Special Lassi

by Amrita Chatterjee

  The day was hot and as soon as she came out, she immediately went into labour. There was no time to call for help, so she held on to the branch of a nearby sal tree as Lord Buddha was born. Time went by, people forgot about Lumbini till almost 100 years after Buddha’s death, when the great Indian king Ashoka came here looking for the holy pond. He had just returned from the terrible battle of Kalinga, where he saw so much bloodshed that he became disillusioned with the world. After the battle, Ashoka became a follower of Buddha’s teachings and renounced violence. He built the original Maya Devi Temple at the exact spot where the queen had given birth.

  He also placed the marker stone underneath and erected the pillar nearby so that no one may forget Lumbini ever again.

  But time and nature are very powerful things. Slowly, trees and mud covered the whole temple. When the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang came across the mountains to visit Lumbini, he could only see the top of Ashoka pillar. But he wrote about it in his journal, which helped archaeologists dig out the whole temple almost 2,000 years later. And now finally, the Nepal government has realized that this place is very important to a lot of people all around the world, so they plan on taking good care of it.”

  “They sure are. This place looks great already. It’s going to be spectacular when it’s finished.”

  “Well, that is to be seen. All this construction should have ended two years ago, but it’s still going on and we are only halfway through.”

  “Oh, but that’s just how things are done in India and Nepal.”

  We both laughed at that. River was sitting next to me, but he didn’t get the joke. He hadn’t said a single word since the man had started talking. I thought that perhaps he was getting bored, so I hastened to end the conversation.

  “So, you were telling me how you ended up living here.”

  “Oh yes, I forgot about that. Well after coming back from Burma, I continued to have good relations with the people in the embassy. And when they decided to build the monastery, they needed someone to help them in sourcing the materials and workers. I had retired from my job by then, my children were all settled, so I thought, why not? They came, they finished working and went back home, but I… I just couldn’t leave. There is something very special about this land; it gives me peace. So I’ve chosen to spend my last days here with my wife and run this little resting hut to pass the time, maybe even meet some good people like you. If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your name?”

  “My name is Amrita.”

  “Amrita? Ahan!” His eyes lit up and he smiled at me. “Do you know what your name means?”

  “Uh, no, not really.”

  “Hmm, come, I will show you.”

  He got up from his chair and took me to a small garden next to the hut. Then he bent down and picked up a vine that was desperately clinging to the tree trunk.

  “See this vine? This is called ‘amrita’; this plant never dies.” He began tracing the length of the plant with his fingers and then suddenly, snapped it in two.

  “Why did you do that?” I exclaimed.

  “Not to worry, this will grow back. Look here,” he picked up the vine at another point, “I had cut off this section last week and already, it is sprouting new roots. It is ready to dig its paws into the ground. Amrita, this is what your name means; understand it now?”

  I nodded and remained quiet; I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Accha naam rakha hai, good name, tell your parents I said that. Now go on have a great day and all the best for the rest of your journey. It was very kind of you to spend some time here listening to this old man.”

  He looked a bit forlorn as he watched us getting back on our bicycles. This man had given me so much to think about. Amrita, I called out my name in my head repeatedly, mulling over each syllable. Ammmriiiitaaa, Ammmriiitaaa, it is indeed a lovely name. I wondered why my parents had never told me its meaning. Perhaps they don’t know it themselves. Amrita, the vine that never dies! Now that’s a tough name to live up to.

  Our last stop for the day was the Chinese monastery, which instantly reminded me of the movie, 36 Chambers of Shaolin. The same dark wooden rooms, the same lanterns hanging from the ceiling. We were also welcomed into the building by the statue of a haughty man, who looked like he was seconds away from throwing a flying kick. But we hadn’t stepped in to admire the aesthetics; we had gone in to listen to the evening prayers that had just begun. A high-pitched but strong countertenor sang the first couple of lines, then the other monks joined in. A gong and some cymbals accompanied them. I could only see a handful of monks in the hall and they were all wearing expensive bright yellow silk robes.

  Their prayer service also had a very precise choreography. While singing, the monks walked towards the giant Buddha statue one by one. Then they turned at an exact right angle to pick up a small bowl full of steaming liquid. They offered this to the statue and then instead of sitting on the floor, they all kneeled on their low stools and bowed their heads. The singing was reduced to a low murmur but it picked up again. Towards the end of the service, all the monks got up, formed a long queue and meandered around the hall in a river-like pattern.

  There was such a difference between their singing and the Tibetan chants we had heard at Rumtek. These monks were more concerned with melody, words and harmony. The chants in Rumtek were just vibrations, whose main purpose was to set each and every brick in motion, and only then to praise or talk about God. The Chinese prayer was interesting in its own right, but just not as rich and deep as the Tibetans’.

