New Delhi (October 2-6, 2011) — It was pouring rain and the sun was shining at 5 PM when I finally realized that my taxi was waiting for me outside the gate at Khyentse Labrang. And that the man behind the wheel wasn’t the driver I’d arranged for. And that I wasn’t going to have a chance to say goodbye to a single soul. Even Ruplal who had been waiting with me suddenly disappeared. I felt emotional and unready to go so I ran across the courtyard and called up to Oddyana’s nanny something incomprehensible because even if I knew what I wanted to say and even if I’d said it in real English, she wouldn’t have understood. So it was a sort of wail and that worked. She called to Stephanie who was slashing fruits inside. Stephanie came out with her umbrella and gave me my one and only hug goodbye. It’s good I said goodbye to Rinpoche a few days earlier during a calm moment, not the last that I would see him before I left.
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The driver did not help me with my bags. There was mud on my boots and my luggage and everything was hot and damp. His sweat smell filled the car. We drove to Deer Park to pick up Tashi Dos Santos who kindly offered to come with me to Baijnath. Who does a nice thing like that?! I could only wave to Serena and Ella who were trying to stay dry, leaning over a rose bush as I leaned over Tashi’s lap. Bye ladies!
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It stopped raining when we got to Baijnath. We were both car sick already and I still had 13 hours of driving to go. The Haryana bus is the cheapest and least comfortable way to get to Delhi and I still don’t remember what inspired me to make this choice. It was a hulking old thing, like a cheap old school bus painted blue or the buses you see prisoners riding in — all heavy steel soldered together with Indian ingenuity. My sweet luggage was roughly tossed in the trunk, which was layered with an inch of rust and dust. I knew it would never be the same.
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Tashi, a certified psychic, went through several extreme mood changes in the course of 5 minutes ranging from “why do I feel you shouldn’t take this bus” to “everything’s going to be fine.” I wished I hadn’t packed the Xanax so deeply.
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It was the worst trip ever. No, the worst was when I took the bus and it broke down in Chandigarh in the middle of the night and a group of us had to hitchhike to another bus station.
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Someone vomited out the window and, like almost all Indian buses, we drove on into the night decorated with triangular splatter.
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My seat mate was a man and therefore insisted on sitting with his knees wide apart like the men on the subway and the men everywhere. Why, men, why? I sat cramped until my kidneys hurt and my knees ached.
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The best part was when we passed Wyatt and Elise on their way up to Bir and the bus stopped and everyone honked. But I didn’t see their faces.
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Four hours later we pulled over at some road side rest stop that smelled like death and coconuts. The men all unzipped and pissed. My seatmate came back with a plastic bottle of mango soda and after tossing half of it down his throat he offered some to me. I said no thanks. The driver turned up the music. Frenetic whiny old Bollywood film tracks. He drove fast and smoked cigarettes. I could not see all the crumbling cliffs and monkeys and the near misses. I did not sleep.
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At 3:30 in the morning we stopped for tea. Through the fluorescent light and highway dust, I saw Ajeer and Claude and others who had been attending the education conference at Deer Park and I was so happy to see familiar faces. They had taken the 6:30 bus but had managed to pass us. They didn’t seem that excited to see me. But then we were all going through the same circle of hell.
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Some people think that the Buddhist message of impermanence is negative or depressing. But when you are in the 10th hour of a trip in a bus without shock absorbers, and you think, this too will not last forever, it is extremely comforting. I knew that the present moment would just be a memory soon. I fast-forwarded to the moment now, as I write this, showered and safe, a future moment when it would take some effort to remember how painful and horrible this present was, how my bones rattled, how I felt I was speeding up the aging process, how my ankles swelled up.
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Now I am back in Inderpuri in Mal’s old room. Three nights. Instead of the dusty street out front of the house, tonight there is a tent and a carpet and a couple of deities. Because this is India.
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