JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi

by Daniel Linden

  “I told the driver to be more careful. You are my responsibility,” he said.

  I didn’t realize that Bim spoke any English, but I was careful not to show any surprise. I did not realize he would be our Sirdar, but should have. That is, unless we would have two English speaking Sherpas. I should have realized that if he were accompanying us to Jiri he would be the leader of the expedition. The last time he had been with me he was a porter and had not spoken more than a few words. I had assumed that Mr. Pasang had sent him along as a porter for us out of politeness. I was wrong. He had grown up a bit and I looked at him more closely and could see that he was now a man and had assumed an air of command and responsibility.

  The way an expedition works is simple. The leader of the expedition is the Sirdar and he will have a number of Sherpas with him. These are the guides that handle all the daily details. Next there are porters and if you have a kitchen there will be Cook – who is equal but just barely – to the Sirdar, and his kitchen helpers and porters. The first time I came we had twelve trekkers. For that journey we had a Sirdar, four Sherpas, eight porters, Cook, and about twelve kitchen helpers and porters. So, a staff of twenty-six for a group of twelve. We needed every one of them.

  The day begins with the Sirdar deciding how far the group will travel. He will then send a Sherpa down the path to notify the appropriate restaurants and hotels that we would be arriving and to make arrangements for our meals and our accommodations. Then the porters take off and finally when the trek begins for the day the Sirdar, unless he has chosen to go ahead and make the arrangements himself will lead off down the path. The trekkers are next and the last Sherpa will bring up the end of the line. This way as the fastest walkers move forward the lead Sherpa stays ahead of them. As the slower walkers trail behind, a Sherpa brings up the rear and no one gets lost and left behind on a snowy glacier’s ledge to freeze in the night.

  There are many other aspects to the trekker’s day and many other duties of the staff, but that is the gist of it. Bim and I spoke casually as the van drove us through the Nepal countryside. He told me he had been promoted from porter to Sherpa guide and then to Sirdar and this was his third trip as Sirdar. (Author’s note: Sirdar was a rank in the 19th century British army, a commander’s rank.) He told me he was glad to be with me again and although I wondered for a few minutes whether he could possibly remember me, he asked about my wife Laurie and actually remembered her name. After a minute he took out a beautiful pair of Nikon binoculars, small and compact and very good.

  “Bim, you still have them!” I was touched. “I will tell Laurie and she will be happy that you kept them and found them useful.” Laurie had given them to him after our last trip and I had told her he would probably just sell them, but she said she didn’t care. I felt a little ashamed as I remembered that, but I was happier that my wife had done something nice and that it had been appreciated.

  Many years ago during her first trek in Nepal she had taken another young Sherpa man under her wing and helped support him through medical school. When I first met her I was surprised to see the amount of money she would send in equipment, microscopes and such, and thought she was merely wasting it until I met the man who had become one of the first modern Nepalese medical doctors. He was visiting the United States and came to pay his respects to her. The Nepali people are some of the most intelligent, industrious, and persevering people I have ever known and I found myself feeling a bit of pride that Bim was moving up.

  We stopped for lunch. As we waited in the small restaurant I watched the people come and go and saw them go to the corner to wash their hands both upon entering and then as they left.

  “I see why you told us to bring spoons.” Curtis said to me in a low voice.

  “We won’t need them here. I’m sure they will bring us utensils of some type. We’re not the first foreigners to visit and they know we don’t eat dahl bat with our bare hands like they do.” Dahl bat is a puree of lentil beans and whatever else is nearby the cook. This mixture is served over rice and can be quite good, mediocre and sometimes just plain bad depending on the cook and what was available. The locals eat it by scooping it up in curved fingers and then pushing it into their mouths with their thumb. It is a quiet efficient method of eating and once used to it, you really don’t notice. I’ve tried it, but after nearly 60 years of eating with knife, fork and spoon, well, old habits are hard to break.

  We were served and the dahl bat was good enough. They had given us an odd assortment of spoons and forks and I attacked lunch with the same enthusiasm I have for all food and drink. I had a coke, thinking that I was going to have to get used to the hard stuff again, that there probably was not going to be any diet coke on this trip. That did turn out to be the case, but here I actually enjoyed the first real coke I had drunk in nearly ten years.

  After lunch I again bought the driver and Bim another cigarette, actually sprang for four this time, and they took them outside and smoked them leaning on the good side of the beat up van.

  Christian had been quiet since the previous day. Actually he had not said much since the night we arrived and I was hoping it was only nerves and not illness or worse. When we started to move toward the van to resume our journey I stopped the guys.

  “Let’s change places for a bit, if you don’t mind. Curtis, do you think you could change places with Christian?”

  We shuffled our gear around and then were heading up the highway past enormous fields of marigolds of every imaginable size and hue. They were utterly beautiful and sent my imagination soaring until Christian said something to me.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said.

