Let me tell you a story…
I took the afternoon off yesterday to go to the local Tibetan hospital to stock up on my medicines. I was looking forward to the drive, which is not a thing you say in Bangalore. But this hospital has a detached feel from the rest of Bangalore – you drive along the new Mysore Expressway at a leisurely 80km/h, music in and sound out. No stopping. No lines of traffic. Bliss.
I get off the highway, turn left, and enter a world of Tibetan signs and prayer flags. The hospital is open, unlike on Saturday when I had made a futile visit. I walk over to the dispensary, where they get very worried about keeping me waiting and run around trying to find the doctor.
I watch in amusement and try to tell them it’s okay. Aren’t we all supposed to wait for hours for a doctor? But they scurry around still.
I sit down at their urging. A quote from Shantideva, the great Buddhist teacher, in front of me: May no living creature suffer. A young man in a doctor’s coat rushes past, then stops seeing me and grins. “Ah, come in, come in,” he gestures as if he is inviting me for dinner.
I enter the cabin and show him the prescription. He doesn’t glance at it. Instead, he holds my wrists and starts humming. I stare at the dark blue Shakyamuni Buddha in front of me. When he is done with the humming, he has again, like the Tibetan doctor I went to in Dharamshala, identified the ‘problem.’ Except, he doesn’t call it a problem. “Just an imbalance,” he explains.
“How do you know this by reading my pulse?”
“You know how people play music on the guitar? The slightest change of your fingers, and the notes are different? It’s like that.”
He stretches himself, then looks at me.
“What happened to you?”
“Excuse me?”
“What broke your heart?”
I gape. I feel for the first time how my guests feel when I ask them the most vulnerable questions on the MyndStories Podcast. Shakyamuni in front is as placid as ever. A monk gently bursts in and asks something in Tibetan. I am glad for the distraction. But the doctor, Dr. Namgyal, is back to me again. I squirm in my seat and try to explain.
He stretches again. “Life is this, yes?” he asks. “Birth. Death. Life. Loss. We learn to see this as the circle of life.” I sit back, unprepared for this philosophy/therapy lesson. He pauses.
“I haven’t seen my mom in 8 years,” he says, an oddly intimate confession in this sterile cabin. “In the last 14 years, I have met my mother twice.”
“Where is she?”
“In Tibet.”
I wait, unsure what to say to this.
“We carry pain. All of us. But we can carry it lightly, yes?”
I nod. He stares at me, then starts scribbling the prescription, the moment over.
I walk out, carrying the medicines tightly and the pain lightly.
Wherever you are today, I hope you do the same.
Carry your pain lightly
Musings / Tuesday, November 26th, 2024
