Monica

Last weekend was fantastic. Maya's college friend Monica is in India right now visiting her family in Delhi and she contacted me and asked if she could come visit and see Chennai. She came last Thursday and I picked her up at the airport in a ricksaw and we got back to my apartment and started planning the weekend. I couldn't really figure out where to take her because even though Chennai is a big city, there aren't really any tourist attractions here. I mean, how many shopping centers and malls can you take someone to? So what did we end up doing? Going back to Golden Sun resort of course. Why not?

Robert, Shasta, Monica and I took the bus to Mahabalipuram which was quite an ordeal. We managed to find seats, but not in the same place and we were all smashed next to sweaty smelly men playing the equivalent of arm rest fighting with our knees. The Golden Sun resort is about 10 kilometers before the city and normally if we were anywhere else in the world we would have probably just waited till we got to the city and then taken a cab to where we needed to go. Not in India - rules don't seem to exist and we're definitely getting the hang of it. As we approached the giant sign for Golden Sun, the four of us stood up and ran toward the front of the bus yelling STOP!!! The driver calmly slowed down and we jumped off before it came to a halt. Laughing hysterically at the absurdity, we ran toward the resort just as the sun was setting. We got our rooms, put our stuff down, got into our bathing suits and jumped in the pool. We had a great north Indian dinner, drank a couple Kingfishers, alternated between the ocean and the pool, and happily came to a compromise with the seemingly 75 year old "lifeguard" on duty who made sure we could swim before retiring for the night. Totally prune-skinned and exhausted, we went to bed late, fully planning to wake up early enough to see the sunrise.. Of course that didn't happen. Instead, we woke up at around 10 ish, ate breakfast, nursed our hangovers and took one last dip in the pool before we had to check out. Robert and Shasta ended up staying at the resort for another night, but Monica and I took a cab into Mahabalipuram so she could see the temples and caves. A couple hours later we took the bus to Pondycherry which took about an hour and a half and were met by Pushkar (who used to work for KM but left about a month ago). We were just planning on wandering around Pondy until we found a place to stay, but Pushkar had graciously booked us a room in the Sri Aurobindo ashram next to the promenade. To stay at the ashram for one night, it was only 100 rupees. 100 rupees! Even though I am suspicious about the source of the various bug bites I got that night and the possibility of head lice.................... 100 rupees! We dropped off our bags, and then went to this wonderful French restaurant called Le club near the sea. The ashram was situated in the French part of the city - cobblestone streets, colorful shops, smart cars. We really could have been in Europe. The restaurant was beautifully lit with lights strung around all of the trees and hanging from the thatched straw ceiling. I started with a cream-based seafood soup then moved on to steak with mushrooms and pommes frites. Crazy ey? After dinner we took a walk along the promenade and then headed back to the ashram to make the 10:30 curfew. Despite us being blanket-less, I slept quite well. In the morning we woke up pretty late, went to Fab India, and then had breakfast at a place called Rendezvous where I had eggs, chorizo, ham, grilled tomato, potatoes and black tea. Heaven.

Next on the itinerary was to meet Pushkar in his hometown: Auroville. What a strange city! Founded in the 60's, this socialist community was supposed to be a spiritual experiment in creating the "ideal". I looked it up and found this:
"Auroville belongs to nobody in particular.
Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole.
But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
Auroville will be the place of an unending education,
of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.
Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."


There is no religion in Auroville but anyone wanting to practice their own faith is of course allowed to do so. Instead the community has adopted a sort of general spirituality that focuses on the teachings of Sri Aurobindo to attain enlightenment. Because of these views, and because the city was founded in the 60's, you can imagine how many hippies migrated from all over the world to participate in communal living. The four main languages of Auroville are English, French, Hindi and Tamil and even though I was there only briefly, I managed to hear all four of them in addition to Russian, Italian, and Spanish. We learned that the soil of 143 different countries was brought to the city and the layout is a circular design around a central banyan tree where they built the Matrimandir. Pushkar took us on his motorbike to the Matrimandir and it is just breathtaking to look at. Not only that, because he is a member of the community, we actually got to go INSIDE which visitors are not allowed to do. The inside of it is just another world altogether. It feels like you're in a spaceship. As soon as you walk in, you have to sit down and put on socks which are provided for you. Then you walk up this HUGE spiral slope that twists a couple times up to the very top where there is a an ominous looking heavy door. We opened it cautiously and stepped inside to a room ten times as large as I thought it would be with soft white carpet, white walls, giant white pillars that seemed to disappear into the ceiling, and white towels purposefully laid out in a circular pattern. In the center lay a massive crystal ball held up by four gold triangles. We chose our towels, sat cross-legged and meditated for ten minutes and left. Despite its futuristic and deliberate design, the energy inside was surprisingly neutral. We left the Matrimandir and had a nice lunch of tofu lasagna and quiche at the visitor's center, and then headed back to Chennai. I slept the whole time on the bus.

