So Be Good Everyone...

If you ever decide on being Indian in a next life, make sure you have a caste. Trust me, you'll be glad you brought one, cos being without a caste in India is not easy. I'd rather be back in Norway, unemployed and without a life than casteless in India. Since they often have jobs! Lots of 'em. All day long... All day long... And I thought this type of stuff was abolished... Yay...

You know, some say that Ashtanga Yoga is Shiva's gift to mankind. I think its God's plan for the female body. As Yoga in general, it inspires spirituality. Its one of those things that make you go "You know, I think there's a plan going on here...", "This is a next step!", It should be, you know... Mandated... I was at the central palace in Mysore. It was beautiful, guys. It was huge! The Maharaja lived very comfortably, let me assure you. With his, what, nine wives? I tell you, that palace was so huge he could have had nine wives in there without them even knowing about eachother. You know... "Ok, baby, I'm heading out to the west wing to hang with the boys... See you... Wednesday! Love you!" I hope he mandated yoga. (passing thought)
I know he had a bunch of castless people working at the palace! A good thing he fought unemployment!

So, well, tadatada... Sanskrit is fun! I just spent five hours the other day, translating eight short lines of text, great fun there... Count in all the "special characters" and the "exceptions", we're looking at a 64 character alphabet, a grammar system that looks like a mangled gear-box, the word "sanskrit" itself can be translated to "highly elaborated"... I asked at the local book store for a sanskrit dictionary, they gave me two books, one for english-to-sanskrit, the other sanskrit-to-english, each the size of a gothic bible, font size the same as the text that reads "shall not be held liable for anything" in your PC's end-user agreement... Fun!

To whom it may concern, Vijaya says hello. The humble, shy, little sanskrit teacher had himself a new Yamaha, showed off his campus and fluent sanskrit skills and was not shy... Seems he is one of 14-15000 fluent sanskrit speakers in India, and studies at a traditional college where everything is done in the language. (hey what a sentence)

I, ehm... Look forewards to Goa, I think we'll have have a mountain of fun there aswell. So be good everyone. Else on Wednesday you get a lump of coal...

Cheers!

So...

Yoke:
To join, couple, link, or unite; something that couples or binds together; a bond or tie. From root Jugum; yōk: Yoga... In case you wondered.

Remember the story about the traffic conditions down here? Well, we went on a trip to see this waterfall out west (16th greatest in the world apparently) and our driver, as we get ready for the trip, tells us he wants to teach us something. He tells us to put our hands together; "In india, when we go out driving, we pray to dhurga and say an Om, and that way we stay safe". Then I said "In Norway we have a thing like that too. Kind of similar to yours. We obey traffic rules and drive carefully". Then we all laughed for a little while. Then we got serious again. We put our hands together and said "Om!". And we were off. Bad choice of prayer if you ask me... Om, being the sound of creation, I found our driver to be just that. Overly creative...

Still alive though... Which reminds me. We encountered this procession underway somewhere, playing happy music, and apparently someone sitting in a chair being carried around by these happy party people... "A wedding!" I shouted out to the others. "Let's go have a look!" And we did. We followed them, taking pictures, many turning around to wave at us or to strike a pose, smiling and wishing us welcome. What an occasion! Then I went ahead a little to snap a picture of what presumably was a happy young girl having her dreams fulfilled at last. And everyone motioned for me to come around to take a picture of her... The girl was however not a young one, with dreams coming true. This girl didn't have to worry about such things any more. She was not excited. She was in fact quite peaceful. Very peaceful... Too peaceful... Very dead... Sitting in that beautiful yellow chair. Won't add anything more here. Except to say, I was mildly shocked.

Still trying to fit in down here... Might take a while. A Puja happened at Alex's place that was very nice, however smoke-filled, and Guruji, Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois, came down for a conference today. Kind of cool, the first time I got to see the man. I have started to work out at the "Tuff-Look Gym", and if that isn't cool I don't know what is...

Cheers.

We have arrived...

Still alive...

You know the way that you used to play traffic when you was a kid? You know, *beep beep*! *vrooooooom*! *beep beep*! Then you grow up and you figure out its nothing like that? Well, in India it is actually. Its like they talk with the horn. And they always give it a good honk before a turn you know? Just like we did when we were kids. Its... Well... The left side of the road is the suggested lane to utilise, and most drivers do as suggested. That's good. In fact, people here know so little about driving and its applicable laws, trucks actually have traffic laws written on the back of their hangers! (see pics) One car just had "God be praised!" written in big letters across the windshield and a big fat blue cross at the end. Which seems the thing to do. Just paste up a prayer, get behind the weel and go!

Bringing a camera to the shala to take pictures is like bringing a mirror to the castle to groom dracula. They frown on it... Even if you think it has merit... So while I couldn't get a photo from within the shala, there's a couple from its exteriors. They do yoga in there if you wanna know.

The best thing about this place is the people. Even tho there's no official campus, there exists one around the shala and the neighborhood coconut stand. Very easy to get to know people and everyone seems warm and open. People from basically every corner of the world. Everyone here to do yoga. Its great! :)

So that's it for now! I'm set good and tight for this. I aparently have twice as much money as I needed, and the living conditions are satisfactory. I'm getting one of them "networks" everybody talks about and people help me along all I need. Only problem I seem to be having is getting to have less fun and more studying. A luxury one, yeh.

Ehm. Bye.

Cya! ;)

Time to leave Oslo, friends, family, the yoga shala and not least that creepy wardrobe man ("Garderobe-Mannen", see pics) behind for a while. India it is! Bye bye everyone. But since I'm not completely crazy, I'm setting up this little thing here to make sure you know I'm alive down here. (still so anyway). I'm setting this up as an outlet rather than a means of communication, so posting is disabled, except for me ;)

The purpose of my trip is business, so I'll be very busy. Hard to reach actually. I hope to do an update here once a week, no phone, won't reply many emails, but I have pictures as often as I can produce them.

And that's it for now. Best of luck, see you all in the spring/summer somewhere, yeh? I am here doing this.