Ladies Venture Hotel, McLeod Ganj, 10:38-11:50pm, Sunday, July 01, 2007

            I’ve been so busy since my last update that there are a multitude of different things I could write tonight. I’ve been meaning to write about the hotel I moved into after leaving the nunnery, about my friends, about Hope Education Center (the school that I teach at and have recently been named a board member), about food, restaurants, the cultural divisions between the Hindis, Punjabis, Kashmiris, Tibetans, Americans, Israelis, Brits, and people from all other walks of (mostly European) life that call McLeod Ganj their home, whether for three days during an Indian backpacking adventure or for life.

            The thing that chiefly brings us together is that this home is not meant to be anyone’s. It was a ghost of a British hill station when the Indian gave it to a man in his twenties who proceeded to relocate his country, preserve his culture, win a Nobel Prize, an inspire (so far) three generations of people to adopt his teachings. Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, created this place. Every building that now stands, every person who walks the streets, does so because of him.

            It now boasts a booming tourist economy, several Tibetan monasteries and nunneries, and hundreds of signs reading “Free Tibet,” “Tashi Delek” (Hello in Tibetan), or counting down the number of days until the cursed Beijing Olympic Games. Cows, stray dogs, monkeys, and slugs feast upon the filthy waste that lines the gutters, swollen now about three weeks into this year’s eager monsoon which shouldn’t have started until today. Tourist taxis, jeeps, and auto-rickshaws race through the otherwise slow-moving streets, horns blasting people and animals away like dynamite. Beggars – always Indian, often women, occasionally horribly deformed – plead for money, often touching you, grabbing your arms and making you feel simultaneously sympathetic and dirty. Then the rains come, creating waterfalls that must exist under American city streets except that they’re covered by sidewalks with grated entrances that prevent all but rats and foxes from entering. Here, the two-feet deep ditches line every road and become almost as navigable as Venetian streets were it not for the steep incline. In a matter of minutes, sunlight can turn to inch-deep planes of water rushing down Jogibara Road, which is steep enough as it is, a road etched into the side of the almost jungle-like forests of the Himalayan foothills. Everything is green. Everything is slippery. No place is dry.

            My soul, however, is being fed with every drop. I lived in a desert for twelve years, and now my heart is being rehydrated as if I had been freeze-dried for consumption in space. Sometimes I think of the scene in the Lion King where Scar is defeated and rain returns to the savanna for the first time in years. When the rain stops (if it stops, and usually not for long), the fog roles itself across the mountains so that McLeod Ganj suddenly feels like it is only connected to the earth by beanstalk. It may not be the Land of the Snow Lion, but my God, it feels like home right now.

            Today, walking back from a short-lived trip to St. John of the Wilderness, the rain began to fall again. Being at the church had been perhaps the weirdest thing I’ve done since coming to McLeod. I have prostrated at the foot of His Holiness’ throne in the main meditation room of his temple. I made the ten hour roundtrip pilgrimage to the Golden Temple, the center of the Sikh world, walking three times around the reflection pool at midday, midnight, and sunrise with my head always covered in respect to God. And though it was not recently, I have also walked the frescoed halls of the Vatican City. Thus, I have made my own spiritual (if somewhat touristy) journeys to the centers of three major religions.

            But St. John’s was unsettling. The sight of the recent murder of an English volunteer (who was Jody’s, my next-door neighbor turned friend and confidant, friend), this Episcopal church was built in the 1800s to serve the British military stationed on the hill. The pathway leading down to the chapel from the Dharamsala-McLeod road is beautifully adorned with bricks and gigantic Celtic crosses inlaid in the concrete. From the outside, it looks as if you should see its picture in a guidebook for Ireland; the green, manicured landscaping dotted only with white lilies equidistant to each other provides a pastoral backdrop to the gothic, stone architecture with white watermarks that make it look older than it really is.

