ONWARDS AND UPWARDS: TAMIL NADU

So my week at Varkala has come to an end. I have no idea why it was such a strange and surreal one but... actually I do... Now I am back on the road and in Madurai, I realise that while I was in Varkala all my connection to India was taken away and I was given a week on my own in a Western environment in which to think too much. All the concerns about home rose up, along with a lot of other old demons, just like the time in the School and started buzzing round my head. I was nearing my two months in India point (next Friday) and, in fact, am already more than half way through my stay. Its a long time to be away from home and in need of a hug from a loved one. I kept wondering how I managed in Hungary for 6 months when I was 18. Some phone calls from home helped. Thank you all! It was pretty tough but I got through it. Eventually I realised that different Gods ruled in India to the West. While we obsess about a Loving God out here there is always Siva destroying what needs to be destroyed. I was going through another crisis to be rid of more shite that was holding me back. It was all good. I came out here for a personal journey, after all, and by God that's what I am getting, with its ecstasies and its agonies! I realise now I need to stop fighting it and live it. And that feels good too. In fact I feel great and am very excited to be in Tamil Nadu and Madurai.

I didn't get through Varkala on my own. Several people there were terrific. In fact I wasn't the only one finding it strange. As often happens to me on holiday on my own, I end up talking to people, in this case two sets of women who were slightly older than me (I have always found that, apart from the special few women I have truly been involved with, two kinds of women think I'm great - the very young (ie children) and the slightly older. Women of my own age, as I say, apart from the special ones I have been with, tend to stay away!). Two of them had been teaching like me, while the other two were on holiday. All four were finding Varkala hard, especially the teachers, who were finding the Western atmosphere and the nothing to do hard to cope with after the energy and excitement of India. We had several huge conversations about life, India and the UK and the struggle we were all finding it getting by in Britain in what we felt was a difficult society. Several of them had children of my age who were going through the same sensation of not fitting in as me. They were wonderful people, very warm, and helped me get through the week in one piece. Blessings to all of them!

Sophie and Dean also turned out to be more and more terrific. We met a couple of times during the week (Dean had also burnt himself badly in the sun) and had some wonderfully rich and interesting meals together, once again talking about Life, the Universe and Everything. They were staying in Kerala for a little while longer before going off to Jaipur to do some more work creatin their stunning jewellery, some samples of which they showed me. Well worth a look.

And on my final night I met a further woman, a friend of the two teachers in Varkala who gave me some wonderful advice about where I was going after Kerala. So the Onwith was good, just as it had been when I left the School with the Kids' love and Cochin with some of the people I met there.

There were other interesting highlights in Varkala. On my last day I walked down to the local Temple, 2000 years old and a site of pilgrimage across India. I went with the two teachers and we looked around. It was not as majestic as the other Temples I had seen - no huge Gopura (tower) and everything painted like a fairground ride. Not all that spiritual, really. A woman beckoned me over and played a blessing on a single-stringed fiddle to gain a blessing from a God. It was lovely. Then she asked for 50 Rupees which broke the spell a little. Never mind. We walked around the Temple grounds and noticed that there were only women there. We wondered if there was a special women's festival going on. I was struck once again by how all the most powerful expressions of spirituality I had seen out here were by women - in the Jain Temple, the Christian churches etc and now here.

But this time I wasn't moved by the goings on around me. They seemed very unfocussed and unfelt and I began to understand why missionaries must have freaked out when they encountered Hinduism. Again, its the two minds - the very focussed Consciousness of the Monotheist West with its vision of transcendence, overcoming, order and the more diverse, less focussed Polytheistic East, with its many Gods which to the Western eye must have felt completely disorientating and confusing, with no centre point... we forget how the consciousness of a people is reflected and formed by their religion. If one thinks of the disorientation of Westerners now when they come to India because of the completely different way of doing things, imagine what it must have been like then! Ye Gods!

And of course, I was struck by the awareness that in no country in the world is it anything other than the very few who go on a genuine inner journey with their Faith. I couldn't see at the Temple any evidence of the beauty or great wisdom about the inner journey I had read in Indian texts like the Upanishads or the Bagavad Gita. I realised, of course, that those were manuals for the individual soul and not to do with group worship or ritual. This is not to say that no expression of exoteric religion is worth anything, only that its only the very rare who go beyond it and really go deep... Of course, that depth is not for everyone and clearly for many the exoteric form alone is enough... I wondered if the important thing now was only the inner journey, unreliant on religions which had become external in their own ways. Watching the musicians perambulate the Temple without much passion or feeling, I wondered if organised religion all over the world had lost some of its sparkle.

The funniest part of the week was going to the worst Kathakali performance you could possibly imagine. This was after the thrill of the Elephant Festival. I had heard from the two teachers that one of the waiters in the Hotel had studied Kathakali and had told them that a performance was going on at the Kali Temple up the road. We agreed to meet at 8.30 and I went off on my own a little early, excited by the prospect of seeing a real Kathakali performance in a Temple.

The Temple in question was quite a modern one, gaudily painted, covered in fairy lights and with a rather cute-looking Kali over the entrance. Again, it looked more like a fairground attraction than a Temple. A sound stage had been set up and various performers and technicians were milling about setting up. Seats were laid out before it like in any village fete. I was one of the few people there.

