White Mountain

  For a while I sat in a VIP lounge. From earlier trips to India, I knew that VIP was a nominal status. It often kept out humble backpackers, but no one would have turned them away. In reality, it meant European travellers with a bit of a brass neck and wealthy or middle-class Indians. Everyone else was out on the dark grey-shadowed dingy grubby platforms, settling down for life on a metre square of newspaper or a piece of cardboard. In the middle of a rushing thoroughfare you’d step over the tightly wrapped bundle of a man sleeping, his blue scarf encircling and cocooning his entire head. And he would be asleep – with all this cacophonous life streaming above and around him. I was reminded of the blue robe of the shaman, but somehow reversed: this man was sleeping and not flying. Or perhaps he was, in his dreams.

  The countdown to the train’s arrival led to crowd surges up and down bridges to other platforms. I got caught in a sort of slow lane. It was then that Chao appeared at my elbow. In careful though perfect English he said, ‘Sir, the Dimapur train is more easily reached this way.’ Then he sort of surged sideways across the wide metal staircase and, with no one else to follow, I followed him.

  I had seen him earlier; he had a shaven head and, though not Nepali or Tibetan, he had the narrowing eyes of someone from the north. Chao was a master chef – he found me a seat next to him on the train, though my designated seat was a row or two behind. It would be sorted (I had long ago lost that paranoia of always being in the right seat; in India it was usual to bargain with families and couples so that everyone could sit together. It took out the random element when you might want to sit with your travelling companion though.) Chao was travelling with a disciple chef to a town beyond Dimapur where his family lived.

  How old was he? I couldn’t tell. Maybe early forties, though he looked younger. He ran a restaurant and a chef school in Tezpur – about four hours from Guwhati – a place I’d been through on my way to the Tawang Monastery on the Tibetan border. Chao was full of information. He had studied both Eastern and Western cooking. He loved Gordon Ramsay and watched him on TV. He knew of Heston Blumenthal and checked recipes on his Samsung Note. He showed me how he could write down notes with the stylus. He was just showing me this enviable jotting feature when the transvestite gypsies boarded the train.

  At least, that’s what they looked like – rough, white-toothed, with bulging eyes, garish yellow-and-pink saris hitched up in that awkward way somehow characteristic of the cross dresser. They were coming from both ends of the carriage – eyeballing everyone. I was intrigued, yet I could see they were beggars and I didn’t want to be begged from. I looked slyly but one came in under my gaze and stared right into my face. Then went on. The group of them coalesced round three middle-class Indian men in suits. They banged a tambourine – but perfunctorily. There was some excited loud talking. A silencing shout.

  Chao remained staring ahead and then he relaxed. ‘They are eunuchs,’ he said. ‘They have an uncanny sense of who to beg from – if you do not give, they curse you. Not everyone believes this curse but most do. They sometimes shame you further by exposing their genitals. That is very shameful to the average Indian.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘But why did they ignore me? Surely they could have got money from me?’

  ‘Ah, they know! They know you do not believe in their curses.’

  ‘I’ve been cursed before,’ I said.

  ‘But you do not believe, even I can tell,’ said Chao.

  ‘How can they tell?’ I asked (I wanted to know how Chao could tell, but settled for a general form of question).

  Chao had a cheery, calm demeanour, but I sensed that he too believed in the cursing. He said with the sort of laboured intensity you have when you are explaining something you know will be discounted or ignored, ‘Belief is like a web, it connects to many things. It is like superstition. Maybe we don’t need it – but who is free? Many in the West put their belief in evolution and global warming, or maybe in Samsung and Vodafone—’

  ‘Not Vodafone.’

  ‘It is an imperfect example, but you see my meaning: it is hard to live without this kind of belief, this web that draws you into explaining the unexplainable, the things you have faith in. After all, it might be right. You can’t be sure, so you half believe. They sense this and extort money. Look at those business chaps. In suits and such like, they are believing even more than some of these average fellows sitting here and there.’

  ‘Is it the power of their personalities?’

