On Vagator beach, a prayer for Japan

Nigel Britto

For those not used to it, Tibetan sacred music can be a rather rattling experience. No gentle sounds of running water and flutes calm the mind, and no pleasant melodies by stringed instruments lull the soul. 

When the robed Tibetan monks began their chants for Japan on Vagator beach on Friday, it was with an intense, low guttural growl. With little by way of musical accompaniment except cymbals and the piercing Dungchen horns, it was only the monks' formidable vocal cords that provided an aurally magical and transcendental experience for the few hundred gathered around. 

In the distance, much like William Wordsworth's Daffodils, the Lungta flags were fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Illuminated by bulbs in painted black bottles at their bases, they stretched in a never-ending line, along a spiral path into the lofty hills beyond. 

The six hundred vertical flags, named after a mythical Tibetan horse that carries prayers from earth to the high heavens, represent the six million people of Tibet. In the midst of the serenity, many an individual seeking solitude meditated to the flapping sound and the cool sea breeze that surrounded it. 

Then, in the lit up area on green and red carpets, the monks started dancing. If the singing ones wore a bright yellow Shamu hat, the Cham dancers wore an elaborately coloured and crafted costume with a black hat. The twirling dance, somewhat reminiscent of the Sufi dervishes of the middle-east, is an annual ritual to exorcise evil, and is rarely seen outside a few, inaccessible Buddhist monasteries in the upper realms of the Himalayas. 

Beyond the dances and the flags, a full-blown Tibetan cultural festival was in progress; locals as well as tourists made a beeline for the stalls selling necklaces, pendants, cuisine and the famous Tibetan singing bowls. Many of the stalls had chants playing, and interested foreigners browsed through, holding them on their palms and testing their tones. 

The Tibetan vendors, known by reputation to be a largely honest bunch, resorted to no annoying sales gimmicks and peacefully demonstrated the utility of their wares to any inquisitive soul that cared to wander by. 

The installation and festival were conceptualized by artist Subodh Kerkar when he visited Sikkim in 2009. "I saw the flags on the mountains, and was immediately struck by their beauty, simplicity and peaceful nature," he told TOI near the Lungtas on the beach. He then decided to install them in Goa by the sea. 

"Then, last month, I met His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who blessed the project and asked me to have it on March 10, which is the 52nd anniversary of the Tibetan revolution", he adds. 

Kerkar then contacted the Tibetan community in Goa and asked them to be part of the project, in what is probably the first time an effort has been made to assimilate Goa's Tibetans into the community. 

A firm believer in the Tibetan cause, Kerkar got the flags shipped in from Sikkim, and dyed them at his studio at Pilerne. Up in the Himalayas, the flags symbolize the carrying of blessings to all beings; as the flags age, the Tibetans install new flags alongside the old, a metaphor of life moving on and always being replaced by the new. 

Here in Goa, Kerkar says it symbolizes the ocean praying for the freedom of snow, referring to Tibet's troubled relationship with China and its freedom struggle. 

"The Tibetans sell jewellery, but lack the most important jewel of all—freedom", he trails off. The Lungtas will stand on Vagator beach till March 17. 

This article was first published in The Times of India's Goa edition dated March 13, 2011.