Jonny's first interview

Myself, my roommate and the team of interviewers from Ayur Info

I had the unexpected pleasure back in January of being interviewed by a group of four students at the Ayurveda College here in Kathmandu. We sat down for a couple hours in my flat, sang some Nepali folk and pop songs and some American songs (my roommate found a crowd-pleaser in the Red Hot Chili Peppers canon), and eventually got around to talking about Ayurveda here and in America. Then we went up on the roof and ate a delicious lunch of dal-bhat Alden had prepared while I was blabbing.
A few weeks later they sent me the transcript they had put together. I was . . . a little dumbfounded. Although the students had tape-recorded everything and taken notes, they evidently had a very different idea of quotation than I did, not to say journalistic integrity. I recognized a few phrases that sounded like I might have uttered them, but mostly my “answers” were in Indian English. No one reading the interview would think I was a native speaker, let alone an American. And in some cases the words put in my mouth were actually contrary to the spirit of what I’d tried to express. And my name was spelled wrong. And and . . . but luckily the students, ever thoughtful and friendly and certainly well-meaning, gave me an opportunity to edit the interview via email. I turned to this task immediately and with the vigor of the misrepresented. I present here the edited interview, which I hope will bear some resemblance to what eventually appears in the Ayurvedic students’ newsletter Ayur Info. If anyone's interested in the 'original' version, I'd be happy to share that as well. (There's about 20% overlap between the two.)

Jonathan (Jon) H. Edwards (25) is a Fulbright Research Scholar in Nepal staying from September ‘08 to July ‘09. He is investing his time to study Ayurveda.

He grew up in New York City and Vermont and has visited Italy, France, India, and Thailand.

He speaks and writes Nepali well, sings Nepalese songs playing Madal, Tabala, and Guitar. And he is currently learning Newari too.

He did his bachelors at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania (USA).
Last year he completed the Ayurvedic Studies Program-I at the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico. The Institute is headed by Dr. Vasant Lad, a renowned Vaidya and teacher.

In January, Ayur-Info (AI) team visited his residence in Kathmandu and made the conversation. The theme is presented hereupon.

AI: Sir, first of all we would like to know how you were attracted to Ayurveda.
Jon: During my bachelors, I went to Kalimpong (India) on a study abroad program through Pitzer College and stayed with a local family. That is where I learned Nepali. During the program I got to hear a lecture on Ayurveda that sparked my interest. After returning to the States my interest grew and eventually I realized I could make Ayurveda the focus of a trip to Nepal. In the meantime I completed ASP-I (Ayurvedic Studies Program-I) in New Mexico, in the States.

AI: What is the status of Ayurveda in the USA?
Jon: Not too many people know about Ayurveda in the States. But due to various factors in recent times, there are many people who are getting familiar with it and are really interested in it. People's interest is growing day by day. In some ways, the position of Ayurveda in America is similar to that of Chinese medicine a few decades ago before it was recognized officially. In ten years time, the number of people loving Ayurveda will definitely be encouraging.
Right now there is a small but growing number of Ayurveda practioners serving as lifestyle consultants in the States. As such we can use diet and lifestyle therapies and some herbs but it is completely taboo to talk about diagnosis and treatment since Ayurveda is not recognized as a legitimate system of medicine in the US. But things are changing. Some states like California have passed legislation that allows Ayurvedic practitioners to operate freely, even if not as actual doctors as is possible here. For the most part people in the US practice Ayurveda after obtaining certification in Naturopathy, Yoga Therapy, Massage Therapy, Conventional Medicine, etc. They slip Ayurveda in through the back door, so to speak.
Nowadays demand for Yoga, Ayurveda and Panchakarma is on the rise. The number of students is growing, too. There were people from all walks of life when I was doing ASP (even a few students from India, ironically!). It just shows the wide-ranging appeal of Ayurveda.

AI:What is the role of Ayurveda in people's life?
Jon: We can't have a ruined environment and healthy people, healthy communities and a healthy world at the same time. It’s all connected. Ayurveda is eco-friendly; it can contribute a lot to sustainable health development. But the classical idea of local potent herbs is being replaced by patent drugs. It may be due to the fact that people look for drugs easier to use and attractive to look. But modern the production of pharmaceuticals and even “ayurvedic” patent medicine products has an environmental cost. We would do well to remember the classical idea that the people of a particular place are best cured by the herbs of that place. Ayurveda can help us live in greater harmony with the world around us. After all, it is a fundamental principle of Ayurveda that we are nothing but reflections of the world (or vice versa).

In the US, people go to buy things in stores, and they are confused, overwhelmed with choice. What to eat? People hardly know what food is anymore. Advertisements in the mass media give all sorts of perverted ideas, so we have an epidemic of diet-related disease in the West. Ayurveda can help people remember what is good ad natural. It's time-tested medicine, and it provides a lot of common sense: not just herbal remedies but preventative care through seasonal diet and such. But people in the West tend to want a quick-fix or magic pill, and worse, they want to consume an exciting new product. For some, Ayurveda is just that: something new and exotic to try, then forget about. I want to see Ayurveda adapted locally and assimilated into the broader culture in the States, because we need it so badly.


AI: What is the status of Ayurveda in Nepal?
Jon: It's a tricky question; actually . . .I don't know if I’m qualified to answer that! You might know better as you study in official Ayurveda College.

I do know that here in Nepal, cultural practices with regard to diet and lifestyle are well-informed by Ayurveda. (Though some people do not follow it seriously) people mostly know what to eat and what not to eat, for example. I mean that a lot of Ayurveda is actually embedded in the culture here in Southasia.

You have a long-rooted tradition. But in many modern settings such as Naradevi hospital they take a less traditional approach. They say “integrated,” but they seem to use mostly biomedical language in diagnosis. The overall clinical model there is very Western. Ayurvedic examination and treatment are minimized—they take blood pressure but not pulse (nadi pariksha). There is certainly a postcolonial dynamic at work, with people aspiring to the legitimacy that they associate with Western medicine.

One problem with allopathy is it focuses on disease without looking at the big picture, the overall aspects of body mind and spirit. You know there is no good definition of health in modern bio-medical science. I'm worried that people look too much to the West to validate such time-tested medicine.

AI: What do you think about integration?
Jon: Integration is exciting, but Ayurveda may be in some danger of being swallowed up by the biomedical/allopathic approach. Even the Ayurvedic drugs are justified in (Western) scientific terms: they say that this herb is Ayurvedic 'antibiotic’ or that one an ‘immunomodulator’ instead of talking rasa/virya/vipak/prabhav. So it’s a fine line between changing with the times and staying true to tradition. I for one am not convinced that modern science should be the ultimate judge when it comes to health. I tend to trust tradition; traditions have survived for so long for good reason.


Some dream about a single, global medical system. I prefer to think in terms of what’s appropriate for a given place, you know, keep it local. But there’s this tide of globalization, the dominance of big multinational companies on the supply of drugs to the whole world. You have to be suspicious whenever there is a lot of money involved . . .
Still, integration in a positive way is necessary. We can’t keep knowledge segregated, it’s not possible. For example, while treating an acute case like bike accident/emergency case, we have to use the modern biomedical parameters immediately. Biomedicine is undeniably excellent for traumatic injuries. And for long-termtreatment (like those of chronic conditions- as sometimes Ayurveda scholars mention) and for health maintenance we can use Ayurvedic parameters. I mean to say that there should be equal dialogue. It should not be like one medical system (like Allopathy) dominating the other systems of medicine.

AI: What do you think about the efficacy of Ayurveda ?
Jon: It's one of the reasons why I got into Ayurveda—because it works. I had some lingering digestive problems and I visited many doctors for the cure. But they said I had no problem, I was OK. I searched in net and went through some Ayurveda books. I met Ayurveda physicians. Ayurveda explains the idea of agni (the digestive fire) which many westerners do not have a concept of. Ayurveda helps to build some common sense like - proper food in proper time and in appropriate amount. In American culture, such things are not practiced well. (Now my digestion is better)
Although it is more than this, Ayurveda can serve as a self-help book. If you study it you can manage many things yourself. People think Ayurveda works slowly. Yeah! it works slowly and balances all ingredients of body unlike Allopathy, which may manage one thing at the cost of another- you take from one hand and lose from another. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the allopathic approach in the West, a growing demand for approaches like that of Ayurveda which work deeply and for longer period of time.

for clarification we'd like ask you, here you mean to say- 'Some may argue one system to be scientific and another to be unscientific and useless. This is due to lack of proper understanding.' Is it so? I consider Ayurveda scientific, in the sense that it is based on observation and experimentation. But of course the worldview that Ayurveda comes out of is broader than the merely physical. The reason that many modern scientists are skeptical of holistic systems like Ayurveda is that the current trend in science is to be reductionistic, to look at one little element and ignore the big picture. The Ayurvedic tradition contains the wisdom not to try and isolate. There are always too many variables; when it comes to life and living creatures, everything is a variable! So clinical studies have trouble capturing the beauty and consistency of Ayurveda.

