Tag Archives: Women

We couldn’t agree more…..

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 5 REASONS TO GO ON A

YOGA RETREAT

  
Something magical happens when a group of like-minded individuals gather together in a beautiful location to share the practice of yoga.  I can’t think of a better way to escape on a holiday.  Whether it is by yourself or with a friend or  two, a Yoga Retreat may be just want you need to recharge your life.

5 REASONS TO TO GO ON A YOGA RETREAT:

1. Deepen your practice.
In these busy lives we lead, finding the time to practice yoga can be a challenge.  A committed week of yoga could be just what you need to deepen your practice. On a retreat you will likely have 2 classes a day.  Practicing every day you will notice the changes not only in your physical body, but in your mental state as well. Coming home afterwards, you might even be inspired to start a new home practice or take your existing practice to a new level.

2. You will create a new perspective.
Going to a new and different place creates an opportunity to see the world, and yourself, in a new perspective. Experiencing the unknown is an accelerated way to grow and learn. You will have the luxury of time to do just what you want to do.  When you change your routine and your surroundings, you see things in a different light. 

3. Rest and relax
Being on a retreat is all about you, your yoga, eating healthy foods and slowing down.  Sometimes it is easier to give yourself that indulgence when you leave your comfort zone of home and go somewhere far away and exotic. And if your retreat is all-inclusive you get 3 healthy and delicious meals every day prepared for you. Most retreats also have free time in the afternoon to do what ever you like to make the most out of your day.

 4. Meet new like-minded people.
When a bunch of people on a similar path get together in a beautiful place, new friendships are bound to happen.  It is inspiring to surround yourself with other yogis from around the world and to practice together. Gathering like this in a group is sometimes the perfect mirror to remind us that, although everyone is unique, we are all connected.
 
5. You deserve it.
You work hard in your daily life and you can always find reasons why you should or excuses for not doing something for yourself. We all lead busy lives, and we often neglect to live life to its fullest. When you immerse yourself for a week, you find the creative juices just waiting to come out.  Not only do you find your own inspiration, but you come home and are able to share it with others.

Get to know the faces of India ….

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There are so many incredible faces in this country.  They represent beauty, joy, struggle, achievement pain, success, poverty, love, hate, knowledge and every other one of the strong contrasting elements that make up Incredible India.

Yannick Cormier, one of our favorite photographers, gives us a wonderful collection of these faces of India

http://www.yannickcormier.com/#/gallery/portraits

Perfection….

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Last night everything just worked.  I knew why I was here.

It was full moon.  Or close enough anyway.  I met my close friends for dinner in the village.  Sitting at D’s table eating parotha dipped in palaak paneer and butter chicken and sipping warming beer, conversation drifted from stories of Auroville, to Pondicherry gossip and back again.  The consensus somehow always ending with everyone in agreement as lovers of India and this place, despite coming from an Indian farmer, a Jewish Brit developer, a Welshman who spent his career in Arab countries and me, SWFI,

Eventually the local farmer decided to “make a move” as they say here, and the three still sitting at the table began to recount sailing stories.  Tales from the Med, the Arab seas, the Great Lakes, Hong Kong harbour and the Caribbean rolled in one after the other while the Havana Club lubricated dry throats and the fans spun under the pandal.  Sitting 50 m from our beach on the Bay of Bengal where there is not a single wind powered boat, we shared our experiences with boats, yachts and catamarans on the waters of the world on boats crewed with people from as mixed backgrounds as ours.  Whenever people meet at this table, stories come out from all over the world and everyone finds themselves contributing to globalization almost unaware of what is happening, just sitting and sharing in this tiny fishing village no one can pronounce correctly, much less spell.

Eventually one of us had to climb into a taxi heading for the airport to catch flights back across those  seas to the UK and then Manhattan so we cleaned glasses and straightened chairs saying our good byes – some that are short lived until we meet for coffee the next morning, and others until sometimes a year or two later and in another country far from this quiet village garden.

I wandered home past the darkened houses with my dog trailing behind.  Not quite ready for sleep, I pushed through the house and out the salt corroded garden gate onto my beach.  And here too I found perfection.  The huge pearl of a moon hung in the sky shining over the waves crashing onto the beach.  The breeze was cool.  The sand I sat down on felt warm. The sheds scattered down the beach were empty except for the dark mounds of nets they sheltered.   My dog lay down next to me, a relatively rare occurrence, and watched the waves too.  I think she understood too that this was a special moment.  The waves were stirring up the plankton and as they rolled in they became for a moment fluorescent until they broke brilliant white with foam.  It was impossible to turn away and go home the scene was so beautiful and so mesmerizing and so full of energy but somehow also so calming.  How to share the feelings that surface when finds oneself alone with only the company of your favorite dog, in your own private Indian paradise?

