a reverie?
-Rinchen
To my Abile (granny) the 2 day long Chemrey Angchok Chham (religious masked monastic performance event) was more about tending to guests in her bustling house. She recounts how our ancestral house would be full of guests, mostly relatives from outside Chemrey (our village). Chhang (Ladakhi beer) and traditonal barley and meat assortments would flow in plenty and Abile would be busy organizing rooms and food with the aid of helpers.
Read more-Rinchen.
“So Abile (granny), do you know how to read both Bodhik and Urdu?”, I asked in awe.
Abile’s answer was in the affirmative. She was telling me about her Urdu teacher when I asked her whether he was a Muslim. She said yes and that Sir Rehman le also taught Bodhik brilliantly.
Read moreBy Sonam Chhomo
Shungma, Jispa, Lahaul valley
The experience of visiting places you always wanted to see for yourself is ethereal. The journey to this shungma felt almost as if I had been divinely allowed to enter its doorstep after many years of waiting for the perfect opportunity to unfold. As a child, I resisted visiting places at high altitudes because Lahaul was/is not a weather friendly place especially during the winter months. Even this time (it happened after a day), my ears remained blocked and my body felt uncomfortable for about two days.
But this year I felt as if I accomplished something.
Read more-Rinchen.
I read a beautiful article this morning in The Hindu’s Sunday Magazine. During the pandemic, I like many others, have found great solace not only in nature but also in learning about nature. The article’s author had written emphatically about planting the right kind of trees in the right region. The author also pointed out the harm of planting trees in areas that are not natural havens for trees: open natural ecosystems (ONEs); Ladakh being an ONE.
In recent years, Ladakh has witnessed various environmental measures, but do we understand whether they are ecologically sound? I for one, honestly don’t pretend to understand, but I do know that not everything that we think is good for nature is good for nature; that not so incidentally applies to our own well being as well.
Read moreBy Rinchen Angmo, Nawang Chhoetso and Sonam Chhomo
Read more-Rinchen Angmo
This land so dear to me
The only aspect that inspires true meaning before the meaningless I
Rangyul Ladags
Read more-Rinchen Angmo
There’s something very interesting about the Chhorten wing (side) of the Leh Palace. The balcony which provides a path for skora (cicumambulation) around the chhorten presents a world in itself. On one side stands the majestic Leh Palace, golden in the light of the setting sun. While Old Leh Town tumbles beneath in all its crooked beauty. And beyond that lies Leh city, an urban landscape. We often venture to remote parts of Ladakh to find beauty, but in our very own Leh are remnants untouched by urbanity.
With reference to ‘The History of Maryul Ladakh’ by Tashi Rabgias (Meme le).
-Rinchen Angmo
The history of Ladakh is a beautiful past of a people similar in some ways and diverse in others, of a land that celebrated all sentient beings, a land of Dharma but also a land that accepted every form of spirituality, a land where good will was and hopefully still is valued above gold.
Read more– Sonam Chhomo
Lahaul has been the centre of two flourishing Kingdoms- the Ladakh kingdom in the north and north-west and later the Kullu and Chamba kingdoms in the south and south-west, overtime giving the people a space to form their amalgamated version of local cultures. The exact history of these regions, as Nawang states in the earlier essay, is difficult to establish pertaining to the lack of efforts in documentation in these regions. Similarly, Lahaul in the eyes of a tourist is seen as one combined valley but in reality is divided into different cultural zones within the same valley. Customs, traditions, Gods and even languages are separately defined for each valley within the entire Lahaul Valley.
Read more-Nawang Chhoetso
This is a brief history of Spiti, always under a different ruler but its people never suffered. Or may be from what I have seen and observed, the people of Spiti have an amazing ability to endure unpleasant situations.
Nawang Chhoetso
“The smaller the unit less known is its history” said historian Luciano Petech .
As a kid I always wondered about the history of my place. Spiti is a barren yet beautiful land that was always isolated from the outer world. Only recently -.i.e. in 1993- did the government allow tourists permits to Spiti Valley. The place then received tourists from around the world and from India. Some travelled and went back appreciating the beauty of the valley, some were astonished by its culture. While few wondered about its history.
Read moreThere are stories which we choose to share and stories which irrevocably fade away with time.
— Sonam Chhomo and Nawang Chhoetso
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When we ask them about their stories, you would notice a sense of hesitation in the beginning, but internally we all know that they are too eager to feel the same emotions again as they traverse through memory lane. And when they speak, you’ll notice that it becomes hard to stop them, you fear interrupting them lest they change their mind and become silent after a pause. You don’t want that to happen, do you? You too want to understand them and wish to find yourself a place in their memory so that you witness them first hand, look at their obscurities and in a childish spree compare yourself to them. Of course our imagination too helps us to walk this same path as they start travelling back to these days in the hope of reliving their most loved memories.
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Perhaps listening to their stories may retain the authenticity of these experiences which no travel book may hold, perhaps their stories will be the last reminiscent of their generation’s experiences and it is only fair as this becomes our duty to document these as part of history, our history. .
Read moreAs a child, the question of gender inequality was quite foreign to me. Of course, I was aware of differences, but never of inequality per se.
-Rinchen Angmo
I grew up in spaces that were owned either by my maternal grandmother or by my mother. I guess this statement needs a bit of a context. In Ladakh, the system of marriage is very flexible in terms of which household the bride or the bridegroom goes to; meaning, either the bridegroom could go to the bride’s house(makpa) or vice versa(pagma). ‘Going to’ the other’s house also means assuming more responsibility over that household than your own. Both in my maternal grandmother’s and my mother’s case the bridegroom had come to their house; consequently, they received an equal share of family property. This is a common phenomenon in Ladakh and has been followed from time immemorial. In fact, even the daughters or sons who depart to another household after marriage attain a small share of family property. Hence, in Ladakh, the question of whether or not a woman can own property figures as a redundant one. Why does owning property become so important one may ask.. When one sees one’s mother or grandmother as a figure who owns property, manages it with finesse, and goes unquestioned by society, one also understands that those constructs of a-woman-can’t-handle-‘manly’-responsibilities, are after-all ‘man’-made fallacies.
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