Here we are, nine days into India, and less than three weeks into our journey. This is the first, or
“catching our breath-sleeping
immensely-intestinal re-organization-nothing to do and nowhere to
go-slowing it all way down-getting our bearings” stage of things.
It's good to be here. Did I say nothing to do? My mistake. There's
actually quite a lot going on. And in fact there has been since
leaving New Mexico.
A week in St. Louis with our old and
dear friend Paula. Let me say just a little about Paula, in order to
assist you in acquiring a sense of our experience. Paula, now our age
of course, started out as the oldest of 12 children way back when.
There's a lot more that could be said about all that, but I'll leave
it there.
That fact alone should make it easy to
conjure up a picture of a person in charge, whether by temperament or
by necessity, or both. Paula never stops moving. She picked us up at the
airport and took us directly to her band rehearsal. She plays a huge
hung-by-a-strap-over-the-neck bass drum with Joia, a sorta
Brazilian beat street band that's been going on around St. Louis for
decades, and they were rehearsing for a big gig coming up in a few
days. She's the mother of four, and now has two beautiful grandsons
by way of her oldest, daughter Mehra: Alex and Avery, ages 4 and 2.
She works full time as a mobile/visiting home care nurse to the housebound poor,
and does private healing work using Barbara Brennan's training and other modalities; she lives in an integrated and hence relatively undesirable neighborhood in north St. Louis, and has an
African American sorta boyfriend about whom she's trying to decide
how she really feels and with whom what she may or may not really
want.
She took a few days off work to be with
us, and we spent the week pretty much moving along with her.
We met and spent a couple of days with
boyfriend Charles, had a brief brunch reunion with old (as in
“childhood” or early adult) friends of Nancy's who now live in
Louisville, KY and drove up for the occasion, ate Thai food at a nice
little restaurant in ”The Loop”, a hip street in the University
district, I got to play a little dumbek on that street with a sweet
and wonderful immigrant musician from Kazakhstan, we listened to a
rockin', honkin' New Orleans style brass band also on said street,
amongst whose members was a kid whose horn was bigger than he was –
I kid you not, visited with Alex and Avery and Mehra and her current
partner John, a real FBI guy, and Paula's other children Anya (and
her med school partner and boyfriend Chris) and Evan, a
fledgling-maybe-but can't quite decide psychotherapist, walked along
the Mississippi near Paula's house, and ate lots of her literally
award winning mushroom barley soup. For starters.
We also rented a car and drove out to
Fort Madison, Iowa , about half way between St. Louis and Ames, Iowa
where they live, to meet a dear dharma friend of Nancy's, Maura, and
her husband Nick, also a newish dharma guy. Maura has been to
India/Sherabling with Nancy, and I had never met either of them.
Wonderful, salt of the earth Midwesterners, as generous and
accommodating as can be, and a delight to meet and spend a few hours
with, and walk around an old brick and Victorian neighborhood of Fort
Madison with, and share some meals with before driving back to St.
Louis the next day. We actually had adjoining hotel rooms. Now how
cool is that?
So by the time we got to Delhi about 24
hours after leaving St. Louis, at about 9PM local time, we were
pretty fried, but also of course wired, and we were picked up by our
pre-arranged hotel driver in his ancient, clunking, rattling, gear
grinding, one step up from an auto rickshaw vehicle and taken through
the dense pollution of the city to our back alley wholly-Indian-on
the old hippie trail hotel, where we were greeted with bottles of
cold water and the proper registration routine, and escorted by lift
to our new, if temporary quarters. Large king sized Indian bed,
shag-a-delic sixties rug and pillows, bathroom with shower and
accompanying floor squeegee, and Western style toilet (a necessity,
I'm afraid, for my much older knees than when I was happy to use an
Indian style squat toilet 35 years ago). Comfortable enough, and
within the budget travel requirements we have set for ourselves. The
staff were all very helpful and kind and available, including Prem,
and Muju who made all of our train arrangements for the coming legs
of our journey to Bodhgaya and Varanasi and back to Delhi, and we
enjoyed our two night stay. We'll be returning to The Cottage Ganga
Inn twice more, I think, enroute first to Bodhgaya after leaving
Sherabling, and then again enroute out of Delhi to Bangkok.
