Magicians of Labdong

The shaman tossed another pinch of wet herbs onto the rock plate of hot coals, and for a second I think I see green sparks in the smoke. My new host mother has been feeling sick since before I got here, so today they brought in a dhaami, or witch doctor, to perform a work of aruvidic medicine. The dhaami, who happens to be another student's host father, came in, chatted for a while, drank a cup of masala tea, and started the ceremony. He chants methodically over a woven bamboo tray of little clay figurines, some of which are probably human, others quite positively alien. With a steady rhythm he waves a few grains of uncooked rice over the tray and in front of my host mother and then throws them over his shoulder. After a while one of my daajus (older host brothers) starts lighting short lengths of string on fire and draping them over the clay figures, where they fizzle or flare or burn steadily down the backs of things that look like slugs or vague cthulhus. About the time the dhaami starts to chant "Om," I find myself having one of those "Holy shit! I'm in India!" moments.

Labdong is a tiny town in rural North Sikkim. There is one road that snakes down the hill, and four shops which sell mostly the same things: candy, foodstuffs, lightbulbs. No one really comes to Labdong (except us, twice a year). Ideas don't really make it here, either. There are two TVs (one of which doesn't get channels), no phone service, no internet. The nearest bazaar is about four hours away. There is a school, but even today most children don't go past the fifth grade. Even then things are weird; some ten year olds in first grade, some twelve year olds in sixth. Labdong has produced two college graduates in its history. Plenty of people in the town don't go to school at all. Testing is coming up, so everywhere we hear the little kids reciting rote memorized English phrases in robotic, singsong voices. "Ay pee pee el ee. Aypal."

The town is inhabited almost entirely by members of the Gurung tribe who migrated to Sikkim from Nepal. Gurungs have there own langauage, but the people here don't know it. For decades the people of Labdong practiced the Hinduism of the closest neighbors, but sometime in the mid-80s the idea came to convert to Buddhism, the traditional religion of the Gurung tribe. Most people in Labdong claim this was because the ritual purity rules of Hinduism are too difficult to follow in the rural basti. The real reason, of course, was politics. The people of Labdong want to reap the financial benefits of becoming a scheduled tribe. For years there has been competition among various groups to see who can be the most "tribal," the most "backwards." For some reason Buddhism is seen as "more tribal" than Hinduism, so the people of Labdong decided to return to their cultural roots. This meant that they had to figure out how to be Buddhist. They put up Buddha posters, built a gumpa, and started praying to Buddha Bhagwan instead of the traditional Hindu gods. This isn't that uncommon; plenty of Hindus pray to Buddha as just another deity, and Jesus, and Sai Baba. If there is one thing I have learned here, it is that Hinduism has historically never been a cohesive religion in the same sense that Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism has. For that matter, India was never a single nation in the Westfallian sense until the British left. "Civilization" is a better term than "country" or "religion." For most of its history Hinduism was merely a vast collection of vaguly related practices, traditions, beliefs, and philosophies. In recent times the drive to create a national Indian identity has turned it into a sort of superstructure into which other religions can fit without much change to the basic local practices. The people of Labdong worship Buddha, but ask them about what he taught, about the eight-fold path or enlightenment or anything like that, and probably they will just look at you.

There have been a few real changes, though. They dropped the purity rules, mostly, but they still don't eat cow meat. While they say that as Buddhists they aren't supposed to drink, use tobacco or smoke marijuana, that is all most of the villagers seem to do. Though it took a while, Labdog has started to produce its first generation of lamas---little kids running around in the red and orange robes. Nevertheless, people still trust the traditional shamanism of the region as much or more than they trust Buddhism or western medicine. When the first round of jaadoo dubai (magic medicine) didn't make my host mother feel better, they called in a second shaman, who performed a much simpler ritual of chanting, herbs, and rice tossing (minus the clay figurines). When I started to come down with a cold, my host family told me that I should take some dhaami medicine, and waved a bottle of sketchy brown liquid under my nose. I told them I had already taken medicine, and hid in my room until my sniffles cleared up.

