A Month in Kerala

Why I put myself through a month of self-deprivation

2011-03-08T03:26:00.000-08:00

A road well-travelled

I came because my obesity was defeating me. I was locked into a spiral of constantly punishing myself for not winning the battle, and each failure only made the struggle worse. This made me both angry and depressed so that – in Ayurvedic terms – my Doshas were all out of balance. I sent an advance email to the doctors explaining what I wanted to achieve (I’d recommend anyone planning to come here to do the same,) and explaining that I felt confused, unstable, angry and unhappy. I wanted to find happiness in my lifestyle, which patently had the potential to be extremely fulfilling – living with a soul-mate in an idyllic location with huge opportunities to create a beautiful home. Well, it wasn’t quite that straightforward, but I knew that we had a great opportunity and I didn’t want to waste it for both of us.

Obesity is not a problem that hangs around the waistline; it exists primarily between the ears. Obesity, at least in my case, is the result of a mindset that has a deeply rooted belief that I am incapable of looking good. Consequently I have reinforced this belief by creating and maintaining superfluous body-fat. This then creates a barrier that protects me by ensuring that other people don’t get too close, which would challenge my core belief about being unlovable. The problem with all of this is that the answer is not to remove the excess weight, because the fat is the symptom, not the cause. The answer is to make drastic changes both to the mindset and to the lifestyle, which is, of course, much more difficult. As I just said, the problem is between the ears.

And part of the reason it’s tough is that when a fat person becomes slim it is deeply disturbing.

Several years ago I shed a large amount of weight through a determined programme of diet and exercise and the help of a kind and supportive dietician. I lost more than 40kg and was left with an apron of excess skin that I then had surgically removed, resulting in a dramatically different profile from the chest down. And then the weight crept back on. This was probably due at least in some part to the decision of my wonderful dietician to relocate to the West Country, which my mind foolishly, but understandably, interpreted as rejection and desertion. But the more significant reason was that I couldn’t identify with the different person that I saw in the mirror. When I see personalities who have famously changed their physique – politician Nigel Lawson and the TV personality Stephen Fry spring to mind immediately, I always sense that I can see an insecurity and fear in their eyes as they fight their demons in that same battle of coming to terms with an appearance which they strain to accept,and with which they struggle to identify.

So this time I am going home with a visibly changed physique and a different lifestyle that incorporates exercise, both out and about in the open air, and in solitary yoga. It also demands a dramatic reduction in the amounts of food and alcohol that I ingest. It’s a lot to ask.

How will the old man cope with the new man? I don’t know. What I do know is that right now I am happy and contented, and I believe that the time ahead will not slide back into the painful experiences of the past.

The biggest lesson that I have learned in my time here has been to accept myself as being OK – Lord knows I’ve struggled with that one for decades. It’s nothing to do with waistline or a general lack of athleticism, it’s about accepting myself for who I am, not for what I look like.

The biggest decision I am taking away from here with me is that having decided to accept myself, I now won’t let anyone tell me that I’m not OK. It sounds a bit like a Gay Pride anthem “I am who I am” and all that, but that’s just how it feels, - and that’s OK, too.

If you want to kick a habit, or just get away and reassess who you are and what you’re doing with your life, there’s nowhere I know that would provide a better opportunity. Just bear one thing in mind:-

Expect to change.

Thanks for following my ramblings over the past month; it’s been a wonderful experience and recording it has helped to share it and hold on to the day-to-day memories.

It's not about weight loss, but by the 23rd day on the programme, I had lost 16.8kg = 37lbs.

This is when it all begins...!

So... to sum it all up

2011-03-08T03:21:00.000-08:00

OK, enough of this philosophy and religion; but since the final week of treatment was enemas and laxatives I didn’t think you’d want anything descriptive about my day-by-day activities for that period. Let’s take a moment to try and sum up what staying here is all about.

The main building

To start with, it’s not a spa. There’s no luxury, no pampering and no sense of being gently cosseted and surrounded by the glitterati in sequined bath- robes,(though the lady with the high-heeled sling-backs does make an effort.) It’s not a clinic. The doctors and therapists are experts and they’re purists, but all they can do is make suggestions and recommendations. They don’t enforce the rules, and it’s up to you if you prefer to ignore them, but if you do your own thing, you shouldn’t expect the best results.

Soren and Ali

It’s a rare mix of personalities. Thank goodness I had Søren and Steini (Holland and Iceland) next door. A couple of guys slightly younger than me who were on the same flight from Dubai. We arrived together and no we’re staying at the same hotel in Calicut before flying back to Europe. Then there was Ali, the water engineer from Oman, who was another great bloke to spend time with. The three of us often chatted and compared notes, which was refreshing in an 80% female environment. That’s the sort of gender ration that you just have to face up to if you’re a man and you do this sort of whacky semi-spiritual stuff. If I hadn’t met up with these three guys, my month would have been very hard work.

The location is not in itself a holiday destination. With typical Indian entrepreneurial spirit, the website and literature explain that trips to the Game Reserve and the city of Mysore can be arranged – and the staff will do so willingly and ensure you enjoy your day out. But those are not mainstream activities. You will probably have to rearrange your treatment schedule (which consumes most of every typical day here.) And if you do go out for the day you still need to think about your diet and medication. If you want to do the sights it would make more sense to do them as a separate part of your trip, before or after coming to AYV. On the other hand, when there’s a religious festival locally, the staff will rearrange everything to involve the AYV guests and personnel so that everyone feels part of the local community. A local festival is scheduled a couple of days after my departure, and they’d arranged white clothing for everyone, made-to-measure at a nominal cost of €5 per person. Everyone would join in the local procession carrying brass trays decked with flowers. That would have been a truly unique opportunity to experience something you don’t get with any tour operator.

On the other hand, the location is one I found totally seductive. AYV is undeniably in the middle of nowhere. There are tiny jungle stores in walking distance where schoolchildren can buy sweets and families can buy rice, dried pulses and other essentials, and if you walk along the river bank to the rope-drawn ferry across to Kuvula Island, there’s a little stall selling bottles of soft drinks and sticky cakes (which you won’t buy if you’re following doctor’s orders, but the location is very photogenic!) Apart from that, it’s a half-hour drive to Katikulam where you can find plumbers and ironmongers, agricultural suppliers, a juice bar, fabric shops and even an internet café with a slow web connection.

This is Kerala and it’s nature in the wild. At night-time you can hear the scrabble of the monkeys on the roof, or even the trumpeting of an elephant in the woods, and if you choose the right day to walk upstream, you’ll find the crocodile basking in the sun on a mud-flat.

AYV is not a luxury resort, and the amenities are relatively undeveloped or minimal. In the relaxation area by the main gate you can unwind to the constant splash, ripple and babble of the river below – but the loungers are falling apart and you can rip your clothes on a loose nail or spear your finger with a splinter from the rustic bamboo. The only other seating area is up on the dining-room balcony, but that’s primarily a dining area – not a relaxation area. Consequently you have only your verandah, which is cool and shaded (both plusses and minuses on that score ) and it can be solitary if you’re not located in a part of the estate where other guests are likely to stop by for a chat.

The accommodation is basic, almost to the point of being primitive. It’s certainly spacious – my room is something like 9m x 7m but it is dark-panelled with bamboo ply, it has a dark red tiled floor and is lit by a few low-energy bulbs on un-shaded lamp-holders that are fixed to the walls. This makes for a rather dingy environment. There are no coat-hangers because there is no hanging-space anyway, and it is almost impossible to see things on the shelving that is provided for storing clothing. The bed is large, and the thin mattress makes it not just firm, it’s relatively hard – but this is a gift to anyone with a weak back who has suffered (as I have) from too many soft, overstuffed hotel beds. There’s a western-style loo, and a shower that is usually powerful, plentiful and hot. There’s a small mirror over the hand-basin which is (as they ALWAYS are) fixed below eye level so any full-sized male has to stoop to shave. I can handle most of this, but the bed-linen is awful: a lumpy duvet that seems to be stuffed with kapok and is covered with multi-coloured floral patterns, giving a sad reflection of a distinct lack of attention to important details.

I am being deliberately critical to ensure that readers are not totally seduced by my overall enthusiasm because none of the above negatives was a real problem for me. The over-riding positive factor about being here is the staff. Nothing is too much trouble, from the gardeners and cleaners to the treatment staff and the front desk, and the doctors and yoga-master: everyone is smiles and helpfulness. In the kitchen, the two women who prepare the food take enormous pride in their work, whether it’s the minimalist meals on the Weight Management programme, or the traditional spread for Sunday lunch. Yes, of course it’s different, but it’s fresh and varied, and if you have a catholic palate and are open to tasting new flavours, you will discover some delicious new tastes.

You might just come here just because you’re enthusiastic about yoga, you might be curious about Ayurveda, or you might have a definite objective. I came here for a purpose, and it was not to visit a spa, resort or holiday destination. Nor was it to poke around dusty shops or watch the monkeys in the jungle, though these have been added bonuses. If you think about coming here, you need to ask yourself two related questions, and be quite clear about your answers:

Why do I want to come here, and what do I want to achieve?

One last stroll down the lane

2011-03-07T02:52:00.000-08:00

No more vomiting, no more stomach ache and diarrhoea.

One final stroll down the lane in the early morning light, then off to Calicut after breakfast.

I sorted out the packing and I think I'll sneak in under the weight limit and I gave away some of my old clothes to the staff.

A fortnight ago I could barely stumble to the fork in the road, a couple of hundred metres down the track, but this morning I was barely thinking about walking, it was easy and relaxed as I strode along.

It was around 6.30 and people were just starting to stir. In many homes the front door was open and I could glimpse through to the television early morning show flickering on the set in the sitting room.

Farmer with his milk

Milk collection point

The clerk at the dairy depot was waiting for the early-rising farmers to bring in the yield from their treasured one or two cows, and everyone had a cheery good-morning for the big Englishman with his hiking poles and camera.

It was still misty as I followed the track across the irrigated fields past the stand-pipe with its designer tap...

Driving his home-made car

Designer bathroom fittings

...past the boy with his home-made car and

...past the lily-pond with the exquisite lotus flowers.

Lotus flowers

The jungle on either side constantly revealed new treasures,

...a glimpse of pale pink flowers framed by banana trees and palms,

then a rubber plantation, silent and mysterious in the mist, with the collection tins nailed to the trees waiting for the new season’s tapping

Rubber plantation in the morning mist

I climbed up the slope to the estate and looked back now that the mist had cleared and knew this was a view I would remember – and that I would also know that early morning walks are a great way to clear the head and plan the day, one of the guiding principles of Ayurveda.

Looking back from the estate down the lane I followed

Rejuvenation therapy

2011-03-07T01:57:00.000-08:00

Three great guys - the massage therapists

These guys know my body pretty well by now. They have seen it lying on their massage table every day for three and a half weeks and they’ve done their best to reshape it. They know how to beat my back and stomach so the bruises don’t show – one of those techniques said to be taught by the North Korean secret police to Third World security forces around the globe.

I am joking, of course, just joking, but only just!

Sometimes I lay there thinking “- what in heaven’s name am I doing here...?” while they persuaded me to eat or drink some vile concoction or lie still, breathing deeply while they injected me from the rear. Today was said to be luxurious relaxation, but it wasn’t long before I began to wonder if it was all some sort of charade that they staged for their amusement.

They sat me down on a stool and started to attack my head. It could have been a massage, but it incorporated some pretty hefty blows to the skull and full-bodied side-swipes. Smiling all the while, the therapists then took handfuls of warm, gritty mud and started to massage it into my scalp. After a couple of minutes I looked like the butt of the joke in some scene of slapstick clowning, and while I waited for the doctor to burst through the door with a custard pie in each hand, the second therapist produced a large banana leaf and a ribbon of tape and proceeded to shape this into a crown which he tied around my head. Fortunately there are no mirrors in the treatment room.

