Feast or Famine

I spent about eight days in Anandpur Sahib, the second holiest city in the Sikh religion. My friend Gurudharm manages Yogi Bhajan’s ashram and personal residence there. My friendship with GD goes back to my New York days, when she still had a western name. We met at the Loving Touch Center, 33rd and Madison, where we were both “studying” Reiki.

GD was the best foodie friend I’d ever had. When we lived in Manhattan, if I called her up to chat, she’d usually suggest we meet for a meal instead of talking on the phone. I learned my favorite food trick from her: in Sushi restaurants I always request a half a lemon that I squeeze into a dab of wasabi for the best sauce ever.

In Anandpur Sahib, though, I quickly came to regret complaining about being overfed elsewhere in my travels. My Anandpur Sahib experience didn’t include much food. On my second day there, GD announced she was undertaking a beet fast for the next 40 days. This meant her staff boiled, steamed and stir-fried red beets about eight hours a day. Although I can’t really figure out what GD does at her ashram, I can tell you what she doesn’t do: cook, clean, do laundry, drive, run errands, answer the phone, feed her dog (or her dog’s three puppies), grocery shop, wash dishes, change linens.

[Okay, what I wrote is totally uncalled for. GD manages the ashram and all the groups who visit there, and maintains the entire complex, which includes a mansion, three guesthouses and conference facilities. She designs the landscaping. She instructs workers on how to create retaining walls to keep the monsoons from sweeping the entire ranch away. She even figured out how to stop the water from flooding into the mansion. She’s part architect, part engineer, part artist and part spiritual leader. She also meditates four hours a day.]

But I get cranky when I’m hungry and I spent a lot of time hungry in Anandpur Sahib, which isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, even by Indian standards. Further, GD doesn’t actually live in the town. She lives in the village of Banni, about a 25-minute walk from any store or café. It rained nonstop for about five days. I watched with increasing horror as the stash of granola and noodle masala (the Indian version of Oodles of Noodles) dwindled precariously low.

But again, I’m not being entirely fair to Gurudharm. All I had to do was ask, and she would have happily sent one of the servants to get me a meal. She made me popcorn for movie night (Erin Brockovich, for the 200th time). But I resented the timing of her fast. I was there to visit for just a few days. Couldn’t she have waited a bit longer before beginning her bizarre beet diet?

But what made me most uncomfortable about my time with Gurudharm was realizing how much alike we are. I’m not exactly the most generous, gracious hostess when I have houseguests. In observing Gurudharm I came to realize what drives my bad behavior when I invite people into my home: fear. I’m afraid of anything that upsets my regular routine. I’m scared because I don’t believe I can be myself and be with another.

So much of what I witnessed in Gurudharm reminded me of how I behave when my mother is visiting. I promise to take my mom here, there, everywhere and, inevitably, I don’t do 90 percent of what I promised. And I, too, have wacky, restrictive diets that don’t work at all for my mom (or anyone else). As I hunkered down in my gorgeous, opulent room in Yogi B’s mansion, I had an image of my mom visiting me, sitting alone, reading novels, trying to make herself invisible, caring for my dogs. Walking a mile in my Mom’s shoes surely has not been fun.

Besides fear, another character defect drives my totally self-centered behavior: spending way too much time alone. People are social animals; we are used to living in packs. Isolate us too long and we become either incapable or unwilling to rejoin the herd. Middle-aged spinsters are downright scary.

One of Gurudharm’s friends invited me to a wedding in Ludhiana, which is a town two hours away from Anandpur Sahib. I wanted to go (if for no other reason than to get a decent meal) but I was sick. I’m guessing I had the flu, since there’s really no possibility of it being food poisoning.

After a few days at the ashram, I went for a walk. I stopped by what I thought was a dhaba (roadside café) to have lunch. I was admittedly a bit delirious from hunger. The guys served me up a feast: potatoes, roti (bread), vegetable mush. They spoke not one word of English; I speak no Punjabi. I ate until I was stuffed. When I tried to settle my bill, they seemed a bit miffed. Turns out, I was not in a dhaba; it was their house. They wouldn’t accept any money from me. I wonder what they were thinking as I left—the irony of them feeding a starving American?

What Anandpur Sahib lacked in food, it more than made up for in serenity. I’d been traveling non-stop for almost two months. With GD, I got a much-needed rest. And then I headed back to Manali.

I just totally love Manali. Second to San Francisco, it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Surrounded by the high Himalaya, which are not distant as they are in other Indian hill towns, Manali is western enough to be comfortable, but it’s still no-doubt-about-it India.

Before I left here the first time this trip, I was invited to a dinner/birthday party hosted by the people who are creating the Himlayan Ski Village (HSV), the first world-class ski resort in the Himalaya. The concept began with my friend Himanshu. Having trained as a ski instructor in Switzerland, returning to Manali had only one drawback for him: there are no ski lifts to transport skiers to the best powder on the planet. HSV, a four hundred million dollar project that will include the highest gondola in the world, was inspired by Himanshu’s overriding thought when he returned to Manali: “I’m sick of carrying my skis up the mountain.”

When I left here a few weeks ago, there was barely any snow. Now, the entire area is snow-covered. We still have to carry our skis up the hill for the time being, which is not fun. But the ride down more than makes up for it.