Not so Holy Cow

One of the reason because I decided to come to India was that this is the home-land of vegetarianism.
There are millions of vegetarians in India, and the Indian cooking is mostly vegetarian, so I decided to use this month as my "trial period" of vegetarianism, to see how my body and my thoughts reacted to this changement.
Consequently, I have been thinking about this topic a lot in these days.

Like everyone else, I was fascinated by the "myth" of the Holy Cow, that in India is supposed to be revered by Hindus as a sacred animal...
Also, I expected people here to have a different attitude towards animals, due to the massive presence of vegetarians here.

After three weeks in this country, though, I realised that it's not so linear as it seems.
India is the land of contradictions, and the attitude towards animals isn't an exception.

Yesterday, for example, we were driving on a road in West Tamil Nadu, and we saw a crowd of people preciously dressed.
We stopped and as we looked a little more, we saw many stalls with porks hanging dismembered and covered in blood.

This view became even more disgusting when we saw a big quiet pig being dragged by four cruel looking guys, surrounded by dozens of excited others, and by some women that poured flowers on the floor, and other men playing drums.

They explained us that this was a tribal celebration, contemplating animal sacrifice.

A few years ago the Hindus wanted to forbidden this practices, but the tribal people took it as a threat to their credences, and refused.
This view was very shocking for me, particulary looking at the cruel stare of the executioners.

As a contrast with this episode, I recalled the memory of the workshop on veganism that my brand new friend Jamey took in Sadhana Forest, starting by the idea of AHIMSA: the pursuit of a life non violence, central in every Yoga practice.

In a vegan life-style AHIMSA can be spelled as follow (quotation from Jamey):

Abstinence from animal product
Harmless with reverence for life
Integrity of Thought, world and actions
Mastery over oneself
Service to humanity, nature and compassion
Advancement of understanding and truth.

This is the life that I really would like to practice, doing the very best that I can (I will be vegetarian, but not vegan, I'm afraid).

But in India there is more then animal sacrifice, talking about animal treatment.

For instance, there's the issue of the treatement of animal products to be sell in the Western market.

First of all, one must remember that India is a poor country. 800 million of people here are poor. The rich people are 10 milions (1% of the total population), and they alone are able to make India one of the laregest consumer luxury market in the world.
But still, in many aspects, Indian economy depends on Western demand.

And one of the most request Indian product abroad is leather. Leather shoes, bags, and boots.
India is the world largest exporter of leather.

But, as the cow is "Holy", killing of cows is banned in all States except two.
Still, Western demand of leather leads to illegal leather trade in India.

It is forbidden to bring cows across State borders, but the traders bribe officials to look on the other side while they pass with veicles packed with suffocating cows.
Other thousands of cows are made to walk forcefully, without food or water, to cross the state border and be killed into the Slaughterhouses.

Once there, they are dismembered whilst still conscious, and in full view of one another.

One could ask: what am I suppose to do to prevent this to happen? I live very far away from there.

This is a fake answer: I am part of the world, I am not an individual, I am connected to every person in the world.
The way I spend my money is very important.
We, Westerns, have the most powerful mean to stop this inhuman treatment: boycotting Indian leather and leather in itself, and stop wearing the skin of dismembered animals.

India and the lost power of the mystical union

When I arrived in Kerala I was sure that I wanted to experience the full body Ayurvedic massage with herbal massage oil. I wanted to do it in the evening, but, with my disappointment, I was told that the evening is reserved only for gents (men), and that ladies can do it only in the morning or afternoon. I started thinking about the women situation in India, and started to think about the ancient Hindu culture compared with the contemporary India.

In contemporary India people live a total segregation between men and women. Everywhere there are separate lines for Ladies, even at the security check at the airport, there is a private lounge room for ladies and mother feeding in every station, and if you enter a bus or ferry you will notice that the women gather together to the ladies seats, while the men stay on the other side, watching them from the distance.

Teresa, my new friend, talked a little about this subject with the 24 years old Hindu masseuse that was giving her this massage in a Ayurvedic Hospital. She was cute and cheery, but her English wasn’t so clear. Anyway, she first asked her why she had this little dot at the edge of the forehead. She answered that that symbol indicated that she was a married woman. She was married since one month, so Teresa asked her how she met her husband. She said that she put a “broom call” in the local daily newspaper. Discussing it with me, Teresa wondered how it was possible that a cute young girl had to do something like that to find a man willing to marry her. I claimed that it was due to the segregation of sexes and to the overpopulation as well. There isn’t an easy way to meet a man in India, a part of being introduced to him by your parents, or putting and advice in the newspaper, unless you are a student and you go to the Secondary School or to University.

