ayurveda: balancing being

being and nothingness, the contemplation by jean paul sartre, examines the existential quagmire of human existence in the modern. in ayurveda, this type of interrogation is part of the human pursuit, and suitable for you, if you are kapha, overly grounded in routine, and afraid to seek. but, depending. you may already be suffering from nihilism, with frequent bouts of depression and sartre's writings may only spiral you further in your abyss. in that case, read inspirational writings from rumi, who also treads on the question of being, and strives towards nothingness, from the greatest pillar of islam - humility -  diminishing ego to align with the One. all praise is due.

ayurveda delves us into this question of being, by embracing you as you and not tom, carlos, or ali. what you read, eat, drink and how and when and with who, all have to do with your prakriti and imbalance, vikriti. what/who will balance you? how?

so, yeah, there's astrological matchmaking, and the greater layer to that is constitutional matchmaking. back in the day, n probably in many villages still, the ayurvedic vaidiya (medicine man) was at once also a jyotish (astrologer) n from the common ancestry of vedas, a yogi as well. so, by knowing your prakriti and vikriti, by way of a medicine man, you can also get a sense (in addition to diet, lifestyle, etc), what kind of dude/chick, would be right for you. 

marma points

in the place where man woman child meets is family, represented by the ankh in ancient egypt, and by the secret science of marmas in ayurveda.

kind of.

marmas are vital points where tissue, bone, vein, muscle meet like family. a family gathering. an ankh. it is known to ayurvedic doctors, in this current age of info through degree programs. it is also known by westerners through the internet’s  google-guru, but understood only by kalari masters.

after reviewing the 108 marma points during one of our ayurvedic classes, the lead doctor and director of the program who lead this class, when asked about how marmas were used, shrugged.

 i don't know, the doctor said. we just learn about them in school, but we don't actually use them in our treatments. we don't know how, he said when he was prodded further.

d, gurrukal, knows marma. he had to learn them as part of the secret trainings in the kalari martial art. gurrukal's 20 year old master student, who is built like an alvin ailey dancer, and moves his body like a wu tang ballerina, reviews the marmas with me. he knows about 25.

why not all? i ask, as he fake-strikes me in between my eyebrow.

i'm not at that level yet, he says.

marmas are revealed through a progression in the art of kalari. mahesh has been training rigorously for 5 or 6 years, and now almost exclusively trains the young batch and assists d in training the adult batch. on his simple phone, mahesh shows me pictures of him somersaulting, defying planetary pulls, as i practice pressing the marmas on his shaggy head.

not too hard, he says, widening his wide eyes as dramatic as the china white of his eye and the black of his skin.

right, i say, recalling d's words.

marma points should be left alone. they are extremely sensitive, dangerous, points used to kill, d tells me . we are in his kalari shala, which resembles a cave, with a bare rocky ground, and brick walls like ruins.

i stare off at the statue on the corner, a set of 7 steps that d uses as an alter. a single candle sits defiantly on the apex. we bow and pray towards it  everytime we enter the shala. according to d, the steps  represents the chakras and the levels of nadis, the ascension from lower self to higher self.

everything here means something, n not in a big deal way, not like we have to be quiet n keep our head bowed n say mantras a million times. sacred is just matter of fact here, just the way it is.

before i know it, i am nearly on the ground. d catches me off guard, flips air to wind me off my feet, grabs my arm to break my fall, twists it behind my back like nypd, and juts a single finger below the center of my scapula.

that's a marma point, he says. it will leave your left side paralyzed in 20 minutes. he says something like that. to release it, you... he shows me.

this is how d teaches me the marmas. sometimes. at other times, a patient comes with a frozen shoulder or a back as stiff as french greetings. d is pressing somewhere and sliding and pressing again. i ask him about marmas, while he's operating.

there's a marma here and here, he shows me on the lower back of the patient.

i thought you said we shouldn't use marmas.

not on a healthy person. but you can use them to release pain. that's the only time they should be used.

gurrukal shows me some common treatments with the vital points, describes when marma massage would be used in total, which is rare.

d gets behind me when his patient leaves, presses some points on my neck and shoulder, and slides down my veins, working his way down my arm.

this releases neck pain and shoulder issues, he explains, staring at me with his dark eyes, dark eyebrows gently sitting in place, his light skin starkly lightened by his blue-black hair, his face maintaining a sweetness.

go ahead, he says, turning his back to me. try it on me.

i do, to no, not like that, to yes, but, to yes and yes almost.

 good. keep practicing.

