I had a sound sleep and could get up well in time for the 6am satsang and meditation class. My roommate Mai who is also the 'staff' makes sure I wake by turning ALL the lights on!
There was a new guy teaching in the meditation hall today. All they say is get ready to meditate and lets meditate! If i could do that so easily why would I be in the ashram?!. Everyone shuts up and sits still for the 30min 'meditation' but i dont think anyone is meditating really. I was hoping for a more guided one.
The chanting started around 6:30 and the teacher today had a bad voice and out of tune as well ! His voice being coarse took away the sweetness of the tunes and he started clapping vigorously through the song. So loud that no one could hear themselves nor the others!. At the end of the chants there is a small vedanta session. He kept giggling through the whole topic of re-incarnation and karma. I was already upset and had no focus on it anyway. geez.
There was a yoga class at 8am and the staff meeting at 7:30 am. And the satsang ends at 7:30 too!. When are you supposed to have a bath??. I chose bath over the staff meeting and was drying my clothes when Kailas the head guy came looking for me asking me why I hadn't shown up for the staff meeting. I told him my concern that i have no time to shower and ideally as in all yogic practices shower is a very important aspect before one does pranayama or yoga. Keeping your physical body clean and breathing facilitates in pranayama too. The body can absorb more oxygen and so can your lungs and there is a feeling pure cleanliness as well. But my dear Kailas seemed to disagree and said 'No well you can have a bath anytime through the day. You dont want to get too comfortable having a bath!'. wth? 'Swami sivananda put together this schedule'. Clearly since having a shower has not been 'documented' it is not being followed. Poor swami must have thought of it as the most obvious thing because for Hindus/yogis having a shower is the first thing to be done in the morning after restroom formalities. Anyway.
So the karma yoga teacher named Satya dev apparently landed and Kailas wanted me to talk to him for the chores of the day. I had a book in my hand when I walked into the kitchen where he was doing something. I greeted him with a nice 'namaste' and he had a slight frown on his face for me being 'late'. Late for what?:|. Anyway so I put the book aside and I was waiting alongside another woman for the instructions. He started talking something with his face and eyes almost towards the other lady , so I did not bother listening. He suddenly was like 'Usha do you get it?!' I was like I didnt know you were talking to me! It was not like you can recognize a squint immediately!! He apparently was looking at me :|. i did not like the tone of his voice when he said 'You got to listen'. Seemed rude and impolite.
He was showing me around the kitchen what to do and I made it a point to tell him that I dont like to spoken to rudely. (Karma yoga teacher really?!). Restless dork.
While cleaning I saw some amazing halwa and mysore pak and ras malai in the walk in freezer!! I took a bit of each of them and they were sooo good!!. I could clean all day eating them!!
Towards the end of the cleaning session a cook named Bharata asked if we wanted chai. And asked me if I wanted to make. Yeah ok was my response. He had a look on his face that said are you kidding me, you are not going to beg me to make some awesome chai for you because am the best here? I stood there to watch how he was going to make it. Hew threw some 3 cups of water and then 1 cup milk immediately then threw some tea powder from the packet no measure. There was some mixed spice packet which he emptied into that and kept looking at it. After a while he said 'yeah well no color lets add some more chai powder'. He added some random amount to that too till some color came to the mixture forcefully. (WTF are you doing dude. I hate chai spoilers).
I took that shit and came to my room and threw it away. Yuck. It smelled like biryani !. I sat on the hammock reading a book and came back to the room to get some water. Emanuela was sitting in the living room with her roommate and we started a conversation about doshas. As anyone who knows me knows, I cant stop talking about that stuff. I went on and on and found an awesome listener /talker in Emanuela. We seemed to hit it off instantly! We went to the library and started yapping and we sopke about astrology and signs and relationships and personalities. And turned out she is exactly like me!!! and has come to the ashram for the exact same reasons!! her boyfriend and my husband also share the exact same qualities!! (:O). We both seem to be vata type, restless, anxious, easily agitiated, hyper. And bf/husbands are kapha type , slow, compassionate, understanding, dont want to move much, lazy and love us a lot!. We went on and on and on for hours talking!
It made me realize again that every single person irrespective of race color culture has the exact same issues!. We went for dinner and the food in the nights is much better than the food in the mornings. A guy called Shambu makes it and he also seems more humble and modest than that Bharat :|.
Had a meditation which was difficult as usual to sit still and we called it a day after that. Had a good restful sleep :)
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