Teresa also asked her what does she prefer about her man. She answered: he doesn’t drink. Teresa and me both agreed that this isn’t really a quality, but the absence of a vice. Maybe she was only looking for a man that wouldn’t hit her when he was drunk. Quite sad, if you think about it. She was totally not demanding, she was only happy to don’t have to deal with a drunken husband.

That is really different from the original idea of relationship between men and women, showed in the ancient legends and epics of Hindu religion, like the Bhagavatha Purana. I have seen a scene taken from this poem in the Dutch Palace in Fort Cochin. Really hidden in the lady’s room downstairs there’s an ancient Hindu fresco, representing the Sri Krishna’s Maha Raasa: the Raasa of the God Krishna, that is the great dance of mystical union with Krishna.

The story tells that when the blue skinned, six handed God Krishna arrives in the forest, he starts to play his flute, making all the girls of the surrounding villages restless. They cannot sleep, they wake up and together run to join Krishna, and to play with him the Raasa, the dance of mystical union.

As you can see above, the beautiful tempera painting represents Sri Krishna surrounded by 17 Gopikas (milkmaids) in different postures of adulation and love. Krishna is laying down, and he is using two of his six hands to play the flute, and he is smiling sweetly. With another hand he is holding a girl’s chin, making her smile in tenderness. With another right hand he is holding a Gopika from the neck, while she is hanging herself on him, kissing him and looking at him in blissful devotion and surrender. Then with the left hand Krishna is holding the nipple of a big booped Gopika with two fingers, giving her pleasure, while with the other left hand he is giving pleasure to the goni of another half naked Gopika. He is doing the same with is feet, with two different Gpikas, smiling in overwhelming pleasure for the attention of the God.

The most interesting fact is that in the painting his six hands represent the idea that Krishna is duplicating himself to give to every single woman the pleasure that she deserves, to make her feel like she alone is enjoying the whole attentions of the God. Krishna really cared for the women.

Women’s pleasure was his goal, instead of his own pleasure.

Sure enough, the painting was highly protected from the possibility to take pictures by two ladies that really annoyed us, making us showing our pictures to makes sure that we hadn’t taken any photos of the fresco (we did a short video, instead).

I think there is a political meaning in not allowing pictures or postcards of this beautiful fresco, sacred and sexual at the same time. Maha Raasa has a really revolutionary message: it is a supreme celebration of divinity and love, one which is only attainable by breaking away from all social norms and bondages. The Raasa is a surrender to supreme love, to the highest calls of devotion and to ultimate freedom – a return to primal innocence where love reigns alone.

I wonder where all the love and freedom is gone in contemporary sex-phobic India.

The continuum concept...

During these days in India I have seen so many indians holding little children in their arms, and bringing them around with them. Many fathers as well, and this is the most interesting point. We don't see so many father hanging around with children in Europe. Actually we don't see children be carried by arms by their parents. Normally they are left home, or they are put in a box with a yawning baby sitter that watches the television, while their parents work or go out.

I have been reading this book called "The Continuum Concept" by  Jean Liedloff. This is quite an old book, from 1977, but still, there's a point in it.

According to Jean Liedloff, the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution. We have to remember that, in spite of our "rational mind", we are not so different to the monkeys that I have seen around the temples of Mamalapuram:

 

The writer claims that for an infant is important to experience:

• a constant physical contact with his mother from birth; 
• the possibilty to breastfeeding  in response to his own body's signals;
• being constantly carried in arms or otherwise in contact with someone, and allowed to observe while the person carrying him goes about his or her business_;

• having caregivers immediately respond to his signals (squirming, crying, etc.), without judgment, displeasure, or invalidation of his needs, yet showing no concern nor making him the constant center of attention;

In this way the child can feel that he is innately social and cooperative and that he is welcome and worthy.

From what I was able to see, this is the way Indians are still rising their child, in a way that is much more instinctual then the Western is:
 

In contrast, a baby subjected to modern Western childbirth and child-care practices often experiences:

• traumatic separation from his mother at birth due to medical intervention and placement in maternity wards, in physical isolation;
• at home, sleeping alone and isolated, often after "crying himself to sleep";
• scheduled feeding, with his natural nursing impulses often ignored or "pacified";
• being excluded and separated from normal adult activities, relegated for hours on end to a nursery, or playpen where he is inadequately stimulated by toys and other inanimate objects;
• caregivers often ignoring, discouraging or even punishing him when he cries or otherwise signals his needs; or else responding with excessive concern and anxiety, making him the center of attention.

