Happy Losar, year of the Fire Dog!
Happy New Year's once more!
As much as we regretted having to say goodbye to the warm weather, pineapple and musambi juice, sweet friends, and other aspects of the south, Tamdin and I were also relieved and happy to have made it back to Dharamsala. For me, it’s a big relief not to have to figure out trains, buses and autorickshaws, not to mention dragging around luggage, finding a decent place to stay every few nights, all these basics of traveling that can become wearisome after a while.
A much warmer, greener Dharamsala greeted us the morning of February 26, along with the Himachali way of things, sweaters and all. It also got us working right away. We unpacked and cleaned our Sidhpur apartment within two hours, and then were off to Mcleod Ganj and Dharamsala (oh, the buses!) to do Losar shopping.
I’ve missed “the” major holidays celebrated in the west (Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s) the past 2 years, though I did spend the Lunar new year at home last year. Anyway, I’d forgotten how fun it can be to prepare and go through the rituals of celebration. I guess since the Losar celebrations are new for me, I can’t take the rituals and preparations for granted. There is more interest in the meaning behind rituals and no jadedness, only light-hearted participation. And I feel like that can be possible also with Christmas and those holidays that I used to celebrate more wholeheartedly. Never mind that Christmas isn’t “my” holiday and that I can’t peel layers of capitalistic & materialistic fluff to get the essence of Christmas, it is possible to understand the intention behind participating in holidays, rituals, etc. and understand what kind of exercise it was meant to be.
This year, I’ve had three chances to celebrate new year. January 1st I was far from parties and champagne as I was at Kalachakra, and in a small Indian village. Kalachakra didn’t have much to do with new year’s, but the locals did celebrate. There were a lot of Christians in Amaravati, and since I was staying just 100 meters from a church, I was right in the middle of those celebrations. The local folks all drew mandalas and messages of happy new year and best wishes in their front stoops with rice flour and brilliant powdered colors. Certainly I could have been spared the all night vehement Christian sermon over loudspeaker and the singing session in which all the kids took turns singing – also over loudspeaker. That was too much, especially since there was already too much use of the airwaves, what with the lamas chanting starting at 5 in the morning (which I didn’t actually mind) and the all-day broadcast of the people locator(“Tashi Dawa from McLeod Ganj, your brother, from Kham, is looking for you”). January 1st I was also thinking about my friend Birj and reflecting back on what this year meant.
I was on the road in Kerala when I got the January 29th email from my Ma saying “happy new year (did you know today is new year’s)”. Haha, what a nice email to get, from Ma, whom I missed so much, and from other friends wishing me happy year of the dog. Really, at that point I was really missing Chinese & Vietnamese food (the ubiquitous “chopsuey” and chowmein, which has become standard Indian faire is ok, but I wanted some good lightly stir-fried veggies with shitake mushrooms, ah!), and especially new year’s food -- banh tet and the Dujou style sticky rice cakes, with peanuts and mung beans, watercress and mushrooms (my mom’s vegetarian substitution for the fatty pork). I wasn’t exactly in a place to cook, but it was nice instead to get stories and new year’s wishes from home, how my dad scared the ish out of Victor with his usual enthusiastic display of firecracker-popping. I was thinking of home a lot.
Losar has been a chance for me to actively participate in festivities. Losar in Dharamsala is much more festive than it was in Berkeley a year ago, though then I didn’t really get much chance to participate much. I should say, my experience here has been rich, as I’ve had a chance to visit several homes and temples. There is quite a bit of preparation that people go through. Everyone sets up elaborate displays of food, especially kapse (Tibetan fried biscuits), fruit, candies. They offer these as well as sugar, butter, and flowers. They also present offerings in beautiful boxes, half filled with tsampa, half with rice (representing bountiful food, and tied very much to the agricultural predominance of life in Tibet). Imbedded in the tsampa and rice are usually colorful sheaths of wheat and butter sculptures that the monks and nuns make (see some photos below).
Losar is celebrated for 3 days in Dharamsala (compared to a month in Tibet), but all the same it’s been fun. Today is day 3, and it’s been nice just to spend a few days preparing and having beautiful meals of momos (dumplings), kapse, and various dishes. It’salso been nice just visiting people, hanging out and talking, drinking chang (barley beer which people brew themselves) and exchanging good wishes and small gifts of food and the like.
