Today is the third and final day of Losar, which is the celebration of the Tibetan New Year. It has been so much fun to have a holiday and see so much traditional Tibetan cultural practices in action! The students here at Sarah have had a week off of school to prepare and participate in Losar celebrations. You’ll have to bear with me in my attempts to transliterate the Tibetan words into English. So last week we started with the baking of khap-se, which are New Year’s cookies! All of the students gathered in the dining hall and they would bring in huge sheets of dough and we would cut them up and shape them. Thousands and thousands of cookies were made – the entire student body worked on them for about six hours! So there is plenty of khap-se to go around, and it apparently sticks around well into the summer months (the Tibetans don’t seem to have such a strong sense of things being fresh and stale that I’m used to).
The night before Losar began we had a special soup called gu-thuk, which is a variation of the traditional Tibetan soup, which is called ten-thuk. The gu-thuk has noodles and vegetables and special balls of dough with written messages cooked inside of them. They’re reminiscent of fortune cookies, except a lot messier to get at your fortune because it’s in the middle of a dense doughy ball covered in soup. And the fortunes aren’t quite as cheery as usual – they’re statements about your character and most are strangely negative. A really popular one this year was sol-pah, which translates to ‘charcoal’ and represents “a cruel person.” Another common one was sru-pen, which translates to ‘chilly’ and represents “a blunt or sharp tongued person.” Luckily mine was not so terrible. I fished out a phrase that means ‘joyful little shoe.’ Unfortunately, my Tibetan has not progressed to the point where I can read that Tibetan phrase (it has vowels, suffixes, prefixes, stacked letters, and umlauting sounds – yikes!). But a joyful little shoe is “a person who will always reach his desired destinations and will be successful in all he does.” Hooray!
Losar itself started on Sunday morning at five am, when my roommate woke me up so that we could wash our hair before going to prayers, which were at six am. We groomed ourselves for a while and she helped me put on my chupa, which is the traditional Tibetan dress. Thank goodness she was here to help because I would have been completely lost without her! The technique behind the blousing is definitely an acquired skill that I have yet to acquire. 
We went to prayers, which was exciting because everyone was all dressed up and we had a special offering of katas (ceremonial scarves) to the throne of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We were served rice, which we got to throw in the air for part of the ceremony. After prayers we had a special breakfast of chang-pue porridge. Chang-pue is fresh Tibetan beer made from barley and honestly was a little bit strong to handle at seven am. Everyone from Emory took about one sip and then headed back to the kitchen to make toast and drink coffee.
But don’t worry; Losar is all about eating so we did not go hungry that day. The first day of Losar is traditionally spent in the home with the family, but the students here are not able to go home to Tibet, so they decorate their rooms and visit all day long. I helped my roommate decorate her friend’s room with streamers and origami and paper chains and snowflakes, etc. Each room also has an altar set up with pictures of HH the DL and assorted Buddhist imagery. The rooms also have offerings set up, which I have a wonderful picture of! 
This picture is actually from the room where the Parliament of the Tibetan Government in Exile convenes, so it’s a very nice altar. On the left is che-mar, which is tsampa flour mixed with butter (tsampa is a huge part of Tibetan culture) and on the right is lo-pue, which are shoots of wheat. Upon entering a room during Losar, you’re supposed to take a pinch of each and say “tashi delek ae-ma bak-dro ku-kham sang, ten-du de-wa tho-par sho” which means “may you have a magnificent and healthy year ahead and may you always attain happiness.” Now try saying it three times fast! The upright panels coming out of the che-mar and the lo-pue are butter sculptures! They are so cool! Butter sculptures are a big part of Losar and there are some ridiculously detailed and beautiful ones that I’ve seen around. In the back of the picture you can see some big pieces of khap-se, which are cookie representations of traditional parts of the altar, including a sheep’s intestines and head. In exile, these are largely represented in cookie form. But according to my language teacher, “of course in Tibet we eat the whole sheep’s head… especially the kids – they love it!” I’m not sorry to say I have seen no real sheep’s heads on any altars in India.
The main activity during Losar is socializing and spending time with friends and family. The days are spent roaming from room to room. Tibetans make very good hosts and hostesses! I have a picture of Gen Passeng-la’s daughter, who was adorable in her pink chupa and pigtails offering cookies to everyone.
These three days are the only time that the boys are allowed in the girls’ dorms and vice versa, so it’s very exciting! The nights are usually for festivities including bonfires, alcohol, and fireworks. Good combination, right? But this year, the high up voices have let it be known that Losar should be celebrated in a more somber fashion. Since the 2008 uprisings in Tibet and the subsequent hardships of those in Tibet, Losar has been toned down to express mourning for those suffering in Tibet. This year it’s supposed to be more about religious traditions and spending time together than dancing and drinking. People are still playing and listening to music and drinking chang-pue, just not going crazy.
Although today is the 21st birthday of Molly, one of the Emory girls on the program. We shall see how that turns out! On Wednesday the Emory program is going on a fieldtrip to Bir, where we will be visiting monasteries and meditating and who knows what else. I’ll talk more about that later – for now, ten-du de-wa tho-par sho! Happy Losar!
No comments:
Post a Comment