by Thomas Shor
When I was on my way to Yoksum and mentioned his name, people told me he was famous throughout Sikkim for performing divinations and controlling the weather. He was an accomplished rainmaker. It seemed whenever there was a drought, people would come to him, as they would if there was need for a dry day in monsoon. Shortly before I visited him, a newly constructed monastery nearby was to be inaugurated with a three-day ritual to which some high lamas were being helicoptered in, including a representative of the Dalai Lama. It was the middle of monsoon. Monsoon in Sikkim is severe, often raining incessantly for days at a time, and only rarely is there a twenty-four hour period without rain. The lamas of this new monastery came to Géshipa, who performed rituals he had learned as a child when he was apprenticed to the king of Bhutan’s rainmaker. Those three days were dry. It is a matter of record.
The village of Yoksum, Sikkim
On another occasion, Géshipa related to me a story from his time as an apprentice rainmaker when three representatives of the Bhutanese king arrived at his teacher’s retreat in eastern Bhutan with a letter from the king. The rains had failed and crops were beginning to wither in the fields across the kingdom. The letter—which had been sealed with the king’s own seal—instructed his teacher to make it rain, which he did with his usual alacrity. It rained so hard that within three or four days everybody in the kingdom had forgotten the drought and there was now a grave danger of floods. The king sent his representatives again, this time without the pleasantry of a letter but with instructions for him to stop the rain immediately. They had with them a heavy rope and instructions from the king to use it if within a day of their arrival the rain did not stop. They were to tie him up and douse him in water with only his nose above the surface until he stopped it.
When we found ourselves alone that first time with hardly a language between us, Géshipa pulled a kerosene cooker out from under his bed. He poured water from a plastic bottle into a pot, pumped and primed the cooker and started boiling tea. He was squatting on his haunches mixing in the tea and sugar, and though we tried we couldn’t converse. So I undusted one of the few Nepali expressions I had at my disposal. ‘Kay garnu,’ I said. What to do?
Géshipa found it so funny that of all the possible things I might know in Nepali I knew that expression, at once so common and so expressive of the simple wisdom of accepting what is and finding happiness in the present. This was something Géshipa seemed a master at—just plainly being happy at the passage of time—and he started rocking with laughter, squatting over the pot of boiling tea, saying, ‘Kay garnu, kay garnu!’
Then he said, ‘Englayshee?’ He wanted to know the English equivalent.
‘Kay garnu: Nepali,’ I said. ‘English: What to do.’
‘WaDoDo,’ he attempted, and I repeated it until he got it right.
Then he took out an ancient and battered address book and wrote phonetically in Tibetan script first Kay garnu, and then ‘What to do’, the whole time repeating it and laughing like a tickled Buddha. This seemed to have great importance for him; he wrote it in a few other places as well, so he couldn’t possibly lose the English for Kay garnu.
Géshipa’s room above the Cows
The next time I visited Géshipa was about nine months later. Wangchuk had taken well to his role as an interpreter between his father and me during our long interviews in Darjeeling. Now we had taken our collaboration on the road, tracking down people and places in Sikkim connected with his grandfather’s story. Speaking both Nepali and Tibetan fluently, Wangchuk was acting as my interpreter and wonderful companion as well as undergoing his own journey of discovery about his grandfather, about whom he had grown up hearing stories but with none of the details we were uncovering.
When we walked up the dirt trail from Yoksum and climbed the old wooden stairs above the cowshed and entered Géshipa’s room with khatas—the ceremonial scarves one presents to lamas—as well as a bag of fruits and biscuits to present to him, Géshipa stared at me, obviously recognizing me but trying to figure out from where.
So I raised my index finger to the heavens, twisted it and said, ‘What to do?’
Géshipa almost fell out of his robe. ‘What to do?’ he repeated. ‘What to do?’ He was howling now with laughter. ‘He’s calling you Mr What-To-Do,’ Wangchuk said as he handed Géshipa the fruit and biscuits and they started speaking Tibetan. I didn’t pay them much heed as I took my seat on the bed opposite Géshipa’s. Then I noticed Géshipa was writing in that same battered address book and Wangchuk was helping him sound something out.
