Tibetan Foothold (16 page)

As they turned into the next street I felt that this was a glimpse of that India which we will never understand.

Perhaps I’m getting too emotionally involved in my work, because I find it quite heartbreaking to walk along Janpath and see the stalls where Tibetan silver is on display. Thousands of refugees arrived in India so destitute that they were thankful to sell for five or ten shillings
articles worth fifty times that price, and many traders – both Indian and Tibetan – quickly took advantage of the peasants’ poverty and commercial innocence. So now prayer-wheels, reliquaries and jewellery are being sold at fancy prices to pop-eyed, laughing tourists and when one knows the spiritual and sentimental value of such articles to the Tibetans this spectacle is almost unbearable.

Really it was foolish of me to return here for such a short period; the look of incredulous delight on Cama Yishy’s face when I suddenly reappeared will haunt me for a long time to come. And my general ‘welcome back’ was unexpectedly overwhelming. From the edge of the compound, overlooking the road, a few Tiblets saw me approaching, and by the time I arrived the lot had been alerted; for all their tininess the combined force nearly killed me with hugs and I couldn’t help wondering what I’d ever done to deserve such a demonstration.

The eleven-hour train journey from Delhi to Pathancot was my first experience of the legendary Indian railways – reputed to be the world’s most interesting and exhausting form of transport. However, this was no baptism of fire, since the Kashmiri Express is naturally not popular in midwinter and even the third-class coaches were half-empty. I lay stretched on the wooden seat, using my saddle-bag as pillow, and slept for most of the time till we reached Pathancot at 8 a.m. this morning – though my responsibilities included all Juliet’s Christmas shopping, plus Bran.

The saga of Bran is worth telling. Yesterday morning Jill and I were sitting in Arabella near Connaught Circus, discussing Tibbery, when suddenly Jill heard and saw a diminutive mongrel puppy being used as a football by a small Sikh boy. Instantly she was out of the Land-Rover and across the road – miraculously escaping a speeding Mercedes – and from the terrified expression on the small boy’s face, before he collected his wits and fled out of sight, I can only deduce that she was looking positively homicidal. Having picked the trembling puppy out of the gutter she recrossed the road, more prudently this time, and I wondered where we all went from here; Jill is already owned by a year-old
variation on the Alsatian theme, which has been living in the back of Arabella since she rescued it three weeks ago, and her frantic efforts to find it a home have to date been unsuccessful.

When the latest waif and stray had been deposited on my lap I saw that he was about six weeks old, weighed some thirty ounces and had an utterly adorable personality. Jill said briskly, ‘We’ll have him put down this evening’, and I said, ‘Of course: absolutely no alternative’ – both of us knowing full well that when evening came we would produce unimpeachable reasons for not being able to contact a veterinary surgeon. During the next half-hour the waif sat on my lap devouring Jill’s protein biscuits – and then I announced that it was being named Bran, in honour of my deceased Irish terrier. Jill
commented
that naming the object was a poor beginning to the process of having it put down before nightfall, to which I retorted that feeding the object vastly expensive protein biscuits was an equally poor beginning to the same process. However, it was definite that Arabella had reached saturation point as far as dogs were concerned, so by 9 p.m. we had decided that some animal companionship would be very good psychological therapy for Tiblets – and Bran was put with my luggage.

Rather to my surprise he travelled like a veteran and was no bother, even doing what he was meant to do when held out of the window, as Indian mothers hold their babies at every stop. (Indian babies are not scarce, so this may be one reason why Indian stations have something in common with neglected farmyards.) He is now in the Dispensary, giving the children there a great deal of pleasure and enjoying life enormously. Obviously co-ordination is what’s needed in this type of work!

During the past six days I’ve been based in Dharamsala, while travelling around this area doing what Umadevi would doubtless describe as ‘CID work’.