AI: Do you think more Ayurveda scholars are required for the better health of the people and community?
Jon: Sure, more is merrier. But educating the general population is as important as creating more specialists.

AI: What can be done for public awareness?
Jon: If every student at the Ayurveda campus teaches their friends and family some of the principles of Ayurveda, that is a good start. And this magazine plays a role too. For me it’s about bringing the concepts to life on a daily basis. Everybody already knows some Ayurveda, since they know some things that are useful for life (the sutra defining Ayurved says, hita hitam sukham dukham, ayus tasya hita hitam . . . ): like maybe they chew cardamom for flatulence and indigestion or drink ginger tea for a cold. Now if they can just extend their understanding to why these things work . . .

AI: How are you doing here in Nepal, how is your study going here?
Jon: (Despite few problems like electricity, pollution, transportations, he did not like to mention them, as it was already well understood. Let us hope that in coming days there will be no electricity cut, pollution, traffic jam and so on. Jon has never experienced power cut in the USA)
Nepal is treating me very well. I don't have one way of study. I'm using various methods and techniques. I have studied with the people of different fields. I have been going to meet traditional Vaidyas in Banepa, the guys who are still preparing Ayurvedic medicines in the old way. They are also involved in Rasa Shastra-- alchemy. In western culture, Mercury is considered as a poison and in Ayurveda it is used in some medicines called Rasaushadhi, so some westerners are afraid of it. I have had to pleasure to meet with Dr. Kashi Raj Sharma Subedi - who is a reknowened Ayurveda scholar here and a real embodiment of Ayurveda. I have visited many people and places. Sometimes I work and study with friends like Puspa Raj Poudel and you.
Overall, I try to find a balance between studying Ayurveda itself (like you all are doing at TU) and researching the forms that Ayurveda is taking in modern Nepal.

AI: Anything that you like to say at the last?
Would you like to send any further message to the readers?
Jon: Sure. I’d like to say, remember how broad Ayurveda is. It’s about what is useful for life, what is healthy in a broad sense for people, for society, for the world. Today so much ill health can be traced back to food: processed, refined, nutrient-deficient food. Too much food, not enough food. That’s a big enough problem to occupy the most ambitious student of Ayurveda (or public health or nutrition). I owe a shout-out to my roommate Alden Towler, a fellow Fulbright scholar, who is studying the relation between modern diet and disease (especially diabetes) in Kathmandu. I consider his work to be Ayurvedic as well.
To the students at the Ayurveda College--keep up your studies but don’t lose sight of the big picture. Find time to do the things you love, that’s the only way you can keep up your own health and happiness. There’s no point in being a doctor if you are sick and stressed-out. When you lose your inspiration, remember the richness of the tradition you are studying, the distilled wisdom of hundreds of generations of Vaidyas. You are a vehicle for that living tradition. And for that you have my deepest respect.

AI: Thank you very much for your kind cooperation and invaluable time!
Jon: You’re welcome, It's a great honour to me. Thanks to you as well.

(Prepared by Aseem Baidya, Cyrus Neupane, Shiva Ram Khatiwada and Shree Ram Phuyal)
{Our heartiest thanks to Mr. Alden Towler for his unforgettable cooperation, help and hospitality}

We humans, animals cursed with metacognition, are in constant need of stories, without whose ordering power existence is a senseless (if occasionally sublime) series of events. These stories are of all kinds. Some are handed down to us as myth, but also as what we call history; even the great god Science consists of the gluten of fact stretched and leavened by the yeasty air of interpretation: like bread, knowledge is mostly useful fiction. In the areas of our lives where the great library of culture fails to supply stories, we’re left to construct our own. This is no mean feat, though, since the stories by which we order our lives had better be believable. Our job is to tell a story so good we convince ourselves it’s true.
Part of the work of growing up in modernity is finding the words in which to tell your own story. (In postmodernity, prose, being linear, may fail altogether; so then you have to write your own poem?) Young people are frequently forced to assess how well the stories we tell fit us: whether they bind and constrain, straightjacket-like; comfort and thwart ambition like a bathrobe; stoke the ego like a tailored suit. Often they’re second-hand stories (though all stories are second-hand in one sense), or patchworks scrapped together from TV and Hollywood, and fit like you’d expect someone else’s clothes to. Who hasn’t in all earnestness tried on layers that look ridiculous in retrospect? Dressing oneself in a story that fits is no easy task, especially with pop culture bombarding us with ready-made articles, one-size-fits-all pieces of glimmering one-dimensional pulp that can’t serve our individual purposes for long. How many people, wearing a plastic tiara or superhero jockstrap, talk in snippets of Hollywood drama for want of something that fits any better?

Just because I’m the storyteller here doesn’t make me immune to the need for narrative, and I’m as excited as the next twenty-something (a phrase I submit myself to voluntarily because at 25 it’s nice to feel I’m in the same boat as all my story-hungry peers, and there is a particular flavor (quiet urgency?) to the years before 30, as we search out our paths) when I stumble across good material for my own plot. I had such a moment recently, when I suddenly found myself playing the role of Ayurvedic doctor to a fifty-year-old Nepali woman. This was during a trip to the Terai a month ago (cf the Nepali Time entry below). My friend Pusparaj and I had stopped by the woman’s house to pay a social call, and over the inevitable irrefutable methamphetamine-like tea it came up that the woman suffers from pain in her right hand. My friend, who is in the middle of his five-and-a-half year Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medical Science program in Kathmandu, beckoned me over so I could examine her. I wasn’t totally comfortable, both because my own Ayurvedic training is very limited in scope and because there was a small crowd of her family members, neighbors, and interested birds watching. But with a little encouragement from Pusparaj I asked her a few questions, compared her hands, took her pulse. Ayurveda’s basic diagnostic strategies: darshana, sparshana, prashna (looking, touching, questioning). She was constipated, it turned out, suffered from lower back pain as well as the pain in the back of her hand, and her pulse and tongue showed the presence of aam (metabolic waste, generally from improper or incomplete digestion) in her system. Her appetite was poor. Her pain was worst in the morning. I found myself blurting out a diagnosis before my conscious mind had reached its conclusions, but Pusparaj nodded: ama-vata, or rheumatism. Treatment would have to involve first cleansing her system of the aam, and under the circumstances of a quick and informal chat about her health, that was all I could hope to undertake. I told the woman to take triphala, the famous Ayurvedic bowel-cleansing, digestion-regulating formula. I’ve given triphala (“three fruits”) many times in my capacity as an Ayurvedic lifestyle consultant in the States, but this was different: here the remedy I prescribed was not some funky, esoteric and exotic powder, but a traditional formula that the villagers knew of. The three ingredients—amalaki (Emblica officinalis), bibhitaki (Terminalia belerica) and haritaki (Terminalia chebula) all grew in the vicinity. The medicine would be fresh, it would be free, and it would be all the more potent for it.
The clarity with which Ayurveda explained (with its own narratives, in turn; much of Ayurveda’s power is in its metaphors) the woman’s condition and pointed to a simple treatment; the beauty of feeling that the remedy lay not only in physical but in cultural proximity—a small but successful union of nature and culture; the mounting roar of disease everywhere; my own struggle for good health in a broad sense; these factors align to illuminate the thread of my own tale.
My own tale: I’ve couched it before as based on a recognition of the fundamental unity between the health of people, society, and the planet; my work then must be somehow to serve as doctor, helping in some small ways to restore the health of the interconnected parts and of the whole. Medicine is anything that enhances health at all these levels, or at least one level without disrupting it elsewhere. Planting a tree can be medicine for the earth; that tree’s nutrient-rich fruit can be medicine for a sick person; even cutting that tree down for its fragrant heartwood can be compatible with medicine if you leave many such trees for every tree you take. Love is good medicine, since it is always more than the sum of its parts.

The premise of my plot, then, is to practice medicine as best I can, using my own peculiar skills and proclivities to do some good, try and avoid harm. (Sounds deceptively simple, I know. Stay tuned for complications.) As this story comes into focus I find myself believing it as though my writing were merely the tracing of letters already written. Don’t we all have to convince ourselves that what we find ourselves drawn to is what we are destined to do? Destiny, that grand narrative, (or as master storyteller Neil Gaiman has it) a dusty tome always being written. An endless book of stories, a story of an endless book of stories: basta. I surrender to that vision, knowing Borges would approve.

Transport is Arranged

"Jaawalaakheljaawalaakhellagankheljaawalaakhelsaatdobaato! O jaawalaakhellagankheljaawalaakhel!"

