Second Entry

Completely on it

To be so, is to have entire balance in a moment. Regardless of what resides in that moment, I believe. Through my ups, uncertainties, downs, breakthroughs, journeys, my moments. I will be writing, articulating, analysing and searching through to you, my blog. 

Suppresion

Too many thoughts are suppressed due to the society and the people that we live amongst. I say this because of a young Tibetan man I met in Delhi. Lana and I chose to have a Limca at a café named “Fat Yak” where we met owner Tenzin. Who consequently changed our path in India, we were originally going into Rajastahn. Currently, we are in McLeodGanj where I taught English. We’re here because we found out from Tenzin that the Tibetan’s childrens village are celebrating their 50^th anniversary. After a slow introduction of personalities we found out that Tenzin was 28 years old and has dreams of travelling the world. Though, his family life does not allow him to do so. We eventually began talking about religion, status and comparatively, western and third world societies. We ended up on the topic of his father, whom used to be a monk. Tenzin believes that “ Even though the Dalai Llama is a great man, I do not call him god” where as his parents and most monks respect him as a God/Deity. Tenzin does not disrespect the Dalai Llama but chooses to respect him merely as an amazing being. In a non religious, but spiritual sense. Tenzin and I were not only reading from the same page but were trailing on the same line. His thoughts, when spoken to me we’re whispered, as they are not tolerated by his family and he would be shunned if he shut out the idea of a “god” even in a Buddhist sense. In his whispers I could see his suppressed being, a wry thing to observe. A disconnection from the self due to a non-tolerance or non-acceptance of different idealogies, most of us have experienced this, first hand.

Dharamsala has welcomed us

Tenzin, the Tibetan Cafe owner told us of the Tibetan Children’s village 50^th anniversary that’s happening this weekend and an assortment of other wonderful performances/celebrations that are happening throughout the day. Since making the decision to come here, Dharamsala has welcomed us. Dharamsala or Mcleodganj is where I used to teach English. Our good friend Dolma Tsering (former Miss Tibet as I only recently found out) who had been helping us a great amount in Delhi decided to catch one of the 12 hour 6:30pm buses up north with us. She was to perform in a Tibetan fashion show and sing one or two of her newly recorded Traditional Tibetan songs.  Upon arriving in Dharamsala we visited an old friend of mine, Kalsang who works at Tibet Tours Travels, one of many local travel agents. Kalsang was taken aback when she first realised who it was, as I hadn’t told her I was coming. She then kindly organised her friend to show us a few of the hotels around Dharamsala. After finding some nice accommodation for $9.75 per night, between us, (with incredible views of the Himalaya) we went for a walk. We ended up on the rooftop at Jimmys Italian Restaurant, where we met Mikhail. Mikhail is an American traveller who lived his childhood years in Madras (India ) and high school/college years in Texas.  This young man from Madras came and sat down on our table, where there happened to be two spare chairs. We began to converse and soon discovered we were on the same page, all three of us clicked. Mikhail sparked up a spliff, and we were soon on the same sentence. Mentioning our lack of Buds, Mikhail gave us a block of hash, laughing “it’s not a problem, I have far too much”. A few moments later, Tenzin, the Tibetan café owner walked onto the roof at Jimmy’s. Mcleodganj is a big place with about 300 restaurants. Tenzin acknowledged this as we shook hands and spoke of what we’d be doing in the near future. Mikhail joined us as we then made our way up to the Tibetan Institute of performing Arts (TIPA) where our friend Dolma was performing. Actually, we had met a young American girl at a café earlier that day who was also to sing at the show. Who ended up blowing us away with a beautiful rendition of a traditional Tibetan song. As we sat on a small window ledge of an overlooking building at TIPA,  I thought about whether the Dalai Llama would come to a performance like this. I thought of the moment when he’d ask his security guards about what they thought of his idea. As my thought ended, within the space of two seconds Lana asked me

“Do you think the Dalai Llama would come to something like this?”

“I just stopped thinking about that two seconds before you spoke” I responded.

Lana’s eyes lit up, “of course you did”.