I eyed the two guys with suspicion and expected one of them to crack up with the Hindi or Malayalam equivalent of “Got You! April Fool!” but their expressions remained serious and stern. When I asked what happened next they explained that I would now have a full body massage, and the liquid used would be a smooth puree of rice that had been cooked in milk for 48 hours with 5 different herbs. Could I still take them seriously? Smothered in herbal rice pudding and have it massaged into most – if not all – of my crevices...?

So I climbed onto the massage table and they set to, stimulating an indescribably uncomfortable sensation as the sticky, slimy liquid was smoothed over my entire body and pummelled in with herbal bags for half an hour. Later I found out they were absolutely right, this slushy liquid did do wonders for my skin but even when they rinsed it off and left me lying on a dangerously slippery massage table, I still wondered if they were having me on.

Then I realised that if they left the banana leaf on my head, then it was probably a joke, but when they removed it and gently shampooed the mud out of my hair, I realised that this really had been their genuine rejuvenation treatment.

So now you know.

Not sure if I look or feel any younger, though.

Negative attitudes and positive thinking

2011-03-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

The river in the early morning mist

Day Four of the 5-day enema programme.

I was in an angry mood this morning, and I think it started with my camera. A few years ago I bought a high quality Nikon digital SLR as I felt it was time to graduate from my beloved Pentax 35mm. But I find the Nikon infuriating. All its supposed manual options are so complicated to invoke that it is obviously the work of engineers trying to see how much technology they can cram into a camera, rather than the work of enthusiasts producing equipment that will respond with intuitive flexibility. What I hate most is that I now have a creeping sense of senile incompetence. I love photography and in 1965 I was a prizewinner in the Pentax World Photographic competition. I want to shoot more prize-worthy pictures, but technology is defeating me. Most of the photos in this blog have been shot on my Nokia phone because it’s so unobtrusive and convenient. I’m very tempted to sell the SLR and go for something much smaller and with simpler controls.

We’ll see.

Looking downstream

I spent an hour this morning fumbling with the camera, trying to get the right photo of the river in the early morning mist, then I stomped into breakfast in full a Victor Meldrew Grumpy Old Man mood and sat down with the newspaper at the “Silent Table.” As I mentioned earlier, Ayurveda teaches the importance of meals both in terms of content and in terms of the dining process, as part of the treatment and I studiously avoid the giggling gaggle of loud women (and their male acolytes) who take over part of the dining-room balcony both physically and vocally at every mealtime. They were all there this morning- but I’ll delete the descriptions rather than receive hate-mail in a week or two. So, Botox Brunette, Alpine Technologist and Fearsome Fashionista, you shall all remain anonymous and your idiosyncrasies shall be kept secret.

I sat with the newspaper folded to the Sudoku and fumed silently at all the things that were annoying me about many of the other guests. The critics who insisted that the food on their tray couldn’t possibly be healthy or appropriate to their condition, the self-diagnosers who exchanged their herbal hot water for coffee; the moaners who complained about the bitter medicines, the whingers who couldn’t possibly face the prospect of vomiting as part of the treatment, and the whiners who similarly challenged the need for medicinal enemas. And the beds were too hard, and there was nowhere to sit, and the paths hadn’t been paved properly, and there weren’t any shops, and, and, and... So it went on, waves of discontented discussion that were getting to me and depressing me.

Later, after my morning massage, I had my daily consultation with the doctor who asked the question I didn’t want to hear:

“So how is your mood today...?”

I pondered for a moment and then let rip with a passionate denunciaton of my fellow guests. This junior doctor has a charming way of getting to the bottom of things and she smiled warmly.

“You are right and you are doing fine, and you shouldn’t let them influence you. You are letting their negative energy overwhelm your positivity.”

Simple, obvious and clearly the right answer. She continued,

“Just go and sit by the river, or write your blog, or read a book. Don’t concern yourself with what other people are doing, focus on your own treatment and your own cure and you’ll be fine.”

So, duly chastened by her magisterial tone, I put my camera away; I relaxed in the armchair on the verandah, took my laptop and found peace in the pleasure of writing.

What I’ve been learning here has been about all aspects of life, and this new awareness is worth even more than what the experience has been doing to my body. In the doctor’s paraphrased words of wisdom:

“The world is very negative, and a positive attitude is very vulnerable in a negative world. The slightest whiff of negative energy can throw you off balance. Don’t let it affect you, focus on your own positive thoughts.”

I now remember the controversial advice someone once gave me:

What other people think of you is none of your business.

Equally, I must be consistent and add that what I think of them is my stuff, and totally my own stuff. Except that to accept this would verge on tolerance – which, as my children will endorse, is not one of my obvious traits.

It’s been a tough few days; it’s tiring and there’s more to come. At the end of it, I hope I can climb out of this mood.

So, what is Ayurveda...?

2011-03-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Yes, you’re quite right, this piece ought to have appeared a month ago so that you’d not be wondering what this blog was all about, and then the posts would follow in a nice orderly, logical sequence like well-planned chapters of a book. Well, I wanted to get my head round it myself, and today I had the added benefit of a long chat with the yoga master. And he’s an interesting chap: trained as a conventional pharmacist then drawn into yoga initially through curiosity and a bit of family background (he’s a Brahmin – the caste of the priesthood.) Then he went to an Ashram to study yoga and now spends some of his working day quietly balanced on his head.

The Ayurveda texts – the Vedas – are written in Sanskrit, a language where nouns and verbs can carry intensely complex nuances of interpretation, making it difficult for anyone not a Sanskrit scholar even to begin to study Ayurveda. The word itself comes from Ayur - Life, and Veda – Knowledge, so the phrase the science of life gives a pretty good steer as to what Ayurveda is all about. It’s not a branch of medicine, and it’s not a religion. The best description would be that Ayurveda is a treatise on how to live. Its origins are, predictably, shrouded in the mists of time. The artists’ impressions that illustrate the stories of the history of Ayurveda show Indian gurus meeting blue-faced strangers at a sort of convention in the foothills of the Himalayas, five thousand years ago. This is manna from heaven for New-Age hippies like me, [- They came down to Earth to visit us and share their wisdom.] For the sceptics, the short answer is that nobody knows how the gurus gained access to this knowledge, and the fact that modern scientific knowledge is showing more and more of Ayurvedic concepts to be right on the money, makes the whole thing another of those spooky mysteries.

So, if it’s not a health-care philosophy, why do people come here to Kerala in search of – for want of a better word – a cure? The answer is that the central principle of Ayurveda is that healthy life comes from achieving a balance between the three Doshas or universal elements of life. These are firstly Kapha [Water & Earth] – the physical body, secondly there’s Vata [Air & Space] – to move and transport, and thirdly there’s Pitta [Fire] - to digest and convert into energy. Ayurveda teaches that life goes along smoothly when these three elements are in balance and that all kinds of illnesses are signs that they are not in balance.
Yoga fits into Ayurveda naturally because of its emphasis on breathing and balance, and the clear parallel between physical balance and mental balance. So, in short, people come here to clean it all out and get some equilibrium back into their lives.
Another teaching is that there are three levels of human awareness. The lowest is closed and seeing nothing; the middle level is active, busy and preoccupied; the highest level is attentiveness, seeing things as they really are and not being drawn into being so busy that you don’t get the bigger picture. People often move up the scale in the course of their lives, gradually becoming more aware. In simple terms, to use a phrase I learned on one of my Personal Development courses – it’s the difference between a Human Being and a Human Doing. Many of us spend most of our lives as Human Doings... and never realise our potential as Human Beings.

For anyone who wants to explore Ayurveda there is a great deal to learn. There are detailed teachings about interpreting the workings of the body (the doctors here demand graphic details of my bowel movements every day.) Then there are relationships. Ayurveda considers a solitary existence to be abnormal and places a heavy emphasis on achieving emotional stability through a settled relationship with a long-term partner.

While some of the methods may seem whacky, obscure or even downright ridiculous, the results are there to experience. As an example, I’ve had one minor medical problem for years, and my doctors both in Kent and in Italy have shrugged their shoulders in ignorance and told me I’d have to live with it. Here in Kerala, it took less than 10 days for the problem to be eradicated – hopefully once and for all.

The best diet uses fresh, local produce

What happens next...?

Of course, it’s one thing to follow a truly healthy routine here in rural Kerala, but it will be a challenge to create something similar that will effectively continue the treatment back home in Italy. Fortunately, diet will not be a major problem as the doctors were lecturing on this last week and explained that every country has developed a national diet that is appropriate to its climate and agricultural potential. Vegetarianism is appropriate to Kerala, it may well not be appropriate in many parts of Europe. Curries with rice and chapattis are not compulsory; they are the local version of combining carbohydrate with vitamins and protein. Every cuisine has its local variation, so pasta can replace rice for carbohydrates, and olives replace coconuts for oil. At home, fruit and vegetables are trucked up from the South every Sunday to the local market, so everything is seasonal and delicious. As far as meat and fish are concerned, I was getting to dislike the tasteless battery chickens, and look forward to experimenting with more Adriatic fish on the menu as well as the chick-peas and beans for which the region is famous.

But what shall I do about coffee? At home in Italy I have grown to love my caffe corretto dark, black, strong and laced with a dash of Grappa all for the sum of just one Euro. Well, one a day won’t be excessive and – as the vedic texts insist – what’s important is to keep everything in balance.

Three heads, four Hail Marys and prayers five times a day

2011-03-02T05:47:00.000-08:00

All things bright and beautiful

I mentioned the devotional dedication to be found on every Ayurvedic prescription, and that may well have grated with some readers who don’t want to read about what they consider superstitious nonsense, but I think it’s something worth exploring for the light it casts on Hinduism and ordinary human attitudes to life, values and morals. The Hindu religion is crowded with a host of major and minor deities, gods-with-a-small-g. The first time I was exposed to this, I found it all very weird, the multiple limbs and heads, the anthropomorphic snakes and elephants, and the faces with skin tones of a lurid shade of blue. My home upbringing was church-going, through Sunday School and confirmation classes. Then, with proselytising zeal, I became quite involved with evangelical Christianity in my teenage years. Later this mellowed into a broader spirituality, but I still warm to Protestant Christianity. The peace and splendour of Lincoln Cathedral – next door to which I lived and worked many happy years – still holds a special place in my heart today.

I have continued to investigate and embrace different aspects of spirituality, and my recent studies have been as a member of a group that focuses on aspects of psychic communication. Part of our learning has revolved around the gods of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who were similar but in no way identical to the Hindu deities. The more I investigated this, the more I came to terms with the idea that these were not so much divine creators in the Old Testament tradition of God Almighty, but rather archetypes or idealised concepts that each related to particular area of life. Moving on from the basic tenets of this analysis, it then makes perfect sense to venerate an ideal or to appreciate the particular area of perfection that is embodied in a particular so-called god. In many ways it is not dissimilar to the Catholic concept of particular saints taking on areas of specialisation and responsibility – Saint Christopher as the patron saint of travellers, for example.

It also follows that these gods-with-a-small-g become like conventional thetrical characters – the hero, the villain, the heroine, the innocent, the wise man, the fool - and so forth. In my mind they and their adventures are often representations of an ideal, and familiar reminders of different human traits, qualities or, for that matter, human failings. I apologise to those who know more about Hinduism for this gross over-simplification, but I don’t like my beliefs to be too complicated, and I can handle this basic idea, so I hope it helps others to whom it’s all rather confusing.

