Another Day in Paradise

It has taken just one month for me to let go of all the trappings of the so-called Modern Life. The telephone company I hooked up with here charges the most insane rates for me to call home so I rarely use the damn thing and have taken to walking to the Store to make my overseas calls. I am pretty much undercover here from my gang of Indian friends so nobody calls at all. The only messages I get are from the rip off phone company so last week I turned it off. Forays into the town are something I can only bear to do once a month because even the sound of the tiny hill station traffic is far to jarring on my nerves. Instead I do without the things I think I need in town and shop at the local store which is located over Cardiac Hill, a brief but steep ten-minute hike away.
The last thing to go was my Internet connection. Strangely, it didn’t hurt a bit! Instead of running to the laptop periodically to check if I had enough signal strength to open an email for God’s sakes, I am pecking at stories and editing and polishing and shining. Instead of cyber love I am sending letters and postcards and getting fit as I do so.
Today I walked to the store and asked if I could use the internet connection. After about ten minutes the guy came back and said, “Internet is not working here today”
“Okay,” I said and smiled in slow relief. “Another day with absolutely no tension.”
Slowly but surely I have adapted into the bliss of Slow Living. This is the India I fell in love with years ago before tourism made its impact on all the small towns the hippies ‘discovered’. It’s an India of no roads and small grocery items, of living without electricity at times and being cut off from the world. Of cooking for yourself and adapting to the local lifestyle.  It’s an India where the locals are graciously accepting of foreigners but not at all intrusive. This is the India with funky little shops just bursting with curiosities and fascinating mysteries that support local living. The India where no one is calling you to come look their shop, buy their carpets or crap jewellery. Tourists don’t exist here, only people.
So yeah, life in the slow lane is pretty damn fine. I wake with the sun, do yoga (or get done by it) to the rays of the rising sun. I drink coffee with fresh buffalo milk as I write and I roam alone across the mountaintops. It’s a simple happiness bought about by living simply, needing very little and being in the breast of mother nature. The only thing I want that I don’t have here is a publishing contract and I am working on that!