Ladakh -- January 25th

--SECMOL, Phey Village, 18KM south of Ley--
I arrived only five days ago, but it feels longer and deeper than any such period I have ever known. Speaking in superlatives does not help to dispel the fear that it’ll disappear, but that type of language seems to flow forth easily. Anyhow, this is Ladakh in January. It’s minus 20 almost all day long, there’s been only two sunny days in the past week, and now it’s snowing again. The snow puts a reassuringly familiar – and beautiful mask – on the otherwise harsh and foreign craggy landscape. The Ladakh physical environment is usually characterized as either moonscape or high mountain desert. Many people would say it’s a barren, dusty, wasteland as well. Others might more generously say the landscape is austere. For me at the moment it is nothing but the most serene beauty I have ever laid eyes on. There I go again with the essentializing. Speaking this way feels doubly silly because so many others have tended to say the same thing. But fortunately, those many other (tourists) are not here in January. In the warmer months, Ley is literally swarming with them, now there are about 8 westerners in town, and from my contact with them, I would say almost all are here for some other purpose then touring – be it photography, volunteering, business, or whatever, it certainly does not feel like a tourist town. This makes it easier for me to focus on what I need to be doing. And indeed I am very happily focused. My time here, prior to the arrival of my students next Friday, is a combination of simple experience, exploration, and prep work. For the first three nights I stayed at SECMOL and experienced the daily happenings of the school, with its 35 foundations students (high school age kids who are studying for there 10th standard exams) and 60 additional elementary age kids who are at SECMOL for a 15-day enrichment course. Ladakhi schools have their three-month “summer vacation” during these the coldest months of the year. This means many students are basically stuck at home doing nothing, as there is no major farm or family work during this time. And NO tourists, hence most businesses are closed and as we said before, it’s damn cold. So what better thing to do, then come out to SECMOL for 15 days of combined ice hockey, academic enrichment and all the good old fashioned camp fun like group singing, talent shows, big communal meals, chores, but no greased watermelon…or other pool games. When I’m not working on sorting through books or typing up lesson plans for the Vermont students, I’m caught up with the program. The foundation students are up at 6AM to do a few exercises, chores, and drink tea. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to join them for the exercise period, but I could only manage to pull myself out of my warm sleeping bag once the sun had risen around 7. Soon enough, the sunrise will coincide with the exercise period and hopefully there might actually be some sun to heat the soar powered campus. Then I’ll definitely be up to lead them in some yoga which they’ve been asking for ever since it came it up in conversation class that I’ve been known to do a few asanas. After breakfast, midmorning brings a double rotation of alternating chores and ice hockey practice. I lucked out and was given the only big (size 11) pair of skates on the campus and a brand new stick freshly imported by two volunteers from Alaska. I wobbled out onto the ice for the first time in ten years and promptly remembered that I never actually played learned much how to maneuver a stick puck and skates at the same time. And the Ladakhis are highly skilled and intense about the game, so naturally I was benched for the first period. Eventually I subbed in and got me hustle (wobble) on up and down the rink, mostly not in control of my feet but managing to coordinate the movement of the skates with the stick and the puck for long enough to pass, shoot, and even score once. It’ll definitely take some practice but for the time being it’s all I got to get the blood flowing and stay warm until my skis arrive. After and hour and half of serious skating, I self-assigned my responsibility as library clean up and organization, which requires a heavy dose of dust inhalation. Then lunch which is the traditional Ladakhi fare. In fact so is breakfast and so is dinner. Basically we’re talking about rotating combinations of rice, lentils, barley, fliur, wheat flour, turnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, occasional smatterings of soy protein nuggets, and tea, lots of tea. Butter tea, sweet tea, and hot water tea sans tea. It’s good, neither here nor there, just flavorful enough to be edible, but not to get you excited about eating, enormous vegetarian portions of fairly balanced nutrition, by no means rich, but sufficiently satisfying. Especially with the help of some homemade spicy pickle. After lunch around 2PM the foundation students come find me and kindly ask that I lead the English conversation class – this is usually more of an English lecture class with me improvising long spontaneous responses to short questions from the students. The other day a student asked what New York city was like and specifically if we had many factories. I said no most of the factories left a long time ago, but that we do have some very crucial infrastructure industries that remain, such as waste management. After that, I spoke for an hour about New York’s sewage processing system, in which all waste flows into one pipe, including rain water. The students found it hard to believe that the whole purpose of the factories was to remove the water and dry the solids. We had a big laugh when one student asked if the final product could be called “poop biscuits.”

I’ve been staying now in Ley for a couple of days and today am preparing to return to SECMOL campus (18KM from Ley) for the final four days before heading down to Delhi. Today is India’s Republic Day and there are parades all over the country demonstrating the strength of the Indian nation. This morning I sat around the kitchen with my Ladakhi (guest house) family watching the Delhi parade and being astounded by the spectacle of it all. Being astounded by how convincing the concept of secular democracy and nationhood is for the Indian people, and for the foreign observer (myself and Nick Sarkozy). Nobody can deny their overwhelming enthusiasm for the idea and practice of it, the communalism of a billion people and at least six thousand distinct ethnicities. In this collective pride the nation actually seems to manifest itself as COMMUNITY. It’s all a bit hard to swallow if you’re not accustomed to it, but admittedly somehow kind of uplifiting and hopeful.

Then there is the main event, literally a parade of India’s most expensive portable military technology; tanks, missile launchers, helicopters, armed personnel carriers, and even the GI Joe style bridge layer, all followed by hundreds of military marching bands representing the countless regiments and divisions of the massive Indian armed forces. And the same thing on a much smaller scale is happening today in almost every state and regional capital of the vast country, including right here in my very own Ley, Ladakh. So I think I’ll wander around town some more and gaze at the spectacle, wondering to myself what exactly are these people thinking. And how much faith can these illustrious ideas really hold? When does the looking glass crack and the projection stop? If it’s not nationalism, then it’s globalism or cosmopolitanism, or some other novel concept for enabling our inherent ignorance. This is a terribly difficult predicament to try and articulate, and it feels horrible. I do not want to feel separate from it and will not. In fact, I really (hate) this EFING computer right now. Wrting actually makes me depressed and I don’t enjoy the real world as much afterwards. I (hate) being inside trying to express abstractions to people I cannot see. I am sorry but that’s it. So much anger is not the goal, but at this moment that’s all that comes out. To speak about overcoming ignorance in an entirely positive and not accusatory way, I’d have to be the Dalai Lama or some other similar being. For the time being, I do recognize how fortunate I am to be in such close proximity to the teachings, and with that in mind, there is really nothing else to do but take them up whole heartedly.