Siddhartha
Returns: India Journal vol. 2, part 2
https://libertinereflections.blogspot.com/2019/01/siddhartha-returns-indian-travel.html
Part II: "Youth is the most precious thing...too bad
it has to be wasted on young folks." George Bernard Shaw
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| Just taking some eggs down to the beach... |
Kovalam India, January 15-19, 2019
Anyone
considering an Ayurveda treatment should not take my last blog’s description of
it too seriously. We have a large clan
of Ukrainians here with us and they are all doing the same treatment I wrote about in my last post. After casually canvassing many of them on the beach, they all think the treatment is “super” and “fantastic”. They seriously love it. Also, now that I’m five days into my treatment, I have
to say, my mind is settled and focused and the treatments flow by like a
breeze under a birds wings as it soars through the sky.
I
still have Babu doing the foot massage daily, but my mind has totally settled down
and I get lost in the void or just relax while playing with a certain thought or idea in my head during the treatments. Also,
I moved on from the coarse hot oil bag rub and powder treatment and am now on what I
call “oil boarding”. I lay on a wooden
board while two people pour little streams of hot oil all over my body for
thirty minutes. After the oil boarding,
I have something reminiscent to the
Chinese water torture, but it involves a
small stream of hot oil constantly being poured across my forehead for thirty
minutes –back and forth – back and forth – like a cylon’s eye in Battlestar
Gallactica. This treatment was tough the first
day, but now that I have found some inner harmony, I now find it quite relaxing and
I usually just tune out and before I know it, the treatment is over. I only have a couple days of treatment left
and after today, I think they’ll be a cakewalk, despite the fact the
detoxification therapy is next.
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| The "Oil Board" |
Besides
the Ayurveda, my body is also benefitting from a much healthier diet. I eat pineapple and mango for breakfast on
the beach, then
usually some fish for lunch and then seafood or chicken for dinner
. Fried foods are few and far between out here,
as are dairy products/cheese. In
Chicago, it’s not that I’m eating such terrible foods (though that is part of
it), but the main issue is the quantity that is given to us in America. A standard size plate of food in the States
is at least double if not triple the size of what is served here (or in
Europe). It’s amazing how your caloric
intake drops and your body feels energized when mass quantities aren’t shoved in your face and stomach.
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| Hot Chili Fish |
One
of my favorite things about having a beach vacation is the time it gives you to catch up on reading. I arrived
here well into Seymour Hersh’s new memoir Reporter
and finished it within the first two days.
Hersh recently came to Prague and did a reading at my bookstore/café
there. It was a great success and his new
book, which he gifted me, didn’t disappoint in the least. It was a great read and I strongly recommend
it for anyone interested in investigative journalism and an on the ground
account of some important events in U.S. history since the 60s. His behind the scenes stories on the My Lai
massacre in Vietnam, Sidney Korshak and the mob, JFK and the unknown story
about what really happened when we hunted down and killed Osama Bin Laden were
just a few of the fascinating stories that he’s uncovered and discussed in the
memoir. 
After
Reporter, it was time to switch gears
into fiction, so I jumped into Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. Tender has been on my reading list for
far too long and I wasn’t going to let another vacation pass without reading it. In fact, I was actually
planning on reading this one last year when I first came here, but I absentmindedly
left the book back in Chicago, so it didn’t happen. By a strange bit of Fate, I hadn’t read much
Fitzgerald beyond Gatsby and his short stories until recently.
Last
year, after realizing I didn’t take Tender
with me, I miraculously found a copy of The
Beautiful and the Damned at the Trivandrum airport when traveling up to
Delhi. I really loved that one, so this
year, Tender is the Night was back at
the top of my India reading list.
Reading a Fitzgerald novel each year is a gift to any literature
lover. He is truly one of America’s
best.
I’m
already about halfway into it and one thing that stands out when reading this
novel is how the young were so much more mature and developed back then. I guess with shorter life expectancy, the
constant European/Western wars, and the hardships that came along with them,
people just grew up so much faster than today. One of the main women characters in Tender, an American named Rosemary, is introduced to us when she is about to turn 18 and is traveling around Europe
and holding company with middle aged adults in a very mature and poised way and
no one thinks twice about the age difference.
Also,
I recently read Nabokov’s Laughter in the
Dark, which is about a man in his forties who is contently married, but
wants a mistress and then falls in love with an 18 year old that is able to
handle herself among the man’s mature and erudite circle of friends. Of course, once this relationship moves
forward, the man’s life falls spectacularly apart, but that is classic Nabokov
and has nothing to do with the age of the vixen at the center of the mess and
more about the nature of man in general.
Both
novels take place in Europe at roughly the same time (1920s-1930s), but when we
read them today, it is pretty much impossible to think of an American or
European under 20 years old being as mature and worldly as the young characters
in these novels. Today, even when I meet
someone in the States closer to 30 years old, most of them them have no idea
about history, literature/arts, geography, politics or just about anything else
that is outside of their myopic view of the world seen through Instagram and
other social media.
Has
the extended peace in the West since the end of WWII delayed the development of
our youth to such an extent that our young adults lack the tools necessary to
survive in a more hostile and uncertain world?
I don’t think this is such a rhetorical question these days, as with the
rise of Trump and populism/nationalism in Europe and the States, the current
world order is not looking anywhere near as stable as it was only ten years
ago. Talk of the U.S. leaving NATO,
tariff wars, a rising China and unchecked adversarial Russia are just a few
warning signals on the horizon that could greatly undermine global stability
and if that indeed does happen, will the backbone of our society- young adults
from 18-30- be ready to carry the necessary load to see us through as our
forefathers did the last time nationalism/Fascism rose up in Europe and
threatened our freedoms and way of life?
I’m
not so sure where we are headed, but enough of these far too serious (and depressing) thoughts. I must be one of the only people around that
goes on holidays and once he’s able to kick back a bit, starts working himself
into a mental crisis about the current state of the world and U.S. culture. Thus, I’m ending this post here and heading off
to the beach to relax, take a swim and continue reading about a blossoming love
affair against the backdrop of coming tragedy between an 18 year old and
a middle aged married man in France during the heyday of the Jazz Age.
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| Kovalam Beach from the top of the Lighthouse |
I’ll
update one last blog as the trip wraps up, but I’ve turned the corner on the
Ayurveda and am very happy to be back in the land of curry, masala and purple
togas/diapers.
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If you want to read more about India and my thoughts on it, you can find my original India Travelogue, that was published last year, here:
