For someone who doesn’t talk, I seem to make a lot of friends. People here like me? Nothing is planned and so much seems to happen. You don’t have to be an extrovert, you don’t have to muster up energy and put yourself out there, torturing yourself to be something you feel you should be, you feel everyone else is. But, there is little things you notice that help. Not walking around with headphones in. Leaving your phone behind. Just saying yes whenever things show up. Not wasting energy trying and instead accept all that is.
Walking alone beside the large trees that look small from above, a big giant four eyed German says, “You alone?”
“Yep.”
“Ah, we were alone too. Join us.”
Dave is a German living in Africa with his company that produces fruit trees, sells them to farmers and buys the apples back off them to be the first ever company to have local grown apples. I told him that America will probably kill him. He is thirty, like me, like I was a few days ago, and his talking abilities and confidence made him a great sidekick in this town. We shared a bond of bogan wisdom.
He walked, and I joined with Nadia. A German/French living in California. She is older but you wouldn’t know it. I don’t seem to even think about age. It lacks relevance. As Dave and I sat in a bar I found myself next to a girl who has lived here for five years, from New Zealand. We had exchanged hellos a few times and that’s how it usually happens. On the fourth hello you take the hint of the energies and their currents and you ask a second question after the original, ‘How are you?’ Usually where you're from, how long you're staying, the well worn template. Maria, the new Zealander who is studying Ayurveda invites Dave and I to the beetroot café. There sits Ujwal, a sassy observer who’s sexuality is as obvious as mine albeit contrary. Pemala runs the café with her mother. They have a tibetan look, from Delhi. Her mother doesn’t speak much English but gives a big smile and a wave when you see her. They invite Dave and I to a Tibetan nightclub.
“It is dangerous there,” they tell us. “The Tibetans get very aggressive when they drink and they carry knives.”
Saloni, the gorgeous girl from Mumbai tells me she is going to take a knife and keep it up her sleeve. I didn’t buy into that; it is almost impossible to find trouble when you aren’t looking for it. Which we did not. Dave and I were the only white people in the place. The Dj is playing the same songs you could imagine in a nightclub for twenty year olds in Melbourne. Same songs but instead of Justin Biebers voice you hear Indian words. Those artists aren’t artists, they’re props, and the music you think they created is the same pop music altered to every culture. They get praised although they’re nothing but cover musicians pushing formula music whilst people’s familiarity gets identified as taste. You don’t like it, you just know it. I guess you could say that about everything. The reason for alcohol is because of bad music. So I drink and I dance and all the friends in my head that watch me, slowly disappear and I realise most of my shyness is narcissism, I realise no one gives a shit, just dance bro. And bro I did, bro I did indeed. The alcohol brings the group together and the hangover creates a bond. Holi comes and we dance in the street. Everyone dancing and drinking and pouring water over each other as the colours fly in the air as if a magician is casting spells on the entire day. With the locals you get the gossip. So much gossip. There I find out my old friend Yash from the sky high café, which I spoke about as if the café was heaven and he an accommodating brother. In the middle of the night, whilst behind on rent and owing money to the supermarket, he left. He disappeared. You just never know with character, and that’s alright.
Now my birthday is coming around, and no one is less excited than me, I don’t care. Nadia and I walk to the beetroot café and I am dressed to go back to mount view, the Tibetan club. Pemala and her mother walk out with a big home made cake with my name on it. Everyone there sings happy birthday to me and I feel very special and I feel very loved. I feel somewhat ashamed that people can be this nice, that I am not this nice, that I at times, have a negative view on the world when people and places like this exist. All that courage it takes to get away and how little it takes to stay. I blow out the candle and close my eyes to make a wish.
I wish everyone here is as nice to themselves as they are to me.
Dave has left for Africa and now I am the only white person in the club. Before you know it, it is 5:30am and we walk together under the heavy rain and get into a cab to go home. Maybe it was the best birthday I have ever had, maybe the most wholesome and surprising week for a while, and they are all like that, when you aren’t looking for something better. Once you allow the sadness of acceptance that you are alone. That you walked into this life alone, and you will die alone. Once you realise all the illusions you cling to are there because you're scared, scared to just feel. Once you realise that the only way to realise is to realise you don’t know anything. Then you see what is, and from that emptiness of sadness, loneliness and the fear of walking around without all your stories that tell you that you exist, then beauty starts to blossom. Then it isn’t great or horrible, its all just alright. Be careful of the bliss salesman, the light eyes of enthusiasm, we create the images and falsehoods for a reason, to prevent sadness, to prevent the truth, but the beginning is allowing it all to flow through you, and when it does, you can be present, without those memories that are no longer real, torturing ourselves with pleasure. We all want to be alright, until we are alright, then we want more. There are no plans for me, there has not been yet, and how many beautiful stories accept me on to the page. So to anyone, book a ticket to Dharamsala, see what happens, its usually pretty good. Alright becomes pretty bloody good.
