TPAC and Mc'llo's

We arrived in the evening at the Tibetan Performing Arts Center (TPAC) and followed the crowd into the auditorium, a theater with a slightly slanted floor facing a wide stage. The performance was apparently sold out, and the audience was almost entirely composed of Tibetans. We sat in two rows and I had no idea what to expect. The play turned out to be a sort of variety show, and a very professional one at that, like a Broadway musical in New York. Each skit, or whatever you call it, involved a chorus of singer/dancers, about half male and half female, wearing colorful and beautiful traditional Tibetan costumes from a specific region. In one skit, the women wore extremely long sleeves that hung way past their hands and they swung the sleeves around as part of the dancing. In another, men wore red fringed circular headdresses that I recalled seeing in the film Kundun. We must have seen just about every possible chupa, the traditional Tibetan jumper; in one region they only have one sleeve (so that it’s easier to use a bow and arrow), and in another region they have two long sleeves, and the kind of chupa that you normally see women wearing on an ordinary day, and which I was wearing, doesn’t have any sleeves. The dancing, acting, and singing were on a par with a musical you might see at any professional American theater. The performers didn’t generally speak lines but almost exclusively sang; however, one of the skits involved some dialogue that we didn’t understand because it was in Tibetan; the rest of the audience was delighted and laughed heartily at the jokes.

We went to Mc’llo’s for dinner; it is a very popular hang-out for Westerners and is located in the heart of the central square of Dharamsala. When the cat’s away, the mice will play. Shantum is at a wedding two and a half hours away and won’t be back till lat, maybe tomorrow morning. I saw few Tibetans or Indians, but unlike at an American restaurant, the tables were very close together. We followed Jagdish up a staircase to the second floor of the restaurant; the bottom floor is quiet and sedate in comparison. The restaurant upstairs was somewhat dark, and large star-shaped paper lanterns hung over all the tables. The outer walls were almost completely windows, overlooking the main square, of which Rachel said, “It’s like Times Square, or Piccadilly Circus.”
Paula said, “But without the neon signs.”

The tables were crowded close together, and next to Richard, at the next table inches away, was a British woman who works at the Tibetan library and has been here since November; she also is part of the organization Free Tibet, which she said is going well. She explained that winter is the only time that Tibetans can escape across the border, because there are fewer Chinese guards. Indians and Indian organizations have been giving a lot of support for the Tibetan cause. The British woman mentioned the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. She and Rachel have both lived in London and Swansea. There was indeed a demonstration in the square before we got to TPAC. It involved a megaphone, the flag of Tibet draped over a building’s outer wall, and monks handing out white candles.

The restaurant has loud Western rock music playing; Peter Gabriel was singing “Sledgehammer” as we left. Between the music and the conversation, it was very hard to understand what anyone was saying, and the only one who understood me was Rachel, since she was next to me on my left. Sometimes she’d repeat my response to others, since my voice is hopeless. Actually, Richard might have understood me—he sat straight across from me.
Most of the group drank alcohol, which weirds me out after last year’s pilgrimage with the all-Buddhist and distinctly anti-alcohol sangha. This sangha passed around several bottles of beer called Sandpiper, and Richard has discovered a whiskey called Royal Challenge. It must be a royal challenge to endure the burning sensation as that liquid goes down your throat. Yuck. I pulled out this notebook, and Rachel, who sat to the left of me, said, “Everybody stop talking! Susan’s writing everything we say!” We’ve had a lot of joking around about Shantum not being here. “When we’re at Strucks, she’ll pull out her notebook, and say, ‘Shantum, you won’t believe what happened while you were away…’”

Earlier, Richard and Rachel et al made comments like, “Shantum’s at a wedding. He’ll probably get drunk.”
“I’ll bet he’s smoking.”
“He’s smoking pot. He’s doing LSD at the wedding.”
“Oh, no, no!” I said, appalled but simultaneously amused, if that’s possible.
“I think he’s done with those days,” Richard said. Oh, yeah, majorly!

I wonder if anyone’s going to the Dalai Lama’s teachings with a hangover tomorrow morning.
We all ordered Tibetan food, which turned out to be a big bowl of noodles with veggies, like chives and carrots, and a side dish of momos. We were packed into a corner, and Kathy ended up at the other table (although she was inches away from me) and talked with a guy on her other side. In the taxi on the bumpy and fast ride back to Cloud’s End or Cloud Nine, as John called it, Kathy said she was practically sitting on the guy’s lap, and that he must have been thinking: “This is like my mother sitting on my lap.” She added, “Sometimes I forget that I’m fifty and someone else is twenty-five.” Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to remember I’m not a twelve-year-old. It’s weird being so much younger than the rest of the group. Oh well. Actually, I don’t usually have a sense of age gap.

Now that I'm alone in my room at the guesthouse, I feel horrible, so unlike I felt on the pilgrimage last year. My usual inferiority complex has come with me on the trip, although of course it’s not as overwhelming as it is in Kansas. I don’t know, it might be in part because we aren’t doing the forty-five minute meditations that we did just about every morning on the pilgrimage last year. I’ve been awake since three am and it’s a bit after 10—I have so got to get some sleep. And I’m a bit on the grumpy side. I think I’ll always be a total freak and a total reject, no matter where I go. Nobody will ever like me.