Keeping it Short

Even though I'm recounting events that happened over the last week, I'm being thrust into school-mode faster than I'd like to make that transition. Already, I'm working on papers and memorizations and trying to stay afloat on the readings. Luckily, the following portion of my spring break is best summarized in pictures.

The pictures you see here summarize the three days my parents and I spent exploring Udaipur, a small city in Rajasthan often heralded as "the most romantic city in India." Udaipur is also known as the city of the lakes, and surrounds three main lakes the biggest of which is lake Pichola.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Udaipur is the city palace, which belonged to the Mewars, who claim to be the oldest royal lineage in the world. They can trace their ancestry back to the seventh century and believe themselves to be direct descendants of the sun. Their palace puts all the ones I've seen in Europe to shame; it took us two and half hours of walking through mirrored galleries and rooms covered from floor to ceiling in miniature painting to cover just half of this palace. Additionally, we visited Jag Mandir, one of the island palaces on lake Pichola. Jag Mandir, just like Lake Palace -the other island palace on lake Pichola-have been converted into exclusive hotels. Lake Palace is so restrictive that non-guests can't even visit unless they pay $80 for a buffet. Needless to say, my parents and I will soon be renting Octopussy, the 80's James Bond movie filmed on Lake Palace to find out what its interiors are like.

The last sight we were able to take in during our short visit was Jagdish Mandir, a breathtaking Hindu temple just meters form the city palace. My mom and I headed there early on the morning of our departure, before w left Udaipor and headed to the rural village of Narlai. On our four hour drive, we visited the Jain ruins of Nagda and the Hindu temples at Eklingji, and I introduced my parents to their first India Dhaba. On my advice, they stayed away from the spicy sauces as they enjoyed one of the best meals of our trip.

El Hombre en Llama

4:45am. It’s my parents second day in Delhi. I wake up, jolted by the telephone and the man on the other line telling me the taxi’s waiting. The taxi drops us off in a dim maze of coolies and crowds.This will be our first train ride in India, a symbolic means of transportation any traveler in India should experience, or so my guidebook claims.

I can tell my parents are shocked by the crowds and the dirt and the hazzling, which is even worse than at bus terminals back home. I’m determined to board us on that train as soon as possible.

We’re approaching the platform when a man in a button down asks to see my ticket. He looks official. At the airport you need a ticket to even enter the airport. I show him my print out.
“Madame, you need to reconfirm your ticket. Come, I show you.”

Reconfirm what? He tells me that electronic tickets need to be reconfirmed, and walks me and my parents out of the Delhi train station and into a tourist agency. I notice that nowhere on the agency is there any official certificate linking its services to government tourism services. The person there informs us that my mom and my dad are reconfirmed, but that my ticket says WS.

“Waiting Seat.” He says. Because I didn’t reconfirm, it’s not possible to get me on the train or on any later trains that day. There are no seats available to Agra, he claims. What he can do is arrange for a government tourist taxi to take us to Agra and show us the sights at 90 USD a piece.

“No way,” I say. I’d asked at our bed and breakfast the night before how much a taxi there and back would cost. About $100 total, I’d been told. We’re half asleep and nervous, but the whole thing sounded unreal.

He then said there was one more chance we had. Why didn’t he tell us that in the first place? The first man walks us back to the train station, up some stairs to the “Tourist Information Bureau,” which I notice opens at 8:00am. It’s 5:45. Outside stands a man fumbling with his keys as if about to open the door. He claims to be a train official whose signature will ensure my seat on the train, even if I haven’t reconfirmed my waiting seat. The signature will be ours for the meager price of 200 rupees ( around 50USD).

My dad’s not falling for it.

“You work here?”
“Yes, Sir”
“Then show us your badge.”

The man pulls out a faded piece of laminated paper we can’t read. We murmur to each other in Spanish that this is a scam but maybe we should just pay the money to make it to the train. I tell my parents not to do it; 2000 rupees is more than we paid for the tickets in the first place. We decide to go to the train anyways, even though I have a waiting seat, and figure it out there.

We pass through security, straight onto our train and into our seats, which are empty and waiting for us. Even though we haven’t paid for anything we still feel frustrated at being taken for fools. My dad hands the first guy, the one who started us on this entire loop 400 rupees and I don’t understand he’s paying someone who just tried to scam him but at this point nothing matters. We’re on the moving train, gazing out as people use the railroad tracks as public toilets. I have never seen something like this.