I finally left the camp today at 3 p.m., swathed in the ceremonial white scarves presented by Tibetans on these occasions. All morning,
while I oiled, washed and checked Roz, crowds of Tiblets had been surrounding me, staring in wonder at the strange machine. (For obvious reasons bicycles are not used in this area.) After lunch I cycled round the compound to demonstrate how the thing worked and gave rides to those brave enough to want them. Poor Dubkay got very envious then and begged to be allowed to cycle a little way down the road; but Roz is so much lighter and faster than the Indian models to which he was accustomed on the plains that I didn’t dare risk him going over a precipice. Instead, I gave him a farewell present of my solar topi, which he immediately clapped on his head – despite the cold north wind – to the great joy of the assembled Tiblets. Finally my saddle-bag was packed and, saying as few goodbyes as possible, I left the camp via a back route, escorted by Juliet, Oliver, Kesang, Deirdre and a number of ayahs. These accompanied me as far as Forsythe Bazaar, where dozens of the resident Tibetans joined the group. Then I mounted Roz – for the first time in five months – and a moment later we had whizzed away out of sight down the steep road.

It was a fortunate coincidence that my departure from Dharamsala meant a reunion with Roz; as we gathered speed I revelled in the comforting contact with her handlebars, in the familiar rush of sharp air past my face and in experiencing once again the thrill of judging the maximum speed at which we could safely take hairpin bends.

A few miles before reaching Kangra we passed the junction where tomorrow morning we’ll be turning east towards Kulu and looking up the narrow road I felt that sudden racing of the pulse which is my personal symptom of wanderlust. Our overland journey from Ireland had assuaged it temporarily, but now it was rampant again and I almost trembled with impatience to be away over those splendidly mountainous horizons. The nomadic existence in which one never knows what may befall between dawn and dusk – or where one will find a bed when dusk has come – is a very essential ingredient in my life.

My bed here in Kangra is spartan enough to satisfy the most exacting
nomad. I’m staying with the Canadian University Service Overseas Volunteers at the Kangra Boys’ School, sleeping in blankets on a rotten wood floor whose days (and presumably nights) are very definitely numbered. Also I’ve just been warned not to register alarm and despondency if the mammoth rats who share this accommodation with the girls should chance to scuttle across my face during the small hours.

It’s remarkable how Tibbery tends to attract extremes; the numbers of heroes and villains met with in Tibland make me feel at times that I’m living within a Victorian melodrama. These twenty-two-year-old CUSO volunteers – Lois James, a nurse, and Judy Pullen, a teacher – could each be earning high salaries in Canada if they had not chosen to come here for two years and live in unimaginable squalor on an allowance of one and sixpence
per diem
. Since their arrival in October they’ve visited us occasionally at Dharamsala, and from our first meeting I admired them enormously, both for their rapid adaptation to the complexities of life in Tibland and for the courage,
resourcefulness
and humour with which they were tackling their jobs. But now, having seen the conditions under which they live, the food on which they subsist and the incredible improvements they have made during two brief months no words seem adequate to praise them. When I think of the comparative luxury of Dharamsala, where the SCF bungalow almost attains Western standards of comfort and where we lived royally on our SCF food bonus, I feel deeply ashamed of the fact that some people regard me as having endured a martyr’s existence for the sake of the Tiblets. Judy and Lois seem to be tough young women – Lois has already spent eighteen months living with the Esquimaux in the Canadian Arctic – but Kangra is a far less healthy spot than Dharamsala and on their present regime of too much work and too little food it is almost inevitable that they will succumb to one – or several – of the virulent local bugs.

When I arrived here at dusk we all walked up to the Maple Leaf Hospital and I said goodbye to Dr Haslem and her staff, who all do a great deal to help the Tibetans, though they are permanently
overworked
in their own jobs.

On our way back to the school the girls went on a mild shopping spree in the bazaar, using a small gift of money recently sent them from home to buy little presents for distribution during the Christmas party they are now planning to give their Tiblets. It was fun to wander through the narrow streets, lit only by lanterns shining from the many little stalls, and to stop for long debates on the comparative values of four-penny combs, threepenny tin whistles and vivid glass bangles at six for two-pence-halfpenny. It has sometimes been remarked to me that Canadians are in general more adaptable than Americans, and certainly these two girls fit effortlessly into the Indian scene. Rarely have I seen Westerners display, in their dealings with Indians, such an unselfconscious and total acceptance of the equality of man.

