A farewell to Pusa

Pusa had been my faithful and loyal friend ever since he and I met in China. At first his name wasn’t Pusa, just an unoriginal ‘Buddha’. I know you are not supposed to buy you own Buddha, but I did.. The man who sold him to me did a little trick in the shop, to prove to me that Buddha was made of real jade. He asked me for a hair, which he wound around Buddha, and then he set the hair on fire! Buddha wasn’t harmed, which proved his genuineness.

Shortly after, I went traveling through China with my friend Hannah. I don’t remember if Hannah already had her own little Buddha pendant, or if she bought one after she saw mine (I suspect the latter), but we ended up both wearing the same necklace. During our first trip together we went to the Giant Buddha in Leshan and found out that ‘Pusa’ is ‘Buddha’ in Chinese. As Pusa is much funnier than Buddha it got stuck.

Travelling in China wasn’t always easy, that was part of the fun, but not always. Sometimes we were just fed up with not knowing when our bus would leave, being scared because the bus we were on was falling apart, not knowing where the bus we were on was going, people throwing up on our bags, or people asking us inappropriate questions. At times like these we would rub the bellies of our Pusas, while chanting ‘trust the Pusa’ to each other.

I don’t recall when this practice first started, but I know we used it a lot during the trips we made when we both had our holidays. Whenever one of us would feel down, the other would remind her to ‘trust the Pusa’, meaning it would all be alright because of our lucky charm. I don’t know if it ever really helped us (after all jade is said to harmonize and balance a person, so it could have), but it made me feel better regardless.

I remember, for example, one time when we were in Beijing. We were walking through old Chinese alleys, looking at the types of houses and listening to the talking Hill Myna (a kind of bird). They were already kind of eerie, saying things like “ni hao” (hello) or “wo ai ni” (I love you) to us. It sounded like they had tiny recorders stuck in their throats. We didn’t see any people, only the birds in the cages that were talking to us. And then, all of a sudden, the sky became dark. We looked up and saw at least a hundred birds. The black birds began to fly in a circle, and made a terrible sound. The sound was similar to the sound you hear when you rub a wet finger on the top edges of an empty glass. It was really freaky, so we looked at each other, rubbed our Pusas’ bellies and started walking to an opening in the Chinese alley-maze. The freaky birds followed us, and worse, more birds joined their scary circle, so we ran to a rickshaw and were quickly taken away from the scene. At times like these, it’s good to have a Pusa.

We wore out Pusas every day in China, and I continued doing so when I came back to the Netherlands. But when I was back in the Netherlands in the beginning of December something terrible happened: I lost the Pusa! Because I had worn him for about six and a half years straight, the cord of the necklace had become worse for wear. I had had it replaced in Singapore, but the man who had repaired it had added some tiger’s eye gemstones at the end. These gems had given me neck cramps, so I had removed them. This had made the construction of the cord weak, and then one day between a job interview and, literally, standing in a jewellers to have the cord repaired, I had lost my Pusa.


me and Pusa in happier times.....


I didn’t respond the way I had imagined I would respond. I only cried a little. Of course I did feel really really sad, because Pusa had been my most cherished possession for years, but I surprised myself by being able to fly to Morocco and being able to deal with the hardships here without the help of Pusa!

Love,
Jonna