Pondicherry

Thursday, 31 December 2009, Pondicherry:  I was a day ahead of myself in previous posts, so subtract one day from those.  We started the day with a yoga class.  Our new yoga teacher was referred to us by the lady that owns & runs our hotel.  The yoga teacher is a middle aged female.  She's got the round matronly body typical of Indian women her age, but is flexible and well qualified.  She's also a naturopath, and approaches yoga as a therapy, with special emphasis on pranayama and diet.  Her pranayama techniques a quite different from those that we were taught.  She concentrates on the chest and head, as opposed to the diaphram during breathing.  Pranayams are done forcefully, with a lot of noise generated in the nose.  Contrary to a lot of western yoga classes, the word "gentle" was never used, much to my delight.  My head was simultaneously buzzing and immersed in tranquility during and after the class.  Definite increase in sattva, decrease in tamas, which is what I need.

We ate breakfast at a little place on the beach (facing the Bay of Bengal) called "Le Cafe".  It's open 24 hours and serves great cappacinos and lattes.  I had two, contrary to my new yoga teacher's advice to avoid coffe and milk products.  C'est la vie!  Three very upper class looking young Indian girls sat at the table next to us, with beautiful saris and faces like movie stars, typing messages on their cellphone.  Young Indian women can be incredibly beautiful, but very few of them bring that head-turning beauty along into middle age.

You see a lot of cell phones here, used by men and women alike.  You see a lot of mopeds driven by women as well.  In some ways, it seems like a very modern society, then you see a small herd of water buffalo saunter out into the middle of a busy street, bringing traffic to a standstill, as we saw today.  When the last one was dead center in the intersection, he decided to stop and take a large, wet, sloppy crap, so the busses, cars, mopeds and bicycles all had to stop and watch this performance. 

The vast majority of the women dress traditionally in saris and the majority of the men dress in western clothes.  I've seen this phenomenom in my travels throughout the rest of Asia, and Africa as well.  It seems that women are the holders of tradition.

Catherine vomited yesterday, but got over it within a couple of hours or so. 

I bought a pair of loose muslin pants that I can wear for yoga and also out and about.  I also bought a nice, light, cool muslin shirt.  Catherine bought a couple of pairs of pants and a very pretty Indian style shirt.

There is a whole lot of litter lining the streets in parts of Pondicherry.  It seems as if the residents don't have the same inhibitions about littering that we have.  There is also a lot of cow poop and dog poop in the streets.  You really need to pay attention when you're walking the streets.  I would bet that the raw sewage goes right into the Bay of Bengal untreated.