The lovable, friendly, jumbo-god Ganesha

Given this premise, I feel no sense of alienation from the ubiquitous pictures and statuettes of all manner of gods that are to be found everywhere around India, but on the other hand, I abhor the crucifixes that are to be found (by law) in every school, post office and government building back in Italy. The happy, smiling elephant-god Ganesha is a character whom I always find welcoming and cheerful – I can’t say the same for representations of the Roman instrument for inflicting a slow and painful death that has been adopted as the universal symbol of Christianity.

It’s both humbling and heart-warming to see the way the religions co-exist in Kerala. Here on the estate, early one morning, long before dawn, the priest conducted Puja (prayers) on the open area designated for meetings and ceremonies. This followed a complex ritual around an open hearth piled with flaming timbers, and the whole area was decorated with flower petals and rushes.

On the road to town there’s a large Roman Catholic convent, and further on a teaching hospital also run under Catholic auspices, while the poster across the road from the hospital calls people to come and try the Pentecostal church. No more than a couple of miles further and there’s a large mosque with a school attached. Despite the history of the partition, and separation of Pakistan at the time of Independence, India today really does promote and project its multi-faith creed. Furthermore, in a population of a billion, sectarianism is not a simple demarcation into major faiths because loyalties and associations splinter into hundreds of local bonds, tribal affiliations and caste connections. This probably helps to limit the effectiveness of religious squabbles because there can rarely be just one, simple, black and white differentiation with so many diverse motives involved.

By and large, life in India is well-integrated and harmonious with only occasional, isolated flare-ups. Furthermore, there is one substantial benefit to having so many religions freely following their practices: - with so many religions there are so-o-o many extra religious holidays to celebrate!

You’re going to put it WHERE ?

2011-03-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

Panchakarma is one of the eight disciplines of Ayurvedic medicine. Others include geriatrics, paediatrics, ENT, gynaecology and so forth. To the Western mind, Panchakarma is the odd one out that we don’t see in Western medicine, because it means cleansing. Panchakarma incorporates the Hindi word for 5 – panch – because Panchakarma consists of five cleansing procedures.

AYV (AyurvedaYogaVillas.com) is one of the few establishments that offer the real thing. Elsewhere throughout Kerala, Indian hoteliers are not stupid, and if tourists want to sample an exotic massage or a short course of treatment then they are not going to turn away trade. Consequently centres offering Ayurvedic treatments appear everywhere, and most resorts and hotels in Kerala offer programmes from single sessions to a 1-week programme or longer. But an Ayurvedic treatment isn’t like a massage at the Beauty Spa of the Taj Hotel in Bombay, nor is it like a massage in the back streets of Bangkok, and nor is it like a muscle massage by the physio’ at the local Sports Centre. In Ayurvedic terms, a massage is just one element in a complex course and should not be taken out of context or used in isolation. So, since most people wouldn’t want to invest 28 days in a serious course of unconventional treatment, very few of those who sample a taste of Ayurveda actually experience a true Panchakarma.

Through doctor's window

The first treatment in classic Panchakarma builds up to the vomiting therapy. The second treatment combines medicines administered through nasal drops with different types of massage and the liquid drip across the forehead. My final treatment – next weekend - will be a powerful laxative after which I will enjoy a couple of days of relaxing “rejuvenation therapy.” While my personal interpretation of such therapy would almost certainly involve peeled grapes and dusky maidens, I fear that here at AYV it will probably incorporate more of the disgusting herbal potions that the doctors here like to prescribe.

So what of phases 3 & 4, you may be wondering? The doctor explained that these steps would continue to work on breaking down the fat cells in my stomach and back areas by two methods. One would be a vigorous massage being pounded with muslin pads stuffed with a herbal mixture and heated in a wok on the hob. As I now know, the therapists don’t hold back with this and I’m surprised I’m not covered in bruises. The other method, he explained, would be the application of very powerful decoctions that would get straight into the digestive system through the wall of the large intestine. I could see that this latter procedure made wonderful sense; I could envisage it as a sort of internal liposuction process, and I warmed to the idea of my stomach gently melting away without any further effort on my part.

Until I asked how this process worked.

“By enema. We introduce the decoction through the anal region.”

Stunned silence.

“You’re going to put it WHERE?” I asked, timidly. (Yes, I can do timid.)

And in his gentle inimitable way the doctor explained that I would have soft, manipulative stomach massages, then on Days 1, 3 and 5 I would have a small enema of oil, and on days 2 and 4 the enema would be a up to three quarters of a litre (heck! -that’s a full bottle of wine!) of heavily medicated solution incorporating mustard, pepper.... but you just don’t want to know, do you? It’s too much information, just too much information....

That’s quite enough blogging about medical processes, the starvation, the painful yoga and the sour, bitter, disgusting medicines. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can knock out a piece on something harmless like traditional Kerala dance, or the houseboats on the inland waterways, or harvesting peppercorns and other spices. I’ll find a topic that’s a bit less graphic. I apologise, dear readers, for even thinking about describing this part of Panchakarma

It was totally thoughtless of me; - I mean NOBODY would go on holiday to have, well, you know...

Don’t talk while you’re eating!

2011-02-28T05:52:00.000-08:00

The soil on the farmland surrounding us, and here in the gardens, is dark and crumbly - the finest soft loam. What I would give for soil like this!... I could weep when I think of the solid clay in our garden in Italy. Local farmers in Kerala produce superb vegetables and one can understand how the diet has evolved without any need for animal products. But of course, it’s more than that and is linked to the recognition of a special relationship between people, their nourishment and their environment.

The attitude to food in the Ayurvedic lifestyle reminds me of the time when I – as a 19 year-old student – had to give a talk at a monastery about the voluntary work I’d been doing in Africa. The meal was almost a ritual, eaten in humility and gratitude and in total silence. Here in the dining room at the Centre, the Northern Europeans congregate together over meals, laughing, joking, gossiping and totally ignoring the carefully worded laminated card that the AYV team have thoughtfully placed on each table. This card explains that mealtimes are an important element of the treatment programme and that the food has been carefully chosen to balance the precise bodily requirements over the period of each week. It also suggests that one “should not talk or laugh when consuming food,” which is hardly the sort of proposition that is likely to be taken up by people away from home and taking a vacation. It goes further with the idea that one should: “consider eating like a vedic fire ritual and that you are making offerings to the internal fire who is god.” Not a familiar concept to people used to grazing, fast-food and snacks. Most people here treat meals with other guests as an opportunity to catch up on the latest news from emails back home. Consequently most people ignore everything on the card and eat as they would do at home, refusing unfamiliar flavours, and far more interested in conversation than in nourishment. As the doctor said to me at my morning consultation “All we can do is explain things to people, we cannot force them to do things our way.”Ayurveda teaches that the food, and the way it is consumed are just as important as the medicines, treatments, therapies and yoga sessions that are all elements of the programme.

Having run restaurants for 15 years, I know the annoyance I have felt on occasions when people just gobble down food without really tasting or appreciating the work that has gone into creating each dish. Without wishing to turn mealtimes into a total ritual, I still think the monks were onto something with their tradition of a silent refectory.

My lunch last Thursday (- that's a teaspoon!)

For 6 days of the week I have very little opportunity to sample the food as the weight management menu is stripped to the absolute minimum. Consider my lunch on Thursday:

1 Chapati
1 heaped tablespoon of onion and cucumber Raita (in yoghurt/buttermilk)
1 heaped tablespoon chopped vegetables with grated fresh coconut
1 heaped tablespoon chopped carrot, onion and green pepper dressed with a squeeze of lime
1 cup of warm herbal tea

The ridiculous thing about this dietary regime is that I have never yet felt hungry, and have on occasions felt almost bloated.

And then there’s Sunday. They make Sunday lunch special so that guests (those who are not on the introductory diet of plain rice) can enjoy a traditional Kerala meal. This is partly to give guests a treat, and partly to wake up the digestive system. The meal is served in the traditional way on a big banana leaf and eaten with the fingers, though spoons are available for those of a nervous disposition. The doctor explained that the fare on offer is not a random selection of dishes that taste nice, but is carefully chosen to constitute a complete, balanced meal that provides nourishment for all the senses, hot, cold, sweet, spicy, salty, mild, etc. The doctor played music to my ears when he advised me to: “...eat as much as you want from all the vegetable dishes, just don’t overdo the rice.”

Sunday lunch - Kerala style

But of course, my stomach has shrunk significantly, so there was no way I could gorge myself even had I wanted to. It was delicious, and full of subtle flavours and totally healthy. Today, of course, I’m back on my minimal rations, and the results are continuing to show almost daily.

In less than three weeks on this regime my weight decreased by 11.6kg. (not a typo....eleven point six kilos!)

Four legs good : Two legs bad

2011-02-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

For centuries children have played with kites; diamond-shaped, paper-covered frames with long tails, tossed into the air and flown ever higher at the tug of a string. Just one string. You couldn’t steer or direct such kites but they were inexpensive and great fun; kite-flying was, and is exhilarating.

It all changed in the 1970s, when an Englishman called Peter Powell replaced the single string with two strings and a kite became instantly controllable. It could be commanded to twist and turn; it would even skim across the hedge-tops horizontally, parallel to the ground. Amazingly, Powell was granted a patent for his invention, because in all the thousands of years that kites had been flown on fields and sea-shores around the world, nobody had ever come up with the idea of two strings. Today almost every kite you can buy in the toyshop has two strings and two little handles that make the kite totally controllable and so much more fun to fly.

There are many aspects of life in which two are better than one. Like walking sticks – or to be more precise, alpine stocks. The Alpenstock was as essential as the digital camera is today for every serious tourist back in the 19^th century, when intrepid Brits started to conquer the Swiss Alps, (that the locals had more or less ignored their entire lives, according to Zurich’s Museum of Tourism.) This was a sturdy walking stick with a spike for slippery surfaces and a shaft of seasoned ash onto which little medals could be nailed, commemorating the peaks and villages that the well-travelled tourist had conquered. And then, no more than a generation ago, one keen walker realised the advantages to speed and stability that would ensue if a person held something like Alpenstock in each hand. And hiking poles were born.

The point about walking in open country is that it’s partly about stamina and partly about balance. While one foot is in the air, the body is unstable because there is only one point of anchorage. Add a pair of hiking poles and there are always 3 feet on the ground. Which is why mountain goats don’t fall over. And similarly, with my German-engineered hiking poles, neither do I. As George Orwell says in Animal Farm: Four legs good : Two legs bad.

When we discussed exercise in my first consultation, the doctor had a wry smile on his face. “We want you to exercise and build up your muscles, but we don’t want you to put unnecessary strain on that worn hip-joint.” A bit of a Catch 22, really, and then he added: “It’s important that you walk on smooth paths and not on rocky roads, because if you are walking on uneven surfaces then you will be struggling to keep your balance and that will put additional strain on your hip.” But there are few smooth roads around here; it’s all farmland and forest.

My hiking poles lying on a typical farm track

With a smile and a flourish, I produced my hiking poles, which would both limit the strain on my hip joint and improve my ability to keep my balance on the rough roads.

But this has not been an immediate solution, as I had forgotten the doctor’s words at the outset, namely that with Ayurvedic treatments, the condition will worsen before it improves. One of this week’s newly arrived patients is giving up and going home, the treatments simply too severe and distressing for her to handle. That’s not wimpish cowardice; it’s a fact that the initial reactions are very difficult to handle. After a few days I found the stairs in the main building almost impossible to climb and was hauling myself up on the hand-rail. Some mornings my walk down the road was no more than a shuffle, handicapped by a sense of complete exhaustion.

