Phebula.

Inside Tashi and his son Tenzin's restaurant, at the camping ground of Phebula. Three seconds exposure, wonder how they sat still that long, that too unknowingly. Those newspaper pages are Tenzin's wall decorations. What's not in the frame is beer bottles and beedi packs and the Buddha resting in the same shelf on the wall. In fact, beer bottles rest above the Buddha, which is a lot more symbolism than I can comprehend, being more familiar with the usual non-nihilist spirituality that's inflicted upon us back in the plains. Beer and Buddha, in perfect harmony and peace, perhaps? (One parallel I can think of is Parassinikkadavu Muthappan, who accepts toddy and dried fish from devotees. But then Muthappan isn't a nihilist exactly, to my little knowledge.)

Thinking of all this, I can't help being touched and moved by the humility and the total lack of pretense of the place, of those people.

( +7 )