The thumb is mightier

Malawi musicology

timtysonshort — Sun, 2 Feb 2014 00:32:00 GMT

Four short films I made in Malawi with a guitar my daughter and Jimmy Keeping

Power of Nun

timtysonshort — Sun, 2 Feb 2014 00:28:00 GMT

MANILA 8^TH OCTOBER 2012

Organisation: Laura Vacuna Foundation www.

POWER OF NUN

I am not used to listening to 15-year-old girls talk about how they were sexually abused and as a family man I can only hear their stories as a father.

Somehow I had managed to film the interview without getting too upset but when little Fortuna started to break down telling me her story, between sobs and caught breath, I felt my emotions start to run down my cheek.

My question was how did you come to be in the Laura Vicuña home for girls in Manila? The combined answers of the two girls took an hour and half and left me once again feeling sick with mankind and it's perversions.

Men and mosquitoes the most dangerous creatures here on earth ~ Terror Firma.

As a young child Fortuna was left by her mother at the doors of a born again Church. She was told to stay there and that her mother would be back soon.

After two days the Christian community took her in.

She worked for her keep but was punished for her slightest mistake; stomach blows and being beaten with coat hangers progressed to walking up flights of stairs on her knees with bibles on her head.

It was all so extreme and she was so confused that she didn't think it unusual when four young pastors in training began to regularly gang rape her or when they tied her up outside with the dog telling her not to tell anyone or she would be killed. Bravely she confessed to her teacher who did not believe her and did nothing.

She was finally found by a nun who took her to the Laura Vicuña Foundation centre, they pressed charges against the priests and set about teaching Fortuna how to live again and somehow restored hope in the most battered of souls.

Christine is the product of her mother being raped at the age of eighteen by her uncle. Her mother, unable to love her and beat her constantly. She said she was better of dead than alive and tried to kill her by drowning in a barrel of water and by gassing her in her locked bedroom. She can actually remember being forced under the water by her mother's hands. The ultimate betrayal.

Her mother moved in with a man who was actually an uncle who fell in love with Christine. She remembers the date; June the 8^th when she woke up one night in her locked room thinking it was her younger sister that was laying on her.

The abuse continued until her mother was sent texts that the nanny had found on Christine’s phone. Messages that her partner had been sending to her whilst he was away working as a volunteer with an NGO in Thailand. He missed her he loved her – she never read them as she kept her phone off so as to avoid him.

When confronted she told her mother what had happened. Her mother beat her more.

”I am a person that likes to make people laugh I like to make people happy – I am good at it, why can I not be happy?

Finally Christine tried to kill herself with pills and was referred through the hospital to Laura Vicuña centre.

“I have never had anyone who cuddles me I never even saw my father, but here at Laura Vicuña I feel part of something they are the family I never had.”

By this time Christine was sobbing and my head and heart had met and swapped jobs somewhere in my chest. There is such a difference between experiencing a story first hand and reading about it, the impact is immediate and doesn’t have to processed by the mind maybe. It was impossible not to fight back tears as the girls broke down whilst sharing their ordeals. Of course I suggested they should stop but both insisted it was part of the healing and apologised for making me sad!

After the sisters joined us saying it was not unusual and that it shows you are touching their hurt you are feeling it and it was a good thing.

Post interview girls were so happy really buoyant and the sense of relief was as it is after a thunderstorm. It was akin to confession maybe and obviously cathartic.

During the evening Flora started to call me dad and I was worried that this was a bad thing, she just smiled and told me not to worry.

As I write this I have just be robbed of a few meaningless items on the beach I am still angry and feel violated but how do you start to heal after something like those girls went through?

How do get to join in again with the rest of the world?

There are twenty girls in the centre and all of them have similar stories of abuse or terrible lives on the street. But dressed for school in tartan skirts and white shirts they are like any other kids leaving the house as they are ushered out the door by the Sisters. They go to local schools and many go on to further education and work with the foundation though few who are sexually abused settle into long term relationships and on having children Fortuna said she might like to adopt but does not want any of her own.

