Diamonds and Colour

"It is better to be a diamond with a flaw than a perfect pebble."

- Confucius

India a diamond in the rough? Perhaps still in the bituminous stage, but a country that holds immense and valuable potential. There is certainly enough external pressure to facilitate such metaphoric-metamorphic transformation. Some - quite friendly, others - decidedly less so. Regardless of the analogical affinity, India certainly resembles a diamond in the cartographical sense. Consult your maps.

Thus far, I've found the extreme facets of this glimmering jewel to be the most precious. Jaiselmer's fantastical desert citadel in the west, the marine balms and roiling surf in the Keralan south, and most recently the mountainous splendour of the east. Darjeeling gleams. Clear, cold, and vibrant. A former colonial hill station, it lies perched on the cusp of the Himalayas. Punctuating a tentacular and terrestial isthmus, it has some pretty funky neighbors quadrangulating its periphery - Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.

Darjeeling is rightfully famous for its sloping and precipitous tea plantations. The world record for the most expensive tea is held by some leaves grown on the local Castleton Estate - a bidder paid $220/kg. For my primitively unrefined palate, tea is tea is tea. Okay at times, but I'm a devoted member of the arabica cult. An American tradition. As they prefer Darjeeling tea in the House of Windsor, I intend to bring some along next month armed for barter. Crushed leaf soup for a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale. Anglophilic gustations have awoken.

While on the topic of libations, I sampled some 'tongba' last week. Only made in the eastern Himalayas, tongba is the beer of the region. For aspiring brewmasters: millet is mixed with water and 'special' yeast and cooked for two hours, then strained in an airtight container for a few days. Tongba is served in a bamboo container, hot water is added, and after waiting a few minutes for the juices to flow, it is sipped through a bamboo straw. Pretty decent as far as warm millet goes but a dreg-like facsimile of true barley nectar.

I've always had a thing - or a 'thang' for you G-funk crowd -concerning altitudes. Maybe its the expanse of perspective or relative dearth of humanity. While not a card carrying misanthrope, I do value a personal fortress of solitude at times. India's compressive density (better measured in torrs rather than a census) precipitates such occassions. [Thoreau - "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion."] My guest house was ideal: a thurible of serenity in the domain of sky. Peering over the Darjeeling valley, it was reached by an uphill trek that would tire a Sherpa. Mount Crumpet sans any grinches. Rather, a delightful Tibetan family and a restaurant claiming pastoral panoramas that rival the Rainbow Room's vaunted cityscape. Location - location - location.

I always found the view from my Kapiolanian sky palace beyond parallel. An erroneous presupposition. For a dollar per night (and the mountain goat ridge hike) I was economically afforded breathless rapture - the spectacular vision of a 100 mile stretch of the Himalayan massifs. A glimpse of Everest's apex sweeping to the enormous grandeur of Kanchenjunga ('Big Five-Peaked Snow Fortress'), the third highest mountain in the world. Cool Moe Dee.

Met an extremely beautiful lady amidst the rhododendron blooms of Darjeeling. A rarefied chimmera worthy of lyric ballads. Twinkling eyes of liquid smoke, lithe, graceful, a veritable Venus incarnate. A miracle of consonance and harmony. Her concupiscent saunter a motion of primal pulchritude, her gaze an effulgence of the light divine. I was too shy to approach her. Warned by eighties pop music, "Watch out boy she'll chew you up ... she's a maneater." I kept my distance. The teeth of a full-grown Snow Leopard, while pretty savage pearls of carnivorous dentition, left me quite reticent. In truth, I be spookified.

Visiting the Snow Leopard Breeding Program became a daily part of my morning constitutionals. The endangered felines number less than five thousand. Absolutely - positively - positutely gorgeous creatures.

Always on the prowl for things to celebrate, the Hindu festival of Holi rocked my little world. A joyous carnival exalting water, springtime, color, and love. Held on the vernal equinox it wells from a playful origin: the princess Radha and her ladies-in-waiting emptied gallons of coloured liquid on Lord Krishna, and he, in turn, chased the adoringly flirtatious, nubile maidens with a 'pickkari' (an antiquitous version of the super-soaker). The streets and faces of Darjeeling exploded in a profusion of pigment. Children enthusiastically giggled at the chance to paint my white tableau. I was a walking palette. I bought some purple and set about annointing everyone in the hue of emperors and gods of the gridiron (Viking warriors - for you wayward heathens). I even tagged a few unwary cows.

