Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
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“I’m going to India! For a month!” I messaged my family and friends one day in late October. Let’s just say this announcement was not met with a lot of enthusiasm. Naturally there was some concern that this 75-year-old who walks with a stick (not a cane!) and whose balance is precarious at best was going alone to such a faraway place. They knew I’d spent time in India in the 1970s, but that was a long time ago. As I said, not a lot of enthusiasm for what could well be my last great adventure.
My plan was to go to an Ayurvedic centre in the southernmost state of Kerala. Ayurveda, the ancient traditional medicine of India, is a holistic approach to healing and health that had always appealed to me. So I booked myself in for four weeks, paid my deposit and had a young friend find a flight that I could afford. Later, when over a cup of tea I casually mentioned my plans to a couple of friends, they expressed interest, and then they told their friend, and the next thing I knew we were four. So I was not going alone after all.
More than anything, I wanted to return to the country I had fallen in love with so many years earlier, when I was exploring the world along the ‘hippie trail.’ Of course I knew India had changed a lot since then. When I had been there cellphones didn’t exist and it took an entire day to make a phone call home, and there wasn’t a Coke or a latte in sight. Now MacDonald’s and Starbucks are as common a sight in the towns as they are here. But I knew that the heart of India would still be the same and I was dying to get there. Besides, I wanted to test myself, to see if I could manage such an ambitious journey.
But first we had a few roadblocks to navigate. India was displeased with our government’s policy of leniency toward the movement to establish an independent Sikh state of Khalistan and had inconveniently stopped issuing tourist e-visas to Canadians. After four months and some sleepless nights they finally arrived – just five days before we left!
And with them, arrived the snow and ice. Flight delays turned a manageable 24-hour trip into a 72-hour trek. Flying these days demands a Buddha-like patience, which we tried our best, with varying degree of success, to embody. It also requires the ability to laugh, of course.
We finally landed in Trivandrum in the dark early morning, and wobbling through the airport doors memories flooded my senses as I felt the warm air gently settle on my bare arms like a silk shawl. The familiar scent of night-blooming jasmine and tuberoses brought me back to my fearless younger days, before work and family and more school and more work turned me into an adult. I fell into India’s warm embrace. It felt like I was coming home.
The next four weeks were indeed an adventure. Everything and nothing had changed. While supermarkets and shopping malls dot the cityscapes selling the same goods that we have, at its core India is still India. The same crazy traffic and honking drivers, the same pye-dogs sleeping on the side of the road, the teetering fruit stalls with their towers of watermelons and mangoes, the ropes of marigold flower garlands, the saris, the faces. All still there.
The Ayurvedic clinic was no five-star spa but the accommodation suited me just fine. The bamboo grove outside my room, home to white-tailed monkeys and a cacophony of birdsong, offered shade and serenity. Morning and afternoon two treatments consisting of hour-long pummellings and beatings and deep tissue oil massages were the order of each day. Meals of dal and dosas and curries and papaya were tailored specifically to our individual needs as assessed by the senior doctor when we arrived. Every morning I awoke in the dark and made my way through the perfumed air down the hill to the open meditation hall where yoga began at 6:30. As time wore on, this early rising became less of a challenge; I was finally broken of my late-to-sleep, late-to-rise rhythm of so many years.
There was absolutely nothing else to do. Take your medicines, go to the treatments, shower, eat your food and rest. A bit of reading here and there. No agendas, no to-do lists, no driving and above all no cellphones. No stress. This was the real healing!
I wept upon arrival, and did so again when I left, and landing in the grey, cold West Coast winter I knew I’d be back. We’ve all booked our next stay, for six weeks this time. In under five months I will again be planning what to pack and what to leave behind, making sure the bills are paid and the garden put to sleep. It seems India has forgiven us; once again e-visas are available online. I’m hunting around for an affordable flight, on my own this time, and I might even travel around the south when I’m done at the clinic. Because now I know I can do it! And this time my friends and family will just shrug and say, “Have a great time.” And, at 76, I will!
Barbara Raphael lives on the Sunshine Coast.