Inevitably Judy and Lois urged me to spend Christmas at Kangra. Juliet and Deirdre had already urged me to spend it at Dharamsala and it’s rather obvious that my disappearance into the wilds of Kulu at this season is regarded as an irreligious and anti-social idiosyncrasy. But to me an escape from all the nostalgic Christmas ritual and paraphernalia seems excellent psychology when home is five thousand miles away.

Roz and I left Kangra at ten o’clock yesterday morning and took it very easy. Apart from the dysentery which has been plaguing me this past week – so that my diet consists mainly of sulphaguanidine tablets and my energy is proportionately reduced – cycling muscles seize up during a five months’ ‘layoff’ and even the freewheel down from Dharamsala had made me slightly saddle-sore. So I planned to cover only the twenty-seven miles to Palampur where the four Peace Corps boys, who have been based there since September, had invited me to stay the night. Actually when we arrived in Palampur at 3 p.m. I still felt quite fresh, having slept for over an hour in the sun, and the temptation to go further was strong; but I resisted it, knowing what agony over-doing things today could cause by tomorrow.

It’s difficult to describe the perfection of the weather here at this season. There’s nothing quite like it in Ireland, but the nearest would be a clear, sunny, late September day. The visibility is fantastic now: a few days ago I could distinctly see Simla from the heights above the Nursery.

The current Indian custom of measuring distances by both miles and kilometres imposes a severe mental strain on travellers with no flair for arithmetic. Every other signpost or milestone uses a different measure and to add to the confusion English is now being replaced by Hindi, a move which has been universally acknowledged as a specially pure form of lunacy. Almost everyone who can read Hindi can also read English and most citizens can read neither – so why take it out on the unfortunate foreign traveller? It seems absurd that both scripts can’t be used, as Pakistan uses Urdu and English and as we use Gaelic
and English. The Government intend soon to replace English by Hindi as India’s official language and this is bound to worsen the already formidable chaos of Indian bureaucracy. Even in the military sphere it will have a disastrous effect on communications, which by all accounts are shaky enough already – rumour has it that the proposed change delights the Chinese! And, when a large proportion of the people’s democratically elected representatives are no longer able to understand one syllable of their country’s language, proceedings in the Lok Sabha will degenerate from the present tragi-comedy to undiluted farce.

I spent a pleasant evening with the Peace Corps boys, catching up on my letters and reports and enjoying a first-class Mozart concert from Russia; in this part of the world the most reliable source of classical music is the USSR and on the whole reception is excellent. Today we were on the road by nine o’clock and despite a strong, persistent
headwind
I felt no more than pleasantly tired when we arrived here at 4 p.m., after covering sixty miles; so apparently getting back into training isn’t going to be the painful process I’d expected.

At Baijnath, eleven miles from Palampur, the Kangra valley ends and from here the road climbs very steeply for about three miles before crossing the state boundary into Himachal Pradesh. Twelve miles further on comes another stiff climb and then for thirty-five miles one is descending gradually from a 4000-foot pass to Mandi, which is only 2400 feet above sea-level. Thus far we have been following the road to Simla, but though I remarked on what lovely country this is when first seeing it last month, I hadn’t really appreciated its beauty – one doesn’t from a Land-Rover seat!

Today there was very little traffic, beyond the occasional local bus, and as these rough mountains and stony valleys offer little
encouragement
to settlers, most of the people we passed today were Tibetans walking to Dharamsala to receive His Holiness’s blessing and visit their children there. Some were also bringing children for admission to the camp, and I examined fifteen of these Tiblets, twelve of whom appeared to be in the best of health; of the other three one had a very bad cough and may be a TB case and two had chronic dysentery and looked quite emaciated.

