From High-Tech to Low-Fi

All except the odd cricket have moved out. So has all except the odd lama Tenzin and I. When Thupten and Lobsang were here the house transformed to a high tech communication center with "heavy" monks walking in and out, chatting on Messenger and constantly speaking on their mobile phones. Someone was always in the kitchen cooking meat or making tea. Now that Lobsang is on his way to Perth and Thupten has gone to Bangalore again we are back to low-fi sleepy veggie life again. It's amazing... All the left over meat seemed to rejuvenate Passang. In all the times I have been here I have never seen that dog react to anything but food. He is always flat out on his stomach, sleeping or staring into space. But today I could not believe my eyes when he started playing with Tenzin. Made my last visit to the Representative's office today and handed over all the scanned files on CD. Dorje took me for lunch and I had to eat meat momos again. Then he took me to Camp 5 and 6 to look at the Meddical Clinic. Every year the people in the camps have to raise Rs 110 000 to run it, and he wants me to do some fund raising too. I have revised my opinion about him a little bit after Thinley told me that Dorje had kept some of Thinley's legal fees for himself as a kind of commission for passing on birth certificate cases. Thinley takes the certificates to court to file for Indian citizenship (about 70 so far). Tenzin and I went for a long walk across the rolling ields behind Sera. It's such a beautiful and peaceful place, especially in the late afternoon when the Indian farming families are together outside their houses after a days work. Outside one of the houses a wedding ritual was going on, or rather a post-wedding ritual where the husband a wife wash each other (symbolically) before enetring their house. Later a thunderstorm broke but it was over in 45 minutes. In the paper I have read that rains are creating havoc in Mysore. I just hope it is over by MOnday afternoon!