The writer claims that evolution has not prepared the human infant for this kind of experience. The child cannot comprehend why his desperate cries for the fulfillment of his innate expectations go unanswered, and he develops a sense of wrongness and shame about himself and his desires.
If, however, his "continuum " expectations are fulfilled, he will exhibit a natural state of self-assuredness, well-being and joy. According to the book, infants whose continuum needs are fulfilled during the early, in-arms phase grow up to have greater self-esteem and become more independent than those whose cries go unanswered for fear of "spoiling" them or making them too dependent on the parents.

We have to remember that the child is, indeed, dependent on the parents for his first years, and to treat him as he was not is un-natural and cruel.
I am really thankful with my mother for having "spoiled" me, giving me food when I needed it, and carrying me around all the time on her arms when I was little.

This book was as much inspiring as it was seeing the eyes of this  courious little monkey, not scared at all for my presence, being safe in the arm of his mother.

Welcome to the Forest

Living in a forest can be pleasant, if you live with 54 people in a community in South India...

You don't even care about mosquito biting you all the time, or bed bugs creeping on your sheets...

You only care about watering the garden and mulch the trees in the forest, and prepare lunch and doing the laundry... Sadhana Forest is like this, she wants you whole and all. But in exchange of your commitment she rewards you with a bunch of great feeling to be good, and pure, and connected with the nature. And this is not so easy when you have the habit of living in a apartment in a Western city...

Sadhana Forest is a volunteers based community, part of Auroville, the Universal City in the making (see my last post; http://couchsurfingexperience.blogspot.com/2010/07/auroville-city-of-dawn.html).

The project was started in 2003 by a family of three people, that decided to settle here to escape to the vicious circle of selling and consuming, and to establish a community based on no profit work, or re-foresting a deserted area. They wanted the community to be vegan, and to be committed to sustainable living. Just after their starting, the volunteers began to arrive, and in the past this community has hosted a variable number of volunteers between 13 and 109, coming from all over the world.  They want the volunteer to share their lifestyle, and to learn as much as possible about sustainable living, organic farming, permacultur, ecology and vegan cooking. 

Here we live a communal life, wake up together and have a morning circle when we decide which job to do during the day, we work from 7 to 9, have breakfast together, then work again from 10 to 11,30. Then we are free to do whatever we want, but still there are many communal activities and seminars like permaculture, capoeira, african dance, yoga, meditation.
We dispose of water with permaculture methods like in this shower that uses bananas to suck the water of the shower.

Like always here are some drawbacks: here you have no privacy at all, and you have to share your space with many people. Anyway, living here is very quiet and makes you feel happy and tuned to the nature, so many time thank you Sadhana Forest, “may there be more forests to grow people!” 

If you want to know more about Sadhana Forest, go to this link:
http://sadhanaforest.org/wp/about/

Auroville, the city of dawn....

So, I landed in Chennai yesterday, and I went directly to Auroville, the Universal city in the making.

It's an international city founded in the 1970s by Sri Aurobindo, a famous guru or avatar, and his spiritual companion, a french lady called "The Mother". She choose a place in the India map, and the follower found that it was a deserted place, with only a isolated banyan. This is a sacred tree in India, because with its areal roots it can multiply itself till infinity, so they decided to put a temple in the place of the banyan, and they called it the Matrimandir, and to found a city there. A city belonging to no nationality, but to the unity of mankind.

As I went out the airport and found my taxi driver with my name on a piece of paper, as it is in the movies, I was approached by a guy who wanted to share the taxi. He said that the Matrimandir is a really powerful temple, and that people are dragged in Auroville by a force, maybe your suconscious or the "super mind", but there is something, a click inside you that goes on when you heard about it the first time, and you feel that you have to come here.

This was true for me, when my friend Siddharth first mentioned it to me, I wasn't even sure to come to India, but after reading a bit about Auroville and its ideals, I immediately felt that I had to go there.

You can read about the Universal city of Auroville in this site:

http://www.auroville.org/

While in this you can read about the daily activities in here....
http://www.auroville.org.in/

Try to read about it, and let me know if the click starts inside you as well!

A passage to India

Here I am, quiet and relaxed, in a airport lounge, after having experienced a week of anxieties and hysterias.


Actually I feel sorry for the people who were around me during these days, because they had to handle with me when I was completely crazy, overwhelmed by the mixed feelings related to the preparation of my first major solo trip in a Eastern country. As always, when I start something new, I do it in style. That’s why I choose India, the long lasting trip of my dreams. And that’s why I decided to spend there a month, this summer.

