Blog-o-licious!

Enabling India

Outside of major metropolitan areas, India is literally an uphill challenge for the differently abled. Sidewalks are nonexistent. Stairwells are frequently built without railings. Homes and temples and even our own Guru Rimpoche statue are accessible only by rocky footpaths, like this one:

Travel in and out of the area is just as bad: few people own private cars, and usually get around by scooter, motorcycle, or non-kneeling bus. Much of the time, in our part of the world, “disabled access” actually means hiring a Bihari kid to run errands for you. As our tale of Sonnam Yutron and our Emergency Medical Fund demonstrated, just leaving the house can be considered a major accomplishment for a differently abled person.

Just another day in a small hill town on the edge of the world.

June 23rd, 2008 Posted by admin | India | 4 comments

Two years.

Seven hundred and thirty days, give or take or week.

Seven thousand, five hundred and twenty hours.

Two years since I first stumbled off a plane in Mumbai, severely jetlagged, stupified by the 82 degree heat baking the city at 2 AM, and somewhat doubtful that my latest MommyWizard adventure was a Good Idea.

The original plan (well, yes, there was one) was to stay in India for several months, and then rejoin civilization. As those of you who have followed along with the blog for the last two years already know, I never did quite get around to boarding a plane headed out of the country and in a westerly direction. At times the timing for a trip to the West simply didn’t work. At others, financial snarls of this-and-that combined to make a plane ticket hard to obtain. So I stayed, keeping my visa legal with obligatory trips to Nepal, and finally registering for residency.

In that time, I’ve done my share of “going” local. Instead of T-shirts and jeans, my wardrobe consists of salwar kameez suits, kurtas, and dupattas. (Dupattas are an absolutely necessary item. An Indian woman would sooner forget her head and leave it home, than leave the house without a dupatta draping her shoulders. It’s just the way it is.) Chai is the drink of choice, rather than coffee. I no longer grumble when the Sikh temple begins broadcasting prayers at 5:30 AM. In fact, if I don’t hear it, I grumble more, and light a couple of candles to shower by, because the silence means the power’s out again. And I now snicker along with the local ladies when a Western tourist slinks through town wearing yoga clothes and attempting to look mystical.

I should really expand that last thought, because I had a similar experience after spending several weeks in Mexico. San Miguel was far enough off the beaten track–despite the large expatriate population–that I soon grew used to moving through crowds of short, brown-skinned people, all with straight black hair, all close to my height. On my return to the incredibly spiced melting pot that is the Bay Area, it took me a little while to readjust to crowds of people that were all shapes, sizes and colors.

The process does not work at all well in reverse. Rewalsar is, like San Miguel, far away from anything cosmopolitan and filled with crowds of short brown people with straight black hair. Westerners tend to stand out. And….well…

They look funny.

Part of the problem is the Western perception of India as a sensuous place devoted to physical sensations. You know, the Kama Sutra. Yoga. Temples filled with the smoke of exotic incense. All of which overlooks the India with moral conventions out of the 1950s, Sanjaya, and a fetish for cell phones and cricket matches. The result is usually an attempt to dress “Indian” without really buying any Indian clothes. So from time to time we have folks putter through wearing kurtas and pants made from the material that’s normally used for djolas (purses) or as mattress ticking. Sorta like wearing a jacket with a “Saranwrap” or a “Tempurpedic” logo….Then there was the one young lady who attempted the “yogini” style of dress. Unfortunately she decided to wear salwar pants with a white tank top. To most Indian women she looked like she had forgotten to get dressed before heading outside, and they wondered aloud where the rest of her outfit was. I know, I did my share of wardrobe malfunctions before understanding how clothes actually functioned socially here, but two years is long enough to have me snickering along with the natives at other folks’ faux pas.

