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July 8th, 2024

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

As my three-hour flight from Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur blazingly descended onto the sprawling asphalt of Malaysia’s busiest landing strip, I could see final traces of a fiery orange sunset outside my airline window.  As I’ve done on every single flight for as long as I can remember, except for the time I went skydiving in Fiji, I applauded vigorously as our taxi slowed to a halt.  I refuse to take the miracle of safe air travel for granted.  

Walking through the airport, from my gate to immigration control, I was immediately reminded of home by the diverse array of nationalities present.  Much like New York City, Kuala Lumpur is a global place.  As such, the two metropolises share an acceptingly tolerant open-mindedness that homogenized societies lack.  I took the eclecticism of the terminal crowd as an assurance that my own idiosyncrasies would be embraced without judgment.  

Indeed, rather than judgment, I received nothing but curiosity and empathy from Mohamad, the taxi driver who generously jetted me from the airport to my city-center hotel.  For the entire duration of the hour-long ride, we lightly pontificated on religion, ancient history, climate change, and Malaysia’s multifaceted identity.  Mohamad’s mindfully open-hearted intellectualism comforted and stimulated me; I reclined deeper into his vehicle’s leather upholstery with every inquisitive probe he asked me.  

When one of his questions led to the revelation of my yogism, Mohamad demanded, “You’re a yoga teacher?  Why are you in Kuala Lumpur, then?  You shouldn’t be in the big city!  You should be studying with the masters out in rural Borneo!  

“You know, back in my village, I’ve seen the yogi elders do incredible things.  I’ve seen them levitate!  I’ve seen them fly above the ground!  It’s true.  And I have this Muslim uncle…  My Malaysian cousin saw him taking his morning prayer from their house in the village, and then my Saudi cousin saw him praying in Mecca at lunchtime!  He’s mastered the Earth-folding principle!”

As enticing as Mohamad’s allegations of physics-defying levitation and teleportation were, his opinion did not inspire in my heart any regrets about coming to the urban center of Malaysia.  That being said, I believe Mohamad’s claims.  But, the escapist allure of yoga’s mystically secretive extremes, true or not, can become an obstacle, gatekeeping beginners from approaching the practical simplicity of everyday yoga.  There are more than enough people in this world, inexperienced with yoga, believing that the practice inevitably culminates in supernatural magic.  It’s not witchcraft.  It’s a set of health-oriented tools that every human, whether dwelling in a noisy city or a rustic settlement, deserves to study.  

Thereby, it’s inevitable that I’ll encounter yoga here in the capital, whether through collisions with fellow seekers or observations of scurrying cockroaches.  The idea that yoga can only be studied at the world’s most hidden fringes is a direct contradiction of my steadfast belief that yoga can liberate everyone.  In fact, it’s most needed here, in this fast-paced center of commerce.  

When my dialogue with Mohamad eventually meandered towards his struggles with cardiovascular health, I was shown a concrete example of how yogic knowledge eternally unveils itself in the most unexpected places.  The driver lamented, “My doctor told me that I need to stop eating processed foods.  But it’s so hard for me.  Here in Kuala Lumpur, there’s so much delicious food everywhere!  It’s nearly impossible to resist!  He even told me to stop eating instant noodles!  I don’t know if I can do that!”

“Well,” I reasoned, “Do you know how instant noodles are made?”

“Honestly, no!  I have no idea.”

“My yogic interpretation of diet is very simple.  If you can imagine a food item growing in nature, either as a plant, animal, or fungus, then, eat it freely.  If you can’t, don’t.  Now, that doesn't mean you can’t occasionally indulge yourself, but remember that health is built on habits, not isolated incidents.”

“That makes a lot of sense!  I didn’t expect it to be so simple!  I thought I would have to endlessly research different superfoods and devise an expensive diet that could make me lose weight.  But I agree with what you’re saying.  

“If it looks like nature, you can trust it.  If it doesn’t, don’t run away, but take it easy!”

That rudimentary guideline, so eloquently phrased by Mohamad, guides me through every moment of my life.  This is the yoga that I wish to share.  

I am infinitely excited to see what adventures await me in this big city.  

July 9th, 2024

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Between the ages of two and fifteen, I lived in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City, a neighborhood that, being directly across the street from the World Trade Center’s infamous Ground Zero, is constantly subject to dense herds of sightseers.  Each weekday morning, as I power-walked from my waterfront apartment building to Fulton Street Station on my way to school, my route, which bisected the September Eleventh memorial, was hindered by the spacial apathy of selfie-taking visitors carelessly obstructing footpaths.  I, like many native New Yorkers, grew to resent tourism for its chronic tendency to mercilessly congest our sacred ecosystem.  

