Ban Pakkem
That night ended a lightning storm
right over Ban Pakkem accompanied by rain of deluvian proportions.
Someone in the nai ban's house
was snoring monumentally at about 23:00, and rather than go squeeze his nose or
make noises like Louis Funèse in "La Grande Vadrouille", I put in my
industrial strength Canadian Shoppers Drug Mart ear plugs and went back to
sleep.
Sleep. A sleep as sweet as death, this
slumber was a never-ending descent into a timeless restfullness; a heavenly
repose, a lithe and supple dream time perfumed by only sweet memories. I had
opened the window of my room on the stuffy top floor and the cool star-filled
breeze was collecting itself in patterns of joy all above and throughout the
mosquito net provided for me by my hosts.
I could feel my thigh muscles
relaxing, almost breathing like lungs.
At about 5:00 a thick and deaf
rumbling began to pound its way through the ear plugs, as though a thousand
drummers on a distant hilltop were trying to breach the distance and establish
contact with the village. I opened my eyes in the dazed nether-light of my
forgotten dream and it occurred to me to take out my ear plugs.
When I did, the truth of the situation
hit me. A rain, a big one.
Just to place this in its correct and
entire context: this was to be my last cycling trip on the back roads before
the monsoon hits and turns the entire country into a river of mud. I have
another big trip planned for May on an asphalt road out of Oudomxay, but this was
meant to be my last gasp into the heartland of Laos while I could still pedal
before the ຂີ້ຝຸ່ນ (dust)
turned into ຂີ້ຕົມ (mud).
And now it was raining. And not just
raining! The tin roof of the house was like a sound box, exaggerating every
single sound, every one of the millions of droplets until the depths of
despair. Lightening, followed in rapid succession by thunder, first cut the air
and then propulsed it. The building actually moved. The storm was right above
our heads.
I got up to look out the window,
visions of my head struck by lightening never far from my imagination, and
there saw the entire village and valley beyond beset by the staccato blinking
of the Universal Eye.
Out there, to the right, there seemed
to be a mountain. The base of it was lit from the interior, as though it were
built of a florescent transmitting rock. It was only later that I realized that
I was looking at the crown of the Buddha tree growing in the back of the Vat
garden I had visited that very night.
Indeed, that night after dinner and
after darkness had descended over all the land I walked down the path to the
Vat and wondered through the grounds shining my flashlight on the temple
frescoes:
A woman took an arrow shot
into her flank by a monkey-monster;
People crossing a river carry
a musical instrument;
A pair of masks in horrifying
and morbid black and white;
Buddha is being born – gods
are smiling, and Krishna is too. A heavenly woman showers the baby with
flower petals: the Universe,
at peace, is finally facing redemption.
But now in the total darkness
punctuated only by lightning throngs the Vat was black invisible and the tree
looked like a mountain lit from within.
As much as I loved the sound and smell
of the rain and the deep throat-filled rumbling of the thunder, I stood there
cursing my luck. I turned my flashlight outside to get a view of the village
and the rooftops but the beam was halted within a meter or two by a wall of
heavy drops.
Even if the rain stops immediately, I
thought, it will take hours for the sun to dry the mud. But the rain did not
stop immediately at all. It carried on with a vengeance well until 8:00. It
carried on while the children walked to school in their uniforms: white shirts
for all, black trousers for the boys and a dark sin with silver trim for the girls. It carried on while the village
dogs sat with their ears held back. It carried on while the roosters crowed to
the invisible fleeting sun.
The sun cleared the slogging earth
just enough to let it compact under the early morning load of trucks and public
transport. It was neither ຂີ້ຕົມ nor ຂີ້ຝຸ່ນ, and the air
smelt as though it had been pulverized with a fine mist composed of mountain
honey and citrus flowers. All along the path the immediate vegetation was
pristine and collected as if the evening’s storm had forced it to control its
contrasts, paradoxes and get a hold on itself.
Rain
laden leaves, thick with slated thirst, flittered in the wind. I could almost
hear their untroubled voices this morning calling victory and vigour against
the cruel fate that had littered the sides of the road with other, less
fortunate debris.
The
distant hills still stood hidden and alone, as if lost in thought, meditating
on the futility of expectation.
I
myself was reminded of a beautiful contradiction in which I found myself just
the night before when I went for my constitutional around the temple grounds: I
had come across a fresco of the Buddha locked in a state of meditation,
protected by the seven-headed cobra which symbolizes to my mind the serendipity
brought by nature when all is going well. He sat there, the Great Man, with his
eyes partly closed and all the Universe serendipiting to help him out of the
jam of existence and longing. On his countenance he wore the kind of satisfied
smile that quite frankly infuriates everybody.
I found
myself in the following paradox: I saw for the first time that the real peace
proposed by Buddha was liberation from desire and its evil twin brother, envy.
At the same time I found myself desiring to be in that state and envying anyone
who was in that state. The envy, the jealousy I felt in my heart was so great
that I think that if Buddha would have rolled up to me then and there I
probably would have smacked him out of sheer annoyance!
How
dare he be free of envy while I am stuck in the mire of desiring to be free of
desire?
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