            The inside, however, is damp, musty, and unkempt. A few rows of falling-apart pews stand lit by a few florescent lights hanging at weird angles from pipes that run along the stone walls carrying electricity as if they were varicose veins on an ancient building, built long before electricity. Large wooden boxes and something that looks like a miniature, thatched-roofed Balinese hut are all but forgotten in the back corners surrounded by the extra plastic deck chairs that were added sometime afterwards. The priest, a short Indian man who I mistook for a beggar, locks his dog in a small closet by the entrance, causing the entire edifice to smell of wet hair. He asked me in broken English if I would sign the guestbook (a damp notebook of lined paper) and to read a testimony written by someone about his life growing up atheist, his sudden, almost rabid conversion, and how he slept in the church every night, eventually ridding it of the devil-like spirits that people have said haunted the place. I had a hard time believing that it had worked. Nor did he seem very holy as he kicked us out of the place after a few minutes of hurried prayer, drowning out our protests that the church didn’t close until five with his rebuttal: not if he had somewhere to be. As he spoke, fog ascended the hill from the Kangra Valley, and slowly filled the church through open the side doors as if, when I returned to the churchyard outside, I would find myself in a fantasy land through some misplace spell.

            Before I left, I felt some kind of energy leaching happiness from anyone who dared step foot inside. Indeed, it felt haunted in a way, as if some spirit was still searching for someone, something, to make it whole. The problem is, the spirit felt greedy, as if it could suck all the energy out of anyone who dared enter under its arches, incapable of being satiated. Almost like a magician, I wondered if I had the power to take on this demon-like force, but I realized that no one has that much power. What power I did have, however, was to plant a seed of hope somewhere in the stone, knowing it would never dye, even if it would stay in mere gestation until someone else could nurture it.

            Seeing this church, the weird vestige of British colonialism, felt strange in India, like it was trying rip something fundamental, something natural out of the very mountain core, so unlike the other temples that I’ve ever seen. They seek to give, this sought to take. But somehow, the experience still touched me deeply, and as I walked the kilometer back to McLeod, past the empty, parked busses, the cows, the main bizarre, and the narrow streets, the monsoon drenched my clothes and my hair like holy water, nurturing some seed of hope inside of me, like a baptism in new karma. It was as if every other meaningful, potentially religious experience blessed me, washing away any residue the church might have left, and leaving my parched lips to taste water again.

Tags: asanga, dalai lama, dependently originated self, monsoon
Current Location: McLeod Ganj, India
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Into the Woods

 Gu-Chu-Sum internet café, McLeod Ganj, 9:22pm Sunday, June 17, 2007

So, hi guys. After complaining to God of my lack of weight loss, God replied, “Oh, OK, fine then. So you want to get sick and lose weight? Fine. Then I proclaim you to NOT be better yet.” Low and behold, I’m still sick.

I guess I didn’t have dysentery after all. I mean, I took the horrible carcinogenic pills, and they didn’t work. I’ve now been sick for two weeks. The profuse diarrhea came back, accompanied by some nausea, and I thought, “Fine, I’ll go to the hospital and do the poop sample.” Problem is (now I know you don’t want to hear this, but tough luck) when you have diarrhea that bad, it’s damn near impossible to even get a poop sample. I tried, nothing stuck to the Q-Tip. It was a really pathetic moment in my bathroom. I decided I should write a book about my travels and title it, Will I Ever Poop Normal Again? : My Travels in India.

So, instead, I saw the Tibetan doctor last night. Apparently he’s very good; he teaches other doctors and just wrote a book. The Khana Nirvana boys were throwing him a book-publishing momo party, and I got invited. Angie told him I was sick, so he sat me down and had a look at me. It was absolutely amazing; he checked my pulse in both hands, and proceeded to tell me exactly what all of my symptoms were. “Lack of sleep?” Why yes! “Lower back pain?” How’d you fuckin’ know that? “Nausea and diarrhea?” Ya don’t say. He said my “loong” (sp?) energy, one of the three energies in the body (according to Tibetan medicine) was blocked, that I had “cold kidneys” (apparently a regular thing in Westerners because of our prolific eating of sugar, processed foods, and caffeine), and that in general, my body was still getting used to India. He said not to eat any raw fruits or veggies, no sugar, no coffee, and only to drink warm water/tea.

