The week­end at Ayur­gram held two inter­est­ing rev­e­la­tions for me: a) that boiled cumin seed (jeera) water can be really addic­tive and b) that being spoilt silly is some­thing I’m enjoy­ing way too much.

I must have guz­zled a few litres of this amaz­ingly refresh­ing drink that I have never tasted before. The day started with a sat­is­fy­ing break­fast of fruit, toast, omlette, jeera water, juice and tea. Com­pared to my pal­try tea and a fruit break­fast back home, I was slowly real­is­ing the mean­ing of liv­ing life ‘king­size’ (or ‘queen­size’ as the case is here).

In the morn­ing I dis­cover pranayama (yogic breath­ing tech­niques). I had no idea there were so many ways to breathe in air! They never taught us all this in biol­ogy class.

The break­fast only seemed to whet my appetite. By lunchtime, I hap­pily devoured every­thing served on my huge Ker­ala thali. Though I couldn’t really tell what I was eat­ing, all I could taste was lots of black mus­tard, coconut and heaps of curry leaves. Yummy, none the less.

In the after­noon, there was a med­i­ta­tion ses­sion (har­ness­ing cos­mic energy and get­ting your mind and body into a bal­anced state). Ever won­dered how some peo­ple tire so eas­ily and some can keep going from morn­ing to night? The answer, dear folks, is in how effi­ciently you can har­ness energy. We’re all given the same amount. Sim­ple stuff actu­ally, but I guess some­one else telling you from a podium in sooth­ing tones, in the serene silence of the after­noon, makes it all the more effective.

I gave myself over to the capa­ble hands (of two very effi­cient women) in the after­noon for the cus­tom­ary oil mas­sage. But not before a few pre­lim­i­nary fears. The scari­est part is when the women say: ‘remove’ like they’re ask­ing if you want sugar with your cof­fee. Then you realise they’re seri­ous. Any­way, after a few wor­ri­some min­utes when I imag­ined all kinds of things, (were they talk­ing about my fat lay­ers as they gen­er­ously applied oil all over?) I decided life is too short. They were prob­a­bly whis­per­ing about their lat­est crushes (well, I hope).

I wan­dered around click­ing pic­tures. The grounds of the resort are really well main­tained. The restau­rant is slightly ele­vated and over­looks the resort. I made it a point to have all my meals there because it was so breezy and peaceful.

The rooms are spa­cious. Clean. The cot­tages that are scat­tered at the rear of the prop­erty are all done up in tra­di­tional Ker­ala archi­tec­ture and are extremely pretty. The food is veg­e­tar­ian, but light and deli­cious (also means you eat more!). The staff is friendly and yet non-intrusive. There’s not much more you can ask for if you’re look­ing for a peace­ful week­end break. The prices though are on the steep side. But then you prob­a­bly deserve the royal treat­ment once in a while. Espe­cially if you’ve been spend­ing too much time burn­ing the mid­night oil and want to indulge in yourself.

In the evening there was a lit­tle bit of magic. In the form of a magi­cian who per­formed tricks to keep us enter­tained for a while. Din­ner was early. I decided to go for Chi­nese and then retired with William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns. An inter­est­ing account of the author’s year in Delhi. I like read­ing travel books when I’m on the road.

On this trip, I’ve gone through But­ter Chicken in Lud­hi­ana, Pankaj Mishra’s account of small towns in India and the Hitch­hik­ers Guide to the Galaxy by Dou­glas Adams and am hop­ing to fin­ish two more books by the time I get back to Mum­bai. I have yet to visit the book­stores here, which in a way is a good thing, because after all my mean­der­ing and reju­ve­nat­ing, my wal­let has got­ten con­sid­er­ably lighter!

After an early morn­ing yoga ses­sion, fol­lowed by another hearty break­fast, I am back in Ban­ga­lore city just in time to catch the morn­ing traf­fic – noise, com­mo­tion and work. The week­end seems almost surreal.