  “Christian, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  This could go on a long time. I chose to end it and looked back out the window at all the golden flowers.

  “When you were here before, did you go down by the river? There are a bunch of temples and shrines everywhere?” He asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “God, did you see all the people pouring blood all over their cars and stuff?” He swiveled around to look at me and the dam broke. “I was walking through all these people and the next thing I saw was this guy trying to cut the head off of a bull with this Khukuri sword that was about three feet long. He had to hit it over and over and it was terrible. The bull was fighting and screaming and blood was flying everywhere. God, it was the sickest thing I’ve ever seen. The streets were running with blood, really, literally running with it. I didn’t realize I was walking in it. I had it all over my shoes.

  “The streets were running with blood. I’ve heard that expression for years, but it’s true. I got so freaked out I couldn’t find the bar where Curtis and Chris were. I just stumbled around and each time I would touch something I was afraid my hands would come away bloody. I couldn’t figure out how to get away from all these people. No one spoke English and I tried to get someone to show me how to get back or find a taxi or just get out of the bloody crowd with all the chanting and… ” He shivered and I was struck by how young he still was.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. No, I’m not all right. I don’t think I’ll ever be all right again. I’ll never be able to forget that horror show.”

  So young.

  Both Curtis and Chris are old enough to be his father and I am much older than they. I had forgotten to take care of him and felt ashamed of myself. No, that was not true. I had wanted him to see the old world without my being there. I had wanted him to stumble unaided and to see something exactly like he had, but I had expected him to be excited by it; I had expected him to thrill to the exotic and be swept up in the differences, not be appalled by the horror of the festival of Dasain.

  Each year they slaughter thousands of animals in bloody sacrifice to the Hindu gods and the streets do run with blood. Most of the slaughter is confined to certain temples that allow only Hindus to enter, but there is so much of it a
nd it spreads out everywhere by the last couple days of the festival that you need to avoid the entire district and be careful of any temple to manage to avoid it completely. I had hoped they would get to see some of the festivities, but did not realize that the older men would be so weary and uninspired that all they would be willing to do is sit and drink beer and let Christian go out and explore on his own. No wonder he had been so quiet the last couple days. We had gone nowhere near the Dasain festival and it had never crossed my mind that while I was with Mr. Pasang, Christian had wandered off so far and alone. I looked at Curtis and asked if he had known about this. He shook his head. Chris was asleep with the effects of a few beers and a high carb lunch, or I might have glared at him as well, but the final truth is that it was my responsibility, not theirs. I looked up to the front and decided that I couldn’t very well blame Celine or Esra, they spent all their time shopping.

  Christian looked back out the window and I reached over and grabbed his wrist with my strong left hand. He didn’t hesitate or pause at all, just turned his hand over and extended his elbow slightly and I had to let go or suffer the pain of a hyper- extended wrist. I did it again. Then I reached over and took the same wrist with my right hand. He looked slightly annoyed and did the same thing only the difference in my grip, right to left, had changed the dynamics, so that now he could not get away.

  “What did I just do?” I asked.

  “You grabbed me,” he said. “I really don’t feel like a lesson right now.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “You grabbed me again.” He looked down, resigned.

  “Christian, what did I just do?”

  “I don’t know, Sensei.” He looked miserable. “But I do know I ‘m not having a good time and really don’t want to be here. So please let go of me.” He tried to break my grip.

  “What I did was to encounter an obstacle and then changed my approach until it worked. I continued to take ukemi until I was able to succeed in finding a place where you could not lead me to resolution. I attacked relentlessly, albeit only twice, but until I had succeeded. Do you think I will allow you to be this miserable for the rest of the trip?”

  “I can go home.”

  “Not any more you can’t.”

  “I’ll just ride back with the driver and then go home.”

  Christ, this was not what I expected at all. I let him go and sat back against the bruising springs pushing their way through the seatback. We were rolling through progressively higher foothills and though the day had turned very warm and the sky occasionally threatened rain, we stayed at speed and made good progress. I hoped we would be able to make it by dark and knew that if we ran into no trouble we would. No trouble that could not be solved, that is.

  “Christian,” I said gently, “I guess I should have warned you about what you might see, but really I thought you could handle anything you would find on the street or I would never have agreed to come on this trip. I still think you can and that you are using this incident to focus all your misgivings upon.”

  He glared at me and I held up my hand. “That’s okay. I just need to tell you that if you had grown up on a farm or in a family of men who hunt you would have learned to butcher hogs and cattle, or to gut out deer at a young age and while what you saw the other night might have surprised you and left an impression you will always remember, you would have carried on with no ill affect. You still can. I’m not going to tell you that you won’t always carry the image of that bull and the swinging khukuri, but it’s up to you how much you let it affect you.”

  “Sensei, with all respect, you were not there.”