That night I ate with the sisters I bowed my head respectfully during grace and sat down to eat. I was wondering how they live and deal with these damaged lives and carry on unaffected.

I was amazed at how much they ate, whole prawns, crabs, tuna, rice, plantain, salad and fresh squeezed fruit and vegetable juice. For a secular man like me I was in heaven.

I have never been in the company of nuns before and it is a rare honor to see how they are out of public eye. They giggle and joke easily and take pleasure in feeding me. At times I get glimpse of their femininity as one delicately wipes her mouth or wipes a stray hair from her face back under her veil. They are still women underneath.

I am surprised to find that Sister Penny sat next to me is 73 but looks 60; Sister Lannie is 34 and looks in her mid twenties. They all look younger than their years and insist that working with the young keeps them young .As we talked I tried to find out more about their order and why they chose to become Nuns. They are members of the Holy Salesian sisters of the order of Don Bosco a 19^th century monk now the patron saint of education and media. He taught to love and you will be loved that it is good to enjoy yourself. Spread joy and you spread Gods love. He encouraged eating and fiestas he believes in making heaven here on earth. They follow a doctrine of love and joy in the here and now and celebrate all that is good around them whilst trying to remedy the effects of the bad. It seems they put an extra o in the middle of God.

I am so excited by this thought and it fits in completely with my way of looking at the world. They explained that their approach to helping their girls was one of showing them how to love themselves and then they can reclaim their lives. They do not judge and let them be who they are and slowly they will come to terms with what has happened by nurturing the seed of love that is in us all that sometimes needs a little help to grow. Though devout and sworn against certain acts they do their best to keep up with what is trending in the girl’s lives, it is simple brilliant, 150 years old and it works. The girls seem so confident and at ease with themselves and most of all genuinely happy.

The girls show me some dance routines that could have come from an MTV, they are grooving and moving like any teenage girl emulating their favorite moves and the nuns looked on their toes tapping in their sandals, smiles of encouragement on their faces habits swaying.

I am genuinely impressed and so invigorated to meet such thoroughly right on nuns and pleased to find some Catholics practicing what I preach.

Later that night as I lay down in my bed and my head and heart finally found there rightful places, my conscience the bastard child of that union reminded me that I may have left their toilet seat up.

Once more I have the privilege of filming for the STARS foundation and the Laura Vicuna Foundation have received a Protection award and they so deserve it. Their projects are vast. Apart from the what they do with the girls in the centre they also work with street kids in Manila’s slums - Manila is hot, gridlocked and over populated any drive will take a minimum of an hour often three as the city is prone to floods. This is made worse by the fact that Manila radio stations play some of the worst music on earth, I never knew there were so many songs I hope I never hear again in my life.

I film a mobile clinic and advocacy project on the outskirts of the city Fortuna and Christine are there talking to the youth and encouraging them to get to school and teaching then their rights as citizens of the world. Local mums are enlisted to help out and be part of the project – they love it and are key to the success it really works and during my time in Manila I am constantly being introduced to people that LVC has helped.

The slums are as others, unsanitary, disorganized and makeshift. The buildings looking like a collection of the worst sheds ever built. The blending of the mundane with the abject, washing clothes in a stagnant gutter, cooking by rubbish tips, toddlers playing naked in floodwater.

Sister Marevic is the animator or big sister of LVC and she is the force she is maybe 4 ft 8 tall and healthy as she calls it - She is as wide as her love but incredibly nimble and she like all the others sisters likes to eat. Before embarking on a cross-city journey we normally have to stop for some food. Even though we will have eaten a huge lunch just an hour before.

“This one is my favorite” I kept hearing her say as another fried fish met its gastric juicy destiny. But she makes things happen it's the power of the habit. A lift that has a “Not in use” sign on it opens and we are allowed to enter,

when stopped by the police, we are apologised to and waved on. Porters appear out of nowhere to carry things, food mysteriously appears where ever we are. I feel like I have been upgraded in my life and all the time I hear the happy giggling of the sisters as we sail through the city. Salutes, shouts and waves, I am hitching a ride on a mission from God

I love her, she and the sisters are so efficient they make things happen, they can see what will happen and they know what has happened. They are even telling the taxi drivers how to get places and when they get there park where they like. Of course they know where to get the best food, who serves the best fish at what time, don’t need to bargain they just get the best price. These sisters rock,

The Salesian Sister film productions – they could clean up. I tell them.

