Last Day in Dharamsala

But back to pre-european times: After attending the last set of His Holiness’s (the Dalai Lama) teachings in Dharamsala (an emotional fiasco of a sort as the pressure of homecoming weighted far more in my head than –well, anything at that time), I had the luck of a more mindful gift-shopping experience and found the \perfect\ Buddha statue, tune bowl, necklace and prayer flags for my friends. I resonated with their vibration and even with the salesman- who unlike many others didn’t look at me all funny and fuzzed-out when I told him that I don’t care about the color , size or symbols present on the bowl, but I need to play it to see ‘if I connect with it’.  Another victory came on the OM MANI PADME HUM field where I convinced a Tibetan seller who was out of such flags to untie the sample copy adorning his stand and sell it to me – and he charged me a second-hand prize. After this amazing offer I felt more than compelled to hang out with the seller, his sister and one of his friends putting ‘special’ wooden carved beads on ‘malas’ (Hindu rosaries). The result being that now hanging from my window frame in my Bucharest flat I have a 40 Eurocents flag ‘sirag’ with a story.

Once home, the celebratory mood led to a packaged UPMA luau with my lovely host Julie (Julie deserves a whole novel done on her – but I’m sure she’ll do a better job at it than me; but as a summary - one-of-a-kind American Polish Irish living in India Capricorn Buddhist fiction writer time-efficient traveler perfectionist kapha pitta needs more adornment items – get her books here).

And naturally, there was no way I could leave India w/o a bye-bye party with some of the Deerpark family. One thing led to another and I ended up crashing a birthday party – indulgent chocolate cake, pizza with lots of cheese, 2 fingers’ level of red wine, cigarettes behind corners and slippery discussions with the girls – 2 girls started smoking, then I joined then slowly the other two pitched in as well – we felt like such outlaws after all that time of pursuing austerity – and not to forget Owen’s and Vimesh’s humor. As much as I care for these people in ‘near-convent’ conditions, allthemore I adore them in the ‘real world’, conventional or relative reality aside or not.

Oh did I mention I forgot to ask about bus times to Chandigarh and then to Delhi and realize at 19.00 when it’s already dark outside and all bus stand offices are closed? Mindfulness at its best J To my best of luck, I ran into some taxi drivers which had taken care of me when I had sprained my ankle 1 month before (again glorious awareness of self and of rock) and they were more than well-informed. Who says that ‘–‘ and ‘–‘ don’t  even out?!?!