But, now that I’ve just helplessly begged commuting Malaysians for travel directions while spinning through a Kuala Lumpur monorail station, I’ve gained significant empathy for the oblivious tourist population of New York City.  I have no choice but to see this town from their green perspective.  

As I move through this foreign city’s percolating center, I find myself smiling at the stimulating richness of its colorful murals, fragrant food carts, and unrelenting wildlife.  The locals I walk past, however, maintain monotone expressions, gone numb to the bubbling details of this fiery melting pot, which they look upon, in their periphery, with mundanely casual familiarity.  They’re just like New Yorkers: back home, we secretly snicker at travelers who marvel at the graffiti tags and street performers that we know to be mere dime-a-dozen inevitabilities.  Therefore, after today, I can completely understand how fascinating and energizing it must be for tourists to walk down my city’s sidewalks for the first time.  

I only hope that, upon my return home, I’ll have enough mindfulness to perceive Manhattan’s predictable cacophony with as much innocence and endearment as an alien would.  

For now, this realization has brought my spirit closer to home than it’s been since I fled America.  In Kuala Lumpur’s monorail system, I see my New York City Subway.  In its fruit stands, I see hot dog carts.  In its art galleries, I see the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMA, and the Whitney.  

Nevertheless, as I stand on the top floor of Kuala Lumpur’s premier art museum, peering out its window at torrential downpour watering an untamed jungle just across the street, I meditate on one unavoidable discrepancy that distances Kuala Lumpur from my native Gotham: in New York, it’s impossible to find rugged natural terrain in such close proximity to urbanism.  In fact, only two references to the untouched woodlands of seventeenth-century Manahatta endure: the city’s twin rivers.  Even the edenic haven of Central Park’s uptown greenery is entirely landscaped, hardly wild.  Our signature concrete towers block sunlight, exacerbate chilling winds, and trap summer heat, creating an unnatural environment that ultimately harms its inhabitants.  In these modern times, the beauty of New York’s indigenous forests, banished upstate, only reveals itself to those bearing the privilege of an automobile.  

Ninety minutes ago, I took the train three stops and emerged at the outskirts of a two-hundred-and-twenty-six acre jungle.  It’s bordered on all sides by office buildings, freeways, and restaurants.  Why hasn’t it been eradicated, compromised in the name of urban sprawl?  

In some aspect of Malaysian culture lies the intuition that there’s simply no substitute for nature.  While I’m here, I intend to pinpoint that grounded aspect and absorb it.  One day, I’ll plant its seed in my hometown.  

July 10th, 2024

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Since my arrival in Malaysia forty-eight hours ago, I’ve already gorged myself on an obscene amount of durian.  The mystifying fruit, which I loved at first bite, found me once before, in Bali, but the scarcity it suffers during Indonesia’s summer months prevented our sophomore encounter.  In Kuala Lumpur, however, these green spiky balls are omnipresent.  As a result, I’ve decided to catch up on an entire lifetime of durian consumption before my departure from Malaysia.  The fruit’s gentle sweetness and silky creaminess, reminiscent of banana pudding, makes such an undertaking effortlessly enjoyable, even mesmerizing.  This is no mere snack.  It’s a devotional ritual that demands focus and respect: durian’s goopy texture requires the brandishing of plastic gloves by eaters wishing to indulge in its addicting flavor, lest their hands be lingeringly coated by the fruit’s polarizing and fragrant stench. 

This morning, devastated by the haste at which I’d made an entire durian vanish into my stomach, I dilated the moment’s euphoria by licking every last speck of milky yellow fiber off the floppy fingers of my plastic gloves.  I put each finger in my mouth, sucking on it, just to be sure that I wasn’t leaving any bit of the sacred crop behind.  My melodrama caught the attention of locals walking past, entertained and amazed at the vigor of my voracious appetite for durian.  Their dumbfounded disbelief wordlessly expressed that they’d never before seen any Caucasian hold such fondness for their signature fruit.  I haven’t either.  I do not know which of my synapses to hold responsible for this fixation on durian, a food that disgusts and nauseates even certain Malaysians.  At this point, my addiction is past any possibility of posturing or hyperbole.  But I harbor no shame, guilt, or embarrassment.  Through eating this fruit, I nourish myself with nutritious phytochemicals, contribute to the local economy, and experience this foreign land through taste, rather than settling for sight, sound, and smell.  