podi-kizhi conversations

packed heat in a bolus bag. leaves picked from the streets tightly tied in a kizhi, ready for use in the kalari room, where d and i do the nadi marma massages. 

d - gurrukal - wipes the sweat falling over his beard, while i cook  the bags over a portable rusty stove. he careflly pauses for a minute to look at raesh, the body builder d is massaging. raesh the muscleman with expressions more intense than the the arab sea, which gathered every few minutes into menacing monsoon clouds that pounded on the tarp covering the shala.

i hand d one of the medicine bags, browned and dripping like a samosa. d takes it, claps it over his own bare olive skin before rapidly smashing it on the back of the bodybuilder. 

body builder glares at d like a wwf wrestler who hulk hogan broke a chair over, looks like someone who has seen the lord. d grins through his semitic beard. he knows; he has seen the reaction before. without turning his head from raesh, d holds his hand out towards me. i know the deal. i hand them fried kizhi. our transaction is swifter than a drug deal - slap, shake, grip - 20 bag and a jackson.

the kizhi consists of ella and errandi, garlic that d and i peeled wih a switchblade and coconut i grated under his tutleage, on a machete style cocount grinder. its the kind of machete my ammu whipped miracles with for my brothers and i.

13 ingredients later we punctre an egg, drip the white like icing over a cake, and d nods at me. at once, we are mixing the ingredients into brownie batter, into cake, into color.

gurrukal's boy, shantu, has appeared, was there all along, pacing in the backgrond, talking to d's sister, mom, sister in law, the babies, until it was just him and the wind talking unemployment . d introduces us, tells me that him and shantu started doing kalari at the same time, back in the day.

shantu is pudgy with a beer belly. he has the same look d's boy raveen had, when i asked him whether he still practiced the martial art. both shantu n raveen had the same hollow voiced response. with beautiful indian eyes the color of melancholy, they looked away and said no. said that they'd been drinking these days. when i asked shantu, when i asked raveen why, wondering how they could give up  this ancient mastery, they shrugged, like it was a choreagraphed dance they knew too well. They said, kalari was no longer interesting. when i asked what they did now, they laughed, said nothing, said they were looking for work and a miracle. 

shantu helps me tie the string around the bolus bag. d holds it up like an inspector, tests it out by playfully pressing it on the head of his little girl, who is on her way to terrorizing grandma, shantu, the stray dogs, the sea.

already i can see what i did wrong. d looks at me, like: come on my dude, you know what you gotta do. but i feeling lazy, want to eat coconut and lounge in a hammock well above the dying whales and sea turtles. 

do it again, d says to me with the ease of a brother, a real one, the kind who can whip your ass and you'll still be cool with an hour later. i do. 

shantu gives me advice, real detailed and long-winded, as he paces, running his hand through his receding curls. he tells me stories with morals, several of them, in the way only a broke dude with lots of time and without a job can tell.

i hold  the kizhi bag, smack it over the porch ledge, over my thin wrists, hold it  to the grey and moshing clouds.

yeah, d says. that's it. 

the medicine man's leaf

gurrukkal flips through a book on plant medicine as he describes “communist pacha” to me, one of the indigenous plants of the region. it is large and pointy like a castor leaf. part of it’s medicine, he explains to me, is that this plant concealed communists in hiding. it helped them temporarily win the battle against the landlords and big bosses in kerala, preventing them from taking over everything. Temporarily.

i get the sense that gurrukal and his family are communists. didi, gurrukal's sister, walks around the neighborhood helping the fisherman fill out government forms so they are not fined for fishing. gurrukal is always talking about and living about service to the community. it's what some of my yoga friends talk about as karma yoga, but just talk about, or do in the ashram, or in internal events. they don't come to the villages, the busthees, the hood, just like the yogi's who visit America n give talks on nonattachment on the upper west/eastside, park slope n dumbo.

as a believer in the yogi way, one who has looked for guidance n gurus, didi is the kind of yoga teacher i've been wondering about like Christians losing their religion, wondering about the possibility of the trinity, of the father, son n holy ghost. didi points at the handkerchief with the hammer and sickle on the dysfunctional lamppost, next to the green handkerchief with the islamic moon n star. she smiles like someone sharing a favorite dish that they are proud of.

as gurrukal and I study the medicinal values of the communist pacha, didi closes the door behind her, after the last of the fishermen or their kids and wives have walked in for the free yoga sessions didi hosts every morning.

i look behind gurrukal, who holds the communist pacha up like a flag and waves it at his boy anu, who cougars in, who flips through the fat book gurrukal's mother is reading - biography on subhash chandra bose - the revered bengali communist who led a guerilla movement against the british. 

