Tibetan Foothold (10 page)

Having no standard of comparison I wouldn’t know whether the death ceremonies performed here today were simple or elaborate. They looked elaborate, but in view of Dubkay’s financial standing were probably simple – only two Lamas are reciting the
Bardo Thödol
in the hut, whereas a rich man would have up to a hundred Lamas chanting in his home or in the temple where the deceased usually worshipped.

This morning, when I went on my ‘ear-rounds’, I saw that one of the girls’ rooms had been taken over by the Lamas and converted to a little temple, where ceremonies continued all day. Another small altar-table was set up on the veranda of our bungalow, and here three of the
saintliest-looking old Lamas I’ve ever seen sat cross-legged for hours, performing strange rites with the butter-lamps, little bowls of foodstuffs and ‘tormas’ (sacrificial cakes) arranged on the altar before them. I longed to stop and examine everything closely but, not wishing to display an outsider’s vulgar curiosity during such solemn rites, I had to be content with casual glimpses obtained while passing. These were enough to reveal the very great beauty of the silver ceremonial vessels, and later this evening I learned that most of these are four or five hundred years old.

Juliet’s first job today was to look for a wet-nurse for Dubkay’s baby – provisionally named Sonam Nobo, which means ‘Lucky Precious Thing’. But in this respect he was not lucky. Many of the ayahs are feeding babies and normally they vie with one another to take on any waif or stray; yet, though expressing endless sympathy for both father and son, they all had an excuse why Sonam Nobo could not be nursed. Rinchin’s death-demon is still very much among those present and Kesang admitted to me that the ayahs believed it might now have entered into the baby – despite Rinchin’s certainty that her child would be safe. So, as it is out of the question to entrust Tibetans with
bottlefeeding
, Sonam Nobo remains in our bungalow, sleeping between us in a Tibetan table turned upside down (Tibetan tables are virtually boxes, some 2´ 6˝ high) and doing nicely, thank you. He requires sustenance half-hourly, as far as I can see – or hear – but since I’m terrified of such microscopic humans Juliet has absolved me from my share of the responsibility and she and Kesang will cope between them.

This evening, just after Juliet had left the camp to escort a bad asthma case to Kangra Hospital, Dubkay called to see his son. Never have I witnessed such a pathetic scene. He burst into tears the moment I lifted the tiny object out of its box – but somehow in this environment there’s nothing odd or embarrassing about a man in tears – and then he sat on the floor for over an hour, cuddling and kissing the infant so incessantly that I thought he’d suffocate it. The only thing that stopped his quiet sobbing was the sight of Sonam Nobo yawning – an operation which made Dubkay beam all over his face. Occasionally he’d look up and proudly draw my attention to the fact that the prodigy’s fingernails
were growing or that its hair was thinning – he hasn’t yet got adjusted to the whole mysterious business of being father to a real live son!

When Dubkay had left Kesang came in, at the conclusion of the ayahs’ night-prayers, and I remarked to her how sad it was to see Dubkay’s grief, but how fortunate that he had Sonam Nobo to console him. Kesang agreed and added revealingly – ‘Dubkay and Rinchin were very good friends. He says he can easily get another wife and in one year will surely be married again. But he says he knows he will never have another friend like Rinchin.’

Walking down to the Dispensary at 5.30 this morning we saw eerie evidence of the funeral, and in the grey early light I found myself shivering slightly – one doesn’t have to be very suggestible to react to the intensity of the camp’s present atmosphere.

En route from the hut to the burning-ghat by the river every single road, path, track and doorway was ‘sealed off’ against the Evil Spirit by a six-inch-wide line of white flour, which at one point extended for twenty yards across the compound. The road to Dall Lake, on one’s right leaving the compound, had its line, as had the tracks to the Upper Nursery, to the Dispensary, to Forsythe Bazaar and to the Military Cantonment down the mountainside. Only the road to the river was ‘open’.

I didn’t hear the funeral moving off, but Juliet was up at 4 a.m., feeding Sonam Nobo, and heard the chanting of the Lamas, the beating of hand-drums, the clashing of brass cymbals and the blowing of human thigh-bone trumpets and sacred conch-shells. The cremation itself must have been quite a brief ceremony for on our return to breakfast we found a tearful Dubkay squatting in the corner fondling Sonam Nobo.

