being the 'new guy' - june 15, 2006

I’m not sure what it is about being ‘new’ that’s so bothersome, particularly as a lot of us travel to escape the same old, same old of home, but it seems like no one likes to be ‘the new guy’. In Mysore, you can separate the new arrivals from the ‘old timers’ by practice time, those who have been here for a while begin at 5:00am and the newcomers begin whenever a spot from the 5:00am group opens up. It’s not uncommon for the question “What time do you practice?” to be included in the usual “Where are you from?”, “What do you do?” list of introductory questions and the desire to be included in the 5:00am start group is even more common. This I don’t understand.

Most of the people who arrived around the same time I did have had their start time moved to 5:00am while I’ve selectively ‘not heard’ Sharath’s suggestions to ‘come earlier’ and continue to arrive just before 6:00am to wait for a spot to open up. I don’t care about being in the first group, about practising in the same spot every day, about not being ‘disturbed’ by new arrivals; I do care about that precious extra hour of sleep. As it is, the alarm goes off at 5:20 so I can press snooze for 20 minutes before getting up at the last possible minute to arrive on my mat with sleep lines still visible down my face. I can’t imagine the mess I’d be after waking at 4:30am and, with luck, I won’t have to find out. All I need to do is maintain my status as one of the ‘new guys’ for the remainder of my visit.