Ufficio Reclami in pillole

gnambox:

MARCO MIGLIAVACCA, YOGA TEACHER
INTERVIEW by Gnam Box

INDIA’S VIEW

Hey Marco we followed your trip in India thanks to your beautiful pics on Facebook.. now we want to discover all the secrets about your trip! 

First of all introduce yourself to our followers…
Thank you Gnambox for inviting me at your table, i really appreciate all of the “meals” you’re serving us everyday (expect those with animals of course, animals are no more food for me). Now from one table to another, there is where Marco’s story begins.

When he’s 6 years old Marco sits at his grandmother’s round table , looking at her cooking in the backshop of her hash house, Marco in the future will cook a lot for his close friends.

With his big nose peeking out of his long curly hair, when he’s 16 years old, every morning he takes the bus to go to the art school from the provinces of Milan, in his walkman the Smiths are playing loud in his ears.

Every friday night he goes to dance at Rainbow.

Together with a friend, the first year of the Brera’s Academy of fine arts, between the cinema and photography courses, he accepts a job on the research at the forensic institute for an experimental project about “x files” and indentikits. His first real contact with human anatomy.

At 21 he draws storyboards for advertising, he takes advantage of a friend’s offer and flies to Beijin, finally his first intercontinental flight, he sees the “martians”, the Great Wall and he falls into a manhole cover in Tienammen square. Everyone has its own Karma!

Marco meets  ‘teatrino clandestino’, a research theatre company and at 25 he collaborates with the company on the “2 volte a te” movie project as an assitant director.

A few months later he leaves for Portugal, his first christmas far from home, Marco lives and falls in love with Lisbon.

He then moves to Barcelona where he works for advertising productions. This job gives him the opportunity to visit the Hezbollah block after the Lebanon summer war in Beirut 2006 and the two oceans meeting at Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

In Barcelona thanks to the suggestion of a friend he tries his first ashtanga yoga class. Sweaty, hard and powerfull, “that’s amazing!”

At 33 he completes his yoga teacher training. Back in Milan he lives with his boyfriend and starts to teach yoga to his friends. He practises around the world with John Scott, David Life, Sharon Gannon and many other yoga teachers.

Today i’m 35 years old and i am all these things at once, i teach yoga full time and while i’m answering your questions i’m buying a ticket for Berlin to go and practise at the Jivamukti yoga school.

Let’s talk about India.. How long you’ve been there?
I’ve been there for one month.

How many places did you visit? Explain us your stages
It all started from New Delhi Airport to Pushkar, 9 hours for a 250 kilometers trip with a taxi. First lesson about traffic and driving in India, no conventional rules and no conventional codes, it’s incredible but even then everything flows harmoniously. No traffic light, no stop, no signs, just loudy horns and hands waving out of the car’s window and of course a lot of cows, chilling and chowing in the middle of the streets.

Pushkar, in Rajasthan, is a small holy village rising around a lake, sourrended by the chanting of mantras from dusk till dawn during the Shiva festival, a place where people and streets are peacefull and full of colours. Ladies in the countryside dig the ground completely dressed up, they are spots of brilliant color in a vibrant green field. If you find the path maybe you could be invited from the Baba for a salty tea in his little house up on the mountain.

After Pushkar on my  way to Agra, where I admired the great Taj Mahal, I reached Fatehpur Sikri, a small village built in Moghul style architecture with an impressive red mosque and royal palace.

A monsoon swept me and my friends away in Vrindavan when we were trying to leave the city to reach Delhi and I felt like being on a “gondola” in Venice due to the high water flooding the indian highway, next stop Varanasi or Banares as they used to call it.

Varanasi is known for being the most ancient city in the world where every single day people have been doing the same rituals since 4000 years, where hindu people go to die and where children play football between a cremation and the other. Life and death as they are for real, are part of the same thing and you can feel it, death is part of everyday’s life and it is not a taboo.

Such an incredible, dirty and full of cow’s shit city but such a magical place where you can feel the connection with the roots of the world if you just try to have a big perspective of the world as a common place.

