Tibetan Foothold (8 page)

No crises today – unless you like to so describe the cutting of the
left-hand
little fingernails of all the adults in the camp. Tibetans keep the rest of their nails very short but this is worn about one inch long and used to dislodge nests of nits from each other’s heads, to unwax the ears and to excavate the nostrils. Normally Oliver is all for preserving ancient Tibetan customs, but yesterday evening, when he went to the kitchen to photograph the colossal mud stove on which all the camp’s food is cooked, he saw Chumba hanging over our dinner, excavating like mad. So this morning I was sent forth at dawn, armed with
nail-clippers
and instructions to go down fighting – which I very nearly did, as opposition was fierce. I found this a most distasteful chore, since the Tibetans are all absolutely devoted to that long, left, fingernail – and now how can they cope with the nit-nests, etc.? I felt very tyrannical and without any real justification – after all, if one didn’t
brood
on it a few consequences of excavation in the soup (thick veg.) would go unnoticed and do no harm.

I only wish other problems, more serious than long nails, could be as easily solved. About sixty per cent of the children have bleeding gums at the moment as scurvy is one of the commonest results of diet deficiency. Fresh fruit can be had cheaply in this locality and one would imagine that it could be provided regularly; but instead we are dosing the sufferers with vitamin C tablets, which Oliver admits are virtually useless once scurvy has broken out, though they are a help if taken to supplement deficient diet
before
the system has been undermined.

Today is a very important Hindu festival in this area; thousands come to bathe in the sacred waters of Dall Lake and to worship the
serpentgod
who dwells near by. During the past week the monsoon has been
easing off: now we only have heavy showers each day, with ‘long bright periods’ in between, and it was clear and sunny at 6.30 this morning when I joined the throngs of pilgrims who were climbing past the camp to the lake.

Somehow I felt more ‘with’ the Hindus today than ever before. These people seemed quite different from the types met with in Delhi; they were very friendly as we ascended the path together and were most anxious that I should go into the temple, ring the snake-god’s bell and have the Saddhu put rice on my forehead. (This he did and it stayed on all day, recalling Ash Wednesday!) Such a degree of mateyness seemed very odd; in view of all one reads and hears about the caste system I, as an untouchable, should have been forbidden entry to the temple. But doubtless Gandhi’s influence is slowly having its effect, and anyway the enforcement of these rules probably varies widely from district to district. Discrimination against the untouchables – officially re-named the ‘Scheduled Castes’ – has been made illegal by Article 15 of the Indian Constitution, yet in a country like India it is the influence of the popular reformer that works these changes, rather than the making of new laws.

On my way back to breakfast I reflected that one of India’s chief troubles must be the number of half-educated, disorientated citizens drifting around her towns and cities. These pilgrims this morning were quite different – honest-to-god(s) peasants with no would-be-Western nonsense about them. One immediately appreciated the sincerity of their faith, however bizarre and unpalatable its outward manifestations. The snag seems to be that Hinduism, though it boasts of its powers of assimilation, cannot in fact successfully survive contact with the modern Western world as, for instance, Islam does. A Muslim may go superficially Western in his speech, dress and material possessions while remaining in his thoughts, feelings and principles a completely integrated Son of the Prophet. But apparently few Hindus can achieve this balance: a veneer of Western education quickly makes them ashamed of their religion and dissatisfied with their country.

Another crisis today. At 8 a.m. all the staff disappeared without warning to attend a meeting at the Upper Nursery and they didn’t return until 4 p.m. One result was that the daily bathing could not take place and I spent the afternoon teaching thirty of the older boys Gaelic football – an occupation which suited all thirty-one of us much better than bathing!

The Lower Nursery has two teachers – whose qualifications to teach anything more than Buddhist hymns are very doubtful – but this morning they too had vanished and, to my astonishment, I observed two ten-year-old boys doing their job by the blackboards while the rest of the children squatted cross-legged on the ground in the usual orderly rows, copying the letters of the Tibetan alphabet onto their slates with stumps of chalk. Tiblets possess an innate power of self-discipline, as distinct from our children’s submission to the imposition of discipline by authority.

