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India had no idea what she was in for when she let this over-controlling American land on her shores.
The air was thick with pollution, the sun hazy but still intense as I dragged my jet-lagged self out of the ashram and into the “village” of Vrindavan for the first time.
It was October 2012, and my first trip to India. I had no idea what I was doing.
What I did know, within days, was that control—the thing I’d relied on my whole life—was utterly useless here.
And while a part of me felt strangely alive in the chaos, another part of me was terrified. Who would I be without control? How would I function?
The Ugly American
That hot, dusty day, I wandered down the road in search of a cell phone. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to be that American.
Later, Ayurveda (the 5,000-year-old natural health system from India) would help me understand what happened next. It was classic pitta (the fiery dosha composed of fire and water)—my constitution’s deep need to fix, to push, to be right.
The shop was small, and the scent of cow dung lingered in the warm air. The man behind the counter greeted me kindly. I didn’t speak Hindi. He spoke Indian English, which I didn’t yet know was different from mine. We went back and forth for a while before I purchased the new phone.
Sweating from both heat and discomfort, I finally left with a shiny blue flip phone in hand, and was told it would connect “in one or two hours.” I felt oddly triumphant. “That wasn’t so hard,” I thought.
Famous last words.
I had lunch at a nearby café, checking the phone again and again. Two hours passed. Still no signal.
Frustration crept in. Had I been ripped off? Was this guy playing me?
Back at the shop, I tried to keep it together. “You said the connection would start in two hours,” I said. He picked up the phone, fiddled with it for a while, then looked up and said, “Oh, you don’t have a SIM card. That will be another 300 rupees.”
I lost it.
I yelled.
I accused.
I stood there, red-faced and sweating, berating a man who had done nothing wrong. I was exhausted and confused, but mostly, I was furious that I didn’t understand how things worked.
In the U.S., you bought a phone and it just…worked. I didn’t even know what a SIM card was.
This was my first hint that my American assumptions wouldn’t serve me here.
Seeing Myself
A few days later, as I walked that same street, I spotted another foreign woman yelling at the same man.
My stomach dropped.
My face flushed hot.
I saw myself in her—and I wanted to disappear.
That moment marked the beginning of something I didn’t have words for yet: surrender.
Before India, I thought I could manage anything if I just worked hard enough, planned well enough, and pushed through. Control made me feel safe. Or so I believed.
But India doesn’t give you that illusion. Plans fall apart. Timelines dissolve. The unexpected is just…expected.
And somehow, it’s still okay.
Because letting go of control didn’t make me less safe—it made me more alive.
Following the Unexpected
That first trip cracked me open.
People would say things like, “You should come to…” and instead of listing a hundred reasons why not, I’d just go.
A Canadian woman I met in Vrindavan, Aditi, invited me to Secunderabad to study Pranic Healing (an energy healing modality with similarities to Reiki) with her. I had no idea what that was, but I went anyway.
I rode the train for 24 hours across India—hot, fragrant, chaotic, and beautiful. I slept in my upper bunk in the 2AC car, chai sellers shouting past, the scent of feet and curry drifting through the cabin.
At the other end, Aditi welcomed me with warmth. She took me to her Pranic Healing class, and more importantly, introduced me to her Jyotish (a system of astrology that comes from India) teacher, Mr. Sundaram. He didn’t just read my chart—he saw me, named me, and nudged me onto a deeper path.
Another woman I met told me to visit her friend Seema in Haridwar. I did.
Seema, the daughter of prolific writer and teacher Harish Johari, welcomed me to her family’s guesthouse—an oasis of flowering plants and perfect food. She later helped me organize my first India retreat in 2016.
These moments—these openings—were born of surrender. None of them were planned.
What Ayurveda Gave Me
Ayurveda taught me to attune to nature’s rhythm, not my own tightly-wound timeline.
It helped me understand my pitta constitution, the way fire shows up in my mind and behavior. That push to control, to fix, to perfect—it’s just a tendency. I’m not bound to it.
When I returned to the U.S. after six months in India, I wasn’t the same person. I had softened. Not perfectly—but meaningfully.
Do I still try to control sometimes? Of course. But now I catch it. I see the grip tightening, and more often than not, I can release it.
Maybe it’s age.
Maybe it’s India’s lingering grace.
But these days, when I start to clench, I remember that dusty little shop in Vrindavan—and I let go.
~
author: Belinda Baer
Image: Author's own
Editor: Nicole Cameron
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