Ayurveda with a 100 year old

In Kerala now. Thiruvananthapuram (tvm), to be precise. It's mainly hot and humid, but also rainy and cool, sometimes. I got two whole weeks of mum pampering me with delicious home-cooked food and juicy pineapples and mangoes (taken from my granma's place) and endless hours of sitting in my basket-chair (you know, the hanging types) gently rocking back and forth and reading my books. My little library in dxb is full to overflowing already. But I feel like I might be tempted to take back some of the books I've left here.
I'm quite impressed with my entire family! None of them have so far even mentioned a word about marriage! Although, things were pretty awkward when I went back to my hometown to meet my granma. Classic pink-elephant scenario! But my parents have been the best! They didn't talk about it, they didn't act sad or disappointed with me... in fact... mum's quite nice to me! And she seems to genuinely feel that way... I can tell she's not doing it just cos I'm not well and my neck is all screwed up!

Oh yeah! About that...the reason I'm here in the first place...
I went to this healer in Ayoor, a hour's drive from tvm.
The guy is ollld, and apparently very good. He said he works mainly through yoga and the treatment would be through excercises and there won't be too many medicines. This sounded perfect to me, cos I hate taking those nasty tasting ayurvedic medicines that make me gain weight like crazy!

When I got to the place, he asked me if I was studying. When I told him I was working, he asked me my age (28) and the next question was obviously... why I wasn't married.
What was I supposed to tell this stranger, who looked like he was a 100 years old, the reason for my single status?Should I tell him that none of my relationships worked out? Was I supposed to expose my emotional scars to this man? And my parents were right there! *sigh*
Anyway... he was waiting for an answer... so I told him that it just never happened.
He laughed. He asked me to sit with my back facing him. He gently ran his fingers down my spine and pressed in two specific spots that were hurting me. He then proceeded to give me a lot of information about my condition... all in extremely shudh malayalam (it could've been sanskrit, for all I know!), and I couldn't understand most of it! All I understood was that there were 7 chakras and that some of mine were blocked, dunno why. He talked a lot, a bit too much, a lot of jargon really.

He showed me a couple of exercises that I needed to do for the next 2 weeks and gave me a few meds, which of course, means that I will pile on the kilos like I've been on a diet of McDs and ice cream for a month! *sigh*
I'm doing the exercises and taking the medicines regularly. So far, the pain is not any better or worse. Let's see. I wanna do the the whole thing completely before I give my verdict.
But I'm praying that it all works out ok, cos I've had enough of the pain!

*fingers crossed*

Close to happiness

So I'm sitting in my hotel room in Bahrain, with a wonderful view of the palace in front of me, tap-tapping on my keyboard and it suddenly dawns on me that I miss Dubai.

This comes as a bit of a shock, as I've always been a bit wary of having any emotional attachment with this country where I will forever be treated as a immigrant, no matter what. (unless I marry a local, which I don't see happening!)

I've tried to maintain a purely you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-your's kinda relationship with this country ever since I returned from India after college.

I don't know if it's because I've been traveling so often to all the other GCC countries and they don't come anywhere close to dxb when compared or what else it is, but dxb's got me hooked!

Sure, dxb is more cosmopolitan than any other place... so it doesn't really have it's own culture... everything's fabricated... nothing's real... yeah yeah yeah! You can say all that and more.

But Dubai is Arabic in the best possible way! It is Arabic, with all the mosques and the souks and the dhows lining the creek. And yet, it is open enough to accept cultures from all over the world. You can sit in a restaurant and be surrounded by people from all over the world.

If you want to mingle and mix, you can do that, or if you wish to stick to your little corner of India or Italy or South Africa or wherever, you can do that too.

I can walk out in pants and a sleeveless shirt and won't be honked at by the vehicles at the signal or be yelled at in arabic by school boys trying to get my attention (this happened to me in Bahrain). I will not be the only one whose handshake is not accepted cos I'm a woman (this happened to me while I was having a meeting with the Royal Oman Police in Muscat).

I am all for respecting the culture of a country, and I will ensure that I am more careful about the way I dress when I next go to Bahrain. But I don't have to worry about this in dxb!

The cinemas are better in Dxb. The stores are all open till midnight here, some places... 24/7!

The shopping is better, the parks are better. They even have some days where the parks are open for women and children only! They have a separate line for women at most counters. At some banks, they actually have a men's & women's bank side by side!

Of course, all this was there before too, but the thing that got me hooked are my friends!

Now, I actually have friends here! Their joy is my joy, their sadness mine. They're like family to me. And while I've felt that I will forever be the outsider, I now, finally, feel like I belong.

I leave for Kerala on Friday. I'm going to miss my life in dxb, even if it's just for two weeks! And I'm so thankful that I have something to miss.

What i hate about mallu-land

I haven't reached Kerala yet and it's already started!

This friend of my parents' stopped by a while ago and of courseinquired about my single status.

And I quote, " my daughter has an 8 month old son! What are your plans? Are you so used to being by yourself and just enjoying life?" (?!)

His daughter is about 3 or 4 years younger than me.

This is what I haaaaaaaaaate about Kerala and keralites (obviously not all keralites are like that, but you get what I mean).

People who have nothing to do with you other than the fact that they might have shared the neighbourhood with you 10 years ago think it is their right to inquire about your most private and personal business. A friend of mine is constantly asked about why she has not yet had babies!