It’s taken the best part of three weeks to get back to some semblance of myself in terms of mental and physical energy, but the price has been well worth paying, and yesterday my exercise was – in both senses – just “a stroll in the park.”

Now each morning and afternoon, I pull on my sandals, grab my hiking poles and stride out confidently and securely as I head through the forest to the amused shouts of a group of local children. What I interpret as cheerful friendly greetings are probably derisory cries of something like “Oy Mister!- where’s your skis?”

Tomorrow, a new course of treatment starts and continues for the next 5 days. You’d never guess....

Exquisite torture

2011-02-26T06:18:00.000-08:00

The peace and calm of the Ganesha shrine and the river down below

After the Powder Massage, my next 5-day course of treatment was to be one that had been my absolute favourite on previous trips to Kerala: lying on the massage table while a thin stream of liquid flows gently to and fro across my forehead. I should have known that Ayurveda-Yoga-Villas would be more meticulous with this treatment – as they are with all – and that my body’s reaction might be different.

To begin with, the doctor had talked me through the objectives of the various treatments. The first treatments had been to clean me out, then the powder massage worked on breaking down the fat around my middle and back. This had all been very successful and had reduced my weight by 9kg in just 13 days...! But treating obesity is not about eliminating the symptoms; it’s about attacking the causes. Why did I overeat? One effect of my excesses had been to push up my blood pressure, which had been worryingly high at 190/110 when I had arrived. This meant that the circulatory system needed attention and, more importantly, the emotions that stimulate it, to try and establish where the problem lay. I was credulous that using a particular massage treatment could identify the emotional factors that had pushed up my blood pressure but, as I said, this was my all-time favourite treatment, so I had no fears when I stretched out on the massage table while the assistants put the equipment in place.

The apparatus used is a tall wooden gallows structure that serves to suspend a large bowl over the patient’s forehead. There’s a hole in the bowl which is partly blocked by a thick wick, so that the liquid in the bowl can flow out slowly and steadily. That much I was familiar with; the new variation for me was the 10cm-wide cylinder of something resembling Play-Dough that the assistant was moulding in his hands. Once I lay down, he positioned this cylinder on my left chest, over my heart, as if he were marking me up for target practice. While I unwound and relaxed, wondering what this was all about, he warmed some oil and then dribbled this into this Play-Dough ring on my chest, so that the oil warmed the skin above my heart, gently massaging the oil in as he did so.

Next he fixed a cloth across my eyebrows so that no liquid would run into my eyes, put cotton pads on my eyes and plugged my ears with more cotton wool. Then he massaged liquid into my scalp as if it was a shampoo. The liquid in this treatment varies from patient to patient, as does the temperature of the liquid and the decoction that they mix in with it. The liquid I am being treated with is buttermilk, sometimes icy cold, and sometimes hot and turned an unappetising grey colour from the medications that have been added to it.

So now, my hair wrung out by the muscular hands of my handsome young man, I lay and waited for the main treatment to begin. Then I felt the liquid hit the spot the gurus call the third eye, in the centre of the forehead, midway between the eyes. The assistant gently swung the bowl to and fro, from left to right, so that there was a constant sensation of the liquid caressing the brow. And so it continued for the best part of half an hour.

How marvellous! -you might think; how relaxing that must be! Indeed, I have tended to drift in and out of consciousness when I have had this treatment elsewhere in Kerala, but the consequences on this occasion were more sinister. The effect of the process as it is carried out here is to open up all sorts of emotions that have been buried over the years. Every night, my neighbour in the adjacent villa next-door has been dreaming a constant newsreel of incidents and relationships from years back; another guest here spent the afternoon after this treatment shut in the room and in floods of tears. My reaction was to walk out of the treatment room as if I was stoned out of my mind: dizzy, disoriented, confused and having difficulty standing straight or thinking straight.

Fortunately I went straight from the treatment to my daily doctor’s appointment. The doctor explained that the medication used in this treatment brings up issues from the past that patients have buried at the back of their minds, and he emphasised the importance of now taking time to sit quietly by the river and re-examine things that troubled me, and to write it all down so I could keep coming back and progressing my thinking. We are so often encouraged to forget about the past and bury it, but I found that with my mind focused after the treatment, I was put in a position to re-evaluate certain things in my life, quietly and dispassionately, and to come to terms with issues that I had been unable to resolve.

It wasn’t easy – and this particular process is a 5-day journey – but with the support of the simple diet, the natural beauty of the environment and the daily yoga there is a natural sense of balance being restored.

Yeah....? A bucket of milk over your head....?Yes... it’s crazy, isn’t it? But it works for me and it seems to work for others here too, and as far as I’m concerned that, and the concise academic reasoning of all three doctors, is enough for me. The scientifically-minded junior doctor was writing out my medication instructions for me the other day, and across the top of the paper she wrote the phrase that they write on all such notes. Roughly translated it means something along the lines of:

“This treatment in the name of the goddess of Ayurveda, all praise and honour be unto her.”

Yeah.... superstitious bunch of cranks...?

Of course, or, well.....

.... meanwhile my blood pressure dropped to 130/68.

Just doing what I said I would do.

2011-02-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

Big Cheery Bloke replaces Fat Miserable Bloke

After two weeks Fat Miserable Bloke is looking a bit more like Big Cheery Bloke. It's been hard work and it's not going to stop being hard work for quite some time. I'm grateful for some of the things I've learnt in recent years that have helped with the challenge.

Ten years ago I took a number of self-development courses. My earnings were high at the time, and I could write off all these activities against tax (- well, that’s what I did, and they never checked!) I attended several advanced courses and I helped to run courses in South Africa, California, Scotland, and Tennessee as well as all over England, and it was a rich and fulfilling experience. The courses had a common element which centred on being true to yourself, of doing what you said you were going to do just because you owed that much to yourself. After all, if you couldn’t trust yourself, who could you trust? The basic course used an exercise that involved accepting and committing to a set of personal disciplines. Some were obviously appropriate – not talking during sessions, others helpful – raising your hand if you couldn’t hear, some seemingly petty – an absolute adherence to timings. The point was that these were not rules laid down by another authority; they were personal disciplines that you accepted and took on as your own.

It’s a concept that has held me in good stead on many occasions, and it is highly appropriate at this time in Kerala, where the programme is not imposed nor even strictly enforced, it relies on guests exercising their own personal discipline. Nobody checks if you rise at six in the morning – there are no alarm calls, and nobody checks if you do actually take that brisk early-morning walk. Nobody challenges you if you insist on getting the kitchen to bring you different food from the menu that the doctors have prescribed for you, and nobody checks if you take your medicines. Well, why would they? We’re all adults aren’t we?

But that’s not the way some people seem to see things. I don’t believe in cherry-picking an experience like this. I want to get the most out of it, so I’ll follow the doctors’ instructions as near to the letter as I can. Variations like going to the village for a sticky cake, or getting the kitchen to make me coffee seem to defeat the purpose of entering into this sort of rigorous regime in the first place. But the whingeing and whining goes on every mealtime, people who can’t eat this or don’t like that, and who choose to customise their days to suit their own preferences rather than accept what has been meticulously constructed to deliver a balanced and – above all – effective programme.

As the days go by I find that I accept and even enjoy some of the physical exertion, the early mornings and early nights, the daily rituals, the simple diet. I am confident that some of this will create new habits, and will be absorbed into my lifestyle when I go home. The whole purpose of Panchakarma is to change one’s lifestyle, not in terms of going home to sit cross-legged on the floor eating curried vegetables with my fingers, but in terms of living my Italian life in a different way. There is a deep sense of peace and acceptance, and I don’t think I could have achieved this if I had chosen to fight the system, ignored the activities and demanded different food.

I paid a fair sum of money and, even more significantly, I committed a substantial period of time and I want to get the best possible return on my investment. I just don’t understand people who do all that and then try to wheedle a way around the system. If you do that, then the only promise you break is the one you made to yourself.

All of this sounds very self-righteous, but there’s a big piece missing in my jig-saw. If I can be so smart about disciplines that other people find so easy to break, why do I have such a problem with disciplines that other people find perfectly acceptable? Why have I eaten too much and drunk too much for so long, and why do I find it so difficult to break that pattern? This is where my new course of treatment takes over – working on the mind and getting through to the emotions.

It gets to the point when life and all the emotions look and feel like an impenetrable jungle

I thought I would love the next therapy in my programme, as I have on previous visits to Kerala, but this time it’s proving a major struggle. More of that tomorrow.

Something my Grandmother taught me

2011-02-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

The main building with first floor dining room

My maternal grandmother was a dead ringer for fairy-tale witch. She lived in a little terraced cottage with a coal fire in the kitchen. The fire was in a grate that incorporated an oven built to the side for baking and had an arm that swung round to carry a big, old-fashioned kettle. Behind the kitchen was the scullery with a wash-tub, and a frightening mangle that had huge wooden rollers to squeeze the water out of the hand-washed laundry. Her white hair was wound into a bun on the back of her head and she always – it seemed – wore long, black, shapeless shifts. Her eyes constantly twinkled, deep-set in a face that was as weathered and wrinkled as a new-season’s walnut.

My parents used to send me to stay with her sometimes in the school holidays. It was long before I was a teenager but my father, with his forceful expectations of me, picked me up at the end of term and put me on the Yorkshire Pullman on platform 8 at King’s Cross with a note of the number of the bus I had to catch from Hull Paragon Station, and the name of the stop from which I could walk to Granny’s house.

Those holidays in Granny’s house were my first exposure to seeds in cookery, because Granny King’s neighbour used to bake the most delicious Seed Cake, for which I must find – or reinvent – the recipe. Nowadays we take for granted the use of seeds and spices in cooking, but in those post-war years of the mid-fifties, spices were a mystery and appeared only in small cellophane packets to be added to the vinegar for pickling onions or making green tomato chutney. Here in Kerala pepper grows in vines along the roadside and a wide variety of different seeds and spices are used in the kitchen every day. And it’s not just in food, of course, because all the medicines here are made from herbs and spices, and many are produced right here on site.

In western medicine we have come to expect our potions to be bland and tasteless, but that’s a recent innovation since synthetic flavours have become available and affordable. The first medicine I remember as a child – probably for a cough or cold – had the strong and bitter flavour of liquorice, and since sweet-rationing was still in force, the flavour was unfamiliar. This medicine was a mysterious dark colour and I decided it tasted horrid. My mother encouraged me with the phrase that Granny King had always recited to her: “If it doesn’t taste bad it’s not going to do you any good!” And that is how it was for many years: medicines tasted truly disgusting until those dark-brown liquorice-flavoured liquids were replaced with bright pink medicines flavoured with a synthetic strawberry taste and then, in time, most bottles were replaced with pills and tablets.

In Ayurvedic medicine, medicines are still the real thing: disgusting colours, gritty, grainy textures, and flavours that surprise, shock and repel the senses. The doctors hand out little poly-bags filled with fine powders in varying shades of brown. Some are to be mixed into a paste with honey, some are to be taken in warm water and others in buttermilk. But these are not soluble powders. When I collect my early morning mug of buttermilk from the kitchen, I spoon in my brown powder and it floats on top. I stir, I whisk and beat until gradually little clumps of paste form and then they in turn can be broken down, so that the mixture achieves a slightly lumpy consistency rather like wallpaper-paste. It is so thick that I don’t know whether I drink it or eat it, but fortunately this early morning medicine is not totally repugnant. You just need to like the flavour of sugar, salt, chilli, pepper, garlic and something vaguely chocolatey.