The Lamas again had an active time today as they continued their exorcising campaign by swinging censers of delightful incense in every corner of every room in the camp. Three of them also prayed for an hour in our room, giving Sonam Nobo innumerable blessings. But they won’t hold the ‘Naming Blessing Ceremony’ for another month.

Today twenty-eight Tiblets were transferred from the Lower to the Upper Nursery – a gratuitously unfeeling action on the part of the camp authorities. Not that it’s entirely their fault: the woolly
bureaucracy
of Tibland in general is also evident here.

There’s a transit camp at Lower Dharamsala where forty-seven children in the eight-to-fourteen age-group are now living in the most appalling squalor – without ayahs, medical care, blankets, mugs, spoons, drinkable water or anything else. This establishment is supervised by one of the corrupt Tibetans – and a corrupt Tibetan is as astonishingly bad as an incorrupt Tibetan is astonishingly good. If one of the relief agencies sends supplies and equipment – as they occasionally do, following an inspection by some shocked foreigner – these are normally flogged in the local bazaars within a week of their arrival. The present group of children have now been at Lower Dharamsala for five months (it all depends on what you mean by ‘transit’!) and it’s anybody’s guess when they will be moved elsewhere. So my argument is that when children are sent from the Upper Nursery to the Mussoorie Schools these unfortunates from Lower Dharamsala should replace them. This would both ease the situation at the transit camp and avoid separating our lot from the ayahs they’ve grown to love and depend on
in loco parentis
. But no – the transit camp is technically a ‘school’ (the fact that it has no teacher is apparently irrelevant), whereas the Upper Nursery is not a ‘school’ (though Doris and two Tibetan teachers are available) so the Indian authorities would not approve of such a transfer. Sometimes one finds one’s patience wearing a little thin in Tibland.

Actually my patience evaporated completely this afternoon when Mr Phalla – Mrs Tsiring Dolma’s second-in-command – came to choose the twenty-eight. We are never given any warning of such events and as I was de-worming 108 Tiblets, having just expended an enormous amount of nervous energy on sorting them out from among the other hundreds, Mr Phalla came rushing into the room waving the long sleeves of his robe and looking like a demented ostrich. He shouted a few Tibetan phrases and before I could intervene my precious 108
tapeworm
cases had vanished. Swearing, I shot out after them, to see every child in the camp lined up on the compound with half a dozen clerks from the office scuttling up and down the lines, picking out one here and one there. Ten minutes later it was all over and the lines had broken up and there were little groups of ayahs and children clinging to each other and weeping their eyes out. There was also me, still swearing as I darted round clutching my list of tape-worm numbers and peering at the (usually wrong) numbers around hundreds of necks. As if life wasn’t difficult enough already for all concerned.

Today’s sensation arrived at 5.30 p.m. in the very shapely shape of a twenty-five-year-old Indian nurse appointed by the Punjab Government to work here for three years. Juliet, Oliver and I just stood with our mouths open when she announced herself; it’s typical of Tibland that no one in the camp had known of her appointment until that moment. Naturally enough she wanted somewhere to sleep so we cheerfully offered the usual floor in our bungalow, on which all casual Western visitors to the camp are of necessity accommodated. But Sister Sawnay raised her eyebrows slightly at this and said that she had meant a
bed
. We said, ‘Sorry, no-can-do,’ so she promptly returned to Lower Dharamsala to say the Hindi equivalent of ‘What the Hell!’ to the Local Government Authorities. But I should think she’ll be back, as she must need the job, having left a husband and a two-year-old daughter in Delhi. Her husband is also a nurse and Juliet tells me that there are more male than female nurses in India. Sister Sawnay earns £10 a month and her husband earns between £12 and £13 – which seems very little indeed considering the high cost of living in present-day India.

A few days ago a rather tiresome American woman visited the camp,
and in the course of her – fortunately brief – stay accused me of ‘romancing’ about the exceptional qualities of Tiblets. I rapidly lost my temper, picked up Spencer Chapman’s
Lhasa: The Holy City
and in a triumphant tone read out his comments on Tibetan children:

My critic was more subdued after that; it’s very useful to be able to quote an expert in support of one’s own observations.

