The Dalai Lama's Cat

by David Michie

  Mrs. Trinci raised her eyebrows.

  “It is the wonderful paradox,” he continued, “that the best way to achieve happiness for oneself is to give happiness to others.”

  That evening I sat on my windowsill, looking out across the temple courtyard. I would try an experiment, I decided. Next time I caught myself yearning for another cat in my life, I would remind myself of His Holiness and Mrs. Trinci, who were both very contentedly single. I would deliberately set about making some other being happy, even if it was as simple as bestowing a kindly purr, in order to shift the focus of my thoughts off myself and onto others. I would explore the “wonderful paradox” the Dalai Lama spoke about to see if it worked for me.

  Even in the act of making this decision I found myself unaccountably lighter—feeling less burdened and more carefree. It was not my circumstances that were causing me distress but my belief about these circumstances. By letting go of the unhappiness-creating belief that I needed another cat, I would convert my jail into a monastery.

  I was contemplating this very thought when something caught my eye—a movement next to a large rock in the flower bed on the other side of the courtyard. Darkness had already fallen, but the rock was illuminated by a green light that burned all night on a nearby market stall. For a long while I paused, staring across the distance.

  No, I wasn’t mistaken! Transfixed, I began to make out the silhouette: large, leonine, like a wild beast that had emerged from the jungle, with watchful dark eyes and perfectly symmetrical stripes. A magnificent tiger tabby.

  With fluid grace he slipped onto the rock, his movement purposeful and mesmerizing. From there he surveyed Jokhang, as a landowner might survey the far pavilions of his empire, before his head turned to the window where I sat. And paused.

  I held his gaze.

  There was no obvious acknowledgment of my presence. He had seen me, I was sure, but what was he thinking? Who could tell? He gave away nothing at all.

  He stayed on the rock for only a moment before he was gone, disappearing into the undergrowth as mysteriously as he’d come.

  In the falling darkness, squares of light appeared in the windows of Namgyal Monastery as the monks returned to their rooms.

  The night seemed alive with possibility.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Can you become famous by association?

  Although I had never asked the question, I discovered the answer within a few months of arriving in McLeod Ganj, on the outskirts of Dharamsala. My ventures into the outside world had become bolder and more frequent, as I became familiar not only with the Dalai Lama’s quarters and the temple complex but also with the world down the hill from Jokhang.

  Immediately outside the temple gates were stalls selling fruit, snacks, and other fresh produce, mainly to the locals. There were also a few stalls for tourists, the biggest and most resplendent being “S. J. Patel’s Quality International Budget Tours.” The proprietor carried the widest range of goods and services, from local tours around Dharamsala to trips to Nepal. At his stall, visitors could also buy maps, umbrellas, mobile phones, batteries, and bottles of water. From early in the morning until long after the other stalls had closed, Mr. Patel could be seen hustling tourists for trade, gesticulating excitedly as he spoke into his mobile phone or, from time to time, dozing in the reclined passenger seat of his pride and joy, a 1972 Mercedes that was parked nearby.

  Neither Mr. Patel nor the other stall holders had much to interest a cat, so it wasn’t long before I ventured farther down the street. There I found a clutch of small shops, one of which immediately had my nostrils twitching with the bouquet of enticing aromas that wafted from its doors.

  Flower boxes, sidewalk tables, and jaunty yellow-and-red umbrellas bedecked with auspicious Tibetan symbols lined the entrance to Café Franc, a brasserie from which emanated the scents of baking bread and freshly ground coffee, interlaced with even more appetizing suggestions of fish pie, pâté, and mouthwatering Mornay sauce.

  From a flower bed opposite the restaurant, I observed the ebb and swell of tourists who frequented the outside tables each day: the earnest hikers gathering around their laptops and smartphones, planning expeditions, sharing photographs, and speaking on crackling connections to the folks back home; the spiritual tourists visiting India in search of mystical experiences; the celebrity hunters who had come here hoping for a photograph of the Dalai Lama.