Géshipa turned to me. He held the page close to his eyes so he could focus. Cautiously he mouthed out the words, ‘Bout do die. What to do? A bout to die—what to do?’ and he burst out laughing, even more intensely than before. He poked his finger to his chest: ‘About to die.’
Then he said something to Wangchuk in Tibetan, which Wangchuk then interpreted: ‘He’s saying that he’s very old now, and that he’s about to die.’
‘What to do?’ Géshipa repeated with the levity of Zorba when the towers came crashing.
Wangchuk had a girlfriend in Delhi, with whom he was always trying to communicate using his mobile phone. But in Sikkim the towers are far apart and the mountains high; even though he was forever pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket and trying to get a signal, he couldn’t get a signal strong enough to place a call. While we were sitting in Géshipa’s room conducting our interview with him, he quietly took out his mobile phone. He turned it on and, even in the dim interior of that room towards sunset, I could see the surprise on Wangchuk’s face.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘a perfect signal!’
It was true. He quickly called Delhi. When he got his girlfriend on the other end, he stepped out of the door of Géshipa’s room on to the old wooden staircase for some privacy but the signal faded the moment he crossed the threshold of Géshipa’s room. The only place during that entire trip where his mobile phone worked was inside the room of that wizard.
The third time I went to Yoksum to visit Géshipa, I went with both Kunsang and Wangchuk. Kunsang and Géshipa hadn’t met in over forty years. When we arrived this time, the rickety wooden staircase leading to Géshipa’s room above the cows was full of black dogs—thirteen to be exact—who started barking and howling at us and blocking our way. Since their barking was accompanied by wagging tails, they seemed harmless enough; we pushed by them and into Géshipa’s room.
Géshipa and Kunsang, Yoksum, West Sikkim
After Kunsang and Géshipa exchanged greetings and comments on how the other looked—such as was natural for the first meeting in over forty years (Géshipa was in his late forties and Kunsang eighteen when last they met)—I asked Géshipa why there were so many black dogs guarding his door.
‘It is because of the dip shing,’ he replied.
I asked my faithful interpreter Wangchuk what dip shing was. He didn’t know, so he asked his father.
Kunsang knew well.
‘Dip shing isn’t known to all lamas,’ he said. ‘It is known only to tertons. It is a potion for becoming invisible. I remember my father teaching Géshipa, Namdrol and Mipham about it. But you need some ingredients that are very difficult to obtain. Géshipa has been working on this for decades.’
Géshipa just started speaking, and it was all Wangchuk could do to keep up with the translation.
‘The black dogs are a long story,’ Géshipa began. ‘I lived in Tashiding until about two years ago. Ever since the time Tulshuk Lingpa was here I’ve been collecting the ingredients. Some of the ingredients are easy to find, like the afterbirth of a black cat. Namdrol had that. He dried it, and had it with him all the time in a little pouch tied to a fold of his robe. He had it with him when we went to open Beyul.
‘The hardest ingredient to get is top secret, and I cannot talk about it.’ He then proceeded to speak of it with Kunsang but in such low tones that Wangchuk couldn’t catch what he was saying.
After some moments of this top-secret associatio
n, Géshipa sprang up on his bed with surprising agility for someone his age, and took a scripture wrapped in cloth and sealed to its dusty shelf with an intricate lace of cobwebs. He sat back down, unwrapped it, searched for the right page and started reading softly to Kunsang about this secret ingredient, which Wangchuk thought might be of human origin.
Then Géshipa continued in a louder voice and Wangchuk resumed interpreting: ‘The second-most difficult ingredient to find gives this potion its name. It is also the most important: the crows’ nest. You need the twigs from a crows’ nest but only from a very special crows’ nest.’
Wangchuk whispered in my ear that dip shing literally means invisibility stick in Tibetan, the stick in question being the kind with which a crows’ nest is constructed.
