JUN-B-18
A GOOD DAY IN MCLEOD GANJ BEGAN WITH A GOOD RUN
AND THEN HAD ME
SPENDING TIME SHELTERED FROM A
TORRENTIAL RAIN IN
THE PALACE OF HIS HOLINESS
THE DALI LAMA XIV
AND HIS SECRETARY,
IN ATTEMPT TOP SET
UP APPOINTMENTS AND EXCHANGEDS,
THEN AN ATTEMPT TO
EMAIL FROM DHARAMSALA,
AND A SHOPPING
TRIP FOR PURCHASES FOR ONE-YEAR-OLD TWINS,
BEFORE A HIKE UP
TO SEE MOUNT TRIUND
AND RETURN IN A
“FREE TIBET” PARADE
June 26, 2002
Both Keith Bair and Jim Blitz have just left my room saying what a good day it has been for them, in which they had a food bit of exercise, got a good guide for everything from an early morning run to shopping and a chance to interact in some way with the almost mystical figure of the Dali Lama, and a chance to see—if not experience too closely, the full monsoon. I also had tried to escapee some part of the noontime deluge by taking refuge in an Internet Café, where mystically enough (perhaps because the Internet Café is across from the temple and Palace of his Holiness) the attachments of the disc were not in the hieroglyph encoding, despite the fact that as I type now, the te4xt is littered with these editing marks which I would somehow like to “unreveal.”
I had promised Jim Blitz that I would show him a way out of the stinking crowded tourist clogged area of the shopping stalls of McLeod Ganj in the pre-awakening hours for most of the hard-core tourists and run through the forest to a Lake Dall and beyond that to the Indahar Pass of the Dhaulidar. This we did. It was a good run, up through the steep hills of the forest preserve, passing the fountain of the Ghorka Rifles and up to Lake Dall at 1817 m meters—above Denver height, even if we have been twice and three times higher during the course of this week already. We kept going on a slower approach to the overview of the spectacular Indahar Pass of the Dhaulidar, even though there were clouds and mist approaching as we arrived to look up at this imposing first range of the Himalayas. It was getting to be misty as the clouds engulfed us, after breakfast, when the group went to the Norbulingka Institute where I have been often, so I elected not to join them. I went instead to the office of the Tibetan Cultural Affairs, and there learned that I would have to go to the Palace to seek the personal secretary of His Holiness, a Mister Tensing Getche who would discuss with me what I had sought to discus with him—an audience for my medical students and an authoritative source for Tibetan Buddhism and the subject of alleviating inflicted suffering for the International Society for Panetics. As I came around the sacred hill, the first of the scattered raindrop[s fell and I had to continue briskly onwards, since I had to walk clockwise around the mountain to keep my right hand on the side of the sacred objects---mani walls, prayer flags and drums, etc. As I took refuge under a covered pavilion where I watched a number of elderly Tibetans doing amazing things in the rejuvenating repetitions of their rituals, I saw one older woman in a full Tibetan costume jump up to catch a low-hanging horizontal branch and do several chin-ups on the tree. She looked to be 70-years or more. I pulled out my notepad and paper and began the serial letter E-6 while pinned down by the rain, but then it cleared for about five minutes and I went up the hill passing the pilgrims making their multiple circuits of the hilltop. I got to the temple, which was largely empty except for the many Buddhist nuns, and others who were doing multiple full prostrations in front of the Buddha and the gilded chair in which the Dali Lama sits during his presiding over the prayers. In the background there were blaring horns, sounding like a tuba practice session. I found the palace doors by accident when I encountered a few Indian Army guards.
