by Maggie Downs
When I wake, my lungs are clear, the cough is nothing more than a scratch in my throat, and my scary place no longer exists. Something has ruptured inside me. This is India, the land of transformation and enchantment, and I’m hungry to experience it.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I EXPLORE MUMBAI MOSTLY BY foot. I watch games of cricket, duck into a movie theater to beat the afternoon heat, sip Bombay Sapphire in sleek nightclubs with blue neon lights. I buy looser, flowy clothing, appropriate for the weather, and stuff my hiking pants into the bottom of my backpack. I meet a friend’s sister-in-law, Malini, who is in Mumbai on business, and we have a conversation that sinks deep into the night about travel, desire, and what it means to experience life.
Walking past Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the magnificent train station formerly known as Victoria Terminus, I’m lured inside by a crush of people. Other travelers have told me that the best way to experience India is by rail, but they warned the act of purchasing tickets can be tricky. I feel lucky when I emerge an hour later with a ticket that night on a sleeper car bound for Goa.
The former Portuguese colony of Goa is known for beaches and laid-back parties. It’s where the hippies go. I shamefully didn’t do any research about the place—it just sounded far less intimidating than heading north to frenetic New Delhi.
The three people who share the sleeper car with me are also travelers—a British couple and a sweet, baby-faced German named Denis. We become fast friends, and when they disembark at Anjuna Beach, so do I. Denis and I split the last room available at a place called Peace Hostel. We rent scooters, the most efficient way to navigate the congested, palm tree–lined streets, and the best way to cool off when the air is unbearably hot.
Beachy Goa is home to cashew farms, spice plantations, and tropical fruits, so the dishes we eat are laced with coconut milk, nuts, and intense spice blends. Seafood is a staple. And every dish balances the heat of chili peppers with a tart note, either from vinegar (the influence of four centuries as a Portuguese colony) or the native kokum fruit or tamarind. I’ve eaten Indian food before, but it’s never tasted like this, fiery, tangy, and rich at once.
What I love about Denis is that he’s young enough to still be excited about the world; he’s not jaded in the slightest, and he doesn’t carry any hurt yet. We go to parades, tour spice plantations, do yoga, ride the motorbikes to forts and churches, then leave Anjuna and rent a small hut along Palolem Beach. I spend entire afternoons standing in the warm Arabian Sea, water up to my hips, a cold beer bottle in one hand.
In the evenings Denis and I go to crowded bars, people spilling out into the sand. Denis carries around a gallon-sized bag of weed, so he makes friends easily. I don’t smoke any of it—it’s garbage weed anyway—but I tag along for barefoot walks along the edge of the water. We find fallen palm trees and sit astride them, staring up at the sprinkle of stars overhead, a few stoned people littered about.
Traveling time runs differently than normal time. It doesn’t adhere to a strict twenty-four-hour schedule or follow the calendar. Some days unravel in a flash. Some nights are as endless as space. Nobody ever knows the date. Denis has this guiding philosophy—borrowed from a movie he once saw—that while traveling, every day is Saturday. He often shouts it into the screaming wind on the motorbike or howls it at the moon. “Every day is Saturrrdaaaayy!”
One night, maybe Saturday, we attend a silent disco. There’s a DJ, but the music can’t be heard by anyone in the place unless you’re wearing headphones. It’s the strangest experience, all of us dancing to the same electronic beat, but separated, something both unifying and isolating.
It’s a great metaphor for how I feel traveling through this place. I have made real connections with people. I have friends here, and I haven’t been alone in weeks. I’m going through all the motions of a normal backpacker. But I still feel detached from the experience. An invisible fortress of grief surrounds me, and I don’t know when those walls will come down. If they ever will. I also know that by walling myself off from grief, I’m also keeping joy at bay.
Before my mom died, I thought sadness was a state that involved tears and melancholy afternoons drowning in music by the Smiths. But sadness can also look like this—sunshine days and party nights, unaware of time itself, digging my feet into the sand just to remind myself I’m still somehow attached to this world. It’s a beat nobody else will ever hear.
