While I get things up and running around here, I thought I’d post my India notes, scribbled and scrawled with love, inspiration and revelation during the five weeks I spent scurrying around India last year. They should give you an idea of the flavour I’ll be trying to create here. Sorry for the redundancy if you’ve already seen them on Facebook.
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12:13pm Sunday, Jul 15
Everything is possible - sab kuch milega! This is a universal term here, meaning “we can work something out.” Too expensive? Not entirely legal? No problem - sab kuch milega!
Now that I’m done my Siddhartha, it’s on to Kahlil Gibran’s “Voice of the Master.” Wonderful reading for an afternoon tea on the side of a cliff. One line jumps out at me, particularly relevant for some of the things on my mind lately: “There are vast spaces of life which the spirit traverses, and which we are unable to measure with time, the creation of man.” The obstacles that we overcome, that make us who we are…
Sorry guys - this place makes me philisophical. Yes, even more than usual.
I decided yesterday to head out picture-taking and wandered for a bit, but I wasn’t too impressed with my shots until something told me to head back to the guest house and sit by the steps. I guess you could say I’ve learned to follow these feelings and I’m rarely disappointed with the results. I went back, ordered a chai, and pulled out a book with my camera ready. Not fifteen minutes go by before one of the guesthouse family’s daughters comes up the steps ecstatic - she has a snow-white newborn puppy in her arms. The children all run out to investigate, laughing and squealing with delight. I couldn’t have asked for a better photo-op - what could be better than children and puppies, together? I take pictures galore, and the youngest boy, Goru, pokes at his image on my digital screen, yelling “Goru!” “Goru!”. I’m laughing as much as the kids, and some of the family members ask for copies of the pictures. I head down to an Israeli (what else?) Internet cafe in Bhagsu, have the pictures transferred to CD, and then print out nine pictures on a photo sheet for 40 rupees. The family is thrilled when I return with the prints - and I mean thrilled. It’s truly humbling to see how much joy can come from something that costs just over a dollar. Kinda makes me feel like scum in a vague sort of way, for spending $40 a month on cable TV that I almost never watch.
Last night, Oliver and Adi head to bed early, and I play guitar with Radeep, Soono and the gang. Another Israeli fellow, Ofer, is attracted by the music and comes by to hang out. There is no rain tonight, and no thunder, but near-constant lightning that illuminates the sky all up and down the mountains as far as my eyes can see. We all smoke, and my new friends honour me with their homemade “Bhagsu water,” a sugarcane alcohol painstakingly distilled on the street for which it is named. It’s not entirely legal, but no one here can afford store-bought alcohol - not even the foul-tasting knock-off “Sminroff” vodka. Carefully they pull out a dirty, dubious-looking plastic water bottle and I’m really not sure this is a good idea, but I reason that between the alcohol and the distillation process, any bacteria that may have called this stuff home is probably long dead. If there are germs to be afraid of, probably there are more on the glass than in the drink. My head says no but my gut says yes, so I have two shots. It’s like a sweet vodka but lighter, smoother, and with less alcohol. Something tells me I’m more used to drinking than they are - I feel nothing, but the two shots definitely have an effect on my new friends.
I head to bed around 1:00 a.m., just in time to avoid the real fury of the monsoon. Thunder rages and my room lights up with lightning, even through the curtains. The rain drives hard into my corrugated metal roof, and just as I realize that insects of all shapes and sizes are all over my floor and walls, the lights go out. I rifle for my cheap Eveready flashlight - maybe the best 50 rupees I ever spent - and realize that the scariest looking bug at least - a mosquito-looking thing with legs as long as my little finger - appears to be dead. I poke it to be sure. Yup, dead. The rest mostly look like some sort of earwig - they seem harmless, at least. Which is good, because the rain has driven them to shelter in huge numbers, and my bed is warm and dry.
