Karma Contradictions

I have noticed beggars today. More than usual. I don't know if there actually are more or whether I have my eyes more open today.

During my walk into Mcleod Ganj this morning, I stopped to watch the lady leper (who ate my flower) try to tip over a garbage can as it was too high for her to search inside. It was difficult for her because she is old and because she wobbles on her stumps of feet, and because her hands don't work so well without fingers. I hesitated about whether I should help her tip over the garbage can... In retrospect perhaps I should have 'helped' her by buying her breakfast.

Sitting on the side of the road, level with the smelly choking exhausts of the zooming taxis and decrepit buses sit her 'family': Two young women, both with bandages holding together the remains of their fingers. I don't know whether the women are old leper lady's daughters or just her companions, but they appear as a family, sharing their 'earnings' or 'rummagings' and every day they huddle together stretching their eaten hands upwards while remaining invisible to the pedestrians they wave along, in their parallel dimension.

As I turned the corner into the main market I had to side step a Poor Man. I don't know if the Poor Man was a leper or a beggar, or both or neither because I felt uncomfortable to stare. However, I know that he was poor as he was squatting pillaging through a soggy cardboard box of rotten vegetables. The Poor Man was picking out the most choice of the decaying mush.

I continued to trace the route which I have walked nearly every day for three months, and before the old mad but beautiful man has a chance to shout his usual “GOOR MORNING MADAME!!” at me I raise my hands in Namaste and sing across the street, “Good Morning, Good Morning!” He beams me the biggest smile and laughs. The old mad but beautiful man does not even lift his tin to me; as if my greeting is enough to feed his empty stomach and to save him from the cannibalistic disease which is slowly eating his flesh.

On my way down the steep steps to yoga – on my way down to worship the divine within us all, connecting each individual and the self with the self and with the universe; on my way to strengthen the energy of my healthy body and to balance my mind - a young leper man stopped to ask me how I was. I know the man. I 'know' that he speaks excellent English and that when he speaks he speaks truthfully. I know this because he told me openly that he is here (like the Nepali waiters) to “work the season”. The young leper man does not lie and instead he tells me that he is entitled to the 'free' treatment for the lepers, but I already know from my own investigation that this 'free' treatment is very difficult to access unless you live isolated from 'people' in a colony of lepers. I also know as the saying goes, nothing is for free, and at a cost of 50 rupees per injection this young leper man would rather save the money to help his 'growing' son rather than to try to save his 'disappearing' body. The young leper man's son (who is six years old) lives in Utter Pradesh with his mother, and this is why he as the father and the husband he would prefer to 'work' to earn money for them. However, as a leper he can earn no money in Utter Pradesh which is one of India's poorest states which a shortage of karma earning tourists. I like the young leper man's honesty, and usually he declines my offer of food because his persistent fever takes away his appetite. When I offered him paracetamol to reduce his fever he also declines, saying that he would rather try to save money for his family than to 'waste' it on an appetite.

This morning I looked into his young wrinkled face, buried under a brown wooly hat and perturding from a dirty worn blanket, and replied to his greeting: “Very well thank you” and before I could stop the automatic response I continued with, “How are you?” The young leper man, wrapped up in dirty bandages, his eyes blurred from fever, his body painfully being eaten a little more every day answered: “I am fine. Thank you”.

I noticed so many beggars today that after teaching the free yoga class I asked all the freebies if they would give 'something' to someone they wouldn't usually. If for some reason they found it difficult to give to beggars then I asked them to check out the fancy new non-profit cafe just outside of the yoga shala. The new cafe has an open front, with a simple bench and wicker chairs giving it a sophisticated air; it sells a selection of teas, has freshly painted walls lined with beautiful photographs depicting Tibet – in Exile. And all of its 'profits' go to supporting the Tibet Rogpa, an NGO aimed to help support the transition of newly arrived Tibetan refugees settle into their life in exile.

Just outside of the shop sits a very very very old lady who perches half way on the road and half way in the gutter. She speaks no English, but calls to me 'Memsaab' as I approach. I feel my eyes try to avoid her and my ears wishing they could close. Memsaab is a term loaded with colonial legacy, “a word replete with rigid social class differentiation, a word denoting nothing but absolute dichotomy of high versus low social status, a word used to address masters”. It basically means, 'Female Master'. My diverted eyes can't help but see her bare feet, her wrinkled shins and one small shiny red tomato perched precariously in her lap. I try to disappear before her fading vision, and then I try to make the image of her disappear as fast as I walked past her reaching hands. Her image fuels my internal questions. She is still firmly in my mind. I imagine to her, I am just another Memsaab - a rich white woman who she has to plead and beg to while she keeps her eyes open for another escaped tomato.

Further along the road squat even more lepers with no fingers and no toes. They all clumsily clutch a stainless steel pot shaking it in front of the turned up noses of passersby. While I hesitate to give to one, feeling my own conscience debate that I will them have to give a few rupees to all, I often see a monk or a nun stop and fish around inside their robes and pull out not a coin but a note. And more often than not, I am facing this dilemma while I am on my way to the 'health food shop' to stock up on 'natural probiotics' and 'spirulina' just to try to 'prefect' my health. As I walk along during my average day I also see the lepers line up at the momo stalls waiting for a plate of hot Tibetan fare. I wonder if they pay for them with their hard earned money? Or I wonder if despite the differences in nationality, culture, language and religious beliefs the smartly dressed refugees who serve them do so because of their belief in the cycle of Karma. I wonder why I asked my fellow yogi's and yogini's to “keep the karma going” when I don't believe that these poor hungry eaten people in any way 'deserve' this brutal rebirth. And I wonder all of this while I sit inside a beautiful Tibetan cafe, watching the mountains and drinking my second pot of herbal tea. And I wonder because I have the luxury to indulge in thought as I just sit and feel the warmth of the sun on my nourished and healthy body. And I wonder if I could smile and laugh and look someone living in another dimension in the eyes and say “I am fine. Thank you”?

