Beggar's Banquet

Before I answer all kinds of personal letters personally, I have to tell all of you about the amazing experience I had this morning.

I have pretty much settled in to living here in Bodhgaya. Bodhgaya is a very small town in the state of Bihar, which happens to be the most poverty-stricken state in all of India (this is in a country where people starve even in the richest state). The illiteracy rate here is also the highest in all of India (again, there isn't any state here without illiteracy). We are close to a slightly larger town called Gaya, which actually can boast of an airport - and everyone in town comes out once a week to cheer when the one-and-only plane takes off and actually manages to stay in the air...

The beggars are multiplying daily, because we in high tourist season, and we are also coming close to the time when the Dalai Lama will visit Bodhgaya to give the Kalachakra teachings (and I'll let you know what that is as soon as I find out myself). So you cannot walk close to the main temple without having to be careful not to step on some child who will come crawling to you (at the speed of light, I might add), with matchstick-thin, mis-shapen and useless legs, asking for money. I am not exaggerating. The number of old women lined up along the sides of the road, hoping to get something to eat, is constantly increasing. So is the number of peddlers, trying to sell postcards and Bodhi leaves (the Bodhi tree is the tree under which the Buddha sat when the bulb lit up in his head, you see, and now they are carefully painting devotional pictures on the leaves and selling them).

I hang out with a group of slightly shady characters (someone (American) said that he feels like he is in a Graham Greene novel, because all the heroes there are doubtful characters, and I know exactly what he meant) - doing one of my favorite things, which is seeing how other people live, from the inside. They are all more or less homeless, living in the streets (or actually, street - singular) of Bodhgaya. One of them, a Tibetan guy who has evidently been living here (alone) since childhood, is opening a restaurant, which is what most of the population here (those who can afford it) does during the tourist season. Opening a restaurant here means renting out a small piece of dusty land, setting up a bamboo structure (that you build yourself, of course) which you then cover with rags, and maybe constructing some seats out of the mud (which, unlike the bamboo, you can get for free). There is a dirt lot the size of a city block that houses these restaurants, and if it looks like a refugee camp, well - it's because that's what it is.

The restaurant is not yet open for business, but Anil (an Indian name for this Tibetan guy) has a habit of feeding the beggars every few days. Last Sunday I was witness to this, and today I actually participated. We start out at about 5 AM (well, Anil did, anyway) by setting up two rows of bricks to build two ridges about a foot high, and a foot apart. Then we build a fire in between them, and set a couple of huge cooking pots on the bricks. (OK, OK - if you want to be precise about it, I just sat and watched while everybody else worked. I would have just been in the way anyway.) The diameter of the these pots is about the size of your arm. Last night, Raju (my motorcycle friend, who introduced me to this group), took my money (because this time it was my gig) and went to the market to buy 50 kgs of rice, 80 liters of milk, 20 kgs of sugar, wood (for the fire), and a few more odds and ends. All these things went into the pots, and Anil cooks and stirs the whole mess with one of the sticks lying around in the dirt lot. We don't bother too much about sterility here. If good food falls on the dirt, you pick it up, brush off the grosser bits of dirt, and put it back in the pot. There isn't so much that you can afford to be particular about it. The guys sit around smoking, talking and drinking tea while the khir (rice pudding) cooks.

This is when Bijay asked me to refrain from greeting him, and generally pretend that I don't know him, when he is out walking with his American "sponsor". He explained that this "sponsor" doesn't know about his normal life, that "sometimes I lie with him" and that his "sponsor" doesn't want him to talk with other tourists. This Bijay is in love with a call-girl who lives in the neighboring town of Gaya, by the way, and he goes to visit her when he is not spending time with his "sponsor". As far as I know, the other guys in this group do not go to the extent that Bijay goes in their search for livelihood, but nobody turns up their nose at his choices, either. And they all treat me with perfect respect, completely open to tell me about their lives. And I've seen them get rather fierce protecting me when some other locals started hassling me. A few of them have told me that I am like their mother, which I figure is not a bad place to be.

By now the khir has pretty much finished cooking, and Surej has gone to the main temple to tell the beggars there that free breakfast is being served at the restaurant block. Last Sunday, Anil and his friends hired a bicycle-rickshaw to carry the two huge pots (then it was rice and vegetables, closer to lunch-time) out to the walkway by the main temple, but they said it would be too much of a hassle to do that this time. So the beggars come, hobbling on their canes, clutching their rags and their bags with their little metal bowls. Surej gets them to sit in a long line facing Anil's restaurant, while Raju and Pramod (our happy friend with HIV) carry a wooden bed-frame out in front of the line. Then each one of them grasps one of the handles on the bigger pot, and they set it on the bed frame.

Now I get to participate. We take the leaf-thalis, which are plates made out of pressed leaves, and set them on the ground, one in front of each person. I want to be sure that the little half-naked boy who has been watching the whole production from two tents to our left gets one. His mother has thoughtfully dressed him in a shirt and sweater (it's cold here in the morning), but evidently saw no reason to put any pants on him, so he is completely naked from the waist down. Neither he, nor his older brother (no more than seven or eight), nor his baby sister have any use for shoes, or more probably, they just don't have the shoes. He reminds me of a plucked chicken.

After the thalis are distributed, Anil starts spooning out khir into metal serving bowls, and all of us, Raju, Pramod, Anil, Sanjay, Bijay, Surej, and a few more who I haven't learned the names of - fill the bowls with steaming hot rice pudding. One and two-year olds, seventy-year olds, men, women and children - all squatting on the ground, eating rice pudding with their fingers. Some of them arrive late, and hold out their metal bowls to be filled - they want more, to take back to their families. If I were alone, there would be a riot, but this posse of Indian locals know how to keep the people quiet and more-or-less orderly.