India is a place where there is no social restriction against staring. Having been the staree for at least a year, it’s sometimes surprising to find myself now the starer–especially at Westerners kitted out in the tourist uniform of t-shirt, shorts, sandals, backpack, hat, and expensive camera. Strange to step through the mirror, and see out…

June 14th, 2008 Posted by admin | General, Travel, India | 2 comments

On Wishes and Adventures

Many times when I mention the “MommyWizard life” I often describe the effects without writing much about the attitude that created the effects in the first place. What’s been interesting to us over the years is the number of people who say, “Oh I wish I’d done that!” But when it comes down to cases, the same folks will happily choose sitting home in the burbs to watch some reality TV instead of eating some rat on a stick, traveling through a revolution, or building a dual-system dirigible
.
The decision pattern sounds something like this: “It’s too weird not to do.” Or “I’ll always wonder if I hadn’t.” Or: “The timing on this is just too coincidental…” Nobody we know has ever spent a lot of time wishing for a normal life. Occasionally I’ll try to picture myself in that life my mother originally intended me to have–good middle manager job, husband, kids, a nice house in the burbs–and give it up after a minute or so. Because, let’s face it, the MommyWizard life involves being very very bad at being normal.

India is a place that’s really conducive to this attitude. Few things you expect to happen do, while things that would never happen normally in the States do happen here, with an immediacy that’s often startling. This is all by way of explaining that last Thursday morning, I fully expected a regular day of shopping for vegetables in town, followed by a day at the computer, and so on. Instead, by about 10 AM I found myself packed in a truck with a mob of women, children, and a couple of goats, all headed for the temples at Naina Devi, near the Holy Caves of Padmasambhava.

I guess a little background is in order. Our landlord Bitu lives just down the road with his extended family including four out of six brothers (of the others, one works in Dubai, the other in Simla). In the beginning of our stay here, I couldn’t keep track of all the brothers’ names. So in my mind there was our landlord; Eldest brother Naru, who drives a tractor, was “Tractor Brother”; while a younger one with a truck was “Truck Brother”; another brother located next door to was a schoolteacher, so: “Schoolteacher Brother”; while the one working in Dubai was “Dubai Brother”. Yes, I know that list is two brothers short. the other two don’t come into this story, so work with me here.

Anyway, Tractor Brother was scheduled to marry off his daughter this past weekend. But Indian marriages are actually drawn-out affairs lasting for days, while this ritual and that puja are carried out. A number of weddings in Rewalsar proper involve a visit to the temples, complete with a band, while the bride and groom promise Shiva, Hanuman, Durga, and company that they’ll play well with each other, or at least not run with scissors, as long as the marriage lasts. On this fine Thursday morning, I was at my desk when I heard a band start up a cheerful tune. This is not a rare occurrence; wedding bands often pass by the house either on their way down to Rewalsar from the upper villages, or headed the other direction, back to a bride or groom’s home. This band stopped for quite a while, and sounded as if it was in front of the complex Bitu and his assorted brothers live in, so I went to take a look.

There I found Truck Brother and Tractor Brother puttering around, while a gaggle of women from the family were clustered around the family truck. As I arrived Schoolteacher Brother told me they were heading up to Naina Devi, and invited me to come along. But only if I came now–they were just about to leave! Well, there was really one answer to that, which was to rush to the house, collect my dupatta, djola and good sandals, and rush back to get in the truck.

Indian trucks are not at all like Western ones. They’re middling size open topped wagons, with railings above the main compartment. In case of rain or goods that might fall out, a tarp gets thrown over the top. Sizable families that need to get from point A to point B without going broke on taxi fare often hire out a truck instead, stuffing as many folks in the back as will fit. In Rewalsar, since it’s a major pilgrimage point, you sometimes hear comments about “truck tourists”. I climbed in with the other women, and found that two goats–a mother and baby, both white–would also be joining us for the ride. In a truck, there’s really only two riding options. Option one is to sit on the floor of the compartment, jouncing along like a marble in a kid’s treasure box, and hope you don’t get stepped on, or peed on, by a goat. Option two is to stand next to compartment wall and hang onto the railings, and hope you don’t get stepped on, peed on, or gored, by a goat. For the kids and the musicians, there’s a third option, which is to climb all the way up on the railings or on the cab of the truck. Once there, you cling there like a limpet, and hope you don’t fall out of the truck entirely and into the road…or on a goat…

So this is how I ended up clutching the railings of the truck as it bounced along the road to Naina Devi, with mama goat’s right horn pointed rather frighteningly at my stomach, and a band player’s trumpet trying to stick itself in my armpit. Once I was settled as much as I was going to be, I looked around for Tractor Brother’s daughter Meena, the prospective bride-to-be. In a Hindu wedding party, the bride is easy to spot–she’s always the one dressed in a red and gold sari, with a headdress of red fabric and gold tinsel. Unfortunately, this time Meena turned up right next to me in the truck–dressed in a regular salwar suit. Hm. I spotted the actual bride, and realized that I had no idea who she was, and that I’d accidentally crashed someone else’s wedding party. Oops.