Today I planned to head alone down the cliff road to McLeod Ganj, but I stopped along the way for a sitar lesson at the Saraswati school of music - a closet of a place, smaller than my bathroom, with a harmonium, tabla and sitar inside. The teacher greets me, and for 150 rupees (about $4.50, but a lot of money here) shows me the basics of the sitar. He makes me chai and teaches me a basic raga, and I manage to sound almost half-decent by the time my hour is up. He says makes sitars himself and tries hard to sell me one, but even if I wanted to spend the 13,000 rupees (CAD$360), a sitar isn’t exactly ideal carry-on luggage.
I carry on down the path but don’t get far - I’ve been looking for hand-painted silk or something of the sort, and I see a little shack selling them by the side of the road. Inside, a young fellow named Sany tries to sell me gorgeous full-colour cloth paintings of Shiva, Krishna, Ganesh and other Hindu gods. Stunning… They are magnificent but my finances are getting thin and I’ve only been here a week…. I bargain him down from 1000 rupees for one painting to 900 for two. I’m not scamming him either - I show him that only 15 rupees remain in my wallet. He gives in, and probably still makes a handsome profit. We sit on a woven blanket that smells like incense and feet, and I see a chess board and ask for a game. I play his friend and him and win both times - Grand Master Oliver has been teaching me well. Sany makes chai and asks for a French lesson which I happily give him. He’s thrilled, and makes me promise to come back tomorrow for another lesson. An Austrian named Peter comes by as well - I play him too, and lose on a silly mistake.
Sany and I talk most of the afternoon, and he invites me over to his main shop in town (his family owns a chain of unnamed silk-selling shacks) to show me his other paintings. He knows I have no money left on me, but wants to share his art just the same. The new ones are as magnificent as the last, and joy of joys, he promises to give me one as a gift tomorrow. He even offers to show me the way up the cliffs to the top of the McLeod Ganj waterfall - just a ten-minute walk he says, and my instincts say yes. He is my age and seems a very kind soul. We wind slowly up a crazy mountain path, leaping from stone to stone to avoid the jagged rocks and mud on one side and the 50-foot drop to the whitewater on the other. I think to myself that if push comes to shove, I’d better make sure I fall *away* from the water… It’s hard to concentrate on the path and not the water - it roars like an animal and rushes by in an instant. Beautiful. I need to find more words for beautiful - I think I’ve used them all…
I’m huffing and puffing and Sany stops often to let me catch up. Just as I start to question the wisdom of this little outing, we reach the top - the hidden source of the waterfall, bursting from the rockface high in the mountains. I take pictures like crazy and thank him for taking me to this perfect spot that I never would have found on my own. We exchange e-mail addresses and chat a while longer before I head back to the guesthouse for supper. By now it’s 8:30, and I can’t believe that I’ll have only one more day in this temperate mountain paradise before heading south to hot, dusty Mangalore. My flight leaves at 6:00 a.m. on the 17th, and while transportation here is difficult during the day, it’s next to impossible in the middle of the night. So, I think I’ll take a bus to the airport in Gaggal (about an hour away) late-ish tomorrow night. Which means this is my last night in McLeod Ganj, at the top of the world, my own private Shangri-La and the most spectacularly stunning place I have ever been, seen or dreamed about. The sincerity of the people and the majesty of this place make it somewhere you can’t easily leave. I have to come back here someday, when I have another month’s time and a ton of money to devote to a plane ticket. The only thing that could make this place better would be sharing it with the right people - next time I won’t come alone.
I’ll sign off now - I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m ravenous. It seems stupid to try to share this place with you through letters on a screen, to think that maybe the right words, correctly placed and chosen, can do justice to this paradise. Maybe when I get back I can do better, and tell you in person what heaven is like. Better yet, make sure you see this place first hand. That fourth trip to Cuba can wait, and the Dominican Republic will still be there next year. Come, for your own sake. I can’t sing Dharamsala’s praises any more than this.
Until next time everyone,
Mark
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