Place: Ronaldo Menéndez
We asked Ronaldo Menéndez to write about an especially intriguing place he'd visited. He sent us this brief text on Mcleod Ganj, the place where the Dalai Lama lives.
The Place Where the Dalai Lama Lives
Photos submitted by author
Side A
Mcleod Ganj, the place where the Dalai Lama lives, does not exist. My first impression was that it was a virtual space, a non-place tucked away in the mountains, a utopia populated by ‘spiritual’ Westerners who travel like snails carrying their backpacks. It’s impossible to walk through its streets –three narrow roads, long as a promise that might never be fulfilled– without having a tourist pop up from under a rock to tell you about the wonderful yoga class he or she is taking, the benefits of meditating when you’re unemployed, or some other piece of wisdom on Tibetan food or ayurvedic massages.
I arrive exhausted after a year of travel, under the dirty humidity of the monsoon, and while I search for a cheap hostel a Macondian rain begins. It doesn’t stop until twenty-four hours have passed, with a blackout included. “Take a look,” I say to Natalia, my companion: “Do you think that street, filled with trash, gaping like a scalpel’s scar, filled with honking cars driving at homicidal speeds, bears anything that the Tibetans brought from China over the Himalayas?” The only slow movement in these streets comes from some extra-large slugs. And when I see sacred cows eating out of trash bins on street corners, I think they’d be better off in the sanctity of a stable.
How long did this desire last, this yearning to run away from that place and never go back? It lasted as long as it takes to forget certain words: Mcleod Ganj is the name of the little town enclosed within the city of Dharamsala, in the state of Himachal Pradesh. The next day I understood it wouldn’t be that easy to forget words with legendary resonances. And Natalia said: “Lets do one of the things everyone does in this place, take a class on Tibetan food.”
Side B
The dough to make the dumplings is kneaded with patience: you have to powder your board and fingers constantly so that it doesn’t stick, and it all looks like snow. Stretch, advance, go back. At the end of our first class the chef smiles at us, slowly brings his left hand to his chest –he’s missing the index finger– and says his name: Gyi’gyiag. I then knew that if I hadn’t forgotten the three words of the region where I was, I would not forget our chef’s name either. Gyi’gyiag means excrement. And if someone who teaches a class on Tibetan cuisine has that name, you suddenly want to stay and learn more.
You stretch the dough, turn it around, and the flour looks like snow. Gyi’gyiag crossed the Himalayas over an entire month, surrounded by snow, and lost the index finger of his left hand to the cold. He fled, like most of the twelve thousand Tibetans exiled in Mcleod Ganj, from the oppression of Chinese communism. And his name means excrement because Tibetans consider certain pejorative names to be a blessing: they protect children from evil spirits. It’s then that I begin to understand.
All exiles are heartbreaking by definition. But these subdued, tranquil men who inhabit Mcleod Ganj carry on their shoulders an overdose of simultaneous suffering and happiness. Living paradoxes. They’ve seen relatives die during the voyage, they’re burdened with the guilt of having survived, and they arrived, literally, without anything. The threadbare cloth with which our master chef now covers his torso is already something.
To cross the Himalayas —Gyi’gyiang tells us— groups are arranged as if they were part of the crew for those movies where men get lost in the ice and end up eating each other. They take paths that don’t exist, with a guide that remains anonymous but must somehow let the group know where to go. Why this despair of a guide who doesn’t show face? It is well known the Chinese are many and are everywhere, and moreso in Tibet and India: if the Chinese police catch him, the guide is killed.
What good is the road, if it doesn’t lead to the Temple? It’s this phrase that ends the movie Nostalgia, by Andrei Tarkovsky. And though it doesn’t sound too Buddhist to value the destination over the road that leads to it, arriving at the Temple is enough to understand Mcleod Ganj. If the proverb says “to arrive to Rome is to lose one’s faith,” arriving at this Temple –a poorly painted polygon– means learning that Buddhist faith is something else. You walk through it in a circle, barefoot and clockwise, because in the cycle of time everything starts over and over again, and it’s best to go through it with humility. And if there’s something everyone shares in this town it’s nostalgia. Despite the backpackers’ cheesiness and the ridiculous “spirituality” of so many Westerners, to see the Tibet at Mcleod Ganj one must look to its exiles. The rest does not exist.
