On To Goa

This morning was my last in Bombay. I hopped a flight to Goa around 3pm and arrived no more than an hour later. On the plane I sat next to two friendly guys who run a travel company. They liked my cowboy hat so they told me of some good hotspots around town. As the plane landed in Goa I had two thoughts, "This is NOT Bombay" and "I'm gonna like this place!" Goa is covered in a deep, jungle green with a perfectly complimentary earthy, reddish-brown sprinkled throughout the landscape from the soil, the rocks and the rooftops. It's a former portuguese colony so the architecture is an excellent mix of tropical and colonial. The cab ride from the airport was long but unbelievable. The landscape, the water, the people, the animals, everything about this place makes me wish I was a professional photographer who could really capture it, but I'll do my best. The hotel is nice but the wireless internet is not what I had hoped. Currently I'm sitting at the bar about 8 feet from the reception desk in order to get a proper signal and I have to pay 100 rsp/hour for it. Regardless expect a lot of pictures from this place and hopefully some interesting new adventures as I make the transition into being a lone traveller. Also look forward to a rap up on Bombay and India in general.

Prasad, Reiki and Me: The Lizard King OR Where I've Been The Last Four Days And What I've Gotten Myself Into

So if you've been following the blog closely you've probably noticed a bit of a lack of upkeep over the last week. That is not do to laziness or a lack of things to report. Rather, I've been away, incommunicado, in the countryside at a place called the Sajan Club, a nature resort, taking part in a very special Meditation and Reiki intensive. It was very cool to see another part of the country (which was gorgeous of course) and to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle of Bombay. The electricity there was on a generator that was constantly flickering and going off for periods, and there was a lot more wildlife. Sajan Club has it's own organic farm with cows, there were chickens just hanging out whom I named Larry and Gary and there were tons of Lizards whom, for whatever reason, really liked my room. At one point a lizard fell down onto my bare shoulder and scurried off and at another point one scurried from my feet to my head across my bed and woke me in the middle of the night (fun stuff I know). All in all I found 16 different Lizards in and around my room. Here are the names I gave them:
Carl
Philliam
Allen
Mohinder
Roberto
Felix
Rembrant
Gus Gus
Mortimer
Zander
Rebar
Gangol
Burgess
Winny
Petey
and Fantasia Berino

A taste of the countryside


Philliam


Anyways, the four of us, Megan, Ren, Hannah and myself were fortunate enough to have been invited through a connection with our friend Leenata to take part in this intensive with Reiki Grand Master Prasad Karmarkar. Prasad is a well respected, heavily followed Guru with thousands of students who (in the Indian way) are completely humbled by his presence and would really do just about anything for him. In his ten years of doing meditation, leadership and Reiki seminars and intensives he has NEVER done one this small, so we are all very lucky that he, for whatever reason, chose us to be on it and spent such close time with us. Usually his seminars have 50-100 people or more and receiving the kind of attention we got constantly for four days will occur only in small nuggets.

Now, to clear a few things up. First of all, I realize that when I say the word Guru the immediate image is an 80 year old man with long robes and a big beard. Prasad is not this. He is 34 (though he doesn't look a day over 28) and he generally wears jeans, a t-shirt, and a pretty nice watch. He's an awesome guy and someone I will forever consider a friend and teacher. Reiki is a Japanese method of healing using the energies of the universe. Essentially, one focuses the energies of love and peace and all that happy good-timey stuff around them into their own body or into the body of the person they are healing in order to balance the Chakras, thus putting the body and soul at harmony (at least that's how I gathered it). While you can read as much as you want about Reiki and I could (theoretically) teach you everything Prasad taught me, you cannot learn Reiki without being initiated by a master, someone who has reached the fourth level of Reiki (I'm now on level 1, 2 is fairly simple to get to, 3 and 4 are complicated). Prasad happens to be a Reiki Grand Master, one of only 9 in the last century. As a level 1 Reiki initiate I now have learned touch Reiki, and after my initiation process is over three weeks from now I can, if I so choose and find one, take a Reiki two seminar and learn what I suppose you could call airborne Reiki.