  One man seemed to spend most of his time at the place. Early in the morning he would pull up outside in a bright red Fiat Punto, incongruously new and polished for a ramshackle street in McLeod Ganj. Springing from the driver’s door, his head entirely bald and polished, his clothing tight, black, and stylish, he was closely followed by a French bulldog. The two strutted into the café as though taking to the stage. During different visits I noticed the man both inside and out, sometimes barking orders at waiters, sometimes sitting at a table poring over papers while keying numbers into a glistening black smartphone.

  I can’t, dear reader, explain why I didn’t work out immediately who he was, or where his cat-versus-dog proclivities lay, or the evident folly of venturing any closer to Café Franc. But the truth is, I was naïve to all this, perhaps because, at the time, I was little more than a kitten.

  The afternoon of my fateful visit, the chef at Café Franc had prepared a particularly enticing plat du jour. The aroma of roast chicken wafted all the way up to the gates of the temple—an invocation I found impossible to resist. Padding down the hill as fast as my unsteady gait would allow, it wasn’t long before I was standing directly beside one of the boxes of scarlet geraniums at the entrance.

  With no strategy beyond a vain hope that my mere presence would be enough to conjure up a generous serving of lunch—it seemed to work with Mrs. Trinci—I ventured toward one of the tables. The four backpackers sitting there were too intent on their cheeseburgers to pay me the least attention.

  I must do more.

  At a table farther inside, an older, Mediterranean-looking man glanced at me with complete indifference as he sipped his black coffee.

  By now quite far inside the restaurant, I was wondering where to go next when suddenly there was a growl. The French bulldog, only a matter of yards away, stared at me menacingly. What I should have done was nothing at all. Held my ground. Hissed wrathfully. Treated the dog with such lofty disdain that it didn’t dare come a step closer.

  But I was a young and foolish kitten, so I took off, which only provoked the beast further. There was a thundering of paws as it bolted across the wooden floor toward me. A flailing of limbs as I scampered as fast as my legs would allow. Sudden, hideous growling as it bore down on me. Panic and pandemonium as I found myself cornered in the unfamiliar room. My heart was beating so fast I felt I would explode. Ahead of me was an old-fashioned newspaper rack with some space behind it. With no other option and the beast so close I could smell its foul, sulfuric breath, I was forced to jump up and over the rack, landing on the floor on the other side with a thud.

  Victory snatched so abruptly from its jaws, the dog went berserk. It could see me only inches away but couldn’t get closer. As it yapped hysterically, human voices were raised.

  “Huge rat!” exclaimed one.

  “Over there!” cried another.

  In moments, a black shadow loomed above me, along with the powerful scent of Kouros aftershave.

  Next I felt a curious sensation, one I hadn’t experienced since life as a newborn kitten. A tightening around the neck, the sense of being lifted. Picked up by the scruff, I found myself looking at the shiny bald pate and baleful hazel eyes of Franc, into whose café I had trespassed and whose French bulldog I had enraged and who—most important of all—was evidently no lover of cats.

  Time stood still. Enough for me to observe the anger in those bulging eyes, the pulsing blue vein that ran up to his temple, the clenched jaw and pursed lips, the glittering gold Om symbol that dangled from his left ear.

  “A cat!” he spat, as
though the very idea of it was an affront. Looking down at the bulldog, he said, “Marcel! How could you let this … thing in here?” His accent was American, his tone indignant.

  Marcel slunk away, cowed.

  Franc strode to the front of the brasserie. He was clearly going to eject me. And the idea suddenly filled me with terror. Most cats are capable of leaping from great heights without the least harm. But I am not most cats. My hind legs were already weak and unstable. Further impact could cause them irreparable harm. What if I could never walk again? What if I could never find my way back to Jokhang?!

  The Mediterranean man still sat impassively with his coffee. The backpackers were bent over their plates, shoving French fries into their mouths. No one was about to come to my rescue.

  Franc’s expression was implacable as he made his way to the roadside. He lifted me higher. He drew his arm back. He was preparing not simply to drop me but to launch me like a missile into the street beyond his premises.

