Wednesday 15 October 2008

I’m off to India to become a Naga…

***


WOW! So I have my life back. After finishing my pact with the dissertation devil I can resume my favourite pleasures, namely: gossiping, partying, mooching, reading, and yoga, (but no DJ'ing as my decks don’t fit in my new room), and of course blogging – it’s been a while.

But one evening, after another 13 hour day slogging it out as a trainee journalist, I returned to a house full of ghosts, with no food in the cupboard, no money in the wallet, and the nights drawing in, and wondered whether it was all really worth it?

Retiring to my basement bedsit on the wrong side of town, I flicked gloomily through the credit crunching channels warning me of the looming recession, climate change, and the end of the world...

But something cheered me up – Channel Five's 'Paul Merton in India'.

The programme featured Nagas (the naked) who have no worries at all.

Living a minimalist life, and hanging around in tribes called ashrams, the dread-locked devotees to the Hindu goddess Shiva are devoid of material possessions, and clothe themselves in nothing but ash.


They spend their time worshiping, meditating, sun saluting, and sitting cross-legged on mats weaving necklaces around camp fires.

One evening they entered a beautiful temple to celebrate Shiva’s wedding, where they danced around whooping and hugging each other with eyes wide as space-saucers, and then jumped into a fountain - kind of like a rave without any music.

Personally, I frown upon some of their traditions, such as smoking copious amounts of weed, and balancing large rocks off their penis’ - but I guess they meditate enough to balance out the cannabis psychosis, and are too busy getting wrecked to start a family anyway.

So there you go, I’m shedding my worldly possessions and clothes, and heading for a trouble free life in the sun...

Namaste.