Word Meanings

A few days ago I was wandering around taking photographs at a huge Eucharist being held in the Don Bosco square up the street from the college. It seemed like every Catholic in northeast India had turned out to take communion. The streets were packed. 

 

When I got back to my cottage and downloaded my photos, I noticed that with all the thousands of people in the streets, I had continually focused on solitary souls--or were they lonely? 

 

Because I couldn’t figure it out on my own, I turned to the dictionary to tell me. “You can be in the midst of a crowd of people and still experience loneliness, but not solitude, since you are not physically alone. Similarly, if you enjoy being alone, you can have solitude without loneliness.” 

 

So, since we’re in Shillong surrounded by people, I must assume that it’s lonely people. But what if they don’t mind being alone? Can they be solitary in a city?

 

“Loneliness, which refers to a lack of companionship and is often associated with unhappiness, should not be confused with solitude, which is the sate of being alone or cut off from all human contact.”

 

Neither seemed to quite fit. So, I tried synonyms and found: alienation, “a word that suggests a feeling of unrelatedness, especially a feeling of distance from your social or intellectual environment.”

 

And it hit me. Was I taking photos of my own feelings of alienation? It’s easy to find metaphors when you have a lot of time on your hands.

 

Shortly after moving back to Susanville a couple years ago, I spoke with one of the Mt. Shasta monks about the overwhelming feelings of loneliness I was experiencing and she answered, “How wonderful! Embrace it. Welcome it. It’s trying to teach you something. Learn from it.”

Blood and Sacrifice

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Maybe it was the full moon that prompted me to stay for the goat sacrifice after the Nongrem Dance. Or maybe I felt I needed to open myself up to all sides of Khasi culture.  Or maybe there’s something in the nature of sacrifice that I’m trying to understand. Or what’s behind killing an animal. I’ve admired the Khasi’s reverence for nature, their care taking of the forest. Blood sacrifice is part of it. So I stayed in Smit Village well after dark, because an animal sacrifice must certainly take place after the moon has risen.

The Nongrem Dance, an annual dance of harvest and thanksgiving, continued all day with colorful, hypnotic, fugue-like choreography. After sunset, the entire village took on a slightly surreal ambience and reminded me of a night I spent in Michoacán, Mexico that I only remember as “the witches’ village.” Fires burning in dark streets. Scent of cedar. Someone told me that sometimes people go there and are never seen again. Only in Michoacán it was women I remember who filled up the street. In Smit, there were lots of men, many of them singing loudly or passed out on the grass after a long day of imbibing in the local rice beer. 

Then the music started. I’ve been reading a book, The Evolution of Khasi Music, by Layynashai Syiem, so I think it began with the ka shawiang, a mournful flute used during death and religious ceremonies. A single drumbeat joined in and the village headmen in white turbans filed out into their seats, a golden goblet on the ground before each of them. Someone started a fire in the center of the field and the incessant doleful music kept on.

The goats were hauled in one by one with ropes, bleating and struggling. They knew what was in store. Fortunately, they did them in quickly, one quick beheading with the ax followed by a round of gunshot to signal their end. And the people surged forward, holding the smallest children on their shoulders for a better view.

As soon as they started dragging the first goat in, I knew I had to get out of there. It had been a bad idea to stay, but the place was packed; I couldn’t move. And with the first bloodshed, the crowd surged forward, yelling and cheering.

I don’t get violence, although I’ve been around my share of violent people, mostly, but not always, men. I get that blood unleashes some primal call of human nature, but that gene seems to have missed me. Before long there was a bloody circle around the headmen who sat impassively and watched. And still they dragged in more and more goats. I hear the final count was over 60. I was gone before they started on the chickens.

I rarely eat meat any more, but haven’t crossed over 100% to a vegetarian diet so it would be hypocritical to say I oppose slaughter of any kind. I’ve always felt hunting or raising your meat was a more honest way of going about it than buying a plastic-wrapped package from the grocery store. I once popped off a dozen quail, plucked and dressed them and simmered them in plum brandy sauce so I could experience the entire range of preparing a meal from live bird to French cooking. And I know those goats will feed villages all over Meghalaya and a lot of people will be grateful for the meat.

