michelle winegar

When I was a little girl I asked my grandmother, who had travelled all over the world (including Japan, Africa, New Zealand, Europe), which place was her favourite? She thought for a few moments, sipped tea from a dainty bone china teacup, and said, “Thailand. The people I met there had the most lovely dispositions.” My grandmother then told me about the chirpy tour guide who showed her around the palace in the 1970’s, the clean streets of Bangkok, and the purple orchids that were served with tea each afternoon.

Forty years later and two days ago I arrived here in a blur, booking a flight from the Delhi hotel room where I contracted giardia, a type of food poisoning that, as a friend put it, feels like you have “a gurgling monster in the belly.” Travelling in India for two months on my own wore me down, along with a few unfortunate encounters, and I was needing a little bit of TLC.

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And then
--suddenly--
a change.
This good feeling

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 1. An umbrella is useful in India from 11 AM - 4 PM, if the sun is scorchin' hot! Other useful things: a metal cup, a spoon, hand sanitizer, acidophilus, natural mosquito repellent (just leave the malaria pills at the drugstore already), emergency diarrhea pills ('nuff said), spirulina, electrolytes, health insurance, friends, an ipod.

2. If you make your aya (housekeeper) lunch, he will move said lunch to stand and eat at the kitchen counter, and you--crimson faced--will eat alone at the table. (Moments later though I had a redeeming moment: He had been trying to help me cook all week but I would not relinquish this task. When he took the first bite, he blinked and looked at me wide-eyed with surprise, saying, "Good dahl!")

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"But it is not a question of minimizing the fear, it is a question of completely uprooting the fear. It is not a question of adjustment to fear, it is a question of utterly burning fear away."

--Osho

I have just dined with a friend at the Yogi Café (papaya soy shake and heavenly green salad--to the contrary of every guidebook about India there are actually “safe” salads here in select joints). My friend and I are celebrating--having recently finished course in craniosacral (biodymanic) principles at the Osho Institute, which is just up the street in a bejewelled corner of Koregaon District in Pune, India. We take a short walk after dinner and I hail a rickshaw home to my one-bedroom flat.

The driver is a young man. He is very friendly. I ask how much and he says 20 rupees, 10 less than usual so I am pleased. I say goodbye to my friend and hop in. The driver makes polite conversation. "Are you married?" he says.

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After the seven-day fast at Ananda Resort on kpp, I develop a new affinity for potato chips. And French fries. And deep fried foods of all persuasions. My body, it seems, is rejecting the new weight of 119 pounds and conspires to pack back on those 12 beloved pounds in record time.

Prior to the fast, I did not indulge in wheat or sugar or dairy. But in the few days following the detox, I merrily weed through brightly-lit aisles of the many 7-11s that litter this island, happy to not know the Thai translation for “MSG,” “glucose” or “trans-fat.”

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