The next morning I was summoned to Rahman's studio at 7 am and recorded yet another demo for the same "eastern European short film" that I recorded for before. But this time I pried a little bit more and found out that this demo that I've nonchalantly been recording for the past 2 weeks is actually for a short film by Shekhar Kapoor (Elizabeth, The Four Feathers)! And after about 11 hours of recording and revising and re-recording, Rahman sent the demo to Shekhar and he accepted it. Woohoo! Monica came to the recording session and hopefully she wasn't too bored. She left at around 4 pm. I had a really great time with her.

Unfortunately I can't get the recording until the film comes out, but perhaps I can somehow weasel my way into getting the demos that were rejected. We'll see.

What a weekend!

Recording

Oh my goodness, I once again had a surprisingly eventful week. I have been meditating a lot more and I feel myself definitely settling in here. Chennai is really starting to feel like home. It's nice to not have to think about how much you're spending, how much money is in the account, how much to pay for utilities and credit card bills etc. This is luxury. Who would've thought that I'd find myself in the height of luxury... in India... of all places. I even have a set schedule now. Things were just really crazy in the beginning because I didn't know what to do with myself when I wasn't teaching and even the school wasn't fully settled yet, so it seemed like there was just constant chaos. Now however, I'm starting to keep a daily routine that is delightfully boring. A typical day is: Wake up at 10, teach choir from 10:30 - 12 at KM, come back to the faculty house for lunch, give private lessons at KM from 1 - 4, go to yoga at 5, eat chaat standing up at the local stand near the corner store at 6:30, buy milk and come home and make chai at 7, do some work till 9, eat dinner, hang out with faculty till midnight and then go to sleep. I think I will miss this chaat stand more than anything else when I leave here. 5 rupees for a samosa and 10 rupees for samosa chaat. Yum. And eating it off of a dirty cardboard plate with a teeny sample spoon is for some reason wildly fulfilling.

Anyway, so two days ago I was going through my routine when Josh told me there was going to be a group meditation at this thatched hut near the faculty house. So I agreed to go. It's this random hut near the grocery store and everyone just sits and waits for the preceptor to come and once he does, he says "begin meditation" and then you sit with your eyes closed and clear your thoughts for a half hour. Straightforward enough. I had my phone on silent so I didn't check my phone until we were done and almost home. It was Faiz saying that I had to go to his office immediately for an urgent matter. I was like what's going on? Did something happen? Then when I got there, he called Rahman who I talked to for all of 2 minutes and he asked if I was available to record at 9 pm! So of course I said yes. I came back to the faculty house, ate dinner and went to Panchaton, his house/studio.

I went to Panchaton at 9 where Rahman showed me the basic idea of what he wanted, which he had already mixed and recorded on the computer. He played it for me a couple times, and then left to go have dinner with his family. But while he was playing it for me he kept talking about what he was thinking of changing, what was working, what wasn't working, what ambience he was looking for etc etc. And without thinking I started giving my opinion and talking about what he could do for the effect that he was looking for...... and then realized that I was giving A.R. Rahman advice.....and then felt really weird.....and then shut up. Anyway, he left and I sat for about an hour and just listened to it repeatedly until I learned it. Basically he needed ambient background music for an eastern European short film that he's doing the music for. So I learned exactly what he had recorded himself on "aaa" because I assumed that there wouldn't be any words if it's supposed to be ethereal. And then I waited and waited and waited for him to come back. That night was apparently a huge deadline for him for like four different projects that were all being worked on at the same time, so he was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything done because he had a flight to catch later. So I waited till about 1 am when he came back and said "ok, shall we do it?" I go into the studio feeling confident that I had learned it correctly, when he turns to me and says "oh, I just talked to them and they say they want words." Then he says "let's put Sufi words, but is it possible for you to pronounce them like German or Hungarian?" Um. What? First of all, I don't know what Sufi is. Second, how in the world does one make very arabic-sounding words sound eastern European? So he finds words to put together and scribbles them on the back of another piece of paper. He continues to work on mixing the demo so I go back outside and hang out with the others who are there waiting as well - the others being Benny (who sang in Jaane tu ya Jaane na and Yuvraaj) and Shrini (also in Yuvraaj). I'm sitting on the couch yawning and Benny laughs and says, "Ha! It's your first time, isn't it? You can't be yawning yet, the night is just beginning." What??? I go back into the studio and Rahman says "are you ready?" And I say, "Sure." I go into the sound booth, put on the headphones and look over the words, when he starts playing the music and... it's COMPLETELY different from what I had listened to earlier. Like, it could have been a different song. I think he saw my concern and said "don't worry, let's just take one phrase at a time." So I start singing and the reverb on the microphone is so intense, I barely have to open my mouth. As a western classical singer, we're just constantly taught to sing...OUT; with a full voice, full support, and loud. Rahman kept saying "could you do it a little softer?" and "could it be lighter... with more air?" On top of that, he wanted it slightly Indian sounding too, so I did my best to do the ornaments he was asking for. All in all, I think I did it pretty quickly, without written notation, and I think it was a success. He seemed pleased, anyway. The best part of the whole thing was that HE was doing all the recording and mixing himself. There was no one in the studio except for me and him. How crazy is that? I'm like trying to concentrate on what he's asking me to do, all the while having flashbacks of dancing to Chaiyya Chaiyya like 10 years ago and hearing Vande Mataram at the 50th anniversary of India's independence parade. It was just a surreal experience.