It was an early milestone of my stay here, the day I found myself able to decipher these strings of syllables. They unreel like gritty, oily ribbons from the mouths of the (pre)adolescent boys who hang out the doors of every microbus in greater Kathmandu. The system is simple enough: it's basically an audible sign conveying the vehicle's route. This one's headed to Patan, the former city-state that lies south of Kathmandu proper and that is now well swallowed-up by the ever growing metropolis. Everywhere are reminders that within living memory of most of the city's inhabitants Kathmandu was more like a modest town, one that gave way abruptly to a sleepy agricultural hinterland. Patan, only a few kilometers away, was enough of an entity in itself that its dialect of Newari is distinct, and Bhaktapur's (at less than 15 km from KTM) is only marginally comprehensible to a Kathmandu Newar. Place names around the Valley are reminders, in their simplicity, of simpler times: new road, Pipal tree, work-place, seven-way-crossroads (saat dobaato, "seven two-road"). Now Haadigaon, whose name imlies village, is in the middle of the city, a short and trafficky walk from Nepal's first and largest supermarket (which in turn is named after the local tantric Hindu temple, Bhatbhateni).

But I digress. I was talking about getting around: it's a trip. I mentioned systems, but when it comes driving they are nonexistent. The only rule is to drive on the left-hand side. Even that's more of a suggestion, for cutting across the road (there are no actually lanes) to pass is fair game. No, wrong word: that implies rules again. Driving is a free-for-all of three and four-wheeled vehicles, hordes of motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, a few rickshaws and the occasional wayward sacred cow. Horns are used not so much as instruments of expression, as in "Screw you bub, try and cut me off!!", as announcements of one's presence on the road. "Here I am coming up on your right." And the bigger buses are equipped with incredible horns that emit a staccato burst of deafening noise like a child hitting a huge organ's keyboard rapidly with a mallet. Do-mi-re-mi-do-mi-re. Intersections . . . work somehow, sort of, despite rather than because of the occasional traffic-light or uniformed mannikin unwilling or unable to direct anyone. But jams (as in "kasto jam bhayo!") are an everyday reality and are caused as often as not by road closures due to strike/protest (the infamous "banda"). Mind-numbing, chest-choking, soul-sucking jams. The motorcycles take their chance to squeeze between the immobilized four-wheelers but in the old city's narrow alley's they too clot up so that sometimes even pedestrians are stuck in the midst of the pack. It just came to me: the city is having a coronary. Anyway. There's talk of a Japanese initiative to expand the arterial "Arniko highway" (spectacular euphemism) into a 6-lane affair, but, as they say elsewhere than here, 'nothing good will come of this.' I take comfort in the near certainty that nothing at all will come of it.

If driving demands a different kind of canniness than we rule-bound Americans are used to, so does being a passenger. The first challenge is re-assuring oneself that there is indeed room in that sardine-can microbus: just find a foothold and someone to grab onto and duck your head inside the door, or hang off the side until the micro nears any sort of police presence (then it's all limbs inside). When two inches of seat open up, claim it like your birthright with one blade of your butt and be content. Make sure to shout out when your stop comes, and be up on the latest fare (11 rupees as of today) so you don't get shortchanged. It can be stressful, what with the discomfort of half-crouching in Twister-worthy contortions, gripping onto a seat with an old woman's head in your armpit. But more and more I find the closeness of the crowding comforting. No one will think twice about leaning on you or sitting closer than any New York subway-rider would find appropriate, and you can lean back on the supporting mass of humanity without reservation.

A peculiar jewel of the bus system lies in the interchange between the driver and the other character I mentioned, usually a twelve-to-fifteen year old boy, whom I'll call the conductor. His job is not only to spew those gorgeously melded syllables with as much brusque adolescent disdain as possible. He also collects fares and makes change, arranges passengers with impunity. You, brother, over here, you come sit, you up front. let's go, let's go! anyone for Tangal? No? Speak up! Guess not, go, go. He's constantly in and out of the vehicle, or standing in the open doorway, hanging on by the tips of his rubber sandal-clad toes. It's his exclusive right (though much abused by disgruntled passengers) to bang on side of the bus, signifying by the rhythm of taps to stop or go. On the bigger buses on precipitous roads throughout the hill region, this simple means of communication has evolved into a complex set of whistles and taps. En route from Syabrubesi in November, Wave was convinced she had decoded the conductor's bird-like calls: he was directing the vehicle as if by remote, with a call for L (away from the craggy blasted rock face) or R (away from the abyss). When we met another vehicle, both would shriek to a stop and the lowlier of the two would reverse around the switchbacks and minor rockslides to a place wide enough for the other to pass with a few inches to spare. It fell to the conductor to relay the signal that this operation could proceed: ta-tap ta-tap, ta-tap ta-tap . . . and the bus inched back, axles moaning, brakes crying for mercy. All this bussing is more fun, at least in nice weather, if you're one of the sardines stacked on top of the bus, sitting on the iron rack, your 50 kilo sack of rice or your trekker's pack. Avoid neighbor's vomit, get proper look at the screaming death down below.

Recently I've started riding on the back of Alden's bicycle, or what's known here as a "budho saikal" (old-man bike, in contrast to the ubiquitous motor scooters). The bike is, as he says, "very Southasian:" heavy as hell, comfortably upright in posture, no brakes to speak of. Nice loud bell. It must be made for the endless flat expanse of North India, which means it's not ideally adapted to Kathmandu's occasional hills: a slight incline and the brakes are apt to fail, as they did the other day when we took a nasty spill into a steaming pile of garbage (sweepers' strike?).
Biking around does give one a whole new perspective on KTM traffic, as well as a good lesson in faith. All I can see is Alden's back and the oncoming traffic to my right. I've trained him to shout 'bump' before a bump. I brace myself, thankful for the sweater wedged between me and the stiff frame. But mostly it's glorious, the smooth flow of the awkward machine in and out of traffic, the ding of the bell, the door-to-door service. Come bicycling with us!

shout out

above: the omnivorous Mr. Alden Towler

I thought I'd post this excerpt from my compatriot (and co ex-patriate) Alden Towler's blog, the matter-of-factly titled Alden in Nepal. Find it at http://aldeninnepal.blogspot.com We've shared much of our Nepali experience, so it seems fitting to invite my readers to check out his thoughtful and earnest perspective. The following bit dates back to the Dashain festival in October:

During festival time I had been noticing so much alcohol drinking and meat eating in the Buddhist community. Every house we went to they were offered. Even Maama [=maternal uncle -Jon] invited us to enjoy Jard and roksi (corn wine and distilled corn wine) as is the custom to please guests. I couldn’t help but ask the alcohol-avoiding, meat-eating, middle-aged married monk with a family a few questions.

“Can you tell me what you think about alcohol?” I asked.

“Its no good” Maama replied.

“But why? What does it do?” I said searching for a more full answer.

“Well” Maama began, “It ruins your heart, darkens your soul, spoils your mind, and destroys your relationship with god” he said in a very matter of fact yet heart felt way.

This definitely left me in a doubting and contemplative mindset. Nepalis are aimed at pleasing their guests, it is hard to refuse something without offending the host, finishing your mountain of rice is just about the only way to say thank you, not finishing it is a horrible insult to the woman’s cooking- ‘miTho bhayena?’ would be implied, ‘it wasn’t tasty?’

The conversation took another direction with Maama and it wasn’t long until he offered Jon and I some roksi. What! Jon and I looked at each other biting our lips to keep back the laughter, had this monk not just told us that alcohol is a horrible substance that ruins your heart, darkens your soul, spoils your mind, and destroys your relationship with god?!

“No, thanks” we said.

“Oh come on, just a little” he encouraged.

Saying no is just about the hardest thing to do in this culture. . .

"I am not time" / A riff and a rant on temporal dissonance

image: "straw festival" in Bhalwad, Kapilvastu. My host Pusparaj Paudel is in the head-scarf.

(1) polishing a stone

What is most unnerving to an outsider about rural Nepali life is the stasis of it. This finally hit me recently on the microbus from Kathmandu as I was listening to lok git, stylized folk music, on the radio: for all their melodic elaboration, the tunes never stray from the tonic. The underlying maadal drumbeat itself is tonal, but mono-tonal (which is not to say monotonous, necessarily: at their best these songs are hypnotic, almost narcotic). In the gaon, life has a similar steady, circular (because endlessly repeating) rhythm that can be incredibly unsettling to someone used to the perpetual drama of novelty. In the village people (well, women) are busy—washing clothes, cutting fodder for the livestock, cooking—but as an outsider there’s this hard-to-define sense of stillness. All the activity is intended to maintain domestic order, to keep the wheel turning; there is momentum, but it is angular, not linear. The modern, Western world is obsessed with change, our exalted “progress.” This forward momentum carries through to our daily and moment-to-moment lives, so that sitting and doing nothing for even five minutes is frowned upon: why is he just sitting there? Why doesn’t he get up and do something productive? (asking ‘why’ is another typically Western behavior.)

