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Concrete cosmos of bits and pieces - NY Times
Ladakh comes of age - Washington Post
In the land of 4-star asceticism - NY Times
Chinese go wild over yoga centres - San Francisco Chronicle
Sanskrit back in the reckoning - Silicon India magazine
Concrete Cosmos of Bits and Pieces
11 August 2006, New York Times, By Ken Johnson
ONE of the most popular tourist attractions in
India
— second only to the Taj Mahal — is a 40-acre wonderland of vernacular
sculpture, architecture and magnum opus landscaping created in the city of
Chandigarh over a 40-year period by the self-taught visionary Nek Chand.
Mr. Chand is not the sort of artist who labors
over singular works designed for contemplative viewing in neutral settings.
He was driven to create a whole world, a kind of miniature cosmos, and his
methods reflected a demand for quantity as much as quality. He produced
generic figures that he could quickly and easily duplicate with variations.
Some are made mainly of concrete with bases embellished by colorful ceramic
fragments. Others are covered by pieces of broken, colored glass, so they
seem to be wearing shimmering robes and headpieces. All have round,
cartoonish faces with stiff, blank, popeyed expressions. Still, all of Mr.
Chand’s sculptures have a lively, animated presence, and the tension in them
between their raw materials and their lifelike energy is compelling. An
inventor, scavenger and recycler, Mr. Chand built his sculptures on metal
armatures made from abandoned bicycle frames. In addition to glass
fragments, he used found materials to give them color and texture, including
pieces of crockery, stones and clinkers.
In the exhibition the life-size seated monkeys
in reddish concrete are mysteriously thoughtful, like Buddha figures. A
large, flat bird figure, its opulent surface made of translucent green glass
fragments, testifies to Mr. Chand’s canny decorative instincts. And various
human figures — from adult to toddler size and in a range of muted colors,
from off-white to many shades of deep gray — reflect an all-embracing
democratic sympathy with ordinary humanity.
After a brief tour of the Rock Garden, you do
get a strong sense of a powerful spiritual purpose at the heart of Mr.
Chand’s prolific creativity. With its winding stone pathways, statuary,
fountains and seemingly antique small buildings, the garden could be part of
an ancient monastery.
The story of its creation sounds like the stuff
of a magical realism novel. It begins in 1947, when Mr. Chand was displaced
from his small Punjabi village in Pakistan.
In 1951 he settled in
Chandigarh,
Punjab’s new
capital, which was then being turned into a great Modernist city by Le
Corbusier. Mr. Chand found a job as a government road inspector overseeing
highway construction. He began to build his own concrete world in secret in
a forest clearing on public land at the outskirts of the city. He continued
working on it until 1975, when the Indian government discovered it and
determined to clear it away. Public protests ensued, and the bureaucrats
changed their minds. In 1976 the Rock Garden opened as an officially
recognized public park with a crew of workers to help with its continued
construction. At 81, Mr. Chand still oversees the park’s maintenance and
development and welcomes its countless visitors.
Top of the page
Ladakh, ‘Little Tibet’, Comes of Age
27 August 2006, Washington Post, By Alexander Zaitchik
The word
Kashmir
evoked wildflower meadows and crystal mountain lakes. A Mogul emperor once
described the Kashmir valley as “paradise on earth,” a conclusion reflected
in the memoirs of countless British Raj officials. Instead of writing it off
as a tourist destination, the latest burst of unrest near the western
Kashmiri capital of
Srinagar
has turned many travelers’ eyes east, toward the state’s lesser-known
Buddhist region: Ladakh, sometimes called Little Tibet. Ladakh, high up in
the Himalaya Mountains, is one of the most remote areas of
India.
Once a tightly held secret among the bearded
pioneers of the Himalayan Hippie Trail, Ladakh — and its backpacking
capital, Leh — now bustles with outdoorsy Americans and Europeans, upwardly
mobile Indians and gap-year Britons. There is no unspectacular way to arrive
in Leh. By car, you travel north from the Indian town of
Manali, along
the mountainous Leh-Manali highway, among the world’s highest. But the
descent during the hourlong flight from New Delhi, with the Himalayas
outside your window, is just about the most fun you can have in a Boeing
727.
Once on the ground, don’t worry about getting
your bearings. Hundreds of trekking outfits line the streets, offering tours
to Ladakh’s snow-capped peaks, rocky desert plateaus and lush oasis
villages. Fierce competition keeps prices stable, about 1,000 to 2,000
rupees a day.
A new trail has also emerged: spiritually
themed tours that promise full immersion in Tibetan Buddhist culture.
Companies like Open Ladakh
combine
hiking with meditation, and Mindruk Spiritual Trek arranges stays in
monasteries and Buddhist homes. For a less serene trip, rent a Vespa or a
Royal Enfield to see Ladakh’s stunning (and sometimes treacherous) mountain
passes. The road from Leh to the fairy-tale
village
of Lamayuru winds along the Indus River and goes north to the ancient Muslim
city of
Kargil.
