Saturday, February 10, 2007

Breakfast Reading

I picked up one of my favorite books, The Lion River;The Indus by Jean Fairley, (1975, NY) and read a few pages at breakfast. A couple of lines were particularly enjoyable, like the last one in the following excerpt for its language:

p 15: "Now the Chinese are deliberately and cleverly undermining Tibetan Buddhism. For a people that has always been oriented to the gods a break with them, if practical materialism wins, can be traumatic.
"It may very well not win. The Tibetans are among the most independent and self-reliant people in the world and progress enforced by bullying is unlikely to be well rooted. Moreover they have a special gaiety against which the portentous earnestness of communism may shatter itself."


And this paragraph because it feels like I'm actually there, and for its unexpected (probably unintended) humor:

p 16: "Merchants ride the trails on small sturdy ponies, their goods packed on the backs of asses or yaks. There were practically no bridges on the high Indus (the Chinese have probably built some now) and animals and men crossed it by swimming or walking; in the strong current, with slippery rocks underfoot, this was a dangerous business and traders might have to wait weeks for the right moment. Yaks and ponies were were usually strong swimmers, although sometimes it was necessary to drive the yaks into the water and pelt them with stones to keep them going, and the men often crossed under tow, hanging on to the animal's tails. Goats were nervous and unreliable but sheep were unexpectedly cunning, using the current to traverse the river diagonally."

Maybe it's just me, but hearing of sheep being cunning and coming up with such a good idea was both interesting and brought on a smile.