Now I feel really calm, watching my Airbus A330-200 while it is in preparation for flight, for the second flight of my travel day, Venice-Dubai. Yesterday I was really concerned with packing my luggage, I had to deal with a few big dilemmas, like: to bring the big backpack or not to bring it? To bring my Single Lens Reflex or not to bring it? Finally I decided to bring both, so now I have a big backpack and a little one as well, and I prepared my poor camera to afford the 80% humidity in tropical South India in a do-it-yourself fashion. I wrapped it with plastic! It will be a great experience, in any case... I'll let you know more...


P.S.
Does anyone want to know what I brought to try to survive one month in India? Fine…

Among electronic devices I brought a net-book, two cell phones and my SLR. A torch with batteries for frequent electricity black-out. A little lamp to read at night.

I bought a first-aid kit ready to use. Medicines: finally I decided to buy the discussed Malarone, so expensive and not surely useful against malaria, Grapefruit Seed Extract, Tea tree oil, Aspirina, Tachipirina, Yogermina lactic ferments, and an anti-biotic called Bassado, Integrator of Magnesium and Potassium. Solar cream and sun glasses. Two or three different hats.

I am going to buy a mosquito repellent in India, to be sure that it’s apt for Indian mosquitos. I already have a mosquito net and a sheet impregnated with mosquito repellent.

For the travel I have an inflatable neck cushion and an eye mask; ear plugs for the noisy night of big cities like Chennai.

Three lockers and a chain for bicycle to lock the backpack while travelling by train. Two hygienic paper rolls and nappies.

Three T-shirts and three pair of trousers. A pair of sandals and a pair of trekking shoes. An Olympic bath-suit and glasses.

A binocular. Photocopies of documents and tickets.

A little bag to fix with the belt.

London vegan café!

Vauxhall in London is a brand new quarter, and a really bon ton one. It’s a place where you easily meet men in suits and women with heells walking home from their nine to five job, among the clean streets with flowers in the balcony. It’s not exactly the place where you expect to find a bohemienne place like the Bonnington Café.

This is not the kind of place that you  find easily in the city of London.

It's a café - vegan restaurant, run by a cooperative of motivated cooks from all over the world. 

The Café was started in the 80s as a squat Café to provide a good cheap meal for the community. This goal hasn't changed, and you can still find good food at a reasonable price there.

You can read about it in their website:

http://s208303316.websitehome.co.uk/about.html

I suspected that the place was a special one when my friend said that we had to bring our own drinks, because the place hadn’t the license to sell it. That was the first hint. 

The second one was that the Mexican chica who welcomed us was really friendly and laid-back, she let us do as in our home, so we brought glasses to our table and arranged the tables in a shape suitable for fifteen people by ourselves. Crowded but cozy.
I was with a group of  people of the Polish Professionals in London, the fast growing association of which my friend is president.

You can see their website here:

https://www.polishprofessionals.org.uk/podstrony/about-us.html

The lunch was organized by a nice girl who had just gave up her job to start her own activity in her brand new agency concerned with cross-cultural mediation and non violence. That was indeed the right place to meet this kind of people!

The place had no menu, but only a list of vegan plates written on a big blackboard. Really similar to the place where Amelie worked in the movie Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain!

Between them we chose the Mediterranean Pie and the Spanish bites, and my friend Adam ended up having a Vegan Pineapple Tarte, after some initial exitations.

The Mediterranean Pie was made with soy "crumbles", also called "ground burger". These are soy food products that resemble cooked ground beef. 

Apart from it, it was made with peas, aubergines and onion, covered with a spicy sausage of diced tomatoes and aromatised with cumin, pepper, tabasco, garlic, and chili powder, and served with salad, lentils and olives.

Afterwards, I decided to have a look at the place, and pretended to go to the toilet.
In the first floor there was a board with the centre activities:  weekly literary kitchen, daily yoga at dawn, tarots reading, biocinetic massage, and a bunch of interesting activities.

They explained also that the place use only food provided by the local farmers of Elephant and Castel (this is the name of a area of London!).
Unfortunately, as I understood reading some paper on the wall in the second floor, the place is menaced by the development of the area, and it is possible that they make them close it in the near future.
When I came back to my table I was happy and at the same time a little bit sad that I cannot come to this place daily... The music from the movie ... Amélie Poulain was the perfect sound track of the evening, played by two dreamy players coming from another age....