We’re all so angry and frustrated at the supposed scam, and then we arrive in Agra and thinks don’t look up. We’re harassed and followed by individuals offering us help, tours, and cabs.

That was a rough morning, the roughest of the trip. My parents are angry, I’m overwhelmed and scared because I planned all of this, and it feels like my fault that they’re not enjoying themselves.

Finally, trying to book a return train ticket back to Delhi, an Indian woman who lives abroad takes pity on us and helps us arrange a taxi to show us around the Taj and the Red Fort and then drive us back to Delhi in the afternoon.

Here’s where Shak Cha Khan comes in. He’s our driver, otherwise known to us as “el hombre en llama,” because of the shocking shade of his hair and beard. Many men and women in India use henna to dye their hair, often turning it an interesting tone of maroon and cockroach. El hombre en llama is lovely, warning us beforehand of the scams we’d encounter at each place and taking us to several restaurants so we could pick our favorite. He’s the guardian angel of the day, proving to us that even in tourist hell there are kind people who feel proud to show you around their homes.

Extremos y despedidas.

I'm writing this to keep away the tears. My parents just left for the airport in Delhi. It's not the first goodbye we share, and I've grown more acquainted with the sharp pain that comes in the moment of the last hug. I'm more familiar with the numbness that slowly overcomes me as I continue walking through security, writing that paper due tomorrow, or -in this case- telling the world how sad I am in the hopes that I'll press "publish" and it will go away.

I'm more acquainted with the pain of goodbyes than I was before I left for college. That doesn't make me any better at them, though. I'm so grateful that I have the kind of parents I'm sad to leave and that I'm lucky to spend time with.

I don't feel this way all the time. In fact, I'm only admitting to it now that they've left and I'm alone in the hotel room; at least, I feel alone even though soon I'll be sharing these thoughts with all of you.

When my parents first told me they wanted to come visit, in my mind I rolled my eyes eyes at them. This couldn't be. There's no way they could follow me halfway around the world.

India inspired the following words when I used to hear it named: magical, challenging, exotic, and more importantly, so far away that my parents couldn't possibly come visit. That was part of my logic for coming here. India's always drawn me for all the stereotypical reasons. It was also the place where a lot of my favorite authors are from, and consequently the place where some of my favorite books take place. More than this, however, I wanted to come here and find out what I'm made out of. I wanted to prove to myself that I can go out and make things happen for myself, by myself, that I can go camping for days on end and live out of a backpack and brave a continent I didn't know on my own, without parents to come and help me move out and top up my credit card when I'm in a tight spot. It's not that I'm ungrateful for their support; rather, I just needed to prove to myself that I could do something like this solely by virtue of my strength of character. I needed to feel less sheltered in order to feel that my achievements were real and not the product of that sheltered -and also incredibly fortunate-upbringing.

After setting out to do all of this, you can imagine my surprise when my parents first expressed interest in coming. There's no way they can come halfway around the world, I'd thought, and here they were, making reservations, telling me they didn't care much about what they saw as long as they saw me.

I love them. So much. I am the product of a hell lot of love and sacrifice and dedication, and the idea of them coming to visit me grew more appealing the sicker I became. Yes, there were all these things I wanted to prove to myself, but I'd still have three weeks after the program to travel on my own. More than that, it would be so nice to see their faces, to hug them, to have them bring me chocolate and good wine. They said they didn't care what they saw, but I did. After all, it was my spring break too. Not knowing what to expect, I bought plane tickets and made hotel reservations and before I could process what was happening I was at the airport in Delhi waiting for them.

They looked like they were scared shitless. And I did nothing to make it better over the next two days. Our first stop on our one day of Delhi sightseeing was Chandi Chowk and Jami Masjid, which were highlights of my own introduction to the city months before.

Throwing a bunch of jet-lagged, scared parents into the middle of tuk tuk madness and muslim men screaming at us to leave the mosque because it was time for prayers is not the best idea. A sack of potatoes on the back of a motorcycle hit my dad on the arm and gave him a bruise he still has ten days later. Sensing that I needed to remedy the situation, fast, I shepherded us into a cab and yelled out the first thing that came into my mind: "the imperial, please." There's not many places nicer than the Imperial Hotel in Delhi, and after a morning of cow shit and smells and harassment from tourist vultures, my parents needed a little air conditioning and peace. It strikes us now that this was the perfect way to experience all the extremes of India. Within a few hours we accessed the majestic and the unpleasant, the sterilized and the vibrant, the dirty and the pristine.

