Dharamshala Landscape

Landscape of Dharamshala and Mcleodganj

The one place where you can stick your head out of the car and enjoy the cool breeze is undoubtedly the hills. The cool grainy lashings of mountain dust and an occasional stray leaf in the pure wind against your face, creeping through alleys in your hair, refresh the mind in a way no spa therapy can rejuvenate.

I realise and feel the joy my dog felt each time it got to stick its head out from the window. I wonder if its not too much to really imitate a dog and stick my tongue out as well; but i decide against it. my cab driver is blasting Punjabi songs from his stereo which does not bother me in the least; the music exudes of the vivacity and brightness of his people who now work in the hills but refuse to let go of the plains they call home.

Lower Dharamshala is a little disappointing; after you pass the impressive army barracks and smartly uniformed soldiers, the scene is of a regular Indian market in a small urban city. It takes the pleasure of the joyride away; you wonder: wait. What? And just as you are about to dismiss this holiday as a wrong decision, the Himalayas play another trick to take your breath away.

Arrive: Upper Dharamshala. Passing a church set in colonial times, i always feel a sense of the British presence, one of my favourite daydreams. I make a mental note to visit the cemetery late in the evening—a narcissistic yet adrenaline powered rush to my sceptical atheist self. St. John’s is dilapidated, its stone walls giving away to the green moss sticking and growing all around it. the graves fascinate me because they hold within them entire life stories of people gone by and now reduced to bones in a box.

The tall, undaunted pine and deodar trees impress upon the mind, their towering and elegant personas. Never overrated is the clarity of mountain air breathed in deeply to detox. It reminds me of crystals and intensively untainted gifts of Mother Nature.

The constant, speedy hits of opposite continue to strike me like a marble on a foosball table. Mcleodganj is now reduced to a grubby little mountain town, aping the west better than a chimpanzee trying to play ball. All you see around you in the main market are clothes shops, eating joints selling mcdonald’s variety foods and people shopping till they drop. I mean, really! And to add insult to injury, a small Buddhist temple now lies sandwiched between wine shops and souvenir shops, ignored by the local tourist. It makes me seethe in anger to see young adults loitering around, sipping their cheap breezers and toying with prayer wheels, making them whir with the fickleness of a four year old playing with a new toy car.

The entire point of a vacation, a visit to the mall or “going out” has become TO SHOP. And specifically, to shop for clothes, shoes, accessories. Where did books vanish in this picture? Personally, the only shopping i would want to do in a tourist spot would be a book (i fancy discovering a repository of the world’s finest in a quaint little wooden door book shop. Sigh) and perhaps something of local make as a useable souvenir. Or quality music. Imagine Bach or Etta James flowing melodiously out of a little store and discovering their records being played; gramophone style. Carry your carefully chosen book to the mountains with you and discover how smoothening the caress of words alongside the playful touch of the wind in your hair, can be while the Himalayas tower mightily and graciously above you.

Yet, i digress. Mcleodganj, in all its immense cultural changes and diversity has merely become a place where young students come to shop for “cool stuff”, to eat in “wicked awesome” restaurants and to smoke some “dude, it was kickass” marijuana. I sincerely believe the reader understands that my usage of the quotes is pure and heartfelt sarcasm for the language and culture of our times.

Anyway, as i make way through this crowd of young screechy adults, i discover a yellow concrete building at the end of the road. I breathe a sigh of relief as my eyes are treated to sights of Tibetan women in Sikang chupas, steaming momos at the roadside. I wonder what this building really is, so i enter.

To my painful discovery, it is the temple of the Dalai Lama. You wonder why i say painful. To my mind, a monastery must be as stunningly beautiful on the outside as it is on the inside. All the pictures i have seen of Tibetan structures have struck me in their complexity and sheer aesthetic charge. I have not yet been lucky enough to visit Ladakh or Tibet and give a more comprehensive understanding of their architecture. But like any lay man, i imagine pagodas, fading yet vibrant prayer flags and brightly robed monks when i think of Tibetan Buddhist centres.

In mcleodganj, the monastery is shockingly pedestrian in its exterior architecture; but it manages to stun you on the inside. I wonder if it is not the same trick as playing foosball. The atmosphere is hypnotic in its mystery, droning chants and quaintly carved prayer wheels. A few Tibetan elderly people sit, humming their mantras on the spacious balcony, as the candle flames quiver with every drone and sound of silent magic.

