11 March 2011
I’ve just been to my first self-practice yoga class! I actually thought to myself that I was pretty good as I went flowing from one posture to next…breathing deeply through my nostrils. Yes,I thought! Score! I had it down and wasn’t so bad at all. But then I got carried away a bit and was indeed away with the fairies my I noticed that I was doing about the tenth ‘downward facing dog’. Well, looking around I thought, sugar, I can’t remember any other postures! So, tried to stay with the flow and behave as inconspicuous as possible and going through one posture after the other, obviously doing a ‘free-flow’, i.e. not sticking to the particular sequence in which the postures were designed. And surely enough!!! I was caught out! Hanging...in the about hundredth ‘downward dog’ with my head upside down, I suddenly saw a pair of legs standing next me whispering that I should stick to the sequence or else…! Darn. Back on my knees I looked at the instructor – a bit helpless and a bit annoyed – and I thought: you perfect person, you! My yoga video never went past the Suryanamaskar B of the Ashtanga primary so I had to repeat whatever I had already done. A bit like a hamster in a wheel I kept going round and round in circles. And I thought the more often I repeated the postures the better I might get at them. But apparently that wasn’t the point. So what is the point? I mean really! It is called ‘self-practice’ during which you practice yourself, on your own and you practice whatever you want to practice - yourself!!! DUH!
So, she told me to stick to the correct sequence of asanas, and for heaven’s sake, I bloody would have if I had been able to remember them! It was the German instructor who pointed out the inadequacy of my yoga practice. Why I got so annoyed with her I don’t know. Maybe because I found her arrogant as she insisted that she couldn’t express herself in German anymore but preferred to speak English the whole time. (I always find it a bit silly really when people of the same national and linguistic background speak in a foreign language to each other when nobody else is around - not that we were getting along, but you know. Why? I mean really, why?) But I think it was more that fact that I was jealous of her that made me so angry. She was soooo good at yoga and I just kept repeating the same bloody postures…
Anyway, my anger turned into energy and despite the fact that felt really intimidated and low I got a great workout and sweated my bum off. Dripping with sweat, I was! Literally! Sooooo hot!!!! And oh, instructors, please! Do not dare to switch on those two lovely fans hanging from the ceiling because they might actually fan some cooling air into this little sauna of ours. Duh!!
After a short green tea-break I braved another yoga session – because I felt spurned on by the fact that I could probably do better – and joined the Ashtanga Yoga session. Oh boy!!! Little did I know. Geez, I thought my body was flexible…at least that’s what people have been saying in school and at the gym. But during this session I actually encountered all the limitations of my mental and physical flexibility. Needless to say that I was beat after that one. Kaputt.
I walked down the dusty and heavily trafficked road back to the hotel - being overtaken by cars, cows and scooters - back to my little hotel and had my breakfast. (These days I lived of rice cakes and apples –I shied away from eating any of the local food for fear of contracting diarrhoea or something like that – pathetic really.)
And being fed up with being honked out of the way and having to run away from lose cows of which I was scared, and being annoyed from not being able to get around as much, I have decided to go out and hire myself a scooter. Yes!!! Yes. Yes. I felt really proud of myself – for having made that decision. Mind you, I have never ever sat on a scooter in my entire life, let alone having driven one!!!
But when in Goa do as the Goans do. J And seeing lots of grannies speeding away on scooters I thought: oh well, how hard can it be?? Besides, in Europe I am a safe driver, know all the traffic rules and am very conscientious.
Equipped with my driving license, passport and credit card (for insurance purposes, I thought) I walked around my little hotel, full of positive energy and courage. I explained to the lady at the shop, who didn’t want to hear about insurance or driving licenses or credit cards – cash talk is the talk of the day – that I was a very good driver on European streets but that I had never driven a scooter myself. She looked at me, put her head to one side and smirked at me. And with a movement of the hand literally waved my concerns off and made me understand in her Indian semi-comprehensible accent, that I needn’t worry and that driving a little scooter is indeed a piece of cake. She had me right there and then! Yay, I thought! I can do this!!!
She went around the shack, un-parked one for me and motioned me to hop on. Oh dear God! I didn’t expect these things to be soooo heavy – they always look so light when they fly past you in the street. She explained where the gas was and the break – no need for a clutch or a gear shift because it’s all automatic – hallelujah! Otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to concentrate on. She motioned to demonstrate how to ride a scooter elegantly. And she did. It looked amazing, really. Then it was my turn.