A woman stood on the stage and sang wonderfully. I was deeply moved, but all the time other members of the troop were appearing from back stage to move a bit of propage here or there. I thought about the Western neurosis about clearing the stage, making sure the performance was clearly about to begin etc and smiled a bit. There seemed to be a much more, shall we say, informal approach here.

The singing stopped and the woman left. Next the PA system started blaring out what I can only describe as the Indian equivalent of Eurovision Song Contest music. Meanwhile the performers kept wandering about moving things. They all looked pretty out of shape, and one in particular, a ragged looking gent, looked a bit like an Indian version of Trevor Peacock's character in THE BISHOP OF DIBLEY, complete with startled shock of white hair and strange chewing motion with his mouth. This chap came out, moved some chairs onto the stage and then started jigging to the Indian Euro-Pop. Meanwhile more people started to arrive, rickshaws passed in front of the stage, a bloke cycled in front of us all grinning at us. Another guy picked up a chair and waved it above his head, chasing a stray dog out of the grounds. Someone else had laid out a mat on the floor at the back of the seating and was fast asleep. The sublime eccentricity of it all was rather wonderful.

The teachers arrived and the performance started. I must admit, it was crap. The Dibley guy and another bloke held up a screen for what seemed like an eternity while one of the performers got ready behind. Two other blokes appeared with a canopy and stood behind the screen, sheltering the actor. All four kept looking at the audience and breaking the illusion by slapping bugs which kept landing on them (looking at the audience to see who is out there is a big NO NO in Western Theatre. You are supposed to stay in the Zone). One guy appeared in a stripey modern shirt, completely at odds with the traditional robes everyone else was wearing. I wondered if no-one had told him he was supposed to wear a robe, whether he had left it at home or it had gone pink in the wash. It shattered the illusion somewhat.

The performance started and the singer was great but the performer was not. He went through the motions and then when the music stopped just snapped out of character and strolled off. Meanwhile all the musicians kept going, but looked singularly bored, staring at the ceiling or banging their drums without much enthusiasm. It got a little depressing, while also a little comic and I found myself trying to stop myself laughing. It didn't compare to the power of the work I saw in Cochin, which was brilliant, but then I thought of the demoralisation of British Theatre comanies when people have lost their sparkle and don't believe in what they are doing and I felt a little sad. Being a performer is hard all over the world if you lose any real hope and it just became a job, stuck in a rut. I felt a little sorry for them and set off home with the teachers, who were also a little mystified. We had a drink somewhere and retired to our beds. When we awoke we could hear the performance still going on. Long shows, these Kathalaki perfs!

So that was the funniest moment. The most surreal moment was sitting in an Internet cafe after a storm, when suddenly the whole room was invaded by hordes of newly-hatched flying insects. They were everywhere, smashing into fans, jumping at the screens. The water must have caused them to emerge from their pupae because all over Varkala for the rest of the evening they were flying around or lying dead on the floor. As I was struggling to finish an email, I saw lizards leaping out of the woodwork looking for dinner. It was a classic Darwinian moment!

Well, I am in Madurai now after a sleeper train journey from Varkala which started at 3.15am and ended at 11am. I really enjoyed it, the adventure of it and the need to be resourceful. Madurai and Tamil Nadu are different again, just as Kerala was different to Karnataka. I love it so far. The light and energy as I came out of the station was terrific. Still noisy and polluted, but vibrantly so. Madurai has one o the biggest and oldest Chola Temple Complexes in India. I could see it from the streets as my rickshaw guy carried my bags to my hotel. It should be exciting. After two days here, I am off to Thanjavur and then Pondicherry. On the train I fell into conversation with a Colombian woman who is another Sai Baba devotee and healer who is heading up to Auroville, the New Age community outside Pondicherry. She suggested I come up to see it. As its a majot site near the city I think I will. We compared notes on first impressions of India, mine being Mumbai and hers Chennai. Although she is now what we call in the trade an Experienced Traveller she had had the same reaction to me - she just wanted to go home after two days! So there's a tip for everyone: if you are coming to India, don't fly to Mumbai or Chennai. There are loads of other places to come to: Cochin, Trivandrum etc, all of which are nicer and more relaxing.

She also gave me some Indian remedy for my cough which I haven't been able to shake since the pollution of Mumbai and the dust in the School. It already seems to be working, so thank you to her for that!

Getting to Madurai was an adventure in itself. Because the train was at 2.45am (!!!) no autorickshaws would come and pick me up so the guy at the reception at the hotel drove me through the night to the station on his scooter. That was quite an experience! Then the train as late by half an hour, causing me a little confusion as to which train I was getting on but the station porter sorted me out. By lucky hap, my carriage stopped right in front of me and I was quickly shown where my little bunk was. I unloaded myself onto it and went to sleep. It was fun.

Kerala was wonderful. Lush and comfortable and happy with great people. I will miss it and hold it dear to my heart. Cochin was very special... I also realise that for all my moaning about Varkala I AM glad I went. The rest was important, my body feels strong for what is to come, I met some good people and even the bad stuff was valuable. I guess these experiences are such that one learns fast about oneself!

We shall see what this new state holds! I'm off to the Temple tomorrow. More adventures to come now I am back on track. Watch this space!