Borrowing a Himalayan Mindset

I’m curled up in a sleeping bag, listening to a Hindi song that someone has been playing on repeat for the past three hours. The loudspeakers are too far away for me to catch the lyrics (not that I would understand them), but I’m starting to get to know the melody really well. I’m actually working on memorizing it. Anything to keep my mind off reality for a bit, because the reality of the situation is not the most ideal: I’m sick. Yesterday I had to puke in the street while I was walking. Today I’m in a state of constant nausea, my insides are squirming, I feel cold and dehydrated, and I know that soon—very soon—I’m going to be spending a lot of time in the toilet.

Welcome to Nepal 101. The first thing you need to know about Nepal is that if you stay there long enough, you will get sick. There often is not running water because a) the infrastructure for running water is not fully developed and b) running water often requires electricity, which there’s not much of (look up “load shedding” to learn more). This means that if someone else is making you meal, they might not be able to wash the food or their hands before cooking. Even if the water is running, this should not be much consolation. In Kathmandu the sewage system was (very wisely) built above the plumbing system. Generally speaking, you can and should assume that the water and food you are eating is actually poop water and poop food.

Before going to Nepal, I had the general attitude that food was an enemy to be avoided. I was on the don’t-eat-too-much-food-especially-sweets diet, so I saw food as a sinful temptation that made me put on pounds. In Nepal, food literally is the enemy. No matter who makes it, all food has the potential to make you suffer through gastrointestinal hell.

For the people who live in Nepal, food has very different connotations. I’ve heard that the locals build up immunities to nasty bugs and bacteria when they are young, so they don’t actually get sick as much as Westerners. Try explaining that to someone who offers you possibly sketchy food as a gesture of kindness and welcome. My monk friends at Tharlam Monastery always offered meals to me—definitely a cultural gesture—and it was really hard to shut them down.

Another interesting thing is that people in the impoverished country of Nepal actually want to gain weight. I remember my skinny amala (my Tibetan host mother) looking at herself in the mirror, voicing regrets that she wasn’t fat. Perhaps because food is less accessible to the masses, people idealize fatness. When I returned to America, 15 pounds skinnier due to malnourishment, women complimented my body, asking if I had been working out. Should I have said, “Yes, thanks!” or admit that I looked the way I did because I spent weeks enduring severe abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, and puking?

In America, the body is a reflection of your personality and your efforts (i.e. working out). People in Nepal don’t carry the same burden of responsibility on their shoulders. They tend to recognize that body weight is a reflection of situation. People are skinny because of sickness or lack of financial resources, not because they want to be that way. Despite all the pain I went through in Nepal, it was liberating to live according to that attitude.

In reality, I think that body weight reflects some of both extremes: personal choices and situational realities. Unfortunately, here in America we put a lot of emphasis on the personal. Will a resource rich, individualist country ever be able to see body weight in a more balanced way? Now that I’m surrounded by American culture again, I have slipped back into American mindsets about body weight. Perhaps if I want to perceive my body weight in a more secure and balanced way, I must first accept—not just borrow—both the Himalayan and American mindsets.