India Bites You Somehow: True-Life Tales

By Kai Mayerfeld

INDIA BITES YOU SOMEHOW - TRUE-LIFE TALES of 40 Westerners Discovering the Sacred Within the Chaos of One Magnificent Country

Will your next step lead you to nirvana or land you in cow dung?

INDIA BITES YOU SOMEHOW is a rollicking collection of true stories that take you deep into the heart of the magical, mysterious Indian experience. Forty people from nineteen countries share their journeys -- both worldly and sacred -- from the 1960s to the present, where they encountered such questions as...

Should I follow the yogi into the jungle to pursue man-eating tigers? Should I give this persistent, maimed child even more rupees? Dare I punch the porter who just pinched me on the behind, or argue with the government official who refuses to extend my visa? Is this guru really enlightened? Will I survive this tsunami rushing toward me? Will I ever be able to get off the toilet?

These narratives – moving, terrifying, hilarious, awe-inspiring -- were recorded by the holy mountain Arunachala in South India, considered by many to be the most powerful place on Earth. It is also where the great sage of the 20th century, Ramana Maharshi, lived for most of his life. Both Mountain and sage have had a profound influence on teachers in the past as well as many present well-known spiritual teachers today.

If you have been to India, you might recognize yourself in these pages. If you would like to come to India, this is advance warning, but with lots of encouragement. If you know you’ll never make it to India, this will take you deep into its essence, minus the scary microbes. And you will find out why, as one Canadian woman says, “Anything is possible in India! It really is! You might go crazy in the process, but it is possible!”

Amazon Reviewer - Pat MacKenzie -
I am a cancer patient who has been given the all clear for Stage 4 Lymphoma. India is on my bucket list. In late January I am going for 29 days to Southern India. This book I cannot put down. All stories are true life, whether they are about homeless dogs, funeral pyres or the unending generosity of the Indian heart. This book is a wealth of knowledge. It is not a guide book to the various temples, but a guide to the soul of India. I feel that I have a much better understanding of snippets that comprise India.

Amazon Reviewer - The One Eyed Turtle -
I enjoy these types of journeys, made by many different types of personalities. I am also a real India aficionada and feel so immersed in the culture and customs that I can almost smell the curry and envision the colors.

Amazon Reviewer - R. Harbisin -
Wonderful and inspiring book. It has made me realize that I cannot put off my trip to India for much longer. A definite must read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kai Mayerfeld
• Release date: Jul 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301433391

Kai Mayerfeld

Kai Mayerfeld, born in mid-west America, followed a "call" to India in her early thirties. Since then, she has spent much of the last twenty-five years living in India. She has traveled all over the country, lived as a renunciate in an ashram, shared meals in dirt huts and palatial homes, recovered from malaria and life-threatening dysentery, and has been forever changed by the paradox and beauty of India. As a thank-you, and as a way to "save stories that might otherwise be lost", she has compiled a book of remarkable true stories in the book INDIA BITES YOU SOMEHOW. She invites you to visit her blog: smallpebbles.com Kai is currently at work on the second helping of INDIA BITES.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

WHY INDIA? WHY NOT?

One drizzly afternoon in South India, I sat with my friend Meg at the Rooftop Café on the main road that passes through the city of Tiruvannamalai. From our window perch we had a live feed of the street scene below—beggars seeking handouts, barefoot children playing tag, ten calves competing with the milking lady for their mothers’ milk, vendors selling jasmine and coconuts, a tottering bullock cart laden twenty feet high with hay, bicycle riders unconcerned by the speeding cars inches away, motorcycles transporting families of five, garish trucks, cavorting monkeys, dogs picking through garbage, people picking through garbage, scurrying peacocks, temple worshippers with folded hands in a cloud of incense, Westerners appearing dreamy-eyed or frantic to get away from the wild street menagerie. It was a typical frothy day in Tiruvannamalai, which is—incredibly—our hometown.

This book had its birth at that café in December 2008, as Meg and I shared our Indian stories with much laughter between sips of hot chai, a sweet milk tea.

We are only two of a large throng of Westerners living in Tiru, and between us we have mapped many miles and logged many years in India. I thought of other Westerners I knew in Tiru, some who had been coming to India for over forty years. I knew their stories hummed in their cells. What, I wondered, might they sound like in words?