Well, alrighty then. The truck was already a good 4 kilometers into the 8 kilometer trip when I made this fascinating discovery. The women were singing temple songs at high volume, while mama goat did her best to get herself untied and out of the truck, and baby goat followed along, because that’s where its next meal would be coming from. About a kilometer away from Naina Devi proper, the truck pulled off the road onto a pull out with a small shrine. We were actually going first to the older Shiva temple on a hilltop across the way. The temple turned out to be “Just up here”–a direction I’ve warned about in a previous blog post. It turned into an hour-long uphill hike, during which I got badly winded and people took pity on the poor American lady. The trail was narrow, rocky, and well-furnished with thorny bushes. Partway along I turned to Meena, and asked her how much further we had to go.

“Oh, just two (vague gesture uphill) or three (vague gesture)..”

By plugging away at it, and taking frequent rests, I managed. I’m good with the path from our house to town, but this was as difficult as the trail from Rewalsar up to the Holy Caves. In time we made it, and sat on cool marble in the shade, while waiting to offer dhoop (incense) and small coins at the shrine. The goats got blessed, as well, and got doused with red powder. We all noshed on prasad–food cooked for Hindu pujas–while the band played a few tunes, and the bride made her obeisances to Shiva. A bit of roti, or dalia (cracked wheat) cooked with sugar and ghee, and we were all set for the next stage. We plugged our way back down the hillside again, and piled back in the truck for Naina Devi.

Naina Devi is not just one temple, but a whole complex of them, and many local families come up there for the various ceremonies of Hindu life. So instead of a solemn atmosphere of quiet, there’s the kind of chaos you normally see at mehlas. Two different sets of brides and grooms came up to have a pandit declare their marriage while folks threw rose petals. Meanwhile, just behind us, a family was having their toddler undergo a different ceremony, complete with head shaving and a (mostly) voluntary bath. The goats also underwent their bit of ceremony, having the families of the bride and groom toss a bit of water and red powder onto mama while a barefoot farm girl tried to keep her from bolting out of Naina Devi altogether.

All of that accomplished, we snacked on a bit of pani puri and chana dal, piled back in the truck once more (with the goats) and headed for home.

Oh, I did finally make it to the correct wedding. But that’s another blog post…

April 28th, 2008 Posted by admin | India | 2 comments

Watching the Trainwrecks

There’s a visual convention in blockbuster action movies. Everyone loves a good train wreck. Something about them makes us want to drink in every significant detail. There’s this hunger involved witnessing them, kind of like what the Romans must have had when watching the lions doing for the Christians at the circuses…

When the large vehicles collide, when the bomb finally goes off, when the airplane finally makes full contact with planet Earth…that’s when the movie drops into slow motion. Every last fireball is lovingly brought to the center of the screen. Large, photogenic pieces of shrapnel gracefully cartwheel through the air. And if there are any casualties? Most movies shy away from graphically depicting the worst of the injuries, settling for the visual shorthand of a motionless hand or a body huddled on the ground. The timing for the whole scenario is important: a train wreck that goes on for too long makes that inevitable shift from the “action-blockbuster” category to the “horror” category in a matter of moments. Each new explosion or flameout makes one wonder when the whole thing is going to end: “Oh, no, not another cartwheeling family sedan…Gawd, another fireball? Isn’t everything exploded yet…When is this wreck gonna be over?”

Now, where things get awkward is when the train wreck is a person. Sure, an actual train on the verge of being rapidly converted into several tons of scrap metal isn’t exactly stoppable. (Unless you’re this guy. Or maybe this one.) But a person? Theoretically, a person can be stopped. Talked off the ledge. Quietly led away from the tinfoil. But that voracious bit of Roman circus hunger keeps us all watching, rather than doing anything.

