Tibetan Foothold (14 page)

Another side-effect of last week’s pilgrimage has been the infestation of the area by an inordinate number of Febs and Fabs, accompanied by
an equal number of young Mebs and Mabs. In this case I feel that the male of the species is deadlier than the female. A few days ago Oliver and I were standing by the bungalow door, waiting for lunch to be served, when we suddenly saw an extraordinary creature advancing towards us across the compound. It had red-gold ringlets halfway down its back, a wavy matching beard, delicate pink cheeks and
cornflowerblue
eyes – and it was clad in a long, white Biblical robe. The net result was so like an inferior artist’s conception of Christ that Oliver and I simultaneously exclaimed, ‘Jesus!’ Juliet, sitting behind us, thought that we’d both become uncharacteristically blasphemous – but when this vision entered the room she saw what we meant.

These young enthusiasts have a tendency to roam around the camp performing esoteric tests to determine whether any of our Tiblets are Incarnate Lamas. This afternoon I was immensely diverted by one such test. As I was tapping a pneumonia case, with a solemn-faced four-year-old sitting on my left, staring into space – and Cama Yishy, as ever, sitting on my right – a group of Febs, Fabs, Mebs and Mabs appeared on the scene, surveyed the four-year-old and declared – ‘He seems very probable.’ They then asked me if I’d noticed anything unusual about the child and I replied – ‘Yes, last month it had three different types of worms at the same time.’ Whereupon they all looked quite revolted – whether by the medical fact or by my insensitive obtuseness I wouldn’t know. Next they proceeded to squat around in a semi-circle, waving their hands and muttering ‘mantras’ and making profound deductions from the infant’s understandably astonished reactions. Finally they announced – ‘This boy is a most interesting case and we must tell our “Guru” that he Shows All The Signs.’ This was the cue I’d been devilishly waiting for. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we all know it’s an interesting case – but I hardly think your “Guru” would thank you for bringing him to investigate an Incarnate Lama who is in fact a girl.’

A horrible incident occurred this morning. Each day after breakfast I take our left-overs – bread, cheese and hard-boiled egg – to the
Dispensary for distribution among those who most need ‘feeding up’. Normally the food is wrapped in a piece of newspaper but today, being in a rush and seeing none to hand, I hurried across the compound with the food exposed on a plate. Before I was halfway across a mob of starving children had brought me to a standstill. Suddenly Tibetan gentleness was replaced by a barbarous aggressiveness. Panic filled me as I looked around at the mass of struggling little bodies, in the midst of which some tiny ones were falling and being trampled underfoot. This was genuine mob violence, appearing in the most unlikely place, and it was horrifying to see the expression of frantically pleading desperation in those young eyes. The ayahs must have been at their breakfast, for none answered my calls, and as Juliet had preceded me to the Dispensary the only way to quell this riot was to throw bits of food in various directions, thereby splitting up the mob into groups. The whole experience was indescribably dreadful and I haven’t yet forgiven myself for causing it through sheer thoughtlessness. Of course we’ve always known that the children are inadequately fed, but somehow when you see them sitting down to four meals per diem you don’t realise that they are literally starving: and probably the recent cold weather is largely responsible for their present state of agonising hunger.

Our working day now ends at 5 p.m. because the evenings are so cold and dark. The children have supper then and are in bed by half-past five – a rather dismal arrangement, but in unheated draughty rooms there’s no alternative.