These few hours summarize the trip. Though so much was awaiting us, we experienced so many swings of the pendulum, finding ourselves nauseated in Varanasi and speechless in Narlai. Our trip really was like a pendulum swinging back and forth, often within seconds, sometimes taking days or hours to make its shift from enchanted to overwhelmed.

Saying goodbye was the final swing of our journey together. Tomorrow I return to Mcleod, to all those papers I've put off. As much as I thought my parents coming would constitute some sort of a sellout, I don't feel that anymore. I am fortunate my parents could come. And though they did bring me chocolate and wine and the ability to stay at hotels with real mattresses, I organized all of this for them so they could see what I see in India and understand what I'm living and the changes that being here demands of me, the changes I'm demanding from myself by being here.

Things I'd Never Thought Would Happen to me in India

Some crazy things have happened in the couple of months have been here. Many of them I would never have anticipated. Among them are seeing an oracle in trance, witnessing monks doing tantric cham dances, letting cockroaches live as I watch them crawl across the floor (part of our agreement while living at Sarah College was to respect all sentient beings, even the disgusting ones). Hell, I'd never thought a monkey’d almost pee on me, and that happened to me yesterday as I was walking through Varanasi. Still, the likelihood of all of these happening seemed greater to me than what I did on the day before I left Dharamsala for spring break.

Eternal Creation's moto is "Ethical Fashion from the Himalayas." Eternal Creation's designer is an Australian woman named Francis who lives in Dharamsala with her family. The brand has a small boutique in Mcleod that one day posted a sign on its window: "Want a free wardrobe?" If anybody wanted to grab my attention, this was the way to do it. I was late for class but stopped and continued reading.

This was the deal: if you fit into their size Small and were willing to pose for their online catalog, your imagination's the limit in terms of what Eternal Creations would give you in return: fabric, ready made clothes, health advice, an acquaintance with a lovely family in India who will offer you their home when you fall ill. Not all of these were listed on the sign when I first read it, but through the process of posing for their fall/winter catalogue I've discovered that free clothing was the smalles of the many kindnesses Francis and her family would offer me.

Francis lives with her husband and two children in Dharamsala, and started Eternal Creation about fifteen years ago. When her children were born, she started designing mainly for them, and found her niche. She then started designing for the mothers of the children, which is where I came in-not as a mother though. A good portion of their sales come from the online catalogue, and, as they put it: they're not short on fabric, but they are short on models. Though I'm quite awkward in front of a camera, the promise of free clothing made me do it. Here are the pictures www.eternalcreation.com. Laugh away.

I shot a good portion of these pictures the day before turning in two mediocre papers and boarding a 12 hour bus to Delhi, where I met my parents. It's been a hectic ten days which end tomorrow as they board a plane back home. In those ten days, we've explored Delhi, Agra, Udaipur, Narlai, and Varanasi. If it's exhausting just typing out itinerary you can imagine how beat we are, but it's been worth it.

These ten days have transformed the way I look at India. I haven't decided whether in a good or bad way, at least not yet. I'm including some of the most stunning pictures of our journey, which I'll be writing and reflecting about in the coming days.

This is Why I Came to India: See for Youself

As promised, here are pictures from my epic hike to Triund, as well as a couple of shots of my Tibetan host family, looking very handsome in their new Losar clothes from my brand new camera. Enjoy!

The Stomach Saga

About two and a half weeks I wrote the following, hoping to publish a new post within the week.

"Thursday night I devoured globs of veg jaipuria and matter paneer and kashmiri naan at an expensive Indian restaurant in Mcleod. I didn't leave the guesthouse -or sickhouse, in my case- till that Sunday. Instead of parading around with elephants in Jaipur, I spent four long days within ten metres of the guesthouse bathroom.

Anna, the friend who was crazy enough to sign up for Holi in Rajasthan with me, also stayed behind when I became too sick to sit through a twelve hour bus ride. We had white suits made in anticipation of Holi, the Hindu festival of colors marking the beginning of spring. The festival is celebrated by throwing paint in powdered or liquid form onto others. When holi escalates, paint can turn into cow dung, and the throwing of paint can turn into unpleasant groping, but nonetheless, it remains one of India's most beautiful festivals.

Anna and I were scheduled to arrive in Jaipur at 2:00pm on March 19, the first day of Holi. Our selves and all our belongings would have been fair game, which is why I admire her for being crazy enough to brave that with me. When we stayed behind, Anna singlehandedly took it upon herself to make sure we still enjoyed a decent Holi. Not only did she prep buckets of water and paint to ambush the rest of the group if they showed up at the library, she forced me out of bed and into white clothes that quickly became splashed with red and blue that I duly reciprocated.

