Possibilities: A Morning in Ladakh

by Aarti Shyamsunder (India)

I didn't expect to find India

The four people sitting before me were a curious group — three tanned white people in raggedy clothes and dirty hair, carrying a backpack, a guitar and cameras, like so many tourists visiting the Himalayas. But these were not the Germans, Israelis or Americans you usually run into. They were conversing in soft tones with the fourth in the group, a Buddhist monk in robes — in a language I had never heard before. We sat around in a cold, narrow, dark hall, with bright tapestries and flowers tucked into the wooden walls, warming up with some salty pink Ladakhi butter tea. We were in SECMOL — the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement Of Ladakh — in Phey, Ladakh, India. Soon, a woman joined us and sat down with a student’s help, and the Buddhist monk broke into eager conversation with her…she giggled, spoke a few words in response, and then, there was a hush as if before an important announcement. And then she began to sing…in a voice fresh with abandon and sweet with experience, wise with contentment and bursting with quiet laughter. I listened to this sound of the hills, a voice that epitomized Ladakhi mindfulness and joy, and a quietness unfolded in my heart. Later, I learned two things. One, the singer was blind. Two, the blind singer was famous…her name was Thukjey Dolma. The Buddhist monk shared that he was originally from Ladakh but had lived in Estonia for the last fourteen years. The others were his friends (‘disciples’, they corrected him) from Estonia who wanted to experience the land of his birth. For him, listening to Thukjey Dolma was a dream come true — “So many lonely nights in Estonia, I would look up YouTube or old recordings of her songs, and here I am, listening to her sing!” I don’t believe this meeting was planned. It would have been impossible to orchestrate such a lovely moment — this man, coming home after so long and then sharing his joy of listening to his favorite singer with his friends from a far-off land. As we sat around with these moments sinking in, the student who had been assigned to show us around asked us if we wanted more of the pink tea. We started talking, and asked him his name. He said “Chamba”, and my friend Akanksha’s face lit up. She wordlessly pulled out her phone and played him the song she had been listening to, called, “Chamba”! This kid instantly transformed from a shy duty-bound student to a chatty friend. Nothing could have prepared us for this moment of bonding, of a coincidence in the form of a name and a song that bridged differences, and glued us together for a few hours. Chamba then showed us around the classrooms, the solar powered kitchen, the winter stores, the sustainable practices of garbage management — all run by students of SECMOL and volunteers from around the world. In the library I noticed a stainless-steel water bottle with a familiar logo from the US Pacific Northwest and the words “Multnomah County Community Center”. This bottle was from Portland! I had lived about five minutes from this community center, where I would attend Zumba classes and borrow library books. Of all the places in the world, to see this bottle here, in a remote Himalayan village was bordering on a miracle. Asking around, it turned out that there was a volunteer from Multnomah County in Portland, at that very moment, in SECMOL! I met Lilly and of course we bonded immediately. As I left SECMOL and soon, Ladakh, I felt these three ‘coincidences’ worming their way into my being. Sometimes we need to go far away to discover something within us. Over the years, I’d grown a thick cynical shell immune to the magic of coincidences or the miracle of chance happenings changing lives. And this is how one cold and clear morning, that shell cracked. Thanks to a blind singer with a beautiful voice, a young boy with a cheeky smile and a water bottle from a distant land. The shell cracked just enough to let myself open up my mind’s eye to the possibility of possibilities.