But let me backtrack a little. While backpacking through India over summer, I was unable to avoid constant interaction with glow-faced yogis, insistent on giving me henna tattoos of the Hindi symbol for “om”, while the stench of their unwashed cotton kaftans wafted up my nose. Every day I came across another “New Ager”, recording their deepest thoughts in a tooled-leather journal despite being a beet and ginger juice-quaffing vegan. Something had to change. But dirty hippies in India are like South D sluts at Metro on a Saturday. No matter how repulsive the normal world may find them, they’re a permanent fixture of Indian travel, spreading their venereal diseases and generally being aesthetically and intellectually displeasing. And so it occurred to me that maybe I had to change; god knows I’m more than capable of slipping into trashy-slut mode if the situation (read: my clitoris) requires it. Surely I could also be embrace yoga, patchouli and bongo drums. And so I booked myself into the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat in tropical South India. Their week-long programme comprised a full schedule of yoga, chanting, meditation and lectures designed to allow me to emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes of casual sex and substance abuse, as a purged, glowing and yoga-toned Miranda Kerr-esque figure.
In hindsight, I probably could have booked myself into a cell at Paremoremo with a smacked out Headhunter, and my mental state in the end would’ve been much the same.
Arriving at Abu Ghraib the ashram, I was presented with a list of rules. Smoking, alcohol, mobile phones, sex, revealing clothing, meat, fish, eggs, garlic and onions were banned. Attendance of the entire ashram daily schedule was mandatory. It began at 5.20am with two hours of prayer and meditation, followed by two hours of “karma-yoga”, a euphemism on a par with “love handles“. After karma-yoga were endless lectures and prayers, followed by – you guessed it! – more yoga. The day ended as it began, with prayer, meditation and chanting for two hours until 10pm. Grim funereal bells announced each event of the day. By the end of my stay, the fear I felt at the ringing of each bell was akin to the fear one must feel heading to your first session of electroshock therapy.
Naturally I was paying an exorbitant sum for the privilege of this daily self-flagellation. Two meals a day were included in the price, but “brunch” and “dinner” varied only in their alternating resemblance to either the vaginal discharge of a chronic yeast infection, or partially digested Budget Wheatmeal Sandwich Bread. Not included in this package was the (tooled-leather) journal we were forced to purchase at a grossly inflated price from the ashram boutique, along with a set of flowing white robes, a yoga mat, and a meditation cushion. The opportunity cost of these items was roughly a finger of quality Kashmiri hash. I wept inwardly as I handed over my rupees.
To counter the inanity of daily existence, and to make use of my leather tooled journal, I recorded my day to day thoughts and experiences for posterity:
Day 1
10:00 am
Just arrived and have made the requisite purchases. Clad in white flowing robes, my eyes bloodshot from daily hash and Malboro Lite smoking, I look not unlike Silas from The Da Vinci Code. Surely things can only get better from here. (Author’s note: As has frequently been written on my marked legal opinions, my reasoning was ultimately baseless and thoroughly flawed).
12:00 pm
En route to a meeting with other newbies. At the front of the hall are enormous gilt-framed pictures of H. H. Swami Sivananda and Swami Vishnudevananda, the ashram’s gods gurus, draped with wreaths of fresh-cut flowers. They are indistinguishable from the creepy elderly hippies offering young women massages on the beach in Goa, on the basis that their root chakras need to be aligned via the release of pelvic tension…
1:00 pm
Meeting is over. It began with the white-robed figures at the front of the hall chanting “Om Shanti” over and over until, apparently, they had placed everyone in the room on the same karmic wavelength. We are assigned our “karma-yoga” tasks: mine is this week’s “special project”. We are told that the laws of cause and effect mean doing good deeds for our fellow cult members ashram guests will ensure that people do good deeds for us in the future, but only if we do our chores with an open and generous spirit.
4:00 pm
Have just spent two hours scraping moss off a pavement using a small piece of broken coconut shell in blazing South Indian 35 degree heat and 95% humidity. Fuck karma. My mind and spirit are officially more tightly closed than my legs at the thought of a spit roast with Rodney Hide and Michael Laws.
6:00 pm
Yoga. The marble-floored meditation hall is so crowded that my head is half buried in the crotch of the dreadlocked French hippie front of me. We are so close in fact, that I spend the 2 hours engaging in Napoleon-Dynamite-level mouth breathing to avoid the rotten stench of the Calcutta fish markets overwhelming me. Honey – it’s called bacterial vaginosis, it happens to everyone. Get yourself to a pharmacy and invest in a broad-spectrum antibiotic. And maybe give your paisley parachute pants a wash while you’re at it.
8:00 pm
Meditation and chanting in the main hall. I sit silently and uncomfortably cross-legged on a bamboo mat as the rest of the students chant every possible combination of the words “Om”, “Shanti”, “Hare” and “Krishna” for an hour. The elderly American leading the chanting is practically frothing at the mouth as he spits out each word. This is followed by an hour of meditation, time which I use to reflect that if enlightenment is standing in front of a crowd of white-robed, dreadlocked losers reeking of BO, while shaking a set of maracas, grinning stupidly, and chanting monosyllables in the manner of my 10-month old nephew, then count me the fuck out.
10:00 pm
Bed-time and silence. I toss and turn all night; it may just be the caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and cynicism withdrawals, but the huge mosquitoes swarming towards every exposed skin surface seem to be chanting “Om Shanti”. Ugh.
Day 2
5:20am
Morning satsang (prayers) and meditation. I gaze around the hall. The eyes of my fellow yogis are glazed with Michele Bachmann-level fervor. Previously bleary-eyed, I suddenly awake with a horrified jolt; for the first time in my life, I am not only in the presence of, but am fully immersed/participating in, organized religion. A Senior Silas at the front of the hall yells into the mike, “Only when you have control of your mind can you be free”. What he really means is that only when the gurus have control of your mind can they be free to liberate you from your cash. Not only are we paying to be at the ashram, “karma-yoga” provides a convenient excuse to avoid having any paid staff at all.
