OxTravels

by Mark Ellingham

  In Delhi we stayed with friends for a few days while Tashi received and recovered from numerous inoculations. At once she displayed characteristic Tibetan adaptability, both to her new surroundings and her new friends. In a bazaar near the Red Fort I bought the statutory ‘nose- and paw-proof’ basket which is still in use almost half a century later as a bathroom laundry basket. On the eve of our departure I cunningly took Tashi to Air India’s central office and introduced her to the Authorities. Nothing else was necessary; they immediately agreed that it would be superfluous to imprison such a very small passenger between Delhi and London. Moreover, it could easily be arranged to have an empty seat beside mine. And so it came about that Tashi, conceived in western Tibet and born in a nomad’s tent at the base of Machhapuchhare, now had the run of a Boeing 707. It’s hard to believe that air travel was once so easy-going.

  When we stopped at Beirut, Tashi expressed the need for a grassy spot – and promptly disappeared into the darkness of the night. As engine trouble in Bombay had already delayed us by three hours the captain asked the passengers if they would be kind enough to forgive another delay – this time a short one – while Miss Murphy pursued her puppy. At Prague I chained her, lest she might have anti-Communist prejudices.

  The scene at Dublin airport was surreal. My final defiant cable had activated a platoon of uniformed officials who were falling over each other in their anxiety to ensure that the infinitesimal Tashi did not break loose and overnight turn the nation rabid. A grotesquely large covered truck stood waiting to transport the mini-basket to the State Quarantine Kennels ten miles away and to my fury I was refused permission to accompany Tashi through the alien cold wetness of an Irish winter night.

  Next morning I found that the kennels were exceptionally well run and during her six months’ isolation Tashi remained in perfect condition and grew a little more. Although my regular fortnightly visits delighted her she accepted my departures with composure – until at last came the day when she departed too, into breezy green fields and bright June sunshine. The joy she then showed at racing free can have been no greater than my own on seeing that little black body again unfurling its ridiculous brown tail in the wind.

  TASHI WAS AGED three and a half when Rinchen Dolma Taring – Amala – came to stay with me in Ireland while writing her autobiography, Daughter of Tibet. His Holiness the Dalai Lama had given her four months leave from her job as Director of Mussoorie Children’s Homes. Time being so limited, we lived in isolation, working twelve hours a day with only one day off – to celebrate Losar, the Tibetan New Year.

  My role was not to ghost Amala’s book but to give advice – a much slower process – and I soon realised that a Buddhist’s autobiography is a contradiction in terms if the writer is as ‘advanced’ as Amala. Her spiritual training had encouraged the obliteration of the Self and conventional autobiography requires a certain concentration on that entity. I recall our standing in the kitchen, beside a round table, and my laying a finger on its centre while saying, ‘You’re supposed to be here, in relation to this book. Everything else must derive its importance from being linked to you.’ Amala chuckled, dismissed this primitive notion and went on to write an idiosyncratic volume of layered social and political history.

  Amala’s father, Tsarong Shap-pe Wangchuk Gyalp, was descended from a famous physician, Yuthok Yonten Gonpo, who, during the reign of King Trinsong Detsen (AD 755–757), studied Sanskrit medicine at Nalanda University in India. Yonten Gonpo’s block print biography of 149 leaves, containing some of his drawings and diagrams, was destroyed when the Red Guard attacked Lhasa’s Government Medical College. Tsarong Shap-pe married Yangchen Dolma – descended from the Tenth Dalai Lama’s family – and Amala was their ninth surviving child. In 1886 her paternal grandfather, Tsipon Tsarong, had been dispatched to the Tibetan-Sikkimese border by the Dalai Lama to negotiate its demarcation with representatives of the Raj.