This evening I went to the Drama for the tenth time; these plays seem more enjoyable the more familiar they become. When I set off for the ‘theatre’ soon after five o’clock the valley was filled with golden evening light and the cool, clear air was deliciously exhilarating. As usual I was on the alert for possible zoological excitements, and halfway to Macleod Ganj I saw what at first appeared to be two squirrels, playing in a giant pine-tree a little distance from the track. When I went closer to investigate they ran up to the topmost branches and it became obvious that they were not squirrels. As they watched me the setting sun shone magnificently on their glossy chestnut backs and when I sat quietly near the tree I saw that they had ginger bellies and coal-black
tips to their very bushy tails, which were as long as their bodies. (Nose to tail-tip they measured about three feet and they were short legged, with small round ears and ferrety faces.) After ten minutes or so they apparently decided that I was harmless and began to play again, approaching to within five yards of me. Then I noticed the very loose folds of skin between their fore and hind legs and at last realised that they were flying foxes. To see them gliding I deliberately chased them up the tree and they took off from the top branch and sailed slowly downwards for about thirty yards before coming to rest in the lower branches of another pine. I followed them and this graceful
performance
was thrice repeated – by which time the path was far behind, darkness was falling and I suddenly remembered that bears as well as flying foxes inhabit the forest. At this stage my torch battery gave out, so during the remainder of the walk to the theatre I expected to meet a bear at every corner and was quite hoarse from singing arias. For the return journey I joined a group of ayahs and we all sang together as we marched along the starlit road.

Bad as material conditions were when I first arrived in this camp, the past fortnight has been by far the most depressing period of my time here. Parents who came on the pilgrimage are now returning to their road-camps and day after day we see families being broken up – wherever one turns one glimpses a weeping parent or a sobbing child. Today I witnessed a particularly harrowing scene, when a family which has just come from Tibet – the journey took them fourteen months – reluctantly abandoned seven of their eight children; only the
sixmonths
-old baby stayed with its mother. She was a handsome woman of thirty-four with two husbands – the elder thirty-nine and the younger thirty-one. The eldest child is a ten-year-old boy and there are four-year-old twin girls. All the children – except a three-year-old boy with bronchitis – are in perfect health, despite what must have been a most gruelling journey. I wonder how long their health will remain perfect, now that they have been submerged in Dharamsala camp.

These people are nomads who have never slept under a roof and who speak a dialect that only one man here can understand – not because he is a native of their locality, but because as a Lhasa Government official he was posted for a time to the relevant area of Western Tibet. With his assistance I discovered that they had attempted to bring their herd of 200 sheep and goats with them, but of course when crossing those barren heights of the Himalayas, where for days on end there is no fodder of any sort, the unfortunate animals quickly died of starvation. This misfortune is common to many refugee families and it explains their utter destitution on arriving in India. One could be quite well-off in Tibet without possessing any cash; wealth was often represented entirely by livestock.

I shall never forget the hysterical grief of that family when the time came for the parents to go. The mother fondled all her children, said goodbye and turned away – but then turned back again and was almost pulled to the ground by seven panic-stricken little pairs of arms. Finally her husbands – big rawboned men with weather-blackened faces – took her firmly but very gently in charge and though weeping openly themselves led her away down the mountainside. This parting took place in Kashmir Cottage Room, where there are two doors and where I was in sole charge, all the ayahs having gone to Macleod Ganj to collect stores. As soon as the parents were out of sight the seven children dashed to the doors to follow them – the twins to one door, the rest to the other. I rushed to intercept the larger party and bolt that door while Cama Yishy, on his own initiative, headed off the twins from their exit, and though he could not reach the bolt he shut the door and bravely defended his post. When the children realised that they were trapped in this vast, unfamiliar cavern they went berserk. The phrase ‘going up the walls’ literally did apply to three of them, who tried piteously to claw their way up the smooth boards to the high windows. Another hurled herself against a door in such a paroxysm of panic that I feared that she would bash her brains out. And the twins lay kicking on the floor and shrieked with terror when I approached them – not surprisingly, since they had probably never seen a European face before. Meanwhile Cama Yishy had taken it on himself to console
the three-year-old, who was crouching in the corner, whimpering with fear, and as I stood helplessly in the centre of that room I vowed to do all in my power, from this day on, to alter a situation that creates so much misery.