Other entries:
[Pilar Quintana]
[Mercedes Cebrián]
[Wilmer Urrelo Zárate]
The Place Where the Dalai Lama Lives
Photos submitted by author
Side A
Mcleod Ganj, the place where the Dalai Lama lives, does not exist. My first impression was that it was a virtual space, a non-place tucked away in the mountains, a utopia populated by ‘spiritual’ Westerners who travel like snails carrying their backpacks. It’s impossible to walk through its streets –three narrow roads, long as a promise that might never be fulfilled– without having a tourist pop up from under a rock to tell you about the wonderful yoga class he or she is taking, the benefits of meditating when you’re unemployed, or some other piece of wisdom on Tibetan food or ayurvedic massages.
I arrive exhausted after a year of travel, under the dirty humidity of the monsoon, and while I search for a cheap hostel a Macondian rain begins. It doesn’t stop until twenty-four hours have passed, with a blackout included. “Take a look,” I say to Natalia, my companion: “Do you think that street, filled with trash, gaping like a scalpel’s scar, filled with honking cars driving at homicidal speeds, bears anything that the Tibetans brought from China over the Himalayas?” The only slow movement in these streets comes from some extra-large slugs. And when I see sacred cows eating out of trash bins on street corners, I think they’d be better off in the sanctity of a stable.
How long did this desire last, this yearning to run away from that place and never go back? It lasted as long as it takes to forget certain words: Mcleod Ganj is the name of the little town enclosed within the city of Dharamsala, in the state of Himachal Pradesh. The next day I understood it wouldn’t be that easy to forget words with legendary resonances. And Natalia said: “Lets do one of the things everyone does in this place, take a class on Tibetan food.”
Side B
The dough to make the dumplings is kneaded with patience: you have to powder your board and fingers constantly so that it doesn’t stick, and it all looks like snow. Stretch, advance, go back. At the end of our first class the chef smiles at us, slowly brings his left hand to his chest –he’s missing the index finger– and says his name: Gyi’gyiag. I then knew that if I hadn’t forgotten the three words of the region where I was, I would not forget our chef’s name either. Gyi’gyiag means excrement. And if someone who teaches a class on Tibetan cuisine has that name, you suddenly want to stay and learn more.
You stretch the dough, turn it around, and the flour looks like snow. Gyi’gyiag crossed the Himalayas over an entire month, surrounded by snow, and lost the index finger of his left hand to the cold. He fled, like most of the twelve thousand Tibetans exiled in Mcleod Ganj, from the oppression of Chinese communism. And his name means excrement because Tibetans consider certain pejorative names to be a blessing: they protect children from evil spirits. It’s then that I begin to understand.
All exiles are heartbreaking by definition. But these subdued, tranquil men who inhabit Mcleod Ganj carry on their shoulders an overdose of simultaneous suffering and happiness. Living paradoxes. They’ve seen relatives die during the voyage, they’re burdened with the guilt of having survived, and they arrived, literally, without anything. The threadbare cloth with which our master chef now covers his torso is already something.
To cross the Himalayas —Gyi’gyiang tells us— groups are arranged as if they were part of the crew for those movies where men get lost in the ice and end up eating each other. They take paths that don’t exist, with a guide that remains anonymous but must somehow let the group know where to go. Why this despair of a guide who doesn’t show face? It is well known the Chinese are many and are everywhere, and moreso in Tibet and India: if the Chinese police catch him, the guide is killed.
What good is the road, if it doesn’t lead to the Temple? It’s this phrase that ends the movie Nostalgia, by Andrei Tarkovsky. And though it doesn’t sound too Buddhist to value the destination over the road that leads to it, arriving at the Temple is enough to understand Mcleod Ganj. If the proverb says “to arrive to Rome is to lose one’s faith,” arriving at this Temple –a poorly painted polygon– means learning that Buddhist faith is something else. You walk through it in a circle, barefoot and clockwise, because in the cycle of time everything starts over and over again, and it’s best to go through it with humility. And if there’s something everyone shares in this town it’s nostalgia. Despite the backpackers’ cheesiness and the ridiculous “spirituality” of so many Westerners, to see the Tibet at Mcleod Ganj one must look to its exiles. The rest does not exist.
Other entries:
[Pilar Quintana]
[Mercedes Cebrián]
[Wilmer Urrelo Zárate]
