by Angela Long
We descended the hillside. There were no such things as street lights here. Darkness was reserved for creatures with night vision, or flashlights. Mine did little but cast an eerie pool of light on the pot-holed road. Wary of stray dogs, we found rocks to clutch in our right hands, and walked in the middle of the dirt road, knowing full well that neither precaution would save us.
Solomon knew a shortcut to the bus station. It involved walking beyond the touristy part of town where places with names like Hotel Yak Tail, Pumpernickel German Bakery, and Wonderland stood shuttered for the season.
We could have arranged for a taxi, but Solomon frowned upon such frivolities. “A taxi will cost less than a dollar each,” Carmen had said. But Solomon prided himself on living like the locals. I suspected, however, the locals knew better than to wander the back alleys of Leh in the middle of the night. Perhaps that’s why Solomon seemed unnaturally chipper at this early hour, trying to persuade his two companions what an adventure this was. As I clutched my rock, I couldn’t help but notice my heartbeat accelerating. Especially when the light of my flashlight faded, then died. Especially when a pack of stray dogs began to yip and howl.
We kept walking. It was taking longer than we’d planned. None of us voiced our shared fears we’d miss the bus, the bus destined to take us out of the cold mountains and into the hot plains of India. It was the only bus until next week, maybe even next spring, if it snowed again and the pass closed.
To be honest, the thoughts of being stuck in the northernmost tip of India appealed to me. Already I was nostalgic for my room at the Oriental Guest House, with a view of the glaciers and a temple the Dalai Lama himself had christened Shanti. In fact, the guest house would be the perfect place to be stranded. Meals were served twice a day in a sun-drenched garden blooming with cosmos, zinnias, and marigolds. Money never changed hands. Guests ticked off their purchases, honour-system style, on a sheet provided at check-in. The guest house was owned by a family of benevolent Tibetan Buddhists. Wind chimes tinkled in the trees. Grandfather wandered the grounds swinging a prayer wheel.
Roy, from Squamish, B.C., had been there four months and had no plans to leave. He rented a room where a former guest had stayed long enough to finish a mural of the jungles of Maharashtra, covering every bit of wall space. Roy pinned a map of India to the canopy of palm fronds. He studied India every day, marking all places of interest with colourful push pins even though he didn’t intend to visit any of them. “Here. There,” he chuckled. “What’s the difference?”
It had been easy to fall into a rhythm at the Oriental Guest House. Every morning I was awoken by Grandfather saying his prayers. He mounted the stairs to the second floor muttering mantras under his breath, extracting an ancient key from the folds of his robe to open the glass-walled temple across the hall from my room. Every day I became more and more part of the travel stream – a circuitous route revolving around food, transportation, accommodation, banking, hygiene. Where to change money. Where to buy toilet paper. Where to eat momos. It was easy to swirl round and round in this eddy. Not many of us could afford such a life of leisure in our own countries. How could any of us think we deserved it? I’d think of all this, and then Grandfather would pass, spinning his prayer wheel.
We walked faster. The yipping of dogs became even more frantic, and closer. We entered a barren field. Unfamiliar constellations stretched overhead. I cursed Solomon under my breath, though I knew how lucky I was to have met him and Carmen. Not many ventured to India’s northernmost state in the off-season. This was the season for beach raves in Goa, not trips to the disputed Chinese-Indian border in the Nubra Valley. The chances of a trio of Canadians meeting at the end of a dusty road in Hunder were so miniscule that when it happened we had no choice but to share a jeep back to Leh together.
But I was beginning to think the extraordinary was the ordinary in India. Even with the whiff of sewage and the sound of scurrying creatures along the edge of the field, I couldn’t help but gawk at the stars and the snow-capped peaks glittering in the clarity of Leh’s sky. Here, at 13,500 feet above sea level, the air was so thin that the line between this world and the universe beyond had all but disappeared.
I wasn’t surprised when we crossed the field and heard the comforting rumble of an idling bus. “We made it!” Solomon cried triumphantly. A chai stand emerged from the darkness and Solomon strode up to the counter. “Chai?” he asked. Carmen and I looked at the rocks in our hands and laughed.
