So now I'm going too. To India. Bought my ticket, destination Ladakh, way up there on the Tibetan plateau. Can't wait. It won't be hard, as long as I survive the altitude. If I don't, put me out for the vultures on a hilltop, or whatever is easy....please don't drag me "home" - please just let me drift away in the Himalaya, according to local custom, and according to my life-long dream. I have loved my life beyond measure, my children and their mates, and parents and sister, and nieces and nephews, and cousins, and friends and all into eternity..... I have experienced moments of exhilaration beyond measure- it's almost unfair to those who struggle in this lifetime without joy, how much happiness my children have brought me. But thank you, my children, from the bottom of my heart. Let's hope for many more years for all of us.
So now I have purchased a ticket to India, way out of my budget, but within my crazy reach. My daughter kept encouraging me to join her - then an old practically anonymous college-time friend from 45 years ago gave me the push I needed....saying can't be sure how much time we have left...then Tim Russert died and that day I bought the ticket..just a moment in time in cyberspace, not quite sure how it all happened... My goal is to go to Leh in Ladakh with my 22 year old daughter who is presently feeling comfortable in Dehra Dun, and to not succumb to high altitude sickness nor, well , God forbid, cerebral edema. I've wanted to go to Northern India and/or Tibet, since I was a kid reading my grandparents' old National Geographics, and saw those beautiful Tibetan faces. I used to dream and sing words like "Shey" and "Ringdom" before I ever even knew there really were such places.
I feel my old 60's exhilarating fearlessness coming back to me in my 60's. The same feeling I used to have when I hitch-hiked across country a dozen times, invincible, or slept under bridges in Paris, or lived in a lean-to on the beach in Mexico. How great is that? It was great then and it's great now. I'm ready for anything. I'm not easily fooled anymore, which is good for India, but I remember the joys of illusion. And would welcome those joys again any old time. Going to give it a go. The Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, here I come.
Showing posts with label daughters in India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daughters in India. Show all posts
Friday, June 20, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Adventurers in India
In the last several years two of my daughters have gone to India, incidentally fulfilling one of my own lifetime dreams. It has thrilled my soul to "picture them" there. All of my children, their mates, and my grandchild thrill my soul day in and day out. But this India thing has me entranced, and I mean majorly entranced.
Why do people go to India? In my family, India has been salve and sustenance. I would say that my girls have gone for spiritual reasons, soul-soothing. One went to Darjeeling to work in a Tibetan School after heartbreaking revelations by her fiance, and a disastrous end to their engagement.
My youngest, my 22 year old, is in India now, headed off suddenly after working for eight months in Manhattan, feeling unfulfilled. She has been staying for the last few weeks in Udaipur in Rajasthan in a guest house called Dream Heaven, in a room with a beautiful view of a lake and her own bath and shower. Originally the room was $4.50 a night, but she and a friend who works in Udaipur bargained for $1.50 a night. The room was sweetly painted and decorated and clean despite having some lizardy things like geckos climbing on the walls. She has loved it there in her little room in that beautiful city, and is sad to leave.
Today she wrote to say that she has extended her trip annother six weeks and had checked out of Dream Heaven. She's on the move, alone, by bus to Jaisalmer, a ten hour ride, and thence to Chandighar, Amritsar and Dharmsala in time for the monsoon. She has signed up for a highly intensive ten-day meditation course, Vipassana, in Dharmsala. Then she'll head across to Darjeeling.
She sent me a phone text message from the bus she's on right now saying that she was in a cupboard above the seats, no air conditioning in 100 degree heat, and the "cupboards" were like fishbowls. She thought it was funny. But how funny can something be when you're alone in that situation, right near the Pakistan border in an area where rebels have been disrupting public transportation with the most primitive of weapons, including sickles?
I've been trying to think of a word to describe how I feel. It's an agitation, fear of the highest order, concentration, constant prayer, and excitement that defies description, my molecules are all astir, I know there's a word for it on some planet somewhere. That old nut Gurdjieff probably made up a word for it. I'm so glad that my girls have had this experience as young women. I feel enormously proud of them, but that's not even it. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...in ancient crazy wild wonderful India! Drawn to the Himalaya, they journey north and leave bits and pieces of their DNA in the sworl of humanity there, as they brush their hair, touch the flowers, swim in the waters.
Even the thought of the Himalaya and beyond that, the Hindu Kush, sets my blood on thin-speed, and makes me feel an exhilaration I cherish.
I'm on edge.
I pray.
I'm there with you every step of the way.
I think of coming but may be too old,
I can't stand extremes of hot and cold.
When I was young
a room for a dollar a day
was just fine.
Do you think
I could still be that way?
So do me a favor
and try not to stare:
just tell me if you can
picture me there.
Why do people go to India? In my family, India has been salve and sustenance. I would say that my girls have gone for spiritual reasons, soul-soothing. One went to Darjeeling to work in a Tibetan School after heartbreaking revelations by her fiance, and a disastrous end to their engagement.
My youngest, my 22 year old, is in India now, headed off suddenly after working for eight months in Manhattan, feeling unfulfilled. She has been staying for the last few weeks in Udaipur in Rajasthan in a guest house called Dream Heaven, in a room with a beautiful view of a lake and her own bath and shower. Originally the room was $4.50 a night, but she and a friend who works in Udaipur bargained for $1.50 a night. The room was sweetly painted and decorated and clean despite having some lizardy things like geckos climbing on the walls. She has loved it there in her little room in that beautiful city, and is sad to leave.
Today she wrote to say that she has extended her trip annother six weeks and had checked out of Dream Heaven. She's on the move, alone, by bus to Jaisalmer, a ten hour ride, and thence to Chandighar, Amritsar and Dharmsala in time for the monsoon. She has signed up for a highly intensive ten-day meditation course, Vipassana, in Dharmsala. Then she'll head across to Darjeeling.
She sent me a phone text message from the bus she's on right now saying that she was in a cupboard above the seats, no air conditioning in 100 degree heat, and the "cupboards" were like fishbowls. She thought it was funny. But how funny can something be when you're alone in that situation, right near the Pakistan border in an area where rebels have been disrupting public transportation with the most primitive of weapons, including sickles?
I've been trying to think of a word to describe how I feel. It's an agitation, fear of the highest order, concentration, constant prayer, and excitement that defies description, my molecules are all astir, I know there's a word for it on some planet somewhere. That old nut Gurdjieff probably made up a word for it. I'm so glad that my girls have had this experience as young women. I feel enormously proud of them, but that's not even it. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...in ancient crazy wild wonderful India! Drawn to the Himalaya, they journey north and leave bits and pieces of their DNA in the sworl of humanity there, as they brush their hair, touch the flowers, swim in the waters.
Even the thought of the Himalaya and beyond that, the Hindu Kush, sets my blood on thin-speed, and makes me feel an exhilaration I cherish.
I'm on edge.
I pray.
I'm there with you every step of the way.
I think of coming but may be too old,
I can't stand extremes of hot and cold.
When I was young
a room for a dollar a day
was just fine.
Do you think
I could still be that way?
So do me a favor
and try not to stare:
just tell me if you can
picture me there.
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