Moksha Ashram, Rishikesh
I’m brought out of my distressing dream by the tinkling sound of a bell. I open my eyes to find that meditation class is over and my bottom is completely numb. My poor legs are aching, stiff and unyielding, from sitting cross legged on the cold floor for a whole hour.
I unfold myself and somehow manage to unlock my knees to stand and follow everyone outside onto the terrace, where I see there’s one long table with bench seats set out for breakfast. I realise that this arrangement would have been conducive to some conversation, except that, of course, due to the noble silence no one is allowed to speak yet. I engage in a friendly smile to those around me, but no one seems remotely interested in making eye contact. I see everyone still has vacant expressions on their faces and dreamy looks in their eyes.
I guess they must have all successfully reached an enlightened meditative state?
Oh gosh … I do hope I hadn’t been snoring or shouting out Jon’s name in my sleep.
Pia told me I’d been yelling and cursing and thrashing about in my sleep at her house.
She also told me I’d been using the really bad swear words she didn’t ever expect I’d know.
Of course, the walls in her place are paper thin. In the adjacent bedroom, I’d had to listen to her and Peter talking about ‘what they were going to do with Maya’ and then them making love.
I take a seat on the bench and look along the length of the breakfast table to see that most people here are a heck of a lot younger than me. I’m a little disappointed by this as I was hoping there would be a good mix of ages and, in particular, a few middle-aged people like myself.
I also see there are more women than men and they look to be a varied mix of nationalities.
Interestingly, many of the girls have long tangled hair and intricate henna artwork illustrations on their faces and their hands. Several of the boys have tattoos on their arms and also wear their hair long and in braids or hanging in dreadlocks. Many are wearing attractive costume trinkets such as crystals and beads and bells on anklets that tinkle when they walk into an otherwise quiet room. Of course, real jewellery is not allowed here.
Rule #5: Leave your valuables at home.
It’s a rule I realise I’ve already broken because I’m still wearing the solitaire engagement ring Jon gave me when he proposed in Paris. I’m loathed to take it off. In fact, I damn well refuse to take it off. There’s no way. They absolutely can’t make me.
Rebelliously, I quickly twist it around my finger to hide the large diamond out of sight in my palm. I’m actually feeling a bit conspicuous and out of sorts sitting here in my plain t-shirt and contrasting neon Fabletics leggings that Pia made me buy before coming here. Pia had assured me – wrongly – that these were the very latest in yoga fashion. I’d trusted her because Pia is younger than me and she should know such things.
But everyone here is wearing bohemian-style things with lots of Buddha images together with baggy cotton clothes in muted shades of dark red, deep purple and mustard yellow. Or they are sashaying around in kaftans or Alibaba-style trousers and head wraps adorned with shiny coins and trinkets. It’s a look that absolutely embraces the whole ashram aesthetic.
I decide that as soon as I get half a chance I’m going shopping in town.
I imagine myself wearing a flowing kaftan dress or a silk saree and some harem-style pantaloons with a cheesecloth blouse, sitting comfortably and bra-less in the shala, meditating in a serene lotus position or a soon-to-be-mastered super bendy true yoga pose.
I wonder if I can get a shala selfie or get someone to take my photo so I can send it to Pia?
But, of course, that would be contravening the rules.
Rule # 10: No phones allowed in the shala.
Everyone is, of course, also barefoot. There are no shoes or socks allowed in the shala even if your feet are cold. Mine are always frozen no matter the ambient temperature. I read that the reason we must go barefoot here is to allow our root chakras to connect with the earth.
I’m not entirely sure what that means but there’s a chakra healing session later this week so maybe I’ll learn more. It’s optional, but as I’m sure all my chakras are horribly broken, I think I should go to it.
Breakfast is a bowl of cold rice porridge made with soy milk. It tastes okay. It has a nice consistency and a good nutty texture, although I think it could have perhaps done with a little honey for sweetness. I suppose I’m noticing all this about my porridge because, like everyone else, I’m sitting here and staring intently down into my bowl, eating in silence.
Which would have been absolutely fine except that it wasn’t an actual silence.
I lift my eyes to glance about and see that everyone else is still either staring into their porridge or they have their eyes closed in a blissful repose while chewing it. Not that porridge normally needs chewing, but the ones with their eyes closed are really making a meal of it – pun intended – and it sounds awful. There’s one particular guy – it’s the Heavy Breather from the how-to-breathe lesson this morning – and he’s sitting opposite me with his eyes tightly closed and his mouth wide open. Chew … chew … chew.
He has strings of soy milk and clumps of porridge in his goatee beard.
I look quickly back down into my bowl because I can hardly stand to watch him. I’ve been brought up to chew my food properly and with my lips firmly closed.
* * *
After breakfast, we all file back into the communal area for our karmic cleansing class.
I’m really looking forward to learning what this is all about.
You see, up until recently, I’d begun to believe in karma.
I say until recently because, since Jon died, I don’t believe in anything anymore.
Jon explained it to me once. Simply put, it’s very much about treating others in the same way you would want to be treated yourself. Basically, if you do good things then good things will come straight back at you and, conversely, if you do bad things – well, ditto – bad things will happen to you. Of course, back in the day, it was just called good manners.
