Tibetan Foothold

by Dervla Murphy

  It’s odd how quickly one adjusts to the tremendous distances involved in travelling around India; despite the thirteen-hour journey I found myself quite naturally thinking of Mussoorie as being ‘near Delhi’!

  For many miles the road runs north across an apparently endless grey-brown plain where sugar-cane is the main crop; only on approaching Dehra Dun does the landscape change to heavily wooded hills. Here one transfers to a local bus and for the next twenty-two miles up to Mussoorie the madly corkscrewing road seems like an entertainment in a giant’s funfair.

  Throughout Tibland the word ‘Mussoorie’ is now synonymous with ‘Taring’ – a name which was familiar too in old Tibet, where this family ranked high among the nobility. Jigme Sumchen Wang-po Namgyal Taring was an army officer for about twelve years before becoming Treasurer to the Tibetan Government. He is first cousin to the Maharaja of Sikkim and this week is away in Gangtok at the funeral of his uncle, the late Maharaja. His wife, Rinchen Dolma Taring, wrote to me recently and I quote now from her letter.

  My husband was guarding His Holiness’s Palace along with the other Tibetan Officials during the uprising in Tibet. He had no time to go back home when Lhasa got shelled and he followed His Holiness by the same track and ever since he has been serving as a Principal of the Tibetan Refugee School, Mussoorie. As for myself; I was also not at home during the uprising in Tibet and also left Tibet by myself through Bhutan. I used to serve the Women’s Association in Tibet. When I came to India through God’s kindness, I was lucky enough to be able to unite with my husband in Darjeeling. When I first came to India, I went to Kalimpong, where I helped our young Tibetans to learn English, and later on I was asked to come to Mussoorie to help my husband to run the School, and at the end of 1962, His Holiness asked me to organise the Tibetan Children’s Homes and I had this great opportunity of serving these children to whom I have completely dedicated myself.

  After my wearing and disillusioning encounters with Tibetan officials in Dharamsala it was heartening to meet Mrs Taring, see the work which she and her husband are doing and realise that there is a brighter side to the Tibetan aristocracy. Mussoorie is a place where everyone works together in harmony, no money is ‘mislaid’ and no goods ‘go astray’. (Perhaps this is why it is not a popular project among some of the relief agencies in Delhi; when dealing with the Tarings it is impossible to come to ‘an arrangement for mutual benefit’.)

  The Tibetan Homes Foundation consists of some twenty houses and bungalows, which have been bought or rented with foreign aid. Each of these accommodates twenty-five boys and girls, under the care of Tibetan House-Parents, and here at last I have found that compromise between luxury and squalor which I mentioned the other day. In all the homes one sees happy, healthy children – but standards have been kept at a reasonable level. The manner in which Mrs Taring has organised this whole project proves that when the right type of Tibetan takes responsibility the refugees themselves are best fitted to cope with their own problems.

  At the Mussoorie Tibetan Refugee School, run by Mr Taring, 600 boarders live in two huge hostels and are joined for lessons by most of the 500 children from the Homes. The education available here is no better than elsewhere, but that is not the Tarings’ fault; until this whole question is approached from a different angle no individual can do anything to improve the situation. Meanwhile these 600 boys and girls are being adequately clothed and fed and kept in contact with the best ingredients of their own culture.

  Mussoorie is by far the most impressive of the relief schemes, yet it provides no satisfactory long-term solution; in fact its existence could ultimately have a bad effect if parents are encouraged, by Western workers, to regard it as a permanent feature of refugee life.

  I’m staying here with the SCF nurse, Miss Joan Ariel, who runs a small, well-equipped Dispensary which, as in Dharamsala, is also used as a hospital. To me it seemed incredible to find only thirteen patients there, not one of whom would have been considered ill enough for admission to our Dispensary.

  NEW DELHI: 9 DECEMBER

  On Saturday I left Miss Ariel’s bungalow at 6 a.m., carrying thirty pounds of drugs not needed at Mussoorie but badly needed at Dharamsala. My personal luggage is never very bulky (it all fits in Roz’s saddle-bag, detached and converted to a suitcase) and as I have by now perfected the coolie technique of carrying loads I arrived at the busstation, four miles away, with no more than an aching shoulder. That really was a magnificent trek, begun in moonlight, continued while a glorious dawn briefly tinted the snow peaks to the north and ended as the first sunlight came pouring triumphantly over the mountains on to the limitless plain below. And, as I passed the various Homes, the early silence was being broken continually by groups of Tiblets singing their morning prayers, followed by the poignant Tibetan National Anthem.

  The journey back here was not as boring as you might imagine from my previous description of the landscape; whatever other criticisms India may merit she is never dull. I have noticed too that since returning to the real India from Dharamsala I’m finding it much easier to come to terms with the country and the people. Perhaps my first impressions were prejudiced by heatstroke in July – or possibly the Buddhist influence has made my reactions a little less intolerant. At any rate India no longer rubs me up the wrong way all the time and I’m very much enjoying these few days in Delhi.

  Yesterday was Sunday so Jill and I forswore Tibbery, and at 4 p.m. I set out to walk to the Gemini Circus grounds opposite the Red Fort in Old Delhi.

  Circuses are among the more innocuous of my secret vices and this one was well worth the long wait, in a turbulent queue, for a cheap ticket. Not that queuing in these surroundings could ever be tedious. On my left lay the long, noble lines of the Red Fort and on my right the dull red stone of the massively delicate Jama Mosjid Mosque stood out against a tremendous glow of bronzed sunset clouds. Also, now that the necessary adjustment to India has been achieved, I revelled in this amalgamation with thousands of fellow queue-ers and in the whole noisy, glittering, pushing scene.

  The show, which started punctually at 7 p.m., had everything that a European circus has – but bigger and better. It was over at 11 p.m. and then, before walking back to New Delhi through the pleasantly keen night air, I had a supper of ‘Kababs’ and new-baked bread in one of the many little Muslim eating-houses that huddle in the shadow of the Jama Mosjid. In this Islamic quarter of Delhi many of the women still go veiled and the cooking is reminiscent of Pakistan. It became noticeable here that despite the inward truce between myself and Hinduism I still find it very much easier to relax and feel at home among Muslims.

  My way back to the main thoroughfare led through a tangle of ancient, narrow streets, which were strewn with sleeping figures hidden in cocoons of threadbare blankets. At the end of one of these alleyways the sound of a brass-band attracted my attention and, suspecting a Hindu wedding, I paused to see the fun. Soon the band appeared, about ten yards ahead of a magnificently caparisoned horse on which rode the bridegroom and best man. This animal was entirely covered in what seemed to be a sort of gold-plated ‘armour’ and the bridegroom was clad in elaborate robes and wore a high head-dress from which hung a curtain of coloured beads, completely hiding his face. Immediately preceding the horse were two drummers and two spectacularly attired dancers – adolescent boys disguised as girls. At intervals the procession stopped and the drummers drummed and the dancers danced and never have I seen anything to equal this display of primitive frenzy. The drummers looked quite crazed with the speed of their own playing, and as the dancers approached the climax of their performance, with eyes staring, mouths foaming and bodies writhing, one could almost believe that they were deriving their passionate energy from some non-human source.

  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.

  DHARAMSALA: 12 DECEMBER

  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!

  KANGRA: 18 DECEMBER

  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 h
ere 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.

  9

  Camping with Tibetans

  MANDI: 20 DECEMBER

  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.