THE BUS THAT RUMBLES INTO HAMPI HAS TRANSPORTED me to another world—one less crowded than Mumbai, slower even than Anjuna—a land of stately temples, enormous rock formations, and a ruddy red terrain dotted with juicy green fields. It looks like a chunk of India that has been shipped to another planet. This is the second thing written on the piece of paper that Kaj gave me in Ethiopia, and I silently give thanks for his advice. This sacred Hindu holy city is instantly captivating, but it’s a tiny dot on a map that I wouldn’t have explored otherwise.
My friend Denis has come along, and we’ve spent the entire ride together in a sleeper car, which is like a tiny cubicle with double beds and a door that slides shut to lock you into place with whatever weirdo is sharing the car. I’m grateful my weirdo is Denis, so the entirety of our trip is spent cracking jokes and mixing cocktails with warm cola and a local alcohol made of cashews. We have so much fun, and none of the other passengers would ever guess it’s only been two months since my mom died.
So far I’ve done my best to shove my grief aside, which is remarkably easy in India since my backpacking friends know me only as Maggie the Traveler. I am the person who will hop on the back of a motorcycle to tour ancient ruins or the person who will stay up late to smoke a hookah and swap stories. They see me as whole because I haven’t shown them the broken parts. I am not Maggie the Mourner, I’m not Maggie the Woman with a Dying Mom, and I’m certainly not Maggie Who Has No Mom. These new friends know me and me alone, so far out of the context of my own life, it’s like the rest of it never happened. Occasionally I try on other identities, and I figure it’s not lying if I’m giving people a good story to tell later. I’m a surfing instructor for dogs. A fortune cookie writer. Geena Davis. I can be anyone I want to be, because the person I least want to be is me.
After procuring a room at a hostel, Denis and I walk up Anjaneya Hill to the Monkey Temple.
The temple is located at the top of 575 steep, bone-white steps that zigzag up the side of a mountain. When we arrive, monkeys tumble across the rocks, chatter as they hop along the staircase, and climb to the temple roof. I assume that is how Monkey Temple got its name—the actual monkeys that reside here—but it turns out I’m wrong.
This is thought to be the birthplace of Hanuman, represented as a monkey and an incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva. In mythological times, Hanuman was the greatest devotee of Rama, an Indian king. When Rama’s brother was wounded, the only cure was an herb that grew only in the Himalayan mountain range—but there was hardly any time. Hanuman is said to have achieved the impossible by leaping from the southern part of India all the way to the Himalayas in the north. When he got there, Hanuman wasn’t sure which herb was needed, so he grew to a larger form and carried the entire mountain back with him. Healers were able to pluck the necessary herb, and the life was saved. Hanuman’s steadfast devotion and determination have since been lessons for generations of Hindus.
The temple is whitewashed, same as the steps, perched on a plateau like a dollop of whipped cream. A red turret completes the image of a sundae like a cherry on top. The panoramic view of Hampi from this vantage point is breathtaking, with checkerboards of ripe, green fields and rugged, rocky land. Veins of water branch through it.
There is a man with a white beard, a white sheet wrapped around his legs like an oversized diaper, who speaks softly and tells stories about Hanuman. I remove my shoes to enter the holy space, and my feet burn on the hot cobblestones. The man ushers me inside the cool shade of the temple, where I am offered a cup of chai, and I drink it. Then I move through the small spac
e, clockwise. At one of the altars, a Hindu priest presses a finger in a bowl of vermillion powder, then swipes it on my forehead to leave a dot. This is a blessing for my third eye, the place of inner wisdom.
Wisdom hasn’t exactly been my strong suit of late, and I feel guilty keeping the dot on my forehead. If anything, I’ve been purposefully dodging my pain rather than reckoning with it.
I don’t think about home much anymore. I don’t think at all. I exist in my own numbness, wandering with no real intention, zooming from town to town on motorcycles. I tear through easily digestible novels, like the entire Pretty Little Liars series, immersing myself in stories other than my own. I drink and I drink and I drink until I sleep, and when I wake, I drink some more, the epidural to make my discomfort go away.
Somehow I have slipped. I have regressed into the self-destructive, feral person I was in the early days of my mom’s illness, and I can’t do this anymore. I can’t continue pretending I am not hurt as my wounds remain open and sore.
