Beauty in Simplicity

It's been almost a solid month now since I came to India. Time flies, eh? It seems to have for me, at least. There have been new people to meet, new customs to figure out, and plenty of work to do. Brij, another teacher, showed up earlier in the week and so I got to hand over the Pre-Intermediate class (the one I got asked to teach “for a few days”) and get a little time back in my mornings. It looks like I've already got the half hour before class filled with individual tutoring for one of my students who is having some trouble keeping up; I hope it goes well.

Tibet Charity seems to be one of the more organized, decently outfitted establishments of its kind here in Dharamsala. Even so, it's a charity and there's not a ton of money to throw around. For example, we do have white boards and markers, but this is what our erasers look like:

Yes, it's a white t-shirt. An increasingly dirty white t-shirt.

Until today, at least. I came in to my Elementary class to find these

:D

resting on the ledge under the board. Little pillows of handstitched cotton. I thought to myself “Were these here earlier, and somehow I missed them?” Maybe 20 minutes into class one of my students, Karma (the one who informed me that the typical Tibetan mother drives a yak), pointed them out and told me she'd made them. How sweet! And how resourceful, too. That is one thing I've noticed about the people in India: they are resourceful. You have to be when you don't have much. Food is all made from scratch. If you need new clothes you go to a tailor so he can take your measurements and make you something. There is a fair amount of construction going on around town but there is no heavy machinery to be seen. Everything is done in a very oldschool fashion, with donkeys hauling loads of dirt and bricks, and people shaping metal with very basic tools. Rain shelters are often made of a tarp held up by a long stick with a bottle on the end so the fabric doesn't get punctured. In the stores there are no prices on anything, you have to ask and then haggle it down from whatever the shopkeeper tells you. It's not elegant, but it works.

And to be honest, there is beauty in its simplicity. In a way it feels more real. It's not as safe and structured as life in the US: the roads are shitty and sidewalks don't even exist, one of the main streets in McLeod Ganj has a steep drop off down the mountain behind the shops lining it, it's not at all unusual to see people washing their clothes or themselves with any available water source, and nobody seems to notice that there are dozens and dozens of dogs, cows, and goats just roaming wherever they damn well please. Somehow it all works.

The other day I was just getting ready to take a nap when Kalden knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go for a hike. I whined for a few minutes and then conceded, mainly because I'd chosen to indulge in some potato chips and a Snickers bar earlier in the day and I was feeling guilty about the calories. We went up (and up, and up) toward Triund. Triund itself is much farther away, but from what I understand the path we took is the first leg of the trip. We stopped at a tea shop just in time for a tremendous downpour (monsoon season, yo); we waited it out, headed back down, and the whole thing took 3 hours or so. The road was pretty:

In other news, there are some guys who have taken to chanting incessantly somewhere outside my room in the evenings. I thought it was something for when HH was in town teaching, but that ended yesterday and they're still at it. I guess it could be worse, but I still wouldn't mind if they'd go to bed.

Wednesday evening we went out for dinner at one of the local restaurants. Om Hotel is home to the Namgyal pizza place, and omg do they make good food. We had a pizza with Roquefort cheese, walnuts, chiles, tomatoes and... I don't even remember what else. It doesn't matter. It was really. Damn. Good.

Amazing, even. Who knew?

Indian chiles are pretty spicy; Bhutanese food uses them quite a bit as well. Back home I used to take a certain pride in enjoying spicy foods. Here, though, “spicy” takes on a whole new meaning. These chiles are really tasty, and they add a healthy dose of straight up flavor to whatever they're in. A lot of times I'll pull them out of the food before eating it, because just having had them touch the rest of it is usually enough. If you bite into one and you aren't expecting it, all I can say is you might want to order a couple of pieces of naan, and fast. It's a little humbling.

Oh, and an appeal to my techie friends: my iPod Touch won't turn on. This has happened before and I was always able to get it going with the whole hold-down-both-buttons-for-a-really-long-time trick, but I've done that a few times now and it hasn't gotten me anywhere. I'm getting really sad about it. Any suggestions? (I suspect that if Apple stores even exist in this country the closest one is no closer than Delhi, which is 12 hours away. Therefore, that is not an option.)