  I sighed. “Christian, when I was eighteen I flew to Viet Nam and when the plane was just touching down, - there was no taking off again you see - the runway started taking mortar fire. There were all sorts of people out there and when the doors opened and they started hustling us off, the mortar rounds, hell, they might have been rockets or even artillery; they started to come in again. I was thrust down the ladder and shoved forward and when I finally stopped to get aboard a transport parked next to a gaping pothole from a recent blast, I looked down and saw a… well, a body part. I was not ready for combat. No one is ever ready for it. But even though the shock of seeing that was so great I can still see it with my eyes open after thirty-five years, I did not let it make me immobile. On the contrary, I used it as a kick in the pants. And later, when things got very tired and strange I used it over and over.

  ”I was six years younger than you are right now. So what I am going to say to you might not taste very good, but it is the absolute truth. Son, it’s time to grow up.”

  He flashed a glare at me very quickly and began to protest. I let him go on until he was at an end of it. It was all the usual things one would expect from someone who heard that phrase. When he was finished I said it again. “Son, it’s time to grow up.”

  He went at it again. It was a long hour later that he finally got it. I kept repeating that phrase and he kept arguing and then finally Curtis said “Sensei, why don’t you change attacks and see what he says?”

  Christian looked at Curtis and then back at me. He hesitated.

  “I’ve been taking ukemi,” he said.

  “No. I have. You have been trying to find a way to dissipate the truth of what I have been saying and to pin me, throw me, or just stop me, but my ukemi skills are far more advanced than yours. I am being a true uke and you just keep floundering.

  “Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?” Celine asked over her shoulder. Esra said something to her and then Celine was explaining what had been said to her in Turkish.

  “Christian, it’s time to grow up. A much smarter guy than myself once said, ‘Argue for your limitations and they’re yours!’ and I tend to agree with him. You had a shock, okay; mature, intelligent people learn from this type of thing. That you understand that sometimes a verbal battle takes the shape of uke and nage tells me that you are doing just fine. If you wish to be hamstrung by this, you can be, and think of the mileage you’ll get from it when you tell stories. But I have to believe that you will get more mileage from using it as a focal point when you need to be serious and bring all your powers to bear on a situation.”

  “You were just taking ukemi,” he said again.

  “I think most argument takes this form, because usually both people know intrinsically that one side of an argument is the stronger even if one person feels ideologically compelled to sustain it.” I scratched my head and looked out the window. “But, I think you feel better, now. I can see it and if you really wish to go home I have done my best and will make the arrangements for you. What do you want to do?”

  “Come on, suck it up, you jerk.” This voice came from the back. Chris was sitting up and frowning over the rear seat.

  I looked ahead and saw we were coming into the town of Jiri.

  “Okay guys,” I said, “this is the end of the road.”

  Chapter 12

  Shoshin (Beginner’s Mind)

  The end of the road, is not just an expression in this case. The road actually ends and the only way to continue east or north is on foot or on some beast of burden. Jiri is an important starting and stopping point for this part of Nepal because most of the goods sent into the high country are shipped by road from Kathmandu to here and then transported onto the backs of porters for the long trek to the villages on the cusp of the world.

  Bim led us to a lodge and took care of checking us in with the manager. We were led to three rooms, side-by-side, and smelling distinctly of an old toilet. I told Bim I wanted a room to myself and he told me that would leave Chris, Curtis and Christian sharing two beds, but he would try to make that happen. It turned out there were only the three rooms available. I resigned myself to the ways of the world and realized that for the next three weeks we would be bound together tooth and tail.

  “Okay, I’ll leave it to you guys who will room with
me. I don’t snore and have no bad habits. I expect whoever bunks with me to behave likewise. You work it out.” I left and went outside and walked over to a small market stall and bought a beer. It was barely warm and tasted wonderful. I took two more and walked back to the hotel and sat down outside on the veranda and watched the day end. Curtis and Chris showed up a few minutes later and I handed them the other bottles. They both sighed as they sipped and then joined me on the bench.

  “I guess we’re officially in the third world,” said Chris.

  “You saw what passes for a toilet?” I asked.

  “Yeah, and when I asked where I could wash my hands the old lady showed me a bucket behind the back door.”

  “At least she understood English,” Curtis said and smiled.

  “And they have beer,” I said.

  “I think Esra is having second thoughts. This is more primitive than she was expecting. I think she’s kind of, well, I don’t know if pampered is the right word, but she isn’t exactly used to roughing it, I don’t think.” Chris took a drink. “It’s kind of hard to tell since I can’t understand a word she says. Does she really think she speaks English?” he asked

  “Well, her English is a lot better than my Turkish. On the other hand I don’t believe that I speak any Turkish, but it is hard to watch and listen and not have a clue what she’s saying. As for her being used to roughing it? Well, I don’t know.” I thought for a second. ”Did you ever see The Thirteenth Warrior?” I asked.