The most magical experience in Varanasi was on a boat on the river Ganga where I saw the puja (prayer) that gives peace and love to the river. Just me and my friends, no tourists, only indian people and the Brahmin celebrating with the holy fire, a lot of smoke and the silent Ganga full of floating butter candles and flowers.

In Varanasi I had the craziest yoga lesson I had ever had before leaving for Delhi.

In Delhi I said goodbye to my girlfrends, who were leaving, with a luxurious breakfast at the Imperial Hotel, it’s been like being in a James Ivory movie in the Old fashioned colonial India at the beginning of the century.

I then flew to Nepal, Kathmandu. Such a touristic city but surrounded by open valleys and ancient places like Patan, a village with a middle age structure and architecture, or the really small village up on the hills where  you can see in the sky the outline of the incredible buddisth stupas with meters and meters of multi-coloured prayer flags flying in the sky. Here in a coffeshop in front of the big Stupa I had a coffee and the bartenders  and waiters were all disabled in a way or another, a bit surreal, i suddenly thought of Tod Browing’s “Freaks” movie but the real shocking thing was that there wasn’t anything strange about it, i’ve never seen anything like that in our modern country, that is shocking! The bartender was deaf, pointing on the menu was the only way to order.

After a 14 hours night-bus trip i arrived in Mcleod Ganj in the middle of the Himachal Pradesh, close to the rooftop of the world, where the Himalaya mountain rises. Base of the exiliated tibetan people, slaughtered by the chinese government that exterminated also millions of monks till today, that is the home of H.H. Dalai Lama and to who ever wants to support the tibetan cause.

I reached Dharamsala to practise yoga and there i discovered a world, made of tibetan, hindu, muslim, buddhist and people from all over the world in a peacefull cohabitation, in a real community of goods and in total mutual assistance.

A place where human beings and relationships really are the most important gift. At the coffeeshop spread around the village, besides having free wifi everywhere and playing old hippy songs, is where humanity has no differences. Young israelian guys come after their service in the military army to find some peace, old ladies after a life spent in the secret services come to find the meaning of their life in a buddhist way. University students on vacation teach english and math for free, precious doctors will their help and women from western ONG try to communicate with the chinese government to set free from the jails a population oppressed and tortured in its own country.

Give what you have to give, everything counts.

One night at Gakyi, one of the restaurants of the village where I used to go, I noticed the upset face of the owner, and Anna, a friend I met there told me about a couple that entered and sat at a table, after a while the owner let a guy take a sit at their table, he was all alone like a lot of other young people visiting the village. The couple, irritated, started to complain with the owner because that was “their” table and they got there before him. At that point a girl next to Anna cut in on the conversation to explain to the owner of the restaurant which are the habits and costumes in the western culture, saying we’re used to have our own table, our own interlocutor. The owner with an astonished look on her face at that point asked: “And you guys are “happy” by having your own table?”.

What’s the best place you have visited?
It’s difficult to choose just one and i don’t like to make comparisons but I think that the place I loved the most has been every single coffeshop’s table or restaurant where I spent the last 12 days, chatting with people from all over the world, of every age or background, talking about politics, intentions, humanity and reasons of happiness…this is the best gift I received during this trip.

Who were your travel mates?
My boyfriend Niccolo’, Sarah, and Inma but during our last dinner in Varanasi we were around 12 friends from Italy, Spain and Holland, it all happened by chance…that night, Varanasi really was the center of the world as it has always been known throughout history.

Let’s talk about food… The strangest meal you have had?
Another time I will tell you about China or Cambodia, there you can have really strange meals like snake blood or ants brew wich is good for your stomach. In India or to be correct in the Hindu part of the continent they eat no animals and eggs, the strangest meal I’ve seen was a kind of “ciambella” in a fluorescent pink color.

What’s your favourite indian dish?
India is a continent ,that means many places, many favourite dishes and many different tastes.

