DHARAMSHALA, India – We’ve been in Dharamshala for a little while, learning the turns, roads, the eats and becoming familiars in this worldly little Indian hilltop town and becoming comfortable in the pine trees and cool afternoon breezes.
My travel mate, Natasha, voiced some distress at being bored. Although, I might mention, she has voiced some distress about being in the city, not being able to shave her legs, the poor quality of Indian conditioner and travelling on buses and trains … so it goes, the way of the woman.
She asked me during the morning if, I “might spice it up a bit. Ya know, get in a fight or something.” We laughed it off and headed to the Namgyal Monastery, with radio and pad in hand ready to be taught by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. Then we ate and went back to the hotel.
As we came around our corner, there sat the long-tailed rascal of these parts, lingering where he shouldn’t have been.
I felt urged to scream, “Women and children beware, flee to cover, for there are ruffians about tonight!”
The little baboon monkey sprang from the wires to across the porch where he looked at me, waiting for my move.
These darn Indian monkeys have just been all up in my grill since I got here.
Back in Mumbai, when I first arrived, I thought, “Hey, cool … look at the monkeys, dude.”
It all started on Elaphanta Island when one of the onlookers of my lunch decided to try participating and then an official monkey-chaser-away-guy came out of the hilltop bamboo-roofed restaurant with his monkey-chaser-away-stick and preformed the verb of the aforementioned nouns.
Now I’d seen that guy chase them away. We even joked about whether or not one would be trained in such a vocation or whether it was a natural talent. I’d also seen the Tibetan owners of our hotel shoo these guys away.
I sized him up. An adult male, about three feet tall.
Natasha said, “Well, go on.” I looked at her and my look suggested the fact that this was my first time at chasing away these bastards and finesse might be what was ordered.
He curled his tail and did something quirky. Natasha said, “oh, look he’s cute” or something.
So, I started forward. He made a noise and showed his teeth. I thought, “Damn, those things are big! And sharp!” I went and waved my hands and did said, “Ahh get out of here.”
I charged. But, like a good goalkeeper, the little guy charged me back and did some sort of screech that was only to be outdone by Natasha’s. My squeal resembled more of the trembling bottom lip of a little scared girl’s whimperous mumble.
I took off, like the floppy eared antagonist in that infamous tortoise/hare fable, ready to leap over the steps and two floors down.
But, as I looked back he stood on hind legs as if he’d conquered me, adjourning to the rooftop. So it goes, the way of the man.
So, with bellies full, we sat and pondered what next to do. “Hmm, what ever should ones like us do on such a fine evening?”
She answered, “Well, howeth would thou liketh to attend the Tibetan Freedom Concert tonight at the Bahgsu Hotel’s grounds?”
I rubbed the hair on my chinny chin chin and said, “That is one fine resolution.”
There are things in life that when you reach them, you say something like, “I have a feeling I’m gonna remember this the rest of my life.”
Let me paint the picture.
Walking back down the dark, dirt path, monks are climbed up in the trees, hundreds and hundreds lining around the stage. A mosh-pit filled with Tibetans dancing with as much rhythm as horny Irishman, four pints down of Guinness and then a bunch of hippies with dreadlocks and shawls who forgot that this wasn’t a Grateful Dead concert.
Up on stage we have the bassist and guitarist dressed in traditional Tibetan garb, this lead singer Tibetan guy with ripped up jeans, a leather jacket and hair going everywhere and then, playing drums, a white dude from Wisconsin.
They were jammin’ and monks were interspersed throughout the crowd, climbing on each others’ backs and they would periodically yell back the lyrics. They didn’t dance; they stood with arms crossed. Maybe one might say, “In a Buffalo stance,” if that one grew up in the 80’s and remembered that Neneh Cherry song.
But I, with the sly eye, like a magician’s sleight of hand, tilted my sockets here and then to catch a glimpse of a stuttering Morse Code foot tap or a little sway of the hip and nod of the head. But this was only with the cleverness of the sly eye, remember.
Tasha tugged at my arm “Are monks allowed to be out this late?”
After the show and some freedom wanting yells, they said they would play some dance music all night. The crowd cheered and a woman took the microphone screaming, firing up the crowd. One could look about and see the fire in the youth of Tibet. As the dance music started: bown chic bown bownba dabown.
“A little bit of Monica in my life, A little bit of Rita by my side, A little bit of Jessica, makes me your man.”
Yada yada yada … you know the song.
The monks, who were partitioned outside the dancing area, stayed and then faded one by one as the crowd seemed to get wilder and wilder.
There seemed to be this dark metaphor approaching as the line of grass and dance could be seen equivalent to France’s titanic failure in the great Maginot Line.
But this line would represent the non-violent way preached by his holiness and Ghandi, before he.
The once-thought invincible line to hold back the thought of violence and maintaining that peaceful resistance, but follow closely, as the marooned-robed headed back one by one, the juggernaut of aggressive revolution seemed to be churning through the young minds as did Hitler’s Blitzkrieg through France’s fortified line.
Zach De La Rocha, in a song, screams: “Hungry people don’t stay hungry for long. They get hope through fire as the weak become strong.”
These people have been starved for over 50 years.
They are hungry and they look on their plates for a true freedom. Not this pseudo exiled existence of maintaining a nationality that the U.N. doesn’t even recognize.
Imagine being a nationless people. Imagine no hope, but for revolution. Imagine what you would do.
As we walked back, in the dark of the street lampless night. Three young Tibetan men argued and tugged at each other, with one in the middle.
Rocks were picked up. Curses were said that went over my lingual head.
Sad indeed. I feel I sit near a powder keg looking to explode in any direction if not given a target and a release of pressure.
Morning was done with breakfast and I returned to do some brushing only to startle my nemesis stealing orange peels from the bin.
He, the monkey that is, laughed at me as he glided in the above over me.
After the local bully picked on me, we escaped out into the Himalayan jungle gyms and bounded and climbed up a huge canyon at 8,000 feet.
It was a good day. I jumped into an icy, azure-blue pool that looked tropic, but felt arctic.
We walked back and barely held off dark.
But good did not last, however, when I was reminded of my personal dilemma.
The darkness grew and my eyes went to adjust, but all above me in the outskirts of my adopted town, the monkeys hopped around in the trees above me, screeching, taunting me.
What’s done is done.
I tried to avoid it, but me and these monkeys are gonna get into some fisticuffs I do believe.
Out of fear, I picked up a stick. So it goes, the way of the monkey warrior.

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