At teatime we heard that, following the mass-meeting, Mrs Tsiring Dolma has decided to remain here as the Nursery Principal. Later she visited the Dispensary and was in tears, which slightly foxed us all. I suppose one really should sympathise with her, despite her genius for alienating even those who are best disposed towards Tibetan officialdom. Probably the whole set-up is just too much for a
completely
uneducated peasant woman who happens to be His Holiness’s sister.

Plans are now going ahead for the building of a new Dispensary. This is essential in the circumstances, yet it’s difficult to get enthused about anything which tends to make these camps more permanent. ‘Tibetan Nurseries’ are most emphatically
not
the answer and one longs to see the Tiblets’ circumstances totally changed rather than slightly improved. Many people are agreed that priority should be given to reuniting these broken families, but the only way to do that, when dealing with a community that is ninety per cent agriculturist, is to resettle them on spare land in some remote region of the world – which, as Tibetans can endure more hardship than most, should not be impossible. If only someone would take up the project of moving
them
en masse
to a suitable area they could then be left alone to get on with the job in their own way – minus the Red Cross, CRC, CARE, SAT, AER, CUSO, WCC, SCF, SCI, and etc., etc. Obviously there would be tremendous legal and political obstacles in the way of implementing such a scheme. Yet surely it’s worth trying, not merely because it would finally solve the practical problem of caring for these people but also because it would give them a reasonable chance to preserve their culture. Rumours are current that one such project was recently mooted but promptly quashed by the Tibetan authorities on the grounds that for Tibetans to move
en masse
to a more distant country would be an overt abandonment of all hope of returning to Tibet.

Today Namgyal left for Switzerland with Thondup, his son – or nephew, as the case may be. He had worked in the Dispensary as general factotum for eighteen months and we were sad to see him go; but he has been longing to set sail, or take wing, to the ‘Paradise’ of Europe, where he is convinced that his son will prosper automatically, by the mere fact of being in the West.

His story is rather an unusual one. He was the youngest of the three husbands of an apparently not very kindly wife, who treated him as a house-boy rather than as a husband, so when the exodus to India began he chose the child most likely to be his own and quietly departed from the village of Gombol. (Don’t ask me where Gombol is; Tibetans measure distances in their own way and Thondup simply said that it was ‘one month’s walk from Lhasa over the Mountain of the Wind-God’ – which is not a very precise indication of the spot.) Having been at school in Mussoorie, Thondup – now aged twelve – speaks adequate English; he is a delightful boy, but as usual I have horrible misgivings about the impact of Europe on a Tiblet.

During the past year Namgyal and one of the ayahs have been living together and I must say that their recent demeanour belies what I wrote some time ago about the emotional lives of Tibetans. It’s been most distressing to see the two of them sitting silently outside the
Dispensary whenever they had a free moment, holding hands and looking like Rodin statues of Sorrow – as if both hadn’t had enough upheavals in their lives already. The ayah naturally wanted to go to Switzerland too, but the Powers who arrange such things seem quite insensitive to refugees as individuals – so many males and so many females are transported from Point A to Point B without any attempt being made to cater for contingencies such as this. One has to admire Namgyal for sacrificing his own happiness to give Thondup the ‘benefit’ of a European education.

I woke this morning with mumps, an infection taken no more seriously around here than is a head-cold in Ireland: every week an ayah or a few children develop it – but they wouldn’t dream of calling
that
an illness and carry on regardless. Irishwomen, however, are of inferior mettle, so after breakfast I shamelessly took to my bed – or rather to the wooden Tibetan couch on which Kesang sleeps at night, since I haven’t got a bed proper. My eyes have been troublesome lately, and now Oliver thinks I’ve got a touch of trachoma – which is not surprising, as the majority of the children suffer severely from this infection. He has advised me not to read or write for a week, which fits in quite well with being mumpsical; I feel no great urge to do anything more than pity myself this evening. Yet you can’t really resent a disease called mumps – it’s such a
jolly
word!

