by Ruskin Bond
He said to us, “I’ve arranged horses for you to go to the border tomorrow. You have to leave early, otherwise the river’ll be too high to cross when you return in the afternoon. I’ll come at six to wake you.”
“Six? Aaack!” Krishna said. “Six!” He shivered with mock horror and looked around for support.
Jamyang grinned. “We,” he said, “we Bhotias don’t wake up until nine.”
Bikas said, “I saw you early this morning on a small horse, with your feet dangling all the way to the floor. Remember?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I had to let the animals out. But then I went back to sleep.” He left the others and came to sit with us.
“The thing about elections,” he said, settling in beside Bikas, “the thing was, the election symbols were stupid. Tree, sun, plow.” This was part of a several-day-long conversation we had carried on about the last parliamentary elections. Gyaltsen was a supporter of the Nepali Congress Party, whose election symbol was a tree. Krishna, a supporter of the partyless Panchayat regime, had joined the party established by those who had been in power during the Panchayat era, which in the elections ran under the symbol of a plow. Rabindra was decidedly neutral. He wanted out, to go work abroad, he said, “Maybe in Japan or Australia.” The candidate of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), whose election symbol was a sun, had won the seat from Mustang.
“They say our MP has four daughters,” Krishna said. He shook the hair out of his eyes.
“Maybe you should ask to marry one,” a man said. Someone whistled. Krishna sniggered.
Jamyang leant back on the mud bench until his whole body was flat, and only his head was propped up on a pillow.
“You know,” he said to us, ignoring the others, “you know what? The reason Congress lost in Mustang is because of that stupid tree symbol. Think about it. The sun gets too hot, trees die. Someone comes and digs them up with a plow, they die. Now”—he held up an instructive finger—“if they’d chosen a more practical symbol like a pressure cooker or a thermos…”
The other men roared with laughter, but glib Jamyang was already elsewhere. “Dolma, are you going to let die of thirst?” he yelled, scowling at the door.
Dolma came in, pale and petite and solemn, with a flask in one hand. She filled Jamyang’s empty tumbler with chhaang. Then she scratched her hair and checked everyone else’s glasses. Rabindra said something to her, and she filled up Bikas’s glass.
“And who did you vote for, Dolma?” Krishna shouted, swaggering somehow, though he was seated.
Dolma indulged him with a smile and walked toward the kitchen.
“Dolma voted for tree,” Jamyang said. “Didn’t you, Dolma?”
“I forget,” she said. She turned back and flashed a gold-toothed smile.
“Then why do you have a poster of the Congress candidate on your door?”
“There’s a poster of Om Bikas Gauchan on the other door,” she said, and shrugged. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
Krishna said, “Dolma voted for plow.”
She laughed, then looked at me knowingly. “They say you shouldn’t tell.”
The guys shouted: “Congress!” “Communist!” as she left the room.
Jamyang turned back to us.
“Have you heard the one about the Bhotia who sold his goat for only twenty-five rupees?”
He sat up. “There was once a very rich Newar merchant who wanted to show off his new gold ring. He spotted a Bhotia selling goats, so he pointed to one goat with his ring finger and said, ‘How much?’ The Bhotia got really annoyed. So you know what he did? He decided to show off his gold tooth. He said, ‘The goat’s worth pachees.’” Jamyang stretched his mouth wide to pronounce pachees, the Nepali word for twenty-five, and pointed to the tooth that should have been gold, according to Bhotia custom. His, of course, was not; he was too urbane for that. “Pachees,” he screeched, “Hee, hee. What an idiot. Pachee-e-e-e-s.”
Dolma walked into the room and said something loudly in Tibetan. The gamblers groaned and stood up slowly and straggled out. Jamyang gulped down the last of his chhaang and left with the other men without bothering to say goodnight.
“I told them there was a woman among my guests, and that they should leave,” Dolma said to me when the room was empty, and suddenly quiet. “Otherwise they’d play all night.”
