The good old times

Dedicated to those who know the muffin man.

Check out the website at www.whatgoogleknows.com. Genius.

(via Hanif)

The Story of Tsondue

A few months ago, I went to Dharamsala.

Dharamsala is a town in Himachal Pradesh, North India. It is quite a spread town, and it looks more like a bunch of villages climbing over the mountains. One of them, is McLeod Ganj. McLeod Ganj is a place full of Western people dressed in funny ways, but that is another story. For this story what matters is that in McLeod Ganj there are a bunch of buddhist monastery plus one, called Namgyal, that has a nice organic café which claims to serve the best pizza in town. But that is not, or not only, why Namgyal monastery is famous. It is where the Dalai Lama lives, that is why it is famous, and that also explains why there are so many buddhist monasteries around.

Like Kirti Monastery, where I met Tsondue.

He looks just like any other monk – his head is shaved, he wears burgundy robes, and carries a rosary – if it wasn’t for the intensely serious and yet very serene quality of his gaze, which he directs at the floor most of the time.  He is sitting in a room with three younger monks. As they talk, he listens very carefully and writes in a thick notebook. When it is his turn to speak, everyone in the room stands up, clasps their hands to offer their blessing, and leaves.

As he begins to talk, his voice is low and husky.
These are the first words that he has spoken in four years. He has taken a vow of silence and is going to resume it at the end of our conversation. He speaks slowly, stressing words with his hand gestures; every time he completes a sentence, he smiles and with a slight bow, gives thanks for listening.

Tsondue is forty-two years old, but he looks somewhat older – not in his body so much as in his attitude. He was born in Golog, in the Amdo province of Tibet, where he lived with his family of nomad shepherds. He lost his mother at the age of eight and his father when he was sixteen. Left alone, he followed his nomadic tribe for three more years before he joined the Kirti Monastery in Nawa. It was there, at the age of nineteen, that he was given, for the very first time in his life, the chance to study. He couldn’t read, nor write. As he entered the monastery, he was supposed to spend the first ten years of his monastic life studying; “ten years”, he repeats, with a hint of excitement still in his eyes.
But things went differently.
In 1989, four years after he began his life at the monastery, protests arose in Lhasa and spread all over the Tibetan territory. With three other monks Tsondue planned to take part in these protests, but when he was caught putting up a poster concerning the Dalai Lama, he was arrested.
He was interrogated by ten policemen and was asked to give the names of his comrades in the protest. He refused, and was subsequently beaten and tortured for  his noncompliance: his hands, arms and back still display signs of that time. While beating him, he recalls, the policemen would tease him saying that the Dalai Lama would definitely come and rescue someone as brave as him. The mocking, even more than the physical pain, was unbearable and he fainted several times. After a month of interrogation, he was given his sentence: he had to spend two years in the Nawa Prison.

In jail, he would share his life with Chinese prisoners, most of them coming from different areas of the country. Since their families couldn’t bring them clothes or food, he would share his with them. After a lifetime spent living completely separate from the Chinese population, he made his first Chinese friends within the solidarity of sharing the same pain.
After being released, Tsondue came back to the monastery, but was kept under close surveillance. His room was routinely searched: in 1994, a picture of His Holiness was found amongst his belongings and he was asked to report to the police station the following morning.

That night, alone and without informing anyone in the monastery, he escaped into the mountains of Golog, where he stayed in hiding from the policemen sent after him for six months thereafter. Finally, on the night of new year, he escaped to Lhasa and there, together with a friend, paid for a guide to walk them to and across the Nepali border and later took refuge in India.
Since then, he says shaking his head in sorrow, he has never gone back home.

But his feelings are still of hope.
At the time of his torture, he got the point where he wanted to kill those who arrested him, tortured him, and made him leave his casa, and when he left Tibet, he was still full of anger.

But then he listened to the Dalai Lama’s teachings, and he understood: there is no good in harming, on any side.
He has forgiven everyone.
He now has compassion for those who hurt him because he sees that they too are victims, just as he and his people are; victims of conditions, of ignorance, of politics. He now knows that common people – both Chinese and Tibetan – are not responsible for his tragedy, and he prays for a future in which politics would move in the direction where people already are: the place where coexistence is natural. He prays for the moment when Chinese and Tibetans will resume the history of brotherhood that they built in centuries past, living one next to the other.

With a last bow, Tsondue smiles, stands up and walks to the door. Before getting out he stops and looks into my eyes: “Tell my story”, he asks, “please”. Then he adds: “I don’t want whoever listens to take my side because as long as opposed sides exist, peace will not exist. It is necessary that everyone understands, for himself, which is the road to truth and liberty.”. He nods his head slightly and, walking slowly, goes away.

For the past four years, Tsondue has only spoken once, to tell this story.
The rest of his days have been spent, and will be, in a perpetual silent prayer for peace.

Now that I think about it, neither am I.

Web Without Sense, go check it. It makes so much sense.