  After the service, we cycled back to the entrance gate along the central canal, which runs right through the heart of the village, connecting the Sacred Garden to the water reservoir at the other end. It was also under construction at the time, but we were told that once it’s finished, there will be ferries going to and fro its entire length. Perhaps a reason to visit Lumbini again? Perhaps…

  Pain is Inevitable

  Lumbini is all about the Buddha, literally, both inside and outside the walled compound. From Buddha travel lodges to Buddha tea stalls, Buddha cafés, Buddha cycle rentals as well as Buddha convenience stores, everything in our line of vision was prefixed with his saintly name. I couldn’t understand why they had even bothered to name their shops. It was late in the evening and we were out looking for a travel agent’s office named, the Buddha Travel Desk, of course. When we stepped into the office, it was empty. But the backdoor was connected to a very noisy corridor, which we assumed was the agent’s house.

  “Hello! Coming… please wait!” a man yelled at us from within. We sat down next to the desk. The Nepali paper in front of me contained a long and critical article on how Nepal’s tourism industry needs a serious facelift. Apparently, 2011 had been declared as the Nepal International Tourism year, a fact we hadn’t come across anywhere in the country yet. River was just as amused by the discovery as I was.

  “Well, I guess the government got fucked over by the marketing companies. I haven’t seen a single poster anywhere.”

  “Hmm, they should’ve hired some Malaysians to do the job. I can’t seem to get away from Malaysia, truly Asia.”

  “Yes, let’s all continue to make this world a more annoying place.”

  “Oh ho, so sorry to keep you waiting" The owner of the office finally walked in wearing a white ‘I heart Paris’ t-shirt and a baby in his arms.

  “How can I help you?” he inquired while rocking the whimpering baby in his lap.

  “We want to get back to India.”

  “Okay, I see. Well, you will have to go… ohhhh noo.” The baby suddenly threw up on his chest and he had to run back in to take care of it.

  “Oh ho ho… again, very sorry about that. Okay, so you said you want to go back to India? No problem. You take a bus to Mahendranagar from Butwal, stay there for the night and then cross the border at Banbassa the next day.”

  “It’s going to take a whole day to get to Mahendranagar?”

  “Yes.
Unfortunately, the buses in this country are a little slow.”

  “Is this a local bus or a tourist bus?”

  “Sadly, there are only local buses to Mahendranagar.”

  “For fuck’s sake! Not another bus journey through Nepal.” River stood up abruptly.

  “I understand you, but that’s the only way, what to do?” the man tried to apologize for his country. I stared at his t-shirt, which had a drawing of the Eiffel tower and the remains of his child’s vomit.

  “Fine, can you book us two tickets please?”

  “Oh man, kill me already.” River banged his head on the desk while I paid for the tickets.

  And that was it; the last day of our sojourn through Nepal was going to be spent in a miserable metal death box. We embraced our fate and set off early in a small van towards Butwal with two Chinese couples. It only took us an hour to get to the bus stand. Compared to the other long journeys we’d had, this one was over before it had begun.

  Our bus was scheduled to leave at nine, which in Nepal means nine. The bus drivers’ strict adherence to the schedule is nothing short of a miracle in a country that’s otherwise just as chaotic as India. With an hour to kill, we decided to grab some breakfast at the Best Hotel, which was the only hole open at this hour. The ‘Best Hotel’ was actually a shop masquerading as a hotel. It still had the shutters and shelves on the walls, but instead of things to sell, they were now full of cheap ugly showpieces.

  I was amazed to see that the only waiter working there was wearing a t-shirt with ‘Best Hotel’ emblazoned across the back. How fancy. The owners had taken the pains to hand out a uniform, yet my coffee came to me in a blurry glass with Bacardi printed all over it. The whole time we were there, a man with a scrawny moustache stood in front of the sink and kept peering into the mirror. He had a small comb in his trousers’ back pocket, which he pulled out with style to almost obsessively comb through his non-existent fuzz.

  “What is that man doing?” I nudged River to look up from his cup of tea, but he seemed quite pale and depressed.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Remember the old saying? Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

  He rolled his eyes in response. It was easy to preach to River on solid ground, but once we were back in the bus, my positive outlook went straight out of the window.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying it, but this road is actually worse than the one between Kakarvitta and Kathmandu.”

  “Oh absolutely! I feel like I’m trying to ride an angry bull.”

  River could not have been more correct; that is exactly what it felt like. I had to learn how to jump up and down with the bus to minimize the pain, as they do in a rodeo. Additionally, our driver, a scary young man dressed in baggy jeans, had such a look of mean determination on his face that it seemed as though he had driven all the way to hell and back.

  However, minutes after we had figured out the nuances of bull riding, the infallibility of the sturdy Nepali death box was compromised and we were all hauled out to push the damn thing for almost half a kilometre.

  “Zor lagake haiya!" all the Nepali folk broke into a chant and looked really happy. In a few minutes, even we were rolling up our sleeves and willingly participating in this fun activity. When the engine came back to life, I felt a little sad about having to get back to sitting quietly in my seat.

  For the first half of the day, the scenery was dull, brown and muddy. It kept raining intermittently. We saw countless children working in paddy fields, with the water up to their knees, as they dolefully went about sticking the plants into the slush. They probably lived nearby in the houses that were perched on rickety stilts to fight the floods during the monsoon.

