Pune June.
Seasons are so cool.
Pune is not at all how I left it.
Just three weeks ago, I remember tiptoeing out of my grandparents’ house in the pitch black darkness to go for morning yoga. Now I make my 5:45 am departure in bright, yawning daylight. With a cool breeze tickling your face, it is quite incredible.The city is still quiet, as no matter what season, Pune doesn’t wake up until at least 9am. I can just see everything better.
I hear the monsoons are coming. I’m not exactly sure what that means. But it’s why the cool breeze blows all day. Pune has actually cooled down a lot. The other evening, I closed my eyes to the dust, bare feet, and rickshaws and felt like I was in California.
Maybe this is why I haven’t gotten even one mosquito bite. Just ant bites. The rain has brought ants instead, which I can tolerate. I am allergic to mosquitos not ants. And I find it rather delightful to squish ants.
The fruit sellers are selling mangoes and lychee. Mangos and lychee everywhere! Not a grape or orange in sight. A small bummer for me because I am not a huge fan of mangos and lychee. But according to our neighbor, Kalyani Aunty, all of the Maharastrans live off of mangoes this time of year. I did find some papaya and mossambi (sweet lime).
My first-day back in Pune was a comic strip. A completely unproductive day for my American eyes. Not one thing got done on my list. Or on my second less important list. It killed me inside. I kept falling into sleep from my jet-lag. I felt so helpless.
Luckily this lasted just a day. A very necessary dose of Indian medicine. When I woke up the next morning after 12 hours of sleep, I decided to take the week off. Or maybe even the month. Just to focus on taking care of myself, doing my yoga, and letting my to-dos happen organically.
I had forgotten that you cannot expect anything to happen when and how you want it to happen in India. The country thrives on chaos and spontaneity. Anything-goes, everything-goes, and nothing-goes depending on how you look at it. As my friend put it, “partly beautiful, partly frustrating“. Embrace this and you will flourish.
So now that I have removed the bar, I am happy to say that things are moving along! I am working on cleaning and setting up my new little place in the happening Sacred Heart Town. Lining up a few yoga jobs. Taking care of grandparents’ household while they are away. I set homemade dahi (yogurt) today, all by myself. Leaving plenty of room for taking care of ME and for the spontaneous gifts that pop up in India.
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Really nice to see my yoga friends again. Pallavi and I have all of these dreams for the future. The yoga boys were shy when they first met me in the morning, but by late afternoon they were excitedly asking me all sorts of questions about America, like “what does USA stand for?”, and laughing at my accent. I gave them each a t-shirt that I had brought from America, which made them shy again.
Check out our yoga photo shoot! These are the faces that you will see all over Pune in our new ads :).
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Today is June 1st. My special month. June is notorious for taking me on crazy rides of change and excitement. I’m bracing myself. Let’s see what happens ;).
Going to visit Guruji Iyengar today and take my first class of the new year.
Much love,
More later,
SONIA