In Delhi I had been given a letter written in Tibetan explaining the purpose of my Kulu tour – but of course none of these parents could read. However, the mere fact that I produced a document in their own script reconciled them to the peculiar behaviour of the white female cyclist who suddenly dismounted, stripped their children by the
way-side
and scrutinised them all over!

Roz was being pushed up a steep slope when we encountered the first group of Tibetans; before seeing them I had heard gales of laughter from round a corner of the mountain and known that they were coming – simply because Indians, on the whole,
don’t
laugh in the course of their everyday life. What a gay people these refugees are! You get ten smiles from a group of ten Tibetans and one smile (if you’re lucky) from a group of ten Indians. Moreover, you can never be quite sure
why
you’re getting the one Indian smile, whereas you know you’re getting the ten Tibetan smiles out of sheer benevolence towards the world in general.

My inside is still giving a poor welcome to solids so I stopped often at tea-houses to refuel on that heavily sweetened beverage which passes for tea in India. It’s a characteristic of Indian villages and small towns that whenever foreigners appear everyone who speaks English collects around as if by magic, and today I used these conversational opportunities to test local reactions to Tibetans. It’s sad, but inevitable and understandable, that the refugees are extremely unpopular – and the reason usually given for not liking them was their personal filthiness, which to a Hindu of any caste is unforgivable. Nor can one criticise the Indians for taking up this attitude. Their religious scruples about bodily cleanliness obviously originated in the absolute necessity for it in a climate like theirs – and the various infections to which the refugees are so prone prove the Hindu point. Yet most of those to whom I spoke today admitted that they found the Tibetans uniquely gentle and honest – though many Indians probably regard the latter virtue as a form of stupidity.

Yesterday I picked up an interesting piece of information. The Tibetan road-workers in the Chumba valley have recently presented a new Willys jeep to His Holiness and this vehicle was bought out of
their accumulated savings with cheerful disregard for the fact that His Holiness already possesses a fleet of motors. Undoubtedly the Dalai Lama will convert this gift to the benefit of refugees somewhere, providing the decision is left to himself, but what intrigues me is the financial significance of this presentation. If road-workers can afford to buy a jeep out of their savings then they can certainly afford to contribute substantially to the maintenance of their children.

This town is a most attractive little place, with mountains crouching close on every side and the River Beas frisking along in its deep bed – though all local rivers are rather subdued during these months of frozen snows. The landscape was quite wintry today; many trees were leafless, others wore our sort of October colours and the meagre grass was brown. But the sky remained that intense blue which we call ‘exaggerated’ on postcards and when one got out of the wind the sun was warm. Tonight I’m staying at the Dak-bungalow and it’s good to sit here writing quietly in my own room, beside an electric fire that doesn’t work, with Roz leaning against the end of the bed and both of us feeling younger after the day’s run.

When we left Mandi at eight o’clock this morning it was very chilly, with a dense river-mist filling the valley. But soon the first rays of the sun penetrated the gorge and the mist suddenly turned to a
pinky-gold
softness floating over the water – and a few moments later had vanished. Yet for another two hours it remained cold in the shadow of the giant cliffs that rise sheer to more than a thousand feet on both sides of the river.

There is one-way traffic only over the twenty-five miles of this narrow, twisting road through the Mandi-Larji gorge, but at many dangerous bends Tibetans are now blasting away the cliff-face and before long normal traffic should be possible. Actually there was no traffic today, one way or the other, though in summer quite a number of tourists come to Kulu.

As we went up the gorge I quoted to myself from
Kubla Khan,
where Coleridge refers to the Beas under its ancient name of Alph.

I little thought, when resentfully swotting these lines more than twenty years ago, that one day I would travel through this ‘cavern measureless to man’. So accurately does Coleridge describe both the physical aspect and the atmosphere of the gorge that it is difficult to believe he never saw or felt it; perhaps opium has stranger side-effects than we know of.