The Boy on the Road
Darkness gathers behind the belt of the Himalayas. I walk, careful not to step in the ditch filled with fetid water when the autorickshaws pass and we begin to jockey for space on this narrow road. This is India, I think, as a rickshaw swerves around the corner and barrels towards me.
This is India. I squeeze myself alongside the ditch, hoping the driver can see past the tinsel, streamers, and deities decorating his windshield. This is India. I shouldn’t be wearing flip-flops. I shouldn’t have left my blonde hair hanging past my shoulders. I shouldn’t be out this late.
A stray dog snarls. The sky darkens too quickly, blurring the branches of the rhododendron into nothingness. This is India. This is the road women are warned to avoid after sunset. But I haggled too long with the shopkeeper from Kashmir. I drank too many cups of cardamom tea. I clutch the paper bag, think about the moonstone earrings inside.
I see the lights of my hotel twinkling on the hillside. I’m almost there. Almost safe in the town the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile call home. I think about dinner. About a cold Kingfisher at the place with the outdoor terrace. Suddenly, a young boy darts out in front of me and throws something red at my feet. Hot sparks prick my toes. “Boom!” The boy laughs from the other side of the road. He throws another firecracker, then another, and soon I trip into the ditch trying to escape.
This is India. I walk faster, thinking about the contents of my bag instead of the filth on my feet. Lapis lazuli from the mountains of Pakistan. Polished jade.
I remember it’s Diwali, the festival of light. The dark sky barely has a moment to relax. Everything is awash in exploding, flickering, blazing light. Doorways open. People dance. They offer exquisite-looking sweets. They smile as though I’ve travelled twelve thousand kilometres just to meet them here, on this narrow road. In this moment.
This is India. I loosen my grip on the bag, open my hand, and accept a sweet.
The Monk
The Parisians were smoking hash again playing guitar on the terrace. I decided it was a good time to walk to the top of the hill overlooking Dharamsala, where a white temple perched among the pines. I was feeling a bit lost on this subcontinent. Even if I didn’t really know why I’d come to this country, I knew it wasn’t to eat hummus and pita and get high.
The dog at the hotel followed me as he had for the past few days when I’d walked down the hill to Green Café. Now he led the way up the rocky footpath beside the stream. Many paths converged onto this one, and all manner of characters were said to wander these foothills. There were rumours of bandits, criminals on the run, drug dealers, and misguided American hippies. But I felt safe with the dog at my side. He growled at everyone who crossed our path: a young shepherdess, a Japanese photographer, a lone horse.
The dog stopped to drink from a pool beneath a small waterfall, and I sat on the rocks and watched the butterflies. My companion stopped in mid-gulp, looked up, and unfurled his ears to their mangy tips. Then he trotted off the main path. I followed, mostly because I didn’t really have a choice; I’d lost track of all the turns we’d made to get here. The white temple had disappeared. Strings of multi-coloured prayer flags stretched from one pine crown to another.
I soon realized we were following someone. I saw a flash of brick-red robes, a bald head nicked with shaving cuts. A monk. The words of the hotel owner came to mind: “Never trust a monk. Anyone could be hiding beneath those robes.”
The path
grew steeper, rockier. The monk crossed the stream up ahead, and then looked down towards us. He smiled and turned to shimmy across a shale ridge. The dog followed. I shuffled behind, sending loose rock clattering down the hillside. Finally I stood before an adobe hut, trying to catch my breath. The monk leaned against the doorframe, breathing easily. “Chai?” he asked, a smile deepening the lines on his face. He held up a teacup in case I hadn’t understood. I smiled and nodded. The dog wagged his tail. The monk pointed to a thin cushion on a stone bench, then stooped through a wooden doorframe carved with symbols.
I sat with the sun on my face and looked out across the foothills. A flock of sheep, shepherded by women in bright saris, zigzagged across the terraced hillside. The monk returned with the chai. I took a sip, and he waited for my reaction. “Delicious,” I said. From gaps in the wall he retrieved an onion, half a cabbage, a tomato. Then he disappeared inside again.
