Mangalore

Mangalore is a cool name for a city. Last night I was making a list of cool sounding places that I have visited, and it was up there with Chichicastinango, Kathmandu and Managua.

I would call it sunny Mangalore, if only the smog would part and let some rays in. The first indication that I was entering a city on the bus yesterday was the sharp increase in dust and smog levels. According to the Lonely Planet this is a university city, as well as one of India's technology hubs. Well, there certainly are lots of "student types" running around, along with an increase in the number of jeans being worn. Every third shop here is selling mobile phones and computers, and at damn low prices too.

Is Anybody Out There?

One little point of administration before the post proper. I have a sneaking suspicion that my mother might be the only person who reads my blog (G'day Mum!). So, is there anybody else reading this? Feel free to comment on this post, or write me an email letting me know if it is worth my while continuing to write these posts. I like writing them, but they are time consuming.

A New Pair of Jeans

As I left the changing room the salesman asked "Hey Boss, they fit you?".
"Have you got any real Levis?" I ask. He thinks about lying, then decides not to.
"No boss. They no good, here, maybe some Wranglers, here try these"
"But these are boot cut, remember I want flair"
"oh boss, same same"
"but different, eh?"
"yes, different, but same, you try?"
"ok"
... I try the jeans and they are not too bad...
"you like boss?"
"hmmmm, not bad, but 1300 rupees is very expensive, no?"
"yes, try these, only 400 rupees"
I smile, and play along, "but they are a different brand, not same same."
"look boss, made by same company, look at labels."
"I see, maybe I come back, see you later"
A look of dissapointment, then a smile, "ok boss".

My old pair of Levis had a blow out on the bum; it was time to get some new jeans. Mangalore seems like a good place for this kind of thing. One has to be careful buying clothes over here, little things like using quality zips, buttons that don't break and dyes that don't run in the wash can ruin your day. I had decided to bight the bullet and get a genuine pair of Levis, to save me having to buy a replacement pair in one months time. Now the challenge was to find a "genuine" pair of Levis.

I had already tried on something that looked like a good approximation to a real pair of Levis. All good until I tried them on and the zip didn't line up. I had then gone to another "emporium" where the exchange went something like
"Hello, have you got Levis?"
"No, but we have Diesil"
"OK, well, I want a 32 waist in dark blue, no bleaching, and flair cut"
"Here try these"
"These are boot cut"
"same same, very good jeans"
"ok. I try."
... I go to the change room, trying to figure out where they have put the spy hole (it is almost guarenteed that they have one), and I emerge 30 senconds later...
"hey boss, you like?"
"The button is not very good quality"
"buttons is first class"
"but look, it fell off when I was putting them on"
"oh, must be a bad pair"
"yeah, must be, goodbye"

Normally I hate shopping for clothes, but I was starting to enjoy my exchanges with the salesmen. Finally I went into a shop and asked to see their Levis. These looked like the real thing, I tried a pair on, and they fit. The perfect size 32, the denim is that flash stuff that is a bit stretchy, and the fly sits straight up and down with no wrinkles. These might just be the real thing. It is also a good sign that there is to be no negotiation over the price (fake stuff is sold at a higher profit margin, and hence one can always find some wriggle room on the price). So now I have some new jeans. Nice.

Paradise Lost

My last post was from Pardise Beach, south of Gokarna. I only stayed for a week, for a few different reasons.

First was the swelling number of Israelis. Now I have to be careful what I say here. All of the Israelis were easy going and good types. But on the last night the little private beach in front of my hut was covered with 12 Israelis and one Belgian. All the other huts in my "hotel" were filled with very stoned Israelis. You have to hand it to them, for a country of 7 million people (when I mentioned this to an Israeli I was corrected... 6 million jews and 1 million arabs, I am sure there is a reason for pointing that out) they manage to get a lot of their young folk out and travelling. They are good types, but they tend to turn the places that they visit into monocultures of smoking pot, drinking and bashing on drums/strumming guitars.

The second reason was the Aaron the Israeli yogi, who was the first person I met on the beach. Aaron is a special guy, that is for sure. He is 50 years old, and when I turned up he proudly declared that he had been a yogi for 30 years. He then did some postures that would impress a layman, but he didn't look that comfortable to me. He smoked a lot of cigarettes, and had the annoying habit of muttering "Om Shiva something-or-other" every time he walked into a room, saw anybody eating, saw a fire alight, and whenever somebody rolled a joint he would grab it off them and bless it. This seemed to be the only continuous form of yoga practice in his life. He then explained that Amelie, the pretty 24 year old French girl sitting next to him was his student. She smiled innocently. Oh dear. I wondered if there were any better huts somewhere else on the beach.

As it turned out there weren't, so I took the hut next to them. The next morning I woke up to find Aaron giving a yoga lesson in front of our huts. I did my own practice, then went to have breakfast and write a diary entry. When I returned he had them in very awkward looking headstands. Some were complete beginners, and he had them practicing for well over 3 hours. He had one girl in a headstand, with her neck and shoulders well out of position, while he stared absent-mindedly out to sea. When he let her down I said that it would be better if she tucked her chin in, or better still did a preparation posture. "Come on Ben, I am just trying to give them confindence". Indeed, and scare her away from doing yoga ever again. I saw the looks on the girls faces, and they were more than exhausted from having to try some very difficult postures without proper technique.

It all went pear shaped for Aaron when he made unwelcome sexual advances on Amelie, and informed everybody that they were not good students, in fact "they were not in his league". This was good, all his "students" stopped practicing with him and Amelie came to her senses and left the beach. But, the next moring he had another couple of girls (always female students) practicing in front of my hut, and later that day I saw that he had one of them drawn to the side all the time and he was talking and working on her. I decided that I didn't want to be around this sort of behavior.

It is ironic that yoga tries to free one from ego, but so many people seem to find their ego swell out of control in the yoga world. It reminds me how lucky I was to get honest and genuine teachers in Brisbane.

Still, paradise beach was an ideal beach, and Danesh, the Indian guy who owned our huts and ran the chai shop next door was super friendly, honest and a good cook. I went swimming all through the day, practiced lots of yoga and drank far too much chai.

Speaking of Yoga

I have been slowly working my way south with Mysore as my target, and tomorrow I will get a bus there. I plan to study yoga with BNS Iyengar (the little Iyengar, that is, not the famous IKS Iyengar who teaches in Pune), although there are no plans fixed in stone. I haven't really mentioned yoga in my blog, but I have kept up a regular practice, though not quite daily. When we were hiking in Nepal I practiced twice a day, before and after each days walk and got amazing results. Since then I have practiced at least once every two days. Now that I am not sitting at a computer all day the improvement in my practice is tremendous, both in terms of flexibility, strength and intensity. It is exciting to wonder what a few months of practice in one place with a master like Iyengar will do for me.