I spent most of the morning finding and examining the forty-eight Tiblets who live in the road-camp between Mandi and Pandoh. That camp is situated at river-level, and to approach it safely from the road one would need the agility of either a goat or a Tibetan. It’s a small settlement of about one hundred adults, most of whom work all day on the road far above; however, a few elderly relatives remain among the tents and prevent the children from getting into too much mischief. This group owns two milking buffaloes, which like all Indian cattle appear to live on fresh air. The tents in all these camps are ex-army models provided by the PWD and some of them are in bad repair; even the sound ones must seem a very poor substitute for the yak-hair tents of Tibet, which were proof against any extremes of temperature and usually wore well for about fifteen years. Unfortunately such tents are very heavy and cumbersome, and so few of the refugees succeeded in bringing them to India.

The foreman of this gang is a Sikh who lives in Mandi and whose directions are translated by the camp-leader, an ex-officer of the Tibetan army. This handsome, rather sad-looking man speaks Hindi quite well but naturally knows no English, so our conversation was confined to basic questions and answers about food and health.

I’m spending the night here at Pandoh camp, which is one of the biggest in the area – one could call it a tent-village, for it accommodates 660 people, including eighty-seven Tiblets. Over 500 adolescents and adults are building a new road along the precipitous mountain on the other side of the Beas. Children under fifteen are not meant to work on the roads, but some of them do; the fifteen-to eighteen-year-olds earn one and sixpence a day. Ninety per cent of Indian road-making is still done by hand, with blasting as the only supplement to human energy, but on this particular section a bulldozer is in action operated by Indians, which indicates the strategic importance of the new road. It’s quite terrifying to stand on the opposite bank of the river – no more than fifty yards wide at this point – and to look up at that gigantic machine edging its way along a narrow shelf newly blasted out of the virgin cliff. Dislodged hunks of mountain come continuously bouncing and rumbling downwards to splash into the Beas and soon I realised that this was forbidden territory; when the foreman noticed me he began to shout inaudibly and to gesticulate in a manner which said plainly enough that I was to go back where I came from. Some ten minutes after my retreat up to the camp there was a terrific explosion, of such force that the ground beneath my feet trembled as in an earthquake. Great jagged fragments of mountain went hurtling through the air in all directions, some landing on this side of the river – which explained the foreman’s aversion to my presence there.

Later, when I spoke to this man, he confirmed what his colleague had said to me earlier today – that because of their great strength, energy and nimbleness the Tibetans are ideally suited to road-making. Certainly it demands all these qualities; it’s awe-inspiring to see half a dozen men and women tie ropes around a colossal rock, push and pull it across the road to the edge of the gorge and leap acrobatically aside as it goes over. Then one of them scampers gaily down the dangerous
slope above the torrent to retrieve the rope, secures it around his waist and climbs swiftly back to the road. I asked how long it takes to widen one corner at this rate of progress, but no one cared to commit
themselves
to a definite reply. However, though these labours may sound to us like some form of infernal punishment the Tibetans seem positively to enjoy them, if one is to judge by their beaming faces and incessant singing of jolly choruses; it’s beyond me where they get the breath to sing while performing such feats.

I’ve now seen for myself a little of the road-camp dangers and
discomforts
, from the Tiblets’ point of view. Babies are normally taken from the tents to the roadworks on their mothers’ backs and are then transferred to little ‘cradles’ made of wooden boxes, while ‘Amela’ gets on with the job, stopping at the appropriate intervals to feed her infant. Toddlers also sometimes accompany their parents, if there is no one at home to care for them, but their obedience to parental orders means that they are less accident-prone than might be imagined. Yet those serious illnesses and accidents which do befall both adults and children are inevitably neglected in the camps – often with fatal results. The choice lies between separating hundreds of children from their parents, as a precautionary measure, or leaving the families united and accepting the consequent disasters as the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately our cushioned society has become so obsessed by physical safety that many Westerners regard removal from the Danger Zone as the only proper solution to the problem – and they tend to push this attitude onto a people who are traditionally resigned to such hazards.