I have 6 medicines to take. One of my little tablets has to be washed down with an infusion made of roasted cumin seeds and hot water. Such infusions are commonplace, and almost every guest here can be seen walking around with a thermos of herbal tea. No “tea” of course: just hot water that is tainted faintly green by the soggy, slimy leaves that are floating in it.

But Granny knew best, because these strange potions are having a remarkable restorative and curative effect on my whole system despite the range of unfamiliar flavours and unappealing tastes. And then there was a welcome surprise when my most recent medicine was prescribed. Not a liquid, not a powder, but a shiny blister-pack of tiny pills, one to be taken daily, at bedtime. Just when I thought the assault on my taste-buds was over, I read the small print: “Not to be swallowed.” So the treatment was clear, just let the pill dissolve in the mouth and fall asleep with the flavour on the tongue, thinking of Granny King’s wise words: “If it doesn’t taste bad it’s not going to do you any good!”

Just stand still for a moment...

2011-02-23T06:36:00.000-08:00

Dressing the shrine with petals

Of course, we’re all fit and healthy and lively and active, and I never thought that I wasn't until I started the yoga sessions. At home I move around the house and work in the garden, and although my hip plays up and I have a bit of a limp, I never considered myself handicapped until....

Yoga isn’t all about tying yourself in knots. Yes, we have people here who can go from a squatting position to balancing on their head in one smooth move, but I’ve now learned that basic yoga is very, very simple... until you try to do it. I mean, what could possibly be physically challenging about breathing?

So, stand still, raise the arms straight above the head with palms together and breathe deeply. The first couple of breaths are easy, but by the time I got to six I found my mind saying “Well, this is a waste of time, isn’t it?” or “This won’t bring my blood pressure down, will it?” My shoulders ached, my arms started to sag and my legs ached from standing still. I came to the realisation that Simple isn’t always Easy.

Then the yoga master told the class to lie down, and I faced the terrifying revelation that it’s been a long time since I went from up here to down there. The master glides smoothly from vertical to horizontal while I’m standing there wondering where to start. Thank heavens for Ali, whose solid Omani Arab frame encourages me with the evidence that I am not alone – though he is 20 years younger than me and relatively agile. The yoga master waits patiently while I catch up with the rest of the class and lie down. Then a simple instruction: Put your legs together and raise them slowly to 45 degrees, hold it, and lower. It wasn’t long before I realised that I was seriously out of shape and that it would take time to awaken some of those sleeping muscles. Then, in one of my regular, daily consultations, the doctor told me that because of my hip and back, I shouldn’t be doing the morning class, but ought to have a private session with the yoga master to work out some basic exercises I could do in my room. Then I could still join the evening class which was more meditative, and avoid anything that might strain my hip or back.

We probably all remember PE teachers who bullied the class into all achieving a common standard. I remember it well from my schooldays, the shame of doing fewer pull-ups or executing a clumsy vault in class, and always feeling not good enough, - and this was not uncommon as a teaching style for both academic and physical lessons in the 50s and 60s. There was an attempt to shame under-performers into achieving the standard. In stark contrast, the yoga master is a lovely man who knows that every student is seeking to improve, and is yearning to achieve a degree of competence. I sat quietly with him in the yoga hall and he worked out half-a-dozen exercises that were all basically focused on conscious breathing.

So each morning I work through my session of breathing exercises in my room. I breathe deeply standing, sitting, twisting to the left, turning to the right, breathing and stretching, breathing and contracting, arms outstretched, arms to the ground and... definitely the most challenging... standing balanced on one leg.

Hold your breath long enough and you go blue in the face

The close connection between Ayurveda and yoga comes from the common theme of balance. Ayurveda is all about creating a balance in life, and so much of yoga – especially as it becomes more advanced – is about a physical balance in posture and movement in conjunction with steady, controlled conscious breathing. The body learns fast and rapidly becomes more supple and coordinated. Positions that were impossible yesterday are surprisingly comfortable today. It’s encouraging and each day brings a little more effort and a little more achievement.

I can even stand on one leg now.

The morning after

2011-02-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

A walk in the estate grounds

The morning after V-therapy I woke up looking forward to some rather more humane treatment, to be preceded by the prospect of breakfast – my first real food for a week. Most of the meals here are served “thali-style” which means that they are served on a brass tray about 25cm in diameter with a number of small brass bowls each containing a different dish to accompany, or follow, the starchy part of the meal, which could be chapatis, or rice or one of the special Kerala breads or a kind of couscous. Being on the “Weight Management” menu I had a slightly different menu with minuscule portions, but by this time my stomach had shrunk so much that I never once felt hungry.

Breakfast starts with a large glass of freshly squeezed or blended fruit juice – orange, water-melon, grape, coconut, mango, pineapple – different every day. Sometimes my breakfast differs and could be a small bowl of lentils, or oatmeal porridge, at other times it’s a smaller version of the rice with vegetables and dhal that the other guests are having. Of course I’ve had plenty of time to work up something of an appetite since I’ll have been up 3 hours already for my morning exercise and yoga routine. At 10 every day now I have my prescribed treatment, which generally includes some element of massage from the two handsome young men who attend to my naked body on the massage table.

Consulting rooms and treatment block

For this 5-day phase my treatment is head massage and powder massage. For the head massage I sit on a low stool while one of the boys vigorously massages oil into my scalp and then starts generally knocking my head around quite roughly, finishing off with a firm massage of my neck and shoulders. Then I climb up onto the massage table while the other boy finishes preparing the “powder,” which has the texture of fine sawdust, being the ground-up roots of a particular blend of herbs. This compound is warmed over the hob and then massaged all over my body. While the massage starts off gently, it builds into very hard rubbing to and fro across my stomach and has an immediate exfoliating effect so that after a couple of days my skin is very soft and supple. After 20 minutes or so I am covered from head to toe with brown sawdust, and they brush me off so I can clamber into the steam-box. Finally, when I am well-cooked, there’s the medication, which at this phase is nose-drops (in addition to the 5 herbal pills and medicines I am currently prescribed.)

I cannot over-emphasise the professionalism of the establishment. There is a consultant, a senior doctor and a junior doctor, and each day every guest has a consultation with one of the three, on a daily rotation, for about 15-20 minutes. These doctors have an initial training that lasts five and a half years, at all times being taught both Western and Ayurvedic disciplines. This is followed by a one-year internship before they are qualified to call themselves doctors and practise as such. Subsequently they can go on to specialise: our consultant here is doing his Master’s in Pharmacology. To have so much specialist attention is a real bonus. All three of them demonstrate meticulous conscientiousness in their approach as well as a thorough investigation of all aspects of the physical, medical and emotional state of all the guests. It’s very impressive.

All guests are encouraged to keep a daily journal to record their physical and emotional feelings on a daily basis. This helps the doctors to be aware of initial issues and the way that these develop over the duration of the treatment. Even looking back just a few days, I am aware of the constant change in my mental state; there is much more calmness in addition to the physical changes. At this half-way stage (as I write this instalment) I am curious to know what further changes are in store.

Sick of it

2011-02-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

Part of the traditional Kerala mural in the main resort building

You may have stumbled across this blog thinking it was just another travelogue, so I should explain that it is a record of my stay at a specialist resort in Kerala – ayurvedayogavilla.com. Panchakarma is the name of the 28-day programme that I have embarked on. In essence it involves a serious of treatments linked to diet, medication, treatments such as massage, yoga and what is loosely called “lifestyle.” The first stage – as I’ve described – involved the ghee, then there was a respite for 3 days of oil-massage but all of this was a mere prelude to the crucial process of vomit therapy.

Here I will respond to the requests that some of you have already made and spare you the most gruesome details. So, in a much sanitised summary, this is what happened after I arrived, bleary-eyed, at the treatment centre at 5 am. It started with a gentle stomach massage, alternating with having a pipe of warm steam played across my middle to relax and soften the skin. Then I was taken through to an adjacent room, sat on a low stool and encouraged to drink a huge quantity of full-cream, warm milk, - several litres – followed by some herbal medicine and finally glass after glass of strong brine. What followed needs no explanation.

The whole process lasted a good hour, and was a slow and steady build-up of self-inflicted discomfort. Remember that my only food for the previous 3 days had been 9 small bowls of rice in milk, and you can appreciate that it is no exaggeration to say that when the process was complete I felt very light and very empty. I staggered back to my room; luxuriated under a hot shower until the memory was washed away. Then I went to bed and slept till past noon.

When I woke I was surprisingly alert and energetic, but I took it fairly easy and didn’t take any exercise. Some colleagues had experienced bad reactions to the therapy and spent the day in bed, but I amused myself with flower arrangements and photography, feeling some real improvement in my whole sense of well-being. At dinner I toyed with some rice but gave up after a couple of mouthfuls, retired early and slept the sleep of the dead.

There’s been a new arrival here, a very interesting Arab from the Gulf, who is involved with the entire water, drainage and sanitation programme for Oman. It is exciting to be able to discuss the political news with him and see his reaction as the whole Arab world struggles with the process of change and democratisation. He is a lovely, charming man and a great conversationalist. I also feel a sense of comradeship as he is a big man and, like me, finds some of the yoga a real physical challenge. There is a steady flow of new guests as others finish their Panchakarma and return home. A furniture designer from Belgium, a research scientist from Marseilles, a girl who lives just behind Clapham Common and works for an adoption agency, and an interesting German guy in a wheelchair. They are all new arrivals and all with interesting stories to tell (and an opportunity to practice my languages.)

Definitely not IKEA

I was at a loss to know what picture to use for this posting, but then I remembered the mural in the main building… and then the maids came and changed the bed-linen. What can I say? - another kind of bad taste....?

Flowers

2011-02-20T06:54:00.000-08:00

The gardens are not laid out; they’re not tidy, and they’re certainly not trimmed and manicured. The gardens are a random planting of trees, shrubs, climbers and crawlers. All the plants looked plonked in the ground, unplanned and liberally dowsed with a hosepipe from time to time. Any pruning is probably accidental and some of the placements are an affront to the eye, with small shrubs hiding behind bushes, and ramblers clinging to training wires that lead nowhere. Hedges are unkempt and grass lawns are criss-crossed with paths worn by anarchic feet that choose the easiest route. But there is growth and there is colour. Brilliant white, vivid scarlet and lush verdant green all screaming for the camera’s attention.

Birthday flowers

I was tidying my room (!) the other morning when I found a little vase full of dead flowers. I was inspired and strolled around the garden with my penknife choosing a selection of blooms and some sprigs of greenery. The little vase now sits on the verandah, but by the time I post this blog, the flowers will all need replacing – for my birthday on Monday. There is a different attitude to flowers as decoration here.

Every morning one of the girls of the staff walks around the gardens with a brass tray, picking flowers – but not the stems and leaves the way we would because people here don’t make flower arrangements as we know them: they strip of the individual petals and either make them into patterns, using the petals like mosaic tiles, or else they scatter them randomly around the shrines.

I think it’s their allegory of life. The flowers grow and bloom then wilt and die. These beautiful patterns of petals fade in hours and in a day or two there is just a mess to clear up and throw away. The Hindu attitude to life is that once the body has experienced this lifetime, it’s discarded and burned. The important thing is to make time to enjoy the blooms and blossoms.

Reflections

2011-02-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

The lily-pond at the end of the lane

When I left Italy a couple of weeks ago I was depressed, angry and confused – and for many, many reasons, not least because I was upset about my general physical condition and overall health. In addition to this, our life had been in someone else’s hands for the best part of three years. The progress from my apartment in Tunbridge Wells to our new Italian home in the Marches, between the Adriatic Sea and the Sibillini mountains had proceeded with almost no positive impetus or interception from either of us. It seemed that we were in the hands of the vendor, or the banks, or the Americans, or Italian bureaucracy – always our destiny was being manipulated by others and it was never our own straightforward decision. It was very unsettling – but we survived.