Today the whole camp was thoroughly disorganised because His Holiness had ordered three sessions of special prayers to be said for the Buddhists in South Vietnam. At the most disconcerting moments all the staff drop everything to pray, and as we sat hopefully waiting for our lunch to appear we heard them beginning half an hour’s chanting of hymns!

By now Dubkay has become almost resident in our bungalow. He sits for hours in a corner talking to his ‘pooh’ – and I’m convinced that Sonam Nobo knows him already. Personally I find month-old human infants singularly unattractive, but Dubkay obviously couldn’t agree less. He brings the ‘pooh’ a little gift almost every day and seems to have abandoned his job – I fail to see what time can be left for teaching between visits to the son and heir.

This morning I chanced to observe Tibetan school-discipline in action. Because four little boys had treated a Holy Scarf disrespectfully they were made to stand in front of the class, bent double, holding their left ear forward with their right hands and vice versa – a posture which had to be maintained without a break for about fifteen minutes. Of course corporal punishment as we know it is unheard of here – but this punishment looks exceedingly uncomfortable, if not painful.

It is noticeable that Tiblets have no scruples about ‘sneaking’. Today the teacher merely asked the class which of them had thrown the scarf over the rafters and at once the four culprits were pointed out by everyone else. Yet after the punishment period the quartet smilingly rejoined their ‘betrayers’ and the whole process was completely taken for granted by all. The class hadn’t ‘told on them’ out of any spite or enmity, but simply because this is the tradition, and the culprits bore no grudge. I must admit that we find this tradition most convenient in our daily efforts to cope with so many children. We have strictly forbidden the use, as toys, of little glass bottles or nails, yet often the tiniest acquire these and won’t willingly part with them so, if an older child spots this breach of the regulations, he’ll report it to one of us. I often wonder why the ‘seniors’ don’t themselves take these dangerous objects from the ‘juniors’ but seemingly this doesn’t occur to them. Possibly the explanation is that a certain amount of force would be required to remove a beloved bottle from the clenched fist of a
two-year-old
and Tiblets are conditioned not to use force. Certainly our ban on such playthings is fully justified. The other morning in the Dispensary my blood froze when a three-year-old opened her mouth and casually removed from it a piece of broken glass in order to make way for her quota of pills.

However, though we appreciate the Tibetan lack of ‘esprit de corps’ when dealing with children, we do find that when dealing with adults it can on occasions make life intolerably complicated. In fact such a basic ethical difference probably creates the widest and deepest gulf between our two civilisations; only when living in a society where no such principles of loyalty exist does one begin to appreciate the extent to which our reactions, attitudes and instinctive behaviour are based on the schoolboy commandment: ‘Thou shalt not sneak.’ It’s not for me to pronounce on the relative merits of the two codes – probably the Western, if abused, can have as disintegrating an effect as the Tibetan does – but to be suddenly in a world where something so fundamental to us doesn’t operate can often take one completely out of one’s depth in both personal relations and business matters.

It’s now 11 p.m. but Kesang has not yet come in, which means that a
story-telling session is in progress. This telling of epic tales is one of the favourite adult recreations and three of the ayahs are experts. Often it takes three or four nights to complete a story, beginning each session after prayers and finishing about midnight. I went out one evening to watch and saw every man and woman in the camp sitting around the ayah who was recounting the epic, listening so intently that they did not even notice my presence. The ‘Seanchaí’, as we would call her in Ireland, was using a wooden box as ‘platform’, so that all could see her gestures, and was telling her tale with great verve and expression. She must have felt quite exhausted after continuing thus for almost four hours.

Sister Sawnay has now got a room in Macleod Ganj and every morning she comes by bus to Forsythe Bazaar and then walks up the very steep quarter-mile path to the Nursery – a ‘marathon’ which, being a typical city girl, she regards with horror. I innocently asked her why she didn’t walk by the mile-long Top Road, instead of taking the bus along the two-mile-Low Road, but she shrank from the mere thought of walking a mile every morning and said that if she attempted such a feat she’d be too tired to do anything else all day.