We then stumbled onto the family gathering the Nepalese owners of our guesthouse were hosting in celebration of Holi. Together with our program director we sat in on traditional Nepali dancing, had our first taste of Nepali food, and had our faces painted by the different members of the family. I will include a clip of Nepali grandparents dancing in the future so you can see for yourself the sweetness of what we were lucky enough to observe.

All in all, as glad as I am to be out of the guesthouse, I'm more grateful to Anna, who not only stayed behind and held no grudge towards me for ruining Holi, but also made Holi happen."

It's been a while since I wrote this. I'm no longer living with my host family (we're on spring break) and I'm in Rajasthan as I write this preparing to leave for Varanasi. In an effort to update everyone on what's been going on, I've decided to start with what happened longest ago and move from there. Coming soon: getting duped in the Delhi train station.

This is Why I came to India

Yesterday was one of the most amazing days of this trip. Mind you, today I was at the Dalai Lama’s spring teachings, and yesterday beats that (sorry, HHDL, but it was hard to understand the translator and four hours of sitting on the floor makes for a sore and sleepy me).

Anna and I were on the road to Triund by 7:30 am, early enough to be the only trekkers in sight. Triund is a mountain top about seven kilometers from Mcleod, 2,875 meters above sea level. Though the most traveled hike from Mcleod, a trip to Triund promises breathtaking views of the Himalayas and –unfortunately– plenty of tea shacks to ruin the experience of nature by selling Lay’s potato chips and sweet teas along the way. They make all the effort to carry the potato chips to the top, but when it comes to trash, the tea shop owners are lazier, barely making it to the precipice before throwing the garbage into the nature that draws trekkers there in the first place.

Nevertheless, the walk remains breathtaking. Almost as soon as we’d left Anna and I ran into Tender, a Tibetan friend I’d made the night before at one of the beer bars at Mcleod that plays Backstreet Boys on a loop for ambience. He’d joked about coming with us, and I’d gone along assuming he wouldn’t wake up in time. But as soon as we reached Mcleod’s main rode, there he was, and so he came. To tell us about growing up in India, to guide the way, and to lead the way on the snowmen building and the snowball fights.

About 45 minutes from the top I almost bailed. We’d been told it’d be cold and snowy at the top, and wishing to minimize our footprint as much as possible, Anna and I packed way too much food and way too much clothing, resulting in a heavy backpack we traded back and forth every half an hour or so. Adding to this weight –which wasn’t that much of an issue at all– was the sight of a mountaintop covered in iced snow. The sun was on the other side of the mountain, and overnight whatever snow melted during the day turned slippery and smooth. It was clear trekkers turned back here. In the distance we could discern faint footprints, a haphazard ledge on the side of the cliff wide enough for about one foot.
“Let’s just come back when it’s melted,” I suggested, prudent. Anyone who knows how clumsy I am can understand my hesitation.
“No, we’re just so close,” Anna replied.

She’s much more stable than me and took the backpack and proceeded to claw her way up the ice. I shrugged, making a mental reminder that I’d hidden the emergency numbers in the backpack, just in case. When I finally stepped onto the flat mountaintop and first glimpsed the mountain range and the snow –invisible until the very last turn– I was so grateful Anna refused to turn back.

Pictures are coming soon, promise, as soon as my Friend Hong Kong helps me take them off her camera. This weekend Anna, Kylie, Hong Kong and I are heading to the Elephant Festival and Holi in Jaipur, which will provide the perfect opportunity to test my new camera.

Even as we make plans to go back and camp out in the caves, the underlying knowledge remains that every day the snow melts, that even though without the ice we can explore beyond Triund, there won’t be on this trip another gorgeous day on the snowy mountaintop, the sun in our faces and the view stealing all our words.

On the way back Anna and I sang the Sound of Music Soundtrack at the top of our voices, the beauty we’d glimpsed reminding us of another similar sight on the Swiss alps.

