and yoga, he had our complete attention. In that way, at least, he was a good teacher. It was as if instead of ‘Eat Me’ or ‘Drink Me’ he had ‘Listen To Me’ engraved on his forehead. Right in front of his Chakra.

I had chanted ‘Aum’ many a time at the end of a Yoga session back in London, but had never known what it meant, and had always felt a little stupid doing it. The Guru would have choked on all 7 Chakras if he’d have known. Because Aum is actually pretty important. Something to be revered, not sniggered at in the back row of a community centre in Brixton. Aum is the 3 letters that the universe is made from, The Guru continued with wide eyes, his arms making a big circular motion to indicate ‘everything’. When his arms moved, a trail of light and glittering dust followed, as if he was making Aum appear visually right before our eyes. But I could have been seeing things in my state of delirium, brought about thanks to my rude awakening at 4 am by the chanting Hare Krishnas next door to my guesthouse.

The universe (Brahman) can be divided into these 3 letters, or sounds, and they form the basis of all languages. The Guru explained that Sanskrit, Hebrew and English alphabets all begin with the letter A, the sound of nature. Apparently you can hear it in a waterfall. I was thinking this over when suddenly a cow next door gave a loud ‘mooooo’, which now when I really listened actually sounded more like an ‘Aaaaaauuuuuummm’. But then again, it was a holy cow, so it was obviously more enlightened than most. And that turned out to be our cue to chant ‘Aum’ ourselves. Perhaps the cow was the MD of the guru’s entrepreneurial enterprise, concerned about the finances, prompting The Guru to move on with his lesson so it didn’t run over the allocated time. Well time costs money, even for The Guru. In my mind’s eye I could see the cow raising its eyebrows in exasperation.

The Guru then told us to follow him before closing his eyes and launching straight into an Aum.

Aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….

Now as I wasn’t sure of ‘Aum politics’, the Brahmin version of ‘spliff politics’ (which is explained very clearly by Mr Nice in the film Human Traffic), I stopped my aum here. I could have gone for longer, I had enough breath left in me, yet then it’d look like I was trying to outdo the guru, and I didn’t fancy the consequences of that little charade. We all appeared to have the same idea, as the Israeli stopped just after, while The Guru carried on.

…mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Then the cow mooed again and The Guru’s voice immediately faded out until it became part of the humming of the distant noises. A smirk of superiority danced across The Guru’s lips before he launched into another Aum. Now being a westerner, competitiveness has been bred into me, and so The Guru’s smirk had an effect on me. It riled me, and so this time, in spite of myself, I decided to give The Guru a run for his money. Through the wall I could sense the cow’s nervousness.

….mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm………..

I was still with him here. Just me and The Guru, neck and neck. Breath against breath.

…mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

I could feel my voice begin to weaken, and my lungs seriously wanted me to take another breath, but I carried on, willing The Guru to stop before me. Then something made me break out of this competitive trance, and I opened my eyes and saw The Guru eyeballing me, his face holding an expression that said, “I’ll go on forever you know. Easily for the whole lesson if that’s what you want.” The intensity I’d created in the room suddenly seeped into me, and I felt the awkwardness of the waiting Israeli. I quickly saw the error of my ways and stopped abruptly, leaving The Guru to finish last. In meditation and yoga the ‘winner’, or Zen Master, is always the last to finish.

He then moved on to the Sanskrit prayers. With his eyes gently closed, his whole being was absorbed in the incantation. His voice quivered up and down, as though he was channelling the vibrations of Brahman through his throat. The sounds and alien language seemed to just come to him, flow. As instinctive as breathing.

The cow then signalled that it was time for the meditation. The Guru explained that the reason for meditation was to reach enlightenment. The physical exercise, the yoga that followed, was used to gain an awareness of nature. So the practice of both was about the body and mind working as one. To him it didn’t make sense to have one without the other. Like curry without the spices.

So gaining enlightenment meant switching off everything we’d learnt to switch on. And meditation was the only way to get there, as it stopped you thinking and let you hear yourself for a change. The Guru could sense that we were a little apprehensive about the not-thinking thing, but he told us not to worry. We were in his company, and had his energy and powers around us, so we’d actually find it much easier than usual. And, of course, we had his copyrighted technique to help us.* He gave us two chakra options of where to focus our minds. The spot in the centre of the forehead, above the eyebrows, or the bellybutton. So if one wasn’t working, we could move to the other, and then back again. Jump between the two, until we were settled.

