Ashleen Buchanan

March 6, 2008

The past 31 days I have spent cradled 11,500 feet above the sea, nestled between the Indus River and the surrounding mountains that tower around me. In the evening the wind blows heavy on the plastic of the greenhouse outside my window. It beats down like a thunderstorm beginning to explode. I lay awake reading Shalimar the Clown listening to the dogs howling in the distance. In the deep of the night I often awake and stumble through the darkness, neglecting my headlamp, and trusting my footing on the cool stone steps that lead outside. The cool air hits my face and brushes through my knotted hair. I look up at the stars that sprinkle the black sky. I find the bright star known as Sirius, the black dog who follows Orion as he hunts through the heavens. As Sirius followed Orion he has followed me from the back yard of my home in Vermont to here on the shore of the Indus.
Each day here has been fulfilling to say the least. No matter what I find myself doing I never feel time has been wasted. In the evenings we watch movies occasionally. This past evening we watched Cry of the Snow Lion, a documentary about the current situation in Tibet with the Chinese invasion. 1952 –incidentally caused tension between China and India which lead to the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict -- the Karakoram pass was closed thus beginning the severe oppression placed on the Buddhist nuns and monks by the Chinese government primarily in Lasa, Tibet. The pressure became so immense that in 1958, the Dalai Lama was forced to take refuge in Dharmsala, India, where he remains to this day. Beginning on March 10 there will be huge march from Dharmsala to Lasa in protest for Free Tibet. Though they may not ever be able to pass through to Tibet I feel the message remains strong.
Splattered throughout the weeks we have been traveling about to different monasteries. At each I feel I have stepped into a surrealistic world filled with blue-faced daemons, with wild eyes and golden crowns. In each Buddhist temple I am surrounded by psychedelic images of violence, sex and enlightenment. On February 20th we attended a Tibetan New Years Festival at the Matho Monastery. I crammed my way in between the masses and nestled snuggly with one rib rubbing sharply on cement and my other rib being kneed continually by the full weight of a grown man who kept smiling at me and saying “julley”, in between gasp for air I would politely sputter “julley”. As I sat there I was reminded of Frida Khalo’s depictions of La Dia de los Muertos because of the many skulls and vivid colors. Then I watch the Buddhist monks come in and dance unenthusiastically to a monotonous beat waiting to see the famous oracles jump from atop buildings blind-folded and slice their tongues with swords. I felt my lungs begin to collapse and was quite positive the oracles would never make their grand entrance. I decided it was time to make an escape and find some chow mien. It is experiences like that, which I will not soon forget.
After we returned from our five-day trek on the first of March it seemed so many aesthetics of SECMOL had changed; most of the snow on the western peaks had melted, the weather had certainly began getting warming, clearly forgoing spring and the ice rink had melted. I will remember the ice rink most fondly because before the trek I had played goalie for the Vermonsters (the VIS team) in our hockey match against the Rough and Tuffs (the Secmol Boys Team) we, to my great disappointment, lost, but only by the two penalty shots in over time.
The days pass all too quickly here at Secmol, but each day is never wasted. I find myself learning continually, whether about the Kashmir conflict that remains today referring to the autonomously of the Jammu and Kashmir region. Or the Lu spirits that, according to Ladakhi folklore, cause women become twisted and stiff. Though of course they never really bother the tourists. One day woman who has studied Amchi medicine, came to speak to us and told us about how she reads your sickness through your pulse and tells you whether you have anger, jealousy, hatred or maybe a bit of bile. On the more laid back days I’ll often find myself gossiping with the SECMOL girls about dating via text messaging. The first month has already flown by and there are only two to go but each day I awake and take a deep breath, look through my window at the sun coming through the opaque plastic and think to myself “maybe we won’t have sku for dinner tonight.”