Visiting my friend Pusparaj in his village in the mid-Western Terai, before long I had to confront the question of ‘how to get into the rhythm here?’ It’s OK to sit and read when the life going on all around offers no easy way in, but in a way that misses the point. It's a kind of escape. Better to sit and sit. What’s needed is work of a mindless sort to yoke the striving mind to the day's minutes and hours: stripping kernels off of dried corn, maybe, or leading water-buffalo around in endless circles to coax the last rice grains to detach themselves from their straw. A piece of wood to carve. A stone to polish.

(2) on "Nepali time"

The thing that gets me about so-called "Nepali time" isn’t that any estimate of how long X is apt to have a margin of error twice as wide as itself, but that you can’t even count on the comforts of slowness that you’d expect to be a reliable result. Instead you’re likely to be rushed—chitto chi-chitto!—into doing something that will then fall victim to endless delays.
Today I set out on foot at 10 o’clock from the village of Bhalwad after a great many exhortations from my Pusparaj to get a move on. Obligingly I finished shoveling in the morning’s rice and we set off after relatively little ado. Our first destination was a town at the beginning of the hills where we were to meet a cow-urine-prescribing baba. How long the road, I ventured to ask? Two hours. Three and a half hours later we stumbled into the town parched—I hadn’t brought a waterbottle for the ‘two-hour’ walk--only to discover the Baba was nowhere to be found. We’d had an appointment (though perhaps that’s to strong a word) for 11:00 AM, so I would have thought we were right on time. No matter, we boarded a bus towards Sandhikharka, the district capital, where we’d spend the night at PR’s maternal uncle’s. The ride would take a full hour, my two companions agreed. I didn’t set my stopwatch. By the time we reached the town it was evening, the January sun ready to dip behind the hills. It must have been a three hour ride. All around me old women and small children were vomiting out of windows, into plastic bags, onto silent husband’s laps. But now we were almost there, to PR’s uncle’s place just a ‘little ways’ from the bazaar. By now I was agitated at our little group dawdling, visiting here and there with relatives and vague acquaintances and drinking tea while the light failed. I was hungry with that mean hunger that hits your head before your belly. Our presumed hosts hadn’t been contacted, and I wasn’t at all sure anyone knew the way to their house, so I thought we should at least try and arrive before they went to bed. Finally we set out as the stars came out along with a bright half-moon. ETA: 20 minutes. No, said a didi from a saree shop, it takes 25. Ah, I thought—here people are precise. But I steeled myself against any thoughts of a prompt arrival, and wisely bought 10 rupees’ worth of peanuts for the road. It’ll be an hour, I thought. After half that, I asked the local man who had volunteered to walk us up how long it would be. What can I say? I was curious. 10 more minutes, came the reply. He pointed out a distant speck of light on a ridge above us and far across the valley. In the end we made it within an hour after a relentless uphill march. Amazingly to me (though I knew in my head that it would be so) we were received warmly but with no fanfare or expression of surprise. Rarely-seen relatives showing up after dinnertime, plus an American—sure, put on some more rice, make a little tea, get out extra blankets and let’s do this thing.

At the Paan Pasal

Four hits of sweet paan in the making in Patan

What the hell is that guy selling, a non-initiate is apt to wonder as s/he ambles past the neighborhood paan vendor. Besides cigarettes and chewing tobacco, all that's visible in the narrow storefront or miniature roadside tent are a bowl or two of heart-shaped green leaves soaking in water of questionable origin. Hidden from view, however, are dozens of containers ranging from thimble-sized to a couple of quarts, containing the minutiae of the paan man's (usually a man’s) craft. Corrosive limestone paste; tiny cubes of bright red candied papaya; chunks of broken betel nut; and a thousand and one other flavors, textures, and colors.
But what compels one to halt here, to shell out 7 or 15 rupees--what, in short, is the appeal of this morsel of a mouthful that stains mouths crimson the subcontinent over? That, friend, is the nut of the matter, the inexpressible kernel of supari that keeps you coming back again. For paan is more than a digestive aid, a mouth freshener, a heart tonic, and a welcome distraction from the infinite frustrations of life here, though it is all of these. It is a custom-folded moment of bliss. According to your stripes, that bliss may consist mainly of the taste explosion and slight head-tingling effect of a mitha (sweet) paan, but it may also involve the less subtle effects of a lacing of tobacco. The leaf itself makes a difference: there is the standard mithapatta, the basic, mild and sweet-natured leaf. There is its idiosyncratic yellowish cousin, whose sourer, spicier flavor is not without its devotees. Then there is the banglapatta, a roguish leaf, which is frowned upon by some for its more blatant narcotic effect. But the beauty of paan is that it's appeal is never reducible to a single ingredient, or even a simple combination of two or three.
It always begins with the leaf, that which gives paan its name. Next comes a scant swipe of chuna, the white lime paste that somehow activates whatever subtly addictive alkaloids the leaf and betel nut contain. The stuff is corrosive on its own (a factor that may be inseparable from its role in paan—more research required), but in the context of the whole it is neutralized by the next ingredient, a light brown paint made of the bark of a tree. I have to admit this ingredient remains mysterious to me, but I like to theorize that it complements and tones down the chuna. From here the particulars of paan production diverge wildly, but it can at least be said that most paan contains a good piece or six of supari, the infamous betel nut. Here is one of our active principles, a seed of great distinction. Activated by the leaf and/or the chuna, the supari stimulates digestion to an almost miraculous degree. It also causes a slight feeling of constriction in the throat, as though you've swallowed your jawbreaker. Not to worry, chances are you're not allergic. Just enjoy the bizarre and (I'm convinced) benign effects of this storied, stone-like nut on your stomach, your cranium, and (according to the Michaelangelo of paan vendors, soon to make his entrance onto the page) the heart.
If you're asked for a mitha paan, your lime ad bark-smeared leaf will now be graced with shredded coconut, clove, cardamom, candied papaya, fennel seeds, silver sugar balls . . . if your order was for a special sweet paan, the list will grow and include a big dollop of heavenly, gloppy rose-petal jam, and the final, folded product will be adorned with silver leaf (not for those of us with silver fillings in our teeth) and that true luxury, a maraschino cherry. A jarda paan, on the other hand, is more about the tobacco, and for reasons of pride or purity of purpose, habitual eaters of this harsher pleasure tend to eschew the sweet delights that make mitha paan so blissful. But compromises can be made. There is also, of course, the "plain" paan, which is almost as fiendishly complex as the sweet version, but omits some of the more sugary additions.
But a paan is never only a paan. I learned this one warm autumn day in Kuleshwor, when I stopped by an untested paan shop on a quiet street. I was with friends, and we were all in the mood, so to speak. In Nepal there is little sense of 'first come first served,' especially since our order for 5 or 6 deluxe mitha paan would take longer than other walk-up requests for a pouch of tobacco, a single cigarette, a bit of supari wrapped in paan leaf with chuna (paan at its most elemental, strictly for the addict). But when the sahuji--honourable shopkeeper--did turn his attention to us, he did it fully. Fielding our newbie curiosity with grace, he lovingly presented a sample of each successive ingredient for our tasting. His ingredients were anything but ordinary, for here was a man for whom work was service, and service divine. Take the rosepetal jam. He had not make it himself, it's true--his wife had. The supari he soaked until tender and cut to order, with an iron implement, into paper-thin slices. The coconut chunks were perfectly toasted. The cardamom he decorticated on the spot, removing the sticky black seeds from the inedible papery green pod. Each perfectly folded leaf was sprinkled with rosewater before being skewered with a toothpick and served. And he forewent the synthetic masala ("spice mix") and maha (honey) that most paan vendors use as a matter of course--saccharine, artificially-flavored, for the birds. His paan was pure, constructed with devotion, presented with pride. It was orgasmic.

In this employment-deprived country, it’s common to be asked to bring someone to America. How, it’s easy to say dismissively, by putting you in my luggage? This might get a laugh, but it does little to address feelings of resentment or inferiority. But lately a local paan vendor had an idea. Is there paan in your country, he wanted to know? Well, a little, I began to reply, in places where Indians have settled . . . other Americans don’t know what paan is. But he had spied the glint of opportunity in a fat, glistening, folded up leaf: bring me, he said, and we’ll start a paan business together. Rarely have I been so tickled by a version of that old saw, the American Dream.

