Early this morning I was lying in bed with a small bottle of water and a rehydration salts sachet, but too weak to put them together. From about 10pm I had been throwing up so violently that at one point I thought I’d come close to finding out what it would be like to choke to death on my own vomit. On the bright side, it had only started once the electricity came back on. Yesterday it rained for most of the day, beating down like a monsoon, and then finishing off with a tremendous storm. As bangs and crashes could be heard from the valley as objects hurled about in the wind, the electricity was turned off in the entire town. Thankfully I wasn’t being sick then so didn’t have to do it all by torchlight.
Getting sick in India is no great surprise, but I have never had it happen so quickly. I’ve also never had it happen so violently - in the small hours I had to drag a chair into my bathroom so I could puke in comfort. But I think I have been lucky; now the worst has passed there is no stomach cramping, so it looks like it could have cleared.
Since then I have been locked away in my room, watching TV and occasionally nibbling plain biscuits and sipping bottled water. As a bonus, my room does have wi-fi access so right now, I am lying down, typing this with one hand. Two hands would involve too much energy. I had planned on going to the second day of a conference on Attention, Memory and Mind being held by the Dalai Lama and a group of scientists, discussing science and Buddhism. Of course ordinary folks like me don’t get to attend the real thing - only high lamas, the scientists themselves, and invited guests like Richard Gere. But the whole procedure is being screened live to a room in a nearby monastery.
On the first day of the conference, I initially thought that I was the only westerner there who wasn’t fluent in Tibetan. In addition to the Tibetans, the audience was filled with grey-haired westerners who were clearly all Buddhist practitioners. Ironically, though, the westerners seem to take things much more seriously than the Tibetans. At one point during the discussion, a psychologist was comparing the mind to a jigsaw puzzle before presenting the Dalai Lama with one saying, “And now you own your own jigsaw puzzle.” While most people chuckled, two European women to my left frowned, angrily pursing their lips into what I call a ‘cat’s arse’ face. “Treating him like a child,” one of the women muttered to the other. The second woman agreed.
Then the psychologist said to the Dalai Lama that his study of the mind made him an engineer. “Your Holiness has said that if you had not been the Dalai Lama that you would have liked to have been an engineer. But you do not need to come back in your next life to be one because you already are an engineer.” The two women did not like that comment at all, this ordinary mortal being so familiar with HH. “He has no respect,” the second woman muttered.
When the session ended I overheard them discussing how they didn’t like it when people spoke to the Dalai Lama with such familiarity; yet the man himself clearly enjoys it. One reason why he is so popular is because of his sense of fun. At the end of the session, when the psychologist was having trouble with his microphone, the Dalai Lama offered to hold it for him, with a big smile playfully waving it like a sword in front of the man’s face.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be up and about and able to attend the next session of the conference. Even sitting on a cushion on the ground for hours at a time beats staring at the view from my window. Being poorly is a miserable experience. Being poorly in India is not to be recommended. And it’s at moments like this that I wonder if I could be getting too old for this backpacking lark…
My friend Simita, however, has had her own troubles. A couple of days ago she took a pair of boots to be resoled. Simple enough, one would think, except for the fact that the man gave her size 6 soles instead of size 7.5, even cutting the boots to make them fit the new soles. She then ended up waiting for hours while he got another shoe repair man to support him, went looking (unsuccessfully) for the original soles so she could get them repaired, and was abused by a crowd of people who gathered and told her that she was a woman and should know her place, and that she should pay the man because he was poor - even though he had ruined her boots and she had to pay a lot more for them to be repaired by someone else. Eventually she said she would go to the police and so the matter was dropped, but even now she feels she can’t walk down the Bagshu Road.
Not a great start to the holiday, but we remain optimistic!
Getting sick in India is no great surprise, but I have never had it happen so quickly. I’ve also never had it happen so violently - in the small hours I had to drag a chair into my bathroom so I could puke in comfort. But I think I have been lucky; now the worst has passed there is no stomach cramping, so it looks like it could have cleared.
Since then I have been locked away in my room, watching TV and occasionally nibbling plain biscuits and sipping bottled water. As a bonus, my room does have wi-fi access so right now, I am lying down, typing this with one hand. Two hands would involve too much energy. I had planned on going to the second day of a conference on Attention, Memory and Mind being held by the Dalai Lama and a group of scientists, discussing science and Buddhism. Of course ordinary folks like me don’t get to attend the real thing - only high lamas, the scientists themselves, and invited guests like Richard Gere. But the whole procedure is being screened live to a room in a nearby monastery.
On the first day of the conference, I initially thought that I was the only westerner there who wasn’t fluent in Tibetan. In addition to the Tibetans, the audience was filled with grey-haired westerners who were clearly all Buddhist practitioners. Ironically, though, the westerners seem to take things much more seriously than the Tibetans. At one point during the discussion, a psychologist was comparing the mind to a jigsaw puzzle before presenting the Dalai Lama with one saying, “And now you own your own jigsaw puzzle.” While most people chuckled, two European women to my left frowned, angrily pursing their lips into what I call a ‘cat’s arse’ face. “Treating him like a child,” one of the women muttered to the other. The second woman agreed.
Then the psychologist said to the Dalai Lama that his study of the mind made him an engineer. “Your Holiness has said that if you had not been the Dalai Lama that you would have liked to have been an engineer. But you do not need to come back in your next life to be one because you already are an engineer.” The two women did not like that comment at all, this ordinary mortal being so familiar with HH. “He has no respect,” the second woman muttered.
When the session ended I overheard them discussing how they didn’t like it when people spoke to the Dalai Lama with such familiarity; yet the man himself clearly enjoys it. One reason why he is so popular is because of his sense of fun. At the end of the session, when the psychologist was having trouble with his microphone, the Dalai Lama offered to hold it for him, with a big smile playfully waving it like a sword in front of the man’s face.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be up and about and able to attend the next session of the conference. Even sitting on a cushion on the ground for hours at a time beats staring at the view from my window. Being poorly is a miserable experience. Being poorly in India is not to be recommended. And it’s at moments like this that I wonder if I could be getting too old for this backpacking lark…
My friend Simita, however, has had her own troubles. A couple of days ago she took a pair of boots to be resoled. Simple enough, one would think, except for the fact that the man gave her size 6 soles instead of size 7.5, even cutting the boots to make them fit the new soles. She then ended up waiting for hours while he got another shoe repair man to support him, went looking (unsuccessfully) for the original soles so she could get them repaired, and was abused by a crowd of people who gathered and told her that she was a woman and should know her place, and that she should pay the man because he was poor - even though he had ruined her boots and she had to pay a lot more for them to be repaired by someone else. Eventually she said she would go to the police and so the matter was dropped, but even now she feels she can’t walk down the Bagshu Road.
Not a great start to the holiday, but we remain optimistic!
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