India, Kumbh Mela, 2019

Mumbai Airport, February 17, 2019 ~India, reflective thoughts

Waiting on my connecting flight back to the States, I found an airport pub with some good jazz, pretty decent Malbec red, and a corner with soft light, the perfect place to sit and drop down some reflections of my time in Varanasi & Allahabad, India

I spent the last month taking bucket baths in the cold mornings while listening to jackals and peacocks call out to their tribe.

I urinated alongside friends and strangers in ditches at roadside bus stops and did not really care. 

I ate amazing Indian food that was prepared by the local people which made the Allahabad Campus feel like home. 

I sat in meditation at sunrise, going deep within my own heart, experiencing feelings, energy, profound thoughts, contemplative new questions, and possibilities. I sat in personal conversations with God every morning along the river, embracing community practice of prayer, chanting, and celebrating the Rudra Yaga, during the 2019 Kumbh Mela.

I took a Sacred dip in Ma Ganga. I walked away from the holy river holding hands with a stranger and feeling a meditative softness that has lasted throughout my days in India.

I spent hours looking for the perfect mala beads for my children, holding their beads tightly in prayer and pouring love from every cell of my body into them so that my son and my girls will feel the depth of my love for them even after I’m gone. 

I whispered prayers and felt a profound love of the world around me and most importantly for myself. The latter was an experience that I recognized while on another pilgrimage in another faraway land. A return to this profound love of self and the world around me is like a reset button for my Soul.

I gazed with sweetness at the various eyes of God in the many faces of my fellow human beings, I laughed from my heart, got gloriously lost in a holy city, and trusted everything to God. I shared smiles, hugs, and “Selfies” with strangers that became friends if only for a moment through nothing more than curiosity and the human connection.  I received colorful blessing bindis on my forehead from many Babas but none more special than from Luke, my teacher whom I watched and learned from afar with a shy heart.

I explored the Kumbh Mela and the maze of Varanasi on my own, testing the limits of my own inner security. I joined complete strangers on walks, dinners, and in heartfelt conversation. I watched in awe, prayed, and chanted at the Sunrise and Sunset Arti’s in celebration of the fire of life that is within us all. I took a lazy sunrise boat ride along the Ganga River and laughed with the joy of sisters bathing and singing in the Sacred River. They shimmered like jewels on the water as their gem-colored Sarees danced in the rising sun. I watched with humble stillness and primordial fascination as bodies were burned with an ancient fire and released to Nirvana on the banks of the same river that my sisters bathed and sang while their children played.

I silently prayed for and felt the pain of not having enough to share with hungry children. I felt anger, disgust, and sorrow at the destruction of mother earth with all of the trash, cow shit, and rubble in a country with so much and so little. I felt fear and misunderstanding in the contradiction of a spiritual land, yet I saw myself in the whole.

Thank you, India for the teachings and the lessons that will continue to emerge for years to come.

Photographs by Leora Sanchez ~2019