Mumps abated, eyes improved and back to work today. This morning a messenger came to the Dispensary from Mrs Tsiring Dolma’s office at the Upper Nursery and said that she had issued an order forbidding the taking of photographs in the camp by any Westerners who had not first obtained her permission to use a camera. We were understandably enraged – no one but the Indian Government or Military Authorities has the legal right to impose such a restriction and I at once sent to Lower Dharamsala for three rolls of film. This is the sort of thing that repeatedly happens to upset relations when you’ve been trying hard to
feel fraternal charity towards the lady in question. Granted it’s always possible in Tibland that things are not what they seem – this order
could
have emanated from the Indian Authorities, who may have their own reasons for not wishing the outside world to see just how grim conditions are here. In such a case Mrs Tsiring Dolma, as a face-saving measure, might well represent the order to be her own.

We heard at lunchtime that yesterday evening a policeman from Lower Dharamsala was killed by a bear in the forest near His Holiness’s Palace. The dangerous thing is to meet one face to face on a winding mountain path; then they are terrified and attack, but if they hear your approach they will always run away. So you are advised to sing loudly when walking alone on such paths and, should the worst happen while you are briefly resting the larynx, you are recommended to lie down at once and remain quite still; apparently an upright human has a most deleterious effect on a bear’s nervous system. Personally I should have thought that lying quite still in the shadow of a jittery bear would have an even more deleterious effect on a human’s nervous system. But the point has been noted.

This is evidently a very inauspicious date. To begin with poor Oliver has caught the mumps and is in a most pathetic panic, foreseeing the end of the Senn dynasty. Then this afternoon one of the ayahs, who eleven days ago was safely delivered of her third baby in Kangra Hospital, returned here seriously ill. It’s an incredible story. Rinchin was aged twenty-four and Dubkay, our thirty-year-old junior teacher, was her second husband. (Her first, the father of two elder children, did not escape from Tibet with his family.) About six weeks ago she came to the Dispensary and told Oliver that soon after the baby’s birth she would die, though the child would be perfectly healthy. Oliver examined her thoroughly and said: ‘Nonsense! You’ve nothing to worry about and your baby will need you so don’t think of such a thing any more.’ However, as she was slightly anaemic he took the precaution of advising her to go to the Kangra Hospital for the
confinement
. At first she refused to consider this, repeating that she
knew
she was going to die and that she wished to be at Dharamsala, near His Holiness, when the time came. Oliver again reassured her but could see that he was making no impression. He then got Dubkay to
persuade
her to go to hospital, and twelve days ago she, Dubkay and Dubkay’s aunt (a nun) all left for Kangra. (Until her labour pains came on she had continued to do her normal daily work and to look perfectly healthy.) On 30 August she was easily delivered of a fine son weighing five and a quarter pounds and for the next week mother and child did well. Then, three days ago, she suddenly announced that she couldn’t walk any more (though she’d been up every day and had even gone to the bazaar with Dubkay one afternoon), that she couldn’t eat and that she wished to return immediately to Dharamsala to die. Dr Haslem tried everything she knew, but could make no satisfactory diagnosis much less prescribe a cure, so this morning when Rinchin insisted on moving back to the camp there seemed no point in opposing her wish.

After her arrival here no one told us how ill she was; apparently all concerned accepted the fact that she must inevitably die unless the Lamas could exorcise the death-demon which had taken possession of her. It is significant that in this major health crisis the assistance of trained Western medical helpers was not even considered – despite the many proofs of the efficiency of modern medicine given to the Tibetans in this area. Like the Celts of pre-Christian Europe the Tibetans believe that death is never natural, but is always caused by the evil influence of one of the many types of death-demon. And presumably in the case of a young, outwardly healthy person the demon responsible is held to be exceptionally powerful and evil.

So it was by chance that Juliet discovered the position, when she noticed two of the dispensary ayahs whispering and weeping and looking frightened. They rather reluctantly told her what was wrong and she and I immediately went up to the little stone hut on the mountainside above the camp, where Dubkay and his wife had their home. (By now Oliver was running a temperature and couldn’t leave his bed.)