Then he proceeded to prescribe me traditional Tibetan herbal pills, which Angie and I picked up at the Tibetan pharmacy this morning. Let me tell you, eating little balls of tightly packed herbs isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I’m surviving. Four before breakfast, two after lunch, and three after dinner (all different kinds). Oh, and tomorrow I’m going to take a “special pill” that came wrapped in red string (it’s quite beautiful, I should take a picture!) instead of these, but then it’s back on the regimen again the following day. 8 days total. But let me tell you, I produced my first “normal” poop since arriving in Dharamsala exactly one hour after taking my morning dose. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, that’s the update for now, because I’m tired of typing, I just took my night-time pills, and something tells me they’re to make me tired, because now I am. So good night all.

Oh, one last thing! I almost forgot. Those of you who ever took Creative Writing with the great (and sadly retired!) Jana Clark will remember the room poem assignment. Well, after returning to my room last night to find a giant mosquito on my floor and a beetle on my bed, I decided to revisit the room poem assignment. Not my best poem, but it’s how I felt last night.

Room Poem, Part II

I am violated by insects.

I strike deals

like a Midwestern used car salesman

turned Buddhist:

“I really don’t want to kill you,

I just want you to go away.

Is that too much to ask?

You stay away from me,

and my shoe stays away from you.”

Like the ancient priests and priestesses,

I perform rituals –

incense lit, legs folded

like the petals of the lotus –

in my one room temple,

a creaking, wooden chair for a throne,

a bed alter hard as granite

and an armoire for class.

But unsealed windows

mean jet-black beetles,

mosquitoes with inch-long legs,

slugs, spiders, and even scorpions

crawl under doors,

through the bathroom, the hallway,

or through cracks under glass panes,

just in from the great Mother Terra herself,

weeping monsoon tears

as she pushes her many-legged children

to find drier homes.

And so, like a sleepless night,

I find them waiting for me

between sheets, perched on the sides of walls

or hiding behind trashcans,

without expression in their eyes,

without shifting of weight from hip to hip

or any other sign which direction

would be opposite of your next move.

Like a gangster

throwing his apple into the air

again, and again,

a cigar dropping steadily from the corner of his mouth.

“So, Tiny Tim,

didn’t expect me to find you here,

did ya?”

I retort: “I thought we had a deal.”

But he only continues his apple games,

like Snow White’s witch,

and I only wish

I could fall into an endless sleep,

never to know what passes by my coffin

as I dream.

Current Location: Gu-Chu-Sum Internet Cafe, McLeod Ganj, India
Current Mood: thirsty

McLeod Ganj, 3:49pm Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Hey guys,

I’m sorry for the long hiatus. Here’s the low down: of course, I had to get dysentery my first week in India. I suppose it’s one of those things that we have to deal with when we travel; you have to be weary of every restaurant, every bottle of water. Who knows where I got it from. (My bet is on the little chai stall in the mountains that we stopped at in the bus on the way here. Note to self: do not, I repeat, do NOT eat or drink anything between McLeod Ganj and Delhi in August.)

I’d been feeling ill from the moment I got here (you may remember incidents with squat toilets… thank god I moved). Well, Saturday was pretty crappy, and Sunday was down right mutinous. Lying in agony on my bed with horrible cramps alternating with half-hourly diarrhea trips… Oh, let me tell you, dysentery is amazing. But, after starting my carcinogenic-in-rats pills that day, I’ve been slowly feeling better, even if I’m always drowsy and have problems sleeping and still feel nauseous whenever I eat. It’s much better.

