Do You Believe Laughter Can Save Us?

Mincho left this morning. We had our last class together last night, which was eerily quiet without the loud, mad energy of Babaji. I'm beginning to think when Swamiji said "Babaji pagal" [crazy] he wasn't far off. But then he says that about me too, a lot the time.

Swamiji once said, "First they crazy, then to us making crazy." I thought it was hilarious, at the time.

Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin into the future...

Mincho's gone. And then there were three. Jessie's backpack is packed.

And I just lost quite a few very important sentences! Sentences that carried the weight of the word in brilliant, deep, insightful thoughts when the power shut off at the internet place. Stoopid internet place, where the keyboard wouldn't let me use the @ symbol, or punctuation like an exclamation mark. I've been going there for ages and the guy who looks like my cousin Tony gave me a crap computer. (I don't know if I've bothered to tell you that my favourite guys here in India all remind me of my cousins, so I've come to think of them as nice guys and family. And I think they too, have come to see me in a certain way, but I don't know the word for weirdo.)

I stomped outside, annoyed. But then I was immediately happy to see it was raining! But then I realised it was not a good scene for me: the street is still pink from the colour festival, and now the road looked like the floor of a old world style meat house, a butcher's stand. I had to lift my pant legs and I was wearing a white shirt.

My thoughts in quick succession: I love rain! This is beautiful and freaky! Why does this have to happen on the day I'm wearing a white shirt and I forgot my modesty shawl?

The ground was covered in mud and cow patties. Or maybe it was all cow patties, wet and smooshed around by the multitude of motorbikes but I was trying not to think about it, I was trying to avoid wiping out - and let me tell you it was like trying to walk on ice, pure ice with no snow, in flip flops. No wonder we don't wear them during the winter in Canada, they have no tread! I was going slow and trying to be quick because IT WAS RAINING WHILE I WAS WEARING A WHITE SHIRT.

I ran to my new favourite internet place for shelter thinking, I'll hide out there at Kalu's. I ran in and told him, "Hey, what's this? Rain in Pushkar!" and Kalu said "Yes, sometimes rain comes."

I said "Where I come from it rains like this all the time!"

And the lone fellow sitting at a computer behind me said "Vancouver or Seattle?" I was so happy to hear the name of the place I have resided in spoken out-loud, clear and familiar, like the smell of rain, the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, the smell of comfort. I turned around and said "Vancouver!"

He said "Me too." And added that he thought there could be only two places in the world with that description, of it raining all the time. (Though afterwards I thought he clearly hadn't heard of Prince Rupert, which I've never been to but heard enough of from my boss that I knew, that's not the place for me. It's for vampires and people who have that life-altering allergy to the sun.)

Next thing I know, we're chatting about where we're from, the 'hood, travelling and yoga. Then Jessie comes in, and hey, she's very familiar, bahut atcha (very good!). By then I was feeling like "I have my gulab jamun and I can eat it too!"

Within minutes, all four computers are taken, this particular internet place is a satellite of the place that I decided sucked (Thanks for nahin, cousin Tony look-a-like!). I was looking up another possible ashram place to go to, and the dates aren't working out unless I can fly from Delhi to Kolkatta and race to the airport. Both airports. As in, race to Delhi and then race Delhi to Kolkatta.

Uhm, no thank you. No matter what I blog, I like my life. I'm sorta attached to it, or so I've been told.

And If you think my motorbike traffic stories are scary, you don't want to hear the stories I've heard about using airlines inside of India. Plus, one of the airlines, Kingfisher, the one Jessie joked I may have to take, is named after a beer company. The motto on all their ad posters is Kingfisher, Fly the Good Times. Riiiiiight. As if I would fly Labatts Lines or Molson Canadian Airways back home. I think not.

I was commenting that sure, I really need that cabin pressure headache when the guy sitting next to me says "They're not bad, actually." And so I struck up a conversation with him. He said they don't serve beer on the flight. I asked that ever eternal question: Which came first, the beer company or the airline? Turns out it was the beer company. I shoulda guessed it. I mean, man has been distilling whatever he could get his hands on since the dawn of time, while those flying machines Leonardo sketched took a little longer to get off the ground.

This Kingfisher-is-okay young man looked thoroughly trustworthy. He was looking up trains, asked if I had booked any train tickets online or if I could figure out the India Rail website. But of course, of course, there is nothing to it. And for my next trick I'll split an atom with my mind. Then he says "This is almost as bad as the trains back home."

So of course I said "How hungry are you?" Ha ha. Okay it's like this: in Catskills, the entertainer with the gold lamé jacket comes out and says "I'm so hungry" and the audience yells back "How hungry are you?" And he says "I'm so hungry, a wino came up and told me he hadn't had a bite in days, so I bit him."

Accompanying sound effect: Wah, wah, wah

Way. Okay so what I really said was "Where's home?" and he answered "Toronto."

You don't want to know how close I came to yelling out "GO TEAM CANADA!"

I did say it. I said "Jessie guess what?" I pointed to myself and the two others and said "Canada, Canada, Canada! Go team Canada!" Then I turned and said to Kalu, "He comes from the town I was born in and he comes from the place I live now."

It may seem like I'm making a big deal outta nothing, but it made me laugh. And that's bahut atcha because I was still feeling sad about Babaji and Mincho. I missed Yoga today because yesterday I drank the water and am paying the ancient Indian flutist-piper today.

All this was on my mind as I was pondering why it made me feel so good, this temporary meeting of the Northern Lights commonwealth. And I was thinking about this question I came across just this morning, in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven:

Do you believe laughter can save us?

I think the real reason I was so thrilled to hear folks from Soviet Canuckistan lies in this other brilliant Alexie line:

The ordinary can be like medicine.