Lion man

                Today, Dharamsala was especially kind. For the first time in two weeks, I saw moments of sunshine. Yes, these moments were followed by heavy rain and power outages but I saw the sun and blue sky, I swear! We started the morning off with a mist filled hike up a lush hill to a temple. The temple offers hour long guided meditations every morning and since we always have our projects during the week, we were excited to go this morning. The teacher had a very soothing voice and took our minds through many relaxation exercises before the actual meditation. The meditation was comparable to a massage for my brain. After we left the temple, Ellie, Ellen, and I felt quiet and relaxed. We ate brunch at a Dharamkot café on the hillside that overlooks the vast green country side and the beautiful Himalayas. I find that we are finally close enough to open up to each other and it feels like there are no guards, no trying to be anything but ourselves. We have some very meaningful and deep conversations quickly followed by inside jokes and lots of laughing. I really feel at home in India today…

I did a little shopping for my people at home. In one week from today, I will be leaving Dharamasala to travel to some new parts of India. I’m so excited to see exotic new places but leaving Dhondulp will be very hard. My best friend, the person I laugh with the most in Dharamsala is a monk. That, I would have never guessed. Yesterday, he had me meet him at a restaurant so I could meet one of his friends, another monk. We were the loudest, goofiest table in the restaurant.  I told them that I had no idea monks were so funny and Dhondulp said he didn’t know English teachers were so funny. Our conversation danced all over the restaurant from secret agent and horror movies (my monk watches action or horror movies every night) to food to giving each other nicknames. When Dhondulp introduced me to his friend, he told him that I was one of them, that I am going to become a monk. I said “ yup I’m shaving my head!” His friend thought it was really funny and said “you two are exactly the same!” So he calls me the same nickname that he calls Dhondulp. Dhondulp gets joy out of introducing me to his friends as his “funny teacher.” He’s invited me out to lunch with some of his friends tomorrow (Sunday) even though Sunday is not a class day.

So, the highlight of my Saturday is not the hike, the meditation, the shopping, or my nap today. Nope, it’s “The Tibetan Dance Performance” we went to. There is a man who stands on the street in the mornings and hands out fliers and everyday he’s wearing the same red star shaped sunglasses. We’ve been accumulating his fliers for this dance performance and then were told by the girls from London that we have to go see it. They laughed when they made us promise to go see it so we knew we were in for something a little weird. Well, we got there, paid our 150 rupees along with thirty other people and took our seats on white cushions on the floor. The man came in, introduced himself as the lion man, and though it was evening, he still had on his red star shaped sunglasses. We quickly learned that this was going to be a one man performance and he opened with telling his story about how he made the dangerous and long journey from Tibet to India. So far, it was pretty normal. Then he said he would proceed to the first dance. It wasn’t necessarily the dance that was odd, it was the fact that the power was out and that he did the first dance to no music and in the dark. It was a little weird to watch but I figured that it was even weirder to be the dancer without music so I thought to myself, “this isn’t too bad.”

The second dance was another traditional one in the dark and just consisted of a lot of spinning. The lion man then announced that it was time for the second act of his show. Again, he explained that normally this act too would take place to music but proceeded anyway. He dropped down on to the floor, crawled up to a woman in the first row and put his face against hers and looked her in the eyes. He then crawled over to the next woman and did the same. The next person in the row happened to be a 10 year old girl who tried to back away from the sweaty lion man’s invasive face and he just followed her with his body so that he ended up on top of her. Um, if I was this child’s mother I would have beat his ass but the mother just giggled uncomfortably and the 10 year old didn’t seem too disturbed. I was hoping that he was only going to do this to the front row. But, no, he crawled over some people to get to the second row which I happened to be in. When he put his face against mine I just hid my head on Ellen’s shoulder until he crawled away and made the rest of the crowd uncomfortable.

 Once he got this out of his system, he then proceeded to bring pairs of people to the front of the room and put them on his shoulder and spin them. Please keep in mind there is still no music, only the sound of his shuffling feet, his heavy breathing, the crowd’s nervous giggles, and people saying “don’t drop me” or “I’m going to throw up.” Thank goodness he didn’t try to get me up there because it would have been a brawl. However, he did make three girls come up front and he looked at one of them and said “sit on my head.” That quote is so obscure that the girls and I have been saying it to each other all night. I do have to give him a little bit of credit though, he really did pick all three of them up at once before dropping them all to the ground in a heap. After this little trick, the lion man then announced that it was time for the last part of the show, an interpretive dance about how he got to Tibet. At first it consisted of a lot of spinning and maneuvers on the ground. Then, he stood up, took off his shirt, tied it around his face and started spinning wildly around the room. In the process, he almost stepped on a few of his audience members even though half had left by now. He also knocked over a candle he had lit on the floor but since it was a concrete room it didn’t seem to be detrimental. After a stint of wild spinning, he removed the shirt from his face and started running wildly around the room and throwing himself into walls and on to the floor. Finally he stopped and said “thank you for coming tonight.” I honestly don’t think the dance would have been any less weird with the actual music and we all walked out of the room in shock. Still in shock from what I saw, I don’t know what else to say so I will leave you with images of the lion man. I’m going to go to bed and hope that he doesn’t spin in to my dreams tonight….