* * *
Dolma’s lodge was tucked into an alley behind the palace. Its guest room looked out on the gate of the walled city. Early in the morning women gathered at the two taps in front of the wall to fill their jerricans—jerkin—with water. Then they went home to cook a meal. In a while the men led the cows and goats to grazing lands outside the city wall. The women headed to the fields with empty baskets on their backs and the day’s rations—tsampa and a flask of tea—in their hands. The alley in front of the city gate bustled with traffic then, and rang with cries and laughter. During the day, when everyone was away, everything was quiet again. A few aged men and women with thick eyeglasses and dark, heavy clothes shuffled by with prayer wheels or beads in their hands. Some children played in the dirt. One or two Rongba—school teachers, border guards, health-post attendants—passed by on the way to work, and monks shuttled from gomba to gomba. At dusk, men gathered by the gate and gossiped, some working their spindles to make wool, others rocking toddlers on their laps. There was a sudden commotion when the children swarmed out of school, and again when the women came back from the fields with the animals. The kids ran in motley groups that fought and tussled each other. Teenagers gathered in boys’ and girls’ groups, eyed each other, and launched sudden, fierce attacks to push and shove and flirt. The women exchanged jokes and reproaches with the men as the cows, still hungry after a full day of grazing, nipped viciously at the greenery in their baskets.
* * *
The Raja’s palace stood directly in front of the city gate, a four-story whitewashed clay structure with prayer flags on top, endless dusty glass-paned windows, and a dismal wood-carved entrance.
I had a chance to go inside only on the second trip, when I came with an assignment to investigate the possibility of repairing two of the gomba of Lo Monthang. A rickety wood staircase led to a dark landing that was decorated with a stuffed Tibetan mastiff. A live one was also tied up there. Farther up the stairs was an outdoor landing where a retinue of servants cooked rice at a wood-fire stove. Up another stairway was a verandah lined with prayer wheels and painted with Buddhist landscapes. Some of the rooms along the verandah were empty and unused. The inhabited ones were closed. The toilet in the palace (I had access to that, but not to the legendary shrine) was like others in Lo, with a hole in the middle of the room, except that the room underneath, where excreta was collected for fertilizer, was a giddy three stories down instead of the customary one.
The room the Raja met visitors in had a linoleum floor, a striped linen ceding, and carved wood furniture mixed with folding metal chairs. A cabinet to the side displayed rows of china and thermos flasks. On the mud benches on the other side sat a row of stately Bista men, Rabindra and Gyaltsen among them. Both men smiled at us in acknowledgment, but they didn’t break rank to talk to us. The Raja and Rani sat across from their relatives.
The Raja was a graceful, stout man with unhurried movements and carefully chosen words. He wore a beige jacket over a woolen sweater. His legs were covered by a woolen blanket. He talked to us in Tibetan and let his secretary, a Thakali man dressed in spotless Western clothes, translate for him. Sometimes the Raja spoke a breathy, broken word or two in Nepali. The Rani, a frail-looking woman with watchful eyes, knitted in demure silence.
During our conversation about electricity and gomba repair, a relative taking leave from town placed a khata on a table beside the Raja. Then he took out a ten-rupee note from his chuba and placed it beside the khata. He poured butter tea from a flask into the Raja’s silver tea bowl
. The Raja lifted the bowl and sipped from it without so much as a glance at the man. When he returned the bowl to its stand, the relative filled the cup again. He moved toward the Rani and repeated the same gesture. Then he walked backward out of the room, scratching his head in reverence.
The Raja’s informal authority extended to only a few villages other than Lo Monthang, but even that was shrinking. With more and more people exposed to the Nepali government’s regulations, and to leftist and populist rhetoric from the political parties, quite a few traditional customs were becoming anomalous. One such custom required villagers to harvest the Raja’s crops before their own.
I found out later, from Dolma, that only relatives and those with a vested interest in expressing servitude observed the elaborate protocol followed by the man we had seen. The electrical powerhouse operator of Chhonhup, for instance, also offered a khata and money when he arrived to talk about the plant. His job depended on the Raja’s goodwill.
When other Lobas had an audience with the Raja they listened silently, scratched their head in humility, and occasionally assented with, “Kanou, kanou.”