  ‘That is undoubtedly a part of it. But they are looking for a glimmer of fear. If they see this, they pounce – but not always. I have observed these eunuchs on many occasions and I can say they are intuitive people. They follow their hunches; they are not just mechanically begging like some poor fellow on the roadside.’

  I wanted to know how Chao knew English so well. Had he been to an expensive international school? He waved away my question with some vagueness. ‘I am from a humble background, but I have been offered a lucky break when I attend a Christian school where they speak English.’ He said something to the disciple, who went to get us tea. Chao wanted to talk about cookery: ‘Good Indian cooking and good European cooking start out far apart, but they are the same in the end, though we have always a more complicated way of doing things. I think this is to do with secrecy and family traditions more than anything else.’

  I asked him if he knew the secret of Indian cooking. ‘Green cardamom,’ he said without hesitation. En passant, he told me the secret of a perfect omelette was to separate the white from the yoke and beat the white until it is like a soufflé, then recombine the two. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘if the egg is very fresh it may be nicer not to have to do this.’

  I told Chao that I was travelling the length and breadth of the Himalayas to write a book. He got me to autograph his Samsung Note and displayed the signature to the disciple. He would find my books, he assured me. He himself had worked in Rishikesh to learn the kind of cooking they had there. In fact, he had in his youth taken jobs all over India just to increase his knowledge. ‘Now I settle down,’ he said, ‘and pass on tips to my students. If you want to go one rung up the ladder, you must bring two up beneath you.’ He paused, ‘Or one, if you’re stuck for good material!’ Chao believed that through cooking one could learn many things. He never actually said that, though I could see it was what he believed. I believed it too. I’d seen in Japan how martial arts could, with some students, lead to learning they could apply in their lives outside the dojo.

  Chao said, ‘Why do spiritual people go to the Himalayas? Because that is where the air is thin. They have to breathe, they have to listen to their breathing. This reminds them they are human after all. And they mistake this insight for something wonderful.’

  I felt a little chastened, as I had experienced something similar myself.

  ‘The Himalayas are also the source of all the great rivers – for China, Tibet, India, Vietnam, Burma – the whole of the East drinks from the Himalayas! People confuse this physical need with a spiritual one.’

  ‘But there is something special about the Himalayas!’

  ‘You are right. They are damned high! But seriously, people make a decision they will have an experience there or “be changed” – and sure enough, they are. But they have really changed themselves. It is like a pilgrimage – that is an excuse to make a change you already know needs to be made.’

  ‘Then it is useful.’

  ‘Maybe. But more useful is to make changes all your life, not just when you go on holiday. Everyday life is like water on rock, it wears away very slowly, very slowly. But over time, it changes everything about a person. Make sure you are in the right stream – one that runs all year round and not just during the monsoon. What I mean is, very few decisions are important. Who you marry, who you are friends with, what your occupation is – all these will wear you like the water on the rock. But whether you make a pilgrimage – that may be less important.’

  ‘But a pilgrimag
e to some high place can serve to wake you up.’

  ‘So can losing your job! I am not against such travel, I just think the real mystery is right in front of our very noses.’

  And with that he started reading a battered James Clavell novel while I settled for Mario Puzo’s The , the only likely-looking thriller on the railway newsstand.

  At Dimapur I was briefly detained by police; although there were no longer restrictions on entering Nagaland, old habits die hard. I had grown accustomed in Egypt to arguing strenuously with police – and it usually worked. But when I started to heat up, Chao intervened on my behalf and spoke calmly. The policemen were more like soldiers: spick and span in khaki, with Himalayan faces, blank and hard as teak. But after photocopying my passport and visa I was free to go. Chao got me a taxi rather than have me wait for the bus to Kohima.

  I went looking for Chao’s restaurant later in Tezpur, but when I found it I discovered there was a new owner. They rang Chao’s Samsung for me, but he didn’t answer. Maybe I had misunderstood and he was moving to start a new restaurant back in his hometown in eastern Assam. I recall, though, his words: ‘People make things overcomplicated in India, when everything is really pretty much the same here as anywhere: your main problem is to get out of your own way!’

