India Archives - Maggie InkMaggie Ink

How to make a dream come true

May 11, 2020

First: Make a list of things to do before you die. Realize that you are always inching toward death and still haven’t done a single thing on that list. This is the same thing your mom did; she put things off until it was too late.

Decide to do something about it.

Quit your job. Leave home. Book some flights.

Tell yourself, “If I make it to Ha Long Bay, this trip will be a success.”

Go to Peru. Go to Bolivia. Go to Argentina. Check some things off the list.

Meet a couple of Americans and drive around South Africa with them. Live in a village. Learn to carry buckets of water on your head. Go to Uganda. Ride across the country in a minibus with 24 people and a pregnant goat. Find work as a country-western DJ for the local radio station. Learn to harvest rice.

Go to Rwanda. Spend your days teaching English to genocide survivors. Cry. Teach them to play bingo. Laugh.

Fly to Egypt and immerse yourself in ruins. Find out your grandmother died. Find out your mom is dying, really dying. Fall down a tunnel of darkness. Hole up in a yoga camp on the Red Sea.

Go to your mother’s funeral. Wrap yourself in grief. Return to Egypt on the day a revolution begins. Feel yourself unraveling.

Take a boat to Jordan. Leave when protests begin. Go to Bahrain. Leave when protests begin. Get the nagging feeling that you are creating a trail of destruction around the world.

Go to Ethiopia, an extraordinary country, and plod your way through it. Feel like you’re something less than human.

Go to India, where something in your soul clicks. Love it. Embrace it. Drink in every hot day, every fragrant spice, every bit of eye-popping color. Move into an ashram. Pray.

Go to Thailand. Work with elephants. Meet a friend from home in Bangkok. Travel with her to Cambodia. Stay with more friends. Say goodbye.

Take a bus to Vietnam. Battle Saigon’s scooter-clogged streets and get a feel for the city. Slurp down bowls of noodles. Take a bus north. When the bus breaks down for 12 hours, sleep at a bus station. When the bus works again, it’s the hottest part of the day and the air-conditioning is now broken. Sweat. Make an unplanned stop in a beach town just because you desperately need a shower.

Take more buses. Take a train. Sleep in a dirty train car on soiled sheets. Arrive in Hanoi. Ride on the back of a motorcycle with a man even sweatier than you.

Schedule a boat tour. Pack up. Get picked up at 7 a.m.

Go to Ha Long Bay.

Wake up on a boat in a bay where everything is still. Everything is perfect.

Write that story.

Go to grad school to really dig into it.

Write that story again and again, edit it, excavate it. Work on it in scraps of time between your day job, when you stay up late, when you rise at 4 a.m. to have 20 quiet minutes before the baby wakes.

Sell it.

Have the perfect editor push you where you need it. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, but most importantly, he makes you better. He reminds you to slow down where it hurts.

And then one day, poof. You have a book.

Your story, between two covers.

It comes out tomorrow.

Enjoy.

PHOTOS: Bikes around the world

August 7, 2012

My sister has been obsessed with bicycles lately, to the point where she wants to redecorate part of her home with a cycling theme. It’s a really cool idea, especially since she’s so passionate about her own bike.

But I couldn’t stomach the thought of her paying a lot of $$$ for a framed bike photo from World Market or Target — especially when I took thousands of photos of everything around the world. I was positive I had something she could use. And I was right!

Here are just a few of the bikes I encountered on my travels.

Lone red bike in a neighborhood in Hoi An, Vietnam.

A line of rental bikes in Sukhothai, Thailand, because bikes are THE best way to explore the ancient city’s ruins.

It’s like Jem and the Holograms took over this street in Vientiane, Laos. Pink and purple power!

A mustard home on a side street in Hue, Vietnam.

Pretty bike on a New Orleans street.

I love this one the most, even if the bike isn’t the most photogenic, because we are two sisters.

This last one I wouldn’t put on any wall in my home. But I still marvel over this man in Mumbai with a seriously impressive stack of eggs. He is the eggman! He is the walrus! Or something.

Pinkeye from Vishnu

March 21, 2012

I hesitate to even tell people that I went to an ashram in India on my trip around the world, because it brings up the inevitable comparison.

“OMG, you’re like ‘Eat, Pray, Love!'”

I mean, there are worse things to be likened to than an Oprah-endorsed, best-selling phenomenon. But I wish we could acknowledge and honor the stories of women without comparing them all the time. My journey was not Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey, and the road she traveled wasn’t mine. We just happen to be two women with backpacks.

Still, it happened that I ended up at an ashram in India.

It was located in the southern part of India, where vines and palms tangle around swampy backwaters. There was supposedly a zoo nearby, even though there wasn’t a town or a city in the vicinity. But every sunrise we could hear the lions roar.

I wish I could say my original intention was spiritual enlightenment. But I was coming off nine months of constant travel, followed by a blurry string of beach parties in Goa. More than enlightenment, I needed a purpose. I needed a schedule. I needed to lay on a mat and stretch my limbs to the sky and breathe. So I went.

It took three rickety buses through the countryside, one long walk and a wheezing rickshaw up a ribbon-like road, but I finally got there.

I fully committed myself to the ashram. I didn’t bring any forbidden goods, like alcohol, onto the property. I didn’t sneak out for a smoke. I didn’t skip any lessons. I didn’t half-ass it.

Instead, I greeted the blackness of morning with chants of “Jai Ganesh” until the sun rose.

I joined 200 people in a chorus of “Om” until the resonance became so deep and strong that it vibrated the chambers of my heart.

I sat crosslegged on the floor, scooped rice and runny lentils with my hand, ate in silence.

