From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Seven (Part I) - Sikkim - On Selfies and The Self

Sikkim is known for not being well-known. Unlike its southern neighbor, West Bengal, which houses Darjeeling, a city so famous that there is a tea named after it, Sikkim still exists as a bit of an anomaly. It was its own independent country until 1975, when it became a constituent of India. Gangtok, the capital, is built up on steep mountainsides and is looked over by the third largest mountain in the world, Kachenchunga.

Gangtok is one of the most diverse places I’ve ever been. It’s as erroneous to think of Indians as one kind of people as it is to think of Americans the same way. The people around Gangtok turned the streets a rich tapestry of skin tones, facial features, dress, and languages—most people didn’t speak Hindi, but in fact, Nepali. There were many who looked Tibetan, and others Han-Chinese. Some seemed to have come clear across from Kashmir, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Then there were the Bengali and Assamese up for vacation, joined by the Delhi urbanites and the Kolkata hoards. They all blended and wove between one another on the MG Marg, the walking street mall dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi (nothing quite says Gandhi like a mall). It was enjoyable enough to sit on one of the many benches and people watch.

It was on such a bench that I was accosted with the first of many surreptitious selfies. I have since found that there are common warning signs. A passerby, always male, stares at me as he walks by. Then he doubles back and stares again. I nod, hoping to dispel some of the awkwardness. He sits next to me, takes out his phone, pretends to look at something other than the camera, but quickly gives up the charade and asks pointedly, “Selfie together?”

This happened twice in the five minutes that I waited to meet up with Dan on the MG Marg. Once the selfies were taken, both men quickly got up and left, their mission accomplished. One reason for this spontaneous need to capture a moment with a foreigner was because, though Gantgtok is filled with great diversity, very few of those people were white. Again in my life I was an anomaly, someone very strange, someone worth taking a selfie with.

When Dan met me at the MG Marg, we stood out even more. I’m six-foot-one and Dan is inches taller than I. There were plenty of stares as we walked down the street and into a Tibetan restaurant for dinner.

After dinner we asked around for where the best New Year’s Eve celebration would be. A local club promised live music and full crowds, though at 8:30, it was empty. We went back to Dan’s hotel to have a drink and discuss the world until we could be sure that the club was full.

Dan played his ukulele and sang songs while drinking the famous Sikkim rum. In the interlude he shared with me one of his favorite poems, one that had resonated with him and, I learned, would with me as well. He had copied it into his journal, which he passed to me and I read as he continued on with his ukulele.

The Men That Don't Fit In

By Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

Service’s poem struck a chord. Here we were, two men who had chosen an itinerant life, seeking some kind of fulfillment far away from home. Why does anyone choose a lifestyle like this?

When I lived in America, the pressures began to mount to find a stable job and settle down. Such pressures came covertly, as I observed my friends’ lives following that path, and overtly when I’d be confronted directly about how I had saved nothing yet, didn’t have a stable job (unfortunately for many, being a public school teacher in America isn’t considered a sufficient career), and had plans to take off yet again. There was a sense that all this was childish. It was time to grow up.

But there is a call that exists for me that Service too knew well. One that Dan knows. Those of us who can’t sit still, the rolling stones, the wanderers and vagabonds, search for both new adventures and for a much more elusive goal: a way to explain ourselves and justify these lives.

What is the point? Is it pure narcissism to go off alone and, in my case, write every detail of the trip so that I can share it with others? Are we just looking for our own vainglorious ends, to get pats on the back and occasional affirmations of worldliness and bravery? If that is all we travel for, then yes, I agree with one interpretation of Service’s poem, we will find that we are failures in the end.

What makes for a good life? In America, often a good life means having a house and two cars and beautiful, talented children. But I have also seen good lives in the villages of Bhutan, where goodness simply comes from being able to knock at your neighbor’s door at any time of the day and sit down with him for tea and a long conversation. I have seen the good lives of the rock climbing bums who live in vans and tents and follow the crisp, dry weather around the world. They wake up in expansive, pristine landscapes every day and breathe in the fresh air and accomplish nothing more than climbing to the tops of rocks and yet they are whole and feel a peace incomparable. There are the bon viveurs who make sure that they eat well every night, joined by friends and a good bottle of wine; and there are the cloistered artists who skip meals to work on masterpieces that will never earn them a dime. There are those who have very little, but have found love, and so have the greatest wealth they could know. I have met these people, sat down with them and called them friends. And the only reason that I know about these lives is because I have traveled.

I looked over the poem again.

“Actually, Dan, I’m not sure that it’s as bad as I initially thought. Service says, ‘Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh.’ So, he’s okay with it in the end. So what if he fails? He’s followed that drive within himself, that need to be a rolling stone, the need to keep moving. He’s found his good life and it happens to be the life of a man who won’t fit in. He doesn’t have to be anything else.”

Dan looks at me for moment, considers this, and then looks back at the poem. “Hmmm. Maybe you’re right. It still seems a bit depressing to me, a bit haunting.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” I thought that the poem mirrored our lives well. It was open to interpretation. One may think the message was good, others a failure.

Dan began playing again and I finished my beer and checked the time. It was 10pm, about time we head to the club. I thought about 2016 now through the context of the poem. What kind of a life was it? Was it good? I tried to make sure that I analyzed well. I wanted the certainty of correct interpretation. But I did not get it. By the time we reached the entrance to the club and heard the music beating like a heart, I had to push the idea into the back of my mind. I’d interpret it later, I promised myself.