The South Asian Men

My top three favorite things about South Asia men:

1) The T-Shirts: South Asian men recycle shirts from the West with phrases they either can read and find hilarious or have truly no understanding as to their meanings.

Examples: 

"Behind Every Man is  Scared Woman"

I'm sorry what? Who even made that shirt to begin with?

Or

"Beer is proof that God exists" 

Are we talking about God as in Yahweh or God as in Ganesh? I'm pretty sure the Elephant headed child had little to do with the fermentation of wheat. 

My favorite is: 

"I don't even want to be famous" 

OK great, glad we got that settled. 

2) The lack of a superego: 

Walking the streets of South Asia is always a game of Frogger, but not always just with cars. Things, liquids, "other" could fly in your face at any minute - you're never fully in the clear. See men in South Asia have this thought that their every whim, their every inclination is their right to fulfill. Some of their habits include relieving themselves in the middle of the road, spitting out their dip from the side of the car, scratching and bathing in inappropriate places, sleeping on the sidewalk, burping in your face, and picking their nose right before they get in your auto. These tendencies to satisfy their every basic, ape-like desire is exactly why trafficking is rampant in these parts. 

3) The Poses:

Visualize a short, skinny teenage looking man with silver bracelets, gold rings on every finger and a popped collar.  His fake, gold trimmed aviators are twice the size of his face and he is leaning up on the side of a wall with one foot popped and his arms sassily folded across his pregnant-like potbelly. As you walk by he doesn't whistle but rather creates a sucking motion from the back of his teeth, which is so much worse. Everyone once in a while he gives out an "o wow," which he thinks is a full-proof tactic. You turn to give him a scowl but instead you have to chuckle because the wall he's leaning on is a massive poster of a ripped, Caucasian Abercrombie Model in a similar pose; and the juxtaposition is just too much. 

So yes, living here can be infuriating and hazardous, but every once in awhile God's Grace is truly sufficient and it becomes simply comical. 

My little mountain village in the Himalayas

Near the Nepal/ Sikkim border is a small little mountain village called Kalimpong about 1600 meters into the Himalayas. Most know little other than it's home to beautiful orchid gardens.

The town consists of one main road connecting two adjacent peaks. It never snows and remains a cool breeze in the summer. While technically Kalimpong is part of West Bengal, it is closer in proximity and culture to Nepal, However the locals don’t really like associating themselves with either country, calling themselves Gorkhland, meaning hill people.

It was this little paradise mountain escape where I spent my Easter.

We left for the weekend of my dreams on Wednesday, March 26, which also happened to be the Hindu festival of Holi.

(My description of Holi could be a blog post in of itself, so I’ll try to keep it brief. Basically Holi is a festival of colors. The entire country buys colored powder and squirt guns, and pelts each other with “Holi” water. It is a bizarre experience and probably the most unsanitary tradition I have encountered to date.) 

Even though we were flying out to Kalimpong on Holi, I refused to pass up the incredible photo op. So I woke up early morning like a kid on Christmas and walked out to the nearest market. The streets were empty. No cars, no buses, no autos. Literally everything was eerily quiet besides the Chawallas who had switched to selling powder for the day. My friend and I met up in Gariahut and started chatting with a man at a nearby stall. I tried asking him various questions regarding the spiritual implications of Holi, but he of course had no idea what I was talking about and instead demonstrated how to throw the powder by rubbing it all over my face. First came the pink powder, then the green, and the red. By this time some street children decided to join in. Basically it was a great Holi experience and I was pleased to experience a couple hours of it, go home, shower, and the escape the rest.

 

The next day, after flying and driving up the mountain, we awoke in a village of flowers and smiling faces and headed out for our trek up the mountain. We were told the night before that it was a ‘leisurely,’ hour-long stroll to the viewpoint at one of the peaks. However, we underestimated hill tribe people and they way overestimated us. Long story short, we were dying. Two hours later and ten pounds lighter we made it to the top! And it was a spectacular view.