  By 1903 the Raj was feeling extra-twitchy about a Russian take-over of Tibet and the Younghusband Mission set off to put British relations with that country ‘on a proper basis’. This alarmed the Abbots of Lhasa’s three great monasteries who regarded all outsiders as enemies of Buddhism. They urged the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to instruct Amala’s father, the senior lay Cabinet Minister, and his monk equivalent, to hasten to the Sikkimese border (three weeks’ ride) and persuade the British to come no further. As a result, the Younghusband Mission became the infamous Younghusband Expedition which on its way to Lhasa in 1904 slaughtered some 500 Tibetan soldiers armed only with obsolete weapons.

  Later that year, Tsarong was one of the four Shap-pes (lay cabinet ministers) who signed a Convention with Britain – forbidding Tibet to have relations with any other foreign power. In 1912, when Amala was a toddler, her father and eldest brother – then a twenty-five-year-old government servant – were murdered on the steps of the Potala. Some said Tsarong Shap-pe had made enemies by signing the Convention without consulting the Dalai Lama’s government. Others believed that he and his son were distrusted for ‘liking foreigners too much’ and introducing to the country novelties of ill-omen. When government business took Tsarong to India in 1907 he returned with sensational inventions – sewing machines and cameras.

  Amala wrote and talked with honesty, tolerance and humour, describing a society that genuinely cultivated non-violence yet could be very bloody indeed. As the weeks passed I felt as though I had left Ireland, mentally and emotionally, and was living in a world that had survived, almost untouched by the outside, for more than a millennium – and had then been shattered forever a mere decade before Amala sat in my home distilling its essence on paper in her neat, firm handwriting.

  Just as the Tibetan language, in 1950, lacked the vocabulary to deal with a mechanised, industrialised, scientific era, so we lack the vocabulary to deal with Old Tibet. In that context, such words as feudalism, serfdom, autonomy, education – even religion – have a misleading resonance. The Lord Buddha is not, conceptually, the ‘equivalent’ of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim ‘God’. And of course ‘feudalism’ insults the complexity of Tibet’s social organisation.

  Most Westerners are ill-equipped to comprehend a country in which all legal, social and political systems and institutions were based on the Buddhist dharma which had long ago been modified and adapted to produce that singular phenomenon known as Tibetan Buddhism. Although the pre-Communist way of life was not, as some like to imagine, ‘deeply spiritual’ – in the sense of being guided by devout, mystical scholar-priests – it was genuinely permeated by abstract spiritual values. Few lamas were ‘hypocritical parasites’ living off the labour of ‘cowed serfs’; only a small minority entered the monasteries for no other motive than to enjoy a life of ease.

  Tibet’s nobility was based mainly in Lhasa where each of the two hundred or so families had to provide one layman to serve as a government official alongside a monk colleague – the two having equal status and responsibility. In theory, families lacking a male to fulfil this duty forfeited their land, all of which was leased from the state. There was however an escape clause. With His Holiness’s permission, a son-in-law could change his forenames, take his wife’s family name and save the day. After the assassination of Amala’s father and brother, a peasant named Chensal Namgang – a favourite of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama – married one of her older sisters and was ennobled. Subsequently he married another sister and in 1928 he married Amala and fathered her first child. (Most Tibetan marriages were monogamous but polygamy and polyandry were equally acceptable.) In 1929 Jigme Sumtsen Wang-po, Prince of Taring, arrived on the scene: a politically desirable second husband for Amala. Chensal Namgang helped to arrange the marriage of this third wife to her handsome young prince. When my daughter and I stayed with the Tarings in Mussoorie in 1974 they were still very obviously in love.

  The upward mobility of Chensal Namgang – son of a small-holder and arrow-maker – was not unusual. Old Tibet was free of European-style class barriers. Rich and
poor visited each other’s homes and formed friendships if personally inclined to do so. A monk from the humblest background, if suitably gifted, could rise high in his monastery’s hierarchy. The families of Dalai Lamas were automatically ennobled; only two of the fourteen came from the hereditary nobility. The same schools served the children of nobles, traders, craftsmen and peasants; an erring young noble might find him or herself being chastised by a peasant prefect. Family servants gave heeded advice about who should marry whom, and other important matters. Each craft – artists, goldsmiths, moulders, masons, boot-makers, tailors, carpenters, weavers, dyers – had its own respected guild. Many craftsmen were richer than some senior noble officials and the guild leaders were always seated above the younger nobles at official Palace occasions.