Howwww can you have the audacity to ask some stranger about their sex-life?!

Talk about poking your nose into someone else's business!

What's worst is... they don't think they're doing anything wrong! Oh noooo!

It is my right to know what's happening in your life! And if you don't conform to my idea of living life, then there's something very wrong with you, and I have the right to advice you as well as discuss this with everyone in a 50 mile radius, and yes! that includes the milkman and the newspaper boy!

Gah!

In Kerala, you will not find a single club that's frequented by females. In Cochin maybe you'll find a few completely lame clubs that close up around 8pm. I know this cos my friend from Bombay was recently in Cochin and told me he finished a round of all the clubs in Cochin in an hour cos they were all empty except for a few lame men (straight) dancing with other men!

This is not cos mallu girls and boys don't party! Oh noo! They just don't party in mallu-land. They'll go to Bangalore to party if they want to. Why? Cos it's against our culture!

I don't go clubbing either when I'm in Kerala, mainly cos there aren't clubs any where I live, nor do I have any friends to go clubbing with!

Plus, of course, going out after 6 pm by yourself is an automatic invitation for a man to molest you in god's-own-country.

I'm serious, the roads are empty after 7pm! And dark (they don't believe in street-lights I guess). And this is the way it will be, cos we are satisfied with that. If a girl gets raped cos she left the house by herself, that's her fault! Because men will be men!

And this is what men are, according to our people. It's a man's world right?

It is the most hypocritical place in the planet after Saudi Arabia and I hate it!

Can't believe I have to spend 2 weeks there!

Damn! I should've just gone to Delhi!

On top of everything else...

Insomnia.

To Dilli, not itni jaldi!

I can't go to Delhi! :'(

My neck problem has now become my neck and back problem and now I can barely walk without wincing, let alone travel!

So the Dilli and Lucknow trip is off for the moment.

Instead, I'm gonna go to Kerala, get some serious ayurvedic treatment, rest a lot, eat mom's cooking and hopefully get back on my feet soon.

Sucks though, I was soooo looking forward to Dilli and Lucknow! :o(

But I've decided to get serious about my health! I'm gonna get better.

And I'm gonna check out these places and more.

I've decided to make myself a list of places I want to go to this year as an incentive to get better soon.

These are the ones on my radar so far:

1. Dilli, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Amritsar

2. Socotra - I neeeeeeeed to check out this alien-island on earth! I've been fascinated by it ever since I heard of it, which, shamefully enough, was only about a month ago! Then again, Yemen isn't exactly the kind of place one would look to visit, so I can't be blamed for lack of research on the place!

3. Morocco and maybe Tunisia too!

*fingers crossed*

Older, but not wiser.

I was looking through some old posts of mine, way back from 2006, and I realize that though I sound a bit young, a bit more naive than I feel now... nothing much has changed.

I'm still as undecided about the future, as confused...as lost as I was then.

I thought things get better as you grow older, that I'd have things figured out by 28.

I still have the same old questions that remain unanswered.

I'm tired.

3 margaritas and a kamikaze later...

I woke up this morning in my room and realized I wasn't wearing any clothes.

I looked around me and everything seemed normal, other than the fact that my clothes from the party last night was on my study-table.

Sometimes, when I get drunk, I switch to auto-pilot mode and don't remember ANYthing from the previous night. And I have my friends telling me what happened the next day. I'll tell you about what I did in Spain one of these days.

Last night though, I didn't think I was that drunk... cos I remembered everything all the way until I got into the car to be dropped home. I even remember one of the girls being dropped off and she lives VERY close to my place. I think I have this vague recollection of running up the stairs of my building as well. But after that, everything's blank.

I got out of bed, put some clothes on and tried to figure it all out.

I hoped I hadn't thrown my lenses somewhere like I threw my clothes, and I went to check out the lens-case on my dresser. I opened the case and saw that drunk-me had carefully put solution and lens in place, but hadn't closed the case very well. Oh well! At least I hadn't flushed it down or anything!

I went to the living room and found my bag on the rug and my keys on the coffee table. So all was well! I filled a bottle of water, all set to drink away the slight hangover I had. I took in the morning paper, and settled down to read. I crossed my legs when suddenly I noticed that there was a brown... something... on my right foot. It was like I'd stepped on some very dark brown liquid.

I was trying to figure out if it was the cake or something from last night (it was a birthday party and there was chocolate truffle. yummmmmm-y!). I went to the loo to wash it off and that's when I realized that I had cut my toe! That brown stuff... was dried blood! and it looked like a pretty bad cut too, judging from the amount of blood there was.

After a while I went online... I saw that I had a few new mails on my gmail account. I found that I'd gotten a few comments from friends on my status message.

"What happened girl? You ok?" and " ??????????????!!" was pretty much how the messages went.

I was wondering which status update of mine they were referring to, cos I knew that I'd left it blank last night.

That's when I realized that drunk-me was also online at 2am last night!

My status said one thing, "broken".

*sigh*

Drunk-me was also depressed last night I guess. And she didn't have any inhibitions about putting up her feelings online for the damn world to see! Idiot!

Thankfully, I hadn't chatted with anyone (I checked chat-history). And so far I don't seem to have done anything else.

And I have to do something about this broken feeling!

If only I knew what.