Prologue to Adventure
Only 8 sleeps until departure and I’m reminded why I am. I rush inside to the middle cottage, 5 newworld st, trying to get away from the cold dark gloom outside. Clouds block out the Southern Cross making the world seem close, compact and closeted. The clouds don’t bock out the rain though and light drops sprinkle my face as I run, resting gently like tiny diamonds, or a glowing sheen of fairy dust. But even such fantasies don’t hold me out. The cold is numbing and I bound over the balcony railing in one. Into the pandemonic and messy interiors.
In my room my bag is packed. The bag is old; it has been caked with ochre in the mines of western Australia when classmates stormed and smudged handfuls of tint that didn’t wash off, it has been drenched in the thunderous torrents of rain whilst wandering the blue mountains, and it has swam when our path met the river. More than once this bag has been my pillow, my seat, and my heavy companion. And now as it sits on my dog-hair-covered floor, it is waiting apprehensively to embark on perhaps its biggest outing yet.
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
Arriving in India, I experienced some shock as I walked out of the airport and was swarmed by men dressed in white trying to make me their passenger. Those first days I was a mix of determined traveler and completely overwhelmed little girl. I moved quickly on local transport out of Chennai to Mammalapuram where I had a horrible experience with ‘Raj’ the owner of my guesthouse, who thought it was his duty to show me every nook of the beach village, teach me meditation, have philosophical lectures on the beach in Tamilglish, and even show me his Kama sutric art…
After several uncomfortable encounters, I literally ran away to a room on the beach to calm down and acclimatize to the new world.
Although it was perhaps a negative start to my fanciful trip but a chance meeting with Dom the cynical Brit over fruit salad provided me with a security and my first friend. We traveled together to Pondicherry, hired a scooter and went on an adventure into Auroville, an international city based on the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. One hot day, quest for several communities, one brutal scooter crash, several cuts and grazes and one momentary loss of consciousness later, I had discovered Sadhana Forest, a community of Auroville and a reforestation project for the world.
“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” -D.H. Lawrence
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