  This was when two monks walked past on their way up to Jokhang. Catching sight of me, they folded their hands at their hearts and bowed slightly.

  Franc swung around to see who was behind him. But finding no lama or holy man, he looked curiously at the monks.

  “The Dalai Lama’s cat,” one of them explained.

  “Very good karma,” his companion added.

  A group of monks coming along behind them repeated the bowing.

  “You’re sure?” Franc was astonished.

  “His Holiness’s Cat,” they chorused.

  The change that overcame Franc was immediate and total. Drawing me to his chest, he placed me carefully on his other arm and began stroking me with the hand that only moments before had been poised to throw me. Back into Café Franc we went, crossing to a section where a display of English-language newspapers and magazines lent a cosmopolitan flair to the establishment. On a broad shelf, there was an empty space between The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal. It was here that Franc placed me, as delicately as if I were a very fine piece of Ming dynasty porcelain.

  “Warm milk,” he ordered from a passing waiter. “And some of today’s chicken. Chop, chop!”

  Then, as Marcel trotted over, baring his teeth, his owner warned, “And if you so much as look at this little darling”—Franc raised his index finger—“it’ll be Indian dog food for you tonight!”

  The chicken duly arrived and was every bit as delicious as it had smelled. Recharged and reassured of my newfound status, I climbed from the lowest shelf on the rack to the highest, finding a congenial niche between Vanity Fair and Vogue. It was a position more appropriate to the Snow Lion of Jokhang, not to mention one that afforded a much better view of the brasserie.

  Café Franc was a truly Himalayan hybrid—

  metropolitan chic meets Buddhist mystique. Along with the glossy magazine rack, espresso machine, and elegant table settings, it was decorated with Buddha statues, thangkas, and ritual objects, like the inside of a temple. One wall featured gilt-framed black-and-white photographs of Franc: Franc presenting a white scarf to the Dalai Lama; Franc being blessed by the Karmapa; Franc standing next to Richard Gere; Franc at the entrance to Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan. Patrons could gaze at these while a hypnotic musical arrangement of the Tibetan Buddhist chant “Om Mani Padme Hum” emerged from the speakers.

  As I settled in my newfound aerie, I followed the comings and goings with keen interest. When I was noticed by a pair of American girls who began cooing and stroking me, Franc crossed over to them. “The Dalai Lama’s cat,” he murmured.

  “Omigod!” they squealed.

  He gave a world-weary shrug. “Comes in all the time.”

  “Omigod!” they squealed again. “What’s her name?”

  His expression went blank for a moment before he recovered. “Rinpoche,” he told them. “It means precious. A very special title usually only given to lamas.”

  “Omigod! Can we, like, take a photograph with her?”

  “No flash.” Franc was stern. “Rinpoche must not be disturbed.”

  The pattern was repeated throughout the day. “Dalai Lama’s cat,” he would say, indicating my presence with a nod of the head as he handed customers their bills. “Adores our roast chicken.” To others, he would add, “We take care of her for His Holiness. Isn’t she divine?”

  “Talk about karma,” he liked to point out. “Rinpoche. It means precious.”

  At home, I was HHC, treated with much love by the Dalai Lama and great kindness by his staff, but I was a cat nonetheless. At Café Franc, however, I was a celebrity! At home, I was given cat biscuits at lunchtime, proclaimed by the manufacturers to provide growing kittens with fully balanced nutrition. At Café Franc, beef bourguignon, coq au vin, and lamb Provençal were the daily fare, offered up to where I sat on a lotus cushion Franc soon installed for my comfort. It wasn’t long before I forsook the biscuits at Jokhang in favor of regular visits to Café Franc unless the weather was inclement.

  Quite apart from the food, Café Franc turned out to be the most wonderful entertainment venue. The aroma of roasted, organic coffee exerted a magnetic spell on Western visitors to McLeod Ganj of every age, temperament, and coloring imaginable, who arrived speaking a great variety of languages and wearing the most astonishing range of clothing. After spending all my short life surrounded by soft-spoken monks in saffron and red, visiting Café Franc was like visiting the zoo.