(SIDE NOTE ABOUT EFFICIENT BUDGET
LONG TERM TRAVEL
We didn't plan our route well, and
so we will be backtracking – a budget travel venial sin - from
Bodhgaya to Varanasi to Delhi, instead of the more logical, and
considerably less expensive route, heading consistently east from
Delhi to Varanasi to Bodhgaya and then flying to Bangkok out of
Kolkata. This oversight will cost us time, which is not a real issue
since we have plenty of that, but more significantly to us, probably
400 dollars more than it would have or should have. (Nancy insists
that this is a non-issue, since she imagines that there is a good
reason to be returning to Delhi. We shall see.) That point aside,
this kind of error repeated over the long term makes for a possibly
shorter and definitely more expensive trip. On the other side of this
unassailable truth is the equally salient reality that, for example, a couple of nights ago we fed six people – three rambunctious little people,
and three hungry adults – for about six and a half dollars at the
local Stupa Guest House restaurant. Relativity hard at work.)
While we were in Delhi we were visited by
Nancy's friend Jiya and her adorable 4year old daughter Alija. Jiya
is the wife of Nancy's other friend and helper in India, Arun, who
arranges transportation, cell phones and other routine matters for
her on her multiple visits. But wait! Indian drama! Or is it soap
opera in real life?
Arun and Jiya are now living apart
because Arun's Muslim mother doesn't like her son's Nepali wife, and
she, Jiya, is tired of being disrespected, and I guess Arun is
obligated toward mom in the scheme of things. Oh no! The same
ethnic/class bullshit all over the world. She now works as a
housekeeper for a rich family and is able to live at their home with
daughter Alija. Stay tuned for the next episode of the endless all
too human melodrama. Wherever you go, people are people, after all.
A quick and easy flight from Delhi to
Dharamshala, and an enlightening and comfortable taxi/van (official
“tourist vehicle”) ride captained by Sanjay, a friend and
colleague of Arun, also pre-arranged for pick-up and transport to
Sherabling. Enlightening in the following way: I learned something
about how drivers navigate the much-too-narrow but two lane winding
mountain back roads and rural “highways” of northern India,
including the routine and frequent use of horn honking to accomplish
several things. To let both pedestrians, of which there are many, and
other drivers, of which there are also many, both oncoming and in
front, know that you are there, that you want them to move over or
move more quickly out of your way, or that you are coming around a
blind curve in their direction, or that you are about to pass. Sanjay
is clearly a happy honker, and loves to use his horn somewhat
relentlessly, and one might say aggressively. He doesn't like to be
delayed, or obstructed, and has no hesitation about letting walkers
and other drivers know this. At first I didn't know what to make of
all this honking, but it soon became clear what the mores are, and
how this system of communication embodies and pays obeisance to the
primal social Darwinism of might makes right. That is, the bigger the
vehicle, the more rights naturally and automatically seem to accrue
to it, and the more aggressively its pilot is allowed to honk.
Passage between vehicles, or next to walkers, is measured in
centimeters rather than feet, and the skill required to navigate
these relatively microscopic distances is considerable. Best to sit
back and relax, and enjoy the ride. These people actually know what
they're doing, and are good at it to boot.
