Om Sweet Om

Rangjung Yeshe, Boudha

September 3

My breath shallowed as Ramprasad and I unloaded the taxi and lugged my truckload of bags past three iron metal gates with enormous silver padlocks. I followed Ramprasad up three flights of stairs, huffing and puffing, beads of sweat rolling down my face as each stair seemed like a mountainous victory. We arrived to a dimly lit floor where I smelled a combination of sulfur and rotten urine emanating from the bathroom to. Wrinkles formed on my anxiety-ridden forehead as my eyes widened and lips curled into a nervous smile. Ramprasad and I were communicating through gestures, his English being very sparse, and he ushered me to the door on the right of the bathroom. Turning the stained brass doorknob (which I broke the other day), he showed me to my room. It was decorated with plush stuffed animals pinned against the wall’s corners and behind a glass case. There were hanging iconic images of Hindu godesses in crazy technicolor and even a glow-in-the-dark Hindu god across from the bed, which felt like a slab of solid rock. A huge dark wooden desk on the right wall with a dusty black leather computer chair felt fairly out of place with the worn red and gold couches, carpet, and concrete bed. The room felt stuffy and dark; the only window was about one square foot of filtered sunlight and didn’t provide much natural lighting. Ramprasad left me to unpack my belongings. I stuffed my clothes into the small cupboard shelf and tip-toed nervously up the flight of stairs to meet my host mother, Aamaa (meaning mother in Nepali). The first thing I noticed was that my aamaa had a large gaping space where her front teeth should have been. I would later learn that her front teeth had been extracted because of a deep tooth infection. The physiognomy of it all was so foreign to me, and even though I knew I would adjust with time, the nervous pang of fear was tickling and paralyzing me at the same time. My aamaa wraps herself in the same red sari with green and gold flowers, her face worn with wrinkles of motherly responsibilities and raising a son and daughter, chora and chori. My father, Bua in Nepali, is retired, and suffered from a heart attack a few years back, his heart left weak and fragile. I hear him coughing heavily every night along with the sound of ‘hocking loogies’ from my bedroom. Coughing is so common here, along with other lung problems because of the incredibly polluted air quality in this part of the valley. The polluted air on the busy streets is so thick with fossil fuel and steamy diesel smoke. If you don’t wear the very popular surgeon facemask or buff to prevent the incineration process, you can actually feel the dense smog of blackened oxygen enter your lungs. The Nepalese have no shame in spitting phlegm or blasting the contents of their nose spontaneously on the street.

My first family dinner was an awkward thirty-something minutes of smiling, nodding, and trying to communicate in broken English. I never realized how difficult it would be without a common language as a cultural bridge between my family’s Hindu Nepalese world and my own. Aamaa had prepared lemon tea with honey, vegetables in a yellow curry-coriander mixture, roti flatbread, and a dish of eight or nine different types of beans called quatti in honor of a holy festival. Every month in the Nepali calender fluorishes with different festivals, some celebrating the full lunar moon, others like Thiese celebrate women. Nabin, their son, finally arrived and was soon able to bridge the language barrier with his broken, but understandable English. He gave me a tour of the apartment building, showing me where the dishes were washed outside in the tap and the rooms on the rooftop where his wife Rashmi and thirteen year old daughter, Sabia, would go sleep during their ‘impure time of the month.’ I needed towels and toilet paper and Nabin was nice enough to walk me the twenty-five minutes to this big department store in the dark. I was tripping all over myself and into puddles of muddied water on the ragged hilly sidewalks. I asked Nabin how he gets around at this time of night, a time quite unsafe for foreigners, especially women, to travel alone. Nabin told me, ‘You get used to the darkness here.’ He was right. With power outages spanning about two hours every night and about 16 hours during the winter months, you really do develop nocturnal eyes and grow accustomed to the dark. The only lights come from the fluorescence of flashlights and my handy-dandy headlight and 21st century iPhone flashlight app. Patty, who had stayed with a Tibetan family in Dharmasala, India, had warned us about the types of beds and pillows we would be sleeping on. She advertised them as slabs of concrete, with a stone pillow. She was definitely not far off, as I woke up very sore from my first night’s sleep. Dylan says he sleeps like a mummy on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, fearing the three roaches he counted in his room. Ben has two beds in his room, and switches off every night depending on where he sees his spider friend, which he named Frederich. Each one of us is living in an entirely different homestay. Some families have running water and others fend without, some eat dhaalbaat (rice and lentils) for breakfast, and others eat Tsampa (barley powder, tea, and butter), some of us even have pets and siblings. Andrew lives next door to me in royalty, in what seems like a Nepali palace. His family is from a very wealthy caste and owns the entire four floors and rooftop of his building. They have two pet dogs and a fish aquarium and the sweetest most welcoming family who I bonded with the other day for many hours over rosebud tea, old photo albums, and a delicious Hindu meal. From their rooftop, we could see the horizons of the valley, all the way from descending planes at the airport to the majestic Copan Monastery on the upper ridges of the visible Himalayas.

