Reflections

The lily-pond at the end of the lane

When I left Italy a couple of weeks ago I was depressed, angry and confused – and for many, many reasons, not least because I was upset about my general physical condition and overall health.  In addition to this, our life had been in someone else’s hands for the best part of three years. The progress from my apartment in Tunbridge Wells to our new Italian home in the Marches, between the Adriatic Sea and the Sibillini mountains had proceeded with almost no positive impetus or interception from either of us. It seemed that we were in the hands of the vendor, or the banks, or the Americans, or Italian bureaucracy – always our destiny was being manipulated by others and it was never our own straightforward decision. It was very unsettling – but we survived.

The gift of being in Kerala now is the opportunity to take stock, and acknowledge the incredible good fortune of all that has happened over the past three years and the exciting challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. If you are the kind of person that likes to be in control of every detail (as I certainly am) then this sort of deluge of events is disorienting, and it’s not a comfortable place to be. But now things are far more orderly in my mind, and though my bones and muscles are aching, my energy is depleted and my whole body is lethargic, there is a sense that this 4-week process has bottomed out and a great deal of rubbish has been cleared away. Now I can rebuild.

So what of all the other people here? Several of you have asked, and I can imagine the ideas you might have of old crones in wheelchairs, or Google executives on sabbaticals, or professional hypochondriacs experimenting with a new course of treatment. I will, at a later post, deal with the complexities of what Ayurveda is and isn’t, but let’s for the moment consider this motley mix of inmates.

The owner and founder, Anjit, is a tall, dark-skinned, black-bearded native of Kerala with long black curling hair that hangs down to the middle of his back. Surprisingly, he lives most of his life in Finland with his sylph-like blonde Finnish wife and their family. Through this Scandinavian connection the project attracts a disproportionate representation of Scandinavian nationals. Of course, they nearly all speak fluent English so there’s no language barrier. Then there are Germans (they get everywhere, don’t they?) two French couples and the largest ethnic group here are the NRI’s – non-resident Indians.

 In the past 60 years Indians have settled all over the world with their innate ability to become totally integrated without losing any of their cultural independence. One retired couple flew back to London earlier in the week; he’d worked in shipping in Pakistan then transferred to London, then moved to air cargo and ended up as a station manager for a small airline, based in Frankfurt. Impeccable Indian boarding-school English, - a character straight out of a Seera Mayal film or television series. Speaking of whom (and forgive me if I’ve mis-spelt her name) someone very like her or her characters is also here; she’s another NRI, married to a Brit and living in Henley-on-Thames. There’s an extended family of NRIs from Canada; the youngest is a student daughter then there’s mother, uncle, and a couple of aunts (presumably all here to keep an eye on her.)

Just when you were convinced that this is the sort of average mix that you might have bumped into in Tesco’s in Braintree, you walk into the yoga class and see the housewife from Mannheim tied in a knot, or the suave Parisian balanced on one leg in a classic, statuesque pose. Like any good Hercule Poirot scenario, one is continually trying to work out the plot, but it’s not so much a “Who-done-it?” as “What-brought-him-here?” There are many tantalisingly complex characters.

What do we all have in common? What is true is that there are certain sub-groups, like the people who have done many years of yoga and relish the opportunity to be coached by a true yoga master. Then there are the people – a small minority – who don’t read the small print, or maybe just don’t buy into the concept, and look on it as a holiday, modifying the rules and recommendations to suit themselves. But the one thing that unites most guests is the appreciation of the opportunity to go through a mental, physical and spiritual detox, and then start life afresh. I think that most of us would like to go home with the sense of breaking bad habits, of adopting a healthier life-style, with the intention of approaching the madness of 21^st century Western life with a little more cynicism. It’s like the river down below us in the valley: I’d like to think about slowing down and flowing deeper, rather than just babbling over the shallows, which is, perhaps, the way many of us lead our everyday lives.

On reflection, I am pretty ashamed of the person I had become before I came out here. I was unforgivably bad-tempered and had lost all sense of joy in my life. If I have now found that, it will be a far greater benefit than the lost inches and kilos, the loss of which will, I trust, support the new persona..