there are no posters in gurrukal's neighborhood that warns them about helping the poor, as there r in nyc subways: if u want to help, give to valid charities. everyone here is poor. gurrukal's family isn't into charity, the way middle-class people in a capitalist system maybe. they don’t believe in making that daddy war-bucks n feeling guilty that they been getting fat – clothes, cars, drinks – the capitalist way of accumulation - and then giving to dirt-faced kids singing about the sun will come out tomorrow. 

for some reason in babylon, we see our ability to purchase a hundred jeans and have a beamer and throw all our phones n furniture out - cause there is newer, the latest, edgier stuff - as freedom. our 
guilt exists for a reason.

for many of the people i know, the sound of a community that is not Facebook, that is not a club or social networking sounds like a cross and garlic to a vampire. the belief, -ism, in community is so scary to us babylonians that community-ism (=communism) is worse than the f word, can land us in jail, is enough to dismiss someone in an argument on issues - s/he's a communist - really? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

gurrukal, gets up to treat the patient who has stumbled off the bike holding his back. d places the communist pacha carefully on the ledge of the porch like a sacred ganesha statue. he continues on the topic with me, even as he is pressing marma points and sliding to arteries with his thumb on the hefty injured dude. d admits it. he's down with communism. 

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...

shavasana – sleeping on the shoulder of giants

pravin, a wide-eyed, sunshining, yogacharaya, in mysore, and one of my teachers here, at the yoga shala, emphasizes the importance of rest, of proper relaxation - shavasana. 

“resting," he says through his kind voice, "is one of the most important things you can do for your body. but it has to be proper relaxation.”

he swipes his gaze across the large studio, where most us sit up against the mustard yellow walls and listen like we were listening to our older brother give us advice on dating. pravin has the older brother vibe, although he smiles often like he is upto something, like he is a playful younger sibling who has enough energy to stir you out of movement the way only a youngin can. 

pashupati, my yoga instructor in the morning, the quiet man with an ohm that reverberates in the surrounding chamundi hills, agrees. after an hour and a half of asanas - of going through the primary series in the ashtanga yoga hierarchy - pashupati tells us to rest in shivasana, to lay like a corpse and let go of any control, to just relax. unlike the majority of our flow, from surya namskar to sethubandasana and uplutti, when pashupati offers us gentle whispery instructions to bring us into a correct form, he lays low for shavasana. he does not pretzel us into resting as he does with murkasana or garba-pindasana, when he subtly comes over, and with a few touches places you in a position you couldn't reach. instead, for 10-20 minutes, he lets the still of the shavasana bind us. 

rumi's 11th century poetry echoes in my head as i lay jumbled in thoughts, on to-do's and damn-i-forgot-to's. “die and be quiet. quietness is the surest sign you've died.”

ramesh, our adjustments teacher, who walks in with the swagger of a 1970's middle-aged italian brooklynite, lives this in his approach to us. with his head slightly up and his eyes looking down through his nose, he swishes past us, in his sleek jogging pants and top, and in a hushed godfather tone, simply says: “sun salutations”. ramesh reviews an asana that we may already feel we know, that some of us may have been doing for years, and through his eagle eyes, observes our alignment. even the best of us, are off, but even the most amateur of us are adjusted so thoroughly, that we are in shock. 

“i didn't think this was possible,” one of my peers says as she is grabbing her big toe in adhabadhapadm-pashima-paschimotoasana.  while we are wowing and speaking 30 words in praises, ramesh says three. 

rameshji lives his art, a clear meditation that he has so deepened over his 26 years of practice so much so, that he sees and knows what is possible in you. he is the meditation our meditation-guru, chandrashekar, tells us about on our sunday morning meditation sessions in the empty of the second floor of his house. “but what technique should i use, what should i be doing to get to this meditative state,” one of my peers asks, frustrated by her inability to silence her overworked mind. 

“nothing,”  chandrashekar tells her gently, urgently. “simply do nothing and observe your mind,” he says with his hands folded, behind his back, his white dhoti and shirt flowing in the breezeless room. like some of my peers i am looking for tricks, and don't fully get how to be quiet. 

