Wherever You Go, Your Passions Are Close Behind

I've written a bit about liminality, that time between time when one is free from restrictive old social roles (but not quite defined into new ones yet). For me, this trip to India is the definition of liminality. No longer defined by what I was or what I will be, I've been free to explore whatever I want, to try new things, to define (or fail to define) myself as I see fit.

To a large degree, this is true. There are, however, things that follow you into your new role or non-role, things that perhaps can never leave you. For, you see, a few months into my time in India and I have found myself a full-time student and painter, a compulsive reader, and hell-bent on the accumulation of knowledge (in all of it's forms, whether true or not, real or not).

I spend more rupees on books then I do on food and drink (I believe I've bought about 15 here). Six days a week, I travel down to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives for a Tibetan Language class and a Buddhist philosophy class. But more about my life as a perpetual student later.

Over the course of the last five weeks, I've come to know a number of shopkeepers and hawkers simply through friendly proximity. So it will come as no surprise that, after over a month of passing her two to six times a day, I befriended a young and beautiful thongka painter called Mittsu.

You may remember her from an earlier blog, in which I described a thongka saleswoman of about my age whom I found to be so sweet and friendly that I did not have the heart to barter with her. Well, as it turns out, sometimes when you pay a little more, you get a lot in return.

Mittsu quickly became one of my favorite people in Mcleod: sweet and humble,, quick to laugh and easy to befriend. After some time, when I told her of my love for painting, she agreed to become (although in much more humble words) my thongka guru.

So nearly everyday I make my way down to her small road-side stand, and together we walk to her husband's shop/studio, a room which is about the size of my bathroom in Chandigarh covered with dozens of gorgeous paintings. She teaches me the technique and chats lightly in broken English as I practice; together we're making a yab-yum thangka, an image of the Buddha in a love-posture with White Tara. As I paint, she tells me about her family's flight from Tibet, her years in Nepal, her seven brothers and sisters, rocking as she giggles when I ask her if she will have so many children.

She's the kind of woman who, hearing children playing on the step of her shop, will go out to play with them and spoil them. She's the kind of woman whose face lights up when she learns that the English word "matches" is the same word that she has always been using, and moves delightedly as she lights a small fire on the hill by her stand to keep warm. She speaks simply and matter-of-factly of the loss of her country, and translates for me when trucks pass announcing candlelight vigils in the town square.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to learn the techniques of a dozen years of painting (she paints, usually, a minimum of twelve hours a day) in a few short weeks. Cloth is bought from the tailor and treated, then strung up on a wooden frame. Brush strokes, from the many types of techniques seen in a single thangka, must be careful and slow, creating a intricate piece of work which holds over a hundred hours of work (minimum). By painting a thangka, I achieve what hours on the meditation cushion cannot give to me: clarity of mind, calm, and a simple peace in which I can truly watch my thoughts.

I watch as a Westerner chooses a painting from Mittsu's stand, picky as I was when I bought my own. She agrees to buy, and just before giving the money, stops at another stand to look at another painter's pieces. I watch as sadness and worry cross Mittsu's face. Later, when I ask her about business, she confesses that she has only sold one painting this week. "In May, when more foreigners come..." she speculates, half-heartedly.

The next day, I tell her I want to buy our painting, but "you  must help me to finish it before I leave."  The smile was worth every rupee.

So every day, she and I sit cross-legged in the small shop, angling the easel and dabbing the brushes, mixing the paints, and floating in and out of meditative peace (sprinkled with laughs, stories, and chit-chat). Some of the best hours.

Crane 70 sits in the box of paints, amidst watercolors and true-gold paints, next to the uneaten chili pepper (at which she giggles when I ask her if we'll use it for painting).

Day by day, it feels as though I'm forming a little life here, a life outside my life, floating in time-out-of-time.