Masala Vagabond: Dinner with Guru-jis

Note: I made it safely back to the US, but will be retroactively posting the stories from my last few weeks in India.

The night before I left for retreat, Mittsu surprised me with a sudden invitation for dinner. Her (not so sly) questions about which types of food I like over the last few days had been something of an indicator, but I was pleased and honored by the invitation to infiltrate the private lives of my dear gurus by this visit to their home.

So at seven o'clock I found myself back at the thangka shop, chatting with Mittsu and the array of customers visiting her shop, giving each my personal thumbs-up for the quality of the paintings, the price of the paintings, and the choice of thangka. Every so often, Mittsu looks at me for help with translation, for over the last months I've grown comfortable with her particular style of broken English. “Very, very good. Many, many details,” becomes (with an addition of my own knowledge of the painting): “this is a very high quality thangka. Just look at the details and the gold work, made with real gold flakes. This one took the three of them two months to complete...” and yada, yada, yada. It's gotten to the point where people often ask me if I work at the shop, to which Mittsu enthusiastically replies, “yes!”

Customers cleared out and the streets darkening, we close up shop, finishing by piling stones and bricks over the cheap Indian made lock (which can be opened with just about anything hard and key-shaped) in a improvised sort of burglar-prevention system. With the shop as safe as it's going to get, we head down Bhagsu road and turn down a steep path to Amdo Village, in a small valley between Bhagsu and Mcleod.

It's my first trip to this village, an area mainly consisting of low-cost homes and rooms shared by Indian, Tibetan, Nepali, and Thaman families alike. As we walk, Mittsu greets friends of various ethnicities, then tells me in a hushed voice about them; they are primarily stories of generosity and community, such as “she took me to the hospital when I was sick,” or “they give us milk everyday.”

After a long row of rooms, we take off our shoes and enter one on the far end. It's a small room, not much more than 100 square feet, with two beds (one for Mittsu and her husband, the other for her brother), a small electric burner in the kitchen corner, and a small color television. The two men are already in the room, Sonam and Sonam, with one at the burner and the otherh pressing garlic in an improvised mortar and pestle. They serve me a glass of warm milk and continue to work as Mittsu and I watch the Tibetan/Nepali music video channel. A short while later, we all sit on one bed as I show them photos from home, Mittsu alternating between “very good,” “very nice,” and “veeeeeeerrrryy good.”

Dinner is served: the table between the two beds is absolutely full with enough food to feed dozens. The rice serving in itself is more than I can comfortably eat, but then comes the yak meat, carried down from Leh (further up in the mountains) by a family friend. Despite my Indian vegetarianism, I have to admit that yak meat is absolutely delicious, salty and less fatty than beef. Then there is enough fish to feed the family for several days, and a chicken dish that appears to have used an entire chicken. I'm convinced that, if beef were not illegal in Himachal Pradesh (even possessing beef means jail time, nevermind eating it), then there would have been an additional dish.

At the last minute, Sonam decides to bring out spoons for us, an indication that this really is a special event.

Dinner lasts for about three hours, and despite the huge servings, the piles of food show little signs of having been diminished (when I returned from retreat, ten days later, I had to ask if they were still eating these dishes. They weren't- but just barely). The whole family lines up to put on their shoes and walk me back to the road, past the most beautiful view in all of Dharamsala, and we part ways with a thankful bow in front of the thangka shop.

As I walk home, I feel incredibly honored. Not only did my friends welcome me into their small home, but they created a feast to celebrate the occasion despite their poverty (Mittsu once told me about the difficulty of affording rent in Amdo Village, approximately $20 a month). If I take anything from India, it is the knowledge that, if you open yourself, people (and the world) continue to astonish you.