Italia - Slovakia 0 - 2

Italia-Slovakia is one of the issue that is more and more discussed in these days, due to the match that will decide Italia’s future in the World Cup. Anyway, be warned, this post has nothing to do with vuvuzelas, waka-waka & co.

I know, the post name is misleading. Nevertheless, “the end justifies the means”, as you will understand in reading it.

   I agreed to host a Slovakian guy, our "football enemy" of the moment, on a very short advance, because I loved the email that he wrote me to ask. From that little hint I should have known that the man knew how to sell himself. In fact, I had to deal with a smart-looking guy, who is a creative and works for advertising agencies. At first, I was wary with him.

Let me explain, it’s not that I don’t trust advertisement people or sellers. It’s that I don’t trust myself with them. In the past I let them sell me a lot of stuff that I didn’t need at all, just by convincing me that I needed it, and they let me with a brand new encyclopaedia and a perturbing feeling of just being fooled. So now I’m a bit suspicious.

I told him that, adding that I worked for a marketing agency in Frankfurt-am-Main, and found it quite unappealing to me. He was curious, and he translated everything I said to his friend, who happen not to speak English very much. So I went on. I said that I didn’t like the job for two reason.

   Firstly, I spent half my life studying Arts, a subject related mainly with the masterpieces, the best creations that mankind managed to produce in the centuries, whereas the marketing deals with the average man, the average Joe, as they call him in the States. To me, people working in that marketing agency were totally committed to appeal to someone like him, and to me it was like trying to be attractive to Homer Simpson, let’s say. You should use a Duff Beer better than a Shakespeare’s line, I think.

    He replied that I was mistaken because it takes a lot of skill to "feel" the client, and to know how to appeal  to him, and a lot of creativity, so a creative director must be well aware of psychology and a bunch of other disciplines as well. That was a really good point indeed, and he scored his first goal. One nil for him.

    My second argument was that in working for a marketing agency I couldn't decide on which product develop the marketing strategies, so I was likely to end in selling something that I intimately disliked, like alcoholic drinks or unhealthy food, or expensive cars, and not feel to be useful for the society.

    To this argument, he counteracted with an even greater point. He said that in the past he was the creative director in a marketing company called Brossmann Consulting which was founded by the co-founder of Wiktor Leo Burnett.  Through its own foundation, he supports the unique charity system  called "Good Angel" (Dobrý anjel), for which my friend designed the most successful Slovak campaign. Here you can see the logo:

This organization helps out to families with children where somebody is suffering from cancer. To those families delivers Dobry Anjel every month small financial subsides from strangers - Good angels, who know names, addresses and diagnoses of suffering people they are helping. 
In fact, donor knows exactly to whom he/she is helping. Each donor, Good Angel, has own "angel ID" and password, which allows him/her to access their personal account on www.dobryanjel.sk. Here the donor has the possibility to monitor and control total amount of contributions, see names, addresses and personal stories of those, to whom the system Dobry Anjel distributes his/her money. 
Also, contributions are delivered to target families within the last cent. The money from already 72.000 existing Good Angels  are collecting through the month and re-distributed among the families (in same amounts) at the beginning of next month. All operative costs necessary for running the system of Dobry Anjel are paid from private accounts of its founders.

The system is unique in the world, and my friend with his creative work has contributed to make it even more widespread in Slovakia.

    Two nil for my Slovak friend. As I suspected in the first place, he was able to make me change my mind. And I’m happy about it.

PS

You can see my friend's Dobry Anjel campaign here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6152775557&ref=ts#!/video/video.php?v=20584978761&oid=6152775557

A moving planet is coming to my place

Starting abruptly, I want to explain the title of this blog.
Moving planet...
Firstly, the planet is moving around me, and coming to my place through Couchsurfers from all over the world.
Never heard about Couchsurfing? It's a Network, a community on the Internet, connecting people all over the world. People who wish to host other people freely, just to share their couch and some moments with stranger travellers. Since March I am part of this community as a host and I'm planning to be a guest as well.
What's more, those meetings are moving because they often cause me very intense feelings and they make me wonder a lot.
Finally this experience is also "moving" in that it is the moving force behind many thinking, the stimulus to ideas that never occurred to me before.
That's exactly why I decided to open this blog, to write down the ideas that are coming to my mind by talking with these stranger visitors, and spread them to the visitors of this blog.

Ah yes, I will also share some of my pictures, taken by my Canon 1000 D, with Canon EF-S 18-55  mm and Sigma DC 10-20 mm. Hope you like them. The first one is a view from the Tonnara of Scopello.