But for me, the ka shawiang and drumbeat will haunt my nights for a long time to come, and I don’t think I’ll ever eat mutton again. 

Communication Misses

She’s called Mother India, but sometimes living here feels like being in a relationship with a difficult man. Something I have a lot of experience with. 

 

It comes down to a matter of communication, and how many of us are lucky enough in love to find someone who speaks the same language? It might seem that way at first, but then, at least when it comes to men and women, one day you realize that you’ve been having conversations with an alien. And so has he. She wants to talk about a problem she’s having at work. He thinks he needs to solve it and then doesn’t understand why she doesn’t follow his advice. All she wanted was someone to listen. And he doesn’t have it easy either. He pays her a compliment. She hears an insult. “I like your hat,” he says. And she answers, “What do you mean I look fat? Do you think I look fat?” 

 

Communication misses.

 

India is a bit like that. And I love language and generally pick them up pretty quickly. In China I was arguing with cab drivers in record time. But here I’m lost. I picked up a Hindi book before I left, only to find out that in the northeast not many people speak Hindi. I’ve learned a few words of Khasi, but there are so many different dialects and languages in this part of the country, that most of the time I don’t know what in the hell I’m hearing.

 

Of course, it’s still easy to get around as English is the link language and everyone speaks a little, and quite a few people speak a lot. But then the nuances, the subtleties come into play, the things like “Oh, crap, did I just hand that school kid a banana with my left hand?” I never know if I’ve just made a major cultural faux pas or just a minor fool out of myself.  

 

But then, there are moments of grace and perfect synchronicity. A blending of heart and consciousness so that you realize no matter how difficult the relationship is, it’s worth struggling through whatever series of miscommunications are necessary to bring you this sublime place. 

 

India is like that too. 

Service without Attachment

Photos from Wahkhen Village, Meghalaya, a Khasi village

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along the India/Bangladesh Border

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“There are different kinds of attachment,” the man from the Ramakrishna Mission told me. “Not only are there attachments to people and things, but we also get attached to ideas and expectations. When you give something, do it with an open heart for the sake of giving, with no expectations of what you will get back, whether you are giving to strangers or to your own children.”

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Every week the Ramakrishna Mission gives. Medicine. Food. Education. It’s given without asking anyone to join their organization, given without expectation. The idea of service is central to most Hindus. Self realization and service. The two go hand-in-hand.

Coffee, the Cow Saint and Reincarnated Cats

 

I suppose that lots of random occurrences that are actually interrelated happen all the time, but being out of my element makes me more aware of them. Today I’m looking at connections that happened because of a cup of coffee.

 

There are few creature comforts from home that I miss, but coffee is one of them. 

 

Fortunately, I have a friend who understands the value of coffee, so with many “namastes” in the direction of Santa Cruz, I got a care package a while back with some lovely, dark espresso. The taste of that first cup of dark roast after six weeks of instant was a truly intoxicating moment. And the smell. I spent a good amount of time with my nose in the bag before I could even bring myself to brew a cup. 

 

The perfect cup of coffee deserves perfect fixings. I decided to go all out and bought a pan of fresh milk from the man who goes door to door through the neighborhood selling it from tin cans that he carries on a pole over his shoulder. Besides, I read somewhere that milk from Indian cows has nearly magical properties. Apparently, so does cow urine, but we won’t go there. 

 

I figured that pan would last me all week, but the next morning there was a knock at my door and there he was with his pails of milk. I see this man all over town, and he charges mere pennies for a pan of milk. Plus, he has sweet, soulful eyes and the most angelic smile I’ve ever seen. I just couldn’t tell him no, so I filled up another pan and put it in my fridge. 

 

Fortunately, there are lots of stray animals around. 

 

Now this is an indulgence, but I like to think that my cat, Emily, who was killed a couple years ago shows up from time to time in different reincarnations. And here she is in India mewling at my front door. 

 

Then I went to the Himalayas for almost three weeks. Surely, this would break the pattern of the cow saint and cats. But no sooner did I get back than I found the cow saint’s two sons going door to door. I knew it was them; they both look just like their father, tall and thin with the same soft eyes and sweet smiles. It’s hard to not fall in love with this family of reed-like men with their kind faces. 

