From: Anya Bernstein
Subject: Fieldnotes on the go
   Date: August 8, 2005 1:22:04 PM CEST
     To: Undisclosed recipients

As we were approaching the gates intending to leave, one monk caught up with us and said something in a broken English. It looked like we were finally being granted a rendez-vous! The swami turned out to be a smiley clean-shaven middle-aged man in orange robes, speaking quite good English. "After all this trouble - you better know what you're going to ask him," W. whispered into my ear, making me even more nervous. Having summoned the remains of my brains not quite melted from the deadly heat-humidity combination, I came up
with a self-introduction and a few decent questions, which seemed to please the swami.
The swami told us that his main disciples were in fact
Westerners, because locals were too interested in "material things." It turned out that the guru to whom the ashram was devoted was quite
iconoclastic. NEXT PAGE >