“relax,”  chandrashekar tells us, his baggy eyes far away. “quietness is a place, as if you were going somewhere, a destination, someone's house perhaps. as you are walking there, you may have some distractions, you run into some people you know, get caught in traffic, stop by a store, but you know your destination and keep on towards it.”

i close my eyes and see colors turning - purple and blue and pink. i open them, after shavasana, after our morning session yesterday. hours later i am before dr. shamasundar, a giant among doctors, the head of the biomedical department in jss medical college in mysore, the lead professor of anatomy, a researcher in neurosciences, a pioneer in plastination in india, a volunteer doctor in a free-clinic in the siddhartha layout neighborhood, and our anatomy and physiology teacher in yoga. 

as we tread through the school he has been in since it's inception, dr. shams three decades of work appears in his voice, beyond glib knowledge and show. there was something calming about walking through his lab of human body parts. there was a quiet there, a shavasana, before dr. shams returned to his meditation through helping the world understand the human body. 

shavasana is the calm in the storm and after. 

yoga - beyond flags draped over skin

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yoga, the brahmcharya with the flowing pink garb quietly tells us, has no beginning, as it is life itself. me and my peers listen with ears plastered to his whispering lips, as we sit comfortably huddled in the living room where our philosophy class takes place. i drift for a second, past the brown of my face and his. 

everyday here, i get a reminder of how yoga is Harmony, is connecting with ancestors beyond borders and nation-states, beyond claims of heritage and complexions. for me, it's a good reminder, humbling to go beyond the land of my father and forefathers and ancestors – india - to move beyond planting a flag, staking a claim, beating my chest with a national/racial pride of something that is more than skin and anthems.

the brahmcharya notes the skeptical expressions of us, the westerners, when he mentions the Controller, the One our soul is in yoga with.

"but what evidence do you have?", one girl finally asks, giving rise to a slew of doubting questions and facts on the big bang and darwinian evolution.

the brahmcharya listens, places his hand over his closely cropped hair, pausing on the tail that begins on the back of the top of his head. 

“the big bang,” he begins, placing his words before us carefully, so not a single meaning can get lost in his karnataka accent, “was an explosion.” he looks at each of us for the word to detonate. 

“an explosion destroys.” he uses his combining delilcate hands to demonstrate. “if you have a bunch of uprooted trees, will it create a chair?” he gives us pause for consideration. 

“no,” he answers for us," there is a furniture-maker who makes the chair, who shapes it." the analogy leads to slight head nods, some hmms. but we aren't convinced.

who shaped you?” he asks. he notices the doubt on our faces. 

“when a rabbit is chased by a cat, at some point the rabbit stops and binds its little hands over its eyes. did the cat disappear?” brahmcharya lets his words sink. “just because you don't want to open your eyes doesn't mean the truth isn't there. the yoga you are studying is proof of this balance, this eternal harmony.”

as i listen to him, i drift again, four years back, on a mountain in ayyanthole with my teacher santosh, a soft-spoken doctor i studied ayurveda with. santosh said the same of ayurveda –" it has always been."

“how,” i asked, looking over to the surrounding hills of mango and coconut trees, “is that possible?”

“ayurveda is life, is balance,” he said. “no beginning, no end.”

i looked at the young couples on that mountain top, holding clandestine rendezvous', pointing at monsoon clouds rapidly coming together like the end of the world, and recalled the words of my chacha, decades ago.

my chacha sat indian style, in our queens, ny living room, pulled on his beard, looked through his glasses, pensive and ancient in his sun polished face and told my brothers and i the same as brahmcharya said of yoga and dr. santosh said of ayurveda. chacha told us that God, ALLAH, has no beginning or no end, was not begotten, nor was he begot.

i thought of einstein and energy and how mr. hammerstein, my fifth grade science teacher said the same of energy, quoting einstein, or newton, or one of the heavily referenced and credited european scientists. clearing his throat, and speaking through a nasally voice at our over-crowded class, mr. hammerstein said - energy is that which cannot be created nor destroyed.

the asanas of yoga allow us to let go of our attachment to the prison that encases us, to be beyond the countries and skin and features we were born into, that we did not choose.

when entangling myself in marichasana - right foot over left thigh, left knee up, right arm around left knee and hands grabbing behind back - i am counting seconds, praying the teacher-ji will say "exhale and release". but he doesn't and instead says breathe, "take a deep ujjai breath." ujjai breathing is the breadth of the ocean, i breathe and get a little deeper in this temple i occupy, grow a little further from it, as i drift deeper in the soul that brahmcharya is talking about. i reconnect with a past and future, with eras when the average life-span was 100,000, according to brahmcharya.