‘There was a boy in the neighborhood,’ Géshipa continued, ‘who was always climbing trees. I took him with me and we walked from Tashiding up to Ravangla. This was years ago. We went into the huge, ancient forest on the mountain above the town and we walked until we heard crows in the distance. We followed the sound until we saw the crows. Then we followed them until we were on the backside of the mountain and after three or four days we found where they made their nests high up in the trees. I had brought the boy because he climbed like a monkey. I sent him up with a rope to get a nest. The rope was for him to tie himself to the trunk before he climbed out on to the branch. But he refused to use the rope. The more I insisted, the higher he climbed out of my reach and started swinging from branch to branch laughing at me.
‘He scampered up to the crows’ nest, disturbing the crows who let out a raucous chorus of impotent protest. I yelled up to him to make sure the crows were completely black. Sometimes crows can have purple tails or wings, you see, and these won’t do. He assured me of their black color. So I told him to take the nest from the tree and bring it down.
‘The nest was practically as big as the boy, made out of hundreds of sticks. I started examining it but the boy said we should hide it, so no one could see what we were doing. Though there was no one else there, he was right. These are secret things. Tantra. So we put the nest in a sack.
‘We slept in the forest again that night, and in the morning we walked down to the river. It isn’t just any stick from a black crows’ nest that will work in the potion of invisibility. You have to test it.
‘So we went to the river’s edge. It was really a mountain stream, bounding down the mountain but the flow was swift and it would do. I broke off a piece of the nest, a stick about three inches long, and I dropped it into the flow. The boy had no idea why I was doing this but what he saw sure made him stare with wide eyes. For the stick hit the surface of the swiftly moving flow and moved upstream! This was exactly what it had to do if the nest had powers. The boy broke off another piece of the nest and tried it himself.
‘“Stop!” I shouted. “We were lucky to find such a nest. Others have spent years looking. Don’t waste it!”
‘But the boy kept breaking off pieces of the nest, throwing them into the stream and watching them float against the stream’s current—eyes full of wonder—until I grabbed the nest, threw it back in the sack and started back up the slope towards Tashiding.
‘When we got to Tashiding, I put the nest into the metal chest under my bed with the other ingredients. As you can see, it isn’t easy collecting the ingredients for the dip shing—though once I had the crows’ nest, the black cat’s afterbirth was easy.’
‘Sure,’ I quipped to Wangchuk under my breath, ‘You just have to find a black cat, get it pregnant—and wait.’
Géshipa, though not understanding what I’d said to Wangchuk, laughed along. Then he continued, ‘The dip shing takes years. But it is worth it. In the end, you apply just a little bit like a black paste on the forehead between the eyes—and like that, you’re invisible.’
‘One can make a potion to become invisible,’ I said, ‘but it’s another thing if it really works.’
‘Working,’ Kunsang said curtly in English, as if to put a complete stop to any doubt. ‘You need piece of crow nest. Black-cat-born-time.’
‘He means the afterbirth of a black cat,’ Wangchuk interpreted.
‘Two things, these ones,’ Kunsang continued, ‘and third is black cat shit. Fourth one, very useful but top secret. I know but cannot say. I putting little inside my bag, then tying bag to one shoe. Doing mantra, then my bag is—I-am-losing. Everybody notice bag gone; they no see, I no see.’
‘Tied to shoe?’ I asked Wangchuk. ‘What the hell is he talking about?’
I was beginning to feel as if I’d entered the land of topsy-turvy.
Wangchuk had grown up the son of his father, grandson of perhaps the craziest treasure revealer Tibet had ever produced, and could understand the language of wizardry. Yet he came down solidly on the side of his generation. Skeptical, rational and modern in outlook, Wangchuk was not only a good interpreter but a bridger of worlds. He respected, though not necessarily followed, the ways of his ancestors.
‘Tied to shoe,’ Wangchuk explained, ‘so you don’t lose the bag when it goes invisible.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Kunsang concurred, ‘Only string seeing. If not tied, losing bag. Crows’ nest very powerful.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You need a piece of a black crows’ nest and a twig that goes upstream when put in water. That twig. And then you need black cat afterbirth.’
‘Oh, this one very important!’ Kunsang exclaimed. ‘Third one, shit of black cat.’
He then said something to Géshipa in Tibetan about black cat shit, and Géshipa started telling the story of how he secured his supply.
