7.3.2008

Leaving Mysore

It's been a strange day; although I knew it was my last day in Mysore I was neither sad nor excited. I just knew that tomorrow would be a day of travelling. I became very neutral in Mysore as it was always a love-hate relationship so perhaps I learned something positive!

We went for dosa dinner at Green Leaf with a bunch of people I grew very close to in the last few weeks. Sometimes you can spend half a day with someone and they become closer to you than any other friend imaginable, there are no masks people have to wear when they travel. Sincerity is the way to go, with the choice of disclosing as little or as much as you like of course.

I've come a long way from resisting this place, not settling in well to drifting day by day and finding something familiar in the way everyday life flows. I'm still unsure whether I will return, perhaps that is answer that will come to me once I leave but it sure has been a great experience.

What I noticed the most is how judgemental I can be when I meet new people. It's not necessarily in the sense of labelling them with anything but it's a matter of not wanting to get very close to them. In Kovalam I was in the comfort zone of being with people I knew which was understandable as getting to know someone requires a bit of energy, questions and answers, checking to see if you are on the same wave lengths, hobbies, past experiences…Phew, its like going on a date! Yet it was interesting to see that once my comfort zones were challenged in Mysore and all the familiarities were removed, no pace where I was settled physically; those people I vaguely knew in Kovalam became so much closer.

A big question in my head was that I could have been for the whole month, somehow hang out with completely different people for whatever reason and have a completely different experience. So how do we get chosen or chose to be with certain people, how do we cross the paths and why? And what possibilities do we miss out on? It's like walking on one side of the street and accidentally bumping into a friend. If you were to walk on the other side of the road would you still have bumped into your friend?

Then you meet some people right at the end of your trip, who'd been there for just as long and you wonder "oh why didn't I meet you earlier?" So its not only who but sometimes the length of time also that is decided by someone.

Anyhow Mysore has been predominantly strong female energy for me. People like Arianna, Ayalet and Andrea have certainly touched my soul in a particular way with their uniqueness. On the other side male energy was very week. People talked about Mysore being a place where people do their practice and then couple up. I didn't notice much love happening around me in that sense, and didn't quite fancy anyone particularly either. Again I guess it wasn't the time for me, I had more to learn from the women than the men.

So tomorrow is another chapter, saying goodbye doesn't hurt as much anymore. One man told me that there are two ways of looking at goodbyes; one where you end a journey and depart, the other you see that journey as a beginning of something more exciting. So I decided to settle for the later, I will be close friends for a very long time with some of these people and that is definitely an exciting beginning for me.