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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10:31am Tuesday, Jul 17
Where do I start… For the sake of coherence I’ll try to keep this in chronological order, but it’s going to be tough not to blurt out the best part right away… Here goes:
Yesterday Sany invited me to a party at a Shiva temple in the mountains. For nearly the first time, my instinct sends me a firm no, and so I don’t go. High up in the mountains where I won’t know a soul, and with a plane to catch in the morning, this is not a good idea.
Still, we talk for a while. Sany wants to be rich some day, with his own guest house and restaurant for tourists. He’s saving his money - as much as 5000 rupees (C$140) in a good month, and if he is as dedicated to his career as he is to my French lessons, he’ll go far. He explains to me the Hindi concept of shaïri - eternal immutable truth in life, like love - and shows me some of his poetry. He is delighted when I ask to copy some into my notebook. Here are a few examples:
“Never blame a day in your life.
Good day give you happiness.
Bad day give you experience.
Both are essential in life, all are God’s blessing.”
“Every bird can’t dance but peacock did it.
Every flower can’t represent love but rose did it.
Every friend can’t touch my heart but you did it.”
Sany negotiates a taxi fare to the airport tomorrow with his friend Bablu, a local driver. He also gives me a beautiful gift - yet another painted silk wall hanging, depicting in exquisite a mythical Indian scene. Normally he would sell this to a tourist for the equivalent of three days room and board. I’m touched by his gesture, and start to refuse, but I don’t want to be rude and besides, it’s stunning… When I thank him, instead of “you’re welcome” he only says “don’t forget me.”
He tells me that he often makes friends with tourists, shows them around and tries to keep in touch via e-mail when they return home. The foreigners, though, almost never write back. He has gone so far as to open his home to tourists, letting them sleep in his room and eat his food with no expectation of reward. He only wants a little company and the occasional e-mail from the outside world. I tell him I’ll keep in touch, that I won’t disappoint him. Now I have a commitment to live up to.
Sany, Radeep, Soono and my other new friends have added a new dimension to my Indian experience - exactly the one I was hoping for when I bought my ticket. I’ve learned more from them in a few days than the most beautiful Indian landscapes and temples could have taught me in a lifetime.
Yesterday I had lunch in a Tibetan cafe, and ate some soup even though I had a bad feeling about it. I should have listened to my gut - I ended up with diarrhea and a fever, and shivered in bed for an hour before getting to sleep. I’m still sick today - though I think the fever is gone, my stomach can’t handle any food just yet. I had resigned myself to the fact that I’d get sick at least once while I was here, so at least it’s not coming as a huge surprise. I have antibiotics but am reluctant to take them, since I’ve still got three weeks in India and while this particular stomach sickness is pretty uncomfortable, I want to have a good stash of meds ready in case something really debilitating comes along.
After lunch I lurch into town and speak with Hammu, a Tibetan refugee selling baubles. She fled Tibet in 2002 and is afraid to go home, where her family still lives, because she says she’ll be taken away by Chinese soldiers if she does. She is beautiful, but worn and tired, sitting at a little stall with her plastic beads and fake silver bracelets. She says she would like to go back someday, and would like me to go too, to see first hand both the oppression of the Chinese government and the beauty of the land. I’m standing in the street, talking to someone who has lost everything - her parents, her home, everything. She holds out hope that in 5 or 10 years - an eternity sitting in this dirty stall - she’ll see her family again. Stupidly, all I can think to say is “good luck” before I move along to buy gifts for my loved ones at home, where I’ll be in a couple of weeks. Nothing about this seems fair.
I decide to walk the 20 minutes back to Bhagsu Street, rather than hiring an autorickshaw. Along the way, a friend of Sany’s is sitting by the side of the road and flags me down. He has seen me walking with Sany and wants to introduce himself. Turns out he is Santosh, a roadside philosopher who imparts wisdom on passersby who stop to listen. I sit on a rock beside him and we talk for a while - he says a few things that I just have to write down:
“If life gives you 100 reasons for crying, you have to show life that you have 1000 reasons for smiling.”
“You can buy food but not no more hunger.
You can buy bed but not good sleep.”
“Never run after a bus, a woman or a train - always you will have an accident if you do.”