Sister Marevic and I fly to Negros Orientale a Cane Sugar growing island 250 miles south it is Marevics home she wanted to buy me an I love Negros t shirt I said thanks but I probably wouldn’t feel inclined to wear it

Of course we are whisked through the airport by a porter with divine connections and are met by sister Nancy in a white van with the engine running ready to go.

It's a relief to be in fresh air driving down empty tracks through green seas of ripe cane. Beautiful wooden houses like the best sheds you ever saw in the Ideal Shed Exhibition are nestled in stand of shade either side of the track. Each with little plots of flowers and vegetables. Half naked children run towards the van waving half chewed cane sticks in their hands, dogs amble out the way while chickens make a last second dash in front of us probably arriving at the other side wondering why they had done that.

I figure that I would rather be or here than the city at least it's clean and a kid can run. The fact is hundreds migrate to the city in search of better jobs and a future, but without an education life cannot improve.

We pass an incredible half built cathedral abandoned mid construction when the heavily corrupt Victorias sugar company went bankrupt the nuns said it symbolised the company as it sat There a naked concrete pulpit meaningless within the vast tracts of whispering cane.

Most families have over 4 kids so that they can earn more on the plantation during the 9-month cane-milling season. It is of course hard, hot dangerous work and is hard to associate with the sweetening effect of the product. Most of the families get stuck in a cycle of poverty never affording the time or money for an education so that kid can move away and get a job with prospects or a decent wage. Alcohol and sexual abuse is rife.

Laura Vicuña women's centre is built deep within the cane field but it belongs to women rather than is exclusively for them.

It is Sunday and groups of parents and children have come here for their one-day off a week but this is no church gathering or Sunday school. People are having fun, As we park under a large Mango tree I see a group of men in their forties across the yard plying basket ball and some younger kids working on a suggestive dance routine. The place is set out like a school 8 or 9 buildings some two-storey classroom blocks and a large covered space for sports, dance, exercise and mass. It’s like a wonderland people are having fun everywhere I look.

First though I am led into one the low level buildings for breakfast- local cooked chicken, pork, macaroni, rice, veg.

Six Salesian sisters and me tucking in to King of Kings breakfast sounds of profound pleasure coming from us all. I'm loving this.

We talk freely of faith and their approach to work and their callings. Before the centre was built in 2004 there was nothing here apart from government schools that didn't account for children that had to work, most dropped out and never made it out of the cane fields. With nothing else to do men drank and womanised and women got pregnant and compromised.

Sister Marevic lobbied for an alternative learning system with qualifications and offerered training in skills that would help young people get alternative work. In Manila I met a young boy who was working in the 5 star Crown Plaza who had come through this system and there are dozens more like him. He dutifully sends 60% of his wage back home to his parents, who are putting his two brothers and sisters through college with the money – Cycle broken.

So every Sunday the centre comes alive with adults and kids

I film an aerobic dance class for all ages Old ladies with dark weathered skin and black shining eyes gyrating dangerously with their hands on their hips. Old men possibly their husbands trying to work out the dance steps. Ragged clothes seeming to hang off their lean bodies like they are hangers. The hands that hold machetes all week free to express themselves, fingers clicking. Wide toothless smiles and good honest joy normally the only available to care free children. There is no sense of embarrassment or loss of cool just pure enthusiasm and an opportunity being taken.

Two old men sit on a wall playing chess with a small child looking on waiting for the next move. A young man plugs in his star shaped guitar and everyone stops what they are doing and start singing a song, a microphone is passes around and everyone who wants gets a turn. Not a sign of a preacher a priest or a bible, no liturgy or sermon yet this is a Catholic institution.