They have intriguing stories to tell—in part because it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to leave Western comforts for a country known for mayhem and lack of sanitation. And when you rub a slow-changing ancient culture against rugged individualism, sparks are sure to fly.

India by its very nature provokes confrontations that can dynamite your long-held assumptions to reveal a deeper truth. They are also the kind of confrontations that happen to make for good stories.

In the next two years, I sat down and interviewed forty people (including myself) in Tiruvannamalai representing nineteen different countries and vastly different Indian experiences. Their first-hand accounts reveal the kind of unexpected and extraordinary predicaments that foreigners can land in without ordinary exit strategies—like an ambulance, toilet, bed, or potable water.

Traveling in India means your next step may land in cow dung or take you into the living presence of a saint. Can you trust the yogi who tells you to follow him into the jungle in pursuit of man-eating tigers? Do you attend a home birth in a mud hut with a group of village women who don’t speak your language knowing the birth could go terribly wrong? How do you digest seeing a limbless boy propped against a wall for donations? What happens when your friend, wedged against a rock after a fall in a Himalayan stream, is screaming out in pain and you cannot call a rescue helicopter for help? Do you say your last prayers surrounded by water during the tsunami? Should you punch the porter who just pinched you on the behind, or argue with the government official who refuses to extend your visa? Why don’t these trained nurses know how to take a temperature? Is this guru really enlightened? Will I ever be able to get off the toilet?

And these are just a few of the stories you will find here.

These true stories are a spicy mix of grit, heart and enduring spiritual grace. If you have been to India, you might recognize yourself in these pages. If you would like to come to India, this is advance warning, but with lots of encouragement.

Some of those interviewed first came to India the early 1960’s in minivans drawn by the lure of exotic excitement, cheap dope, Indian gurus and the promise of enlightenment. Those same enticements draw travelers today, although they may see their guru first on YouTube. Instead of traveling overland across Asia in vans perfumed by hashish, they land in air-conditioned international airports laden with cell phones and computers. Yet a few blocks from the airport, they hit India full on, and even a direct-dial to their parents’ cell phone won’t get them a fair fare from the rickshaw driver. Thus begins the enduring spiritual promise of India—you will leave it a different person.

The core of these stories also point to an inward destination. This is a journey each person must ultimately travel alone—to discover the inner sacred. And that is where the real journey begins.

The people I’ve interviewed are like spokes on a wheel, dropped on Indian soil at different places and different times. Yet their inner and outer journey took them to the same hub, a town named Tiruvannamalai.

Called Tiru for short, it is located in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. One of India’s most renowned sages, Ramana Maharshi, spent most of his life living there, at the foot of the sacred mountain Arunachala. Tiruvannamalai is a place of deep silence beneath the outer chaos. Despite the open sewers filled with plastic bags, dusty torn-up streets, vehicles spitting out black fumes and ear-shattering noise from temple loud speakers, millions of Indians and a growing legion of Westerners consider it a spiritual oasis.

The Mountain dominates the town and is said by sages to be the most powerful spiritual place on earth. From just about any rooftop in town and for many miles beyond, Arunachala can be seen rising from the plains like a magnificent beacon of light. Around it live sadhus, (spiritual renunciates) gurus, beggars, Westerners, and an increasing Indian population. On the Mountain live large black-faced monkeys called langurs whose calls echo throughout the valleys, smaller tribes of brown monkeys, deer rarely seen, an odd assortment of frisky dogs, lizards, and multi-colored butterflies. A few sadhus live in remote caves. The Mountain’s trees have been ravaged by firewood-seekers, but in recent years it has been re-greened by the planting of tens of thousands of trees.

From my house, I can see the sun rise over the Mountain and watch as its dark shape, reminiscent of an elephant’s head with outstretched trunk, reveals its rocky contours bit by bit. In the early morning, the peak is often shrouded in clouds. Slowly, slowly as the clouds evaporate with the rising sun, the shadows fill with light and the full magnificence of Arunachala is revealed.

I never tire of looking at the Mountain. And I wonder, how can it have such a profound impact on most everyone who comes near it? It is a mystery. It has been called a mass of silence and the heart center of the universe. For me, as for many, Arunachala is home.

