I sit on my mat. It’s 7:58 a.m., and I’ve already swum in the ocean, taken a freezing shower, eaten two granola bars, and bellowed out four, or maybe twelve, Sanskrit chants. My knees, an aching red, remind me of my twice-daily prostration. (There are five monks presently at the ashram. That means a whole lot of bowing for me, plus a whole lot of up-close encounters with feet (monks usually do not wear shoes)). As I wait for my first daily yoga asana class to begin (two per day, each an hour and 45 minutes long), I bury my nose deep in Donna Tartt (unlike the aforementioned monk-foot encounter, this I mean figuratively). I scratch at my bug bites and tug at my sopping wet t-shirt, and then I freeze at a line spoken by the protagonist of The Secret History: “I had a confused idea that my dissatisfaction was bohemian.”

You know when the professor brings up a “tardiness issue” at the end of class, after you, and you alone, and you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the semester, have stumbled in late? That’s kind of what reading this line felt like. 

I first discovered the ashram in February of last year, at a time when I felt a particular disdain for the world and all pleasures and joys so-associated. Thinking myself superior to, and yet simultaneously terrified of the Thursday-night Whiteclaw-fueled events that awaited at dreaded college, I had deferred my acceptance and boarded a plane with the destination of not fucking there. For a while it seemed to work. I rode the bus down the Uruguayan coast and shared a bunk in the “all-female dorm” with a 75-year old man named Carlos; I ate fatty cakes (like funnel cake but better) in Cape Town around the kitchen table I shared with thirteen students from thirteen countries; I met a guy named Marcus in Mozambique on November 24th, and Marcus’s mom owned a restaurant, so I spent Thanksgiving Day sauteing crustaceans and watching the Morocco-France World Cup game live on the restaurant kitchen’s TV. I encountered wonderful humans and places everyday, and that was awesome. But eventually I grew sick–or sad–of living on continents where I knew no one, of countless interactions that I could not find a place for in the narrative arc of my life. 

In March of 2022, I booked my first trip to Paradise Island, Bahamas. The island is host to the ashram, a spiritual center where anyone who shows minimal proof that they’re not a murderer can go spend three months and get room (a 3 x 6ft tent) and board (beans, cabbage, cauliflower) in exchange for (a 6-8 hrs/day of) work (floor mopping, dish washing, cooking). 

For three months, I wore only white and yellow (“pure, sattvic” colors), woke up at the 5:30 a.m. bell, and then, thinking that lazy, began setting my alarm earlier to allow my friend Krishna-Victor (here I am called “Rukmini-Mia”) and me to squeeze in a 45-minute breathwork session before 6 a.m. meditation. When I reminisce about my time here, I remember the long talks I had with fascinating characters. I remember the constant state of epiphany, where insights came and felt huge, like my mind was being lit with a fire that burnt all remnants of what I thought I’d known. I remember the fact that I did not own shoes after they got carried away by the ocean my first week there, and how it didn’t matter because there was no need for them. I remember that I didn’t have a mirror, and, after a month or so, forgot to care what I looked like. 

My dad, a behavioral scientist, loves to talk about context. And this particular context, it’s just so weird. I never foresaw any chapter in the narrative of my life–anything beyond a short paragraph called “random dude I work with’s wedding”–taking place in the Bahamas. But things didn’t go as planned. 

I’ve now been to the ashram twice: once, for three months last spring, and then again this winter break. At noon on January 14th, I sauntered off the plane, carving a path through the sea of soon-to-be-pinker pink faces. A Bahamian man dressed as a pirate greeted me and every incoming traveler with an Ahoy! and then Welcome to the Bahamas, mon, in an obtusely fabricated accent, which sounded distinctly Jamaican. I got in line. My ears perked up at the sound of Reggae. I turned, recognizing the same three musicians I remembered from last time. It hit me that they’d been here this whole time, playing these same tunes for the mobs of laughing pink. I wondered what they thought about, standing there all day. Maybe they mentally teleported to a customs line on the other side of the world, where they too were gearing up for a guys’ weekend instead of performing for a bunch of heliophiles in Terminal A. 

Scrupulous surveillance of the crowd, a compulsion of mine, endowed me with some empirical data on the passengers of United flight 1408 from EWR to NAS; about 3/10 were Orthodox Jews–I’m told that they travel here annually for some conventions. Of the other 70%, each possessed at least one of the following: a Louis Vuitton tote, false eyelashes, an airplane-fueled inebriation, children in matching outfits clutching matching iPads which made me curse Steve Jobs and whatever code he conjured that allowed for such ear-piercing barks–the likes of Pet Hotel or some mumbo-jumbo cousin like Pet Cruise–to emanate from these devices. Other passengers I decided must have been sponsored by Giorgi Armani, or had a plan that involved draining a perfumery of all of its stock, and a strategy that was “wear an entire fucking bottle of the stuff, today.” My favorite subgroups were the crews wearing custom t-shirts saying things like Mommies and Daughters Bahamas 2024, or Jim’s Bachelor Weekend, beneath a photo of grinning pink people in straw hats. 