  3

  Lunch at Uncle Yong Kong’s

  There are two types of wise men – one who says ‘I only am wise’ and one who says ‘I am not wise.’ The one who says ‘I am also wise’ is not wise at all.

  Tibetan proverb

  Yong Kong was ready to go. On top of his sagging wardrobe was a battered cardboard suitcase, blue, scuffed, shoved up there as if Yong Kong had only just arrived and was already looking to depart. He had been in England thirty-five years.

  Uncle Yong Kong was the most senior Naga nationalist then living in Britain – this was in the mid-1990s. A member of the Ao Naga tribe, he had been sent to negotiate at the United Nations in 1962, but nothing much had come of these talks except that Yong Kong stayed in London. His small one-bedroom flat was round the corner from Baker Street, and when David Ward, the founder of Naga Vigil (an NGO that campaigned for Naga human rights), was in town, Yong Kong’s flat became the hub of all intrigue and gossip relating to the Naga cause. Yong Kong would cook great pots of rice and lamb curry, pass around plates and talk about the ongoing fight for Naga independence.

  Later, I would see an interview in which Yong Kong made the distinction between seeking independence and seeking to expel an invader from your territory. It is a worthwhile distinction – Tibet was under Chinese suzerainty for centuries and did not chafe too much, but once they exercised sovereignty and invaded in force, the situation very quickly became intolerable (though it has been tolerated). When the Angami Nagas led a rebellion against the British invasion of Nagaland in the 1880s, they stopped fighting and waited to see what would happen. They accepted they had lost the first round to the British – but Naga tactics are somewhat different from ours. To be killed in a head-taking raid is considered an ignoble death; to run away to fight another battle is a cause for celebration back at the longhouse. Hit-and-run is clearly a far saner approach to war than encouraging meaningless self-sacrifice – as long as you have hills to escape and hide out in. Which the Nagas did. They observed that the British – once they had their agreement – stayed in Kohima with a tiny force of Assam Rifles and the District commissioner. Naga life went on as usual. The unadministered area remained free – the strip of land between Burma and the regions occupied by the Ao and Angami (the two biggest and most powerful tribes). But the Indians brought policemen, large numbers of soldiers, shopkeepers and forestry companies. The country ceased to be administered lightly; such heaviness constituted an invasion. And the Nagas fought back – hit-and-run for sixty years. When I visited in 2014, I saw little evidence of Naga separatist activity. David Ward, I know, has given up Naga Vigil – after being arrested in Nagaland and held for a year in a Delhi jail. The Khapland faction, who operate on the Burmese side of the border, are still fighting on for independence. But when I crossed into Burma in the Konyak tribal region, life seemed to be going on as normal in the villages I passed through.

  I met Yong Kong and David Ward in Nepal during a clandestine meeting of Naga separatists in the 1990s.

  The meeting was very hush-hush, but everyone knew about it. Everyone in the Nagaland Cause circle, that is. Even Susan, the Australian organiser for the Naga charity set up by David Ward would be there. She told me she’d only become interested in Nagas by accident. She’d been looking online for dragons – and she had found Nagas. Anyway she knew all about the secret meeting to take place in Kathmandu of the heads of the Naga separatist groups.

  I went to Kathmandu hoping to meet the Naga separatists. I was working as a freelance journalist at the time – writing stories and selling pictures. Stories from a women’s angle were best, because then the story could be sold to every foreign edition of Elle or Marie Claire. Any kind of story would be tricky, because this was in the late 1990s when it was impossible for foreigners to visit Nagaland. Because my father had grown up there, I had a strong desire to visit. I also thought the Nagas had got a rough deal from both the Indians and some of their own leaders.

