Freedom for Tibet and Sympathy for Bex

My renewed faith in Western medicine has jumped out of the window and gone to play with my excused faith in alternative medicines. I now have a 'new' infected Lump below the incision which removed the last one, only that this one is solid and very painful. I am no longer upset about missing the yoga course – I am just upset. It hurts and I am feeling incredibly sorry for myself.

Two hours sleep and a painful night of painting a beautiful mandala. Although the beauty of my painting was not equal with the beauty of the mandala. Partly because I couldn't decide whether to paint the outer circles gold or blue – so in my insomnia I painted them both gold and blue. An excessive mistake. I watched the dead moth spin and twirl and wondered what happened to the spider who had spun its deathly web, and how even in the hunt of nature there is waste and the unnecessary ending of life.

I walked down to Delek Hospital as soon as the time was acceptable to morning adventures. A Nepali man I had met yesterday man gave me a lift. This was after he asked my age and after I had told him I had a husband. The hospital was deserted. Not a good start. I wondered around. I read a notice advertising for full time nursing staff, offering a wage of 9000 rupees (about £110) per month. Doctors were on 24000 rupees. I found a nurse. She was a Tibetan, Hindi, English speaking Nepali and so friendly. However, today – once again – is a holiday which means that there are no doctors in Delek hospital. She looked at The new Lump and said I would probably need a new operation. I was to come back tomorrow and not to worry. No worries – no problem but my shoulder and left side feel like they are trying to start their own separatist movement. She cleaned and dressed the first incision, and tried to remove the patchwork of gluey patches which had accumulated around my shoulder.

I snuggled into my kurta and went for a chai at the “Tibet Bakery and Cafe”. A tiny wooden box next to Delek Hospital. With a counter full of freshly baked 'muffins', which were actually warm balls of doughnut dough and incredibly good. I dipped one in my chai, which was actually a cup of hot milk with a floating Teatly Tea bag swimming around inside. I thought of my brother-in -law and how he would be simultaneously exalted to find his favourite band of tea and horrified to see it in a soup of milk. It was great.

Carrying my arm back up the hill, I found a monk appearing from the bushes. In his broken English he managed to reply to my queries by pointing into the bush, and saying 'up' and 'shorter'. A short cut to Dharamasala. It was only a few days ago I had been reading an email from a missed friend. He was talking about 'silence' and how he was surrounded by it. I replied that in India, silence was difficult to find, unless of course you found yourself on the back of a Royal Enflield bike, lost in Kashmir, in thick fog, coming down an impromptu mountain and with no brakes. However, this morning, following the monk of few words short cut, I found silence:

A stone path, slippy with moss and moisture. Lined with wet green grass and bushes pushing out tiny wild flowers which were all the shades between orange and red - or do I mean pink and yellow? Nature's mandalas, constantly changing colours. Water was flowing down into an skinny stream, pulled by gravity and undeterred by the walking rubber dams of the soles of my boots. I tried to listen to the silence. To stop the multitude of different and simultaneous thoughts inside my head. My arm was throbbing and it wasn't long before I realised that in Kolkata my arm would hurt far less. Here in the beauty and silence of nature, the burning of the small hole under my arm seemed greater than I know it would if surrounded by death, destitute and survivors of diseases so massive they would hurt just to see. Here, in the hills of northern India, like in all the other places where it is easier to look inside rather than out, the tiny temporary superficial pain is dominating my day, because relative to the luxury and beauty and self indulgence which I am surrounded by it feels far worse than when compared to gaping holes and deathly disease.

Eventually the silence turned into noise, and the nature surrounding my body began to soothe my mind. The same calls of a bird which I remember listening to in the hills in Scotland, the trickle of the water as it a washed the stones slippy and fell down the hill, the rustles of invisible creatures as they jumped through the leaves. The air above was filled with the silent soaring of birds with large extended wings. I tried to remember Bruno's birds of prey identification lesson. I couldn't, so I just watched as they 'floated' rather than 'flew' and circled and then rose with seemingly no effort apart from just 'being'. The views at each corner were stunning, and the valley mist provided an inaccurate 'escape', hiding the shapes of the town of Dharamasala in the distance and replacing them with the depths of my imagination. The damp air felt fresh and cold, and despite the wild life around me, for the first time in a long time I really felt alone. With each step I listened, let the thoughts rise and drift and once again felt the power of life around me and my thanks to be part of it. As I walked further towards the top of the hill the noise of nature was mixed with a regular 'ding' of a prayer wheel from an invisible monastery, identifiable only by the waving colours of the prayer flags hanging camouflaged in distant trees. I climbed up the rocky path, gradually leaving the flowers, grass and tress behind me and joined the pilgrim circuit which leads to Mcleod Ganj. An old couple marched determinedly past me, whispering Om Mani Padme Hum – Love and Compassion for all.

Forgive me for such a self indulgent blog. Free Tibet! And Happy Birthday.