The weather during this past week has been perfection – pleasantly hot sun, a slight, fresh breeze and the whole world vigorously green after the monsoon. Here, at this season, one feels simultaneously the freshness of spring and the melancholy of autumn: but of course there will be no riot of changing leaves as these forests are not deciduous.

We’re trying to get the children to sunbathe as therapy for their skin diseases – but Tibetans are allergic to hot sun so it’s not being a very successful campaign. On Sunday last I decided after lunch to sunbathe for half an hour, and I hadn’t been stretched out on a little patch of grass for more than two minutes when Cama Yishy came along, hurrying as best he could under the enormous weight of an open umbrella. This he carefully placed over me so that only my legs were exposed to the lethal rays. Then he beamed as if to say, ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ and sat himself down in the shade beside my head.

I’ve just noticed something interesting. A few moments ago an ant was crawling up my left arm and quite automatically I blew it off and
it continued its crawl across the floor. Only then did I register the fact that three months ago I’d have just as automatically squashed it to death. I’ve not consciously acquired any new
principles
about preserving life so it must simply be the effect of living in such a highly concentrated Buddhist atmosphere. It was the spontaneity of the action that struck me as so significant.

Admittedly this date doesn’t sound probable, but it is literally the Tibetan equivalent of 28 September 1963. And 1962 was the Water-Tiger Year, and 1964 will be the Wood-Dragon Year – enchanting! But the Water-Hare particularly takes my fancy: it could be out of
Alice
!

Last night was quite cold with a slight gale blowing and this morning the rugged peaks above us were smooth and radiant with new snow after the first blizzard of the winter. This afternoon I had a job to do in the Upper Nursery, and when walking back via Dall Lake – now rapidly shrinking – I saw hundreds of monkeys coming down to their winter quarters in the warmth of the Kangra valley. These dainty, delightful creatures are very curious and unafraid – unless you point a camera at them, when they flee, mistaking it for a gun. The babies are specially lovable, as they sit staring wide-eyed at this strange cousin who returns their fascinated wonder with interest! After seeing them playing
tip-and
-tig in the freedom of towering green trees I could never again visit a zoo and look at their captured brothers listlessly climbing dead branches and wearing sad, patchy coats.

The Tibetans are celebrating some special feast today, and ‘tormas’ were very much in evidence. These conical-shaped sacrificial cakes are believed to be the Lamaist substitute for the human and animal sacrifices of the Bön-pos, and apart from their use as temple offerings they are also eaten on special occasions. The basic ingredients are barley-flour, butter and water and they are coloured dark brown, so that at first sight they look like some attractive chocolate confection – but appearances can indeed be deceptive. This morning Chumba honoured us by bringing a ‘torma’ to Juliet and me for our exclusive
enjoyment. It was presented on a large platter, and around the base were strewn nuts and slices of raw onion and gaudy boiled sweets and slivers of cheese and dirty sultanas. Proudly laying this gift on the breakfast table Chumba stood waiting for us to sample it and go into a gastronomic ecstasy, so there was no alternative but to carve it up and feign delight – what an effort! No one can accuse me of being faddy about food but I really thought my stomach would instantly reject this hideous concoction and ever since it’s been haunting me. It felt like sticky, gritty clay in the mouth and it tasted like poison. Yet Tibetans revel in the stuff, and all day the children have been going around clutching and sucking wedges of it – as I know to my cost, since by evening I was covered in the mixture. Naturally possession of it does not diminish their affection and they hug and caress you none the less enthusiastically for having this sordid mess in their fists.

Sometimes, observing how Tiblets treat food, I marvel that the camp’s diseases aren’t even more numerous and deadly. One sees bits of moo-moo or potato that have been saved from a meal being carried around for hours inside the clothes next to the skin, then falling into one of the channels that run through the compound, serving as latrines at night, and then being retrieved and eaten with relish. And if the Tiblet in question is too small to fish it out of the channel for himself an ayah will come rushing along and return the tidbit to its owner with a fond smile. Another of the ayahs’ startling habits is to feed very small Tiblets, who may be ill and disinclined to drink, by filling their own mouths with liquid and transferring this to the patient’s mouth. Recently I observed an ayah with mumps thus treating a year-old baby.