I interview three old men, one openly weeps as he tells me how his life is better now, how his child is working in Manila he doesn't drink and he loves coming here on a Sunday. His peers look on approvingly. These people so appreciate what they are being offered and are using it for all its worth. Their lives are better, there is a non-secular core and mass is held monthly and the songs being sung are ones of Thanks and the Lords name comes up occasionally - but that is a secondary thing. There are no strings attached, no judgment or guilt mongering. These nuns are giving these people an opportunity to love life that they otherwise didn't have and more than that a chance to change their destinies on earth not when they die. This is love manifest; this is why we are here. These quietly powerful women have changed lives in the whole area, crime is down and hopes are up. People come running from the fields to greet them. They wouldn't say this themselves but their work is akin to how the effect of Jesus and his disciples must have worked spreading love and positive change at the micro level sowing seeds that people grow.

Spiritually I am a freelance man, no fixed abode when it come to places of worship but I spent 5 days with the sisters of the Laura Vicuña and I have seen a mission that works.

Generally it's hard being good, people don't trust you they think you are angling for something. They look for the catch; everyday humans don’t do good unless there is something in it for them. A pure spirit can move lightly but is rarely taken seriously. In a corrupted world we look for each other’s faults. The thing is with nuns is they make themselves immune to accusations by taking their vows and wearing a habit. They wear the uniform we expect them to be good. I ask Sister Marevik if you can sin in your dreams she says no you can only sin consciously and I wonder if evil people ever wake up in sweat at night having dreamt they did something good?

Sent on the move

Water is life

timtysonshort — Sun, 2 Feb 2014 00:16:00 GMT

INDIA OCTOBER 2013

Organisation:

Floods of Tears

“Water is Life” is the title of an album by Tinarawen desert dwelling Touareg supergroup,i is also a saying in Somalia, another parched land.

On the other hand Fela Kuti wrote a song called "Water no get enemy" and those are the words that apply to the angry torrent 200 feet below me at the bottom of the near vertical sides of a rocky valley.

The water equivalent of lightning, this river knows no opposition, it is a force as strong as an element can ever be, surging relentlessly on, it certainly has no enemy nor charm nor beauty, just untamed power. There is a fury here, as if the water is livid at being held in a frozen state as a glacier for hundreds of years and is now free to vent, psychopathic in its urgency to escape.

Rupeesh from the Indian organization Pragya tells me this is calm since the rains have stopped and is nothing to what it had been just the week before.

I love rivers but actually fear this one. Normally I will do all I can to get down to water level and dip in it but there is no approaching this tempest. I want to leave it well alone.

We are upstream from Rudraprayag in Uttarakand in northern India - the scene of terrible flooding in June 2013, I am here to film the work that Rupeesh and his colleagues from Pragya have achieved to try and remedy some of the human and physical losses that occurred - no small job it was a total cataclysm.

It's a 6 hour drive from Deradhun up the valley that channels the sacred river Ganges out of the Himalayas and eastwards across the plains of India where it acts as a font, grave and dustbin until it secretes its poisonous self through a delta into the bay of Bengal .

We are following an ancient route up to the Himalayas, scattered along it are temples and sites of pilgrimage all part of a trail that ends in one of Hinduism’s holiest of shrines; Kedarnathji, decicated to Shiva the destroyer up above the winter snowline.

For thousands of years Hindus have made this journey as part of the Charta Dham a route round four holy shrines devoted to the three major denominations of Hinduism. The people that live along the route make a living from the pilgrims as guides, porters and by running rest houses. Many pilgrims start the journey knowing they will not return, it is like a final trek to start the next cycle of life. They may die en route and it is fine with them and have said goodbye to their families already. How perfect, how economical. Imagine starting a company offering a pilgrimage and funeral service in the UK. Canterbury to Santiago de Compostela, full board, shoe repairs, funeral with the wake thrown in. I would like to think I would go that way rather than slowly running out of life amongst strangers, handing my life’s savings onto some leeches that own an old people’s home. I’d rather the opportunity of an honourable self effacing death under my own terms. It is odd how we concentrate on the right to life but not death