Nepali hospitality is greatly valued here. Families extend far beyond the concrete sense of your typical mom, dad, brother, and sister. Local taxi drivers and shopkeepers alike are greeted as dai or didi, brother or sister in Nepali. Entire communities become like families here, and almost everyone is related in some way or another. Even myself, a five-foot foreigner wearing my mala beads and boho pants, is considered part of this neighborhood family now. If I walk home one night and am followed or harassed (let’s hope not!!), but just incase, it is so comforting to know that my neighbors will be ready to jump from their stoops and chase down the offender. My own homestay has been nothing but welcoming to me, making me feel like a real part of the family. I met my little eight year old brother, Subham, and my thirteen year old sister, Sabhya, a few days ago. Subham’s monkey-like energy keeps me laughing and Sabia’s curious gaze wanders across my foreignness; she is constantly asking me questions about what life is like back in the West. They do not have much, but have shared with me all they can afford. We have simple dinners of dhaalbat and roti every night followed by tea. Tonight we dunked our rolled up roti into some warm milk flavored with masala spices… Mmmmm. The bathroom stench welcomes me home every time I climb those two flights of stairs past the padlock brigade. I am always shphitzing (drenched in sweat) by the time I come home and look forward to bonding with my family over photo albums, stories, and youtube videos of Nepalese dancing. Speaking of coming home drenched, the other night after a great meal at Nir’s, our favorite restaurant, the monsoon clouds darkened and we felt the initial raindrops fall from the sky. Before we knew it, the sewers were bubbling with dirty sewage and swept down the streets in the form of white rapids. The dirty and peaceful Boudha street had turned into white rapids of Niagara. We had two options. We could wait out the storm under the damp entrance of Nir’s Café or we could swim upstream towards home in the surf. Andrew and I decided to face our odds and go for the swim. The power had conveniently gone out as we struggled up the current in the general direction of Mankhal Street. The roads generally have no names, or at least no visible street signs, so you usually rely on memory and friendly Nepalis for directions. In the darkness, without my umbrella, I was getting absolutely drenched in the Himalayan downpour. We were so lost in the darkness and could not seem to find any familiar shops or local landmarks to guide us. We asked a kind looking Tibetan for directions on how to get back to the Shedra Gomba, the white monastery, but his bewildered stare was not the answer we were seeking. Uhhhhhhh oh. So lost. After a few minutes of back and forth broken sentences, we mentioned the name of the abbot Rinpoche at the Shedra, Chokyi Nima, and that somehow sparked recognition with the Tibetan. He pointed us back toward the way we came and with exaggerated gestures, managed to send us back to familiar territory where we could find our way home. My rain jacket’s mortality left me, my backpack, and clothing soaked in palpable layers of grime and polluted rainfall. My family swarmed me when I finally reached home and started wringing out my hair. Shower time!!! There was no running hot water, but a cold shower would do just fine. I’ve actually grown to enjoy the cold showers, they are so much more refreshing after a long day of walking, running, and dodging the carnivorous traffic in the Nepali heat.

My sister-in-law Rashmi, who has become like a mother/older sister to me has truly made this experience incredible so far. She takes the time to answer all of my million questions about the daily Hindu festivals and questions about the Nepali language. She even gave me a set of toe rings and beautiful beaded necklace she received on her wedding day as a gift because she saw my lonesome toe ring and said I needed a pair. She is so sweet and such a hard working mother, really seaming this family together. This week, Rashmi tells me, she will not go into the kitchen and cook and must eat her dinners in her room because it is her monthly time of impurity. I ask her if she finds this at all offensive and how women react to this sort of tradition. She says women generally do not question or oppose, as Hindu ritual is heavily based on the notions of purity and impurity. Every night, I sit with three generations of the Dhakal family and we eat dinner together, often in the dark with a flashlight and backup generator for light. There have been a few lizard spottings, one is a local at the kitchen buffet, hanging out on the walls and scurrying behind the pantry. The other lizard, a little pink creature with translucent scaly skin loves to hang out in my room. It might be the same one as the kitchen dweller, but who’s to tell. I saw Lady Lizz high up in the corner of my window wall the other night, but yesterday morning she was scrambling low behind my bed. I just hope we can keep our long distance relationship...

It’s been a while since I’ve collected my wandering thoughts, especially after our journey to the Old Kingdom of Phatan. They say the Chinese borrowed the pagoda architectural design from this region of the Kathmandu valley. I could certainly see why. Phatan is an ancient city, worn with rustic pagodas and public squares, a once majestic place that is now home to Tibetan and Newar Buddhist temples and of course the tourist groups that travel through this religious and ethnic time capsule. Father Greg led the tour through the central square of Old Phatan, past a live band of drums, symbols, and trumpets, in between long tables of Tibetan treasures (bronze Buddha heads, wooden masks of the gods and goddesses, Tibetan silver bangles, colorful prayer wheels, and other Buddhist ritual accessories). We walked through old alleys with endless shops. I was mesmerized, transfixed in a jaw-dropping stupor. I kept falling behind the rest of the group, staring and gawking at the window displays, but Karma, my sweet monk friend from Mustaang, waited for me at every corner, knowing I would easily trail behind. We wandered through ornate pagodas filled with Buddhas in various poses, shrine rooms with puja offerings of rice, rupees, and katags (white scarves) strewn about. Buddha overload in the best way possible.