  “What kind of a childhood is this?” River wondered out loud. Indeed, what kind of a childhood was this? It was painful to keep looking at. Thankfully, the countryside took a dramatic turn when we entered the Bardiya National Forest. Gorgeous green trees were back, as was the fluorescent sky. Every once in a while in between the tall erect trunks, a rebel tree jutted out sideways, almost parallel to the ground. It made for very interesting patterns. Then came the buffaloes lolling around in the marsh and kids running free in their torn clothes while teasing their grandmothers.

  During our drive through the forest, armed soldiers stopped us several times to come on board and check everyone’s bags. On one such occasion, a soldier sat down next to us and we talked for a bit. He had spent a lot of time in India, so he was happy to see us.

  “But why are you not stopping at Bardiya? It is a beautiful place; you must see it.”

  His words were tinged with genuine love despite being stuck in the middle of nowhere, away from his family and friends, surrounded by wild animals and rain.

  “I know. We didn’t have enough time, but maybe someday we’ll come back.”

  “Yes, yes, you should.”

  When he got off, he waved at me through the window with his perfect dimpled smile.

  The bus also pulled over for refreshments a couple of times, but we never got off; well, we didn’t have to. Kids came rushing to our seats with everything we needed: bottles of water, soda, chips, biscuits, packed snacks. And River, being the only white person in the troupe, was almost always their main target. A boy even tried to sit on his lap while attempting to sell some soda. When River did not relent, he ran out to get some special mogai. Corn on the cob is perhaps Nepal’s favourite snack. All along the highways, you might not find a toilet but you will surely come across mogai sellers, sitting on their haunches and fanning their little coal stoves. Even in Pokhara, while the storm was raging over us, the mogai wallahs continued to do brisk business.

  As soon as the forest ended, so did the daylight. Mahendranagar was another dead-end town like Bhairawa and it was just as difficult to find a place to spend the night. Rain lashed at us as we went to several dingy rat holes to see which one was the least revolting. After I narrowly avoided falling face first into a pile of garbage, I put my foot down and signed into the first hotel I could see. The man at the counter haggled with us over the price. He wanted 400 and we were not going to pay a fraction over 300. He relented eventually, but assigned us a room on the sixth floor. I had to wonder if this was a trick to ensnare tired travellers; send people up to higher floors with their entire luggage so they simply lose the will to go anywhere else.

  Nevertheless, we followed the bellboy’s bandy legs up the stairs, where he dropped the stinkball that we had to pay 300 Indian rupees and that too in advance. Scumbags! Now that I look back, the money wasn’t such a big deal; it was the way in which they had extorted it from us that made us really angry. After dinner, which was also exactly like Bhairawa – except that in place of mutton, there was chicken curry – we came back to the room and plotted our revenge.

  “No murder?”

  “No arson?”

  “Hmm what about some good old vandalism?”

  That was it. I wanted to shit on the bed but I realized that it wouldn’t affect these scoundrels much. They would just turn over the sheets and scam a few more unwitting backpackers.

  “Okay, I know what to do. I’m going to steal this bed sheet,” River declared proudly, “and draw a dick on the wall.”

  “Well, then I’ll cut off the plug for this stupid television.” Yes, we had a television; no bathroom, but television, yes.

  “Excellent.”

  And this is exactly what we did after a brief restless sleep. Then we made a quick getaway from the crime scene with the dawn breaking at our heels.

  Smooth Criminals

  From Mahendranagar, we shared an autorickshaw with at least 15 other skinny men and women towards the no man’s land called Banbassa. The ride ended shortly, in front of a metal checkpoint, from where we were directed to go ahead on foot. It is said that misery loves company and who could escort us better than rain? As the storm announced its arrival, we abondoned crossing the border on foot. Unfortunately, except a few jeeps that were not going any
where, we couldn’t see any other mode of transportation. Daylight peeped feebly through the grey clouds, villagers with sleepy eyes went about their business despite the deluge, but none of them understood English or Hindi. Completely drenched, we had just put down our bags under a tree to wait for the next messiah when a boy of about 17 tapped on my shoulder.

  “Rickshaw? You need to go border?”

  Rickshaw? In this rain? I was hoping for a flying machine or a superhero in a cape; this wasn’t exactly my idea of a rescue. I turned him down the first time, but then he told me that waiting was useless. Only rickshaws and horse-carts were allowed to go across the border freely. We didn’t believe him and continued to brood under the tree while the boy made a big show of wringing the edge of his wet trousers.

  “Please madam, give me chance. I take you very fastly.”

  River and I remained quiet for a few moments just listening to the wet leaves slapping against the branches above our heads. Then we looked at the rickshaw, then at our bags, then at the clouds and then at the boy who was still standing over our heads.

  “Alright, what the heck, let’s go!”

  Going over the treacherous Nepali roads in a bus had been a challenge, no doubt about that. But tackling the same on a rickshaw? Well, I’m certain that it would be a worthy addition to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

  “Wait, wait, wait, I think I’m about to fall off!”

  “Wait, wait, wait, I think my bag is about to fall off!”

  This was our refrain for the next half an hour or so as we tried our best to hang onto the slippery wet seat and maintain our grip on the backpacks dangling dangerously from our laps. I also had my umbrella open and it took all my strength to keep it from blowing away.