 

And the cat, too, came back too, complaining loudly at the door once or twice a day and looking skinnier than when I left so I made some rice to mix in with the milk and she lapped it up. 

 

Maybe this is what I love about it here--the strange interconnectedness of things, these different threads of different lives that make their way to my door on a daily basis. It’s not just the cow saint and cats, but the retired priest who gives me a different saint’s card whenever I pass him on our evening walks. It’s the paper boy who pushes open my door and walks in to say hello in the morning. Or the disoriented elderly woman with no teeth and red gums who wanders in smiling and looking lost. It’s community and something I didn’t know I was missing until I found it. 

 

Getting Realer

 

A few years ago I made a commitment to be more honest with the world, but more importantly, with myself. I’ve been more or less successful, but living in a small town where I see half a dozen familiar faces every time I go to the grocery store makes it easy. I don’t want to get caught in a lie. Traveling through small Himalayan villages tests it.

 

For a long time, maybe most of my life, I was uncomfortable in my own skin and my semi-nomadic lifestyle allowed me to avoid dealing with it. 

 

Moving was an opportunity to recreate myself, and traveling, especially, gave me the chance to literally be someone else. I changed my name, background, profession and identity. Casual encounters in coffee shops or on trains didn’t meet me. They met a physicist from New Zealand; being poor in math, I liked to choose careers that I couldn’t possibly pull off in real life. Sometimes I mixed Spanish in with my English and claimed to be from Bolivia or Argentina. I was the estranged wife of a Hungarian diplomat or a daughter-on-the-run of a Mafia hit man. Who I am could never possibly be enough. 

 

Here in the Himalayas, I’ve had to bite my tongue more than once. After all, what harm do these lies do? Who would ever know? It’s just role play, a way of expressing my creative side. 

 

But I would know and lying has lost its appeal. So, maybe for the first time on the road, maybe for the first time ever, I’m practicing just being me. And, for now, it’s enough. 

 

Leaving What We Love

In his introduction to The Snow Leopard, Pico Iyer writes, “Sometimes we have to move away from that which we love the most” in justification of author Peter Matthiessen’s decision, just a few months after his wife died, to leave their young son for a trek through the Himalayas. This seeming abandonment has been one of the main criticisms of Matthiessen over the years. How could he do such a calloused, self-serving act? 

 

Six years ago, when my youngest son, Zeke, was fourteen I left him and my husband to go to China for a year. The previous year we had pulled him out of junior high to try to save him through homeschooling from failing seventh grade. Fourteen is a vulnerable age for any child, a time when they need a grounded life, balance, security. 

 

To this day I don’t know if I made the right choice or not. I like to tell myself that going to China set me on the path to becoming a stronger, more complete woman who is now able to be more present not only for my children, but for everyone in my life. But I can’t deny that I was mainly thinking of myself. 

 

Tomorrow my oldest son turns thirty and in ways I abandoned him as well while he was growing up. As a young single mother, I was full of ego, making my way through the university and from one relationship after another believing that if I could only find true love, I would be happy. I spent more time on my own romances than wondering how this ever-changing procession of boyfriends would affect my son.

 

Eventually, I did find love, but one that allowed me to indulge rather than transcend my flaws. Psychology claims that we recreate early patterns, especially from childhood, not because they work for us, but because they are familiar. We’ll even endure pain because it’s familiar. 

 

So now I’ve come to India, but for the first time on a journey that doesn’t feeling like I’m running away from anything. Nor am I running toward anything. 

 

As I move deeper into Buddhist thought, I’m learning to simply observe my feelings, but not place too much importance on them or on any epiphanies I might have. For someone who has long been ruled by emotion, this has been huge. We tend to believe so strongly in our thoughts and feelings; we accept them as the ultimate truth. If we think it, then that must be how it is. One night on a mountaintop we believe we see things clearly and so commit it to paper. Those words become our evidence. We can’t see that it’s only our idea of truth and nothing more, an idea that is fluid as water, as changeable as the wind. So often it’s our own rigidity or inability to see things from any point of view but our own that is damaging to those around us. Sometimes we have to let go of what we think is real in order to be free. Sometimes we have to leave what we love.