Over the past year I've had a tumultuous relationship with faith and the universe and love and life in general. Family and friends existed and were always there for me to reach out to but I didn't seem to want to include them in what i was going through. Mostly because I was having a tough time trying to define what was happening myself, and then to try and explain it to someone else seemed too mammoth a task for my weary brain to undertake.
Also, post my yoga teacher training, I was making a conscious effort to only connect with people whose energies matched with mine. I realised, that If I didn't want to meet someone or spend time with them or meet them for a coffee or dinner, I'd say no. It seems like a small (and easy) thing to do, but took a lot of courage from me to say "NO". I lost a few people in the process, which I expected, but that's alright, took a while for my " I need to please everyone" personality to accept, but the most important person in my life last year was me. And thankfully I was true to her.
2015 was almost ending on a good note until the year decided to screw it up a bit, but then maybe it also wanted to get rid of the remaining nonsense in my life before I step into the new year. The year has already been a good teacher and I'm learning to take the lessons in my stride without letting it overwhelm me altogether. I'm slowly coming back to believing in the good, to trusting that the universe has a plan for me and I need to have faith in that plan, that I need to keep doing what I do best and be good and do good and good will come my way. I'm learning to be grateful again. I usually suck at resolutions, but in 2016 I am making sure that at the end of everyday I take a few minutes to look back and show gratitude for the whatever it is that made me happy or feel blessed that day. Gratitude is a small but very powerful drug, it makes you humble and get out of a state of dejection and smallness that you can inflict on yourself every now and then.
For starters I had forgotten to appreciate how absolutely lovely my small tiny home is. With the addition of a brand new couch, that ensures that my weekends are now utterly lazy, this house truly feels like home. I've begun to bake once (or more than once) every week and that brings me a lot of solace. There are a few baking projects in the pipeline and that adds to the magic.
I spent a week with my grandmother and some of the extended family and loads of quality time with my parents and that seemed blissful. I've been living away from home for so long now that I've long forgotten what life used to be at home. But the sheer luxury of not having to think and just be and the trust and safety that you can do it with at your parent's house is a gift I can't be more thankful for. I literally switched off my brain for that one week and stepped back from having to plan every single aspect of my daily life to just going with the rhythm. I got another opportunity to switch off my brain with a trip to Sri Lanka and hence the title of this post, Bohoma Stutiyi means thank you very much in Sinhala.
In (extreme) summer last year, my two very close girl friends and I decided to go to Sri Lanka for a week long trip. Being planners (in life and at work) it was an amazing trip simply because we decided to hire a tour agency to do it all for us. Yes. Yes. very lazy women I know. Anyway, that was a beautiful beautiful trip. And sometimes in life, when you're either meeting someone or you've traveled somewhere, you feel like this person or this place has a deeper meaning that just a random occurrence. Like that person is going to play an important part in your life or this place is going to add to your life in a unique way, and that it's going to stay with you for some time to come. I felt that with Ubud, the minute I stepped into Ubud I knew that it was going to mean something to me in the future and that I was going to come back a lot lot lot more. Which I did. Similarly with Sri Lanka. I knew immediately that I was going to come back to Sri Lanka again and spend a longer time in this country and with her people. And i did. I signed up for yoga retreat with two of my very special teachers : Daphne and Anton from Routes of Yoga and spent a week at The Mudhouse. I've only just arrived back in Singapore, but was compelled to get this post out before I hit the bed before yet another Monday. There'll be loads more from the yoga retreat on my other blog, because it deserves a lot more than just a casual approach or mention.
I was in two minds on whether or not to sign up for the retreat. And then when I was in the phase of deciding, I heard Sri Lanka mentioned twice on the same day. Being big on signs, I came back home that evening and registered on the website. And i knew I'd done the right thing. Going with the usual booking spree that I get into, I booked flights and decided to spend an extra few days in Sri Lanka and told myself I'll think about where I want to go for those 4 additional day closer to the date. After many chats with friends and some research I decided I wanted to go to Galle. It turned out to be exactly what I needed.
