Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva: Spiritual Beard, Secular Vagina

Yoga is about letting go of fixed viewpoints. After healing my sad and damaged relationship with my pubic hair, I decided that I still wanted to get it ripped off. My change of heart had almost everything to do with the fact that in Mysore, Pube Eradication costs between 300 and 700 rupees. This equals about $5.50 to $13.00 Canadian dollars. Good deal.

Due to Pube Eradication Trauma from another era, I selected the most luxurious option. Legend has it that the 300 rupees ladies use extremely hot wax. None of my friends who had gone had ended up with debilitating blisters; however, they felt this was maybe a risk. So Flaunt Beauty Salon it was.

Last Tuesday, my father and his girlfriend left for their tour of Kerala. I waved them good-bye from the coconut stand before immediately dragging myself and my abundant crotch all the way to the fancy salon in Vivi Mohalla. But as fate would have it, Flaunt Beauty Salon was closed. Apparently Tuesday is not a good day for new yoga postures or elite bikini waxing. Perhaps it has something to do with Hanuman. Whatever the reason, my pubic hair would remain attached to me for one more day, or at least until after lunch when I could re-evaluate the risk-benefit ratio of the Hot Wax Ladies.

Lunch was with three friends. We drove there on one scooter. Of course, I wasn’t the driver. Instead I blabbered away about my deepest values in life. In Halifax, I once hired a psychologist for 165 dollars and he told me to talkabout my deepest values in life. In Mysore, I get to go on and on about this all day, and it’s even cheaper than waxing your pubic hair. That said, during the last two conferences, Sharath has reminded us that yogis don’t talk too much. Each time on my way out, someone has called out to me, “Hey Erica, did you hear that? You never hear yogis talking.” So far my only comeback has been to point out that during these same conferences in which Sharath has warned us about excessive babble, he happened to go on and on about lions and tigers and leopards and trees. So maybe a moderate verbal machine gun is okay, especially if I switch my subject matter to lions and tigers and leopards and trees. Although maybe from now on, I will reduce my scooter chatting.

This is to say that while I was yammering away about infinite patience and moula bandha, we had a mild crash. Traffic laws in India are vague, and there are quite a lot of scooters and cars buzzing around, along with a few buses. While crossing a busy street, a guy on a scooter pulled quickly in front of us, and we had a little fender bender. Our scooter fell pretty slowly to the left. My friend who was driving broke most of the fall with her hand and foot. I hit the ground skidding the pavement only slightly with my shoulder, hand and knee. Due to my longstanding fear of amputation and spinal cord injuries, I am not the best with accidents. But I feel like I could have been much more hysterical. And lucky for us, except for a few gashes and bruises, nobody was seriously hurt. The steering of my friend’s scooter went a little wonky, but the mechanic solved this problem by generously banging on it with a hammer on a couple of occasions.

After lunch, despite having no swelling and full range of motion in all of my body parts, I started to fret about whether or not I’d broken my wrist. After all, the fall had been similar to the time I fell off my bike in Montreal and broke my arm. My Cool Friend From Belgium reassured me with her osteopathic knowledge that broken bones typically perpetuate at least a some swelling. But surely there was some bone in your body you could break without knowing. After twelve and a half minutes of stressing, it occurred to me that perhaps it was an excellent time to go to the Hot Wax Ladies and get my pubes waxed off. In fact, this proved to be an excellent cure.

The Hot Wax Ladies, around the corner from the Shala

“Not too hot?” I asked the lady as I lay sweating in terror on the vinyl table.

“No, no Madam,” said the Hot Wax Lady. She blew diligently on the wax which she spread on my vagina with a wide wooden popsicle stick. It was burning hot.

“No stressing, Madam,” she said. “Making wet, very sweaty. Very sweaty Madam.” In order to remedy my sweat, she dumped half a cup of baby powder all over my crotch. With each rip, I cried out more. Have to say though, she was amazing. The whole ordeal over in less than seven minutes and it made me forget entirely about my silent broken bones. Plus I walked home with zero pubes, zero pockmarks and zero blisters. Best of all the worlds. Except for the world in which I get to have sex with a real human being. Friday was the two-month anniversary of the last time I had sex with the Boatman. After an angsty morning humping the ugliest polar fleece blanket in the world, I sauntered over to a popular breakfast place to binge on chai. At the corner of my table, a man with a very spiritual beard was having a conversation about Brahmacarya. (The meaning of Brahmacarya is debatable. Most people think it has something to do with not having that much sex, and/or not ejaculating and/or only having sex with one pre-determined person when you are breathing through your left nostril.)

“You know Brahmacarya means you’re not even supposed to do it with yourself?” Spiritual Beard Man asked his friend. I thought of the ugly polar fleece bedsheet that had come with my apartment. There is no way it could be any more hideous.

Who made this bed sheet and why is it the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life?

Later on, I had a whine fest with my friends on their balcony. In Mysore, some people like to use their balconies to practice fancy yoga postures in the afternoons. I tend to think that whining about your sad sex life is a better choice. A select few people in Mysore have the opportunity to have an appropriate amount of sex with an appropriate person. Unless they are totally obsessed with fancy yoga postures, these people have little need for using the balcony. Hence, “not using the balcony” has become a euphemism for the activities of people lucky enough to transcend their ugly polar fleece bed sheets.

“It has been more than two months for me too,” said my Chill Dog-Rescuing Friend from well, maybe she would rather I did not say. “After a month, I went kind of numb. I think I could tell people how to do this.”

“Not me,” I moaned. “I have no Spiritual Beard.”

“Well you did have a Spiritual Beard until you got all your pubes waxed off.” This bout of wisdom came from my Creative Intellectual and Astute Canadian friend. She too misses her husband. And she has already hired the Hot Wax Ladies twice, so she doesn’t have a Spiritual Beard either. My Creative Intellectual and Astute Canadian Friend (CIACF) is a big fan of cookies from the Chocolate Man. She buys a lot of them, but she is very good at sharing. The Chocolate Man also sells coffee. We think he is the third richest man in Mysore. First comes Sharath, and then the Coconut Man. Then comes Coffee/Chocolate Man. Due to the widespread lack of Spiritual Beards.

Anyways, let’s hope our friend with the Spiritual Beard is having a fun time with Brahmacarya. Those of us with secular vaginas may find redemption in cookies from the chocolate man and/or our ugly polar fleece bedsheets.

The Boatman has a secular beard to go with my secular vagina. I miss it immensely.