See, the thing about dysentery though is that you’re supposed to have this nice reward for your suffering: weight loss. You know, Christians survive a life of penitence in order to gain entrance to Heaven, the dog-treat of faith. Well, I start bargaining with God at 10 pounds (expecting to end up at about 7.5, in good Indian fashion), and in return, I don’t curse Her when I’m doubled over in abdominal agony or dreading going out to buy more toilet paper because, let me tell you, you go through a lot of toilet paper with dysentery.

Well, God, I’ve been robbed. ROBBED! I don’t think I’ve dropped a pound. It’s just not fair, I’m sorry. I thought this was our deal!

Ahem. Anyway. So, I’m definitely feeling better, though I’m getting really sick of the limited supply of music on my computer. I love Into the Woods, but if I listen to it one more time this week, I might get squashed by a giant headache. I’m also really sick of Free Cell and Solitaire. They’re mindless (aka: good for sick people) games, but my mind is ready to exist again. I will start teaching the advanced English class at Hope Education Center tomorrow (more to come soon, ready your purses), and I have two private students who I should hopefully be able to see later today, assuming I still feel OK. (Crossing fingers, crossing fingers…) That should help me to feel better. I mean, really, it’s why I came, right?

So, that’s why you haven’t heard from me in a few. Hopefully I will continue feeling better. We’ll see. Check back in soon!

**Title thanks to Caroline, my neighbor from Newcastle.

Current Location: The cheapest internet cafe in all of McLeod Ganj

Current Location: Lady's Venture, McLeod Ganj

My Room at the Nunnery, 9:32 pm, Sunday, 3 June 2007

            OK, Now I feel terrible. I just killed all the power in the nunnery by trying to plug in my computer. I plugged it in and suddenly all the lights went out. I know, I know, yet another reason that I shouldn’t stay at this place much longer. And hopefully I won’t have to; I think I’ve found another place, one with a real bathroom with a real toilet. I’d have to share the bathroom with one other person, but that’s OK, I can deal with that. Especially since I think I might be sharing it with a girl named Jody. Jody’s a yoga instructor from NYC who’s here teaching yoga, teaching a few people English, and going to the Dalai Lama’s teachings (when he’s here). The room was full today, but I’m going back tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to take it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

            Today I hung out with Angie, Jody, and Alyssa. Alyssa is one of Angie’s friends that she met when she studied in Sikkim. She’s from a little town north of Boston and is only here for another week or so. She’s cool – different than Angie, and I think having her own difficulties finding herself and her path. It’s not easy, right? Anyway, we hung out again tonight over dinner and talked about life and goals and such, which was cool. We had pizza at a place called “Carpe Diem,” which serves everything from Chinese food to lasagna. (I was warned to stick to the pizza which, by the way, was pretty excellent.) It was nice to talk to another native English speaker. I’m hoping to continue making friends, both American and otherwise. Probably the more people I hang out with, the better that will get, although it seems very difficult to make friends with the Tibetans. The women keep to themselves, and the more outgoing guys mostly want to sleep with western women, so I’m not a priority. I look forward to starting my tutoring, when hopefully I’ll be able to talk a little more.

            Anyway, in the absence of power and with my battery (and personal energy) waning, I think I’ll go to bed. This was going to be a much better entry, but I think in light (or lack thereof... sorry, I'm usually very anti-pun) of recent events, let's not. It’s amazing… going to bed before 10:30 every night is so nice. I forgot what that’s like.

PS: (written the next day) As it turns out, I actually killed the entire power in all of McLeod Ganj. I learned this morning that the entire city went black when I plugged in that computer, and the power only tricked back on staggeredly this morning. Let’s keep this to ourselves, shall we? Oh, and I am no longer at the nunnery. Look for an update on my new place of residence tomorrow.