  Even more remarkable was Tibet’s cultural history as outlined by Amala – the Buddhist-powered evolution of a pacifist state. Long ago, Tibet’s warriors were renowned: brave and ferocious. The Chinese recorded nineteen serious Tibet versus China conflicts between AD 634 and 849 and the Tibetans were almost always the aggressors. At one stage Tibet’s army crossed the River Oxus, invaded Samarkand and prompted Harun Al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, to ally himself with the Chinese.

  Buddhism began to put down deep roots after the death in 842 of the anti-Buddhist Kind Lang Dharma. In 1249, when the Sakya Pandita came to power, it was unthinkable that anyone could rule Tibet without the support of a Buddhist sect. The change from militarism to a society influenced by non-violent principles was gradual and sometimes faltering yet there was no fudging on a par with Christianity’s conveniently elastic ‘just war’. However, Tibet was riven for centuries by sectarian rivalries and inter-monastery jealousies, occasionally leading to brief battles. But those lamentable aberrations were recognised as such at the time; physical violence was no longer taken for granted as a legitimate means of settling disputes. And since the mid-seventeenth century the institution of the Dalai Lama had brought to Tibet an extraordinary degree of social stability, described by the Chinese invaders as ‘stagnation’.

  Some of Amala’s recollections made me wish that I, too, had been born in Tibet in 1910. I would have happily settled for incarnation as a lady’s maid if that job required me to ride for twelve days to a country estate, crossing a landscape of incomparable beauty where human beings were scarce and animals plentiful: bears, wolves, bighorn sheep, musk deer, wild yak. On every side roamed huge herds of chiru (a Tibetan antelope), gazelles and wild asses; by the many lakes dwelt an abundance of birds. It delighted Amala that most creatures showed no fear of approaching caravans. Hugh Richardson, a British Trade Consul who lived in Lhasa during the 1940s and was a close friend of the Tsarongs, noted: ‘The majority of people make efforts to live as much as possible with nature, not against it.’ Because the Chinese live otherwise Tibet’s wildlife is by now on the verge of extinction.

  To spend four months in the company of only one person, collaborating in the intrinsically intimate task of memoir-writing, is a rare experience. By some mysterious process of osmosis that time of close companionship with Amala changed me – not in any obvious way, but inwardly and permanently. Yet I was never tempted to ‘become a Buddhist’. There is a theory – I forget, if I ever knew, who first articulated it – that the Tibetan diaspora, though so heartbreaking for so many, must benefit the rest of the world. I can easily believe that the majority of Tibetan exiles, living out of the limelight and perhaps no longer readily identifiable, are continually enriching the various communities amongst whom they have settled.

  On the sad day of Amala’s departure, Tashi accompanied us to Cork airport. Her tail dropped as her compatriot disappeared. They had become mutually devoted.

  Rafaelillo

  JASON WEBSTER (born Mountain View, California, 1970) is the author of four travel books on Spain, including Duende, an account of his experiences searching for the heart of flamenco, and Sacred Sierra, about his life on a mountain farm. He is currently writing a series of Max Cámara crime thrillers, set in Valencia, the first of which, Or The Bull Kills You, is published in 2011. He lives with his wife, a flamenco dancer, and their two sons, in Valencia. www.jasonwebster.net

  Rafaelillo

  JASON WEBSTER

  It wasn’t typical bullfighting weather: cold winds were blowing in off the mountains to the north-west and spectators were wrapped in coats and scarves. Not a straw hat in sight. But the people of Castellón were used to it, a small price to pay for the honour of staging the first serious corridas of the new season each year. Except that the city’s lunar-calculated fiesta had fallen earlier than usual this time, and there was still plenty of force in the tail-end of a harsh winter.

