The lama boy who swapped the Buddhist monastery for Ibiza's nightclubs

BarcelonaIn the 1980s, his story filled pages and pages of newspapers and magazines. At 14 months old, Osel Hita Torres, a child born in the Alpujarra region of Granada, was declared the reincarnation of the Buddhist lama Yeshe, whose parents were admirers. Known as the lama child Osel, dressed in traditional red and yellow Buddhist garb, entered a monastery in India at the age of 18 months and did not leave it for good until he was 18, when he decided he wanted to experience the Western world with all its implications. The documentary 'Osel' tells the story of the child lama, now an adult, father of a seven-year-old son.

"I am neither a child nor do I identify as a lama, but people still call me the lama." lama child", explains Osel Hita Torres to ARA, who confesses that one of his hopes is that the docuseries will make viewers go beyond the label that became popular in his childhood. hippie of which his parents and their Buddhist faith were part, a key element to understand why they agreed to let their son live in a monastery and have sporadic contact with his family. Lucas Figueroa, director of the series, says that his intention has been to narrate the events leaving aside prejudices and preconceived ideas regarding the parents of the lama child"We didn't want to judge the parents or anyone. For me, telling such a dense story with so many layers without having a clear positioning of who is the good guy and who is the bad guy is an achievement," he says.

Experimentation in Eivissa

At the age of nine, Osel managed to record a cassette that he sent to his mother, asking her to take him out of the monastery, a need he experienced on several occasions throughout his time in retirement. “Time was infinite, seconds were like years. This, for me, was the hardest thing. Everything was always the same, even the food: rice, lentils and vegetables, every day. This scared me,” Osel recalls. During his time in the monastery he was worshipped as a divinity, no one could have physical contact with him unless he gave them permission, he ate alone and was subjected to long hours of study.

Until the age of 18, Osel was able to make some visits to Spain to see his family, trips that made reintegration into monastic life very difficult. At the age of 16, he managed to get special permission to stay three months with his mother, who had moved to live in Ibiza. Life on the island sparked a desire to move to the West and discover a world that was completely foreign to him. "The first afternoon I was in Ibiza, my mother took me to a nudist beach, and in the evening, to the youth gala at the Pacha nightclub. I went from a monastery where there wasn't even music to that," explains Osel, who remembers that it was at this point that he began to break down.

To return to the Western world, he had to wait until he came of age, when he could theoretically decide for himself what he wanted to do. He says that his departure from the monastery was, in reality, an escape: "I asked permission to go and visit my family and they asked me to promise that I would return. I said: «I promise to return», but in my head I said «but in 10 years». And I did, I came back when I was seven." When asked if the monastery's rules might resemble those of a sect, he has a quick answer: "All religions started as a sect and, for me, this is not relevant. For me, what is important is what each religion represents, the values of love, respect and humility."

In his new life, Osel discovered long hair – he had had his head shaved since he was a baby – tattoos, music trance and beach parties where he could spend hours playing the timbales. With parents open to their son's experiments, he began a journey of self-discovery that led him to spend some time on the streets of Italy. He also decided to distance himself from any contact with the media: "I wasn't very interested in exposing myself because I knew they wouldn't understand me because I didn't understand myself."

Osel, who is now involved in environmental activism with an organization dedicated to planting trees, says that his childhood was not emotionally stable because he was always surrounded by different people. However, he doesn't hold a grudge against his parents for the decision they made. One thing is clear, though: "I wouldn't do the same thing they did with my son not in a million lives."