Friday!

Led class was good this morning. I practiced a few people away from Govinda Kai. He is from Japan and one of the certified teachers. He is here with his wife Mai, who is pregnant with their first. www.lunaticmonk.com He is a very good soul and an amazing photographer. You can actually follow his photos of Mysore here, they are stunning: http://www.flickr.com/photos/govindakai/page1/

I got home and haven’t been able to use my key to open our door. I try and tell Laksmi not to turn the little lock knob, but with our language barrier it is not getting through well. So I walked Laksmi outside to say goodbye and slam…. Mags shut the door on us. Luckily Laksmi has a key, so I borrowed it and….you got it. Mags was locked inside b/c that little lock knob was turned. Crappy doodle. You see, our house is like a fortress and there are horizontal bars on every window, just like Compton, and the doors have about 5 locks to each one. Hmmmm.

I walk to the window and say “Mags, go to the door and turn the little knob to the left.” She said ok, grabbed my keys and started using the keys in the lock. Close. So this went on for about 15 minutes and I was like ok, we are going to need a welder to cut through the bars to get me in. Just then Jess, was driving by on her scooter taking the kids to school. I said, can you call Shiva, our building manager, and tell him to come down?

In the meantime, our neighbor came over and was trying windows, my key and so forth. He ran 5 doors down to the owner’s house, but they weren’t home. Then Swami, our rickshaw driver pulled up. We were starting to attract a crowd and luckily Mags was laughing at the window thinking the whole thing was fun. I was happy for that.

Swami tried the keys. I said it’s not the key, it’s the little lock knob inside. He got it though he speaks no English. He ran down to get some more friends. Then the 3 Japanese girls who just moved in got home from practice. They were so cute in their soft spoken accents, “Maggie-chan, go to the door and see the little knob turn it to the left.” Mags laughed with them and kept showing them her stuffed dog. As they were trying to get her to go for about 10 minutes, 3 more rickshaw drivers showed up. I love these guys as they are all really good guys, and have been so good to us.

Mags was doing ok and the amazing thing was that everybody was really calm just working out solutions. They looked over the situation and tried to get Mags to turn the lock, but after 2 minutes Swami ran and got this long metal pole. I guess a neighbor had it. So they knocked out the screen and started pushing the pole through the bars to reach the lock. It made it, but couldn’t catch the lock. I thought, hmmm, this is a good idea.

As they were trying that and talking to Mags, 2 of the Japanese girls were back with their digital camera. They had run upstairs and made a video of them unlocking their door (same door as ours). Totally hillarious! Mind you they don’t speak English, so many giggles here. They got Mags to the window and played it for her and then the one who speaks pretty good English said, ok Maggie now you go unlock the door just like that.

I stood back, pretty calm, as I knew if nothing worked, I was going to get a welder to cut the bars and we would be in. But I marveled at the 3 countries we had here and each of our approaches to get her out. 1-US) cut the bars and get in, 2-Japan) use their lovely electronic gadgets to make a movie of how to open the door and 3- India) here comes Swami with another pole, this time a 10 foot bamboo pole and a small metal hook on the end. It was a coconut pole that pulls the coconuts down from the trees! I love it!

Now with about 12 people all hovering around and Mags smiling watching the movie babbling to the Japanese girls, the neighbors standing by and we’re talking our broken English with eachother, and the rickshaw guys all guiding this pole through the bars and talking to Mags to stand back. Two neighbors are walking up with a bamboo ladder, saying they could punch out the screen above the front door and reach through the bars to unlock the top locks on the door and then kick the door in. It was great!

Just then…click! The coconut pole worked!!!! Amazing! I ran around and had someone, not sure who had my keys, throw them to me and click again. I’m in! Everybody was cheering and clapping, the Japanese girls are documenting this on their camera and Mags started clapping. It was a wonderful way to start our morning!

I said thanks, we changed and off we went to breakfast. Just another lovely Indian day!

Tomorrow we are off to Melkote, about 60 km from here for a day trip. Rachel, a really great gal from Colorado is joining us. Sanjay, one of our rickshaw driver’s older brother, drives a car and is picking us up at 9 a.m. Rachel recently got divorced after 11 years. Her husband bought her out of the house and she is now traveling for a year maybe longer around the world. She is writing a book and teaching yoga workshops. Her next one is in Bali in 2 weeks. I immediatly liked her when she told me this story. I thought, right on girl, get busy living!

I’m sure we will have some stories tomorrow after our day trip. Early evening we go to a benefit kirtan for the Onandi Project. They are working with women and children here to stop the trade of human trafficking. It is scary and truly happens here. They have helped 1500 women and children to date. Tomorrow nite, we bring in our 2nd doggy for spaying/neutering. Busy day!

To end here, I signed up for my last month at the shala today with Sharath and paid my rupees. We actually had a little conversation and I liked that. It was nice. He smiled and said, you must get supta kurmasana. I said you got it, next week, I am all over it!

Ok, power just went out for the 3rd time today. Mags is asleep and I am getting eaten by mosquitos. Time to sign off.

Jai, jai jai!