Although many visitors treat Leh as a way
station, the city itself should not be overlooked. Near the medieval Chokang
Buddhist temple, Tibetan restaurants serve veggie momos (dumplings), next to
Punjabi sweet shops.
But as new and ever larger waves of travelers discover Ladakh, old mainstays
like the restaurant Gesmo are being crowded from every direction. “The
growth is too much, too fast,” said Vivek Namagyal, a Leh resident, pointing
to a cluster of new businesses on the new outskirts of town. But he didn’t
have too much time to complain. He’s busy opening an Internet cafe on
Changspa Road.
Top of the page
In the
Land of Four-Star Asceticism
13 August 2006, New York Times, By Patricia Leigh Brown
There is a sign at the entrance to Kalari
Kovilakom, the more than 150-year-old palace in the state of
Kerala,
India, now known as the Palace for Ayurveda, that says “Please Leave Your
World Here.” But, having encountered elephants ambling along the highway
from the airport, you already have. You have taken the Order, the humble
oath of four-star asceticism. You have agreed to forsake all known forms of
vacation decadence, to give up meat, alcohol, caffeine, leather accessories,
naps, sunbathing, swimming and mindless frivolity in order to purify and
balance your whacked-out Western body and soul. You are here to immerse
yourself in ayurveda, the 3,500-year-old herb-based healing tradition that
still flourishes in the daily life of India.
Since the 1970’s, “ayurveda tourism” has drawn
Lonely Planet acolytes and Rough Guiders, especially young Germans, to the
thatched-hut beaches of southern India, lured by the promise of $5 massages.
But with the re-imagining of this historic rajah’s palazzo by the Casino
Group — Keralan hoteliers who have shrewdly rechristened themselves CHG
Earth — the ante has been considerably upped.
For pilgrims with deep pockets wanting an
authentic immersion into this ancient medical system, including a radical
purification and detoxification treatment known as pancha karma, the Kalari
Kovilakom — which markets itself as combining “the indulgence of a palace
with the austerity of an ashram” — is the real deal. Within the palace’s
teak-columned halls, with exquisite images of gods and goddesses carved into
the ceiling, you are less tourist than nun.
The palace lies in “the land of the
cloud-capped hills” in the remote Palakkad district against the
Western Ghats,
the otherworldly mountains bordering Tamil Nadu. Kalari Kovilakom is not
exactly a hotel, not exactly a hospital and not exactly a spa, but a hybrid
with a Mother Superior aura (in accordance with strict ayurvedic principles
the establishment requires a minimum 14-day stay).
Mornings unfolded simply, with music from
nearby Hindu temples the reveille of
India. Yoga
began in a deeply shaded sanctum; the heat seemed almost a living being.
After breakfast guests (or were we patients?) drifted maharajah-like across
marble floors, polished and fragrant with lemon grass oil. “It’s not
Mauritius or Bali,” observed Patrice Gilbert, a Parisian pharmacist who was
completing two weeks of pancha karma with his wife with a farewell dinner of
artfully prepared gruel. “It’s a treatment. The most important thing is the
quiet, because you are inquiring within yourself. It’s a silent release.”
The
Kumarakom
Lake resort is situated on the backwaters, a languorous tropical labyrinth
of lakes, lagoons and shady channels brimming with village life, navigable
by dugout canoe or traditional Keralan longboat, called a kettu vallam.
Kumarakom Lake mixes no-nonsense ayurveda and palm-fringed restaurants with
piped-in Glen Campbell and Kingfisher beer. Fishermen drift past in dugout
canoes propelled by poles. The contrasts that make India India are here in
abundance.
The new
ayurveda luxe taps into the country’s growing wave of medical tourism.
But
instead of a new kidney, ayurvedists — longevity-seekers who are already
deeply into the present moment — come to Kerala to detoxify and purify with
ayurvedic doctors, the new yogis, for whom mind, body and spirit have been
fused for more than 3,000 years.
Traveling solo, I chose Kerala not just for ayurveda, which has deep roots
here, but also for its tropical cuisine, its history of progressive
politics, its 91 percent literacy rate and, not the least, the sensuousness
of a culture where even trucks are works of art.
Ayurveda can be difficult to grasp for
non-Indians, with hundreds of levels of practice, from learned to folk. It
is part of the country’s medical system, with 2,100 ayurvedic hospitals, 196
medical colleges and a dozen major pharmaceutical companies. In 1887, the
British administrator William Logan wrote of a native medical system in
which the universe, including the human body, is formed by five great
elements — space, air, fire, water and earth. Then, as now,
Logan
observed, ayurveda, which means “knowledge of life” in Sanskrit, was
designed to “restore health and establish the digestive powers and likewise
create intellectual brightness, personal beauty, acuteness of the senses,
and prolongation of life.”