Forgive me please - the young wrinkled man - for using your photo. But your spirit is so powerful that I wanted to try and share it; To open Eyes that otherwise cannot see yours.

Tibet Rogpa: http://www.tibetrogpa.org/AboutRogpa.php

A very interesting site on the use of language in Hindi: http://www.linguistik-online.de/21_04/pande.html

Om Shanti

Today I bought myself a yoga bag. Its a beautiful light blue – the colour of the sky on a sunny day. It has the motif of 'Om Shanti' printed on the front. My yoga mat (which is also blue and has clouds and rainbows on – thanks Super Yogi Chef) fits perfectly inside. I bought my new yoga mat from a small Tibetan shop. The proceeds go to supporting Tibetan political prisoners, so I didn't feel so bad about spending 380 rupees/ £4.50 (the equivalent to what I spend on three nights accommodation). Indeed I didn't feel so 'bad' until I walked outside and handed seven rupees to a Beggar with eaten fingers and eaten toes.

What hypocritical lives we lead. What gives us the right to think we deserve our fortune? To spend money to satisfy our whims, while others Struggle just to Survive? And then we feel like martyrs when we make small sacrifices. Or find excuses to keep our eyes closed by telling ourselves that we 'can't help everyone' or ' the beggars make plenty of money so why should we give them more'? Why give more small change to a young man who has already lost his family through a disease as well as his fingers and toes when Others may give him their small change?
What feeds this attitude of dis-attachment, superiority, ignorance? Where we can live happily in a world of parallels – the 'lucky' juxtaposed against the 'unlucky'?

Is it religion? Is it that we feel fulfilled by doing a Service to God rather than by doing a Service to a fellow living creature that allows us to draw a line? Is it this 'disconnectedness' from our blatant interconnectedness with each other that makes us believe the suffering of others is nothing to do with us? Or conversely, is it a belief in 'Karma' which gives us the excuse to stay blinded? So as we make time in our busy schedules to pick and choose the selected 'Western Friendly' teachings of the Dalai Lama, such as the 'Art of Happiness,' our consciouses are smoothed by the idea that we have each been fed a fate which we 'deserve'? That leprosy or any other debilitating disease is a consequence of our own actions and therefore we can let the lepers live with their 'punishment'. That is of course if we even find the time to hear or to challenge our consciousnesses. However, this attitude would suggest that we would all feel grateful and satisfied with our 'lucky' lives..

Alternatively, perhaps our dis-attachment and view of compassion, it is a reflection of our consumer society which is becoming Increasingly Individualised and Isolated? Or even a continuation of colonalism which allows us (or in this case Me) to walk to the street and feel a flash of pity before continuing in my bubble of self assurance?

Anyway, apologises for using the plural to express my frustrations. I guess it makes me feel less heartless if I include 'You' within the same questions I am being forced to ask myself.

Om Shanti Indeed.

A Beautiful Flower

Today – as if left over from a dream - I found a beautiful flower. It was already picked and just waiting to be loved a second time. It looked like a rose but a rose without thorns. It had soft petals, but many of them, row after over lapping row. It had a sweet scent, but hidden within its coloured pleats; like a ballerina hidden within the folds of her intricate tutu. I stroked the flower, and brushed its smoothness against my dry flesh. Its touch felt strange to my skin – almost too soft and too tender.

I felt sad to waste the beautiful flower. I wished that somehow I could preserve the flower, to take it home with me and to look at it every day and to smell it every day. But even as I thought these thoughts, the flower did what was natural – for without its roots and without the life force of the water and soil it had already began to fade. In my hands its soft petals were too delicate to last; the petals were already turning outwards, as if making a final bow to a mesmorised audience after an incredible performance. I felt sad to think of the flower starting to wilt and then to disintegrate and then to disappear.

As I was thinking these thoughts I felt a pair of eyes staring into me. I looked up to see an old and wrinkled lady smile - at me. Her face was creased upon itself, her brown eyes peeking first through her sunken face and then through a pair of crooked specs. Her hair white like snow, and her golden nose stud looking too large for her shrunken nose. I thought I knew the lady but I couldn't quite place her face; that is until I saw her hands – her hands which were not there – the hands of a leper.

The old ladies fingers had been eaten, along with her toes, and part of her feet. As she smiled at me, she was still being eaten – and this was how I recognised her. The old lady with eaten fingers and eaten toes was a beggar from the side of the road. But now she was not begging, she was simply smiling at me as I stared at the beautiful flower.

As instinctively as I had felt her eyes look into me, I found my arms reaching towards her, passing the beautiful flower into her hands without fingers. The old ladies smile spread across her face. The old lady with eaten fingers and eaten toes stopped staring at me, and instead she turned her attention to the delicate petals she was trying to balance in her hands without fingers.

Now it was my turn to watch her become mersmorised by the beauty of the rose. I watched as she brought the flower to her nose, but the old lady didn't stop to smell the sweet scent. Instead the old lady with no fingers and no toes took a bite out of the flower. She smiled at the flower which was half in her mouth and half in her eaten palms. She chewed its petals as if it were a succulent fruit and when she had finished chewing she bowed her head to take another bite.

I smiled, and then I laughed, and then I thought how perfect that the rose without thorns - with petals so smooth and so soft, with a colour so deep, and a scent so sweet - should not be wasted, and certainly never forgotten.