I slept naked under a mosquito net.

And then I waited.

I waited for that moment — enlightenment, clarity, bliss. Whatever it is that people are supposed to feel at an ashram, I wanted to feel it too.

I did my part, after all. I was present. I was open. I was expectant. And when it comes to spirituality, isn’t that the bulk of the battle? Just showing up?

This was also a particularly vulnerable time, since I had lost my mother just two months prior. So I did a lot of meditating and marinating while I let grief unzip me. If there was ever someone ripe for a divine moment, it was me — literally down on my knees in a temple, pleading for something, anything.

When those prayers went unanswered, I turned my efforts outward. I climbed mountains. I sang to the sun as she tossed scarves of color into the sky. I turned my face up to the heavens and said, “Come on. Give me everything you’ve got.”

Nothing happened.

I thought it would come in a bolt of lightning or something equally dramatic. I figured it would be like the conversion of Saul to Paul in the New Testament, a familiar story to every classically-trained Christian. Basically, Saul was traveling the streets of Damascus when he saw a bright flash of light and the resurrected figure of Jesus. The event caused Saul to go temporarily blind, at which point he changed his name to Paul and became (arguably) the greatest disciple of all. It was amazing. The dude went blind!

Meanwhile, I begged for something to happen. And Vishnu only gave me pinkeye.

After I left the ashram, I traveled to Kanyakumari, the town at the very bottom tip of India. In a country full of spiritual places, Kanyakumari is among the most special and sacred. This is the confluence of three major bodies of water — the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.

It is where millions of travelers, missionaries and pilgrims have entered the continent. It is where Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were released back into the world. And according to Hindu legend, this is where an avatar of Parvati was set to marry Siva. When he failed to show up for his wedding, the rice that was supposed to feed the guests washed ashore, turning into the rocks that form the beach today.

I hiked up my leggings and waded into the water. It was as warm as tears. Around me, pilgrims tossed pink flowers into the waves, where they drifted out into forever.

Maybe enlightenment never really comes in a force of nature. Maybe it is just the gentle intersection of waves. It ebbs and flows, taking things away, returning again, washing over all of us.

—–

This post is part of the Scintilla Project, a fortnight of storytelling.

Mr. Postman

October 18, 2011

I had a stack of souvenirs and clothes, ready to ship back to the United States. Except the employee at the Mysore, India, post office wasn’t having any of it.

“No. Send.” he said, abruptly clipping each word.

“But why? Why no send?”

“No send,” he repeated.

“Please help me.”

“No send!”

After several frustrating minutes, that’s all he would say. It was infuriating.

Just then a boy tugged at my sleeve. “You want to send parcel?” he said.

“Yes, I want to send parcel,” I growled, hovering on the verge between screaming and crying. “I am here to send parcel.”

“Come with me.”

The boy held my hand as we weaved in between speeding rickshaws and honking motorcycles. He led me down into a basement, where he pulled up a plastic chair and motioned for me to sit.

A few seconds later, the boy’s father appeared. Syed was the 43-year-old owner of his own parcel packaging service. Or, as his hand-painted sign stated, “Parcle paking.”

It turns out that all packages mailed from India must be wrapped in cloth and sewn shut, with the seams covered in globs of sealing wax.

As we chatted, Syed pressed my stack of clothes in between two empty sari boxes, then tied them together with twine. He covered that with plastic and taped it together several times over. With a quick snip of some scissors and the whirr of a sewing machine, Syed fashioned a cream-colored cloth bag for the entire package. It fit as snugly as a pillowcase. He sewed the end shut by hand using mustard yellow thread.

Over a cup of tea and a hot samosa, Syed showed me the book where he keeps meticulous records of each and every package he has mailed — including gushing e-mails from thankful customers who receive their souvenirs at home, intact and on time.

He was interested in trying out my computer, so we flipped through photos together. He pointed to a shot of my sister.

“She is very beautiful,” he said.

I agreed.

“More beautiful than you,” he said.

“Yes, yes. My sister is much more beautiful than me. She always has been.”

“She is younger, yes?”

“Uh … actually, she’s 13 years older. But thanks.”

He pointed to another photo.

“Who is this?”

I told him it’s me.

“No, really? But this woman is beautiful!”

“Yeah, I can’t explain it. Maybe that picture was taken on a good day.”

“And this? This is you?” he pointed to another photo of me. Then he carefully eyed me up and down. “It is my thought that you have gained weight.”

“You are probably correct,” I said, then shrugged. “What can I say? I like samosas.”

On that note, I excused myself from Syed’s shop.

The package eventually arrived in Palm Springs with no problem, even though Syed addressed it to “CALIFORNIA GURL!” (I’m still shocked it didn’t end up on Katy Perry’s doorstep.)

And now it seems Syed has decided that I am something of a looker, after all. We’ve become friends on Facebook, and today he sent me this message: “Hello, dear maggie your all of photos most beautifuls. your face is the moon. best regurd.”

It was terribly sweet. If there’s one thing this California gurl loves more than samosas, it’s best regurds.

Living at the ashram

April 5, 2011

I was incredibly nervous before I arrived at Sivananda ashram near Trivandrum, India.

Seriously. The ashram costs just $11 per day, which includes room, board and a full day of yoga, meditation and chanting activities, so I wasn’t expecting much.

I imagined myself sleeping on a bamboo mat in a cockroach-infested shanty, eating gruel and pooping in a hole.

So it was such a pleasant surprise to walk down the cobblestone path and see Lakshmi, the women’s dorm where I would be staying for a week.

There are something like 36 beds per floor, and each one is arranged cubicle-style. Everyone at the ashram also receives sheets, a pillow and a mosquito net.