India, week 1. Ochre salamander on azur wall.

Here I am, sitting next to a fierce running fan, in the moving air of this warm internet shop.
Basicly as fully equipped to conquer the world wide web as at home.

It feels strange to start writing on this new myblog (dear diary, …….) from this unplanned vacation.
Wasn’t this myblog to be on maybe ‘spirituality’?
Well, here I am, but who am I?, in this strange mixture of day to day Indian life, and a
also mixed breed of meant for Westerners spiritual Supermarket.
The place is Tiruvanammalai in Tamil Nadu, India.
Tiru is known in the West as the homebase of Ramana Maharshi.
In India, Ramana is one of many many Hindu Satgurus, and part of an ongoing spiritual culture that goes back thousands of years.
The village is next to a hill that is considered here a holy mountain.
Each month at full moon hundreds of thousands come and walk around it.
(This is going on right now)
Once a year even several million people come to make this 14 km walk
See for more background information the one and only wikipedia,
(or any trustworthy source of your liking): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiruvannaamalai
Here is some extra info by a Maharashi devotee on this so called giri pradakshina.

So, for those who stumble in, some background information for now.
I have had eczema since June last year, was in treatment by a doctor of the Chinese Medical Center in Amsterdam and also by a electro acupunturist/homeopath from Alkmaar and the eczema lasted and lasted.
Have had this twice before since 2003. Never lasting longer than a few month, but severe enough to having had to stop working completely. This attack seems to become everlasitng.
Than Xmass came. I met a guy who I had met before at a Ganpati meeting on the Zandvoort Beach (google for everything you do not understand, please, I cann’t keep up my habitual precision). He saw my hands, we talked about my skin and he said you have to go, go to India or something, my intuition says you have to move. My habitual story came up, all the whys for not going, (me owing people money being the most important one). That night I couldn’t sleep and I realised that I was not on my track, but in some fear.
I went with the flow and here I am.

Flew in to Chennai, where I met a guy that I know from a yahoogroup.
I had no clue why I booked even a week earlier than would have made practical sense,
(I obtained my visum the day before my flight was), then it showed that there was a festivity going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Pongal) , due to which feast this man J. had a for days leave from his job as a teacher. Which made it easy for him to serve me, as he called it.
We had some nice days together and he showed me a lot of his city. All on his motorbike, a Yamaha Libero, good name afaic. (Maybe later a more detailed report, life is going to fast to make a decent report of it. This last sentence seems to be a often observed truth in my life the last year or so).

As a desert for now some lines from my written notes, typed from memorie as we go:
Yes, and India has always the still surprising ‘ah, there it is again’ things. Like seeing the first pair of swastikas. This time illustrating the illustrous words ‘Kodak photos’ on a shop window.
And the first person sleeping out on the street somewhere. And the first police officer telling you ‘taking pictures not allowed, sir’. The first burning garbage in the street. An not to forget the first monkeys.
The monkeys showed up, seen from the bus, right after Fort Gingee, and here in Tiru it is again crowded with ‘m.
With the instruction that go with that, like don’t fight for your bananas once they have got hold of your plastic bag.
And in Chennai I wrote that it is just a matter of time before i’ll see my first Hummer.
That is about the only SUV that I have not yet seen here.

Enough for now.
But for this good news: Each and every day since I have left Amsterdam, complete with all the medication, except for some almond oil that I took with me, the irritation of my skin is lessening, the itching has lowered to a third of that a week ago, some rather critical points of the skin have closed itself.
I am so happy about that!! Rationally I was taking quite a risk, if the eczema would have worsened I would have been in a rather precarious situation by now. Yet there was not much choice involved, the flow was flowing and it still does.

Oh, and the title: another ‘ah, there it is again’ thingy.
An ochre salamander walking along a azur wall, disappearing behind the mirror of a hotel lobby.

hans