Remember the lake chowkidar?

Well, for a while, the town’s most vocal crazy person had settled down somewhat. He was actually keeping himself a bit clean and groomed, and seemed to be holding actual conversations with the people he was talking to, and maybe even remembering their names. He even stopped thinking I was his mom.

Then he stopped taking his meds. Why that happened isn’t all that important. It’s a common thing among the schizophrenic and/or bipolar to decide to stop taking their medications. One otherwise okay but admittedly bipolar woman I know is completely off her meds right now, because she “doesn’t need them in India.” Yikes. Anyway, to make the lake chowkidar’s long story much, much shorter, he went off his meds, and has gone back to dressing up in garbage and ranting at tourists.

It’s “on-season” here in Rewalsar. Winter is here, but the weather is still relatively warm to visitors from points further north. The town’s filling up with Ladakhis and Kinnauris escaping the snow of the higher elevations, and many Western groups who are coming either on pilgrimage, or for a teaching or meditation retreat. In the midst of them is the chowkidar, occasionally ranting at nothing (or everything) or cadging change for a cup of tea. Because of his unpredictable outbursts, most locals (including your humble Editrix) keep a weather eye on this man. For the most part his antics earn looks of bemusement; but every once in a while his tone will have nearby menfolk edging their way off teashop benches and out of shop stalls in case he needs to be subdued or disarmed or whatever. But by now, everything has an “oh no, what is it NOW?” feel to it, as the decline and fall of a single human being continues.

Here in Northern India, there’s very little here to remind me of life back in the States. More often than not, I turn to the Internet to keep myself up-to-date. I read the news. But not just any news. Is it CNN? No. NPR? Nope. The Christian Science Monitor, even?

Uhn-uh.

It’s all the Hollywood gossip about the latest adventures of Britney Spears.

For some reason I’ve become fascinated by the epic decline and fall of this pop star. The whole downward slide from America’s favorite professional virgin pop princess, to “Can I borrow some panties? I left mine home again” skank has this horror movie can’t-bear-to-look-gotta-see-more feel to it. I’ve never even heard any of Britney’s music, even. But the arc of her particular rise-and-fall seems to be this combination of legendary and just damned weird. By now there’s not even any point in mentioning specific scandals. It’s kind of like watching what happened to Michael Jackson back in the 90’s, only faster and trashier. I mean, I can remember the days when Michael Jackson was a Black person, compared to now, when he seems to have transformed himself into a whole separate species. With Britney, each new round of bad taste/bad judgment/bad karma is like that next fireball in the explosion that’s already run about 35 seconds too long. Has she hit bottom yet? Oh, something else wtf-able just happened with her? Well, how about now? Isn’t someone going to intervene? Oh, the family did, and it didn’t work? Let’s check the latest headlines…omg. This should be it, it really should…whaddaya mean, “there’s more”? And as a bonus, here comes Britney’s younger sister, Jamie Lynn, with her own bit of drama in the form of an unwed pregnancy at 16.

The thing I really feel odd about though, is the fact that what we’ve got here is a crazy person with–well, not exactly unlimited income, but pretty damn close–running around loose while everyone else stands by and waits to see if she kills anybody. I’ve seen my share of nutty folks who didn’t have enough money for their next MD 20/20, let alone a psych med prescription. Britney Spears, even as messed up and whacked out as she is right now, is still pulling in something on the order of $US 700,000. Per month. That’s enough over the last year of crazy frappuccino drive-thru purchases for Britney to buy out half of Rewalsar, and put up a statue of herself next to the one of Guru Rimpoche. I know money can’t buy happiness, I really do, but I would think that much money would at least make it possible for a down payment on some sanity. There’s something wrong about being able to watch antics like this while no one intervenes.

That still leaves us with the question of “what kind of intervention?” Court orders haven’t worked; rehab hasn’t worked. The latest thing that’s been tried is an actual honest-to-God 5150, bt it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression. Now what? How is the trainwreck finally going to end?

