Last Day in Dharamsala

Pictures at Pathnkot Train Station

I’m sitting outdoors, it’s morning, and I’m listening to birds. One makes a soft peep-peep, and several make a series of chirps, not in unison. Periodically I hear a bird that calls continuously and sounds a lot like an alarm clock; I’ve heard it frequently throughout this stay at the guesthouse. Last night, weirdly, the roof of my room was assaulted by the bizarre sounds of either birds or monkeys (or some sort of creature, possibly mythological) scrambling around and either chirping or emitting high-pitched chatters. It sounded like the creatures might fall through the roof—they scrambled so frantically. Oh, I just heard a crow.

At Chonor House one day, Gary identified a gliding bird as a vulture and others as hawks, and since then I’ve noticed hawks with white undersides. Here I am surrounded by trees, and it just occurred to me that I haven’t seen any squirrels since we were in Delhi. Perhaps they’re not into higher altitudes.

I gave my stack of postcards to the Maharaja this morning and said, “Could you please mail these postcards? I haven’t found a post office.” I refrained from mentioning that I didn’t try very hard to find one. There were much more interesting sights to distract me.

Enid asked the Raj about one of the photos in the sunroom, and he explained that was one of his sons and explained several portraits over several generations. The sunroom contained modern color photos and old black and white photos. The Raj showed us an elaborate picture that’s the family tree dating to before Alexander the Great, and over one window was a very old yellow parchment that he explained is the original family tree. It was framed and behind glass. The Raj’s dad had nine wives and fifty-two kids. No wonder India has a population of over a billion. The current Raj and Rani have one son; one of the pictures was of his wedding, and he wore a spiffy pink silk tunic and turban. In the midst of the conversation, the Raj led us into Kathy and Inge’s suite and opened a far door into a charming room with a large bookcase and wall panels hand-painted with a white background and a colorful tree in the foreground.

Before this, Kathy and Inge showed me their beautiful suite, with a fireplace much like ours and an elaborately carved dark wooden bed and chairs. There’s a sitting room in front complete with an alcohol-filled sideboard in a corner and an empty leopard on the opposite wall. I realize it was killed a long time ago, but I’m glad my room contains no dead animals. Past the sitting room is the big bedroom, and beyond that a little whitewashed anti-room and a larger but similar bathroom to ours, and connected to the bathroom is a separate toilet room—rather convenient when you’ve got a roommate.

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At approximately ten this morning, we got together in the courtyard, and Jagdish sang and told us the story of the Ramayana. Mimi pointed out that the story is rather patriarchal and that Rama was very unkind to Sati, testing her instead of showing that he was glad to have her back. As I mentioned in my pilgrimage memoir, Rama needs a dog, not a wife.

Gill said, “I think Kashmir Cottage is having trouble getting it together. We ought to share our insight poems and run away.”
“Gill, you are a mischievous girl,” Manny said. It was all the more funny, because she’s about twenty years older than he. Shortly after she said that, the Kashmir Cottage people have arrived.

Shantum said, “The sixth element is consciousness. All the elements are related.” Birds singing has to do with both earth and air. “We are all one with the elements.” He led us through an element meditation in the style of Thich Nhat Hanh. Afterwards, we shared insight poems, and I went ahead and read aloud my poem “Mindful Trek” even though I figured few people could hear my horrible voice. We had another but briefer discussion on generosity and such.
“When you feel like buying something, put the money in your pocket and give it to someone,” Shantum said.

We had some practical discussion. Address lists from Kashmir Cottage and from Cloud’s End will be e-mailed to the sangha; Marsha has one list, and Inge has the other. Kathy’s going to try making a website to share photos from the trip. I am glad to hear that; she took, among other things, group photos.

Shantum read from the Happiness Sutra. Perhaps if I had concentrated I would have learned something from it, but my mind was more undisciplined than usual.

After we shared our insight poems, Etiel had to go to a travel agency to confirm the next segment of her trip, so Shantum did the moli ceremony with her before she left. This ceremony is one that Shantum did with each of the pilgrims last year: he silently and mindfully ties a hand-dyed red and yellow string around your left wrist, a thicker string than the Three Jewels strings that monks tie around your right wrist. That was the last we will see of Etiel, because she’s staying behind in Dharamsala while most of us go to Delhi. Shantum then did the moli ceremony with Lynn and John, who also left.