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

I have lived in India for much of the last twenty-odd years, starting in January 1988. I first came to south India to visit an Indian saint named Ammachi whom I met on her first foreign tour when she came to Berkeley, California, in 1987. I was so moved by her outpouring of unconditional love that I went to her ashram in Kerala, a state in southern India, for a three-month stay. I ended up settling in, living a simple life of renunciation, meaning that I foreswore sex, stylish clothing, toilet paper (it is mostly not used in India), a bed, yummy food and most of the comforts Westerners take for granted. During those years I had the opportunity to visit many places through out India, where I was exposed to the rich diversity of Indian life and her people. It also was (as anyone knows who has lived within a spiritual community with a teacher) ego kickboxing extraordinaire. After almost twelve years of ashram and India living, I found that parasites, malaria and dysentery had worn down my health. A change was needed. I returned to America at the end of 1999 and lived on the healing isle of Maui, Hawaii thinking to settle again in the West. Yet all those years forever imprinted my being with a permanent love tattoo for India.

Two years later, in 2001, someone sent me a photo of Ramana Maharshi. I quietly put the photo on my shelf. His penetrating eyes seemed to follow me around the room. It didn’t take long before I made plane reservations. When I told friends I was going back to India for a few months, some rolled their eyes and said, Are you kidding? You would leave Maui for India!

Just like the first time, I thought it would be for three months. Just like the first time, I was wrong.

One hot afternoon, jet-lagged from thirty-six hours of traveling I entered Ramana’s ashram and circled the place where his remains are enshrined. Immediately my mind quieted down. Silence. Within a few days I knew I wanted to stay. I now spend part of the year in the West and part in Tiruvannamalai, as do most of the people who entrusted me with their stories.

Many stories describe an earlier time in India before the recent impact of vast changes that are happening at lightning speed. Modern times in India have brought Toyotas, Hondas, Mercedes Benzes and even Ferraris, when for many years the clunky Ambassador was the only vehicle of choice. Innumerable cell phone towers dot the landscape—I counted twenty just from a friend’s roof. On every city and many village streets, inside cafés, trains and buses, riding on bicycles, scooters or motorcycles a huge population is glued to cell phones. In writing this book, I wanted to record a bit of history before too many changes alter the landscape forever and the Western stamp of modernity erases much of quintessential India.

It is not possible ultimately to express the profound impact that India has on the wayfarer thirsty for Truth. There are many cups to drink from, and they are everywhere. And for this, I am forever indebted. The book is just a small token of thanks to Mother India in appreciation for her endless cultural and spiritual gifts.

As you read this, I hope you will let yourself be swept away by the stories and have fun along the way. They were told to me with genuine open-heartedness. My suggestion is to read a story or a few, pause, maybe put the book down a bit before moving on. Underneath the stories you may hear something else—or rather nothing, nothing at all! And that is silence. That silence beyond thought, as many sages have declared, is what we are.

WHAT YOU’LL FIND HERE

This book has been laid out in six main parts. It is not necessary to read the stories in the order given—feel free to start with any section and dive in. There is a thread that ties the stories together if you choose to follow it. The stories begin with first landings in India, then branch out into India’s cultural and spiritual roadways. The roads are full of inevitable potholes and detours that the storytellers describe in often horrific and humorous detail. Then the road smoothes out and Ramana and Arunachala appear. For a few people this long road has led to service projects in India. For others it has meant returning to the West with a fuller appreciation of life and a wish to serve with awareness and peace.

In transcribing the narratives, I kept them as close to how the speaker actually spoke them as possible. Some editing was required to make a story more readable, especially when their mother tongue was not English. In a few instances, I changed a name or place if the person requested me to.

At some points the Western response to a situation may appear limited or arrogant on the surface. It is not the intent of this book to look down at Indian culture, and no disrespect is ever meant, as each storyteller has an abiding appreciation and love for India. Sometimes living in India can feel overwhelming, though. Most Westerners have never known such chronic poverty, let alone illiteracy. Often humor is the survival mechanism used to deal with the paradoxes one encounters in India. The longer you are in India, the more clueless you can feel!

So by all means, pack your bags and head East to the land of saints, beggars, devotees, and wagging tails! The stories you are about to read will fill your pockets with sparkling gems and useful reference points. If the only traveling you do is via your armchair or curled up in bed, these forty pairs of Western eyes will guide you on a memorable journey to astonishing India and perhaps inspire an exploration into your vast inner galaxy.