  Kathmandu – just before the Nepalese Maoists appeared on the scene (and there were Naga Maoists, too; they were able to cross from Burma into China and then down into Nepal, so they avoided having to travel through India). The rank-and-file Naga politicians made a show of avoiding Indian cigarettes, drinks, food. But then I noticed the hard-core separatists, those that hid out in the jungle and trained their guns on Indian soldiers, had no qualms about smoking Indian bidis and drinking Indian beer (although that was a little problematic, given that many of the leaders were also church leaders and did not drink).

  Kathmandu, with its dark, dusty streets, was then burgeoning into a worldwide tourist destination. It had its own casino. We all went there one day and played some blackjack. Gambling with the guerrillas.

  David Ward was fascinating to me. He was a few years older than I was, but appeared, when he talked to the guerrilla leaders, to be in another league of age and experience. He joked with them in Hindi and English and told his stories of being in prison for a year after his capture in Nagaland while publicising their cause in 1992. I often thought about how he was captured. He was part of a convoy heading out to eastern Nagaland. If he had made it past the checkpoints, it’s unlikely he would have been caught, as the Indian army were not able to penetrate that far into the Eastern jungles. There were probably informants. A classic hero in many ways, in a tight situation, Ward had a knack for doing the right thing, the heroic thing, the stuff of mythology. Like when he was in an Indian jail, having his hands broken by a bullying guard, but never removing them from the bars like the guard wanted; when the warder heard, he wanted the guard punished and sacked from his job, but Ward intervened and said no. The guard became his best friend after that. But like all heroes, Ward had his Achilles’ heel: he got migraines – very bad ones. When migraine struck, he couldn’t walk, he had to lie down in a darkened space and just wait for it to pass. So the convoy was leaving for eastern Nagaland but they had to delay for him – maybe eight hours – and this delay meant that the chances of word slipping out were higher. So when they did set out, the Indian army was ready for them. When their Jeep approached the roadblock they couldn’t turn back because there were roadblocks behind them too, being set up as they journeyed east. The road back went west to Kohima. So they had a choice: abandon their vehicles, or keep going. At the first roadblock, David Ward shouted in Hindi at the Indian soldiers. It was night, raining, he convinced them he was an Indian intelligence officer. They got through. The next block was harder. There was more argument. I could picture his thin, committed face, arguing in the rain. There began some kind of tussle and a doctor, who was accompanying them, was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. This was the kind of situation that Ward excelled in, though it cou
ld have no happy outcome. He had briefly been a medic in the British Army (before leaving because he refused to serve in Northern Ireland). He knew that the doctor had little chance of survival unless he was in hospital, the hospital my grandfather built in Kohima. So though this weird and tragic encounter had happened, David Ward managed to persuade the Indian soldiers to let him go and take the doctor back to Kohima – maybe two hours’ drive away.

  Grandad’s plan of Naga Hospital, Kohima

  At this point they could have left the road and gone through the jungle and escaped on foot. The doctor begged Ward to save himself. He said he would die anyway. But David Ward persisted. They drove back and got through the next checkpoint. But there were three more before Kohima. And when they got there, what would happen at the hospital? David Ward didn’t care, he was so focused on getting the doctor to the hospital. You can see the hero here. A normal person would think through the consequences and get a bit confused. He’d think, OK, so we get to the hospital – then what? Or maybe we won’t make it and then we all get caught. Or maybe he dies before we get to the hospital. But a hero has an intuitive grasp of the symbolic potential of all his actions. They are not pursued because they are wise or right, they are pursued because of a single-minded adherence to their symbolic worth.

  In a way, a hero is like an author who considers his life less than the works it calls forth. A writer who will sacrifice health and comfort and happiness in order to produce the works that will carry his name for ever, or so he hopes. Likewise, the hero knows that symbolic acts from the past are powerful forms of motivation. They travel as images through time and space and serve to weld a people together. The hero creates his own myth. Not that for a minute am I suggesting that such a cold-blooded analysis was going through Ward’s head as he drove the wounded and bleeding doctor back to Kohima (typically, Ward didn’t have a driving licence). If they failed, the act would still be heroic. Whereas any other act, though potentially wiser, would not be.