It was illuminating that when being questioned on their arrival as to why they had brought their children here these parents gave the stock answer – ‘Because they will get schooling and it is good for them to be near His Holiness.’ Yet in Tibet this family lived four months’ journey by horse from Lhasa and had never been there or seen the Dalai Lama. (My questionnaire has shown me that few Tibetans, except those living in nearby towns and villages, ever went to the capital.) As for education, it is utterly beyond the bounds of possibility that such people, who don’t even speak Tibetan, could have thought this one out for
themselves
– so it seems justifiable to assume that during the three days which they have just spent in Forsythe Bazaar they were thoroughly indoctrinated.

Admittedly it is best under present conditions that at least some of the children, in a case like this, should be left at a camp while their parents find work; the tragedy is that even when work has been found the family will not be encouraged to re-unite.

This afternoon I had a most enjoyable row with Umadevi, an elderly Polish-born Feb who lives at the Palace. She accused me of being bigoted, conceited and treacherous, and I accused her of being fanatical, jealous and totally incapable of seeing the realities of any situation. After two and three-quarter hours of such exchanges we parted the best of friends – possibly because we both found that quarrelling with each other, rather than with Mrs Tsiring Dolma, was a truly satisfying experience. Certainly I felt that having someone saying what they thought of me to my face made a very nice change.

In the course of our conversation – if the interview may be so described – Umadevi asked petulantly, ‘Why don’t all you foreigners go back to your own countries and look after affairs there, instead of interfering with the Tibetans?’ To me this was a delectable question, coming from a Pole who has spent the past three years virtually running the Tibetan Government Foreign Affairs Department. I said as much,
to which my opponent replied that she was only trying to help – whereupon I retorted that it was a matter of opinion whether ‘help’ or ‘interference’ was the
mot juste
for any of our activities. She then went on to accuse me of being ‘like the CID’ – a charge which left me completely uninsulted because, as I pointed out, CIDs are necessary evils, human nature being what it is. As can be seen, our meeting was not exactly productive, except in so far as it gave us both the opportunity to let off a great deal of long-pent-up steam. I only wish that I was more deserving of comparison with the CID – though actually Interpol is what we need here.

The walk to the Palace is more beautiful than ever at this season and when returning westward at sunset, as I did today, one is confronted by a vast red-gold sky, smouldering behind the dark, deep green of the forests. To the south lie long, multi-coloured streamers of cloud against a pale, cold green sky and nearby hundreds of almond trees are richly blossoming among the pines and deodars. Occasionally too one notices a strangely lovely tree whose transparent leaves have now turned to the palest gold and adding to this beauty is the unceasing music of the Tibetan flute. All day, from dawn to dusk, wherever you go in this region, you hear that flute being played in the distance; yet never once have I
seen
it being played, which makes me feel that it’s the original ‘music of the spheres’ – an illusion fostered by the quiet, simple tunes.

It’s hateful to think that within a fortnight I’ll have left this glorious region and returned to the plains.

It has taken us all day to realise that President Kennedy is dead. We heard of the assassination at 8 a.m. on the Delhi news, and though India had her own national tragedy yesterday (when five of her senior army and air force officers were killed in a helicopter crash not very far from here) three-quarters of the bulletin was devoted to Kennedy. The Russian tribute struck us as being sincere, and if this impression is correct its sincerity is the best epitaph he could have. It is curious how hostile feelings to the American way of life and policies do not prevent
most Westerners from involuntarily regarding the President of the United States as
our
leader – not merely the leader of a friendly power. At least that’s how the four of us here – representing three European nations – reacted this morning. There was a sense of personal loss in our sorrow – and also an element of fear, at being suddenly deprived of a protector whose individual greatness had placed him outside the area of petty international antagonisms, while his humanity kept him within reach of the least of us.

This evening President Radhakrishnan broadcast a tribute and the most impressive thing about it was its incoherency. Last month I mentioned his fine talk on the eve of UN Day, when every idea was carefully thought out and perfectly expressed; but today he spoke very slowly and haltingly and it was the tone of his voice, rather than the inevitable
clichés
, that said what he felt.