Current Location: McLeod Ganj, India
Current Mood: amused

As the bus was leaving Delhi back on Thursday, I began to write about what little I'd seen of the city. Unfortunately, the jostling bus and diminishing sunlight meant that I only got about one page into my journal and then had to just jot down all my impressions very quickly, hoping to turn them into a journal entry later. Here’s the first of what will be a two part blog. The first is my time in the Tibetan refugee settlement, and second will be my impressions of Delhi as the bus left that evening. Look for Part II soon.

Delhi Part I – By Day

            It might be the scents permeating the whole city that attract all the flies. Walking down the deserted streets of the Tibetan refugee settlement with Dargee earlier in the day makes me thankful for all the medical precautions I have taken. My day in Delhi falls on a triple holiday for the Tibetans: the Buddha’s birthday, the holiday of Enlightenment, and the day of the dead. The two cramped, narrow main streets are usually lined with stores selling everything from junk food to traditional Tibetan crafts, but today their mettle grills are pulled shut and the streets are silent like a ghost town.

            Silent, that is, until we reach the temple. Located at the center of the settlement, the temple is the religious center for the refugees living there. Inside, the air is hot, thick with the smell of the dozens of miniature oil lamps burning along every mantle and shelf of the walls. Buddhas, demons, and other religious cymbals are prominently displayed in glass-doored cabinets overlooking the silk-draped throne reserved for the teacher, whoever that may be. Occasionally, it is the Dalai Lama himself, spreading words of compassion to gathered masses in the square.

            But today the great leader has beaten me to his home in McLeod Ganj, and instead the square is only half full. Sitting on blankets and pillows on the dusty gravel are old Tibetan women, with wrinkled skin that runs like river deltas from their eyes, who clutch worn down threads of dark, wooden beads and pray. A middle-aged man sits at a picnic table in blue jeans and a gray flannel shirt, reading endlessly into a microphone that blasted his voice through speakers at every corner, making it a tireless, inescapable presence throughout the settlement. Other onlookers stand, mostly in silence, while pathetic (in the most gracious definition of the word), crippled beggars accost everyone, especially me, the target westerner. An old man follows me as I remove my shoes to enter one of the meditation rooms off the square, muttering things to me in Tibetan and tapping my arm to get my attention as I struggle to ignore him. Dargee tells him to go away, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t want to.

            He isn’t alone, though. A woman asks me for money for her family. A man and his wife, trying to escape the sweltering, June sun, lay in the shade of a building and reach their bony arms after me as I passed them. Worst of all are the children, hungry and armed with cunningly desperate voices, and the deformed man in the wheelchair. He must have been born to diseased parents; his body is the size of a ten-year-old, but he wis missing his legs starting halfway down his stubby femurs. His short, rake thin arms protrude from shoulders below an enormous, full sized head that smiles kindly and calls to me for any money I could spare.

            I am grateful when Dargee leads the way back to the hotel, where I can wait out the remaining hours for my bus amongst the air-conditioned and employed, the spoiled American. In pure emotional desperation, I order more chai.

Current Location: McLeod Ganj, India
Current Mood: good

McLeod Ganj, 8:44 pm, Friday, June 1 2007

Soon after arriving in McLeod Ganj, my sister and I went off in search of suitable living accommodations for me, aided greatly by a nine-month-old that we took turns carrying her in a baby back pack. We quickly decided to visit the Geden Choeling Buddhist Educational Society, a nunnery conveniently located about 2 minutes from my sister. The nunnery takes about a hundred and fifty women from Tibet, India, Nepal, etcetera and trains them in Buddhist teachings, spiritual direction, meditation, English, and even math and science. They showed me to a room (100 rupees or $2.50 a day, $75 a month) with two twin beds, a table, a plastic chair, and a little bookshelf. It shares a bathroom with the other guest rooms on the floor and has a couple of outlets and one florescent bulb overhead. Bare, but beautiful in its simplicity. I’m sure I could fix it up. We decided to take it, at least for now, as it’s a very cheep daily rate.

