In the Market

(photo: still from the film "Milarepa". The man farthest to the right is a friend of mine).

Wandering through the open markets in Leh, I dicovered that all of the vendors of these markets were Tibetans (as opposed to Ladakhi). Most of them had a settled home somewhere, usually in Bir or McLeod Ganj - but spent each year as traveling merchants: the rainy months away from the monsoon in Ladakh, the winters on the beach in Goa, and the spring in Dharamsala.

I spent an afternoon looking at jewelry in one of these outdoor markets, and once I began bargaining in Tibetan, I became an instant source of curiousity. I was very glad to find people speaking Lhasa dialect and exile Tibetan, as I had been struggling at times to make myself understood in Ladakhi. A husband and wife invited me to join them for ubiquitous butter tea (whispered conversation, overheard: "Don't serve her butter tea! Westerners don't like it." and then "She speaks Tibetan, of course she must like it").

The three of us began a very animated conversation. They wanted to know how, where and why I learned Tibetan, if I had visited Tibet, what my impression was of the current political situation. Had I met the Dalai Lama? Visited Himachal Pradesh? I wanted to know their birthplace, where they were from, when they escaped Tibet. He had escaped Tibet as a boy, and his family home was now in Bir, forty kilometers east of Dharamsala. After a few endless cups of tea, the husband started to cry in front of me. He was an older man, with a beautiful weatherworn face and an outrageous mustache. It is very unusual for Tibetan men to have cultivated facial hair, and I felt a great affection for this mustache.

He took my hand, wiped his tears, and told me how happy he was to see a foreigner speaking his language. His generation is among the last born in a free Tibet, and the first to be exiled to India. He was so inspired, he said, to meet a young person making an effort to preserve the language and the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of a dying Tibet.

In many ways, it has felt to me that my studies have been so selfish, so completely oriented around my own goals, my own need for adventure, for spiritual contact. And for one moment, while sitting there with him, I felt that the scope of what I do actually benefits other people, as well as myself. It is a beautiful feeling.

The story of this afternoon came to mind a few days ago, at the premiere of a new film by Neten Chokling Rinpoche on the lifestory of Milarepa (www.milarepamovie.com). Milarepa is Tibet's most beloved saint and poet, and his legacy is preserved in the thousands of spiritual poems he composed in the eleventh century. This film, the first of two, recreates the childhood experiences of Milarepa. It was filmed in Spiti Valley, which is the eastern Himalayan range of Himachal Pradesh. The monastery of Neten Chokling is in Bir, and most of the actors and the crew were ordinary people harvested from the monastery and surrounding town.

In the film, when the birth of the boy Milarepa is announced, his father emerges from a tent to receive the news. Milarepa's father was no other than the man I had met one afternoon in the market in Ladakh - no one else in the world could have that mustache. This time, it was I who cried.