Back When I Couldn’t Feel My Fingers

The week before last the weather was beyond awful. Frightening even. The sky would take turns between snowing and raining and the temperature was permanently bellow 10ºC (the forties Fahrenheit), which doesn’t seem very cold until you remember there’s no heating anywhere. This was the week I came down Giardia, the week we moved in with our host families, the week the electricity went out in our library –where there are geysers that will heat up water for showers– for three days. Mind you, I’ve become flexible when it comes to showering regularly –not something I’d want to admit to the world in writing but here it is. By Friday, the situation was dire, and I left my host family’s house early, embarked on the brisk hike up to the library, only to discover there was still no electricity. By this point, I was feeling so dirty and cold and frustrated that I jumped into the freezing shower and wept through the process of washing my hair and soaping my body. It was so cold I couldn’t feel my fingers by the end of it, and to my great enjoyment, it started hailing ice the size of mothballs that afternoon. Let’s just say it was a low point, one of the lowest so far.

I can write about it now that the sun is shining and I have showered each of the last three days. I even had my first glimpse of His Holiness the DL last Thursday, when he gave a speech inaugurating the 52nd Tibet National Uprising Day.

Mcleod is turning out to be quite the experience. My friends and I hike to the nearby waterfall in Bagsu on an almost daily basis (pictures coming soon, promise), and I’ve discovered my host family is flexible about me coming in and out and staying out at night, though I’ve never pushed their flexibility past midnight. One of the Teaching Assistants has a kitchen where I cooked my ginger almond broccoli last Wednesday night (I mention it because chances are, if I’ve fed you, you’ve had my ginger almond broccoli), and we shared a couple vodka-lime-sodas and spoke into the night. Similarly, my Pa-la is teaching me to make Pale, the Tibetan morning bread, and taught me how to make the vegetable momos that gave this blog their name. Of course, once steamed, you could tell which ones he had made and which ones I haphazardly assembled. I’ve been eating so uch my a-ma-la has taught me how to say, “I’m full” in Tibetan, a phrase I use every night after downing bowls of noodles –called thugpa or tentuk in Tibetan depending on the shape.

Barriguita llena, corazón contento, verdad? Especially after being sick, every bite tastes of glory and I’m looking forward to hiking to Triund tomorrow with Anna, a good six hour hike that should make me feel that, despite all I’ve consumed, I’m nearer to my regular shape than I am today. We’ll see.

Sun setting = curfew

Yes, Tibetan families are very traditional. Yesterday I was allowed out but today am not nearly as lucky. I have to run home right now, but just wanted to post a couple of the pictures meant to go with the Khapsay entry. And good news about the camera situation: It's not getting fixed but another study abroad student, Hong Kong, is lending me her spare until I sort everything out! The flash doesn't work, but soon I'll be showing and posting about our Losar celebrations, hail as big as mothballs, cold showers, and getting lost and trekking through barbed wire.

Giarda, Khapsay, and Mcleod Ganj

It has been an eventful week, marked by losar preparations, our move to Mcleod Ganj, and me being too sick to notice much of it.

I can write it now that I’m on my way to a –hopefully– full recovery. I’ve been diagnosed with Giardia, a nasty parasite that’s very persistent but also very common. The details aren’t pretty, and I want all of you to continue reading so I won’t talk about them now, but suffice it to say that it was bad enough to make me swear off all sorts of spicy non-cooked sauces at roadside dhabas –my absolute favorite. Dhabas are traditional Indian roadside restaurants, and mine and my roommate’s shared love for spicy was the first thing that allowed us to bond.

About my roommate: last week was my last week living with Gaphel, and now the Emory group has moved from isolated Sarah college to the bustling hippie enclave of Mcleod Ganj. Compared to the size and surroundings at Sarah, most of us feel like we’re now in New York, where there wifi cafés abound, yoga studios are a dime a dozen, and Pure-Veg restaurants are populated by westerners with dreadlock with not one Tibetan or Indian in sight. This change epitomizes the notion of bittersweet; as wonderful as it is to have easy access to internet and hikes to waterfalls and falafel and yoga studios, leaving Sarah college was much harder than I once thought it would be.

I love my roommate, and miss her. There was no escaping the separation, so we celebrated our friendship in style. We had meals and spicy at all sorts of canteens and dhabas close to Sarah, and last Thursday we even made khapsay together. Khapsay is the traditional Tibetan biscuit made for Losar (the Tibetan New Year). There are several kinds of Khapsay, the most intricate, resembling donkey ears, are only made by specialists, but all the students at Sarah cancel classes on one day to make countless smaller Khapsay.

The process takes an entire day, and biscuits can be as simple as tiny squares or braided designs. Here you can see some pictures of the Khapsay making process, including a Khapsay I am very proud of having made given my lack of skills whne it comes to arts and crafts. The best part of making Khapsay is tasting them at the end. Sweet dough and white flower is fried, sometimes in butter.
“Do you like?” Gaphel asked. What’s not to like?