Three hours up the valley we reach Depraprayag - where the Bhgirathi and Alaknanda tribrutaries meet to form the Ganges, it is a special place. Two deep and narrow v shaped valleys converge below huge mountains.We crossed a cable footbridge with cows sat mid way seemingly chewing the view and descended through an ancient village with steep and tight alleys down to a spit of land with a river either side I sense a breeze blowing on my face and my back as I look downstream. One river is a milky green the other an opaque blue they meet but stay separate for a distance making a line in the middle of the new watercourse like a nervous couple on the first night of an arranged marriage.

There is a temple to Shiva there and two caves on the shore one for each river one representing the moon the other the sun. I repeat a blessing made to me by a holy man and get given some marigold petals to cast into the water whilst praying for those that I love. It makes sense to me but that’s a lot of flowers mind.

Later we pass a large solitary rock sitting in the middle of the channel. Rupeesh tells me that this is where a shrine to the God that looks over all the shrines from the Chota Char Dham stood.

It was decided to move it somewhere more accessible and locals say that the day it was moved on June 13^th 2013 was when the torrential rain started. The rain was unlike any that anyone had known and lasted for 3 days as a deluge. Monsoon rain is more water than air;cups of water being thrown every second by a stadium of supporters onto one spot.

So water came from the sky, down the slopes and along the river itself making a flash flood sweeping down the valley washing away anything that stood in its way. A Himalayan Tsunami it was called. The small makeshift shelters and restaurants that lined the paths to the shrines and villages were wiped away and most terribly the people in them. The water level rose and cut off settlements and then submerged them .Entire sides of mountains slipped down to bury what and whoever was below. The devastation was complete. What would take humans years to do was finished in moments.

This was just the start, the horror that followed was an international rescue operation that was hindered by further appalling weather and an inability to get to the areas needing emergency help. Roads, bridges and dams were gone, relief teams could not get through, the area was completely cut off, marooned.

I remember seeing news reports and images, another humanitarian disaster with ruined lives and homes, misery and horror. People I could never meet, in a situation I am lucky enough unlikely to find myself in. The sympathy I felt was real but not really connected, instinctive compassion, care by proxy, part of the reason why we watch the news and part of being human I guess.

The story was in the headlines for a week or so, helicopters crashed and relief workers were killed, tragedy upon horror upon despair. The relief and emergencies community rallied while the rest of us reeled. As with most disasters the public eye soon turned in its satellite dish socket to focus on another issue like a civil war somewhere hot or another MP committing buggery whilst denying it. Life on Earth.

5 months later and I am heading into this same area to look at the work Pragya has done to help communities that have lost so much that they no longer function properly. They were quick to attend the scene as they had workers in that area as they concentrate on helping the marginalized people of the high Himalayas. They are organized, efficient and most importantly have a local base.

We drive up roads that have had bites taken out of them like an apple, perfect tarmac with a piece missing, a vertical drop of 100 ft where the road has just fallen away. A few stones are placed by them to mark the drop. Elsewhere the entire side of the mountain has slipped away and a passage has had to be hewn out of the hill again. There is only enough room for one vehicle to pass at a time which of course seriously challenges Indian driver's ability to give way. We have to wait several times whilst there is a face off between buses, only resolved by someone having to reverse back with imminent death on one side.

The Himalayas are a young mountain range and in a constant state of flux and this area is vulnerable to landslides and earth tremors. In places as quickly as the road is rebuilt the loose rubble and shale soil gives way again. It is similar to a child making channels and sand castles on the beach that constantly collapse.

