Service

Daily jobs or services as they are called are essential to you being able to stay on the ashram. Everybody is expected to perform a service. There is sweeping, sewing, weaving, working in the mill, planting and sewing the crops, sorting the grains, various kitchen duties, shovelling gravel, mucking out the cow shed, feeding and milking the cows, making incense and the list goes on. The jobs are generally manual, exhaustive, repetitive and meditative in nature.

Kitchen service for us involves chopping vegetables and making chapattis. Sweet! I thought, this was going to be a breeze, I know how to chop veges.  How hard can it be to make a chapatti?! Let me tell you it is so seriously hard!

Chapattis are made from flour and water and are traditionally a circular shape. I could not, try as I might, get mine to be round. I made square ones, heart shaped ones, ones with ears, ones of shapes that still have not been invented. I was told to make them thinner, thicker, smaller, larger and rounder. Oh for goodness sake, does it really matter! Yes, apparently it did.

After two hours of sheer frustration, I suggested that maybe I would be better suited to another kitchen service. Rice, perhaps? No, I'm a chapatti person.

Cody was deemed a lost cause and was given the envious job of ball boy. Meaning he got to roll the dough, that I then had to flatten and make round. Taiga obviously showed some potential as he was encouraged to keep making.

I tried meditating whilst making them to stop my overwhelming desire to throw my oddly shaped lump of dough at the Indian woman instructing me. I tried to cut out all the surrounding sounds, which was not easy. I tried to breath in some fresh air from the smoke filled room. I thought circle thoughts, I focussed so hard on that dough, I made it with love, I rolled it, I turned it, I floured it, circle, circle, circle and it was still not good enough.

After four hours of constant rolling, a few did eventually pass muster, and because I am a chapatti person, I will continue to do my service in the role I have been given. I will go with a smile on my face, calmness in my mind and continue my focus of making the perfect chapatti.

x Lisa (haven't found my inner peace yet, Mum)

Boys making chapattis

Lisa chopping veges