It has been 61 days since my Indian taxi driver drove me up the Chamundi Hill.  I remember arriving with immense gratitude.  I leave in two days now with the sense of a job very well done.  This is beautiful because the future is always unknown and a job well done can't be taken away from you.

It's like this:

I have a novel that I have really pulled together.  When I tell prospective agents I will be done by the end of January 2017 this is real.  Writing this book has been so interesting.  I feel like writing another book just about writing this book.  It is a Russian doll kind of thing.  The novel is fictionalised memoir and I am drawing on countless springs.  I actually feel altered by what I remember of family life and being a kid.  Also pleasantly surprised by my writer's work ethic and how long I can sit and work; past tiredness and past irritation.

I have always liked getting up and moving.

I am also leaving India with 78 completed poems and when I arrived I had 17.  I have never experienced anything like it before in my life.  I am literally tripping over poetry.  There is one more blog coming to you from this Reflections on a Gift of India stream and that will be comprised of poetry itself (just a snack pack - not too much).  I plan to start submitting poetry to appropriate publishers when I return to London.  I have always loved the poetry I loved and the 17 poems I wrote prior to India (some published and one attracting a prize) were mainly blank verse.  I astonish myself now with all this rhyming.

As well I began blogging and I now understand something about why the internet is good.  My previous involvement with the internet has been online dating in the main and I would not describe this activity as happy-making.  I did it for a long-time and it gave me novel fodder as well as grist for the mill but the online interaction itself never felt very easy or liberating.  Blogging is fun.

Finally - whilst in India - I have taken myself on as a yoga student and twice a day we go up on the roof. Me - I lay my writing body down - and teacher Jeannie starts.  My goal was to do little and make it count, what I think of as a teacher's practice. I have been backbending daily using a sequence that came from John Stirk and now when I look in the mirror at the end of day 61 my skeletal structure has moved.  I could wax lyrical for an hour on yoga.

So this is what I bring home with me as well as the fine balancing factor that is India herself.  I had a couple of meltdowns personally and then I looked around at the material improvishment and the (sometimes) spiritual wealth.  India is the perspective-maker and the mother.

Here I come then with India, my poetry chicken, what I hope is a strong and compelling novel as well as a keen desire to teach yoga to someone other than myself.  Also the fine-tooth combing of karma through a few tangled areas of my life.  I have had three major addictions as an adult and I have thoroughly knocked two on the head.  The final one - perhaps my darkest chicken - is in the front yard right now and I have an interesting challenge ahead.

Also jubilation.

The first two addictions I will cover another time.  The final one is debt and this is the one that I couldn't even see in bright light as she/he has been my bedfellow for so long.  The reasons for this are ocean wide and will definitely be brought to book but in the meantime the dark chicken in the front yard has to be dealt with.

So at the age of 53, I am selling my central London property (I only ever had a 25% share) and looking for shared accommodation to rent.  It feels like eating humble pie and it also feels congruent. Having been through the de-addicting process before in my life I recognise this as a stage.

My name is Jeannie and I have a problem with debt.

Had a problem with debt - allowing myself past tense after debt consolidation through this sale -  but the same as alcohol and drugs, you have to be vigilant.  You can say you aren't now but you have to remember that you once were and with some things you still have to watch it.

Forwarding Address Unknown refers to my status from mid-October onward and my willingness to trust.  I don't know what the relationship is between my wellspring of creativity and my downsizing to clean up this mess but there is a relationship and I'm sure retrospective understanding will be granted.  I feel a bit like a child starting on her financial road - corrected this time.  I know I haven't got the luxury of another 80 years (50 perhaps) but I can fast track now if life will permit.  I think the Universe just wants to see that we have truly got the lesson and then we are fed back into the mainstream.

Thus like a 20-year old I am on Gumtree looking for a room in a flat or a house.  I would bring a lot to that accommodation and the oddness of it all is mixed with excitement.

When I was a teenager I lived in one group home - Sancta Maria House, Toronto, circa 1979 - and we had a house mother called Joan Quinn. She was an Irish woman with a big heart who had a lot to say and cared about her wayward girls immensely.  We all lived there because of trouble with our original familes and I had quite a few dramas during that time because I was that sort of kid.  I would get into semi-serious trouble often.  Throughout the time I knew Joan - sadly, she is now dead - she used to shake her head in amazement and throw one hand up in the air.

Jean Margaret!

That was my name then.

If you fell on glass you wouldn't get cut.

I find the memory of that phrase reassuring.