Slowly but surely letting go of the gas I inched my way forward on the scooter!!! Yeah!! I did it!!! But it must have looked like as if I was hopping away with the machine rather than driving it. Sweat was pouring down my face again – I was concentrating so hard - but I was beaming and it didn’t bother me at all that I was driving slower than the slowest cow was walking – in fact the five of them who lived on my street just passed me, probably wondering what the hell I was doing driving so damn slowly or rather leap-hopping with the scooter.
And then there came the bent in the road!!! Oh shit, I thought. I was seriously contemplating getting off that damned thing and walking it around the curb to turn back to the shop. But I was too proud – nay too embarrassed to do that (not only was I the whitest woman in town, but also the whitest woman in town trying to master a scooter amongst the cows and locals –an attraction I should have charged the numerous onlookers for).
So, I managed to come to halt before the bend and then millimetre by millimetre I carefully – and to the dismay of all the vehicles behind me – pushed the scooter around the bend and returned to the shop with some of the locals actually clapping and congratulating me on my success. Embarrassing! But well, what a confidence boost!!
So, it was sealed. I rented the iron horse for a week, filled it up with a liquid that looked a bit like thickened lemonade – extra charge of course and was privileged to borrow the shop keeper’s own personal horse riding helmet for the time of the rental. Man, was I proud!!!
I made my way back to the hotel – mind you it was only 20 meters away so not such a great achievement – grabbed my swimming gear, some water, sunscreen, a book and camera…and imagined how I would cruise along the palm tree–lined country roads, the sun kissing my nose and shoulders, my hair flying elegantly in the wind, and how cool and self-confident I would look….
Well, that bubble burst as soon as I realized that I didn’t have a clue how to get to that palm-treed road I had so vividly imagined. I couldn’t possibly be driving and reading the map at the same time and I was too scared ending up in the middle of nowhere and being attacked by pack of stray dogs.
Hence I scootered slowly down the road I remembered walking along on foot the past few days when realized that I haven’t really seen anything yet… apart from the scooter shop and the local corner shop, 30 meters down the road.
But I thought I need to pack the wolves by the ears or the bull by the horns or something and pull myself together! So, I decided to go where the wind would blow me…on my scooter. Having inhaled a huge bowl of courage I went further – actually passing the corner shop – into the unknown, wild territory…on my machine-horse. And, as long as I was alone on the road I was fine.
But then, as it happens in a peopled village in India, numerous vehicles appeared out of nowhere, honking, passing me only at inch-distance, all the cows of the village seemed have decided to bug me all at the same times, lots of Goans appeared walking along the side of the road. Then there were the dogs threateningly barking and running alongside my machine horse…and I got scared.
Mind you, when I say road I don’t mean road, I mean dirty dusty path-type-road-way…Obviously, traffic rules did not apply. The only rule was: there is no rule. It’s quite intriguing actually how it works: there is some sort of mutual agreement that you just nod at other traffic participants to indicate who can go first. Thank the lord for indicators on my iron horse because I couldn’t have managed driving with one hand and holding out the other one to indicated the direction I wanted to take.
And then there is honking.
Honking seems to be an all-rounder instrument of navigation: You honk when you pass someone – anyone – even the cows and dogs. You honk before you turn around the bend. Obviously, you honk to indicate that you know someone walking on the side of the road. You honk in order to scare the animals off the road – as well as humans. You honk as an excuse for reckless driving and you honk for honking’s sake. So, there is quite a lot of honking going on in my little village.
Again, the dream of a quiet sanctuary, piece of mind - and piece of ear - remained a dream indeed. The noise level in Goa is incredibly high – not only have you got all the natural noises, i.e. monkeys, crows, cows, dogs, screaming children, people arguing, tourists chatting and laughing, old women bickering with their husbands, and then you’ve got all the extra – artificial – noises as well: the humming or roaring noise of cars, vans and overcrowded busses, the millions of scooters and the HONKING. I found it really hard to concentrate on the machine I was driving whilst noticing everything else around me, plus all the crazy thoughts in my head weren’t helping (thinking about not having insurance to do what I was doing and all the type of accidents that could happen), the heat and sun roasting me and there was an increasing fear of speed and falling wallowing up inside me.