Delivered safely and soundly to the
Palpung Institute,
the teaching facility and hotel at Sherabling
Monastic Seat of the Twelfth Kentin Tai Situpa, colloquially,
respectfully and affectionately referred to as Situ Rinpoche. We met
Lundup at the front desk, and Nancy ran quickly upstairs to the
third marble staired and marble floored level to confirm that a room
which she had previously liked was empty and available. Lundup, like
almost everyone else around here, except for the Indian workers, is a
monk. Most of the time, it seems, the monks who tend to the Institute have little to do since there is almost no one staying here, and no teachings happening at the moment, and
there is a lot of hangin' out going on, people occupying themselves
routinely with their 3G smartphones, doing what people everywhere do
in this way. Also though, monks are assigned to different functions
as needed, such as manning the front desk of the hotel, or organizing
clean up details in which perhaps dozens participate on a monthly
basis, walking through the forest picking up trash. All are friendly
and helpful, and for the most part things appear to run loosely and,
I suppose, smoothly. Of course, there may be the “when the cat's
away.............” phenomenon at work as well, since Rinpoche is
currently gone from his seat, in Delhi as it turns out, and is due
back in the next few days, no one seems to know precisely when.
So we are comfortably settled into room
310 of the Institute. A much more modern facility than the Cottage
Ganga Inn, certainly. The neighborhood ravens provide a frequent,
insistent sonic background. The sky and the mountains and some of the
eight stupas are visible from our window. We rest, we walk from here
to there through the woods and down the road, we eat twice a day at
the restaurant, we visit Amma and Acca, an almost ancient couple that
Nancy first met here and who adopted each other 36 years ago.
They feed us breakfast of fried egg and
chapati (roti) and milk tea if we go in the morning, or tea and
“biscuits” if we go in the afternoon. Amma is deaf, and for all practical
purposes blind with cataracts, although this does not seem to get in
her way very much, or too much temper her edgy-sweet demeanor. She
spends a good bit of her time spinning her prayer wheel and fingering
her mala and muttering whatever mantras she mutters, dozing at times
in the midst of these endeavors, leaning precariously to one side til
you would think she'd simply keel over, but she does not. Instead she
regains her posture and continues on with her long established
practices, eyes closed or open, watching her cable informed big
screen TV full of Indian soap operas, like very old women all over
the world perhaps. (These Indian shows are populated, exclusively,
and frighteningly, by the whitest skinned Indians you could ever
imagine seeing. Are they all dipped in white wash? Not a dark skinned
Indian to be seen anywhere).
Acca, toothless and wrinkled and richly
darkish mocha brown colored, does the cooking and the serving, and
most of the limited talking, such as it is, with Nancy, as the two of
them, after all these years, still stumble through their respectively
paltry abilities in the others' language, yet somehow, for the most
part, manage to make themselves reasonably well understood to each
other. The two of them now live in their tiny apartments – they
each have one, Nancy tells me – one room, with little kitchen
alcove, and toilet, in the Old Age Care Center on the monastery
grounds. They each hobble around, bent over, with bad knees and hips
and legs, the infirmities of being very old, and the effects of an early life of hard physical labor working on the highways of India, and they grimace with
the pain they are in, yet allow no effort, with us in any case, to
be attended to. They attend to us. We stay for a half hour and leave,
with the promise to visit again tomorrow. Nancy goes every day, while
I have settled into less frequent attendance, in part because I don't
want to eat egg every day, and in part because I don't wish to
intrude upon relationships begun long ago in a very different time at
Sherabling.
Another of the places we roam to
through the woods is the Canteen, a small snack shop cum minimal
restaurant frequented by monks on break between classes, or pujas, or other monkly engagements, and located
very close to the main monastery buildings themselves. Here we buy
liters of water (“normal water”, as opposed, I suspect, to
sparkling water), biscuits, an occasional plate or bowl of chow mein
or thukpa, a traditional(?) noodle soup, and sit a while watching the
older monks play with and tease the little monks, or argue with each
other, about what I can only speculate, and the style of which, while
loud and aggressive sounding, never becomes hostile, or concerning to
an outside observer.
We did have an appropriately dramatic
travel adventure a couple of nights ago. Nancy's digestion has been a
bit troublesome – mine has too, some, but I'm sure it has been a
simple adjustment, and nothing pathological – and she wanted to
visit the Tibetan Medicine clinic here on the grounds, which we both
did. Her complaint being largely digestive, mine being more about
exhaustion. We were seen by the doctor who read our pulses Tibetan
style, asked a question or two, and prescribed some
herbs/pills/patents.