  But it wasn’t long before I began to realize that beneath all the apparent differences, there were many more ways in which the tourists were quite similar. One way, in particular, I found intriguing.

  On days when Mrs. Trinci wasn’t in the kitchen, food preparation up the hill was always uncomplicated. Most meals were rice- or noodle-based, garnished with vegetables, fish, or, less often, meat. This was the case in both the Dalai Lama’s household and the nearby monastery kitchens, where huge vats of rice or vegetable stew were stirred by novices wielding broom-length ladles. But although the ingredients were basic, meal times were occasions of great enjoyment and relish. The monks would eat slowly, in companionable silence, savoring every mouthful. There would be an occasional observation about the flavor of a spice or the texture of the rice. From the expressions on their faces, it was as though they were on a journey of discovery: what sensory pleasure awaited them today? What nuance would they find that was subtly different or gratifying?

  A short wobble down the road at Café Franc it was a different universe. From my lookout on the top shelf of the magazine rack, I could see directly through the glass panel of the kitchen door. From well before dawn, two Nepalese brothers, Jigme and Ngawang Dragpa, were hard at work baking croissants, pain au chocolat, and all manner of pastries, as well as sourdough, French, Italian, and Turkish breads.

  The moment the café doors opened at 7 A.M., the Dragpa brothers launched into a breakfast service that included eggs—fried, poached, scrambled, boiled, Benedict, Florentine, or in omelets—as well as hash brown potatoes, bacon, chipolatas, mushrooms, tomatoes, and French toast, not to mention a buffet of muesli and cereals and fruit juices, accompanied by a full range of teas and barista-made coffees. At 11 A.M., breakfast would segue into lunch, which demanded an entirely new menu of even greater complexity, and that, in turn, was succeeded by an even more diverse range of dishes for dinner.

  Never had I seen such variety of foods, prepared to such exacting standards, with ingredients from every continent. The handful of spice jars in the monastery kitchen seemed altogether inadequate when compared with the multiple racks of spices, sauces, condiments, and flavorings in the kitchen of Café Franc.

  If the monks up the hill were able to find such pleasure in the most basic of foods, surely the delectable cuisine offered to patrons of Café Franc should be the cause of the most intensely spine-tingling, claw-curling, whisker-quivering ecstasy imaginable?

  As it happened, no.

  After the first few mouthfuls, most customers at Café Franc har
dly noticed their food or coffee. Despite all the elaborate preparations, for which they paid a high price, they virtually ignored their food, too busily engaged in conversation, or texting friends and relatives, or reading one of the foreign newspapers Franc collected daily from the post office.

  I found it bewildering. It was almost as if they didn’t know how to eat.

  Many of these same tourists stayed in hotels that provided coffee- and tea-making equipment in their rooms. If they wanted to drink a cup of coffee without actually experiencing it, why didn’t they do it for free back at the hotel? Why pay $3 to not drink a cup of coffee at Café Franc?

  It was His Holiness’s two executive assistants who helped me make sense of what was happening. Sitting in the room they shared the morning following my first visit to Café Franc, I looked up as Chogyal pushed back from his desk. “I like this definition of mindfulness,” he said to Tenzin, reading from one of the many manuscripts received each week from authors petitioning His Holiness to write a foreword. “‘Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment deliberately and non-judgmentally.’ Nice and clear, isn’t it?”

  Tenzin nodded.

  “Not dwelling on thoughts of the past or the future, or some kind of fantasy,” elaborated Chogyal.

  “I like an even simpler definition by Sogyal Rinpoche,” said Tenzin, sitting back in his chair. “Pure presence.”

  “Hmm,” Chogyal mused. “No mental agitation or elaboration of any kind.”

  “Exactly,” confirmed Tenzin. “The foundation of all contentment.”

  On my next visit to Café Franc, having enjoyed a hearty helping of Scottish smoked salmon with a side of double-thick clotted cream—a meal I can assure you that I ate with the most intense, if somewhat noisy, mindfulness—I settled onto the lotus-pattern cushion between the latest issues of the fashion magazines and continued my observation of the clientele.