At Home in the Other Corner of the World, by Mishel Mussali

A Home in the Other Corner of the World

The clock is ticking. The hours are going by firmly, elongating the past and moving away the future. There is a thing called time that is intimately linked to our memories. Clocks measure time, but they fall short when measuring memories. 

My memories have become a kind of fuel that burns to keep me alive. Those memories might lie in the simplest things, yet they intertwine in such impossible ways that make existence itself a complex yet exciting path to walk on.  

Clocks were merely the tools we used to go to class, to meet at Gu Chu Sum, or to have tea time at the celestial palace. Those clocks were delayed by three different times, and failed to measure our memories second by second. So, what is left of so many hours in the Eastern latitude?

What has stayed with me since the day we left is a tiny voice on the back of my head that keeps reminding me that things are not what they seem. 

Time flows in strange ways when one is away from home, and little by little what not long ago was our daily life, today it has become memories of mountains and foreign smiles. Memories that have captured far-away places and that have taught us things we had never imagined.

Our steps were outside the traveled lanes, with curious eyes and dancing winds. Prayer flags accompanied our steps. Those memories are brightened by the way the sunset colors the sky: blue at heart, pink, subtle orange, light blue and clouds, deep blue clouds. Some shiny stars dying in the far distance reminding us that we are too made of star dust.

 That’s how Dharamsala colors its days: red, pink and orange for the sunsets and a bit of turquoise for the early sunrise. That’s how I remember the faces, streets, words and smiles that have ticked in my clock, impregnating the seconds with time and the time with stories. 

It is well known that mountains keep secrets. Secrets that combined with distance have the ability to transform the mind and the heart wisely.  Little by little, the smell of incense, red robes monks and those surreal highlands became a continuous story.

I used to wake up early to a cup of chai and if I was quiet enough I could listen to chants in the distance and also monkey fights not so far.  Later on, dodging cows, motorcycles and eating momos after class were tracing my day to day. Walking up and down by Temple Rd I would sing along Om Ma Ni Ped Me Hum with that catchy melody that just the ones that have listened to it can understand.

Suddenly we stopped being spectators, and we became characters. We started to sound out some Tibetan words just like little children do, and that opened a new world of understanding. We were not there just to consume culture or passing by with our backpacks. We were there to listen deeply to all those untold stories that wanted to be listened. 

At the beginning it seemed like the cause was not ours. But then, as we walked together with our Tibetan friends, their cause became also our own.  

It was then when I would come back to my host family for dinner to listen the crazy stories of my –Pa la- or the laugh of my –Ama la – while trying to understand each other through mimicry. 

An unknown street, in a remote town, in the other corner of the world became a street of memories, in which we would walk on our way to class or to a café in Jogiwara Rd. Crossing cultural borders just required to fill my stomach with as much chai as my Pa la could fit in my cup. And then without realizing we were weirdly belonging to a place that wasn’t ours, crossing borders that we didn’t even know existed. 

I could go on, trying to extract the essence out of moments, but I have always believed that there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words. 

Time seemed to pass by very fast, and suddenly the time to leave home to go to another home ticked on our clocks. 

On one of our last days in Dharamsala, another very tragic event occurred in Tibet. And it touched me deeply. In a late evening of that last week, I found myself with so many other people, holding a candle for a vigil of a nomad that self-immolated back in Tibet. It was such a painful, yet powerful moment, Tibetans chanting for their brother and some foreign eyes witnessing the horror of our time. A picture of the nomad hanged in the front made me recognize the look of a dear friend, and the struggle that little by little became also mine. 

In between the obscurity and sadness of the moment, there was something tingling in the freezing air. There is something that lives in each Tibetan, and that I myself have also learnt to live with. There is hope in our hearts, burning as a vital flame that warms the freezing air in the cold vigil nights. 

It’s hard to believe that so much suffering and dispossession can occur over soil. People are being displaced by something called borders. Those borders of nation states are not so different from borders between people. 

Suddenly everything became a matter of borders, borders created by language, by nationality, by way of living, borders constructed upon the illusion of difference. With every second passed, and smile shared, those differences fell apart, leaving behind a strange sensation in the chest. This semester in Dharamsala taught me that it is possible to cross those cultural borders by opening our hearts and ears, and understanding that all those cultural differences are mere illusions that we exercise through a thing called identity.  

There is so much resemblance between nation states and people. And to break free from borders, we also need to break from our illusion of self. That thing called self, changes while it moves. I move, therefore I am.

This is the way in which that corner in the Indian Himalayas became home, while I realized that I am not so different from snails, always carrying home with me.

The most important thing I learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.

Those days in Dharamsala have found a deep rooted place in my memory. A place where they will age old and sprinkle sunset colors before going to sleep. As of today, the images of a not so distant past swell and shrink inside me, shaking up my thoughts, making me believe that I’m capable of reaching true understanding.

Today, I have this strange feeling that I am not myself anymore. And it is a good thing, although it’s hard to put into words, I have been disassembled and now I’m capable of experiencing metamorphic changes through space and time.That sort of feeling. Hopefully these dear memories will live in my words and thoughts, making my life worth living.