While my mom’s journey toward dying made me want to live more vibrantly and fully, it’s her death that has caused me to shut down.
Before I leave, the priest pulls me aside and says Hanuman brings peace to agitated minds. My face burns red, as though I’ve been seen—really seen—for what I am. Maybe he intuited it. Or maybe he knows that everybody struggles with something they hide.
Enlightenment Is Boring
AFTER HAMPI, DENIS AND I HEAD BACK TO GOA, WHERE he’s planning on staying for an undetermined amount of time. I know I need to leave, but I don’t yet have a destination. We loll on the beach, our sweaty bodies flopped on a sandy blanket, as I try to make a decision.
“Like, everybody needs to go to an ashram,” says a nearby woman, who is stupefyingly drunk and wearing a Playboy bikini—and the way she says it makes me think I absolutely do not want to go to an ashram. She makes it sound like a cliché, another box that needs to be ticked off the “Things to Do in India” list, not a place of spiritual retreat and simplicity.
But as time passes, I can’t stop thinking about the ashram this woman suggested. After so many nights of mindless drinking and dancing, and too many days of sunning and smoking bidi cigarettes, an ashram sounds like a relief. I need some direction in my life, and it might as well come from someone in a Playboy bikini.
This particular ashram, Sivananda, is snuggled into the hills of southern India, surrounded by fields and misty mountaintops. The closest neighbor is a lion sanctuary.
By the time I make it there, I am feeling the effects of too much travel and too much grief. My body is bruised, and my head is heavy. Every matriarch in my family is dead. I know I still have a husband and siblings, a father and friends, but I couldn’t feel more alone and aimless.
The schedule at Sivananda is rigorous, beginning with meditation at 5 a.m., then continuing with classes, spiritual sessions, and volunteer work throughout the day.
We receive two vegetarian meals per day, served in an expansive dining hall. We file into the room individually and sit on bamboo mats, where we chant before the meal. The food is served on large silver platters with sections, just like in a cafeteria. In addition to no meat or fish, the food is cooked without eggs, garlic, onions, or salt, so every dish is mild. A typical meal is chapati bread, bananas, dal, and a salad with shredded beets, carrots, and cabbage. Volunteers loop around the room and serve up unlimited refills from buckets.
I no longer have any choices to make, which is a relief, since my trip so far has been nothing but one choice after another: Should I stay in Bolivia or go to Argentina? Will I stay two weeks or three? Should I volunteer at the school or the farm? Do I want to stay in the city or in a rural area? Should I take the bus or walk? Should I barter for the fare or not bother?
At the ashram, the constraints are liberating. I am told when to wake up. When to meditate. When to bathe. When to eat. When to do yoga.
And there is so much yoga. Five hours of yoga a day. I am spending more time upside down than I did on my honeymoon.
This yoga is not like any other class I’ve taken before. First off, there is no sound. No throaty, chanting music. No banging of brass singing bowls. Not even a sitar CD. We also don’t flow from one asana to another. We simply move from pose to pose, holding each one for several excruciating minutes at a time. It is not a sweat-it-out workout. It is a physical form of meditation.
After one week, I approach the yoga instructor.
“Hey, I was wondering if we could change the yoga class a little bit,” I say. “Mix things up.”
“Of course not,” he says. “What we’re trying to do here is to achieve a higher, more mindful state. Reach enlightenment.”
“Okay. It’s just kind of boring.”
He snaps back, “Enlightenment is boring.”
This is the first time I’ve ever heard those three words in that order, and it’s a revelation: enlightenment is boring.
For the past ten years, ever since my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I’ve been throwing myself into activities and excursions, assuming adventure was the only way to truly experience life. I’ve plodded my way around the world; I have literally thrown myself out of perfectly good airplanes. But what if it means this? What if enlightenment is tucked away in the routine of our days?
Maybe I should have been looking for meaning among the mundane all along. It’s a sticky thought that stays with me all day and long into the night. I wonder if enlightenment is actually attained in these blank spaces—the long and rambling prairie that grows in between the mountains I’ve climbed and the oceans I’ve crossed.