“I asked a flower, ‘you give your smell to everyone, what do they give you?’ The flower says to me, ‘give and take, this is business - love is only giving.’”
And my personal favourite:
“No chapati, no chai, no woman, no cry.”
I asked Santosh if he knew where I could buy an alarm clock, to make sure I caught my flight. “Don’t spend your money on electronic things,” he said. “Just tell your pillow, ‘look you, I wake up at 5:30.’ Then you wake up at 5:30.
We part ways and I head back up the road toward my guest house. I can’t believe I just had this conversation by the side of road with someone who, if I met him in Canada, I’d call nuts in a heartbeat. Maybe he’s nuts here too, or maybe I’m the crazy one for thinking so.
A young monk in crimson robes is walking beside me, and we start to chat. His name is Kunchok, and he’s 23 years old. I offer to buy him dinner if I can ask him a few questions. We head to a restaurant, and he tells me that some of his fellow monks had tried to return to Tibet, but were gunned down by the Chinese army at the Chinese-Nepali border. He himself made a long, dangerous journey to return to Tibet, but turned back when he got there and realized that he would be killed if he tried to cross.
Kunchok taps the side of his head, and says “Chinese soldiers, very hard here.”
Some monks, he says, are very angry and try to fight the Chinese. He is angry as well, but he follows the Dalai Lama’s principle of non-violent resistance. For all the anger and passion in his voice, and even through his very broken English, he radiates love and peace and is as beautiful a human being as I’ve ever met. He tells me about life in the monastery, chanting and praying, and the simplicity of a monk’s daily rituals. He thinks one day he may want a wife and children, and this would mean leaving the monastic life.
For all the cheaters and scam artists in this country, I am nonetheless struck by the incredible way in which the slightest kindness is repaid tenfold. First Sany’s present, in exchange for friendship and a couple of French lessons, and now Kunchok offers to meet me way up at my guest house on Upper Bhagsu tomorrow morning, to carry my bags down to the taxi for me….
(As I’m writing this, a lizard in the Internet cafe just scrambled across the wall to eat a bug. Crazy place…)
By the time I return to the guest house, I’m really not feeling well and I swear off of meat AND soup for the rest of my time in India… I put on my new Tibetan tuque and yak-wool blanket and Radeep makes me a couple of mint teas to soothe my stomach. He plays his favourite song on guitar: Doobah Doobah. It’s beautiful and melodic and full of la-la-las, and he sings it quietly while I sip. I’m sick and tired but so in love with this place, with the people I’ve met and the things I’ve seen here. I know I should get some sleep to kill off this bug, but it’s my last night in McLeod and I talk and play guitar with him and his friends until 1am or so. Radeep insists on helping me carry my bags in the morning, and on accompanying me to the airport. Again, the smallest kindness is multiplied tenfold.
In the morning I feel like absolute crap. As promised, Bablu meets Radeep and me and we head to the airport. When we get there, I pay Bablu for the cab and Radeep for the guest house and food, and when he sees that I have only 100 rupees left in my wallet (just under $3), Radeep actually tries to give me some money back. I can’t accept this, but at his insistence I promise to call him tonight to let him know I was able to take out money in Delhi. I’m crazy thirsty and have no cash on me, but I’m confident about being able to get some cash and a bottle of water at the Gaggal airport - what kind of airport doesn’t have these basic necessities? The answer, it turns out, is an Indian airport.
The air is sweltering and though my fever seems to have broken, my stomach is still doing somersaults and I have no more water. I’m now very thirsty, and I have to fight hard against the urge to use the “cold water” fountain. Thirsty or not, this unfiltered water will surely send my stomach lurching to new heights of misery, and anyway I figure there’ll be water available on the plane. There had better be, for the 7000 rupees I paid for this flight. I’m glad I did though - my stomach threatened to heave up its contents more than once on the bumpy hour-long taxi ride to the airport, and I’m in no condition to brave a repeat of my original 15-hour bus ride to Dharamsala.
I’ve got to run - I hoped I would have time to explan, but the Dalai Lama’s main teacher is taking us out to dinner and he’s already walking down the street. I know that sounds crazy - I’ll write more tonight!
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