I finally tore myself away and headed back to the house, reminded once again – as I am every day in some way, why I am here in this crazy, wonderful, challenging and exhilarating place so far from where I started.  The ending of another perfect day in India.

(Photo by S.Kolari)

Ice in India

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Ice.

Back where I come from, we have freezers full of it.  Trays, automatic ice dispensers, some of us even have our own ice makers.  We can walk up to any corner shop or gas station, open the freezer outside and take huge bags of it home.  It is available anytime, anywhere.  We use it all the time and never think twice.  There is always more somewhere.

Here in South India ice is a rare commodity, a luxury.  Most of us have miniature fridges, usually red for some reason, with a small plastic door enclosed freezer section at the top big enough for like 2 ice cubes, forget a tray.  Then of course with regular power cuts, it does get challenging to actually make or stock ice.  They don’t seem to last long without refrigeration for 12 hours at a time.  But even in big hotels, which surely have ice makers with back up gensets for continuous power,   the waiter puts the cubes in your cocktail glass slowly… slowly…one by one, asking each time if you really want one more so you don’t overindulge and use up his stock of 10 cubes… If you really insist you might get four, and then he takes the ice bucket away with him, just in case you get greedy.

The locals don’t really understand ice or freezers anyway, never having had access to them.  Anything cold is considered unhealthy.  When it is 45 C, one should drink steaming hot chai and avoid ice cream.  When the women who work with me do indulge with their children in a Sunday ice cream or cold soft drink, they always arrive at work the next day with sore throats and runny noses and insist it is the ice cream or cold drink they had the day before, (never the fan they slept under with wet, oiled open tresses).

It took years for me to understand why when served an ice cold beer at the end of a long day, the waiter always offered me the bottle to touch, hesitated, and then asked if I wanted him to open it.  Considering how desperate one generally is at that point to a cold, bubbly liquid running down one’s throat, it was always an exasperating delay.  Then one day I noticed the Indian men at the next table, shake their heads when they felt the bottle and leave it closed sitting on the table for ten minutes.  Only when it warmed up to a more healthy temperature, did they imbibe.

It is only with all this local knowledge behind me, that I manage to understand the challenges of the last 3 weeks in organising ice for my new restaurant.  I purchased 20 ice trays and asked the staff in my first restaurant to make ice in our 4 American style freezers from Monday to Friday.  I bought 2 Styrofoam coolers to transport and store the ice in the village restaurant where power cuts are random and long.  The first week the ice was delivered in the boxes by rickshaw, as requested.  However, when I opened the cooler there were large blocks of ice only.  Apparently every plastic Tupperware container we own had been filled with mineral water and stuck in the freezer – there were round, square and oblong blocks.  When I asked why, I was told it would stay colder longer that way.  They were a little confused when I mentioned that a block of ice the size a cake pan was difficult to insert in a glass.  It was supposed to go in a glass?

The next week,  the second attempt.  The problem was this time, they forgot to make ice until hours before the event I needed it for.  In case you were not aware, there is no such thing as a standing order in India.  If the boss does not remember to remind staff of the basic tasks, they are very often forgotten – oh, did you need sheets on the bed in the guest house this time? Sorry, Madame. You didn’t say. – Of course the cooler arrived as I did put that on the shopping list the day before, but it felt very light this time.  In fact there were only two small plastic bags of ice caps – that fragile surface that forms at the beginning of the development of an ice-cube.  Needless to say we had a supply of ice for the first 15 minutes of the event.

Last week, I tried again.  I managed to remind the staff to actually make the ice several days in advance.    By the weekend I was pleased to find a visible stock of correctly sized ice cubes that would fit in any glass, bagged up in my big freezers.  AND I even remembered to make sure that one of the coolers was available for transport.  However, as it is low season, our ready cash is very tight.  So this time ice was delivered by scooter rather than by the more spacious but unfortunately expensive rickshaw.  One of the “good” things about my staff is they do try to save me as much money as possible.  Anyway, because of the limited space on the scooter, the cooler could not be utilized.  Instead the ice was packed in the much more convenient, readily available, branded, cotton shopping bag with wooden handles.  The bag was easily hooked on the scooter body, next to the vehicle’s nice, warm engine and driven the 20 minutes to my second establishment under the noon day sun – it was only 37 C that day.  My assistant walked confidently into the kitchen with 3 ice cubes left in the sodden, dripping and dust covered bag.

I swear I will have ice cubes eventually.

I just need a little patience.

Right?

 

(Photo by S. Kolari)