I think it would be nice to live here. It is relatively quite now, sitting on my bed. The only sounds are those of a few younger Tibetan people who must be staying in the room opposite mine. Tibetan is a very beautiful language, and I hope to learn as much of it as I can while I’m here. I look forward to hearing the nuns chant, and even kind of hope they wake me up at 5:30 (just this once, right?). I also like thinking that my money is helping to support girls who have fled their homeland for their lives. That makes me think that I, perhaps, am putting my money where my mouth is instead of supporting conglomerations, or even individuals who could be scummy land lords for all I know.

This place would seem a paradise to me except one thing. It’s a squat toilet, not a sit down toilet. And tonight, for the first time since coming to India, I had a good old case o’ travelers diarrhea (shouldn’t have been bragging to Angie about how healthy I’d been…!), and let me tell you, the logistics of diarrhea and a squat toilet is something they should let you major in. I have no clue how it works. I did it, somehow, safe and sound and stainless, with only one tear shed in my soul, but I’m not sure if this passionate love affaire with the nuns can withstand my need to sit while I shit. (Please, pardon my vulgarity. Relish in it, knowing how infrequently it comes.)

Not that you want to know everything about my bowel movements, but… (famous last words spoken by many a Jewish mother) it really wasn’t so bad, and hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning. I guess I should keep my eyes open, however, for the right deal on my own place. Until then, I look forward to experiencing this. I’m going to enquire as to their need for an English tutor tomorrow.

Current Location: McLeod Ganj, India
Current Mood: groggy

Delhi, 12:15 am, Thursday, May 31 2007

            For my first journal entry, I am sitting on my hotel bed at the New Peace House in the Tibetan settlement outside of Delhi. I’m going to keep things short and sweet, because I’m exhausted. (I left Boston about 22 hours ago.) I wish I could just use my mind to film a documentary through my eyes (with my immediate commentary as editor, director, star, etcetera). I flew in to the Delhi airport at 10:00 pm, and Dargee met me at the airport. He had a sign reading, “Mr. Tim Wilfong.” He’s very nice. He came to India in 1996 at age 12. Angie said he’s in Delhi now because there have been police raids on Tibetans, and so he’s hiding out here waiting for things to improve. We took a taxi from the airport to my hotel. It took about forty minutes and brought us through the heart of the city. I saw the arch and drove along what I think Dargee called the Kashmir Gates.

            Delhi smells horrible, and driving through it at night was about equivalent to driving through the worst corner of Adams County. Or Dorchester. (*note: Upon typing this a day and a half later, I have found that the US is not capable of being as corroded as Delhi on a good day.) Lots of cracking concrete walls and buildings that remind me of the Indian version of tenement houses. Their shops have Western style grills that pull down to safeguard the entrances, but overall things seem oddly lacking in Western grandeur, which is all about clean, new buildings. I also got my first glimpses of the extreme poverty I know I’ll be facing here. There was one man who crossed the street hobbling on a cane; he was probably only in his forties, but he looked ancient and gnarled. Moreover, the look in his eyes was akin to that of an animal chiefly concerned with survival. The look in his eyes was assessing everything, scare and panicked and ready to fight all at once.

            That said, there are women beautifully dressed in the most decadent saris who ride on the backs of motorcycles. I have to remind myself that these people are just more people who come completely different life paths. Not all men in turbines are terrorists, or even anti-American. They have just as much a chance to be nice as anyone else. And not all Indian men treat women badly. The couple I sat next to on the plane was sweet. They husband works on an oil tanker, and the wife flew out a few weeks ago to be with him. He didn’t seen rough, though. He was as kind as she was silent. And while discussing Bush, he commented that he thinks Bush doesn’t like to talk, and that even he insists that he talk to his wife if they fight so they can work things out. OK, I really must sleep.

Current Location: Delhi, India
Current Mood: tired