So this is what they do every now and then, these people who have no home to call their own. They say it's good for their karma, and they suggested I improve my own karma as well. The whole thing costs less than a pair of shoes (less than one shoe, depending what kind of shoes you like), and literally tens of people had at least one good meal today.

People have asked me how I can enjoy living amidst so much misery, but this is the point - that there is intense poverty, but not necessarily misery. Living here is a lesson in life, learnt more by experience than by anything I can say. I hope I gave you at least a glimpse of it.

Root Institute

So, let me tell you a little bit about Root Institute. It's about a kilometer and a half west of Bodhgaya (where our revered Buddha attained his much-sought-after enlightenment), and it will evidently be my home for the next three months. It is a meditation center, retreat center (in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition), and also a free health clinic and hospital for the surrounding population (and they get free meals when they come in for their follow-up treatments, too). The inhabitants are mostly European, but there are enough Indians and Tibetans to go around.

Besides the two-legged inhabitants, we have our fair share of the four-legged type. One of the dogs has a hang-up about chasing things and she will drop stones on your foot (or in your lap, if you're sitting), and then watch them with a hawk-like gaze until you toss it away for her to catch. She is so hung up on this that she forgets to eat and is losing weight (we are worried about her health). The other dog (Flea-bag by name) just sticks her nose up your sleeve, in case you forgot that your main aim in life is to pet her.

And then there are the goats, especially the white billy goat with the attitude. They get tethered to various parts of the lawn every morning (in accordance with whichever part needs the most mowing), wearing their burlap bags as over-coats. So the lawns get mowed and manured simultaneously. There are two baby kids that have something to say to you every time you pass by them (baa), and Mr. Attitude will occasionally tilt his head back and raise his upper lip at you with a "come hither" (or maybe it was a "go yonder") look. Besides the attitude, he also has a fine set of teeth - he can and will eat the bark off the trees when his tether allows.

Bodhgaya has only about half as many mosquitoes as any typical South Indian town (which still leaves it in the millions), so my ankles and wrists are slowly recovering from the wildlife of Kerala - I wonder what the mosquitoes there are eating now that I've gone (at least 20 bites per ankle, and not much less per wrist). But I'm actually proud of my big right toe, which still shows where the leech got me. Walking along the roads of Munnar (a hill-station in mid-Kerala), and retreating to the long grass alongside whenever a car came by, I noticed later that there was some kind of black leaf stuck to the side of my toe, but I couldn't brush it off. Then I realized that it was too thick and too round to be a leaf, and much too persistent about staying right where it was. When I finally did pluck it off, it stopped being round, and one point of it (the mouth, I guess) started casting about in all directions, looking for lunch. Imagine a little ball of blood (my blood, no less), pulling itself around. Yuk.

But the really big thing is that I'm doing exactly what I came here for. A couple of years ago I was daydreaming about going off to be a Buddhist nun. So - living at a Buddhist meditation center, surrounded by Buddhist monks and nuns, meditating and practicing yoga every morning, and working as a volunteer in return for room and board – I would say that's pretty close. I spend my mornings working in the office, and my evenings riding around on the back of Raju's motorcycle and howling at the moon. (Well, that part wasn't exactly in the plan, but we have to be flexible, don't we?)

Raju is one of the local hot-rods that passed my pathetic little bicycle rickshaw the day I arrived and slowed down to find out "Where you from" and "Where you going". Later, in town, he reminded me that we met (yeah, like I'd remember him from all the motorbikes that did the same thing on that two-hour journey), and offered me a spin on his bike. What can I say, another dream come true, ever since "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

Raju can speak six or seven different languages, but he can't read or write in any of them, since he never went to school. He's been living on the streets since the age of eight, when he ran away from home (twenty years ago), and now he's introduced me to his friends, each and every one of them just as homeless as himself. They spend their evenings round a fire in an empty lot, surrounded by bamboo constructions (which I have been assured will soon become tea-shops, in time for the Dalai Lama's visit here), making toast and smoking; and then they go to sleep in one of the tea-shop constructions. Pramod Kumar, one of the guys, has HIV, and is happy to declare that "my life is very short, but very happy".

Several people have told me that they couldn't handle India because of the poverty. And each time I think I have seen something bad, I find something worse. Raju and his friends, for instance, actually have clothes, a place to sleep, and food, and their limbs are intact, unlike most of the beggars rolling around the mall on your way to the main temple. (And I do mean rolling, because they can't walk.) I still haven't quite figured out the beggar woman who sits outside the fence of the main temple, bleating, with her hand stretched through the fence for hand-outs. So you have men and boys with match-stick legs, either crawling on all fours, or rolling, or otherwise propelling themselves with their hands, trying to get your attention and your money. And you have men, women and children trying to sell you anything. And all of these will wrap themselves up in their thin little blankets, or whatever other rags they have, and lie down to sleep in the street under the trees, and believe me, it does get cold here. Living with this, seeing it every day - there is a lot to learn here. How do you relate to it, to them, without getting either callous or depressed? How do you see them as people and not as phenomena? Not too easy...

I do a round or two at the main Mahabodi temple in Bodhgaya most days. Lately, it's been decorated (again) with millions of little lights, candles and lamps, and the trees around it look like christmas trees. This time, it's in honor of Tsong Kapa's birthday (some great holy guy in the Tibetan tradition, if I'm not mistaken). The point is, that it's still beautiful and awe-inspiring, surrounded by Buddhists of all types, with Tibetan monks (and sometimes just plain people) doing endless prostrations on wooden boards, pilgrims meditating, and people chanting and reciting all kinds of prayers in all kinds of languages.

Weird, strange, and very very wonderful, at least for me. I still don't know how to explain it, but I love it.