“this spiritual process,” the brahmcharya says pointing at the board of charts and vedic notes he has written for us to ponder, “is your purpose in life.”

yoga: yuj with Isha

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can you meet me half way? i asked banshee, back in the day, when i was a teenager, sending secret codes through the payphone to her beeper. she said yeah.

we met on steinway street, amidst bronze shorties with nefrittiti doorknockers on their ears and dudes with high fades and flattops, pants so baggy they sailed through the music of october in queens.

it was never cold when we met, even when i was underdressed in oversized white-tees and the winter wisps cast goosebumps all over the streets.

we slid into mickey dees where my fake cuzin hap, smiled gold teeth from behind the counter, and hooked us up with big macs and fries. he smirked sly dimples and snuck in some bangla props for me on scoring banshee. didn't matter if he didn't. banshee and i were over the rainbow, on the border of venus and the neighboring seven-seas solar system.

when the light was too bright, when it didn't seem like we could get much higher, banshee and i dissolved into other galaxies. love became beyond the limit of our bodies, beyond seven-seas, beyond beyond. we disappeared from each other and briefly encountered Isha.

i saw banshee a decade later, on the ave, she was married and we barely said what's up, but i still longed for that feeling, for isha, and even hummed this song my boy moin translated for me: sanu ek pa chan na we. it's a qawwal by nusrat fateh ali khan, where he laments on “not a moments rest without you.”

i first heard the song shortly after banshee and i collided, but didn't get what moin was saying, about how the lyrics were not of a lover but of the seekers desire for the Essence. I didn't get how anyone could be singing love songs to Allah, to feel restless in their love for the One. i get it now. it was where banshee and i was.

these days i've been traveling through yoga and other galaxies, listening to meditation guru's, asana geniuses and bramcharya's dropping jewels about the soul and Isha.

the jana yoga sessions with the brahmcharya has been making me long to shed the prison uniform he says we carry. shedding it, this body that we are incarcerated by, places us in yoga, in connection with Isha – the almighy Allah – the One who is revelaed in the upanishads and purana's, who is spoken of in the bhagavad gita and reminded of through the prophecy of jesus (isa) and the revelations of the prophet muhammad (pbuh).

this is yuj, the link, connection with isha. this is yoga, the brahmcharya says with beautiful intense eyes that land in your insides and vibrate through his soft voice. the shedding of this baggage, of this inmate's outfit, through asana and mantra, ahimsa and jnana. this, he says, will set u into what the ancients call samadhi - to become One with the One.

all praise is due... 

kannur's prakruti is kapha, but her vikruti is not.

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kannur has a scorching midday sun that makes you wet like molten sox that smells like doritos. it can be light on the soul in that you don't see every tenth person blind and with a beggars bowl and without limbs, rolling down the street saying a religious phrase like you do in dhaka. you are also not weighed by cool, as you may be in new york, london, pa'ree (paris), bombay, major cities. you can walk out in culture that fits you.

kannur can be overloading to the ears – took-tooks honking, trucks blasting, buses screeching, a million cars trying to edge through each other. but the arabian sea quells the voices, leaves people speaking below the surface. 

kannur has arab-money from men in gulf jobs, returning with mid-east cash for big houses. this makes kannur focused on growing bigger, better, building up and out, becoming a player in the game, but subtly, not too ostentatious, just a matter of fact, as if the growth is just as normal as the all night theyyam dhols that play from the village temples and from houses cleansing evil spirits.

kannur is rapidly drying out. water shortages. gurukal, who i went to meet with, with intentions of studying gurugulla style with, in kalari marma and medicine making, says he can no longer host students in his house, as he used to in the past. there are only drips coming from the crusty lips of the faucet. his well is drying up. the bucket that his wife drops in the well only catches handfuls of liquid, like the sparse anorexic fish the fishermen capture in their ocean-size net.

like georgia, kannur is still on porches drinking coconut water and waving hi to neighbors. but, the city center and south bazzar, the citified towns of kannur, are making kannur aspire to becoming atlanta all over. atlanta and not miami. not yet. 

kannur is still paused by the muezzin's allahuakbars, and speeding vehicles will slow their roll for an older person walking across the road. although you hardly see older people in the cities, they are content hearing the stories of their grandkids in skinny jeans sitting around and keeping busy on their smartphones. the slow of kannur has entered the middle lane, going the speed-limits set by international monetary standards.

the texture of kannur is still soft around the sea, and in the fishermans' villages, but it is hardening in the centers. development is everywhere and the streets and buildings show it. like much of india, people, stray dogs and cows share the street with vehicles and cart pullers. if you are not indian, it could be easy to sprain your ankle.

although you still feel a sense of grounded-ness in kannur, it is growing less stable for people who aren't keeping up with the market-prices. commodified-ayurveda and the institutions that are selling it like cocaine, r bringing in more tourism - foreigners moved by the sea and beach. the slow pace of kannurites are growing fast with schemes to keep with the discovery of this gold. their goldrush has manifested into resorts and ayurveda spas and schools. 