The week of my departure was hectic from the word go. I was at various point in the week running around like a headless chicken and come Friday, I was close to screaming. It didn't help that it was pouring in Singapore and i had a dinner to arrange for some colleagues at work, so taxis were a huge problem and getting from dinner to home and to the airport seemed like an almost impossible task. When it rains in Singapore, the taxi guys act like a mafia almost as if they want to punish us lesser mortals. Grab Taxi didn't have any taxis and Uber had a 4x surge. I dislike Uber more and more every day. Anyway, I managed to get to the airport (thank you Grab!) and heaved a huge sigh of relief when I sat down on that seat in the airplane. It was 2 am when we took off and I don't remember anything after that, until we landed in Colombo.
After a harrowing experience with my hotel in negombo and the airport taxi, I managed to get to Galle with a terrific driver who had amazing stories to share. It was a big nice car (I'm vain, what can I say) with a lovely person to speak to on a long long long drive and i had just started a new book. I looked up to the skies and thanked whoever had enabled this for me. In my hurry to leave for the airport, the book I had picked up from my bookshelf was "Asuras : Tale of the vanquished". The irony of it hit me as flipped it open and read the first page. It was such an enthralling read that all i did in Galle was drink loads of amazing Ceylon tea and read this book. Passer-by who saw my frown, laugh or be sad would've taken for me to be mad for sure, because I would be sitting in a corner of the cafe with a pot of tea and my legs up and crossed with my nose touching the book.
Galle is everything I wanted it to be. I stayed at this lovely lovely property inside the fort called The Mango House. I was lucky to get the last room in the place for the weekend that I was there and it really must have been a divine intervention, because the house is exactly what I wanted it to be. Safe, relaxing, and chill. and so pretty! not to mention, the "complimentary" tea which needless to say I made full use of at all hours of the day (and night). The fort has gotten very touristy and commercial but still thankfully retains it's charms. The dutch design low roofed colonial houses, the fort ramparts and walls that protected the fort and it's residents from the 2004 tsunami and the many many tiny little cafes that you can hide in and just be, stole my heart. I walked the streets a dozen times and was happy doing just that. I used the time to catch up on my sleep and nap at random hours during the day. Tried writing a little, but was barely able to outline a few stories, which I am sure will come alive in the next few days or weeks. The only 'active' thing I did was this 26km bike ride through paddy fields and this huge lake and the charming Sri Lankan countryside. Sri Lanka reminds of a softer India. Or maybe remind is the wrong word because I haven't seen this side of India at all, so maybe it's my romantic idea of what India used to be or should be. A huge part of that comes from the fact that the Sri Lankan people are so warm and nice.
So after an utterly restful holiday in Galle, I drove back with Kushantha, my chauffeur to Anamaduwa, where another magical experience was waiting for me. More of the beauty of Mudhouse and it's people on Samasthiti, for now just this one picture :
I come back from Sri Lanka with new friends, amazing memories, beautiful sunrises and amazing sunsets, gorgeous food and lovelier people, clear blue skies with cottony clouds and skies full of millions of tiny glittering stars. What it brought back to me was a peaceful heart and a calm mind, two very valuable things that I had let go off in this last year. Their absence took me to some of the most dark, painful and saddest moments of my life. And their renewed sprigs bring back hope and light, that all is not lost, and all i need to do is reach out and the world will reward me with magic. As I step into another bittersweet week where a friend is leaving Singapore and me to go to the place that calls out to her, I feel equipped to deal with it a bit of serenity and loads of equanimity. While Routes of Yoga and the Mudhouse and my fellow yogis had a huge part to play in it, it wouldn't have been possible without Sri Lanka that supported us in this.
I come away with many stories and many many refreshing views on life, lifestyle and sustainability. It's almost as if lying on a stone tablet looking up to a clear sky full of stars in the mudhouse gave me a sense of renewed zeal to take on whatever fate has planned for me, good or bad. I also left Sri Lanka with a promise to return again, there's so much more that land has to teach me and I am eager for all it's lessons.
Bohoma Stutiyi Sri Lanka, I bow to you tonight in pure gratitude.
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