by Bruce Kirkby
“Something about this place feels so inauthentic,” Christine moaned. “It’s like they are just trying to make money from tourists.”
Lamayuru was no longer a monastery, but rather a museum. And in it, I saw Karsha Gompa’s future.
At a roadside stand, we ordered bottled water and chicken curry. After four months of isolation, Bodi and Taj had forgotten the perils of traffic, and we had to constantly remind them of the heavy trucks roaring past. Then we climbed back into the minivan and purred off toward Leh.
Christine and the boys drifted to sleep, but I remained restless and alert, watching as the rocky plains turned to industrial wastelands, strewn with scrap metal, tires, rusting vehicles and abandoned shells of concrete buildings. An interminable line of trucks was parked along the highway shoulder, surrounded by men wearing undershirts and velour track suits. Next came the military bases, fuel depots, vehicle compounds, target ranges, field hospitals, airfields, hangars and camouflaged barracks.
By the time the fabled city spread below us, I was numb.
* * *
Winter was approaching, and the tourists had fled.
Our minivan zipped down streets lined with shuttered shops: Dreamland Cyber Cafe, Apple Tree German Bakery, Himalayan Magic Carpets, Hotel Yak Tail, Shangri-La Restaurant. A few ambitious vendors still lingered, selling the same trinkets found in Varanasi and Kathmandu: fake turquoise necklaces and little Buddha statues, blackened in the pit fires of Manali.
Our family were the only guests at the Padma Guest House. Surrounded by tall poplars and vegetable gardens, it was owned by a young Zanskari couple—friends of Sonam, of course. Opening the padlock on our small room, we found two beds and a stale pile of electric blankets inside. Christine immediately leapt into a warm shower. The boys plopped down in front of the television, and I plugged in the iPad with a forgotten feeling of anticipation surging through me.
Opening email for the first time in six months, I discovered 3,800 new messages. The majority were spam. A few came from friends and colleagues, and what struck me most was the curtness of these interactions, the sparseness of human connection. Most contained only a few sentences—it was all business. Rarely did the sender sign off with “cheers,” “thanks” or even “regards.” Most of the messages weren’t even signed. Normally, I appreciated such brevity, but now it spoke of a breathless existence.
Wandering into the bathroom, I passed a mirror. The reflection looking back was almost unrecognizable: hollow eyes, unkempt hair, gaunt cheeks peppered with stubble.
“We’re going outside to play, Dada,” Taj yelled.
Despite a satellite dish offering countless channels, they had lost interest, and through a window, I watched the pair chasing yellow leaves on a chilly wind.
* * *
In the years ahead, the bond between Bodi and Taj would continue to flourish. Despite a three-year age difference, the pair still play together today: building Lego scenes, bouncing on our trampoline, waiting patiently for the other to return from school before enjoying their half-hour allotment of “screen time,” side by side, in a shared Minecraft world.
“This never would have happened if we hadn’t gone away,” Christine remarked recently. Then, with the awareness of a parent who knows she will someday be gone, she added, “My greatest hope is that they’ll always have each other.”
Several months after our family’s return to Kimberley, we were visiting a local swimming pool when I noticed Bodi surrounded by a pack of grade seven boys on the slippery deck. The larger boys seemed to be jostling him, and I wondered what on earth was going on. Was he being bullied? Only as I raced to intercede did I realize that the boys were actually high-fiving Bodi, who grinned hesitantly.
“Saw you on TV,” one toothy tween gushed. “That was so awesome.”
The television series itself was a dismal failure, bumped from prime time after just three weeks and replaced by a far safer ratings bet: Bikinis & Boardwalks.
In the intervening years, I visited Wes (now a father of three) in Los Angeles and have stayed loosely in touch with the other television crew members, mostly via social media. Heartfelt emails occasionally arrive from viewers who have found Big Crazy Family Adventure on some obscure channel—usually parents or children whose lives have been touched by ASD—and for these alone, I am grateful we documented our travels.