I walked in to a place where there were multiple receptionists—all male—awaiting a large group of supplicants and audience seekers before them, but heir attention immediately turned toward me with the question “What country are you from?” When I responded “From the USA “ and presented my card, they ushered me through the security scanners setting off all the alarms from the tape recorder in one pocket and the camera in the other which I pulled out by way of explanation. “No bother” they said and waved me through to a waiting area like a doctor’s office. A young man with good English came to see me named Ngawang Gyathem talked with me about what I was here to do, and I explained the subject of Panetics to him, as well as telling him that I was here with a group of volunteer medical students who would like an audience if one were at all possible. I asked to speak to the Secretary Tensing Getche, and would like to explain “Panetics” to him as I believe His Holiness is already introduced to the subject through a series of books we call the trilogy that had been presented to him earlier, whereas we could mail to the personal secretary Mister Getche another complete set of books and explanations for which we seek an authoritative source on Tibetan Buddhism and the subject of suffering and its relief.
The young man disappeared with th4e promise to come back after he conferred with the secretary. I could see that I was already about fifty deep in a queue of applicants for audience. He returned to say they were both interested, and took my Hotel, room number and phone number and the fact that I was leaving at noon tomorrow whereas his Holiness would be leaving the following day, and if there were an opening for a private audience (there will be no public audiences) we would be the first to hear. I went over to the temple to try to make a dash for the Hotel and alert the team as well as give the desk Hem’s cell phone number, but could not make it that far through the very thick cloud of misty opacity in the air before the sky opened up in a drenching downpour.
I ran into the temple, and took off my shoes and “Circumambulated right-side to the temple" photographing a few of the faithful earning eternal merit by spinning the prayer wheels crammed with thousands of “Om mani Padme Om’s”and then the rain fell in such torrents that the wind had whipped it into the temple court. I sought refuge under an overhang that was there for the sheltering of racks of butter lamps, with a bench beneath it. I sat on the bench to shortly be covered by a group of twelve elderly Tibetan women in full wool costumes, who simply moved in on me, with the characteristic Easterner’s disregard of the concept of personal space, and tried to do their best to ignore the fact that their was this alien from another planet taking notes on a notepad in the tight and pushing circle of real people dressed in wet wool, spinning prayer wheels and chanting their mantras in a low hum. I even pulled out my tape recorder to pick up a few of the outlandish features of this surreal scene in which the rain is cascading down so hard that our feet are awash in this minimal shelter, as the two groups are huddled in mutual incomprehension—one a Western male dressed in a wet tropical (only) outfit, and a dozen Tibetan women warmly dressed in wet (similarly only) outfits, quite comfortably uttering their mantra until one after another dropped off to sleep with snoring replacing the humming as the rain drummed on and the butter lamps flickered as my only illumination behind me and this unusual huddled crowd.
PINNED DOWN BY A
MONSOON DOWNPOUR FOR OVER AN HOUR,
I THEN ESCAPE INTO
AN INTERNET CAFÉ FOR ATTEMPTS
AT TRANSMISSION OF
MESSAGES ON MY CURRENT STATUS,
THE LETTERS OF
EVALUATION OF MICHAEL EIFFLING,
AND THE REQUESTS
FROM THE ISP FOR FURTHER DATA REGARDING THE DALI LAMA’S SUPPORT AND INTEREST
I left my unusual company of Tibetan elder women and made a dash though the scattered rain and puddles accumulating from the cascades of rainwater down the steps of the palace. I passed a tree with yellow ribbons tied upon it, since the Dali Lama had recognized the “Panchen Lama” as the youngest prisoner of conscience being held by the Chinese as the legitimate successor who will be the XVth Dali Lama whenever he can be found in the captivity the Chinese have secluded him. On his eighth birthday, it was decreed that on each succeeding Friday until his release, a new yellow ribbon would be tied upon this tree in the courtyard palace.
