Our House

The saga of where to live continues, owing very much to my display of one of my ex’s most annoying personality traits: equivocation.

In my fantasy of coming to India to study yoga, I pictured myself living in some quaint little shack for maybe $150 a month. It wasn’t too detailed, there was no image of the bathroom or kitchen specifically. Maybe a sunny courtyard with flowers. Windows. Walls.

The first place I stayed in, a single room with toilet, fridge and fan, was costing me $275 a month. At least it had a cute little courtyard. Then along came a friend of a friend and the next thing I know I’m installed in a beautiful villa, complete with a pool and flowers and peace and quiet, free of charge. I actually left the first place early figuring it was worth the 1200 rupees to get into something with a kitchen. It might have been, too, except that Mr. Friend of a Friend might not have had permission to install me in his parent’s villa, and so I had to move from there at the end of week one anyway, making it a wash financially but a not insignificant mental and emotional deficit.

Except that I landed in the Big Brother compound, next door to the house where all the yogis live, which has turned out to be fabulous. Thanks to sharing kitchen facilities with them, I got to know Nathan and Anna. Nathan and Anna live in yet another house on the compound, a two-unit space with a little deck and an attached kitchen. They did the teacher training course last year, and Anna is back to assist with the teacher training students and Nathan is taking massage and meditation courses in addition to doing some teaching. I fell in love with Anna when she called me a lazy trollop and Nathan when he dubbed the Tibetan groundskeeper, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Huge hearts, but even bigger senses of humor, they lack the dreaded yogic personality trait: earnestness.

But I didn’t know all that after I’d been here for a week. I wasn’t sure I’d want to stay. The first few days I was here I burnt the shit out of my hand. I was exhausted pretty much all the time. Nathan and Anna had signs made for their house, “Ken” and “Barbie.” They were a unit and I was on the periphery. My room which—in deference to Big Brother’s “real” name, Casa Mojo—I dubbed Casa Mojito, was reeking with the vibe of the heroin addicts living upstairs. I didn’t want to be in my room, and I wasn’t sure how much time I could spend at Ken and Barbie’s. So I kept the feelers out looking for other places. When Auntie, Big Brother’s dotty matron, asked me how long I was staying, I said, “I don’t know.”

The other phenomenon that comes into play here is The Season. The closer we get to Christmas, the rooms are sold out and prices get jacked up. There are fewer and fewer houses available. Of the houses I did see I told almost every one that I’d move there, then Ken and Barbie would come for a looksee and point out the things I’d missed. “Only well water you have to pump for yourself? Hmm.” Or, “look at that ceiling, the rats can just jump right into bed with you.” Or, “no refrigerator?” I was paying 6000 rupees a month for my room at Casa Mojito, and these places were a minimum of 8000 a month, plus electricity. So I sort of lazed into thinking I’d just stay on at Big Brother. But for the Auntie factor, I might. She’s gone and rented the room out to someone else!

And so, Nathan, Anna and I plot to make that untenable, but in the meantime I may end up moving to Ginny and Sara’s when the course finishes. We’ll see.






[tagname]