Kashmir Kush
A postcard of Paradise usually shows off palm trees, umbrella drinks, and turquoise waters.
What if I were to tell you that the real Paradise is a cold desert, dry without booze?
That Paradise goes days without internet when the nearby war gets spicy?
That Paradise’s winters are so cold, your pee freezes midstream while nutsacks flirt with frostbite?
That Paradise is called Leh Ladakh in Kashmir, 16000 ft above sea level and that much closer to contentment, filled with characters walking along the same plane, free of intention to fly above their playmates.
Fly your eyes along these lines, and I’ll prove it to you:
1) Meet Norgyal (half Seagull half Viking), with borderless beauty, and an even bigger heart.
Norgyal is 8th Generation Ladakhi (7th generation is his Mom — seen here making us breakfast), and lives in a village filled with Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians. Whenever someone in the village comes down with a cold, one person from each family comes to visit with a remedy called Community.
I met Norgyal one morning in the city. But after a day driving together through the highest motorable road in the world at 18000 ft, I was windless and ready to wind down, without Winding-Down-Formalities. #SocksOn
As we shuffled in the starry dark through Norgyal’s village, he warned amongst our exhaustion to “watch out for bugs.”
“Oh are there big ones out now?”
“Big or small, we must not step on them.”
In my exhaustion, I found his discipline impressive, but it was the next evening that I found it extraordinary.
After another long day, we reached town and passed a cow whose legs were tangled in wire. My mental wiring sprung a “shit that sucks,” but his took tangible action. He pulled over immediately, and along with a few others who stopped to join, freed the cow from entanglement.
Seeing my awe in entanglement, Norgyal unraveled it: “We have to help each other. What makes us human is that we know how others feel. Animals do not, but since we and we alone have this power, our actions should reflect the best interest of everyone and everything around us. Otherwise, what’s the point of being human?”
His point won all the points on Humanity’s Scoreboard. But Norgyal wasn’t an anomaly…..
….2) Meet Nordan, self-dubbed as “Michel Nordan”, collectively referred to as “Doc”
Michael Nordan is an Oxford-educated physician, with a laugh like Santa on hiccups.
The first day I met Nordan, he asked what I wanted to do. I suggested some things I’d seen online.
“That stuff is for tourists. What are you REALLY interested in?”
“People. Understanding people..”
“Then come with me tomorrow to a labor camp, you can interact with the local people while administering medical exams.”
Sounded perfect, practicing Medicine with my English Literature degree.
One after another, I asked 150 of these $150/month laborers, who literally lived in shipping containers, “Anything you don’t like about your job? Any dessert you’ve been craving? Are you missing your kids?”
“(smiling) How? What an opportunity!”
“(smiling) How? The chapati and daal are more than enough!”
“(smiling) How? They already know how much I love them!”
I was hunting for complaints, realizing it was through shared complaining that I hunted for connection. And yet, they didn’t care for the stage to tell sob stories; rather, when visiting them in their shipping containers, they staged off who made the best chai. That was how they bonded, through cooking for each other, through rich chai. Meanwhile, I realized that my mind’s complaints about their lack of complaints made me the poor one.
And through all that, there was still Nordan the constant, Nordan the Brave…….busy running medical exams, fielding calls from the hospital, in between checking in on his kids, and all the while, whistling to himself.
I had to ask him, “You have so much on your plate. Does it ever feel like too much? How do you not get irritated?”
Nordan didn’t even know the word, nor the emotion. Under a layer of annoyance, I introduced Nordan to Irritation. And Nordan irrigated my irritation with a hug and a smile.
I had to wonder, what was their secret…….their secret to Paradise?
One theory relates to the altitude. Most meditation techniques manipulate the breath, slowing down thoughts by slowing down oxygen to the brain.
Maybe the lack of oxygen meant less fuel for innocuous thoughts, and thus more space for Paradise of the Mind?
Maybe the size of the surrounding mountains served as constant reminder about their servitude to Nature?
Maybe they just liked each other.
All the while I was just trying to record each monumental moment, storing canned soup for Irritation Hurricanes hiding over the horizon.
But hedging memory of the moment is far from being in the moment. And if planning gets in the way of enjoying, then plan on not truly living.
Kashmir — you beautiful Goddess — another trip for the ages, another 15000 miles traveled. And while no age or mile-count can silence your mind, Kashmir can certainly shush it.