  Nonetheless, the bullring was packed. The day before, José Tomás, one of the greatest matadors in the history of los toros, had appeared triumphantly here, hauled up onto hired shoulders at the end of the fight and carried through the main gate in celebration of his genius. Today it was the turn of El Juli, José María Manzanares and most importantly Miguel Angel Perera to face six bulls from the Zalduendo farm. If anyone was getting close to José Tomás, they said it was Perera, and every aficionado in the crowd was waiting for the first two matadors to finish so he could come to his own conclusion.

  It had been impossible getting a ticket to see José Tomás – the last seats had sold on the black market for thousands of euros. But for today, at least, I’d managed to find a gap, and the man who would be talking me through the afternoon’s slaughter was a retired bullfighter himself – Rafa Ataide, or ‘Rafaelillo’.

  In his time, Rafaelillo had been a banderillero – a specialist with the brightly coloured darts that were thrust with acrobatic skill into the bull’s shoulders during the mid-point of the fight. Today, he was an elegant-looking Spanish gentleman, with slicked-back white hair, a cleanly shaven chin and wearing a thick tweed jacket over ochre-coloured corduroy trousers. He smiled politely at the foreigner at his side jotting down comments and observations in a black policeman’s notebook.

  ‘Research?’

  ‘I’m writing a novel.’

  ‘About bullfighting?’

  ‘A matador gets killed in it.’

  He looked away. ‘You’ll learn about death here.’

  High-pitched whistling cut through the air. A man sitting on the stone seats behind us had stood up and was gesticulating and shouting, joining other spectators in vitriolic protest. Down in the ring, a well-fed horseman was pushing a long spike deep into the bull’s neck.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I shouted to Rafaelillo over the din.

  ‘They want the picadors to stop,’ he said. ‘If they wound the bull too much it loses its strength to carry on with the fight.’

  ‘So why do this, then?’

  No reply. Perhaps some questions wouldn’t get answers.

  The banderilleros strode out, raising their weapons above their heads, provoking the bull. They skipped, then ran at an angle towards the surging beast, deftly planting the spikes into its back before arching themselves to safety and sprinting away. Rafaelillo’s attention didn’t waver from the men performing what had been his own art form years before.

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘This is my life,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t change when age forces you to retire.’

  ‘Were you ever frightened?’ The bulls weigh anything up to 600 kilos, like a small car. And while some scoff from a distance that the odds are stacked in the bullfighters’ favour, there was no denying – from here – the animals’ lethal force.

  ‘I felt fear all the time,’ Rafaelillo said. ‘A fear unlike anything other men have felt. You embrace it; it becomes your passion, your lover. You need it.’ After a pause he added: ‘Fear, yes, always. Cowardice, never.’

  The banderilleros finished and the final act began – the tercio de muerte, or act of death. Perera the matador walked out onto the sand with his red muleta cape and sword tucked under his arm. He took off his montera cap, saluted the audi
ence, then unrolled the cape and hitched it up with the length of the blade. To the side of him the bull stood panting and bleeding, taking its time.

  This was Perera’s moment, his chance to perform. The day before José Tomás had had them on their feet, cheering. Would the younger man be able to do the same at this, his first bullfight of the season? A sharp freezing wind blew through us, ruffling the matador’s cape. ‘That’s bad,’ Rafaelillo said. ‘There’s only one thing worse than windy conditions, and that’s a manso bull, one with no fighting spirit in it.’

  I glanced up briefly at the mountains just visible in the distance. Through the dark grey cloud it was possible to make out the peaks turning white with snow.

  ‘Wouldn’t an unaggressive bull be easier?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite the reverse. A manso bull is the hardest to read. Most of the time it’s trying to get out of the ring, then suddenly it might lift its horns in a way no one expected…’

  He tossed his head to one side, as though skewering an invisible matador standing next to him.

  ‘What you want, what everyone wants, is a truly bravo bull, one that takes the fight to the bullfighter, that never gives up and struggles till the very end. That’s where the real beauty comes. That’s where the art and power is.’

  ‘You make it sound like a sacred act.’

  Still looking down at the ring, he pursed his lips. Then without warning he leant over and pulled open my jacket and lifted my jumper up a fraction, then glanced down at my shoes.