Navratra

I'm on Day 4 of the 9 day fast of Navratra. I just finished one of my hardest and most productive yoga practices ever, and I decide to let myself have just a little nap before starting pranayam and meditation. As I start to slip immediately away, I'm startled by an sharp, eerie, unearthly sound that jolts me upright. It's a pig walking outside the window. I laugh at not only my sleep sogged imagination, but yet another reminder, I'm in India. And then I'm out again, until I hear the knock on my door. YES? I leap up to open it and it's the carpenter bearing a lovely cup of chai. Kaushal not being here today, the carpenter's under instruction to keep me in good condition for the fast.

Navratra is a semi-annual 9 day festival of fasting and prayer. Occuring at both equinoxes, the fast is to clean the body to be in good health for the coming seasonal changes. It seems to me that in America, most, if any, of our wisdom on this topic is to have a positive attitude toward a change of season cold as a way to rid the body of accumulated toxins. How much better to turn it into a festival with that unique inseparable Hindu mix of religion, health and science. But this is uneducated rambling on my part. I realize I have little to say on the topic of what American life is like, my own experience being a mishmosh potpourri of who knows what. And I'm learning about India from people who speak very little English. Kaushal discourages book learning saying it fixes ideas in the mind and prevents inner understanding. So I'm just doing what everyone else is doing and checking it out for myself. I have to say I'm in excellent spirits. The last post was indeed a necessary down point which forced me to look more deeply within and find my own answers. And finally, finally with the understanding that there are no fixed answers and no mistakes either, for that matter. The amount of despair I experienced opened a new door to depths I couldn't have known were waiting for me. Trust only God was the instruction I came to. Human beings are so falliable, but that's our nature, it can't be the problem. In trusting God, I see that anything I might deem a mistake, is only a lesson I need, any difficulty an opportunity, and thus, the end of fear. OK, I know how that sounds, but this is my real experience. I've said YES - again, but yes to my path, a subtle but essential difference. Yes to India does not include me and then I'm adrift and at the mercy of those I hand over power to thinking they are India. But YES to my unknown path, trusting God, and whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! I no longer have doubts about why I'm here.

So when I suddenly hear that tomorrow starts Navratra and do I want to fast and do I want to do the midnight rituals, well friends, you know me by now! But it's not a fast like I ever could've imagined. Daytime is only milk, chai, and some fruit if necessary. I have been put on bananas and I think it's a good call. But meanwhile, it's very, very strange, because the main ingredient in the daytime seems to be, feels like, sugar. I'm drinking water, but most Indians rarely do so. So it's cup after cup of chai. Even to the Indians it's a big enough joke to get translated to me. When someone talks about how strictly they're observing the fast, someone else will say, yes, chai every half hour. I haven't experienced any hunger pangs at all, but I certainly am getting the sugar rushes.

Plus there's a full dinner. No wheat, rice or dhal, but there are special substitutions like a Navratra only type of rice and chestnut flour pakora and chapati. I eat like crazy for dinner, like a wild woman, though I haven't realized my hunger until that moment. In Indian, the more you eat, the more you're offered. Once satiated, I think, what the hell kind of fast is this? I've thought about that a lot, but I'm doing it 100% anyhow. Last night, after dinner, my intestines discreetly informed me that they were painlessly, but urgently, going to perform a cleanse. Unlike other times I've been in this situation, I just felt totally great, somehow mind and body in a harmonious releasing process, leaving me feeling clean and energetic. So today I'm not so worried about the sugar. Plus, as Kaushal says, it's a 9 day fast and I can't afford to lose much weight. He's telling me I need daily honey and I shudder to think of even more sugar in the diet, but what do I know? I am, at this very moment, both the best proportioned and most fit I've ever been in my entire life, with energy and confidence increasing daily.

Speaking of which, it's time now for my meditation practice and I'm trying to be faithful. So a quick posting and more soon I sincerely hope. Thanks much to everyone who's responded, I love hearing from you, and I will be in touch individually. I love you all!