Wangchuk interpreted:
‘Since I did not own a black cat, I went into the village looking. I am not so young, so it wasn’t easy. Seeing a black cat behind someone’s house, I chased after it and caught it with my own hands. I caught it, put it in a sack and brought it home. I tied its leg to a string to wait for it to shit. But in the morning, the string was broken and the cat was gone. It had climbed a tree nearby and was meowing. The string had gotten wrapped around a branch. It was stuck there. So I sat under the tree, waiting. I knew it would have to shit sooner or later, and sure enough after a few hours I saw it drop. I scooped it up and got the boy to climb the tree and free the cat. Black cat not important—black cat shit important!’
‘So that’s the third,’ I said to Kunsang. ‘The fourth, what’s the fourth?’ I was trying to trick Kunsang into divulging the secret ingredient.
‘Fourth one is—’ Kunsang said, catching himself. ‘Fourth one I forget. Géshipa show me in book. But I don’t know. He know; he know.’
‘You just said you know,’ I shot back. ‘You said, “I know but I cannot tell.” Now you say you don’t know.’
‘I don’t know, really. He know. I forget but he show in book. Difficult to find. Very difficult!’
‘Can a person also go invisible?’
‘Sure thing! Then nobody will see you. Kema, kema: incredible! I don’t do this kind of work. Fourth thing, very difficult to find. Géshipa found it.’
‘Why would you want to go invisible?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes necessary.’
‘Why? To hide from the police? What did you do?’
Laughter.
‘Have you gone invisible before?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know people who have?’
‘No. Only stories.’
‘The fourth ingredient is from human beings?’
‘No, no, no—I forget.’
‘You don’t want to say?’
‘Géshipa had the secret ingredient,’ Kunsang said. ‘I remember years ago, Géshipa telling me, “If one day I go to the Hidden Valley, I’ll bring one small leather bag with everything in it—snake meat, frog meat, all dried. Black cat, too, all dry. Black dog meat, dry. I’ll make everything dry and take it with me.” But what to do? He had everything. He even had elephant liver, cut in little pieces. But all st
olen.’
‘Stolen?’
‘Yes,’ Kunsang said. ‘Stolen.’
‘What happened? Wangchuk, ask Géshipa what happened.’
‘It had taken years to collect,’ Géshipa said, ‘and I had almost all the ingredients. I was living at the Tashiding Monastery in those days. As I got each ingredient, I put it into the locked metal box under my bed. Then, one day I went to put something else into the box and the box was gone. It hadn’t gone invisible; it was stolen, along with one hundred and fifty rupees. So I had to start all over again. That’s why there are so many black dogs at my door.’
I couldn’t divine the connection. It had been my first and, I thought, quite innocent question. So I asked again, almost in desperation, ‘But why all the black dogs?’
Géshipa got up from where he had been sitting cross-legged on his bed to squat on his haunches before his kerosene cooker and start a fire for tea. He poured water into a pot, opened a can of tea and threw in a huge handful. Taking a flat rock off the top of another rusted old can, he reached his hand in and threw handfuls of large-grained sugar into the water as well, oblivious of the ants that had been feeding on it.
Géshipa spoke so matter-of-factly of fantastic things that one could easily imagine their reality. There was gentleness in him, an innocence that was alien to any sort of guile. He lived with the simplicity of a man for whom the material world around him was of so little concern because the scope of his creative imagination was so immense. His eyes were at once innocent and deep. They sparkled as if they wanted to communicate what no words could—the accumulated wonder of their eighty-six years of looking on a world that was just plainly more fantastic than the world most of us look upon.
When he had poured tea for the four of us, he sat back down.
‘The black dogs?’ he said. ‘They are quite necessary. For dip shing you need black dog meat. It started like this: one day I was walking through the village when I saw a black dog that had just died on the side of the road. That’s how it is with this dip shing; sometimes you have to wait for such an opportunity. One of the ingredients is the meat of an entirely black dog. Since I am Buddhist, I cannot look for a black dog and kill it. Therefore I have to wait. I took the dog—it was a big dog—and I held its front legs and I swung it over my shoulder and brought it home on my back. There I cut off strips of meat and dried them.’