Monday 28 November 2011

Tackling the Thuggish Beijing

Hollywood actor and musician, Johnny Depp, was bullied everyday in school by a big fat boy. "Punch him in the face once and he will not bother you any more!" said his mother one day. Depp did just that and the rest, as he told a group of student at The Actor's Studio, was history.

Saturday 19 November 2011

Things Happen Here

“Oh! You are still here,” said a monk, who I knew from my school days. “So good to see old Dharamshala faces who are still around.” He has come back for a short visit from the US, after twenty years. He fished out a five hundred-rupee note from his wallet, slipped it into my pocket and said, “Thi’i solja choe rog nang.
This made realize that I am now a pukka-Dharamshala-wallah or the ‘real Dharamsala resident’. Even the garbage can knows me, I fear.
Over the years, I have noticed, this place gets busier, restless and more energetic — hotels get bigger, food more varied, more tourists come and more things happen.
Materially almost everything is available here, including relatively good wine (very expensive though!), top-quality Manchester United soccer jersey and third-class Made in China nylon socks (if you wear these socks for three consecutive days, your feet will stink worse than over-flowing public toilet!) Today, I saw a new comer from Tibet selling yaksha kampo or dried yak meat and tea bricks, which he claims came all the way from Dhartsedo, a Tibetan trading town bordering China.