Stay tuned, I guess…

January 7th, 2008 Posted by admin | General, India | no comments

In Their Own Words

A comment from Deepa on the Hindi signs blog entry mentioned the fact that many of the signs were actually in English, simply spelled out in Devanagri, the Hindi script. Actually, the practice is not so absurd as it sounds. What’s spoken in Rewalsar by many native residents–especially older, more traditional, folks in the remoter villages– is not “pure” Hindi, but actually a dialect that sometimes bears as much resemblance to formal Hindi as the twang of an Appalachian hillbilly does to the more neutral tones of a Midwestern news broadcaster. Nominally, both people are Americans, speaking English; but, realistically, they’d have a hard time communicating.

Too, Rewalsar’s function as a pilgrimage point means there’s a steady influx of people speaking different languages–Sikhs from the Punjab, Buddhist pilgrims from the Himalayan foothill regions of Kinnaur and Ladakh, saddhus from Rishikesh, contract workers from Bihar. Yeah, officially, all these different folks are Indians who speak Hindi. However, the Punjabis will favor their own language when they can. The Biharis, from way the other side of the country, have their own version of the national language. And the Kinnauris and Ladakhis, who are strongly related to Tibetans, speak a variant of Tibetan rather than Hindi. If the Hindi dialects don’t match up when two people meet, they’re as likely as not going to try English to communicate. And so, the enterprising Rewalsar shopkeeper has his signs painted in Devanigari that phonetically spells English words. Add to this mix sanjoor (refugees) from Tibet, MommyWizards from California, backpackers from Czecho, doctors from France, tourists from China, and you have a polyglot mess that promotes as much confusion as it does world peace.

What this also means is that the Hindi that’s presented in most textbooks and tourist phrase books is useful, but only up to a certain point. For example, I go produce shopping just about every other day. Most days I try to get a few nimbu (limes). The juice makes a tasty drink, and also has a few household uses. According to my Hindi text books, my conversation with the subji wallah is supposed to go something like this:

Me: Namaste. Kya aj nimbu hay?

Wallah: Ji nahi. Aj nimbu nahi hay.

Me: Accha. Namaste.

Me: Hello. Are there any nimbu today?

Wallah: No. There are no nimbu today.

Me: I see. Good-bye.

In actual practice, however, the conversation that takes place is a drastically abbreviated exchange, punctuated by the infamous Indian Head Bobble:

Me: Namaste. Nimbu hay?

Wallah: (head bobble) Nahi, nimbu ni hay.

Me: (head bobble) Thik’.

Me: Hello. Any nimbu?

Wallah: (head bobble) Nope, no nimbu.

Me: (head bobble) ‘Kay.

Multiply this kind of slang-ridden conversation by a factor of three or four–since it also happens with Tibetan, English, and some of the local dialects, and you can see how the town sign painter might have his work cut out for him…

September 18th, 2007 Posted by admin | Travel, India | no comments

Mel, this one’s for you.

Over at Cabezalana, Mel posted about his adventures in learning Hindi script. In the interest of helping any of y’all who are thinking of visiting our little corner of the world, I’ve taken pictures of a number of common signs in Hindi script. Learning these is definitely helpful. Answers posted at the bottom of this post–you’ll have to highlight the text to read it. Enjoy.

Where we are:

Nearby destinations:

Ek Mandi Bas

It sometimes helps to know that Hindi script is often just phonetic spelling of word in other languages. Which is why there are signs like this:

While with this sign, you get cluck for your buck:

And, just for completeness’ sake, here’s a local Tibetan menu:

Oh, and if you have plans to fight city hall, here’s where you go:

ANSWERS

Where we are: Rewalsar
Nearby destinations: Nainadavi, Durgapur
Ek Mandi Bas: Mandi - Rewalsar - Mandi (All bus signs are in Hindi script. I learned my bus destinations first, in order to get around HImachal safely.)
Dhaba sign: Breakfast - lunch - dinner (Yep, no dictionary needed)
Chicken sign: Chicken Corner: Masala Chicken, Butter Chicken, Chili Chicken, Taza chicken
Tibetan Sign: Fast food: Veg Chowmein, Veg Momo, Veg Thukpa, Mango Shake, Banana Shake, Lassi, Chai - Coffee, Dahi Paratha
City Hall: Nagar Panchayat Rewalsar (Literally Town Council-of-five, Rewalsar)