The gift of being in Kerala now is the opportunity to take stock, and acknowledge the incredible good fortune of all that has happened over the past three years and the exciting challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. If you are the kind of person that likes to be in control of every detail (as I certainly am) then this sort of deluge of events is disorienting, and it’s not a comfortable place to be. But now things are far more orderly in my mind, and though my bones and muscles are aching, my energy is depleted and my whole body is lethargic, there is a sense that this 4-week process has bottomed out and a great deal of rubbish has been cleared away. Now I can rebuild.

So what of all the other people here? Several of you have asked, and I can imagine the ideas you might have of old crones in wheelchairs, or Google executives on sabbaticals, or professional hypochondriacs experimenting with a new course of treatment. I will, at a later post, deal with the complexities of what Ayurveda is and isn’t, but let’s for the moment consider this motley mix of inmates.

The owner and founder, Anjit, is a tall, dark-skinned, black-bearded native of Kerala with long black curling hair that hangs down to the middle of his back. Surprisingly, he lives most of his life in Finland with his sylph-like blonde Finnish wife and their family. Through this Scandinavian connection the project attracts a disproportionate representation of Scandinavian nationals. Of course, they nearly all speak fluent English so there’s no language barrier. Then there are Germans (they get everywhere, don’t they?) two French couples and the largest ethnic group here are the NRI’s – non-resident Indians.

In the past 60 years Indians have settled all over the world with their innate ability to become totally integrated without losing any of their cultural independence. One retired couple flew back to London earlier in the week; he’d worked in shipping in Pakistan then transferred to London, then moved to air cargo and ended up as a station manager for a small airline, based in Frankfurt. Impeccable Indian boarding-school English, - a character straight out of a Seera Mayal film or television series. Speaking of whom (and forgive me if I’ve mis-spelt her name) someone very like her or her characters is also here; she’s another NRI, married to a Brit and living in Henley-on-Thames. There’s an extended family of NRIs from Canada; the youngest is a student daughter then there’s mother, uncle, and a couple of aunts (presumably all here to keep an eye on her.)

Just when you were convinced that this is the sort of average mix that you might have bumped into in Tesco’s in Braintree, you walk into the yoga class and see the housewife from Mannheim tied in a knot, or the suave Parisian balanced on one leg in a classic, statuesque pose. Like any good Hercule Poirot scenario, one is continually trying to work out the plot, but it’s not so much a “Who-done-it?” as “What-brought-him-here?” There are many tantalisingly complex characters.

What do we all have in common? What is true is that there are certain sub-groups, like the people who have done many years of yoga and relish the opportunity to be coached by a true yoga master. Then there are the people – a small minority – who don’t read the small print, or maybe just don’t buy into the concept, and look on it as a holiday, modifying the rules and recommendations to suit themselves. But the one thing that unites most guests is the appreciation of the opportunity to go through a mental, physical and spiritual detox, and then start life afresh. I think that most of us would like to go home with the sense of breaking bad habits, of adopting a healthier life-style, with the intention of approaching the madness of 21^st century Western life with a little more cynicism. It’s like the river down below us in the valley: I’d like to think about slowing down and flowing deeper, rather than just babbling over the shallows, which is, perhaps, the way many of us lead our everyday lives.

On reflection, I am pretty ashamed of the person I had become before I came out here. I was unforgivably bad-tempered and had lost all sense of joy in my life. If I have now found that, it will be a far greater benefit than the lost inches and kilos, the loss of which will, I trust, support the new persona..

“That’s to Stop the Elephants at Night.”

2011-02-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

After a while, even an idyllic hideaway engenders a certain sense of claustrophobia. I always used to say that the only difference between exile (Napoleon exiled to Elba) and escapism (escaping to your own estate on Elba) was the ability to purchase a ticket to get away and travel on to somewhere else. So while this feels somewhat like being exiled from civilisation (civilisation as we know it, Scotty) it is the luxury of sheer escapism. I sit here on my verandah with my laptop, listening to the birds in the trees and the river splashing in the valley below and it is truly idyllic; but after a while I want a bit of noise and bustle, or simply a change of scenery. So most guests here head off occasionally to the nearest large village or small town to buy a bar of soap or a bottle of shampoo.

My neighbours (the gentlemen from Holland and Iceland – an intriguing combination of national characteristics) and I all have shirts to collect from the tailor in Unpronouncable, so we piled in after lunch and headed off on the short 5km ride to town.

In essence, Kartikullam (I think that’s right) is a street stretching over a couple of hundred metres, with shops each side opening onto a dusty road. Most of the shops fall into one of three basic categories: fabrics and tailoring, food and kitchen, and hardware, house and garden. The latter is – of course – not net curtains and patio furniture but more shower heads, spades and hoes, and these shops advertise their presence with mountains of multicoloured plastic buckets and bowls spilling over the pavement. I had hoped that somewhere on the main drag I would find some fabric for shirts and lounging trousers but I faced an immediate problem.

Typical shop in the High Street

While all the haberdashers were well-stocked with “shirt lengths” of 2 metre pieces of fabric, there is a serious discrepancy between a shirt length to make a short-sleeved shirt for a small Indian and a shirt length to make a long-sleeved shirt for a large Englishman. The answer, of course, would be to buy 2 lengths of the same fabric, but in their search for maximum stock range, nearly all the shops had only one piece of each pattern or colour. In the end I found 2 lengths of the same fabric – sadly, a rather bland pattern, and a 4-metre length of genuine hand-loom, vegetable-dyed fabric that was guaranteed to fade over the years (don’t we all!)

As I write this now on the verandah, 4 days after my first trip to town, and having made 2 further trips to collect my goods, (sorry, sir, seamstress will finish tomorrow,) I am now waiting for a salesman to arrive in the capacity of delivery boy, with my two new shirts. They probably won’t have been a great bargain at the end of the day, by the time I’ve taken 2 taxi fares into account, but they will carry a story and a host of memories. Where else would I have purchased hand-made gardening tools, a hand-printed hessian shopping bag and bars of medicated Ayurvedic soap?

Kerala jungle - elephants, tigers, the works!

The road there and back goes through the nearest thing I’ve ever experienced to real jungle. Clumps of giant bamboo fallen in clusters then overgrown with creepers and populated with monkeys. Then plantations of coffee interspersed with pepper vines. Then there’s the wildlife, with elephants roaming at night towards the town so that the end of the main road is closed off with a barrier pole. Hence the title of today’s blog – the response to my question when I asked why the end of the main road was blocked off.

Coffee bushes in blossom

Putting the treat into treatment

2011-02-17T05:11:00.000-08:00

Well, that’s the end of the intensive part of the 28-day process (so I thought, but not so sure after asking around...) Today I have sweet milky rice porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and tomorrow, and the next day. Then I have vomiting therapy, followed by rice-water porridge.

The next day I have Tournedos Rossini [cuisson bleu-saignant] and a bottle of Vosne-Romanée 1985, followed by a glass of Sauternes to accompany my Îles Flottants . I wish... I wish...

But surprisingly I am not missing anything. My stomach has shrunk – at least internally – and I don’t feel at all hungry. The climate is superb: cool to the point of a slight chill at six when I go for my early morning walk, then warm and warmer to comfortably hot in the afternoon. I decided to celebrate the successful completion of Phase One with a trip to town, and arranged a taxi for the afternoon, but first I had my first treatment session: oil massage followed by steam box.

Shoes outside the front door

One thing you soon get used to in India is the shoes. They’re everywhere because nobody wears shoes indoors. I remember being in Mumbai/Bombay for an important business meeting and having to deal with the indignity of kneeling down to tackle my shoelaces, because I was wearing my smart black lace-up business shoes. In India, most men wear loafers for the (now) obvious reason. At a place like this, the area outside the main building or the consulting rooms is scattered with shoes. Of course, you have to remember where you left them, which is something of a problem when there are four different entrances to the main building.

So I took my shoes off and waited patiently outside the consulting rooms. You’d think that if you told someone it was an Oil Massage, they’d have some idea of what they would be in for. Of course, the sexes are separated for treatment, with female masseuses treating female patients, but this failed to reassure one particularly puritanical Canadian woman who confessed to complete shock with the realisation that treatment involved disrobing in front of strangers. We laughed at her story over dinner that evening, and, like all of us here, she recovered from another of the daily surprises of learning what Ayurveda entails, as she described her plunge into a new experience.

Shoes outside the consulting room

I kept my appointment in the men’s treatment room. I stripped off, climbed onto the wide, solid wooden massage table and stretched out while two handsome, winsome and charming young men massaged me gently with perfumed oils. Were I differently inclined in life, this could have been a dream come true..... As it was, it was both relaxing and invigorating, with the massages on subsequent days gradually becoming increasingly vigorous.

If you remember the steam-boxes in “Goldfinger” then you have an idea of what was next in store for me. You sit naked on a stool inside a wooden box, with a cut-out hole that’s just the right size for your neck, so that your head sticks out above the box, cushioned by a judiciously positioned towel. Health & Safety would love this contraption. Inside the box there is a tiny stool on which you perch - dripping with oil. If you slide off the stool – assuming you don’t break your neck in the lid of the contraption – you could finish up wedged inside the box with the steam jets pointing just where you really wouldn’t want them to point. Adjacent to the steam-box was a cooking hob on which a pressure cooker was bubbling away, producing steam. The safety valve had been removed and replaced by a plastic tube that piped the steam into the box. But when all is said and done, the apparatus worked very well and the effect was heavenly. This really is more treat than treatment, - and the prospect of more of this every day certainly compensates for the lack of alcohol and whatever.

My afternoon trip to town was fun and I ordered two shirts. I’ll write about the town and the shops after I’ve been to collect them.

Homes and Gardens

2011-02-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

Day Four of Ghee.

Day One it had been 30ml; by Day Three it was a full 100ml tumbler; Day Four was more than one and a half tumblers. I retched but managed to control myself and quickly washed the taste down as best I could with tumblers of warm water, then slowly chewed my ration of sultanas, savouring the taste as intensely as I could to counteract the slippery greasiness of the ghee. I muttered a grateful prayer that this was the last treatment of this stage of Panchakarma. Tomorrow – and for two subsequent days – I would be on a diet of rice porridge with milk and sugar instead of rice porridge with salt and water, and tomorrow there would be an oil massage followed by half an hour sweating in the steam box. Plenty to look forward to.

To celebrate the changes, I decided to take a different walk and explore new areas. A few hundred yards down the road there’s a turning up to the left. Usually I go straight on, towards the farmland, but before reaching the agricultural land there’s “Pepper Green Resort.” I was intrigued by this stockade estate which seemed to contain a collection of hotel rooms built up on stilts and into the trees, in the style of the Treetops Hotel in

Kenya

, but without the Elephants. I asked around and managed to unearth some if its history. Apparently, it is open mainly at weekends and caters for the yuppies of Bangalore (India’s Internet Capital) who want to get away for a weekend to drink, crash out and party. The hotel never really promoted itself and never developed much in the way of facilities apart from those that this particular market demands, namely bars and beds. Sadly, it’s currently closed, as I would have loved to explore... maybe next weekend. Such an eclectic and original location might make an amazing film-set.

Today I didn’t go as far as Pepper Green, but instead turned up the hill beside a coffee plantation which had irrigation sprays sprinkling the bushes. This part of Kerala is poor, but far from destitute.

The women at the well

Some people have to use standpipes for their water supply, some, like the ladies in the photo, prefer to draw their supply from the well even though the standpipe is only a hundred yards away. Many homes have piped water, tiled roofs and even satellite dishes. I was fascinated by the neatness and tidiness of many homes, and the brilliant colours some owners have chosen.