We were sat on the hard floor facing The Guru with our eyes closed. For the first few minutes it seemed easy, just peacefully sitting there, focusing on the chakra in the centre of my forehead. It was a relief to be left alone and escape from the intensity of the conversation. All the tension was lifted from my neck and shoulders in what I imagined to be huge helium balloons adorned with SpongeBob SquarePant’s inanely grinning face. The image instantly calmed me more as I pictured them floating above us, beckoning us to join them up there. In fact, I was so relaxed that it felt like a good time to snatch a quick nap. Or at least to be brain dead for a while, and have a break from all the observing the general traveller will make every second of the day in a country like India. It was a first hand experience of how Indians manage to escape from the overcrowding, the defecation on the street and general suppression of the hardness of everyday existence, in order to still survive like human beings.

Yet then, after I got accustomed to the relief, I started thinking. Not deep thoughts, just things like, how long is this going to go on for? How long has it been already? As soon as I thought this, the room started to seem really close and it felt like the walls were bending inwards towards us. Like tripping with your eyes closed. The air became thick, as if suddenly because I knew about it, the energy from the chakras was so tangible to me, I could now feel it. I found it harder to breathe, which made the atmosphere intimidating, along with the overwhelming sensation that someone was watching over us. Not just watching, but observing.

I discovered that when your eyes are closed, your ears take over, and everything sounds ten times louder then it normally does. So the next thing to take over my thoughts were images my mind painted to the sounds I was hearing. The tinny sound of a bucket being put on the floor. Flip flops scraping the dirty ground. Women chatting, cows mooing. As I focused on these, I began to relax again and let them wash over me. This was at last, possibly the right state to begin meditation, one that The Guru’s had probably been in all the time. And that’s when The Guru asked us to open our eyes. It had taken me 10 minutes to get there. I felt like I hadn’t even tried to meditate, but I suppose that was the first step towards it at least. It proved just how hard it is for a westerner to not look at, say or think anything for even only 10 minutes.

Aaaaaauuuuuuummmm. It was time for the yoga. I have been used to slow movements in yoga, but the Guru’s product incorporated energetic ones. It was more of a high-energy workout. Running on the spot, raising your hands above your head, waggling your arms by your side, star jumps and general moves to loosen up the body. After the calm of the meditation, it felt good to be energised. I realised how well the two went together. The Guru set a frantic pace, and challenged us to keep up with him, reminding us of how much older he was. He was only in his late fifties though. It’s not like he was 86. Or 900, like Yoda. This provoking spurred us on, and I star-jumped until I was so exhausted that I was about to give up when I was encouraged to keep going by the beads of perspiration that I saw forming all around The Guru’s fading hairline. Like glistening sequins on the headdress of a white sari. I realised that we weren’t going to have to keep it up for much longer. We didn’t even have to wait for the holy cow MD to moo before we got on to the stretching.

And it was while we were stretching that I discovered that there is actually a similarity between The Guru’s yoga product and the more basic versions you find across the UK in community centres and gyms. Farting. In most of the yoga sessions I’ve been to, at least one person has ‘let one off’ during the more rigorous stretching moves. Yet it was a surprise that in this one it was to be The Guru himself. Although he didn’t bat an eyelid as the air was released from his backside, producing the satisfying noise of a whoopee cushion that’s just been sat on hard by an inanely grinning SpongeBob SquarePants. It was hardly the much talked about ‘body and mind working together’ technique. But instead of going as red as a talik mark, the superior Guru simply ignored his body protesting about too much dhal for breakfast, and boldly carried on with more stretching, boasting about how much more flexible his body was then ours.

At the end of The Guru’s ride, I did feel energised and generally more positive, so when he asked, ‘Do you feel good?’ as he grinned from ear to ear, I honestly answered yes. It might not have been the authentic Indian experience I’d been looking for but I had been given more of an insight into the Indian’s mindset. For a change, I wasn’t just a tourist observing, I was participating, and that’s how you can start to understand a culture.

And I had to admire The Guru. He’s an entrepreneur, adapting to the change that’s happening in India as it embraces capitalism. Although unlike Bangalore, Varanasi hasn’t reincarnated. It’s crumbling, dying a slow death like Calcutta, being kept alive by travellers and tourists’ cash. So India (and Varanasi especially), is full of con artists trying to get as much of this money as possible. But even though he kept grinning from ear to ear like the tricky Cheshire Cat, I don’t believe The Guru was one of these tricksters. He was simply trying to earn a living with the knowledge and the skills he had. It’s not like he had a huge Rolex dangling from his wrist and his home was very humble.

Gurus are self-realised masters, and my one had taken this further and had become a ‘self-made man’, breaking out of Indian poverty, a rags to rich-ish story. He’s honed his ‘product’, has a ‘unique selling point’ and has turned himself into an accessible and marketable character to westerners. Part vexing Cheshire Cat, loony SpongeBob SquarePants and Alan Sugar perhaps, but also Yoda. And in a world that’s so mixed up that no one knows where to turn anymore, he provides the Dummy’s Guide to Enlightenment, the first step towards reaching the way out of all the madness and hullabaloo of modern society.

*Proven to be successful for over 30 years.