Sisters

Some excerpts from my sister's email messages sent from a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in Himalayas in India:

"For two mornings now I woke up to chirping birds, chanting nuns, and the faint smell of burning coal. For two evenings now I sleep into more chanting and humming of insects, cicadas, and monastics. Everyone is very friendly, the mosquitoes by far the most loving. They say the mosquitoes swarm to new blood, and after a while, they will leave you alone. I long for the day when mosquitoes grow sick of me."

"The local Indians are mostly farmers, with several small vendors on the main road. The few 'stores' are found in mud huts along the main road."

"It’s only 9am in the morning but we have already had 3 thunderstorms today. The rain washes everything away, most visibly roads, but if it weren’t for the rain, the roads would be all covered up with dense layers of animal poo, which accumulate very quickly throughout the day (the animals have very good GI system since they feed on fresh grass). And when you start to think, which would you rather have, muddy paths or paths filled with poo, you realize they are exactly the same."

She talks about simple--very very simple--vegetarian food, mostly made up of starch: rice, potatoes, this very hard bread. And there's not much taste to food except salt and, if you want, there's a spicy chili pepper sauce to add to everything. She also talks about the aggressive monkeys all over the place, ready to attack women in particular!

It's fun to think about how different our daily routines are at this moment, with me driving along paved highways, shopping with a credit card in well-lit markets, using machines in every thing I do: dishwasher, dryer, computer, heater, cars. And I can eat whatever kind of food I fancy: be it Indian, Chinese, Italian, vegetarian, seafood, or if I so choose--hunks of meats.

Which way of life is weirder? I guess they are equally hard to imagine.