I finished recording in an hour and a half but he asked me to stay in case he still needed to record something. I was at the studio till 7 am. 7 am!

I came home and passed out with a satisfied smile.

Mahabalipuram

I had the most amazing weekend; it was so surreal. It all started on Friday when I met Rajesh Vaidhya who is an absolutely incredible veena player - just an absolute joy to watch and listen to. He did a workshop for the KM students and played traditional Carnatic music as well as some really crazy english tunes like Michael Jackson and Beethoven and Mozart. He even played Fur Elise on the veena!! It was one of the best concerts I have ever been to hands down - of any kind of music. He has a certain effect that makes you stop and say "wait a minute, this is Waaay cooler than anything I do. I've got it all wrong."

Then , it was Rahman's mother's 60th birthday on Friday and the KM faculty were invited to a gala party for her at the Park Hotel which included fantastic north Indian fare, media cameras and involved fancy attire. I had just bought a really nice suit from Pantaloons that I enthusiastically showed off (I haven't had a chance to wear anything I've bought yet so this was especially fun) and I hobnobbed with a few people: the singer Sujatha who sang in Roja and Rahman's manager, Noel. I asked Sujatha about how to maintain vocal health in such a humid climate and she gave me some tips and told me about her ENT that she sees for vocal scopes etc. Anyway, I spent the night running away from cameras and uncomfortably sitting with the rest of the faculty who didn't know anyone. But it was fun. And I finally got to meet Rahman's wife and she is stunningly beautiful in person. What a woman!

But it didn't end there - we stayed up all night and early the next morning, Shasta, Robert, Eilidh, Michael, Liz and I jumped in a car and went to Mahabalipuram to watch the sunrise. I was so exhausted and was really debating not going but once we got there I was so happy I went because it turned out to be one of the best experiences I've ever had. We walked directly to the beach and sat on the sand while the sun came up. I don't know if I've ever actually watched a sunrise before but it was just incredible. After about 2 hours we walked back up and climbed the hills to see the rock carvings, temples and caves. It was only 7:30 am when we finished but it was already about 100 degrees outside and by that time I was just plain exhausted.

We got back in the car and were driving back until we saw a huge sign for Golden Sun Resort on the right hand side. We promptly stopped. We walked in and asked how much it would cost to use the beach for the day and it was only 75 rupees!!! I had brought my bathing suit just in case, but public beaches here are just so creepy and people just stand around and watch you so I never attempted to jump in. But the resort had their own private beach and at 8 oclock in the morning there was absolutely no one there except for a goat herder and scattered cows. The best part was that it was CLEAN. We ate a "continental breakfast" which was just eggs, toast and coffee, got into our bathing suits and jumped head first into the ocean. We stayed at the beach till 3 in the afternoon and I now look Nigerian. All in all, it was the best day ever. We came home and passed out for the rest of the day.

The next morning I woke up early at 7:30 am and went with Josh and Liz to the Sahaj Marg Ashram to meditate. Josh practices raja yoga through the Shri Rama Chandra Mission and is actually a preceptor himself. He's been having meditation sittings with all of us who are interested and it's actually quite nice. I definitely believe in the overall benefits of meditation in general, but I am suspicious of groups that say their way is the right way to gain spiritual clarity. The "master" only does sittings on Sunday mornings and it lasts for almost an hour. We sit cross-legged with our eyes closed and the master supposedly "cleans" out extraneous and potentially harmful layers of resistance that we have built over the years. I believe that that's true - we do add layers and layers of resistance to ourselves based on the experiences we've had, but isn't that just a survival technique in the darwinian sense? Don't we harden our psyches as a way to not get hurt again? I don't know how much I believe in this particular technique, but there have been a couple of times where I have felt incredibly potent surges of pure emotion like anger, fear, and guilt for no reason during meditation. So who knows? Maybe there's something to it. After the ashram, I went and sat at a coffee shop called Mocha and enjoyed a lamb panini, which I washed down with cranberry infused lemonade.

Seriously. It was the best weekend ever.

Some pics:

The sun about to come up










The sun starting to come up. It was a teeny bit foggy so the picture didn't come out as clear as it actually was

Eilidh and Robert watching the sunrise


The sun finally coming up




How crazy is this picture?? And it's not digitally enhanced in any way. Nuts.



There were these tiny little crabs running around all over the beach. They dig little holes and walk into them sideways.




The Shore Temple right on the beach. Apparently there are a whole bunch of small temples that have been covered by the ocean. And when the tsunami came and the water receded, all of these small temples were uncovered, so everyone went farther out to look at it and then perished from the wave.

All of us who went: from left to right, Liz, Shasta, Eilidh, Robert, Michael








Large rock carving








Remnants of a temple








A goat precariously perched on the rock wall








A random giant rock. I'd be a great tour guide wouldn't I?








Liz trying to push the giant rock








The view from the top







At the Golden Sun Resort







The view from the thatched hut








Oh how much fun it was!