The big idea of ayurveda, said to have divine
origin, is that health is a state of balance between body, mind and
consciousness. Its sister discipline is yoga, which, before it became an
industry, was also a science dating back to the Vedic period. One’s
constitution is said to be composed of three doshas — vata (air), pitta
(fire) and kapha (water) — encoded in every cell. Initial treatment includes
a prescribed diet (supplemented with herbs both ingested and applied), yoga,
meditation and massages to prepare the body for elimination of agni, or
waste.
In
India, and
especially Kerala, a relatively rural state with a tropical climate that
makes love to practically anything that grows, ayurveda is part of the warp
and weft of daily life. When babies are born, their first foods are rice and
green gram, known for balancing all three doshas. Spices in the Indian
larder, including tumeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom, all have
medicinal properties. In earlier days, mothers and grandmothers made oil for
different kinds of ailments from ghee, coconut and sesame, and even
Bangalore tech execs still routinely apply oil to the head before work.
With ayurveda tourism booming, the Keralan
government has been working to regulate and rate ayurvedic resorts, so the
creed is not diluted by unscrupulous operators without professional
training. Traditionally, ayurvedic medicine was passed down from father to
son, uncle to nephew, but now it is professionalized, with physicians
earning advanced degrees from five-year ayurvedic medical schools.
In Aranmula, a picturesque hamlet on the
Pamba River,
Dr. Hari Kumar Bhasker runs the
NSS
Ayurveda Hospital, where a portrait of Lord Dhanvantari, the physician of
the gods, hangs in the entrance hall. Outside are demonstration gardens lush
with ayurvedic plants — holy basil (for fever, skin lesions); brahmi
(memory); ashoka trees (mental acuity), Indian gooseberry (an anti-oxidant).
Dr. Bhasker also teaches a three-week “Ayurveda 101” to students like Kim
Berley, a 28-year-old Sacramento waitress, who is convinced that ayurveda is
the next yoga — “a way of balancing yourself with your own body and the
elements around you,” she said.
I left
India reinvigorated, with a lighter heart. I was dreaming of December.
Top of the page
Chinese
go wild over yoga centers
27 August 2006,
San Francisco
Chronicle, By Olivia Wu
The lithe young woman walks toward the sound
system, punches up some warm, seductive jazz, then briskly steps into the
empty slot before a wall of mirrors, puts her palms together at the center
of her chest, and begins to call out moves in Shanghai-accented English. The
teacher is Daphne, and she's teaching yoga at the Fuxing Lu studios of
Y-plus, a 3-year-old business in
Shanghai
that is levitating at rocket speed.
She's one of about 20 instructors at the
studio, which offers classes from
6:30 in the morning to
10:15 at
night, often with two or three classrooms running concurrently. The classes
fill so quickly that there is a new protocol: Students call ahead to make
reservations for each class. The cost of a class: 200 RMB -- or $25.
It's the latest incarnation, Shanghai-style, of
the ancient Indian practice. There's a niche for well-packaged trends that
are relevant to the high-stress lifestyle in this city where everything
moves at race pace. In the
United
States, yoga, fueled by the attraction to Eastern mysticism, has enjoyed
popularity for a good 40 years. Yoga studios range from the funky,
incense-filled, one-person-led room to celebrity-studded workshops in New
York and Hollywood and hard-core gathering places all over the Bay Area.
In
Shanghai, the niche is upscale. From its beginnings three years ago with a
couple of hundred clients, Y-plus now has 10,000 clients in locations in
three cities. Said Y-plus President and Executive Director Harry Yu. "They
come for seeking inspirational values and pampering -- both physical and
mental -- as well as yoga instruction. And, in many cases, clients come to
Y-plus because it is so new to Chinese culture. Yoga makes the heart calm
down".
Top of
the page
Sanskrit back in reckoning
9 August
2006 , Silicon India magazine
In the
days when Mc Donalds and Coke seem to be playing bible to the younger
generation in India, a new breed have rediscovered the joy of getting back
to their roots. And this time around it is Sanskrit that's acting as the
catalyst in assisting this change in attitude.
Termed
as the mother tongue of the modern Indian languages, Sanskrit seems to be
creating a global presence in today's world. Simple Sanskrit words are being
used today in day to day to life, almost as if in an attempt to make a
connection to the genesis. A recent Economic Times report stated that there
was a definite rise in the number of students signing up for Sanskrit
classes. The Madras Sanskrit College, which offers the Shiromani and Prak
Shiromani courses besides the diploma, has geared up to introduce further PG
and certificate course to meet the demand.
The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA of USA), has
acknowledged Sanskrit's scientific parameters. Learning the language has a
direct influence on the mind and body, creating a positive effect of
combining word and action.
After
yoga and Ayurveda, Sanskrit seems to be taking the next big leap into the
western world. Techies and the corporate world seem to using the Vedic
techniques to deal with HR related issues. The language is also deemed
useful as a technical tool. Used as a major stress buster, Sanskrit is
believed to contain healing properties that would help the mind and body
relax. Some techies have gone the extra mile to using the Bhagavatam (an
Indian classic, describing the life and times of Lord Krishna) to manage
global business.
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