FROM THE SUBLIME...

...to the f***ing ridiculous!

Well, I had to move out of the Ashram today which was not a little frustrating. I can see why. When I handed in my key (having dodged a nightwatchman who wanted a tip) they waved me off with a smile. No charge or anything for my whole stay. Freebooters could easily rip them off. Had I arranged a proper stay about three months ago I could have stayed on site for the whole week and probably had an even more amazing experience. It has been beautiful staying here. Very relaxed and calm and a real privilege to be able to take your contemplation time quietly back to your room at the end of the day. You will have noticed the tone of my last few posts. Its been very special. Like being able to stay at the top of the world for a little while where one's thoughts can fly. Ah well, at least I know that if I want to return I can with better organisation!

Alas, the hotel I have moved on to is a real hole. If you've seen BARTON FINK you will know what I mean. It has the same feel to it without the lucky quality of being a film set. When I stepped off the rickshaw and looked at the dusty, weatherbeaten sign that advertised its presence in a slither of building between two other ramshackle constructions my heart sank. I climbed the steps into a dank, dark reception hall where the guy on site levered himself up off the floor as if he had been alone so long he had forgotten how to walk. I said I had made a reservation and he said 'Do you want to see the rooms first?' I said I was happy to sign in now, to which he said, his eyes widening with meaning a little, 'Yes, but do you want to see the rooms first?'

I got the message and said 'Yes, ok.' and he guided me up two less than salubrious flights of stairs to a room. He unlocked the door and showed me inside. The Rough Guide describes this hotel as 'excellent value for money' and 'neat and clean'. Well, they might have been back in the 14th Century. This first room had holes in the sheets, mould on all the walls, a mirror so grimed up it as opaque and a wrecked toilet that looked as if a bomb or very large person had landed on it, damaging it irrevocably. I was about to say 'Well, ok.' when I head the guy unlocking the door to another room down the floor. I looked into that one and it was better. At least the toilet didn't look like it had melted. I decided to take it. After all, I didn't plan to spend much time in it.

I had a shower and whiled away a few hours reading THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS which I enjoyed but found a little self-consciously frustrating in its style. I began to feel very keenly the difference between being in the atmosphere of the Ashram and this new 'environment' (I use the term generously). After a couple of hours I decided to go out and look at the Temple which dominates the town and which I had been able to see from the Mountain two days ago when I was walking up to see Ramana Maharshi's meditation sites. I wandered around its walls and found a place to eat. Again, the food was delicious and I was treated as an honoured guest by the staff who made sure I ate well. As I was chowing down, the room was filled by a family from Bangalore who were down for the day on a visit before going to Vellore. They engaged me in conversation and showed me how you were really supposed to eat with your hands. Being a Westerner, I was just picking up the food and shovelling it into my mouth, trying to imitate what I was seeing around me. They showed me how you were supposed to mix the sauces and curries up with the rice and then place it in your mouth, using your thumb to send the food onto your tongue. It was so simple it was brilliant! I resolved to cook a meal like this at home and show everyone how to eat it properly.

The family left (they had a very striking daughter!) and I set off to look at the Temple. Its another magnificent, enormous complex like those at Thanjuvar and Madurai, also built in the form of a mandala, but today, for some reason, I wasn't open to it. Perhaps I had been spoilt by the feeling at the Ashram, where the spirituality was so pure and so simple. Here just seemed empty to me...

On the other hand, as it was so unvisited by tourists, I found myself able to walk it unmolested. There were no guides running up to offer their services, nothing like that at all. It was Temple life in the raw. For that I am grateful.

I am equally grateful for the discovery on the other side of the Temple of a series of spanking new Lodges all of which look really nice. To be fair on the Rough Guide, the edition I have is from 2000. Maybe the people at the NS Lodge where I am represented the cutting edge of accomodation then and maybe these new lodges have sprung up recently. I looked in a few and decided to move into one tomorrow. Phew!

So the plan is to stay here for a few more days and see how commuting to the Ashram works. If it doesn't, if the magic is lost, I will move on to Bangalore and Whitefield a little early and see what happens there...

Improvise, improvise! I was told India would throw up surprises. Just as you least expect it the unexpected always happens!

HOLD THE PRESS! UPDATE!

No, the magic hasn't gone, but I think I will still move on to Bangalore in a day or so rather than stay the full week. I popped back to the Ashram this afternoon, feeling a little divorced from it and who should I bump into but my untipped watchman who gave me a stinking look, a bolt of bad energy and muttered something incoherent about my room. I didn't know the Tamil for 'You're just pissed off that I didn't give you a tip.' so smiled at him, pretended I didn't understand (in truth I didn't really) and moved on, wondering if I was about to be barred from the Ashram as an undesirable. There is nothing anywhere which suggests that only if you are staying on sight can you enter, so I decided to risk it, thinking that if I was thrown out then I would definitely leave the next day.

Sitting in the Meditation Room again I began to realise I probably SHOULD move on in a day or two because what I was supposed to get from the place I had already got. Ramana Maharshi's whole teaching was about the God/Atman in Man. That was his Onwith, just like Aurobindo Ghose. I realised that this was why I hadn't responded to the Temple earlier, which was not on this tangent. I began to understand anew the Hindu adage that all the Gods - Siva, Vishnu, Krishna etc - were avatars of a higher truth, they weren't the Truth. If one stayed at that level, one stayed at that level. Perhaps this is true of all spiritualities. Unless one aims to the top of the mountain, one stays midway, even if one feels comfortable in the embrace of the God there. That's fine, but one is missing what the God is pointing at, be they Christ, Krishna or anyone else...

All this mystical talk. Sorry guys. Do I mean it literally or do I mean it metaphorically? Who knows? I certainly don't. You decide. But one thing I have learnt out here, if you want to understand a culture and a population, you have to honour their Gods, or at least what they represent. Otherwise you will always be a foreigner, at odds with everything around you.

Make of THAT what you will! Ha!

In the meantime, tomorrow I am meeting up with friends of my friend Sara Griffiths. Sara was in the first ever professional production of a play I directed on a main stage, playing the heroine in LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich in 1996. She was terrific and we have stayed in touch ever since. At my leaving do she appeared to say goodbye and Godspeed to me and revealed that she too was about to go to India. She was going on a twelve day retreat at about the same time as I was in Koorg to Tiruvannamalai. It took a number of phone conversations and exchanged emails until I realised that this was where the Ramana Maharshi Ashram was. Although it was somewhere I wanted to go I couldn't find how to get there. Sara was able to give me all the details and put me in touch with two people - Volker, who ran her retreat and Karna, an Indian who showed her around. She also sent me details of the things she did, some of which I will be following up.

So thanks again to that delightful thing 'coincidence', I was able to reconnect with a friend and learn how to get to somewhere I wanted to go. Tomorrow I will meet with Volker and Karna and experience what they have to offer. Then, perhaps, I will visit the Ashram one last time before heading off to Bangalore the day after...

So things are looking up again! Now back to the luxurious room in my BARTON FINK hotel!