I drank my chai, closed my eyes, and listened to the soft hiss of a gas flame from the hut. When I opened my eyes, the dog had gone. I panicked for a moment, wondering how I’d find my way back. But then I realized it was OK. Suddenly everything was OK. I remembered the words of David while we’d sat in his hut in Guatemala. “Going to India is like taking your head off and putting it back on in the opposite direction,” he’d said. “You have to learn how to see again.”
Soon a bowl filled with fragrant rice and vegetables arrived. The monk smiled and ducked back into the hut. From the other side of the door, I heard the scrape of spoon against bowl. I ate, too.
The Five-Armed Goddess
I don’t know the names here – the name of the yellow-masked bird, tree with starburst leaves, the leper who begs in front of the fruit stand. I don’t know the name of the five-armed goddess dressed in purple velvet and glitter hearts. But I walk uphill to her temple, look into her cracked eye, and ring the copper bell. Sound ripples namelessly along footpaths and foothills, along stitches of page-like flags strung from one nameless branch to another.
The Orphan
I realized I was caged in to keep the monkeys out – I saw two of them beyond the steel grid welded to my balcony watching me from the rooftop of the dining hall: a male with a flame-red backside mounting a female. He stopped to examine his penis. She picked lice from his back.
It was disconcerting to be caged in, but I knew there was no other option; monkeys were the rats of India, or so I’d been told. They stole, shamelessly, anything that appealed to their senses – children’s ice cream cones, women’s rainbow-hued scarves. I’d witnessed one steal a grapefruit right out of the hands of an old lady.
In a town near Dharamsala, I’d been advised by a Spanish woman named Lou to purchase an umbrella – preferably colourful and patterned – to protect myself: “Open it up and ‘Poof!’ off they go, back to the trees.”
But I couldn’t find any umbrellas for sale. Supposedly a monsoon inundated this country for at least four months of the year, but I had my doubts. The garden inside the perimeter of the fence consisted of a few dusty rose bushes with a handful of buds that looked as though they’d never bloomed.
I glided my hand along the cage, looking at my palm, the once-smooth skin now crossed-hatched with fine lines. The dryness would take its toll on more than just the roses. I looked at India through the tiny frames of the cage’s grid: a side of bus, a flash of wing, a shimmer of water tank.
Suddenly the monkeys began to screech, a high-pitched, frantic screech that sounded nothing like the playful monkey calls of Hollywood films. They swung towards me from the pipes of the water tank to the wires of a power line. The cage shook with the impact of their landing. They bounced across the grid and stopped in front of me, blocking my view of India.
The black pads of their hands gripped the steel, the digits, so like fingers, poking. I touched the locket around my neck that I’d bought from a Tibetan refugee. I caressed the turquoise and red coral, the silver filigree.
“It will protect you, Madame,” the Tibetan had promised, “from barrenness and other evils.”
Dutifully, I fastened the locket around my neck every morning. It was the closest I’d ever come to having a religion.
The monkeys bared their yellow-stained teeth and shook the cage, screeching. I thought I should try to smile, to show I understood – yes, I was another one of those crazy westerners looking for themselves. But then, halfway through smiling, I remembered what Lou had said about teeth: “Never, under any circumstances,” and she’d wagged her umbrella at me, “never show them your teeth. Most importantly, don’t smile – they’ll think you’re provoking them.”
Lou was right. The monkeys were outraged. The male with the flame-red backside began to spit at me. Other monkeys began to appear from other rooftops. I touched the locket, as I’d touched it many times since my journey from the Great Himalayas of Leh to the Indo-Gangetic Plains of Haridwar, and felt safe.
Thankfully, the lunch bell rang. I could hear the children gathering to line up and enter the dining hall. I wanted to arrive first to be less conspicuous, even though I knew that was impossible. There were seventy children and me, the lone foreign volunteer, staying at Sri Ram Ashram and Orphanage – school, medical clinic, and “loving home for orphaned and destitute children.”
