Tibet, Or Not Tibet...

Tibet, Or Not Tibet...

      India was the best three weeks I ever savored... Full of life on every level, the country offered detailed uniqueness and piety with variety... The people, the history, the music, the festivals, the colors, and the food... Above all, the food... It was an adventure at every meal, with potential to either nourish me eternally, or debilitate my body with some exotic amoeba... Some dinners were better than others, yet the best stories all come from the outlandish and grotesque realm that we call reality...

      It was my final night in Goa, and my life travel partner was at last feeling well enough to eat solid foods again... She had heard about a cute Tibetan restaurant nearby that had great momos... Why she would go from bedridden upheaval to Himalayan medieval was beyond me... But I prefer to imagine myself as open minded, so I told myself, "Hey, what the heck?" We ventured out into the sultry supper air, fully aware that each and every bite could be tempting some food-borne illness to obliterate our stillness...

      As we entered the establishment, a very cozy atmosphere was strewn before us... Everything was outdoors, with straw mats on the sandy dirt... Limp cushions were strewn about on the earthen floor, and various tables were set up, about a foot off of the ground... Several Tibetan kids were scampering around a filthy, scratching dog... This really put the finishing touches on the atmosphere's authenticity... There were a few, 'Free Tibet' posters on the partition wall that hid the kitchen...

This appeared to be a very popular mantra in India... The general hubbub was that China had invaded Tibet, and ought to give it back. But having lived in and just come from China, my Tibetan food tasted more like Chinese than Indian... This made it more difficult to fully believe all the, 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers I had always seen in the states. Finding no resolution to this quandary, I set it aside and turned my attention to my surroundings...

      Having overcome the visual aesthetics, we sat at a table on the floor... I raised an eyebrow toward my partner to ask, "Want to get out of here?" She opted to stay, and I settled in... Almost immediately we began to find fleas nipping at our ankles... The cushions were infested, and the leaping little bloodsuckers are one of my worst pet peeves... I muttered, "They really want to carry on with the village unfulfillage theme, eh? Agh, I think I might have altitude sickness!" She ignored my sarcasm while staring at the menu...

      I noticed a lone hippie enter the place and sit down... He had the look of someone who'd been around Goa for awhile... They get a grizzled sort of leathery seriousness to them... This one had all that and much more... I really wanted to get a second opinion of the cafe's cleanliness before I tried the food, so I crawled over to his table... He seemed to wake from neverland when I approached... Somehow, amidst telling me that this restaurant had the greatest food in the world, he ended up at our table... I fretted to myself, "Did I accidentally ask him to eat with us?" I decided to go with the flow, and so we all sat down together on the flea mats...

      We began a conversation, though it was more his monologue than any dialog... He explained that fleas were part of the universal cycle of life, one of nature's tiny miracles... Then he talked about the Mayan calendar, the heads on Easter Island, and UFO's... He gestured sadly to the 'Free Tibet' posters and echoed their sentiments over China's occupation... To him it seemed a preoccupation... Then he pointed out one of the Tibetan kids who bussed tables... He revealed to us that the child had great magical powers, and was actually a very old wizard... Or something like that... I took it all in stride, paralleling long enough to survey an acre or two of his mental landscape...

      I was relishing the man's surreal stories, so I kept him going with, 'yeahs' and, 'uh huhs'... I patiently bided my time, watching and waiting for an opportunity to point out that he was scratching his own flea bites... Which seemed to be a huge contradiction to his universal cycle of life, and I wanted very much to unravel his whole ball of yarn... Yes, that was likely a very cruel notion, but someone so wise is just asking for it... The man told us he'd taken lots of drugs in Goa, including the notoriously destructive DMT... 'Okay, that could explain a lot' I thought. As he pulled out his pack of very corporate Marlboros, I decided to get to the heart of the man... I offered him one of my Indian-rolled bidis instead, inquiring as to his name... He said he was called Metri, after some such Hindu god or goddess... I pried deeper, asking what the name was on his passport... He seemed sheepish after looking down and saying, "Dimitri... I was a journalist... But now, now... maybe I just want to go back home to Moscow..."

      As soon as he spoke his true name, he became real to me... No more wearying cheer about sacred fleas, or spider webs of spirituality... Instead he became very scared, telling us that the local trance-dance party-ashram overseers were after him... I knew Goa was a raging scene of revelry, though Dimitri was convinced that behind it all was a Mafioso type-of 'Party Illuminati'... They had telepathically threatened his life while he was on acid, causing the poor guy to go into hiding and lucid paranoia... He said that they had later poisoned his food and even caused him to crash on a motorcycle... How Goa's 'Party Illuminati' got the coconut to fall from the tree onto his bike at that precise moment, I couldn't guess... But I decided to skip the midnight rave on the beach...

      Dimitri was extremely worried for us, like someone in witness protection who had just endangered someone's life by spilling all their secrets... I had to think of something to quell his agitation... I told him not to be frightened for us, that we were protected... He became very rapt as I said, "We know someone..." With that, I let the matter go, probably giving him one more thing to trip out over...  He must have assumed that we were in India on behalf of whatever was good in the world, ready to take on the partiers to vie for the freedom of his mortal soul... Obviously comforted, he rose to leave...

      As we parted, I gave him my pack of bidis, and he hugged me richly in truest hippie tradition... I still don't know fully what to think about that guy... He and I had connected for a brief time span, and I'd felt genuine pity and concern for him... Whether the Party Illuminati was out to get him, or whether he was a paranoid schizophrenic, I'll never know... I can still love the dude, because he finally gave me something real to love... I only hope that all the thousands of Dimitris still in Goa can get some kind of help, some lifeline to follow towards hope and freedom...

      The wizard kid's magic sure didn't help our food arrive any faster... We finally got our momos, an hour after we ordered them... My partner, in the meantime, had been to the Tibetan-style outdoor restroom, next to the Tibetan-style outdoor kitchen... It was a 3rd world backyard cookery, with utensils hanging off of tree branches, or simply laying on the ground... As the dogs yapped for scraps, we gradually lost our appetite... Still, I tried one momo, having waited an hour for the closure... I didn't like it at all... Much too close to the Chinese cuisine I sought to escape, having eaten ten lifetimes' worth already... I wanted No Mo' of those momos... They didn't go to waste, however... As we left, the scratching dog wolfed them down in two and a half bites, thus providing sustenance for all the fleas, which completed the universal cycle of life...