studies with a medicine man ii

everyday there r bruised soldiers from the cold war of indian-poverty that limp into the porch of gurrukal family's place. the porch is the color of venus, the prettiest work of architecture on the strip of dismal houses along an allah-hu-akbar-ing arabian sea that threatens to spill over the short wall of rocks that sit like a buffer of meditative turtles.

i'm usually leaning back on a bamboo chair n meditating on the jewels dilu/d/gurrukal is dropping. half the time, i'm unsure exactly what he's saying through his bare english, as bankrupt as his finances. but i see him. he see's me too. his family and friends and even his wife often laugh at us, at how we r communicating. we laugh too. only after having engaged on a profound conversation on leaves, on nature, on medicine, on islam n hinduism, and forgetting to remember that we didn't speak the same language, hardly had a middle ground.

d loves nature. says nature provides everything we need. no need to go to the store, everything is back there, he says pointing to the forested area behind the house, before the river of plastic bags, plastic packages, plastic bottles, plastic sandals. i think of the plastic, the way it's strangling the Mother, the ancient ways. d doesn't notice. sees only the gold mine back there, the storehouse of medicine. he drops a recipe to the guy who has limped in with a leg blacker than the ebony of his skin. he has kidney failure, d tells me when i ask, when i stand inches away like a kid in a science lab watching the teacher dissect a frog. beads of sweat crawl down his balding head, onto his shiny button down.

gurrukal is having 4 conversations at once. usually is. his 2 year old daughter, who is unrestricted by gravity, is snipping the air with hedge clippers n yelling a question to him, his mother is telling him something about something from the ocean she is gazing out at. the patient n him r talking about nature, a continuation of the conversation he and i were having, the three 21 year old's with muhammad (s.a.w) beards, who have come in from the suddenly violent storm, holding onto various parts of the body, take note of the cipher and question him like he was socrates.

i realize that there is no equivalent to this in ny, to what he's doing, to the healing center on the porch of the village community, except maybe at the barbarshop. gurrukal is running an ad hoc clinic like a barbarshop. like. but, not exactly. there r young n old, women n men, hindus with four stripes across their head n women with hijabs. they r having chai with the family, politicking, talking health n sirens; they r sprawled over the humble furniture n mats on the ground, along the ledge of the porch that sears out towards the road like a beach-boardwalk.

the health clinics in ny, like the hospitals, like the police precint, feels humiliating, like cheese lines, like soup kitchens, like immigration, like u would be doing something wrong to be asking question, that u r wrong for just being there, like u better write down your questions in text-message speak cause you have 92 seconds when the god-doctor comes out to see you.

gurrukal has set up a people's health clinic, where people seem to be accidentally slipping in the sea and tripping on airless soccer balls n falling off their motor-bikes just to hang here.

studies with a medicine man

gurukkal is young, early 30's. he waited for me to sit on his motorcycle, to sit behind him and his wife and his two year old twin girls, who sit on the space before him, 1 grabbing on to the bike handles, the other on to her. he dodges the debris on the unfinished street he sometimes stays in; stays still in the wild wind caressing his thick black hair; tilts past auto-rickshaws, fishermen and time.

he skids into a narrow block where there are men n women sprawled on the street, politiking, hawking, vending. barely pausing, he scoops his daughters n hands them to an older woman, with lines like a banyan over her thin face. her thin arms stick out from an old once colorful sari.

"that's my mom," he says, looking back at me. i wave at her, as we fly off.

he has to drop his wife off in the city, leaves me at the bus stop on the way. gurrukal gently looks at me with depth - his black eyes in mine, mine in his. we never made a date to meet again, never fixed a price on studying with him. didn't even exchange info.

that was our first meeting. we mostly looked at each other the whole time, feeling each other out. i met with him another two times within the span of over a month before he nodded, before i knew that he would be the one i wanted to study under.

this past week i've been watching gurukkall at work, working with him, training in kalari-chikitsha. at night, sometimes, after 3 or 4 massages, after bandaging, repairing a dozen broken/fractured, bruised limbs, after picking up/dropping off/feeding his kids, he is teaching kalari, reviews moves with youngins, and then an hour later with an adult batch. i join in on occasion, if we don't have patients to do nadi-massage on. but we usually do, shortly after the kalari class, n these days we r tag-teaming. he does one part of our patient's body then nods at me. i move in using the strokes he's taught me, reminded of the mantra he's instilled in me when i am feeling tired, lazy, bothered - "remember that this is the work of divinity, that when u r working on them, u r working on yourself n that u should always give your best."

serenaded by the sound of the ocean that sits outside the largely fishermen hood of muslims n hindus on the fringes, i press into the veins of our patient n get Deeper in the work. all praise is due...

graduation day

--> the one month yoga program culminated yesterday in a graduation ceremony. all 13 of us students in the ancient path, were there, trepidly awaiting our test results. we sat indian style in a circle, on the smooth wooden floor of the rooftop shala, looking like a bunch of seniors in a high school ceremony in a small hippie-dippe school.

one by one, sunil, the coordinator of ashtanga mysore yoga, called our names, and read off our scores. his light eyes sparkled in the diminishing sun, peering through the window walls and tall beige curtains.

“speak up,” dr. malika, our teacher in the patanjali sutras, gently scolded sunil, who spoke like a man perpetually in a library, with his head in a book.

“most of you have passed,” sunil proudly announced. there was a silent uproar.

for a moment you could hear graduation tunes playing in our heads, draping imaginary gowns over our yoga tights and tanktops. the song materialized in the form of thunder, as sunil stood and grabbed the 200-hour yoga certificates from the ledge, by the alter, above the yoga mats that crumbled before our virabadhrassana's and parsarita paddontonasana's just that morning.

monsoons lurked behind june, two days away, as my classmates stood, one after the other to collect their certificates and smile for the flashing camera's: claudia the glow from spain, with diamonds in her eyes, olivia from bolivia her partner in crime, with flowers in her hair, brittany the teacher from dallas with flowers on her pants, jamie, the invincible elastic woman from ottawa, yves, the man of many-talents from belgium, charolette the photographer from syndey, kat, the aussie with plots of a yoga studio, padma, the hatha-yoga teacher from kerala, job, the smoking acrobat from the netherlands, ellie the human rights defender from argentina, melody, the honey-voiced illustrator from france.

...

our teachers trickled in as we began huddling for a group picture. first praveen, his dimples revealing playful plotting for spicier pictures.

“this is a yoga class. lets take yoga pictures,” he said. like a masterful conductor of a symphony, he began orchestrating group asanas of scorpion poses, over urdvah dhanurasana over supta kurmasana. ramesh-ji, a virtuoso in adjustments, came just in time to align us in perfect angles and prescribe adendums to our intricacies.

some of us watched our peers, some were in conversation with our teachers, some of us eyed the man who rushed with two large bags of aromatic goodies. our graduation was sealed with mysore-style h'orderves – spicy mix, jilabi's and a mysore pack – a golden sweet that crumbles in your mouth.

thunder cracked, rain poured and we quietly stood in a sacred circle and paid homage to our past month.