The whole group


The important thing to note is that Prasad is an amazing and important person. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people who would kill to have gotten to spend the kind of time with him that we just spent with him, and for whatever reason he had some feeling about us and saw something in us that made him choose us for this time. It's pretty cool and pretty special. Anyways, if anyone out there has been feeling a few extra positive vibes or really if anything at all good has happened to you in the last four days it's because I've been sending out a lot of love and positive energy to all the people in my life so you're welcome.

Prasad and Me

Sangeet Rocks!

Let's start this post off with a little Hindi lesson. Sangeet means music and the Indians certainly have their own way of doing it. Obviously everyone knows about Bollywood movies and how musically driven they are, but I've fortunately been experiencing some other types of Indian music that don't get quite as much play but certainly ought to.

For starters there is classical Indian music which revolves heavily around several different percussion instruments and of course the ever popular Sitar. On Friday we went to a classical Indian music concert. The main attraction was a Tabla master named Fazal who was joined by several other percussionists, musicians, vocalists, a full Rajastani Band, and an Indian dancer. The concert started with Fazal and some of his students on the Tabla. Here's a clip:

Later on Fazal was joined by a Pakavag player, which is a two sided drum. Though this guy looked kind of like the Indian Weird Al Yankovich, he was undeniably sick. They were also joined by male and female vocalists at different points as well as the other percussionists and musicians and the dancer. The dancer was very impressive because she was not only dancing but also telling a story with her dance and acting as a musician playing along with the percussionists using the bells attached to her ankles.

Eventually the Rajastani band started playing. First they were introduced by their mouth harp player who plays that thing like I never thought possible. If you note the guy in black with the colorful turban in the Rajastani band, he was my absolute favorite because he sat there perfectly still like a total badass and was the absolute last person on stage to play anything but when he did he was not only an amazing musician but an extremely entertaining performer, getting up on his knees and really getting into it. Tons of build and twice the payoff, as a fellow entertainer I respect nothing more.


Towards the end all of the major percussionists started a beat up and started passing it around, it was awesome.

A part of me wanted to and tried to get the grand finale but at some point I stopped worrying about catching it on video and just enjoyed it for myself, sorry. Regardless, if you ever have a chance to see some classical Indian music I highly recommend it. Here's a bit more of Fazal the Tabla Master though:

Afterwards we were able to go and meet the performers because Denise happens to be a big deal tabla player around these parts and knows Fazal personally. I met my hero, the castanet master as well as Fazal and I saw Weird Al Patel up close but he snuck off before I could introduce myself or get a picture (my biggest failure since I got here).



Update:
Sorry it's taken so long but I've been away for four days, more on that in the next post. Anyways, Saturday night we went to The Blue Frog which is the hottest club in Bombay and ranked as one of the ten best clubs in the world. It's a really sick atmosphere (I highly recommend the virtual tour) and it's not just a club but also a record label with a recording studio right next door (which of course we got a VIP tour of). The studio was sick and Denise's friend Carissa is friends with Mahesh Mathai part owner of the club and film maker. He mostly does commercials here but his film Bhopal Express apparently did quite well on the festival circuit. Anyways, like I said we got the VIP status there, he covered our drinks and appetizers and the place was amazing from the wicked cool bar and layout to the bathrooms with a joystick-like faucet control. Unfortunately we had made dinner plans with a friend across town and had to leave about a half an hour before DJ Ankytrixx, a DJ from Nepal was scheduled to come on and they were to have their first ever "Neon Night" (basically a cool light show over the audience who were all asked to wear white). We did however get to hear a recording of an awesome fusion performance between a tabla player and an electronica group called Midival Punditz which was spectacular.

Moral of the story: Indian music comes in many forms, all of which seem to be very very cool.

Denise Playing Tabla -Best White, Female Tabla Player There Is


Blue Frog's Studio A Control Panel