I’m just taking the time to recuperate from the travels and reflect before the next stage, which promises to be just as busy as my first three months here in India. I will be taking a Buddhist philosophy class and certainly getting into some other stuff as activity in Dharamsala picks back up for the spring season. I have to move closer to the area of activity (alas, the beautiful little flat here in Sidhpur, while peacefully agrarian, is now missing a kitchen as someone moved in next door and the spare kitchen’s no longer available).
On top of moving and getting into studies, I have a burning desire to establish a regular, stable, art practice and meditation practice again. After all, a creative person who doesn’t practice is a tortured one indeed, so many ideas, stories, images, expressions that want to come out. Much more difficult than in the US, where (though I had less time), I had more conveniences and resources, which made painting much easier. I’ve looked hard for oil paints, man, and finally scored a few tubes of paint and some turpentine – alas no mineral spirits, which are much better for the health and nose. Anyway, we’ll see what we can do with limited oils, local materials, and watercolors. Given enough time to mess with materials, scarcity can be wonderful for creation.
I’ll be challenged for sure. One thing I’ve learned in the past year is that time isn’t going to go any slower. My teacher Hari made a keen observation about age – the older you are, the less a year means. A year is a whole lot more time for a seven-year-old than for a fifty-year-old, because a year is longer in proportion to the kid’s experience of life than it is in proportion to the old guy’s. Hence adulthood, and for me 27, 28 (and coming up this year, 29, <>) have been a whirlwind of one thing after another, making it more challenging to do the art, and now much more discipline is required on my part to make things happen. There’s also a lot more sacrifice that is demanded. I’ve been forced to simplify simplify, give up give up give up, not just things, but ideas about myself and about my life. It’s been an intense but great growing experience. I truly have felt my life shaping me into an adult. It’s putting the reality in my face that life is precious and short (two deaths of people I was close to this last year made that reality really clear) and that I can’t continue to seek comfortable for be paralyzed from doing what I need to and want to do out of fear (all who’ve had deadlines know that procrastination doesn’t come so much from laziness as it does fear). It’s demanding that I get up and get my life together. I guess that’s one of the reasons I also had to come back and experience life in the 3rd world long-term (of course, that’s a complicated statement, as India is a huge mix of everything from 3rd world to first class all in one package.) But however you describe it, I've been living dramatically differently, very simply. I’ve needed to be removed from the comforts and conveniences and safety of home to understand the reality in daily life.
Anyway, I hope this year brings along with these demands more joy.
Part of our chupa (offering), which includes these butter sculptures made by nuns at Dolma Ling Nunnery
Losar breakfast
Neighborhood kids in their best dress
Tamdin and Dhakpa
As much as we regretted having to say goodbye to the warm weather, pineapple and musambi juice, sweet friends, and other aspects of the south, Tamdin and I were also relieved and happy to have made it back to Dharamsala. For me, it’s a big relief not to have to figure out trains, buses and autorickshaws, not to mention dragging around luggage, finding a decent place to stay every few nights, all these basics of traveling that can become wearisome after a while.
A much warmer, greener Dharamsala greeted us the morning of February 26, along with the Himachali way of things, sweaters and all. It also got us working right away. We unpacked and cleaned our Sidhpur apartment within two hours, and then were off to Mcleod Ganj and Dharamsala (oh, the buses!) to do Losar shopping.
I’ve missed “the” major holidays celebrated in the west (Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s) the past 2 years, though I did spend the Lunar new year at home last year. Anyway, I’d forgotten how fun it can be to prepare and go through the rituals of celebration. I guess since the Losar celebrations are new for me, I can’t take the rituals and preparations for granted. There is more interest in the meaning behind rituals and no jadedness, only light-hearted participation. And I feel like that can be possible also with Christmas and those holidays that I used to celebrate more wholeheartedly. Never mind that Christmas isn’t “my” holiday and that I can’t peel layers of capitalistic & materialistic fluff to get the essence of Christmas, it is possible to understand the intention behind participating in holidays, rituals, etc. and understand what kind of exercise it was meant to be.