August 20th, 2007 Posted by admin | India | 5 comments

Moratorium

As I write this, it’s Friday evening, only hours before July 21st. Now I know you folks over in the Western hemisphere have a slightly longer wait, by about 12 hours or so. But still: less than 24 hours before the release of the Book.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The final book. The last installment in the saga of a young wizard and his nemesis. The one in which major characters will meet their end. The one in which Lord Voldemort, at the most critical juncture of the plot, cries out:

“Luke! I am your FATHERRRRRR….”

Hang on, wrong notes. Ah, there we go…

At any rate, the Book’s release is a moot point here in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. I am no more likely to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Rewalsar than I am to find a Cartier wristwatch in my next packet of Hide and Seek biscuits. But that’s okay. I am content to wait for Joy to bring her copy back from the States, when Lama Wangdor Rimpoche’s teaching tour ends. That’s still a matter of weeks. In the meantime, somehow I have to protect my poor mind from the unwitting revelations of those Harry Potter fans who will have finished the book by about 7:23 AM, and can’t wait to share their reactions.

As a child I was a voracious reader–mostly science fiction novels, murder mysteries, and the occasional graphic novel. (Phoebe Zeitgeist, anyone?) Like many people I went through an Agatha Christie phase. However, I went through mine while still in elementary school. Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells completely captivated me. One day a teacher asked my opinion of Murder on the Orient Express.

“Oh, I loved it,” I chirped. “You’d never guess that ************* did it!”

If looks could kill, I would not be around to write this now. After glaring at me hard enough to burn holes in sheet metal, the teacher mastered her dismay, and gently lectured me about giving away the ending of a book to someone who hadn’t read it yet. The lesson has stuck with me to this day.

With each Harry Potter book the secrecy stakes have gotten higher. Each time it’s gotten harder for me to keep myself blissfully ignorant until the next Book reaches my hands. This time around a copy of the Book is allegedly wandering the byways of the Internets, engendering much discussion as to whether it’s the real deal or not.

Here in the far reaches of India, I read a lot of blogs to keep my sanity. Geek blogs. Food blogs. Knitting blog. Blogs about writing. Blogs about medicine. Blogs about, oh, any damn thing at all. But just today I was puttering along in someone’s nursing blog, and hit an entry where she gave away a major plot point of Book 5. Mind you, I’ve read Book 5, but that’s not the point. The spoiler was there, with no warning, and entered my frontal lobe faster than you could say “Crucio!”

So I have no choice but to declare a moratorium on my blog-reading, until I’ve read the Book for myself. A spoiler could pop up anywhere, at any time. Y’all may not be putting yourselves under the same restriction. In the interest of promoting some of these folks, I’m listing a few of my favorite blogs below for you to enjoy on my behalf. There’s a lot of thought-provoking and funny writing out there.

Joy’s blog

Penny Arcade

User Friendly

News of the Weird Daily Edition

The Yarn Harlot

The Rabbitch

The Beadlizard

The Panopticon

The Lawdog

Violent Acres

The Cranky Professor

The Certifiable Princess

Tigers and Strawberries

Crass Pollination

Day by Day

Barista Brat

Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good

The Evil Editor

The Dilbert Blog

July 20th, 2007 Posted by admin | General, India | no comments

And then there was one. (redux)

Sometime during the early hours of this morning. Dusty died. He was one of two boy kitties Chime gave birth to only about three weeks ago. It was one of those respiratory ailments that is so lethal to young kittens. He showed almost no symptoms except for a growing lethargy and the occasional gooked-up eye. But late last night, it was obvious he was having problems breathing, and no matter what I did, he couldn’t keep warm. I wrapped him up in a fleece blanket as best I could, and then went to turn out the house lights for the night. I stopped to marvel at the odd points of green glowing light that were decorating the floor of the veranda, before I realized what they were.

Fireflies.

Dying.

A chill ran down my spine. Sometimes the Powers That Be can’t resist making reality as obvious as possible. It’s as if they want to make sure you don’t waste any time with denial, plea-bargaining, arguing, or any of those other emotional stages. Just cut right to the heart of the matter, and keep on keepin’ on.