Right on cue, a middle-aged Australian couple sauntered up to the fruit shop where I sat, scrutinizing, with perplexed eyes, a high tower of durians erected by the vendor.  

Gregariously, I called out to them, “Try it! It’s incredible!”

Their response was fearfully dubious: “I don’t know… I heard they’re pretty stinky.”

Every traveler must decide the limits of their personal comfort zone.  Some draw the line at durian tastings. 

Personally, I draw the line at letting monkeys crawl all over me.  After my morning feast, I taxied to Batu Caves, Malaysia’s most popular Hindu Pilgrimage site, consisting of a three-hundred-step staircase that leads up to a secluded, yet opulently intricate, holy temple housed within a clammy grotto.  The spectacle is bordered on all sides by a jungly forest, predictably rife with monkeys.  I noticed many sightseers relishing interactions with fellow primates, feeding them bananas and laughing in delight as the nimble creatures climbed their bodies.  But, my persistent fear of survivalist primates’ violent tendencies prevented my participation.  I held my head high as I walked past them, maintaining respect but refusing to humor their gluttony.  My sights were set on the world-famous temple, shrouded in ivy-tickled rock formations, before me.  I was disarmed by its ancient aura and artful architecture.  

In fact, this religious haven resurrects a poignant question I asked yesterday, prompted by the existence of an untouched jungle in Kuala Lumpur’s city center: why is Malaysia so insistent on yielding to nature, even in the capital of their structural developments?  Why not construct such a powerful destination of worship in a more accessible location than a staggeringly elevated cavern?  Because human spirituality is inescapably indebted to the dramatic miracles of Mother Earth.  Batu Caves struck me as a monument dedicated, beyond its evident nods towards Hindu tradition, to the generously lush and romantically picturesque Southeast Asian biome.  Without Malaysia's fertile soil and temperate climate, would Kuala Lumpur’s concrete jungle even be here?  This culture has not forgotten the prehistoric origins of natural abundance that heralded its current economic prosperity.  

I see that same reverence for nature in the manifold durian carts that line these asphalt alleys.  They’d be entirely devoid of product if not for this natural ecosystem.  That truth is certainly not lost on the impassioned durian slingers of Kuala Lumpur: they rate each fruit’s quality by the age of its tree.  Signage boasting “AAA QUALITY - DURIANS FROM 120 YEAR OLD TREE” is taped on the most prestigious carts.  When I splurge on these top-of-the-line treasures, I taste the difference.  

An incredible metaphor lies within this ranking system: Malaysia’s timeless nature will forever appreciate in value.  Planting new trees, lined in agricultural rows, holds no candle to the undisturbed interdependence of uncultivated wilderness.  May these historic durian trees always stand as a symbol of nature’s unmolestable prosperity.  May the rest of the world follow this nation’s admirable example. 

July 11th, 2024

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Do not misinterpret my optimistic admiration of Malaysia as neglect of its imperfections.  When I enter unfamiliar cultures, I must absorb their best qualities and deflect their worst, while, above all, acknowledging their complexity.  In truth, I prefer omitting complaints from these daily logs because my words cast palpable spells: the connotation that characterizes my diaries inevitably seeps into my daily life.  So, I choose gratitude.  

Yet, I’d like to add a bit of nuance to my glowing depictions of Southeast Asia.  Yesterday, as I was conversing with a Bangladeshi man – he’d just introduced me to his favorite snack, chili-coated mango – he casually tossed a plastic spoon into the street, to my surprise.  Later that night, while speaking to a waiter who’d just served me a delicious dish of kangkung, I was alarmed to hear that he steadily maintains a nocturnal lifestyle, disrupting natural circadian rhythm, in order to combat Malaysia’s scorching heat.  Evidently, my environmentalist nature-frolics and fruit-binges, as well as my spiritual mindfulness-practices, are not universally shared, whether by locals or fellow travelers.  Nonetheless, no amount of forest litter, frying oil, or vampires in my orbit could deter this lifestyle of mine.  I’d uphold the same values in any nation, biome, or culture.

Therefore, when I praise Southeast Asia for its lush biogeography and open-hearted citizenry, I do not mean to suggest that idealism to be its entirety, nor that such favorable qualities are exclusive to this region.  Actually, my travels here have taught me that such pillars of love and nature can intrinsically be found anywhere on the globe.  Our species may be flawed, but our birthright purity cannot be stolen.  It simply must be uncovered by determined seekers.

As a stateless citizen of the world, I accept this faraway land as my home, just as every corner of our Earth is.  I love this place.  

Love,

Etai