Once, while volunteer teaching, I taught the hokey-pokey to a couple hundred Tibetan primary school kids in Tabo, in the Indian Himalayan region of Lahaul and Spiti.
I’d get all the kids in the school together in the courtyard at lunch break, to stand in an enormous circle facing inwards and holding hands. Then I’d sing “Do the hokey pokey” and start to lead them in the movements — “Right hand in, right hand out, right hand in, and you shake it all about”, etc. Pretty soon they had the melody down, and while the lyrics took a lot longer, they quickly learned the actions.
Not so great a surprise because it turns out dancing in a circle is a popular past-time in this part of the world. For six months of every year the mountain passes are blocked by snow and ice, it’s -20C outside and the nights are long. Pre-satellite TV and mobile phones, dressing up in costume and performing a really long dance was a great way to pass the time. If you’re drinking home brew and dancing in somebody else’s house, then dancing in a circle while holding hands is a great way to minimise collateral damage.
If you’re a Tabo kid, anything in English is cooler than anything in the Bhoti the monks want you to sing (Bollywood tunes in Hindi are somewhere in-between). I don’t really know what most of the traditional songs of the region are about exactly, only that they take at least 10–15 minutes to sing.
You’re not really singing them properly unless you’re wearing an elaborate and colourful traditional costume. And you’re supposed to take the performance of these songs very seriously, since some of them are for identifying your future child wife/husband, or communicating with long-dead ancestors and spirit guardians, or helping you defeat the enemies now encircling your village.
The hokey-pokey doesn’t suffer from any of those handicaps — it’s silly, obviously funny, no matter how bad your English is, requires no costume, and won’t unintentionally summon the ghosts of your ancestors. Also, you can stop as soon as you get bored with it.
Which was way longer than I expected, but that could be because I grew up with trampolines, bicycles, Lego and Atari to play with, rather than looking for fun in a dusty yard of broken concrete and dirt.
By the time I finished up at the Tabo school, hokey-pokey was really taking off — you almost had to join a waitlist to get in on the action.
And that was years ago now, so sometimes, I wonder if the hokey-pokey has since replaced some of those thousand-year-old traditional Tibetan ceremonies of deep religious significance.
There could be all sorts of unintended consequences — villages left defenseless, guardian spirits running amok, teens marrying whoever the heck they want, suddenly high unemployment rates amongst Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, or worse.
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that with many lifetimes of careful meditation and devotion, a future reincarnation of yourself might achieve enlightenment.
The hokey-pokey teaches that putting your left leg in and then your left leg out is what it’s all about.
Buddhism never stood a chance.

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