Everyday we learn a bit more Nepali, a beautifully complex language. Nothing like French or Spanish, or any of the romance or Germanic languages, Nepali is an Indo-Aryan language according to our linguistics whiz, Patty. Its written form looks like a combination of Sanskrit and Arabic, with a horizontal line connecting each scriptic word. I love everything about the way the words roll and vibrate as I try to pronounce things like mohkaaii, kamiilaa, or masala-- even cocacola sounds more sublime with a Nepali accent. Our teacher Pavitra is an adorable Nepali woman who really tries to get us involved by making us sing and repeat words and prononciations to her. Its as if we have time-traveled back to a kindergarten class and are learning an entirely new alphabet and language for the very first time. English rules do not apply in the least. Each consonant and vowel that form syllables are pronounced from a different vocal part of the body. Some stem from the throat or the palate, and others from the nasal or teeth. Today, we met with our Nepali language partners for the first time and mine was a kind man in a white linen shirt whose name simplified to KP after I tried to puzzle through the Nepali pronunciation of his full name. We spent about five minutes working on nasal pronunciation of certain syllables like ‘nga.’ I couldn’t help but think I sounded worse than Helen Keller in attempting my nasal ‘nga.’ But, Pavitra tells us that once we get a better mastery of Nepali, the spoken and written language will allow us to communicate in Hindi and understand Sanskrit… triple wammy!

Dostoyevsky, a Russian novelist, wrote that there are two kinds of cities: intentional and unintentional. Everything I have seen so far on this journey has led me to believe that Kathmandu is definitely an unintentional city. We were doing our usual laps around the Stupa, circumambulations as they are called, and came across these two emaciated cows, a mahogany brown bull following his striped golden brown-ivory friend. The Tibetan monk in red and gold robes walks around the giant Stupa next to the flower-child from the 60s in her tattered flowy pants, Teva sandals, and unwashed dreadlocks. The roads have no names and the narrow streets are far from the organized grid of New York City avenues. Jewish American writer and fellow seeker Eric Weiner writes about his travels across geographical and religious boundaries in search of his ‘God,’ in whatever divine form tailors best for him. In his book, he is now exploring Boudha, and actually goes to visit Chokyi Nima, the reigning Rinpoche at the Shedra where I study!! Weiner describes Boudha as a ‘thin place.’ Thin places are those unique locales where the distance between Heaven and earth is compressed and you can sense the divine- the transcendent, as Buddhists would say. Life here revolves around the Stupa. Even though Boudha has been swallowed up by the busier Kathmandu city, it still retains this small village feel. The Boudha villagers will wake up every morning around 5am or so and do their morning prostrations by the Stupa. Our friend Maitri, a new age hippie-academic from California, tells us that people do hundreds of thousands of these bodily prostrations. The Buddhists will do their circumambulations around those all-seeing Buddha eyes painted on what Weiner calls the ‘giant white marshmallow.’ There are often hundreds of people walking around the Marshmallow at certain times during the day. All stupas, Boudha’s being one of the three biggest in South Asia, are built to represent the Buddha mind, the mind of awakening. Walking morning, afternoon, and nighttime laps around the Stupa is said to bring one closer to Enlightenment.

A few days ago, we escaped the smoggyy haze of Boudha to the fresh open air of the Himalayan countryside. We drove on a bus filled with Shedra students through the Himalayan foothills and past lush green amphitheaters of rice terraces. It almost seemed like a Chinese Hawaiian type of landscape. We drove by Tibetans with leathery skin that look out of place so far from the Stupa, but have made their homes somewhere high in the mountains. The sky was a cobalt blue and the grass shined brilliantly below. There were hints of smoky thunderclouds far in the distance, I was sure it would rain later on in the day. But as of then, the air was crisp and breathable compared to the thick pollutants of city air. We were off to Namo Buddha, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery seated high in the mountain peaks where the Buddha recalled supposedly sacrificing one of his past lives to a starving tigress and her cubs some twenty-five hundred years ago. It was definitely one of those ‘thin places’ where the divine is physically felt in the lamasphere of the monastery. It was a Buddhist Mount Olympus, but instead of Athena or Zeus floating about, there were Oriental Tibetan lamas parading in their celestial robes. Past the streams of Tibetan prayer flags that seemed to trail down the mountain's curves without end, we had an amazing panoramic view of the valley and clouds suspended below. I never want to leave this place!

More to come...

Xoxo Julia