(via Fabrica Blog through Ann).

Ordering

I just had one of those moments when you NEED to put everything in its right place.
So I created a new blog, “Del(h)ightful Del(h)irium”, where I will be posting about my Indian life.
“My India -A to Z-” is already there, because that’s it right place.
The address is www.lascrittoria.com/delhirium, check it out.

Oh, and keep checking here, I am not closing “non sa/non risponde”: I don’t throw away, I just order.

Some Time in India

I’ve been here for the past two weeks. Two weeks of sort of empty days. Empty, because almost all I have been up to has been watching the painters, the electrician, the plumber and the cleaning guy getting our house together. Sort of, because doing that is a full time job. You sit from 10 am to 6 pm and make sure that the workers actually do work. You stare at them. You make them chai – tea with milk and lot of sugar – thrice a day, otherwise you just stare at them.

The best were the painters. We hired them and three days later than the agreed date two painters arrived. One knew how to paint and the other knew how to speak English. For a day and a half it was the two of them, then three more decided – we never requested more painters – to show up. Which would make the job much faster, you’d think as we thought. Not the case. Most of the times, out of five guys, one would paint, one clean, one hold the ladder of the painter, one give direction and one, finally, simply watching. Quite an amusing view. When there was nothing more to clean the cleaning guy would stop. And then the painting one would stop,because, you know, paint needs to dry before another coat. You could propose them to begin painting another wall, in the mean time, but the english-speaking-guy would reply to your suggestion with one of the local most favorite sentence: after some time. Five minutes, half an hour, a day after, they would actually begun painting another wall.

After some time is more than an excuse for being lazy. It is one of the most popular local sentences and I am under the impression that simple statement unveils a whole philosophy of vague appointments. Appointments with things happening. In a western country you would aim to get stuff under control, to begin with future. You would say I will paint that tomorrow, or the lamp you want will arrive in a week or the person you are looking for will be back tonight at eight. Here they just say anything would happen after some time. Which is, if you think about it, very exact.

And when I ask – I have a lot to learn – how much time I always get the answer I need: one day, one week, three hours. But the answer is delivered by an half-laughing face, the face of someone that just found yet another one of those who want to find out how much time is some time.

Yes, I am fine.

Updates coming soon, meanwhile you can entertain yourself as I do by simply clicking here. Look for Mauja Hi Mauja, it’s The song, here.

En Route

Leaving tomorrow, destination Indira Gandhi International Airport – New Delhi.

My new address will be in New Delhi, Chittaranjan Park, CR Park for locals.

I might even happen to meet myself while exploring the streets, yet please don’t worry: that’s not the reason I am moving to India.

I can always pretend it’s a journal

I am bad at keeping journals, but good at keeping things.

Lately I have been cleaning up my room from the stuff I’ve accumulated in the past six years. It was a lot of stuff. So much that trying to decide what to keep and what not wasn’t even hard: throwing away any object I had no idea how I got in contact with was enough of a choice criterion. Whatever survived that is now mostly packed and safe in my grandparents’ place. The price of leaving: dropping all your memories in humid garages.

Of all the things I found, a few say a lot about me. And they remind me of what I have done, where, when, with whom.

ONE: Notes

I packed eleven A4 folders, each one of which had been chosen for having the nicest cover available, filled up with notes. Each one of them contains note of 4/5 university course for a total of 5 academical years and 50 courses. All these notes are written with a blue fountain pen and the subject of every lesson is written in capital red letters.

I have been absent from a maximum of ten lessons in total. Yes, I do like school.

TWO: Cinema Tickets

I have been keeping cinema tickets since highschool. Until a few years ago tickets wouldn’t say, as they do now, the day and the movie, so I wrote the indication by hand, with a pencil. Now things evolved and you can totally use your ticket as a valid alibi, I guess.

I have counted 195 cinema tickets, which means that since highschool, and without counting film festivals, I have spent a minimum of 12 days in cinemas (considering the length of 90′ per movie). Yet, for some reason, it doesn’t seem enough.

THREE: Train Tickets

I have been seriously keeping every single train ticket I have used since the beginning of university. As for today I can count a total of 557 train tickets, divided in:

447 general tickets, 20 cm lenght;
75 kilometrical tickets, 10 cm lenght;
9 regional tickets, 11 cm lenght;
4 receipts for tickets bought on the train, 15 cm length;
2 tickets bought on the train, 15 cm length;
2 intercity tickets bought on the train, 16 cm length;
7 ticketless receipts, 15 cm length.

Which means if I put one after the other, in a line, all my tickets, I get to a length of 100,3 meters.

Now I have no idea why this information should be relevant; it is, though, to me.

Aftermath

Meet the World

This project by (Joao Roque, Luis Silva Dias and Icaro Doria) is quite old (2005) but I just found it and it reminded me how powerful communication can be when it is done with intelligence and creativity.

In this post-graduation confusion I thought this deserved a post.

More flags here.