Because I’m in this very special place of healing, and connected with Jon’s spirit and maybe even the spirit of John Lennon too, if I can once again associate with karma, then I imagine this cleansing will wash away all the bad karma I’ve accumulated and make room for good and positive energies that I now need to bring into my life and my future. Perhaps if I can believe in karma once again and it has been cleansed, then I can somehow accept that Jon is dead. That he’s gone while I’m still here breathing and very undead.
I also imagine that real karmic cleansing – like real yoga – is something that can only be done properly in India. And, importantly, with an authentic Indian guru like the old man sitting cross-legged on a cushion in the middle of the shala right now.
Along with Swami Nanda, Guru J is one of the founder members of the Moksha Ashram.
Today he is wearing a long white gown that looks like a bedsheet wrapped around his body, secured with a knot on one bony shoulder, leaving the other equally bony shoulder bare. He’s very small and very thin, in a Gandhi-esque way.
I’m feeling absolutely sure that Guru J is the same Guru who once knew Jon.
He looks exactly like an older version of the person in the photo. The very same guru who also taught John, Paul, George, and Ringo, in the late sixties.
On entering the shala we all line up to wash our hands.
A poster on the wall shows a giant pair of hands held together in a prayer pose and states:
Wash to symbolise purity of body and soul.
Swami Nanda is being aided by Baba. He is tipping a generous splash of water from a large pitcher into a row of hand washing bowls and she’s bowing and smiling at everyone and handing out soap and towels. After washing, I take my place in the circle, and this time I’m grateful to sit on a comfortable plump cushion. In front of me and everyone else there is another small bowl of water. I imagine this is holy water and I expect our karma will be cleansed with this water. I look around. I’m now really wishing I’d discreetly brought my phone along with me so I could take a quick photo to send to Pia. She’d love this. The whole room looks so pretty with lots of flower arrangements and so many candles and incense sticks and golden statues. It’s so authentically ashram-like and looks like it’s actually glowing.
But there’s also the problem of no internet connection in the ashram.
Maybe that’s Rule #11? Except surely there must be internet in the office?
After all, they do have email and a website and an Instagram page.
I’m wondering if it’s possible to bribe Swami Nanda to give me the Wi-Fi code but then, no doubt, there will certainly be rules on the list in my room about corruption and bribery too.
Just then, Guru J presses his hands together and bows his head in a silent greeting to us all before looking up and in turn at each of us. In the hush of the room, the tension is palpable.
He begins to chant. ‘Om Mani Padme Hum. Ommmm … shanti shanti.’
I watch as he slowly lifts up his water bowl, cupping it with both of his aged and bony hands.
We all do the same. The bowl feels pleasantly warm to touch. I wonder if we are going to tip the water over our own heads in the same way as in a holy baptism? Or if we are perhaps meant to drink it and therefore cleanse ourselves of our bad karma in that way?
But what actually happened next was neither of these things.
Our esteemed guru simply cocked his head to one side and then tipped the water from his bowl into and up each of his nostrils in turn. Snorting and slurping up the water and allowing it – together with whatever dirt and mucus was up in his nose and his throat and his sinuses – to pour straight back out again into the bowl.
I will admit to being terribly shocked and more than a little disgusted by this.
To my horror, I then see everyone around me has also started to tip the water up their noses, snorting, slurping and blowing it all back out again in a gargling, bubbling blast of phlegm.
I retch. Honestly. I couldn’t help it.
But then I’m spotted by our Guru as the only one in the shala not to have cleansed my karma.
So, in panic and fear and embarrassment, I cock my head, tip my bowl and pour the warm and very salty water over my face and up my nose – where it immediately burns all my soft tissue before flooding straight down the back of my throat.
I start to choke. I can’t breathe. I honestly think I’m drowning.
I’m convinced I’m going to die a horrible death here in the ashram in front of everyone.
Until, of course, what went in – the salt water and my morning porridge – all comes rushing back out again into my bowl. When I look up, I see everyone staring at me in horror.
I’m guessing that if this is karmic cleansing then I’m thoroughly purged.
Feeling horribly humiliated and with my heart pounding and my stomach still heaving, I flee from the shala and run back up to my room to lie on my bed and be alone with my shame.
I curl up and let my travel-sore body sink into the thin mattress, my aching head resting on the flat, lumpy pillow. A guttural sob escapes my throat and I really wish I hadn’t come here now. What on earth was I thinking? Pia was right. This really isn’t my kind of thing at all.
I’d marvelled at all Jon’s stories of India, but it had been from the safety and comfort of distance.
I’d had no idea what it was really like to travel so far and to land alone in a country that was so vastly different from anything I’d ever known before or could ever imagine.
I came here naively thinking I’d find a way to heal myself and move on. But now I realise I’d been desperately grasping at straws. How the hell can chanting and bell ringing help me? How can meditation calm my rage? How can yoga make me feel better about myself?
How can spending seven days in a barren commune in northern India with a load of hippies ever help me to accept a world without my Jon in it and start to live my life without him?
It all seems completely ridiculous to me now.
Just as my life without Jon seems impossible to contemplate and unbearable to comprehend.