I ran up to the nearest Internet Café and popped inside, to find a machine that had both Word and an access to my server to try to send a message. I typed for some time and then “attached” the messages which are not contaminated by all the editing marks—and, Voila!---the Internet Café’s computer did not recognize them! So, I thought this is the way to send a rather unpolluted message, but when I pushed “Send” the whole message was sent to “Appointment” from which it could not be retrieved or saved including through the efforts of the local guru. So, as seems to happen at each and every new stop in any Internet Café around the world, I had to start allover again for the same uncertain yield of a very great deal of effort. I forwarded Michael Eiffling’s evaluation to him, and it announced that it had been sent. Not so the repeat message I had tried to send along with the last several chapters of my most recent story subsequent to the medical missions, which had said the connection had timed out. Again I could not retrieve or find the message I had typed an attached the files to, but later I got a “Undeliverable message” under the same title, so it must have been sent to someone as it bounced from someone as well. I then tried to write to the ISP and let them know that the current status is that I am awaiting an appointment with the Dali Lama’s secretary through the assistant secretary who will determine whether I or any of my students may have an audience with him when he is principally interested in talking with me about Panetics. The assistant secretary had promised to call me back at my hotel, and did so, saying that they would expect me at eleven o’clock just before we leave after our twelve o’clock lunch. Score one for Panetics!
I had tried to send these messages through a very slow and “timed out” twelve o’clock lunch. Score one for Panetics!
I had tried to send these messages through a very slow and “timed out” server connection, when it had stopped raining and I was now an hour late for our lunch back at the Bhagsu Hotel. I tied to run up hill, going through the Women’s Monastery, where Tibetan nuns with heads shaved, shared seats with middle-aged blonde women with British accents. I dodged around a number of sacred cows who were a bit cheeky after the heavy rain and used their bulk to shove passers by into puddles, and I came to the lunch which they tried to serve me late by frying some chicken, crusty and spicy on the outside, and frozen in the inside.
I then went down the street to see if we could get very far for a few of the group who had wanted souvenirs. I stopped to meet with Hanif, a Kashmiri Moslem jewelry salesman who is honest and not pushy. We had done a lot business when I was here with “Dr. Burt” who had bought a lot of things to take home and to re-peddle on the Internet. I had purchased a fine stone as a peridot birthstone, and it turns out that Keith’s betrothed, Margie has an August 5th birthday, by coincidence—a second person on this special day! So, I helped him pick out a necklace and earrings of peridot set in silver for the Leos.
We stopped at a Kashmiri rug merchant who told me his father had died this year, and before this event, he was carefree, with two children at ages seven and five, but now he is the patriarch of a family of fifteen, all of whom are dependent on him, as the busloads of tourists pulled out of Dharamsala with the State Department warnings against coming to India. He was a gentle fellow. I told him of a very specific requirement I had for a pair of special items for one-year-old twin grandsons. He did not have them, but within minutes a cousin appeared at the door with a sample assortment of what I had wanted. I packaged a pair of very exceptional items along with a couple of cute smaller things together and then asked to see a very specific Tibetan pattern rug. I liked the color and the antiquity of it, so I bought the whole lot. He asked us to stay for tea, and I said we would return—and we did. When we did so, he expertly sewed the bundled purchases into a sheet which he sewed up with a running vertical mattress suture, a bit faster than most of my surgical residents could ever close skin, and he then made a strap to carry the bundle “”prêt-a-porter.”
We talked about life in J and K now with the wars and threats of greater wars looming over it. I t is lake country and among the most fertile and beautiful in India. He was amazed to hear of my knowledge of the adjacent states of Ladakh and all of Himachal, saying few Indians would know of such remote pout of the way outposts as I had visited. We talked a bit further and I wished him well---I believe I have made his day twice over.
One of my deliberate purchases I had set out to do in order to supply my new grandsons with something memorable from far away, was that I wanted to have some luggage to check, however minimal, so I would not be making long international flights without luggage—a sure trigger for search. I figured that since I had no luggage—mine, I am sure, never left Delhi, since I heard that Blake’s backpack was forwarded to Manali at a charge of $150, and mine would cost more than that, so all the feeding me along that it would arrive in Simla, Sangla, Tabo, Kaza, Manali, Dharamsala was just a way of saying “Kiss that off, since it is far too expensive to try to ship that pair of bags anywhere—you will b e lucky to see it at all, if in Ladakh for Lingshed and almost six weeks of remote work that follows thereon!