For example: fried momo from Kathmandu and Dharamsala, a pan fried dumplin stuffed with vegetables, tofu, potatoes and paneer. In Kathmandu I have the address of a fantastic restaurant where, in a very cosy garden away from the traffic of the city you can try the best momos I’ve tasted during all my trip, together with a sweet and sour sauce and little fried cheese cubes in an orange batter made of paprika and turmeric.

Chana masala, a pot of garam masala chickpeas wrapped in a tomatoes and coriander sauce together with pappadami lentils pastry and garlic naan, has been one of the dishes i’ve eaten the most.

How can’t I talk about the great lemon curd cake with ginger lemon honey from Dharamsala? A crispy shortbread with a lemon yoghurt layer served with a ginger infusion, lemon and honey.. I looooved it!

Describe us the typical indian lunch?
If I have to be honest, lunch wasn’t contemplated during our vacation, very rich breakfasts and different breaks during the day. Anyhow the food in India went in the background, it was just meant for living, there were plenty more important things to eat through the eyes and senses, the feast was everywhere both tempting or repulsive and was able to satisfy or reject depending on how much one was willing to observe and listen. This is the food that i prefer everywhere, the one that is born from a dialogue with the places through our needs. a trip is always the external expression of an inner world.

Were there a lot of food markets?
The “market” concept in India, apart from the big cities, is a nomad concept, from the street, everyone displays his harvest and his goods taking care of it, protecting it from the insects, deep refrying the food to disinfect it and at the end of the day what is left is given for free on the streets so that poor people can have it.

Sometimes food is so covered in flies that it looks like a sculpture, the colors of the spices are so vivid to put you under a spell, the smells, like everything else in India, permeate each other, from the smell of urine to the sweet one of the ghee (clarified butter) alternated with the perfume of incense and the votive mariujana.

You have told us that animals were the funniest thing… Why?
Animals are living beings like me and you and this thing in India is very clear, humans and animals coexhist in absolute peace and serenity. Bulls enter Western Union offices while the calf and the cow wait at the entrance chewing, holy cows enter guest houses for a nap on the terrace or treat themselves with food found on the street markets or in the baskets usually balancing themselves on indian women’s heads. Monkeys, with their puppies hanging on their tummies, jump everywhere without fear, they climb on the wires of a  clothes dryier while a lady turns back to take another peg. In the middle of Varanasi’s chaos, while at a crossing an energy case blasts letting out bright flames and sparkles, a cow licks its little calf in the middle of the main street and if you turn your head on the other side a beautiful lady with plenty of bracelets and rings on her nose and ears caresses her cobra on its head to keep him calm in her basket.

I had never seen a cow peeing, seeing this 2 meters long “water jet” being sprayed while she was chewing looking at me as if she was thinkin “do you have any problems?” has been real fun.

Did India change your life?
Every experience, if you’re willing to look over and receive, changes you someway. It looks like when you’re about to face a trip in India everyone is more open to understand, to observe and  receive the enlightment but poverty in India isn’t that different from the one in America’s province or from people asking for charity in our street just because it is an exotic country. What is more shocking is to notice how the misleading western model is about to quickly devour also India. The difference maybe is the importance we give to the individual while hindu people are used to consider humanity in its wholeness. We have a linear conception of time while they conceive time as a circle, we consider them polytheist but they consider themselves monotheist, God is one but has a multitude of avatars, that’s why an indian recognizes the exhistence of Jesus Christ and Maometto or Shiva as a manifestation of the divine and respects it because all is one but depending on the country or the culture in which it grows or manifests itself changes shape and colour. Cultural integration and not discrimination could be an interesting point of view in our political situation.

How India changed your yoga method?
Yoga is about sharing and every experience you have becomes part of what we will be sharing tomorrow, if you look at it on this side yes, my method has changed.

Close your eyes… What’s the first memory about India?
“Namaste’” at every single step on the streets of every city, everyone smiles at each other and you always say “hi” if you meet someone passing by on the street and this changes the relationships and the beginning of your day.

Thank you Marco for all your beautiful words and for your inspiring story!
Namastè