I'm near the end of a busy day. I took over the Intermediate English class this week, and my students are whizzing expertly through the verb tenses review that I thought would take much longer. I can see that they will have me hustling to keep up with them for the next two months. I am very much appreciating their energy and enthusiasm, and their geniality. All are Tibetans, and about a third are monks.

I'm now at a busy internet cafe up the road from my guesthouse, packed in between a young German having a tearful heart-to-heart talk via Skype with her partner, and others emailing and blogging. Even in the shadow of the Dalai Lama's palace, the human condition is alive and well in Mcleodgang, in all its manifestations.

My weekdays now start with breakfast at a rooftop cafe with my Swedish friend E, and then a half-hour walk down the hill to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, where I'm taking my morning classes in Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy (E is also taking the language class, so we walk down together).

I walk back up the hill when my classes end at noon. Today's noon walk reminded me that an essential aspect of life in India is that the sublime can appear in one moment, and the devastatingly tragic in another. One can never predict which will appear, or when. Rounding an uphill bend during my walk, I noticed a line of stopped cars above me, and then heard police sirens. "An accident!," I first thought, with alarm. It would be too easy for a car to strike a pedestrian or motorcyclist on this narrow, winding road, or for cars to collide.

But that wasn't why the cars were stopped. Seconds later, a police car swept past me with a line of cars following behind. And of course, there was His Holiness in the passenger seat of the second car, smiling gently at the many people--including me--waving and bowing to him as he passed. He must have been on his way to a meeting somewhere. A highlight for today!

And now, an update on the "old man" I wrote about in my last post. I've since learned that he's actually just 3 years older than I (hence I'm leaving the "old" off my descriptions of him from now on), and his name is A. His situation is now very much improved, thanks to my Swedish friend E. She went to see him late last week, discovered that he'd had to spend a night on the street, and went into action to find a better solution for him. She called her various contacts, and some of her Tibetan men friends proved especially helpful. "They're my heroes!," she exclaimed to me when we met over breakfast on Monday. A longer-term guesthouse stay was soon arranged for him, and one of the Tibetans will stay overnight with A for the next month, in return for modest remuneration from A. He now takes A over to the Green Hotel in the morning--where A generally prefers to spend his days--and picks him up in the evening.

So we're all relaxing a bit on this score, but the experience of trying to help A is making us all reflect. Further, my Calcutta friend P asked a very pertinent question in a comment on my last post: "If the man was a poor Indian, would you have helped this much?" Though I don't like to think it, I suspect I wouldn't. The difference mainly has to do with how one naturally feels more hesitant when crossing language and cultural barriers, and what I'm even able to notice or figure out about a person's situation, given that very few poor Indians speak English and my Hindi is still poor. It's simply far easier for me to communicate with an English-speaking Westerner who uses the same cultural cues I do.

The difference also has to do with the fact that I've only encountered a single Westerner who needed significant help, while in contrast, each day, many Indian people ask for money from me, or appear to be in possible distress. I try to be intentional when I'm asked for money, typically giving money mainly to older women who seem to be alone and to physically disabled people. It may seem paradoxical, but I've stopped giving money to mothers with young children who are asking for money to feed those children (this is common here). That's because I've been told by development volunteer friends that at least here, there is subsidy money for parents who need food money, and that children are often kept out of school in order to be used for begging. One friend who helps out in a slum in lower Dharamsala knows a very attractive and bright little boy who's being kept from school because his parents make so much money by having him beg. I certainly don't want to encourage the removal of children from school! P, I would be especially interested in your thoughts on, um, my thoughts. Encountering the destitute while recognizing my relative prosperity is easily the most deeply disturbing kind of experience I've had in this country. But then again, I've had the same experience among the homeless population back home in Seattle...