At some point, Enid said to me, “You have got to get out of Kansas!” I agreed enthusiastically, with what was probably a stupid laugh. The trip has certainly reminded me of the urgency of my moving far away from Kansas, to the west coast, though I think I said the same about the last trip. However, on last year’s pilgrimage, I found considerably more acceptance and a sense of belonging, a sense that got me fantasizing about living in India. On this trip, I’m getting a message that India is not where I need to be to seek healing after all; even dogs have been unfriendly. Anyway, I’m busy writing journals instead of getting ready to leave. I can do both, really.

At some point in Dharamsala, Lynn asked me, “What do people in Kansas think of you?”
I laughed heartily and said, “They think I’m a freak!” I may have expanded on that slightly.

At some point Enid said, “You should wear that hat all the time,” referring to my new hand-embroidered burgundy Kashmiri fez.

“I just might!” I said.

“You should even wear it when you go to bed, and in the shower.”

She suggested that I should wear weird clothing in Kansas all the time, and I said, “I do!” and laughed. “People stare,” I added.

The sangha enjoyed a nice Indian lunch at Cloud’s End. It was everyone who was left, including people who stayed at Kashmir Cottage.

We climbed into five white cabs, as we had before, and experienced a queasy-dizzy drive from Dharamsala. We circled around and around down the mountain, as we had up the mountain, and I felt dizzy. This time I uncharacteristically refrained from keeping quiet about it, and I said to Rachel, who sat beside me, “I’m feeling dizzy and nauseous.” Rachel thought I meant that to the extreme of needing to stop the car so I could vomit on the side of the road, but no, I said that wouldn’t be necessary.

We stopped at Mao Fort, the same derelict hotel/restaurant we had stopped at on the way to Dharamsala. We had tea and enjoyed the view again.

One of the Davids offered me Chinese herbal cold medicine that he had gotten earlier on the tip and didn’t need any more. Given the way I was coughing at that point, it was obvious that I wasn’t feeling well. I eagerly said, “Sure! That’d be great!” and he went out to the taxis to rummage in his suitcase for the drugs. I felt flattered that he was going through all that trouble—again, a mother! While we sat in the circle, he came over to me and gave me two biggish pill bottles one labeled “Cold Away” and the other something beginning with a B. I thanked him profusely. It seems like just about everyone I traveled with was being my mother. Stacy noticed the drugs, and since she and Paula have more or less the same thing I have (like, the pollution in Delhi probably has something to do with it). Anyway, Stacy gave me advice on the drugs—she’s a professional homeopathic healer and in fact gave a couple of us fizzy pink vitamin C supplements for breakfast yesterday morning, our last breakfast at Cloud’s End.

Everyone sat in a circle at Mao Fort and sipping tea, the two sisters Pat and Gill (with a few comments from Shantum and Richard) paged through their journals and summarized the trip, starting at the very beginning, about a month before I joined the sangha. As Sheila later described it, “It was like a British sitcom.” At least one other person said this was boring for people who weren’t on that part of the trip, and they pointed out that we should have been doing that in the courtyard the other day instead of waiting till we were at Mao Fort.

I haven’t written about Boom Boom yet. Lynn and John went to the café, Boom Boom the Fifth, on a Monday night. Normally Boom Boom doesn’t do her cabaret show on Mondays, but she did it special just for them (I think because it was John’s birthday). Lyn said, “It was like we were in an independent film.” Boom Boom played a Bessie Smith record and sang with it---I get the impression she’s a very good singer. She’s a bit overweight and wears excessive make-up, with lipstick that goes high above her lips and forms a pair of sharp points, under her nose. Lyn said that Boom Boom had a relationship with the Raj that she can’t explain because that would be unmindful speech. So, like, presumably “Boom Boom is or has been the Raj’s mistress,” as someone put it. I wouldn’t have used that archaic term. Shantum later smilingly said that Boom Boom likes to gossip, to spread gossip, not just be the subject of gossip. Oh, yes, also, she’s Australian.

The Raj himself is a bit odd. I mentioned that he wore pretty clothes. In addition to the regional hat, he wore a hand quilted, or a dark red or navy blue velvet robe in the same wrap-around, vaguely Tibetan-looking style. I never thought I’d want to pet a Maharaja. He is pale for an Indian and has deep-set eyes and white hair, what’s left of it—Enid said she’s never seen anyone who looks like the Raj and said, “He’s Indian, isn’t he?” Paula or someone pointed out that he’s from Northern hill tribes, and I remembered the family tree on his wall in the sun room, a family tree that goes back to before Alexander the Great.

