I keep thinking of my blog as an episode of this American life. I can hear Ira Glass’s smooth voice informing listeners about this week’s theme and painting pictures about my grand time abroad in Asia. He reveals sweeping universal truths taken from my simple life, assigning meaning to everything that I’ve been up to, no matter how small. So that’s what this week’s blog is. Except don’t expect such universal insight, I’m still working out what this all means to me.
*ok now Ira Glass voice*
Today in our show we talk about home. What is it? Does it have to be a place? A feeling? A person? Or does it even exist at all? From WBEZ Chicago, it’s This American Life. Stay with us.
Act One: Himalayan Mountain Home
Flying into Leh, Ladakh, I was listening to a podcast about Dolly Parton. Well, I was half asleep and not taking much in, but I was still listening to it. In my ears, Dolly was talking about her Tennessee mountain home, the place she grew up and the place that’s continuously inspired her music. I was thinking that it would be so special to have a place that provides so much insightfulness and inner peace, but then I looked out the window at the mountains. That felt like home.
Ladakh is home to a lot of different people, with a lot of different cultures and a lot of different lifestyles. To the Buddhist monks to the trekking foreigners to the nomadic Changpa tribes, everyone here lives a hard life for at least some of the year. When the winter roles around and the weather drops below zero (in CELSIUS), these people have adapted to make do in their Himalayan mountain home. Even this summer, people have been having a hard time because of the 10,000% increase in rainfall in this dry landscape.
I imagine that even despite all the climate challenges, Leh would be quite a peaceful place to live. Surrounded by the mountains and open landscapes, I can't imagine ever feeling trapped. At least that's the vibe I got from the Buddhist monastery on the top of a mountains that we visited. Walking up to the monastery, I felt like I was ascending above everything else in the valley. We meandered past layers and layers of housing for the monks, eventually reaching their dining hall. We had come just in time for lunch. Older monks were sitting on tables and cushions as they slowly scooped up their food, while little six year old monks were running around the room complaining about their "doing the dishes" grades. This was their little community, and they all seemed to treat each other like family.
After exploring the monastery and the place that these men called home (followed most of the way by a little monk friend), I saw another young monk eating ice cream with a visiting family. Slowly I realized that must be his own family coming to visit him, since he couldn't go to them. Our guide explained that most families that have multiple children often send a little boy to come study to be a monk at the monastery, as they don't have enough resources to take care of all their children. At the monastery, the kids are fed, bathed, given an education, and complete their mandatory life cycle as a monk (a Buddhist belief). They're accepted into a whole new family, one that they'll have for the rest of their lives. They live at the top of a mountain, focusing only on what they can learn and what they can do for others. A life like that doesn't sound too bad.
The Himalayan mountain home can definitely be harsh, but that harshness seems to add an organic kind of beauty. You can't have the mountains without some snow.
Act Two: The Beginning of it All
Ladakh lies in the Indus Valley region, where civilization sprang up from. People created settlements along the Saraswati and the Indus sometime around 2,500 BCE. Starting at the Indus coming down from the mountains, I couldn’t even wrap my head around how old this was and how these people were just as complex as I am.
To understand how these people were actually people, I went on a deep dive into how they lived their everyday lives. Here's a few of the facts that really portrayed just how deeply human this civilization was.
These guys had a working sewage system. They had toilets and showers and drains and wells. They pooped just like we do. Everybody shits, I guess.
Following the water theme, they also had a public bath! This was essentially a giant swimming pool for everyone to use. I wonder if little kids peed in it.
There's seals all around the city that are theorized to be an ancient form of writing. We can't understand it, but even proof that it's there makes me feel connection.
They also found some art that included some of the more private body parts. I'm sure I don't need to explain that one further, as everyone saw a similar art form etched on desks in middle school.
Toys! Archeologists have found evidence of thousands of small objects that are thought to be games - rattles, spinning tops, marbles and dice, game boards with ivory pieces, and clay mazes that you navigate with a marble
They possibly held and voted in city council elections. There's no evidence of kingly worship, so I'll just choose to believe in the power of democracy.
These people were eventually pushed out of their home. Whether this was the drying of the Saraswati, the flooding of the Indus, or other groups of people coming in - they left their homes.
All of these little things that we've discovered about this group of people really emphasize to me how they had lives just like I did, just with maybe less iPhones. They raised their families and ate good food and planned for the future and messed around. They made a home under towering, snowcapped mountains. I can't help but think it's fitting that I, and so many others, did, too.
Act Three: A Resting Place
I always thought the Taj Mahal was built to be a palace, but it was actually built to be a mausoleum. Shah Jahan, the 5th Mughal emperor, commissioned to have it built in 1631 to house the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. She died about twenty years before it was finished, but she’s resting in there now. And he's right there next to her.
About seven years after construction of the Taj Mahal was finished, Shah Jahan fell ill. His sons all decided this was their opportunity to gain the throne, and they all turned against each other. Jahan's third son, Aurangzeb, defeated his brothers in battle and locked up his father as prisoner in the Fort of Agra. From the fort, Shah Jahan had a perfect view of the gleaming Taj Mahal. For eight years, he was forced to look at the eternal home of his late wife, never getting the chance to come any closer. Eventually Shah passed, and his daughter decided to lay him to rest right next to his wife in the tomb he had built to show his love for her.
Even though Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal's story didn't go quite as planned, as least they're resting next to each other now. I can't imagine a better place to be.
When thinking about how I've moved from place to place over the years, across countries and oceans and states and cities, I've come to the conclusion that home can just be whatever you want it to be. If you want it to be a place, whether that's a city or a region or just a geographical landmark, that's awesome. If you want it to be beside your loved ones (dead or alive), I think that's even better. Personally, I like to take the advice of a good friend of mine and think of myself as home. I can create my own sense of peace and security. Of course, I'll always draw from everything around me, all the family and friends and mountains and rivers.
Comments