This year, I’ve had three chances to celebrate new year. January 1st I was far from parties and champagne as I was at Kalachakra, and in a small Indian village. Kalachakra didn’t have much to do with new year’s, but the locals did celebrate. There were a lot of Christians in Amaravati, and since I was staying just 100 meters from a church, I was right in the middle of those celebrations. The local folks all drew mandalas and messages of happy new year and best wishes in their front stoops with rice flour and brilliant powdered colors. Certainly I could have been spared the all night vehement Christian sermon over loudspeaker and the singing session in which all the kids took turns singing – also over loudspeaker. That was too much, especially since there was already too much use of the airwaves, what with the lamas chanting starting at 5 in the morning (which I didn’t actually mind) and the all-day broadcast of the people locator(“Tashi Dawa from McLeod Ganj, your brother, from Kham, is looking for you”). January 1st I was also thinking about my friend Birj and reflecting back on what this year meant.
I was on the road in Kerala when I got the January 29th email from my Ma saying “happy new year (did you know today is new year’s)”. Haha, what a nice email to get, from Ma, whom I missed so much, and from other friends wishing me happy year of the dog. Really, at that point I was really missing Chinese & Vietnamese food (the ubiquitous “chopsuey” and chowmein, which has become standard Indian faire is ok, but I wanted some good lightly stir-fried veggies with shitake mushrooms, ah!), and especially new year’s food -- banh tet and the Dujou style sticky rice cakes, with peanuts and mung beans, watercress and mushrooms (my mom’s vegetarian substitution for the fatty pork). I wasn’t exactly in a place to cook, but it was nice instead to get stories and new year’s wishes from home, how my dad scared the ish out of Victor with his usual enthusiastic display of firecracker-popping. I was thinking of home a lot.
Losar has been a chance for me to actively participate in festivities. Losar in Dharamsala is much more festive than it was in Berkeley a year ago, though then I didn’t really get much chance to participate much. I should say, my experience here has been rich, as I’ve had a chance to visit several homes and temples. There is quite a bit of preparation that people go through. Everyone sets up elaborate displays of food, especially kapse (Tibetan fried biscuits), fruit, candies. They offer these as well as sugar, butter, and flowers. They also present offerings in beautiful boxes, half filled with tsampa, half with rice (representing bountiful food, and tied very much to the agricultural predominance of life in Tibet). Imbedded in the tsampa and rice are usually colorful sheaths of wheat and butter sculptures that the monks and nuns make (see some photos below).
Losar is celebrated for 3 days in Dharamsala (compared to a month in Tibet), but all the same it’s been fun. Today is day 3, and it’s been nice just to spend a few days preparing and having beautiful meals of momos (dumplings), kapse, and various dishes. It’salso been nice just visiting people, hanging out and talking, drinking chang (barley beer which people brew themselves) and exchanging good wishes and small gifts of food and the like.
I’m just taking the time to recuperate from the travels and reflect before the next stage, which promises to be just as busy as my first three months here in India. I will be taking a Buddhist philosophy class and certainly getting into some other stuff as activity in Dharamsala picks back up for the spring season. I have to move closer to the area of activity (alas, the beautiful little flat here in Sidhpur, while peacefully agrarian, is now missing a kitchen as someone moved in next door and the spare kitchen’s no longer available).
On top of moving and getting into studies, I have a burning desire to establish a regular, stable, art practice and meditation practice again. After all, a creative person who doesn’t practice is a tortured one indeed, so many ideas, stories, images, expressions that want to come out. Much more difficult than in the US, where (though I had less time), I had more conveniences and resources, which made painting much easier. I’ve looked hard for oil paints, man, and finally scored a few tubes of paint and some turpentine – alas no mineral spirits, which are much better for the health and nose. Anyway, we’ll see what we can do with limited oils, local materials, and watercolors. Given enough time to mess with materials, scarcity can be wonderful for creation.
I’ll be challenged for sure. One thing I’ve learned in the past year is that time isn’t going to go any slower. My teacher Hari made a keen observation about age – the older you are, the less a year means. A year is a whole lot more time for a seven-year-old than for a fifty-year-old, because a year is longer in proportion to the kid’s experience of life than it is in proportion to the old guy’s. Hence adulthood, and for me 27, 28 (and coming up this year, 29, <
Anyway, I hope this year brings along with these demands more joy.
Part of our chupa (offering), which includes these butter sculptures made by nuns at Dolma Ling Nunnery
Losar breakfast
Neighborhood kids in their best dress
Tamdin and Dhakpa
posted by sylviashines at 7:06 AM
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