along with kannur's erraticness is her foul-smell, in parts, like chinatown at midnight, after garbage becomes heaps for rats to triumph over.

kannur has a vata/pitta aggravation. what should be the treatment for this doshic imbalance be? what would you recommend?

water – jalamahabhoota

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lightning flashed brighter than the moon it covered up last night. rain loomed like vamana in a kapha-aggravated patient, prepared with 6 glasses of milk and two fingers down her throat. thunder kept the huddle of late-night men at bay, at home, staring out their window and watching us walk by.

after saying our goodbyes to the graduates of our ayurveda program, the four of us living in kamala, the other residence for the ayurveda school, walked in silence. our group was dwindling in goodbyes, which would end for me the next day, a final goodbye to kindred spirits.

on the almost last walk along the shore of payamollah beach, we listened to the music of the ocean tell us stories about his big and strong dad. the four of us each fell in, for moments, inside the oral-tradition of the ocean. we stopped like men stirred by the dark eyes and perfumed gaze of a brown-eyed karnataka girl. we stood there and stared over miles, as far as the eye could see - purple waves.

jala (water) is one of the panachamahoboota's. unlike, prithvi (earth) you can easily thrust your hand through it. unlike agni (fire), your hand won't burn (necessarily), during/after. unlike vayu/akash (air/space), you will have physical proof of jala on your skin – drops of water. but these distinctions are subtle.

water is holy in many cultures. there are millions who gather around the ganges each year, pay homage to the river that begins as mist above the himalaya, flows down the mountain and runs it's hands through northern india.

floyd redcrow westerman (r.i.p), a hopi elder, said that before the europeans colonized america, you could drink out of any river, “because water is sacred to us.”

water has no borders that separate it. water covers 70-75 percent of the earth. water is a liquid. water runs faster than boys with candybars (mistook for guns) from the cops. water runs faster than slum dogs for that million dollar bone, faster than wallstreet stockbrokers can lip persuasion to capture million dollar deals, faster than palestinian boys with rocks hurled at israeli soldiers with the star of death and tomahawks. water runs faster than flash gordon, if it wants to.

my little homie, bear, is water. he moves on the basketball courts like liquid, runs his hand over the rim like a tidal wave, and dunks as the ocean does to surfers getting too close, off guard. bear sits still on a park bench, like a lake, has people surround him and grow quiet. he flows to redhook in the evening and streams back to willyburgh when its time, when the moon calls.

my amma is a river, she is our holy water, holds my brothers n poppa n i together, even as we circle the city again and again, like dolphins in a bp oil-slicked ocean. she caresses our wounds, keeps her arms open, no matter how far we go away, no matter how many jobs let us go, no matter how often we quit and lay on the couch and encase ourselves in the aquarium of television and text-messages and internet. she keeps my poppa, brothers and i together like rivers bind ecosystems.

the medicine of mantras

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today i will receive a diploma for the panchakarma diploma course i have completed. today i will receive a piece of paper that will say i have completed x number of hours doing x number of things. today is another steamer, 35 degrees celsius, baked men driving buses, rickshaws n trucks will skillyfully honk n drive three lanes in a one lane, going back and forth, to and fro.

today is day trillion cubed in ayurveda. today, bombs somewhere. today the bombed will be on the news, for being savages with beards and guttural tongues. today my mama n my papa will wonder about we. today is ubuntu.

today is a wedding of a 20 year old girl down the block that the 30 year old childless/husband-less western women staying here will comment on, say how oppressed the women here are. today they will meet, run into each other, mutually curious behind kajol and language and permanently change each others lives and mine. today everything is everything.

today, after the graduation, as matthew waited for a took-took that would take him away to a train to bangalore, and as we stood around, saying goodbye and watching him pace, radha, lulu and i talked about the grades we received and whether it was fair. the conversation became cigarette smoke. a funeral processcion took over the street. a group of muslim men, young and old, walked with a coffin on their shoulder. the coffin was held steady by sticks of bamboo. the men, focused beyond our presence, seemed to look inward with their long eyes. the mantra that glided them, that gave meaning to the qaugmire of a life no longer being, that weaved me into their pause, was: la illaha illala, la illaha illala, la illaha illa.

there is no god but god.

today i chanted coldplay: we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do. it was my mantra, a frequency to tune into the vibration of meaning, when meaning slips from under your feet like the floors of turn of the century houses.

