28 January, apparently Saturday...

Organized chaos... in the Universe, in our comprehension of life, in our thoughts, in the way we move or talk, in our feelings or in the birds going South. Varanasi train station is also organized chaos. I've never seen that before... Hundreds of people, everywhere, mainly on the floor, with their own places, food, toilets, with their own hope... to get into the next train. We were going to Gorakhpur from Bodhgaya and had to change in Varanasi. We didn't know they had one of their Mehlas (religious feasts). And we didn't know they'd all want to take the same train we bought tickets for. How to describe... lake of people. Sea... Ocean... with inner rivers and boats. With luggages and prayers. Noisy, stincky, pushing, swearing, crying... Someone told us they changed all the sleeper coaches into the sitting ones. If you've ever taken a train in India, you'd understand what I mean if I say organizes chaos, right? Indian don't buy tickets to sitting trains, they just go. But when you have thousands of those who just go... Police was rude and violent. Somehow we managed to find someone who would help us to squeeze into our coach. Terrible. They through out five or seven people for us three. Difficult to be equanimous. Difficult not to gasp. C'etait infernal... Then in the train... you couldn't step - people EVERYWHERE, literally. We had to find out places and convince people that we had right to occupy them (actually not a problem - the policemen were outside shouting on people through the window and nobody protested, they just had this crazy inner wave of anger towards us...). We tried to sleep on our benches surrounded by faces (close to me there were 4 women sitting on the floor, and some more in my feet). In the middle of the night more policemen came and there was a fight and they were throwing people out again and then nicely asking us if we were ok, if our luggage was safe. Sad... specially when you understand that it's all about money - the ticket I bought was 80 rupees, 1,5 euros and it gave me right to be treated as a human being. Sad, again and again. Well, let everybody be peaceful and happy, policemen included! At the end it turned out to be less drama than I thought and we even had sandwiches and tango music for breakfast!

So we arrived in Lumbini, for that had to go through 101 small things - rikshaws, immigration service, busses, dust, people, traffic, long walk with bags, screaming monkeys. Crazy day! Oh, Lumbini... Buddha was born here. There are tens of monasteries around, have never seen that before, it's a big supermarket! The town turned out to be a one-street village, like in a spaghetti-westerns. Pretty clean and with nice people... Everything much more expensive than expected, but I supposed it's due to the wave of tourists coming from India to spend their obligatory gap of two months outside the country. Locals are spoiled by the amount of money floating here as well (Lumbini is a UNESCO-heritage place, but everything is done in a real wannagenna style, roads go out of the plan, money disappears etc)

Right now in the vipassana center, on a short 3 days self-retreat - after the previous course ended they nicely let us stay, providing food and shelter. I am supposed to meditate, but now it's 21.34, there's no light, and if I sit and concentrate on my sensations, I immediately fall asleep, so I decided to write all this instead. See you  soon!

Be Happy and don't forget to chew!

(oh, the lights are on again, I'll try to do some vipassana...)