Oh, yes, the Rani is the one who comes from the Maharaja family, and their marriage was arranged—they met on the day they married. I’m glad I didn’t know this while I was staying at Cloud’s End, but on the ride away Paula said that the Raj said men should be masters and women should be submissive. As Paula pointed out, he’s married to a woman who used to be the M.P. (Member of Parliament) for the region. The Rani, who sorted out and returned laundry to sangha members, said, “I used to work for the government, and now I sort underwear. This is not in my league.”

Anyway, on the bright side, Shantum and the Raj were never close friends. He’s actually Vikram Seth’s age rather than Shantum’s, so they would have been five years apart. The oddest thing about the Raj is the way he talks: he scarcely moves his lips, like a ventriloquist, and it’s therefore hard to understand him, even though he speaks English with a British accent. James did a funny impersonation of this after we got into the taxi to leave Cloud’s End for the Pathankot station.

On the way to the train station, we rode through the filthy dingy hazy downtown of Pathankot. The air is grey with haze, the traffic is mostly rickshaws, motorcycles, and trucks, and right up next to each other are countless open-front little shops. Litter lies or flutters on the ground before these shops. The occasional horse cart clops and rattles past. The buildings and everything around is overwhelmingly grey, with some exceptions, in particular the bright salwar-kamiz women wear; I hope they’re wearing washable cotton.

We arrived at the Pathankot train station, where the first thing I recognized was the cartoonish grey elephant sculpture in a blue jacket and holding a lantern. Numerous rickshaws and a very dirty man hovered around, watching us; he wore a mustard yellow shawl and matching turban.
At the station, we stood around and saw four red-clad Tibetan monks waiting on a bench; a guy with a metal cart on which he was making roti; and another guy with a fruit cart piled mostly with oranges and bananas. The haze was still really obvious. When the train came along, the engine billowed black smoke and chugged by, rapidly followed by the third class cabins in which people appeared to be tightly packed and the open windows had horizontal bars. As the cabins went past close to us, I felt dizzy and had to turn away, but my curiosity compelled me to turn back to the train. The next windows were long rectangles, with glass, and next was sleeper class, which we would ride again.

On the platform, Shantum had gone over a list assigning us numbers, and both Marsha and I had the number 37, so I ended up taking number 17 instead and letting her have 37, which makes sense especially since that would put her with her friend David from Florida. (She lives in the San Francisco area and he lives in Florida, but they keep in touch regularly anyway.)

We got on the train and I noticed that my bunk had a bundle of used sheets on it, so I scooped them up and said, “It looks like I get the dirty laundry!” and put the sheets on the bunk above me. James was coming up behind me and laughed at my comment as he moved by, but a skinny guy who worked on the train wasn’t so amused and as soon as I put the laundry bundle on the upper bunk, he hastily took it down.

Jagdish handed out carry-out diner, a basic Indian meal, from Mao Fort. It consisted of a cardboard box containing two plastic bags, one full of a cauliflower curry and the other a paneer; an aluminum container full of rice; and two pieces of chapatti. I sat cross-legged on my bunk—again, an outer one with my own curtain and window—with my backpack and handbag and jacket and velvet shirt spread out on the bench. Jagdish also passed out bananas and oranges, although the once hot food was sufficiently filling. I had expected cucumber sandwiches, eggs, and fruit like the picnic lunches on the pilgrimage last year, so this was a pleasant surprise…except I really shouldn’t be eating right before going to bed, which is essentially what I did.

I took the Chinese drugs with dinner and promptly went to bed afterward.

After eating on the train, and having a chat with Stacy and Manny, who were across the aisle from me, and Paula was visiting them. (What a relief—at first I was afraid that strange men would be across the aisle from me, after Paula told me a disturbing true story, on one of these trains, in which there were a couple of English women in their twenties, and some creep was not only staring at them but also jacking off). Anyway, I made my bed, putting my passport bag (which contains a bunch of money) under my pillow, and on top of that my handbag, then my coat, then my pillow, and at my feet were my shoes and backpack. As I drew the curtain, I heard, “Good-night, Susan!” and replied, “Good night!” as I lay down with my face toward the curtain, like a reclining Buddha.