There we met up with a Swedish Christian biker who lived in Kolkata as a missionary before marrying a woman from Kalimpong, moving and starting a paragliding company. At about 1800 meters up the Himalayas I jumped off a cliff and soared above the tiny hill village as the crisp mountain air whooshed against my face. God’s glorious creation was my backdrop and it truly felt like I was casually lounging on heavenly clouds watching the meaningless bustle of everyday life from a world away. The man to my back tapped me on the shoulder as we caught a lift high into the sky, “Would you like to do acrobatics?” he asked. I laughed, “Duh!” Then suddenly he jerked us to the right and we spiraled downward. The falling pit in my stomach reached the tip of my head. The mountains blurred together and my sight started to fade. Suddenly we pulled out and landed softly on a cricket field as village children ran toward us to meet the people who had fallen from the sky.

The day after we awoke to a text message from a coworker who explained that she coincidently grew up in a nearby village and was headed back for an Easter weekend. She asked if we would like to join her family for lunch before we traveled up to a different mountain town called Darjeeling. Spontaneously we accepted and after a morning of fishing, hopped in a trendy public jeep and zipped along the narrow roads blasting fuzzy American top-40-music. We arrived in her small village market 15 minutes ahead of schedule and started the 30-minute trek up the mountain to her home. The roads stopped and the only way up was a windy, slippery, rugged path, which literally lead us to the very top. Huffing and puffing we continued to climb, cracking jokes about how she must have been in such shape growing up and how impressed we were that she actually went to school every day. Then finally, we reached. Her home is perched on a sheer cliff, over looking at least three other villages in the surrounding valleys. But the most interesting part of the day was sitting on pride rock, which protruded above the pine forests that engulfed her village, hearing tales of her childhood. She spent the first half of her life without gas or electricity, and had to climb down the mountain 40 minutes every day in the dangerous monsoon rains. Her family faced the very real danger of leopards that used to prowl the area and disease without proper emergency systems. Her life was far from easy; in fact it was storybook hard. But this wasn’t some girl from a world vision campaign; this was my close friend, a coworker and a peer. She made something of herself, and seeing her upbringing that day made me realize just how blessed I am to work with people like Anju. She is yet another hero in my midst.

Because of our spontaneous detour up the mountain we didn’t arrive back into Kalimpong until 6pm, which is midnight in village terms. Our cab driver suddenly decided he didn’t want to take us anymore, leaving us stranded with no hotel and no other options. We called Anju who promptly mobilized her family, aka everyone in the village, to find a solution. The result was magnificent. The funniest, mullet haired hipster Nepali man showed up with a Jesus van. He and his friend again blasted American Pop the entire way, probably enjoying it more than we were, which is saying a lot. The classic moments came when the car got stuck on an incline because the young driver was dancing at the wheel and the car stalled. We had to get out and run up the hill, laughing hysterically while trying to breathe. The laughing continued as we cracked jokes and we danced our way to Darjeeling under the illuminating moon. Then, without warning, they pulled to the side of the road and announced we were to have a five-minute break and a proper dance party. So at 9pm, on the edge of a back hill Himalayan road, we danced to Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift as the tiny house lamps lining the mountains blended into the radiant starry filled sky.  I couldn’t have imagined a more dream-like scenario. Reluctantly we all piled back into the car and continued on our way. 

Seeing as this post is already embarrassingly long, I shall keep my description of the next two days brief.  The most notable event was my time in the tea gardens. Those of you who have heard of Darjeeling tea will understand a bit of what I am saying. But the reality is I can’t write down just how splendid the tea tasted, smelled, and looked. After tea tasting eleven different brands, flushes, and colors, I started to recognize the quality leaves, which were picked higher up on the leaf and the more bitter leaves closer to the stem. The good tea would blend impeccably with the hot water and slowly slide down your throat with an almost soft and smooth-like quality. The other tea would leave a spoiled aftertaste.

But the true splendor came in the gardens, which covered every inch of every unoccupied space of those mountains. Small bundle of bushes stretched across the rolling hills as far as the eye could see. And tea filled the air. I spent almost a full day walking through those gardens, watching women pick the leaves one-by-one, hunched back and sweating into the very baskets they lugged from bush to bush. At one point, I just collapsed in prayer and journaled; the majesty of it all was too much to bare unaided by the Holy Spirit. I saw God in a new light that day. I prayed I could fear God the way I feared those mountains, which was rooted in love, awe, and trepidation.

Then, of course, the spell was broken as I was jerked back into reality by mild food poisoning after eating at a five star, rather expensive and reputable hotel for dinner. I completed my time in Gorkhaland with a bang as I remembered that I was still in India.