Waiting

'You are on waiting list', I heard from the other side of the check-in counter. 'What the hell?', I thought, I bought the ticket online, and it wasn't a discounted ticket. 'What's happening here?' There were so many things going wrong recently, that I wasn't utterly surprised. I walked through the glittering corridors of Vienna Airport, and entered the transit hall. I showed my ticket to a flight attendant, who asked me to wait for a while. I'm sitting in the transit, waiting. More and more people come in. It feels as if time stopped for a while, or just the NOW expanded into the past and future washing away memories and plans. It feels like being always in transition, and always on the road in the same time, waiting here and there to get somewhere without ever arriving to my destination. Always on a waiting list.

Mongolian sunset

इफ यू वांट तो विसित मार्स, चेक आउट थिस, sorry, if you want to visit Mars, check out this:

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/mars_rocket.shtml

If not, come with me!!!

Face map

Hong Kong. I was exhausted. Just finished a trip and it was constantly 32 degrees, so after sitting at the computer all day I decided to cheer myself up. I headed to Temple street enjoying the cool evening breeze to find a face reader on the night market. One of my favorite films called The Chinese box with Jeremy Irons and Gong Li, is set in Hong Kong and I saw a face map in it. I wanted to have one. I went up straight to the lady who was sitting right there, where the old man in my hotel told me she will, and asked her to read my face. She was happy to have a customer, but she didn’t want to draw. She said these days people just want to talk to her, and she is out of practice. But I wanted to understand how it works, and insisted to get my face mapped properly:)

She started off with some general compliments. 'You are a very kind person. You always have a plan, and never let anyone stop you or divert you.' And then she started analyzing me, ordering certain ages and qualities to different parts of the face. 'Your ears are big and thick, it means your parents loved you very much when you were a child. Your forehead is full, so you were very good at school. Your eyebrows are long, it means good career. Eyes are beautiful: you do good business. Your nose is long and straight, between 40-50 you will make a lot of money. Upper lips means your years between 50 and 60, you will be doing well, the chin over 60. You have to be careful with water over 60. Especially when you have a bath. And your two moles are bad signs, they make you spend a lot of money. You should get rid of them. The lines under your eyes show that your children will be great, they will always listen to you.' I thought I just have lines there because I’m tired, and I was looking at her with such disbelief, that she asked: 'How old are you?' When I said 39 she was shocked. 'I thought you were 34. But it doesn’t matter. Signs are signs.' 'How many children do you think I`ll have?' I asked just in order to participate. She became even more serious, and she was checking my face then my palm for a while. 'Two boys and a girl.' 'Wow!' I was surprised by her firm reply. 'And your eyes are shining which means you love traveling.' I couldn’t deny that, and thought this divination might have been sold to a few more people today already. Thanked the old lady and walked over to an open air seafood restaurant to have some shrimps with cashews and while making some notes, a huge crab walked past under my table. I was shocked first, then touched as I followed him to the door with my gaze. Would he be able to leave the urban jungle and ever make it home? The cook caught up with him just when he made it to the street of freedom. I was thinking for a while about his chances to survive on the streets of Kowloon and find the way back to the sea. Still pondering over the crab, the divination, free will and determination, being caught up in reality which is just a loop in the chain.

Jetleg in New Delhi

It is raining all day, the wet winter chill creeps into my bones. Just landed in Delhi three hours ago. It would be best to watch TV while lying in bed under the quilt, but when I turn it on, it`s just humming and buzzing, the screen looks grey and foggy like the weather outside, trying to press all the buttons on the remote, but can`t make it work. Trying to set up things for the coming months, jotting down ideas and lists in my diary, but soon the electricity goes off, and my little world goes black. I don`t remember seeing a window in the room, must be right, I`m blinded by the darkness. I doze off into a dreamless sleep as if I fell into a black hole. A long and dizzying fall. Don`t know how much time I spend in total hibernation, but I wake up hearing the generators starting, as if an old movie was about to start. The music is climbing up slowly after being unbearably out of tune for a while, then the rhythm becomes stable, a melody builds up, and although the sound is creaking, and black lines and spots are flickering on the old film, I recognize it, I’m here again. India 2004.