Thanksgiving in Kathmandu

Above: our Bagmati river ducky enjoying the last and cleanest bath of his life

I’ve been part of some strange Thanksgivings in my day. There was the time a couple years back when 6 or 7 friends and I decided the way to give thanks was to cook the meal, complete with 30 lb. brined turkey, the day before, so that we could eat some poisonous mushrooms on T-day and wander around the Bitterroot mountains. It was a cold and chaotic day in the woods, but we did stumble upon a Ponderosa pine seeming to grow out of another Ponderosa, straight over and up, like some sort of inexplicable flying buttress; and in our impressionable state we marveled at rotten stump-turned-termites’ nest. “That’s where they mansion at,” I remember observing. Profound words. The eight of us arrived back home to our big weird house safely enough, if a little disoriented, but I for one had no appetite for meat or stuffing or pie or anything else.
I’ve spent two thanksgiving days in New Mexico, both of them in the company of a lively and loquacious near-centenarian named Jack, who I’ve never spent time with on any day but Thanksgiving. Then there were feasts in the Barn where we lived in college, huge productions involving multiple apartments and lots of smoked meat courtesy of my friend Tev; all I remember really is lying in bed groaning all night afterwards—my strategy of taking just a bite of everything backfired, since it added up to a heaping mound of incompatible delicacies.
In any case, I’ve usually looked forward to Thanksgiving, and this year was no exception. But how to celebrate in the Nepali context? Aiming for any sort of typical American feast was out of the question; the nearby Bhatbhateni supermarket did actually stock frozen turkeys for the occasion, but each 5 kg bird was flown in from some monstrous poultry farm in Australia and cost a whopping 6300 rupees, about $75. Not exactly in the Thanksgiving spirit, if we interpret the holiday as my friend and room-mate Alden does, as a chance to commemorate and thank the other Indians for showing us how to live in a New World. Instead of ignoring local foodways, we wanted to revel in the flavors of this place, and do so in a way that still recalled the Thanksgiving archetype burned deep into every American’s palate. Pumpkins and yams are readily available here, as are green beans and potatoes. No cranberries, though. And no turkey from halfway around the world. Enter, then, the duck.
Alden, as obsessive a cook as I have sometimes been and as devoted to tracing food chains back to their roots, had long wanted to slaughter an animal himself, so I was not entirely surprised when he called me on Wednesday night to tell me that the bird he had purchased was alive and, well, quacking. Morning found us, my girlfriend Waverly and Alden and I, on the roof of our house with a bucket of hot water, a knife, and an astoundingly docile duck. Said duck was freshly bathed thanks to Alden, who was now down on one knee stroking our quarry with perfect tenderness. Thank you ducky, he said with a knowing sweet smile, for the gift of your flesh and blood. The veteran fowl-slaughterer of the bunch, I showed him how to tie and hold the duck and how to make the killing incision so that our friend would bleed out before the heart stopped beating. An hour later (plucking a dark-feathered duck clean is fussy work) we had a surprisingly scrawny dressed duck, a plastic bag full of heart and neck and gizzard, and another full of feathers and entrails. It was time to grab our seasonings, head to a friend’s house (home of a makeshift oven, i.e. a large pot) and start cooking.
We had high ambitions for our roast duck. Knowing the likely provenance of our bird—the indescribably filthy banks of one of Kathmandu’s rivers—and its probable effects on the flavor of the meat, we decided a rather unsubtle spice rub would be in order. Thyme, rosemary, black pepper, coriander, garlic, and plenty of salt. Easy. This we applied liberally to our duck inside and out, along with some melted ghee. Into our hot pot he went, all trussed up on a brass plate and stuffed with some onions and whole garlic cloves. Meanwhile we set to work on an orange-pomegranate glaze by boiling down fresh-squeezed juices and honey. We brushed the bird with this crimson stain every so often, and watched with anticipation as the duckfat rendered out into the plate below. Our poor centerpiece was shrinking by the moment as it lost its last shred of dignity, its thick insulating layer of subcutaneous fat.
Mid-day had its own adventures, including an epically circuitous cab ride to another Thanksgiving dinner at some old friends’ of Alden and me. By the time we returned to our duck, the troops had gathered and our host was busy reheating various dishes, all vaguely—but only vaguely—reminiscent of the Thanksgiving fare of your childhood. The spread included Nepali-style pumpkin soup courtesy of myself and W, a dish of strangely pungent mashed potatoes, a bland shepherd’s pie, sautéed green beans with mushrooms, stuffing with apples and green peppers, and numerous apple desserts. We reheated our tiny, saffron-colored duck, spruced him up a bit with some clementine wedges and a spring of parsley, and presented him to an awkwardly preoccupied hodgepodge of Fulbrighters, significant others, and a couple Nepali friends of mine, a middle-aged man and his straight-talking mother (later, when I asked her what of our traditional American feast she liked the most, she pointed to the no-bake chocolate-oat cookies and the ice cream.) And? The punch line here, if there is any, is that neither Alden nor Waverly nor I could bring ourselves to do more than taste the merest shred of our piece de resistance, the duck. Possibly it was the imagined but surely very real contamination of the once-spunky creature by Kathmandu’s unspeakable waterways, the tinge of open sewer to the succulent flesh. The limp skin added another brick to the wall of our discontent (we had reheated the duck with a little water in the pot ‘to keep it from drying out’). And there was the memory of the tiny rubber band we had found in the gizzard of the intrepid fowl to further deaden our appetites for its meat.
The slaughter had felt noble enough, serious but not sinful; but the earned reward was somehow more unpalatable than the dirty work. We gave thanks along with everyone in the room that night for the blessings in our lives. With characteristically charming sincerity, Alden thanked the duck.

We Took to the Hills

Above: "hills" on the Tamang heritage trail

Below: on the trail between Langtang village and Kyanjin Gompa, mid-November. The walls are made of thousands of engraved prayer-stones.

Our long-awaited trip started out with a reconnoiter to the New Bus Park, a dismally chaotic transport hub on the outskirts of the city. After the usual bureaucratic hurdles--in this case, tracking down the ticket-sellers who had disappeared on the pretext of lunch--W and I procured our tickets for the next morning for Syabrubesi, the furthest you can drive North from Kathmandu. We had already scrounged, rented and borrowed all the necessary gear for 2 weeks at the foot (and perhaps up to the knees) of the Himalayas: warm sleeping bags, down jackets, a sci-fi water purification device that works by UV-light, the bare minimum of clothing (if you can’t wear it all at once, you packed too much). Our only reading matter—and it should go without saying that we're a couple of book fiends--was a tattered ghost of a Peter Dickinson novel that we ended up tearing apart page by page, so that the two of us could read it simultaneously without waiting for one another to catch up. Now that we had the tickets and the gear, our scheme started to feel like something that might turn into something outside of our heads, and we were light with excitement. Walking back along the grey and congested route from the bus park, we made small last-minute purchases: pieces of hard gudpak (a rich sweet confection with jaggery and butter) and a bandana for snot and blood; cashews to sustain us on the chilly mountaintops of our imagination; a dark chocolate bar. We were going to Langtang.

The next morning we jumped in a taxi to the bus park around dawn. it's worth noting that the 15-minute taxi ride cost 200 rupees, which while still less than US $3 was nearly as much as our 280 rupee bus tickets. We located our bus and somewhat hesitantly left our packs in a pile of things to be stowed on the roof. W glanced back nervously until she was sure our things were there, intact, on top of our bus. We tried to settle in as the bus rattled to a start. We sat on the side of the bus that had fewer missing windows, but still the morning air was chilly and the bony seats tilted forward at an awkward pitch. Soon the 'conductor' (more on the ingenious, informal systems of transportation management in a later post) came and asked us to move, since our tickets actually had assigned us to a different pair of seats. Reluctantly we repositioned ourselves just behind a missing, suited up in our windbreakers and wool scarves, and braced ourselves for a long ride.

Even with the prospect of a jangly 10 hours ahead of us, it was exhilarating to be moving, to be rising out of the Kathmandu valley and to find ourselves so suddenly in rural Nepal. It was W's first glimpse of a Nepal other than Kathmandu: of endless terraces carved into the precipitous hillsides, their crops of mustard and finger millet and rice in various stages of maturation and harvest; of long white Daikon radishes piled high by the roadsides; of village houses with thatched or corrugated tin roofs, Maoist slogans still blazing in bright blue paint from the elections last spring. Kids barely clothed, grubby, playing in the roads and running alongside the bus for a while, shouting with laughter. WIthout warning the brakes screeched a dreadful shrief of metal-on-metal, jolting us from our private reveries, and the bus hurtled to a stop. Pee break. Men lining up on the side of the road, women darting for the cover of the forest. 90 seconds and everyone was back on, the bus moving again. But where was my wallet? I had shifted it to a front pocket so as not to have to sit on the uncomfortable lump all day, and now it simply wasn't there. There was some searching, some wracking our brains and asking around, but by the time we stopped at Trishuli Bazar for mid-day dal-bhat it was clear that my wallet including cash and local bank card were simply gone. Then the inevitable flush of emotions: anger at myself for my carelessness, and at whoever would pickpocket me or simply pick up my wallet off the seat we'd moved from and disappear; frustration, and even a weird feeling of justice. I'd been pondering, from my wind-blown seat, the predicament of the majority of Nepalese, of rural poverty in an era of ever-more-glaring inequality. Nothing new, but hard not to think along these lines given the moving panorama framed by the bus window. Now someone (and someone who could probably use it) had 20,000 of my rupees (about US $250) and I was left with nothing, not a cent. A fitting reversal, in a sense, I thought with a wry smile, and a strange stand-in for my guilty feelings of a couple hours back. For the time being I would no longer be able to play the rich white Westerner tromping off to explore at leisure the pristine Himalayas, blessing the locals with my patronage only to disappear at midnight (the end of the tourist season) on a pumpkin-coach (taxi, hired jeep, or airplane). But what of our trip? W still had some money left, about 5,000 rupees. It might be enough to take a short trek, if we were thrifty, and still buy bus tickets back. We'd be forced to bargain hard, and to ask for more local hospitality, but then again we would see more of the Nepal that Nepalis live in instead of the tourist fantasyland that’s been superimposed on top in places like Langtang.

