‘This new bamboo shoot hangs over my neighbours wall
– hasn’t yet learned about boundaries -‘ /Satish Gupta/
Whenever I end up in Delhi, the first thing I do is to go to Connaught Place and start circling around till I find a newspaper wallah to buy a copy of the First City. It is a monthly magazine of listings of events and places to go, but nothing like the usual expat magazines you find in big Asian cities. More of an upmarket publication on culture and art for the people of Delhi with some amazing columns and interviews. My favourite column is Satish Gupta`s Zen black, zen white, a painting and a haiku (or sometimes a longer thought) arranged perfectly on a whole page. Every time I`m so excited to see it, that I have to open the magazine already while handing over the money, and only then I`m able to walk to a cafe and read the rest. Satish Gupta is an Indian painter, sculptor, writer and poet. In the 70ies when studying art in Paris, one day he walked into a second hand bookshop opposite the Notre Dame, and came across a book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Since then Zen philosophy moves his brush, pen and chisel. Now that I`m back in Hungary repacking my stuff accumulated during the last few years of travel, I found my diary written in 2003 with this haiku above and his ink painting of a bamboo. And it moved me just the same way as seven years ago.
Hongkong. I was really exhausted after finishing the trip and it was constantly 32 degrees, so after sitting at the computer all day I decided to cheer myself up. I headed to Temple street to the night market to find a face reader. I watched a film recently called The Chinese box with Jeremy Irons and Gong Li, and I saw a face map in it. I wanted to have one. I went up straight to the lady who was sitting just where the old man in my hotel told me she will, and asked her to read my face. She was happy to have a customer, but she didn’t want to draw. She said these days people just want to talk to her, they don’t want drawing, so she is out of practice. Or maybe never got into. But I wanted to understand how it works. She started off with many general compliments. „You are a very kind person. You always have a plan, and never let anyone stop you or divert you.” And then she started analyzing the face ordering certain age and qualities to different parts. „Your ears are big and thick, it means your parents loved you very much when you were a child. Your forehead is full, so you were very good at school. Your eyebrows are long, it means good career. Eyes are beautiful: you do good business. Your nose is long and straight, between 40-50 you will make a lot of money. Upper lips means the period between 50 and 60, you will be doing well, the chin over 60. You have to be careful with water over 60. Especially when you have a bath. And your two moles are bad signs, they make you spend a lot of money. You should get rid of them. The lines under your eyes show that your children will be great, they will always listen to you.” I was looking at her with disbelief, I thought I just have lines there because I’m tired, so she asked: „How old are you?” When I said 39 she was shocked. „I thought you were 34. But it doesn’t matter. Signs are signs.” „How many children do you think I will have?” I asked just in order to participate. She became even more serious, and she was checking my face then my palm for a while. „Two boys and a girl.” „Wow!” „And your eyes are shining which means you love travelling.” I couldn’t really deny that, and thought maybe this divination was sold to a few more people today already, so just thanked and went to an open air restaurant and while writing this, a huge crab walked past under the table. The cook caught him just when he made it to the street to freedom. I was thinking for a while about his chances to survive on the streets of Kowloon. Will he be able to leave the urban jungle and ever make it home? I was pondering over the crab, the divination, the paralels, being caught up in reality which is just a loop in the chain.
It is raining all day, the wet winter chill creeps into my bones. Just landed in Delhi three hours ago. It would be best to watch TV while lying in bed under the quilt, but when I turn it on, it`s just humming and buzzing, the screen looks grey and foggy like the weather outside, trying to press all the buttons on the remote, but can`t make it work. Trying to set up things for the coming months, jotting down ideas and lists in my diary, but soon the electricity goes off, and my little world goes black. I don`t remember seeing a window in the room, must be right, I`m blinded by the darkness. I doze off into a dreamless sleep as if I fell into a black hole. A long and dizzying fall. Don`t know how much time I spend in total hibernation, but I wake up hearing the generators starting, as if an old movie was about to start. The music is climbing up slowly after being unbearably out of tune for a while, then the rhythm becomes stable, a melody builds up, and although the sound is creaking, and black lines and spots are flickering on the old film, I recognize it, I’m here again. India 2004.
Then on the metro a guy came up to me saying ‘this is the fourth time I see you today’. It was true, I also noticed him in different parts of the city. (Calcutta has 12 million inhabitants). In the evening I read the Telegraph, the local newspaper where a proud article said that India got the 8th place in a survey where the question was “how often do you have sex?” The article was emphasising the fact that India is better than Britain in this respect. And who got the first place? You wont believe me: Hungary. It`s hard to imagine when I remember those gloomy faces on the streets of Budapest. This morning when I walked down on Park Street a waiter stopped me from the restaurant where I had dinner last night saying, that I should visit Mother Theresa`s House, it`s not far. I walked and walked, maybe even for an hour, it felt like an endless hike in the heat, but finally found it. It turned out that Mother Theresa`s beatification ceremony will be this Sunday in Rome and a sister of charity showed me the room where she lived. Then completely exhausted I sat down in Barrista Cafe, where an old Bengali man came over to my table for a chat, and told me his life story and how he met the Dalai Lama in `59, when His Holiness arrived to India. Then I met a young Bengali guy in the Oxford bookshop (had to buy a book by Tagore:), who took me out for a drink, and told me he is a fashion designer in Japan, just came back for holiday, and he would take me around on his bike tomorrow to see some scroll painters and collect some Bengali patterns. Then I went to the library of the Asiatic Society to find a book, but instead I found the Acta Orientalia on the shelf, the great Hungarian academic journal with Professor Wojtilla`s article (my Sanskrit teacher from the university). These are just some of the events of the last two days. I don`t know what I`m doing here, it`s too fast, too random, too much for my brain. Maybe it`s all just a malaria dream.
I am back in Banaras after a trip to Tibet, but my mind is still there trying to replay the moments, retasting fragrances, colours and sounds. There is a picture coming to my mind often these days, the moment when we were about to reach Nyalam (a Tibetan village near the Nepali border). From the endless plains of the rocky desert plateau the road descended into a deep gorge with a river at the bottom. And the dry air of the Tibetan highland suddenly changed into the moist air of the Indian subcontinent. 
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