Sunday meetings

At Sunday meetings daily duties were given. You could either do the wake up call, close the gates, water the plants, manage the compost, fill up the water tanks, be the hygiene inspector, do the morning raggy or be the lunch chef.

That Sunday after Pondi a bunch of about 22 American students had arrived to the community. So there were plenty of people and daily duties could be shared. An Slovenian couple had chosen the wake up call. An easy thing to do, which really only needed one person. I was always the last one to go to sleep and I smoked in the smoking area outside the compound, so I thought I would close the gate this week. Filling up the water tanks had turned out to be too harsh and demanding.

But Eric had the same thing in mind. So when the moment came, we both lifted our hands. Julie, confused, came up with a: "OK, Eric, Erik, you too, OK, Erik 1, Eric 2, you are gatekeepers." And that is how we became Erik 1 and Eric 2 for the following 2 weeks. We had the same name, curly long black hair tied up in a pony tail, and we both had glasses. I had arrived first, plus I was older, so I earned the number 1.

At the start , we both thought it would be too much of a confusion, but it turned all right despite the fact that we were always together. By that point, I had terminated my two compulsory weeks in Sadhana, so I was free to leave the place. But chance didn't want me to, not yet, and I would end up being there a little bit longer than I had expected. But this is a story to be told separately.

The thing is, that I had become comfortable with the people and the surroundings. And I was having fun. But I knew that this week everything was going to change. The 22 American students had their own dynamics, and chances were that they would disrupt ours. We were a little family but we weren't always together, so people did their things whenever they pleased. The American students moved and acted as a whole, in a group, and so their presence in the community was much stronger than ours. You could notice specially at nights, when the community was lit by laptops all over the place.

The people that were already there disappeared the moment work finished. Everyone felt uncomfortable, aggressive and bitter, by one reason or another. Laughter was set aside to criticism. Grumpy discomforted faces were at the order of the day.

And on this basis Eric and me became like a couple. When someone was looking for him and couldn't find him, they asked me, and viceversa. We were always the last to go to sleep, sneaked into the forest for a spliff, and usually, left Sadhana together and came back together.

He would have much to do with my near future.