Speaking of Khapsay, I have a plate of it in front of me as I write this at my host family’s. Since Saturday, I’ve had a new a-ma-la (mother) who works at a tailoring shop, a pa-la (father) who is an ex-monk and former political prisioner –he was caught by the Chinese trying to flee Tibet and was tortured for four years at a Chinese prison– and a ten-year old pochun (little brother). The four of us sleep in one cozy room –by cozy of course I mean tiny– but we’re lucky to have our own kitchen and bathroom –both also tiny. They’re so kind, offering me all kinds of Tibetan medicine to cure my Giardia, and my little brother is a bundle of energy with a special place for Tom and Jerry. The pa-la and a-ma-la are amazing cooks, and already I’ve been allowed to make the breakfast omelettes. I’m hoping to leave in four weeks with knowledge of the preparation of a couple Tibetan dishes under my belt.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of them at the moment, since my camera suffered a mysterious accident and the lens refuses to open.Also, old pictures are taking too long to load, so it's either this or nothing. More updates coming on Losar celebrations.

Unplanned Experiments with Navy Blue Dye

I must confess I was so pampered I didn’t wash my own clothing until I went off to college. Since then, I’ve never opened my washes to discover all my clothes have been turned orange or pink or neon green. That is, until last week.

Last week it rained every day without fault, the days were abysmally cold and my enthusiasm for doing laundry –none to begin with– turned into dread. Nevertheless, we were heading to Bir for the weekend, and wearing something that didn’t reek became pressing. So I left my clothing soaking overnight, and woke up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to scrub at my clothes in water so cold I lost feeling of all my digits. While scrubbing and soaking I discovered that a pair of fluffy navy blue pants I bought in India had turned all my bra’s and whites into interesting shades of violet. Oh well. So it goes.

I took my experiments with blue dye to be an auspicious sign of this week’s trip. It did turn out to be a mind-blowing two days. Bir is another Tibetan exile settlement in Himachal Pradesh. It’s about two hours from Mcleod, but has an entirely different feel. Bir is known for housing “New Arrivals,” or Tibetans who’ve escaped Tibet in the last two decades –as opposed to Mcleod, center of Tibetans in exile since the Dalai Lama escaped in 1959. Additionally, most of the New Arrivals have escaped from Amdo, the north eastern region of Tibet, while the bulk of earlier refugees came from Utsang, or central Tibet. Though claims are commonly made that Tibetans have a unified culture and language, Amdo dialect is incomprehensible to most Tibetans in exile who learn Lhasa dialect at the Tibetan schools in exile. The new arrivals go to specific schools the Tibetan Exile government has created for them, and we had the occasion to visit one on our fieldtrip.

Moreover, because Bir is a newer settlement, the monasteries built in the surrounding area were built with more funding than the first monasteries constructed in exile. What this translates into are breathtaking halls with marble floors and twenty foot Buddha statues. These monasteries are built in the scale of the greatest monasteries in Tibet, and even though they’re built of cement instead of stone, great use is made of traditional tanka painting and Nepali metalwork. The two days were filled with the most beautiful monasteries we’ve had the opportunity to visit. Even now, thinking back to the trip it’s hard for me to believe that most of these structures were built in the last two decades.

Oh, and did I mention we got to see some dead guy in a glass case and our first reincarnated lama? Thogten are monks in the Kagyu school famous for their unconventional methods; they let their hair grow long, unlike other monks, and generally meditate in isolation. They are reminiscent of Indian Sadhus. When Kamtrul Rimponche escaped Tibet, he brought eleven thogtens with him, and when his teacher died, special rites were performed to preserve his body. Though the mind has left the body, it’s believed that because this person was such a great practitioner, some of the karmic imprints may still emanate from the body and benefit other human beings. Sometimes, the salts that are used to preserve the body are handed to devotees to eat. Though it’s supposed to be very auspicious, I’m squeamish about the prospect. Nevertheless, it was an honor both to meet Kamtrul Rinpoche and to visit the preserved body of one of his teachers. Overall, the trip was no less breathtaking than the one to Amritsar, though interesting in a different sense because the most beautiful monuments we saw in Bir were all built within the past fifty years.

On the Universality of Twilight

It’s official: there is no escaping cheesy American trilogies anywhere on this planet. Stephenie Meyer's brand of flat but addictive writing has made it as far as Sarah Campus, in the middle of nowhere, Himachal Pradesh, where the internet is about as frequent as solar eclipses. Yes, even here, Team Edward vs. Team Jacob is an issue of primordial importance to teenage girls.