But the greatest reward of the television project remains watching Bodi and Taj together, as they watch the show—which they love to do. I suspect their memories of those events have been cemented by the recording, and they often parody their favorite lines. Taj: “I do not like meatballs.” Bodi: “Peking duck kinda tastes like, well, Peking duck.”
On the rare occasions Christine and I actually sit down to watch Big Crazy Family Adventure with them—seeing oneself on television is as unsettling as listening to oneself on the answering machine—we both cringe whenever my narration broaches Bodi’s autism spectrum diagnosis. So great is our discomfort that we tend to talk over such moments. But our boys appear completely unfazed. So why do we flinch?
While we don’t second-guess our disclosure of Bodi’s diagnosis, I suspect a part of our hearts will always waver.
Mercifully, the decision appears to have done him no harm, yet. To the contrary, it seems an understanding of Bodi’s challenges has led many in our small community to support and encourage him, even those with whom he only crosses paths tangentially.
Indeed our journey marked a shift in the tides of Bodi’s life.
Before leaving home, most days were a battle—both for him and us. In the years since, he has flourished with unexpected vigor: developing and expanding a circle of friends, learning to paint and play flute, joining speed skating and drama clubs, enjoying the challenges of French immersion. As Bodi’s resistance to change and social interactions ebb, a sharp wit and unexpected joie de vivre have emerged. Now budding with confidence, he appears to understand himself with enviable clarity.
Such leaps in his development may have been coming all along, and only by a fluke coincided with our journey to Zanskar, but I don’t think so. Rather, I suspect our immersion in that ancient community—with its abundance of time, stillness and attention—somehow invigorated such advances.
I suspect it invigorated my parenting as well.
Being the parent of a child on the spectrum has always felt like a delicate balance to me, a search for the right mix of both acceptance and support. And while it has never been our objective to “cure” Bodi of the unique thinking and wonderful eccentricities that make him who he is, it also goes without saying that we want to provide him with every tool we can, in order that his true nature might shine through.
I think we are not alone in this approach to navigating autism’s tangled challenges.
Yet in my experience it’s easy to pay lip service to “acceptance,” while focusing fiercely on the interventions, therapies, and training: the “cure.” My own internal balance likely tilted this way before our trip.
It seems ironic that children on the spectrum are routinely accused of lacking empathy, when perhaps it’s the rest of us neurotypicals that are lacking.
Even years after our visit to Karsha Gompa, the most enduring gift of that time remains my newfound ability to slow down, to quietly watch and listen, and actually meet Bodi where he is—rather than trying to bend him to where I feel he should be.
If there is a secret sauce for me, that’s it.
* * *
The morning after our arrival in Leh, we shared a breakfast of toast and milky tea in the guest house courtyard, then set off to explore the city’s historic bazaar. A wearisome barrage assaulted us: horns, flashing billboards, blank stares and jostling crowds. I felt as if I’d been peeled raw.
The streets themselves were a shambles, torn up by excavators. In deep trenches, shirtless men built viaducts by hand, while crews of sari-clad women mixed cement and carried drums of gravel on wooden yokes. Christine and I gripped the boy
s’ hands fearfully, lest in a moment of inattention they tumbled into one of these pits. Overhead, a billboard announced, LEH BEAUTIFICATION PROJECT UNDERWAY.
The barley fields that once spread across these slopes had been paved over, but the irrigation channels remained. Running alongside the streets, they were now clogged with leaves, cardboard, plastic and paper refuse. Teams of men cleaned these aqueducts by rake, piling the muck by the side of the road and leaving it to dry. It would later be burned.
At a deserted pizzeria, Christine picked at her food. “I don’t want to sound all holier-than-thou about it, but I think I’d rather just have a bowl of dal.”
What unsettled her—at least in part—was the cost. After three months of spending almost nothing, money was again flowing from our pockets. There were tourist maps to buy and trinkets to investigate. Bodi wanted to expand his collection of gemstones. Taj had spotted a Tintin in the front window of a used bookshop. Christine herself wondered about trying to ship home a hand-woven carpet. In a single day, we were on track to spend more than a local family earns all year.