11:00 am
Brunch. I sit cross-legged on the bamboo mat in the dining hall, shovelling the bowel of thin gruel into my mouth, and attempt to distract myself from its pre-masticated taste and consistency by chatting to my neighbour. She looks at me like I have just commented on Skrillex’s recent Grammy wins, and points to a sign on the wall prohibiting talking while eating. Apparently our energy must be focused on digestion while eating, for optimum health. The thought of focusing energy on digesting what I can only assume is cottage cheese imported from New World’s countrywide budget bins is almost enough to make me snap and throw the bowl at the wall. But instead I smile beatifically. Inner peace, Maddy. Inner peace.
2:00 pm
More moss-scraping. I start to wonder whether a stay at Sivandanda predicated the genocidal impulses of Idi Amin, Nicolae Ceaucescu, Slobodan Milosevic...
8:00 pm
Evening meditation. Instead of closing my eyes and finding inner peace, I keep them wide open and scan the fetid pit of ovine guru-worshippers with the same sense of grim foreboding with which I check PIMS every July and November. I wonder if I am having an acid flashback from my most recent trip in Goa. The wall hangings of Hindu deities seem to have spontaneously transmogrified into Impressionist renderings of L. Ron. Hubbard.
Day 3
9:00 am
I have officially snapped. This cannot go on. I gaze fervently around the ashram looking for a Sikh student who might have a ceremonial dagger with which I can act out a sort of Dexter-like ashram cleansing for those who have enslaved millions to the cult of bullshit. With no turbans in sight, I opt for Plan B (a sentence I repeat far too often; I am meant to be an adult now, have got to start getting responsible about contraception) and pop a couple of Valium. Ahhhhhh. When are pharmaceuticals not the answer?
I have officially snapped. This cannot go on. I gaze fervently around the ashram looking for a Sikh student who might have a ceremonial dagger with which I can act out a sort of Dexter-like ashram cleansing for those who have enslaved millions to the cult of bullshit. With no turbans in sight, I opt for Plan B (a sentence I repeat far too often; I am meant to be an adult now, have got to start getting responsible about contraception) and pop a couple of Valium. Ahhhhhh. When are pharmaceuticals not the answer?
Day 4
5:20 am
More Valium. Suddenly, the morning satsang become more akin to the soothing ambient electronica I am partial to, rather than the insanely aggravating indoctrinating drone it once was. Was everyone else just pilling up the entire time? Is this what I was missing?
More Valium. Suddenly, the morning satsang become more akin to the soothing ambient electronica I am partial to, rather than the insanely aggravating indoctrinating drone it once was. Was everyone else just pilling up the entire time? Is this what I was missing?
Day 5
5:25 am
More Valium, but this time it’s not working – the Tom-Cruise-Brian-Tamaki-L.-Ron-Hubbard-Destiny’s-Church-Movementarians mélange of cult-like bilge is seeping through my sedative haze. Perhaps Valium isn’t strong enough – if religion is the opiate of the masses, maybe I need an actual opiate to counteract it. I consider a quick run into town for some Afghani black tar heroin, but, my mental faculties still somewhat intact, decide against it. Fulfilling my pre-paid week at the ashram is probably not worth cultivating a raging smack habit.
6:00 am
I pack my bags and flee. The world is rendered in vivid Technicolor, after days of white robes and white floors and white buildings and blank pages which were intended to inspire inner peace, but instead resulted only in intellectual, emotional and physical desolation. After a mere five days at the ashram, I am a broken shell of a woman, my limbs languid but more from the sedative effects of copious amounts of benzodiazepines than any newfound flexibility. The moment I arrive back in the nearest city I gorge on Domino’s, whose vile pizza seems to be the gastronomic antithesis of the “spiritual” slurry I have been force-fed for the last few days.
More Valium, but this time it’s not working – the Tom-Cruise-Brian-Tamaki-L.-Ron-Hubbard-Destiny’s-Church-Movementarians mélange of cult-like bilge is seeping through my sedative haze. Perhaps Valium isn’t strong enough – if religion is the opiate of the masses, maybe I need an actual opiate to counteract it. I consider a quick run into town for some Afghani black tar heroin, but, my mental faculties still somewhat intact, decide against it. Fulfilling my pre-paid week at the ashram is probably not worth cultivating a raging smack habit.
6:00 am
I pack my bags and flee. The world is rendered in vivid Technicolor, after days of white robes and white floors and white buildings and blank pages which were intended to inspire inner peace, but instead resulted only in intellectual, emotional and physical desolation. After a mere five days at the ashram, I am a broken shell of a woman, my limbs languid but more from the sedative effects of copious amounts of benzodiazepines than any newfound flexibility. The moment I arrive back in the nearest city I gorge on Domino’s, whose vile pizza seems to be the gastronomic antithesis of the “spiritual” slurry I have been force-fed for the last few days.
Ultimately, what was meant to achieve enlightenment, weight loss and general physical and mental wellbeing, led only to insanely strong cravings for high-GI refined carbs, and a crippling benzodiazepine addiction. Frankly, I would rather co-star in a Kiwi remake of “2 Girls 1 Cup” with a Topp Twin than ever repeat the experience. You want enlightenment?
Seriously, drink some Perrier and invest in a butt plug. Those baggy-panted yogis who float around with beatific grins on their faces? Don’t mistake that expression for inner peace. The grin is really more of a grimace. Each of them has a shit-smeared meditation cushion stuck so far up his or her own ass it’d have to be surgically removed.