As I walked out of the shop, I saw the clouds clear and the vista of the Mount Triund I had climbed last year and the Indahar Pass beyond it open up. I had determined to buy a backpack on the street as I had done in Kathmandu, and spotted a small Jansport that was cheap. I then went further down the street and saw a large and roomy backpack that was twice the size for only two dollars more. But the shop was closing, and I said to them, “Do you want to sell it to me for two dollars less cash right now, or wait until you open up at 9:00 AM to sell it to me for the asking price then?” She had to look at me to determine how likely it would b e that I might return, and she held out—which was good since I did not want to carry it with me as I led Keith and Jim on a brisk climb up to the summit where the two trails left for Mount Triund’s peak, where I had gone up one and come down the other last year. We could look all over the town of McLeod Ganj and its multistory houses clinging to the steep hillsides, dating from the fifty-five years ago when the British Raj still fled to the hills to escape the heavy heat and oppression of Delhi summers. In front of us were a number of monkeys, and as Jim circled to photograph one of them with his digital camera, it got angry and its scrotum and rear end turned fiery red. This could be considered a “posterior blush.”
As we returned toward the town, a crowd bearing candles was spotted marching behind a few banners spread out claiming to China that they should “Free Tibet.” OK, now, I have witnessed such a parade on each occasion that I have been in McLeod Ganj, all led by young and well dressed and fed third generation descendants of the exiled Tibetans. How many do you thing that would want to go back to the cold and barren inhospitable Tibet if it were free for them to do so tomorrow? But the continuing demonstrations point out to the world that they are keeping the pressures on China to give greater autonomy to Tibet which will almost never get to b e independent again—after all, the Tibetans host state India has seized the other parts of Tibet and no one here is demanding that India get out of Himachal and Ladakh!
I came back home top the Bhagsu Hotel to tip the porter for posting my letters and intercept the phone call for me to announce the Dali Lama’s secretary’s appointment with me tomorrow. I asked if a few medical students could accompany me, and he will call me back with that advice after conferring with the secretary.
Tomorrow I will probably run for the last time on this trip to India, and will pack up the new backpack I will pick up upon return from the run and prep for both the meeting in the palace and the departure for Chandrigarh. This will mean another long bus ride, It will also mean that we can visit the rock garden where I was last caught in the monsoon two years ago, and then a long solo ride back in the A/C bus to Delhi’s airport. The visit to Dharamsala, though redundant for me (after all the waiters and merchants and the hotel desk clerks all greet me with “Welcome Back! Seeing me three times in this month already) was actually so far a good experience. Speaking of bizarre meetings, I was walking up a steep back street in McLeod Ganj in the cow dung slick road after the rains when I heard my name called. WE were going to go to the most decadent place I can imagine—this being the third time in the last ten years I have been to a Baskin Robbins---and it is the same one!
I turned and saw Leyla, who had been on my medical mission
three trips ago! She was the one uncertain
about her future and what she thought about the ambivalent course she had
dropped out of at UMDNJ after a freshman medical school year—four years ago.
She had been with me in Barot, and since then, I have run a mission
in Nepal, gone home, and returned to run one in Spiti—and she is still here!
What is she doing? “Just hanging
out.” “I thought I would go to Europe for a while
and camp; around there, and then I think I will go to Peru to study Shamanism.” I had frankly suggested to her that since she
was in a fugue state supported by parents who are facilitating this behavior
after four years of continuing indecision about medicine, and from my observation
that she seemed to feel trapped in clinics when confronted with sick people
with problems, perhaps she should just come out and say she was not going
back, and feel better rather than worry about when and whether she should
return. This is in distinct contrast
to what Ravi had reported that she was back in medical school, since it does
not seem she has any plans to return and is “hanging out” around the fringes
of the “alternatives to medicine “ fields to avoid any decisions or decisiveness. But who else and where else can I be flagged
down on the manure covered back steep streets of a mountain retreat in northern
India and greeted by a former student who recognizes me from a distance and
comes back to announce her still undecided status?