Over a chain linked fence on one of the many winding streets a sign reads, “Thamel: To / Homely / Atmosphere / and More / Enjoyable / Living. This is district of Katmandu known for everything tourist, backpackers, arms dealers, drug addicts and prostitutes, and some of best cuisine and nightlife Katmandu has to offer. The past weekend a dozen or more students met at a quite guesthouse restaurant called Café Mitra where we ate and drank in an open air garden complete with lotus pond, creeper vines and carved statuary. Eventually we made our way to the New Orleans Jazz club where Americans and Europeans were interspersed with Nepalese, Sherpas, and Tibetans watching a wayward hippy couple sing “We Shall Overcome” in cracked voices with guitar and harmonica accompaniment. The man, a thirty something struck me as strung too tight for this place. He emanated a tense enthusiasm as he encouraged the noncommittal crowd to chorus to “We will rock you.” Walter and I happily obliged in the fullest, most red blooded American hollering we could manage.
Just before midnight we moved down the street to another night club as taxies filled the streets in a midnight traffic jam and Thamel began to empty. Curfews are loosely enforced and armed police stand at every intersection directing the flood of cabs for the exodus. At the middle of an intersection a large officer, a hefty billy club in his right hand, puts a firm hand against a pale faced and gaunt European directing him off into more suitable corners of the city. All around us the formality and expected modesty of Nepal is lost in a sea of miniskirts, stiletto heels, and low cut blouses. The youth of Nepal fall against each other and in side streets and alleys old men escort stumbling and incoherent young girls through antique wooden doorways into narrow halls and dark rooms. And all around there is raucous laughter, Christmas lights, and blaring horns. Inside the Dragon’s Eye night club people cluster, dancing round a large Buddha head that stands at the front of a long empty wading pool. Cheap electric lights flash and outdated house music throbs at a decibel high enough to drown out any superfluous conversation.
There is a sort of beauty in the madness, the unrelenting rush of emotion and the complete absence that breaks from every pore, attended by smoke and alcohol. On the dance floor Padampa whirls round, his head wrapped haphazardly by a white bandana. Padampa is an unusual young man, probably twenty two with an indistinct accent, partly Russian partly English. Most days he is dressed in monks robes with a cleanly shaved head and endearing smile. His very presence exudes an infectious charisma. The rumor mill has spun a story, perpetuated either by Padampa himself or others, that he is the incarnation of the great Maha-Siddha of India, Padampa Sangye, progenitor of the Chod or Kusali practice (I will explain this further in a forthcoming blog). Now, in the heart of Thamel, sans robes, Padampa is thrown here and there amongst a mass of sweat and breath as though propelled by some hellish and beautiful wind. Part of me thinks this is freedom and wants to become part of it, to abandon myself and give away all control to the incessant heartbeat of everything that swims inside this haze. But this sort of abandonment is not freedom, it is a drug of choice, a temporary suspension of self. And besides that, I’m not much of a dancer.
Many Buddhist practitioners and seekers end up in Thamel and later justify recklessness or random choices as the purification of karma or transcendence of duality. For the most part this is of course complete bullshit. We arrive at such places through impulse or a lack of judgment the only practice involved is to see how we negotiate the pitfalls of every second step we take. As Chokyi Nyima observed, “Westerners love Vajrayana and tantra.” We have this insatiable desire, myself included, to experience the unusual and often perverse worlds of the great Indian Maha-Siddhas like Padampa Sangye or Virupa. The latter a mad saint who captured a loose ray of the sun and kept it from setting for days till the king paid his bar tab. Maybe we want magic and enlightenment and the enjoyment of every passion without question and without discipline or maybe we just want a quick ticket out of samsara. The magic of Thamel is that is shoves the impermanence and tedious balance of life right up in your face. As we leave Thamel the streets are nearly deserted except for a pack of Nepalese police on bicycles. In Bouda I walk the empty and silent circle round the stupa with Aksel, Walter, and Asha, the unsleeping eyes of the Buddha staring out into darkness. Loosing oneself in Tamal is nothing and those of us who come out maintained have accomplished only a little more.