My friend at the ashram said something to me once over a meal of I-don’t-remember-what form of lentils. “You know how they talk about a fly in the ointment–a speck of filth in an otherwise fine thing–the ashram is like the opposite.” In case it isn’t clear, he was saying we yogis are the dash of ointment in a big ole bucket of flies. First of all, I don’t know what’s so marvelous about a dash of ointment, or what it does to fix a bucket of flies. And then of course, there’s the issue with calling a mass of unfamiliar thousands a “bucket of flies.” I think back to Tartt’s quintet: students of Ancient Greek, clad in black, sipping whisky in their minimalist apartments, laughing at the shortcomings of the plebs, the hoi polloi they deem unsophisticated, of inferior intellect and unrefined taste. As I wince at the roaring guffaws of this crowd, I wonder if my disgust is justified, or if I’m just a snob.

I guess my disdain comes from the supposition that these people have traveled here–the Bahamas–to have an experience geared precisely towards unawareness of where they are: they golf, and drink, and shout, in blissful oblivion of their whereabouts or fellow humans (aside from the ones they came with). I overheard some group behind me in I-don’t-remember-which line, talking about how, in Mexico, they treat you as they should, like a king, whereas here, oh, they won’t be back, it’s like these hotel workers “treat you like you’re lucky to be here or something.” 

While this is all horrifying, I realize that my fellow ashramites and I gravely overestimate how much we differ from these people in any sense beyond aesthetics. The ashram was designed to be an oasis from the world, a world that includes the Bahamas and the people who live here. Over our morning chai, it is the cruise goers at whom we scoff, but it’s not like most of us go out of our way to see Bahamian culture–or Bahamians at all–beyond the few individuals who keep the ashram’s gardens beautiful and its water running. 

I leave the airport in a taxi with three Israelis. We are all heading to the boat dock where we’ll part ways: them to Atlantis, me to the ashram. This would be the last leg of their jaunt around the US, the cherry on top of their Orlando-Miami-Vegas sundae. Charming, I think, and sit up front with the driver, hoping to let my ridesharers go Instagram-live in peace. What ensues, however, is a group-wide conversation, in which the driver offers his thoughts on Atlantis. First to the Israelis: “Expensive, good drinks, good fish, expensive.” And then, re the ashram, to me: “Good people that go there, they mean well. But sitting around and chanting about peace all day? That’s not gonna bring anybody peace.” 

My navel-gazing, of which the current subject is “the aesthetic I prescribe to my sadness,” is gently disrupted by a wonderfully aesthetic Om. I say it gently because here, you never know if you’re imagining it or actually hearing it–it’s like the air is one constant Om. In this case, though, the source is in fact a yoga teacher, letting us know that class is starting, so please shut up and lay down in savasana.

Transitions are important. I’ve always disliked the Spotify feature which blurs the last five seconds of one song into the first five seconds of the next song–I like to experience the conclusion of one thing and the distinct beginning of the next. But when Discobitch’s first electronic note crashes right into the deep, self-important vibration of this bearded yoga teacher’s Om, I like it very much. 

“La petite bourgeoisie qui boit du champagne?” she calls out. My eyes open wide. “Oui! C’est moi, c’est moi! Je suis la!” I answer. In an instant, Discobitch swoops down from the heavens, scooping me up in a golden chariot, the pegasus drivers sporting giant shades and stereo headphones. I smile dopily, recalling nights, or snippets thereof, that share no common thread besides this song, tequila, and an amnesic respite from the world. 

A buddhist with whom I’d spoken several weeks earlier told me to notice: to notice the way things make me feel as they enter my consciousness. “It’s like how when you eat an apple, you can feel that it’s nourishing you. When you eat a doughnut, you can feel that it’s not.”  Well, when Discobitch called out, it felt like I was hearing my guru, like the stars were aligning. Maybe I’d mistaken the ashram for my mecca, when really it was Ibiza’s nightclub, Eden, where I should’ve been all along.

Still basking in the glory of C’est Beau la Bourgeoisie and its fabulous evocations of jet planes, Hawaii, and booze, I hear the teacher explain that those responsible for the din are some ten frat boys staying in the mansion next door, who have a clear knack for EDM played at a decibel count above 150. But wait a second… Frat boys? I could scarcely believe my ears. Having Atlantis just down the beach was always a mind-fuck, me trying to live my ascetic life and all, but next door?! Suddenly, I couldn’t wait for the class to end. What if I go spend the week with them? I wondered, coming up with scenarios in my head. Would I come up from the beach or ring the doorbell? 