In the distance, i hear the ever sweet chatter and playful shrieks of little children; to my delight, when you look down from the balcony of the temple, you can see the playground of a school where little dolled up kids (i have to admit that Tibetan kids take the cake when it comes to cuteness with their small bright eyes and apple red cheeks!), dressed in blue and white are enjoying their recess.

The pine cones are still fresh and green and provide a stark contrast to the aged monks ambling around the premises. The raw smelling soft cones remind me of the school children below—not yet hardened by reality. However, all hill people are fond of two basic things in life—music and food. And care little for the luxuries of the plains.

In my world of throngs of people jostling to and from work, a punitive weather and constant race for money, this world is alien in its simplicity and slow attitude to ambition. Ambition is treated like a subtext here, not as the entire book of life.

I wish, like every other traveller, that i could live here forever, in simplistic and basic happiness that can come from merely getting to eat meat one day or travelling on a car the other—things that we can never view as a luxury or a gift. I bite my nails and gulp down several bouts of “do it” impulses when i see a job advertisement in a coffee shop offering a small stipend, a room and meals. And i calm my dreamy heart with a practical mind, by walking in and ordering one of the best cappuccinos of my life.

The main town is a crowded frenzy of people determined to eke out everything that their vacation can offer in terms of “fun”. Hike around the area, and you will realize the subtle tranquillity in which the Tibetan refugees live; harmonious and patient with the noisy bluntness of the tourists from the plains.

 I sat on a bench on a non-descript road behind the temple after a thirty minute walk. a few minutes later, i heard a cough and saw an old old man politely smiling down at me, silently asking “may i sit here?”. “of course”, said my equally big smile. We tried to talk till we realised he knew no English, and i no Tibetan. So, i spoke in broken nepali and he, in a few words of English.

The conversation ended in my understanding that he is REALLY old and a monk under the dalai lama while i was a “bit strange” little girl from the city. He gifted me a “dorjee”—a Tibetan totem to protect one from evil and sickness. The monk told me to walk down to dharamkot the next day and meditate with my dorjee. So i did.

At the rooftop of the “lonely earth” (really? HOW is it lonely?) cafe, i took my little brass friend out and made to sit in a yogic posture, confident that the Himalayas would bestow wisdom on me. However, half an hour of immense drowsiness in the soft wintry sun later, i went downstairs and indulged in a scrumptious lunch of steamed momos and a delightfully warming thukpa with thingmo bread. The dorjee has been relegated a spot on my ‘nail of artefacts’ in my tiny box room in the city.

The Tibet museum, in its sparseness, is a painful reminder of the injustice done to the Tibetan people; while the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts is a bit a of let-down in terms of “art”. However, if you are feeling cheeky, you can always score some hash right from the reception counter; or so says the “funky” crowd determined to couch themselves in a smoky haze.

The rise and fall of the sun is another feature to look out for. Make yourself wake up in the morning and trust me, the experience is worth every minute of sleep sacrificed. Or watch the sunset with a cup of tea or Tibetan soup that delightfully warms you in the chill wintry town. The Himalayas undergo every imaginable shade of red, yellow, orange, blue, purple and white with the sky. It is like watching an artist in a remote Italian town work on a painting and constantly refurbish the colours to his liking, on the canvas. It made my mind fabricate my own tales of how Tibetan people first made a foray for refuge through these tough regions; of the times they must have spent camping in the jungles, cold and hungry, yet filled with some distant hope. Hope and dreams can never be marginalised. Imagine how they must have felt, packing up their lives, to trek into a new country with anticipation and a resolution to create a new life here.

Mcleodganj is like Marquez’s Macondo; it is surreal in its own right and is populated by generations of people so estranged from their homes that they have made this city a home. it accepts the vast differences of culture that India bestows on it and also lends its own, subtly and elegantly. The rain is as unpredictable as a pregnant woman’s labour pains. One moment you bask in the gentle sunlight and the next, you are in danger of being drenched by torrential rains. Umbrellas lend colourful cheer to the sobriety that coldness is born with.

The hills are always a happy reminder of the good things in life. The sea, more or less, does the same thing too. The mountains make me wonder about what lies on the other side while the sea makes me realise how the vast ocean is brought to a humble end in frothy waves and wet sand when it nears land. So this trip, despite the aforementioned loopholes, will happen again. a third time.