In the end our consternation and uncertainty were for naught. Once bus pulled in to Syabrubesi, after a jolting final 4 hours along narrow, bumpy roads, across landslides and streams, and down a vertiginous set of switchbacks to the Bhote Koshi river; after thousands of ear-splitting brake-squeals and one episode of spontaneous window-shattering into the lap of the poor Scottish lass behind us (the conductor took one look and nonchalantly tossed the two pieces of the tinted pane out the now-empty windowframe)--when we finally disembarked, bruised and jangled and rather demoralized, we quickly made friends with an energetic Austrian named Michael who lent us 10,000 rupees as soon as he heard of our predicament. He too had had money stolen, while doing the Annapurna circuit, and figured it was his turn to help out some strangers in need. We were back on track, just on a slightly tighter budget than originally planned. We finally felt we could relax, once I'd taken care of canceling my ATM card, and we settled into the smoky kitchen of the Sherpa/Tamang family who ran the budget guest house we found ourselves in that first night. Some tongba was procured, and for once I enjoyed the stuff immensely: red millet fermented whole for weeks or months, put in a wooden vessel and covered with hot water, left to steep, and sipped through a bamboo sippy straw. Every batch is different, and this one hit the spot: not too sweet, nicely acidic and fruity, with a clean taste. None of the chemical overtones or the nauseating breadiness that immature tongba can yield. Sitting by the family's hearth, helping to chop vegetables or dinner, and learning a few snippets of the Tamang language, I thought to myself: the bus ride was worth it already.

Butter tea. Silky, reviving, hot comfort in a cup, and one of three or fore defining tastes of the Himalayan region. Tamang, Sherpa, and Tibetan woman make it in a tall quiver-like device braced against one leg. In go boiling water, a hunk of more-or-less rancid yak butter, some Chinese brick tea, and salt. The plunger (English terms fail miserably here) churns the stuff as it steeps, emulsufying the butterfat, so no one of the endlessly forthcoming cups of tea has too much or to little. In Gongang, a Tamang village of perhaps 30 houses (one turned hotel, i.e. they have an extra bed), the butter tea was smooth and delicate, but at the Yeti guesthouse in Syabrubesi whence we set off it was as funky as blue cheese.

Hills. Anywhere else these hills would count as mountains. They rise and fall thousands of feet with brutal abruptness, the slopes often so steep that even the rugged farmers can't terrace them. Landslides, when they happen, can wipe out entire villages. But the true mountains rise behind them, gleaming perpetual white, cheating the hills out of their otherwise deserved geological category. These mountains, the proper peaks of the Himalaya, are too big. It challenges the smooth flow of cognition to sight them from almost any distance; they seem to hover in the sky.

Weather. Central Nepal is temperate, I suppose, but only on average: during our summer months monsoon rains beat the hills mercilessly, while for more than half the year chances are no rain at all will fall. The sun is strong year round, especially at altitude, so that the south-facing slopes of the hills are all but scorched. They harbor hardy grasses and spiny cactus-cousins and not much else, at least not so’s you'd notice in the winter. Meanwhile the north-facing slopes are lush with deciduous trees, pines higher up, in the full subtropical spread.

Walking along a sandy trail up the Bhote Koshi river our first morning out we came around the end of a large wrinkle of the land and spotted our first house: modest, solitary, built roughly from stone. In front of the house the ripening fields of millet, buckwheat, mustard formed three broad stripes like a great flag spread over the ground: gold, brown, green.

In Gongang, our first night after a day of walking up the river, we sat with our Tamang hosts around the earthen hearth, warming ourselves and watching as the evening meal slowly came together one pot at a time over the coals. What emerged, finally, was the most satisfying dal-bhat I've ever had. Every ingredient locally grown except the salt and a couple of spices: nutty, slightly sticky rice, black dal, potatoes with cabbage and beans, cut up meticulously into thin strips. A simple fresh daikon achar. I've never eaten rice so slowly, savoring every bite, nor felt so at home in a stranger’s house. Our host, when asked the next morning how much we owed him for lodging, dinner, and a breakfast of flatbread and butter tea, said, “three hundred rupees” with a smiling shrug. “Why ask for more?” (We’d paid that much earlier in the day for two cups of ginger tea and a plate of chowmein that I’d ended up cooking myself).

Amongst other remarkable flora, the marijuana growing wild on the sunbaked hills near Tatopani caught my attention. Its buds looked candied, in the way that one candies ginger: colors concentrated, sticky, glistening in the sun. The heady scent wafting along the narrow trail and alerting you to its presence before your eyes catch sight of it. Seeing my admiring one such specimen, a couple of women sent a 4 year old boy over to me with gifts: a grubby fistful of finger-sized sticks of homemade hash. (Thanks but no thanks, kid, I’m on a government scholarship!) For this kindness we shelled out a measure of our own most precious goods: cashews, dried coconut, dark chocolate.

A few minutes past that cannabinoid seductress, the hotsprings at Tatopani were a sight to behold: under the gushing pipes stood Nepali men and women of all ages, most of them people who I imagined had never enjoyed the luxury of unlimited hot water in their lives. Families walked for days to come here, loads hoisted on a tumpline around their foreheads, and camped out at this strange little village for days to be near the hot water. But aside from a warm exchange or two with fellow travelers, Nepalis and a lone, stoned Frenchman, we found the place standoffish and hit the road after a soak and a plate of dal-bhat. (We were getting used to cabbage potatoes by now.) Mid-afternoon found us in Brindang, an eerily quiet village of Tibetans or Tamangs perched high on a ridge above Tatopani and where little Nepali was spoken. An old woman conveyed the direction of our trail, towards Thuman, and off we set along the high dry slope in the waning hours of the day. The trail was lightly worn and uncertain, and soon we were doubting our way on and worrying about where me could find shelter for the night. There’s something about being high up on a hillside with the sun about to dip behind a ridge . . . our vision tinged with panic, we spied a shape bobbing about a few hundred feet below us. Man gathering scrappy firewood. No answer to our shouts, so down we go, small quick steps over the tricky terrain, to catch him before he too disappears. Catch him we do, and he turns out to be an old man, hard of sight and hearing, a Nepali-speaker (thank God) and the caretaker of a small gompa tucked away in a clump of pines a few hundred feet below us. Shelter there for a couple of lost travelers? Sure. Not knowing whether to lead the man or follow him, and still a little trembly with the adrenaline of running straight down a mountainside with packs, we ended up lending him a headlamp and beating him to the gompa. How romantic—a chilly night in a remote Buddhist monastery—but not to be. The man lives there alone but for a small child whose mother has recently died. Another man, of similar stature and nimbleness of foot, arrives just as night is settling in and tells us of the caretaker’s misfortune, of how alone cares for the child while living largely off of the charity of nearby townsfolk. This man has come to borrow a drum from the gompa. He tells us to follow him to his village, just a few minutes he says, where we can find shelter for the night. Well. He straps the drum onto his back and down we go, as in the deepening moonless dark the stars come out by the scores. I notice for the first time a sharp shooting pain on the outside of my left knee, and am glad we’re close to rest. Finally, after another hour or more of descending steeply over all but invisible paths, we arrive in a village. We find ourselves in the main room of a house, in the midst of some commotion. The family, it seems, is preparing for a puja to be held in the morning. We lay down our packs, trying to keep them out of the way yet in our sight, hurriedly change our sweat-soaked base layers, bundle back up, and settle ourselves gingerly on a stiff bed. The room has been cleared, and the men of the house, all teens or twenty-somethings, bustle back and forth attending to the work at hand. We are too tired and dazed to realize it at first, but the man seated near us is the Lama who will perform the puja and who is overseeing its preparations. No one is terribly interested in talking, which is fine with us, but all seem to accept our presence without so much as a sidelong glance. Some lost white people, OK. Before long we are brought steaming bowls of filtered tongba, far and away the best tongba I’ve ever had; it was a year old, and worth the wait. The evening takes on a dreamlike quality from this point, not so much from the drink as because I was falling asleep. W has been quiet, but speaks with understated alarm in her voice when my head hits first her shoulder, then her lap. ‘I need you to stay awake.’ This situation is novel for both of us, but unlike me she has no precedent for how to act, what is expected of her. I force myself awake and notice what everybody is working on. Tomorrow’s wood and bamboo altar having been completed, the boys have made an enormous ball of whole wheat dough and are kneading it in batches. Soon everyone is greasing up their hands and rolling and shaping pieces of the dough into tapered cone-like shapes, sticking these in rows on boards. The lama takes part as well, and his playdough shapes are the most elaborate. In the flickering candlelight I see macabre sandcastles, crooked teeth, dream images. The illusion only heightens when one of the sequestered women of the house appears with a saucepan of nutty-smelling butter infused with a local root to make a potent red paint, and a brother starts dabbing it onto the dough spires. The lama fashions a bull without fuss, and it is reddened. Next come dabs of butter that he flattens into disks and deftly attaches to each piece. At some point I lose consciousness, asleep sitting up, only to wake to a plate of hot rice. I’d been so hungry after our afternoon that I’d eaten some nuts, thinking we’d missed dinner, but no, the dictates of Himalayan hospitality know no such bounds. The rice is delicious, even better than the previous night’s in Gongang. In the dark I guess from aromas and textures that the accompanying dish is dried yak meat and potatoes. I don’t realize until too late that the dal is spiked with hot peppers, and I douse my rice with it. Eating greedily, my mouth suddenly explodes with fire. There is nothing at hand to quench it, so I take another and another handful of soothing rice. Soothing, napalm-soaked rice. Soon my plate is empty, my entire head burning, and I stumble outside for some cool air and to clear my sinuses. Back inside we pull out our sleeping bags and fall asleep side-by-side amidst the quiet bustle in the big dark room.