And the heart of the matter is really this: it’s hard being a baby creature of any kind in India. There are just so many things that can kill younglings before they’ve ever had a chance to experience life at all. I’ve posted elsewhere about how humans and animals alike tend to procreate as much as possible, and then wait to see how many offspring actually survive. This is Chime’s second litter since March, and with me, Joy and Lena housing and feeding her, she’s still only managed a 40% survival rate. It’s one of the frustrations of being raised in the First World, and then living in the Third: so many resources we take for granted in the West are non-existent here. As I often do, I turned to the laptop, and Googled for pet advice, but all of it counseled the same things: “Take your pet to the vet immediately,” or more often, “Just go down to Petco and pick a bottle of these tablets.” Neither of these things was an option for a rural Indian kitty, dying in the middle of the night.

As I wrapped Dusty’s body in a katak this morning, I couldn’t help remembering the loss of our cat Velcro, about a couple years ago. We had no idea anything was wrong until she fell over in the bathroom, and couldn’t get up again. At the time we were living in the Bay Area, deep in the heart of civilization. In that region there’s any number of 24-hour animal hospitals, tricked out with all the latest medical gadgets, and staffed by vets who stand by to minister to an ailing pet no matter what time it is. It was only a matter of minutes for us to find an emergency room to which we could transport Velcro. After tenderly packing her up in a box, there was perhaps a 15 minute drive, and then she was receiving care comparable to what a human would receive. Examinations. Lab tests. An IV drip to stave off dehydration.

At the time, mind you, this turned out to be small consolation. Vet after vet came out to talk to us, saying in a gentle voice, “That’s a really sick kitty you have there.” Velcro’s illness turned out to be a cancer so advanced, there was no hope of treating her in a way that would maintain her quality of life. After a tearful couple of days, we opted to have Velcro put to sleep at home, with all of us holding her and singing manis as she died.

In India, when a cat is this ill, the only thing you can do is sing manis.

Which may be the lesson for today. Two cats, two very different cat lives, same ending. Life and death may be ugly, unacceptable, and hard, but there’s always that chance for salvation from the Great Wheel…

Editrix’ note: It’s two days later, and Sandy is dead also, from the same thing. I’m noting it here rather than in a separate blog post, because there’s only so many unfortunate animal stories I can bear to write. The respiratory problem set in so fast, there was really nothing to be done. I hate this. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to say to the Powers That Be, “Ya know, this ain’t right.” But this is the lot of many animals here.

July 15th, 2007 Posted by admin | India, Tibetan Buddhism | 4 comments

A Celebration of Independence

Admittedly, it feels a little odd posting about Independence Day, bt I thought I’d give it a try. When I was in the States, July 4th was the holiday I felt most ambivalent about celebrating. After all, I am descended from folks whose first experiences of the New World were of the involuntary kind. On the other hand, there’s nothing like a day basically spent eating, drinking, and then playing with fireworks.

After a year in India, I realized that when I put my mind to the idea of independence, some entirely new perspectives on the subject came to the surface. I realized what I really wanted to celebrate was freedom from “dependencies” I’d always assumed were just part of the American way.

Freedom from advertising. Think about the advertising you’re exposed to over the course of a day: billboards, bus stands, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and so on. I didn’t realize how much of it I’d been exposed to, until I started living in a place with much, much, less. Oh, there’s advertising signs plastered on the front of general needs stores, or the sides of sheds, but it’s not even close to the experience of driving along, say, 101 for about 30 minutes.

Freedom from “i”-anything. No ipods, No iphones, no i-nothin’. Yes, white earphones are trendy now, in Delhi and Mumbai, but out here the cult of the Tiny Tune Carrier is mercifully absent. Instead, many cell phones include radios and MP3 players.

Freedom from Franchise living. No Denny’s. No Target. The closest Mcdonalds’ is 12 hours away. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are times I’ve pulled into a Denny’s for a meal, precisely because no matter which Denny’s I went to, I was guaranteed to get the same thing every time, whether I ordered it in Portland, Oregon, or Roswell, New Mexico. Here, a bus ride can expose me to several different Indian cuisines, including the fiery Punjabi fare.