I walked up the road, and after a hundred yards the rocks and dust were superseded by smooth tarmac that was a joy to walk along. After a mile or so I came to the local school, opposite which was a row of small shops. These are the equivalent of the corner shop in UK in the way that these are the shops people rely on for basic essentials and bits and pieces. There’s never just one shop, because of the basic rule of retailing – customers, anywhere in the world, don’t trust a lack of competition. I remember being taught this on the Bata Marketing Course in Canada and the U.S. back in 1969. We were taken to what was then one of the largest shopping malls in America, just outside Chicago, and it was pointed out that there was Sears department store at one end of the mall and Macys at the other, because malls with only one major store simply did not pull in the customers.

Here in rural Kerala there were two little shops, each selling basic foodstuffs in small quantities, together with spools of cotton, tubes of superglue, plastic combs and hairbrushes and single-use sachets of shampoo (for less than 2 UK pence each) So there it is – American shopping mall, two competing outlets; Indian country lane, two competing outlets.

I needed soap and washing powder, and picked up a couple of other novel items before my eye was caught by a group of men squatting together on the ground. They were quite animated and rolling two rectangular pieces of wood instead of the dice. Each length of wood was marked on its four faces with 1, 2, 3 or no stripes. By rolling the pieces and counting the stripes (to total between zero and 12) you achieved the same effect as rolling 2 dice.

Playing for money

The players had chosen different counters from what was lying around; one played with cigarette ends, another with scraps of foil, and another with slips of paper. As they made a score, the players moved their markers in a mysterious route on the board, and from time to time a winner was declared and received stake money from each of the other players. I would have loved to understand it, and watching it took me back to watching men playing similar games in the African bush. In the part of Kenya I visited it was called Kiothi, and I have seen versions in UK toy shops. This gambling game in Kerala was clearly addictive and I wonder if some bright spark will mass-produce it in bright plastic colours and persuade Toys ‘R Us to stock it. You never know!

Simple Agriculture

2011-02-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

Today I swallowed a full tumbler (100ml) of warm medicated ghee and felt positively ill. I drank warm medicated herbal water to try and rinse away the taste, but it lingers on – and on. I decided I needed to take my mind off things and took my camera with me on my compulsory 1-hour march.

I followed the valley, which is intensively irrigated by the local farmers and it was fascinating to see the different activities and landscapes.The path cuts across farmland that is not very high above the river and the land is both terraced and intensively irrigated.Some terraces are flooded as paddy fields; other areas are irrigated for other crops. Another area is divided by shallow dykes to create raised beds for growing certain types of vegetables, while other areas are soggy and muddy for growing varieties of squash.

Vegetable patches divided by deep dykes

I watched the land-owning farmers sitting at the side ordering the workers as they dug the ditches, - but mainly just sitting and watching. In some places you got the feeling that the farmer himself was working the land with the help of a colleague – as in the yam farming – but plenty of times on the larger plots, I got the distinct impression that there were workers and there were land-owners –a familiar pattern around the world.

The seamstress called in the evening with wonderful pantaloons she has made for me to do yoga, and a huge wrap-around gown to relax in. She didn’t really understand what a dressing-gown looks like, so it goes almost twice round me. The total bill for the two garments was about £7, so I am not worried – and I know Fi will either discard it as being not my colour (or the wrong colour for wearing in the sitting room) or remake it into a proper dressing gown (with enough fabric left over to make boxer shorts – or something!)

Tomorrow I will explore the road that leads up the hill away from the river.

Marching orders

2011-02-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

Out through the front entrance of the estate

That first day, walking was really tough. The doctor had taken me off any medication, so no anti-inflammatory pills any longer, and even my glucosamine sulphate tablets were banned. Consequently, my hip joint was aching at night and was not comfortable for a walk in the country. It’s not the walking itself that is the challenge, it’s keeping the balance. On a rough track through the woods the path is rocky with alternating pools of dust, rocky outcrops and grassy tufts; the challenge is to keep balance which is easy if your hips are fully functional. My left hip joint is seriously worn away so even on pavements I walk with a limp.

The early morning “brisk walk” is shortly after 6am, in the dim light of breaking dawn; it’s difficult to make out the path and easy to trip and stumble. I thought it would be easier in broad daylight, but by the time I completed this wake-up exercise I had decided that in future I would use my hiking poles – the kind that look like ski poles and which people use for Nordic Walking.

Down along by the river

There’s a pleasant, level walk, starting along by the river bank and then winding through the paddy fields and vegetable gardens. It’s a wonderful context for getting back to the realities of life: the simplicity of life in what is essentially a tribal society.

On my second day here one of the girls who work here as a cleaner was to be married and the management organised transport so that both staff and guests could attend the wedding if they wished. Under normal circumstances I would have gone, but I was too drained by the combination of the journey and the start of the ghee treatment and I decided to take things easy and continue to relax into the Spartan regime.

The story behind the wedding was fascinating. The bride was a simple girl from a tribal family. Her father was a fisherman, and theirs was very much a subsistence life-style. There was a real family crisis a few weeks back because it seemed unlikely that the family could afford to pay for a full-scale wedding. However, the owner of this establishment offered to provide transport for estate staff to attend which meant that the bride’s coffers would be swelled by the cash contributions that are traditional at weddings. Then, when the paying guests here were also invited, not only were the financial problems completely removed (because of all the extra cash) but also the status of the bride’s family rose enormously from being attended by the cosmopolitan group of guests from around the world.

Staying here, surrounded by the homes of very ordinary, very humble people puts this time in Kerala into context. The facilities at the local level may not be to the standard of Western society but villagers have clean water, food, health services and education. What is more, they live in a society that is expanding dynamically with the newspapers reporting daily on new economic and social developments. By contrast, I find so much of Western society in cynical, social and moral decline. India has a genuineness that permeates so many aspects of life, and you get very close to it here in the bush, rather than in some 5-star Intercontinental Hotel.

Just drink it and don’t think about it.

2011-02-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

The doctor had been quite clear in his instructions:

Rise at six am

Drink 3 or 4 glasses of warm water

Take a brisk 15-minute walk

Have a shower and dress

Say a morning prayer

Come to the shrine for your morning ghee

Take a 1-hour walk

Relax, read, meditate, - but do not sleep in the daytime

Eat only when you are hungry (rice porridge)

Drink small glasses of medicated warm water - but only when you are thirsty

The first thing that came as something of a surprise was the emphasis on the spiritual side of life. I thought about this and came to the conclusion that just as the exercise and the shower prepared the body physically for a start to the day, so the morning prayer provided mental preparation. The doctor had obviously had to explain this concept to confused atheistic Westerners, and he had gone to some pains to say that this was not about religion but about a humanist appreciation of Nature and Life in general. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to spend a few minutes collecting my thoughts at the shrine to Ganesha that stands near the central area of the estate before going in for my morning ghee.

Shrine to Ganesha in the gardens

Much of what they do here takes the form of a ritual and this applied in some detail to the service of the ghee. I met up with the Icelander and the Dutchman who were sitting in the reception area, having just imbibed their first dose and putting a brave face on it. A junior priest arrived and led me to the shrine in the adjacent room and sat me down on a cushion. He then chanted for a minute or so, ending this by ringing little temple bells. He took two brass beakers, filled one with warm water and the other about a quarter-filled with warm ghee. Beside them he placed a tiny saucer with a spoonful of sultanas.

I drank the ghee back in one swift gulp then quickly rinsed the beaker with the warm water and drank that too. The sultanas were a welcome addition to take away the sickly sticky taste in my mouth. After a few moments of silent meditation, the priest motioned for me to leave and I went and sat quietly with my travel companions before heading off on the prescribed 1-hour morning constitutional which I’ll write about separately.

After my walk, the day was spent largely on my verandah. I read; I wrote; I listened to the wind in the trees; I tried not to doze off, though I may have slipped asleep briefly once or twice. It was a challenge to spend a whole day in total idleness but, as I discovered in the coming days, there was an overwhelming feeling of de-stressing.

A Gentle Deceleration

2011-02-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

The knocking was persistent, and I dozed in and out of sleep until I realised that I was in Kerala and someone wanted me up for breakfast. It was 9 o’clock and many other guests had been up and about for three hours. I pulled on some clothes and made my way through the gardens of hibiscus and bougainvillea, neem trees and banana trees to the main building.

Papaya fruit on the tree

To my left, the ground fell away from the path down to the river which splashed and trickled over the rocks. This was the only noise apart from the breeze in the leaves and the bird-calls that came from all around. Up on the first floor dining area, I sat on the balcony letting this whole new experience soak in.

A waiter appeared with a brass tray which held small bowls with different foods, some sweet, some savoury and one of diced fresh mango and papaya. The discipline here is to eat slowly, and I relished every mouthful, not knowing when I might expect real food again, but I need not have worried. I later discovered that the first day is set aside to allow guests to recover from their journey. Later I would meet the doctor, who would discuss my treatment in detail.

I spent the morning posting my blog, deleting most of my emails on Googlemail and sorting out my clothes and other luggage. Lunch was another selection of delicious concoctions and since most of the guests seemed to be enjoying the same menu I began to wonder how the anti-obesity programme actually worked. All in good time: at 2 o’clock I had my consultation with the doctor who explained the programme.

The consultation was very detailed and lasted well over an hour. I was questioned in depth about my health, my lifestyle, my moods and any aches and pains or other ailments. The doctor outlined the principles of the treatment and explained that in the classical tradition, my first treatment would be vomiting therapy.

Now I am pretty adventurous and open to new ideas, but this scared me. Most Ayurvedic medicines made me want to throw up anyway, so what was this business of turning an aversion into a therapy? It got worse as the doctor spoke further. For 3 or 4 days my breakfast would be warm, medicated ghee (clarified butter.) I’d had this before – it is disgusting. Then at lunchtime and in the evening, I could have a small bowl of what is euphemistically called rice porridge. Actually, that’s broken grains of rice served in the water in which they’ve been cooked. Same each day, with the dosage of ghee being increased to a large tumbler by Day Three. If the doctor is satisfied that this is sufficient, I will be woken at 5am on Day Four and led off to the treatment room where I will be fed large volumes of milk, followed by large volumes of salt water. When the inevitable has happened, that process will be repeated two or three times. Great holiday, huh?

The good news is that once this initial treatment is completed I will be allowed to add 3 hours of yoga each day to the 90 minutes exercise already in my initial programme.

Meanwhile, there must be no sessions on the online computer for a few days. I totally understand the reasoning for this... it’s not just the slow connection that raises the blood-pressure, it’s the missing keys on the keyboard and the extreme discomfort of sitting on either a low stool or a on the window-ledge to be able to see the flickering screen.

I made the most of the soup, curry, fruit and vegetables in the knowledge that tomorrow would be very different.

The estate at top right running down to the river

Arriving in Kerala

2011-02-12T22:04:00.000-08:00

Immigration at Calicut was straightforward, but having seen the excess baggage the returning expatriates were importing, I was prepared for delays getting through Customs. But I was wrong. The officers waved through the procession of trolleys piled with flat-screen televisions, computers and goodness knows what else in the seemingly endless flow of sturdy cardboard packing cases that were further secured with tightly-knotted washing line cord.

As I reached the crowd of anxious relatives, one man stepped forward with a broad smile: “Meester Harwee?” – and my suitcase, glistening in its industrial-grade cling film, was whisked away out into the warm night air. He introduced his other passengers, who had actually been seated just behind me on the flight, though we hadn’t met, a Dutchman and an Icelander with whom I would be sharing the same experience for the next 28 days.