Namaste. I bow to the light within you!

Note: While reading these stories you may encounter Sanskrit words, names and places. If a simple meaning sufficed I put it next to the word. With words requiring lengthier explanations, I put that word in italics (regular type if the surrounding words were already italicized) the first time the word appears. At the end of the book you will find an alphabetized word glossary with a list of these words.

PART ONE

LANDING IN INDIA—THE JOURNEY BEGINS

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Landing in India is entering a movie that implodes upon the senses in Technicolor contrasts—sour urine and sweet jasmine, tinkling temple bells and blaring truck horns, open sewage and holy banyan trees, smiling children and limbless beggars. Land Rovers rush past ambling bullock carts, chai vendors sell tea on decrepit carts next to air-conditioned Internet shops. It is no wonder many Westerners feel they’ve landed in alien territory.

Out of the airport, some Westerners shoulder heavy backpacks and troll the streets for a cheap guesthouse to crash in. Others, wishing less sensory input, scurry off to a four-star hotel or stop at a beach resort. Some people jump on a bus or take a train to an ashram. A few brave souls plunge right in and find shelter with an Indian family that does not speak any English and may have never seen a Westerner before.

Newcomers to India have intense emotional reactions. Many feel like they have finally come home. Others wish they could make the whole thing vanish and wake up in their cushy beds far, far away. Regardless, landing in India push-starts a transformative odyssey.

I landed in India for the first time in 1988. As the plane coasted down the runway at Madras, Indians jumped up and opened the overhead bins. The frantic stewardess squeezed her way through the aisle waving her arms and saying, Please, everyone, sit back down until the plane reaches the gate and the seatbelt sign goes off! Her admonitions went unnoticed. Out came bulging luggage and plastic bags full of liquor bottles, stuffed animals, chocolates and various objects from foreign destinations. I watched as women patted down their disheveled hair and flung small shawls around their necks. The men tucked wrinkled shirts into their pants and cleared their throats with loud chagh-hagkk sounds. A melee of chatter in various languages criss-crossed the aisles.

I was too tired to wonder if all this pandemonium was a prequel to coming attractions.

I got off the plane, walked down the ramp way, and even in my zombie state noticed the peeling paint, holes and smudges on the walls and food wrappers lying on the floor. Uh-oh.

After getting my passport stamped by a somber looking agent, I went to the baggage claim area and stood in front of the carousel, a rusting metal and rubber mechanical insect that flung boxes and bags on the floor as if regurgitating breakfast. I managed to grab my wedged-in bags, pulled them up on the rickety cart and headed towards the exit.

No amount of reading books on India had prepared me for the sea of rickshaw drivers that surged toward me as I ventured out of the airport doors. I felt like I had landed on planet Hullabaloo.

I walked out into sultry midnight air to a wall of waving arms and the cacophony of many voices all asking, Madam, madam, taxi, rickshaw madam? I started to panic as the wall moved in closer and closer until, as if sent by a benevolent angel, I saw a woman’s arm wave at the back.

"Over here, over here," a voice called out in English. A Western woman from the ashram I planned to visit had seen my distress, and she guided me through the barrage of hungry drivers. I had received a letter shortly before I left for India that maybe, only maybe, someone might come to the airport to meet me. I certainly did not expect it. I felt incredibly relieved. I had just received my first lesson in India—in the middle of chaos is grace.

A Prayer and a New Life

Vishni, Australian

In Australia by chance I saw a leaflet about a trip to India. I had started to meditate so I felt a bit curious about the spiritual side of India. I took the leaflet home and placed it on the bar, thinking to look at it later. Before I could, my nineteen year old son picked it up and said, Huh, as if you would go to India mum. You and dad never have time to go anywhere, you are always working, and you would never get the time to go to India.

I looked intently at my son and out of my mouth popped the words, Parish, I will win the money and I will go to India!

Unbelievably, within three weeks I won enough money through a Scratch-It-Lottery. I could have paid bills with it, I could have done a lot of other things with it, but I felt certain the money came for a plane ticket to India.