One of the risks of travel to foreign
lands is, of course, not being able to understand the language. In
most cases this might be a challenge to simply live with and learn to
accommodate one way or another. When it comes to medical situations
however the risks are amplified. Somewhere in the communication about
how exactly to take the horse pills the doctor had prescribed there
was a gap in understanding. In any case, Nancy didn't understand that
these pills were to be crushed into small pieces before swallowing,
and she dutifully set about to swallow the thing whole. But alas, the
mass seemed to get stuck in her throat, and while there was never any
danger of not being able to breathe, she was in severe discomfort and
began to panic and tighten up. We walked from the Institute through
the woods to the Medical clinic, and fortunately, the Western
medicine practitioner was home. He was however just taking his
dinner, and so we were instructed to sit and wait. After a few
minutes of waiting his assistant returned to inquire as to whether
Nancy was indeed having any trouble breathing. Assured that she was
not, we were again left to wait for the doctor to finish his dinner.
In the end, the doctor was calm and
reassuring, had a deep look into the darkness of Nancy's throat,
firmly palpated her neck and throat, looking to feel any possible
stuck pill there, thrust a wide flat stainless steel instrument
into this darkness while Nancy gagged, and watched while Nancy drank
a glassful of water. Her success at being able to drink and swallow
convinced heir doctor that the offending pill had slid down to where
it was intended to be, and that all was well. A bit of soreness in
the esophegus, a mild tranquilizer to help relaxation and sleep, and
we were sent on our way. At no cost I might add.
Of course we made a donation into the
“THANK” box at the dispensary window.
Fitful sleep despite the tranquilizer,
still some fear and discomfort upon awakening, but within a short
time everything was resolved and back in order. THANK indeed!
Another of Nancy's friends at
Sherabling is Tsultrim, maybe 45 years old, former monk, former guest
house manager, former thanka painter, and now working on the sewing
of a huge component of what will become a 300 foot tall banner which
will be draped, only on some very special occasion, down the slope of
a mountain some 24 hours drive from Sherabling. There are four or five people working on this one
component. This one happens to contain the likeness of His Eminence
Tai Situpa, and is perhaps 25 feet long by 20 feet wide. The
principle section, we're told, will contain the likeness of Guru
Rinpoche, he who is credited with bringing Buddhism from India to
Tibet, and will be 6 or 7 times the size of the Situ component.
In addition to working on this piece of
art, Tsultrim takes care of his sister's 5 year old daughter Nawang,
while sister and her husband are somewhere else in India earning
their living. Nawang is a bright, boundlessly energetic, artistically
creative munchkin of a child with the tall slim build of a ballerina,
and it was she and two tag along 4 year old little monk-lets, along with
Tsultrim, who joined us last night for dinner. Tsultrim and Nawang
live on the grounds of the monastery in a tiny one room apartment
along a corridor of such rooms in an old, typically Indian run down
concrete building for the poor. In this fashion they are taken care
of by the institution, provided with work, food, school and lodging.
In addition to which, at least for Tsultrim, he gets to be in service
to Situ Rinpoche and to the Dharma.
Today Nancy is having a day of silence,
and so I am sitting at the restaurant, having just finished
breakfast, writing this. The weather has been glorious. Perfect,
really. Not hot, not cold yet, although the intimations of coldness
are in the air; two afternoons of very heavy rain, otherwise sunny
and mountain bright. It is rumored that His Holiness Karmapa will be
in the neighborhood tomorrow, at the school further up the mountain,
and that the public is welcome to stop in. We'd be hiking down and up
to the school, along a path that Nancy thinks she knows. She will
certainly go. I will probably go. I clearly do not share Nancy's
dedication to Tibetan Buddhism, to Situ Rinpoche, to the Karmapa, or
to much of any formal involvement in religion, but HEY!, here I am,
at Sherabling, and there will be a bona fide HIS HOLINESS in the
area. How could I not go?