A couple nights ago, I was speaking with my roommate Gaphel, who loves TV as much as I do, but indulges in it much more often than me. I asked her what she had spent her Saturday watching and she told me she watched a soap opera version of the American vampire series.

“Do you know Twilight?” She said to me. Uh, oh. I nodded my head. I wasn’t sure I was going to like where this was going.

Well, she explained that every Saturday there’s a thirty-minute installment of a Hindi version of Twilight. Las Saturday, Gaphel told me, the girl found out the Indian equivalent of Edward was a vampire, but that she still loves him. Bet none of us can predict where the story’s going next.

I am committed to experiencing the phenomenon of Twilight in Hindi one day to witness first hand the capacity of a bad novel to captivate so many people in so many languages across most of the world’s continents (If anybody hears of Twilight in Antarctica, let me know).

On a disparate note, here I am posting some more pictures of my trip to Amritsar this weekend that I was unable to upload yesterday due to a slow connection.

Mercurochrome

Salman Rushdie titled the chapter in Midnight's Children dedicated to the British Massacre at Jalianwalah Bagh "Mercurochrome." The title is an allusion to the color both of the blood spilled when General Dyer opened fire on a group of non-violent Sikh protesters celebrating the Sikh New year and to the color of the solution used by doctors to heal some of the wounds. It is one of the most powerful images in the novel, which I recommend to all.

I was at Jalianwalah Bagh this past weekend. Nowadays, the land is the site of these beautiful gardens. You would never imagine them to be the site of such misfortune if it weren't for the bullet holes on some of the walls and the well that reminds visitors of the many who drowned trying to escape the shooting by diving in. What I most remember about the visit,though, were none of these remainders but the little alleyway that serves as the only entrance to the gardens. When General Dyer ordered his men to fire, the thousands of people in the garden could only escape through this tight alleyway.

Just 400 meters of this site is the Golden temple, the most holy site for Sikhs. The Harimandir, the temple itself, containes over 100 kilograms of gold and is surrounded by a commanding pool of holy water as well as a complex of countless buildings built in marble. The temple is remarkable. It is beautiful, sure, but the way it functions and the services it provides to the surrounding community are impressive. The Sikh religion puts a lot of emphasis on service, and as a result a large part of religious practice is serving others.

What this means is that surrounding the temple are a free kitchen, free lodgings, a free school and a free hospital. The temple itself is polished from ceiling to floor every night.Even the children help out. What's more, free food is available twenty four hours at the Langar, the temple's kitchen were we had a dinner of dah, chapatis and chai. On weekends, when the temple is busiest, the Langar feeds over 100,000 people. All of this, completely for free. The Guru Ram Das Niwas, where our group stayed, is one of two complexes the Sikh providing free housing to all who want or need it. In our case, we stayed in a wing reserved for foreigners where we benefited from a guard outside our door. Though the accommodations are beyond basic, it was so striking how organically the temple works; it's an arrangement that has been maintained for hundreds of years. However, what is most striking is that within the Sikh compounds no divisions of caste are tolerated; the rich man must sit next to the homeless in the Langar and vice versa. In a country where caste remains so important, staying in this small sanctuary for a couple of days was such an interesting experience

The final thing we saw on our trip to Amritsar this last weekend, were the border closing ceremonies between India and Pakistan. These are supposed to be incredible because Indians and Pakistanis shake hands, but personally I found the competitive nature of the whole affair a little overwhelming. On the Indian side people lined up to run back and forth while holding the Indian flag, and people kept shouting "India Live forever" at the top of their lungs. Turns out one of my high school teachers, Jeremy Jimenez, witnessed the processions in the Pakistani side. Since we couldn't see into Pakistan from the bleachers on the Indian side, it would be interesting to compare what we saw.

Anyways, now we're back in Sarah college, with a lot of Tibetan to memorize and map assignments and memorization tests, but only for a very short time: next weekend we're going to Bir, a Tibetan exile settlement with mainly refugees from East Tibet.