Like all Western tourists visiting Ladakh, we probably appeared, to local residents, to be successful and happy. And I suspected it was difficult for Ladakhis—especially those living in rural regions—to weigh the hidden costs that come with such material wealth: the desk-bound hours, the unfamiliar neighbors, the parents without time for their own children, the fast-food diets, emails and loneliness.
Meanwhile, for a Westerner visiting Ladakh, it is easy to assume that money plays a similar role here as it does at home, and thus feel horrified by the meager wages and rudimentary living conditions. But what we do not see is the peace of mind many villagers still possess: the co-operative living, the paspun, the abundance of time, the contentment—all things that a modern economy cannot measure, and thus does not value.
Helena Norberg-Hodge, noted critic of globalization and among the earliest outsiders to visit Ladakh, recorded a rural farmer’s reaction upon first visiting Leh: “I can’t understand it. My sister in the capital, she now has all these things that do the work faster. She just buys her clothes in a shop, she has a jeep, a telephone, a gas cooker. All of these things save so much time, and yet when I go to visit her, she doesn’t have time to talk with me.”
Outside the restaurant window, I watched farmers and gaunt laborers shuffle slowly past. None would likely ever sit in the seats we occupied. Instead, they would become flotsam, caught up in a modern flood that would soon sweep across the high peaks and into Zanskar.
22 GONE
Then we flew south, to India’s steaming, teeming plains.
In a posh Delhi neighborhood, uniformed guards saluted our taxi as it pulled up to the wrought iron gates of a colonial hotel. After circling the car, using mirrors on hand-held sticks to ensure no bombs were mounted on the undercarriage, they waved us on.
Beyond lay manicured lawns shaded by frangipani, palm and eucalyptus. Fountains sprayed, peacocks strutted and flocks of lime-green parakeets zipped between treetops. A bellboy in tux and top hat welcomed us to the opulent world of Maidens, part of the luxurious Oberoi Group.
Sonam had booked our rooms in advance, never mentioning where. Now, upon seeing the hotel, Christine was mortified. “It’s too much, Bruce. He knows us better than this!”
But the humidity was crushing, and we didn’t have the energy to look elsewhere. So I handed my credit card to a murmuring, sari-clad woman behind a mahogany desk.
While the marble hallways, turquoise pool, terraces and balustrades were all gorgeous, what struck me was the pervasively sour mood. No one smiled. Not those milling in the lobby. Not those lying on poolside chairs, sipping cocktails. And for the first time in months, no one acknowledged our boys—except when they disrupted the serenity, which brought darkened glances.
On any other visit, at any other time, I don’t think I would have noticed. But there exists a fleeting cusp as one emerges from a journey, when the world is seen with unusual clarity. When attitudes and assumptions generally invisible—the simple beauties, the jarring inequities—come into sharper focus. This likely seems self-evident, even facile, but as I gazed around that glassy lobby, the impression was overwhelming.
We’d only just dragged the heavy duffels into our tennis court–sized suite—the boys were already jumping from one king bed to the next as if on trampolines—when the phone purred. It was Lama Wangyal. He was waiting downstairs.
I had been planning on calling his mobile after we’d settled in, but there was no need: the wide-reaching Zanskari web had apprised him of our whereabouts.
“Come on up!” I told him, giving our room number.
But he couldn’t. He was being held at the front doors, he explained, not allowed to enter the colonial hotel until I appeared to vouch for him.
Throughout Zanskar, Buddhist monks are held in highest esteem, shorn skulls and maroon robes symbolizing sacrifices made on behalf of all. As the former head of the largest monastery in the valley, Lama Wangyal’s prestige and influence remained immense. But here in modern Delhi, such attributes were meaningless. I, on the other hand, possessed light skin and a credit card, which could open almost any door.
I hustled down, and there he was, silhouetted against the window.
