Day of perspective

It's been a while since I have been working in Mauritius island.

Tomorrow being the day I am leaving for India on a vacation, it has been quite tense and restless.

Although I woke up in a not so spirited mood, I got around to enjoying the day soon enough.

I am living at the place of Aunty. She is the only one in Mauritius who actually cares about what's happening to me.

I am really grateful to live a life in the house she has allowed me to stay in. And I am more than grateful that I get to spend some time with her family.

I took my bicycle out for a small ride.

I went to the food court where all sorts of Indian food are sold. And where all the food sold are affordable by the poor.

I paid a visit to the market. The Sunday market for clothes.

The most wonderful thing about the clothes market here is that there are so many beautiful almost designer-like clothes sold.

After the wandering, came back home and began feeling like nothing.

That's when I remembered that I had so much packing to do, got so busy with it and didn't realize how my afternoon went ticking away.

I was searching for the letter from the Immigration office that would let me go to India and come back.

I looked pretty much everywhere, sorted all the things in the house as a result, still couldn't find it.

That's when I started reading the book by Osho I had been reading for a while, "Vedanta, the art of dying".

There was something really interesting that I read in the book, about how one needs to keep putting in effort, leave no stone unturned, so that the unconscious mind can come up with a solution for the problem one is looking for; that only when the conscious mind is completely exhausted with finding  the solution for a problem, will the unconscious mind kick in.

As much as this theory sounded relevant, I decided to put it into action.

I continued sorting through all the stuff in the house, collecting all the things I wanted to carry to India.

I was so exhausted, I went to say hi to Aunty downstairs; came back upstairs then cooked an egg.

Finished it with some bread, made some tea and sat down to watch TV.

Now that I was completely relaxed, I walked to the pile of paper I had sorted out and would have just as well thrown it in the trash if it didn't have all the invoices of things I have bought.

And finally!

There it was!

I had chosen quite a careless place to keep the letter from the immigration office.

What an amazing way it was to find it!

It has been a wonderful to be in Mauritius the last eight months, despite the ups and downs, the intense situations and the culture shock.

I look forward to my journey to India with hopes of making a better life when I come back with a lot more zest.

On an Island (Mauritius)

The last time I blogged here was about 5000kms from here when I was at the Indian capital. I have moved on in so many ways since then and here I am now on this island in the Indian Ocean not too far away from the African island country Madagascar.

Ways have been difficult, but what I've found here has been happiness.

It's been the reversal of the climates here since it's the southern Hemisphere. It's winter here in the month of June when it usually rains heavily in Kerala, where I was born.

Now, in the first site, Mauritius looks very similar to a quite village in Goa. A lot of people here are racially Indians and follow Hinduism and celebrate almost all Hindu festivals (both north Indian and south Indian).

The food is quite interesting too. There is curry and rotis like in India, although not so spicy. I am also totally in love with the signature dish you can find in a local restaurant called bol reversé. Rice with a soup of vegetables and chicken (or fish) served on the plate reversing the bowl with its contents.

Although officially, English is the language of Mauritius, almost everybody speaks French or Kreole (a colloquial version of french). So I had to make sure I knew the greetings and trivialities in French in order to move through daily life.

There are also a lot of people who speak Hindi and Bhojpuri and it always makes a wonderful conversation when I meet a Mauritian Indian who speaks either of these languages.

Apart from the struggles of being an expat living alone, Mauritius has given me a very peaceful and quite life.

The traffic is way better than in India, with proper roads and sidewalks everywhere and the vehicles actually stopping for pedestrians to cross the road, which is barely the case in India.

Mauritius is also a place with so much green wilderness everywhere; in the cities and places inhabited by people there are so many trees and gardens that are part of houses, lined along the roads of just part of the urban landscape everywhere.