I head back to my dorm, Lakshmi, named for the goddess of prosperity, where I’m one of seventy women. I brush my teeth, scrub my face, and settle onto my flat, hard mattress while turning the questions over in my head. The brassy gong outside signals that it’s time for lights-out. My eyes are heavy and then comes an urgent thought, something so swift and powerful that it shakes me wide awake: what if my mom’s life was never the boring, unlived journey I presumed it to be?
The night is hot and still, and I lie with that thought for a long time. All this time I’ve been operating under the assumption that my mom didn’t get to accomplish what she wanted to accomplish, simply because she didn’t make it to specific destinations. She didn’t achieve her goals, or, at least, what I thought her goals were.
But the act of living a life is the act of establishing priorities. Maybe people do what they want to do. And perhaps what my mom wanted to do, more than she wanted the world, was to be with me.
When I realize this, I’m smiling and weeping in the dark.
Like most other women in the dorm, I sleep naked or in my underwear because it’s too hot for clothes. Even the most modest among us have shed garments over the past several days, like snakes discarding their old skin. Our unnecessary layers are peeled away. What emerges is fresh and new, revealing.
My only nighttime cover is a thin sarong, brown and pink, threaded with golden fibers, which I bought on the beach in Goa. I pull it over me like a blanket, even though it’s as sheer as gauze. It touches me like the lightest kiss. Moisture beads on my skin, and around me, I hear others breathe and moan through their dreams. For the first time since my mom’s death, I am not actively grieving. I might even be okay. At some point I fall asleep, though I have no idea how long it is before the night takes me.
The next morning is a special event. Rather than chant in the temple, we are guided through the darkness on a silent, meditative hike. Rocks crunch under my shoes as I make my way, one step at a time, up a slippery trail I can’t even see. I am not sleepy, even though I spent hours awake in the dark. If anything, every cell crackles inside my body. I’m as awake as I’ve ever been.
When we reach the summit, we sit and chant until the sun rises, and when it comes it’s almost as though we will it into being. It’s a spectacular show, a citrus orange sun drenching the sky with juicy color.
“Jaya Ganesha!�
�� my ashram friends sing with jubilance, and several people bang rocks together like cymbals. Far away the lions roar, loud enough to provide bass for our melody. My friend Bhanu strikes a pose on some rocks, and he is like a purple-clad warrior against the vivid sky. When we do yoga, the mountain warms under our palms.
It’s possible this is what I’ve traveled all this way to learn. Enlightenment is boring, and it looks something like this: shuffling through the dark, trusting there’s a trail beneath your feet that leads into sunshine, movement, and joy.
FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS, I ZIGZAG AROUND INDIA solo but collecting friends along the way. For two nights I drift on a houseboat in Alleppey with two American backpackers, Jesse and Dave, floating around backwaters and lush canals. I meet a German hiker in Munnar, where the sprawling tea plantations look like rumpled green quilts, and we spend several mornings traveling over verdant hillsides.
But my friends aren’t limited to backpackers. In Mysore I am temporarily adopted by a family, and they treat me to a guided tour of the dazzling Mysore Palace, buy me dinner afterward, and then take me to a temple and show me how to pray. They ask for nothing in return, only the opportunity to share this intersection of our lives. In Kolkata I CouchSurf with a twenty-nine-year-old attorney. During my stay he has a party with takeout and close friends to watch the Cricket World Cup semifinals against Pakistan. When India wins, the celebration includes dancing in the streets, banging on buckets like snare drums, and an exhilarating stream of fireworks that glitter against the dark sky.
On a train ride, a Malayali man explains arranged marriages by saying, “In India, love comes after marriage.” At first it strikes me as funny, but the more I think about it, the more I can see how that works. Marriages take work, initial attraction fades, and being in love each day is a choice.
It’s a strange thing to love Jason and to be so far away from him. I haven’t seen him since January, when he met me in Ohio for my mother’s funeral, and we have just celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Skype. I sent him a movie and a boxed Indian dinner from Amazon, and then I hunkered in the corner of a restaurant with Wi-Fi and we ate chana masala together—two computer screens and 9,000 miles between us. The distance is a strain, though, and so is time, and we are both growing into new people. I once heard someone describe her ex-partner as “the same river but not the same water,” and I’m curious if this will be the case when I see Jason again. When two people grow, there’s no assurance it will be in the same direction.