mantras are a road in. they can tune us into essence, into being so tuned in, we become the music. mantras are said during shivarati in temples in the south, are caroled beyond christmas on rosary beads, are repeated 99 times on muslim prayer beads hidden from view and whispering each of the traits of the magnificent.

ayurveda dreaming in a vata world

matthew and i sit eating curry and rice in the a.m, before the breakfast sun, which seeps through the harmonics of crows and banana leaves. we talk monsoon season and ayurvedic treatments. monsoon is the peak time of ayurveda, matthew says, the teachers here say, the kalari guru and his longtime disciple, who i met with yesterday, say.

after breakfast, matthew slices a mango and hands it to me, hands me a card and an invitation to visit him anytime i want, in bangalore, where he dreams of continuing the legacy of his grandfather, a kalari master. the tradition was lost with urbanized pushes to get real work, jobs that made sense for the modern frequency of rent and mortgage.

i dreamt too. last night. saw my little homie drugged and laughing, his yankee cap low, his dry and cracked hands out for handouts. went back, with my dude, to the alley hallway, where him and his friends used to play dice at; now they scratch themselves and wonder what today's treatment in the hospital will be. they are being treated for addiction. they are permanently there, stuck like a needle on the sacrum of a crackhead.

i wonder what happened to him, when it happened. did it happen when i was away, in india? was it just waiting to happen like a birthday? but i know. i knew it was coming like 2012, was sure of it, more sure than muslims and christians on the return of the mahdi – jesus.

i said nothing, watched the lines of vata scarring his twenty-something face, the deposits of kapha on the necks and throats of his friends, who questioned me being there, in that hall that stank of institution. they questioned my down-ness, wanted me to participate in the next hit to help them deal with the left lane of living – of becoming mid-twenties and moving so fast that they never moved an inch – a cyclone standing in place. but it was true, i wasn't down and i'd given up on being a star before drugs could swallow me.

left my little brother-homie, left that smile on his face. the once pitta shine in his eyes had become a vata dull, like the clouds sagging over the dry and brittle, high-on-speed-vata city. pigeons hovered like death. walked the quick strides of a vata imbalance, like i was going somewhere, knew i was running away from what he was, what i could be.

strange, but our meeting was medicine for both of us. i love him, i thought, on my walk into my ex, who was doped out and wearing staten island like a shawl of empty pepsi cans. she was truth, that's what i used to call her back then, after exhaling yellow scud in the park swings.

truth was almost as i remembered her: sattvic giggling like spirits were tickling her high, like only a gorgeous crazy woman could. we chilled under the verazano bridge, leaning on the rail looking onto the green river with bubbles from the landfill below. she was just laughing, saying spells. l hardly listened, which was odd. i usually hung on her words like she was a jyotish with the gospel of hassan n ali. not now. i was too busy wondering if being cracked out was destiny, if all of us in the city that breathes chemical breaths are fried and destined for collapse. i kept it pushing.

a little bit broken, i woke up, away from the suicidal carousal that my loved ones were riding on into an asphalt earth, stiff and cracking like a severe vata aggravation.

dinacharya: daily routines

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every couple of weeks here, i am saying hi to some one new, someone who has washed up on the shore, like a new character in the ayurvedic island world of 'lost'. they are all interesting: robin the chicago-ite with skin as bright as her large blue eyes, only outshined by her speed to be stimulated; noorin, whose kerala tanned ebony skin shines diamonds when she giggles; miguel, the pretty ayurvedic practitioner from portugal who walked in one eve with a surfboard n philosophy; govinda, the professor of music from italy whose dialect was as unique as his govinda-expressions; bianca the spirit trapped in a body and floating through india like music notes...

some of them, i got to know deeper, fell into a hole with. some of them i broke bread with one night, then every night, talked vata, pitta, kapha with. as we grew, we took walks to the beach and swam through our past fears, n our future hopes, taking slight pauses to catch stars hovering like spaceships over the sea. then it's over. they leave. done with their treatments, their 1 week or 3 week or 1 month ayurvedic programs.

some of them, like my crew – j.c, ray, tama, n maud – i've gotten to know for months. we ran past infatuation, shared walks longer than days, train rides through time, laughter enough to wake temple gods. then, goodbye.

each time i say goodbye, a part of me breaks. when bianca, manisha, vallerio left, i sat around till their morning ride came.  each of them sang variations of “i'm leaving on a jetplane, i don't know when i'll be back again.”. when the dust cleared, i was still there and would've fallen, as i almost did when my boy jc left, when ray told me she was leaving, when they actually left, both before their time, before we could both be on our way, mutually abandoning each other in a chapter in our story of life.