The instant I saw his familiar fatherly figure, I was flooded with unexpected joy. I’d missed the stern man. The bellhop saluted theatrically and waved Lama Wangyal inside. I wrapped my arms around him.
“This very happy day,” the Lama said softly, kissing my cheeks over and over.
He carried the same red canvas bag he’d departed with from Karsha Gompa. Clearly he was moving in with us, which was no problem, for our suite was ridiculously large and held plenty of spare couches.
“This very big hotel,” he whispered as we walked down the carpeted hallway. Then he pointed to the vaulted ceilings. “Mortub, why so tall?”
I could offer no sensible answer.
“Very difficult to heat in winter,” he declared, thinking pragmatically as always.
When I tried to explain that there was no winter here, at least not in the way he knew, and that the hotel was heated by oil that arrived in trucks, rather than firewood, Lama Wangyal just shook his head, as if he’d rather not know. I didn’t say that the people staying here couldn’t care less about the expense of heating such a grand palace; that we’d slipped beyond the world where such warmth demanded a physical toll.
After a happy reunion with Christine and the boys, we sat on a sofa together, eating fruit and cheese from a platter, talking of the trek, of our final days at the monastery and of Lama Wangyal’s journey to Delhi. He had stayed in a Tibetan refugee settlement, initially renting a dormitory room for five dollars a night. But when the costs began adding up, he moved into a monastery, sleeping on the floor beside a snoring monk.
Then Lama Wangyal got down to business.
“No visa,” he said, confirming rumors I’d heard from Sonam. “But Mortub, you can fix?”
He showed me the letter he had received from the Canadian embassy. It was a pile of bureaucratic jargon, almost unintelligible, even to a native English speaker. After quoting at length from Parliamentary Acts, the missive ended with a list of possible reasons why any application could be refused. In Lama Wangyal’s case, just one box had been checked: Insufficient funds.
The letter came unsigned and carried no return address. It was the universal administrative obfuscation: faceless and cowardly.
And the decision seemed fundamentally flawed, for Lama Wangyal’s application carried with it a signed guarantee that I would cover all his expenses, and included bank statements and tax returns to verify my capability. Submitting a new application was out of the question at this late date. So I set off with Lama Wangyal to visit the visa center, despite a warning not to on the letter.
In bustling streets, we flagged down a tuk-tuk, and the blinding disparity of modern India rolled past. At every intersection, children with wi
ld hair and fetid clothes emerged from cardboard boxes, begging at the tinted windows of BMWs and Jaguars. Rake-thin men pushed bicycles carrying staggering collections of mustard oil tins, which they’d gathered from restaurant trash bins, eventually to be sold to the poor as cooking pots. Others carried stacks of flattened cardboard boxes, which they flogged as beds.
For many Zanskaris, Delhi represented the promised land, but whose dream was this?
Midday traffic moved at a crawl. Horns honked frantically. Cars pressed frighteningly close, but never hit. Overhead, the sky was filled with thunderheads, and my shirt was sodden in the humidity. Crammed closely on the tuk-tuk’s rear bench, hip bones ground.
“Visa application center close,” Lama Wangyal promised after we’d been driving an hour.
Two and a half hours later, the tuk-tuk spluttered to a stop before the glassy high skyscraper. My watch read 3:52 P.M. The visa centre closed at 4:00 P.M. Sprinting up escalators, we found security guards barring the entrance.
“Come back tomorrow,” they instructed. I showed them my watch, which read 3:57, but they shook their heads.
Sitting on the marble floor, overcome with frustration, I watched as men in business suits continued to whisk in and out of the office, carrying armfuls of passports. They were travel agents, the guards explained. Then, inexplicably, one of the uniformed men whistled and waved me in.
I joined a long queue and eventually arrived before a pane of bulletproof glass, where I made my case to a young man in an immaculate blue suit.
“This application was refused because of lack of funds, but that can’t be correct, because I’ve guaranteed return tickets, food and lodging.”