I signed up for a three-week spiritual tour of India that year in 1995 with seventeen other people. I didn’t know any one in the group. I remember feeling not good enough to be with those people because everyone seemed to be a healer or be clairvoyant or have some special ability. I was just a housewife. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to go to India. I had been very involved with my son and his problems and I couldn’t fix them. I suppose I was looking for some direction.

All my fears surfaced thinking about that trip. I thought, what if I get sick, what if I get lost, what if, what if! Before our plane even left the ground I was a bundle of terror.

We first flew to Delhi and then made our way to Haidakhan Baba’s ashram in the Himalayan foothills and arrived there during Navaratri, a nine-day festival that honors the Divine Mother, the feminine aspect of the divine.

It was an intense introduction to India that included, fire ceremonies, chanting and other devotional practices and some seva (service done without expectations or attachment to a particular outcome). Each morning I had to be in the kitchen by 4 a.m. and help prepare the food. Then throughout the day I would participate in other ashram activities. This was my first exposure to ashram life. Thank goodness we got time to rest in the afternoons!

After a few days of feeling my way in very strange and unfamiliar country, I could finally relax and enjoy it. My heart and soul felt nurtured by the silence and honoring of the Divine Mother.

After those nine days our group went to another ashram in Haidakhan, toured other parts of India, and visited the Taj Mahal before returning to Australia. The three-week trip whizzed by so fast, yet it left a huge impression on me. When I returned to Australia, things would never be the same.

Gradually my lifestyle at home started to change because of that trip. I became more interested in the spiritual side of things. I was happily married, with two kids in their late teens then.

A year and a half later in 1997, I went back to India for three months. I visited some ashrams and returned to Haidakhan Baba’s ashram again.

I experienced a lot of inner upheaval during my stay there. I felt my life mentally unpeel. Day after day I sat in the cave where Haidakhan Baba had materialized and tears came pouring down my face. One day I sat on a rock looking at the Himalayas. The huge peaks stood out against a crystalline blue sky free from the usual cloud cover. A small Indian boy who sat next to me said, What a blessing. It is God’s grace to see the Himalayas on a clear day.

When I heard his words, something inside just let go. All those tears evaporated. At that moment, I surrendered to the Divine Will and thought what will be, will be. I even shaved my head and let my precious hair fall away.

A month later I learned that as I made my inner declaration of surrender, my husband had let go of something too. On the same day as I sat in prayer facing those magnificent mountains, my husband sat eight-thousand kilometers away talking with both our mums about a needed change in his life. When I returned to Australia, my husband of twenty-eight years met me and announced our marriage was over. I did not have any clue about his decision until that moment.

I felt like my chest had been hit by a windstorm and although devastated, my three months in India had given me a lot of courage and inward strength to face that unexpected blow. When he said, I just can’t do this anymore, somehow I met it and did not fall apart.

Suddenly I had to live by myself and sort everything out. We had started out as school kids together with nothing, and we finished with a clean slate. With everything paid off, we both had to start over. I worked again and began saving money.

During that period of reorganizing my life, a good friend asked, What would make your heart sing?

I said, To go back to India.

Why don’t you then? she asked.

I can’t, I said running in my mind a list of why it was impossible.

Why not? She was very persistent.

When I really thought about it, I thought yes, why not. About two years later I returned to India and the next chapter began.

Full Moon from the Cockpit

Ishvari, British

In 1986 the saint Nityananda appeared to me in a vision and instructed me to visit India. I sold all my belongings and flew to India for the first time from England, where I lived.

I booked my flight into Bombay. After we took off and gained altitude, the Captain walked down the aisles saying hello and chatting with various people. When he stopped to speak with me, I told him about the vision I had of an Indian saint and how that influenced me to leave everything and come to India. My story must have had an effect on him as after our talk, he invited me to stay in the cockpit for the rest of the journey. That would never happen now, of course.

I went up to the front of the plane with the Captain and his co-pilot. The Captain said, For this flight, in honor of your vision, you can have the bed for the flight, and you can stay with us as we come down into Bombay. Inside their little compartment they had bunk-like beds for the pilots to take rest. After I got settled on one, they even brought me a bottle of champagne. There was nothing sexual at all about it. I don’t even know if the Captain had some kind of spiritual interest. He just said he noticed me because I looked very happy.

As we flew into Bombay I could see the entire sky lit up with a full moon through the cockpit window. That was