If Hinduism confounds you, take comfort. It is is a gloriously whacked belief system that defies comprehension or definition in any specific sense. Some argue that it is in reality an association of religions. It has no founder, central authority, or hierarchy. It is not a proselytizing religion. You can't be converted; to be a Hindu you must be born one (Mom sighs in relief). While Hinduism often appears as a complex mix of contradictory beliefs and multiple gods, in theory it happily incorporates all forms of belief and worship.

Brief overview: essentially, all Hindus believe in Brahman, the One without a second, without attributes. Brahman is eternal, uncreated, and infinite; everything that exists emmanates from Brahman and will ultimately return to it. The multitude of gods and goddesses are merely manifestations - knowable aspects of the formless phenomenon - and one may pick freely and choose among them. Although beliefs and practices vary widely, there are several unifying factors. These include common beliefs in reincarnartion, karma (conduct or action), dharma (the cute sitcom star or appropriate behavior for one's station in life), and in the caste system. Hindus believe earthly life is cyclical; you are born again and again (a process known as samsara), the quality of these rebirths being dependent upon your karma in previous lives.

There is no escaping your behavior. Living a dharmic life and fulfilling your duty will enhance your chances of being born into a higher caste and better circumstances. Rebirth can go either way (prince or toad) but its only as a human that one can gain sufficient self-knowlege to escape the cycle of reincarnartion and achieve moksha (liberation). Traditionally, women are unable to achieve moksha. The Vedas are quite sexist on that point: make me some pie and hope for a Y chromosome on your next samsaric spin.

The Hindu pantheon is prolific; some estimates put the total of deities at 330 million! All are regarded as a manifestation of Brahman, and the particular object of veneration and supplication is often a matter of personal choice or tradition at a local or caste level. Brahman is often described as having three facets, the trimurti: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. A newly accepted deity is Santoshi Mata - women appeal to her for success in the modern urban world or in the acquisition of modern ammenities. Devotees fast on Friday in her honor. Absorbed into the pantheon as a bona fide goddess, her origins seem a little sketchy to me. She's a figure created in a recent movie, the Bollywood film Jai (Hail). What!?! Bombay cinema reminds me of a random splice job using The Sound of Music and Enter the Dragon. Siskelian critique notwithstanding, it spawned a goddess. On an oblique tangent ... Uma Thurman's father is a professor of Asian Studies at Columbia University. Her unique appelate was chosen from the Hindu scriptures. Fitting.

I'm being followed. Was it Ozzy Osborne who chimed the melody, "Paranoia will destroy ya"? Three years ago I was tracked down in Bankok and just lately in Delhi. It's Clinton. Mom probably sent him. His recent tour of chaos central seemingly went quite well. The region's a delicate powderkeg and yesterday's parley in Pakistan was nicely done. Our tides of favor ripple toward the dawn quite perceptibly.

Silver - gold - diamonds. For those intent on baking a cake, my golden birthday is Friday. I prefer chocolate or the ice cream variety. I'll be floating on the SILVER MINE, a houseboat in the northern Himalayas nestled in the vale of Kashmir. Time to visit the most lustrous and fabled facet of India's twinkling diamond. The word 'mine' represents both a weapon of surreptitious carnage and a source of immense value. Apt for Kashmir. I leave in the morning.

- ala Kerouac's tome ... your DHARMA BUM

P.S. As I conclude this epistle twilight fades on the twenty-sixth of March. A day of import in the annals of American poetry; the world first welcomed Robert Frost and sadly bid farewell to Walt Whitman. The New England yankee offered sound advice when choosing our course in life:

" ... I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference."

More importantly, papa Walt showed us how to walk it:

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever
I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself
am good fortune.
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no
more, need nothing.
Done with indoor complaints, libraries,
querulous criticisms,
Strong and content, I travel the open road."