And if they passed him on the streets of Lo Monthang? I asked Dolma. They didn’t have to, but if they wanted to they could scratch their heads and smile at him and respond politely if he addressed them.
“Don’t you have to stick your tongue out?”
Dolma looked at me with wide, shocked eyes. “Nowadays only villagers do that,” she said gravely. “Those of us from the city just scratch our heads.”
If you weren’t a Loba, you could do anything; the hierarchy observed by insiders wasn’t expected of others. For Rongba like us, a “Namaste,” and the superlative form of address, “Hajoor,” sufficed.
* * *
The walled city of Lo Monthang had three gomba: Thugchen, Jamba, and Chhoedhe. Of these, only Chhoedhe had a monastic community, and it belonged entirely to the village’s monks. Thugchen and Jamba Lakhang were built by the Raja’s ancestors, and they were jointly cared for by monks and laypersons. Keys to these gomba rotated from one family to another. For the duration of a month, the family with the keys looked after the gomba, secured butter to keep the lamps lit, and opened the door for worshippers.
Because of the poverty of the caretakers, the gomba had fallen into dismal, irrevocable disrepair. Moisture and water leaks from the ceiling and walls had destroyed many wall paintings and much of the woodwork on the ceilings. The community undertook heartfelt but inadequate protective measures, like shoveling the snow off the roofs in the winter and cleaning the gomba grounds once a year. In Thugchen Lakhang, the villagers had added layers of mud to the ceiling to prevent snow leaks, but the weight of the new mud had bent the beams instead. So the villagers had moved the entire north wall by tearing it down first—and destroying its fresco of eight Buddhas in the process—and rebuilding it closer in. This had helped a little, but moisture seeped in through other walls and continued to wear away the remaining paintings.
Many years ago, the Gomba Repair Committee of the Remote Areas Development Department of the Ministry of Local Development had allocated some funds for the repair of Thugchen and Jamba Lakhang. The villagers spent that money on a few beams and posts from Jomosom which helped hold up the sagging ceilings.
* * *
On our second trip, a festival was taking place at Thugchen Lakhang. In a mud clearing outside the gomba, monks stirred great vats of rice to feed all the worshippers—that is, the entire village. Inside, the immense, smoky interior of Thugchen rumbled with chanted prayers. Worshippers sat cross-legged on mats on the floor, dwarfed by the enormous pastel-shade Buddhas on the walls. Some worshippers swayed in prayer with their eyes closed and their hands clasped around prayer wheels. Others read from texts or prostrated themselves before the deities at the far end of the hall. A few distracted children eyed us as they mumbled prayers.
Tashi Dawa Bista, the village head for the year, sat with the other Bistas at the base of the statue of Avalokitesvara, the Compassionate One, who towered above the room. The warm yellow light of scores of butter lamps flickered on his face.
“If you’ve come with good intentions,” Tashi Dawa rasped after we made our introductions, “then I welcome you as family.” He swayed drunkenly, and his eyes narrowed. “But if you’ve come with bad intentions I can even—kill you.” His eyes shot open, his lips pursed, and his face puffed red.
We met him again later, and found out that he wasn’t really as daunting as he liked to appear. On other days he was the bumbling village head, a man who prided his ability to paint, and who had a knack for strolling in front of my camera viewfinder. When he showed me sections of Thugchen Lakhang that needed repair, his creative side took over. “We could put glass on the skylight,” he said. “We could repaint some of these Buddhas.” He pointed at a wall that had been destroyed by water leaks. “And then we could paint the pillars red with shiny enamel paint that will last a long, long time.”
* * *
Jamba Lakhang, near Thugchen, had a narrow clay front washed in red earth, and it towered above the flat city houses. Originally, it had four stories: a dark underbelly passage in the bottom, a shrine in the middle, a room on top, and a balcony above. The villagers had walled up the door to the bottom to keep children out. Because I had the approval of the village to investigate repair needs, I was able to go in. The paintings on the walls were dusty and neglected. The floor was covered with rubble. The stairs to the top floor and balcony were broken. I went there using a ladder, and saw, on the top floor, amazingly intricate gold- and silver-touched frescoes. From the balcony I saw a central, breathtaking view of Lo Monthang’s lush fields and I realized that Lo Monthang did live up to its name, “Plain of Aspiration.”