The morning was a morning of intestinal distress, and I’ve had one too many of those to want to recount it. I relieved myself inappropriately and urgently in the yard next to a slumbering buffalo just before dawn for lack of any evident toilet, and tried to ignore the cramps and sulphur-reeking giardia belches and go back to bed. But everyone was up, including W who was hyper-conscious of being in the way. The was puja about to begin a few feet from our bed. Someone brought more hot tongba, this time laced with sugar; W graciously accepted and I graciously declined. Too weak to think of walking anywhere for the time being, I sat next to W in the early morning light and watched the ritual. Now we could see the night’s work properly, the intricately shaped tiers of dough figures on the makeshift altar. The lama sat cross-legged on the other bed, sipping his tongba, surrounded by the instruments of his trade: the drum brought down from the monastery, a brass bell and dorje (thunderbolt), carefully wrapped Tibetan texts, a straight horn, cymbals. The heavenly racket soon began, and it is to the aesthetic credit of that venerable B’on or Buddhist tradition that I could sit there at all in my state. After an hour or so I tucked 4 or 500 rupees under a cup and we made a quiet exit, thanking the family and apologizing for not spending the day with them. It was only then that I noticed the Maoist slogans painted on the façade of overhanging second story; if these people held Maoist ideology, it didn’t prevent them from treating a couple of bourgeois interlopers like comrades for a night.
That day took us back to Syabrubesi, for we had strayed too far off our trail during the evening to think about trying to rejoin our proposed route. I was in a pitiful state what with my knee and my bowels, and the short trail back to our starting point took half the day. A little guiltily we snuck past our faithful Yeti guesthouse, home of the blue cheese tea, in favor of a more comfortable-looking place with a garden and rooms with real walls. We inquired about a chessboard and spent the day playing, drinking tea, wondering what to do next. It seemed a pity to turn tail and take the early bus back to the Valley, but then it again it was pure foolishness to think about heading up a glacial valley with a bum knee, even if my guts took care of themselves in the meantime. In the end we woke early, took a test walk after switching packs and shifting around weight (W now taking the lion’s share) and decided to give it a go for a day. My knee felt less than stellar after an hour’s walking, but soon the trail towards Langtang steadied into an upward grade and I could forget about the pain of stepping down onto my left leg.

In the end we did the whole Langtang trek, up to Kyanjin gompa and back, and did it in four and a half days. My knee was fine, and there were no more mishaps. Somehow the stories from that second half of our trip feel less poignant than those from the Tamang trail, though. Partly this must be because we were now on the beaten track, a well-established tourist route. We spent nights at lodges with woodstove-heated dining rooms and laminated menus, all alike except for the prices (which increased exponentially with altitude and distance from the nearest road). There was a nice one at Rimche, the Moonlight guesthouse, that we returned to on the way home. There was a little co-operative cheese factory in Langtang, the only actual town on the trail, where we had yak gouda and both immediately came down with head colds. The views were extraordinary, the air rare, the terrain rugged. Barberries hung like tiny waxy red lanterns, and bright yellow sea buckthorn berries blazed against the deep blue of the sky. Silver-faced langurs played in the trees, and higher up hundreds of crows picked the last dried rosehips clean off the bushes. The climax of the trip, altitude-wise, was the cluster of tourist lodges near tiny Kyanjin Gompa at 3700 meters or so. We were slightly depressed by the sight of dozens of these ugly concrete buildings all crammed together in that rugged place, I think, and by the way that every other lodge-owner solicited us. Offending at least one friend from the morning’s road, we settled on a small, out-of-the-way place where we were the only guests, and talked with the owner for a while about business and opportunity over bowls of Syakpa, the hot Tibetan-style noodle soup. Next day we headed early back down the valley, retracing our steps at nearly double the pace on the downgrade. In Langtang we skipped the yak cheese but sought out some yak butter to take home, some roasted barley flour called tsampa, and were rewarded by an amused old Tamang woman with some tsampa-cakes she had used in a puja. The hearty lumps were painted with a familiar red infused butter and dotted with sticky gobs of jaggery.

Our only remaining ambition was to spend some of our last funds on the weirdest item on the ubiquitous tourist menu, the “snicker momo.” Momos, in this context, are pastry turnovers, much richer than the meat or cabbage-filled steamed dumplings of the same name in Kathmandu. The Snicker part, of course, refers to the candy bar that (along with the inferior Mars bar) was bizarrely prominent on the Langtang trek. But when we arrived for the second time tired but happy in Syabrubesi, no one seemed to be able to locate any Snickers. We contented ourselves with an apple momo and milk tea at our fancy garden hotel (200 rupees a night), then chowmein, then an omelette--our appetites suddenly insatiable after 9 days on the move. But to sleep we returned to the Yeti lodge, where a comfortingly lukewarm welcome and a hard bed awaited. The bus ride back to the city was if anything longer than the first one, though less terrifying. Somehow arriving back in crazy Kathmandu felt like coming home.

Enter the Juice

There are times when one can sense, not only with 20/20 hindsight but right then, in the moment, that something has changed forever: a door opened, a step taken across a threshold to a world of new possibilities. A majority of us Americans dared to hope that Barack Obama would become our President, and through the sheer audacity of this hope—we’re talking about a black man, but even more radically for a candidate for our highest office, a man who speaks from his heart, who pours all of himself into his vision for our country and for the world—the sheer audacity transformed dream into reality. Rarely is it so clear that we are witnessing history in the making. Where were you on the day Obama got elected? I was in an American compound here in Kathmandu, watching in shock and disbelief along with a motley hundred or so fellow citizens as the flat screen showed his lead turn suddenly into to a mute declaration of victory, a victory that had until that moment remained almost unthinkable. I’ve never before felt a welling of tears at any mass event, not even at ruthless war or senseless disaster, let alone politics: but this was personal, for me and for everyone in that room it seemed. There was a first mounting round of cheers and applause as the realization set in, then further bursts rising and falling over the next hour or so. Eyes shining, smiles of joyous disbelief. Faith, after all, still leaves room for shock and awe.
Now, less than 24 hours later, the historical moment already seems almost inexorable, the tipping of the pendulum back towards light, clarity, hope. Dark days are yet ahead for America and the world, but perhaps we can—we will--strain against the terrible reins of our country’s momentum. Anything taken to enough of an extreme gives rise to its opposite; in our darkest hour is born the spark of hope anew. The Bush Era is suddenly conceivable as a thing done with, grittily lived through, as we prepare to exit the dark tunnel of these years. No matter the reality of the next four or eight, whatever the stumbling blocks, the disappointments inevitable from a leader onto whom millions of disenchanted people have cast their desperate hopes, we can never now go back; there’s no forgetting the sight of a sunbeam into the oubliette.