My first night in Labdong a bunch of kids came up to me and asked if I knew karate. I said I did, and their second question was if I could do a backflip and clap someone's ears with my heels as I soared over their heads. The fighting in old Hindi and new Nepali films is all assisted with crappy wirework and all grossly unrealistic, but it is the pretty much only martial arts that these kids have been exposed to. My fifteen year old host brother is creepy. A few days into my stay he watched me intently as I brushed my teeth, and as I am just finishing up he reaches out and strokes my head. "Sundar kesh," he said ("beautiful hair") and then asked if he could carry my toothpaste for me. My sisters run around playing with a tiny flashlight that shines a dim image of Osama Bin Laden's face on surfaces about a foot away. This place is fucking weird.

When my host mother isn't feeling better a few days later, the second dhaami (who turns out to be my maternal host uncle) comes back to give it another go. I'm sitting in my room when my host father comes in and asks if I would like to see the shaman jump. Giggling, he bounces up and down on the balls of his feet, holding his hand in front of him as if shaking dice. This particular shamanistic practice is apparently hiliarious to most people, even those who believe in it. I come down a few minutes later, and the drums are already going. The jumping doctor is holding a traditional handled drum and banging on it with a curved stick, his eyes closed, mouth forming words and sounds somewhere between a chant and a moan. Nearby one of my uncles slaps a brass plate with a stick, producing a jarring gong-like noise. His eyes are glazed and his head is tilted at a weird angle, but this isn't due to the ceremony. Labdong is full of genetic abnormalities: extra fingers, cleft lips, distorted hands and faces, mental retardation. Most men don't go more than a days walk to find wives, if that, and over the decades a serious inbreeding problem has built up. My daaju asks a couple times if you can marry cousins in America. His keen interest in the topic is worrying. Still, he says it doesn't happen here (if you do your families will throw you out) and is quick to claim that Muslims do it.

After what must have been at least an our of chanting, the jumping doctor starts to bounce up and down where he is sitting in strange convulsive motions, his body swaying from side to side. This, I realize, is the true trance state, the real deal when it comes to old indigenous magic with authenticity that modern day occultists lust after. Meanwhile a dozen or so relatives have crowded into the kitchen and are taking this opporunity to get really fanastically drunk. I see one person pour a glass of warm Hit Beer, but mostly the air is thick with the smell of raksi, a sort of Nepali moonshine. A pair of aunts smoking homemade cigarettes squak at me to go get my camera. I return with a pocket full of high-speed film and am immediately pulled around the room to have take pictures of relatives or have my picture taken (not that they know how to work an SLR). When they find out that the camera isn't digital and doesn't show the pictures after they are shot, the aunts, shouting to make themselves heard over the jumping doctor's moaning and drum playing, tell me to send everyone here ten copies of these photos from America. On the other side of the room an uncle sits next to the dhaami, heckling or shouting encouragement as necessary.

I wander out and find another dozen people watching a Nepali martial arts film on the family's makeshift DVD set up. When I return, the witch doctor is just starting to stand up. Eyes still closed he just sways and convulses for a second while he gets his balance, and then starts to jump---little hops, with feet turning one way and then the other as he continues to play the drum. I snap some pictures. My family gives a little cheer and goes back to their drunken chatter. After a couple minutes someone realizes that this is where my host mother is supposed to get involved, and she comes and sits in front of the oblivious dhaami while a relative slowly lifts a weird potted plant and feather apparatus and waves it over her head. When this is done, she returns to her seat on the bed, nursing a mug of raksi with palpable disinterest.

The dhaami eventually sits down again, still in a trance. Then, unexpectedly, his eyes open. He is still convulsing, but his eyes are wide and unseeing. He starts shouting shouting things out in Nepali. I can only make out a few words, but for the first time the audience starts paying attention. My host father stands in front of him and shouts questions. The heckling uncle heckles even louder. This is the nearest thing I've ever seen to channelling or possession. I sort of gathered that the jumping doctor was channeling the ghost that was causing my host mother's illness, and was now telling the family how to banish it. Eventually the shouting fades, his eyes close again, and he goes back to drumming. After a while, though, this too fades. The drumming stops, the shaking slows, and a few moments later the jumping doctor opens his eyes, wipes his face with a cloth, and starts cracking jokes.

I go to bed. By now it is nearly eleven---practically the middle of the night by bedtimes here. I'm just drifting off when the drumming starts up again. They aren't finished, apparently, but I am too tired to go watch. Sometime around 2 AM someone goes around the house ringing a loud, heavy bell. An hour later the witch doctor comes in and crawls into the room's other bed, and, half-awake, I have another one of those "I'm in India!" moments.