Freedom from “the office”. I have a home office again, in my bedroom as is my wont. Ironically, because of the pace of rural life, I tend to get up much earlier and start work earlier than I ever did in the Bay Area. Some days I’m up and working by 6 AM, and happy to do so.

Freedom from religious assumptions. If you want to change your religious world view, travel to a place where Christianity is not the dominant religion. In Rewalsar the kora path passes by three Buddhist monasteries, several Hindu temples, and a big Sikh gurudwara. In the morning as I go on kora, I meet neighbors going off to temple, and nod to the Sikh meditator who sits by the lake in the early morning. One time in Delhi, I wandered into the Muslim quarter of “Old Delhi”. As elsewhere, I found myself being stared
at by passersby. I was a bit surprised to realize that many people were staring not just because I was a Western tourist wandering in the hood, but because they could see my face.

Freedom from….er…meat. No, really. I’ve not become vegetarian; I still tuck into the occasional dish of thukpa or momos. Except for sushi, I don’t actually miss it that much. I think back to the number of times a week I had steak, burgers, chicken, or fish back in America, and the amount seems kinda startling now. I’ve just grown accustomed to eating a lot of vegetarian dishes.

Freedom from wanting a lot of material goods. This is way different from needing material goods–I still lust for a dishwasher, and a microwave from time to time. I’m talking about more of the “retail therapy” form of wanting. It’s the difference between needing a new pair of pants, and buying five pairs because the store happened to have a sale that day. Many days I try to think of stuff I would buy tomorrow if money were no object. It’s actually a pretty short list, mostly computer stuff, chocolate, and hair
product for my dreads. Of course, in this “material goods” equation, yarn doesn’t count…

So those are the freedoms that are on my mind today. What kinds are y’all celebrating?

July 4th, 2007 Posted by admin | General, India | 2 comments

All Right Now…Kitties, Redux!

It’s been a while since I posted anything about Chime, and her surviving kitten, Leopard. Leopard is now three months old, and hell on wheels, sort of the Indian version of Dennis the Menace. If she were ever featured in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, she would play Calvin. To Leopard’s credit, she’s also a bug-eating mouse-catcher, a wonderful cat to have in an area where the variety and tenacity of the insect life is truly amazing. The bugs
here deserve a post all to themselves. Meantime Chime has been weaning Leopard, snarling and batting at the little cat whenever she came around to play or nurse.

So, anyway….did I mention that Chime had gotten pregnant again, apparently right after having the last litter? No? My bad. If my understanding of feline reproduction is correct, she went right back out and got knocked up only a few days after bringing Tiger, Leopard, and Smoke into the world. The marauding tomcat who was such a nightmare before has not been around for weeks, so I’m guessing he’s the babydaddy this time around. Egad, it’s
almost like being back in Inglewood, this situation.

As time passed, Chime got bigger, and lumpier, and slower, and her face took on more and more of that uncomfortable-pregnant-female look that is not exclusive to the human species.

Last night, Chime took up residence on top of an armoire, meowing and complaining the whole time. This morning I got up to the peep-peep-peep-scuffle-scuffle sounds of new kitty life. Chime had camped out in Joy’s bright red Swiss Army duffle bag for the big event. I suppose I could turn this whole thing into a testimonial for Victorinox products.

Looking at the kittens, I realized I was stumped for names. “Chime” just means cat in Tibetan. I could name one kitten “Bille”, which is cat in Hindi; but what would the other one be called? The other kitties were named after animals, except for poor little Smoke. Both the new kitties look exactly like Chime, which isn’t real surprising. Most cats in this part of India are a variation of grayish-brown tabby, a color scheme obviously evolved over the centuries to blend in with the stones and dirt of the landscape,
like so:

It was one of those before-coffee moments. Two little tabby babies who look just like Mom, one a grayish brown, one a brownish-gray. Hm. I looked down at the clumsy little furballs, and proclaimed them to be:

Sandy and Dusty.

Huh. Maybe a bit more coffee…

June 24th, 2007 Posted by admin | India | 5 comments