Home Sweet Home

My long-anticipated moment finally arrived – I spent the first night in my new home last night. Construction has been slow but steady for many, many (MANY!) months now, and while there is still much work to be done (yes, that is an old water heater out front), I felt a nearly seismic shift as I [...]

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Pancha Karma, at last

Here I sit, propped up with pillows on my room’s private porch with a cup of tea, looking out at the storm clouds gathering over Anemalay in the distance, the elephant-shaped mountain that greeted me upon my arrival at Vaidyagrama five months ago. I never had much time to just sit and watch her and [...]

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The Next Chapter

We finished our classes at Vaidyagrama today. It is amazing the time has passed so effortlessly. We are off tomorrow to Bangalore as the first stop on a few weeks’ tour. Coincidentally, “the President” and his wife completed their treatment here today and leave tomorrow as well, so a farewell gathering with a traditional Indian [...]

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At the Service of the President

Since we returned from Ooty over a week ago, Vaidyagrama has been caught up in a whirlwind of activity, the center of which has been a high profile guest and his entourage. He arrived accompanied by a five-car police escort two nights before we left for Ooty. We had never seen so many cars at [...]

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A Weekend in Ooty

Last weekend, the four of us students went to a nearby hill station (isn’t that a quaint term?) for a bit of a change in scenery – and temperature. I haven’t been writing about the temperature much, mostly out of denial, but rest assured, it’s gotten HOT here in southern India. I am glad I [...]

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Resources and Resourcefulness

As I described last week, I have started making my own medicine, which I thought would lead me to the development of some new fire-building skills. Instead, I have discovered a wonderful new invention – the gas stove. I know, the gas stove is not really a new invention; however, this particular gas stove is. [...]

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Japan

What can you say in the face of such abrupt destruction and incomprehensible suffering? Everything feels trite and obvious, too repetitive. Perhaps, however, it is the repetition of our shocked sadness, our shared grief spoken aloud around the globe, that is important. If we don’t repeat it, if the size of the trauma seems too [...]

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Happy Pongal!

Last weekend was Pongal, the annual harvest festival. It is similar to our Thanksgiving – they give thanks for the harvest and for the generosity of the earth. It also marks the transition between early winter and late winter (they recognize six discrete seasons here). It is the only Hindu festival that is observed on [...]

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And Then There Were Five….

This trip came about because of Sanjay, a classmate of mine at the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque and a truly remarkable man. He is an allopathic physician, an ophthalmologist, born and raised in India and currently living in Holland.  He trained in India specializing in eye surgery, and decided to work in the foothills of [...]

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A very full weekend

Turns out I know even more people in this enormous, anonymous city than I thought. Sunday afternoon I took a taxi from Daniel’s apartment in to Mumbai proper, about a 45 minute drive south, to meet up with my friend Aditya’s parents. As my 18 month old niece Koruna says, I felt like a Big [...]

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