Where repairs are being made are low rusty corrugated shacks that are home to families of migrant workers from Nepal or the poorer states of India. Perched on the edge of cliffs looking out over wondrous views of the valley and up to the high Himalayas they are still desperate places to live. With just a door to admit light they offer nothing more than a shelter from the road. Completely unserviced by the necessities for a normal life, whole communities live up here without water, sanitation, schools or transport. The monkeys that live around them lead a better life than these souls, at least they are free and not encumbered by dreams and a desire for a different life, the kind of life that passes them by in cars and buses on the road they are mending. Children no more than 6 or 7 staggering with sacks of stones that their older siblings or mothers have broken up with hammers. Older children with pick axes and sledge hammers doing adult work prizing rocks out of the hillside to be put into metal cages used to shore up the slope or splitting them with steel rods. Infants without toys and a very short childhood play with mud and sticks on the edge of perilous drops oblivious to the danger and the dust from passing trucks and buses.

The workers are paid about a dollar a day which is less than a local receives, pure and honest discrimination in the world's so called largest democracy. I am conscious of what I buy and who made it where, but this is child labour on a different scale and being used to rebuild a damaged country.

Nowhere in Europe or America would such conditions be tolerated, but this is a country where it can even get worse than this.

Pragya are aware of the problem and have a mobile health and education unit that visit these makeshift camps. They do what they can but these people need the work and the country needs their work. These people are not registered and do not exist on paper so it is not known how many were killed in the floods. The government estimates deaths in the region are at about 5500 but Pragya puts it nearer 8000 if you include migrant workers

Everybody I meet who lives in the flood stricken area has suffered a tragedy; lost a family member, their house or livelihood, often all 3.

As roads were rebuilt there was a rush of people to come to the towns and villages looking for their kin and local resources were further stretched and chaos intensified.I hear one story of a group of Sikhs who after finding m cut of and unable to move forwards or backwards took their 4 wheel drive to bits and over three days carried over a mountain and reassembled it “Fitzcarraldo” style

On the walls of houses and shops in the villages we pass through are badly photocopied images of lost children and relatives. Smiling faces from marriages or graduations, a captured moment taken in another time with no thought that their images may end up on a wall as the last hope for a grieving family. The saddest smiles I’ve ever seen.

I speak to Pratap a local man who is employed with Pragya he told me he had lost his brother and another fellow worker had lost both his parents and siblings. Both had run to higher ground as the rising waters began to flow through the market place where they had their restaurant business. From the hill above, those that had made it there watched the entire market place and everybody in it swept away and the land where it stood crumble into the abyss below.

As night fell, he climbed up high to escape the rising water.

And for three days he and hundreds of others wandered terrified around the mountainsides, living off plants whilst trying to get to villages and find their families. Two boys I met said the only reason they had survived was because they had seen Bear Grylls programmes on TV, I must let him know and that alone is worth my TV license fee.

All roads, bridges and paths were gone and there was simply no place to go until the water subsided. As it did it revealed the extent of the tsunami’s damage.

For many anything from their former lives had been erased and where their houses once stood was now air, the land was gone. Even after 5 months the ground is still sliding down the hill and houses are splitting in two and valuable farmland crumbling away. If you survived the flood you were lucky but still not out of danger.If you lost your entire house the government gave you about £2000 but if you only partially lost it you got nothing .

Rupeesh and Pratap take me up to where some families have been forced to resettle at the too of a mountain because their houses are collapsing. Pratap says it's a bit of a walk which concerns Rupeesh he says a bit of a walk for the locals means a long walk for us.

It was.

We left the roaring river below us and climbed a 2 km slog up a mountain side, we passed small picturesque coloured houses with roofs made of thick brown slate. They had terraced farmland laid out before them with spectacular views of the village of Kalimath in the valley below and the snow peaked mountains above. Under a clear blue sky lemon, lime and peach trees offered some shade and in amongst the dense greenery wild marijuana leaves waved at me. In Europe these places would be exclusive holiday cottages and I simply wanted to just stop there for a month or so. But up close all the houses were broken. Large cracks left walls at unlikely angles, roofs had collapsed and the land was riven by fissures. These were the homes that the families we were going to see had to leave to move up the mountain.

Carrying my camera kit between us the walk became increasingly tougher. I always think life is like walking up a hill: the older you get the harder it gets but the view gets better.

I was beginning to think I was getting old in fact I was no longer sure what I was thinking as my heartbeat was drowning my thoughts. How would the elderly manage this though?