Monkey Pain

A couple days ago in Buddhist Philosophy class we learned that there were three kinds of suffering. Of these, “suffering of change” is the hardest to understand, because it doesn’t involve any sensation of pain. Rather, it’s quite the opposite of pain. "Suffering of change" is actually those pleasurable acts that we engage in everyday. A delicious piece of cake,a dark chocolate truffle, a new pair of jeans, fitting into an old pair of jeans; all of these little joys of life are supposedly not pleasurable, but rather, forms of suffering. The argument goes that though we feel pleasure after engaging in each of these acts, this pleasure is limited because it is not a lasting pleasure. If eating chocolate was truly pleasurable, the more you engage in the act the more pleasure you would derive. This is not the case, because eventually, you’d become sick and start to experience pain from eating too much chocolate -or so the argument, goes; personally, I think I could eat chocolate for the rest of my life and continue to derive pleasure from each bite. Nevertheless, I was happy to begin today's philosophy class with a little suffering of change in the form of German chocolate.

That chocolate definitely was the highlight of my day. As a result of the permanent cold and the foreign food, members of the group have taken turns feeling like crap, and today my turn has come. Symptoms include no energy, nausea, and an overlying desire to be home, lying underneath the covers, watching cheesy movies while family members brings me soup. The good news: since I am the second-last to contract welcome-to-India illness, I know for a fact that two or three days from now I will feel bright as sunshine. Right now, I am looking forward to finishing this so I can crash in the lounge and sleep while pretending to practice my Tibetan pronunciation.

Before I go collapse, I will finish this post with a monkey update. Yesterday, my friends were sitting in the lounge outside the campus canteen, and a monkey crawled down a tree and straight out stole my friend Michelle’s popcorn. Meanwhile, another monkey peed on her newly washed shirt that was lying next to the popcorn. This morning, I was calling home from the roof of one of the buildings on campus -reception is terrible inside the classrooms- and, all of a sudden, a monkey crawls down in front of me and starts eating both of the bananas I was planning to have before lunch. Because I am a coward and have the excuse that I didn’t get the rabies shot before coming here, I ran the other direction, screamed a little bit, and mourned the loss of my two bananas. So far, the general conclusion is that the monkeys are vicious and far from cute. They’re also everywhere, and have taken to raiding people’s rooms looking for food.

We have, however, scored one victory against the monkeys. Just this morning, a monkey was crawling into Kylie’s room. In a very primal fashion, she screamed at it and stomped her feet and the monkey turned around and left.

Until next time, the score remains: monkeys 4 (bananas, popcorn, peed-on shirt, eaten underwear) study-abroad-students: 1 (go Kylie!)

Monkeys ate my Underwear

Well, not exactly.

So they didn’t eat my underwear, but just after we had finished doing our first load of bucket-washed laundry, one of my friends knocked on my door with this announcement. She found out when she was folding what remained of her laundry and realized that two of her favorite quick dry undies were missing the crotch. The monkeys had left the rest intact. I know; it made wrinkle my face too when I heard.

But in all seriousness, who would have thought when packing for this trip to account for monkeys with, let’s call it “refined,” palates?

My stay in Sarah has been like that –not the underwear-eating monkey part, but rather the constant surprise. Who would have thought that there’d be no mattresses on the beds? Who would have thought it would be so cold in India? By cold, I don’t mean bellow freezing temperatures or daily blizzards or anything along those lines. Rather, it’s a cold that I had never experienced before: the cold of not having heating anywhere you go, of never actually becoming warm. So far, this has been the biggest challenge. As I write this I have my three layers of socks and long underwear on, as well as gloves so that my hands don’t freeze as they reach out of my yak-wool blanket in the direction of this laptop.

At the same time, all of these constant surprises just tune me into how privileged my existence has been. Though I was aware that the vast majorities of humanity don’t have access to the same facilities I have enjoyed my entire life, this last week has forced me to really conceptualize what this means by forcing me to embrace a life without washing machines and massage shower heads. I don’t think I could ask more from an education than this.

I realize my privilege even now, because, though I have no control over the temperature of my hot water, this experience for me is timed and controlled. The study-abroad program ensures that we are well fed by making available to us separate food cooked especially for us. It also ensures that this cultural immersion of ours is long enough to be significant but short enough to be bearable. In a way, such experiences could be likened to petting zoos, where you believe you are participating in another’s life when they are there only to serve a purpose in yours.

I hope this is not the case here, for me, though I can't help feeling like I should be more critical at times. My roommate’s name is Tenzin Gaphel, and even in a week I have developed such respect for her. She has been kind beyond what I could have imagined; whenever I come home there is another treat waiting for me, be it gum or cake or tea. She has introduced me to her friends and helped bargain on my behalf in the markets and invited me to watch Hindi soap operas. I can become cynical about how catered this "immersion can feel at times," but as I turn to Gaphel, sitting just a couple feet from me studying, I can’t be anything but grateful.