Having recently come across some Yoga students and Practitioners from the West who had been wandering around India, I have decided to follow an American Indian dictum.. You come across good and bad people, avoid those who would cause you pain. I shall from now on avoid any westerner who has spent time at Ashrams in India or wandering around with beads or orange coloured robes and greets you with Namaste. As James Michener had written a long time ago in a novel form, these confused westerners go to exotic places hoping to add them to their repertoire of practices and some even venture to teach Yoga in the west, while knowing very little of the deep philosophy of the practice. I am looking forward to a time to an awakening in India among Indians which would lead them to study and propagate their own philosophy at home and abroad. To these mantra chanting, fake yogis of the west, I have only one thing to say: Please go home, look in your own backyard and smell the flowers that are yours by nature… before you come to steal something from someone else’s garden.
Sorry to be so harsh, but I am just avoiding that which is fake in my universe and not allow their shallow understanding of this world to harm the people I care for.
from www.indax.com/dress
There are a surprising number of young Western travelers moving about India who seemed to have abandoned all attempts at personal hygiene. Wearing dirty, stained clothing and with greasy matted hair it is possible they see themselves in solidarity with the very poorest of India's poor. Perhaps they are blissing out on a temporary detachment from material possessions. This may seem fine for privileged children of the West who are here with return tickets and adequate cash, but it offends and disgusts most Indians. In India, personal cleanliness is the most basic of virtues, and most people are fighting a daily battle to maintain whatever level of personal cleanliness and order that their socioeconomic situation allows.
