Here we go… 3rd time in India in 3 years…

...

Back to this beautiful University of Amrita in Ettimidai, near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.
Close to 6000 students, mostly on holidays now.

Going around with my bicycle this time, my proud Hercules!

Funny… I was quite anxious to come back… back to Amrita, for a week, then quickly heading heading north, at the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for 5 weeks of hell...PhD studies: 2^nd phase!

At the same time I knew that Ettimadai campus in its green heaven would be the best place to heal, to meditate, to study really hard, face sadness, deepest sorrows, forgive, myself, her... and mover on.

A place to go around as well, like to the next city Coimbatore, center of most of the Indian confection, especially Tirupur. Coimabtore, with 1,06Mio people is one of the fastest growing tier-II cities in India and a major textile, industrial, commercial, educational, information technology, healthcare and manufacturing hub of Tamil Nadu.Whole streets (like the one on the right) dedicated... to High-Fi, to mechanical equipement, to flowers...
And the Elizabethan hotel to offer its terrace for a very nice dinner with faculties and fellow scholars.

 Back to bowels of flowers, flamboyant trees everywhere…

Back to PhD classes, hard core: this time 4 topics: New Institutional Economics, Advanced Quantitative Methods (mostly stats, regressions!), HR, and Qualitative Research Methods, and 4 term papers to write in the coming 3-4 months.

 Here the kids buses are yellow too!

The wonderful Olympic swimming pool where my friend Girish accommodates my swimming hours even when it is "ladies only", between 2 classes!

5 weeks felt like a bit much to face, long, really long, very lonely… but after having passed quite surprisingly the first 3 topics of last semester, especially Stats…I had some hopes too.

Hopes to face the hard lessons of last months disaster, sad, devastating ending, complete break down on my part, suffocating and not able to free myself, to stick to my values…. to decide to really work on those topics that have been so impeding so far… to choose new ways, new kind of people by my side, maybe capable to make compromises, new ways to interact, less expectations and co-dependence, more nurturing and caring, taking both our share and responsibilities in building a caring equilibrium based on that!
This time no way out, no more kidding myself with high ambitions and the pressure that comes with it, there is no more going back to that feeling of void, emptiness, ending on the cliff of life, at the window of death!

Hopes to really change, to be able one day to build more balanced relationships, where both want to participate to elaborating a common space of serenity, caring communication, where both understand trust, nurturing love and know that it takes time and efforts to make build and maintain it!

But lets go back to India, back to this sweet funny accent where all charts start with a "Djiro"… which is easier to follow written in mathematical terms: 0. Back to the horns of those long blue trains passing along the campus... to the wild elephants to be heard sometimes on the nearby mountains...

Back to the wonderful Eden garden, the cries of peacocks, not really gracious, almost painful (maybe their pain to be trapped in a perpetual seduction mode!)

The flights of cockroaches just as well in the grocery store where I buy fruits and dry nuts…
The power cuts every hour or so, that burn your EHD...
The wonderful smiles of colorful indian women with their beautiful saries and jasmine in their hair!

And studying the great ones, the rishis in India:

“In awareness we grow. The more you know yourself, the less you are afraid “ Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Happiness is in understanding and therefore transformation" Jiddu Krishnamurti

Gosh ... did I need to go so far?