I’d been told it was unfortunate I hadn’t arrived a few weeks later when Babaji – monk, master yogi, and founder of Sri Ram – was due to visit, accompanied by his entourage of American followers. Apparently, Babaji preferred to spend India’s dry season in Santa Cruz.
“If I were you, Madame,” they’d suggested, “I would stay until Babaji returns.”
By then I’d heard all about his annual visits – how he gave the children toffees after breakfast and chocolate bars in the late afternoon: “It’s like Christmas every day when Babaji is here.” I’d heard about the trampoline where he taught the children tricks. How he communicated by white board and black marker and hadn’t spoken since 1952. “He blows a whistle if the children are misbehaving.”
I’d heard these things with my usual skepticism of all things spiritual. Somewhere at the heart of all these organizations lay a scam, I’d thought. It was just a matter of time, before their cover was blown.
I hurried away from the balcony, leaving the monkeys to screech at my underthings strung up to dry, and collected my plate and spoon.
In the dining hall I sat cross-legged on the strip of burlap on the girls’ side and waited. I examined my stainless steel plate separated into five compartments. Soon it would be filled with rice, dal, pickled mango, yogurt – all products of the ashram’s sixteen-acre farm.
I polished my spoon with the hem of my kameez, a long tunic worn over long trousers called salwar. This was the suggested attire here. Preferably white. Upon my arrival, I’d been shown to a large steamer trunk filled with layers of neatly folded salwar-kameez and multi-coloured scarves – clothing Babaji’s followers had left behind. I’d packed away my khaki trousers and cotton T-shirts, visiting the trunk every morning to choose an outfit.
Today’s salwar-kameez was lavishly hand-embroidered with flowers and vines. I’d draped a lemon-coloured scarf, a dupatta, across my chest to cover my arms just above the elbows and, more importantly, hide my breasts. Even though I was one of those women who’d never really needed a bra, it didn’t seem to matter. Breasts had a more symbolic value here than anything else. Any woman who flaunted them (which meant not draping a scarf over them) was asking for trouble.
At the last moment, I slid on a few bangles, and put on some lipstick. Then I caught sight of myself in the mirror and hoped I hadn’t overdone it.
The kitchen workers set up for lunch, piling chapatis into baskets and stirring fresh curd. A woman in a fuchsia sari splashed with yellow polka dots stopped stirring and looked up. “Oh, that’s much better, Madame. Much better. The children will very much like your new look.”
The children be
gan to fill the room. Boys first. They sat on their burlap on the other side of the room, facing me, leaning into one another to whisper and giggle.
The girls arrived next, hurrying towards the spot where I sat, vying to be the one who got to sit beside the foreigner and examine, close-up, every detail of my attire, every pore on my face, every move I made.
At first, I’d felt uncomfortable under such scrutiny. But the children examined me with such unadulterated curiosity that I’d grown to enjoy the attention. They touched my hair, held my hand, their eyes never leaving mine, searching through me as I’d been searching through the grid of the cage. And I wondered: What did they see?
Today a thin girl with a slight limp crouched down to sit cross-legged beside me. The others had let her pass, deciding it was her turn. She stared at me. I smiled. The girl caught sight of the locket around my neck. I unclasped it, passing it to her.
“It’s okay,” I said, watching as the women began to serve the boys. The girl caressed the red coral and turquoise.
“Does it open?” she asked. I nodded. “What’s inside? Do the gods live inside?”
I thought for a moment. One of the kitchen helpers arrived with a steaming cauldron.
“Let’s open it after lunch and see,” I promised as one of my plate’s compartments filled with yellow dal.
I watched the children scoop perfect portions with cupped palms, pushing the food with a thumb into their mouths, never spilling a single grain of rice. They ate in unison, silently, and with purpose. As I watched, I thought about what the ashram’s nurse had told me about the history of some of these children. Who had been beaten and left for dead on a garbage heap in Punjab? Who had arrived with one side of their head flattened? Who had been covered in their own excrement? Who had survived the earthquake buried beneath a pile of dead bodies?