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.