i'm used to departures. ny is a transient city, an overnight bedfellow for many. hello's and goodbyes are like swivel doors, so much so, new yorkers grow callouses on their speech, stones in their eyes.

i understand other new yorkers - immigrants from the global south n migrants from down south in america - louisiana, georgia, the carolinas - trapped in our economic drown, without knowing how to get out.

in babylon, relationships r ephemeral, unaccountable, quick steamy affairs and poof.

i could be sunk, but i have rituals/things to do, to keep it pushing. 

after watching each friend here leave, i look at the sky, and depending on the position of the sun, step into the arena of daily regiment. i have to go to the beach, do pushups in the sand, sun salutations in the water, jog before the sun could see me, meditate to the sound of waves and give thanks and prayers for mama earth, for fam n strangers. i have to shower, oleate, and dress before school, and then it's time for me to leave.

constancy, as the prophet muhammad has shared with the world, will keep you from floating away, from losing your mind, from falling apart.

every day, there are rituals that keep you anchored. five prayers a day, sleeping with your head to the east, fasting 30 days a year, eating light, washing your body and openings, dabbing scented oils... are some of the prescriptions for groundedness that the prophet of islam conveyed.

the yogis have lived this wisdom for millenia, by way of the shat-kriyas, detailed ways to engage with cleaning, with being, from nasya and vamana to asanas. the yogi code, described in patanjali and hatha yoga texts, and lived by the real, is known as ashtanga-yoga. ashtanga guides the yogi practice – from ahimsa - active non-violence to all beings - to karma yoga - service to the community.

among the mohawk, iriquois and many of the northeastern as well as continental tribes in north america, the practice of rituals was known as a warrior code. warriors awoke while the moon was still out, meditated by sunrise.

the zulu in south africa, the masai of east africa, the tuareg of north africa, each have their kriyas, their warrior codes, as did the lost and found nation of islam in chicago, the five percenters of harlem, the zulu nation in brooklyn.

in ayurveda, the prescriptions of quran and vedas resound. the warrior code manifests in rituals throughout the day, known as dinacharya.

dinacharya is the code of rituals that ayurveda prescribes. things to do everyday, to keep you grounded, keep you from sinking into overthinking, into immobility or unsteady erratic movement. dinacharya is warrior code. 

chyvanprasha - witches brew

wisdom blows like a breeze here, over the arabian sea n into the city center of a scorching kannur. on the fourth floor of a building, above the dusty roads of south bazzar my peers n i make medicine. like witches in salem, we share our love for ayurveda, stir the large spoon over the concoction of herbs and amla, our witches brew.

chyvanprasha is a decocotion of over 40 herbs, gathered, dried and made into a decoction, until the herbs disintegrate, ending their life as an herb and beginning  a new beginning as liquid. they look like wet mud, a blend of all the people of the earth into medicine.

robert smith, of the cure, in the song disintegration, sings, shouts, laments, how the end always ends. there is no end in sight, bush said about the war on terror. he may have hit on a truth, that there is no end in sight, life is a continuum, without beginning or end, that dark and light coexist and that as far as the eye can see, is not far enough.

a day after the decoction is made, we mix it with the amla that boiled in a cotton cloth, above the herbs. reduced to mush, the fruits are blended into a paste, which we stir with ghee and fry to a brown as rich as the earth in pheni, bangladesh.

blends make our features. my mothers cheekbones point to malaysia, cambodia, china, somewhere east. her hair paints the sky in frizz, like blended girls in brooklyn from berkley, with cotton candy fros and mexican noses and irish eyes and arabic written on their eyebrows and india on their nose.

ayurvedic medicinal preparations are about blends, about the alchemy of plants and understanding their property, their dravyaguna, by listening. thousands of recipes have been listed in caraka samhita, susruta, asthanga - books older than the americas, than the mughals and christianity and judaism.

we stir, elena, a light hearted brunette from a past life in india, and i. she laughs, boisterous, full as christmas carols in claymations. i laugh too, until their is no sound, only the vibration of ghee and amla going into herbal decoction and dissolved sugar cubes. the brown becomes richer, the consistency thicker, but hours later it is not thick enough to be paka (sticky) in the way we need it to be. we keep stirring, taking turns to take shots of the honey we will add for our medicine.

cyhvanprasha is like centrum, the a-z immunity booster of ayurveda.

yesterday, when we first began the preparation, we walked into a room of fifty herbs in sandwich bags, sitting around like a forest of elder trees. i fell in love.