The middle portion of Jamba Lakhang was in remarkable condition for being five centuries old. In the center of the gallery was a gleaming golden figure of Maitreya, the future Buddha, which towered two stories high. The figure dated back to the fourteenth century. In time, other forms showed up from the dark: rich red-and-green mandala on the wall, gold-speckled thangka, and carved woodwork on the ceiling. Then, slowly, patches of wall washed away by water leaks, rotting wood on the ceiling, and broken deities and statuettes stashed in a corner.
* * *
During both my stays in Lo Monthang, monks were conducting prayers at one gomba or another, and almost the whole village participated. Every time I entered a gomba I saw worshippers.
One day, when I was examining the frescoes of Thugchen Lakhang, a young man burst into the hall and strode up to the base of the Avalokitesvara. He muttered something under his breath, then flung himself on the ground with such ardor I thought he might hurt himself. He remained prostrate for a long time. I looked away, suddenly embarrassed by my own stubborn atheism. I couldn’t help looking over again. The man had stood up, folded his hands, and he was chanting. Then he flung himself down again, and stood up, and repeated this motion again and again.
Another day, in Thugchen Lakhang, Bikas and I found ourselves surrounded by a mass of teenage girls. They were all dressed identically in black bukkhoos and formal black shawls, with their hair done up in braids. Among them was one who was taller than the rest, who stood out because her dress was like a Chinese doll’s, with an iridescent, puff-sleeved pink shirt and a billowing satin skirt. She wore coral on her ears and neck. Her hair was done in two buns at the back. She had white, milky skin, flashing black eyes, and rouged cheeks.
She moved toward us slowly and displayed none of the childish inquisitiveness of the other girls. Softly, but with authority, she asked us where we came from. She nodded at our reply and seemed to want to ask more, but she held back in dignity. Then she offered to take us to the gomba she was visiting next. “There’s a prayer going on there,” she said with a gracious smile. We declined politely. Her eyes lingered on us. But perhaps it would have been improper to say much more, she gathered
the other girls and led them away. I found out later that she was the daughter of an important lama.
The deep religiosity of the entire community was apparent. When I spoke to the villagers about the possibility of repairing Thugchen and Jamba Lakhang, they all responded warmly. Even those youths whose leftist politics made them skeptical to outside intervention raised no voice of protest. “That will be dharma,” one elderly man said, and the others murmured in agreement.
* * *
The Chhoedhe Gomba was relatively new in comparison to Jamba and Thugchen Lakhang, particularly the recent additions to it, which included a festively ultra-modern hall called the Naya Gomba. The gomba was maintained by the sixty-odd monks of Lo Monthang, whose abbot was Khenpo Tashi Tenzing.
I went to see it on a whim while Bikas surveyed a possible site for a powerhouse. Some young monks showed me the new section of the gomba, which consisted of a breezy, well-lit hall with glass windows on the roof, machine-cut wood planks on the floor, and identical photocopy reproductions of the Buddha plastered all over the walls. At the altar, there were two paintings of terrible, dancing Herukas whose bodies flailed about and whose mouths twisted into hideous grins. One of these paintings was ancient and crumbling, with lush, deep colors. The other was a newer replica with bright, flat colors. A young monk pointed out his own broad, acrylic-paint strokes on the newer painting. “I also added these pictures of God,” he said, and his face lit up with the pride of accomplishment. He pointed at two photocopies of the Buddha which were glued to the bottom of the painting.
The old section of the Chhoedhe Gomba remained intact, except for a few cracks in the richly colored wall paintings. Beyond the gomba, along the northwest corner of the walled city, were the monks’ living quarters: handcrafted adobe huts with one room each, which the monks wanted to level and replace with an L-shaped structure, “like school buildings in the south.”