As I pulled myself by a tree root over another false summit I was greeted by a gummy grin from an old lady. Her age made her beautiful, in the same way time gives beauty and value to an antique piece of furniture. Perfectly old and not trying to be anything else. She was as natural as the scenery.

With some bemusement and curiosity she let me pass and then proceeded to set a pace from behind that I could hardly maintain When I stopped so did she, refusing maybe out of modesty to go ahead or simply testing my fitness.

My memory fails me for much of the latter part of that ascent all I remember is flash frames of a path, tree roots, rocks, lichen and my own feet and a gummy grin set against a backdrop of such beauty it made me insignificant.

Unbelievably at the top there was a group of guys from Pragya making some prefab toilets every element of which including bags of cement had been carried up there.

There should be an Olympic event for carrying things up impossible slopes, so much more impressive than bowls or polo.

This was the only place that these people could move to. They are living in tents and canvas awnings with no agricultural land or means of income since the temples are closed and they will receive no money from the government for the loss of their old houses .

Mothers and children sit inside shelters around a cooking pot on a fire, the smoke filling the space, tormenting my aching lungs.

Their future is bleak, just a view down on a world that has no place for them. I am completely distracted by the location and the wonder of the situation but of course it means nothing to them, I am seeing a vision that we as westerners long for and spend a lot of money to gaze at for a short while. Then I will return with my useless camera and equipment to my civilised life where wheelchair users are mugged for their pension and my monthly mobile bill is more than these men could possible earn in a year, leaving these unfortunates that fate has singled out, to suffer a winter that is coming. The snow line will come down to a few hundred metres above them and no one knows if they can survive the winter.

It’s true climbing hills can put a strain on your heart.

Don’t waste your good luck on gambling and bingo, save your good luck for the lottery that is life.

Two days later back down roads that are barely passable, with the constant threat of landslides and collapses, I see schools that are first floor deep in silt and, broken dams. and bare hillsides where there once were villages. Destruction spread down the valley left behind by the floods like revelers leaving rubbish after a festival.

Gradually we come across signs of modern life, white water rafting camps line the banks of a still youthful Ganges, settlements with guest houses and yoga retreats, ashrams and temples. Wide eyed westerners seem to sleep walk through Rishikesh made famous by the Beatles, a town spread across both side of the Ganges and joined by another chain footbridge. Gone are the posters with photos of lost souls, they have been replaced with adverts for enlightenment, ayerverdic treatments and meditation retreats. A western couple knock me with the handlebars of their Royal Enfield motorbike, not looking back or apologizing, too busy living the dream and pursuing a higher path.

I appear to be the only Caucasian who hasn't adopted a semi holyman dress code, and isn't warring a bindi or some Hindi accouterment. All the Indians here on en route to a pilgrimage are smiling happy and carefree, taking photos in front of shrines and bathing in the water, uninhibited and openly excited. I hardly catch a westerners eye and see no smiles as I pass them I can’t figure out why, is the path to enlightenment and self discovery that painful? They are so fortunate to be here, to dip in to a culture, commune and then jet off home again. It is a rare privilege to taste another life,let alone change your own.

One of India’s biggest attractions and exports is spiritual enlightenment, westerners throng here to re-charge their souls or find themselves whilst most the people I have just left further up the valley in Kalimath would do anything just to make a living. I reckon the best thing is the displaced families set up a few stalls alongside the therapy dealers, karma merchants and trinket sellers and in Rishikesh and offer a know yourself service.

You walk through a silk drape into an candle lit room with the low murmur of praises being offered. Sweet incense fills the air, and a holy man dabs a turmeric Tilaka on your forehead. You sit in a lotus position before an altar, the sound of bells chime lightly as a richly embroidered drape is gently parted to reveal a mirror with a small motif engraved on it as your face gets larger as you peer at it you read the motif it says ”KNOW YOUR LUCK”

Sent on the move

Photos: people and places

timtysonshort — Sun, 2 Feb 2014 00:05:00 GMT

some of my luck