Calcutta

Yesterday morning I arrived to Calcutta. I was reading The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh on the train travelling here from Banaras. It is an exciting book on malaria disease, delirium and nightmares, coincidences and synchronicity, all set in Calcutta. When I arrived here, many of the stories of the novel seemed to repeat themselves. I met an Italian woman, a personal disciple of Osho. She was a natural healer, who gave me an interesting teaching on tantra and relationships and told me she is on the way to the Nicobar Islands to write a cookbook. Her first yoga teacher happened to be Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. Then I went to Kalighat, the place where Sati`s finger fell on earth, and I found a Kamaccha Devi picture on the road. I picked it up and still have it:) In the afternoon I visited the Birla Art Academy, and saw a market behind, where there was a Bengali painter sitting with his scrolls singing the Ramayana. He was just the kind of storyteller I came here to find.

Then on the metro a guy came up to me saying 'this is the fourth time I see you today'. It was true, I also noticed him in different parts of the city. (Calcutta has 12 million inhabitants). In the evening I read the Telegraph, the local newspaper where a proud article said that India got the 8th place in a survey where the question was "how often do you have sex?" The article was emphasising the fact that India is better than Britain in this respect. And who got the first place? You wont believe me: Hungary. It`s hard to imagine when I remember those gloomy faces on the streets of Budapest. This morning when I walked down on Park Street a waiter stopped me from the restaurant where I had dinner last night saying, that I should visit Mother Theresa`s House, it`s not far. I walked and walked, maybe even for an hour, it felt like an endless hike in the heat, but finally found it. It turned out that Mother Theresa`s beatification ceremony will be this Sunday in Rome and a sister of charity showed me the room where she lived. Then completely exhausted I sat down in Barrista Cafe, where an old Bengali man came over to my table for a chat, and told me his life story and how he met the Dalai Lama in `59, when His Holiness arrived to India. Then I met a young Bengali guy in the Oxford bookshop (had to buy a book by Tagore:), who took me out for a drink, and told me he is a fashion designer in Japan, just came back for holiday, and he would take me around on his bike tomorrow to see some scroll painters and collect some Bengali patterns. Then I went to the library of the Asiatic Society to find a book, but instead I found the Acta Orientalia on the shelf, the great Hungarian academic journal with Professor Wojtilla`s article (my Sanskrit teacher from the university). These are just some of the events of the last two days. I don`t know what I`m doing here, it`s too fast, too random, too much for my brain. Maybe it`s all just a malaria dream.

I love trees!

Although I`m back in Banaras after a trip in Tibet, my mind is still there trying to replay the moments, taste again some fragrances, colours and sounds. There is a picture coming into my mind often these days, the moment when we were about to reach Nyalam (a Tibetan village near the Nepali border). From the endless plains of the rocky desert plateau the road descended steeply into a deep gorge with a river at the bottom. The dry air of the Tibetan highland also changed into the moist air of the Indian subcontinent. And then I saw a tree, and then more and more trees, something we didn`t see for days. I was overflowed with joy as if it was a sign of reaching home after a long journey.

I was touched as I remembered the boy in Eric Valli`s Himalaya film, the little chieftain-to-be, when he saw the first tree in his life. Many thoughts rushed through my mind, about trees I`ve seen before, the sacred trees of India, banyans and pipal trees, tree worship. Then I thought I should catch this moment, I should be able to explain or describe it with words or pictures what that tree near Nyalam meant to me when I looked at it, but I couldn`t put it into words. And today in Benares, sitting in my hotel room reading, found a piece of poetry by William Blake who I think really made it: 'The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.' (Photos: the landscape before and after Nyalam)