Giddy with excitement, I stopped myself, aware of the irony of it all. Weren’t these boys just what I was escaping by coming here: People my age whose behavior I found boring, depressing, and not on par with my own level of engagement with the world? If my sadness is bohemian, the contempt I feel might get me nominated as a stand-in for Bunny, Tartt’s lost sixth. Bunny gets killed by the others, basically because he is too happy and too dumb for their sophisticated liking. Tartt’s “cult” is totally isolated from the rest of their college campus, sequestered in physical spaces unavailable to the rest, discussing esoteric material and speaking a language (ancient Greek) that literally nobody else understands. The ashram feels similarly isolated, especially stationed next to the rest of Paradise Island. I romanticize the fantastical story of a strange, secret, other-worldly world, and I cherish the feeling of awe that I experience at the ashram, or reading The Secret History. But seeing how quickly I can be pulled back to my hedonist, regular-old-teenager roots, I realize that here at the ashram, I romanticize the world that, just yesterday, I couldn’t wait to get out of. These frat boys are sending me a postcard from that world right now; I close my eyes tight, hoping that if I concentrate hard enough on Discobitch I might be able to teleport next door and join them for a Heineken in the pool.

The ashram is stationed between two bodies of water. To the north is the ocean: it is beautiful, turquoise, etc.–a boring picture to paint, with either colors or words, because perfection is all the same whereas imperfection is always imperfect in its own way (thank you, Mr. Tolstoy). To the south is the bay. This is the port of entry to the ashram: the first part you see, after the rusty old boat picks you up from Nassau and takes you the half kilometer trek to a different universe. The bay is shared by other vessels making their way to Paradise Island: think thousand-foot-long cruise ships fitted with waterslides and enormous, inflatable homages to Mickey Mouse.  Party boats cruise by at all hours of the night, and if you squint hard enough, you might just see a large gyrating behind, or six, or sixty. 

The ocean is perfect, but I love the bay more. Many of my greatest moments at the ashram have taken place as I’ve gazed out wistfully at a Royal Caribbean vessel. Deprived of all colors besides white and yellow, I crane my neck to get a better look at the partying pink people in pink Hawaiian shirts drinking pink cocktails around pink lawn chairs. My ears perk up at the sound of Jason Derulo, which blares from giant speakers. His vulgar, misogynistic lyrics fly right over my head, and in these moments, I find the hymn nothing other than divine. I smile across the water at masses of drunk people. I don’t feel envious, exactly, but I remind myself, nonetheless, that at a moment’s whim, I could be one of them, dancing to Derulo’s boastful accounts of blowjobs from women who don’t speak English. 

I worry that I am a “grass is always greener [on the other side]” person. I am writing this from the Starbucks at Atlantis, sipping on a chai tea latte. I abhor Howard Shultz and don’t even have a particular taste for poison-concentrate with extra whip, but suddenly, forbidden from A) leaving ashram premises, and B) caffeine, without this latte, I feel I might just drop dead. So I skip meditation to drink contraband Starbucks and sunbathe with loud Floridians at Atlantis. Immersed in that same sea of Floridians, I feel out of place and read an American classic about bookish little pricks and smile to myself, feeling like that is my tribe. But at Princeton, I recoil from an elitist environment grounded in perfectionism and miss the air of nonchalance apparent in these sunbathers. On the weekends, I reunite with Discobitch for a few hours of hedonism and jungle juice until I get antsy and start the cycle all over again, missing the ashram, and its lack of mirrors, and Western scholarship, and shoes, and substances. 

In high school I once wore my Pitbulls for Obama t-shirt (turned muscle tank)–which depicts three pitbulls, a speech bubble attached to one of them, saying “we don’t need no stinking lipstick”–to a July 4th party at a Republican classmate’s house, which also happened to be the town police chief’s (his father’s) house . This felt A, just funny, and B, emblematic of my instinct to create (sometimes Molotov) cocktails out of radical extremes. 

Wherever I am, I like to remind myself that some other exists–that the belief system shared by those around me at a given moment is only one of many possibilities, one that somewhere else, they’d laugh at or dismiss wholly. The grass may be greener on the other side, but you’ll never be standing on it–wherever you are, there you are. And luckily, none of us have to pick–we’re allowed to jump around between conflicting affinities. 

A yoga ashram, Donna Tart’s The Secret History, and Discobitch’s C’est Beau la Bourgeoisie:

My holy trinity. The triumvirate in my mind, each holding one rein, yanking me, again and again, into a state of equilibrium.