The drive to the location would have been hair-raising if I had not decided to resign myself fatalistically to being driven on the wrong side of the road, overtaking on blind corners and trusting that oncoming trucks would always reveal their presence in the night by their headlights shining ahead of them. Amazingly, we wound our way through jungle and villages for three hours, without so much as a serious swerve nor a jolt of emergency braking. At times the road was smooth pristine tarmac, at other times the driver picked out a route between pot-holes and rocks, zig-zagging across a rough unmade road. We finally arrived at the estate just before midnight.

No electronic key-cards here

Once I’d completed the paperwork requiring a tourist to be registered with the local police I was escorted to my room, which was the size of a Junior Suite in any other country, but primitive in its naked bulb lighting. The bathroom was functional but Spartan and the furniture consisted of a crude wardrobe, a moquette sofa with two matching armchairs, a large but hard bed with a thin mattress and – inexplicably – a towel rail high on the bedroom wall. None of this worried me in my exhausted travel-worn state, and I doubt if it will trouble me over the coming weeks.

I took a quick shower and collapsed into a deep, exhausted sleep.

Going off-line

2011-02-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

Well, you don't pay the doctor and then ignore the advice.
He says that I must keep off the computer during the intensive initial stage of my treatment, so I won't be blogging again till Monday at the earliest.
I have to endure an extremely uncomfortable therapy - I'll write about it next week

The disciples and the last supper

2011-02-08T22:43:00.000-08:00

It was a long 8 hours at the airport. I wrote and posted the previous blog entry and I read and watched the world go by, but I was weary from the travelling and the packed aircraft from Rome. The workforce in Dubai is predominantly expatriate and drawn from around the world. The girl in Starbucks was from Nakuru in Kenya, the barrista in Costa was Somali and the airline staff are totally cosmopolitan. However, the largest source of labour in Dubai – and throughout the Gulf for that matter – is the Indian sub-continent, and south India in particular. The flights from Dubai to Kerala are often taking Indian expatriate workers back to visit their families, laden with the electronic goods that fill the shelves of the airport’s duty-free emporia. They are the disciples for the era of consumerism, taking the Good News back to the unenlightened ones.

Disciples waiting to spread the good news

The population of my airport departure lounge was almost entirely male, each man dressed to impress his parents, in-laws and wife, and each with the world-weary look of a man who lives and works away from his home, his family and his roots. I found myself absorbed in philosophical reflection, thinking about the Englishmen a few generations back who lived this same process in reverse. When I watched the Africans with their perfect English and skilful management of the latest retail technology I thought back to when I was in Kenya and all the expatriates I knew there who were each in their own field endeavouring to raise the abilities, ambitions and aspirations of local people. Then I ordered another espresso and I smiled as I realised that colonial education had done a pretty good job.
I chatted to the Emirates Airline girl in the departure lounge and managed to get the emergency exit sea so I could stretch out. I unwound with a spicy Bloody Mary, savoured my personal last supper before my month in the wilderness then dozed into oblivion

Chicken Biriani with raita, baked spiced custard, mango juice

No room to sit and wait

2011-02-07T22:08:00.000-08:00

The flight from Rome to Dubai was around 5 hours. Emirates is a well-run airline but the flight turned out to be completely full - thanks to Chinese returning from visiting parents or in-laws for the Chinese New Year. Maybe the next leg won't be quite so crowded.

Another weary traveller

Dubai Airport's Terminal 3 is spectacular. I've no idea what terminals 1 and 2 might look like, as it takes the best part of half an hour to walk from one end of this terminal to the other and I am too tired to have any inclination to explore any further.

Which is my point. I am tired: very, very tired after travelling all day yesterday and spending 5 hours squeezed into an airline seat spasmodically dozing.

And many of the people here feel just like I do.Like this guy 5 feet away from me, lying on the floor because there's nowhere comfortable to sit.

Free power, but standing room only

Like him, I'm sitting on the floor because although the Korean electronics giant LG supplies a complimentary recharging point for laptops and mobiles, it's just a row of sockets on a fancy display stand and if you want to use it, you have to sit on the floor. After taking this photo I nicked a chair from Starbucks because the marble floor is (a) too far down and (b) uncomfortably hard, When you've been travelling for a day and a night, you really could do with some basic creature comforts. And thinking of creature comforts, I can feel a Starbucks' hot chocolate with whipped cream coming on. I'll call it chair rental. Or I'll call it one final high-calorie fling. That's two good reasons.

But who needs reasons, anyway?

Please check your change.

2011-02-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

It was, of course, one of the oldest con-tricks in the book. Give excellent service and "accidentally overlook" giving the customers their change. I'd been pondering about the machines at Rome airport which wrap your suitcase in impenetrable cling-film. My suitcase will be kicking around Dubai tonight for several hours and I don't really trust the way modern cases are closed with hefty zip fasteners. Even though I have a broad strap around the case, it's dead easy to slip the zip back a few inches and take something out - I'd been doing just that on the train.

Convincing paperwork

So after much hesitation I decided to splash out €9 / £7.50 / $ 12 on having my case shrink-wrapped.
The guy who did it kept up a running commentary then when I handed him a €50 note he produced a receipt and fixed it to an insurance policy guaranteeing up to €3,000 compensation in the result of any damage. I decided it wasn't such a bad deal after all - until I realised when I checked in at the airline desk 20 minutes later, that he'd pocketed €41 change.
When I'd finished checking in, I returned to the booth and with a big smile said "Sorry, I rushed off and didn't take my change." I made no suggestion that there had been any deceit or dishonesty, and kept up my "anyone can make a mistake" approach while he made a big show of checking the takings in the till.
He handed me my change with a smile and a flourish and I apologised, then he apologised, then I smiled broadly and he smiled and shook my hand, and honour was satisfied.
Moral of the story - there's a way of playing just about any game.

On not reading the small print

2011-02-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

When is a train, not a train? - when it’s a pictogram!

This is a train

I’d booked my ticket on the Italian Railways site, and Fi had dropped me 5 miles from home at Tolentino station. Then I carefully looked on the Departures Board to check the track number; (you can’t call a strip of tarmac 4 inches above the ground a “platform.” I had the correct time, and there was my route and train number, but instead of the track number there was a pictogram with tyres instead of wheels, and no overhead power take-up.

I checked at the tobacconist across the road – he sells train tickets since the station ticket office is now closed – and he confirmed that after the morning rush (“rush” is a slight exaggeration) it was a bus service, not a train service to Fabriano, and that it ran from just outside the station.

This is a bus

It was just a bus – very much like any other bus, but it had a nauseating aroma that brought back memories of the school buses that took us from my primary school to the playing fields. It’s a fragrance that is difficult to describe. There’s a base undertone of tired moquette upholstery that carries many layers of old dust and the ingrained crumbs of synthetic snack-foods. This is overlaid with a pungent aroma of stale sweat (hence the memory of primary school football,) and penetrating all of this is a sickening whiff of diesel fumes. I made the mistake of spending the first 5 minutes of the journey composing a lengthy text on my mobile phone, just as the coach negotiated the first sequence of hairpin bends. When I raised my head I felt a tightness in my throat and sensed a sickening dizziness as the bus lurched over the mountain passes.

By the time we reached the mainline railway at Fabriano I was feeling decidedly sick and sat very still and very quiet till the Eurostar service for Rome arrived. Now I am at my executive seat, working on my laptop just like everybody else in this carriage and gradually feeling slightly less queasy.

The moral of the story.... read the small print.

The end of my Caldarola winter

2011-02-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

Caldarola in the winter sunshine

It's been a glorious weekend. The weather has changed dramatically and today has been so warm that we breakfasted and lunched on the patio under a clear azure-blue sky. I love days like this, especially when we have the backdrop of the Sibillini mountains covered in snow.

The view from over our garden hedge

I've spent the day tidying up figures on the computer - bank accounts, foreign exchange, payments and transfers - but the big job was birthdays. In February there's the birthday of one grandson, then in March there are birthdays for one sister, two daughters, three sons-in-law, one grand-daughter and one grandson. Add to that one "Congratulations" and one "Good luck in your New Home," and you can see that if I didn't have everything programmed into Outlook I'd be lost.
Fortunately we have a house-guest, and I still have stocks of UK postage stamps so everything will be mailed from Uk in the next few weeks. That means some offspring will receive their birthday cards very early - but at least I won't have missed the day.
The rest of the day has been minimalist packing. I just kept on discarding stuff from the massive pile I had put ready to pack.Eventually it's only about 15kg - and since Emirates allow even ordinary passengers 30kg, I'll have plenty of room for shopping.
Yes, I'm ready. Yes, I'm excited. Time to enjoy a drink and try not to think about a month of alcohol abstinence.

Daily bread and regular Scotch

2011-02-05T11:01:00.001-08:00

It was a last-minute purchase before we left UK. Bought it from Amazon and never unpacked it till we installed our new kitchen in Caldarola.

Then there was a certain hesitant nervousness about a new toy: but I'm sure that's not unusual for a self-confessed Oldie. Why have I not used my ice-cream maker? Where are the home movies I intended to make with the camcorder I bought on e-bay? Has my sister ever used the digital camera I gave her when I left UK...?

We Oldies take slowly to new-fangled gadgets. It seems i-Players, i-Phones and i-Pads need a younger i-Q to grasp simple functions like putting on a long-playing gramophone record, sending a letter, making a trunk call or even reading a book.

So.... without mentioning what I was up to, I tentatively tried my hand as an artisan baker. The result was indifferent. But I got better. Now my bread is to die for though I say it myself. Wholemeal, studded with sunflower seeds, crisp crust, slightly salty, disastrously more-ish... and there's the rub.
It is my weakness. With marmalade, or cheese, or home-made lemon curd. And so the pounds have crept on, slowing me down, straining my well-worn hip joint and delaying the operation which will put the spring back in my step.
Nothing to do with the whisky. Well...
Are these Indian fakirs (no, not rude) going to be my salvation or my downfall? Will I miss hot, buttered toast, or will they teach me the secrets of chapatis, rotis and pooris?
No such luck, I fear. They are going to try to get me to put my head under the crook of my knee. Or sit cross-legged in reflective meditation.
And then there's the fasting. I do not relish the pain of detoxification - when this means relinquishing the pleasure of such delectable toxins.
Still, it's not started yet and I am making up for it this weekend. The Six Nations Rugby would not be the same without the alcohol. I'll just make the most of my final self-indulgent hours before I arrive at my destination.

This is the destination

2011-02-04T14:47:00.000-08:00

It's in the forest. I looked it up on Google Earth and there's nothing for miles around; just the villas and the forest and the river.
No alcohol or tobacco allowed on the premises; a diet that excludes all meat, fish and eggs; a regime in which every day starts with an hour and a half of yoga and ends with an hour and a half of yoga. I've had Ayurvedic treatments before, and take masochistic pleasure in the harsh regime. This time it's a necessity rather than a perverse luxury. I need to lose weight so I can have surgery for a prosthetic hip. The weight has crept on for many reasons, and I have never felt so lethargic and unhealthy.
I'll tell you what it's like, day by day, but first I have to pack, and then I have to get there.

Every time it gets more complicated

2011-02-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

You wanted a blog. You wanted to know what it would be like, so here is the blog.
I couldn't get the URL I wanted so it's had to sunshinespices.blogspot.com. But if I'm really clever I'll manage to link this to Facebook and so the family (at least) will be able to see what I'm up to from there.
Meanwhile it's Friday night and there's just the weekend left before I take the train from the local town and start this adventure.
More soon.
Let me try and master the basic technology first.