Well, guess what! It was only a matter of time – of minutes actually – until exactly that happened. Speed and falling. Fear gripped me by the neck and sent my flying – nay skidding– across the road. 10 min after I rented my scooter.
So, let’s rewind: I left my hotel to find the lovely romantic sandy beach and followed some road that led across a rice field, thinking: well, as there are no proper roads and with the map being what it was – a bunch of black squiggly lines on a piece of paper – any of those roads will lead to the beach. Ha!! Not so much in Goa. Because suddenly it seemed as if I ended up in a desolate part of the village with fewer houses and more and more trees…and weird animal noises greeting me as I inched my way forward into this unknown territory. Needless to say that the monster Fear was already sitting behind me lurking over my shoulder, when it prompted me to a halt, telling my brain to better turn around and return to civilization. The screeching monkeys or birds or whatever made the noise were probably laughing their butts off when they witnessed what came next: in sheer panic of being lost, I stopped my iron horse in the middle of the dusty pebbly road and decided to slowly turn it around to go back to where people live. Good plan! And easier said than done …because the scooter wouldn’t turn around as conveniently as I might have hoped.
So, in my attempt to draw a circle with it I lost my balance for a split second during which the back wheel slipped on the pebbles…and in a pathetic attempt to prevent myself from falling I grabbed both handles harder not realizing that actually I was turning up the gas. The scooter jolted forward and lifting my butt off my seat and then saw us both speeding through the ditch on the side of the road into which we (my iron horse and I) have skidded. I was still frantically gripping the handles – must have been a reflex – and I was still speeding through the shrubbery when – like a miracle – the iron horse brought me back onto the road with a jolt. That’s when it dawned on me that it might be a good idea to ease the grip on the gas handle – duh – not to say to let go – which I did, of course. So, still being on full speed, the machine stopped immediately – that came totally unexpected, duh ! Losing control of the scooter and my balance I was then thrown off the machine and skidded about 6m on to the gravelled road.
I don’t know how but I ended up lying on my back, helmet still on. Yay!
My initial reaction: Thank God, I am not dead. Second thought: verdammte Scheisse! If that thing is broken now, I can’t afford a new one! I will have to go to jail! In India! Oh dear Lord!
But I could hear the machine still running and was delighted. I tried to get up to do some damage control. Well, not so easy. I was in a bit of a shock and couldn’t move. So, I lay there in the middle of the road, saw the picture of the past 30 seconds reeling passed before my eyes and I started laughing. Well, it was more of a giggle considering that I couldn’t really move. I hadn’t even noticed that two motorcycles have stopped and two Goan men came running to help me up. How ridiculous that must have looked to them: an extremely white woman lying extremely in the middle of the road, wearing an extremely ridiculous horse riding helmet, laughing her ass off.
One man helped me up on my feet and oh – my legs were really shaky. The other man picked up the scooter and tried to turn that stubborn thing off and only managed to after a couple of attempts. I scanned my body, counted my limbs, touched my head and back and everything seemed fine. Apart from numerous bloody scratches on my feet and legs and my right shoulder there was no obvious damage. Well, me right hand hurt like hell – more specifically, my right little pinky finger did and it seemed to have been broken.
Judging by the look on the faces of those men I must have looked like a real mess. However, I immediately realized the seriousness of the situation and tried to regain some composure and dignity and tried to take control of the situation: I went over to that damned iron horse, opened the seat compartment to find my bag in which I had – with spooky foresight (I’ve always known I had a sixth sense! ) – put some antiseptic wipes that same morning. My hands were still shaking when I wiped off the blood of my legs and shoulder, whining about the stinging pain in the open wounds. But I assured those lovely and helpful men that I was absolutely fine and I actually intended to drive the scooter back into the village.
But as I was still trembling, I couldn’t master the strength to even hold that damned scooter thing. One of the men kindly offered – and I think they all (there were four altogether) felt really sorry for me – to drive me back to the village. On the way, sitting behind that stranger on a scooter, feeling the cooling air on my wounds and in my face, I’ve decided that I will not be defeated by a stupid scooter thing. Man reigns over machine!!! I was determined to master the art of driving a scooter without getting killed instantly. This was not going be the end. I haven’t travelled thousands of miles to a country I didn’t know anything about only to be intimidated by a frigging scooter and be scared into staying in my hotel room for remainder of – my whole holiday. No. No. No.