I doubt I’m alone in feeling the charged energy of these days, this past week or so in particular. Even here, across the world, the tension though indefinable has been thick. Now of course it’s broken, the rising tide having spilled over and turned out to be sweet. Our popular language is poor in terms to deal with movements of our collective consciousness; serious students of astrology probably have some grip on what’s going on ‘energetically.’ For me, at any rate, this public break in the status quo has aligned with a significant internal shift, or so it feels like in the middle of this giddy night. This’ll take a little explaining.
A few weeks back I discovered the stretch of narrow street between Bhedasingh and Naradevi east of Asan Tol in old Kathmandu. This little neighborhood is a sort of Ayurvedic nerve center, containing not only the Naradevi Ayurvedic hospital but also countless shops/clinics that sell mostly patent medicines from big modern herbal manufacturers like Himalaya. I’m more interested in the older shops, the herb retailers whose tiny stores are packed with medicines in various states of preparation: from hundreds of plastic bags of whole dried herbs hanging from the low ceilings, each bag marked with a permanent marker in scrawled Devanagari script, to the bins of various woods, barks, powdered extracts, resins, to the smaller glass bottles filled with handmade compounds and the tiny vials of bhasmas (mineral and other finally ground oxidized substances). Whenever I’m in the vicinity, I feel an almost magnetic pull towards this district, and each time I go I find something new. How did I not notice this particular shop last time, I’ll wonder, or fail to ask this old Vaidya-cum-pharmacist about his medicines? Yesterday, in the happy, bewildering aftermath of the election returns, luck carried me to a small shop that sells not whole herbs and from-scratch formulas but rather pre-made formulas ranging from traditional to patent, made in India and Nepal. It turns out the woman I met there and her brother both come from a long family of traditional (non-academic) Vaidyas and are thoroughly-trained and certified Vaidyas themselves. They gave me a warm welcome, the sister tickled by my knowledge of Ayurved and Nepali, and I settled in for a few hours behind the counter, trying to stay out of the way as customers came in for a word or two of medical advice for themselves or a child, to fill a formula, to pick up a popular Ayurvedic supplement. I got to watch as the pair custom-ground formulas that they had composed out of various already-compounded drugs on their shelves: formulas made out of formulas. First into the smooth porcelain mortar went the most potent ingredients, the Rasadi (mercurial) preparations that make little more than a percent of the total. These are ground steadily for until a sheen develops—the longer the better—along with a little herb powder for easier grinding. Then the other ingredients go in, factory-made pills and powders of plants and oxidized minerals, and all is thoroughly mixed before being packed pack into the emptied plastic bottles that the ingredients came from. This was a great opportunity to learn about Ayurvedic pharmacology, or Vaisajya Kalpana as the sub-discipline is more properly known. Complaining of a lingering sinus infection—polluted Kathmandu is not an easy place to kick a cold—I was able to discuss with the knowledgeable brother some details of the formula he wrote me. (It’s interesting, too, to compare the Ayurvedic dietary restrictions he outlined with popular Nepali conceptions of what not to eat when you have a cold: Ayurvedically speaking, it boils down to avoiding Kapha-increasing foods like yogurt, bananas, old and sour and heavy foods, while your Nepali Aama will insist that you avoid “cold” things: essentially the same list, but in (over)simplified layman’s terms.)
I have at this point a decent grasp of the basic properties of many of the more common Ayurvedic herbs, but these two were using almost exclusively classical (textually-rooted) formulas that I knew nothing about. This new vista was tantalizing, and in a burst of enthusiasm I proposed to the brother that we make me a personalized formula of a type called a Rasayana. A Rasayana (“russ—EYE—an--uh”) is a rejuvenating formula used to restore strength during convalescence, or simply to enhance one’s health. It’s a nourishing therapy, but also a catalytic one supposed to trigger the body to restore itself towards perfect health. Lots of substances are known to act as Rasayanas if given in the right way at the right time: the ubiquitous Amala (amalaki fruit, ghee, milk, probably chocolate chip cookies too. The right time is when the system is relatively free of impurities, like the byproducts of undigested food that can linger in the tissues and clog the body’s subtle channels; the process of rejuvenation is likened to dying a piece of cloth, so of course the cloth must be clean to start out. Little or no accumulated aam, metabolic waste, and healthy digestive ability (agni) are important. Like most students of Ayurveda, I suppose, I had been experimenting with Rasayan therapy for a while, making use of fortified milk decoctions and the renowned herbal jam called Chywanprash (after the old sage Chyawan, who used the formula to keep him strong and vigorous enough to satisfy his young wife) on a more or less daily basis. But here in this little pharmacy it occurred to me to try out another order of Rasayana: the alchemical formulas that include purified and processed mercury as well as other metals and minerals. Like many Sanskrit words, “ras” has an interesting range of connotations: it can mean juice, flavor, essence, interest, enthusiasm--and mercury. Literally, then, Rasayan means “entry of the ras.” Of course in the West anything that contains mercury, in any form, is taboo, and the association with such a notorious poison has threatened the reputation of Ayurveda just as it is starting to gain recognition as a legitimate healthcare system (of course it is much more than this, but in the context of our Western culture Ayurved is perceived as one option amongst many in “alternative” or “complementary” medicine). Hundreds of years of Ayurvedic philosophers, doctors and alchemists were no fools, though, and they know the dangers of mercury if not properly prepared. This is subject in itself (called Rasa Shastra). When I met an old Rasa Shastri, alchemist-Vaidya, in Banepa a couple of weeks ago, he said something like, “they say that mercury is poison. Well, we turn it into amrit [nectar of life].” I’m deep enough into this world, this worldview, that I no longer have any hesitation about consuming such substances, provided they came from reputable sources. (Ironically, the toxic Ayurvedic drugs come from the more modern Ayurvedic drug companies who cut corners in the purification process in order to save money.) At the little shop in Bhedasingh, the brother Vaidya wrote out a Rasayan formula based on my prakriti (Ayurvedic constitution—mine is Pitta predominant with Vata a close second). He also asked if I was married: well, not exactly, I admitted, but for his purposes the answer was essentially yes. He was asking because the formula he was composing would be a powerful aphrodisiac; the way to renew the body is through the reproductive organs, the ‘deepest’ of the 7 dhatus or tissues, and the one that is capable of producing ojas (the sap of life, analogous to the Chinese jing).
The formula he came up with contains Amalaki Rasayan (itself a processed and purified formula) as its base, to which he added tiny quantities of bhasmas of silver and mica, the soluble starch extract of Guduchi (Tinosporia Cordifolia), Prawal Pishti to counterract the heating properties of some of other bhasmas, and a mere few grams of Siddhi Makaradhwaj, a famous Rasayan containing Mercury, Sulphur and Gold. A Rasayan of Rasayanas. I wanted to grind it myself, so I began with the glittering granules of makaradwaj, watching the dark sparkling substance turn into a deep red powder as I ground it down finer and finer. That done we added the rest of the ingredients, all already powdered, and mixed it all up. Before I paid (Rasayanas aren’t cheap, as Ayurvedic medicine goes, but my total was still under $20 US) I wanted to clarify what dietary or other restrictions would go along with medicine. It should not, I learned, be taken with any other medicine, especially potentially toxic allopathic drugs, recreational drugs, or alcohol. I would finish the cold medicine he was also giving me before starting the path of Rasayana. It would also be superfluous to take any of the other tonic type herbs or mild Rasayanas like Chyawanprash once I started this formula.
When I got home after the morning watching the election results and the afternoon in the medicine shop, curiosity got the best of me and I allowed myself just a little taste of the innocuous looking, charcoal-gray powder. (It smelled like plums, my roommate decided.) That taste was one of the more electrifying experiences I’ve been privy to. It began as a lively tart sensation on the tongue, delightfully effervescent, and spread from there instantly, up to my head and out to my limbs. I broke out in a big stupid grin and couldn’t help but exclaiming out loud and then bursting into slightly maniacal, joyous laughter. After the initial reaction I thought, Good God, what is this stuff? It was just so obviously potent, pregnant with possibilities I’d only considered half-seriously, as a piece of esoteric lore out there in Ayurvedic wonderland. All that talk about rejuvenation wasn’t just talk—I could feel this stuff working already, and I hadn’t even meant to take a therapeutic dose. It affected my consciousness as definitely as a hit of hash (a possible object of my quest for Rasayana in days gone by) or a surging feeling of love—much closer to the latter, though, in terms of its qualitative experience. The rest of the evening I spent basking in the afterglow of this discovery, this epiphany: not only are Ayurved’s most powerful medicines much stronger than I’d even suspected, but I was—I am--going to commit myself to the straight and narrow path of Rasayana and see where it takes me. Having such a powerful aid in the search for health—health, the only solid foundation for dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, the Vedic Four Aims of Life—is profound inspiration for me to keep up my own end of the bargain, to keep myself clean in body mind and spirit so that the dyeing will come out even and deep.
In my current frame of mind I may be prone to grandiloquence (not to say delusions of grandeur), but it feels like the greater paradigm shift presaged by Obama’s victory is reflected in me in a small way in my discovery of the path of Rasayana, the bringing in of the life-giving juice. I hope the analogy proves fruitful, that Obama and what he represents serve as Rasayana for our ailing world. Is it possible that all the war, the starvation, the ugliness we numbly accept daily over the morning paper, that all this sickening mess is a cathartic purge that will ready us for the dye of new life?